Homebodies

by Joan Schweighardt

  Gladys barks a laugh of amazement. “Where would you like me to go?”

  He looks around quickly, at the nurses coming and going and the other patients sitting in their wheelchairs, staring into space.

  “Come on, Pete,” Gladys whines. “It’s been a long day. I’m getting tired. I’d like to get back.”

  He reaches into his pocket hastily. “Here. Take the keys. I’ll take a cab and meet you back at the hotel.”

  Gladys snorts. “You want me to drive back by myself? From this neighborhood?”

  “Do you think you can find—”

  “Of course I can, but … Pete … I thought …”

  “I’ll explain everything later. This could be important. This could be the most important thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  Gladys takes the keys and stands. Pete tears his eyes from the old man to look up at her. He can see that she’s upset. Some of the other people at the conference were talking about meeting later for a drink. It occurs to him that Gladys may decide to join them. “Please don’t be upset,” he pleads.

  He looks back at Fred before she can respond, and noticing that the old man is shivering, he quickly slips out of his sweater and drapes it over Fred’s shoulders. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he says more firmly. “I’ll explain about this then.” He looks up into her flawless face. “And we’ll talk about the convention. Of course we need to discuss that, too.” But she is already turning on one heel.

  Pete watches her go. She swings her hips exaggeratedly. Even the folks in their wheelchairs seem to notice. He is suprised to find that he feels an overwhelming sense of relief. As soon as she turns into the hall, he brings his chair in closer to Fred’s. Then he places his hand on Fred’s useless one, up on the tray. He leans in, so that their faces are only inches apart. “All these years,” he whispers, “and I never thought to ask you … I never thought of you as … I never understood that …”

  “Yes,” Fred responds.

  The two men search each other’s eyes for some seconds. Then both begin to cry.

  LIZ

  Liz awakens with the feeling that someone is looking down on her. For an instant she thinks it may be Maddy, but in the time it takes her to open her eyes, she realizes that there is a pressure on the bed and that the presence must therefore be tangible. Jake. She should have realized. She sighs. “Time to get up for church,” he whispers.

  It is a little after eight. Unless Pete lied about the time of the first of the day’s workshops, he is already—they are already—up and out, tired but cheerful, eager to move among strangers who can’t possibly know their secret and thereby make it even more magnificent. “What do you look so mad about?” Jake asks.

  She props herself up. Her head begins to pound immediately. She glances at the empty wine bottle on the night table and realizes that she fell asleep shortly after turning off the light. She hears Brigit down the hall singing, “Ma ma ma ma” from her crib. Beyond the door, which Jake left opened behind him, she sees Katie coming out of the bathroom in her nightgown. “Get Brigit up,” she orders. “Put her bottles and things in one place for Mrs. Bowker. And then make sure that Katie is dressed in clothes that match.”

  “Suppose,” Liz says to Jake in the truck, “I drop you and Katie and Sherri off and I’ll drive around for an hour and then come back to pick you up?”

  When she stops for the light, she turns to see why he hasn’t answered. Her head pounds with the effort. Jake shakes his fiercely. “Unh-unh, Ma. No way. You promised.”

  “I said I’d take you to church. I’m doing that. What do you care if I accompany you or not?”

  “You’re coming,” he insists. “It’s not fair. You promised.”

  “I didn’t, Jake.”

  “You did. Didn’t she, Katie? Didn’t she, Aunt Sher?”

  The light changes. Liz steps on the gas and glances at Katie in the rearview mirror in time to see her shrugging indifferently. She glances at Sherri, who is looking out the window. Her hands are clenched into fists on her lap. She doesn’t like it when Liz argues with the kids.

  Liz tries another tactic. “Except for Communions and Confirmations and the like, I haven’t been to church in years, Jake. Who knows what will happen if I go again? The ceiling may come crashing down. The windows may shatter. The pews might start swaying demonically.” She attempts a casual laugh.

  “Give it up, Ma,” Jake says disgustedly.

  “Stop,” Sherri cries. “You’re scaring me!”

  “I warn you, Ma. Don’t ruin this,” Jake demands.

  “Ruin what?”

  “This.”

  “Does my being there have something to do with the reason you wanted to go?” she questions.

  Jake nods and looks away.

  They pull into the parking lot. They’re early. There are only a few other cars. Liz cuts the motor and turns around to give Jake her full attention. “Is this some kind of conspiracy to convert me?” she snaps.

  “Duh,” he replies. “Get a life. Why would anyone want to convert you?”

  “Well, I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’ll tell you this. I’m not setting a foot inside unless you tell me what’s going on.” She folds her arms determinedly.

  Jake shifts his weight, his face closed. She can see that he isn’t going to tell her anything. It occurs to her that maybe he has some inkling as to what is going on with his father. Maybe he wants her there so that he can pray for … for what?… family concord? But how could he know anything? After all, had she not bent under a table—months ago—to retrieve a scrap of bread, she might not have realized herself. It’s possible that she only recognized Pete’s indifference and silence for what they were because she saw that first.

  This realization stuns her. She bursts out of the Jeep and slams the door. Then she stands, perfectly still except for her panting, staring at the church while the others slide out behind her. In a moment they appear at her side. Jake touches her hand with one finger. It is the nearest thing to a gesture of affection that she has received from him in weeks. She looks down at him, into his uplifted face. Now that they are all out, it occurs to her that she could dive back in, lock the doors. She wants so badly to be alone. But Jake is still looking up at her, still communicating some urgency with his eyes. He looks like Pete now. He’ll probably grow up to be like Pete for all that he thinks he despises him, she muses. One day he’ll give up his antics and take up worrying and superstition instead. He’ll have trouble relating to his sons and he’ll cheat on his wife. He’ll read Robert Bly and try to figure out where he went wrong.

  She can’t disappoint such a face. She has no choice but to go in. She reaches for Katie’s hand and begins to walk. A station wagon pulls into the lot just in front of them. Liz notes that its driver, a middle-aged woman, is staring at her, and she turns to watch her park. The woman, whose head is still twisted, hits the curb, rocking the car. She gets out of her seat-belt quickly and throws open the door crying, “Wait!”

  The woman is short and heavy-set. Her blue crepe dress clings to her thighs as she rushes in Liz’s direction. Her children, a boy and a girl, are just getting out of the back seat. Their expressions confirm that they have no better idea of what this is all about than Liz does.

  When she arrives, the woman’s eyes sweep over Sherri and Liz’s children. Then she turns to look at her own children. “May I speak to you alone?” she asks Liz. She seems genuinely upset.

  Liz turns to Jake, who lifts his eyebrows at her. “Go in,” she whispers. “I’ll be along in a minute.”

  Jake looks at the woman, then back at his mother. “I don’t trust you,” he says.

  “I’ll be in in a minute!”

  “I just need to speak to your mother for a minute,” the woman pleads.

  The woman’s children arrive and join the circle. The boy, who must be Jake’s age, nods at him. Jake nods back. Liz thinks the boy may have been on Jake’s baseball team last year. It occurs to her th
at maybe the woman wants to admonish her for not letting Jake play this season. “Go on in,” the woman says to her son. “Aunt Nina should be sitting somewhere on the right. Go find her. I’ll just be a minute.”

  The boy smirks and grabs his sister’s elbow. They head off toward the church with Jake, Katie, and Sherri following. Liz turns toward the woman. “Do I know you?” she asks. Her tone is testy. She doesn’t like meddlers.

  The woman opens her mouth, closes it, then opens it again. “No, you don’t,” she says finally. Her round face puckers with supplication. She glances at the church. “Now that I’ve stopped you, I don’t know how to begin.”

  Liz follows her gaze and notes that Jake and the woman’s son are walking together, conversing now. “Does this have to do with Jake?” she asks.

  “No, it’s something you did.”

  Liz starts. “Me? What did I do?”

  The woman wrings her hands anxiously. “Last week,” she begins. She is so nervous that she has to stop and take a deep breath. “Last week you were driving down Maple, which is where we live. And you hit our dog.”

  “What?” Liz shrieks. She swallows hard, feeling herself beginning to sway.

  The woman goes on rapidly. “I saw that you didn’t realize it. I was standing just near the road, getting the mail from the box. Felix was with me. He always followed me to the box. He walked out into the road and you hit him with your bumper as you came around the bend. He went flying, landed at my feet. I saw your face. Your expression didn’t alter one iota. I realize that you didn’t realize.… I got your plate number, but then I spoke to my husband—”

  “But it can’t have been me,” Liz interrupts. “I’d have known. You must have me confused with someone else.”

  The woman fumbles in her handbag with quaking fingers. From the zipper compartment she extracts a piece of paper and hands it to Liz. The numbers scrawled on it are so slipshod that they might have been written by Sherri, a confirmation, no doubt, of the woman’s emotional state at that time. Liz looks at her license plate. The numbers are the very same. “But it’s impossible,” she says weakly.

  “My husband said I shouldn’t mention it, that it wasn’t the Christian thing to do since it was obviously an accident. Maybe I shouldn’t have. I don’t want you to be upset. I know it was an accident. But you were driving so fast. If you hadn’t been, you’d have seen him. He was just at the side of the road, not out in the middle or anything.”

  “But that’s impossible,” Liz repeats. She tries to picture it, the speeding Jeep, the jolt, the thump. It doesn’t jive.

  “I’m telling you, your face was set; it never changed. You must have been concentrating … or distracted or something. My husband said I shouldn’t tell you. But when I saw you here, I thought maybe telling you would keep you from hitting … another animal in the future. Or worse.”

  Liz is shaking violently now. “What day did this happen?”

  “Last Monday.”

  She thinks back, but her thoughts are so jumbled that it takes her a minute to recall that she was on Maple last Monday, twice. The woman is searching her face, her expression more sympathetic than angry. “I’m sorry,” Liz whispers. “If I really did it, I’m truly sorry. But I can’t see how—”

  “We buried him in the backyard.” The woman bites her lip and looks down. “We’re getting another one. For my husband and me, it won’t be the same. We had Felix for a long time, got him when Jody was a baby. But the kids … a little puppy is hard to resist. They’ll be okay.”

  More people are pulling into the lot. Liz and the woman have to move out of the the way of traffic. They begin heading toward the church. “I probably shouldn’t have told you,” the woman mutters. “I can see that you’re really upset.”

  “I can’t see how I could have hit him and not realized.”

  The woman shakes her head and looks away to dab at her eyes with her fingertips. When she turns back, she lays her wet fingers on Liz’s wrist. “Just pay attention when you drive,” she says. Then she gasps with fresh emotion and hurries off into the crowd that is merging at the door of the church.

  Liz stands still and stares at her shoes. Her head is still fuzzy from the wine she drank last night. She tries to remember what she was thinking of on Monday when she drove down Maple. It could have been anything. What if it had been a child? she asks herself. She thinks of Maddy. She yearns for her.

  She climbs the stairs slowly and enters the vestibule of the church. From one of the front pews, Sherri’s large form ascends hoisting a curled finger up into the air. Liz moves toward it in a trance. She can’t get over it. She killed a dog, without even realizing.

  Since Sherri doesn’t move, she climbs over her and shimmies into the small space between her and Jake. Katie is on Jake’s other side, slumped against the back of the pew, sucking her thumb. Liz feels closed in, claustrophobic, dizzy, sick to her stomach. She is still imagining the jolt and the thump. She thinks she might feel better if she could discuss it with Jake, but when she says his name, he only gives her a look and inclines his head toward the altar. She understands that he doesn’t want to have anyone’s attention drawn to him.

  There is a sealed room off to one side of the altar. People with young, disorderly children are filing into it to observe the mass from behind the glass wall there. It occurs to Liz that maybe she should suggest they sit there too. She could say it’s because of Brigit, in case she acts up. Jake would assume she was really thinking of Sherri. He might consider it. But her mind is working slowly, and by the time she realizes that Brigit isn’t even with them, that she is home with Mrs. Bowker, the organist on the balcony has already started up, and the priest and the altar boys are coming down the aisle with the choir behind them.

  The congregation stands, or rather, everyone but Sherri does. She sits looking straight ahead at nothing with her arms folded beneath her heavy breasts. Her bottom lip protrudes, so that you can see some of the inside of it, and her upper lip is resting calmly above it. She looks almost angry, as if the choir is something she hadn’t counted on when she calculated how long it would take to get to the pancakes. Katie waves to a little girl in the choir procession who she knows from school. The little girl looks aside quickly, refusing Katie’s invitation to show a sign of recognition. “Jake,” Liz whispers.

  Half of the children in the choir are dressed in red robes and the other half are in black. They all wear white frocks over them. They move slowly, singing off-key in high-pitched voices. Some, proud to be at the center of attention, sing too loudly. Others seem only to be mouthing the words.

  They are a touching assemblage, as innocent as puppies in their white frocks. Liz can hardly bring herself to look at them. She closes her eyes for a moment and is struck by a sudden, sharp image of Pete and Gladys. The image comes from nowhere, unbidden, unannounced, so that Liz thinks there must be some validity to it. She sees him over her, pumping, the red line on his nose marking the absence of his glasses. She sees Gladys, her flawless face turned to one side, her expression nearly pained, her beautiful, baby-fine hair spread out on the pillow, full of the light that is streaming in from the window.

  She thinks they must not have gone to the workshop this morning after all. She wonders whether she would have known if she hadn’t first bent over to pick up a slice of bread. Then the image of the jolt and the thump reappears and obliterates the other. “Distracted,” the woman said.

  She opens her eyes and catches a glimpse of the girl in the choir procession who is just passing their pew. This is one of the older children, one of the last of the group because of her height. She looks remarkably like Maddy, or rather, she looks the way Liz imagines Maddy would have looked by now.

  Liz watches the back of the girl’s dark blonde head as she genuflects and slides into one of the pews in front of her. Her hair hangs midway down her back. It is very straight and even, as if it has only recently been trimmed. Mindlessly, Liz pulls a lock of her own recently-trimmed hair
around and examines the color. It is the very same.

  Of course it can’t be Maddy. What would Maddy be doing in church? Liz has never seen her anywhere but in the house, and once, at twilight, outside in the yard. Yet she feels a wave of nausea and has to grab hold of the pew for support. When she looks at her hand, she sees that it is colorless. Sherri glances at her, but gives no indication that she knows her sister is about to collapse.

  It can’t be Maddy. Maddy never leaves the house. Maddy is far less substantial, more like the mouse that has already vanished by the time you’ve registered its presence.

  Liz chalks it up to the bottle of wine and the jolt and the thump that she’s just been made aware of. She reminds herself that she’s not Sherri, that although she feels like she’s losing control, she can’t be, that her eruption in the house last week was an aberration that can’t be repeated. They have the same genes, yes, but different arrangements. She can’t let herself forget that.

  Still, she feels that she must get a look at the girl’s eyes. Maddy’s were large and green, like her own. But the congregation sits just then, and she can’t even find the back of the child’s head.

  She can hear her breathing becoming irregular. She glances at Sherri, who is twisting her head so as to take in all of the stained-glass windows, looking them over one by one. Her brows ascend when her focus falls on the window depicting the keys to heaven. Liz wonders if she ever found the house key. She turns to look at Jake. His gaze is set dead ahead. Someone is reading something up at the altar. Jake nods once, slightly, as if in agreement.

  Liz feels as if she is gasping for breath. She leans closer to Jake, hoping he’ll hear her and take her out for some air, but still he doesn’t seem to notice. She remembers her image in the shop window after the Guernica, how surprised she was to see how content she looked when on the inside she was coming apart, losing her center, spinning out of control.