by Andre Dubus
Separate Flights
A Novella and Seven Short Stories
Andre Dubus
To Suzanne, Andre, Jeb, & Nicole
The name of ‘Threads of the Virgin’ is applied to certain tiny threads that float in the wind and on which a certain kind of spiders…take flight in the free breezes of the air and even in the midst of a violent storm…. But these spiders spin those floating threads out of their own entrails, delicate webs by means of which they hurl themselves into space unknown.
—Miguel de Unamuno
THE AGONY OF CHRISTIANITY
Save me, thought the Consul vaguely…
—Malcolm Lowry
UNDER THE VOLCANO
Contents
We Don’t Live Here Any More
Over the Hill
The Doctor
In My Life
If They Knew Yvonne
Going Under
Miranda Over the Valley
Separate Flights
A Biography of Andre Dubus
We Don’t Live Here Anymore
Pity is the worst passion of all: we don’t outlive it like sex.
—Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear
Come see us again some time; nobody’s home but us, and we don’t live here anymore.
—a friend, drunk one night
1
THE OWNER of the liquor store was an Irishman with graying hair; he glanced at Edith, then pretended he hadn’t, and said: ‘There’s my ale man.’
‘Six Pickwicks,’ I said. ‘And a six-pack of Miller’s for the women.’
‘You hardly find a woman who’ll drink ale.’
‘That’s right.’
We leaned against the counter; I felt Edith wanting to touch me, so I stepped back and took out my wallet. Hank had wanted to pay for all of it but I held him to two dollars.
‘Used to be everybody in New England drank ale. Who taught you? Your father?’
‘He taught me to drink ale and laugh with pretty girls. What happened to the others?’
I was watching Edith enjoying us. She is dark and very small with long black hair, and she has the same charming gestures that other girls with long hair have: with a slow hand she pushes it from her eye; when she bends over a drinking fountain, she holds it at her ear so it won’t fall into the basin. Some time I would like to see it fall: Edith drinking, lips wet, throat moving with cool water, and her hair fallen in the chrome basin, soaking.
‘World War II. The boys all got drafted before they were old enough to drink in Massachusetts, see? So they started drinking beer on the Army bases. When they came home they still wanted beer. That was the end of ale. Now if one of your old ale drinkers dies, you don’t replace him.’
Outside under the streetlights Edith took my arm. In front of the news stand across the street a cop watched us get into the car, and in the dark Edith sat close to me as I drove through town. There were few cars and no one was on the sidewalks. On the streets where people lived most of the houses were dark; a few blocks from my house I stopped under a large tree near the curb and held Edith and we kissed.
‘We’d better go,’ she said.
‘I’ll bring my car to the Shell station at twelve.’
She moved near the door and brushed her hair with her fingers, and I drove home. Terry and Hank were sitting on the front steps. When I stopped the car Edith got out and crossed the lawn without waiting or looking back. Terry watched me carrying the bag, and when I stepped between her and Hank she looked straight up at me.
We talked in the dark, sitting in lawn chairs on the porch. Except Hank, who was always restless: he leaned against the porch rail, paced, leaned against a wall, stood over one of us as we talked, nodding his head, a bottle in one fist, a glass in the other, listening, then breaking in, swinging his glass like a slow hook to the body the instant before he interrupted, then his voice came, louder than ours. In high school he had played halfback. He went to college weighing a hundred and fifty-six pounds and started writing. He had kept in condition, and his walk and gestures had about them an athletic grace that I had tried to cultivate as a boy, walking home from movies where I had seen gunmen striding like mountain lions. Edith sat to my right, with her back to the wall; sometimes she rested her foot against mine. Terry sat across from me, smoking too much. She has long red hair and eleven years ago she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen; or, rather, the prettiest girl I had ever touched. Now she’s thirty and she’s gained a pound for each of those eleven years, but she has gained them subtly, and her only striking change is in her eyes, blue eyes that I fell in love with: more and more now, they have that sad, pensive look that married women get after a few years. Her eyes used to be merry. Edith is twenty-seven and her eyes are still merry, and she turned them bright and dark to me as I talked. When Hank and Edith left, we walked them to the car, hugging and pecking them goodnight as we always did; I watched Edith’s silhouette as they drove away.
‘Come here,’ Terry said. She took my wrist and pulled me toward the back door.
‘Come where.’
‘In the kitchen. I want to talk to you.’
‘Would you let go of my wrist?’
She kept pulling. At the sidewalk leading to the back door I stopped and jerked my arm but she held on and turned to face me.
‘I said let go of my wrist,’ and I jerked again and was free. Then I followed her in.
‘From now on we’re going to act like married people,’ she said. ‘No more of this crap.’ I went to the refrigerator and got an ale. ‘Just like other married people. And no flirting around with silly adventures. Do you understand that?’
‘Of course I don’t. Who could understand such bullshit.’
‘You’re not really going to play dumb. Are you? Come on.’
‘Terry.’ I was still calm; I thought I might be able to hold onto that, pull us out of this, into bed, into sleep. ‘Would you please tell me what’s wrong?’
She moved toward me and I squared my feet to duck or block, but she went past me and got ice from the refrigerator and went to the cabinet where the bourbon was.
‘Why don’t you have a beer instead.’
‘I don’t want a beer.’
‘You’ll get drunk.’
‘Maybe I will.’
I looked down at my glass, away from her face: in summer she had freckles that were pretty, and I remembered how I used to touch her in daylight, a quick kiss or hug as I went through the kitchen, a hand at her waist or shoulder as we walked in town; that was not long ago, and still she reached for me passing in the house, or touched me as she walked by the couch where I read, but I never did; in bed at night, yes, but not in daylight anymore.
‘Why don’t we talk in the morning. We’ll just fight now, you’ve got that look of yours.’
‘Never mind that look of mine.’
The pots from dinner were still on the stove, the plates were dirty in the sink, and when I sat at the table I brushed crumbs and bits of food from the place in front of me; the table was sticky where I rested my hands, and I went to the sink and got a sponge and wiped the part I had cleaned. I left the sponge on the table and sat down and felt her fury at my cleaning before I looked up and saw it in her eyes. She stood at the stove, an unlit cigarette in her hand.
‘You and Edith, all these trips you make, all these Goddamn errands, all summer if someone runs out of booze or cigarettes or wants Goddamn egg rolls, off you go, you and Edith, and it’s not right to leave me with Hank, to put me in that position—’
‘Now wait a minute.’
‘—something’s going on, either it’s going on or you want it to—’
‘Just a minute, wait just a minute—two questions: why is it wrong for Edith and me
to go get some beer and Goddamn ale, and what’s this position you’re in when you’re alone with Hank, and what is it you’re really worrying about? Do you get horny every time you’re alone with Hank and you want Daddy to save you from yourself?’
‘No, I don’t get horny when I’m alone with Hank; I only get horny for my Goddamn husband but he likes to be with Edith.’
‘We’ve been married ten years. We’re not on our honeymoon, for Christ’s sake.’
Her eyes changed, softened, and her voice did too: ‘Why aren’t we? Don’t you love me?’
‘Oh hell. Of course I do.’
‘Well what are you saying, that you love me but we’ve been married so long that you need Edith too, or maybe you’re already having her? Is that it, because if it is maybe we should talk about how long this marriage is going to last. Because you can move out anytime you want to, I can get a job—’
‘Terry.’
‘—and the kids will be all right, there’s no reason for you to suffer if marriage is such a disappointment. Maybe I’ve done something—’
‘Terry.’
‘What.’
‘Calm down. Here.’ I reached across the table with my lighter and she leaned over to light her cigarette, cupping her hands around mine, and under her flesh like a pulse I could feel her need and I wanted at once to shove her against the stove, and to stroke her cheek and tousle her hair.
‘Terry, you said those things. Not me. I have never wanted to leave you. I am not suffering. I’m not tired of you, and I don’t need Edith or anyone else. I like being with her. Like with any other friend—man or woman—sometimes I like being alone with her. So once in a while we run an errand. I see nothing threatening in that, nothing bad. I don’t think married people have to cling to each other, and I think if you look around you’ll see that most of them don’t. You’re the only wife I know who gets pissed at her husband because he doesn’t touch her at parties—’
‘The other husbands touch their wives! They put their arms around them!’
‘Hank doesn’t.’
‘That’s why she’s so lonely, that’s why she likes to tag along like your little lamb, because Hank doesn’t love her—’
‘Who ever said that?’
‘Hank did.’ Her eyes lowered. ‘Tonight while you two were gone.’
‘He said that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know, he just said it.’
‘What were you doing?’
‘Well we were talking, how else do you tell people things.’
‘When people talk like that they’re usually doing other things.’
‘Oh sure, we were screwing on the front porch, what do you care?’
‘I don’t, as long as I know the truth.’
‘The truth. You wouldn’t know the truth if it knocked on the door. You won’t even admit the truth about yourself, that you don’t really love me—’
‘Stop that, Terry. Do not say that shit. You know why? Because it’s not true, it’s never been true, but when you say it like that, it is. For a minute. For long enough to start a really crazy fight. Do you understand that?’
She was nodding, her cheeks looking numb, her eyes frightened and forlorn; then I felt my own eyes giving her pity, washing her cheeks and lips with it, and when I did that her face tightened, her eyes raged again, and too quick for me to duck she threw her drink in my face, ice cubes flying past my head and smacking the wall and sliding across the floor. I rose fast but only halfway, poised with my hands gripping the edge of the table; then I looked away from her and sat down and took out my handkerchief and slowly wiped my face and beard, looking out the back door at the night where I wanted to be, then I brushed at the spots on the burgundy sweat shirt she had brought home for me one day, happily taking it from the bag and holding it up for me to see. Then I stood up and walked quickly out the back door, and she threw her glass at me but too late, the door was already swinging to and the glass bounced off the screen and hit the floor. Somehow it didn’t break.
I crossed the lawn, onto the sidewalk that sloped down with the street; a half block from the house I was suddenly afraid she was coming, I felt her behind me, and I turned, but the sidewalk was empty and lovely in the shadows of maples and elms. I went on. If there was a way to call Edith and she could come get me. But of course no. I could go back and get my car, the keys were in my pocket, I could start it and be gone before Terry came running out with a Goddamn knife, if I drove to Edith’s and parked in front of the house and looked up at the window where she slept beside Hank she would know, if I waited long enough watching her window she would know in her sleep and she would wake and look out the window at me under the moon; she would tiptoe downstairs and hold me on the damp lawn. I came to a corner and went up another street. ‘Edith,’ I whispered into the shadows of my diagonal walk, ‘oh Edith sweet baby, I love you, I love you forever.’ I thought about forever and if we live afterward, then I saw myself laid out in a coffin, the beard and hair lovely white. I stopped and leaned against a car, dew on its fender cool through my slacks. Natasha and Sean and I looked at Terry in her coffin. I stood between them holding their small hands. Terry’s smooth cheeks were pale against her red hair.
When she told me she was pregnant she wasn’t afraid. She was twenty years old. It was a cold bright Thursday in January, the sky had been blue for a week and the snow in Boston was dirty and old. We went to a bookstore on Boylston Street and bought paperbacks for each other, then we had steamers and draft beer in a dim place with paintings of whale fishing and storms at sea and fishing boats in harbor on the walls. For some reason the waiters wore leather tunics. In those days Terry always seemed happy. I can close my eyes any time and remember how I loved her and see and feel her as she took my hand on the table and said: ‘After today I’ll be careful about eating, and if I promise not to get fat and if I get a job, can I keep our baby?’
Now I started walking home. We were, after all this, the same Jack and Terry, and I would go to her now and touch her and hold her; I walked faster, nodding my head yes yes yes. Then going into the dark living room I felt her in the house like the large and sharpened edge of a knife. She was asleep. I crept into the bedroom and lay beside her, at the edge of the bed so we didn’t touch.
Natasha and Sean woke Terry early for breakfast but I stayed in bed, held onto sleep through the breakfast voices then their voices outside, while the sun got higher and the room hotter until it was too hot and I got up. I went straight to the shower without seeing anyone. While I was drying myself she tapped on the door.
‘Do you want lunch or breakfast?’
Her voice had the practiced sweetness she assumed when she was afraid: strangers got it, and I got it after some fights or when she made mistakes with money. For an instant I was tender and warm and I wanted to help her with a cheerful line (Oh, I’ll have you for breakfast, love; just stick a banana in it and hop in bed); but then sure as time is a trick I was sitting in the kitchen last night, and the bourbon and ice were flying at me.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. Through the door I could feel the tone of my voice piercing her. ‘What do you have?’
‘Just cereal if you want breakfast. But if you want lunch I could get some lobsters, just for you and me; the kids don’t like them anyway’
‘No, I have to hurry. I’m taking the car in.’
Linhart, I said to my face in the mirror. You are a petulant son of a bitch. Why don’t you drag her in here and whip her ass then eat lobster with her. She was still waiting outside the door; I pretended not to know, and went about drying myself.
‘I could go to the fish market and be back and have them done in thirty minutes. Forty to be safe.’
‘I have to get the car there at twelve.’
‘You have to?’
‘If I want the work done, yes.’
‘What’s the work?’
‘Oil and grease.’
‘That doe
sn’t take long.’
‘They’re busy, Terry. They want it at twelve or not at all. They don’t care how badly you want a lobster. But if you want one, get it now before I leave.’
‘I don’t want one by myself.’
‘What, you mean it won’t taste good?’
‘Oh, you know what I mean,’ in that mock-whine you hear from girls everywhere when they’re being lovingly teased. I started brushing my teeth.
‘Cheerios or Grape Nuts?’
‘Grape Nuts.’
She went away. When I came dressed to the kitchen the table was set neatly for one: a red straw place mat, a deep bowl which had the faint sparkle of fresh washing, a spoon on a napkin, a glass of orange juice. She was upstairs with the vacuum cleaner. Over in the sink were the children’s breakfast dishes, unwashed; beneath them were last night’s dishes.
Terry is the toy of poltergeists: washer, dryer, stove, refrigerator, dishes, clothes, and woolly house dust. The stove wants cleaning and as she lifts off burners the washing machine stops in the wash room; she leaves the stove and takes another load of dirty clothes to the wash room; it is a white load, bagged in a sheet, lying on the kitchen floor since before breakfast. She unloads the washing machine and, hugging the wet clothes to her breasts, she opens the dryer; but she has forgotten, it’s full of clothes she dried last night. She lays the wet ones on top of the dryer and takes out the dry ones; these she carries to the living room and drops in a loose pile on the couch; a pair of Sean’s Levi’s falls to the floor and as she stoops to pick it up she sees a bread crust and an orange peel lying in the dust under the couch. She cannot reach them without lying on the floor, so she tells herself, with the beginnings of panic, that she must do the living room this morning: sweep, dust, vacuum. But there are clothes waiting to be folded, and a new load going into the dryer, another into the washer. Going through the kitchen she sees the stove she has forgotten, its crusted burners lying on greasy white porcelain. In the wash room she puts the wet clothes into the dryer, shuts the door, and starts it, a good smooth sound of machine, the clothes turning in the dark. In fifty minutes they will be dry. It is all so efficient, and standing there listening to the machine, she feels that efficiency, and everything seems in order now, she is in control, she can rest. This lasts only a moment. She loads the washer, turns it on, goes back to the kitchen, averts her eyes from the stove and makes for the coffee pot; she will first have a cup of coffee, gather herself up, plan her morning. With despair she sees it is not a morning but an entire day, past cocktail hour and dinner, into the night: when the dinner dishes are done she will have more clothes to fold and some to iron. This happens often and forces her to watch television while she works. She is ashamed of watching Johnny Carson. The breakfast dishes are in the sink, last night’s pots are on the counter: hardened mashed potatoes, congealed grease. She hunts for the coffee cup she’s been using all morning, finds it on the lavatory in the bathroom, and empties the cold coffee over the dishes in the sink. She lights a cigarette and thinks of some place she can sit, some place that will let her drink a cup of coffee. There is none, there’s not a clean room downstairs; upstairs the TV room is clean enough, because no one lives there. But to climb the stairs for a sanctuary is too depressing, so she goes to the living room and sits on the couch with the clean clothes, ignores the bread crust and orange peel whispering to her from the floor. Trying to plan her work for the day overwhelms her; it is too much. So she does what is at hand; she begins folding clothes, drinking coffee, smoking. After a while she hears the washer stop. Then the dryer. She goes to the wash room, brings back the dry clothes, goes back and puts the wet load in the dryer. When I come in for lunch, the living room is filled with clothes: they are in heaps on chairs, folded and stacked on the couch and floor; I look at them and then at Terry on the couch; beyond her legs are the bread crust and orange peel; with a harried face she is drinking coffee, and the ash tray is full. ‘Is it noon already?’ she says. Her eyes are quick with panic. ‘Oh Goddamnit, I didn’t know it was that late.’ I walk past her into the kitchen: the burners, the dishes. ‘Jesus Christ,’ I say. We fight, but only briefly, because it is daylight, we aren’t drinking, the children will be in from playing soon, hungry and dirty. Like our marriage, I think, hungry and dirty.