by Greg Johnson
She wanted to shift their talk away from their mother. “How is Connie? He hasn’t phoned in a while.”
Thom shook his head. “I’m not sure what’s going on. Warren called the other day, said he had to send Connie home from the office. He’d shown up two hours late for work—it was almost lunchtime—and he’d been drinking. ‘Only a couple of Bloody Marys with my breakfast!’” Thom gave a thin laugh. “But Warren thought he’d had a lot more than that, and he was furious that Connie had driven up 1-75 that way. He sent him home in a taxi.”
Puzzled, Abby glanced at her brother. “I thought this job was going to be good for him. Is his father coming to visit, or not?”
Thom had quickened his pace; trying to keep up, Abby felt a little out of breath.
“That’s the mystery,” Thom said. “Connie talks like he’s a cross between Simon Legree and Charles Manson—he still claims they have these huge arguments and his father gets obnoxious, says he’s going to sue him about the estate, even gets drunk and threatens him bodily harm. Yet Warren says he’s heard Connie talking pleasantly and even laughing on the phone with him. That Connie has been urging him to come. The latest thing is some flap about that jewelry Connie sent back, telling his father he could keep it—evidently his father sent it back again, and they argued about that. I don’t know why.”
Abby shook her head. “Connie makes everything so complicated, doesn’t he?”
“Chaos,” Thom said. “Warren says he’s addicted to chaos.”
The dogs crisscrossed in their paths, reacting frantically to a woman walking a pair of white poodles across the street; again they stopped while Thom sorted out the leashes. “Girls, girls…” he muttered.
Abby was grateful for the chance to catch her breath. She said, “I feel that way about Valerie, sometimes. Her life is such a soap opera.”
Thom raised up, his face reddened. “Who is this mystery husband of hers, anyway? Sometimes I wonder if he really exists.”
Abby stared ahead as the dogs, back on track, led them briskly along the sidewalk. “I haven’t met him, either, and I think Valerie likes it that way. According to her, he’s a workaholic with a mother fixation, and he’s commitment-phobic to boot.”
Thom laughed. “Warren should be here,” he said. “He loves to talk psychobabble.”
She recounted to Thom the few details she’d gotten from Valerie these past few months; though Valerie often enjoyed complaining about Marty, she’d noticed that when Abby asked specific questions about him, Valerie would turn evasive and change the subject. On the one occasion when Abby had said bluntly that she and Thom would really like to meet him, Valerie paled visibly. “Oh, hon,” she’d said. “You really don’t.” Abby knew only that he worked seventy-hour weeks as a regional manager for an insurance-industry trade association, and that the job required extensive travel. Valerie had shown her a photograph: a light-haired, pleasant-looking man in his forties with an uneasy grin, the kind a man wears when asked to smile for a photo. Snapped on a San Francisco street during their honeymoon, this was a rare shot, Valerie had laughed. He hated having his picture taken.
“Their big issue,” Abby said, “is that when Marty travels he sometimes visits his mother on the weekend, in Minneapolis, instead of flying back home. That drives Valerie crazy.”
“But I thought he was the one so smitten with her.”
Abby shrugged. “When she threatens to leave him, he gets that way. Sends gifts and flowers, promises they’ll take a second honeymoon to Paris or Hawaii. Even threatens suicide when Valerie really gets intent on leaving. So she relents, and then the cycle starts all over again.”
They’d reached Wildwood Park, a leafy enclave with smooth dirt paths, picnic tables, scattered benches. They sat on the bench farthest from the swing-sets, where children shouted to each other as they pumped higher and higher on the swings; both the dogs had lunged in that direction, but Thom and Abby had coaxed them up to their laps.
“It sounds like she ought to dump him,” Thom said bluntly.
“I think she will, eventually. She’s trying to figure out what she wants to do.”
Abby gazed out at the sidewalk where someone jogged or walked by every few seconds. In the park’s dense shade the air was cooler, and Chloe’s panting warmth felt wonderful on her lap; instinctively, she had edged a few inches closer to Thom. She glanced at him, smiling. “You’re looking so well, these days. Like you’ve got everything figured out already.”
“Me? Are you kidding?” She saw that his throat and cheeks had flushed, as if he were pleased by this compliment. Now that he’d gained some weight Thom looked younger, his skin fresh as a teenager’s even with his end-of-day stubble, his thick dark hair gleaming above his prominent forehead. The deep-blue eyes held a mischievous self-deprecation, as always. The thin mouth had its ironic curl, as always. He still wore his work clothes but the khakis and cotton dress shirt were amiably rumpled, his top button undone and the tie hanging askew. Next to him, she felt pallid and insubstantial, like some ghostly sidekick next to this friendly, handsome man in his prime. No one would guess they were siblings.
He said, “I just got dumped, remember?”
This surprised her; or the “just” surprised her, at least. “I didn’t—I didn’t think it was that serious. It’s been a couple of months, hasn’t it?”
“I don’t know. Yes, but it doesn’t seem that long. He really got under my skin, that one did.”
Suddenly, Mitzi lifted her red snout and gave Thorn’s nose a broad swipe of the tongue. “Thanks, honey,” he laughed, massaging the dog’s head as her eyes closed in bliss. “I needed that.”
Abby watched them. “I’m sorry.” She didn’t know what else to say.
Thom turned, his blue-eyed gaze no longer smiling. “What about you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Before we went to Key West, I knew you were seeing someone.” He spoke matter-of-factly. “I didn’t want to pry, but I knew. Now I’m assuming you’re single again. You want to talk about it?”
She caught her breath, so startled that she gave a quick, nervous laugh. She said, “You didn’t want to pry?”
“Sorry,” he said, glancing off.
“No, I—” She took a deep breath, then another. He’d said “someone”; he didn’t know who the someone was. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. I thought I’d been so clever.”
Thom rolled his eyes. “Honey, please. All that scurrying into my room to use the phone? The new clothes, the makeup? The long evenings out with ‘old friends’ doing vague things you could never quite describe? You’re a very bad liar, you know.”
He’d softened this with a quick squeeze of her forearm.
She didn’t want to lie, so she chose her words carefully. “It was someone I met by chance, but I’d rather not go into it.”
“OK. I don’t mind.”
“It’s still too—too recent.”
“I understand.”
They sat staring out toward the street.
“I do wish you could meet someone, though,” Thom said. “That guy up in Philly was really a bust? Ginger didn’t say much, when she told me about it, but she seemed to think you were seeing a lot of him.”
The image of poor Graham Northwood’s pale, wounded face floated into her mind’s eye, a ghost from an improbable past.
“I was, but it was just for something to do. It wasn’t ever serious. He was nice in his way, but very ‘safe.’ Kind of boring, to be honest. He didn’t count.”
Thom made a clicking noise with his tongue. “I wouldn’t mind someone safe,” he said softly. “I’m tired of always being the one who’s more vulnerable, more attached—I’m in the mood to find a guy who’s wild about me. That would be really nice, for a change.”
Abby gave the neutral smile she wore whenever she thought about Phil DeMunn. She would have to remember this conversation—the phrase “a safe relationship”—when she finally told Thom what had happened. That
would occur when she no longer thought of Phil daily; no longer took shallow breaths when she considered what he had done. The other day, against her own best instincts, she’d lifted the receiver and dialed his number, not to tear into him, nor even to mention her discovery, or any of that; but rather to force him back to their first meeting and ask the real reason he hadn’t returned to her at Pace’s party. Had he worried that Thom might see them together? Had he suffered a twinge of conscience? Why had he left her there after taking so much trouble, slipping into the night while upstairs her head swirled with champagne and the sight of eddying snow against the glass roof? It was important that she return to that moment somehow, important that she understand. Yet she hadn’t been surprised, of course, when she heard the recorded announcement that his phone had been disconnected. She hadn’t really been displeased.
“Someone wild about you? You think it would be nice, but it wouldn’t,” Abby said.
Instantly, she regretted the words. Abby Sadler as a source of advice about romance was a laughable idea, if she’d cared to laugh.
Instead, she turned to her brother; Mitzi had begun squirming, so he’d let her down and sat bent forward, elbows on his knees as he watched the dog edging from the bench, sniffing. Gazing at him, Abby endured a flood of nostalgic emotion as she recalled the companionable, even-tempered brother she’d adored since their earliest childhood. This recent estrangement—four years!—struck her now as something so idiotic that she could scarcely believe it had happened to them. She leaned down to him, catching the tangy scent of his hair gel, and slid an arm around his shoulder. She whispered, “Thanks for being such…an angel,” and though she felt a flush of embarrassment she didn’t care. He smiled, his eyelids drooping as they always did when he embraced someone, and they hugged a long moment.
“Same to you,” Thom murmured, and as they broke apart his lips grazed her cheek.
Abby let her gaze wander back to the sidewalk, where she saw an elderly couple walking along slowly, holding hands; both were watching Thom and Abby, smiling. Thom waved at them, and they waved back and passed on.
Lovers, the old couple must have thought. Lovers in springtime.
Abby dismissed this notion as the dogs, attracted by a scurrying sound from a nearby hedge, charged away from the path, and of course they managed to get their leashes wound together within seconds. Thom called sternly for them to come back, and they obeyed, but they scampered excitedly around Thom and Abby’s legs, as though deliberately entangling them. They circled frantically until they ran out of leash and stood there grid-locked, perplexed. Thom and Abby laughed, trying to extricate their ankles. Near Thorn’s shoe, Chloe panicked and began trying to wriggle out of her collar, but the more docile Mitzi simply flopped onto her back in the grass, waiting patiently for Thom to sort out this hopeless new tangle that was binding them all together.
She arrived at the doctors’ building at 1:50 and sat in the parking garage, waiting. Either she felt nothing or she did not know what she felt. Anxiety, tension, thrumming heart and clammy palms—she had none of these. Her fate lay waiting upstairs in Dr. Kim Smith’s office, no doubt folded neatly inside an envelope. The doctor knew, maybe her nurse, her entire staff—“That young woman who came in last week…really doesn’t fit the profile, such a shame…” Soon enough, maybe others would know. She pondered this and wondered if she cared. Another of Atlanta’s nicknames was “the world’s largest small town”; though most people who lived here came from somewhere else (natives like Abby and Thom were a distinct minority), mostly they were from the South, and Southerners talked. One evening after they’d watched a video at Thorn’s place, Connie had remarked, “Well, there may be six degrees of separation in New York, but in Atlanta there’s usually just one. Two at most.”
It was true. Any stranger you met, it seemed, attended high school with your best friend, or dated your cousin, or went to AA with somebody who lived on your street. “I’ve heard all about you!” was the common phrase, stripped of its sinister implications by the delighted, impenetrable smile common to white Atlantans from the better neighborhoods. So Abby Sadler (“Really? My matron of honor went to St. Jude’s!”) would be that poor, dying girl, struggling to get her Ph.D. in spite of everything. Emitting a little paugh of disgust, Abby interrupted this train of thought. She grabbed her keys and purse, then made her way numbly to the doctor’s office and gave the receptionist her name, not quite meeting the woman’s eyes.
Abby had waited inside an examining room only a couple of minutes before Dr. Smith entered briskly. “Abby! Good to see you!” she exclaimed with her shut-eyed grin.
Abby sat shivering in her chair; the room was very cold. The glaring fluorescent lighting made even the petite but robust Dr. Smith look washed out. Here, at least, Abby did not sit facing a mirrored wall. She must resemble a scared little mouse.
Abby said, “Thanks, you too. The results?”
“Yes, the results!” Dr. Smith said, in her harshly accented English. She held a manila folder in one hand and waved it briefly. But then her tone changed; her voice lowered, her smile disappeared.
“The pap smear, everything,” she said with a direct, professional gaze into Abby’s widened eyes, “was fine. Everything was negative. But it’s important, Abby, that you come back. For another HIV.”
Only now did she understand that the anxiety, the suspense, had been there all along; she hadn’t allowed herself to feel it. While Dr. Smith stared, Abby’s eyes filled with tears and her throat knotted; she blinked her eyelids, letting the tears fall, and waited until she could breathe.
“Abby? You OK?” Dr. Smith held out a Kleenex and Abby pawed at her face, embarrassed.
“Sorry, I—I didn’t know what to expect—”
“That’s OK. Sometime good news gets more reaction than bad—I see it all the time! But remember, I want you back in two months. The antibody—they take a while to form. You’re probably OK, especially with just one exposure, but we want to be one hundred percent sure. OK?”
Abby nodded, gratefully. She felt like one of the weepy high school girls who’d often visited her office, back at West Chester Academy.
Ten minutes later, she was back in the parking garage inside her car feeling as though she’d been run through a meat grinder. Everything was fine. Everything was negative. Half an hour ago her body had been numb, but now it seemed that every nerve throbbed dully with pain, something strangely akin to grief. She did not understand. If she’d slipped near the edge of a precipice and extended her arms for a flailing hopeless plunge to certain death, but at the last moment a strong arm had circled her waist, pulling her back, might she have felt like this? She did not understand, but whatever the case her peculiar reaction did not last. For a while she drove aimlessly up Peachtree in the wrong direction—she wasn’t ready to go back home, pretend to her mother this was some ordinary day. By the time she reached Lenox Square, she understood that her reaction had subsided; she pulled into a parking space near Rich’s and again sat for a few moments. The paroxysm of emotion had left her feeling calm and almost weightless, breathing lightly. She left the car and went inside the mall, whose broad main corridor held few shoppers on this weekday afternoon. She walked, feeling elated and even pleased with herself. She wandered aimlessly.
After a few minutes she paused out of habit in front of a bookstore, but decided not to go inside. Her condo was filled with books. Her life was filled with books. Slowly, the awareness had taken hold that a life, probably long, had unspooled before her, blank as paper. Hadn’t there been a writer who had bought a roll of ordinary butcher paper and written an entire novel as the paper wound through his typewriter? She saw the paper as if she took the roll herself and sent it unwinding down the long corridor of Lenox Square mall, speeding far and fast and out of sight. She saw the paper but not the words. She turned from the bookstore and went along in her aimless pleased way, pausing at a music store but not going inside, pausing at a ladies’ shoe store but not goi
ng inside. Then she remembered that the first of May was her brother’s birthday. Next Saturday. They had celebrated when he’d gotten back from the hospital, but of course that was two weeks ago, and they would celebrate again. She would invite everyone to her place; she would get party decorations, and they would all buy more gifts, and Thom would look embarrassed and sheepish, but of course this would happen, only a few days from now. Why hadn’t she thought of this before today? Why hadn’t she planned anything? Her future might be shapeless as dough, blank as paper, but she knew what would happen next Saturday.
In the Polo Shop, she found a light-blue cotton dress shirt that would bring out her brother’s pretty blue eyes, and she selected a diagonally striped tie that complemented the shirt; the unctuous salesman remarked that she had excellent taste. She handed him her credit card with a delighted, impenetrable smile. The total was over a hundred dollars, but she didn’t blink. Soon enough she would stop buying him extravagant gifts. Soon enough she would put herself on a budget, become an impoverished graduate student. But not yet. Or maybe she would not become a graduate student at all. There were private academies around here, of course, like the one where she’d taught in Pennsylvania, so she could simply resume her high school teaching, if she wanted. She was tired of self-centered rich girls in uniforms, but she needn’t teach in a private school, of course; she could get certified for public school teaching and try that. She could even seek out a school in south Atlanta, teach black kids to read Langston Hughes and Rita Dove. Why not?
Meandering through the mall with the Polo sack flapping against her leg, Abby smiled at herself, recognizing this idea as a version of her girlhood convent fantasies. No, she would not become Mother Abigail, ministering to the city’s poor. Instead, she would go to Emory and pursue Bakhtinian readings of the novels of Charlotte Bronte and spend months or years writing a dissertation only three people—her graduate committee—would read, and only because they were paid handsomely to read it. Then, if she was lucky, she’d get a job teaching freshman comp in a community college somewhere, putting marks beside dangling participles with that memorized flick of Miss Sadler’s wrist. And why not? Surely this was preferable, she thought, to getting literally fucked to death in a hotel room in Key West? She had evaded that fate, and would replace it with another. As she meandered through the dim open spaces of Lenox Square, she felt herself an alien arrived in a new world, permitted the surprising freedom to explore, improvise, make her own way. Here she was.