She Poured Out Her Heart

by Jean Thompson

  From time to time she thought about getting married, having children, wondering if she even wanted to do such a thing. It wasn’t yet too late. Of course she’d have to find a partner, or at least a sperm donor ha ha, but no. Bad jokes aside, she’d want a man who voiced the intention to stick around. That is, if she made an actual decision in the first place.

  And where was she supposed to find this future mate, this accomplice in willful self-delusion? The men she knew (through work, through her occasional bouts of self-improvement via gyms, gallery talks, etc., through, it must be admitted, nights spent in bar-trolling) were not notable in wanting to marry. They had expensive hobbies or engrossing jobs or both. They squirmed at the mention of children. Or maybe they had already been married and were not anxious to repeat the experience. They’d already had a first batch of children with whom they were on precarious terms.

  Or sometimes they were still married, although this was not always disclosed at the outset, and even then you could go along with it and be Low Expectations Girl. But Bonnie had not done so, aside from a dispiriting episode or two, not because she was so morally upright—she was pretty sure she was not—but because she didn’t see why these guys ought to be able to get away with it. Not to mention the unsavory parade of cover stories and excuses. Who would have thought there were so many marriages of pure convenience out there, platonic and sexless? So many wives with so many obvious, damning character defects? Maybe it was easier back in the good old guilty days, when they just hid their wedding rings and you weren’t expected to help them validate their excuses.

  Jane called the first week of December to ask Bonnie what she was doing for Christmas. “Do I have to do anything?” Bonnie said. “Christmas has turned into such a misery. But”—she amended herself—“you have little kids, you get to do all the fun Santa stuff.”

  “Grace is too young, but Robbie’s into it, big time. Of course, since we don’t go to church or anything, it’s basically this extravaganza of greed. We tried telling him that we celebrate Jesus’ birthday because Jesus was an important person, but that sounds pretty feeble. Anyway, Eric thinks we should have a Christmas party.”

  “He does?” Bonnie tried to calculate a response. “What do you think?”

  “People are always inviting us over, so, sure. Probably the week before Christmas.”

  “You don’t sound entirely sold on the idea.”

  “It’s either this or wait until the kids are in college.”

  “I bet the house is going to look nice all dolled up.” With the help of Eric’s parents, he and Jane had bought a bungalow in Elmhurst, small but charming, with a deep, covered front porch, hardwood floors, a fireplace, and a kid-friendly backyard. “I bet they have some ordinance, you can’t put a blow-up Santa on the roof. Let me know if I can bring anything. I mean, something that doesn’t require cooking. A salad, or bakery stuff. Italian beef so you can make sandwiches.”

  “Thanks. Maybe some wine.”

  “No, really, let me bring actual food. Jane! Don’t overdo it! Back away from the refrigerator! Order a bunch of pizzas. People always like pizza.”

  “I just want it to be nice,” Jane said vaguely. “It’ll be fine. I have plenty of time and I’ll be really organized. I was thinking, a seafood buffet for starters. How hard is that? It’s mostly ice. Then some kind of main course dishes. And a big dessert table. Everybody expects sweets at Christmas.”

  “How many people are you thinking?”

  “Twenty, twenty-five. Or more. I haven’t got a good feel for it yet.”

  “You know what’s big these days? Hiring a chef. They come in with their own knives and pots and pans. They take over the kitchen and you don’t have to do a thing.”

  “Like that’s going to happen.”

  “At least get Eric to help.”

  “Ditto.”

  “Can you hook up with a cookie exchange? You know, you bake a batch and then you trade cookies with everybody else? Don’t they have those things in the suburbs?”

  One of the kids was acting up and Jane said she had to go, which was the usual exit for their conversations. Bonnie hung up and wondered if she should talk to Eric, try and head off what sounded like a bad idea in the making. She was pretty sure that Eric had not demanded a seafood buffet. More likely, he’d mentioned a party and now Jane would turn it into something completely exhausting and then blame Eric for it. But that was their business, and anyway, Bonnie didn’t want to find herself joining forces with Eric one more time, talking about Jane as if she was a problem that needed solving.

  She didn’t know anything about marriages, Jane and Eric’s or anyone else’s. All you ever saw were the public moments, the submerged or surfacing fights, the lovey-dovey. People did their real living behind closed doors, which was why the couples you thought were so happy ended up divorcing, and the miserable ones hung on forever. Of course there were the things Jane told her about Eric, and from time to time, things Eric told her about Jane. These were most often in the nature of complaints of the letting off steam variety, nothing that sounded fatal. Jane was too tired. Eric was too busy. The kids were good kids but they were a handful. Jane didn’t appreciate. Eric didn’t help. The kids didn’t behave. Jane always. Eric never. Kids!

  Did love get worn down over time? Did it change form like a chemistry experiment, from a fizzy potion to an inch of tar in the bottom of a beaker? Most likely she had the entirely wrong idea about it, all her stupid trashy notions. Grow up, she told herself. Nothing was as simple as she’d thought it was back in her comic book days.

  She bought Christmas presents for Robbie and Grace, and for Jane and Eric, a gift card to a grown-up restaurant nearby, in case they managed such a thing as a date night. Two days after the party was their seventh anniversary. When Bonnie pointed this out, Jane said, “Really? What’s that in dog years?”

  “Stop,” Bonnie said. “Stop with the bitter jokes. You sound whiny. Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? I kind of don’t.”

  “All right. I need new material. Noted. Listen, I’m seeing somebody.”

  “You are?”

  “A psychotherapist. He’s got me on these antidepressants, I think they’re helping. So I want you to know, I’m making an effort here.”

  “That’s great.” Bonnie tried to cover her mistake. She had assumed Jane meant, seeing a lover. “It’s great that you’re trying for some positive changes. Because really, you have so much going for you. You and Eric and the kids. You ought to be completely happy.”

  “Yes, I ought to. Oughtn’t I. See you at the party.”

  Bonnie couldn’t decide what to wear. There would probably be some women there in pants and holiday sweaters. It was, after all, the suburbs. Maybe some glammier cocktail dresses. It wasn’t a night to wear too much black, or high boots with a leather miniskirt, or anything else that would mark her as an interloper. And although it was bound to be mostly couples, you couldn’t help thinking there might be some cute young single doctor on the premises. Maybe not even young. Maybe not even cute.

  In the end she chose a red sweater with a pretty scoop neckline, one of her fifteen different black skirts, and the kind of jewelry she thought of as aspirational. Low black heels. She thought she looked all right if not great, festive if not quite ready to compete with the Christmas tree. It wasn’t a long drive to get to Jane and Eric’s, a straight shot down the Eisenhower. There had been a recent snow and now polar cold had settled in on top of it. The traffic kicked up slush and Bonnie had to keep running her windshield wipers to clear the grime. Why did she always spend major holidays in transit, hurrying to whatever celebration would keep her from feeling like an isolated failure? Maybe someday she’d live somewhere big enough and nice enough to host her own parties and have people come to her.

  Once she reached Elmhurst, she let herself enjoy the look of the place, all done up for Christmas with
its lighted greenery and decorated windows, although the whole point of the suburbs seemed to be an attempt to look like what it was not. An English country village, perhaps, complete with these half-timbered mock-Tudors. An American small town circa 1910, but with good access to shopping and regional transport. No matter. The streets were plowed, the sidewalk shoveled, and the new snow was a clean layer of cold.

  Jane and Eric’s house was decorated with swags of colored lights across the evergreens in front, and electric candles at the windows. A wreath hung on the front door, and the woodbox next to it held some white birch logs, sprigs of holly, and a floppy-legged felt elf. Bonnie stamped her feet on the red and green door mat so as not to track any snow in, and knocked. Nobody answered, perhaps they had not heard her. Some kind of child-themed Christmas music was playing inside. She pushed the unlocked door open and entered.

  The living room was empty except for a hulking decorated tree that took up a lot of the small space. It had multicolored lights and ropes of tinsel and some construction-paper chains that the kids must have pasted together. “Hello?” Bonnie put her bag of presents on the sofa and took a few steps inside. Had she arrived on the wrong night?

  But no, they were all in the kitchen, “all” being Jane and Eric, two other couples, and Robbie and Grace, who were sitting at the table and making a mess with some frosted sugar cookies and red and green sugars. The adults were all watching them, either interested or pretending interest. Little Grace was paddling in the bowl of frosting and Robbie, who was older but not much tidier, was applying colored sugar by grinding it in with his knuckles.

  “Bonnie, hey!” Eric spotted her and waved her over, giving her his usual half-hug and kiss on the cheek. “Merry Christmas!”

  “Merry Christmas. Where’s your reindeer sweater? Hi kids. Hi Jane. Hi.” This last to the people she didn’t know. Jane was trying to haul things out of the refrigerator even though everyone was in her way. “Excuse me,” she kept saying. “Excuse me.” What were they all doing in the kitchen? Why were the kids still up?

  “Bonnie, this is Ed and Allie. Jay and Carol.” Hello, hello, Bonnie said, shaking hands. Were they neighbors? Doctors? Neighbors who were doctors? She had the unhappy premonition that this would be one more goddamned party where she would be the only single person. To Jane she said, “What can I help you with?”

  Jane looked oddly blurred or out of focus. Medication? She had the whole of the counter space filled with bowls and trays, wrappings of foil and plastic. “Maybe you could . . . Robbie? Grace? I said you could stay up for the party and now it’s bedtime.”

  Neither child looked up from the cookies. Bonnie said, “Hey guys, what if I help you put the cookies away and get cleaned up? Robbie, do you still play your astronaut game?” She didn’t mind, really. The maiden aunt always had to tend to the children, and anyway it would save her from exchanging what-do-you-dos with the guests whose names she had already forgotten.

  Grace was no problem. She was a sweet, quiet little girl with Jane’s fair coloring and nearly translucent skin. She kissed her parents good night and headed for the stairs. Robbie was still a hell-raiser and a worldbeater and required more negotiation, more cookies, before he was ready to give in. “Come on,” Bonnie said. “I’ll let you be the Russian cosmonaut.” Robbie still considered her an acceptable playmate, although the day would come when she would be demoted to a mere female. They were both delicious children, each in their separate ways, and Bonnie was grateful to Jane for having them so she could hang out with them occasionally and not have to have her own.

  Bonnie got heavy-headed, sleepy Grace settled into her pink bed in her pink pink room, then sat on the floor of Robbie’s room with him and played the astronaut game. This was a made-up contest involving a model of the international space station and its crew, who were always subverting the spirit of scientific cooperation by smashing into each other and knocking each other out of orbit and into the vacuum of space, although, unlike space, there were many sound effects.

  Bonnie might have been content to sit there all evening, engaging in interstellar mayhem, but the doorbell kept ringing and she knew she had to get downstairs. “OK, kiddo. How about you get in bed and take your astronaut with you?”

  “My astronaut’s the best! Yours is a wuss!”

  “Yeah, well my astronaut got better grades in school. Good night, sweetie.”

  Descending, she noted that the music had changed over, from songs about reindeer and snowmen to something resembling choir music. Christmas anthems, presumably, as sung in some high church setting. It seemed like the wrong choice for a party, and once she reached the bottom of the stairs she could tell instantly that the party had not jelled.

  There were people standing around in pairs—she’d been right about that part—holding drinks and plates of food. Surely some of these couples knew each other, or at least knew the person they were standing next to. But there was a general dearth of conversation, as if they were attending some sort of well-fed holiday visitation. Bonnie fixed her expression in a pleasant half-smile and made her way through the guests, looking for Jane.

  Passing through the dining room, she was impressed, no, daunted, by what Jane had done with the food. If not an entire seafood buffet, there was at least chilled shrimp and pickled herring. A platter of cold sliced roast beef and fixings for sandwiches. Different bowls and trays, cheeses, salads, casseroles. Asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, mushrooms entombed in phyllo. The guests were milling and nudging each other around the table, intent on getting as much as possible onto their plates without looking too piggy.

  Good God, the dessert table. Jane must have been baking in her sleep for weeks. There were frosted snowflake cookies, date bars, chocolate stars, jelly tots, coconut snowballs. Red and green cupcakes. A Bundt cake on a pedestal stand. A jar of multicolored candy canes. How had she managed to keep the kids out of it all?

  The bar had been set up in the kitchen, and that was where she found Eric, drinking bottled beer and talking with a couple of other men. Jane must have been in the bathroom.

  Eric waved her over. “Are the kids locked up yet, I mean, settled in?”

  “Such a kidder. Grace is out like a light. Robbie might bounce around for a while.”

  “Thanks. I’ll go check on them in a sec. Have a drink, you’ve earned it.” He reached for a bottle of red wine. “The usual?”

  “Sure.” She was all about the usual. That was, of course, a self-pitying thought, and she tried halfheartedly to bat it away. The two men nearby were still deep in conversation. Neither of them had registered her presence with as much as a glance, which told her she’d dressed in acceptable camouflage. “Thanks,” she said, accepting a glass from Eric. “The food looks great. I bet Jane’s been cooking up a storm.”

  “Yeah, you bet. OK, I’m going to go check on the kids.” A layer of something distant and unreadable settled over his face. If they’d been alone, she would have asked him if everything was all right, meaning it didn’t seem to be, but he patted her shoulder and hurried off. She raised her glass and tried to look serene and self-possessed, rather than a stranded wallflower. She looked around the kitchen, hoping for some chore to occupy herself with, but everything had been cleared away. The sink and countertops, refrigerator and stovetop, had all been wiped down. Whatever Jane’s doctor was giving her, she wanted some herself.

  Trying to maneuver, she bumped into one of the talking men. Sorry, they both said. Sorry. They glanced at each other, waiting to see if a conversation would take hold. Nice party, or something like that. He said, “Hi, I’m Ron Madjiak.”

  “Bonnie Abrams.” She extended her hand and they shook. At least he knew enough to wait for the lady, in this case her, to offer to shake. It was one of those etiquette things that nobody much followed anymore, but that she got huffy about. He was older, forties, blond and heavy-set. His wedding ring sent out a beam like a lighthouse b
eacon. She said, “Let me guess. You’re a doctor.”

  He spread his hands. “You got me.”

  “Are you a heart guy like Eric?”

  The other man leaned into their conversation. “He’s the heart guy,” he informed Bonnie. “We’re in the presence of greatness. This man can unhook your wires, jump-start your battery, and put it all back inside your chest, smoother than peeling a peach.” He clapped Ron on the back and headed off for the food tables.

  “Wow,” Bonnie said. She tried to be more eloquently impressed. “That’s something.”

  Ron looked modestly bored. Or boredly modest. “It’s not exactly like peeling a peach.”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “I’m the head of Cardiology at Northwestern.”

  “Eric’s boss?”

  “Mentor. Supervisor,” he corrected. “He’s a great guy.”

  “Yes, he is.” It was her turn to offer something. “I’m an old friend of Jane’s.”

  Slight puzzlement on Ron’s big blond face. “Jane?”

  “Your hostess.” Where was Jane, anyway? And then, because Bonnie did not want to launch into a narrative of what it was, exactly, that she did, because it was all too involved and sometimes she told people she was a bartender or an aerobics instructor instead, she said, “This music isn’t really doing it for me. I’m going to see if I can find ‘Deck the Halls’ or something.”

  Bonnie hadn’t expected him to follow her, but he did. She knew where the sound system was inside a cabinet in the living room, and she apologized her way past a few people who were trying to keep a grip on their plates and drinks. “What we need,” she said to Ron, “is something in between ‘Have a Holly Jolly Christmas’ and a bunch of chanting monks.”

  “Let’s see what we can do.” Ron bent over the console. One of those take-charge guys.