She Poured Out Her Heart

by Jean Thompson

  “How is she?” Feeling a little stupid/awkward/weird at sleeping in his bed, but that was hardly the most important thing right now. “Eric?”

  “She’s stabilized. They admitted her and she’ll be there at least until tomorrow. Her body temperature was 96 when we got there, which is just above hypothermia. So it was probably lower before we got to her.” He rubbed at his eyes, kicked his shoes off, and lay back on the bed. “I don’t think there’ll be, you know, those kinds of medical issues, respiratory . . .” He trailed off, mumbling a little.

  “But why . . .” Bonnie sat up. What time was it? She couldn’t see a clock. It felt like the deepest darkest part of a winter night, when you can’t remember there’s such a thing as daylight. “What’s wrong with her? I mean, why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She waited for Eric to say something else, but his eyes were closed. “I should go,” Bonnie said, trying to get herself untangled from the comforter. “You need to rest.”

  He reached out with one arm and found her shoulder. “Please stay a while.”

  “All right,” she said after a moment. She lay back down, and Eric pulled her in closer to him, but she guessed that was all right since the big comforter was wadded up between them. She smoothed her skirt, which had ridden up. “Eric?” His eyes were still closed. “What was she saying? She said something to you?”

  “She said, ‘white.’ Yeah. I don’t know. Delirium, maybe.” He turned over on his side so that Bonnie could see his tired, tired face, the dry lines around his mouth and eyes. There was a current of something on his breath, liquor or coffee or both, strong but not unpleasant.

  “White,” Bonnie repeated, but the word led her nowhere. She thought Eric had fallen asleep, but he yawned and propped his head up with one arm. “Well . . . ,” Bonnie said, feeling like an elephant trying to tiptoe. “You knew she was seeing a therapist, didn’t you?”

  “It was my idea. Doesn’t seem to have helped, huh.”

  “You wanted her to go because she was unhappy?”

  “She’s never actually unhappy. Or actually happy. You know how she is.”

  Bonnie nodded, although Eric couldn’t see her, and although she was in the process of reevaluating whether she did, in fact, know Jane, if people were knowable, or if you only got used to them being around, got used to your idea of them, and then they flipped out and attempted to kill themselves at their Christmas party.

  “There’s also the possibility,” Eric began, sounding noncommittal now, in a way that made Bonnie pay particular attention, “that, because, see, one of the symptoms of hypothermia, when the body starts to lose function, lose the ability to regulate itself, when the mental function is impaired, one thing people do is, take their clothes off.”

  “So maybe she wasn’t trying . . .” Bonnie tried to find space for it in her tired head. “But, why be out there in the first place?”

  He didn’t answer. After a minute he said, “Day after tomorrow is our anniversary. Some celebration, right?”

  There was nothing to say to that either, and then Eric said, “There’s times I wonder why she ever married me. If I was going to make her so miserable.”

  “No, hey. It’s not anything you did. It’s medical, it’s psychological, you wouldn’t blame yourself if she got appendicitis, would you?”

  Eric said, “I’m tired of always worrying about her,” and then there was a silence, and once more Bonnie did not know she was asleep until she woke up. Eric was stirring too. It was still dark. They drew in close to each other, their faces together. They kissed, lightly at first, and then with intention. Eric pulled and tugged the comforter away so they lay entwined and pressed together and even though it would seem that there would be other moments later when it was possible to draw back and to stop, in fact this was the last one, and they did not.

  His hand was working his way underneath her clothes, and Bonnie reached behind her to loosen her bra, though she kept her sweater on and let him pull and tug it away from her breasts. His hands were warm but she shivered. Then he was up under her skirt and she was feeling for him too. The old hungry wanting, and it didn’t much matter by now who he was or why it was a bad idea, except that there was a moment when it was impossible not to think of Jane, of how she might be only imperfectly understood even when sleeping on her pillow and becoming a lover to her husband, and then there were no more such thoughts.

  Eric stood up to take his clothes off and Bonnie pulled her skirt and panties off so that she was bare except for the disarray of her sweater and bra riding up around her collarbone. She liked his body, its neatness and compactness. He looked down at her and in spite of every reason not to, they both smiled. He lowered himself to lie next to her and pushed her legs apart with his hand. He wanted to see her come, she understood that without his saying it, and so she put her hand over his and guided him. His fingers entered her even as he stroked her. It was like climbing a staircase in the dark, all you had to do was find the first step and follow it up and up. Her breathing caught on something and made its way out of her in gasps, up and up, and at the very top she writhed and cried out and he put his hand over her mouth to muffle the sound.

  Then he was straddling her and pushing his way inside, and now it was required of her to do him the same service, even as sparks were still going off in her and trying to kindle again. She liked the feel of him. Not huge but hard. He went slow at first. Then he couldn’t help himself and sped up and pitched his weight forward and she rode along with him and at the last she pressed herself against him and used her hand and climbed those stairs all over again.

  “I should go,” Bonnie said, wanting to get away before the guilt smacked her upside the head. He moved the arm encircling her and she sat up and pulled the sweater down over her again and took the rest of her clothes with her into the bathroom. Here was a whole mirror not to look into. She used the toilet and washed her hands and cupped water in them to rinse her face. Her body was hectic, unquiet, her head scraped dry from bits of patchy sleep. There was a small clock with a silver frame, something that either Jane had bought as a present for Eric or Eric for Jane, she couldn’t remember. It was four thirty, or a little past.

  When she went back into the bedroom, Eric had dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt.

  He was standing by the door and Bonnie knew he had opened it to listen for the children.

  She started to say something, she wasn’t sure what, then remembered the jewelry she’d left on Jane’s nightstand, oh nice touch, leaving her gaudy finery at the scene of the crime. She picked it up and dumped the whole handful of it in her purse. Then faced him again. He said, whispering, “If you could . . .”

  Bonnie followed his pointing finger. “Right,” she said, and stooped to take off her shoes. He opened the door for her and they soft-footed their way past the children’s rooms. She followed him down to the dark living room and into the kitchen, where an unlovely fluorescent light burned over the sink. Eric opened the refrigerator. “Drink? Anything?”

  She shook her head. He took a glass from the cupboard, filled it with ice, and poured out a can of ginger ale. “Here. Settles the stomach.”

  “Stomach, sure.” Bonnie nodded and drank. She set it down on the counter. “Yup. Good stuff.”

  “Come here.” He opened his arms and she stepped into them and they leaned into each other and that felt fine, in a sad way. She breathed in the complicated smell of him, the layers of heat, body, and sex. Then she drew back and looked at him, this ordinary man who had become both dear and confusing to her. He said, “Why don’t you wait until it’s light. I don’t want you driving at this ungodly hour.”

  “I’ll be all right. Better this way.”

  “If you think . . .”

  “Yes.”

  And then they both began talking at once, and stopped, and Eric motioned for her to go first. She said, “I ho
pe Jane’s all right.”

  “Thanks.” Bonnie looked at him, waiting, and he said, “I guess we should think of this as some kind of accident.”

  Bonnie said yes, that was probably a good idea, and she got her coat, and they kissed, lightly this time, on her way out the door, and she didn’t look back as she walked carefully down the glazed sidewalk and cracked open the door to her frozen car and cranked the cold heart of the battery until it caught and the engine turned over. It took a while for the defroster to make enough headway so she could see to drive. And so she had to sit there and sit there when all she wanted was a clean getaway, and among the things she was trying not to think was that accident wasn’t the right word at all, because an accident was something you couldn’t avoid.

  a vacation

  If Jane opened her eyes and did not turn her head or change position, she saw a long, narrow rectangle of sky, ocean, and beach, one stacked on top of the other, like a fancy dessert. She did not turn her head or move because this was the way she had been arranged, they’d left her like this. She lay on a reclining chair under a beach umbrella. She wore a swimsuit, in the hopeful possibility that she might go in the water. And over that a gauzy caftan, plus a broad-brimmed hat and sunglasses. And of course, they’d put sunscreen all over her. Jane couldn’t decide if she liked the smell of it or not, a lotion smell that overpowered the ocean one. She spent a long time going back and forth about it, then ending up at the same place without deciding, and then having to start all over again. That was the medicine they gave her, which slowed her brain down. It was thought that she needed to be easy in her mind, and everything made very calm and restful.

  The vacation was a part of the prescription too, something else it was determined that she needed, and not just any vacation but a trip to this warm and sunny island (she had forgotten the name of it, if she ever knew it), a long ways away from ice and snow. And so, after their patched-together Christmas, there had been this expensive last-minute trip. She thought that Eric’s parents must have paid for it. She hoped so. She hoped they were mad about spending so much. The medicine made her not care about liking people she was supposed to like.

  Every so often, in the rectangle of her vision, her children appeared, walking or wading, dressed in their beach clothes and accompanied by, not a babysitter, but a buddy sitter, as the hotel styled her, a cheerful, very black girl wearing a tropical print camp shirt, her long legs in khaki shorts. She was helping Grace pick up shells and trying to keep Robbie from charging headfirst into the surf. Eric was there too, strolling along behind the group, entering the rectangle after a delay. He waded in after Robbie and pulled him out of the water, then held on to his arm as he bent and spoke to him, one more reminder about paying attention and doing as he was told.

  Eric was careful not to look in Jane’s direction too often, though sometimes she caught him doing so. Nor were the children allowed to disturb her. It was believed that the care and management of the children had contributed to her stress, and so they were told, many times a day, that Mommy was sleeping, or Mommy was resting. They were, however, permitted to approach her on occasion and show her the periwinkles and sand dollars and seagull feathers they had found. They were nice children. She missed them.

  The hotel sitter was trying to get Grace and Robbie started on building a sand castle, for which they had been equipped with plastic pails and scoops. She pointed out a good spot, neither too wet nor too dry, and sat down with the children and used Grace’s scoop to demonstrate how to dig. Jane felt sad about this. She should be the one showing them what sand castles were all about, how you built them up and then watched the inevitable, magnificent ruin when the tide came in. She could get up right now and go to them.

  But her legs were so heavy, and once she got her legs in motion there would be the rest of her to haul upright, and the sun was so hot. And say she did get up and walk a careful path down to the water’s edge. Would they be happy to see her, the Ghost of Mommy? Or would they be unsure, afraid, wondering what was wrong with her? What would Eric do? What would she want him to do? She rolled that question around in her head for a while, and then came up with the answer: nothing.

  She fell asleep. She slept all the time now. The medicine parched her mouth and her dreams were slow, as if they were mired in glue. Were the pills supposed to make her feel better? No. They were only meant to keep her quiet and out of harm’s way. She was seldom left unsupervised. There was another employee provided by the hotel, an older black woman who helped her dress and bathe in the mornings, and who brought her meals in on a tray, and who sat in a chair while she napped. It was all quite deluxe, she didn’t have to lift a finger, all of it the result of the one time in her life she’d caused anyone trouble.

  Of course they’d asked her—the doctors at the hospital—what had happened and how she had come to be in such an alarming condition, and she could see that their questions all had to do with finding out if she was self-harming, that is, likely to do such a thing again, and if so, what flavor of mental illness she was. She allowed as how she had been stressed, what with the holiday, the party, the kids. Perhaps more stressed than was good for her. Yes, and perhaps unhappy at times, since who wasn’t? The whole housewife thing. Everyone was familiar with dissatisfied housewives, dragged down by the repetitive boredom of their routine and the bitterness with which they imagined the unrealized lives they had been deprived of. Yes, she might have been feeling unappreciated, taken for granted, etc. That hint of marital discord that allowed the doctors to feel they were able to put together the whole picture. None of this was exactly a lie, but neither was it entirely true.

  She woke with Eric’s hand on her arm. “Honey? We should head back to the hotel, the kids are tired.”

  “Don’t touch me,” Jane said, and he drew his arm away as quick as if he’d touched a snake, and she was glad to see the concern he did not mean wiped from his face, replaced by the peevishness and anger which he did. “I’m coming,” she said, and managed without his help to swing her legs around so she sat on the edge of the chair, then stood, carefully, getting her bearings. Now there was a great deal more to look at, sky and ocean and sand all spilling their boundaries, rushing in at her. She fought against dizziness, steadied herself. Eric stood back from her and it was easy enough to read his thoughts: Fine, go ahead, fall over, do it your way. He was furious with her for being something broken, for refusing to be well, even with everyone’s best efforts.

  Where were the children? Jane had a moment’s panic, imagining them drowned, lost, but no, they were right here, being herded toward her by the hotel sitter. In spite of all the sunscreen, parts of them, Grace’s nose, Robbie’s shoulders, were turning the color of boiled shrimp. “Did you build a big castle?” she asked them. “Was it fun?”

  “It was super big,” Robbie said. “A shark ate it.” He made biting faces at his sister, who shrieked and held on to Jane’s legs.

  “Sharks don’t eat sand castles, Robbie.” This from Eric. Since the hotel sitter was there, he made his tone fond and indulgent. He was the fun-but-responsible parent, making all the tough decisions, shouldering the burdens. It was so unfair for him.

  “I’m a big shark!” Robbie couldn’t decide what kind of noise sharks made, so he employed a variety of roaring and snarling and showing his teeth. Grace started to cry.

  “That’s about enough,” Eric said, since Jane was only looking on in an interested way. “Robbie, leave her alone. Gracie, he’s just teasing you. I think both you guys need naps.”

  “If you eat a whole lot of sharks, then you turn into a shark,” Robbie informed them.

  “I’d like to do that,” Jane said. “Be a shark. Just try it on for an afternoon, maybe.”

  “Thank you, Rachel, we can take it from here.” Eric drew money from his shirt pocket and passed it to the girl. “Kids, say thank you to Rachel.”

  They did so, in a spotty, halting fas
hion, and the girl hugged them and headed up the path to the hotel. Jane watched her go, so lithe and mobile, her legs bounding along so effortlessly that she might have taken an extra leap, lifted her arms, and flown.

  She turned back to Eric and the children. Left on their own, their group seemed diminished, straggling, untidy, Robbie and Grace clearly needing care and setting to rights. But her body refused to let her be more than a polite spectator, and so it was Eric who said, “All right, kids, let’s march,” and made sure they rinsed off in the outdoor shower.

  The hotel was not one of the luxury places they’d passed on their way from the airport, all royal palm walks and pink stucco villas, but it was nice enough, with its own little stretch of beach, and purple bougainvillea climbing the walls. The bedrooms had ceiling fans that rotated in lazy fashion and the windows were framed with plantation shutters. Jane had to remind herself that these were not merely props to evoke the Caribbean, that they were in fact in the Caribbean. Jane lay down on the bed and left Eric to tend to the children, peeling off their swimsuits and rinsing the itchy sand from their bodies and the salt water from their hair, applying sunburn cream to their flaming skin. He made sure they drank water to keep from being dehydrated. He put them down for their naps in the bedroom adjoining his and Jane’s. Jane heard Robbie complaining that he was not sleepy, and Eric telling him to pretend he was sleepy, make a game out of it, and Robbie telling him that sounded like a really really dumb game.

  Eric came through the door, closing it lightly. Jane was lying on the bed with her eyes closed. She was not asleep but she wanted him to think she was. She felt Eric looking at her. Then he went into the bathroom and she heard him running water, opening and closing, slow sounds, tired sounds.