by Donnna Salli
I peeked out at the audience again. There was no mistake. Lucy’s and Marcus’s seats at front row center were big, bright, and empty. I didn’t understand it. They were an institution at opening night. When I left the store, Lucy said, “We’ll be there, hon—have we ever missed?” I’ve worked for her nearly five years and never knew her to make a promise she didn’t keep. What really disappointed me, though, was that nowhere in the audience did I see Richard Cross.
When I was young, everybody loved Claire. I was a perfect child, I never did anything wrong. But then I lost my innocence on a bathroom floor and turned wild. There was an unending cyclone in my chest, a cloudburst in my head—and since my divorce things have only gotten worse. I’ll find my purse well chilled in the fridge, the milk going sour in a cupboard. Some days, I think I should just check in at the state hospital. Everything I once believed in lies like china shattered to a gift shop floor, and time is screwed up. I’m haunted by poltergeist twins. Wherever I go, they remind me where I’ve been. I’ll be fine, minding my own business—then wham, I’m back in time, it’s like I’m there again, where I don’t want to be. My heart’s racing, I can’t breathe. My past and my present stagger around inside my head, drunks arm-in-arm, taunting me, pissing their way down an alley.
Tonight started on a bad note. On my way to the theatre, I nearly got taken out by an ambulance coming around a corner. I pulled over quick, heart thumping. I’m raw nerves as it is, on opening night. I didn’t need that.
And later—no Richard.
The whole time I was waiting for my cue, I kept thinking, He didn’t come. I was being smacked by tsunamis of embarrassment. I was angry, angry with Richard and angry with myself. A minister, that kind of man, is the last I’d want. But Richard is . . . he’s savvy, at the heart, and there’s something about that. He’s a man I would like to want. When I saw he hadn’t come, I thought, You’re such a fool. What would you have done, if he’d shown up? Screw him, I thought. Screw all men. Who needs them?
“Good for you, Claire.”
I could almost hear Richard’s voice, so low and reassuring. He would say it, and mean it. In my mind I looked up and saw his eyes, those deepest, darkest eyes. I began seeing him for counseling when I started attending his church after Paul and I separated. Actually, after Lucy dragged me to services. The first session, he listened, then said, “Why are you beating yourself up over this?”
God. As if a person had to ask.
We’d just finished the courtroom phase of the divorce, and I was a wreck. The day before, a woman in my book club had said, with me sitting right next to her, her perfect bad example, “Divorce is just too easy.” Her tone was pointed, cruel. Inside me something bent in on itself. It gave the poltergeists an in. A voice cackled in my ear, So what? So what if, the night before the hearing, you threw up and threw up? So what you had the shakes, you were shivering, you were emotionally numb? And so what, Baby Girl, your life sloughed down the toilet and you couldn’t cry a drop? I hadn’t—haven’t—been able to, in months.
Lucky Richard.
I kept going to his church because it felt right. The first time I attended a service with Lucy, as we entered the church we passed a collage of broken mirror shards. Lucy stopped and stared into it.
There we floated, in pieces.
“What’s this?” she said. “There aren’t enough mirrors in the world? You don’t know about that. I envy you, Claire. I wish I was back in my twenties.” Lucy blows me away sometimes. She said, “I say this only to you, dear—I have moments my body buzzes to be some guy’s lollipop again. I used to be, you know. Then I pass a mirror or a window on the street, and I get this shock because some old thing who looks a lot like me walked though it. Then I realize it was me, and I feel like parking myself on the curb, to laugh maybe, or cry.”
During the sermon, Richard’s point was, we reflect Christ in the world. He said, “Are you thinking, ‘Ridiculous, no way’?” He paused. “Now, I’m not going to bare my soul here, because I like my job.” There were chuckles, guffaws. “Look inside you,” he said. “What you see there, you’ll see in here.” He touched a hand to his chest. “If God can see fit to have something to do with this, God can do the same with you.” He gestured to the entryway. “Look in the mirror as you leave. That’s you, the crabbed hands and dirty feet of Jesus. Kind of a mess. But lean into it, see where it goes.”
If crabbed hands and dirty feet are the ticket, I’m in the front row.
Divorce isn’t easy—it’s a terror. Paul, my ex, is Methodist so when we got married, I became Methodist, too. I was happy there. There ought to be a ceremony where a woman going through divorce kisses goodbye her husband’s coworkers, half their friends, all his relatives if there are no kids involved, the credit card company—who will pull her card, but not his, on her worst day—and even their church if it was his church first. When we split, I couldn’t just move to another pew. I left the congregation. Given how my head was, if not for Lucy I might have left church altogether.
In answer to Richard’s question—why I was beating myself up—I said, “Because it’s my fault.”
“What makes you say that?”
“It must be. Paul didn’t even want the divorce.”
“That’s not unusual. Why did you want it?”
Richard brings out the deuce in me. I could have told him, for one, that Paul’s eyes once flooded at the sight of a toddler being guided up a steep stairwell by his mother. I had come up quietly. But so private was his moment, I stepped back. He hadn’t known I’d seen. We’d been trying—both of us wanted a baby, more than we wanted to breathe—but every month, nothing. The doctors couldn’t say why. I could have told Richard, but didn’t. I said, “I don’t know why I wanted it. If I knew that, maybe we could have done something about it and I’d still be married.”
Richard thought awhile. “Okay. I guess that’s not somewhere you want to go.” He brought his fingers together, tip to tip, thought some more, then unlinked them. “Let me try it this way. You’re telling me the problems in the marriage were only your fault?”
He studied me without expression. But it was clear “yes” would be the wrong answer. I said nothing, shifted in my chair, crossed and uncrossed my legs. How do you tell someone that what you know, and what you feel, are two different things?
When I was a kid, eight, maybe, or nine, I found a baby robin in the yard. Its needy mouth kept opening and closing, opening and closing. I thought about fixing up a dryer-lint bed in a shoebox and trying to raise it myself. But I decided to put it back into the nest. I had to climb the tree to do it, and I went in to dinner feeling elated and heroic.
When I was excused from the table, I ran back out to check on it and found its little body lifeless against the trunk of the tree. I just knelt there, looking at it.
My dad came out to see what I was doing.
“Too bad,” he said. “You touched it. Makes the mother bird reject it.”
I don’t know if it’s even true—a mama bird pushing its baby from the nest. If it is, I didn’t cause it on purpose. I know that.
But I feel like I did.
When I didn’t answer—Richard’s question about it being only my fault—he shook his head. “We don’t have that problem at our house. We’ve got two people sure they’re in the right.”
You could have blown me over with a cocktail straw. I hadn’t expected him to talk about his life, and it surprised me, about his wife—she’s such a bland, starchy thing. In that moment, the man earned my regard. I knew I’d tell him everything.
I said, “You have problems?”
He laughed and leaned so far back I thought he would hit the frame of the large painting behind him. It was a folk art pelican. It’s some kind of thing there, the pelican—Lucy wears a pelican charm that Marcus had made for her. The painting was simple and primitive, but the pelican seemed alive. It was the eyes. They were painted so they followed you. Whichever way you turned, they were there.
Richard’s chair looked like it would tumble ass over crown. It was a pedestal-leg rocker, and every time he swung back, the spring squeaked. He said, “Surprised? Why? That we have problems, or that I’d tell you?”
“Both.”
He rocked the chair forward. “I don’t want you to think I’m talking from out of the clouds.” He got this look on his face I can only call pained, and he said, “I was young once. Wasn’t married, was having thoughts, here and there, maybe I’d be a pastor. Maybe. At the same time I was doing things I regret.” He saw the skeptical look on my face and said, “You don’t believe me?”
“What? You knocked over some kid’s tuba at the bus stop?”
He laughed. “I see I’ve got my hands full, with you. No, there are things I truly regret, they should be regretted, and you know what? Some days I wish I could do them again.” He pulled a pen out of a cup on his desk—the cup had a pelican on it, one on a nest—and started drumming on the desktop. “I use it, I use it every day to be a better pastor. It takes one to know one, you know? You really can’t be there for someone you don’t see.” He dropped the pen back into the cup. “But we’re not here to talk about me. Every couple’s got problems, Claire. You must know that being married, or in any serious relationship, doesn’t mean you’re dead. You’ve got two people who are rowing together, and then, sometimes for no reason, there’s a temptation to jump out of the boat.”
I thought, How curious.
What happened with me wasn’t a temptation. It was a desperation. I had to get out of the boat before . . . before I drowned in it. There was the baby I couldn’t conceive—I suppose I should say we. When you want something, something you can’t get, it makes you numb. But there was more. Once I was wearing a ring, I had become invisible. I was dead in the water, married to a guy whose yachts took all the trophies. I had become no one. By the end, Paul and I had nothing in common, we’d come more and more unglued. He had his eye on this little schnauzer at the animal shelter. He wanted it so bad, and he couldn’t understand that I kept saying no.
It’s hard to explain the things that happen at the end of a marriage. How the two of you behave, people who were once so in love. By the time we were coming up on our seventh anniversary, we’d gotten to where we couldn’t talk without an argument. It seemed to come down on his side to my involvement in theatre. Somewhere along the line Paul had decided the theatre represented everything wrong in our marriage—that, if he could get rid of it, our problems would disappear.
One night, I’d had a really hard rehearsal. Austin Sloan was directing, and he can get pissy. He picked at everything I did. “Claire,” he said, “you’ve dropped character six times in three minutes. I clocked you.”
By the time he called it a night, I was ready to quit everything. Paul was already in bed when I came in, and as I undressed, he lit into me.
“What’s the matter with those people?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t they have lives, or homes? Nothing better to do than preen and strut around? Hit the bars? Leapfrog from bed to bed?”
“I wasn’t at a bar. I haven’t done bars since we got married. You’re being ridiculous. Gordy, preening? Trice, sleeping around? It’d be like Mother Teresa doing it.”
“Yeah, well. Take O’Neill. Even a dunce can see the numbers add up. What’s Mr. Smooth on now—wife number three, or live-in number six?”
I flipped my camisole up over my head and tossed it into the hamper. Paul was forever leaving the cover up, like it was now, and it bugged me. “Sounds,” I said, “like the pot calling the kettle.”
“That’s another thing, Claire. You’re always throwing my divorce in my face.”
“Look,” I said. I’d heard his bitching about my theatre friends enough to be sick of it. “Why don’t you just say what’s bothering you? It’s not O’Neill. It’s not who’s screwing who in the all-star lineup. It’s me. You can’t stand that I do this thing just for myself. With girls in your classes, it’s ‘You can do anything.’ But the ones you marry? Get off it, Paul. I’ve had enough trouble in my life.”
He rocketed out of bed and grabbed for his pants. “Good, Claire. That’s real good. Fall back on ‘Life’s done me wrong.’ Always works, doesn’t it? Well, not this time, sweets. Where do you get off? You’re not the only one who’s been hurt.”
He had his pants on and was reaching for his shoes, and he shot me an ugly glance. “Doing theatre is fine, but you have to be in every production. It’s some kind of sickness with you. Go, go— see Claire go. You keep telling me you’ve put your past behind you. Christ, I don’t see it. I don’t think you want to have a baby. If you did, you’d have to sit still. You’d have to look at yourself.”
It was a poison dart. I knew where it was coming from, but he had no idea, no right. “Don’t psychoanalyze me,” I said. “You’re no shrink.”
“You ought to know, you’ve seen enough of them.” He gave me a look that was pure contempt and went out the door. Halfway down the hall, he threw over his shoulder, “I’ll be at my folks’—if you’re interested.”
That was how our last arguments tended to go. Nothing was talked out. He’d leave, or I’d shut down. We were out of sync, completely. I don’t hate Paul. I love him still. I know that’s confusing. I could see he was wounded by what was happening with us, that it made him hold tighter. But I couldn’t help him. It terrified me—but the last year, all I could think about was untangling us. It was like a disease in the brain, a fever, a tic. An endless washing and rewashing of hands.
When I got to feeling I had to tell somebody, I chose Lucy. I sat her down one afternoon when my shift ended. I said, “Lucy. I can’t go home.” I told her how heavy I was. I said I couldn’t breathe.
She said, “Come to our place for dinner.”
Lucy’s a woman who says whatever’s on her mind. While the lasagna was baking, we were in the great room. Marcus was there, too, and Lucy was playing mother hen. Honestly, she clucked. She said, “I can’t say I’m surprised, Claire—we’ve noticed you taking on water. But, hon, think about what you’re doing. I’m sticking my nose in here, but—why? Why would you leave? Is it . . . because you don’t have any babies? Is that it? Is Paul . . . you know . . . refusing?”
“L-u-u-ucy.”
“Well. There are men who want you knocked up every day of your life, and there are men who don’t want to be bothered. Both boil my blood pressure. Some people just don’t know what’s good for them.” She got this conspiratorial look on her face. “Some people,” she said, “you have to help along a little. What’re you using? The Pill?”
Across the room, Marcus folded his newspaper, got up from his chair, and said, “Excuse me, ladies. I think I’ll start a fire.”
“Good idea,” Lucy said. “It is a bit chilly. When you come back, bring my afghan. It’s in the den. And bring Claire a sweater, please. There’s one in the foyer closet.”
As he went by, I grabbed his sleeve. “Thank you, Marcus.” “No thanks needed, dear.”
Once he was gone, Lucy said, “Well? Are you using the Pill?”
Lucy’s like a grandmother to me, an outrageous grandmother. But I can see why when some people see her, they duck. She’ll worry a subject to death—and you always end up feeling there’s something you ought to be doing.
“Not the Pill,” I said.
“What then?”
I felt my face flush. It was like being a teenager and having your brother, or your science teacher, who’s your secret crush, bring up sex.
“Lord Almighty,” Lucy said. She grabbed my knee and shook it. “Look at you, blushing like a bride—though I guess that blushing bride stuff is mostly hogwash these days. Get some spit in you. You’re past time. You’re married, aren’t you? Well, if your man won’t provide you the baby you’ve got coming, just take it. The Good Book says the Lord’s on your side, when it comes to marrying and multiplying. Don’t shake your head at me. He didn’t say, ‘Wea
r a bag and have fun.’ Did He? No. And if the father-to-be squawks about what he promised when he said he did, there will be time later to put his suitcase on the porch. Packed. That usually brings them around.” She mock-shook her finger at me. “If that man of yours is watching to make sure you put your rubber cookie in, you just smile at him, have a pee afterwards, and take the damn thing out. I have friends that’s worked for.”
I stared at her. Sometimes the things Lucy says don’t quite square with her station in life. I could see her in some seedy dive, strutting it in a boa and high heels, tucking bills into her cleavage. She’s got room in there for quite a few.
“I couldn’t do that,” I said. “It . . . it wouldn’t be right.”
As if I could be that lucky. The poltergeist twins were listening in. One of them leaned into my ear and whispered something he’d pulled from way back in my memory. Lucky, Claire. You’re a very lucky young lady.
I ignored him. I said, again, “I couldn’t, Lucy—even if it was the problem. But it’s not. Really. It’s not.”
She looked at me like I was dense, or a liar. “Claire, you’re a beautiful woman. But you’ve got a brain in your head. Anytime there’s no babies, there’s a problem. Don’t you see that?”
My mind stopped in its tracks. I pictured Paul holding his infant niece—smiling at her, bouncing her on his knee. It made my heart ache. “We could adopt,” he said, wiping dribble off the baby’s chin. “Maybe look into the in vitro thing?”
Lucy Talbot. Pinball Wizard. She’d delivered a direct hit. The board came to life. Lights flashed, bells binged, numerals spun. How could a person come across the hidden room just by stumbling down the corridors? I have this image in my head— me, with a protruding abdomen and rolling step. Me, cranky and touchier than usual. Me, happy for morning sickness, delighted over swollen legs. I’m twenty-seven. There was a time I thought I’d have wrapped up having kids by twenty-seven.