Lacy Eye

by Jessica Treadway

  “I wanted to say I’m sorry about earlier,” I told him. “I was rude about the cassoulet.”

  “Not at all! I shouldn’t have just barged in like that.” He ran a hand through his hair, and I wondered if he was worried about how he looked. “I know I must seem like a goof, running around offering people food all the time. But it keeps me out of trouble. By ‘trouble,’ I mean lonely. You know?”

  “I do.” Many times since Joe died, I had been tempted to take Warren up on one of his offers for us to eat together, instead of heating another meal in the microwave. But I’d always stopped myself before now, afraid of where it might lead. “I’m not really very hungry, but I wondered if you might have some coffee or something? Or tea? Anything. I’m not picky.”

  I smiled as if what I’d said had been funny, and felt grateful when he did the same.

  He apologized for his manners and said he hadn’t been expecting anyone, adding that it was a nice surprise as he put a hand out to usher me inside. When he didn’t move to take my coat, I stepped toward the hall closet, and he apologized again, yanking the door open to search for a hanger. Not finding an empty one, he shoved one of his own jackets onto the floor and hung up mine. In the closet’s corner I saw a stack of Maxine’s old protest signs: NO MORE COLLATERAL DAMAGE and MAKE LOVE NOT WAR.

  Stepping into the living room, it occurred to me that for all the times Warren and I had spoken out on the sidewalk or in our driveways, I hadn’t been inside his house since the last time Joe and I came over for dinner, more than three years earlier. Could it really have been that long? Everything looked exactly as I remembered it, down to the furniture that had seemed shabby but comfortable the first time I was invited in almost twenty years before. I remember thinking, that day, how different Warren and Maxine must have been from Joe and me, in terms of a sense of order: at our house nothing was out of place, even though the girls were little and it took exhausting vigilance on my part to keep their toys in the bins and baskets we’d set up in their rooms for storage.

  At the Goldmans’ house, you’d always had to move something aside if you wanted to sit down—a section of the newspaper, a sweater, one of Sam’s drawings or a piece of one of the model airplanes he was always building. The night I went over for the party to celebrate Hillary Clinton’s election, I figured they would have straightened up because they were expecting guests. But the rooms were no neater than usual, and though I knew Joe would have been uncomfortable in the disarray, I remember feeling a little envious. Because I was the one who was home with the girls most of the time, it had been largely my job to teach them to put things away as soon as they were done with them. Dawn never complained (because she was not one to put up a fuss about anything), but Iris made a big deal out of it every time we asked her to return something to its designated container. “I have better things to do than pick up Magic Markers,” she’d say, even at the age of six or seven. And although of course I didn’t let her get away with it, part of me admired the fact that she recognized her time as valuable, and that she had big ambitions for the things she would eventually accomplish in her life.

  Even the candy on the Goldmans’ coffee table seemed familiar; the dish contained the wrapped peppermints Maxine had taken to eating after she got sick because they alleviated her nausea from the chemo. I wondered if these were the same candies from that time, or whether Warren ate them out of nostalgia—as I recalled, he didn’t like them himself—and kept replenishing the stock. I could see him doing such a thing.

  “How about some wine?” he said, opening a cabinet as I followed him into the kitchen. As he spoke he was uncorking a bottle, and he’d poured two glasses before I decided, as tempting as it was with all that had been going on around me, not to indulge. “I don’t usually drink,” I told him as he held mine out to me.

  “Oh. I’m sorry, I forgot. It’s been too long.” I had embarrassed him again, and it made me feel bad; here I was, just dropping in on him, expecting to be served. “How about some tea, then?”

  As he turned the stove on to boil the water and took up a glass of wine for himself, I stood in front of the fridge to look at the pictures fastened by magnets in a casual collage. Most of the photos’ edges curled up at the sides, making me think that the display had been Maxine’s handiwork; leaning closer, I saw that the only one that looked remotely recent was a shot of Warren, Sam, and Sam’s bride posing in front of the synagogue on their wedding day. It reminded me of the photograph in Iris’s house that had caused our argument about Rud, so to distract myself, I pointed to a picture of Warren and Maxine from when they were much younger, which looked as if it had been taken on a boat, and asked Warren about it.

  “That was her father’s yacht,” he said, smacking his lips over the wine in a way I was sure would have dismayed a connoisseur. “Long Island. I worked at the marina, and you can imagine how thrilled her father was when his princess took up with a dockhand.”

  I told him I was surprised to hear that Maxine had come from money, and said I’d always assumed they’d met at a rally or something. “I always thought of her as a little bit of a kook,” I added. The words came out before I realized how they might sound, but before I could apologize, he smiled and told me, “Well, she was. But in a good way.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” I accepted the mug he handed me. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “It’s okay.” He led me into the living room and sat on one end of the sofa, leaving room for me to take the other end with plenty of space between us. “Now I can tell you that I always thought of Joe as a little bit of a stuffed shirt.”

  “Well, he was,” I said, smiling back at him. “But in a good way.”

  A silence followed, but it didn’t feel awkward anymore. Then he said, “I know what you mean. I miss Maxine like crazy. Little things, mostly. I even miss the things I couldn’t stand when she was alive, like the way she cleared her throat all the time. You know?”

  I nodded. “For me it’s how much he expected of everybody—himself as much as everyone else. I used to feel like I couldn’t live up to it. But now I miss having that kind of moral compass.”

  “Not living up to your own standards, Mrs. Schutt?” Warren laughed as he raised his glass again.

  I tried to laugh, too. “I know that sounds silly.”

  “No, it doesn’t. I know exactly what you mean. I liked having Maxine as a witness to how I lived my life.” He took another sip and smacked his lips again, which made me laugh a little. It seemed to encourage him. “We were lucky,” he went on. “Well, if you can call it that. But we had time—we knew she was dying, and we had the time to say things to each other. I don’t think I left anything out.” He lifted his glass to his mouth, but lowered it to add, “It wasn’t like you and Joe. So sudden, such a shock. I can’t even imagine.”

  Something about the sympathy in his voice, combined with the flush I felt in my cheeks from the tea, made me close my eyes. I knew I was about to tell Warren something I’d never told anyone before. Part of me wanted to stop myself, but it wasn’t as big as the part that wanted, finally, to confess what I’d never had the courage to say to Joe.

  It was our fifth wedding anniversary. Iris was four years old, Dawn a year and a half. Joe had said he’d be home early to give the girls their bath before we went out to dinner to celebrate while my friend Claire babysat. Around three o’clock Joe called and said something had come up—a last-minute audit he’d been assigned—and he was really sorry but we’d have to reschedule.

  I knew I couldn’t ask him to object to the audit, because he’d just gotten a promotion at Stinson and Keyes and was still working to prove himself in the new job. But I was far more disappointed than I let on to Joe. The whole week had been rainy, and I’d been playing Chutes and Ladders with the girls all day to the point of a boredom that made me think I might scream. After hanging up with Joe, I called Claire to see if she wanted to come over anyway, but she begged off, saying she was tired and that if I didn’t
need her to watch the girls, she thought she’d just go to bed early. I put Dawn and Iris in front of the TV, letting the sounds of cartoons and Sesame Street fill the house as I opened the cupboards to take out ingredients for a dinner I did not want to cook.

  I stared at the shelves for a minute or so, then shut those doors and opened the one to the cabinet over the sink where we kept liquor, although we seldom had people to serve—most of the guests who came to our house, especially in those days, were Iris’s playmates. Checking to make sure the girls couldn’t see, I poured vodka in my coffee mug and added a jot of orange juice, then went in to join them by the TV, thinking, Don’t I deserve a break? I had not allowed myself to have any alcohol since I’d met Joe, remembering the nights I’d soaked and erased myself in wine after my mother died. It was the one thing I hadn’t told Joe before we married, because I was afraid of what he would think of me. Afterward, I was afraid of becoming that person again without being able to help it. I knew I’d lose everything if I let that happen.

  But the night of our anniversary, my resolve flagged. I refilled the coffee mug three times before Iris said she was hungry, at which point I got up to make macaroni and cheese but forgot it was on the stovetop and burned it in the pan. Dawn cried, until I told them they could have cookies for dinner and dessert.

  I could tell she needed her diaper changed, and I told myself I’d do it when she was finished. She was a slow eater, though, and as she dawdled over her cookies, I got impatient. I wanted to put her and Iris back in front of the TV and pour myself another drink.

  The glass of orange juice (which was how I thought of it) sat almost empty on the dresser in the nursery. I was in the middle of changing the messy diaper when Iris screamed from the bathroom, “Mom, come here!”

  There was something in her voice I took to be panic. I don’t think I ever even made the decision to run from the changing table; I just ran. In the bathroom, Iris stood in front of the toilet and pointed into the water. “Perfect poopy,” she said to me, turning up a proud smile. She only wanted me to praise her, I realized, as she reached over to flush.

  “Oh, God,” I said with a groan, rushing back to Dawn’s room. What I’d heard as a shriek of distress had only been my daughter exclaiming her admiration for herself. What was wrong with me, that I couldn’t tell the difference?

  When I returned to the room, Dawn wasn’t on the table. My heart clutched, along with my breath. Then I saw her moving behind the toy chest, trying to sit up, getting herself tangled in the smeary diaper she’d pulled down with her when she rolled off. I sucked my breath in with a noise, and when I picked her up, I saw that she’d cut her forehead on the chest’s edge; a slit of red bloomed over her left eye.

  But she wasn’t crying. She didn’t seem to realize she’d been hurt. “Mommy,” she said, reaching for me, “I falled.” I set her back on the table and looked carefully at the cut. It didn’t seem too deep, and it wasn’t gushing. If I got ice on it right away, I thought, I could probably keep it from swelling. I slapped a clean diaper on her and, afraid to lay her down on the couch, put her on her back on the floor in the living room while I filled a baggie with ice, then pulled her onto my lap and held it against the wound. At the touch of the coldness she began to struggle, and I remember thinking, Good, at least she feels that.

  Iris came and stood in front of me as she watched me tend to her little sister. “She can’t even do poopy right,” she announced. That was the year she started announcing things, and she never stopped. She added, “Dawn is a dummy.”

  “She is not,” I said. “You never say that, Iris. About anyone, but especially your sister.”

  She shrugged; it was also the year she seemed to stop being bothered anytime I said anything sharp to her. “Go play in your room,” I told her, because I wanted to be as far away as possible from what she’d said.

  Dawn had settled back and let me keep the ice on her forehead. In the back of my mind I knew I should call the doctor, but then I reasoned, I’m a nurse. I know what the bad symptoms are—vomiting, drowsiness, bleeding that won’t stop—and she’s not showing any of those.

  It also occurred to me, distantly, that whoever I brought my daughter to for help might be able to tell I’d been drinking. I’d been alone with my children. I couldn’t risk it.

  I also didn’t want Joe to know what had happened, of course. The vodka had made me sleepy, so I put the girls down early and went to bed myself around nine, before he got home, but the next morning at breakfast Iris told him about her sister’s fall. I played it down behind my hangover headache, but he looked alarmed before he took Dawn’s head between his hands, looked for the mark (which, thank God, had lessened instead of swollen overnight), and allowed me to assure him that she was fine. He told me he understood, but I couldn’t help feeling that he blamed me. Which he should have; it was my fault. I kept apologizing, and he said more than once, “Hanna, accidents happen.” But I couldn’t tell him the whole truth, so from that day forward, even though I never took a drink again—and allowed him to believe I did it out of consideration for him, since he’d grown up in an alcoholic home—a wedge existed between us that softened and shrank over time, but never went away altogether. And only I knew about it, which made it worse.

  I finished my monologue to Warren by saying it hadn’t taken me long to realize I should have called the doctor, or just taken Dawn in to get examined, and not only for her sake. If I had taken her in and gotten official word that she was okay, or that she wasn’t okay but here’s how we’ll fix it, I wouldn’t still be torturing myself like this, wondering if my letting her fall that day might have contributed to her getting a lazy eye a few years later. Or to the “something missing” her teacher had mentioned. To other kids calling her Ding-Dong Dawn.

  And to what happened to Joe and me in our bed nearly twenty years after the fall.

  Warren listened intently the whole time I was speaking. The kind expression on his face did not waver. “I might have been able to save us—my family,” I said, and this was when I couldn’t sit on the couch any longer; I had to stand up from the force of my own guilt and grief. But I didn’t know what to do once I’d stood up—which direction to turn—so I let Warren take my arm and guide me back to rejoin him.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “You’re not responsible for anything Dawn did. You know that, right?”

  “What she did?” I pulled away from him. “I was talking about how she is.”

  He looked stricken. “I didn’t mean anything, Hanna.”

  “Yes, you did.” But instead of feeling angry at him, I began to cry. I told him about the interrogation transcript, and how I hadn’t recognized my own daughter in the things she was reported to have said. “It didn’t sound like Dawn. But of course it was. I know that.” Warren pulled an old-fashioned handkerchief from his back pocket and held it out to me, telling me not to worry, it was almost clean.

  Despite myself, I laughed and took it from him. “I’m not worried.” I wiped my tears and said, “What happened to her?” I didn’t expect he would have an answer, but I’d needed to ask the question for longer than I realized until that moment.

  Warren spoke so quietly that I wasn’t sure, at first, what it was he’d said. “I really appreciate this, Hanna.”

  “What?”

  “Your opening up like this. You’re usually so—I don’t know. Held in.” He folded his arms across his chest to illustrate what he meant. “I thought maybe it was me.”

  “No,” I told him. “It’s the Swedish way.” The words, my mother’s, popped out before I could plan them. When the prison called to tell me that my father had died in his cell while playing solitaire, I remembered all those nights of watching him turn over cards as he sat beside my mother, who quilted silently beside him. “Why don’t you guys ever talk to each other?” I’d asked her once, and she told me again that it was “the Swedish way.” “We keep to ourselves,” she said.

  “Ah. ‘The Swedish way.’”
Warren smiled. “I’m glad to know there’s a name for it.” He leaned in, and I thought he meant to kiss me, but then I realized that the intention was my own.

  He kissed me back—I thought I heard a small groan during it—and then put his hand up to my temple. I couldn’t help pulling back and drawing a piece of hair over my damaged eye.

  “Don’t,” he said, pushing the hair back in its place. “I’d rather see you.” He lifted his forefinger and traced it over my longest scar. The touch made me cry, and I reached out to clutch him close. “Hanna,” he said, “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  I nodded, not trusting my voice, then shook my head.

  “Have you been with anybody since—?” he said. I shook my head again. “Me, either,” he said.

  I began to unbutton his shirt and let him pull me down next to him on the couch. When he felt for my breasts, brushing my nipples lightly, I felt myself responding with a surge, suddenly remembering—​as I had not before—that the last time Joe and I had made love was that Friday night after Thanksgiving three years earlier, only a few hours before we were attacked in the same bed. We were both upset by what had happened with Rud and Dawn that day, and the sex was more comfort than anything else, as well as a way to allow us both to sleep when otherwise we might not have been able to.

  I had testified to the court that the last thing I remembered, before waking up in the hospital, was watching Dawn and Rud pull away in her Nova, which Joe and I believed contained the items he had stolen from our house. Now I was remembering something that had happened hours after that. The realization was almost strong enough to make me want to sit up, stop Warren, and tell him about it, but then the desire not to do so—and, perhaps, not to remember?—overtook me, and I began grinding against him in a way I hadn’t felt myself move in years, since long before Joe died, since early on in our marriage. At first I thought I felt Warren wondering if he should keep going, but then he began moving with me, and I found myself giving in to the impulse to express what it felt like to have this man touch me the way he did, to feel my body react in ways I hadn’t been sure it still knew how to, until now.