Lost in His Eyes

by Andrew Neiderman

  We all walk with some fear or another, I thought. Or maybe I was just projecting my own feelings and fears.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing. I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘Your silences speak volumes.’

  ‘Volumes not everyone can hear, even those you thought could or should be heard.’

  We were both silent for what Shakespeare called a pregnant moment.

  ‘Look, I realize what you have now is not enough for you. I don’t mean me; I mean what you had before we met.’

  ‘I’d be a liar to deny it, not that I’m anyone’s little Heidi. Little lies are unfortunately what keeps most marriages together these days. I’m just exhausted from the effort to come up with new ones, I guess.’

  ‘Is that why you’re toying with going back to work? Because if it is, it won’t be enough. That won’t do it.’

  ‘Thanks for the encouragement.’

  He laughed. ‘I’m going to go,’ he said.

  ‘Slam bam thank you ma’am?’

  ‘Hardly.’ He leaned over to kiss me. Then he backed away and exited the car smoothly, closing the door so softly that I didn’t know it had even been opened.

  I watched him walk off into the darkness, a shadow going home. After another minute or so, I got out and got behind the wheel. When I started the engine and backed out, I saw the young waitress leaving the bar and restaurant. She stopped instantly when she saw me driving out of the lot. She wore a smile of incredulity and then looked as if she was laughing before she walked faster to her car. I pulled out sharply and sped away, embarrassed, but a little angry at myself for telling her so much, too.

  It wasn’t until I was pulling into my driveway that I realized I really was hungry. When I entered the house, I listened for a few moments and imagined that Kelly and her friend had gone upstairs to her room. The living room was cleaner than I had expected – no empty pizza box, dirty glasses or plates left on the coffee table. Even the kitchen looked passable for a military KP inspection. I opened the refrigerator, saw the remaining pieces of their pizza and shoved them into the microwave. I poured myself a glass of cranberry juice and then went at the pizza, standing up and leaning against the kitchen counter. I gobbled it down – wolfed it actually – and hurriedly got rid of the evidence. Maybe a minute later, I heard Kelly and her friend Waverly coming down the stairs.

  I stepped out to say hi so they wouldn’t be frightened at the sound of someone in the house.

  ‘You’re home already?’ Kelly asked.

  ‘Hi, Mrs Howard,’ Waverly said. Waverly was a good three or so inches taller than Kelly, slim, with a model’s figure. However, there was just nothing remarkable about her face to make her photogenic, and her straggly hairdo did nothing to help.

  ‘Hi. Yes. My friend had another appointment. She’s at a convention,’ I said.

  ‘Oh. Where does she live now?’

  ‘Cleveland,’ I replied. If you were going to lie about a city, that seemed to be a good choice. There was nothing that excited Kelly about Cleveland.

  ‘I have an uncle in Cleveland,’ Waverly said. ‘My mother’s youngest brother, Uncle Lloyd. But we’ve never been there.’

  ‘Amazing,’ Kelly said dryly. ‘I’ll put it on my Facebook page.’ She could be so biting sometimes – a chip off the old block, if I could call myself an old block.

  Waverly giggled and then looked closely at me. I hadn’t checked myself in the mirror after I had entered the house. It suddenly occurred to me that I was probably nowhere near as put-together as I had been when I had left. Instinctively, I ran my fingers through my hair and brushed down my dress. I saw the look of surprise and confusion on Kelly’s face. Before she could ask another question, the doorbell rang.

  ‘That’s probably my mother,’ Waverly said. ‘It’s nice seeing you again, Mrs Howard.’

  ‘You, too, Waverly,’ I replied and smiled at them both before heading quickly to the stairs. I wasn’t in the mood to have a small-talk conversation with Waverly’s mother, who was a dentist. Whenever I confronted women, especially married women, who had achieved professional careers and managed a family at the same time, I couldn’t help but feel inadequate because I hadn’t continued with my own education and had instead settled on being a paralegal, and not for that long either.

  Kelly followed Waverly to the front door as I ascended and went to my bedroom. When I looked at myself in the full-length mirror, I saw just how disheveled my hair was. There was still something of a flush in my face. Almost always, whenever I made love, I followed it with a shower if I could. It wasn’t that I felt particularly dirty or I was afraid the scent of love was lingering. The warm water on my shoulders and my back helped me relax and recall the moments I had enjoyed.

  When I stepped out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around my hair and wearing my robe, I found Kelly sitting on Ronnie’s and my bed waiting for me.

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Something wrong?’

  ‘You ate my pizza,’ she said with an accusatory tone. I suddenly felt like a witness on the stand in a courtroom. ‘I was going to warm it up and finish it.’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d mind. You rarely eat leftovers. Sorry.’

  ‘But why did you eat pizza leftovers if you went to dinner?’

  Was this a Perry Mason moment?

  ‘I didn’t eat much. Hardly anything, actually. The food was disappointing. And,’ I added, the ideas coming quickly, ‘my friend was at minimum thirty pounds heavier than she had been when we knew each other. You know the effect very heavy people, especially women, have on my appetite.’

  ‘What does your friend do? Is she married? Does she have children?’

  I went to my vanity table and sat. Then I unraveled my towel.

  ‘She works for an advertising company that specializes in prescription drug marketing. I was never so bored. She couldn’t talk about anything else. No, she’s not married and she has no children. It was like nothing we once had in common survived the years,’ I added.

  I was actually quite taken with my ability to fabricate. I didn’t think a successful novelist or playwright could be more self-satisfied at the moment. Before she could ask another question, I began to blow-dry my hair, but she didn’t leave. She waited a few moments and then raised her voice over the sound.

  ‘Why did you take another shower and wash your hair again?’

  ‘I hadn’t before I left,’ I said.

  ‘Your hair looked great, though, and since when do you go out without showering first?’

  ‘I was in a rush. What difference does it make?’

  She shrugged. I thought that might be it, but I was wrong. She had other suspicions.

  ‘Daddy called,’ she told me, dropping it into our conversation just the way a good trial lawyer might try to surprise a witness.

  I shut off the hairdryer.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Half-time at the game. He said they were winning. He sounded very surprised about your going out. I told him why you didn’t call him, but he still sounded very surprised.’

  ‘A man believes he can be spontaneous, but when his wife is, he’s surprised. It’s in their DNA.’

  ‘I told him you said you were going back to work for sure. He was surprised about that, too.’

  I spun around.

  ‘I didn’t get a chance to have much of a conversation with him. He was on his way to the game and you know how men can be when they’re with each other. They never want to appear hen-pecked. Get off the line quickly before they start getting mocked is their modus operandi.’

  ‘Sometimes you sound like you hate men,’ she said and started out, pausing in the doorway. ‘And don’t tell me it’s in our DNA,’ she added.

  Before I could respond, she was gone. I turned and looked at myself in the mirror. Was that how I was really coming off? Was I hardening, tearing the scabs off old wounds, my memories of disappointing romances from junior high until now? Was I taking out my frus
trations on my daughter, poisoning her well, shaping her into a cynic?

  If anything, I should have appeared happier when I came home. Didn’t I have an exciting and satisfying tryst? Maybe it was having to lie about where I was and whom I met that took away from my feelings of warmth and satisfaction. Rather than blame myself, I blamed the situation that required me to lie. I wanted more freedom. I certainly didn’t want to be cross-examined and made to feel guilty, especially by my teenage daughter.

  I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before I came home, but now, when Ronnie returned, I’d have to come up with the same fiction. He’d be more detailed with his questions. Who was this old friend? Why hadn’t I mentioned her before? When did I know I was going out to dinner? And why didn’t I tell him about my seriously pursuing work again? The classic evaluation made by anyone observing all this surely would be that I was digging myself in deeper by expanding on my lies, but what choice did I have?

  I went to bed with my new novel. Kelly looked in just before she went to bed.

  ‘Denver Scott asked me out this Friday for pizza and a movie,’ she said.

  ‘Thank God for pizza.’

  ‘He’s not the richest kid in the school.’

  ‘I was just joking. I didn’t go to fancier restaurants until I graduated high school,’ I said. ‘Even when your father and I started dating, we didn’t go to particularly expensive restau-rants. He wasn’t fond of spending money on gourmet food, and ambience wasn’t important to him, even then. Actually, most men aren’t very interested in restaurants at that age. Food’s just a path to something else.’

  She raised her eyebrows.

  ‘You never told me that stuff about Daddy and other young guys.’

  ‘To be fair, most girls are that way at that age, too. Even the ones used to better things.’

  ‘You’re talking funny.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was my turn to shrug.

  ‘You want me to think of you as more of an adult now, so that’s what I’m doing.’

  ‘I suppose,’ she said. I smiled at her indecision about whether or not she should be pleased by what I had just said. I recalled the same feeling on the same road traveled. You do want your parents to see you as more mature, more capable of understanding. You don’t want to hear real life watered down. And yet, when that happens, you realize what you’re leaving behind – the innocence, the freedom that comes with no real responsibilities, and all the make-believe that gave you comfort.

  She was staring at me intently now. I could see the question marks in her eyes.

  ‘What is it now, Kelly?’

  ‘What made you fall in love with Daddy?’ she asked. She stood there with her eyelids narrowing. I hated when she had that intense look – Ronnie’s look – after she – or he – had asked a question that had more of an underpinning than you’d first think. The way she asked the question made it sound as if she believed I had regretted falling in love and certainly regretted marrying. Thankfully, I didn’t have to get married. I didn’t get pregnant for nearly two years afterward.

  ‘I don’t know that anything makes you fall in love,’ I said. Good spin, I thought. Politics is seeping through the cracks in the middle-class family dome that had been dropped over our lives, and I didn’t just think of it as Ronnie’s infatuation with the echo chamber talk shows. We lobby each other in little ways constantly.

  ‘There had to be something different about him, something that won you over, right?’

  I lay the novel down. I really wasn’t prepared for such a deep conversation at that moment, but I also realized I couldn’t give her some short, trite response. I wasn’t going to talk about bells ringing either, however. Somehow, hypocrisy had taken on a more offensive odor than ever. Maybe because I was swimming in it.

  ‘Most of the women I know seem to have fallen into their marriages.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, stepping farther into the bedroom. ‘How do you fall into a marriage?’

  ‘It’s as if they were navigating through various relationships and just stepped into the one that turned into a marriage. I sometimes get the impression it was like they were asking themselves, “What else is there for me to do at this point in my life?” Funny thing is they’re not ugly, even comely women. They were obviously very attractive, but the usual pressures were poking and pressing them. You know … What are this guy’s prospects? If they’re good, shouldn’t I say yes? How many more years will I be searching for Mr Right? When will I stop thinking it’s all like it is in the movies? You can grow into love, I suppose. I’ve even heard one or two say their husbands fit them. Like they were trying on shoes or something.’

  ‘What about passion?’ she asked.

  ‘It has to be there for most, I imagine, even if for only a little while. Although there are some women who not only look like they never experienced it and certainly don’t now, they look like they don’t believe it exists for anyone, period.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Absolutely needed passion.’

  ‘You couldn’t keep your hands off each other?’ she asked, nodding, urging me to affirm it.

  ‘Something like that,’ I said, smiling. ‘I used to be afraid my parents could see your father’s fingerprints on me.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It sounds silly, I know,’ I said. Then I quickly stopped smiling. ‘You don’t feel that way about this boy, do you?’

  ‘No. I haven’t felt that way about any boy yet.’

  ‘There’s no rush, Kelly. You’ve got plenty of time.’

  ‘That’s what every adult always says … and then there’s Amy Benson,’ she added, her face filling with a dark shadow. Amy Benson was a girl in her class who had been killed in a car accident last year. The girl driving, Teresa Matthews, had been speeding and lost control on a curve. Kelly could have been in that car. For months afterward, both Ronnie and I grilled her on wherever she went and with whom, as if being her age was her fault.

  ‘You can’t base your life on things like that. They happen, but thankfully it’s the exception, not the rule.’

  ‘Whatever,’ she said. I had come to hate that word.

  I reached for my book, but she wasn’t finished.

  ‘Did you ever feel you made a mistake?’

  ‘Mistake?’

  ‘Marrying Daddy?’

  ‘You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t think about it. You probably think about it whenever you’re with someone – even this Denver Scott.’

  ‘I don’t want my parents to be human,’ she said.

  I was about to laugh, but stopped myself. She was right. I hadn’t wanted my parents to be human either. As a child especially, you see them as larger than life, always perfect, always right in the end, no matter what the argument. That was a good illusion. It helped you to feel secure, protected. As soon as you began to see their failings and weaknesses, you were far more aware of your own, and with that came the realization that you could fail, be hurt very badly, even die. My parents seemed to know that instinctively. They did their best to hide any financial problems or health problems. They never wanted me to worry about anything.

  I looked at Kelly more closely. How much of my disappointment in Ronnie these days was she aware of? How much of his disappointment in me? What about the disappointment in myself? How well did she pick up on my reactions, my smirks, shaking my head, mumbling to myself? Or maybe she saw me staring into space many times, but didn’t approach me to ask if I was all right? Why shouldn’t she be sensitive to a woman’s feelings, even at her age? She was half me, wasn’t she?

  ‘I didn’t want my parents to be human either, Kelly. I can’t blame you for that, but you’re far from a child now. It’s all right to grow up.’

  She gave me one of Ronnie’s ‘Duh, I know that’ smirks.

  ‘Are you going back to work because we need the money or because you’re bored?’

  ‘Your fat
her would tell you we always need the money. He loves doing that scene from Key Largo when Lionel Barrymore asks the mobster Rocco, played by Edward G. Robinson, what he wants, and Bogart says he wants more.’

  ‘Don’t remind me,’ she said. If she had girlfriends over, she fled when Ronnie started to do his actor and movie imitations. Actually, it was one of the things about him that I found delightful. I could see how proud he was of his accuracy, especially when it came to recalling famous lines from famous old movies. It brought to mind one of the positive things I would say about him now.

  ‘He’s cute when he does that, Kelly. Your father can be very personable, which is what makes him successful in business.’

  ‘Right,’ she said. She yawned.

  ‘Go on, go to sleep,’ I said. I held out my arms and she hugged me.

  ‘Love you,’ I said.

  ‘Love you back. And sorry you didn’t have a nice time tonight,’ she added. I watched her walk off.

  I lay back and looked up at the ceiling. Lancaster was so right. I was reluctant tonight, and mainly because of Kelly. I had to end this, I thought. There was such a world of danger here. Stop before it comes tumbling down on all of you, I told myself.

  Could I? Was it all beyond my control now? I felt like someone who had been shot into space. There was no way to turn back, no way even to change direction.

  I put my book aside and put out the lights. Ronnie would be home late, for sure, and whenever he was, he was usually very considerate, practically floating in and out of the bathroom and slipping softy into bed. If I woke up, I didn’t speak because he was usually still running on high-octane fuel and would talk and talk, which would really wake me up.

  If I had continued speaking about love and marriage with Kelly, I would have mentioned what years of being with one person really means. You get used to each other’s little peculiarities and habits. Maybe this was why we had so many similar thoughts simultaneously. We could anticipate so much about each other.