Hope Street: Hope StreetThe Marriage Bed

by Judith Arnold

  “In honor of her mother’s birthday, she put on the stilettos.”

  “They weren’t quite stilettos,” Ellie corrected him. “They were high enough, though.”

  “Do you have the DVD they made, or did you send it home with the other gifts?”

  She hadn’t opened most of her gifts. God knew what her friends and relatives had given her. Would those presents qualify as community property and have to be divvied up in the settlement because she’d received them before divorcing Curt? Would she even want to keep the presents, which would always remind her of the misery she’d been experiencing on her fiftieth birthday?

  “I held on to the DVD,” she remembered to answer Curt. “It’s in my purse. Katie insisted that I take it. She thought we might want to watch it tonight.” Actually, she’d said that if Ellie and Curt ran out of other things to do in their très romantic room, they could always catch their breath and watch the DVD. Ellie had pretended to be amused and mildly scandalized by Katie’s bawdy remark. The only activity that left Curt and Ellie breathless anymore was arguing, and they’d pretty much lost their passion even for that. Two civilized people who’d once loved each other could talk about divorce without becoming hysterical.

  “Why don’t we check it out.” Curt rose from the chair and crossed to the dresser, where Ellie had left her purse. “Mind if I get it?”

  “Go ahead.” Her purse contained no secrets. He could rummage through it if he wished.

  He pulled out the DVD case, which featured the title Eleanor Brennan Frost: The First Fifty Years and a pen-and-ink drawing of Ellie—a pretty decent likeness, she’d had to admit. Jessie had designed it, according to the notes inside, which solemnly listed the credits: “Written by Katherine and Jessica Frost. Produced by Katherine Frost. Package Design by Jessica Frost.”

  Curt moved to the cabinet that contained the TV, opened the doors wide and fussed with the remote control until he had both the television and the DVD player on. Ellie suffered a twinge of apprehension—what if the video was schmaltzy and sentimental? What if it made her cry?

  If it did, it did. She’d noticed a box of tissues in the bathroom.

  Remote in one hand and glass in the other, Curt settled back into his chair and clicked a button. The screen went dark, and then they heard the familiar strains of the song from Evita, and a strange man’s voice singing, “Don’t cry for me, birthday woman…”

  Curt laughed. So did Ellie. If the movie continued in that vein, she wouldn’t have to worry about running through the bathroom’s supply of tissues.

  Eleanor Brennan Frost: The First Fifty Years spread in block letters across the screen, white on black, followed by a snapshot of Ellie as an infant, bundled in a blanket and cradled in her mother’s arms. She knew that picture from her mother’s photo album. Katie’s voice took over the narration: “Ellie’s life started when she was born. She was quite young at the time. Gradually, she grew.” The screen filled with a series of photos—Ellie as a toddler, sucking her thumb. Ellie as a four-year-old, seated proudly on her tricycle, with plastic streamers dangling from the ends of the handlebars. Ellie in a crisp plaid dress, white anklets and Mary Jane shoes, boarding a big yellow bus on her first day of kindergarten, her stick-straight brown hair cut with ruler-edge precision. Her mother had cut her hair, she recalled. And she’d sewn that dress. Ellie’s family hadn’t been poor, just proudly blue-collar. They’d lived frugally.

  A class photo appeared—Ellie seated at her desk with her hands folded primly in front of her and an artificial smile stretching her cheeks—followed by a picture of Ellie’s third-grade report card. Jessie’s voice entered the narration: “‘Ellie is a bright little girl who will accomplish great things if she keeps her focus. This year she excelled in social studies and science. Her book reports improved throughout the year. She participated in all class activities and played well with others.’ Mrs. Birnbaum, Grissom Elementary School.”

  Curt laughed again. “Those daughters of yours are wicked,” he said.

  “Oh, they’re my daughters?” Ellie shot back. She was laughing, too. The video spoofed all those somber documentaries the Public Broadcasting Service was forever airing. Photos, narrators speaking in grave, measured tones and reading from documents, accompanied by an occasional snippet of haunting music.

  The TV screen filled with a shot of Mrs. Carmody, who’d lived next door to Ellie’s family when she was growing up and, like Ellie’s parents, still occupied the house in which she’d raised her children. Her hair was silver now, and her face had pruned with wrinkles, but she sat in her spotless parlor and smiled at the camera. A caption identifying her as “Frances Carmody, neighbor” appeared at the bottom of the frame. “When Ellie was about nine or ten, she made herself a skateboard. Not one of those slick skateboards with the plastic wheels like the kids have today and do all those tricks on. This was a plain pine board with metal roller skates screwed on to the underside. She’d roll up and down the sidewalk all day on that thing. The wheels were very noisy.”

  “I remember that!” Ellie exclaimed. She’d sacrificed her roller skates to make the skateboard, and she’d spent countless hours rattling along the uneven sidewalk. When she was twelve, she’d passed the board along to her brothers. By then, she’d been too mature for such toys.

  “You made it yourself?” Curt eyed her with curiosity.

  “Of course I did. I’m handy. I fix things all the time.”

  “But you were only ten.”

  “A hammer, a screwdriver—it wasn’t rocket science, Curt.” She pressed her lips together, unsure why his respect for her accomplishment should rankle. She often did household repairs, hung paintings, scrubbed the innards of spitting faucets and freshened the grouting around the bathtubs. He’d always appreciated her efforts, but he’d never made a big deal about it, and she’d been glad.

  She gave herself a mental shake. No reason to be so touchy. All he’d done was ask a question.

  Sipping her port, she directed her attention back to the television screen. Katie was narrating again: “In high school, Ellie continued to play well with others,” she recited as a montage of photographs of Ellie appeared—with a couple of her girlfriends at Revere Beach, with a dozen friends in the rec room in Lynne Schwartz’s basement at Lynne’s sweet-sixteen party. The yearbook photo of the Future Doctors of America Club, with Ellie prominently positioned at the front, one of only two girls in the club. A portrait of her and Jimmy Kilpatrick taken in an anteroom at the hotel where her senior prom had been held. Her gown had been banana-yellow—a ghastly color for her, she realized in retrospect—and Jimmy had worn a frilly tux, his hair frizzing out from his face in a bright red afro. They’d been good friends, neither going steady with anyone, and they’d probably had a better time at the prom than all those hot-and-heavy couples who’d had impossibly high expectations about the big night.

  The high-school collage ended with a photo of Ellie in a cap and gown, holding her diploma high in the air as she marched from the platform that had been set up in the football stadium at her high school. Jessie’s voice said, “Ellie Brennan, Pinebrook High School class of ’74, member of the Honor Society and National Merit Scholar, got into Brown University on a scholarship.” The word scholarship was accompanied by a photo of Ellie’s parents gleefully smiling. Curt laughed, and Ellie relaxed and laughed, too.

  “At Brown,” the narration continued as the screen filled with a photo of the university’s famous Van Wickle Gates, “Ellie found true love.” There followed a series of photos of Ellie with that mildly pimply boy she’d gone out with a couple of times freshman year—what the hell was his name? And then a photo of Martin, with his long black hair and narrow face—Ellie grimaced. And finally a picture of Ellie with Curt.

  Her breath caught in her throat. God, he’d been cute then. Lanky, but with the kind of firm shoulders a woman could lean on—or so Ellie had thought back then. Hair the color of honey, long but not too shaggy. Clean, straight feat
ures and hypnotic hazel eyes, and a smile that could melt a polar ice cap. How could Ellie have not fallen in love with him?

  There was photo after photo—Ellie and Curt outside Sayles Hall, Ellie and Curt in the Hope Street apartment he’d shared with Steve Rogers, Ellie and Curt and a bunch of other people at Narragansett Beach. Ellie sitting on Curt’s lap at some rowdy party, with other faces crowding the frame and plastic beer cups scattered about. Ellie and Curt at the big campus dance before his graduation, her hair long and silky, his barely tamed, and both of them dressed in the nicest clothes they owned, she in a flowing Indian-print dress with little mirrors stitched into the fabric and he in a pair of slightly wrinkled khaki trousers and a Harris-tweed blazer. Ellie and Curt at his graduation, a year before hers, Curt in his brown academic robe and Ellie in a cotton sundress, holding a bouquet of roses. He’d been the graduate, but he’d given her those flowers that day. He’d also asked her to marry him.

  “Jesus. Were we ever that young?” Curt murmured.

  The tears she’d anticipated arrived in a rush. Yes, they’d been that young. They’d been that naive. They’d believed that nothing bad could ever happen to them, nothing so terrible it could break them apart. Nothing so dreadful their love wouldn’t be enough to overcome it. They’d honestly believed that.

  The screen blurred and she closed her eyes. The bathroom—she had to get to that box of tissues if she didn’t want to flood the bed with her tears.

  Before she could swing her legs over the side of the mattress, it shifted under her. Curt climbed on beside her, stuffed his linen handkerchief into her hand and looped his arm around her.

  She sagged against him, resting her cheek against the soft, warm cotton of his shirt, and sobbed for everything they’d lost—their love, their marriage, their dreams of growing old together. Their trust. Their friendship. Their son.

  It was all gone. But at least for this one moment, in this room so far from the reality they lived every day, so far from a world full of awful things, Ellie discovered that Curt’s shoulders were still sturdy enough to lean on.

  THREE

  Thirty years earlier

  HE FOUND HER SITTING all alone on the slate steps outside Faunce House. Night had fallen on the campus, a crisp, clear October evening lit by an amber harvest moon. Heading back from the Rock, as Brown University’s Rockefeller Library was affectionately known, he was strolling across the green toward Faunce—a dowdy block-long building that housed lounges, snack bars and vending machines, along with a theater and the campus post office—and debating with himself about whether to buy something to eat. He and Steve had food in their apartment, but for some reason their fridge never seemed to contain exactly the thing he had a hankering for.

  Tonight he was in the mood for a salty snack. Potato chips, corn chips, pretzels, something he could crunch with his teeth. Whatever edibles he might exhume from the dark recesses of their kitchen would likely be soggy or stale. And he didn’t feel like trekking to the supermarket. Faunce was so much closer.

  His hunger for chips went forgotten when he spotted Ellie Brennan seated outside the building. He knew her because Steve was going with her roommate Anna, which meant their social circles frequently intersected. Ellie was dating a long-haired, artsy-fartsy type. What was his name? Curt had met him at a couple of parties. The guy was thin and intense, with hair longer than Ellie’s.

  She was alone now, though. More than alone, she was alone. She looked abandoned, forlorn, her straight brown hair drooping into her face, her elbows propped on her knees and her chin resting in her cupped hands. Her blue jeans were worn white along her thighs, and she had a thick brown-and-white scarf wrapped around her neck. Next to her on the steps sat a bulky sack of a purse made of a bright red fabric.

  Sad as she seemed, she was strikingly pretty. Curt had noticed her beauty the first time she’d accompanied Anna to the apartment, and every time he’d seen her since then. But Steve had alerted him to the fact that she wasn’t available, and Curt respected that kind of thing. He didn’t like guys trying to poach on his territory, and he sure wasn’t going to poach on anyone else’s. Even if the guy had stringy black hair and a snooty way of talking.

  Asking her if everything was all right wouldn’t qualify as poaching, though. It was simply being considerate. She seemed distraught, and ignoring her under the circumstances would be rude.

  “Ellie?” he called out as he strode over the grass to the steps.

  She glanced up and her eyes focused on him. A feeble smile curved her lips. “Hi, Curt.”

  He drew to a halt in front of her, then hunkered down. “You okay?”

  “Oh, I’m just great,” she said in a wobbly voice.

  “You don’t look so great,” he argued. “I mean, if it’s none of my business, say so, but you look…” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence. If he told her she looked terrible, she’d be insulted. Could he say she looked beautiful and terrible at the same time?

  She dropped the phony smile and sighed. “Apparently, according to people who supposedly love me, I’m the world’s biggest loser.”

  Curt swore softly. “Whoever told you that doesn’t love you.”

  “Whoever told me that may or may not love me, but they’ve got their own ideas about who I am and what I should do. And go ahead, sue me, but I think I know myself better than they know me.”

  She was being cryptic, but she wasn’t telling him to go away. He sensed that she wanted to talk, maybe even needed to, and he was all done studying for the night. “You want to go get something to drink?” he asked.

  “I’m only twenty,” she said. “Unless you’ve got a stash of liquor somewhere, I can’t drink.”

  “I’ve got a stash,” he informed her. “Come on.” He straightened, then extended his hand. She took it and let him hoist her to her feet. As soon as he let go, she slung her purse strap over her shoulder and fell into step next to him.

  They walked in and out of the round blotches of light shed by the lamps that stood along the walkways crisscrossing the campus green. Ellie didn’t speak as they strolled off the campus onto Thayer Street and past it to Hope Street, where Curt lived. Although he would never publicly admit to such a corny notion, he loved living on a street called Hope. Brown University’s neighborhood, the east side of Providence, was full of streets with inspiring names: Hope Street, Benefit Street, Benevolent Street, Power Street, Prospect Street, even Angell Street, which was probably named after a person, with that extra L stuck on, but Curt liked to believe it was named after a heavenly creature. He’d grown up in Manhattan, where roads had names like Third Avenue and East 65th Street. Hope Street sounded…hopeful.

  The apartment he shared with Steve wasn’t quite as auspicious as its address implied. It occupied the top floor of a ramshackle three-story walk-up with paint chipping from the clapboards and ratty old furniture sitting on the porches that abutted each level in front. The place was overpriced because its tenants were all Brown students and the landlord clearly felt justified in gouging them. But Curt and Steve had the best of the three apartments on the third floor—the front apartment, with access to a porch. The living room and kitchen might be dreary, the two bedrooms not much bigger than coffins, heat sporadic and air-conditioning nonexistent, but they did have that porch.

  The porch was where he led Ellie, after a quick detour into the kitchen to grab a bottle of bourbon and a couple of mismatched, but clean, glasses. The bourbon was one of his first liquor purchases since he’d turned twenty-one a few weeks after arriving on campus at the start of this, his senior, year. In fact, the party he and Steve had thrown to celebrate Curt’s arrival into adulthood might have been the last time he’d seen Ellie. They’d had maybe forty people crammed into the apartment, but he’d remembered she was there—with Stringy-Hair.

  Curt hadn’t paid them much attention. The Lennox sisters had been all over him that evening, arguing over who was going to win the privilege of taking the birthday boy to
bed. Yes, that had been a fine night…and as he recalled, Ellie Brennan hadn’t been an essential part of it.

  But Stringy-Hair wasn’t present now, nor were the Lennox sisters. For some reason, he believed that cheering Ellie Brennan up was imperative. A little bourbon, a little company, a sympathetic ear and the cool autumn air on the porch overlooking Hope Street…Maybe he could pull it off.

  They settled on an overstuffed sofa on the porch. It smelled only slightly mildewy; the porch’s overhang protected it from rain and snow, and it was much more comfortable than plastic furniture would have been. Curt filled the two glasses with a couple of inches of Wild Turkey and handed one glass to Ellie. She took a tiny sip, winced and then snuggled into the sofa’s puffy upholstery.

  “So,” Curt said, “what jackass called you a loser?”

  “My parents,” she said. “Not in so many words, of course. But they did, and my advisor did, and Martin did.”

  Martin. Right, that was Stringy-Hair’s name. “And what led them to this ridiculous assessment?”

  His academic phrasing sparked a laugh from her. “I told them I wanted to be a nurse.”

  “A nurse.” Curt pretended to mull this over. “Oh, yeah. There’s a real loser career. I hate nurses. They contribute absolutely nothing to society. My greatest fear is that I might someday have kids who want to grow up to be nurses.”

  She laughed again. He liked the sound of her laughter, especially since she’d been so glum when he’d found her. But he wasn’t just trying to make her laugh, even if that had been his primary goal when he’d brought her here. He really was stumped about how anyone could possibly find Ellie’s choice of career objectionable.

  She solved that mystery for him. “Everyone assumed I was going to medical school. I’m the first person in my family to go to college, Curt. My parents pinned a lot of dreams on me. My dad works for the postal service. My mom does part-time secretarial work. And here I am, their firstborn child, going to an Ivy League university. How could I possibly become a nurse? I was supposed to be a doctor.”