Wrongful Reconciliation

by Peter Svenson

  She nods her head, barely concealing her disinterest.

  He leads her past fighter planes of all nationalities, pointing out design elements in their evolution from propeller to jet propulsion He shows her the early U.S. space capsules—the one-man Mercury, the three-man Apollo, and all the unmanned orbiting payloads that preceded them. He shows her exhibits on the evolution of flight suits, flight recorders, flight simulators—but the more he points out to her, the less attention she gives. She’s polite enough, but she’s clearly just tagging along.

  I had forgotten what it’s like when her mind is a million miles away. Something in her demeanor makes me try all the harder to get through to her. I feel like I’m expending thousands of BTUs—all of it going to waste. Too bad there isn’t a hot air balloon lying around waiting to be filled.

  For a change of pace, he takes her to the museum’s IMAX show about the space shuttle and the construction of the international space station. After all the walking, it’s good to sit and gawk at the vertiginous screen accompanied by its near-deafening soundtrack and a vicarious feeling of weightlessness. As soon as it’s over, though, she’s quick to remind him of the hour.

  “It’s ten minutes to noon. We should be going.”

  “What? Already?”

  Budge is well past the age where he permits another person to rush him through an exhibition he has just scratched the surface of. Still, a glance at his watch confirms the agreed-upon hour.

  Shaking his head in exasperation, he says, “Why are we in such a hurry to get back on the road? Let’s see a little more of the museum. I’m not even hungry yet.”

  “Budgie!” she says. “You agreed!”

  Her easygoingness of the previous day, nay, of the previous hour, has vanished. In its place is a pushy righteousness, as if she’s shocked that he’s letting her down.

  “Okay, okay. But let’s at least …”

  He pauses. She gives him a cold look of distrust, the same way she looked at him when she told him nothing could change her mind and she was moving out.

  “Let’s at least swing by the Presidential Hangar before we return to the highway,” he proposes.

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “That’s where the Air Force Ones are, which I was really hoping to see,” he continues. “I’m sure you’ll enjoy looking at them.”

  “Will I?” she asks sarcastically. “I’m impressed by the way you read my mind.”

  “Aw, c’mon, it won’t take long. All the First Ladies flew in these planes too.”

  Now her look implies, you’re the biggest chauvinistic asshole in the world, but he ignores it. He’s won, she’ll go.

  We walk right inside several of the former Air Force Ones, beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s plane. The interiors are reminiscent of railway parlor cars—clubby, with plenty of ashtrays. Privacy booths and bunks are interspersed between double rows of armchairs. Authority registers in the presence of telephones (some red), teletype machines, call buttons.

  Then we step aboard the Boeing 707 that conveyed the assassinated president back from Dallas on November 22, 1963—a date indelibly marked in the minds of Americans of our generation (we remember exactly where we were and what we were doing)—and stand at the precise spot where Lyndon B. Johnson was hastily sworn in beside Jacqueline Kennedy in her blood-bespattered pink suit. A sign explains that President Kennedy’s coffin lay next to the service door at the rear, lashed to a bulkhead so it wouldn’t shift during the flight.

  Continuing west on I-70, Budge is in the passenger seat and conversation is minimal. He knows they’ve fallen behind schedule, whatever that means to his companion. Mile upon boring mile unravels with the afternoon. Theoretically, Chicago had been reachable today, but not anymore, not unless they drive past dusk. He offers to spell her at the wheel, but she declines. To make small talk, he apologizes for the earlier delay.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t leave the museum sooner.”

  “Not a problem,” she replies.

  “I know it wasn’t your thing—all those airplanes—but thanks for doing it with me.”

  “Not a problem,” she repeats.

  This isn’t the kind of jargon she used to use—or rather, I was used to her using. She’d say, “That’s all right,” and “you’re welcome.” Now her words have gone flippant, like that of a vocabularily challenged teenager. Question: why do middle-age people feel obligated to dumb themselves down? Do they really think it makes them appear younger?

  Naturally, Budge isn’t addressing these queries to her directly. If he did, she’d have good reason to stop the car and tell him to get out. He can see that she’s tired, and tiredness, as he knows, can lead to irritability. All in all, it hasn’t been an easy day between them—hour after hour of good behavior despite cross-purposes and unspoken resentment. He strove to interest her in what interested him, and as usual, he strove too hard. She, for her part, stuck it out for as long as she could. The prospect for a simpatico evening looks bleak.

  “We’re coming to the Lafayette exit,” she announces. “I think we better look for lodging.”

  “Not a problem,” he says, mainly to experiment with the idiom on his own tongue.

  She swoops the car down the exit ramp.

  “Purdue University is here,” she relates. “Did you know that Amelia Earhart once taught an aviation course at Purdue?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  The ensuing exchange alleviates the torpor. Budge is thinking that maybe she got more out of the Air Force Museum than she was letting on.

  Downtown Lafayette, picturesquely nineteenth century with the Tippecanoe County courthouse smack dab in its center, is situated on the east bank of the Wabash. With unerring female luck, his wife steers up a side street where a Victorian mansion, reincarnated as a bed & breakfast, perches on a hill overlooking the river.

  “This looks nice,” she says.

  “Looks expensive,” he observes.

  “Don’t worry about it, Budgie. I’m paying, remember?”

  There’s just enough pique in her voice to persuade him to drop the subject. He feels stupid for bringing it up in the first place.

  When you pinch pennies for as long as I have, you can’t help but assume everybody else is pinching pennies too.

  The proprietor has one room left, the room called “Isadora,” at the top of the grand staircase. It—or rather she—is decorated in swags of sateen fabric and garishly striped wallpaper, with stuffed animals and vasefuls of dried flowers. At her center is a large four-poster canopy bed. Her price is $150 per night, including breakfast but excluding tax.

  “We’ll take it,” says his wife.

  While she checks in, the burden of carrying their luggage upstairs falls upon Budge.

  Christ, I’d rather have found a plain, generic one-story motel! Why do women go gaga over places like this, with rooms absurdly dolled up and a historic rap sheet that’s meant to inspire awe and reverence? I’m the opposite of relaxed in such surroundings; I get twitchy and claustrophobic lying on a fancy bed. I hate wallpaper that screams at me. I abhor furnishings that do the opposite of soothe. I want to take a baseball bat to the whole faux environment and beat it to a pulp.

  As can be imagined, Budge keeps these bilious observations to himself. He hefts the bags into the room and forces himself to calm down. What does he care about where he’s laying his head tonight? It’s not charged to his credit card, so he’s in no position to complain.

  Only gradually does the sleeping arrangement dawn on him: they will be sharing the one bed. Nobody mentioned anything about bringing in a rollaway cot. When his wife comes in, her eyes meet his briefly and he detects a little smirk on her face. A dare? A challenge? Soon they’re unzipping their suitcases, arranging their things, taking turns in the bathroom. To Budge, the bed is downright imposing—a fringed environment that quite dominates the floor space. Out of ancient marital habit, he goes to his former side to sit and take off his shoes. Only when he
pivots to face her does he realize that she is already stretched out, fully clothed, and observing him.

  “I guess we can manage for a night in the same bed,” she says. “But let’s set some ground rules.”

  “By all means,” he agrees, joining her on the horizontal.

  It’s our age. We’re not spring chickens anymore. We need supinity. Wasn’t it Stonewall Jackson who ordered his marching army to lie prostrate for ten minutes every hour, saying, “When a man lies down, he rests all over”? Well, here we are, fifty-somethings self-commanded to do the same.

  Budge finds it gratifying to observe his wife from this position again, pillow to pillow. He likes the way her hair cradles her cheek, upon which her make-up reveals its roseate texture. He likes the firm cast of her lips, their fading veneer of lipstick. He likes the way her hands extend beyond the cuffs of her blouse. He likes all of her enough to drink her in slowly. At the same time, he can’t help but feel his passion stirring.

  “No, I’m serious,” she says.

  “So am I,” he protests.

  “Look, you can sleep in the car, for all I care. I don’t mind sharing this bed with you, but let’s get one thing straight. No fooling around. You stay on your side and I’ll stay on mine.”

  “If you say so,” he replies wearily.

  The weariness in his voice is mostly for effect. It annoys him that she can be so dismissive. Okay, so there’s water over the dam, but doesn’t he himself count for anything—a living, breathing heterosexual male who’s just inches away from her?

  “Would you rather I slept in the car?” he asks.

  “It’s up to you,” she replies.

  Now it’s her turn to feign fatigue, which she does quite convincingly. Her yawn is contagious, but he fights it off.

  “Well, I’d like to stay here,” he says huffily, “since it’s a damn sight more comfortable.”

  She looks at him horizontally and breaks into a grin.

  “C’mon, Budgie, don’t take offense. I think we can manage okay, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Let’s just not complicate things at this point.”

  “Sure, fine.”

  Mollified, Budge turns on his back and closes his eyes. This way, he shuts out everything in the room that irritates him, including his bed companion.

  “Let’s rest for no longer than ten minutes,” she says, inadvertently echoing the famous Confederate general. “Then we’ll walk downtown or along the river to find a place to eat.”

  Budge feels like saying, “No problem,” but instead, takes several deep breaths, intended to give her the impression that he’s falling asleep.

  Not surprisingly, sleep does come to him—and to her, too. Half an hour goes by while they slumber side by side, not touching, as shadows from the bed’s four posters lengthen across the hooked rugs on the heart-pine floor. Budge is awakened by her voice practically in his ear.

  “Let’s get going, okay?”

  Her query can only be interpreted as a command. Obligingly, he sits up and rubs his eyes. Pulling on his shoes, he is somewhat disoriented.

  Where am I? Somewhere in Indiana, I think. Who is this other person? Oh yes, my wife. Am I still married to her? Yes, technically, though we’ve lived apart for ten months. So where are we headed now? To dinner, a restaurant of her choice.

  On foot, they reconnoiter the streets of downtown, but the few eating establishments are already closed. They cross a pedestrian bridge over the river to West Lafayette, where they come upon a sports bar and grille called Bruno’s which, judging by its full parking lot, looks like their best choice. Budge is disappointed; he would have preferred dinner at a quieter place, a restaurant that offered “atmosphere.” In Bruno’s he finds just the opposite. Suspended from the ceiling are wide-screen televisions, each with a different football game in progress, each surrounded by vocable fans who show their appreciation and/or dismay eruptively. Sports equipment and numbered jerseys are displayed along the walls. The waitresses are dressed as cheerleaders. The place is so packed with people that it’s hard to tell the demographics—are they mostly young, mostly old, mostly blue collar, mostly professional? Budge is at a loss for insight; the whole place turns him off. Its only saving grace, he notes, is that it’s smoke-free.

  Yet his wife seemingly enjoys the hubbub. She doesn’t mind waiting ten minutes for a booth beneath one particularly loud television. Like everyone else in the sports bar, she is soon caught up in the onscreen action.

  “Wanna split a pitcher of brewski?” she asks Budge, in perfect synch with her surroundings.

  Brewski? Since when has she used that term? And since when has she ordered beer instead of wine, much less a pitcher of it?

  Boy, have I got some catching up to do! She’s developing a whole new personality. Gusto of this order is something I don’t remember her having. Obviously, she’s crawled out of her shell since she left me. Guess I should be showing her how far I’ve crawled out of mine.

  “Fine by me. Hey, didja see those guys sack that quarterback? Wow, whatta ream job!”

  Budge has no trouble falling into jock talk. In circumstances like this, it’s easier than conducting meaningful conversation. In the recesses of his mind, however, he’s puzzled. After living with this woman for twenty-six years, he thought he had her down pat. He realizes now that he hardly knows her at all.

  The pitcher arrives, along with two frosted steins that by their dripping, opaque coruscations seem to be extensions of the very beer commercials themselves. The amber liquid is poured, the steins are clinked. Quaffing thirstily, Budge blurs the line between television and reality. By the second pouring, he feels a satisfying oneness with the gregarious clientele. They’re just folks, just like him—and her. On his third refilling, swilling only marginally slower—so as not to give her the impression, among other things, that he’s a binger—he feels the spirit and wisdom of the onscreen athletes, who, behind their helmets and padding and protection, appear to be making wonderfully brave decisions, and likewise taking terrifying abuse.

  The fact that their limbs don’t snap like twigs and their skulls crush like eggshells is nothing short of miraculous. This is life richly lived, not the dryasdust plodding of a sedentary wordsmith. This is danger and cunning and camaraderie rolled into one, fueled by salaries in the millions of dollars and fame so widespread that the cognoscenti can be found in kindergartens as well as nursing homes.

  On the personal level, these guys don’t have to get reinvolved with women who’ve walked out on them. Hell, they can acquire ten more at any given moment. Women are banging down their doors and barging into their homes. Women are vying for rides in their SUVs. Women are spread-eagled on their king-size beds, or on their knees, or on all fours. “Take me,” they beg. “Use me any way you like.”

  How different from the lifestyle of the hopeful horny scrivener, whose odyssey takes him into the hinterland, into establishments like this where his presence is about as noteworthy as a bead of condensation on chilled glass.

  As Budge’s mood swings from amusement to introspection, his tablemate either ignores or pretends to ignore the clues to his mental state. Yet what clues are there for her to notice? Mesmerized, they’ve both been watching the nearest television for a good twenty minutes. After a series of first downs, one team stands on the verge of a fourth quarter victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. He dares not utter a word, remembering how she used to shush him for interrupting her concentration in tense moments like this. Shush him rudely, the marital equivalent of a bellowed STFU, shut the fuck up! His two cents, unlike that of the broadcast commentators, was superfluous. She neither wanted to hear what he had to say nor even acknowledge his presence. She’d be so caught up in the proceedings that it was as if she had transported herself right into the game itself.

  “Yay! Touchdown!” she cries, high-fiving a passerby in the throes of concomitant ecstasy.

  Only when the thrill of the moment has p
assed—and commercials fill the screen—does she return her attention to the other end of the table.

  “Didja see that? It’s never over till the fat lady sings!”

  Though he finds her metaphor misapplied, Budge nods in agreement. Their steaks and fries have arrived, so he shifts his attention to his plate—a comeuppance, as he sees it, to counterbalance her earlier ignoring of him.

  The television continues to blare, of course, but both Mosses, to their credit, now pay it scant heed, although holding conversation proves to be difficult.

  “So, how are you holding up?” she inquires.

  “What?”

  “I said how are you holding up? Shall we order another pitcher?”

  “Another pitcher?”

  “What?”

  “You’re asking me to drink another pitcher of beer with you?”

  Budge weighs the option. Sure, he could further wet his whistle—drown it, for that matter—but he’s also thinking ahead:

  I’m not so sure that more beer is a good idea. I still know her well enough to remember what happens when she drinks too much. She conks out, absolutely and totally, as soon as she hits the bed. Moreover, she snores. I don’t fancy listening to that all night long. She won’t touch me physically, but her decibels will, and I’ll be a wreck in the morning.

  “No, I think I’ve had enough,” he says.