Any Minute I Can Split

by Judith Rossner

  “Did you tell him about me?”

  “No, David. I didn’t.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “Not unless I have to, I guess.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that if I have a choice of telling the truth or lying and having Roger know I’m lying, then maybe I’ll tell the truth.”

  “But if you can lie and get away with it you will.” A certain moral loftiness in his tone.

  “Sure.” The water began boiling and she put in some tea, wishing that tea bags weren’t verboten at the farm because of the chemicals in the paper. “It seems like the least I can do.”

  David said, “Sometimes I don’t understand you.”

  Margaret said, “That is because of your extreme youth and my advanced age.” Two poles with a distance of eleven years between them.

  David said, “You’re not so old.”

  “You don’t think I’m old?”

  “I like women of all ages.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that, David, because the fact is that tomorrow’s my thirtieth birthday and I was fearing you would reject me.”

  “But instead you rejected me.”

  “I didn’t reject you,” she told him. “My husband just showed up.”

  “Did you know he was coming?”

  “Of course not. I would’ve told you.”

  “Why did he come?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe he missed me . . . or maybe he was just curious.” She smiled but David didn’t. He wouldn’t remember their conversation of months before. Why did she? It must have to do with the importance other people had for you. Yet David was acting as though she was important.

  “David, you know that I’m fond of you and that’s not going to change just because Roger’s here.”

  “What will change?”

  “Oh, God,” she said, “I really have no idea. I find it hard to think in terms of the future.” And so do you most of the time.

  “The future,” he said bitterly. “Where I’m going to sleep tonight, is that the future?”

  It was a question at once reasonable and impossible. She hesitated, his urgency about the present briefly contagious.

  “Would you like me to get a blanket and sheet and make up the couch for you?”

  He shrugged. How long had he been on the road and how often had he slept on grass, on gravel, on somebody’s floor? But of course he’d made it clear from the beginning that he expected more of her. She made up the couch and grudgingly he stretched out on it without taking off his shoes. She pulled off his shoes and covered him. She turned off the light and sat on the floor near him, stroking his head, wondering what would happen if Roger woke up. Trying to figure out how David had managed to make her feel guilty about neglecting him instead of betraying Roger. Maybe she wasn’t betraying Roger? Maybe it was what he wanted? No. More likely it didn’t matter in her own deep down balance book what Roger wanted. If you were of that generation which having repudiated the old values still carried them around tattooed in your vital organs like some IBM cards of guilt, registering old ladies helped across the street, litter not picked up, husbands abandoned, young boys screwed, then it didn’t matter what your explanation was or what your views of the future, it only mattered that you were the devil’s handmaiden. The guilt was there, it simply hadn’t made itself felt, yet. David’s eyes were open, wakeful. Challenging her to make him sleep. What could she tell him? The things she could say that might make him feel better would all be lies.

  “If he leaves tomorrow will you go with him?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think so. But I don’t think he’ll want to, either.”

  “What if he does?”

  “I don’t know, David. I hardly ever know what I’m going to do in advance.” No. That wasn’t the right thing to say. “I can’t imagine that I would just walk out of here and leave you and never see you again, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  He glowered at her.

  “You’re not being fair,” she said. “You know that I’m crazy about you.”

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  She hesitated. “It means I’m all involved with you. I like you and I care about you and I’ve been all wrapped up in you for a pretty long time.”

  “You’ve been wrapped up in your babies.”

  “Yes, but in you, too.” Not in a hundred percent different ways. But maybe you know that. You know it and it doesn’t mean shit to you.

  He wanted to make love to her but she couldn’t let him. She sat on the rug and leaned up against the couch.

  “I’ll have to go up soon.”

  “You said you’d stay until I fell asleep.”

  “Are you going to stay up all night, then?”

  “How’m I supposed to know?”

  Fair is fair.

  “Maybe tomorrow we could set you up in the barn,” she said. “In the room next to the one Butterscotch is using.” And Jordan.

  “You’re trying to get rid of me.”

  “If I was trying to get rid of you,” she pointed out, “I wouldn’t be trying to figure out how to make you comfortable.”

  “I was comfortable where I was,” he said.

  She sighed. “I know that, David, but it’s not fair for you to . . . I mean it’s not my fault Roger showed up.”

  “It’ll be your fault if he stays.”

  “Not necessarily. He could stay to bug me.”

  “You mean you don’t want him to?”

  “I didn’t say that. I don’t know how I’m going to feel. All I’m saying is that what he does doesn’t depend on what I want.” Any relationship, if it exists, being inverse.

  “What if you had your choice right now? Would you have him stay or go?”

  “Right now . . . I guess I’d have to say stay, David. His daughters are here, you know, he’s never even seen them before. How could I want him to go?”

  “What if they weren’t here?”

  She stared at him, her mind a temporary blank. “What do you mean? Of course they’re here, how can I . . .” How can I want to know the answer to that? This was her whole life they were playing around with as though it were some kind of game plan.

  “All I’m saying is if it didn’t happen that you became pregnant, and you did what you did, came here and so on, and we were all going along pretty much like we were except you had more time because no babies, and then he showed up—how would you feel?”

  No, that wasn’t it; she was wet wash being put through the mangle of an old-fashioned washing machine.

  “I guess I’d have mixed feelings, like now.”

  “What would you need him for if you didn’t have this crap in your head about kids and parents?”

  “It’s not crap.”

  “It is crap.” Fiercely. “My parents got divorced and it didn’t make a fucking bit of difference in my life.”

  “Mmmmmmm.”

  “I mean you can tell yourself some shit about how I was a boy scout when they were still married and this terrific change came over me but that’s what it’ll be, a load of shit.”

  “How old were you when your parents got divorced?”

  “Eleven.” Sulky.

  “Did they get married again?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you five with your mother and her husband?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you like him?”

  “Mitchell? He’s all right. I mean he’s a prick but he’s a nice guy and he’s got plenty of money and they travel all the time so they weren’t on my back.”

  Pause to digest. “David? Do you mean the same Mitchell who owns the farm?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “I don’t know but it does.”

  “Bullshit.” Fierce again. “All this is bullshit because you don’t wanna answer what I asked you before.”

 
“That’s only partly true.”

  Silence.

  “You were getting balled anyhow, so you didn’t need him for that.”

  She smiled. “Maybe I like a kind of written guarantee that I’ll always get balled.”

  “Marriage doesn’t give you that. Half the married people I know don’t ball.”

  “They told you.”

  “They don’t have to tell me. I can look at them and tell myself. Mitchell balled my mother more before they were married than after. You think I couldn’t tell?”

  Silence.

  “There’s a permanence to the idea of marriage,” she said feebly. He snickered. “I mean, I’m not saying it always works, but there’s a certain security to the idea of it, of always being with the same person, for better or worse, and all that stuff.”

  “You make me sick with your lies.”

  That, David, is because you thinking I’m lying for your benefit while in truth I’m lying for my own.

  Silence.

  “All I was saying, David, is that a place like this you feel as if the whole thing could split up any minute, people coming and going, for me that’s a very shaky feeling.” Shakier than going to parties with Roger and wondering how I’ll get home? “All right, so a lot of it is baloney. I admit it. So I can’t answer your question.”

  “Which question?”

  She wanted to shriek something unintelligible. He’d left her in the mangle and then walked away from it.

  “About what binds me to Roger. Besides the kids.”

  “Forget it,” he said. “You answered that already.”

  “I did?”

  “Sure. A lot of bullshit binds you to Roger, that’s what.”

  “I’m going upstairs now.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t need you here. You or your bullshit.”

  THE twins slept late and so did she. Roger was still sleeping when she took them downstairs. The couch had been stripped and David wasn’t around. Only Dolores and Butterscotch were left in the kitchen—and Dolores’s new lover, a young girl with long black hair and the eyes of a fawn caught in the headlights, who never spoke to anyone but Dolores and then in a whisper.

  “Is it all right to talk about David?” Butterscotch whispered as Margaret gave Rosie her bottle, put her in the playpen and sat at the table to nurse Rue. She nodded.

  “He took off early this morning,” Butterscotch said. “I think he’s upset.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “He wouldn’t say.”

  “Did he say when he’d be back?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me.”

  A moment of fear. David has gone. David is hitching another ride on the potholed highway of life. Who will pick up David next? Another old lady? An older old lady than me or a younger old lady, like maybe twenty-eight? Hey! It was her birthday! She hadn’t thought of it until now. You could make out a case for disaster; briefly it freed your mind of symbols.

  “He did say he’d be back, though?”

  “When I asked he just said why wouldn’t he be, as though he was pretending he didn’t care about your husband.”

  Margaret nodded. “We talked late last night but it doesn’t seem to do any good. It’s very difficult . . . Roger’s still asleep,” she added irrelevantly.

  “I sleep much better than I used to, better than I’ve slept since I was little,” Butterscotch said, “but Jordan doesn’t fall asleep until it begins to get light.”

  “I guess I’ll go see how De Witt’s doing with the goats,” Dolores said. “Leila’s having trouble with her udders.” She left, followed by the girl.

  “No matter how busy we are all day,” Butterscotch said softly, “he doesn’t go to sleep while it’s dark. It frightens me because I always think he’s so strong.”

  “Maybe that’s when he gathers his strength.”

  Butterscotch smiled gratefully. “That’s a beautiful way to think of it.”

  Hannah came in now, having given her kids breakfast in the trailer. She poured herself a cup of coffee (not allowed in the trailer) and sat down.

  “I’m exhausted,” she announced. Her friend who’d brought the films had slept in the fourth bunk and apparently he snored. In the middle of the night she’d dropped down her pillow on his head and he hadn’t awakened but had slept badly and, blaming her for this, had gone off early in high dudgeon. Hannah giggled. “No more films.” She didn’t seem upset that her friend had gone off angry with her.

  Roger came down and asked where the girls were. Margaret said they were in the playpen, pointing to the other room. Roger went looking for them.

  “He’s making up for lost time,” Hannah said softly, something in her tone inappropriate to a woman who kept her kids away from her husband for three hundred and sixty-four days a year.

  Roger came back holding Rue. “Rosie’s asleep in the playpen,” he announced, sitting down with Rue on his lap. “How about some breakfast?” He was looking at Hannah as he said it but Margaret got up to make some eggs after noting that Hannah smiled demurely.

  “Who’re you?” Roger asked.

  “I’m Hannah.”

  “I’m sorry,” Margaret said. “Roger, this is Hannah and this is Butterscotch.” She broke three eggs into the pan, brought Roger a cup of coffee. He was bouncing Rue on his knee; she seemed to accept him without question.

  “You really dig your kids, don’t you,” Hannah said.

  “They’re fantastic,” Roger said. “No one ever told me they’d be like this.”

  Rue lunged for his coffee and he pushed it away but then dipped his finger into the cup and let her lick it.

  “Coffee’s terrible,” Hannah said, solemn but twinkling. “Aside from giving you false energy it robs your body of B vitamins.”

  “No shit,” Roger said.

  “No shit,” Hannah said.

  There was a pause. “All right,” Roger said. “No more coffee, baby.”

  Hannah smiled sweetly. Margaret gave Roger his eggs.

  “You and me,” Roger said to Hannah, “we can have a cuppa, huh?”

  “As long as we’re perfect in all other respects,” Hannah said.

  Margaret bit her lip. She was experiencing that feeling of dread which had lost its familiarity in recent months. Maybe it was this she’d been anticipating when she’d refused to let herself be purely glad that Roger had come. She sat down at the table but it was like having to watch your own execution, a ritual which once you’d forgotten it, couldn’t be resumed again so easily. She took Rue and wandered into the sewing room, letting Rue down on the floor to play while she hemmed napkins for a while. When she wandered back into the kitchen, only Roger and Hannah were still there.

  “They think they’re ready for anarchy,” Hannah was saying. “That’s because they don’t know what anarchy is.”

  Roger nodded. “The idea of self-government is foreign to Americans.” He seemed quite serious, not at all condescending. He really liked Hannah. For the first time since meeting her, Margaret was able to feel a simple, direct dislike toward the other woman. “Self-government is a form of self-control, self-limitation. It goes against our whole grain. We’re supposed to go after what we want, not question whether we really need it.”

  “Well said,” Hannah murmured.

  “I feel qualified to discuss this at length,” Roger went on, “because I’m an absolutely typical American in that respect.”

  Hannah smiled. “You’re young. There’s time for change.”

  “I’m very young,” Roger agreed. “I’m two years younger than my wife, as a matter of fact.”

  “I’m three years older than your wife,” Hannah said.

  “Good, good,” Roger said. “That’s promising. Anyhow, the problem is, I don’t really want to change. I have yet to be convinced that I’ll benefit in any real way from changing.”

  Hannah, who might in other circumstances have been repelled by Roger’s confession, was quite charmed by it, said that at the moment s
he couldn’t see where there was any crying need for change.

  “But here I find myself in this place you say is full of half-assed anarchists,” Roger persisted.

  “I wasn’t talking about this place,” Hannah said. “I was talking about the last place. Here the problem is quite different, from what I can make of it.” She glanced at Margaret, seemed about to go on, stopped herself.

  “What’s the problem here then?”

  “Well . . .” She was still hesitant but she was going to force herself. “This place seems to be full of people looking for the father they never had. Ready to turn over their brains and free will to the first fake wise man who promises to take care of them.”

  Margaret was stunned, although she wasn’t sure by what—this simple new version of their lives with De Witt or Hannah’s assurance that it was all right to voice it. De Witt, who had assumed leadership so reluctantly because without any leader the whole thing didn’t work!

  Roger laughed. “That doesn’t describe my wife.”

  “I didn’t mean—” Hannah began.

  “My wife will turn over her brains to anyone, fake wise man or not.”

  Hannah laughed. “Margaret, you’re not going to let him get away with that, are you?”

  “Sure,” Margaret said, standing up, faking calm. “Why not?” Then left the room quickly before the façade could crumble. Went out on the porch, then down the front steps although it was freezing cold out, a cold gray day in March, and she was wearing only a light sweater.

  Why not? Because you were out of the habit and it was a good habit to be out of. Margaret the shit-eater. Making fun of her had been like something Roger did instead of working. And her readiness to accept his mockery had been based not on saintliness or good will but on some crazy idea of the way she was supposed to be. Some lopsided notion of femininity maybe not invented by her but certainly fully acquiesced in. Not that she was ready to disclaim the whole notion; it was only that in recent months she seemed not to have worried much about what she should be. She had worried about her sex life, about whether she was a good mother to both girls, about whether she was doing her share. About what she was doing, in other words, instead of about what she was. And now back came Roger with his yardstick and she wasn’t in the habit any more and fuck you, Roger, that’s all, fuck you! Even when there is justice in your remarks you never make them in the interest of seeing justice served!