Any Minute I Can Split

by Judith Rossner

  “Then what was that about?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “It’s probably full of people.” She wasn’t going to risk their good feelings by telling him.

  “Twelve hours away from the farm and you’re crapping out again.”

  It was true.

  “At the farm,” she said, “I feel as though I’ll have someone else if you get mad and leave me.”

  “I don’t leave when I’m mad,” he said. “I leave when I’m bored.” It was an echo of De Witt; only the qualifications differed. “Anyway, it’s the bullshit that makes me mad, the truth never does.”

  “All right,” she said reluctantly. “It’s going to the house. I was there in the fall with David.”

  “You WHAT?” The car swerved off the road onto the grassy shoulder, where he braked so hard that her head nearly went through the windshield and both twins rolled across the mattress into the seat backs and woke up crying. “Are you telling me,” he shouted, “that you brought that little fuck to the house at the Cape?”

  “You said the truth wouldn’t make you mad.”

  “Well, I was wrong, goddammit!” he bellowed, pushing back Rue, who was trying to climb over the seat into the front.

  Margaret got out of the car and stumbled through the grass toward the trees. Roger came after her.

  “Don’t you run away!” he shouted after her. “Don’t you fucking run away or I’ll drive off and leave you here!”

  She stopped and turned. He looked grim in the white light from the overhead highway lamps.

  “It wasn’t the way it sounds,” she said tearfully.

  “You’re always telling me it’s not the way it sounds.”

  “It wasn’t a romantic idyll, Roger. It was when I just met him. On the way to the farm. We just needed a place to flop for the night.”

  “It’s a fucking Bible story.” Still at the top of his lungs.

  “I was still pregnant, for Christ’s sake. I weighed two hundred and fifty pounds.”

  “The little tit-sucker must’ve been crazy about you.”

  “You’re still getting more mileage out of my one—”

  “Whaddya mean, ONE?”

  “All right, damn it, TWO! One and a half! Whatever! You’re still getting more mileage out of my two piddling infidelities than I got out of the whole endless stream of girls you’ve been fucking me with practically since we got married!”

  “I never took anyone to the house on the Cape!”

  “What’s so sacred about the house on the Cape?” she screamed. And then stopped. Dumbfounded at their reversal. Rue had climbed out of the car and onto the empty highway, then run onto the grass. Now she clutched Margaret’s leg and screamed to be picked up. Margaret ignored her.

  “You don’t mean that,” Roger said.

  “It just came out.”

  “You were using anything to win an argument.”

  “You always said there was nothing special about the house.” He’d always said it but she’d always known he loved it almost as much as she did. It was a happy place. The repository of much of the pleasure in a large, otherwise drab and unsensual family.

  “But you did, Maggie. You thought it was special and you took that fucking kid there.”

  “I felt . . . it never occurred to me that I shouldn’t. I really never thought you’d care. I didn’t think you cared about me at all.”

  He regarded her thoughtfully. “Some of the best times we ever had were at that house.”

  “I know,” she said. “That’s why I felt awful about going there with you now. I felt guilty that I was last there with him, even if I didn’t make love with him there.”

  Silence. She finally responded to the baby’s wailing and picked her up. In the car, Rue’s less mobile sister sobbed gently.

  “You keep saying what amounts to that my infidelities are worse because I care more. But what it really is, obviously, is that mine hurt you more and yours hurt me more. That’s all.”

  More silence.

  Then Roger said, “I’ll take you to your father’s. But we’re not sleeping there.”

  She smiled. “I doubt we’ll be invited.”

  “We’ll drive right through.”

  “You’re not too tired?”

  He shook his head. “We’ll get there in the morning, stay a couple of hours. Then we’ll go to the Cape.” He waited.

  “All right.”

  “And we’ll stay there for a couple of days. I’m in the mood. We’ll pick up bathing suits, anything else we need. I want to do it now more than I did before.”

  To exorcise young boys and other bad spirits.

  “I hope there’s room,” she said. “At this time of year . . .”

  “If there’s no room indoors,” he said, “we’ll buy sleeping bags and sack out in back of the house.”

  BOSTON. She bit off the long ragged nail of her right thumb.

  “Well,” she laughed nervously, “here we are.”

  It was just past seven in the morning and the street was still reasonably quiet. The twins had awakened at five; they’d stopped for breakfast at six. Now Rosie had dozed off again and Rue was playing with the box of diapers.

  “He gets up early, doesn’t he?”

  “Sure. Six-thirty. Breakfast at seven-fifteen; lunch at twelve; dinner at six.”

  Roger laughed. “How could I forget?”

  She looked at the brownstone, flashed back to the moment in her last visit when the girl had opened the front door, briefly now found her own body refusing to get out of the car.

  “Well,” Roger said, “here goes nothing.”

  He took Rosie and she took Rue. Up the front steps. He rang the bell. She felt nauseous; only a conscious effort held down her breakfast. The door opened almost immediately and there was her father, gaping at them in the sunshine.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said, “It’s us. Your family. Together again.” Remember us?

  “Margaret, me dear!” he said, suddenly remembering his early Barry Fitzgerald. “And Rogerrrr! How are ya, me boy? You’re lookin’ just fine, I haaaardly recognized ya, children!”

  “We brought your granddaughters to see you, Father!” How fucking quaint she sounded. Elsie Dinsmore coming home to Daddy. He looked at the twins.

  “Ah, yes,” he said, “a fine pair of girls.” Something in his manner reminding her of the classic Thanksgiving Magnificent Bird line. “Yes, of course, Margaret, ya wrote me about them.”

  You never answered.

  Rosie watched him sleepily. Rue lunged toward him with a wooden spool in her fist; he stepped back hastily.

  “Rosemary,” she said, “Rue, this is your grandpa.”

  “Rosemary,” he said. “A beautiful name.”

  “Do you want to kiss them, Daddy?” Daddy? Why was she having such trouble with what to call him?

  “Yes, of course,” he said, but made no move to do so. Impulsively Margaret leaned forward and kissed his cheek.

  “Yes,” he said, “we’d better go inside.” As though until her loss of self-control he’d counted on holding court on the stoop.

  They went into the house. The living room got about two hours of sun in the early morning and wasn’t as dark as usual. Margaret and Roger sat on the sofa, the twins on their laps.

  “Have you had breakfast?” her father asked.

  “Yes,” Margaret said.

  “You’ll excuse me then,” her father said. “I feel The Headache coming on.”

  The Headache had as distinct a personality and cause as The Curse. It was what visited her father at 7:16, 12:01 and 6:01 if there was no food in front of him at those times.

  “I’ll have a cup of tea,” Margaret said.

  He left them. There was no sign of the colleen but there were subtle changes in the room. Bright new fiberglass curtains at the windows; a ghastly red glass vase filled with plastic gladiolas on the sideboard; lace antimacassars on the sofa and easy chairs. Her father came in with his bowl of oatmeal, dish
of toast and two cups of tea on a tray. He gave Margaret her tea and sat with the tray in the chair that swiveled toward the TV set. For the next few minutes he concentrated on his breakfast. She glanced at Roger; he grinned broadly. Rue was squirming so Margaret let her down on the rug. Rue promptly teetered over to her grandfather and grabbed a piece of toast from the tray; her grandfather, with a startled exclamation, grabbed it back. Roger laughed but Margaret nearly cried except that a second later Rue grabbed the other piece of toast from the plate and began jamming it into her mouth before he could take it again.

  “The child’s got to learn some manners, Margaret.”

  “The child’s ten months old, Dad. Maybe you should’ve let her have the damn toast.”

  “Mind your language,” he said abstractly, finishing his oatmeal and putting the empty bowl on the sideboard.

  “Sorry, Dad.” She sighed. “Do you mind if I make them some toast?”

  Why? They weren’t hungry, they’d eaten huge breakfasts.

  “I suppose it’s all right,” he said. “I can always get more for lunch.”

  Why in all the great fucking world of places to go had she wanted to come here? The connection. Making the connection. But all they were connected by was a sick joke. Rue finished the toast and began investigating the room. She picked up a Ladies’ Home Journal from the coffee table and dropped it on the floor. Margaret picked it up and put it on the coffee table.

  “Can’t you put her in something?” her father asked.

  “What’d you have in mind? A cage?”

  “Come on, Rue,” Roger said, putting Rosie next to Margaret on the couch, where she docilely remained. “I’ll make you some toast.” He stooped over to hold Rue’s hand and guide her into the kitchen. Margaret bit off the nail of her right index finger.

  “Are ya still bitin’ yer nails, then, Margaret,” her father said, shaking his head. He finished his tea, put the tray on the sideboard. Then he looked at Rosie for the first time since they’d come indoors.

  “You’re a pretty one, aren’t ya.”

  “Actually,” Margaret said, “they’re identical. No one can tell them apart, not even me. For all I know this one may really be in the kitchen right now.” She waited. Nothing. Hostile tones could be ignored indefinitely; he needed something concrete and important like a dirty word to latch on to before he could get mad. She chewed off the nail of her right pinky.

  “Such a terrible habit for a young woman,” he said.

  “You didn’t like it much when I was a kid, either.” Anyway, I only do it when I’m here.

  Silence. He was watching Rosie. He looked almost nostalgic.

  “I’ll tell ya, Margaret,” he said after a while, “I’d love to see them baptized.”

  “WHAT?” Her mind was briefly blown into the various corners of the room.

  “It would be a great comfort to me to see them baptized.”

  “You seem pretty comfortable already,” she said, recovering quickly. More comfortable than my mother is. More comfortable than I am.

  “It’s the church, Margaret,” he said, as though she’d paid him a compliment. “I’ve been going again, regular-like.”

  “What brought that on?” she asked. As if she couldn’t figure it out for herself. Guilt had driven people to stranger places than their own church.

  “It came over me one day,” he said solemnly, “that it was where I belonged. No reflection on anyone, Margaret, but I’d have been a happier man if I’d learned that lesson early in life.”

  Of course you would never have existed, Margaret, but you were always such a troublesome girl, anyway. The first few years of your life your mother, the poooorrr creaturrre, was laid up with a skin disease of the groin, no one knew what caused it but the fact of the matter was that she never had anything like that before you were born and so you see Margaret it seems only reasonable to say it would have been better for everyone if you’d never been born. Aaahhhhhhhh, the poor creaturrrrrre.

  She had a tremendous urge to scream or cry or break something but of course she didn’t do any of those things, she just sat there.

  Roger came back with Rue.

  “Roger,” she said, “my father wants the girls to be baptized.”

  “Okay,” Roger said. “Should we leave ’em here and pick ’em up in a few days?”

  Her father looked so petrified she had to laugh. Roger took the toast from Rue, broke off a piece for Rosie, gave it back.

  “Are you serious about not minding?” Margaret asked him.

  “Sure,” he said. “It’ll roll off their backs like water.”

  “Not on the sofa, please,” her father said.

  She looked at him, bewildered.

  “The toast. She’s got the toast crumbling on the sofa.”

  Margaret stood Rosie on the rug where she could lean against the low coffee table as she ate. Once again her eyes fell on the Ladies’ Home Journal. The Ladies’ Home Journal! It hadn’t registered before.

  “Whose magazine is this, Dad?”

  “It’s a fine magazine, Margaret,” her father said.

  “Yes, but who gets it?”

  “Thousands of people get it. Have you seen the beauuutiful article on the Kennedys?”

  “Daddy,” Margaret said, “did you go to the store yourself and buy this magazine?”

  He stared at her blankly.

  “And if you didn’t, WHO DID?” The prosecution rests. Silence. Roger watched. Toast crumbled. Behind the triple-layer fiberglass curtains of her father’s eyes, little things slipped and slid, searching for a way out, but they found none and so eventually he spoke.

  “She did.”

  “She?” Triumphantly pained. She had found the scab on her heart and peeled it off. “Who’s she?”

  “Now, Margaret, you’re acting foolish.”

  “Who is she?” Making up in aggression now what she’d lacked before. “Who? Rose Kennedy? The Virgin Mary? Your . . . your concubine?”

  “Damn it, Margaret!” he exploded, and she should have been prepared then for she had never heard the mildest curse from his lips in her entire life, “you’ve got to stop using that language!”

  “It’s just a word,” she said. “Why are you so scared of words? It’s a word for someone who lives with you without being married.”

  “Father Dempsey wouldn’t let her,” her father said, lapsing into sullenness.

  “Huh?” She was confused. As though she’d wandered into the wrong argument. Roger came over and sat down next to her and put his arm around her and that, too, should have told her something. “Father Dempsey wouldn’t let her what?”

  “Wouldn’t let her live here without being married.”

  “Are you talking about the girl who was here?” Roger asked in a low voice.

  “The girl who was here,” Margaret said. “The young Irish girl who was here the last time I—” Finally it sunk in. She stared at him, wild-eyed: “Are you telling me that you were married to her the last time I was here?”

  “I certainly was not,” he said indignantly.

  “Then when?” She demanded.

  “October third,” he said, as though naming a much later time, while in point of fact it was perhaps a week after she’d been there.

  “There was no choice in the matter,” he said.

  “Where is this girl?” Roger asked.

  “She sleeps late,” her father said. “It’s the pollution, her eyes smart if she wakes up early.”

  “Five months!” Margaret said, the nausea nearly overcoming her now. “Five fucking months after Mommy died!”

  It jolted him to his feet. “Leave this house! You can’t use language like that in this house!”

  “She was dead five months when I was here!”

  “I didn’t want to do it but the girl had to be protected.”

  What about me? Who protects me? Roger will protect me. Roger’s arm is around me and he isn’t laughing even though all this is very funny.
/>   “Doesn’t everybody wait a year?”

  “I’m not a man to live alone, Margaret.”

  My mother wasn’t a woman to live alone but she always did.

  “And Father Dempsey felt . . . well it’s not as though the Church recognized my first marriage.”

  That snapped it. The thing, whatever it was, whatever it was made of, the thing that had bound her to him for all the years, in spite of the odds, in spite of her vision of him, in spite of himself, it snapped. She stood up and picked up Rosie. Roger took Rue.

  “Fuck you,” she shouted, looking down at her father with a full and righteous rage. “Fuck you, Dad, and fuck the little cunt in the bedroom and fuck your farts in the bathroom and fuck your lousy policeman’s badge. Fuck you, that’s all.” And as he stood there frozen in a position of horror that was more satisfying than any fury could have been, his mouth open, the color gone from his face for the only time in her memory, his shoulders looking as though they’d been boned, his arms at once stiff and dangling at his sides, she marched past him and out of the house with Roger and the girls.

  ROGER started the car.

  Her nausea was gone but it had been replaced by exhaustion and a feeling of emptiness, as though she’d actually thrown up.

  “I’m proud of you,” Roger said.

  “Really?” she asked dully. “You mean for telling him off?”

  “Sure.”

  “Roger,” she asked after a while, “aside from all the stuff you let out on your parents, the jokes and everything . . . have you ever really told them off in what you thought of as a final way?”

  “Uh uh,” Roger said. “I always left an opening.”

  “Consciously?”

  “Consciously.”

  “Because of money?”

  “Because of money.”

  She sighed. “It’s so ironic.”

  “That point has been made much of,” he said.

  “I know, I know,” she said. “Still, it’s very ironic . . . Not that I ever want to see him again.”

  THEY parked in the house lot, next to a new Oldsmobile. It was nine in the morning. They walked through the gate back to the beach. There were three teenage boys stretched out in the sand, sunbathing. If they were her cousins or nephews they’d gone through enough growth or acculturation since she’d last seen them to be unrecognizable to her. She and Roger sat on the sea wall for a while, letting the girls play rapturously in the sand. They’d never seen sand before! After a few minutes Rue teetered over the sand to the edge of the water. They’d never seen the ocean before! The tide was fairly high and it lapped at Rue’s feet as she stood there, looking down, swaying as the receding waves washed sand from under her feet. Rosie crawled to a spot a few feet in back of her sister where she could watch the water without being touched by it.