Traveling Left of Center and Other Stories

by Nancy Christie

  Sometimes, my husband falls asleep right away, snoring into the pillow, while I lie awake, watching him. Sometimes, we make love, a carefully orchestrated dance of bodies and hands—connecting physically but not emotionally. Not anymore.

  When we are done making love, he pats my shoulder, the way one would pat a mare after a day’s exercise, and then pulls the sheet around himself and turns away.

  I want to cry, but I don’t. I wouldn’t be able to explain the tears, even if he would ask. He doesn’t mean to hurt me. But there you have it. I am hurt anyway.

  Movement out of sync, engine out of tune. Damage.

  And on the following mornings, he would be especially kind to me. He is a kind man, but, on those mornings, there is an extra sense of gentleness about him—which is why I never refuse to make love to him. Gentleness, even when it is a substitute for love, is not a thing one can refuse—not in this world, where mindless cruelty is so common, where random failures can destroy unsuspecting lives.

  I know I am fortunate. I have healthy children, a responsible husband. If I want more, I keep it to myself, lest what I already have be taken as a punishment for my greed.

  Tonight there was another dream: the ringing of the phone and when I answered, a single question—“What do you want?” Then nothing more, and I awaken, the question echoing in my mind.

  What do I want?

  I look around me—at fifteen years of furniture and wall coverings, at fifteen years of marriage and family life, at fifteen years of connections.

  “I don’t know,” and I turn, hugging my husband’s body for warmth.

  Skating on Thin Ice

  “For the twelfth straight day, the high temperature will only reach single digits, setting a new record—”

  I turn off the radio before I can hear the rest of the forecast. When I was a child, weather like this meant the pond behind my parents’ house would be frozen—glass-smooth and hard as tempered steel. We would gather on the shore, where some kind neighbor had lit a bonfire, and alternately toast our faces and our backsides while strapping on the high-topped, sharp-bladed skates.

  The unsafe portions of the ice were clearly marked. Ominous red flags warning “Weak Ice” were posted on the thinner surface, and stiff brown ropes were strung from pole to pole, confining the young to the safer areas.

  As a child, I obeyed the warning, but once safely into the invulnerable teenage years, I joined friends in daring each other to leap the cord and try their luck on the melting surface.

  Most of the time, our luck held. Skate lines crisscrossed each other in ever-deepening slices, and sometimes the rifle-sharp crack from below the surface would scare us back behind the rope. But never for very long. First one, then another would tip-toe on skate point, and, seeing no widening breach, no ominous fluid darkness, venture back onto the thin ice.

  But luck can not be tempted indefinitely without demanding payment. The year I was fifteen, eight older boys played crack-the-whip on the unsafe section, sending one of their own sailing out alone under the moonlight. A widening black line followed him, but there wasn’t enough time to stop. And, in the end, he was simply swallowed up like a long-awaited meal.

  “Paul! Paul!”

  The shouts echoed across the darkening night, until someone had the presence of mind to call a parent, the police, the ambulance.

  By then, it was too late.

  There was no more skating on the pond after that, and the following summer, the neighbors banded together to hire an excavating company to fill it in—the largest single gravesite I have ever seen.

  I have since learned that thin ice is not only a condition of winter, nor confined to stretches of frozen water. There is thin ice everywhere—between lovers and friends, between reality and obsession, between hope and despair.

  And sometimes, the only warning you receive is the sharp crack just before the ice breaks and you fall through—to nowhere.

  When I was five years old, we moved from the sunshine and sand of southern Florida to this cold state of Ohio, where bare tree limbs cast stark shadows against the whitened landscape. Snow was an unfriendly stranger—chilling my suntanned skin, reddening my face—and the dazzling reflection of the sun off its white surface was painfully bright.

  My father was taking me ice-skating on the frozen pond in the park—not because he wished to spend time with me, but to escape the house where my mother was.

  My mother was “sleeping.” My mother always “slept” in the afternoon. Among the many bags and boxes we brought in our battered Ford wagon was the hidden truth of my mother’s sickness.

  At sixteen, I would say my mother was a drunk. Twenty years later, I could say she was an alcoholic. But the right words, like my compassion and understanding, are two decades too late.

  Hurriedly, my father strapped the borrowed skates on me. But they were too big for my thin feet, and like an ungainly bird, I flapped my wool-covered wings to keep my balance.

  “Come on,” and impatiently, he grabbed at my hand, towing me out to the center where other families swirled and dipped in an unfamiliar dance. I held onto him tightly, and, following his terse instructions, slid my feet tentatively across the cold glassy surface.

  And for a moment, I was dancing, too.

  Then, my skate caught in a crack and I stumbled. My father’s fingers, never holding very tightly, released their grip as I fell to my knees. For a moment, I thought the crack I heard was the sound of the ice breaking, and that I would soon fall through the widening slice to vanish forever into the frozen depths.

  But it was only my ankle that was broken. I stayed, a frozen bird trapped in the ice, until my father finally turned and saw that I had fallen. For a moment, he paused, as though deciding whether or not to come back. The late afternoon sunshine illuminated him, and I understood then that, each day, he must make the decision to return.

  It was not only my ankle that hurt. It was not only the fragile bone that had been broken.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  “He’s gone and left us, the dirty bastard!”

  My mother stood there on the porch in her threadbare housecoat, the November wind whipping it against her blue-veined legs.

  I turned quickly around, hoping no one from school was near enough to see her or hear her voice, slurred and thickened with alcohol and rage.

  I knew, without having to ask, what had happened. I had seen my father packing late at night. But he didn’t see me. His mind was a hundred miles away—probably in some other house, with some other woman.

  “Mom, go back inside,” but she ignored me, hugging her arms around herself as if to hold in what little warmth her scrawny body could generate.

  My mother was thin, painfully thin, almost a wraith. Sometimes I wondered how she had the strength to go on living. Sometimes I wished she didn’t.

  I opened the door, throwing my school books onto the kitchen table, and then came back to lead her into the house.

  “The dirty bastard,” she repeated, and tears ran down her face. I set her gently on a chair, brought her a pill and some vodka, wiped the tears from her face.

  The next morning, I called the school to tell them in a grown-up voice that “little Sarah is sick with the flu and will have to stay home the rest of the week”—the first, but not the last time I played that role.

  Sometimes, I thought they knew it was me, pretending to be my mother. But if they investigated the situation, they might have had to do something, accept some responsibility, take some action. And they were already too busy with other problems.

  So they took me at my word, and I bought time to stay with my mother, until she was well enough for me to leave during the day.

  “Why did he leave me?” and the tears started again, the low keening a mourning chant for a dead marriage.

  I turned on the overhead light, seeing in its ruthless light the dirty dishes in the sink, the broken glass scattered across the floor.

  “He’ll be back,” I said auto
matically, and began to sweep the glittering shards from the floor. Then, while she continued to sob, I heated some canned soup and toasted stale bread.

  In spite of the grief permeating the kitchen, I was hungry.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Drinking came naturally to my mother, like breathing or sleeping.

  After a few glasses—vodka, mostly but occasionally gin—my mother would fall asleep, her snores echoing through the house. She would sleep anywhere and everywhere: at the kitchen table, on the faded couch in the cold living room, once even in the bathtub, while the water rose higher and higher around her weak, ugly body.

  I tried to move her from the tub, but her wet flesh was too slippery. And she wouldn’t answer me, no matter how much I raised my voice.

  “Mom, Mom, come on. You have to move. Mom,” my voice growing sharper as the frustration built, “wake up! You can’t stay in here.”

  I slapped her face—not once but several times—but her head lolled like a rag doll’s. Finally, I left her there, in the cooling water, and went back to my homework.

  By morning, the bathtub was empty, and I was able to shower before leaving for school.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  When I was sixteen, I tasted liquor for the first time. It was not my first flirtation with a vice—I had been smoking since I was twelve. There was never a need to hide it from anyone. My mother would not have noticed it, and my father was too far away to care what I did. But lately, cigarettes failed to provide me with what I needed.

  Spending a night at a friend’s house, I went with her into the dining room, dark and heavy with mahogany furniture.

  “What would you like?” and, one by one, she set the bottles on the lace tablecloth.

  I tried whiskey first, but it burned my tongue and brought tears to my eyes. My mother preferred vodka, but I found it too numbing, flavorless yet powerful. Finally, I reached for the wine.

  I wrestled with the cork, breaking bits free to fall into the fluid darkness. Once opened, I tipped the bottle to my lips, pushing aside the bits of cork with my tongue, letting the liquid slip between almost-closed teeth to reach my throat.

  As I drank, I gazed critically at the bottle. The label was pretty—a pastoral scene with trees and horses. It was supposed to reassure the drinker that the liquid was healthy, fermented as it is from fruits ripening in the sunshine. The wine tasted more of alcohol than fruit, but I didn’t mind. After all, it wasn’t flavor that I was seeking.

  My friend turned on the crystal chandelier, and I saw myself reflected in the lace-curtained window—eyes dark holes in a pale circle. Watching myself, I tipped the bottle to my lips again and swallowed.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  There were not many choices open to a woman thirty years ago. High school was followed by either clerical work or college, depending on the female’s intelligence, motivation and finances. But the ultimate goal was the same for nearly all: to be married to a reasonably handsome, steadily employed husband, and bear him 2.5 children.

  That was the acceptable path, the mark of success. But, for some of us, the path was not so straight and clear. Sometimes, it deviated, and the sequence of events became scrambled and out of sync.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  My hands were slippery on the black receiver. These were not the words I wanted to hear. This was not the tone of voice I had hoped for.

  “Of course I am.” My voice was more confident than I felt. It was, after all, not an unheard situation. It had happened before—to other girls, other couples. The colleges were full of new-marrieds with babies on the way.

  “The doctor says I should be just fine.”

  “You’re young. You’re healthy,” were his exact words. He had shoved a prescription for vitamins into my cold hands. “I’ll see you in one month. Any questions? No? Good.”

  No, I had no questions, not even if I should stop drinking the Bloody Marys that had become part of my daily diet. If I had asked him, he might have dismissed its importance. Alcoholism was not something discussed in polite society. Besides, his lunches were also liquid—vodka Martinis, I’d heard.

  The silence from the other end was deafening. I twisted the cord around my wrist, waiting.

  Then, “What are you going to do?” and I heard the pronoun the way one hears the guillotine right before it slices away life.

  “I thought . . .” and my voice died away. I thought—what? That he would marry me? That my life would have a form, a shape, some semblance of normality? That I could have my drinks in the privacy of my own living room, rather than sneaking the bottles into a crowded dorm?

  That I would never be alone again?

  “I can give you some money to, you know . . .” and I understood then that it was my problem to deal with—mine and mine alone.

  I uncoiled the cord and gently hung the phone back onto the metal holder. There were red marks on my wrist where the cord had cut into my skin. Later that night, I would recreate the lines with the blade of my scissors.

  They told me I was fortunate. And, contrite and frightened, he came to see me. We were married three weeks later, before I began to fill out the front of my dress.

  But it ended, as it began, with a sharp unexpected pain and trails of blood. An ambulance ride, sirens screaming, lights flashing. The examining room was blindingly bright, and I closed my eyes against the glare of the round lamp, wishing I could close my body against the doctor’s ice-cold instruments.

  There was no need to buy baby furniture after all. Later, in the darkened living room of our small apartment, I swallowed medicine and tranquilizers, washing them down with spiked tomato juice. After two drinks, I didn’t notice whether he came home. After a few more, I didn’t even care.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  In what ultimately became a vain attempt to escape from our past, my husband and I had moved—far from the town where we had gone to college, farther still from my mother, who clung to her bitter memories in the house by the pond.

  Sometimes, walking down unfamiliar streets, watching other mothers wheeling baby carriages in the park, I could almost convince myself that the childhood I recalled had never existed—that somewhere in my past was another mother: normal, stable, sober.

  But then a late night or early morning phone call would destroy the fantasy I had created. My mother’s voice, cracked and harsh, would pull me back into the alcohol-blurred past.

  “You never come see me,” she would begin, and I would reach for my glass and take a long drink, knowing I would need it. “You’re like your father—you used me and left me all alone. What kind of daughter are you?” and her voice would rise and fall, a tide of words eating away at the bulwarks I had erected.

  Sometimes the silence would stretch out for long minutes, and I imagined her pouring yet another drink, lighting yet another cigarette. I wondered if someday she would catch fire, all that alcohol inside her feeding the flames until she blazed into nothingness.

  If I were a better daughter, I would try to help her. If I were a stronger person, I would put immeasurable miles between us—refuse to accept her calls, her grief, my guilt. But I was neither. I was only my mother’s daughter, listening to her litany of pain and accusations, wondering if I had enough alcohol to last through the afternoon.

  Even when the call was over, when the phone rested back in its cradle, I could see her face, hear her voice, smell the alcohol on her breath. It would take several more drinks before I would stop seeing, hearing, smelling my mother.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Marriage has been described as an “institution,” as though it were a building housing sick people or inmates. For me, it had been a place in which to exist, a wall to hide behind.

  But over the years, my marriage, never very strong, had developed cracks in the foundation. Small breaks: the phone numbers scribbled on slips of paper, unexplained because I was afraid to question. Larger breaks: the work days stretching later into the night, the business trips growing more frequen
t. On bad days, I had believed I could feel our marriage quivering, waiting for the one last tremor that would shake it to pieces.

  Those were the days when I slept late and went to bed early. Alcohol was my solution, my salvation.

  “I can’t put up with this anymore!” His voice shook the house, reverberating in my ears until I thought I would be deafened. “You do nothing but drink—day in and day out!”

  I didn’t know what to answer, so I sipped my drink instead. But he slapped the glass from my hand, and then, harder, slapped my face.

  “Listen to me!” and I turned my head up toward where I imagined his face to be. It’s hard to see clearly after three in the afternoon. Or maybe it was just hard to see after three.

  “Look at you,” and he dragged me to the bathroom mirror. The overhead light hurt my eyes, but he made me look. But instead of my own reflection, it was my mother’s I saw.

  “I need a drink,” and defeated, he let me go.

  “I want out—out of this life, out of this marriage. It’s over between us. You can have the house. I’m leaving.”

  I understood what he was saying. It sounded familiar, like I had heard it all before, long ago. I poured half a glass of vodka and took a long swallow. Then I turned to him.

  “Dirty bastard,” and I threw the glass across the room, watching it shatter across the wall.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  “I need to speak with Sarah Armstrong.”

  I turned on the bedside lamp, the glare from the bulb burning my eyes. I blinked them a few times, trying to ease the dryness, before shifting the receiver closer to my mouth.

  “Yes, what do you want?” My voice was rough, and I cleared my throat before continuing. “This is Sarah Armstrong. What is it?”

  “We have a patient here—Anna Wilson.”

  “My mother,” I said quickly. It had been several years since I had seen my mother. The nursing supervisor said she didn’t recognize anyone any more, that I didn’t have to make the three-hour trip if I didn’t want to.

  I grasped at the escape she offered, like a drowning man clutches at a rope. I didn’t want to see my mother—watch her shaking hands, see her face crisscrossed with spider veins. I didn’t want to see myself.