The Fainting Room

by Sarah Pemberton Strong

  “So, I’m thinking,” Evelyn said. “What if we called Ingrid’s dad and offered to let her keep living here instead of going back to the dorms at Newell?”

  Ray choked on his drink.

  “We could call her dad, or rather, you could, Ray, you’re good at that kind of thing, and just say she’s so happy here and we love having her around, and he could save a lot of money on boarding school fees if she were a whaddaya call it, a day student, and we’d be happy to have her.”

  Oh, how we’d be happy to have her, Ray thought. Oh how we’d be happy to ruin three people’s lives for an hour of caresses.

  He glanced, just glanced, toward Ingrid, and oh hell, she was looking at him. Her dark eyes went into him, the color of brown glass, lighter than you’d think brown eyes could be and still be brown, and her cheeks had that damning roundness that meant she was years too young for him and that he wanted to put his own cheeks against, feel the softness there.

  What an evil thing the body is, he thought wildly. His own body had turned on him like a dog he had thought was tame. He could feel the energy of desire course through his body like the drug it was. He would not do this; he would not lose control. When he was nineteen and had to have surgery for a ruptured appendix, he’d fought the anesthesia, trying to hold his head a little off the table even as he complied with the request to count backward from ten. He’d got all the way to six, two more numbers than most people, he’d learned later.

  I will control myself, he thought. I will.

  Evelyn and Ingrid were both waiting for him to say something.

  “But he’s her father,” Ray said.

  “Meaning what,” Evelyn asked.

  “Meaning if Ingrid’s father wants her to go back and live there, that’s what has to happen. It’s not up to us.”

  “But we could at least talk to him,” Evelyn said.

  You kissed her, you love her, you want her, it’s too late for talk. Ray looked out past the trees toward the town green. People lived in Randall who had never met Ingrid or Evelyn, never married a failed circus performer covered in tattoos, never fallen in love with a teenager half their age. I can do the right thing. I can.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said. God knew that was true. He drew courage from this and faced his wife. “We’d be interfering.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Ingrid said.

  He let himself look at her again. Her mouth was bunched up in an effort to keep from crying. She was miserable and he was making her so. She was beautiful and young and hating him and on the verge of tears.

  She stood up and came to the foot of the porch steps and stood right in front of him. “You’re talking about me like I’m not even here,” Ingrid said. “I’m right here, Ray. I’m right in front of you. I can hear everything you’re saying.”

  Oh, his name in her mouth was music, a Bach cello suite. Ingrid gave it a color that no one else could. What could he say that would make her understand, what could he do, short of grabbing her and kissing her again, that would get the obvious through her horribly shorn and ragged head?

  He reached out toward Ingrid’s chair and patted her arm, once, twice, oh God, took away his hand. There, you little fool, do you feel it? Do you feel that wild ache and spark? Pressed his lips together hard, wished the ground would open beneath him.

  “I want what’s best for you,” he said. “What’s best for you is that you should leave.”

  Ingrid turned away, crying. “I hate you,” she said, and ran to the shed, yanked up her bike and pedaled unsteadily down the driveway.

  “Ingrid, wait,” Evelyn called. And to Ray, “What the hell has gotten into you?”

  Ray felt a ripping in his chest as his heart tugged free and ran after Ingrid. Empty hole in his chest, he looked at his wife.

  “I mean, Jesus,” Evelyn said, “haven’t you been listening to anything she’s said all summer? She hates living in California. Her family doesn’t understand her at all. She said her new stepmother was giving her some line about how she needs a stable family, not a boarding school. So maybe if she lived here—”

  “This is a stable family, you’re thinking?”

  Evelyn scanned his face. “Why do you say it like that?”

  He looked at his feet. “She needs to find some friends her own age.”

  “No, you said it like we aren’t stable, you and me.”

  Ray realized he was supposed to contradict this. He opened his mouth, closed it again.

  “I mean,” she said, “I know we’ve had some hard times, and I’ve been unhappy and stuff, but not lately. Not since Ingrid got here, in fact. I mean, don’t you think things are good now?”

  “Between you and me,” he said.

  “No, between you and Nancy Reagan. Yes, between you and me.”

  “Things between you and me are fine,” he said. He could never tell her about Joanne, ever. He would have to hold that lie forever and let it eat him.

  “Well, then what’s your point?” Evelyn said. “Ingrid doesn’t need to be with her parents if she’ll be miserable there, and anyway, her mother’s dead, this would just be another new stepmother she doesn’t even like. And we love having Ingrid here with us, so why send her away? Hello? Ray, I’m talking to you.”

  He loved his wife, he knew he loved her. He had fallen in love with her, falling in love expressed as a man leaping out the window of a burning building. His life the building. She the window and the net. And now this terrible, terrible thing: he was in love with a sixteen-year-old girl and his entire body was on fire.

  He shook his head to clear it. “I’m just trying to think of what’s best for Ingrid.”

  “What’s best for Ingrid is if we help her out.”

  “She needs to find friends her own age,” he said weakly.

  “She’s too dependent on us. The best thing we can do for her is to send her back to her family.”

  Evelyn shook her head. “I don’t get you, Ray. I really don’t.”

  She started up the back steps.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To see if I can find her—and comfort her, since you made her cry. The Olds is still at the shop—I’m taking your car.”

  She went inside, and a moment later he heard her start the car. He closed his eyes.

  If it were a good thing and not a bad thing I would find Ingrid down whatever road she’s riding, beneath whatever tree she’s thrown herself. If it were the right thing and not the wrong thing, I would gather her up in my arms. I would hold her and tell her that if I could give her the gift of time, of patience, of trust, she would see she has nothing to worry about, that she’ll be all right because she knows how to love. If it were a good thing and not a bad thing I would hold her against me and let it flow into her like heat how much I love her. I wouldn’t kiss even the top of her head, and I wouldn’t look in her eyes, in case she saw there all the wrong ways that I want her as well. I would just hold her until she stopped crying, and then I would let her go.

  A car door slammed, and he realized he hadn’t heard Evelyn drive away. Had Ingrid come back by herself? Now Evelyn was coming around the side of the house with a panicked expression on her face.

  “Is Ingrid all right?” he asked.

  “What the fuck is this?” Evelyn said, and held out a scrap of pink phone message paper.

  He had seen hundreds like it; he had received hundreds of messages written on this identical message paper, all in Joanne’s handwriting, but this one was not going to say Pls. call H. Gibson, or Weber mtg changed to 3:30.

  “I don’t know,” he heard himself say, time slowing down, igniting.

  “Then why the fuck is it addressed to you?” She threw the paper at him and it fluttered ineffectually to his feet. He picked it up and read, in Joanne’s familiar, slanting, Catholic school penmanship:Dearest Ray,

  A beautiful afternoon yesterday. Thinking of you always. We need to talk—not at work! (smiley face) When, where,
how soon?

  J.

  “Where did you get this?” Ray asked.

  “Is that all you can fucking say? ‘Where did you get this?’ On the floor of your car, you bastard. Who is she?”

  Ray shook his head. His mouth was dry. In the summertime he always left the windows of his car cracked open. Joanne must have gone into the parking garage and slipped in the note. Explanations and apologies burst in his mouth like spoiled grapes; the truest thing he could think of to say was It’s not what you think, but what Evelyn was thinking was that he had slept with this note-writing woman, so “it’s not what you think” was not true after all.

  “You can’t do this,” Evelyn said. Her voice was low and level. It frightened him. If she had cried or yelled, at least he would have felt he was in navigable territory.

  “You can’t do this,” she repeated. “I can’t do this again. Not after Joe. Ray, you are married to me.”

  He took a breath. “Evelyn, I am so, so sorry. It happened once. Yesterday. I wanted to tell you, but I thought—”

  “Who is she, some architect?”

  “She’s the receptionist. I’ve known her for years and I’ve never felt anything for her, and I don’t now. There’s never been the slightest—”

  “The receptionist? So what is this? Am I just like, part of some thing you have for low-wage women? Who else is there? You got a cleaning lady somewhere, too?

  “Evelyn, that’s crazy. Please listen to me.” But what was he going to say? I fucked her because I can’t fuck Ingrid? “Joanne doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said. “I can’t explain why it happened—maybe it’s some kind of midlife crisis. I know that sounds terrible and it’s not an excuse, but I’m saying I don’t know. Maybe I think I don’t deserve you and on some level I’m trying to sabotage it.”

  Where had that come from, he wondered. Was there a chance that it was true?

  “Spare me Marseille’s psychobabble bullshit,” Evelyn said. She took a deep breath and pressed her hands to her sides, as if she were afraid they might fly out and strike him. After a moment she continued, speaking almost under her breath. “I want you to go into work tomorrow and tell Dunlap you need a different receptionist. Tell him you can’t work with her anymore, that he’ll have to move her somewhere else.”

  “Evelyn, that’s not necessary. Believe me, it was crazy that this happened even once. There’s no way it will ever happen again.”

  “I didn’t marry you so you could screw around on me,” she said hoarsely. “I don’t need to sit here every minute while you’re at work wondering what you’re doing, if you’re fucking her again. You think I’m so desperate that I’ll just take it? That you can do whatever you want? I don’t need you that much—” Evelyn broke off and turned away from him. Out of her body came a long guttural sound of pain that Ray had never in his life caused any woman to make, no girlfriend, not his mother.

  He stood up behind her and touched her shoulder. She jerked away.

  “Please,” he said louder. “Please, Evelyn. I love you and I would never leave you. Please look at me. I love you. Please.” She turned, raised her head for just a moment—he saw her mouth contorted in a shape that did not seem to belong to her—and, having made some snap assessment of him, she turned away again and went into the house. He followed her, caught her in the foyer.

  “I will not do this again,” she said, speaking very slowly as if he were an uncomprehending child. “So find someone else to type your letters for you or whatever the fuck she does. Find a way to get rid of her, move her, fire her, whatever—or else I’ll leave. You’re a bright boy, you’ll figure something out. Don’t bother talking to me again until you have, you shit. That’s fucking all.”

  She went out of the house and got back in the Saab, backed up fast and sloppy, then turned out onto the street, barreled past the stop sign and was gone.

  22.

  Ingrid bicycled without direction, headlong into dusk as if darkness would save her. She could taste already the dust of Melvin, California, the dust that gathered at the edges of the artificial lawns and pink gravel, the dust that worked its way into her hair and under her nails. She could feel her soul shriveling up in the dust of that landscape where red meant not Evelyn’s hair but polluted sunsets and brush fires. Where the circus never came to town. If she had to go back to Melvin, California and live with her father and Linda and Melanie, the person she would become was not anyone she even wanted to know. As Ingrid pedaled toward the Post Road on the far side of Randall Common, Ray’s Saab passed her and stopped on the shoulder just ahead. Ingrid skidded to a stop and turned the bike around, intending to ride back in the other direction. She didn’t want to hear another one of Ray’s apologies. But it was Evelyn who stuck her head out the window and called her name.

  Evelyn by herself, Evelyn crying, raw, wet gasps. Ingrid got off her bike and climbed into the car. Evelyn’s face was dissolving, misshapen by sobs. Ingrid had never seen Evelyn cry at all, and this crying, so hard it didn’t even look like Evelyn anymore, raised goose bumps on her arms.

  “He fucked some woman, some other woman,” Evelyn managed.

  Ingrid went cold. Evelyn had found out she and Ray kissed. Oh, why had she kissed him? How had it happened, how had she opened that flood of desire in him? She truly hadn’t meant to, but how could she ever explain that? Her insides were trying to climb out of her body. She might as well kill herself right now.

  “He fucked his secretary.” Evelyn was sobbing, her head pressed against the steering wheel.

  She, Ingrid, was the secretary, the typist. How fast would we have to be driving this car for me to jump out and die doing it? And if I didn’t die right away, would she lean over me? Would she touch me one last time?

  “I found a note she wrote him,” Evelyn said.

  What note was this? Was it something from her story?

  Evelyn raised her head from the wheel and Ingrid saw the imprint of circles from the leather in her forehead.

  “He doesn’t look like the kind of guy, does he,” Evelyn said.

  “He looks like a nice upstanding guy who does what he’s supposed to do and doesn’t fuck around and loves his wife.”

  “What did the note say?” Ingrid whispered.

  “Just some bullshit about wanting to see him again. His secretary, can you believe that? Some bitch named Joanne.”

  “Joanne?” Ingrid sat back in her seat. Joanne? Evelyn was not talking about stupid teenage Ingrid kissing Ray in his study after all. Evelyn’s tears were not Ingrid’s fault.

  Detective Slade leaned over and draped one arm around Evelyn’s shoulders. Mister, there’s one thing I can’t stand to see. A dame crying when a guy’s just left heel marks all over her heart.

  Ingrid could hardly breathe. Detective Slade made Ingrid’s fingers move softly along Evelyn’s shoulder to the back of Evelyn’s neck, and then slide beneath Evelyn’s hair to stroke the nape of her neck. The downy skin there was as intimate as a bird’s nest, hidden and fragile. Ingrid watched in amazement as Detective Slade buried Ingrid’s face in Evelyn’s hair. Kissed the top of Evelyn’s ear. Her ear was hot, her hair sweet and heavy.

  “I love you,” Detective Slade said. “It’s okay.”

  Evelyn gulped tears and let her head rest against Ingrid’s shaved one. She found Ingrid’s hand and held it, gripped it because she was turning upside down, she was on a sick carny ride: her relationship with Ray had suddenly become the madness of her marriage to Joe. For years Joe had fucked around, at the end with whores—by then he’d gone so far downhill Evelyn supposed no woman would to sleep with him unless she got paid.

  She raised her head from Ingrid’s shoulder and looked at the inlaid wood on the Saab’s dashboard, the fancy dials, the leather-covered steering wheel. Ray, of all people. Honorable, upstanding, clean-smelling Ray. Ray who opened doors for her, who had gone to fancy schools, who designed buildings that won awards. Was it so foolish to have believed that those things had confe
rred some kind of protection against the kind of life she’d wanted so badly to escape? Ray who had rescued her. He did not do things like sleep with his secretary. And, she realized, it was not even the cheating that was the worst. It was that it was so unlike him. That was what was making her feel like the floor had dropped out from under her.

  She turned to Ingrid. “Have you got any money?” she asked.

  Ingrid shook her head. “Not on me. But I have my typing wages back in my room. Why?”

  “I thought maybe I could go to a motel or something. I don’t want to go home. But I just ran out here without my purse.”

  “I could sneak back inside and get it for you,” Ingrid said.

  Evelyn managed a smile. “You’re sweet, you know that? No, it’s all right. I’ll drop you off and then, I don’t know, maybe I’ll just sit here in the car awhile.”

  “I don’t want to go back to the house either,” said Ingrid. “Let’s just drive around.”

  Evelyn shook her head. “I don’t think I can really drive anywhere. I feel too shaky.”

  “I’ll drive us around,” Ingrid said.

  “You?”

  “I did okay the other day, didn’t I? At Paragon Park?”

  “Yeah. In first gear in a parking lot, no one could touch you.”

  In the dim purple dusk Evelyn saw Ingrid smile her one-sided smile. “So show me second gear,” Ingrid said. “Come on, you said yourself that once I had the clutch figured out, the rest was easy.”

  Let Ingrid drive Ray’s Saab around in the dark? “Oh, why the fuck not,” Evelyn said. Ingrid could crash it for all she cared. “Put your bike in the trunk,” she said. “I hope its tires are muddy.”

  Once Ingrid had gotten the car started and in gear, Evelyn settled into the passenger seat. She switched on the radio, but it was tuned to some classical station of course, and at the first strains of violin, she shut it off again. “Fuck that,” she said.

  “Let me,” said Ingrid. She fiddled with the dial, and suddenly the car was filled with something loud and violent, something driving forward hard, the sound of boys not so much singing as screaming and the same drumbeat over and over, harder and more insistent than Evelyn’s own stressed-out heartbeat, and the earsplitting effect was that she couldn’t feel her own heart so painfully anymore.