Sing Them Home

by Stephanie Kallos

  He told her about me, Larken thinks wonderingly, still barely able to grasp the concept. None of the married men she’s been with have ever told their wives about her. She’s been their secret, their sin, a diversion. She’s been a nonentity.

  The fact that Jon told his wife about her means that Larken exists. It makes everything that she and Jon have been through together real. It makes it all important. His honesty redeems him, but it condemns her, because if Mia can forgive him, then she and Jon will never have a life together. And Esmé will be lost to her forever.

  It is moving day. Larken is being allowed to host Esmé for however long it takes Jon and Mia to load up the U-Haul.

  Afterward they will drive their belongings to their new abode, wherever it is. Larken hasn’t been made privy to that information, although she has been told that they will still reside in Lincoln and their phone listing will remain the same.

  When Mia arrives at Larken’s door, she is surprisingly cordial. Whatever has occurred in her world over the past few months has softened her; she may have even put on a few pounds. Clearly she is a woman unaccustomed to shame or guilt or any of the normal human tendencies involved in a situation like this.

  Of all of them, Mia is the one person who seems to be doing just fine.

  “Thank you for helping us, Larken,” she says. She speaks with such emphasis and apparent sincerity that Larken cannot help but suspect a deeper subtext.

  You’re welcome, she thinks. It is always my great pleasure to do whatever I can to help fucked-up married couples get back together.

  “Larkee!” Esmé yells, and the two of them are alone.

  Larken does what she can to keep them busy—they bake, they read, they conduct a treasure hunt—designed to gather up any of Esmé’s remaining possessions that may have been left behind in Larken’s apartment.

  She wishes she could cherish this time with undivided attention, but throughout, Larken finds herself keeping one ear tuned to the comings and goings of Jon and Mia, up and down the stairs with furniture and boxes, working together with such cooperative efficiency that it is easy to imagine that they’ll live to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary after all.

  Esmé is in the kitchen putting the cookies on a paper plate when Larken hears the dishearteningly conclusive sound of a door being pulled shut upstairs.

  Moments later, Jon arrives. “Hi,” he says.

  “Hello.” Larken hasn’t seen him yet this morning. She’d rather not have seen him at all.

  “We’ve got everything loaded up,” he adds.

  “Okay.” She will not smile, she will not accept his kiss with grace, she will not let her body soften to his platonic hug.

  “Time to go, princess!” Jon calls.

  “Look, Da!” Esmé cries. “Larkee and I made cookies!”

  “I see that. They look fantastic. May I have one?”

  “No,” she says firmly. “They’re a housewarming present. We have to have them in our new house.”

  Jon takes up the box Larken has filled with Esmé’s things and the three of them head outside.

  “Are you ready to ride in the big truck with Mommy and Daddy?” Larken asks.

  Jon hands the box off to Mia, who wedges it into the back of the truck. The two of them enter into a negotiation about which route they plan to take and should they stop and get some food first.

  Larken takes Esmé’s hand, pets her head, removes and tries to replace a pink plastic and rhinestone barrette that is about to fall out of her fine, flyaway hair. She could make this easy—and undoubtedly should, for Esmé’s sake. But this is a good-bye she is unwilling to expedite.

  “Larkee?” Esmé says, thoughtfully.

  “Yes, button.”

  “I have a question for you.”

  “What is it, sweetie?”

  “When will it come?” Esmé removes a cookie from the plate. She absentmindedly takes a few nibbles and then offers it to Larken. “I’ve been waiting a long time.”

  “Mmmm,” Larken says. “Delicious.”

  “So,” Esmé says. “When will it?”

  “What, sweetie?” Jon is making his way to the driver’s seat; Mia is coming around to the passenger side. They’re really going.

  “When will what come?” Larken starts to panic. It’s ridiculous to think she can do this, be away from this child. She reaches down and takes Esmé into her arms. She’s getting heavy. “Now,” Larken says, “say it again, sweet pea. When will what come?”

  Mia arrives and stands at the open passenger side door.

  “I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting,” Esmé says.

  “I don’t understand, honey,” Larken says. “Waiting for what?”

  Mia interrupts, her tone sharp. “Esmé.”

  “Your baby,” Esmé says, smoothing her hand over Larken’s stomach. “The baby inside your body. When will it come out?”

  “Esmé!” Mia repeats. “That’s not a polite question.”

  Esmé puts her face close to Larken’s belly. “Hello, baby!” she calls. “Hello! Please come out soon because I want to play with you.” She starts singing Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

  Mia speaks; Larken hears her as if she were underwater.

  What is she to say? When will it come out?

  How I wonder what you are …

  Larken pulls Esmé close, even as Mia continues to make indecipherable noises of a shushing, apologetic nature and tries to wrest Esmé from Larken’s arms.

  “I wish I knew, sweetie,” Larken whispers, not letting her go, sick already with nostalgia for this moment, as if it’s passed into memory and she’s looking back on it from a far-distant future: Standing in front of their apartment, Esmé is four years old and singing to the held weight in Larken’s body, as if her voice could bring it forth, and that release would be an event so joyous as to be like birth. The smell of her (butter-drenched crumpets, baby cornstarch, warm Crayolas, Elmer’s glue)—and the knowledge that Esmé is escaping this moment even as it happens, that she is growing up and away no matter how tightly Larken holds her—fills her so completely and unexpectedly with feeling that she has to close her eyes to contain her tears. Eventually Esmé starts to squirm a little and giggle. “Larkee, you’re squishing us!”

  Larken sets her down and looks Esmé in the eyes, realizing that the only answer she can give is one that splits the difference between a lie and a truth. “I wish I could tell you when it will come, but I can’t.”

  Esmé takes this in, her brow puckered, her expression considering. “Maybe it just needs a different song,” she concludes. Pressing her face once again to Larken’s midsection, she sings a snippet from I’ve got a loverly bunch of coconuts.

  Larken hears time to go now button, say good-bye, good-bye as if dreaming, and then they are gone, with nothing left to show they were ever here except for a small dollar-store barrette at the bottom of her pocket.

  Hope’s Diary, 1976:

  The Changing Shape of Thought

  Feel like swearing more, and do. I blame the pharmaceutical industry. My face has also grown big as a balloon. A travesty. Some days the children look at me as if I’m a monster and then I am glad for the days (good days? or bad days?) of blindness.

  Should we talk about it some more? Discuss it at the dinner table?

  Larken has started cooking most nights. Hamburger Helper, Tuna Helper. I help, too, of course I do! I tear up the iceberg lettuce. Can’t be trusted with a knife, or near the stove. Some days (good days, bad days) it takes half a minute for my fork to travel to my mouth. The suspense is riveting.

  I can almost see the shape of my thoughts some days. They are oval, generally, and flat, and intricately detailed, like tatted antimacassars.

  But just as I’m about to take hold of one of their fine edges and place them appropriately—on the armrest of an overstuffed chair, say, where I can sit down in regal beneficent wise silence—the thought changes shape and quality altogether. It becomes a floor
mat in the car smelling of factories, a bristly thing placed next to the back door and used to scrape mud off of work boots.

  I should be writing/typing things as soon as they come into my head, I’m realizing. I cannot trust my memory anymore, I can’t count on being able to recall anything once it’s flown into my mind because chances are it will just as easily fly out.

  I’m developing my own language, a one-of-a-kind language that is already extant and will soon be extinct because how can I pass it on to anyone else?

  Good days, bad days, the specialist said.

  Heartless son of a bitch.

  Viney came over today, did housework. A huge help. I should feel grateful.

  “I love making beds,” she said.

  “Really. I don’t.”

  “Hmmm. I think it’s a nurse thing.”

  The setting was apt—we were in Llewellyn’s and my room—so I blurted, “Have you had relations with anyone since your husband died?”

  She looked at me. “Relations? You mean …?”

  “Sex.”

  She laughed, said no, went back to tucking in perfectly mitered corners, making the crisp, brisk, efficient movements of the physically competent. I caught myself hating her. This was a new experience. I thought: “How fascinating, to have the ability to hate someone and be grateful to them at the same time.” I don’t know why it surprised me so much. God knows I’m acquainted with the way hate and love coexist in my marriage.

  “Have you ever wanted to?”

  “Wanted to what?”

  “Have sex since you’ve been a widow?”

  “Hope.”

  “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? Since your husband died?”

  “Thirteen years.”

  Don’t you miss it?”

  “Not really.” She paused, got thoughtful. “Sex with my husband was, well … How can I say this? It worked, in a reliable, predictable way, like a well-oiled machine. It’s hard to miss something that never changed. Missing sex with Waldo would be like missing a tractor.” She started laughing again, a little hysterically I thought.

  “But you must have … urges, or something. You’re still young.”

  Viney snapped out the top sheet. It billowed between us, briefly transecting my view of her body so that I was able to assess her torso and hips separately and appreciate what a good figure she has. “Don’t you get lonely?”

  “Sure, but my feeling is, you get what you get. I’ve had a lot.”

  “So you’ve given up on ever having any romance in your life again.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t need a man.”

  I didn’t believe her for one minute, so I came right out with it. “Are you attracted to Llewellyn?”

  “What?”

  “In theory, I mean. Do you think he’s attractive?”

  She frowned, leaned over, and started bundling up the dirty sheets. “Your husband is a very handsome man,” she said, her voice irritated. “Is that what you want to hear? I’m gonna go downstairs and throw these in the machine. When I come back we’ll tackle the kids’ rooms.”

  She fled down the stairs on her good legs. I regarded the fresh linens on my marriage bed.

  Have I mentioned my new acquisition in these pages yet? A cane. I like to think that it lends an air of sophistication and/or threat. I feel positively monarchial. Virgin queen, that’s me.

  Pre-cane, only last week, I fell on my face in the country club parking lot on the way into a benefit dinner for—how’s this for irony!—the MS Society! I made a fine poster child, with my fresh abrasions, bruises, and cuts. The checkbooks couldn’t come out fast enough. The fall put the kabash on any further efforts at unassisted walking.

  Today I learned that my cane also doubles as a handy household tool. I used it to dismantle Nurse Closs’s work, poking and prodding, undoing all those precisely tucked and mitered sheets.

  Huge fight with L. last night. Exhausted today.

  I thought it was a reasonable suggestion—that he and Viney sleep together. It’s certainly an extremely boring and unoriginal one. The stuff of countless novels and soap operas. Adultery makes the world go round.

  What a prude, my husband.

  He got home, very late as usual, having missed everything, the whole domestic sweep of after-school and pre-bedtime life.

  “You spend all your time with her anyway,” I reminded him. “It would be so easy! No one would blink an eye; people are used to seeing the two of you together.”

  “Shut up, Hope.”

  “All those nights you’re out on house calls together anyway and feel like you have to rush home to me and the children … Think about it from a practical standpoint. You could just stay at a motel.”

  “I said, shut up.”

  “She’s got a helluva figure, don’t you think?”

  I think I was trying to get him to hit me or something, engage with me in some kind of real, impolite way. I would have welcomed any kind of crack in his veneer. In retrospect, my cane might have come in handy.

  He looked at me, cool as ice, and said, “I’m married to you, Hope,” he said. My husband, the loyal masochist.

  “So, you’d rather stay manacled to the bed of a failed marriage than be happy?”

  “Marriage isn’t always about being happy.”

  “It isn’t always about suffering either.”

  “I’m not suffering.”

  “Really? You don’t miss having a wife who can satisfy your physical needs?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, come on, sweetheart!” I said, patting the fresh clean sheets laid down by my sexy, long-suffering friend. “Here I am, ready and willing and waiting.” I started struggling with the buttons on my nightgown. Eventually I just gave up and started trying to tear them off. Too weak of course. L. restrained me. I tried to push him away. Too weak for that too.

  “No, no, wait please while I slip out of my diaper, darling,” I cried. “I can’t make any promises, but I’ll try my best not to shit the bed.”

  He held me while I wept. Poor Llewellyn. Poor me. We sat there for a while, loving and hating each other.

  When I finally stopped crying and calmed down I was able to speak to him in a reasonable, civilized way.

  “I just want the two of you to enjoy each other. It’s not a betrayal, not if I want it, don’t you see? You can still love and honor me until death parts us.”

  I’ve done what I can. They will or they won’t, but I think they will because really: what a sublime form of self-punishment it will be for Llewellyn. He won’t be able to resist.

  Chapter 27

  Art Appreciation Redux

  At the congratulatory reception—a big to-do at the University Club with the board of regents and the dean and a lot of other high rollers—current chairman Richard Edgerton Gaffney, that slimeball, noted that the decision was cinched when Dr. Piacenti demonstrated such courage under fire earlier in the year, stepping forward to assume all the responsibilities involved in shepherding a group of twelve UNL art students during a three-week overseas trip when her colleague fell suddenly ill with bronchial pneumonia. Cue the applause, lah-dee-dah. Mirabella looked ravishing. Her husband and kids looked ravishing. Larken gorged on canapés and still managed to get drunk. On the way home, she picked up two pints of Häagen-Dazs and ate them while watching the 1986 remake of The Fly on cable. Every hardworking, failed academic/adulteress deserves a little treat now and then.

  The end of the regular academic year doesn’t usually have this kind of finality. For Larken, it has habitually represented just one more caesura in a year full of caesuras: winter break, spring break, pre–summer school break, post–summer school break, et cetera. Long-term separations are not involved; significant good-byes are not required.

  But this year, Professor Jones has decided to vacation in the fullest possible sense of the verb. She is absenting herself from the University of Nebraska campus, the responsibilities of summer school teaching, the daily s
ight of the bronze zaftig women in the sculpture garden. She is freeing herself from the entanglements of university politics. She is taking leave of the students, colleagues, and mentors whom she has disappointed so grievously. She is removing herself from the company of the new upstairs tenant—a twenty-seven-year-old female law student from McCook whose political and social leanings make her a likely reincarnate of William Jennings Bryan and who has no social life whatsoever. She is abandoning the capriciously functioning window air conditioner in her apartment—reliable only in its ability to break down during one-hundred-degree heat waves—in order to read the Emlyn Springs library’s Harlequin Romance collection in the cool, steady comfort of a residence supplied with central air-conditioning.

  This summer, because she can no longer sleep in a place that echoes so loudly with the sound of a child’s laughter, Profesor Jones is moving to her fathers’ house in Emlyn Springs.

  It is early afternoon when Larken arrives; next to the front door she finds a lidded cardboard box held together by a thick rubber band and labeled PAGEANT MATERIALS FOR LARKEN JONES. She leaves it for the time being and starts unpacking everything from the car into the living room.

  She telephones Viney. “Hi, I’m here,” she speaks into the answering machine. “Gaelan? Viney? Anybody home?”

  There’s no reason to suspect that the residents of the Closs household are monitoring their calls, but Larken can’t remember a single time when Viney hasn’t picked up the phone; her failure to do so now makes Larken feel woeful.

  “Okay, well, I guess you’re out. Call me when you get this. Love you. Bye.”

  When she calls the Williams girls, they inform her that Bonnie isn’t home either, but you should try Blind Tom’s, dear. There’s a good chance that she’s there. This is a puzzling suggestion until Larken remembers that the bike shop and the piano hospital share the same warehouse.

  The keeping of regular hours by Emlyn Springs’ businesspeople—especially her sister—isn’t pro forma even when there hasn’t been a death, so Larken isn’t exactly surprised when the phone rings twenty times without an answer. She hangs up.