Mrs. Kimble

by Jennifer Haigh

“Joan?” He remembered the sixty dollars he’d stolen from her purse. He’d felt bad about it for years afterward.

  “She was nice,” he said.

  DINAH CLEARED the dishes from the table. Brendan had left a slice of turkey on his plate; he’d excused himself after Charlie’s outburst at the table. How old was my mother when you married her? But then, you like them young. The revelation had stunned her; she’d never imagined Ken’s first wife was so young—eighteen when he’d married her, a teenager. What sort of man falls in love with a teenager? she wondered. And then, not for the first time: What kind of man is he?

  She cleared the stuffing and sweet potatoes, brushed away the succotash and corn bread crumbs surrounding Ken’s plate. Everyone had eaten well; they’d all had seconds except Charlie’s girlfriend. Dinah thought of the girl as she’d been at dinner, absorbed in Ken’s stories: deals he’d brokered, others he’d wisely passed up. He’d warmed under her attention, laughed as he hadn’t in weeks. At one time Dinah would have been jealous. Now she was only grateful. It pleased her to see Ken interested in something besides his work, his failing health. He hadn’t mentioned his blood pressure all day.

  She went back to the dining room for the platter of turkey. The gravy boat had left an oily ring on the tablecloth. Charlie appeared in the doorway.

  “Let me get that.” He took the platter and followed her to the kitchen. He smelled of outdoors and cigarettes; he radiated cold.

  “Where is everybody?” he said. “You shouldn’t be stuck with the dishes after all that cooking.”

  “I don’t mind. I enjoy it.” She transferred the leftover turkey to a plastic container. “I rarely get to cook a real dinner. Your father—” She stopped herself, reddening. “Ken works late, and he hates a big meal before bed.”

  Charlie filled the sink with hot water. “I thought he was retired.”

  “He was, for about a week.” She put the leftover turkey in the refrigerator. “After he sold the brokerage, he started a nonprofit company. He buys old houses and fixes them up, then sells them to poor families for cheap. He even helps them get mortgages. It’s a terrific project.”

  “No kidding,” said Charlie. “What’s in it for him?”

  Adulation, she thought. His picture in the paper. He gets to be a hero. Ken never spoke of the families he helped; he talked only about making deals, the way he always had. She remembered him in bed the night before his heart attack. Miz Watkins and her struggling family.

  “Well,” she said, “he doesn’t make a dime off of it, if that’s what you mean.”

  Charlie smirked. “So he does it for the satisfaction? Out of the goodness of his heart?”

  “You could say that.” Dinah scraped the plates at the sink. When she looked up, Charlie was staring at her.

  “What?” she said.

  “You look different.”

  Dinah smiled. “You mean my birthmark. I had laser surgery many years ago.”

  “Why?”

  She cocked her head. “That’s funny. I’ve never had to explain it to anyone before.”

  “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “No. It’s a great question.” She stacked the plates in the dishwasher. “My whole life I thought something was terribly wrong with me. I figured everyone else thought so too.”

  “I didn’t.” He shrugged. “I was just a kid, but I never gave it any thought at all. To me it was just the way you looked.” He placed a pot in the drainer.

  “It was a fantastic dinner,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure. We have so little family, I rarely get a chance.”

  She sensed him stiffen next to her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “That was presumptuous.”

  He draped the dishcloth over the faucet. “He’s not my father, you know. I don’t think of him that way. I never will.”

  “But he is,” she said. “Like it or not, he is.”

  “How do you figure that?” His eyes met hers. “Look, I know you mean well. But you don’t know the first thing about me.”

  “So tell me,” said Dinah.

  “What do you want to know? The man walked out when I was six years old and never looked back. And I won’t even get into what he’s done to my mother.” Charlie turned to face her. “The point is, he’s never given a damn about me or Jody, from the time we were little.”

  Dinah’s face burned. She’d hoped, naively, that the family could be reunited, that it wasn’t too late. She was ashamed of her blindness.

  “Jody called him once,” said Charlie. “Did he ever tell you that?”

  “No.”

  “About ten years ago. She was in college then. She had a few drinks to work up her nerve. She left a message on his machine at work.”

  Dinah frowned. Ten years ago she and Ken were already married, living in the house in Georgetown. He’d never mentioned a call from his daughter.

  “What did she say?” she asked.

  “She gave him hell. I guess she was pretty bombed. She probably didn’t make any sense.”

  “Did Ken call her back?”

  “No,” said Charlie. “He didn’t.”

  From the next room Dinah heard Ken’s voice, female laughter; the false enthusiasm of a TV sportscaster. She was mortified: for defending Ken when she and Charlie both knew better; for her pathetic attempt at a family Thanksgiving. Ken’s children had suffered enough.

  “Oh, Charlie,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  He shrugged. “The only thing I can’t figure out is, why now? Why did he invite us here, after all these years?”

  Because he cares about you, she started to say, knowing it was a lie. But she was sick of covering for Ken. Charlie was a grown man; he ought to know the truth.

  “Because I insisted,” she said, her heart hammering. “I thought it would be good for him.”

  “It figures,” said Charlie.

  “You’re right,” said Dinah. “He doesn’t care one way or the other.”

  “I DON’T SEE why we had to leave so suddenly,” said Anne-Sophie. It was raining again, the visibility poor as they merged onto the Beltway. “Before the dessert. It was very rude. You didn’t even say good-bye.”

  “I said good-bye to Dinah.” The name sounded strange in his mouth: the baby-sitter, his father’s wife. I’ll be in touch, she’d told him. Then she’d kissed him on the cheek.

  “I thought he was charming,” said Anne-Sophie. “He speaks French. Did you know that?”

  “No,” said Charlie. “I don’t know anything about him.”

  They rode in silence.

  “I talked to the son,” said Charlie.

  She smiled. “I didn’t know he could talk.”

  “He’s a smart kid. Smarter than I was at that age. He has no illusions about the old man, I can tell you that.”

  “Old?” said Anne-Sophie. “That’s funny. To me he didn’t seem old.”

  Charlie thought of the trail of corn and lima beans on the tablecloth, Dinah cleaning up after the man every day of her life, nursing him in his declining years. His whole life Ken Kimble had played musical wives; she was the lucky one sitting when the music stopped. Congratulations, he thought. You win. And he’s quite a prize.

  “I feel sorry for Dinah,” he said. “In a couple of years she’s going to be wiping drool from his chin.”

  Anne-Sophie shrugged. “It’s an exchange. She has a beautiful house, a marriage, a family. For a woman that can be enough.”

  Charlie stared at her. “You’re joking. Sharing a bed with that disgusting old man?”

  “People get older. It’s a part of life. Certainly Dinah understood this when she married him.” She reached for his hand. “It seems to me she has a good life.”

  Charlie grunted. “Some life. You’d never settle for that kind of arrangement, would you?”

  “If my choice is to spend the rest of my life alone?” Her eyes met his. “I don’t know, Charlie. Perhaps I would.”

&nb
sp; DINAH WAS RINSING the wineglasses when Ken came into the kitchen.

  “Good Lord,” he said, eyeing the carcass on the counter. “That’s a lot of leftovers. We’ll be eating turkey till Christmas.”

  “It freezes well,” she said.

  He opened the cupboard above the sink and brought down a basket full of bottles; he counted out pills—a beta blocker, Lovastatin, a baby aspirin to thin his blood—then swallowed them in a single gulp.

  “What happened to Charlie and Anne-Sophie?” he asked. “She got up and left suddenly. She never said good-bye.”

  Never mind Anne-Sophie, Dinah thought. What about your son?

  “They had to leave.” She took two pies from the refrigerator, pumpkin and cherry.

  “None for me,” he said. “I’m stuffed.”

  She cut into a pie. “Where’s Brendan?”

  “Haven’t seen him. He’s probably upstairs, sleeping off all those potatoes. Did you see the stuffing he put away?”

  Don’t, Dinah thought. Ken had grimaced when Brendan helped himself to seconds; she knew she’d hear about it later. “It’s Thanksgiving.”

  “Every day’s Thanksgiving for that kid.” He replaced the basket of pills in the cupboard. “All those starches.”

  “He’s still growing.”

  “He eats too damn much.”

  “Stop it! Do you hear me? Not another word.”

  Ken frowned. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Me?” She put down the knife. “Charlie just walked out of here. You’ll probably never see him again. And all you care about is what Brendan ate for dinner.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t tell him to leave. It isn’t my fault.”

  “Nothing’s your fault. You’ve led a blameless life.”

  “You’re not making any sense,” he said calmly.

  She turned her back to him. “Get out of my kitchen.”

  The locker room was nearly empty at that hour; the humid air smelled of shampoo, the showers of the early morning athletes. A few women lingered at the mirror, drawing lipstick mouths. Dinah unwrapped her ankle from its neoprene brace and stepped into the shower. She’d played tennis that morning, her first match since Ken’s heart attack. After the Thanksgiving debacle she’d stopped playing nursemaid. He seemed to miss the attention; within a week he went back to work.

  She stretched her arms overhead, grateful for blood and heat. Her opponent, a woman she knew from the club league, had a weak serve; Dinah had beaten her handily, barely breaking a sweat. Her muscles felt hungry inside her skin, starved for movement. She could have played for hours.

  She stepped into the shower. Through the wall she heard deep voices, laughter from the men’s locker room. She imagined Wayne on the other side of the wall, soaping his arms and chest. She remembered his body damp and slightly messy, a fragrant chaos of skin and hair. She’d noticed his truck in the parking lot and hoped they’d cross paths; she couldn’t bring herself to call him. I’m a fool, she thought, remembering their conversation in his truck, the way she’d defended Ken. He’s my husband. He’s family.

  She dried off and dressed. At the mirror she daubed color corrector over her left temple and cheekbone—green to neutralize the redness—then covered her whole face with foundation. Normally she ran out of the locker room barefaced, but she was meeting Ken at his office. They were going to Emile’s to celebrate their anniversary. She’d planned the lunch weeks ago, before Thanksgiving. Now she dreaded it.

  Outside, the morning was clear, the warmest December on record; for three days temperatures had climbed into the seventies. She rolled open the sunroof as she wove through the city. The Homes Project maintained offices just off Connecticut Avenue, in a renovated row house near the bus line. She found a parking space on the street and walked two blocks to the office. An evergreen wreath hung on the front door, losing its needles in the heat.

  She went inside. Ken’s old office—the top floor of a mirrored tower in Crystal City, Virginia—had intimidated her; she liked this place much better. The waiting room was small and cluttered, set with folding chairs. A little girl squatted at a toy workbench, banging with a plastic hammer. A red-haired black woman sat in the corner, an infant sleeping on her shoulder.

  “How you doing, Miz Kimble?” said Val, the receptionist. She sat at a folding table overlooking the waiting room, arranging printed forms into neat stacks. A hand-lettered sign dangled from the table: “If You Need Help, Ask.”

  “I’m fine,” said Dinah. “Is Ken ready for lunch?”

  “He’s in with the reverend right now. You want to set and wait?”

  Dinah took a seat next to the plastic workbench. “Hi, honey,” she said to the little girl, Val’s granddaughter. “What are you making?”

  “A car,” said the child. She was absorbed and carelessly beautiful, her dark hair twisted into a hundred tiny braids. “I’m building Grandma a car.”

  Val laughed. “You hear that? I’m getting a car.”

  Across the room the red-haired woman eyed Dinah from head to foot. The baby breathed softly on her shoulder.

  “He’s a good sleeper,” Dinah observed.

  The woman shrugged. “He got to be. He been waiting all morning.” There was something familiar in her wide cheekbones, the sharp cut of her jaw. Dinah remembered where she’d seen her: at the Man of the Year dinner the previous spring.

  In the rear office a door creaked open: men’s voices, heavy shoes on the bare floor.

  “That’s him,” said Val. “Miz Kimble, you go on back.”

  Dinah got to her feet. The red-haired woman exhaled loudly, an angry rush of air.

  “I’m sorry, Miz Watkins, but you got to wait,” said Val.

  “That’s okay, Val,” said Dinah. “She was here first. I’m not in a hurry.”

  “You go on back,” Val repeated, in a voice that meant business.

  Dinah went down a long corridor lined with stacks of cardboard boxes. Ken hunched over one of them, flipping through a manila folder.

  “Hi there,” said Dinah.

  He looked up. “What are you doing here?” There was an unpleasant edge to his voice.

  “Lunch,” she said. “Our anniversary. Remember?”

  “Now?” He looked flushed, irritated.

  Dinah’s jaw tightened. “It’s lunchtime, isn’t it?”

  “I can’t today. I’ve got someone here.”

  She peered over his shoulder. The office door was slightly ajar. A grizzled black man sat opposite the desk.

  “Reverend Blanks?” she asked.

  Ken glanced at his watch. “I’ll call you later. It could be a late night.”

  “Fine.” She turned to go. “There’s a woman waiting for you out front. She’s been waiting all morning.”

  “Let her wait.” He went into his office and shut the door.

  Out in the lobby the red-haired woman was gone.

  XMAS TREES, the sign read. FRESH CUT.

  Dinah and Brendan parked in the lot. The air had turned cold; the car left a trail of vapor behind them. Three years in a row they’d come to this busy intersection in Reston, where a family of tree farmers unloaded their pines and firs. The trees were overpriced and not very fresh, but deep in the suburbs there was nowhere else to go. When Dinah was a girl, she and her father had driven into the country for their trees, an all-day proposition involving lunch in a particular diner, roast beef sandwiches and gravy; then much deliberation before her father finally cut down the tree and loaded it into the truck. At home would be supper and Christmas carols, Perry Como and Bing Crosby on the hi-fi. Her father would sing along as he strung the tree with lights, his gruff baritone surprisingly tuneful. The trees were always too large, bushy and shapeless, but he delighted in their size. “Another winner,” he’d pronounce once the lights were hung. “Another Whitacre special.” She remembered her father young and strong, tossing the tree onto the truck as if it were a bag of old clothes; the early sunset as they drove back to R
ichmond, the pale winter sky. Her parents were far away now, living in a retirement community in Arizona; but she brought out the memory each year to admire, like a beloved Christmas ornament. It saddened her to think what Brendan would someday remember: a parking lot across from the Home Depot, traffic noise and diesel fumes.

  But he didn’t seem sad. He moved fast down the aisles of Scotch pines and Douglas firs, whistling. He was taller than most of the trees, nearly a man in his heavy jacket. They’d just come from the orthodontist; he’d suffered silently while the doctor tightened his braces. Now he seemed pleased to be outdoors, invigorated by the cold, his usual lethargy gone.

  She’d hoped this year would be different, that Ken, somehow changed by his illness, would come with them to get the tree; but he was working late, as usual. They’d argued about it that morning while Brendan was still asleep, their harsh whispers more violent, somehow, than shouting.

  “Just once,” she rasped. “Just once you can come home at a reasonable hour.”

  “Christmas is a week away,” said Ken. “I can’t drop everything to get ready for some bullshit holiday.”

  Finally he’d promised to be home by nine, to hang the Christmas lights. It was better than nothing.

  “Hey, Mom,” Brendan called out. He struggled with a blue spruce, tall and shapely. “What do you think?”

  “Nice,” she said.

  He took an awkward step back to examine the tree, still holding it upright with his outstretched arm.

  “It’s a girl tree,” he said. “If you were a tree, this would be you.”

  Dinah laughed. There was something feminine about it, the graceful curves, the pear-shaped fullness at the bottom.

  “Here’s you,” she said. She crossed the aisle and pointed to a towering Douglas fir. The tree was broad but shapely, the trunk straight and true. There were no bare spots. “The Brendan tree.”

  “You think so?” A rare smile pulled at his lips, red and slightly stretched from his braces.

  “Absolutely. It could use a little trim up top”—a dig at his hair, which he’d decided to grow—“but all things considered, it’s a pretty handsome tree.”