Seventh Heaven

by Hoffman, Alice;

  Ace walked through the snow into the blue distance of the street. His hands were split and cracked from working all day in the cold. He could be kissing Rickie Shapiro right now, but he was walking alone. There was a big moon, and Ace could hear the sound of his own boots crunching in the snow. When he reached the Corrigans’ he went around to the side and quickly climbed the fence. He landed in a drift, then moved close to the house, staying in the shadows. He went past the side door and the dark, empty kitchen, past the picnic table and the barbecue. He was sweating and his sweat froze and stung his skin. He thought of all the people on the block who were sleeping: his brother, and Danny Shapiro, and Cathy Corrigan’s parents. He thought about the fence down at the school, how it was folded in on itself, a broken silver chain. He kept inching forward, and he didn’t stop until he saw the dog, tied to a crab apple tree.

  The rope was long enough to stretch to a sheltered place, under an awning of corrugated plastic that rose above the cement patio. There were high drifts of snow along the patio, and the dog looked blue in the moonlight. It was just a puppy, a German shepherd, not more than six months old, and it had been outside since the accident. There was a large bowl of kibble beside it, and a bucket of water, which had frozen solid. The dog was still barking, but its voice was ragged. As soon as the dog saw Ace, it grew quiet. Its ears stood up, but it didn’t move. Ace went over and worked on untying the rope from the metal collar; he had to blow on the rope to get it to bend. He swept the snow off the dog’s frozen coat until his fingers burned with the cold, then he picked up the dog. He could feel a second heartbeat against his own; he could feel his chest go tight with cold and an agony that had no name. This time he didn’t scale the fence. He went out through the gate, and even though the hinges creaked and he had to push hard to open it against the drifts, he made certain to close the gate behind him.

  5

  THE LOST WIFE

  DONNA DURGIN WEIGHED A hundred eighty-seven pounds, but she didn’t plan to be fat for long. She was drinking so much Metrecal that she was fairly certain if she slit her wrists Metrecal would pour out instead of blood. You were supposed to drink one can for breakfast and another for lunch, and have nothing more than grapefruit and salad or a broiled hamburger, no ketchup, no bun, for dinner. Donna bought fourteen cans of Metrecal each week, and she kept them in the cabinet under the sink, alongside the ammonia and her supply of extra sponges.

  She had a heart-shaped face and pale blond hair that curled around her neck in damp weather. Her skin was as white as snow. In the A&P people who didn’t even know her told her she would be beautiful if only she would watch herself. They whispered to each other, How did she ever let herself get this way? Well, all they had to do was take one look at her shopping cart and they could figure out the answer. There were packs of Snickers and jars of Ovaltine; there were boxes of Frosted Flakes and loaves of white bread so soft you could roll a slice between your fingers and form a perfect ball of dough. What they didn’t know was that, as of December first, Donna wasn’t eating any of it anymore. Beneath all those sweets there were green cucumbers and lean ground meat she doled out to herself, slice by slice, one broiled meat patty a day. And on the bottom of the cart, under the chips and the noodles, were cans of Metrecal in assorted flavors.

  Donna had been fat for seven years, so her neighbors on Hemlock Street had never known her any other way. She’d gained sixty pounds with her first child, and although she’d lost some of that weight before her second, by the time her last was born, she’d given up. Her feet were still size five; they were so small that when she looked down at them she felt like crying. But most of the time she didn’t look at herself, she didn’t even think about herself, or, if she did, she imagined herself as a cloud, as if the center of herself had drifted away in strands of cotton netting. And then on the last day of November her heart had broken, and that was how Donna discovered that she still had a body.

  She had a load of laundry going in the basement when it happened, and her two boys, Bobby and Scott, were settled in front of the TV. Her littlest, Melanie, had fallen asleep on the living-room floor with a bottle of chocolate milk in her mouth. There was a tunafish casserole in the oven at 350 degrees and a package of frozen green beans out on the counter. Donna’s husband, Robert, arrived home at five thirty, the way he always did. He worked as a printer, and the cuffs of his shirts were black with ink; the first thing he did was go into the bathroom and scrub his hands with Lava soap. When he had washed up, he changed into clean clothes; then he made his way past the limp bodies in front of the TV and came into the kitchen to get himself a beer. He had seen the Sears truck parked out front and he could hear the serviceman banging away at the pipes.

  “What’s broken now?” Robert asked.

  He was a thin, dark man who wore a watch on a metal wristband that left a pattern on his skin. He opened his beer over the sink, in case foam sprayed out.

  “It’s under warranty,” Donna assured him. “The washing machine just stopped working.”

  “So they come at suppertime?” Robert said. He was easily annoyed, and Donna noticed that when he was, a vein in his neck moved up and down, pulsing like a moth. “Couldn’t they have sent someone over earlier to fix it?”

  “I called at eight this morning,” Donna said.

  Robert made a sour face; then he went into the living room to sprawl out on the couch, which was covered with a bedspread to protect it from stains. Luckily for the kids, he didn’t mind how much TV they watched, as long as they watched the programs he liked. Donna pulled the casserole out of the oven, and while it cooled she scooped three Hershey’s Kisses out of a canister and popped them into her mouth.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” the serviceman called up from the basement. “It’s sticking on the spin cycle.”

  Donna Durgin went to the top of the basement stairs. “Oh, no,” she said. She went down to the laundry room, wishing she’d made that five Hershey’s Kisses. The serviceman had been working since seven thirty that morning and he was tired. He had blue eyes and was so tall he had to duck under the pipes that ran along the ceiling.

  “There’s been a strain on the belt,” he said in an excited kind of way, as if he’d just solved some major equation.

  The serviceman nodded for Donna to come closer, and she did. Out-of-season clothes were kept down here in the laundry room, safe in plastic clothes carriers, which hung on a metal pole. There were bathing suits and beach towels in a large brown box, and in another, smaller box Donna stored the neatly washed and folded baby clothes she couldn’t bring herself to throw out. The serviceman held up his hand; he had one of Bobby’s toy cars.

  “This is what’s been slowing down the motor,” he said.

  Usually Donna checked everyone’s pockets before she did a wash, but somehow this small red Corvette had gotten past her. For months it had been grinding against the gears.

  “I’ll tell you what,” the serviceman said. “Let’s pretend it never existed.”

  A bare bulb hung above the utility sink; the light it gave off hurt your eyes, and Donna had to blink. The serviceman reached out and took her hand in his, and when he did Donna was so surprised she took a step backward and her tiny feet slid out of her sling-back shoes. The serviceman placed the toy Corvette in the palm of her hand, then closed her fingers over the car.

  “Otherwise it won’t be on warranty,” he said.

  Donna nodded and held her breath.

  “I can tell you work hard,” the serviceman said. “You wouldn’t believe some of the laundry rooms I’ve seen. You’re somebody who really cares.”

  The serviceman turned and went back to the washing machine, but Donna Durgin didn’t move. She’d been wounded by his kindness; all it took was a few words from a stranger and something inside her snapped. When she went upstairs she felt dizzy, as if her lungs weren’t getting enough air. The casserole was cooling on the stove, the TV was still on in the living room, Melanie was whimpering the w
ay she always did when she woke from a late nap. Donna went out through the side door without bothering to put on her coat. She stood at the fence, clinging to the metal because the sky was coming down at her, hard. She had eaten a bowl of leftover lasagna for lunch, and she’d had some Twinkies with the children after school, but she felt as if she had swallowed bowls and bowls of white rocks. She went across the street, to the Hennessys’, and made her way around to the side door. She knocked sharply, and when Ellen opened the door she was surprised to see Donna; they never visited each other at suppertime. Donna could smell dinner cooking on the stove; minute steak and onions and scalloped potatoes.

  “Are you all right?” Ellen said.

  “I don’t know,” Donna said. She had a very little voice, which everyone agreed belonged to a thinner person.

  “Do you need something?” Ellen asked. “Some butter? I’ve got extra milk.”

  “Oh, God,” Donna said.

  “What?” Ellen said, frightened.

  Donna Durgin leaned against the storm door. “I can’t breathe,” she said.

  “Have you called a doctor?” Ellen asked. “Joe can drive you over to the hospital. He can turn on his siren and have you there in five minutes.”

  “No,” Donna said. “It’s not like that.” She leaned in close and then she whispered, “It’s like I’ve eaten stones.”

  Ellen smiled. She had to bite her tongue so she wouldn’t say, Are you sure it wasn’t Milky Ways?

  “How about Pepto-Bismol? Joe’s a Pepto-Bismol fanatic these days.”

  Donna Durgin stared at Ellen; she couldn’t seem to focus. “I have that at home,” she said finally. “I think I’m okay now.”

  “Are you sure?” Ellen said. Her onions were burning on the stove and she looked over her shoulder when she heard them sizzle.

  “Oh, yeah,” Donna told her. “Positive.”

  Donna Durgin crossed the street and stood in the dark while the stones rattled around inside her. She had been married for eight years. On her wedding day it had been raining, and when they left the church Robert had carried her to the black limousine, but the hem of her dress got soaking wet anyway. Some of the paste pearls fell off the bodice and the sleeves, and Donna’s nephews and nieces scattered to grab up the pearls as though they were pirates’ treasure. Now, after three children, Donna Durgin hadn’t the faintest idea of who Robert was or why she had married him. When she looked down at her hand in the dark, she saw red marks on her fingers where the serviceman had touched her. From her yard, Donna could see the Christmas lights John McCarthy always strung across his garage the day after Thanksgiving. Who had smiled at Donna in the past few months? Who had asked her what she thought or what was inside her or noticed that the cuffs of Robert’s inky shirts were always white after Donna had washed them and ironed them and folded them into the bureau drawer?

  That night Donna reheated the casserole, but she didn’t eat any supper. In the morning, she made the boys their lunches and walked them to school, then she went up to the A&P and bought her first cans of Metrecal. She didn’t have a bite to eat all morning, didn’t even pour her first Metrecal until Melanie had gone down for her nap. Later in the week, she began to make Christmas cookies. There were crescents coated with confectioners’ sugar, chocolate peanut-butter balls, ginger cookies in the shapes of reindeer and elves, but Donna hadn’t even tested the batter. She lined her tins with waxed paper, filled them with cookies, and stored them above the refrigerator.

  After fourteen days of dieting, Donna had lost eleven pounds and her clothes began to feel looser, but she still wasn’t there; when she looked in the mirror she couldn’t see herself. And clearly, other people didn’t see her either, because no one, not even Ellen Hennessy, noticed that she was thinner. Donna stopped weighing herself and kept to her diet solely for the sake of being true to her regime. She put the diet out of her mind completely, and then one day, when she was looking for a roast that would be big enough for Christmas dinner, her pants fell down around her ankles in the meat section of the A&P. Donna calmly pulled them back up, but she was thrilled because she hadn’t realized till now that the elasticized waistband was inches too big. That night she seasoned the roast, and after she had pretended to eat supper and had put the kids to bed and Robert had switched on the news, Donna went into the kitchen and devoured three pink grapefruits. When she was done, she wiped her hands on a red-and-white-checked dishcloth; she still felt light as air. She went to the sink, where the dishes were soaking, and when she cleared away the bubbles Donna could see her reflection in the dish water.

  Robert’s whole family came for Christmas, and they had to borrow extra chairs from the Winemans and the McCarthys so all the Durgins could squeeze around the table. They served the roast and small pink potatoes and peas and onions and three kinds of pies. By the time Donna put out the coffee and mints, the kids were so wild that Bobby’s new punching bag tore and exploded with a gush of air and Melanie was so overexcited she had to be put right to bed, although she refused to let go of her new stuffed animal, a cat that mewed when you shook it. The cousins gave Donna a box of nougat. Robert gave her a new G.E. blender and a set of Tupperware he had bought from Nora Silk, and his parents presented her with an angora sweater Donna’s mother-in-law had bought at a big-ladies shop in Hempstead. Donna let the children stuff themselves with the nougat. She put the blender on the counter, the Tupperware into a cabinet, and the sweater, still folded in its cardboard box, up on the top shelf of her closet.

  The day after Christmas, Donna was still picking up stray bits of wrapping paper and ribbon. That afternoon she had Ellen and Lynne Wineman and all their kids over and she fed them hot chocolate and Oreo cookies, but after they’d gone she realized she hadn’t said a word to her friends. She knew she’d have to try harder. She took the kids sledding over at Dead Man’s Hill with Ellen; she helped plan a New Year’s Eve party with Lynne; she went house to house with Bobby, dragging the other children behind, selling raffle tickets to raise money for new Little League uniforms. But none of it worked, none of it mattered. And then one night when the snow was coming down hard, Donna’s engagement ring fell off while she was bathing Melanie. She had had the ring enlarged when she gained all her weight, but now she had to wrap tape around the band so it wouldn’t slip off. Every night she wound another piece of tape around the gold band, and she forced her finger inside, even when it hurt.

  After she had lost eighteen pounds, Robert noticed. But instead of telling her he was proud of her, he complained about the price of Metrecal. He started to pick up Carvel on his way home from work—Donna’s favorite, chocolate marshmallow sundaes. He left Mounds bars on the dashboard to tempt her, and when Donna didn’t give in he started to harangue her that the house wasn’t as clean as it used to be. His shirts weren’t as white, even sex wasn’t as good: Donna seemed so jumpy he half expected her to bounce right off the bed. Donna Durgin said nothing and continued to drink Metrecal and eat her grapefruit. She started to wear one of Robert’s old leather belts knotted around her waist so her clothes wouldn’t fall down. Sometimes when she took the children sledding she’d see Nora Silk wearing a woolly green jacket and black stretch pants, going full speed down the hill on a wooden sled with her older son behind her, his arms around her waist, and her baby up front, squealing and clapping his hands as their sled careened toward the parkway. She’d see Nora in the supermarket, thoughtfully reading recipes on the back of cereal boxes while her older boy stole sourballs from an open bag of candy on the shelf. One evening at dusk when Donna went out to retrieve a toy from the backyard, she looked through the grid of fences and saw Nora out in her backyard, lying in the snow and moving her arms up and down to form angel’s wings. There was snow in Nora’s hair and her cheeks were red and she let the baby crawl around without a hat while he stuffed handfuls of snow into his mouth.

  Donna stood there staring, even though any other mother on the block would have looked away. On Dead Man’s Hill, Lynne Wine
man and Ellen Hennessy clucked their tongues when they saw Nora’s baby on the sled and when they noticed that Billy Silk’s winter jacket had a hole in the elbow. Ellen occasionally let loose with some of the information she’d gotten from her boy, Stevie, who sat two desks away from Billy Silk, so they all knew that Billy had once brought a sandwich for lunch that consisted of nothing more than a chocolate bar inserted between two slices of Wonder Bread. They knew his mother didn’t allow him to climb the ropes during gym and that he often came to school sick and that he had vomited in the library corner. Donna Durgin listened to all this information, but really she was more interested in the jangling charm bracelet Nora wore, and the beat of the radio she heard when she walked with Melanie past the old Olivera house, and those black stretch pants, which were so tight you couldn’t be more than a hundred fifteen pounds and get away with wearing them.

  The truth was, Donna had begun to dream about clothes. Cinch belts and gold lamé dresses and little fur jackets made out of rabbit skins. She dreamed she was behind a counter of silk blouses and lace lingerie. She could feel the fabric when she woke up, and she felt as though she had somehow been unfaithful. She stayed away from silk and chiffon. She was still wearing her fat clothes, held up with Robert’s belt and several safety pins. On the day she met Nora on line at the A&P she had on a smocked blouse she’d bought during her first pregnancy. Because it was school vacation, Nora and Donna both had their kids with them, and if Donna hadn’t been so distracted by her boys’ fighting she might not have pulled her cart up behind Nora’s.

  “Billy,” Nora said sharply.

  She was loading her groceries onto the checkout counter and holding the baby at the same time. Billy was standing beside the rack of candy and gum; he had begun to slide a pack of Black jack into his coat pocket. He looked up, cool as a cucumber, when Nora called his name, but Donna could see that he had dropped the gum into his pocket. Nora came around her cart, dug into Billy’s pocket, pulled out the gum, and replaced it in the rack. She gave Billy a little shove, but then she noticed Donna Durgin staring at her and she ran her fingers through her hair and smiled.