Loose Ends

by Raskin, Barbara;

  Coco would create a character like Captain Ahab. The Sylvia-lady would become a monumental American literary figure—a compulsive man-chasing, power-humping, home-wrecking, family-shattering monomaniac. And Take Heaven By Storm would be transformed into The Great American Novel—the female version of Moby Dick.

  Coco would NOT appear on the Dick Cavette show; she would be invited to Cambridge; Radcliffe, Sarah Lawrence. She would give lectures; listen to aspiring young female writers, advise them to keep working, keep writing …

  fifteen

  It was late afternoon when Gavin suddenly kicked open the screen door and walked out onto the porch. He looked around briefly, surprised by the clutter of papers stacked on the floor trimming Coco along both sides of the chaise, but then dismissed her private stash of office supplies with a blink of erasure behind his glasses.

  “Come inside, Coco,” he said in a high-school principal tone of voice, “I want to talk to you.”

  Coco looked up at him from Semi-Recline and felt the same kind of fright that overcame her when she lost her wallet. “What’s the matter?” she whispered. Her heart lurched in her chest, while she automatically recapped her purple Flair.

  “Something’s come up,” he said.

  A nasty remark flitted through her mind, but it dissolved as she watched her husband’s familiar backside disappear into the guest room. The wooden floor planks were burning hot beneath her bare feet as she stood up to follow him inside.

  “Sit down,” Gavin ordered.

  Obediently Coco moved toward the bed, creased her body at the center, as if her waist were a dotted line, and placed herself on the edge of the mattress, where she had perched, hooked on Suede’s X-L, in an upright, uptight position.

  He’s found out about us, she thought. He knows we were fucking around right in here in the house while he was out earning a living and the kids were playing unsupervised in the backyard. The man from the apartment across the alley must have seen in through the window and called Gavin up at his office.

  Gavin’s face looked spray-set with resolution; his features were frosted with a newly manufactured brand of determination.

  “I’m through, Coco. I’m leaving today.” His voice was cold and matter-of-fact.

  “Leaving?”

  “I’m moving out. I’m through.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I don’t love you anymore, Coco. I haven’t loved you for a long time.”

  Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, hiding from speech.

  “Oh, Gavin, it’s because you’ve got a girlfriend,” Coco finally said in a weak but accusative voice. “That’s why you want to leave.”

  “Maybe I do have a girlfriend. But that’s not why I’m moving out. I’d rather live alone the rest of my life than spend another night in the same house with you.”

  Coco began to cry. Slowly she became aware that Gavin showed no sign of concern about her tears. There was no expression on his face at all. He was totally impervious to her. Out to lunch. He simply didn’t care. He didn’t care at all.

  “And what do you expect me to do?” Coco asked between gulping sobs. “What’s supposed to happen to me? What am I supposed to do now? Raise the kids by myself? Take care of the kids, and grow old while you whore around with every hippie cunt you can find?”

  “Shut up,” he said, banging his hand down on top of the bureau so that Suede’s shaving kit jumped several inches into the air. “I’m sick of your hysteria. I’m sick of your kvetching. This is what you’ve been aiming for all these years. You wanted to destroy us. To kill off my love. And you did. You won. And now I’m going upstairs to pack my stuff.”

  Coco succumbed to an uncontrollable torrent of tears that interfered with her speech processes. “Oh, yah,” she said, finally regaining control. “And where are you going to go? Are you going to move in with Sylvia?”

  “No,” Gavin shouted, “I’ve got a room. I rented it this morning.”

  “Without telling me?” Coco shrieked in rage. “You motherfucker.” His audacity brought her to her feet. She whacked the side of his head so hard that his glasses flew off his face, but he was suddenly in possession of an enormous new strength that allowed him to grab her arms and keep them spread apart far away from him. His fingers bit into her wrists with a vengeance that verged on brutality and for a brief moment Coco felt physical fear infiltrate her anger.

  “And what are you going to tell the kids?” Coco shrieked. “Are you going to tell them you’re leaving them to go fuck Sylvia?”

  “No,” Gavin shouted. “I’m going to tell them the truth, that I don’t love you anymore and that I’m leaving so that they’ll never hear you shrieking at me ever again.”

  “Well I’ll tell them the real truth,” Coco screamed, bringing her knee up and out toward Gavin’s groin. But he was still maintaining a safe distance, holding her away with stiffened arms. “And I’ll tell them the truth about how you ran out on your first wife, too.”

  “You never knew the truth, Coco. You don’t know the truth about anything.”

  “You fucking hypocrite,” she screamed, ducking her head while trying to land a knee into him. “You ugly fucking son-of-a-bitch,” she yelled. Her face was wet and hot.

  But suddenly he released her arms with a violent thrust, and Coco fell back against the wall, liquid and limp, so weakened she could only sneer while he bent over and began to fumble around on the carpet for his glasses.

  “Don’t come near me,” he hissed. “If you come near me now, I swear I’ll beat the living shit out of you.” His fingers connected with the glasses, which were lodged against the baseboard and he examined them before putting them back on. Then he looked at her, pale with rage and revulsion. “Don’t come upstairs,” he warned. “I need one hour to pack my stuff, and if you come near me, I’ll ruin that face of yours forever, you fucking little whore.”

  Coco slid along the wall until she could slump back onto the bed and watched Gavin walk out of the room. Then she sat perfectly still with hands clasped, fingers clutching at each other. Fury and rage, now swollen to painful proportions, were locked inside her body. It seemed as if the anger inside would have to rupture, erupt and rip open her flesh, ejaculating inner organs in an explosion of skin, bone, and blood. But then, sitting still, she slowly realized that there could be no climax now. Her rage had reached a pinnacle of purity, dazzling in its perfection, but permanently paralyzed because the enemy was sneaking away, escaping like guerrillas, into the hills, refusing to meet and do battle.

  “No way,” Coco suddenly said out loud. “There’s no way.” The words felt right on her parched lips, although she didn’t know what they meant other than that Gavin’s performance felt intolerable to her.

  So it has come to this, she thought formally, still uncertain of the antecedent of “it.”

  Very slowly she stood up and walked back out to the porch. She reclaimed her Marlboros from the table, lit a cigarette, and clutched hot smoke into her lungs. Out in the hallway she could hear Joshua crying as Mrs. Marshall carried him upstairs for his nap. Now Mrs. Marshall would see Gavin packing. But he was always taking trips, and she would probably think he was going away on business.

  That’s what I’ll tell her, Coco decided in a newly constructed secret defense shelter in the cellar of her brain that hadn’t existed fifteen minutes ago.

  That’s funny, Coco thought. Why don’t I want Mrs. Marshall to know?

  Then Coco became aware of a fluttering in her chest that felt like a fetal foot or elbow kicking in the womb, demanding internal attention. Her body stiffened as she heeded the strange little knock. Was that sensation a twitch in her lung? Did cancer start with a dull thud like that in some unspecified interior region? Was that suddenly sensate section that she had never noticed her left lung? The fluttering intensified. Coco stamped out her cigarette and expelled all the smoke she could dredge up. Her breath made a soft swishing sound, a blowing whewww, through the air.r />
  Then she turned, ran out to the hallway, and took the stairs two at a time.

  Gavin was stationed near the hall closet, pulling shirts off their hangers and parachuting them into his big black suitcase. Joshua’s bedroom door was closed, and Coco could hear the crib rocking in a steady, masturbatory motion.

  “Where are you going to go, Gavin?” Coco asked in a subdued voice.

  “I told you. I’m leaving.”

  “Yes. I know. But where will you be?”

  “Not anywhere I can be reached.”

  Coco emitted a shrill note of hysteria. “But what if I need you?”

  He laughed.

  The strange fist of emotion, bagged in her chest, began shadow-boxing her heart again. “Listen, Gavin. There are four little kids here. You’re not just going to walk out on us.”

  “Oh, yah. Who says I’m not?”

  Now he was pulling down the winter sweaters Coco had wadded up on the shelf above his clothes rack, throwing them into the suitcase on top of the short-sleeve drip-drys with a year-round-run-away-pappy kind of abandon.

  “Well, I’m going to call Dave Kaplan,” Coco said, feigning a decision-made-with-reluctance tone of voice.

  “What for? You going to file for divorce? Or are you going to get an injunction to stop me from leaving?” Gavin snorted out the words without turning around or decreasing the tempo of his packing. “You know something? I finally believe it now, Coco. I really believe you’re crazy. You really are just plain schizy.”

  Coco turned, walked down the hallway to their bedroom, and sat down at her dressing table.

  Why am I shaking? she wondered, looking into the mirror with medical rather than cosmetic interest. What’s the matter with my chest? Idly she considered the possibility she might be having a heart attack. She felt much sicker than she had the night Gavin confessed his love affair. But then, of course, everything had still seemed conversational—debatable and negotiable. Now everything was different. Now she was confronting a vacuum, an enormous gaping crater in the center of her universe. She had been transformed into a colonial army fighting a sneaky band of rebels who disappeared after surprise attacks that left injured women and children in their wake. The Burman’s civil war had turned into a revolution and Coco was definitely on the reactionary royalist side.

  Gavin came into the bedroom dragging the suitcase and pulled it toward his dresser. He started at the top, opening each drawer, and began dumping handfuls of unmatched socks, faded-pink Jockey shorts, torn T-shirts, and mateless pajama halves into the yawning suitcase.

  Coco watched in frozen horror. He was going. He was really going. He was leaving her alone. She was going to be alone.

  “Please, Gavin,” she said firmly. “Please. Stop it now.”

  He didn’t even look up.

  Coco experienced an unexpected resurgence of anger. “Is somebody coming to pick you up with a ladder? Can’t you talk to me for a second? I mean, isn’t this just a little bit too fast? Too unilateral? I mean, isn’t this just a little bit too much?”

  He looked around the room, but everything else belonged to Coco.

  “You know, I don’t believe this,” Coco said. “It’s really too incredible.”

  Gavin, standing straight and solitary looked at her with distilled contempt. “For Christ’s sake, Coco, how long did you think I was going to take all that shit? Isn’t twelve years long enough? What do I get out of staying here any longer? You cut off my balls in front of the kids, you don’t want to fuck, you hate my nuts, you yell and scream …”

  Coco felt awed by the new egocentricity that was emanating from her husband as he delivered himself of his intentions.

  “And this morning, I just suddenly realized that I don’t want to see you anymore, and I sure as hell don’t want to live here anymore. I’ll call up toward the end of next week to talk to the children, and I’ll take them out and explain everything to them. I talked to a lawyer this morning, but I want to see him before I tell the kids, so I’ll know where things stand. He’ll draw up all the custody and separation papers next week, and we can get the divorce started right away.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Coco whispered. “You can’t just leave. You can’t just leave me here alone with the children.” Then amazement fired her imagination. “Listen! Why don’t you stay here, and I’ll go. If it’s just me you can’t stand, then I’ll go. I’ll get out. Put your stuff back in the drawers and I’ll pack.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Well, how come I automatically win the kids and the responsibilities? How come when I win, I lose? How come when I got you away from Ann she became a success and I became a piece of shit? How come?”

  Gavin issued a short snort of laughter. Then he bent over to push the excess clothing down farther into his suitcase, without displaying the slightest interest in compromise or justice. “I’m not reconsidering or renegotiating anything. I don’t think there’s any reason for us to have to talk to each other again or see each other anymore.”

  “Gavin,” Coco said. “Gavin, what are you saying?”

  Now he was trying to force the top of the suitcase into line so he could snap the lock.

  “You better believe it, Coco, because I’m not kidding. This ball game is over. No more fun and games.”

  Coco thought she heard prison doors clang when the Samsonite clicked.

  “Games,” she shrieked. “Games? You must be totally insane, Gavin. You turn on and off like some lobotomy case.” She was crying now while she yelled. “I was right about you not having normal feelings. You don’t feel anything at all. You’re the crazy one. You’re just out of it.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Well, I’m going to sue you for adultery,” Coco screamed. “I’m going to roll you for every penny you have.”

  “There aren’t too many pennies, Coco, but you can have whatever you need that I can give you.”

  “And who are you going to live off of? Huh? Answer me that, why don’t you? Who are you going to live with? And tell me something else, Gavin. Is this how you did it to Ann, too? When you came to take me to Indiana? Is this how you left her?”

  “I’m not answering anymore questions, Coco. You don’t seem to understand. You’re dead. You’re finished, done, gone.” He put his thumb up to his teeth and snapped the nail in a vulgar motion toward Coco’s face. Then he yanked the suitcase off the floor. His face was scarlet. “And if you make a scene now in front of the kids, I’ll see to it that you pay for it the rest of your life.”

  The fact that threats kept tumbling out of Gavin’s mouth seemed to validate his intentions more than the packed suitcase.

  Coco got off her small corduroy-covered stool. For a moment she thought she might attack him, lunge forward and begin tearing away at his body. But instead she walked over to the bed and lay down flat on her stomach with her face turned into the pillows.

  He didn’t say another word. Coco heard him open the bedroom door and then close it behind him. She listened to him clump and clatter down the uncarpeted stairs and eventually slam the front door with great finality.

  Coco lay in bed and cried.

  sixteen

  She stayed in her room until Mrs. Marshall yelled up the stairwell that she was leaving. Then, dazed and numb, Coco went downstairs, paid Mrs. Marshall her week’s salary, wished her a good trip, and went into the kitchen to begin cooking dinner. Shortly after six she sat down at the table with her children and pretended to eat. Jessica asked where Gavin was, and Coco said he had to go to New York for a few days to try a case. Mike commented in a nasty voice that Gavin had promised to take him along the next time he went to New York. Then Jessica went into a monologue about some geographically misplaced cities that distracted everyone. Within a few minutes the talk shifted to the Fourth of July fireworks.

  After dinner Coco watched the children watch television. When Nicky grew restless she lay down on the floor in the den to help him build a cowboy fortress, keeping Josh bu
sy with his blocks on the other side of her legs so he couldn’t grab any Indians. After The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family, she marshaled Josh, Nicky, and Jessica upstairs and put them to bed. Mike stayed behind to watch The Odd Couple and Love American Style. Convinced that ABC had maliciously rescheduled every family show they owned to torture the Burmans on the first night of their orphan-hood, Coco snuck down to the living room, made herself a double gin with tonic, and carried it back to her bedroom. After putting on a pair of white bell bottoms and a tight-ribbed shirt without a bra, she sat down at the dressing table. The supersophisticated, semicorrupt sensation of drinking whiskey in her bedroom gave Coco a guilty sense of wickedness. Her only worry was that Mike might come in and discover she was actually drinking alcohol off livingroom limits. To cover the clink of her ice cubes, she rattled her can of hair spray so that the tin mystery inside produced a camouflaging noise. With the spray can in one hand and her drink in the other, Coco studied her face in the mirror to see if there were any visible signs of her psychological deterioration.

  Coco could not remember ever being so frightened before. The tremulous shaking and quaking in her hands, knees, and thighs felt like the first serious symptom of a deadly disease. For several hours she had been recalling a childhood campfireside ghoststory about a man in Texas who died from fear when he found a rattlesnake wrapped around him in his sleeping bag. Coco was now prepared to believe in fear as a scientifically acceptable cause of death. The terror that had infiltrated her body was so perilously pointed and sharp that if she negligently let it lacerate her consciousness, severing her precarious rope to sanity and rupturing her life-support system of self-control, she would die.