Safekeeping: Some True Stories From a Life

by Abigail Thomas

  Then What Did He Say?

  What did he say, my sister asks, after he patted your hand?

  He said he wanted to help.

  But what else did he say?

  He asked me about my fevers.

  And?

  He asked about my dizzy spells and my headaches. And he made me a doctor’s appointment. Someone he knew.

  A shrink?

  Are you kidding? No. That would have scared me to death. A regular doctor.

  Then what?

  I went to him and there was nothing wrong with me.

  His Affair

  My husband’s affair (I found out later) was with a woman who put many different kinds of sausages and wild birds and pigs into a big pot and cooked them with garlic. It was delicious but frightening. We were at her New Year’s Eve party. She seemed very sophisticated. I had never heard of and could not spell the names of her sausages and she wasn’t interested in giving me the recipe anyway, certainly not in the middle of the huge party she was throwing. All she told me was that it took three days to prepare and it was called hunter’s stew and was an old family recipe. She was a heavy-breasted woman; she wore feathers and shawls and I seem to remember some beautiful and exotic jewelry and combs in her swept-up hair, but perhaps my mind has embellished her. I lingered in the kitchen although I was no match for her. I don’t know if my husband had met her before, but they must have known right away, strains of “Some Enchanted Evening,” these two unhappy strangers.

  Her Affair

  She went to a psychiatrist because she wasn’t feeling up to snuff and he recommended pills. “Oh yes, of course,” she said, nodding her head obediently, but didn’t go get any. Next week he asked if she was feeling at all different from the pills and she said she hadn’t filled the prescription yet. He looked mad and said since she hadn’t taken any pills he wouldn’t treat her and would in fact never see her again, but as long as she was there they might as well talk since he was going to charge her for this session anyway. She was a little taken aback. “I had no idea they were that important to you,” she said, but then had nothing to add because she had no intention of ever taking any because, well, she hated pills. Even and especially the birth-control pill, which she no longer took since her husband never slept with her anyway. That was one of the reasons she wasn’t feeling so good about herself or the world either, although there were plenty of other reasons such as her failure to be a decent humorous and understanding mother to her kids as well as the fact that she had no education and a big crooked tooth and she turned everybody’s everything pink in the wash and she got very very frightened while in the middle of doing nothing in particular which made her even more frightened. She could no longer even drive a car. She had taken the train to the city for this appointment.

  The psychiatrist asked her what her problem was. She said her husband didn’t sleep with her anymore. She said she felt like something left too long in the vegetable drawer. Then the psychiatrist told her several things, but she could only remember one. He told her to tell her husband that if he didn’t get himself some help pronto she was going to go out and have an affair. “Oh,” she said, laughing a very small laugh, “I could never do that.”

  “Time’s up,” he said and she paid him and she got on the train and went home and her husband was in the bathtub. The mirror was all fogged up and he was smoking grass. The bathroom smelled sweet with it. His ragged bathrobe hung on the back of the door. “How did it go,” he asked, but not in a friendly voice. “Listen,” she said, sliding the glass shower door open and looking down at him naked in their squarish beige tub, his penis afloat. His eyes were bloodshot and his big knees poked up from the water. “Listen. If you don’t get yourself some help pronto I’m going to have an affair.” Then she slid the door back and went downstairs to make a cup of tea. Later, when supper was ready, she hardly glanced at him. He took his place at the table without speaking to her, his mouth a thin line. She served a perfect brisket with carrots and turnips and potatoes.

  He didn’t get himself some help and she started to have an affair that very week. It turned out she couldn’t wait. A businessman from up the street was very obliging, yes he would be delighted to sleep with her, and he consulted his date book directly and told her later in the week would be convenient. She called her old friend Lucky, who still lived in a small apartment on Hudson Street with two Great Danes. “Hi,” she said, “could I borrow your apartment for an afternoon?” and she told him why. Lucky was happy to oblige; perhaps he had never really liked her husband. He said he would take the dogs out for three hours if she gave him a little notice. She looked forward to it very much and there was some small hassle about who could sneak away from what when and how long would the dogs be gone, because the businessman was allergic to dogs but Lucky said he’d do a little vacuuming and leave the windows open. Everybody really wanted her to have an affair. It was sort of touching.

  The funny thing is now she can’t remember anything about that afternoon except the Great Danes part. And they weren’t even there.

  She Imagines His Side

  She imagines him lying in the tub, pleasantly high, enjoying the water lapping around his shoulders, the quiet house, and thinking about what—architecture? Art? Nothing at all? Suddenly she comes clomping upstairs, bursts into the bathroom, and lays this line on him. She stands there with her coat on! Then she stomps out again. What the hell is he to make of that? He frowns, shifts his weight in the tub. Did she really say what he thinks she said? He is stunned into a deeper stupor from which he is roused by the uncomfortable sensation of cooled water. There is a mealy gray scum around the tub now, old soap. His knees are cold. He turns the hot tap back on, a trickle, holds the washcloth under it, then places it upon his knees to warm them. Lights his pipe again. Inhales, closes his eyes. The house is quiet. He hears the radio faintly, which means she is in the kitchen. Rolling Stones. That’s a relief. She must be cooking.

  He can’t take any part of her seriously. Chicken is never the same two days running. She’ll make it marvelously on Monday, and three nights later it’s a failure. How hard can it be to pay attention to what she is doing? Except he loves the way she holds the baby. She is so sure of that. He trusts her implicitly. It moves him to tears even. But other than that, it is hard to know what goes on in her mind, what she wants of him. What she wants. He hates it when she tries to please him, when she pretends to like something because he does. It makes him angry; worse, it irritates him. He wants an independent woman.

  He wonders what she is cooking. Brisket? She’s gotten quite good at brisket recently; she won’t tell him what she does with it. A secret, she says, smiling, as if it mattered. Garlic? He hates tarragon and he hopes she remembers that this time. He has a bit of an appetite now. Then he remembers what she said. He stands up abruptly, water sluicing off him like a giant. He dries his feet on a scratchy little hand towel first, one toe at a time, steps onto the bath mat. He calls her name once or twice as he sees no bath towel on the towel rack. No answer. Is the music louder now? He is angry. He hates to get angry, which makes him angrier. She forces him to be angry. He shouldn’t have to ask her for a towel. Things should go smoothly in a well-run household.

  The towels are still in the laundry basket at the foot of the bed. So are the sheets. Last week she threw a red skirt into the wash and dyed his tennis shorts pink. She said she thought they looked nice like that. She had laughed shyly, knowing it wasn’t funny. He didn’t find it funny. It shows such a lack of respect for him, the way she runs the household. She has no concept of what it means to be a wife.

  But don’t forget, this is how she imagines it. Perhaps she has unwittingly loaded the dice in her favor.

  Not Meaning to Brag

  I remember one summer I was slim enough to wear a yellow polka-dot two-piece bathing suit, and still, I could see him looking sadly down the beach like a dog on a rope. No matter what, there was still only one of me.

  Which later he
regretted taking so long to find out.

  The World Looked Different

  After her husband moved out she stopped picking up. Why should she? She didn’t care. They were getting divorced. It wasn’t her house anyhow, as it turned out. Whole bookcases slid to the floor. Potatoes lay where they rolled to after the bag broke. She rinsed her coffee cup, wiped her spoon on her apron. Then she stopped wearing her apron. The big house took on the look of a half-eaten sandwich, waxed paper and mayonnaise everywhere. Wherever she stepped she stepped in something, or on something, or something rolled away under a table or bed. Her children were scattered. Some had no home anymore, not really. Where would they all spend Christmas? She took to wearing her nightgown all the time. Sometimes she had scary dreams. The raccoons returned to nest in the walls. Previously her husband had chased them away with hammers and nails, with traps and foul language. At her urging, it must be noted. It was she who had objected to their presence beneath (for example) the bathtub, where one of them gave birth and you could hear the unnerving scritchings of tiny claws and cooings and conversations among the family members while you lay on your back in a bubble bath trying to clear your mind. You could feel the vibrations of their little claws on the undersurface of the tub. Her husband laughed. They are only raccoons.

  Raccoons have conversations. They have words and tones of voice. They laughed their little asses off. This is our house, she would say to her husband, and we are human beings. He really didn’t mind the raccoons. But then he wasn’t home all day worrying and he slept soundly at night when the raccoons were so active. It was she who was wakened by their carousing. Her husband had enjoyed sharing his house with wildlife. It was she who had objected to their nightly excursions and comings home at dawn drunk and disorderly, the whole huge family of them, babies too, after a night of barhopping or pool playing or whatever raccoons do in the suburbs where there isn’t much to do besides root around in the neighbors’ garbage. Her children also had not been too crazy about the raccoons, although she had assured them that they could not claw through the plaster and eat them in their beds. Sometimes the dog would growl at the big white walls, the hair on her back standing up. It was an unpleasant way to live. Like always being sunburned. Finally her husband had taken action grumpily and the raccoons had left the premises. It turned out to be simple. You just boarded up the hole they had made as a door before they came home in the morning. It worked. They moved into a tree in the yard.

  But now she found the house lonely with everyone gone and when the raccoons returned she was almost glad to have them back, although it worried her to hear their tiny fingernails scratching on the inside of the wall behind the headboard of the bed her husband had moved down from her daughter’s room; she was sleeping in the daughter’s bed now; her daughter had moved in with her boyfriend; her husband had taken his own bed back to the city with him. Her children had scattered (two in boarding schools) because the house was for sale, and only she was living in it because she had nowhere else to live at the moment. After all you cannot send a woman away to boarding school. She was supposed to be looking for a job and an apartment, but sometimes she went into the city and walked around with no stockings on in the cold and then took the train back to the house, telling whoever asked that yes, she had looked all day, all day, for everything. But really she just drank coffee and smoked cigarettes and so forth while wandering around not even like a chicken with her head cut off. Not even with as much energy or purpose as that! No wonder she locked every door every night. No wonder she left little feasts for the raccoons. No wonder nobody spoke to her anymore but looked at her when she drove by, her hair uncombed, in her nightgown. Pull yourself together, they must have prayed, and after a while she did. The house got sold, and her husband had to hire a whole cleaning crew to tidy it up after she left. It was in his name; it was his house. She didn’t pick anything up. She wasn’t well at the time. Even now, looking back, she isn’t sorry it was such a mess. The raccoons? She hopes they are still there.

  No Happy Answers

  She remembers her son patting his baby sister’s arm. “It’s okay,” he whispered, trying to comfort the child. “It happened to me when I was your age too.” All her children were clustered around the big white rocker where she sat. She and her second husband were explaining about the coming divorce. The house was up for sale. He had gotten himself an apartment through his university and he was moving into it soon. Where would everyone else go? There were no happy answers. She didn’t know where she would be once the house was sold. Everyone needed a place to live and she needed a job. She had never lived without her kids before. But things were different now. Apartments were expensive; you couldn’t live on nothing anymore. And a job? What did she know how to do besides fall in love? It was a terrible time. They decided the older kids would go away to school, and her parents agreed to pay for that. The littlest girl went to the city with her father. She was starting kindergarten. Her oldest daughter had already moved in with her boyfriend.

  But It Got Better

  This was when her son was away at school. A terrible school, but cheap. Paint was peeling off the walls and ceilings and there was a leak in the bathroom, but she left him there anyway. At least it was someplace green. She was getting divorced (again) and the house was being sold and she was looking for a place to live in the city and trying to find work. Everything was up in the air. She knew somebody who had gone to this school. She knew somebody who said he would keep an eye on her son for her. She thought it would be okay. But then that person left for Montana.

  The boy was young. He was homesick. Sometimes he called her late at night. He was in a bad way and could hardly talk except to say couldn’t he please come home. Couldn’t he live with her. He would sleep on the couch. Or anywhere. He would be quiet. He would be good. But she was just finding her feet. She had a job and an apartment in the city. She told herself her son would be better off coming home on vacations. She told herself he needed room to run around. “Hi, honey,” she would say. “How are you doing?” and she tried to sound cheerful. “Not too good,” he’d answer, his voice small on the other end of the line. Then he was silent. She was silent. And there were those funny celestial sounds in the telephone wires that let you know the whole universe is out there and how big it is. “Here,” she’d say then, “talk to Wes.” Wes was her boyfriend. She thought maybe he could help. Man to boy. She didn’t know what to say.

  So the boy stayed where he was in a green place with nobody watching out for him.

  Some things are so sad you think they can’t get better, and nothing will be okay. She didn’t make it better, although she tried, later. It got better by itself. He has a wife and a baby girl now. They sleep in the same bed. He lives on an island.

  I Had a Good View

  Years later I was traveling on a bus. I watched the passengers getting off somewhere fancy. A well-dressed woman and a boy greeted a man who descended from the bus carrying a briefcase. The boy stood by politely while the man greeted the woman. The man nodded to the boy and it seemed to be the moment for the boy to come forward extending his hand and so he did, but the two adults had already begun to talk and didn’t notice. He stepped back again. You could sense his great eagerness. He was maybe nine or ten.

  His hair was carefully combed. He was slight of build. It was Bridgehampton. He had a smile plastered to his face. He could not seem to stop expecting something warm and good to happen. He was not asking for much. I couldn’t take my eyes off them and I had a good view. Then the man and woman started to walk away. The boy followed, then saw his shoe was untied, and he knelt down to attend to the lace. He soon got up, though, and half ran, half hopped, trying to catch up, looking to see if they would wait, or notice, but they did neither; he again knelt down, tied, then darted forward only to bend down and tie it again. He smiled just as if they were calling to him. He maintained his look of eagerness and expectation as if the two people, the man and the woman, were turning to see where he
was, that he was still there, and that he was following close behind in the gathering dark.

  Such Appetites

  After we got divorced he went out with a former nun for a while. “Such appetites!” he said in wonder. “Why tell me?” I asked and hung up the phone.

  Friends Again

  I can’t remember what made us friends again. Was there a moment in particular? I wish you were here. Was it my first grandchild? We all went to Pennsylvania. It was Christmas. I think I was already there, cooking, and you rented a car and drove with the kids. Kids, I say, although they weren’t kids anymore. We all stayed together at my daughter’s house in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania. You slept upstairs with my son; I slept downstairs on a pull-out couch with the girls. As best I can remember. We ate and ate. You had bought presents for everyone, although you had never before gone shopping for presents. We ate together at the same table again, and it wasn’t your table or mine, but my daughter’s. “He is a very nice baby,” you said, your eyes filling with tears. There was a lot of snow; we were all together. Was that it?