by Susan Conley
There’s a futon on the floor inside, and a TV, and a little galley kitchen. I sit on a wooden stool by the fridge, and she hands me a mug of Sanka.
I can’t take my eyes off her. She’s thin and catlike, with coal-colored eyes and oily skin around her nose. She takes a sip of her coffee, wipes her mouth with her wrist, and points to the sink faucet. “He fixed that. Your husband. A genius. It was always leaking before. No one’s ever been as kind to me as him. No one.”
It’s quiet in the apartment, and my arms have the tingly feeling. I don’t know if Marsh has told me about the faucet to prove something to me. I can’t be sure.
Maybe she thinks Kit came and fixed things because he wants to save her. He likes to save people. But she’d be mistaken if she thinks she has been singled out.
I look on the walls for a clock but can’t find one. Charlie’s going to be so mad at me. I finish the coffee. Then I say, “I hate to do this, but I think I better head back. The boys want to get on the road and it’s a bad idea to start a trip with them pissed off.”
She puts my mug in the sink and says she can’t imagine living with teenage boys. “Just the sight of a group of them back in high school gave me the creeps. Boys. They were always so menacing.”
I can’t tell whether or not to feel insulted. It’s really warm in here now, or maybe it’s that I hardly got any sleep with Charlie in my bed. Am I supposed to respond to what she said?
She says she can’t decide whether to have children or not, because of the commitment.
“The commitment?” I’m confused.
“The biggest commitment of your life, and you can’t get out of it.” She drains her mug and puts it in the sink.
“I’ve never thought of it that way. About wanting to get out of it. I mean, once you do it, once you have kids, you’re so in. There’s no getting out.”
“My mother didn’t see it that way.” She laughs. “Jesus, I can’t imagine being that tied down.”
“It’s definitely that. But it’s also this opening up of your heart like you cannot imagine. I’m a different person because of my kids. A better person.” I can’t believe what is coming out of my mouth. “I’ll now stop my small speech on procreation. Sorry. Listen. Everyone’s on their own journey. I certainly never planned to have kids.”
“Right on.” Marsh nods. “I get you.”
I’m not sure she gets me.
I tell her I really have to pee.
She points me back toward the other room, with the yin-yang poster above the futon and a mess of blankets on the floor.
The only towel I can find is hanging on the back of the bathroom door over a flannel nightgown with white flowers on it. I feel like I had this nightgown once. I grab the towel and dry my hands and see Kit’s Patriots T-shirt hanging under the nightgown. The blue one with the armpit tear from the only game that he’s gone to in Foxborough. He and Shorty.
The game was the highlight of his life, he told me once, except for meeting me.
I stand in the little bathroom with the silly movie-star lightbulbs over the sink, and I feel gutted over the shirt. Like something at the center of my life is breaking.
ON THE DRIVE BACK to the hospital I try an experiment where I don’t talk. It’s been part of my training, so I’m pretty good at it. I don’t say anything to Marsh, and wait to see what she’ll say back to me.
She says nothing. Then she says, “Damn this rain,” and doesn’t say anything else.
While Charlie and Sam and I were waiting for Kit on the island, and missing him, and trying not to fall apart, he was going to Marsh’s apartment and fixing her faucet.
I feel a rash start on my neck.
When I climb out at the hospital, I give her a half wave.
* * *
—
KIT’S IN THE BED watching some pregame football show. The boys are looking for a vending machine in the basement. I stare at my husband until my face feels like it’s got tremors.
Then he says, “I’m so sorry.”
What’s he apologizing for?
I ask him if he is okay. Really okay.
He says he’s sorry he can’t go home with us and that the accident woke up something in him.
“What will I do with the rest of my life if I can’t fish?” He waves me over to the bed and reaches for my hand. “I’ve missed you so much.”
I say, “I’m having a hard time with this.”
“With what?” He keeps holding my hand.
“I don’t understand the woman who comes here with her dog.”
“You mean Marsh?”
“That’s who.”
“I’m helping her.”
“Helping her with what?”
“She’s someone who’s suffered. She’s a friend.”
“How?”
“How what?”
“How has she suffered? Your shirt’s in her bathroom.” I keep looking to see what his face is doing, then I look away.
“What shirt?” He sits up more in the bed.
“The one under her nightgown in her bathroom.”
We’ve never had anything close to this between us. I walk over to the window and stare at the birch trees and feel frozen in the dread. He’s slept with her. He must have.
He says, “I can’t believe how you’re treating me right now.”
I don’t think he understands anything about me. How rigid with fear I am. “Tell me you haven’t gone to her apartment.”
“We have days off the boat, Jilly. I help her with the dog.”
“You help with the dog. I lie to you about what it’s like on the island so you don’t know how bad it is there.”
“You get to be with our children. Is it really that bad?”
I pretend I haven’t heard him.
“I mean, who is she? And if you’re sleeping with her, I’ll never forgive you. You should never ask.”
“You’re mad.” He stares at me.
I want to hit something like Sam did yesterday.
“No, you’re crazy,” he says. “What are you talking about? Your forgiveness?”
I know fishermen who go on long trips to fish in other waters because it eases their marriage, and because their marriage is dying. But that wasn’t us.
“I think she’s in love with you.”
The prickly feeling goes up and down my legs. There’s something between them. I saw it.
“You’re out of control.”
“That’s what Sam says to me whenever he’s guilty.” I’m giving him a chance to tell me the truth. I’ve heard about these moments in a marriage. This one clear moment where everything in the past turns.
“Jesus, Jilly. You’re wrong.”
“It’s simple, Kit.” I try to slow my way of speaking. “Tell me if you slept with her.”
He stares out the window. “I don’t understand you. I’ve been up here for weeks fishing for you.”
I feel something frantic inside. “Yes or no, Kit?”
“You left me here. I don’t get it. I wouldn’t have left.”
This is all I need to know—this fact that he can’t answer me. Jesus.
The room feels alien and too warm now. There’s the sanitized, metallic smell. I hear myself say, “We have children. One of them was smoking pot. I have a film to finish.” I’m so angry at him for trying to put the blame on me. “We can’t make payments on the trawler. We can’t make any payments.”
“We’re waiting. It’s a waiting game here. I make a friend, and you won’t give me this.”
“Did you have a sleepover with your friend?”
The door is slightly open to the hall and people walk back and forth and call to one another, and nurses and orderlies push patients by in wheelchairs and on gurneys. While inside our little room, I’m shuddering.
“Marsh knows boats. She understands.”
He looks like my husband, but who is he?
“She understands what, Kit? I moved to the island and gave up everything for you.”
This last part’s untrue. I say it anyway and try not to raise my voice, but it catches and gets ragged at the end. I swallow a sob. He will not see me cry.
“You made me come here. You said we needed money.”
“We need money, but I never said that I wanted you to go.” I shake my head. “Maybe I’ve never known you.” I walk to the door.
“You’ve always known me. I’m not complicated. She’s a friend.”
Leave now. Get out of the room. I stand by the door and search for one last thing that would reach him and mean something. He’s always been fair. Always been generous. “Why did you need a friend?”
“We all do.”
I go out to the hall and want to lie down on the floor and close my eyes and scream. But the boys come upstairs with little bags of pretzels and Cokes and go into Kit’s room and give him high-fives.
“Let’s hug it out,” Kit says to them.
“Mom,” Sam yells to me in the hall. “Mom, please get in here. We need you.”
I have to go in and put my hand on Sam’s shoulder. I’m meant to hold Kit’s hand with my other hand so that we make a circle, but I can’t do it. I just can’t.
Sam asks why Kit’s still in bed if he’s coming home with us. “You’re not even packed, Dad.”
“I can’t come with you today, mate. I can’t. The doctors say I need more time here. Maybe a week.”
“What are you even talking about?” Sam says. “That’s why we came. To get you.”
Then he starts crying, which he never does, and we’re all thrown. It’s good to see him cry, even though I think he’s ashamed by it. I still believe it’s good.
Then he starts kicking the heating grate under the windowsill. Kicking it and kicking it.
“Stop it,” I say. “Stop it right now.”
He cries harder.
“It will be all right, mate,” Kit says. “It will really be all right. Come hug it out with me.”
Sam walks back over to the bed and puts his face in Kit’s chest.
I can’t look at them. I have to get out of the hospital. I go wait in the parking lot.
CHARLIE’S LYING DOWN IN the back of the Subaru, and I’m standing by the driver’s-side door while Sam and Linda have a moment in the parking lot.
It’s eleven in the morning and Sam believes he could stay in Nova Scotia and sleep in the armchair in Kit’s room.
Linda’s talking him down.
The leaves on the trees out here have turned many shades of orange and red and fallen to the ground, so the hospital seems even lonelier than it did when we got here.
Linda puts her hand on Sam’s arm and says she never lets patients leave her care when they’re fighting an infection. “You’ve got to believe me on this,” she says, like she’s trusting him with her confidence.
Sam wipes his eyes again and says his dad doesn’t look sick to him, so why can’t he come with us? He thinks it’s a conspiracy to keep his father away from him.
Linda says, “Lots of people who don’t look sick are sick. You need to go now.”
She points at me and we lock eyes for a second. Then I look away. I don’t want Sam to think I’m staring at him.
Charlie’s moaning in the back about the precalc test.
“Your mother is waiting,” Linda says. “You’ve got school, and I’ve got your dad covered here.”
Sam finally gives up and gets in the car, but he refuses to sit in front with me.
“Once again,” he says after he puts his seat belt on in the back, “Jillian has lied. Once again Jillian has not told the truth.”
I don’t even try to answer this.
It’s my fault Kit has the infection. My fault Kit had the accident.
“What will we do without Dad?” Sam says. “What will we do? What will we do?” He stares at me in the rearview mirror.
* * *
—
I REMEMBER THE TIME Kit came home after a fishing trip and found me leaning against the fridge with my eyes closed. It was two in the afternoon, and I’d just gotten the boys to sleep. They were three and four years old, and I hadn’t changed my clothes in a couple days. I didn’t think I’d ever change my clothes again, because I had two little boys with penises camping out in my head, and I lived on an island in Maine and never saw other humans.
I told Kit it was a mistake.
“What was?” he whispered, because the boys were sleeping on the wooden seats he’d built under the window in the living room. We had to whisper all the time when the boys were sleeping.
“To live out here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“On the island.”
He came and put his arms around me, and I felt like I was standing above my body. I hadn’t begun shooting the Harwich film yet, and Kit was someone who had a job on his boat and left the island for days while I rarely left. I could see him as a separate person. This didn’t happen often, that he was separate from me.
This is how it feels in the car. That he’s separate from me again.
The boys nap, and I keep looking back in the rearview mirror at their greasy hair and their long, smooth necks.
Kit broke his nose once when a winch hit his face, and they had to bandage it and keep fishing because they were four days out. His nose has a small rise that skews it and makes it different from Charlie’s and Sam’s.
They wake up an hour later and start playing a game called Clash Royale on their phones, which I think involves gnomes.
Sam asks Charlie if he’s kissed Lucy.
Charlie tells Sam to please shut up.
Charlie seems older to me after the hospital. He was so good with Kit and with the nurses. Both boys were.
Marsh is someone who seems hungry and also vain. I want to warn the boys about this dangerous combination. Then I can’t decide if I’ve made the whole thing up.
WE CROSS BACK INTO America, and it’s so easy again. The blond boy in the back has a clueless smile, and the rule-abiding, darker-haired one hands his passport over to the immigration officer before it’s asked for.
After we’re through, Charlie says it took Lucy and her family three years to get visas to fly from their refugee camp near Nairobi to Atlanta. Her father still doesn’t have his visa. Lucy hasn’t seen him in three years.
Sam says, “That’s terrible.”
Charlie puts his feet between the seats. “You have no idea how much Lucy misses him. It’s bad at night. Really bad. Like it worries me. They’re not sure when he can ever come.”
“Jesus,” Sam says. “I mean, Jesus.”
“It’s been years,” Charlie says. “Years. They’re like completely powerless.”
We’re quiet after that. All of us thinking.
At least I think that we’re thinking.
CHARLIE WAKES UP IN the backseat and asks if either of us knows what determines a star’s color.
I’m looking for a place to get a milk shake. I’ve been looking for the last half hour.
“No, Charlie, I do not know what determines a star’s color.”
“Well, the surface temperature for starters, Mom.”
“You’re weird,” Sam says. “You talk so much about galaxies and shit.”
Charlie says, “Jesus, you’re always on me, Sam.”
* * *
—
WE GET TO BANGOR, and Charlie closes his eyes again.
Then Sam climbs up front and tells me he doesn’t miss Dad at night at home if he’s the first one asleep, so every day he tries to get really tired.
“If I can’t fall
asleep, I worry.”
“I’m so, so sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry it makes you worry.”
The last thing Sam needs is more worry.
He says, “Did you know that when people drink they change their behavior?”
We’re in the tundra of trees now, and the adrenaline isn’t working anymore. There are too many things happening at once. I can’t drive and keep up.
“I did know that. Tell me more.” I never thought my life would hinge on the confessions of an exhausted teenager. But the stakes feel high with him.
“Like when a group of guys drink alcohol, they do things they wouldn’t normally do, like run around in the snow or dance. I think I’ll probably have to try it.”
“You will?”
“I will.” He looks straight ahead at the road. “Or maybe I’ll be the designated driver.” He pauses.
“But that will get old. Let’s not have any drunk people in your car. You or anyone else, okay?” I am trying to keep him talking.
“Yeah. Dealing with drunk people in my car would be beat.”
“Very beat.”
Whenever he’s talking, it’s good. “And here’s the thing,” I say. “You’re sixteen. Underage drinking is illegal, and you signed the contract to be on the basketball team.”
“Okay, Mom. I get it. I get it. I was just trying to have a conversation with you.”
Now I’ve ruined it.
He turns on the radio, and Charlie wakes up angry about the noise.
I tell them there’s amnesty if either of them gets into trouble and needs to call me. They can call day or night and I’ll come. No questions. But if I find out they’re doing drugs, there will be such consequences.
Sam rolls his eyes at me. “I don’t understand what real kids do. How do they not get crucified by their parents like me?”
“You’re a real kid,” Charlie says.
“We have not crucified you yet,” I say. “Do you feel crucified, Sam?”
Then I tell them how the man I met in Italy did lots of drugs, and this was partly why I left him. “I think he was punishing himself for something he couldn’t articulate. I could never figure out what it was.”