Do Not Deny Me

by Jean Thompson

  I’ve determined to try and get to know some of the locals, who I can see when I go into the post office and the lumberyard. Right now we seem stuck at the nodding and grunting stage.

  It smelled like Thanksgiving. Anna woke with her nose curling around the tickling, teasing smells of onion, roasting meat, cinnamon, sage. It was reassuring that Thanksgiving was still Thanksgiving, no matter how far afield you might go. She showered and dressed and felt some of her hopefulness return, or maybe it was just the hope of being hopeful. Good attitude! Smiling face!

  The boys were eating cereal in front of the television in the den. She gave them a comradely wave as she passed by. Stopping to make conversation would have risked ruining the fine rapport they’d reached the night before. The kitchen was empty, though the oven was on and the turkey was sending out its good smells. A stock pot burped and simmered on a back burner, while smaller saucepans, some with crusted edges, crowded the rest of the stovetop. Complicated preparations were strewn over the counters: the leafy ends of celery, dark little bottles, packets of raisins, knives and cutting boards, vegetable peelings, measuring cups, wadded sheets of aluminum foil. The garage door activated, and, crossing to the front of the house, Anna saw Jay backing out of the driveway in his black, Dad-sized SUV. Heading out to get currant jelly or leeks or something other perfecting ingredient, she guessed.

  There wasn’t any coffee made, so Anna found a packet of cocoa, then helped herself to a carton of yogurt, pleased at her resourcefulness. She wondered if Lynn was still asleep. With nothing else to do, she washed the dirty pots and pans and sieves and spoons that had landed in the sink, stacked them neatly in the dish drainer. Even Jay shouldn’t see that as interference. What was the etiquette for guests these days?

  She heard Lynn coming down the stairs, then she appeared in the doorway. “Christ,” she announced, surveying the wreckage of the kitchen.

  “The turkey smells great,” Anna offered. Lynn didn’t answer, just set about making coffee. She was wearing pink flannel snowflake pajamas and she looked like something awakened too early from hibernation. “You sleep okay?” Moody shrug from Lynn. “I’ll take that as a no.”

  They watched the coffeemaker chug and cycle. Anna said, “Are you mad at me for telling that story?”

  “My mom, the make-out slut.”

  “You were always popular.”

  “It’s such a pathetic little story. I kind of wish you’d told them something racier.”

  “You never did anything racy.”

  “My point exactly.”

  The coffeemaker finished its heaving and Lynn poured them each a cup. “What’s the game plan for dinner?” Anna asked. “Should we be fasting? Carbo-loading?” Maybe she should squirrel away some granola bars in the guest room. “I guess Jay went out to get something,” she added.

  “He left?”

  “Yeah, ten, fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Oh fuck him. Fuck him to death.”

  “Lynn?”

  Lynn was shaking her head, but it was more like twitching, something she couldn’t help, and Anna crossed the room to her, alarmed, uncertain, but Lynn put up her hands to ward her off. “Okay,” she said. “Right.” She turned and scrabbled in the corner desk. “Keys,” she said. She lifted a coat from a hook by the door and headed out into the garage.

  Anna said, “What are you—” and then, “Wait a minute, wait a minute.” She hurried upstairs, found her own coat and purse, then down the stairs again, past the lounging, incurious boys, detouring to grab her coffee mug.

  Lynn was already behind the van’s wheel. She was having trouble with the garage door opener. The door came up partly, then banged down again, up down, up down, “… fucking thing,” Anna heard through the van’s closed window.

  “Hold on.” A snow shovel had gotten wedged in the door track. Anna straightened it and the door rolled up. She hoisted herself into the van. “Will you tell me what’s the matter?”

  “That asshole. I know where he is.” Lynn started the van and they lurched out into the street. “He’s been screwing one of his grad students. It’s supposed to be over. Hah. Even on Thanksgiving he can’t stay away. Goddamn him.”

  They were zooming through suburban streets laid out in curves and circles so as to hinder zooming. Anna held on to the door handle. “Wow. Are you sure? I mean . . .” She found herself thinking of the combat-zone kitchen they’d left behind them, the bubbling stock pot, the turkey in need of basting. She hoped the boys would notice if something actually caught on fire. “It could just be an errand.” Not wanting to defend Jay as much as calm Lynn down.

  “Oh, he’ll come back with a pound of butter, or some other alibi. We’ve been in counseling for almost a year now. I found a bunch of their emails, he thinks he’s so clever. She’s twenty-three. I’ve seen her, she’s a little business slut.”

  “Business—”

  “You know, the whole hair-and-makeup package, sits on the desk, shoves her tits in everybody’s face. Business slut.”

  “I’m sorry. What are you going to do?”

  She’d meant it in the general sense, as in, do about your marriage, your life, but Lynn hit the accelerator in the two-block stretch between stop signs, then slammed on the brakes, sending Anna’s coffee slopping over into her lap. The engine stalled and she cranked it viciously to restart it. “Don’t think I don’t know where she lives. I’m gonna block his car in her driveway so he has to come out and face me. Goddamn his eyes.”

  Anna considered that Jay would be facing her too, unless she asked to be dropped off at the corner. They peeled out onto a four-lane road, past apartment complexes, expansive gas stations, through sparse holiday traffic. Sunlight came down in a slant but the rest of the sky was piled-up clouds. The van’s heater was roaring, making her head feel clogged. She said, “I don’t suppose there’s a bar open, anywhere we could sit and talk.”

  “I’m in my pajamas.”

  “Oh, yeah.” That would look nice in the police report. “Do you want me to talk you out of this or egg you on?”

  “I wasn’t going to tell you. It’s too stupid and embarrassing, it’s so common, the cheating rat husband. It’s like getting hemorrhoids.”

  “You sort of told me. I knew you weren’t happy.”

  “You’re like, psychic, right?”

  They turned off the larger highway onto a smaller one. The university district, Anna guessed, since the businesses were named Spartan this or Spartan that: dry cleaning, liquor, shoe repair. Anna’s stomach began to curdle. She hoped that Jay wasn’t really at his girlfriend’s, or if he was, that he’d hide in the house and not come out. “Hey, Lynn? I don’t think this is your best move. Seriously, we should go home.”

  “Just this once? I think I get to do something really trashy and sordid.”

  “Okay, then. We’re good.”

  At the next stoplight, the van’s engine stalled and died. Lynn cranked it; it made a stubborn noise and failed to catch. She tried again. And kept trying, until the starter only clicked.

  “You probably flooded it.”

  “Crap.”

  “I would look on it as a sign from God.”

  “Holy crap, then.”

  The innards of the car ticked, the engine cooling down. It was going to get very cold very fast. “Do you have AAA or anything?” Anna asked.

  Lynn patted at her coat pockets. It didn’t appear to be her coat. “I don’t have the card. Did you bring your phone?” Anna handed it over and Lynn fumbled with the keypad. “Your phone sucks.”

  “Don’t throw it,” said Anna, because Lynn looked capable of one last petulant, thwarted act. “Here.” She retrieved the phone, cleared the screen, and handed it back. Lynn punched in the number. One of the boys must have answered, because she asked if Dad was there.

  A space of listening, then Lynn said, “All right, here’s what I need you to do.”

  Afterward she gave the phone back.

  “Was Jay there?”


  “Yes. But that doesn’t prove anything.”

  “I guess you don’t trust him.”

  “No shit.”

  “I haven’t heard you swear this much since, like, forever.” Lynn shrugged. “You deserve better. You know that.”

  When Lynn didn’t answer, she went on. “I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t think either Steve or Terry was stepping out on me, or if they were, I didn’t know about it, anyway, that’s not why things didn’t work out.” She sounded glib, false to herself. “Didn’t work out,” what did that mean, it was shorthand for wretchedness, mortal combat, loss, failure, grief. She had the sensation of shouting down a well, sending her words into some echoing, absent space. “I mean, God, you guys have all these assets, we never did. You could probably kick him out, keep the house, get him to pay for the kids’ college. Everything.”

  “I don’t want a divorce. Jay doesn’t want one either. At least, that’s what he says.”

  “But if you have to check up on him every minute . . .”

  “If that’s what I have to do, I’ll do it. You think I’d get some kind of great settlement, forget it, you don’t get bonus money just because the other guy’s screwing around. Assets, forget it. He’d still have his income and his fuckee, or the one that’ll come after this one, or the one after that, and I’d end up all by myself in some crummy little apartment.”

  “Like me.”

  “I didn’t say that. I didn’t mean that.”

  “It’s okay,” said Anna, although it wasn’t.

  “You know I didn’t—”

  Anna held up a hand. “Let’s just drop it.” She was afraid she might cry, furious, squalling tears. She forced them back out of pure self-loathing. They sat without speaking until Tim pulled up behind them in the SUV.

  Lynn popped the van’s hood and Tim applied something from a spray can. “Try it now,” he told them, and the engine turned over.

  Anna got out of the van and watched him let the hood down, blowing on his bare hands. What was it about boys that made them avoid protective clothing? “All right if I ride back with you?”

  You could count on people saying yes as a reflex, if you caught them by surprise, and so Anna climbed into the SUV and waited for Tim to finish talking with his mother. She figured Lynn could explain anything she felt like explaining.

  They followed the van on the way back. “Did you guys have a fight or something?”

  Anna thought this must be what it was like to be a parent, some part of parenting. When you had to explain to children those things you did not wish to explain to yourself. That it was possible she and Lynn had never really been friends, that over time they had become a reproach to each other, and that people would do almost anything, contend with all manner of injuries to the spirit, just to keep from being alone.

  Anna said, “Neither of us is in a very good mood today. When people know each other for a long time, they sort of wear each other out.”

  The boy nodded. He was a serious kid; she thought she had been right to talk to him seriously. “Mom wears herself out. I wish—”

  He stopped, and Anna was left to wonder what it was he wished, this serious, half-grown creature, and how much the boys knew about their parents’ troubles. Plenty, she guessed. It was even possible that one or both of them, Lynn most probably, had sat them down and made an earnest, awful speech about Mom and Dad having to work some things out, but nobody should worry.

  Anna thought she had never had children because she wasn’t optimistic enough. Wouldn’t you have to be deeply hopeful to believe that your own children would end up happier than you were?

  Lynn’s van nosed into its spot in the garage and Tim maneuvered the SUV next to it. Following her inside, Anna beheld the kitchen, now tamed and ordered and bristling with edibles. The dining room table was set with a white cloth, with cheerful, harvest-patterned dishes, a centerpiece of tall, yellow candles, grapes, pomegranates, apples. “Oh honey,” Lynn was saying, “this is all just perfect. It’s yummy-scrumptious.”

  Now don’t laugh, but I’m thinking of getting a dog. Something big and furry and friendly that’s always, by god, happy to see me.

  It just worked out better for Jay to drop her off at the train station, and Anna said that was fine. She and Lynn had made up, or at least they’d said the words necessary for making up. “You big goof. I didn’t mean anything, you’re so silly sometimes.” Oh yes, ha ha, said Anna. Famous for her silliness.

  During the drive, Jay played a talk radio station that substituted for actual talk. Fine with Anna. At the train station, he alarmed her by parking and announcing that he was coming in with her.

  “Honestly, you don’t have to. I’m fine.”

  Jay opened the back of the SUV and hoisted her suitcase. You could almost admire how good he was at ignoring other people, how words, requests, instructions rolled right off of him. “Let’s just make sure your train isn’t going to be late.”

  As if she wouldn’t sleep in the station, rather than go back home with him. She followed him through the doors, scanned the waiting crowd. “Looks like everything’s good to go,” she announced, hoping that would be enough to make him leave.

  Jay walked her suitcase up to the head of the straggling line of people waiting to board, a minor rudeness. She supposed she could go to the back once he left. “Well, thanks for everything. The dinner was great.” It had been great. In that, at least, she thought Lynn had nothing to complain about. “And thanks for the ride.”

  It was his cue to leave. Still he lingered, looking around him peevishly. Or maybe that was just his face in repose, its natural settled expression. He stood out, too tall, too prosperous for the semi-shabby group of travelers. Was she supposed to shake his hand? Embrace him? He said, “That’s really something, you and Lynn knowing each other for so long.”

  Anna said yes, it was. Cautious about agreeing with him on anything.

  “I don’t know anybody who goes back that far. College or high school. Growing up. I don’t even know where any of those people are anymore.”

  “I’m trying to imagine you as a little kid. It’s not coming to me.”

  “I wanted to be an archaeologist. I had a map of the world with pins in it, all the important sites, Egypt, Greece, Peru, China. I did an archaeology badge in Boy Scouts. I don’t know why I quit on it. I don’t know why things stop being important, they just do.”

  She couldn’t stand the thought that he might be lonely too. She couldn’t stand having to feel sorry for him. “Hey, could I ask you something? When I first got to your house, and you were up on the ladder outside? Were you looking in at me while I was changing clothes?”

  “Good God, no.” He was genuinely startled, distressed. “What kind of person would do that?”

  He did leave then, and in due course the train came, and Anna boarded and found a seat next to the window. The train nudged forward on schedule, the promise of a smooth ride. She was thinking about Ted, laying in his supplies against the winter. There would be the hunting hawks, and mornings of ghostly frost, and the scouring wind, and the great theater of the sky. In such a bare and gorgeous place, the soul’s ache would find its proper home. What did you need in the wilderness? A kinder, braver heart. When she got home, she would write Ted a nice letter.

  Mr. Rat

  I was hanging out at the window by the coffee area, watching the construction crews going at it across the street. They were working on another gigantic office building a lot like ours. We’d watched them from the hole in the ground phase and now the scaffolding and rebar framing was up to five or six stories. Pretty soon they’d get as far as ten, where we were, and we’d be able to practically look out and wave. We all liked watching them. In our jobs we worked with words on computer screens and numbers on paper. There were plenty of times when I thought it would feel good to be out in the open air, getting my back into it, with an actual physical thing you could point to as a product.

  I had a pre
tty good view of them, looking across and down. A construction crane was lifting big sections of girder up to where the ironworkers, I guess they were, little bugs in yellow hard hats, guided it onto a big stack of girders. We’d watched them do that over and over these last few months, and we always got a kick out if it.

  But today something went wrong, big-time. The crane arm swung too wide and hit one of those industrial-grade extension ladders, and there was a guy on the very top of the ladder who paddled and flailed as it tilted at a crazy angle, then the whole thing went over.

  He landed somewhere below my line of sight. The other little bug guys scattered. The next minute you couldn’t see any of them.

  Just then Brian, whose work space was next to mine, came by and asked me what was up.

  “The weirdest thing just happened. A guy fell off this really tall ladder and probably pancaked himself.”

  Brian peered out the window. “I don’t see anything.”

  “You had to be looking right at it.”

  One of the supervisors came by and we got moving. There had already been a few remarks passed about window time.

  Our work areas were not equipped with windows. We had a lot of bleary fluorescent lights that somebody at corporate was experimenting with. They were supposed to prevent eyestrain, but they made you feel like you were breathing something other than air. A full day of them made me groggy. Walking from the window back to my chair was like submerging. I sat down but I wasn’t able to pick up my work where I’d left off. I wondered if the guy who’d fallen was dead or alive. It was like a part of me was still looking out the window. That’s how peculiar it felt. Like I’d seen it all happen on some outer space TV channel. It wasn’t like me to get worked up about some strange guy, even if he did take a header onto concrete. I’m just not famous for things like that.