Gone So Long

by Andre Dubus III

  Marianne seemed a bit cheerier after lunch, too. They’d eaten at the Sawgrass, and over steak salads and iced teas, Lois went on and on about Gerry’s galavanting around, about his giving her VD, about his drinking and spending money they didn’t have then leaving her high and dry, though she did get to keep the arcade. Marianne kept shaking her head, chewing and shaking her head and dabbing at her lips with a napkin. And Lois could see her doing what she’d hoped Marianne would do, which was to compare her lot with Lois’s, and they hadn’t even mentioned the infinite black hole in the dead center of that lot.

  On their short walk back to the shop, Marianne gripped Lois’s hand and said, “I know how blessed I am, Lois. I do.” And Lois could not deny the joy she felt tending to her, but again, Marianne’s pitying sincerity irked her, and Lois had said: “Hey, none of us get out of here alive, honey.” It might not have been the right thing to say, but when didn’t Lois utter the wrong thing? But that lunch talk had put Marianne back on an even keel, and after they’d picked the right shades, Marianne had driven over to the drugstore for a big gift bag the shades sat in now in the parlor, and Lois’s fingers felt too thick for the scissors as she snipped and snipped at the wrapping paper she’d pulled from her closet. It was a Christmas wrapping—repeating gold ornaments hanging from a spruce branch—but that’s all she had and anyway it was the thought that counted.

  Downstairs Susan had turned the music down a bit, and Lois could hear her voice. At first it’d been chatty, but now it was underscored with some kind of alarm or higher level of attention. Jesus Christ, she thought. He better not be leaving her while I’m doing all this. Lois paused and straightened up. After what Suzie had said to her about her not knowing if she loved her husband or not, how would she take this gift to the two of them? Would she accuse her of not listening to her again? How many times, when she was young, had Susan screamed that into her face? You don’t fucking understand me, Lois! Or maybe she’d done it only once, but it had hurt, had brought Lois back to Linda, who’d never screamed a word at her, just slipped away without once asking for guidance about anything.

  But downstairs Susan was laughing and Lois could only take that as a good sign, though maybe she should just give these lover lamps to her. Why not? The way she stood there in that castle in Punta Gorda staring and staring at them. Just give them to her, you old bat.

  The music volume went back up downstairs, a Spanish DJ’s phony voice talking fast and gabby about who knows what, then Lois heard in plain English, “Ernie’s Dodge Trucks,” and then it was Spanish again, and Suzie was calling up the stairs. “Noni?”

  “Don’t come up!”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Bobby’s coming. Is that okay?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes, tonight.”

  “That’s A-okay with me, Suzie Q.”

  Susan laughed. Lois hadn’t called her that in years. So many of them. And wasn’t that something, that Bobby was coming? Maybe this was all that couple needed. Or maybe that’s all Susan had needed. Just a little distance for her to see more clearly. Lois folded the wrapping longways over the box then ripped tape from its dispenser and taped the paper’s edge to the cardboard. It would be good to have a man in the house again. How long had it been? Susan had brought Bobby a year or two ago, but they’d only stayed for the afternoon. Paul never brought his family here. Lois always had to drive to Miami. Walter and Marianne had come over for dinner once, but not in a long while. Before that, it was Don, and going back, it was one of Susan’s many boyfriends, Brian Something, that redheaded fisherman who smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and didn’t talk much and kept staring at Suzie like she was a meal he would not be denied much longer.

  Lois finished wrapping the box of Dresdens and carefully turned it over and reached into the corner of her closet for her bag of ribbons and bows. But the room shifted and her torso and legs felt like stone, then heated bird bones, and she knew she shouldn’t try to carry this box down those stairs herself. It’d been dicey enough carrying them up in a paper bag with handles, so no, she’d just have to bring Susan up here, and so what?

  Time for a glass of wine and a nice dinner before her sweet grandson-in-law came along, though she did not think of him that way as she stuck a big gold bow over a gold ornament in the center of the box. What she thought of him as was her friend, a friendship that had really only just begun this past Christmas at Susan and Bobby’s little house in St. Pete, that strange jazz music playing, tall kind Bobby smiling down at her as they both diced vegetables for the meal the three of them would then share, the kitchen’s light reflecting softly on his bald head, Susan somewhere else in the house like she was giving the two of them to one another as a gift.

  SUSAN WAS standing at the sink washing lettuce, and Lois poured herself a glass of Merlot and sat heavily in her chair at the table. She generally did not smoke right before eating, but one with this wine would do nicely, and she opened a fresh pack and tapped one out and lit up with the lighter she always kept on the windowsill. Outside, a peach light lay on the oaks and pines, and Lois could not remember the last time she felt this good. The nicotine was kicking into her veins like a reliable friend, this wine-warmth in her chest and face, her lovely Susan fixing them dinner, her devoted husband on the way. And there was that very expensive gift waiting for them upstairs—yes, them, that had been her original plan so why not stick to it?

  The faucet shut off. Susan laid the wet lettuce on paper towels on the counter.

  “It’ll be nice to see, Bobby. Is everything all right?”

  Susan turned around to face her. Low across her top was a streak of water, and she had gotten too thin lately, her hair a mess. She should look better for when her husband came, and Lois could feel words of advice begin to rise up her throat, but she drank and swallowed instead. They’d been down that road enough.

  “Everything’s fine. He says he has some important mail for me.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, I think I may have sold something.”

  “On eBay?”

  Susan smiled and shrugged. “It’s a short story. I wrote it a long time ago, but Bobby talked me into finishing it and sending it out, so I did.”

  “When do I get to read it?”

  “You really want to?”

  “Yes. How many times do I have to tell you that? What’s it about?”

  “You wouldn’t like it.”

  “Listen, missy, how would you know what I like?” She inhaled on her cigarette and squinted at Susan through the exhale. “Well?”

  “The Gainesville murders.”

  “Oh, wonderful.”

  “I told you.”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t interested. It’s—can you imagine how hard it was for me to have you up there then?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, I don’t.” Lois stopped herself, or the words coming out of her stopped on their own. Susan didn’t seem to notice. Lois shook her head. “Well, I want to read it.”

  “That’s fine with me.” Susan put on an oven mitt and opened the door and pulled out the steaming chicken. There were the smells of rosemary and burnt lemon. She stuck a fork into the breasts and turned them over, then pushed the tray back in and shut the door.

  “Well, we should celebrate when he comes, honey.”

  Susan smiled, but she looked pale, and she set the oven mitt on the counter and walked down the hall and into the downstairs bathroom, closing the door behind her. “You all right?” Lois coughed, then inhaled on her Carlton. The room was a bit too quiet now. “Suzie?”

  The toilet flushed, and Lois could hear the muffled voice of her granddaughter saying that she’d be right out. Lois sat back with her wine. She tried to picture where she and Bobby would put those lamps back in their home in St. Pete. Maybe their living room, which was also Bobby’s office, one lamp on each side of their comfy sofa. She hoped Bobby would like them as much as Sus
an seemed to, and it was funny when Lois thought about it. Those two intertwined lovebirds at the base of a tree, it was a little romantic for Susan, wasn’t it? But maybe that’s just what she needed, a little romance.

  The bathroom door opened, and Susan was stepping back into the kitchen. With the back of her hand, she brushed a strand of hair away from her forehead, and her eyes seemed dark with some kind of emotion Lois hadn’t seen coming.

  “You okay?”

  “I was such a selfish bitch then.”

  “What? When?”

  “When I went back to Gainesville. I should have known what that would do to you, of all people.”

  Lois waved at the air as if what Susan was talking about were as unimportant as having forgotten to check the mail, but her eyes began to burn and she couldn’t look directly at her and she reached for her cigarette, but then Susan was walking across the floor, and now her bare arms were around Lois’s shoulders, her granddaughter’s turned cheek pressed to the top of Lois’s head. “I’m sorry, Noni. I’m so sorry.”

  Lois nodded, and nodded again. She patted her granddaughter’s back, could smell the skin of her warm shoulder, and Lois felt grateful and embarrassed and she wanted Susan to pull away and she wanted her to stay. Right here. Like this. For as long as it took to make everything right again, which it would never, ever be. So be thankful for this, she told herself, be thankful for this moment, because she’d needed to hear those words, hadn’t she? Not from Susan about young Suzie, but for what had happened to her and her family that should never happen to any family anywhere at any time.

  “Okay, honey. Okay. You’re gonna burn your chicken. You need to check that chicken.”

  But Susan held on, and Lois was no longer certain if she was doing this for her or for herself, but did it matter? Just enjoy this, she told herself, just, for one damn time, enjoy the damned good.

  27

  DANIEL’S PENIS burns and he needs to piss. He begins to swing his legs to the left, but there’s more bed there than there should be. And to his right, where’s the wall and his trailer window? And where’s the pilot light of his water burner he can always see straight ahead in the doorless closet of his kitchenette?

  A hotel.

  In Virginia. That young businesswoman at the bar. He turns and squints his eyes at the glowing orange numbers of the clock: 4:46 a.m.

  His hip burns, and he gets up and stands and makes his way around the bed in the dark. There’s a line of light beneath the door up ahead. He fumbles for the switch in the hallway, and the light coming on is flat and too bright. A peephole in the door in front of him. On the carpet is a folded piece of paper. A razored heat flashes through his chest and face—What? Who?—and he can only think it’s his Susan. A letter back to him. But how would she know how to find him? And so soon?

  He leans down and picks it up, his knees stiff, that hip burn moving into his back and groin. He opens it, and it’s his bill. Like they can’t wait for him to get of here fast enough.

  He steps into the dim bathroom and leaves the light off and drops his bill onto the counter and tries to piss. From his lower back comes a gathering burn then a short release into the water, then the gathering again that feels like the passing of time no one can feel but him, and for the first time in a very long time he feels not merely alone but afraid in the endless silence of being alone. Like he never left the Hole at all. Like these twenty-three years on the outside have just been the voices pushing him out to his yard to cane chairs under the sun, into Port City to walk the street like a ghost, into the library and its shelves of books on tape and its computer table and that tall older one who probably remembers his face from faded newspapers and his mother lying in her hospital bed with so much love in her eyes for him, her boy, the artist’s boy, The Sound, who could never control himself, this old man who is now pissing blood and feels the way he did after fourteen years and eight months on the inside, that his time is short and he is ready to leave where he’s been, but he is afraid of where he is going.

  Of what will come. All of it.

  There’s a whimper in the air, and he longs to see his mother again. Not when she was old and sick, but when she was still young, sitting beside him on the sofa in her housecoat while he read to her from his comic books. Kicked out of school again, and she treated him like he’d just done something special or soon would one day.

  He needs to leave this hotel, and he can feel the highway out there in the dark waiting for him.

  He shakes himself off and flushes the toilet and washes his hands. The water is warm and he splashes his face three times. He should clean his entire body, too, then he needs to shave and comb his hair and put on a change of clothes. He still has nine hundred to a thousand miles to go, another eighteen to twenty hours of driving. He won’t get there tonight, but he should the next day, and he wants to look presentable for the entire trip. And no more staring at or even talking to strangers. No more wine.

  He turns off the faucet and flicks on the overhead light. Again, it’s too bright, the man in the glass old and ugly, his face wet, this shining, squinting mug that only a mother could love.

  DANIEL IS driving in silence in the dark, his headlights on the oncoming asphalt of 95 south. Just before turning onto the highway, he’d pulled into a Jiffy Mart and filled the tank of his Tacoma and bought a large coffee and a tin of aspirin. He took four before getting behind the wheel, dry-swallowing them, and he can still feel their dusty trails in his throat, even when he swallows hot coffee that he wishes were stronger.

  He doesn’t remember if it’s a Wednesday or a Thursday, but it’s still too early for traffic, just a few eighteen-wheelers behind him and up ahead. Off to his left, above the dark shadows of what seem to be woods and a housing complex, there’s an occasional lamplit window here and there, or an outdoor bulb flickering through the trees. The sky is a pale lip of gray out to the east, and he thinks of the ocean and how he has been to the strip only twice since moving back, when he circled the Midway and never even once stopped or stepped out of his truck.

  Three years before his release date he’d been eligible for furloughs. But his mother was still living on the beach then, and he didn’t want to go back to that. He couldn’t. And no one else would have him, so he stayed behind the walls and when his mother met him at processing three years later, holding her was like holding a sweater full of bones. There were the smells of talcum and dry skin and wool, and she made crying sounds, though when she let go of him her small eyes were dry and her hooked nose was his hooked nose and she said something about God and home and if there were more hugs after that he does not recall them now.

  The sky begins to lighten now, its dark curtain getting slowly pulled to the west. The guardrail is easier to see, and down on the other side a ribbon of water cuts through a grassy bottomland. There are a few cars on the road, their taillights red in front of him, their headlights insistent as bees behind. He knows he’s driving too slow again, and he doesn’t care. He sips his weak, cooling coffee and thinks about turning on his book on tape. But no, it’s good just driving in the quiet like this.

  Lying in bed with Suzie, reading to her. There was—he had to say it—a certain peace. Like a hot blowing rain that had finally ceased, then comes the calm. Then comes the quiet sun.

  PART

  FOUR

  28

  SUSAN LAY naked under her sheet, one leg over Bobby’s hip. Her childhood bed was too small for them both, but she didn’t care. It was good lying beside her husband again. He was naked too, and there came the memory of his weight on her then in her, his hungry darting tongue. Lois’s shadowed face out on the screened porch, Bobby’s too, both of them laughing like two old friends who’d picked right up where they’d left off. Bobby had brought red wine, and they opened a bottle and finished it off then opened another, though Susan had only had half a glass, something neither of them seemed to notice. She’d told herself she wasn’t drinking because it wasn’t going down well,
but that wasn’t true. It went down just fine, too fine, better than the chicken she’d had only two bites of, but when she swallowed that wine there came the reckless feeling that she was rushing into revealing a decision she had not yet made, and so she stopped. Lois smoked a lot, too, way over her limit, and she’d turned the kitchen radio back on so there were Mexican love ballads playing, and it was hard not to see just how much Noni liked Bobby and wanted the two of them to make it.

  But Susan had been happy to see him, hadn’t she? His cheerfully tentative hello at the door, then Lois calling him into the kitchen and his tall gentleness stepping into the light, his bald head and sweet smile at them both, though when Susan rose to hug him he looked into her face as if he were searching for something.

  Noni asked him if he’d eaten and he said he had.

  “Then let’s drink,” Lois said. “Now, where’s that important mail?”

  Susan poured him a glass of wine and handed it to her husband, but Bobby stood there quiet, glancing from Lois to her then back at Lois. Susan had never seen him quite like this before. He looked caught in some kind of test he hadn’t prepared himself for, and she said, “I told her you had some mail for me.”

  “Oh, shit.” He lifted his hand and dropped it. “I’m sorry. I left it back at the house.” He turned to Noni and said something about stress and the start of the semester and losing his mind, but there were splotches of red blooming on his throat and Susan knew he was lying. It was not something she believed he’d ever done to her before, and there opened up in her the dark certainty that of course she hadn’t sold any of her writing. She wasn’t any damn good at it. And then she felt sorry for him for lying just to have an excuse to come see her. It ticked her off and made her feel far away from him. It reminded her why she’d needed the time away. He simply needed her more than she needed him.