“You didn’t have to leave the party just to check on me,” said Desiree.
Vern rounded the bed and took hold of friend’s hand. “Are you okay?” she said.
Desiree turned and faced her, facing also the two onlookers she could not see. Her eyes were swollen and red. She leaned back against the wall, managing a weak smile. “Do you ever think about that night?” asked Desiree. “About New Year’s Eve?”
“What about it?” said Vern, holding Desiree’s face in her hands, wiping at the tears with her thumbs.
Desiree looked away, looked down. She tapped her fist against the window pane. “It was probably even earlier than that,” she said. “Do you remember that canoe trip when we were twelve, when your dad took us way up into Maine?”
Vern nodded. “It was wicked cold.”
“And he said, ‘If you girls don’t want to do this...’”
“But we’d already slipped into our life jackets, had already started arguing about who got which oar.”
Desiree smiled. “We were a day into the trip, miles and miles away from the car, and away from civilization. It was so peaceful,” she said. “I remember we saw a moose on the side of the river, just grazing.”
“And then we hit those rapids,” said Veronica, shaking her head.
“I fell overboard,” said Desiree. “And it... it gets fuzzy from there. But on New Year’s a few years back, when you kissed me, and ever since, I... I’ve started to remember.”
Veronica felt a real physical change in her body then, could see that Vern felt it too, their pulses quickening, chests rising and falling with greater speed. “My dad thought you might have hypothermia,” said Vern, picking up the story. “We set up the tents and he told me to go inside, strip us both down, and then to curl up with you in a sleeping bag, to keep you warm.”
“For years,” said Desiree, “I thought it was just a dream. But it was the safest and best feeling I’d ever had, you pressed up against me, holding me. And when you kissed me on New Year’s...”
Vern looked like she was beginning to hyperventilate, and Veronica struggled to breathe right along with her. They inhaled deeply, trying to keep control.
“Calm down,” said the Salesman.
“What?” said Vern to Desiree, unable to say more, hoping that Desiree would answer the question, would answer this question that Vern had been asking herself for more years than she could remember.
Desiree grabbed Vern by the back of the neck and pulled her close, pressing her lips to Vern’s. And it took a moment for Vern to respond, took almost too long in fact, for Desiree was already pulling away by the time Vern opened her mouth to kiss her back. Suddenly, there were tears streaming down Vern’s cheeks, but Veronica couldn’t tell—couldn’t remember—whether they were Desiree’s or her own.
“Do we have to stay?” said the Salesman. “Haven’t you proved your—”
But Veronica clapped a hand over his mouth and held him there, wanting him to see, wanting him to see it all.
Fingers tore at the buttons of Vern’s blouse till it hung open at her sides. And Desiree seemed surprised that Vern’s breasts were bare, though they must’ve gone shopping together a hundred times, though she must’ve known what she’d find. Veronica closed her eyes, could feel herself in Vern’s body again, could feel Desiree’s hands on her. They were uncertain hands, and cold to the touch, but they were soft, and careful, and they felt like they belonged there.
Veronica opened her eyes in time to see Vern pull Desiree away from the wall, in time to see them falling against the bed. She closed her eyes again as she watched Des’s anxious fingers pushing Vern’s skirt up, then she felt those fingers slip up along her legs, her thighs, her hips, and then finally, mercifully, to that warmest of places.
The Salesman struggled against her grip and Veronica opened her eyes. She tried to keep the Salesman’s mouth shut, to keep him from saying whatever words might stop this. Together, they watched as Vern wrapped her legs around Desiree’s back and squeezed, as Vern slipped her own hands underneath Des’s turtleneck while a pair of lips pressed hot against her neck.
“ENOUGH!” shouted the Salesman. His voice was muffled by Veronica’s fingers, but it was, apparently, clear enough, for everything went black once again, and they began to fall through the darkness.
“Don’t you see?” said Veronica, as they dropped. “It could have been her and me! Did you ever even consider that?”
The wind around them was picking up now, as they sped along, but the Salesman’s voice boomed over it. “Don’t you remember what she said to you?” he said. “Before the baby was born? Don’t you remember what she said to you, and where she said it, and where you were going?”
They landed in the back seat of a car, of Desiree’s car, just in time to see Vern grab hold of Desiree’s forearm and squeeze.
“Pull over,” said Vern, closing her eyes, leaning her head back into the soft leather of the Cabrio’s passenger seat. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Des flicked on the directional, and they all listened to the thing click and then pause, click and then pause, as they waited to turn. Veronica recalled that moment in Peter Pan where Captain Hook begins to hear the ticking and tocking that signal the return of his nemesis, the crocodile, come back to finish what it started with the mauling of his hand. The click of Desiree’s direction was like that, these days—every time they turned in somewhere, it was to give Vern a chance to throw up without ruining the upholstery.
The car turned—a little too sharply, Veronica thought, the whole of her body sliding into the Salesman’s, the whole of Vern’s sliding into Desiree’s—and then it rolled to a stop. Veronica stared through the windshield at the red brick and white woodwork of St. Mary’s Church. Desiree shifted the car into park, pushing the stick forward with such force that Veronica thought she might break off the handle.
“Why are you so angry?” Vern asked her.
Desiree tapped her lacquered fingernails on the steering wheel.
“I’m feeling sick,” said Vern, reaching to turn the heat down and the fan off. “Okay? I’m not fibbing.”
Desiree stared down at the dash. “I know you’re not fibbing. It’s just that, if we could get to the doctor’s office and get this over with, we wouldn’t have to... You wouldn’t have to deal with this anymore.
Vern slid her hand underneath her sweater and rubbed at her stomach. She pinched the loose roll of flesh just above the waistband of her sweats. Veronica remembered how her tummy had never felt so soft before, so pudgy. With her free hand, Vern plucked her can of Chelmsford Ginger Ale from the cup holder, the maroon and yellow aluminum glistening with condensation. The cup holders were positioned right in the path of the heater’s vents, and Veronica could still remember the taste of the warm soda, could still remember wishing she hadn’t left it there so long.
Desiree glared at Vern, shaking her head.
“What are you looking at me like that for?” asked Vern.
The car shuddered for a moment from the assault of the fierce February wind. Vern twisted the knob for the fan, bringing it back up to full blast.
“You know you’re not supposed to eat or drink anything beforehand, don’t you?”
“I could throw up all over your car,” said Vern, sipping some more of her soda. “Would you prefer that?”
“I’d prefer that we get to the damn doctor’s office before you have any more second thoughts.”
Vern stared into the mirror on her side. Veronica stared too, watching gray puffs of exhaust rising up from the back of the car. “Second thoughts,” Vern mumbled. “I’m on third thoughts now, and fourth thoughts...”
Vern unbuckled her seatbelt and shifted, turning her back to Desiree and leaning her side into the soft leather.
A pair of hands—cold, Veronica remembered—slipped up under the back of Vern’s sweater, thumbs kneading at just the right spot. Vern exhaled, let go a low, soft moan.
“Don’t y
ou want to be done with this?” asked Desiree.
“It’s not that bad,” said Vern, grimacing and wincing, though Desiree could not see.
“I mean, why would you even want to have his—”
“It’s not his,” snapped Vern, twisting herself around. “It’s mine.”
Desiree slumped back into the driver’s seat, rubbed her expert thumbs along her own furrowed brow.
“You know,” said Vern. “I was on the phone with the nurse at the doctor’s office, listening to all of their instructions—don’t eat anything after midnight, bring someone to give you a ride home—and she started to sound like the teacher in Charlie Brown, her voice like an out-of-tune trumpet. But then, at the end, she says this one thing, and it’s this one thing I can’t get out of my head.”
“What did she say?”
“She said, ‘After the procedure, we’ll remove the products of conception.’”
Desiree turned away, stared out through the windshield at the church’s vast parking lot.
Vern clasped her hands over her stomach. “Doesn’t that make it sound like they’re taking out the garbage?”
“They’ve got to be clinical about it,” said Desiree.
“But what do they even do with it when they’re done, Des? Throw it in the trash with the half of their tuna fish sandwich that they couldn’t finish? Flush it down the toilet like we did with goldfish when we were kids?” Veronica yelped, “What are they going to do with my baby?”
It was a question that Desiree couldn’t answer, or didn’t want to answer. She sat silent, her hand on the stick shift, waiting for instructions.
“You don’t have anything to say?” said Vern, wiping at her eyes, her nose.
Desire wrapped one of her amber curls around a finger and began to twirl it. She bit down on her lower lip, closed her eyes.
Vern swatted at Desiree’s hand. “Stop twirling your hair and say what you want to say!”
“You’ve made your decision, Veronica. What am I supposed to say?”
“I haven’t made—”
“Yes,” said Desiree. “You have.”
“And you think it’s the wrong one,” said Vern.
Desiree shook her head and shifted the car into gear. “What does it matter, what I think? It doesn’t matter,” she said. “And it never will.”
The Salesman opened his door and slipped out of the car. Veronica thought to stay, hoped they would take her away, but when the car didn’t move, when the girls in the front said nothing further, she got out and she stomped over to the Salesman, who was walking toward the tree line, toward the shadows, his work here nearly done.
7
Odbody & Marley
Into the woods he went, and into the woods she followed. But they weren’t long amongst the trees. Soon enough, the sky darkened over them and all light seemed to fade out of the world. “It did matter,” she yelled into the void. “It did!” But he said nothing back.
Out of the darkness then, there came one final flash, and Veronica saw herself climbing into the four-poster, beckoning the Runt to climb on top of her. She felt her soul swoon as he drove himself into her, breaking her open for the first time. She watched Vern wince, her brow furrowed, and she remembered how badly it had hurt, the Runt burying himself into her, the words of her Grampy’s motto—“Honesty breeds happiness”—falling away like dust from the drill-hole.
The silence of the scene was eerie, but that was the way it had been. He didn’t make any noise at all, the Runt, not even as he squeezed hold of her shoulders, his whole body convulsing against hers, that throbbing, awful piece of him seeping into her.
Neither of them said anything when it was done. He simply lay on top of her. And she, she turned away from him, her eyes focused on the nightstand, squinting, seeing something she was sure she wasn’t seeing: the small square he’d taken from his wallet, the package unopened, untorn.
Quiet. It was so quiet that, like in the book her brother had sent her for Christmas, she could hear the snow falling faintly through the universe and, like herself, faintly falling.
The next few weeks were a blur, a video cassette on fast-forward. She watched herself pick up the phone and hang it up, pick it up and hang it up. God, he had called so many times.
And then there was the stainless steel bowl she kept by her bed, the one they used to make pancakes with, the bowl she seemed to fill at least twice a night when the nausea came.
And, of course, there was the trip to her Aunt Michaela’s office for the test, a test that a pediatrician in their prim and proper town rarely had to give. All of it was like a blur until that afternoon in Desiree’s car, on the way to another doctor’s office, on the way to a doctor who would Wite-Out the mistake, who would give her one more chance to pass the final exam of her adolescence. It was all a blur until that moment of truth when she grabbed hold of Desiree’s forearm and squeezed, until she asked Des to say what she wanted to say.
Once again, Desiree shook her head and shifted the car into gear. “What does it matter, what I think? It doesn’t matter,” she said. “And it never will.”
Veronica closed her eyes. “It did matter!” she shouted again, into the darkness.
“I know it did,” said the Salesman, stepping out of the void and back to her side, a flashlight in his hand.
“It mattered,” said Veronica, “because she was the one who held my hair back during every hurried trip to the toilets at school. It mattered because I knew, even then, that she’d be the one holding my hand in the delivery room, the one reminding me to breathe. And it mattered because, even though I knew you were going to force me to marry the Runt, even though it would be his chapped lips that pressed against mine when the preacher said so, and not hers, it was she who I loved. She was my partner. She always has been. She always will be.”
“But what a dangerous partner to have,” said the Salesman. “Look what she almost made you do.”
Veronica jabbed a finger into the Salesman’s chest. “She almost made me see that she loved me!” she said. “She almost made me admit that I loved her. And what the hell would have been wrong with that.”
“She almost made you kill your daughter.”
“Is there a point to all this?” she asked him.
“Always,” he said.
“You want me to say it,” she said. “You want me to say it out loud.”
“Yes,” said the Salesman.
Veronica looked down, unable to look him in the eye, or maybe just unwilling. “Okay,” she said. “Fine. I wonder. Every once in awhile, I wonder what it would be like if my daughter had never been...”
But she trailed off as she noticed the light rising around her, the subway platform materializing again before her very eyes.
“Yes,” he said. “Go on. Had never been what?”
Veronica stared across the platform at her guitar case, sitting there all by its lonesome.
“You know,” she said, “in all my time at Berklee, and all the time since, I only ever wrote one song worth keeping, one song worth a damn.”
“But that wasn’t what you did,” said the Salesman. “Your thing was reinventing songs. There was the venomous dirge you made out of ‘Here Comes the Hotstepper,’ the contemplative cover of ‘Freedom ’90’—”
“But there was that one song,” she said, turning from the guitar to face him.
“Which one?” he said.
“I don’t remember much of it,” she said. “I wouldn’t let anyone record my originals because, you’re right, they weren’t my thing. But there was something about it,” she said, pausing for a moment to listen to a guitar tuning in the distance, then deciding the sound was just a lie of the mind. “I’m sure the lyrics were dumb,” she said, “but the meaning behind them...”
“Was what?” said the Salesman. “What was the meaning?”
“I wrote it for my little girl,” she said. “It was a distillation. Of all this stuff, everything I wanted her to know about m
y mistakes, everything I wanted her to learn from them. And I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe it didn’t work. Maybe it was terrible, but—”
The Salesman pressed a finger to her lips, then nodded over her shoulder. She turned around in time to see Vern begin to play the guitar, an empty pickle jar standing at her feet, a sleeping baby strapped to her back.
“You can’t be president,” sang Vern. “You can’t be the boss. You can’t make the rules, cause you don’t know the cost.”
And then came the chorus, and Veronica sang with her, “So, just sing, Angel. Sing, when you can’t do a thing. When you can’t do a thing, you just sing, Angel. Sing.”
On either side of them, trains rolled into the station, the morning’s first commuters making their way. A small crowd gathered as Vern delivered the next verse. “You can’t hit that ball,” she sang. “You can’t make that toss. You can bear a child,” she sang, and then she belted, pouring everything she had into the last line, “but you can’t bear the cross.”
All of them sang the chorus now, Veronica reaching for the Salesman’s hand as she did, intending to squeeze it, to thank him for this moment. But he was gone. She whirled about, looking for him amongst the onlookers, but he was nowhere to be found.
Vern finished the song. The crowd showered her with applause and her cup runneth over with tips. Then the people were gone, onto their trains, and then the trains were gone too, and just the two of them remained, Vern and Veronica.
“What are you waiting for?” said Vern, as she packed up her gear.
Missing Mr. Wingfield Page 5