by Tim O'Brien
She finished her tea and stood up. "The truth," she said, "is that my husband is a fabulous man. Better than fabulous." She tried to smile. "I hope you'll keep him out of this."
The young policeman studied the dark. He seemed to be humming to himself, except there was no sound. "You know what I think?" he finally said. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I think you'd sleep with me in a flash. Down and dirty."
For a few seconds Ellie said nothing. She was not shocked, not even surprised.
"Go away," she said.
"Oh, soon enough." He leaned back comfortably in the wicker sofa. There was something illusory about him, something not wholly connected to the world of lakes and trees and rocks and drowned human bodies. "Right now," he said, "you wouldn't dream of it. Sex, that is. Because I brought it out in the open. Now you can't. But if I hadn't spoken up..." He looked at her brutally. "I guess we'll never know, will we?"
"We won't," she said. "Go."
"I didn't mean it in a bad way."
"How, then?"
"Well, most people in your shoes, they try to hide the betrayal. Not you. You want to hide the actual freakin' body. Now, that's pressure, a walking nightmare, and I figure you need to make sure it's all real. Make sure you're real."
"I'm plenty real," said Ellie. "I don't require proof."
"Then I apologize."
His voice, however, was not apologetic. It had a bitter, singsong quality. In a way, Ellie thought, the man did not seem to be speaking to her at all, but to himself, or to someone in the dark behind her.
He stood up, touched his cap.
"I'll do what I can to keep a lid on," he said. "But not for you. For me, really. So I'll know for a fact you're wide awake at night, chewing up those gorgeous rich-lady nails." He smiled. "I'm what you've got instead of a conscience."
"Why can't you just—?"
"Bad luck, I guess. Wrong cop."
"Listen," Ellie said. "I'm not evil."
"Heck no, ma'am. You're just so terribly, terribly unhappy." His smile was courteous, almost solicitous. "Here's the thing. I knew this lady once, loved her a bushel and a peck. Reminds me of you, kind of. Real unhappy. Spiritual emergency, she tells me, then she grabs her hair curlers and trots out the door. Week later—oh, hell, not even a week—two days, three days later, she's off with some other guy, this dumbass Spartan, and I'm stuck with my own spiritual emergency. Never forgot, never forgave."
"Spartan?" Ellie said.
"Yes, ma'am."
"I don't follow."
The policeman made a harsh, predatory sound. "Nothing to follow. Goddamn Spartans. They'll eat you alive."
"Who are you?"
"Me?"
"Officer what?"
The policeman chuckled, stepped off the porch, and stood in the rain. His face was little more than a smudge.
"I'll be in touch," he said. "Conscience and all that."
Ellie took the early bus to Minneapolis, then a half-empty jet to Boston, then the 4:05 commuter train out to Sheffield Farms. She was amazed to find her car parked exactly where she had left it a week ago, in the lot behind the train station; somehow, without realizing it, she'd been expecting rearrangements in the most banal details of the world. But the car was there, unmoved by events, and so was the road to her house, and the bright green mailbox out front, and the giant oak trees, and the gravel driveway up to the garage.
It was a little after 5. The house, too, seemed complacently unchanged. There was a fresh woodsy scent in the air, as if the furniture had been sweating, and in the kitchen she found a blue Mason jar full of cut flowers from the garden. Ellie put down her suitcase. She stood still for a moment, almost calm, then she moved to the den and switched on the answering machine. There was a whining noise before she heard herself say, "Kisses." Later her voice said, "A fiasco, Mark. The whole stupid flight was canceled. Nothing I can do. Miss you a whole bunch."
She replayed the tape once, listening for the lie, but her voice seemed sturdy and expansive, like the house.
Ellie fixed herself a drink, carried it upstairs, filled the tub, slipped in, and sat soaking. More than anything, she now craved sleep. A four-month nap, then wake up to find matters settled. She could not focus on the practicalities. At some point things would have to be said, but the logic of it all seemed far too intricate. When she thought of Harmon, it was to think of him in the abstract, like a problem in geometry. The old passions struck her as something quaint and foreign. She remembered how they had gone dancing one night at Loon Point, how adventurous it had seemed, how the music and starlight and danger had stirred her to feel close to him, giddy with pleasure, and how in a curious way it was not really Harmon in her arms, it was the idea of happiness, the possibility, the temptation, a slow, tantalizing dance with some handsome future.
Ellie slid back in the tub, her lips just above the surface of the water. For a few seconds she drifted away, half dreaming, half awake, listening to the loud, mindless din of waterfowl, wild ducks and geese and loons, many thousands.
At six o'clock she went downstairs to start supper. A half hour later she heard the garage door crank open.
When Mark walked into the kitchen, Ellie fixed her lips in an expression of savage domesticity. She adjusted the heat on the electric skillet, used a spatula to drop on three hamburgers.
Mark came up behind her. "The globetrotter," he said, and kissed her neck, his fingers squeezing the inch or two of loose flesh at her waist. This was a habit Ellie disliked—it made her feel fat—but now she let herself lean back into his hands. She felt a rush of gratitude. Immediately, by the pressure of his fingers, she knew he had no inkling.
"You're late," she said. "Again."
"Wow, I didn't realize—"
"An hour late," Ellie said. "More than an hour." It was not quite true, but it transferred the burden of explanation.
Mark stripped off his tie and sat on a stool beside her. He did not look at the clock.
"Usual nonsense," he said wearily. "Nancy brings in this pile of contracts, the Earhardt deal, except she's got the addresses all scrambled. A first-class bollix job. Christ, if I hadn't spotted it—" He made a sound that was meant to convey frustration. In fact, Ellie knew, he was pleased with himself. "Anyhow, I straighten it out, but by then it's almost five, so I end up driving the damn contracts across town. I'm a mailman. I'm a six-figure delivery boy."
Ellie flipped the hamburgers. "But you settled it?"
"The Earhardt thing? Signed, sealed. Professionally well delivered."
"My warrior."
"Right, babe. Call me Tonto." Mark grinned and stood up. He glanced at the evening newspaper. "How was the trip?"
"Fine," said Ellie.
"Well, great. Give me the whole happy scoop at dinner."
They ate in their bathrobes in front of the TV. The evening news was dominated by the economy—lagging exports, a proposal for retaliatory new tariffs—and Mark's posture went rigid as he watched footage of small, brightly colored Korean cars rolling off a ship in Seattle. At one point he muttered, "Sick." A moment later he said, "Criminal." During the commercials, in a tone Ellie recognized as politely forced, he asked questions about her trip. He was interested in the airline food, the weather, the friends she'd been visiting in the Twin Cities. Ellie kept her answers short. The friends were a bore, she said. The weather was hot, the food was poisonous.
Mark nodded at the TV screen. His eyes had a far-off shine. Apparently it had not occurred to him that in the past six months she had accumulated a good many frequent-flier miles. Not that it was Mark's fault, Ellie realized—it was her own—yet she found herself riding a quick wave of irritation.
"Listen, I'm sorry about the snafu," she said. "Nothing I could do about it."
Mark was scanning channels with the remote control. "Snafu?" he said.
"The canceled flight."
"No kidding?"
Ellie glanced at him. "Mark, I was due in yesterday. I explained how I couldn't ...
You didn't get the message?"
"Oops," he said, and frowned at her. "Never checked the machine."
Ellie stared at her plate. The hamburger had left a fleshy, rancid taste in her mouth. Stupidly, without calculation, she was seized by a need to strike back. What she should've done, she thought, was call in a message describing how her lover had drowned in the waters off Loon Point. All the details. She should've talked about Harmon's wet corpse, and how she was feeling pretty soggy herself, and how she'd been numbed by the terror of growing old and silly and insignificant. Even now, maybe, she could unburden herself. Interrupt the broadcast. A personal bulletin.
Instead, Ellie took her tray to the kitchen, rinsed the dishes, and moved out to the back patio. The evening was humid and still. In the leaden twilight, she once again had the desire to lie down and sleep, just collapse, and it required an act of glacial willpower to hold herself together. From beyond the oak trees came the brain-dead drone of someone's leaf blower.
Ellie loosened the belt on her bathrobe. The hamburger was not resting well.
Barefoot, moving with new caution, new knowledge, she walked out to a bed of flowers she'd been nursing since spring. Ellie spent the last minutes of twilight there, admiring her astilbes and phlox, recalling the many ceremonious, unconscious hours she had devoted to this tidy patch of suburbia. It seemed bizarre and gallant that she'd once taken such pleasure in the growth of things. The happy farmer, Mark always said. And it was true: she had been happy, or whatever happiness was when it came without joy. Her life, she observed, had fallen into the cycle of a nasturtium, uncomplicated by desire. She loved Mark, yes, and perhaps in a vague, nostalgic way she had also loved Harmon, but the reality of love was not what she'd once imagined it to be.
Ellie reached down to pull a weed. Then she stopped. Something awesome, something approaching grief, suddenly flooded her stomach. In the evening air, like a blank tape, there was the hum of a terrifying question—What next?—which then deepened into the sound of an imperfect, infinitely approximate answer: Who ever knows?
She pictured Harmon on the dance floor at Loon Point. She pictured herself as a little girl in a frilly blue dress and white shoes.
And then one other image came to her. On a New Year's Eve eighteen years ago, a few months before they were married, Mark had presented her with a huge corsage, then they'd taken a cab to a late-night party, where they had danced and sampled exotic drinks and looked at each other with the apprehension that love was happening. At one point, well after midnight, Mark had led her outside. He'd put his hands on her shoulders. "Please, please, love me forever," he'd said, "just keep on loving me, always and always and always and always and always and always, please, please, and don't ever, ever, ever stop, not ever," and when Ellie bobbed her head, when she began to cry, Mark Abbott had grinned like the man he was, a simple, romantic, courageous man—so good, so hopelessly guileless—and he kissed her lips, kissed her throat, leaned down and ate the corsage off her breast.
Ellie opened her robe to the garden and let herself be bathed by the humid night air.
She would never tell.
She would brace herself. She would endure the terror of discovery. She would flinch at each ring of her telephone, at the approach of a mailman, at every knock on the door. For the remainder of her married life, maybe beyond that, she would be pulled into the deep by the weight of a drowning man. Even now, on the street opposite a neighbor's lawn, a car had just stopped. A slim, neatly dressed young man got out, locked his car, seemed to hesitate, and then walked away into the shadows.
It was not the policeman. Probably not. But someday, Ellie knew, it surely would be.
A little later Mark came up behind her.
"Hey, gorgeous," he said. "How's the crop?"
Ellie tugged her robe shut. "It's fine," she said.
14. CLASS OF '69
"SO WHAT you're afraid of," Paulette said, "you're afraid of getting blackmailed? By that policeman?"
"A little," Ellie said. "Not much."
"Conscience, then?"
"If I have one. But sometimes it feels like—this'll sound completely nuts—it feels like that snotty, holier-than-thou cop's actually spying on me. I look up, he'll be there. Then he's not there. And then he is."
"Whatever it takes," said Paulette.
Ellie Abbott looked up at a passing airliner. The morning was hot and muggy, very silent, but now a shroud of clouds had started to pile up over the Dakotas, still distant, still many hours away. There was the scent of a coming storm.
"I'll tell you what else it feels like," Ellie said. "It's like this heaviness inside me. The secrecy. It weighs a ton. I wake up with it, lug it around all day. Can't ever relax. I'll be watching TV, having dinner, and then boom, it's not dinner anymore, it's Harmon, and he's drowning. How do you hide this big, white, dead body? Won't ever stop."
"You can't hide it," Paulette said. "You don't. You told me, Ellie. Tell your husband."
"What if he turns around and—"
"Oh, I know," Paulette said quietly. "Problem is, what if you don't?"
Ellie almost nodded, not quite.
She looked at her wristwatch and tried to smile. The smile didn't come off.
"We should get back," she said. "The service starts at three, I've got to pick up flowers, change clothes, try to make myself—"
"Harmon's dead," said Paulette. "So is Karen. You aren't."
"Christ. All right, then. I'll try."
"Don't say try, honey. Promise me."
"Okay," said Ellie.
"Is that a promise?"
"I don't know."
They turned and headed back toward campus, holding hands. For some time neither of them spoke. Then Ellie said, "Did I mention the loons?"
"You did."
"Well, good. Do you mind if I stop a minute and cry?"
"Let's both," said Paulette.
At 2:15 P.M., Spook Spinelli's alarm went off. She nudged Marv, who slept face-up beside her. His tie had been loosened, nothing else.
"Hi, there," he said sleepily. "Did we do it?"
Marla Dempsey and David Todd dropped off their flowers at the Darton Hall chapel. It was a circular brick-and-glass building, the venue of their wedding thirty years earlier, but neither of them had the courage or discourtesy to bring that up.
"Off to change clothes," Marla said. She pecked his cheek. "You all right?"
"A-okay."
"You're positive?"
"Yeah."
"I'll stay if you want."
"Not necessary," he said. "Change."
When she was gone, David sat in a front pew. The chapel was empty except for a teenage organist setting up her sheet music.
Outside, the temperature was approaching ninety-four degrees. Inside, it seemed warmer.
David popped some Darvon, popped some Demerol, folded his hands, leaned back, and listened to Johnny Ever scold him about lost causes. "Ancient story," Johnny was saying. "Old as the protons. Seen it once, seen it a zillion times. We're talkin' grand illusion here. Fairy tales. Fuckin' Hair. Your whole wacked-out generation, man, it got turned around by all that tooby ooby walla starshine crud. I mean, in all flat-out honesty, what the fuck? Greek to me, Davy, and I know Greek." Johnny sighed. "Naivete, my friend, it's health risk number one. Romantic fantasy, it ought to be covered by your HMO. Give it up, partner. All them cockeyed Marla dreams. Remember the Alamo."
A half mile away, in an affluent section of St. Paul, Dorothy Stier stood before a mirror in her master suite. She was dressing for Billy McMann. She was also explaining to herself how happy she was, how the cancer had been mostly beaten—eight nodes, knock on wood—and how her boys were the two best kids on earth, and how Ron was completely devoted to her, very Catholic, the ideal partner, always supportive and punctual and full of wonderful ideas about home air filtration and automobile maintenance.
Dorothy decided against ostentation. She would wear a simple blue blouse over her prosthesis. No p
earls. Glass earrings. That cheap perfume Billy used to like.
"So?" Marv said.
"My secret," said Spook, "but I'll tell you this much. You are a fathead."
"Thank you, thank you," Marv said. "Not just the head, the whole well-marbled shebang." He looked at her. "Took advantage of me, then?"
Spook said, "In my dreams."
Marv said, "Maybe tonight? Say maybe."
"Maybe," said Spook. "Straighten up that tie, unstraighten the hog. We've got funerals to go to."
"Hog?" Marv said.
"Under your pants."
"You mean this fat thing?"
"That's what I mean," said Spook.
"Say maybe again."
Spook laughed and said, "Don't press it."
Jan Huebner fluffed up her close-cut bleached hair, applied a coat of Midnight Plum lipstick, painted on a pair of blue-black eyebrows, and said to Amy Robinson, "No place like a church to get lucky. How do I look?"
"Fucking awful," Amy said.
The new bride of Minnesota's lieutenant governor, twenty-six years his junior, watched the big old houses on Summit Avenue slide by. She was not interested in reunions. She was not interested in funerals. And she was most especially and most definitely not interested in that crowd of alcoholic, pot-bellied, whatever-happened-to-us old folks. She'd had her fill the day before. Claimed a headache, left midway through last night's dance: crappy songs about barricades and paranoia.
She looked over at her husband, who was driving.
"Whose funeral is it?"
"Memorial service. Two old friends."
"Who?"
"Karen somebody, Harmon somebody."
"Loved them dearly?"
"Names," he said. "I'm getting old."
"You are old," said his new bride. She sat restlessly for a time. "That fiancée of yours, will she be there?"