The Vagabonds (20 page)
No sooner did Joanna hang up than the telephone rang once again. Again her daughter answered and she felt excluded: the person who served them their eggs.
The first shall be last,
Alice thought. For in truth she could be bitter about the way her husband taught flirtatiousness, how he showed the children daily, nightly, what a man without scruples could manage—what a smile and a dropped voice accomplished in the dance of courtship and how to behave on the phone. George always was a ladies’ man, had never denied or disguised it, and at least she’d known what she was getting into when she got into his bed. At least he was clear about that.
“Just a minute, please,” Joanna said, and then, “Mom, it’s for you.” She handed over the phone. The cord could barely stretch across the tabletop, and Alice considered changing her place or going to the hallway extension but leaned across the table instead, putting her elbow down by the plum jam and feeling a twinge in her wrist. “Hello?”
“Mrs. Saperstone,” a stranger inquired, and she said, “Yes.”
“Is your husband a George Saperstone?”
She nodded.
“And does he drive a blue Mustang convertible? 1969?”
“Correct. Who is this, please?”
“It’s Sergeant Alwyn out of Keene.”
“Keene?”
“Keene, New York. It’s the police. We’re in the Adirondacks, ma’am, and your husband’s had an accident.”
“What happened?” she asked. “Just what exactly happened?”
“I’m sorry to have to be telling you this.”
“How is he? I’m sitting down. When?”
“It’s not good news,” he said. “I’m sorry to be the one to inform you, but he died late last night. Or this morning, maybe, early. He had an accident and we only just discovered him; we had our first weather last night. Our first real snow, I mean.”
The children were silent, watching. There was a wind in her ears. The telephone receiver was a loud high wind in her right ear, and all she could manage was “Yes?”
“There was a passenger,” the sergeant said. “She’s deceased too, I’m afraid.”
A vision of hot bubbling fat, the skillet clattering down off the stove and bacon searing her dear friend Marie, a vision of George in the car with some woman from the business meeting and skidding off the ice-slick road—all this assaulted her, the shock of it, and somehow also the not-shock, the certainty when she’d reached for the phone that what she was going to hear would be bad. “A Miss Skellings,” said the Sergeant. “Regina Skellings, yes?”
“I don’t, know, no her,” said Alice.
“Mom?” said David. “What
is
it?”
She glared at him, shaking her head.
“The vehicle is totaled, ma’am. Were they at, what, a party?”
“I don’t, no,
know,
” she said.
And then the policeman was talking, saying he was sorry, saying there would be an autopsy and the coroner believed death had been instantaneous but it was Sunday morning and would take time to tell; it hadn’t been a snowstorm, really, mostly freezing rain and ice. It was early in the season and they hadn’t plowed or salted and her husband didn’t have snow tires on his car but they were two hours north of Saratoga and here in the mountains an October ice storm isn’t all that unexpected and would she be willing to drive up to Keene or was somebody able to drive her and would she want an officer from the Saratoga station to come over to the house? He went on and on about procedure and the need for formal identification of the body and the fact the car was totaled and it was a one-car accident but he ran into a tree; did he have any history of heart disease or seizures or was he diabetic or might he have suffered a stroke?
Alice shut her eyes. She cupped her left hand at her ear. Sergeant Alwyn faded in and out while static intervened and the blue jay chased the cardinal. She couldn’t tell him, when he asked, where her husband was staying precisely or the location of the Lodge; she didn’t know the names of other people in the fishing party or how many of them had been on the trip. And even though the policeman kept saying “I understand,” she knew he didn’t understand, or didn’t choose or want to, and would keep on asking questions—not quite addressing but not avoiding either the issue of Miss Skellings’s presence, the empty flask, and what they were doing at two, maybe three in the morning together on a mountain road, a second fatality there in the car until what she needed to tell him, and did, was “I’m sorry, I can’t talk any longer,” and reached across the tabletop and hung up the phone.
“Mom?”
“What is it?” asked Joanna.
“What happened?”
“Your father is dead.”
“What?”
“I told you. In a car crash.”
“Where?”
“In the Adirondacks.”
And then in fact she couldn’t talk and dropped her head to her plate. In the instant that followed she knew she should rise, should take her children in her arms and start consoling, planning, start the process of accommodation and deal with the fact of his death. But the shock and not-shock contended in her fiercely and she was trying not to vomit, trying not to faint or fall, and it took time before she raised her head and stared at David, Joanna and Claire. “What will we do?” she asked them. “What will we ever
do
?”
Claire gathered a handful of dishes. She carried them across the room and placed them in the sink. She did this in silence; Joanna too was silent and David’s bright face had turned white. It was, their mother understood, a pivot point, an absolute dividing line: everything that happened now would happen
after
George was dead and everything that happened earlier would have been
before.
And while the children stared at her she found herself remembering the way George honked, twice, lightly, tapping his hand on the horn rim and waving and how she had never imagined it would be the final time, the last time she’d see him alive. She imagined the dark mountain road and the snow and ice and trees and freezing rain. She pictured how he took the curve, the way he picked his right foot up and hit the brake but late, too hard, the mirror and dashboard and radio, the granite shelf and tree and plunging car and crumpled hood and shattered glass and then she imagined the woman beside him: a blonde, a redhead, a brunette, a terrified creature with long hair or short and wearing a pea coat or fur coat or nothing at all, her skirt hiked up above her knees or face averted, screaming, gloved or ungloved hand on his . . .
“Mom? Are you all right, Mom?”
“
Mother,
” said Claire.
She shook her head. She saw them, her pretty ones all in a row, and saw the can of bacon fat and knew it had congealed. David was standing now, close at her side. “Oh dear,” she said, “oh dear, oh dear,” and opened her arms to enfold him and knocked her coffee cup down off the table. It broke. “He wasn’t alone,” Alice said.
“What?”
“There was somebody with him. In the car. And she’s dead too.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. A person called Skellings. Regina Skellings. A business friend.”
“He said he’d take me
next
year,” David said.
“Well,” said Joanna, “he won’t.”
Then David lifted his white strained face and Alice could see he was crying and cradled him, her baby boy, and his big sister said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it
that
way, I didn’t mean . . .”
“It was snowing. It was icy there.”
“You can say that again,” said Joanna. “The fucking Adirondacks.”
“Fucking business trip,” said Claire.
“Those fucking Adirondacks,” repeated David, greatly daring. “That fucking business trip.”
Now Alice was raising objections, objecting to the way they swore, was ready to correct them who had never used that word before, or at any rate not in her presence, but what was he doing out there on the roads, why hadn’t he stayed in the Lodge or the hotel or motel or wherever he was fucking her—this Regina, this Miss Skellings—and come back not sorry but safe? She bent to the cup at her feet. First she collected the porcelain shards, then soaked her napkin in the coffee that was pooling at the table leg, then tore off sections of white paper towel from the towel rack by the pantry sink and the framed picture of the horse David had made her for Christmas—he was good at it, he had an eye and liked to draw horses in corrals, or cantering, or lined up at the starter’s gate—and rubbed the linoleum clean with the towel, seeing a spiderweb under her chair and cleaning that up also.
The rest of the morning they stayed in the house, close to each other, unwilling to leave. Her children cried and cried. She was trying to control herself and to not be furious; she rocked back and forth on her stool. That afternoon she would travel to Keene and view his broken body, and the next morning return. There would be weeks and months and years of dealing with the accident, her husband’s death, of mastering the fact of it and mustering an attitude. She would learn when to smile and nod and when to turn from sympathy, the proffered lip or outstretched hand; she would teach herself what to answer when asked, and how to deflect the next question . . .
“Oh, Mummy,” said Joanna. “Are they sure it’s him?”
“They have his wallet. Yes.”
She stared out the window, unseeing. She bit at her thumbnail; it tore. She bit at her cuticle, sighing. The old procedures would resume,
sweet George, wild George, our impossible George,
and as though she read it all already in the coffee grounds or darkly through the window glass Alice saw what would ensue from this: the policemen and the lawyers and the newspaper reporter and insurance agent with her husband’s life insurance, its surprising yield. She saw herself a widow, her dead parents’ only daughter, and the ranks of those who offered her their words of comfort or their wordless presence thick, then thin again, the wound first fresh, then dull, then healed,
dear George, poor George, that terrible George,
the line of suitors come to call, the children growing up, away, and then with children of their own . . .
“We’d better pack,” she said. “I’d better get ready to go.”
“Where?”
“Keene. Does anybody want, what, something else to eat? Drink?”
Claire said, “Oh, Mother. No.”
2003
“I
have something to tell you,” says Jim.
“What?”
“I think you know it already. I think you know what I’m going to say.”
Claire looks across at him. “What?”
“Don’t act so surprised,” he says. He is standing by the Bose. He has inserted a CD but not as yet pushed
Play.
“I believe you’ve guessed it already.”
“No. No, I haven’t.”
“It’s been going on,” he says, “long enough for you to have noticed. Of course you have.”
“OK, I’ll guess,” she says. “Animal, vegetable, mineral?”
“What?”
“Twenty questions. You’re making me play twenty questions. I gave that up some time ago.”
“That’s exactly it.” He glares at her. “It’s just exactly what I mean. The way there’s nothing’s
fun
for you. There’s no excitement anymore.”
She feels a weariness—immense, premonitory; she does in fact know what he’s planning to say. “All right.”
“All right, what?”
“Let me guess. You’re having an affair,” she says. “You love another woman.”
“No.”
“Well, not love exactly, maybe not yet. You’re sleeping with your secretary?”
“No. And I can’t help myself.”
“That cute receptionist?”
He shakes his head.
“Oh Christ, Jim. Don’t be doing this. Don’t make me play twenty questions. My mother died and I’m just back from the airport and I’m very tired and don’t have the time for this . . .”
“It’s beyond me,” says her husband. “I can’t help it.”
“What?”
“What I’m trying to explain to you.” He remains by the three-tiered container of CDs; he has lost weight, she notices, and has his arms crossed and blue sleeves rolled back precisely to the elbow, and his forearms bulge. He makes a half-turn to the Bose as though to start the music, then stops himself. “It isn’t a woman.”
“What?”
“You heard me, Claire. It isn’t a woman I love.”
“A man, then.”
“Yes.”
“Another man?”
Nodding, he smiles a tight smile. Again she feels exhausted; the ottoman is at her side and, giddily, she sits.
“You knew,” he says. “You couldn’t not know.”
“Have I met him? Have we met?”
“What’s that got to do with it? No.”
“Does he have daughters too? Is he married, your new . . . ?”
“Cut me some slack here, all right?” says Jim. “Not
everybody’s
married.”
“Is he?”
“No.”
Now Claire is trying not to hit him, not to run across the living room and scratch his face or spit. “How long?”
“Excuse me?”
“How long has this been going on?”
“It’s about, well, feeling
honest.
Feeling like I’m me again, the real, the
actual
me, I mean, after all these years of faking it.”
“Faking it?”
“I don’t mean that. I mean,” he says, “I’m just extremely tired of impersonating somebody called Handleman, some CEO of Alpha-Beta who’s supposed to be one of the guys.” He spreads his hands. “I don’t feel
authentic
is what it comes down to . . .”
“Oh, Jim, you’re a cliché.”
“Whatever.” He colors. “I’m leaving.”
“Leaving?”
“Ann Arbor. Tomorrow; it’s Valentine’s Day. Not for forever, obviously, but I do need some air.”
Claire shuts her eyes. “Alone?”
“No. Robin’s taking me. He’s got a place in Florida.”
“Where?”
“Does it matter? Longboat Key.”
Then he describes his discovery, his conviction that he’s found himself or at least can begin to start finding himself before this chance is lost; he’s been waiting till she came back home to tell her he would leave. It isn’t so much about sex, he declares, it’s like I’ve been wearing the wrong suit of clothes, pretending they fit and were tailored exactly, but what I was was faking it and now I require the truth. Is that what they mean, Claire asks him, by coming out of the closet; you’ve been trying on my clothes? You’ve been borrowing my skirt? But Jim is impervious, patient; he speaks with what she recognizes as the old boyish excitement, the old self-regarding enthusiasm, telling her he’d always known or at least suspected he had been born to be somebody else, and is tired of pretending, tired of fighting against it; this is his opportunity, a chance he
has
to take. It isn’t a good time, says Claire, and he says that’s true enough but there never
will
be a good enough time, never a time that is better than others, and he’s beginning to think of himself and wants her to think of him—this will happen, he is certain—as a kind of caterpillar who became a butterfly; oh he knows it does sound silly but the caterpillar and the butterfly are really the same creature and it’s only a question of which shape comes when and now his instinct tells him, is telling him unstoppably he has to take advantage of this chance for transformation and head south.