Separate Flights (2 page)

I crossed the lawn, onto the sidewalk that sloped down with the street; a half block from the house I was suddenly afraid she was coming, I felt her behind me, and I turned, but the sidewalk was empty and lovely in the shadows of maples and elms. I went on. If there was a way to call Edith and she could come get me. But of course no. I could go back and get my car, the keys were in my pocket, I could start it and be gone before Terry came running out with a Goddamn knife, if I drove to Edith's and parked in front of the house and looked up at the window where she slept beside Hank she would know, if I waited long enough watching her window she would know in her sleep and she would wake and look out the window at me under the moon; she would tiptoe downstairs and hold me on the damp lawn. I came to a corner and went up another street. ‘Edith,' I whispered into the shadows of my diagonal walk, ‘oh Edith sweet baby, I love you, I love you forever.' I thought about forever and if we live afterward, then I saw myself laid out in a coffin, the beard and hair lovely white. I stopped and leaned against a car, dew on its fender cool through my slacks. Natasha and Sean and I looked at Terry in her coffin. I stood between them holding their small hands. Terry's smooth cheeks were pale against her red hair.

When she told me she was pregnant she wasn't afraid. She was twenty years old. It was a cold bright Thursday in January, the sky had been blue for a week and the snow in Boston was dirty and old. We went to a bookstore on Boylston Street and bought paperbacks for each other, then we had steamers and draft beer in a dim place with paintings of whale fishing and storms at sea and fishing boats in harbor on the walls. For some reason the waiters wore leather tunics. In those days Terry always seemed happy. I can close my eyes any time and remember how I loved her and see and feel her as she took my hand on the table and said: ‘After today I'll be careful about eating, and if I promise not to get fat and if I get a job, can I keep our baby?'

Now I started walking home. We were, after all this, the same Jack and Terry, and I would go to her now and touch her and hold her; I walked faster, nodding my head yes yes yes. Then going into the dark living room I felt her in the house like the large and sharpened edge of a knife. She was asleep. I crept into the bedroom and lay beside her, at the edge of the bed so we didn't touch.

Natasha and Sean woke Terry early for breakfast but I stayed in bed, held onto sleep through the breakfast voices then their voices outside, while the sun got higher and the room hotter until it was too hot and I got up. I went straight to the shower without seeing anyone. While I was drying myself she tapped on the door.

‘Do you want lunch or breakfast?'

Her voice had the practiced sweetness she assumed when she was afraid: strangers got it, and I got it after some fights or when she made mistakes with money. For an instant I was tender and warm and I wanted to help her with a cheerful line (Oh, I'll have you for breakfast, love; just stick a banana in it and hop in bed); but then sure as time is a trick I was sitting in the kitchen last night, and the bourbon and ice were flying at me.

‘I don't know,' I said. Through the door I could feel the tone of my voice piercing her. ‘What do you have?'

‘Just cereal if you want breakfast. But if you want lunch I could get some lobsters, just for you and me; the kids don't like them anyway'

‘No, I have to hurry. I'm taking the car in.'

Linhart
, I said to my face in the mirror.
You are a petulant son of a bitch. Why don't you drag her in here and whip her ass then eat lobster with her
. She was still waiting outside the door; I pretended not to know, and went about drying myself.

‘I could go to the fish market and be back and have them done in thirty minutes. Forty to be safe.'

‘I have to get the car there at twelve.'

‘You
have
to?'

‘If I want the work done, yes.'

‘What's the work?'

‘Oil and grease.'

‘That doesn't take long.'

‘They're busy, Terry. They want it at twelve or not at all. They don't care how badly you want a lobster. But if you want one, get it now before I leave.'

‘I don't want one by myself.'

‘What, you mean it won't taste good?'

‘Oh, you know what I
mean
,' in that mock-whine you hear from girls everywhere when they're being lovingly teased. I started brushing my teeth.

‘Cheerios or Grape Nuts?'

‘Grape Nuts.'

She went away. When I came dressed to the kitchen the table was set neatly for one: a red straw place mat, a deep bowl which had the faint sparkle of fresh washing, a spoon on a napkin, a glass of orange juice. She was upstairs with the vacuum cleaner. Over in the sink were the children's breakfast dishes, unwashed; beneath them were last night's dishes.

Terry is the toy of poltergeists: washer, dryer, stove, refrigerator, dishes, clothes, and woolly house dust. The stove wants cleaning and as she lifts off burners the washing machine stops in the wash room; she leaves the stove and takes another load of dirty clothes to the wash room; it is a white load, bagged in a sheet, lying on the kitchen floor since before breakfast. She unloads the washing machine and, hugging the wet clothes to her breasts, she opens the dryer; but she has forgotten, it's full of clothes she dried last night. She lays the wet ones on top of the dryer and takes out the dry ones; these she carries to the living room and drops in a loose pile on the couch; a pair of Sean's Levi's falls to the floor and as she stoops to pick it up she sees a bread crust and an orange peel lying in the dust under the couch. She cannot reach them without lying on the floor, so she tells herself, with the beginnings of panic, that she must do the living room this morning: sweep, dust, vacuum. But there are clothes waiting to be folded, and a new load going into the dryer, another into the washer. Going through the kitchen she sees the stove she has forgotten, its crusted burners lying on greasy white porcelain. In the wash room she puts the wet clothes into the dryer, shuts the door, and starts it, a good smooth sound of machine, the clothes turning in the dark. In fifty minutes they will be dry. It is all so efficient, and standing there listening to the machine, she feels that efficiency, and everything seems in order now, she is in control, she can rest. This lasts only a moment. She loads the washer, turns it on, goes back to the kitchen, averts her eyes from the stove and makes for the coffee pot; she will first have a cup of coffee, gather herself up, plan her morning. With despair she sees it is not a morning but an entire day, past cocktail hour and dinner, into the night: when the dinner dishes are done she will have more clothes to fold and some to iron. This happens often and forces her to watch television while she works. She is ashamed of watching Johnny Carson. The breakfast dishes are in the sink, last night's pots are on the counter: hardened mashed potatoes, congealed grease. She hunts for the coffee cup she's been using all morning, finds it on the lavatory in the bathroom, and empties the cold coffee over the dishes in the sink. She lights a cigarette and thinks of some place she can sit, some place that will let her drink a cup of coffee. There is none, there's not a clean room downstairs; upstairs the
TV
room is clean enough, because no one lives there. But to climb the stairs for a sanctuary is too depressing, so she goes to the living room and sits on the couch with the clean clothes, ignores the bread crust and orange peel whispering to her from the floor. Trying to plan her work for the day overwhelms her; it is too much. So she does what is at hand; she begins folding clothes, drinking coffee, smoking. After a while she hears the washer stop. Then the dryer. She goes to the wash room, brings back the dry clothes, goes back and puts the wet load in the dryer. When I come in for lunch, the living room is filled with clothes: they are in heaps on chairs, folded and stacked on the couch and floor; I look at them and then at Terry on the couch; beyond her legs are the bread crust and orange peel; with a harried face she is drinking coffee, and the ash tray is full. ‘Is it noon already?' she says. Her eyes are quick with panic. ‘Oh Goddamnit, I didn't know it was that late.' I walk past her into the kitchen: the burners, the dishes. ‘Jesus Christ,' I say. We fight, but only briefly, because it is daylight, we aren't drinking, the children will be in from playing soon, hungry and dirty. Like our marriage, I think, hungry and dirty.

While I ate the Grape Nuts, Natasha and Sean came in, brown arms and legs and blond hair crowding through the door at once, the screen slamming behind them. Natasha is nine; she is the love child who bound us. Sean is seven. Looking at them I felt love for the first time that day.

‘You slept late,' Sean said.

‘That's because you were up late, you guys were fighting,' Natasha said. ‘I heard you.'

‘What did you hear?'

‘I don't know—' She was hiding whatever it was, down in her heart angry words breaking into her sleep. ‘Yelling and swear words and then you left.'

‘You left?' Sean said. He was simply interested, not worried. He lives his own life. He eats and sleeps with us, comes to us when he needs something, but he lives outside with boys and bicycles.

‘All grown-ups fight from time to time. If they're married.'

‘I know,' Sean said. ‘Where's Mom?'

I pointed to the ceiling, to the sound of the vacuum cleaner.

‘We want to eat,' he said.

‘Let her work. I'll fix it.'

‘You're eating,' Natasha said.

‘I'll hurry.'

‘Is that your lunch?' Sean said. ‘Grape Nuts?'

‘It's my supper.'

I asked what they had done all morning. It was hard to follow and I didn't try; I just watched their loud faces. They interrupted each other: Natasha likes to draw a story out, lead up to it with history (‘Well see, first we thought we'd go to Carol's but then they weren't home and I remembered she said they were going—'). Sean likes to tell a story as quickly as he can, sometimes quicker. While they talked, I made sandwiches. It was close to noon but I lingered; Natasha was stirring Kool-Aid in a pitcher. In twelve minutes Edith would be waiting at the Shell station, but I stood watching them eat, and I hoped something would change her day and she wouldn't be there. But she would. An advantage of an affair with a friend's wife was the matter of phone calls: there was nothing suspicious about them. If Edith called and talked to Terry I'd know she couldn't see me this afternoon. I asked the children if they wanted dessert.

‘Do we have any?' Natasha said.

‘We never have dessert,' Sean said.

I looked in the freezer compartment for ice cream, then in the cupboard for cookies, sweets to sweeten my goodbye, and there were none. Sean was right: we never had desserts because I didn't like them and Terry liked them too much; she controlled her sweet tooth by having nothing sweet in the house.

‘I'm sorry,' I said. I knew I was being foolish but I couldn't stop. ‘I'm a stupid daddy. I'll bring some dessert home with me.'

‘Where you going?' Natasha said.

‘To get the car worked on,' my voice jumping to tenor with the lie.

‘Can I go?' Sean said. He had a moustache of grape Kool-Aid.

‘Me too,' Natasha said.

‘No, it takes a long time, then I'm going to run with Hank.'

‘We don't mind,' Natasha said. ‘We'll watch you.'

There is not one God, I thought. There are several, and they all like jests.

‘No you won't,' I growled, and went at her with fingers curled like talons, then tickled her ribs; her sandwich dropped to her plate, she became a fleshed laugh. ‘Because after we run we're going to a bar and drink beer. It's what mean old men do.'

They were laughing. Now I could leave. Then Terry came downstairs, one of my old shirts hanging out, covering her shorts.

‘I want us to start having desserts.'

‘What?'

‘Yay!' Sean said. ‘Desserts.'

‘We never have desserts,' Natasha said.

Terry stood looking at us, smiling, confused, ready to joke or defend.

‘We're depriving the kids of a basic childhood experience.'

‘What's that?'

‘Mother's desserts.'

‘Jesus.'

I wished she were the one going off to wickedness; I would stay home and make cookies from a recipe book.

‘Well, I'm off.'

I kissed their Kool-Aid mouths, touched lips with Terry, and went out. She followed me to the screen door.

‘Did you get enough to eat?'

‘Sure. Not as good as lobster,' talking over my shoulder, going down the steps, ‘but cheaper anyway.'

She didn't answer. In the car I thought adultery is one thing, but being a male bitch waging peripheral war is another, this poison of throwing gift-lobsters at your wife's vulnerable eyes, drying up her sweetness and hope by alluding to the drought of the budget. Which was also a further, crueler allusion to her awful belief in a secular gospel of good news: we were Americans, nice, healthy, intelligent people with nice, healthy, intelligent friends, and we deserved to eat lobsters the day after a fight, just as we deserved to see plays in Boston and every good movie that came to town, and when I told her there was no money she was not bitter, but surprised. She was also surprised when the bank told her we were overdrawn and she found that she had forgotten to record a check, or when someone wrote her about a bill that lay unopened in her desk.

When I got to the Shell station Edith was parked across the street. I told the man to change the oil and grease it.

‘I'll go run some errands with the wife,' I said, thumbing over my shoulder at Edith. ‘Then I'll come pick it up.'

He looked across the street at Edith.

‘Keys in the car?'

I slapped my pockets.