She Poured Out Her Heart (35 page)

“I really don't know.”

They sat in silence. Eric drank half his wine in one pull. Then he got up and climbed the steps to the back door.

Stay or go? She could walk right around the house, get into her car and drive off, never see either of them again. Or no, she could not, because she had left her purse and keys inside on the kitchen counter. She swore under her breath, although there was no one there to hear her. Having come this far, there was no retreat.

The back door cracked open. “Dinner,” Jane called.

Bonnie took a fortifying drink of wine and rose to go inside.

In the kitchen, Jane's voice floated back to her. “Go ahead and sit down, I'm just going up to get the kids settled.”

Eric was already in the dining room and Bonnie took her usual place to one side. The table was set with one of Jane's flowered cloths and the earthenware dishes she favored for everyday dinners.

Eric turned to look at her as she sat down, without expression, then went back to kneading his chin with one hand and staring out the front windows. A green salad was to the side of each plate, and a loaf of brown bread, unsliced, was in the center of the table. A stick of butter and a small pitcher that was probably salad dressing.

Bonnie might have made a joke about the unpromising look of the meal, but it didn't seem like a jokey situation. They heard Jane upstairs, telling one of the kids to stop doing whatever it was they were doing. Then her feet descending. Jane came into the dining room in a rush. “All right, then. Let me just . . .”

She went into the kitchen and they heard her opening, closing things. “Eric? Would you put down a trivet? There's one in the silver drawer.” Eric got up, placed a circle of cork on the table, sat back down. Jane came in with a casserole swaddled in hot pads. “Oh, the bread. One second.” She maneuvered the casserole onto the cork and returned to the kitchen.

Bonnie and Eric regarded the casserole. It was brown, with the lumpy surface of an unplowed field. It was hard to identify the ingredients. Something white and weblike that might be cheese. “Christ,” Eric said, to himself, not Bonnie.

Jane came back in with a wicker basket of the sliced bread. “All right, everybody can serve themselves.”

Nobody did. “What is it?” Bonnie asked, trying not to sound like one of Jane's children.

“Feta and Chili-Vegetable Crumble. Here.” Jane took the serving spoon, pried up a corner of the casserole, and deposited a helping on Bonnie's plate. “It's butternut squash and sweet potatoes. And the feta. And sriracha sauce, that gives it a little kick. Eric?”

Jane handed the serving spoon to him. Eric used it to put a scant portion on his plate. He reached for two slices of bread and buttered them thickly.

“What's in the topping?” Bonnie asked.

“Wheat flour, thyme, ground walnuts, some of the cheese. Oh, and oatmeal.”

Bonnie used her fork to push aside the brown layer and tried some of the vegetables. They were orange, with the melted cheese adhering to them here and there in white curds. She tasted and got a blast of hot garlic. “Wow,” she said, fanning her mouth. “Spicy.”

“That's the sriracha. I have extra in the kitchen if you want it.”

“No thanks. Wow, I really got a good hit there, I think I need some water. That's OK, I'll get it.”

Bonnie got up to run water in the kitchen sink and, since the others could not see her, put her scorched mouth to the faucet to drink directly from it. Then she filled a glass with water and returned to the dining room.

“You all right?” Jane asked when Bonnie came back in.

“Yeah, it just landed kind of funny.” She sat down, picked up her fork, and started in on the salad. Her eyes were still stinging. She didn't dare look in Eric's direction.

Jane got up then. “You know, I've got a whole different dish of it without the sriracha. I made it for the kids, I'll bring it out.”

Out of reflex politeness, Bonnie started to tell her not to bother. But she stayed quiet and took a slice of the bread, for something to do. She was scarcely hungry. “Here you go,” Jane said, putting the new casserole down on a folded kitchen towel. “This should go down a little easier.”

“Thanks.” Bonnie spooned up some of the new glop. She was aware of Jane watching her.

She lifted a forkful. “Oh yeah, this is better, I can tell.” Nodded, yum yum. The vegetables had a peculiar, slippery texture in her mouth, like something that did not wish to be swallowed.

Bonnie's stomach roiled. She had a sudden stupid panicky thought: Jane had poisoned her.

It was all a set-up, a monstrous plot, this new dish prepared just for her. The hot sauce a ploy. Jane would sit back and watch her eat, then later that night Bonnie would start to sweat and heave and kick. . . .

With an effort, she swallowed. “Yeah, much better,” she said, and took another bite.

“Like I said, it's an experiment.” Jane ate a bite of her own portion, considered it. “You know, trying out some vegetarian options. But less sriracha next time. Definitely. It's a little too punchy.”

“It's slop,” Eric said. “It's completely inedible. I don't know what you're trying to prove.”

Bonnie kept her eyes on her plate. In the corner of her vision she saw Jane take another bite of the casserole, chew, swallow, put her napkin up to her lips. “I suppose it proves that everybody has different tastes. Different appetites. I think it turned out fine.”

Eric pushed his plate away. “Slop. A possum wouldn't eat it.”

“Well, I'm not a possum, am I? I'm sorry you don't like it. Bonnie's not a fan either, she's having a hard time with it. But she's trying to keep up a good front, aren't you, Bon?”

Bonnie said nothing. “You two,” Jane began, then she reached for her water glass and drank.

They waited. Jane put the glass down. “You both seem to have a taste for any number of things that I don't share. Fine. I've thought about it and I decided I don't care. You should do whatever you want. Just don't think I don't know. And keep the children out of it. I shouldn't have to say that, but maybe I do.”

Jane stood up and cleared her plate. She ran water in the sink, then she called back to them. “I made dessert. Brownies.” Then they heard her climbing the stairs.

Bonnie and Eric looked at each other, haggardly. “What happened?” Bonnie asked.

“This is how she's been. I can't stand it.”

Bonnie felt herself shaking, the tension coming out of her in rippling, hiccuplike waves. “I'm sorry.”

“Everybody's sorry.”

“Does she know we're not . . .” Bonnie stopped, embarrassed. She didn't want to say, “Not sleeping together anymore,” although that was what she meant.

“I don't know what she knows. Or how she knows it. She just does. It's creepy.”

“I guess we're . . .”

“What?”

“Not as smart as we think we are.”

Eric waved this away. “I haven't felt very smart lately.”

Bonnie wished he'd unbend, let himself be something other than furious and ashamed and hostile. But she was not allowed to expect anything of him now. She guessed she never had been. “I should go.” She stood, steadying herself on the table edge. “I hope,” she began, but trailed off, because in fact she did not know what she hoped for.

She was already out the front door when he came up behind her and pulled her inside and held her body against him and kissed her face and hair and then released her and walked back into the house.

Bonnie tried writing a letter to Jane. She never got very far. Dear Jane, I know how you must feel. Except that she didn't. Maybe she never had. Good old anxious, long-suffering Jane, so reliably preoccupied with so many small challenges. Now she was through with that, or no longer cared. No longer cared about her husband or about Bonnie. She'd said so. Friendships didn't always last forever. Sad fact of life. People moved on. Things came to a bad end. So Bonnie told herself. But losing Jane was—and this was a dopey thought, but it came to her—like losing a tooth, when your tongue kept rooting around in your mouth, just to feel the hole.

And then Jane called her. It was a couple of weeks after the deadly
dinner. Bonnie looked at Jane's name on the caller ID with dismay, but in the end she answered.

“Eric's miserable,” Jane started in, without preamble. “I can live with that, but it's hard on the kids. They keep asking if Daddy's mad at them.”

Bonnie muttered something about that being too bad. She'd thought she was out of the business of being responsible for Eric's well-being.

“I meant what I said. I have no objections to the two of you—being together. In fact I can see where there would be advantages.”

“Correct me if I'm wrong,” Bonnie said, “but last time I saw you, it hardly seemed like you were perfectly OK with the concept.”

“I was angry. Hurt. I had to process that. Get beyond it.”

“I don't think I can ever eat squash or sweet potatoes again.”

“Oh come on. It wasn't that bad.”

“Yes it was.”

“All right, look, it's taken me a while, but I've made progress, you know, emotional and mental progress. Set aside a lot of my insecurities and come up with what's best for everyone. You, me, Eric, the kids. That's why I'm calling.”

“You're calling because you think it would be better for your children if I went back to having sex with their father.”

“Do you always have to say things in the crassest possible way? But yes, something like that.”

“That's really white of you.”

“I hate that expression, you know better than to use it even when you're making fun of it.”

“Really Caucasian of you.”

“What were you like when you were actually in the eighth grade?”

“I was hell on wheels,” Bonnie said. “A worldbeater.” She allowed her mood to lift ever so slightly at this hint of their old back and forth, needling humor. She said, “Look, you know I'm—”

“Yes, I know you are all those things. Sorry and all. Let's not dwell.”

“No, you have to let me say it. I apologize. We thought we could avoid hurting you. It was just easier to be dishonest.” Unworthy tears formed in her eyes. She had to stop feeling sorry for herself. It was one more unattractive character flaw.

“All right. Noted. I'm more interested in how we can . . . move forward.”

Bonnie thought she heard a hesitation, as if Jane might still be trying to talk herself into this particular idea. She said, “Could I ask you something? Why don't you just separate. Divorce. I mean, if you really don't care what he does. It would be tough and scary, but that's what people do when they come to this particular fork in the road.” It occurred to Bonnie that it sounded like she just wanted Jane out of the way. Impure motives. Not that her motives were ever particularly pure.

“Divorce came up. Not until the kids are older. We can tough it out. People do. But . . .”

“I don't think I want to be in charge of babysitting your husband until you're ready to get rid of him. No thank you.”

“Listen to me. It's not that. Or it's not all that. He needs, he deserves, somebody who loves him. In some . . . way I don't.”

Bonnie was silent. Then she said, “I don't know if you can expect things to work out that neatly.”

“But you do love him, don't you? That's how it works for you, isn't it? Hormones. Biochemical processes.”

“Thanks,” Bonnie said. “You make me sound like a spawning salmon.”

Jane sighed. “But that's exactly what the whole sex thing always seems like to me. Like a bunch of wriggling, copulating fish.”

“Why did you get married, exactly? Remind me.”

“I guess I thought you were supposed to. I was lonesome. And it's not like I didn't care for Eric.” Bonnie noted the past tense. Jane went on. “It's better to get all this out in the open. A relief, really. The two of you gave off such a guilt vibe. Should I have Eric call you?”

“This is a totally weird conversation.”

“That can't be helped,” Jane said, briskly. “At least now we don't have to keep having it.”

“Well . . . what does Eric think about all this?”

“Who knows what he thinks. Mostly he's been sulking and feeling sorry for himself. I have to go, the kids need to return their library books.”

Bonnie tried to wrap her mind around this new circumstance. There was something incongruous and off-putting about it. She and Eric would now be paired off like rabbits or racehorses, and the entire distressing problem would thus be solved. It would only make sense to someone like Jane, who by her own admission did not understand such things, did not know the nuances. Had the words but not the beat. It reminded Bonnie of hearing a group of Chinese people singing, with gusto, John Denver's “Take Me Home, Country Road,” in which “road” became “roar,” and so on. John Denver, it seemed, was very popular in China.

And how would Eric feel? Maybe he would not like being given permission, or told what to do.

Maybe he would no longer want her.

This was her most shaming fear. He would take a new, cold look at their time together, decide that it was based on the cheap romantics of secrecy and betrayal, and if that was gone, not much else was left.

Bonnie spent an unhappy few days after Jane's call. She didn't hear from Eric but then she hardly expected to. It was possible that he felt as embarrassed as she did.
That's how it works for you, isn't it? Hormones. Biochemical processes.
As if love was only a matter of falling on her back some endless number of times. Something she had no choice in.

It made her angry to think how shallow and mindless she might be made to seem. A grubby pleasure-seeker, not to mention all the other choice language that got hung on women who had too much enthusiasm for sex. Although it was true that her enthusiasm had gone a bit downhill lately.