A Good Divorce (33 page)

“Cuss scrabble,” Lill said sheepishly. “Sorry, Cyrus. I just wanted to see what words they knew.”

I smiled to myself, the kind of hidden crack in the heart that makes you feel momentarily lighter. “Where's Jude?”

“Stomach cramps,” Lill said. “She's in the kids' room.”

“Too much vino.”

“I think she's just tired. I hope it's okay she's using their bedroom.”

I hung up my coat and draped the dog leash over its hook in the closet. A headache was advancing from the horizon of my skull toward the crown. The cheaper the wine, the bigger and quicker the hangover. I heard Warren asking if he could join the scrabble game as I walked down the hall toward the kids' room. I didn't even know why I was doing it. Jude was Lill's to administer to now. I guessed it was curiosity, wanting to know what she thought of the evening. The door was ajar and the room pitch dark. If she was asleep, I'd just leave her be. I made a warning tap on the door with the pads of my fingers as I went in. There was no answer. The light from the living room provided enough candlepower to see the lump under the covers. I knelt down next to the kids' twin bed, my knee resting on what must have been one of Jude's shoes. The room smelled of dirty clothes and sheets that needed laundering. As my pupils dilated, I could make out the hair on the back of her head. Judging from the shape of the lump, she must have pulled her knees up to her chest.

“Jude, it's me.”

She drew her head further under the sheets like a turtle, then the fingers of one hand reached up and combed the hair back over one ear. The box springs creaked as she stretched her legs toward the footboard. An elbow emerged and pushed the bedspread and blankets away from her head. She rolled onto her back and looked straight up at the ceiling. I studied her familiar profile, the generous eyebrows, the Roman arch in the bridge of the nose, and the parted lips that were dry from breathing through her mouth.

“Can I get you something?”

“I feel sick,” she whispered, still not looking at me. “Maybe you better get me a pan.”

I almost put my palm on her forehead to check her temperature. “Sure, just a minute.”

I went to the bathroom and checked the wastebasket, which had a flattened toothpaste box and some crumpled toilet paper on the bottom and a used string of dental floss caught on the rim. With my bare hands and bar soap, I scrubbed the drinking glass that we kept our toothbrushes in, rinsed it, and filled it with cold water. I rolled up the bath mat, grabbed the wastebasket and water, and reentered the hallway. There was laughter and clapping at the scrabble board. Somebody yelled, “‘Caca's' cussing,” and I turned into the bedroom and pushed the door shut far enough to muffle the noise.

When I'd finished setting up the vomit basket in the center of the mat, Jude had turned herself over and was facing me. “They're having a good time,” she said.

“Yeah, do you believe it?”

Her face glistened with sweat. “Not much has changed, huh?”

“What do you mean?”

“You're still taking care of me.”

“I don't ever remember you sick. I kind of like you this way.”

She started to laugh, then grimaced as she pushed a fist toward her abdomen and doubled up. I resisted the temptation to give her a pat on the shoulder. She looked the way I felt the night I had appendicitis in college, when I played shuffleboard at the Century Tavern and thought it was just gas pains from the beer and pepperoni sticks until the pain localized to where it felt like someone had left a jack-knife open inside me. “Maybe I've got a bleeding ulcer.”

“That's doesn't come until law school.”

She grimaced again. “Maybe I'm not as tough as I thought.”

I didn't want to say anything else that would make her laugh, which was a new idea, worrying that she'd laugh too much. “I can't believe I ever seriously considered the kids living without you.”

The side of her head sunk into the pillow so that her lips rubbed against the pillowcase as she spoke. “I did. Remember when Justine was a baby and I set her down behind the wheel of that car in the parking lot and she was almost killed? For years, I couldn't tell anyone about it, not even my mom. I thought it meant I wasn't cut out to be a mother. I never understood why you didn't just yell and scream at me.” She licked her lips. “When the kids acted up this year, that whole incident came back to me and I lost my confidence. I knew I was a mediocre wife but I was scared to death I was going to turn out to be a crappy mother too. That's why I couldn't believe what you did.”

“You mean …”

“Testify for me. You had me by the balls, Cyrus.”

She was drained of the bravado I'd come to fear, and it felt as if she'd hear me if I answered in my own voice. No more spitting into the wind. “You'd have won without me.”

“I'm so tired of wasting energy changing pronouns to hide the fact that I'm living with a woman and worrying about whether my mother will approve.”

I remembered the vet putting my dog to sleep when I was a kid and holding her until she went still in my arms. Something was expiring between Jude and me and I wanted to hold on to her until it was gone.

“You're a scrapper, Jude.”

“I didn't plan this, honest.”

I listened to the voices arguing in the next room. The words were indistinguishable and the people seemed so far away. They weren't around when this thing started and would never know what it meant. There was a pride rising in me, though, the kind my mom must have felt, to know that she could still believe in someone who mattered despite all evidence to the contrary. Jude's and my union may not have been tender, but it had proved stubborn. Something in it didn't want to die. I brushed the hair off Jude's clammy forehead and searched for her eyes.

“I never thought you'd be waiting for me on this side of our marriage,” she whispered, and slid her hand across the sheet to grip my arm.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2003 by John E. Keegan

978-1-5040-1578-3

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