Aerogrammes (20 page)

Hank and Gina married at the courthouse with Barb as their witness, as well as Lucille, Hank’s former cleaning lady. Throughout the ceremony, Lucille stared at Hank in a dreamy daze, as if witness to a miracle. Afterward, they all stood outside the courthouse, glowing, and even Barb produced a close-lipped smile. “Thank you,” Lucille whispered in Gina’s ear, with a clenching hug. “Thank you for bringing him back to us. Call me when you need a cleaning.”

Lucille then made the mistake of trying to hug Hank. No
one had told her that Hank couldn’t be hugged; one could just as easily plant a kiss on a breeze. In her attempt, Lucille lost her balance and fell forward onto the sidewalk. Hank and Gina helped her to her feet, while a shaken Lucille brushed the gravel from her knees. “He can touch,” Barb lectured, arms folded, “but he can’t be touched.”

After the wedding, Gina and Hank entered a period of sweet, cyclical domesticity. Sundays were Gina’s favorite day, when she would bake muffins or biscuits while Hank sat at the breakfast table, reading the newspaper. Though he couldn’t eat, he loved the smell of baked goods. (“The Bundt cake was my favorite part of your Bio Video,” he told her.) Whether or not her cakes and muffins turned out, Hank was happy so long as the air was laced with butter and burnt sugar.

While the batter rose in the oven, Gina listened to Hank tell of the city as he had once known it. In high school, he lived around the corner from the Hilltop Theater, in the East End of town. The Hilltop was where he took his girlfriend on dates. He also liked hanging around Benny’s Billiards, where he’d shoot pool or play cards or work the pinball machines until his mother called and had Benny send him home for dinner. There was no point in lying to Mrs. Tolliver about where he’d been; she knew by the traces of oil on his shoe soles, the same oil that Benny used to wax his floors.

Here, he laughed just like Jeremy—
Hah!
—a single huff that punctured her heart.

To Hank, Gina confessed her hope to someday open a sophisticated beauty parlor that would double as a bar. She had heard of such a place in New York, where a woman could sip from a martini in one hand and receive a manicure on the other. Why not in Louisville? She was sick of salons with names like Swift Clips and Mane Attraction. She envisioned a black-and-white tiled floor, counters edged in chrome. Hank
loved the idea. He suggested a jukebox and maybe, on some nights, a live band. “I’ll keep an eye out for spaces to rent,” he said.

They talked all morning, until 11:00, at which point Hank gave her a brisk kiss on the cheek, put on his hat, and headed out the door.

After he left, Gina would garden, or watch TV, or try a cardio hip-hop DVD, hoping he wouldn’t come home early and catch her in action. She had quit her job at Swift Clips, but she still made occasional house calls to her oldest clients, the ones for whom driving had become a hazard. Several of the women remembered Hank Tolliver. When Gina told Mrs. Fenton about Hank and his girlfriend going to the Hilltop Theater, Mrs. Fenton laughed. “Girlfriend or girlfriends?” she said. “I don’t think he could keep track of them all, that old sly boots.”

Whatever she did during the day, Gina always made sure to be home by 8:00 sharp. At that hour, a humid coolness would sweep through the house and a vapor would creep up the mirrors. She would hurry down the stairs, tracking the scent of smoked dirt as it grew more potent, until she found Hank hanging his trench coat in the closet. He always greeted her the same way: “Hey, kid, where ya been?”

But Hank seemed preoccupied in the evenings. Sometimes they played a board game or watched a movie, but most of the time he was in bed by nine. “All that walking,” he’d say, though he never explained where he went, never asked her to join him. He simply wished her good night and retired to the guest room. In the contract, he had ceded the master bedroom to her, an arrangement she now regretted. She had never lain in a bed so big it made her lonely.

•

Over the next few days, Gina began to wake up earlier, thumping down the hall in the hopes that she would wake Hank. He seemed surprised to see her out of sweatpants, her hair up and fussy, pearl studs in her ears. Some nights she slept in rollers.

One morning, as Hank was folding up the newspaper, she asked if he might stay home tomorrow, since Ami was stopping by for lunch. Hank paused, smoothing his hand over the crease of the paper. “The sister who didn’t come to the courthouse?”

“There was that field trip,” Gina said quickly. “It might be nice for you both to get to know each other.”

“She didn’t want to know me before. Why now?”

“People change,” she said. “I’ve changed.”

“Yeah …,” he said, and looked away.

Gina stared at him, suddenly afraid of what he might say next. “Never mind. Forget it.”

She got up from the table but was stayed by a subtle sensation across her palm. This was what it felt like when Hank took her hand, not the blunt force of human touch but something delicate, like a soft cloth wrapped around her skin.

“The contract said mornings and evenings, Gina. I can’t be here whenever you want me to be.”

She shook his hand off. “Where do you go all day?”

Abruptly, he rose from the table and said he had to get going. She felt a kiss glance off her cheek.

Watching him head for the door, she blurted, “I looked in the guest room last night. You weren’t there.”

Hank stopped. He turned halfway, his brow creased. “That’s allowed. Check the contract.”

He continued out the door, his peaty fragrance dissolving from the room.

•

Later that night, unable to sleep, Gina crept up the stairs to the guest room. The door was closed, a faint slip of light beneath it. She tapped her fingernail against the door. “Come in,” he said.

Hank was sitting up in a bed so high, it required a wooden step stool to climb aboard. He wore red plaid pajamas. The bedside lamp brightened the side of his face and the cover of the book he was reading:
The Count of Monte Cristo
.

Hank lowered his glasses. “Hello, warden.”

He watched her walk to the other side of the bed and climb on top of the covers.

“Gina—”

“I tried Ambien, I tried counting sheep. Nothing works.” She peeled back the comforter and wiggled her way in until she was laying on her back, the sheets pulled up to her chin. She closed her eyes. When Hank began to protest, she whispered, “Just five minutes.”

She kept her eyes closed. After a moment’s pause, she heard the book thump shut and the click of the lamplight. She felt him settle noiselessly into bed. He didn’t move.

“Why did you and Helen divorce?” she asked.

Hank gave a long, bored sigh. “I fooled around on her. More than once.”

“Do you know what happened to her?”

“Nope.”

“And you don’t want to know?”

Hank rubbed his eyes. “Come on, Gina. We shouldn’t talk about that stuff. You read the Primer.”

Gina had skimmed it.
A Primer to Interlife Relationships
. She had found its tone condescendingly bright.
Too much looking back will lead to a nasty case of whiplash. Leave past relationships in the past
.

In a small voice, Gina asked if he ever missed Helen.

Hank flung off the covers and hopped out of bed. “It might be the mattress that’s keeping you up,” he said. “Sleep here tonight. See if you like this one better.”

Tucking his book under his arm, he left.

The next day, Ami came over for brunch. Gina toured her around the garden and pointed out the tomatoes that had just begun to plump. She liked them green and taut, lightly fuzzed in down, like newborns. Ami kept wrapping her sweater tighter and asking, “Is he here? Can he see us?”

Gina pinched a tomato from the vine and moved on, pretending not to hear. Ami and her family lived in a grand colonial house with a hot tub whose novelty had worn off among the kids, leaving her to dutifully boil alone once a week. Gina suspected that Ami was jealous, now that hers was no longer the larger house.

“All right, fine, I’m sorry,” Ami said. “It’s not that I’m against you marrying a ghost, in theory. I just don’t know anybody who’s done that. It’s a generational thing. Maybe in fifty years our kids will look back and think we were just a bunch of uptight assholes.”

“If we make it that far.”

“Just tell me you have a plan. If something goes wrong.”

It wasn’t the first time Ami had raised that concern. Normally Gina would have dismissed her sister, assured her that everything would be fine. But the night before had left Gina with questions that took root in the fertile dark, and by morning had flourished into the inevitable: Hank was having an affair with Helen. Two weeks ago, this would have meant much less to Gina. But lately she’d found herself dwelling on him when he wasn’t around, thinking ahead to what they
might discuss the next day. She was frustrated by his reticence in the evenings, when he returned to her slightly sad, and yet somehow fortified.

“I could divorce him,” Gina said. An image came to her, of Hank tracing his finger over the fleur-de-lis hinge. “But no, I couldn’t do that to him.”

“Why?” Ami’s eyes widened with more wonder than worry. “What would happen to Hank?”

“He’d go back there. Wherever he came from.” Gina wrenched a handful of sinewy weeds from the earth, wrung the dirt from their roots. “And I’d lose everything—the money, the house, the cars.”

“You could move in with me. Till you get your sea legs.”

“My legs are fine right here, Ami. This is my home.”

Ami bit her lip without reply. She drew a hand through Gina’s hair and twisted a lock around her finger like a vine. “Is that why you did this, Gina? For the house?”

“And someone to play Scrabble with.”

Ami released a curl, rested her hand on Gina’s shoulder. “No one could beat Jeremy at Scrabble.”

“No one but me.”

After Ami left, Gina went snooping around the house. Not snooping, she told herself, just a form of spousal tourism, harmless to the delicate ecosystem of their marriage.

But Hank wasn’t making it easy. He had eradicated the house of nearly every portrait and photo frame, an absence she had never noticed before. The Primer had talked a lot about making new memories, but completely razing the old seemed extreme.

She turned to her laptop and Googled “Helen Tolliver.”
There was only one Helen Tolliver (now Helen Tolliver Dade) who was originally from Louisville, Kentucky. She was featured in
The Springfield Gazette
for earning blue ribbons at the Third Annual Pie Festival, where her mocha pecan won the Nut category and Amateur Best in Show. Her new husband, George, remarked: “I’d eat that pie off the floor, it’s so good.” But the article showed only pictures of pies, not people.

Gina climbed the spiral staircase up to the tower, where Hank had brought her on their first date. Back then she had noticed the cardboard boxes and crates stacked up against one wall, but only now did she choose to open them one by one. She rooted through the trophies, diplomas, Boy Scout badges, a plastic rhinoceros, a framed certificate from the Rotary Club of Louisville, and a 1963
Playboy
sheathed in plastic featuring “The Nudest Jayne Mansfield.” At last she came across a leather photo album with
Our Wedding
embossed in gold on the cover. She opened it.

Helen. Helen was beautiful. She wore a boat-neck dress with elbow-length gloves and lofty hair that lengthened her neck. In nearly every picture Hank was glancing her way and laughing, as if he had just discovered a woman whose sense of humor outdid his own. The reception looked like a Derby party—bourbon in Mason jars and mint juleps in silver cups; lavish sun hats, pale pink neckties, careless charm.

As she flipped the pages, Gina felt shame and envy sinking in her stomach like stones, as if her snooping had taken her too far, as if Helen were looking right back at her, transmitting some silent message through her innocent smile.
You weren’t invited
, Helen said.
You want memories? Find your own
.

What came to Gina was a day like any other, when she and Jeremy were in the park, lying on their backs over soft spring grass. He was reading a magazine while Gina watched
the blue-brown currents of the Ohio River and its sprawling clots of driftwood, dislodged by yesterday’s rain, gliding downstream like the backs of ancient sea creatures.

She was beginning to doze off when Jeremy made a noise. “Hm,” he said, as if he were having a conversation with the magazine. With her ear on his shoulder, Gina felt his voice ripple through her, like a seismic wave.
“Mm.”

She raised her head. “I can’t sleep when you do that.”

“Do what?”

“When you go,
Mm, Mmmm
.”

He laughed. “I didn’t even notice I was doing it. Okay, I’ll be quiet.”

She nestled herself against his chest, and he went back to reading. But now the silence felt strange. Gina raised her head again. “What are you reading?”

“Your diary,” Jeremy said, without removing his eyes from the magazine. “ ‘Dear Diary, I am the luckiest woman in the world to be married to a guy who puts up with my shushing. He’s a patient man. And he looks like a male model.’ ”

She smiled. “A male model?”

“ ‘I heart him so much.’ ”

“I have never ‘hearted’ anything.”

“ ‘I just wish I could lay around with him forever.’ ”

The grass stirred. They went back to being quiet. Gina put her ear to the cavern of Jeremy’s chest, felt the twitching of his heart beneath his secondhand soccer jersey. All those organs carrying on their precious work until one day, like that, they wouldn’t.

Out of the blue, Jeremy kissed her hair and said, “Oh, all right, I heart you, too.”

•

In the late afternoon, Gina sat in the gazebo and watched shadows lean across the grass. She swirled the melted shards of ice in her vodka tonic. Drinking alone, in the daytime, wasn’t part of her usual routine, but in an hour or so, she would confront Hank, and a glass of watered-down courage might help.

What would she say to him? That she loved him, against all the odds? Play that Patsy Cline record in the background, that tune about railroad tracks and broken hearts? Some sentiments were better left in song. She poured herself another drink.