B000FCJYE6 EBOK (32 page)

“Afternoon.”

She poured herself a cup of coffee and grabbed a chair. “I suppose you’ve disowned me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

She laughed. “Thank God.”

“Honey, I think you should maybe stay here for a while.”

She looked up at me like I was nuts. “Not that I wouldn’t like to, Claire, but—”

“No buts.”

She glanced at Frank. “Take it he knows.” I nodded. “All right,” she said. “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

“Looks like your husband’s got himself into a bit of a fit.”

“What else is new?”

“Yeah, well, this time he’s after you.”

She set her coffee cup on the counter, crossed her legs, and looked at me.

“He came to the bar this morning, already drunk,” Frank said. “Got himself kicked out, and that takes some doing.”

“Was he on about me?” Donna said.

Frank scowled at the back door.

“Frank? He was on about me, wasn’t he? What in the hell did he say?”

“Donna, I can’t say I’m inclined to repeat it, except to say I think it’s better if you don’t go home right now. Let him drink himself out and sleep it off.”

“Does he know?”

Neither Frank nor I spoke.

Donna sighed and flung an arm out aimlessly, as if she were sweeping everything off a table. “Well, shit. So he knows. Who gives a rat’s ass. Had to happen sometime. Least now he’s got a reason to leave.”

“Donna,” Frank said, raising his voice, “wake up. Man doesn’t want to leave. He wants to kill you.”

He cleared his throat and poured himself another cup of coffee.

Donna studied the floor. “He said that?”

“Yes he did. And a lot of other things too.” Frank was quiet now, looking out the back door to where I kept my seedlings.

Donna looked at me. “Well, where in the hell are you gonna put me?”

I shrugged. “We’ve got plenty of space. Let’s just tell the kids and leave it at that for now.”

Frank pushed off the counter and turned. “How’s about seven?” he said to me.

“All right,” I said.

He tapped his hat and went to say good-bye to the kids.

“What’s at seven?” Donna asked me.

“We’re going to dinner.”

“What?”

I shook my head. “Don’t ask.”

I sat at my dressing table in my underwear and a slip, putting on my makeup. Donna and all three kids had crowded onto the bed with a plate of cookies, to watch me. The baby lay on the floor, happily examining her toes.

“You’re getting crumbs!” Davey shrieked at Kate, brushing them off onto the carpet.

“Well, excuse
me,
” she said, indignant.

“Don’t forget earrings,” Donna said. “Scoot over,” she said to Esau. “You’re hogging.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Pass the cookies, please.”

“Are you and Frank getting married?” Davey asked.

“They can’t,” Kate said. “She’s already married.”

“No she’s not,” Esau said. “She isn’t, she isn’t.”

“Yes she is, stupid. She’s married to Dad.”

“Dad’s dead. Dead Dad.”

I looked up in the mirror and caught him thumping his thigh.

“I know
that,
” Kate said.

“So she’s a widow.” Thump thump. “Black-widow spiders eat their mates.” Thump. “Widows mostly mourn.” Thump thump.

“Oh, that’s really nice,” Donna said. “That’s enough about it from both of you.”

“Apologies are offered,” Esau said, his face furrowed. He stuffed a cookie in his mouth. I was worried about him. He hadn’t let any of the three little ones out of his sight all day. He kept counting them.
One two three,
I’d heard him whisper,
one two three, all present and accounted for.

“Esau, how are you?” I asked his image in the mirror. He glanced up, his cheeks bulging. “Are you all right if I’m gone for a few hours? Or not? You have to tell me the truth. Or I’ll”—I didn’t know what I’d do—“take your books for a week.”

His eyes widened and he shook his head. “I’m okay. Really, super okay. Very much okay.” He stuffed another cookie in his mouth. “Precisely how long will you be gone?”

“Three hours,” I said. It seemed like a safe bet.

He looked at his watch, which I mightily regretted having gotten him, and said, “Ten
P
.
M
. That is your curfew. We’ll still be up, so we’ll know.”

“All right, then. I won’t be late.”

Kate nibbled. I watched her in the mirror while I put on my blush. She looked confused.

“So are you not married?” she finally asked, worried.

I glanced at Donna. “I’ll always be married to your dad, in a way.”

“But you could get married again.”

“I suppose I could.”

“So are you and Frank getting married?”

I sighed. “No. Frank and I are having dinner. That’s all.”

“Dad,” said the baby, sounding cheerful. We all looked at her. “Dad!” she said again, looking around, pleased with the attention.

Esau scrambled upright and grabbed her. She dangled, giggling. “Dadadadada!”

“She called me Dad! Did you hear her?” Esau crowed, and danced her around the room.

“Oh, Christ,” Donna said. “That’s rich.”

“It’s her first word!” Esau shrieked. “I’m calling Oma!” And he dashed out.

“For a wedding anyway she has to have a veil,” Davey said disdainfully, pulling a pillowcase off a pillow and putting it on his head.

Donna flopped backward. “Claire, this is a loony bin.”

“Yes it is,” I said.

The doorbell rang and they all scrambled off the bed, Kate yelling, “Get dressed! Get dressed!” and slamming the door behind herself.

Okay, I thought, looking around. Okay. Okay. Here we go. Dress. I stood up and slid it out of its Norby’s bag. We’d fussed around in my closet for an hour and finally settled on a blue not-really-silk number that, Donna said,
gave my ass a little oomph.
Out in the living room, I heard Donna offer Frank a drink, and had an unexpected jolt of panic as I heard him say, “Well, just a little splash, thanks.”

I sat down with a thud on the vanity stool. I stared into the mirror. The vanity was the only piece of furniture I’d taken with me from my mother’s house. It was old. Maybe valuable, who knew? It was mine, a piece of my memory, it was the way I’d always thought of her, sitting there fussing with her face, her hair, her treasures in a cloisonné box. I sat there, running my hands over the mahogany.

She and I stared at each other in the mirror.

What am I doing, I thought. It’s too soon. There’ll be talk.

They’ll see us. We’ll walk in; Frank will hold the door and take my wrap. They’ll all look up.

And then?

I took off my wedding ring and opened the left-hand drawer. I put it in the cloisonné box with the other treasures. I reached for a bottle of perfume and decided against it. That was too much.

Somehow that settled everything, and I went out into the living room just in time to catch Frank knocking back a double. His eyes caught on me and tripped. He coughed.

“Hi, Frank,” I said.

“Hello there.”

“You’re looking sharp.” He did, in a seersucker summer suit, a little too short in the wrists.

“Don’t look half bad yourself.” Immediately he regretted his choice of words, and I could see him trying to figure out how to rearrange them or replace them with new ones, his face twisting up as if he were eating a lemon sour.

Donna looked from one of us to the other. She sat comfortably on the couch, under a heap of children. “Well, go already,” she said, waving us toward the door. “Git.”

“Yeah, git!” Kate said, braiding Donna’s hair.

“All right, then,” Frank said, setting his glass down. “If you’re ready.”

I bent down to kiss the kids. Esau stared straight ahead, Kate scowled. Davey, bless his heart, took my hand and kissed it. “Night,” he said.

Frank held the car door open for me and bent down to fold in the edge of my dress before he closed it. We rode in silence down to the county road, and then he said, “Really, you do. Look lovely. I mean. Sure is a pretty-color dress.”

“Thanks.” I turned to look at him. “That’s a good-looking tie.”

He looked down at it as if he’d forgotten it was there. “Thanks,” he said. Then he laughed. “I have to tell you, I had a hell of a time tying it.”

“That so?”

“Ain’t worn a tie in a while, that’s for sure. Not much occasion.”

“Well, it looks just fine.”

“Good.” He sounded relieved.

I giggled. “Well, now that we’ve got that sorted out.”

He laughed. “Jesus. Act like a couple of teenagers.”

“I know it.”

“Out on a first date.”

“Silly.”

He cleared his throat and I looked out the window. In the late-summer dusk, the fields were a rich, fresh green from the rain and the barns looked like stains on the darkening sky.

“Pretty night,” I said. He was two feet away. I could hear him breathe. In the closed car, I could smell him, his own clean scent mixed with aftershave and soap.

“Sure is,” he said. The air between us hummed. I thought of the instant when Arnold had held out his hand to me, asking me that night in New York to dance: the few seconds that I looked at his thick hand and then took it, tentatively, and followed him onto the floor.

We passed the sign for Staples and the Elks Club came into sight on a hill at the edge of town. The parking lot was packed and you could already hear the music and a dull roar of voices from inside. Frank pulled into a spot and let the car run.

I stared straight ahead.

“Claire,” he said.

For one frantic second, I thought he would kiss me. How so many kisses in my life had begun with that one word, my name. I turned my head slightly toward him and studied the dashboard, weirdly remembering the night I lost my virginity, and the dashboard light, and the boy saying my name, once, and then not knowing how to ask.

It was easier then. Everything’s easier when you don’t know.

“Claire,” he said again, and leaned forward to set the odometer. His voice, it suddenly occurred to me, was beautiful, and I wanted to turn to him and tell him about the night I lost my virginity, my God, twenty years ago! and how suddenly I was realizing one day Kate would know, it would happen to Kate, and probably Esau too, and how could I explain to them? How could I tell them anything? Protect them from anything? And I sat there, twisting my hands in my lap, finding to my dismay that my ring finger was
bony, shrunken,
while the others were a regular size, and I turned to Frank, wanting to tell him everything, wanting just to fill the crowded air with words.

He put his hands on the steering wheel as if he were practicing driving.

“Arnold and I were friends,” he said. He shut his eyes briefly, as if bracing himself. I sat there. “And I have to tell you, I feel a little funny. I just—” He gestured. “You know. Don’t want to be disrespectful.”

“Frank,” I said. I opened and shut the glove compartment. I wanted to say, He’s dead. I wanted to say, I left long ago, and I am sorry and unspeakably sad, but I am alive. I am alive, and you are alive, and I am lonely and you are too, and I am not ready for this but there are two feet between us and we are only going to dance. And if we only dance one night, this will be all right.

I said, “You’re not.”

“It doesn’t look good,” he said firmly.

“Who’s looking?” I knew perfectly well who was.

“Minute we walk in that door, the whole town will be. All I’m saying. That’s all right. That’s all right,” he repeated, talking to either himself or the dash. “All I’m saying is, well,
Jesus,
Claire, this is difficult. I tell you, I feel like a grave robber. I feel like I’m stealing another man’s wife.” He looked out at the supper club, agonized. “Which is not to say I am making any assumptions, either.”

I studied his profile from the corner of my eye.

“I think I am not technically another man’s wife. Anymore,” I said hesitantly.

“Still.”

“I know,” I said.

“Still, I swear to God, Claire, I feel like he’s sitting here in the car between us. Just sitting here, I swear to God.”

“I know.”

He looked at me finally. I smiled. Before I knew I was going to do it, I smoothed out his eyebrow. He stared at me.

“And see,” he said, shaking his head slowly, “that’s just it. That is just it.”

I nodded.

“Because the hell of it is, I can’t do a damn thing about it now, anyway, now, can I? I can’t stop it now anymore than I can jump in front of a damn train.” He pounded the steering wheel once with the heel of his hand. “That is the
hell
of it, Claire.” He looked at me. “So we’d best go in and have dinner.”

At the wide red door of the supper club, he straightened his tie. “Ready?” he said.

“They’re looking.”

We were dancing.

“Of course they are. They’re looking at you,” Frank said.

“They might just as easily be looking at you. That
is
a particularly fine tie.”

“Oh, yes. I’d forgotten. Maybe that’s it, then. My tie.”

“Is it late?”

“Don’t think about it.”

“What should I think about, then?” I’d had a bit of wine, it seemed.

“Me.” He looked shocked at himself, put his cheek closer to mine, not terribly close, nothing obvious. Just enough that his ear was near my mouth.

“Pretty light on your feet,” he said, as if he were complimenting my begonias. I giggled.

“For an old girl, I guess I’m not too bad,” I said.

“Heh!” he scowled, disapproving. He drew his face back to look at me. And he put his rough hand out on my face and his thumb against the corner of my eye. “Not hardly,” he said gruffly, and the Motley-Staples Big Band played us a Viennese waltz.

As ten approached, I said I had to get home. It was raining again. He held his coat over my head and we ran to the car. The tires whooshed through the water on the road, and it ran in sheets over the windshield, wipers slapping. I hummed.