Continental Drift (53 page)

Could it be? Could the strong part of his life be dream and the weak part real? If so, then he was just crazy, that’s all. Crazy. A quiet kind of madman who lived his dreams and dreamed his life. Most people were a little like that anyhow, especially people whose lives, like Bob’s, were ordinary and, despite the ordinariness, gave them constant trouble. Maybe, just possibly, the awful pressures that Bob’s ordinary life had placed on him, the difficulty, for him, of living an ordinary life well, had finally made him crazy. Most men, he was sure, lived such a life easily: they worked and saved, they took care of their wives and children, who were grateful and respectful for it, and their days and nights passed cheerfully by, until finally they were gray-haired and a little fat and semiretired and spent the winters in Florida with the wife, fishing, watching baseball on TV, waiting for the kids and grandkids to come down for the holidays. But a few men, like Bob, despite their being just as intelligent, dutiful and orderly as the others, turned their ordinary lives into early disasters and never knew why. That can make a man crazy, Bob thought.

For a second, he thought of going inside the store, just in case Ted Williams was there again. He peered across the parking lot, looking for Ted’s white Chrysler, then remembered his mistake regarding
the Chrysler and said to himself, See, I am crazy! What I imagine, what I remember and what I actually experience get all mixed together, and I can’t tell the difference. He was now sure that he had dreamed the death of the Haitians.

The relief and pleasure he took from the conviction lasted only a few seconds, however. As he started toward his car, he put the folded newspapers under his left arm and shoved both hands deep into his pants pockets and with his left hand instantly felt the money, a packet of bills a half-inch thick. There it was, blood money, uncounted, forgotten, invisible for whole hours at a time, then suddenly reappearing, linking everything back together again, closing and welding fast the split in his life, so that his dreams and his daily life were one thing again. It’s horrible,
horrible!
he thought, and he almost cried out, and he withdrew his hand as if he had touched a cold, dry serpent there.

He wandered in and out of the trailer all the rest of the afternoon, unable to leave the place, unable to sit down and make his home there, a ghostly figure who repeatedly appeared in the yard and then stood at the threshold outside the screened door for a few moments, until finally the woman and children inside felt his presence and looked up at him, and he turned away and went back to the road again. Up the lane to the highway he walked, then back, past the trailers to the water, where gulls and terns poked between chunks of coral and blond, almost translucent crabs scrambled in the shallows for shelter. A car driven by Horace came and went, and all the while Bob kept his back to the man. Around five-thirty, Allie Hubbell came home from the crafts shops in Key Largo, walking in from the bus stop on the highway, and. Bob kept his back to her too. She stood a moment on her stoop, watching him, and not until she had lit a cigarette and gone inside did he turn slowly back toward his own trailer. He stopped next to his car, got in, sat behind the wheel awhile, got out, walked to the water again, resumed peering at the horizon. The sky was low, zinc gray and smooth, like sheet metal. A steady southeast wind blew, keeping the water choppy and dark as old, cold coffee.

Finally, Elaine came out on the steps and called his name. He turned and faced her.

“You want supper?” she shouted into the wind.

He shook his head no and turned away from her, and she went quickly inside, closing both doors against the wind.

A little later, when it was nearly dark, Elaine came out again, this time wearing a pink cardigan sweater buttoned to the throat to cover her bare shoulders and the low neckline of the short black dress she wore for work. Wobbling on high heels in the sand, she came up to Bob and asked him for the car keys.

“I’m sick of taking the bus,” she said. “I hate being seen like this five nights a week, and you don’t like anybody from up there giving me a ride home, remember?”

“What’d you do last night?” he said. As if he’d asked an idle question, he pursed his lips and watched a crab at his feet scuttle to the water.

She studied his profile for a second, then said, “Sunday and Monday I’m off, Bob. Remember? I spent the evening at home, talking to the police.”

“This Tuesday?”

“Yes, this is Tuesday. What did
you
do last night?”

He didn’t answer.

“I said, ‘What did
you
do last night?’ “

“You know what I did. Where I was,” he said in a thick, sullen voice.

“No. As a matter of fact, I don’t. All I know is you left here early Sunday in the car and you drove back into the yard this morning, and that’s all I know. That’s it. Oh, yes, I know the police met you this morning at Moray Key as you came off the boat. Because they said they would, and if you hadn’t been there, they would have been back here. And I know they thought for a while you were involved with Ave’s drug business, because they said they did. Maybe they still think it. But really, in the end, that’s everything I know about you lately. You, though, you know everything about
me
. What I do every minute
of my life. No surprises. Nothing to sneak up and hit you on the head when you’re not looking. If you told me right now this minute that for the last two days you were smuggling heroin or cocaine or whatever, guns, anything, I’d just say, ‘Oh, so
that’s
the kind of man he is.’ You could tell me you had a girlfriend in Miami or someplace and spent the last two days in bed with her, and I’d say the same thing. Because I don’t know anymore. I don’t know what kind of man you are, Bob. That’s the truth. You understand that? Somehow it wouldn’t seem so awful to me, so hard to take, if you didn’t know what kind of woman I am. But you do. You know me. And it’s not fair. And it’s hard. Hard. This is not like it used to be with us. And I don’t know where it went from being fair to being unfair. Because I never knew that’s what it was between us, fair. I only knew it after it was gone, after it had been unfair a long time. A long time now. And you know it. Don’t you?”

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t look at her eyes, so he turned away from her altogether and faced the darkening sea.

Finally, he said, “You can quit that job. Tonight, if you want. You don’t have to go in. Just call and say you quit. I made … I made good money this trip.”

“Running drugs.”

“No, no. Fishing. A big party. Big spenders.”

“Bob,” she said, and she sighed. “I just don’t … I don’t believe you, Bob.” She looked at his broad back, a wall, and shook her head slowly.

“Well … what if I did, what if I did do something that was illegal … and got away with it? What the hell difference, what would that make different, to you, I mean?”

“I’d think you were stupid,” she said. “And lucky. For once in your life. No, I don’t know what difference it’d make, really.”

“Well, let’s say I did, okay? Let’s say I came out with a lot of money. Not a whole lot, but enough to let you quit that fucking job. Would you? Quit the job?”

She was silent for a moment, and he turned back around and faced her.

“Well?” he asked.

“No. No, I wouldn’t quit.”

“Why not?”

“Because … because it’s drug money, Bob. It’s not like winning the state lottery or something, for God’s sake. It’s drug money.” She tilted her head up at him and examined his large, dark face. “This is what I mean, about not knowing you anymore. No, you keep your drug money. Buy yourself a new car with it, if you want. Anything. But don’t buy anything for me with it, or for the children. Just don’t. As far as I’m concerned, you can throw it in the ocean. I don’t want it touching me or my children, that’s all.”

“
Why,
for Christ’s sake? What’s the big deal it’s illegal? Lots of things are illegal and we do them.”

“Like what?”

He hesitated a second. “Well, you know. Little things. Drinking and driving. You know what I mean. And what about Eddie, for Christ’s sake? You think
he
wasn’t doing anything illegal? And Ave? You didn’t seem to mind it when what Eddie or Ave did ended up benefiting you.”

“They’re not you, Bob. And Eddie’s dead. Ave’s in jail. But even if that wasn’t true, even if they were still out there, still getting away with it, like you think you just did, it’d be the same. Look at me, Bob. I’m not crying. Not anymore. And I’m not yelling. Not that anymore, either. I’m just saying. I’m not upset, and I’m not angry. I’m just saying.”

“Saying
what,
for Christ’s sake? You don’t love me anymore? Is that what you’re saying? I’m too stupid, or … or I’m too illegal, or … or immoral? Or what?”

“No. Not that, none of that. Something else. It’s more complicated.” She seemed genuinely puzzled. “I don’t know … something worse, maybe.”

“What could be worse?”

“To love you and not know you, I guess. That’d be worse. For me.”

“Jesus H. Christ, Elaine! You know me.”

“No. Not anymore. And I don’t know why, if it’s because you’ve changed who you are since we left New Hampshire, or because things have happened to you since then. Bad things. Things I didn’t even know were happening, some of them. All I’m sure of is I don’t know who you are anymore.”

“You know me.”

She smiled. “I’m going to be late for work. Let me have the keys. We can talk later if you want.”

He gave her the keys. “I hate that fucking job. More than you can ever imagine. That you have to do that.”

“I hate it too, Bob. More than
you
can ever imagine. But it’s legal. And right now, it’s the only job we’ve got.” She turned and started toward the car.

“Elaine! What … what can I
do?
”

She kept walking.

“Do you want to go back to New Hampshire?” he called out. “Is that what you want?”

She stopped, turned and said, “Yes. Yes, I do.” Then she opened the car door and got in. A few seconds later, she was gone, and it was dark. Slowly, Bob crossed the yard and went inside to his children.

Elaine came home at one-fifteen, stopping only for a moment in the living room, as if to give Bob a chance to look up from the David Letterman show and ask her to sit down, have a cup of tea, talk things over. He didn’t. All he did was glance at her when she came through the door and then look back at the TV screen as she crossed the room. She called from the kids’ bedroom, “ ’Night, Bob,” and he answered, “’Night,” and that was it. They no longer slept together.

He watched the TV screen inattentively, as if instead it were watching him, until the National Anthem was played at two-thirty and programming ceased. A half hour later, he realized that the blue eye
in front of him was dead, and he reached over and flicked it off. With the lights on, he lay back on the sofa and tried to sleep. He squirmed and bent and unbent himself, but his body felt like a sack of nails to him, painful in any position, until finally he gave up trying, sat and smoked cigarettes, finished all the beer in the refrigerator and read
People
magazine twice, until it disgusted him, and he threw it on the floor. All those happy, pretty, successful people—he hated them because he knew they didn’t really exist, and he hated even more the magazine that glorified them and in that way made them exist, actors, rock musicians, famous writers, politicians. Those aren’t
people,
he fumed, they’re
photographs
.

At six, he heard the baby wake, burble and yap to himself a few minutes and then cry to have his diapers changed. Bob rose slowly from the couch, got the bottle of apple juice from the refrigerator and headed down the hallway toward the children’s room. Elaine appeared at the door, crossed the hallway silently, as if alone there, and went into the bathroom, closing the door tightly behind her. As he entered the bedroom, softly gray in the predawn light, he heard the splash of the shower behind him. Ruthie and Emma, accustomed to their brother’s morning howl and the sounds of a parent tending to him, slept on, grabbing at the last, fat hour of sleep before they themselves had to get up.

Ruthie lay curled away from Bob, facing the wall, her thumb jammed into her mouth; Emma, in the other bed, slept on her belly, arms and legs splayed, as if swimming underwater. In the crib, which was squeezed between the dresser and the back wall of the small, crowded room, Robbie lay flat on his back, scowling and red with discomfort, until suddenly he saw Bob towering over the crib and ceased to cry.

Bob handed him the bottle, and while the baby noisily sucked at it, proceeded to strip away the sopped, plastic-lined paper diaper. When he had the baby’s bottom naked, he stopped for a moment and thought, almost amazed, as if seeing it for the first time, My God, he has a penis. Just like me. An ordinary, circumcised penis. A doctored tube coming out of his digestive tract, that’s all. It was contracted and short, shrunken to little more than thimble-sized from the cold and sudden exposure to the air. Below it swelled the testicles in their tight pouch, like the breast of a tiny, pink bird. There was no mystery, no power, no sin, no guilt. Just biology. It was terrifying for that, and for an instant, wonderful.

“Oh, Robbie,” Bob whispered.

The baby, large blue eyes peering over the cloudy bottle, looked up at his father, and though his lips and cheeks yanked furiously at the rubber nipple, the baby seemed to be smiling. Bob returned his son’s gaze for a moment, then began to examine his own hands, huge against the infant’s tiny, smooth torso, legs and feet. They were coarse hands, scratched and hairy across the tops, with thick veins zigzagging over the surface like blue bolts of lightning, and suddenly his hands looked like weapons to Bob, weapons with wills of their own, like stones that could hurl themselves, and he hauled them out of the crib and jammed them into his pockets.

Once again, his left hand felt the money, but this time, instead of pulling away from it, the hand grabbed onto the packet and held it for a long moment. “Robbie,” Bob whispered. “Robbie, your father is a terrible man. Look what he’s ended up doing,” he said, and his voice sounded like a cold wind raiding a shutter. “Just look at it.”