Other People We Married (13 page)

He spoke without turning around. “Not really. I like it here. I have the whole basement.”

I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me, and tucked my hair behind my ears. Mud told me that when it got really cold, he’d tell me where to get a good hat.

A car turned down our block—it was my car—James was home early. He pulled into our narrow garage, which was a lighter shade of pink than the house. I heard the engine rumble off. The world was overwhelmingly quiet; even the squirrel in the tree stopped nibbling and scratching.

James would want to know what I was doing, crouching in the yard with Mud, my feet straddling the remains of a flower bed, a borrowed BB gun snug in my armpit, when I was supposed to be at work. I would have to explain it to him.
I could just tell him; my path was not about coffee, or gossip. It was about something else—real estate, maybe. Standing there, waiting for my husband to emerge from the garage, I thought about how each time you moved, you left behind more and more: the antique furniture; the soft, faded T-shirts; the garbage and then the garbage cans themselves, until maybe one day you were left with only what you could carry on your back, and what was packed inside your own skin. The abandoned addresses would line up on the front lawn and, knowing you wouldn’t miss them, turn their backs as you drove away. Now that we’d left New York, we were already floating in space, tethered only to each other.

When James stepped out from the garage, his body no wider than a sapling, I raised the butt of the gun to my shoulder and peered through the sight.

“Sophie?” he said, his voice lilting up, as though unsure if it was really me. He held his briefcase in front of his body, a paper-filled bulletproof vest. “What are you doing out here?”

“Pow,” I said, smiling.

James took a few steps closer, until only a single row of dead plants lay between us. “Sophie, would you come inside with me?” James asked quietly. This was a key to public negotiation: we’d seen so many couples have it out on the sidewalk, stumbling out of nightclubs. Remaining calm in the face of uncertainty could prevent almost any disaster.

Mud chuckled.

“Shut up,” I said, and he did.

In one motion, I snapped the barrel of the gun back toward the sky. Over our heads, clouds scurried out of the way. James stepped aside, into a dead rosebush the house’s
previous inhabitants had killed before we were even given the chance. I crossed in front of him, brushing the hair across my forehead with my free hand as I might before a job interview, making sure I looked my best. Behind me, I heard Mud start to say something about the gun I was still holding, and then he stopped himself abruptly, as if he thought I might need it, wherever I was
going.

T
he advertisement had been gloriously distorted. What did it say,
3 bed/2 ba cottage on the water, w/boat slip and dock, private beach. Great for families
, was that it? It was like something Edward Gorey might have drawn, with a little girl skipping to her death. The thing barely held Bobby and his fire truck, and he was only three.
Great for families looking to off each other in the peace and quiet of the Vineyard
, is what it should have said. Jim would have put his foot down, always eager for his creature comforts. Franny just wanted to get out of the city, go somewhere with a beach. She still thought she was a cow with her leftover baby weight and yet insisted on wearing those stupid pigtails all young mothers seem to think it’s their right to wear, as if they were all waiting, gasping, praying for someone to say,
Oh, you! You can’t be the mother of this child! You couldn’t possibly be old enough!
Charles was just
along for the ride, the fourth wheel—Bobby might have been small, but he was family, and Charles was something extra.

Jim drove the Saab. It was little and black and frankly impractical for someone with limbs as long as his, but it was his car, and he loved it. He’d fold himself into the front seat like a Chinese acrobat and then wait for everyone else to climb in—Charles in front and Franny in back with the baby. Bobby had a booster seat that he was strapped into, the kind of thing that made most kids wail and squirm, but he sat there quietly eating his Cheerios, always listening to his mother when she pointed out things they passed on the highway: horses, fire trucks, hamburger stands.

Franny had found the ad. The
New York Review of Books
ran pages of classifieds; its back pages were always filled with idyllic retreats somewhere or other and, more often than not, a handsome older gentleman to share them with you. She sometimes cut those out for Charles, too—she’d crack up reading them aloud.

“Listen to this one, Charlie, he’s perfect for you.
Long baths and foot rubs. Looking for someone to enjoy my impressive wine cellar and library. M4M.
Impressive wine cellar, do you think that means no twist-offs? Or maybe that’s what he’s looking for, some good twist-offs, what do you think?” It was unclear if Jim ever got to weigh in on whether Charles came along on their family vacations. It was doubtful. Jim was her husband, but Charles was her man, and if Franny wanted him along, well, then, he was going.

Martha’s Vineyard was always a nightmare to get to, and Franny, despite her formidable organizational skills, never
seemed to time things quite right. That year they showed up three minutes before the last ferry, instead of half an hour before the one they were booked on, which had departed hours earlier. Luckily, Franny was great with uniformed personnel. Jim and Charles stood by the car with their arms crossed, Bobby crouching between their shins with his fire truck. The three of them watched Fran reason with the ferry ticket boy. He was about eighteen, covered in pimples, and didn’t have a shot in hell. His supervisor, maybe all of twenty, lasted about a minute, made her laugh three times, and their passage was secured. It was already dark outside when they got to the island, and Bobby snored quietly in the backseat, now in his mother’s arms. Jim said the directions were bad, and it was too dark to read them anyway, and this couldn’t be where they were going.

The cottage would have been more aptly described as a shack. It was sharp around the edges and saggy in the middle, the kind of place that kids briefly sleep in before getting slashed to death by homicidal maniacs in horror movies.

“Franny, what’s the address again, 21 Mill Pond Lane? I think that sign read ‘Mill Pond Street.’ We must be in the wrong place.” Jim craned his neck, and even though the inside of the car was too dark to see discernable features, Charles knew his mouth was pointing down in that creaky old way—some parts of Jim always looked like they would be better on a man of advanced age. That was something nice about blonds; they could go white or gray without anyone ever really noticing, because what was the difference? There had been a little Cruella de Vil in him from the start. That was what Charles liked most about Jim, the frosty undercurrent of detachment when Franny wasn’t around.

The car was rolling along slowly, half a mile an hour. The driveway was gravel, and the Saab snored loudly. The nearby houses were all lit up, nice big normal houses with roofs and proper kitchens and bathrooms and probably Jet Skis in the garages. Franny opened the back door to the car and jumped out before either of the men could tell her not to, and went skipping up to the house. She cupped her hands around her eyes and tried to look in through the door.

“No, this is it, this is it!” She spun around on her heels, the headlights of the car tracking her like a spotlight. She did a little pirouette on the porch, her dark pigtails twirling out to the side, and Jim stopped the car.

In the light, the house wasn’t that bad—it was worse. There were three “bedrooms” lined up end to end like Alice in Wonderland, with one door leading straight to the next, like what newspaper ads politely called railroad apartments but were in reality nothing more than glorified hallways. This house was no different. The three bedrooms were carved out of a single hall, leading down toward the dock. The fatter part of the house, the hand to the bedrooms’ thumb, had been a quaint little cottage, once upon a time. The house did have three bedrooms. The house did have a dock. The house did have Massachusetts-appropriate knickknacks on every available surface. What it didn’t have: charm, clean towels, two forks that matched, pots with lids, anything remotely childproof, a full-length mirror, or level floorboards.

Franny and Charles drove Jim’s car into town and bought some cheapo plastic lawn chairs. There were always more stores in the Vineyard than you ever remembered, more tiny little mom-and-pop
places that grew from the ashes of other mom-and-pop places after the old people died and their kids decided to move to Boston to live like normal people, where peanut butter and toilet paper weren’t overpriced imports. Bobby and Charles sat in the back, both strapped in like good little boys, while Franny drove slowly through the streets.

“I swear, I thought he was going to kill you.” Charles looked over at Bobby. How early did children learn the word
kill
? He smiled and kicked his feet around. He’d been running for what seemed like forever but didn’t talk much. Everyone struggled to get a word in edgewise with Fran.

“Who?” Her sunglasses took up half her face, like something out of
Charlie’s Angels
. Charlie’s post-pregnancy-weight angel. Charlie’s frozen custard angel. Charlie’s fag-hag angel. Franny was mugging for him in the rearview mirror. “Jim?”

“Is that his name?” Franny was being bad, and Charlie was happy to play along. “I forget, I was too drunk at your wedding, I wasn’t paying attention. Yes, Jimmmmm. You could have called the Better Business Bureau or the Vineyard Mounties or something. I’m sure there are other rentals; it’s not a holiday weekend.”

“And what fun would that have been?” She spied a parking spot and yelped with joy. “See? We’re having fun already!”

Bobby joined his mother in a laugh at his father’s expense.

The shopping list wasn’t very long, just some hamburger meat to go along with the fixings they’d packed in the trunk. They hadn’t lied about the barbecue, although it looked as though it hadn’t
been cleaned since its date of inception. Franny thought it would lend some flavor, like a cast-iron skillet. Jim pushed her aside and started the fire. Wine. A rubber ball and a flimsy kite for Bobby. More wine. Franny loved to shop, it hardly mattered where. She loved those stupid tourist shops with printed T-shirts and ashtrays, the stuff no one ever wants. She cooed over all of it—
Look, Charlie! It’s a tiny little sandbox, only it’s an ashtray and you put your cigarettes out in the sand!
Bobby exercised remarkable restraint. Charles encouraged her. They came home with a T-shirt for each of them, their two already on their backs and Jim’s in Franny’s lap, at the ready. Jim rolled his eyes and asked where the meat was. His wife handed over the drooping plastic bag and he took it inside to pummel and season, leaving Fran and Charles to open the wine.

The dock was twenty feet or so long, and Charles thought he’d set up his supplies there, maybe paint some picturesque water scenes with naked Bobby at the edge, Buddha belly extended. Franny always wanted to be painted as a bohemian, even though she’d left the sixties with her bra intact and hairless legs. Little Franny Gold. She always said she would have kept her name, or at least hyphenated it, if Gold-Post had sounded less like a slurring football announcer. Her parents lived on Eastern Parkway in what would have been a million-dollar apartment if it had been on Park Avenue, every surface dust-free, even if you showed up unannounced. The Golds would not have tolerated a bohemian.

“Don’t draw pictures of me drinking. You’re going to make me look like a wino.” Franny’s whole mouth was
already purple. The wine was cheap and made their lips pucker, but only at first.

“Of course not,” Charles said, finishing the bowl of the wineglass with a fat charcoal line.

Behind them, Jim stood with his back to the water, prodding the meat on the grill. A cool breeze rustled Charles’s papers and sent tiny red sparks out from under the barbecue.

“Careful, Jim, we don’t want to set the house on fire,” Charles called out.

“You mean this is a ‘before’? How could they tell the difference?” He was still mad. Once he ate, he would be better. He was like a teenager, sullen until his belly was full. Jim kept talking with his back to them, the conversation aimed at no one, all mumbled curse words.

“So, Charlie, I was thinking.” She stage-whispered, cupping her hand around her mouth to block the sound from Jim, who wasn’t listening anyway. “What do you think about smoking a little
p-o-t
?” She opened her eyes wide in mock surprise. “I know you brought some. He doesn’t have to know.”

“What about Bobby?” He was already asleep inside, taking the second of his two daily naps, a habit Charles fully intended to steal.

“Let’s not tell him. More for us.” She scrunched up her nose, sending little wavy lines of wickedness across her cheeks.

“You are so bad, Fran.”

She nodded and took another sip. Someone in a canoe slid by, gliding across the surface, and waved. Franny waved
back, smiling. “Do be do be do.” The dying sunlight was in her eyes, painting her skin a warmer color than it usually was. This is how Charles would paint her: this warm, this pink. “Love you, Charlie,” she said. She knew the light suited her. Whenever she felt particularly presentable or pleased with herself, Franny slipped into this Katharine Hepburn voice, all sass and class. For a slightly round Jewish girl from Brooklyn, that was pretty much the top of the heap.

Before the wedding, when Franny was cloistered away in some hidden chamber of the synagogue with her mother fixing every defiant hair on her head, Jim and Charles had sat alone in his dressing room, which also seemed to be the Hebrew school classroom. Charles leaned against the lip of the teacher’s desk, and Jim sat opposite him in an orange plastic chair, the seat of which looked like it was made to hold a ten-year-old’s slim hips and little else. Their suit jackets hung beside each other, the hangers hooked over the doorframe, two swaying old friends. Some people looked great in black suits, spruced up and handsome, and Jim was one of them. Charles looked more like a waiter than Cary Grant, or even Warren Beatty.