Preston Falls : a novel (48 page)

"Are you okay?" she says. "You're not, are you?"

She comes around behind him—Rathbone jumps up to join in—and kneads his shoulders, digging thumbs into the back of his neck. His head ratchets forward and down as if it's relaxing him, but she can tell he's acting. He doesn't want even this simple service from her hands. She stops and says, "Is there anything I can do?"

"Not at the moment." He pats Rathbone's head. "Go lie down."

"Then what if I do this}'' She makes a claw of her left hand, digs the nails into the back of her right wrist, and claws forward to the knuckles, digging four white furrows with red dots of blood welling.

"Do what?" He hasn't turned around.

"Nothing," she says. Hand doesn't hurt. But it will. "I have to go up and get some socks on."

She goes upstairs to the bathroom, washes the hand off, pats it dry with a towel, smears on triple antibiotic, wraps gauze around and tears off an inch of adhesive tape to hold it. She takes two Advils, which she hopes will be kicking in when the pain starts. She goes into the bedroom, sits down on the bed and just breathes. Slows her breathing.

When she feels steady—steady enough —she gets up, opens her underwear drawer and takes out a pair of white cotton socks and a pair of thick gray wool socks. She looks away (too late) from the black lace teddy she bought at Victoria's Secret one afternoon when she felt like a bad girl at the Galleria, and then never wore for Willis. Right, like that would've made all the difference. She sits on the bed again and pulls on first the cotton socks, then the wool. She puts on her blue cable-knit cardigan over the sweatshirt, and goes back down to the kitchen. Rath-bone gets up to greet her, tail wagging.

"Do you want coffee?" she says. "A drink? Actually, I'm not sure there is anything."

"No, nothing, thanks."

"I'm going to have some tea." She pours the old water out of the kettle and fills it with fresh. "You just missed Carol. She left this morning. Or I guess yesterday, now."

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"Must be synchronicity," he says. She says nothing. "I didn't mean that as a dig." The first outright He—he thinks. "And things are okay at work?"

"Actually," she says, "I may start looking for something else."

He raises his eyebrows. "Really."

"They seem to be cutting back our department," she says. Damned if she's going to spell it out; she hates herself for telling him this much. "They let Jerry go this week."

"Hmm. That's not a good sign," he says.

"No," she says.

"But they haven't come after you."

"Not really," she says. "You know, Marty Katz has been trying to get hold of you."

"Did you speak to him?"

"No. He just left messages."

"Well," he says. "To be expected. I don't know that I can bring myself to go back there. God, what happened to your hand?"

"Nothing," she says. "Scratch." The hand's starting to hurt. "So what would you do? If you didn't go back."

"Yeah, well, that's the thing."

"Shouldn't you touch base with them at least?"

"Probably."

"What happens to us if you don't go back?" she says.

"Yeah, well..." He chews at his lower lip.

"Or is that not something you worry about anymore? Because if it's—"

"Well, you know, yes, I worry.''

"I was going to sayj' she says, "if it's not something that enters your thinking, that's something I should know about."

"Right," he says.

"Because right now we're living very expensively."

"Right," he says. "I mean, there is all that money in the 401 (k)."

What is he telling her? That he just means to let everything go and run through the money in his 401(k)? After whatever huge penalty that'll eat up half of it? Or is he offering her the money, as some kind of setdement? The kettle starts whistling; she turns off the burner and pours water over the tea bag.

"It sounds like you're saying you want out of the marriage," she says. An odd way to put it: as if the marriage would still be there, only

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without him in it. She sets the mug on the table, really harder than she means to, and sits down. He's not saying anything. "You know, at this point..." She shakes her head. "Right? But I want you to say it. You've made me do the leading up."

"Yeah, okay, you're right," he says. Rathbone has sneaked over to sit by him again, and Willis reaches down to stroke him. "Okay, I guess so."

"Fine," she says. "Well, then that's the happy ending."

"Right," he says.

"Seriously. Why is it so bad? You've got what you wanted, and I'm not any worse off. At least now I know where I stand and what I have to deal with."

"So," he says. "Just like that?"

"What else is there? Do we reminisce?"

"Yeah, okay. So I guess I should go."

"Wait—how did you get here?"

"My brother drove me," he says. "He's actually waiting up at the corner, in case I need, you know, a ride back." He gets to his feet. Rathbone stands up too, tail wagging.

"Oh. Of course," she says. "Of course. Well, that solves that little mystery. Will you tell your brother for me that he's a shit? And that I hope sometime somebody does this to himV

"Listen, my brother—"

"I don't want to hear about it. Just go to your fucking brother. Will you just go?"

"Okay, fine, but we still have to talk about stuff like money, and about visitation. I still want to, you know, be involved."

''Involved? That'll he something to witness."

"That's a low blow, Jean."

"I don't actually think it is."

"Well, we can argue about this some other time."

"What other time?" she says. "This is it—it's over with. You get to think what you think, and I get to think what / think. That's the glory of it."

"Fine. Then Til just let you know when I get set up somewhere."

"I assumed you'd just go live in Preston Falls," she says. Her hand is really hurting now. "Since you love it so much. With the trees and grass." She likes knowing he won't get the allusion. "You could take the dog with you—he's happier up there."

"I sort of burned out on Preston Falls. Tve been thinking I should

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put it on the market." He pats his thigh and Rathbone comes and sits down on top of his foot.

"Amazing," Jean says. "So all this was really just about getting away from us."

He shakes his head. "Search me what the fuck it was about."

"On that note." She stands up.

He sticks out a hand. To shake the hand he made her hurt.

She says, "Oh please."

Willis walks past the Durkins' house and on up the sidewalk. The flurries have stopped, but now it's cold as shit. Should have asked Jean to bring him down a pair of his gloves. Okay, fine: he puts his hands in his pants pockets. When he gets to Bonner, he looks left, toward the corner of Crofts. No Champ. Looks right. The only car parked on the street is some budget thing with a round ass end, a Nissan or whatever, right under a streetlight; shattered safety glass sparkles like looted jewels on the pavement. Not a good place to be seen hanging around on foot. He walks west on Bonner—he did say the corner of Bonner and Crofts, right? No car in sight. It couldn't have been a half hour, could it? Probably Champ figured he'd brought the two lovebirds together, and he should just discreetly disappear. Jean always thought Champ was her enemy: one of the many things she'd gotten wrong, (Though like what else?) He stays on Bonner all the way to Route 9. Only one car goes by—a Chesterton Police cruiser that slows down, checks him out, then speeds on. At the corner of Route 9, he turns and starts north. Once you get out of the side streets, with those sheltering trees, the wind coming off the river really whips. Champ might have lingered in Dunkin' Donuts. It's on the way to the Birlstone anyhow.

Another cruiser's parked outside Dunkin' Donuts, plus a regular car. No Champ. Willis goes inside and over to the phone on the wall. This once, he could treat himself to a warm taxi ride; Chesterton Checker runs twenty-four hours. But no: this isn't about mortifying the flesh, exactly, but it is about who the fuck is going to be master. He picks up the receiver, drops a penny through for appearances' sake and punches random numbers; it plays a little tune in his ear— doot deet deet doot deet deet doot —that sounds like "Old MacDonald Had a Farm." He listens, then frowns and shrugs to indicate to the cop, who's surely

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watching him, that he's not getting through. He walks up to the counter, shaking his head.

He stands looking at the diminished late-night choices on the sloping shelves. Coconut doughnuts, whole wheat doughnuts, jelly sticks, French crullers, Original Dunkin' Donuts with the little fucking handle. Which of these would he most Hke to find in the morning, waiting for him on the dresser? None of them. What he will not think about is that he's just thrown his life away. When Jean had told him there'd been an inadvertency—the first—he had said. We can deal. Not his all-time warmest. Plus he was afraid that this was just a thing he was saying. Yet this, and nothing else, was the thing he had said.

Well, tonight is clearly where it was all heading. It's bound to get more real to him eventually, yes? Before it gets less real again. Some little top-of-the-bell-curve moment somewhere up ahead where this will be real. What a concept.

A pasty woman in pink comes over, and he asks for coffee, regular. This will get him there. The cop and some guy in jeans and a leather jacket are sitting in a booth in molded pastel seats, leaning toward each other across the table. So this is where the cops meet the undercover guys late at night: a whole hidden substructure nobody knows about. Though they could equally be brothers: one who grew up to be a cop and the other a contractor, say, who's not getting along with his wife. One taking a break from his duties, the other unable to sleep, unwilling to go home. Just talking shit over in the quiet time, in the white-blue fluorescent light.

Jean sits in the kitchen and finishes her tea, while Rathbone lies under the table on his side, as if slain. When she reaches down to pet him, he twitches at her touch, then lies there unresponding. She's just blown off her marriage. Not that she shouldn't have. And not that it could have worked out any other way. Though of course it could. But she'd done her best. Which is also completely and absolutely not true. She gets up, puts the unloved green mug in the sink and goes upstairs to check on the children. Rathbone doesn't follow her. Tomorrow's Sunday. Today is Sunday. She could think about finding them all a church to go to, since they were obviously going to need something now, big time. But to know she considered the situation that desperate would only scare Mel and Roger, making the situation even more desperate. Her mother made her

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and Carol go to Sunday school at a Methodist church in Bethesda, because her family had been Methodists. Her father called Methodists Holy Rollers, which in retrospect she realizes was pretty hilarious, given what Hubert Humphrey liberals they all were. So maybe forget the Methodists. She could just keep taking Mel and Roger to the pancake place on Sundays, though it would seem sad. But they could deal.

It's almost three in the morning, and she's wide awake. Nothing downstairs to drink, she's pretty sure. That's one thing she'll definitely have to fix. She goes into the bedroom, rearranges the pillows and gets under the covers with her clothes still on, cardigan and all, and picks up Emma. She reads a couple of pages, but the words just move through without leaving anything. She's worried about Willis: like what if his useless brother didn't wait? Well, so he could walk to the train station. Earliest train to New York was what, five-thirty or something? If they ran that early on Sunday. It wouldn't kill him to spend a few hours on a bench in the waiting room. If the waiting room's open. But this is not her responsibility. As of half an hour ago. She throws off the covers, peels off the wool socks and puts on her running shoes.

She checks the kids again—both sound asleep—goes downstairs, puts on her jacket and pats the pockets to make sure she's got car keys and house keys. She makes sure the front door's locked. Rathbone's still lying on the kitchen floor; he raises his head about that far when she opens the back door, then lets it sink down again. She closes the door behind her, sticks in her key and turns the deadbolt. She's never left the kids asleep alone before, but they should be okay for just a few minutes. She stands the garbage can back up and puts the lid on. Tomorrow, without fail: bungee cords. She opens the garage doors, starts the Cherokee and backs out into the street. It's stopped snowing, that's one thing.

At the stop sign she turns right, scanning both sidewalks ahead. Nobody out at this hour. She turns left onto Route 9 and drives the mile and a half south to Main Street without meeting a single car. Hangs a right on Main, completely deserted under the pink streetlights, and follows it down to the train station. He couldn't possibly have walked this far already, could he? So maybe his brother was waiting. She gets out of the car and climbs the steps up to the platform. Not a soul. The waiting room is locked. She looks down at the commuter parking lot. Only three cars, randomly placed among the fish spines of white paint.

She drives back up Main and makes a left onto Route 9. The head-

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lights pick up more flakes of snow. She gets in the right-hand lane and signals for the turn onto Stebbins; then she remembers Dunkin' Donuts stays open all night. She's starving. She flicks the blinker off and keeps going, over the crest of the rise. As she pulls into the Entrance Only, she notices a man far ahead on the sidewalk, walking north past Midas Muffler. Even at this distance she thinks she can tell that little limp nobody else would even notice, from when he broke his leg playing baseball and God knows what kind of a doctor that mother of his took him to. Where on earth could he be going? Well, it's none of her business anymore, he's made that clear. And, in fairness, she's made it clear too. She's not his business, he's not her business. As if they were back to being any two people. Isn't that the meaning of this? But look at him, walking away: that's Willis, absolutely.