Still Life with Husband (33 page)

“So, that went well, huh?” Meg said, pointing her fork at me for emphasis. Steve elbowed her.

All I had now was a sense, deep down and intermittent, that there had been a shift, that I was on the other side of all of my stupid choices. All I had now was the knowledge that I had sunk to the bottom of my life—this was it, right here, the bottom; there had to be some small comfort in that—and if I could hold my breath long enough, I would eventually emerge on the surface, probably gasping for breath, but alive.

“Who’s for more pie?” I asked, and Meg and Steve lifted their plates.

I’m scooping the last bit of reconstituted cranberry sauce onto my spoon. Cranberry sauce is just jam, really, and Thanksgiving just happens to be the only occasion on which it’s okay to eat jam like this, straight up, or spread over turkey. It occurs to me that I might want to implement this combination more often. Who says it’s not acceptable to spread jam—strawberry, I think, but even grape jelly would do—on your run-of-the-mill baked chicken in the middle of February? It sounds incredibly appealing to me right now.

My family is stirring. I can hear my parents laughing—are they laughing?—in their room, and I heard Rolf click the bathroom door shut a few minutes ago. I’m acutely aware that these are my last moments of peace before things get messy again. This warm, satiated feeling I have now, this slow calm, just me, here, at the kitchen table at my parents’ house, it will all be broken in an unseemly collision of personalities and emotions, in just a few minutes. I can’t imagine what the crash site will look like. Will Heather still be furious? Will she start in on me, stomping her feet and flailing her arms about, before she’s even poured her cereal? Will my mother talk to me at all? Will she sulk disapprovingly, glare at me from behind her sequined reading glasses, as if I’ve deliberately sullied her carefully honed reputation? Will my dad defend me? Or will he give me a wink, grab a bagel, and retreat into the safety of his den? Fleetingly, I wish Kevin were here. He’s always run interference in my family; he’s mediated every Ross conflict with unflappable courtesy. (“Barbara, I think that when Emily compares you to a charging rhino trying to take over her wedding plans, what she’s trying to say is that she loves and respects you, but that she doesn’t think that releasing one hundred doves into the air at the conclusion of the ceremony is entirely necessary.”) Then I wish David were here. Go to hell, you judgmental jerks! My lover and I are going into my room to have steamy, unpredictable sex.

I hear Heather, still in her room, calling for Rolf, asking him if he would bring her a cup of water from the bathroom. I hear my dad grumbling about never being able to find his slippers—his house slippers, he calls them—my mom telling him that they’re where they always are, under the bed.
Hey, kid. Hey, little friend.
I pat my belly.
Hello. Here we are.
“No, nope, they’re not under the bed, Barbara!” Len calls. “Oh, yes, sorry, here they are!” There’s more indeterminate thumping from that end of the house. I should sneak back into my bedroom or, better yet, out the side door.
Head for the hills,
my brain is urging, but I feel petrified, rooted to my chair by some faulty electrical impulse in my flight-or-fight mechanism. Whatever is about to unfold, I guess I’ll be seeing it through to the end.

I turn my gaze to the kitchen window, to the transformed face of my parents’ front lawn. The snow outside, it strikes me, is really a lie. It’s just a half foot of cold deception. It may look innocent, like a soft blanket, but it’s hiding its own dark secrets, all the muck and trash of autumn buried beneath it; stinking, decomposing leaves and gum wrappers and cigarette butts, everything that will reappear; it’s all there, on the placid streets and the sidewalks and in the parks and backyards, just waiting. The snow is not just gently concealing the sleeping buds and shoots of spring: it’s covering up all the world’s crap, too. When Len and Barbara and Heather and Rolf finally emerge from their bedrooms, all sleepy and smug, their morning rituals completed, they’ll say,
Oh, look, look at the snow; it’s so pretty!
And they won’t even think about shoveling the driveway or brushing off their cars or the leaky garage roof, or about how, in a few days, the snow on the curb will turn filthy with soot and dog piss; not at first: they’ll just gasp at the beauty of the world draped in white.

“Hello there.” Rolf’s appearance jolts me out of my reverie. His resemblance to Kevin is disorienting; for a second, I forget where I am.

Before I can fully collect myself, Heather shuffles up behind Rolf and wraps her arms around his waist. Her hair is half-straight and matted on one side of her head. She looks rumpled and tired and she burrows her face into Rolf’s neck for a moment, then peers over his shoulder at me. “Hey, Em,” she says, no trace of last night’s rage in her voice. She and Rolf two-step together, attached, over to the cupboard, where Heather reaches above him for a box of Raisin Bran. A minute later, my parents show up, first Barbara, then Len. My dad walks over and ruffles my hair, then does the same to Heather. “Dad!” she says. “It took me hours to achieve this style!” Barbara doesn’t look at me, but she doesn’t look at anyone else, either; she moves directly to the coffeemaker and busies herself spooning coffee into the filter. This is how she starts every morning, sullen until she’s caffeinated, so I can’t gauge her mood, but everyone else seems normal; they’re not ignoring me or hurling invectives; no one, it seems, is going to slap a scarlet
A
onto the front of my T-shirt and send me out into the cold.

“Look!” Barbara exclaims sharply. “Look at all that snow!” She sounds slightly mad at it, but awed, too. “My goodness!”

“Well, that settles it,” Heather says, craning her neck to see out the window. “As soon as breakfast is over, I’m going back to sleep.”

“Ah,” Rolf says, “and that’s because of the
snow.
”

But Heather has the right idea. I have the overwhelming desire, suddenly, to rest, to gather my strength. My head feels heavy and precarious on my neck, a boulder balanced on a spindly stick. Len and Barbara and Heather and Rolf step around each other, reaching for bowls and mugs and sugar. I’m perfectly still, but inside everything is changing. I close my eyes. For now, just for right now, I’m content to be here, in this chair, in my parents’ kitchen, letting the easy, happy chaos of my family shore me up for what’s ahead, for after I sleep, for the rest of my life, when I will have to be brave.

Postscript

A FEW DAYS LATER, WHEN THE ROADS HAVE BEEN PLOWED
but the inevitable weariness and grime of the long Midwestern winter have not yet settled in, I decide that I need to go for a drive.

During the strange days immediately after Thanksgiving, my family dealt with their post-traumatic stress in uncharacteristic silence. I would have preferred the intrusive questions I know they wanted to ask: Had I thought ahead to full-time employment? Where was I planning on living? Had I spoken to Kevin? Were we talking about divorce or was there any hope of reconciliation? I would have loved nothing more than to have shouted, “None of your business!” and stomped off, only to return five minutes later and answer their nosy queries. But instead my parents and Heather and even Rolf, the gentle alien in our midst, kept their distance. They tiptoed around me as if I were an exotic panda just shipped in from China: Do Not Upset Our Zoo’s Recent Acquisition, or She May Behave in an Immature and/or Aggressive Fashion. I would wander from my bedroom into the kitchen or the living room and there they would all be, talking and laughing, and then they would see me and fall silent. My dad rubbed my back every time he passed me. My mom kept bringing me sandwiches I hadn’t asked for. Heather started a dozen stilted conversations with me about people we used to know, and Rolf just nodded at me, practically constantly, like a bobble toy. This morning I woke up and I knew I needed to get out of the house.

I keep the radio off as I drive through the quiet streets of my parents’ neighborhood. I let this silence form a soft padding around me, instead of a thinly frozen lake under me. I aimlessly circle the lazy streets for a while and then find myself heading north, toward the road that runs parallel to the highway.
I’m finally alone!
I think. But then I quickly realize: not anymore. I can distract myself from the idea of the fetus for a time, but it doesn’t matter: he’s still here. This knowledge settles into my stomach, and I feel queasy and hot. I have the desperate urge to run away. But wherever I go, he’ll be there. The hum of the road is suddenly oppressively loud, and I am in a tin can hurtling through space. Beads of sweat break out on my forehead and upper lip. Unbidden, I recall a detail I skimmed from one of Meg’s books: if a pregnant woman doesn’t take in enough calcium, her fetus will leech it straight from her bones. I feel my skeleton suddenly weakening, growing soft and porous beneath my skin. I’m trapped, stuck inside my own, rapidly deteriorating body, as this beast sucks the life force from me. Good God, I can’t breathe. I need vitamins! I force myself to take a sip from the bottle of water I brought with me. I turn down the heater and unzip my jacket. I take a breath and focus on the road. I clear my throat; I’m still here. I wiggle my fingers on the steering wheel, shift my hands from 9:00 and 3:00 to 10:00 and 2:00.

Okay,
I think.
Get a grip. Fetus, can you help me out here?
I picture him nodding gravely, giving me the thumbs-up. I turn the heat off completely, open the vent, and let cold air fill the car. I begin to feel a little bit better. I think I can breathe now. Every light I come to is green, and there are few other cars around. After a while, the hiss of the road under the wheels becomes a soothing sound again. I start to feel peaceful, in a way that seems like it might last for a while. Without my knowing it, the fetus has begun to turn into a quiet comfort, my tiniest companion, not to mention my best audience. I may be stuck with him, but he can’t exactly leave the auditorium, either. So maybe what holds you back is also what holds you down, a necessary thing, like gravity. “The fetus” begins to seem like a less than acceptable term with which to refer to him. I squirt some washer fluid onto the windshield and turn on my wipers. I drive past a strip mall, then a series of fast-food restaurants. I pass a moving van with a gaudy orange depiction of Montana splashed across its side panel. I decide to call the fetus Monty, at least until he’s born. We drive together, Monty and I, and I’m okay again, and I know that I have something I want to tell him.

“All your actions have consequences, Monty,” I say, and the surprising croak of my voice is loud in the car. “Well, maybe not yet, but they will.” That isn’t quite what I wanted to say. “You have to make good choices,” I try again, “all your life, because if you don’t, you’ll end up doing something rash and destructive and hurting other people.” That’s not quite it, either, although it’s closer to the mark, for sure. I can’t put my finger on what it is I want him to know.

I veer off at Adams Avenue and I see where I’ve been headed all along: Jupiter’s Palace of Cheese. I slow and pull into the parking lot. I’ve never seen it from this angle before; I’ve never seen it from a full stop. It’s flat and uninspiring. It looks like a motel. The sun shines dimly on the few cars in the parking lot. What do I have to offer a child, anyway? I’ve screwed up so badly, I don’t even know who his father is! “I’ll probably tell you a lot of stupid things during your life,” I say, as the engine clicks a few times. “Everything I say is wrong. Whatever I tell you, do the opposite.” But that doesn’t seem fair, either. I unbuckle my seatbelt and zip up my jacket.

The air is thin and sharp on my face as I walk across the pavement to the Palace. There are patches of ice on the ground, and I have to walk carefully in my sneakers. I almost forget the momentousness of this occasion, of my crossing the threshold into Jupiter’s Palace of Cheese, and then, by nothing more than my own forward motion, I’m through the jingling door and I’m inside. Years of contemplation, and all it took was a turn signal, Adams Avenue, a simple slowing down, and then me, making my way toward the door.

The first thing is warm air and the heavy, foot-ish but not unpleasant aroma of a complicated mix of cheeses. I breathe in, look around. A few people mill about. It’s nothing in here, and it’s everything. I begin to explore. There are some peripheral displays of specialty foods, seasoned crackers, and canned asparagus spears and sweets your aunt Minnie would serve while you sat on her plastic-covered sofa—watermelon-coconut strips and butter biscuits and marzipan bars. But mostly there is cheese, counter after counter of cheese, all the cheeses I knew about and some I’ve never heard of: Swiss and Gouda, Babybel and Beaufort, brick, cheddar of all ages, Colby and Gruyère and Monterey Jack. It’s just one display after another of cheeses, of choices, utterly predictable and yet the most unexpected collage of one thing, one prosaic thing, made glorious by its unashamed excess. The possibilities are endless. There will be things I can show my child, galaxies.

“Oh, Monty,” I say softly, full of wonder. “Just look at all this cheese.”

Acknowledgments

Many people helped guide
Still Life with Husband
toward completion. I am grateful to Julie Barer and Jennifer Jackson, my agent and editor, for their equal measures of wisdom and kindness. This book wouldn’t exist without their care and expertise. Thanks also to my publicist, Sarah Gelman, for her patience and professionalism.

My deepest appreciation to my friends Erica Ackerberg, Judy Bernstein, Carolyn Crooke, Peter Kafka, Mimi Kleiner, Elizabeth Larsen, Jim Moore, Daniel Riseman, Deb Rosen, and the members of the Wednesday night writing group, especially Jon Olson, for their keen editorial vision and encouragement.

Special thanks to Carly Yiannackopoulos for being such a wonderful friend to my daughter. My family have been endlessly helpful and supportive in every way, and there aren’t enough words to express my love and gratitude. And finally, to Andrew and Molly, my thanks for everything, and my love.