This Will Be Difficult to Explain and Other Stories (13 page)

About halfway through the night, though, the feeling would change again. She wouldn't feel light anymore, like in the movies (the blanched light, the weightless clattering of silverware), but heavy and dull, instead—as though she'd absorbed a blunt object exactly the same size as herself. For whatever reason, Fay always appeared to the others in these moments almost
too
self-assured, and the girls avoided her—though not with contempt. Left alone, she would idle by the bar for a while looking unapproachable—until, without hardly knowing why, she would get up and run outside, swinging the door back and forth on its hinges behind her as she went.

She would run only a little ways, though, before she stopped, and though no doubt—at least in part—it was
fear
that stopped her, she never would have admitted to it. In her mind, Fay would have run all the way to New Jersey, if she'd wanted to. It was something else that stopped her. She didn't want, suddenly, to just
run away
.
Just—anywhere. For two or three minutes, then, she would stand outside not wanting to run away, but not wanting to go back either
.
In those moments, it seemed impossible that anyone else was awake or alive in the world. Even the sounds from the bar seemed distant—as though they already had more to do with a memory of something. She tried to feel something. Some particular way. About the stretch of grass, for example. Or about herself. About the way she was then, or the way she was going to be. But she always got cold very quickly standing out there like that, and then, almost imperceptibly, bored, and she would start to wish that Martha—or better yet, Bobby—would come running out after her, and be concerned, and yell her name so that she would have no choice but to forget it all, and go back, and not have to feel any particular way about anything. When neither Martha nor Bobby did come, as they often did not, she'd wonder why, and feel hurt—and then jealous of Martha, who had
everything
—though
everything
, in those days, really meant only one thing: Bobby. It would never have occurred to either of them to be jealous of any of the other girls—and least of all, Laurel.

If no one came—as, again, they often did not—Fay would have to
make a scene
, like in the movies: she'd have to stumble in, knock into a chair, crash to the ground if she was able. In order that Bobby would have to get up from wherever he was and come over to her and ask if she was all right. Other times, she poked her head inside the door instead, and yelled, “Come on! Let's run across to New
Jersey,” and make as if she was really going to do it this time. Maybe she even believed that she really would do it, too, if no one came along to stop her.

But they always did, and that night it was no different. Then they piled into the car—all of them except for Linda—and began the long drive on the back roads home.

Perhaps it was just that: Linda being gone. But somehow that drive home was not like any of the other drives home. Something had shifted, and it even occurred to Fay that the great
change
, which they had all been anticipating with such eagerness but could never envision, or even properly believe in, had actually begun. Perhaps it was just that. The idea of Linda, back at school the next day, all aglow, talking about Mount Holyoke and William and Mary—choices that Fay and Martha scoffed at, preferring the state schools, where the men, at least, would be interesting, and you could actually
learn something
. Whatever it was, Fay found herself unhappily staring off down the long distance of the road, as if it were the distance to New Jersey. Wanting to be there. For real this time. Or in the empty field that stretched in between—which was neither here nor there, but instead nowhere in particular. To really
know
that field. To think it and think it, and never get cold, and never get bored. In short: she wanted to be anywhere but in that car, on that
interminable
road. Squished in the back with Marilyn, and that boyfriend of hers, whoever he was—irrelevant even then.

Up front was Martha, of course. She was sitting in the middle—between Bobby, who drove, and Laurel. Laurel,
saying something in a sad, faraway voice, like in the movies, about Linda. Missing Linda. Saying: This is how
it happens
. How it begins. How
everything changes
… Fay, irritable in the back seat, saying: “Linda wouldn't have fit.” Even though it struck her as interesting and a little disappointing that Laurel had been thinking the same thing that she had just a moment before. Interesting that Laurel had been thinking at all … But then what she said—about Linda not fitting—had made Laurel start to cry, and she sounded awful when she cried. The effect was not at all touching, like in the movies. When people cried in the movies it always seemed to do with everything all at once, and not just the thing that they were crying about. Martha would have been able to make it like that if she was the one crying. Fay, even, would have had a better shot at it. But Laurel was so plain, and so depressing when she cried, that it was as if the sad thing that she was crying about really was just that sad thing.

At first, Fay wished only that Laurel would shut up and not cry, but then she forgot about Laurel. She felt a growing pressure behind the ears. Then—a field rose before her. Stretched like a canvas. So that for the first time, she saw it. Truly. In panoramic vision—from all sides. There was no end to it this time—no New Jersey in the distance. It was just, for the first time, an uninterrupted vision of that which stretched, toward nowhere in particular,
in between
everything. But then, suddenly, it was not a vision at all. It
was
the field. Beamed into existence by the headlights of Bobby Zerembeh's car as he swung it from the road. And
then it was Laurel. Scrambling like an animal at the door. And the scream. She felt it rather than heard it at first, but then she heard it, too. An inhuman sound. Then Bobby, who had turned around in his seat. Slapping her—quite hard—across the face, with the back of his hand. Finally, the scream stopped, and she realized it had been her own.

It had only been a small accident, and in under half an hour, the two boys—with the help of Fay herself, who had become remarkably calm by then, in that way that made the other girls leave her alone—had the car back on the road. With the exception of Martha, who had received a few bruises and scratches from Laurel as she had attempted to escape, no one had been hurt.

IT WAS MARTHA
, and not Fay, who later spoke of the event if it was spoken of at all. Fay herself did not think of it; in fact, she did not even properly recall it, and over the years, because of this, she had come to think of the experience, to a certain extent, as Martha's own. Perhaps this was why it had taken six whole months to remember that it was
that particular moment
—the long extended moment leading up to the scream in which the scream had occurred—that she'd recalled and in some way experienced again, all those years later, when she wore the cleats that Carey had given her for her fifty-second birthday, and got stuck in her yard.

Like all of Martha's stories, this one had been told variously over the years. Sometimes, she spoke of it as a “falling-through time,” a “flash,” a “primal scream.” When
Eva visited, and the story of the scream again resurfaced, Martha said: “For your mother, it was like a sudden glimpse of—” and closed her eyes. How could she put it? What word fit now? At this juncture, after so much had changed? “Like a sudden glimpse …” Martha said again, finally, her hands floating in the air—not quite descending—“of the … the old-fashioned
horror of things
.”

Eva raised her eyebrows and looked hard at Fay, then Martha. “The—what?” she said. She was sitting opposite Fay, on Martha's couch, her feet tucked up under her. There was something surprising about the way that she sat. A certain—
composure
about her that Fay could not have anticipated. It made her want to cry, suddenly. It made her feel terribly—alone. But glad, too, in a way. Glad to be alone, if that was what it took. For her daughter to be sitting there, as she was just then—opposite her in Martha's living room—looking, for all the world, as if she had grown up by herself, without context.

“Oh, of it all …” Martha was saying to Eva, in reply. “The
old-fashioned horror
… of
it all
. The, how would you put it,” she said, “the unravelling … Linda gone, you know—” Martha looked at Fay, “and us too, at the
verge
of something …” Then she paused, and her voice changed. “And the … fickleness,” she said, laughing, “of that bitch Laurel's love.”

The story had in fact been told by Martha in response to something Eva had asked earlier in the evening, though by now the question had certainly been forgotten by Martha—and no doubt by Eva as well. “Does it get any easier?” Eva
had asked, even rolling her eyes a little as she said it—conscious, as ever, of the way that everything (particularly the petty miseries of a college sophomore) was predictable, inevitable; had already
been done.

Fay, too, had thought of Axel's for some reason when Eva said it, and so it seemed natural to her that Martha should have mentioned it then. In a way, though, because of this, she wished that
she
could have been the one to tell the story for a change. For the first time it actually
felt
like her story, and she knew exactly how she would tell it if she were to try. But—as Martha began her own version of things—Fay did not interrupt.

It wasn't until later, when Martha's story was long finished, that Fay remembered her daughter's question. She was gathering sheets for the daybed, where Eva would sleep, when she remembered. Martha had already gone off to bed. “So,” Fay said to Eva, who was crossing from the toilet, “yes. It does get easier.”

Eva had indeed forgotten the question to which Fay now referred, and only looked at her mother blankly. For some reason, this struck Fay as very funny and she laughed. For the first time in a long time she felt happy and, still laughing, she moved off to the kitchen, leaving Eva, puzzled, to take the sheets from where Fay had laid them, and go make up her bed.

A
NGUS
'
S
B
ULL

 

“I LOST ANGUS MACLEOD'S BULL,”
Steven said one day, charging like he was a bull himself into the kitchen. He had the same expression on his face as when he came back late after losing bad at cards. Only this time, worse. I put down the rag I had been using to mop up the sticky grape juice that Benny had spilled, and motioned to him to be quiet, though he already was.

That's what they did—he and the rest of the boys, some nights. Played blackjack or poker until someone ended up going home sorry. More often than not it was Steven who did. But really—I was lucky to have married a man with as much sense as he had. It wasn't the regular thing in our family, and so I didn't ever really mind about the money. They didn't get into any trouble, Steven and those boys. Sitting around at someone or other's kitchen table, with their hats on, and the wife of the house gone to bed upstairs. They would even be careful, because of that. Keep their voices down. Not swear too much—or loud.

I would tease him sometimes, though—worry him a little when he got back home. But mostly I just did it because it could rattle him. Nothing much did. He was the sensible type. The type to, more often than not, spend his
extra money and time on things for his wife and his kid. Who didn't drink too much, or gamble too much—and you noticed it. I was lucky that way. It wasn't the regular thing.

“What do you mean you lost him?” I said.

He had that look more than ever on his face now. Like he'd forgotten where he was, or why—or what it was he'd come to say.

“He—ran,” Steven said. And he made a motion with his hand to show me. The way his hand moved, though, it didn't seem to indicate a bull. More like a leaf, or a bird.

“We got a couple of the boys coming down to help,” Steven said. His voice was low again, trying to sound regular, and calm. “Harley and Matthews and a couple more. Could you get them something to eat after a while?”

Then he turned around in a circle, as though he weren't sure which way was out the door.

“How long ago did you see him?” I asked.

Steven winced. “It's been a while,” he said. “Could be anywhere by now.”

“Well,” I said. “Not anywhere.” But only because it had suddenly just occurred to me as strange: even when you lost something it never did just
disappear
.

But it was a stupid thing to say, and after I said it Steven found the door quickly and hit his head with the flat of his hand as he went out, making a sound like a stuck engine. But he didn't curse. His teeth gritted together in that way, like he wanted to, but then he didn't, and the curse got
pushed out instead, in a hiss, through the space between his teeth.