She's Come Undone

by Wally Lamb

  “I mean, he brings those handyman magazines to bed with him and next thing you know, he’s clinging to me like stretch pants. I don’t suppose a newlywed like you knows anything yet about dry spells in a marriage, but, phew, happy days are here again! Dolores, I’d be a millionairess if I had stock in the company that makes the cream I use with my D-I-A-F-R-A-M.” She readied down and tapped her knuckles against Ashley’s skull. “Little pitchers have big ears,” she said.

  Suddenly I recalled the name of that tune Ashley was humming: “Mairsy Doats.” My mother and I had sung it mornings before grade school, when she’d comb the snarls out of my hair. I didn’t want Boomer and Paula’s life or their prefab house, but I wanted their happiness. I wanted a little girl to sit on my feet and hum. Dante referred to Vita Marie’s conception as “the time we got good and burned.” We were managing sex once a week.

  On the way home, Dante said someone ought to gag Paula before poor Boomer went brain dead—that looking down at their foundation felt to him like staring into the abyss.

  “Maybe we should think about buying a house some day,” I said.

  He laughed. “With what? Our looks?”

  “We have that money from my grandmother. I could start saving.”

  “Oh, right,” he said. “With any luck, we can reserve one of those glorified Big Mac containers for our very own—right next to Boomer and Paula. The Mertzes and the Ricardos, happy as pigs in shit.”

  The houses we passed on Route 38 were blurs. Dante always speeded up when he was angry. “Well, anyhow,” I said, “they seem real happy about it. I guess that’s what counts, right?”

  “Really happy. Adjectives take adverbs—for the millionth time.”

  “Really happy,” I repeated.

  “Macramé heaven,” he mumbled. “Shag-rug nirvana.”

  But I couldn’t shake the idea that a house might make us happier—that settling Dante into a place of our own might even make him want a child. People change, I assured myself. While I was cleaning closets the next day, I found a present Paula had given us the year before, a blown-up snapshot of Dante and me on our wedding day, decoupaged to a rectangle of wood. I’d put it away and forgotten it. Now I tapped a nail into the wall over our bed and hung it up in roughly the same spot where Grandma would have put a crucifix. I believed in our marriage—our future together as a family. Pictures didn’t lie. We were happy.

  I had done all the bills and banking from the beginning. “I’m just not into money—couldn’t even tell you which drawer we keep our bankbook in,” Dante was fond of telling people. Now I began clipping coupons and adding what I could from my Grand Union checks to Grandma’s wedding money. When I got our savings account to the $4,000 mark, I walked myself down to the bank and made a pinch-faced woman at a desk explain CDs and money markets and mortgage rates—over and over again until sweat formed over her top lip and I finally understood.

  I kept my plan a secret from Dante, figuring I’d overwhelm him at some right moment. The more I saved, the bolder I got, throwing out glossy mail-order catalogs before Dante had a chance to see them and place an order. I hand lettered an index-card sign—“If it’s not on sale, we can’t afford it”—and taped it to the refrigerator. I Crazy-Glued the soles of my clogs back on rather than buying new ones. “Sorry,” I told Jehovah’s Witnesses and Fuller Brush men. “Not at this point in time.”

  One evening, in the middle of ironing our tablecloth, I committed my most radical act of all. The TV was running a Revlon ad. Just as the commercial was convincing me to try that new makeup—right at the verge of my humming along with the jingle and wishing I looked like the woman in the ad—I walked over to the set and threw the tablecloth over the whole business. The result amazed me. Without the pictures seducing you, TV was just a powerless talking ghost.

  * * *

  Mr. Lamoreaux, the assistant manager at Grand Union, called me into his particleboard office and told me to sit.

  I had never liked Mr. Lamoreaux, who whistled “Hello, Dolly!” through the cracked-open door of the women employees’ lounge instead of just yelling at whoever was taking too long on break. That very morning, Mr. Lamoreaux had forced a skinny old shoplifter to empty three tins of Underwood deviled ham spread from his pockets onto my conveyor belt in front of a whole storeful of customers. “You try living on my pension check, you son of a bitch,” the old man had told Mr. Lamoreaux, just before he cried.

  “I’ll be blunt,” Mr. Lamoreaux told me. “We’ve been watching you.”

  I looked away, fingering my cowl-neck sweater. Whatever I was about to be fired for, I figured “we” must be him and the police.

  “For four months in a row now, you’ve had the most accurate tallies of any girl at this store,” he continued. “We keep track.”

  Being complimented felt the same as being accused. I crossed my leg and fiddled with my clog, prying apart my own repair job.

  “We also like the way you conduct yourself out there on the floor. None of this foolish instigating and taking sides.”

  “Yeah, well, basically, I’m a wimp.”

  “A diplomat,” Mr. Lamoreaux corrected me. “We think you have the potential to become one of us.” His basset-hound face lifted unnaturally into a smile. “To start off, we’d like to try you out as head cashier, alternating first and second shift. We could give you a dollar five more an hour but, of course, you’d have to work some nights.”

  While he talked about other possible promotions down the line, I did the math in my head. A dollar and five cents times forty hours equaled forty-two dollars a week more toward a house, minus withholding, a figure that offset the prospect of becoming part of any group that included Mr. Lamoreaux. “So what do you think?” he said.

  “I think I’ll take it.”

  Dear Grandma,

  It’s Tuesday afternoon. Ordinarily I’d be at work, but I’m getting this root canal done so I’m home taking aspirin with codeine. Last Sunday night I got a toothache you wouldn’t believe. I mean, I was in PAIN! But that’s not what I’m writing about. I’m writing about the present you sent.

  When the UPS man delivered the package and I opened it up, I couldn’t help crying. I remember those twisted candlesticks from our old house in Connecticut. I even found candles that smell exactly like the ones Ma used to keep in them. Bayberry. Things weren’t always bad between Ma and Daddy. When I was little, I used to sometimes walk into a room and catch them smooching. I haven’t talked to Daddy in years and years. Dante thinks both my parents are dead. He just assumed it one time and I never bothered correcting him. In a way, Daddy is dead, I guess. A dead socket—just like what I’m supposed to end up with after two more appointments with Dr. Hoskin. Don’t mind me, Grandma. I guess I’m a little goofy from this codeine stuff I’m taking.

  I hope you’re not taking on too much, trying to clean up that whole big attic by yourself. When Dante and I get down for a visit (probably the end of this month if I can swing it), we’ll help you with the heavy boxes. Don’t you dare try to move them yourself.

  We’re doing great up here. We’re both real happy and in love. Work is fine, too. I’m doing a pretty good job as head cashier, if I do say so myself. I’m the one who has to rotate the weekly schedule for everyone, so I got the idea to write it down in pencil first and post it in case there’s problems or complaints. Everyone really liked that. I bought a Mr. Coffee at a yard sale (never even used!) and brought it in for the lounge. Now everyone’s bringing in plates of goodies and plants and posters, stuff like that. It makes it nicer with people not fighting each other. I used to wear jeans to work, but lately I’ve been wearing skirts and dress pants. The other day I asked my boss, Mr. Lamoreaux, if we could give out an Employee of the Month award. He’s thinking about it.

  I put up a shelf in our bedroom for the candlesticks—drilled the holes and everything myself. I walk over and touch them twenty times a day. They make me happy.

  Love, Dolores

  P.S. Rem
ember—leave those boxes for when we visit. I love you, Grandma!

  Dante started the summer of 1979 with a bad bout of insomnia. I’d wake on and off during the night, cracking open my eyelids to the sounds of his disgusted sighs and turning magazine pages. He frowned and twisted as he read under the little cone of light from his high-intensity lamp, taking the covers with him. No, he didn’t want to talk about anything, he said—what was bothering him wasn’t anything he could verbalize. By then, I had $4,800 in our secret savings account.

  “How much?” Dante asked, blinking. I hadn’t meant to tell him; I figured it might give him peace of mind and get us both some sleep.

  “Forty-eight hundred. Mim, this lady I know, says it’s enough for a down payment on a house—a smaller one.”

  “Mim?”

  “Mim Fisk. A real-estate lady. She comes into the store.”

  I’d never actually seen Mim Fisk in Grand Union. She usually picked me up out in the parking lot during my lunch hour and drove me around to possibilities in my price range, houses that had a lot of character but needed things like a new roof or a plumbing overhaul.

  “Mim says a mortgage payment won’t be that much more than monthly rent, and plus, we’ll keep building equity. Just think of it, honey. We could have a nice big yard for your garden. And a room for you to write your poems in—your own little study instead of you having to drag the typewriter out to the kitchen table all the time.” I skipped the part about the baby’s room.

  “Equity?” he said.

  “Yeah, something to fall back on. Mim explained it to me. Kind of like we’re paying rent to ourselves instead of to Mrs. Wing.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve been thinking of taking an extended leave of absence so I can write full-time,” he said. “In which case, a house would be out of the question.”

  “Dante, be realistic. We couldn’t live on just my salary—even if we didn’t buy a house.”

  “Well, now that you’re one of the movers and shakers down at the supermarket, how long could it be before they line you up for a corporate vice president’s salary?” He raised his arms into a long sleepless stretch that knocked our wedding photo off the wall and into bed with us. He looked at it and smiled. “Here we are,” he said. “Stuck to a board. Shellacked for life.”

  I got up, yanked on my bathrobe, and went outside. I walked around and around the house, listening to the crickets and thinking of the things I should have said to him. Then I went back in and said them.

  “Look, I’m getting sick of your sarcasm all the time.”

  “Sarcasm?” He said it sarcastically.

  “That shellacked-on-a-board stuff. And my work may not be as important as yours, but people say I’m doing a good job. Yesterday, Shirley brought in a plate of blond brownies and said I’d made it fun for her to come in to work, the first time in twelve years.”

  “That reminds me,” Dante said. “Your Nobel Prize came in the mail today.”

  “Last week, when I asked you if you wanted to go to that cookout at Tandy and Rusty’s house, you could have just said no. You didn’t have to say what you said—be mean about it.”

  He sighed. “What did I say? It’s so significant, I’ve forgotten.”

  “You said you’d rather spend the afternoon coughing up blood. How do you think I felt—having to make three-bean salad and drop it off and lie to every one of my friends.”

  “Your friends?” he said. He pretended to look under the bed.

  But early the next morning, he woke me up, patting and stroking me, asking for my patience. “I’m going through a rough time right now,” he whispered.

  But you’re on vacation! I wanted to scream. Instead, I told him to just forget it. His apology turned into sex and I clung tightly to him, my eyes on the candlestick across the room. When he was through, I burst out crying.

  “Hey?” he said. “What are the tears for?”

  “Nothing,” I said. They were for my mother—for what her banged-up face had looked like the night she’d called my father a whore and he’d given her that swollen purple lip, that Chinese eye. I’d been lying there reliving that night during Dante’s grunt and thrust.

  “Hey, babe,” he whispered. “You and me.”

  He’s nothing like Daddy, I told myself. No couple is happy all the time. He’s nothing like him at all.

  * * *

  All that next week, Dante drove me to work so he could have the Volkswagen. One afternoon, I walked back up the hill, happily unaware. The thick orange extension cord was what I noticed first, not the harsh sound of the drill someone was running out back. I followed the cord from our kitchen window out to where the noise was painful. What I saw was painful, too. The cord ended at Dante, who was wearing plastic goggles and standing on our stool, armed with a power tool. He was drilling a hole into a shiny green van that still had its price sheet stuck to the window.

  “Well,” he said. “What do you think?”

  I said I hoped he had permission to cut into whoever’s van it was.

  He laughed. “It’s ours, babe. I’m putting in a teardrop window.”

  “What do you mean it’s ours? Where’s our bug?”

  “Traded her in. Don’t worry. I got this below-sale price—super deal. Bought it three days ago but there was some paperwork. Surprise!”

  “You bought this thing without even telling me?”

  “They install these windows for you at the dealership, but it’s a rip-off. I’m saving us a good hundred and a half. You like it?”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “You and I are going on a belated cross-country honeymoon trip. First three weeks in August.”

  “Dante, I . . . I can’t just pick up and go on a three-week vacation. I only get a one-week vacation.”

  “All taken care of. I called what’s-his-face, your boss. He finally agreed to give you your week with pay, plus two weeks off without pay.”

  “You planned my vacation without even asking me?”

  “I’m putting shag carpet down on the floor. Boomer’s got a remnant left over from their place. All the comforts of home, huh?”

  His using the word “home” was what woke me. I ran into the house.

  He’d found which drawer the bankbook was in, all right. The balance said $671.

  He came inside. Wearing those safety goggles, he looked like a giant insect. “I wanted to leave some in there for the trip. The payments are only one fifty-five a month. . . . I figure we can camp out right on the van floor in sleeping bags, save some money. Maybe splurge once or twice and get a motel room.”

  He walked over and put his hand on my rear end—cautiously, like he was testing the flatiron. “Well,” he said. “Say something.”

  “I thought you were going to write poems all summer. You said that’s what you needed to do.”

  “Travel will feed my writing. I figured you can take the wheel when I want to write.”

  “You never even asked me!”

  His fist whacked down against the mattress; dust specks zoomed around us. “I thought you’d be excited about it. You think it was easy putting all this together?”

  “But a lot of that was money my grandmother gave us.”

  “Oh, I get it. Hands off the wedding stash because she’s my grandmother, not yours? I never realized you were such a fucking materialist before. Little Miss Equity.”

  “That’s not the point. Making decisions without me is the point.”

  “How about Mim whatever the fuck her name is? Doesn’t she get her usual vote in this, too? Look, I wanted to surprise you with the honeymoon we never got to have. Not that our marriage needs a jump start or anything. Not that we have room for any more wedded bliss.”

  Dear Grandma,

  Exciting news! Dante and I decided to use your wedding money to buy a van. We’re taking a cross-country trip in August. (I’ll buy you a pair of Mickey Mouse ears when we get to Disneyland!) We don’t know our exact route yet, but we
’re either planning to drive down and see you the first part of the trip or the last part. I had to give up my head-cashier position because the trip will take three weeks, but I’ll still have a job there when I get back. People are always coming and going at that place, so who knows? I might be head cashier again before too long.

  Sorry to hear about Mrs. Mumphy breaking her hip. I sent her a card at the hospital. Maybe you should go on that bus trip anyway. I’m sure there’ll be other people you know. Take a risk! That’s what Ma always used to say.

  I really WASN’T crying the other morning when you called. I had a cold. (It’s better now.) I’m very happy.

  Love, Dolores

  Dante got the carpeting in smoothly enough, but he’d cut too wide a hole for the teardrop window. On and off all one afternoon, I was required to train the garden hose at the error while Dante sat inside the van and studied the leak. Somewhere near dark, he hopped out the back, let loose a string of curses, and kicked a dent into the passenger’s-side door.

  “You happy now?” he shouted, forcing my hand against the dent. “You like the feel of that? Well, you can thank all your bitching and moaning for the last several days.”

  I pried my hand away. I thought he might hit me.

  “That’s your tactic, isn’t it? Chip away at me little by little? I should jump into this thing and leave you rotting in the driveway—good fucking riddance.”

  “Don’t say things like that, okay? I know the trip will be good for us. It’s just that I thought if we bought a house, then . . .”

  “You’re not going to be satisfied until we’re in one of those prefab coffin things over there at Granite Acres. Until we have some tiny little life we can predict right up to the funeral.”

  The abortion had been a choice between Dante and Vita. If he left me, I had neither of them. I had my old self back. “You’re right,” I told him. “I felt a little disappointed at first, but it was just temporary. Don’t say that about leaving, okay? I love you, Dante.”

  That night he did anal sex on me out in the van. I pressed my face against the new carpet, inhaling the chemical smell and reciting things I’d memorized in school. “Seven times eight is fifty-six, seven times nine is sixty-three . . . This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks . . .” I winced and waited for it to be over. It was nothing like what Jack did, I told myself. This is my husband, our van. We’re two consenting adults.