The Behavior of Love

by Virginia Reeves

  He’ll see Laura and tell her about his dream. Was it a dream? It must have been. She was so close, so near, and he touched her belly and also her face, the sweet young face he’d fallen in love with back in Michigan, but even as he conjures her face, it changes, the glasses bleed away, the hair shifts, the eyes, the form and shape, until his mind no longer holds Laura, but Penelope, pregnant and beautiful under his hand. Pen? He distinctly remembers Laura, but Laura won’t return, and her memory is already tiptoeing away, slinking off to its dungeon. Goodbye, young Laura. No, not goodbye. He will have lunch with her, with Laura, not Pen. He says it aloud. “Lunch with Laura, not Pen. I’ll see Pen tomorrow.” They have a date at the library.

  He is still in bed. If he lies there long enough, the instructions will come.

  “Walk yourself through every step of your day, Edmund. Simplify the steps as much as possible, and acknowledge each one of them in your mind.” Martin said that. Good old Martin, one of the few good aides he has on staff. No, not an aide, a therapist. Martin is a therapist. They work together in Boulder.

  That feels almost right.

  Ed leaves it.

  When he first got home, he’d spend whole days trying to figure out where his instructions should start. Waking up from sleep required no instruction because it was subconscious. His body woke itself regularly at five-thirty a.m. But then what? Open eyes. Should his instructions include a description of the eyes? How to open them? The peeling back of the lid to reveal the orb? He would lie in bed questioning, his eyes still closed, those swatches of color playing against his irises, the oranges over the blacks over the greens. When he squeezed his lids tightly, colors exploded, and should he mention this phenomenon in his instructions? Should he practice this action upon waking every morning? One final squeeze of color-drenched darkness before opening those lids to his dark room?

  Open eyes.

  Roll onto left side. Ed sleeps on his back.

  Open eyes.

  Roll onto left side.

  Swing legs over edge.

  He goes through the steps and rounds a corner to his kitchen. My kitchen! Slick with blueberries—there they are, the squish and pulp and stickiness, a mess of them on the floor. Pete got the berries because of some health they imparted, and Ed didn’t close the bag entirely before putting it back in the freezer upside down. And then it became morning (Weeks ago? Days?), and he gave himself instructions to Rise and Go to kitchen and Make coffee and Eat something, but there weren’t instructions for upside-down unclosed blueberry bags, and though he didn’t move quickly once he grabbed the bag, it seemed like a fast-forwarded moment, a dancer’s spin, a lithe pivot, the bag opening, the berries breaking loose. It was a new bag, and big, and all those berries—hundreds, even thousands—flew across the kitchen. They gathered below the edge of the sink cabinets and rolled under the dishwasher; they scattershot the counter with purple-blue, mixing with the crumbs from earlier breakfasts. They built themselves into drifts, settling like dunes in the corners. And they are still there. Ed sees and remembers. They are still there under all the other accumulation.

  He picks up the kitchen phone. “Pete!”

  “Goddamn it, Ed, it’s really early.” Pete’s voice is sleepier than Laura’s, rough with drink, Ed is sure.

  “You out boozing last night without me? Out with the boys? The Tavern. Ladies all around and dinner getting cold, isn’t that right?” Before Pete can answer, because it feels like one question, all questions piling together in Ed’s mind, a great collection swept up against a door that suddenly and unexpectedly opens, “Did I tell you about the blueberries?”

  Silence, a long exhale, and then, “Blueberries?”

  “I spilled them all over the kitchen.”

  “Did you clean them up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why are you calling me so early?”

  “No.”

  Pete is the only person who comes to Ed’s house, and there are moments—this one, right now—when Ed can see it as Pete must see it, the kitchen spread with dishes and food and mail. Empty soup cans take up a whole portion of countertop—Dinty Moore stew and Campbell’s bean with bacon, cream of mushroom, classic tomato. His Crock-Pot still holds the remains of the pot roast he cooked for Pete a month ago. Dark ratty towels are piled on the crusted floor, which is creaky in spots from all the water damage. Hair and crumbs under the cupboards, grease spatters staining the plaster above the stove, crusted tomato sauce and ranch dressing and gravy and milk, and now—blueberries, their juice seeping into the already stained and darkened linoleum, purple-blue-black mixing with the mottled brown.

  He should know what to do about the spilled blueberries, but the instructions and processes won’t come. He doesn’t know how to start. He doesn’t even remember why he got the blueberries out or why he had such a large bag of them to begin with. They must’ve come from Pete. That was it. His old drinking buddy who was trying to get him to eat healthier.

  “How about that housekeeper we discussed?” Pete asks over the phone.

  “I don’t need a housekeeper.”

  “Ed.”

  He’ll start using the dishwasher again, the dishwasher that isn’t built in, that rolls around the kitchen on its shoddy wheels. It moves like a refrigerator, a dryer, a tall, thick-walled safe. He’ll just have to screw one of the hoses to the faucet head of the sink, then put the other hose into the basin for draining. The last time he used the thing, he failed to get the drain hose where it belonged, and he caused a small flood in the kitchen. That was the first flood. Then there was the second, a small leak at first—a dribble of water out the bottom of the sink cupboard, drips that grew into a small rivulet, and then into a stream, but a small stream, nothing pressing. It flowed at a weak rate, only a centimeter wide, probably less. And it disappeared quietly through the edges of the kitchen, making for small slivers of open space between the floor and the trim. That stage lasted for a good week, but then the pipe let go completely, the last vestige of strength succumbing to the building pressure, and so when Ed walked into the kitchen for his morning coffee, there was a river running from the bottom of his sink cupboard.

  He called Pete, and Pete called the plumber who’d come before, who didn’t conceal his outrage when he walked in. “Jesus. You’re ruining your house, you know that?” The man waded through the deluge, speaking and shouting as he went, the cuffs of his pants darkening with the water. “You know water is the number one assailant to a home? It’ll touch everything it can, go everywhere, and it’ll rot and mold everything it touches. Goddamn it. The break’s above the damn shutoff valve. Didn’t you think to shut the water off?” The plumber crouched in front of the open sink cupboard, his hand deep in the dark interior, shoulder swallowed, head cocked at an awkward angle to look back at Ed, and then the water ceased to flow. The last wave spilled out of the cupboard and scuttled across the shallow lake of the kitchen, slipped quietly down those secret passages into the basement, where it dripped in an orchestra of noise, a sloppy plunk into an existing puddle, a tinny clang on the lid of a metal can, a subtle, barely heard swallow on the upholstery of a rotting sofa.

  Pete says, “I’ll come over after work tonight and help with the kitchen.”

  “That’d be great, just great. I’ll get us a six-pack.”

  “All right, Ed.”

  Ed hangs up and continues with his morning: coffee and cigarette and morning news. His recliner is there and his book, the book Pen recommended about eyes, blue eyes, the bluest, that was right. It’s devastating and sexy and awful, and he’ll be able to talk to her about it soon, tomorrow.

  On television, the newsman speaks to a slight rise in the price of gasoline, a riot in Bristol, a lottery scandal in Pennsylvania. Eight U.S. troops are killed in a midair collision during a failed mission to rescue American embassy hostages. A British plane crashes, killing all 146 people on board. The women’s winner of the Boston Marathon is exposed as a fraud: “Ruiz did not run the enti
re course,” the anchor reports. “She is believed to have entered the race a half-mile before the finish line.”

  Ed chuckles and unfolds the current note sheet he keeps tucked in his book. Under the heading “Find Out,” he writes, “Rosie Ruiz.” He’ll see what he can dig up the next time he goes to the library, what bits of Ruiz’s history he can learn, trivia a hook he uses again and again. “Listen to this,” he’ll say, and go on to tell his son, so big now, how Ramses II’s mummy was issued a passport when he was shipped to France, with his occupation reading: “King (deceased).”

  “Did you know Oscar the Grouch used to be orange?”

  “Jay used to be slang for a foolish person, so people who ignore street signs became known as jaywalkers.”

  “The only number whose letters are arranged in alphabetical order is forty. F-O-R-T-Y. The only one!”

  He’ll tell Laura these facts, too, and Penelope, who brings her own to the table. The last time he saw her, she told him something fascinating. He wrote it down. What was it? He flips his paper over, unfolds, and folds. Yes, here it is: “Only female mosquitoes bite you.”

  “Ha!”

  — —

  The day creeps slowly toward noon. Ed dozes in front of the television. At eleven, he opens his eyes, smokes a cigarette, and then hoists himself from his chair. “Beau!” he calls. “Time to go out!” There is no scrambling of paws on the wood floor. He calls again, and then he remembers—Beau lives with Laura now. But Laura lives here. He shakes his head. Laura lives somewhere else. They’re taking some space—that’s it. She got the house down on Beattie Street. She’ll be back soon.

  He’s still in his robe, and it’s time to get dressed. Yesterday’s pants crouch near his bed, legs gone to puddles, rippling back on each other. They stand highest of all the floor’s accumulation, buoyed by soiled paper towels, girlie mags, plates, silverware, books, mail, other, dirtier clothes. He should have left them on the dresser or draped them on a chair. Bending to pick them up is hard. He sits on the edge of the bed to ease his legs in, his left leg stiff and stubborn, the toes stuck in the pocket of the knee, fabric folded in on itself, caught and catching. He kicks and the fabric loosens. His foot passes through, emerging in the open air at the other end. The right leg goes quicker.

  He misbuttons his shirt, the tails misaligned at the hem, the left side shorter than the right, but the error is hidden when he tucks it in. He isn’t wearing an undershirt. The thick swatch of hair at his chest leaps from his collar. Like his beard and his head, this hair is mostly gray now. He tells himself it’s dignified.

  He backs into the trash can on his way out, leaving another white scuff in the dull plastic. He’s left lines all over town, his car a great swatch of scratches. He tries to remember the source of all of them, but those moments are as blurry as the instructions for spilled blueberries.

  Dorothy’s isn’t far. It was an easy walk once, but it’s steep downhill there and steep uphill back. Ed can’t handle either anymore. He drives everywhere he needs to go.

  Though he easily could qualify for a handicapped sticker on his license plate, he refuses. He will park in no designated place, accept no charity. The handicapped are not his; he is not theirs. This definition is clear in his mind—always. It does not cloud or waver or need writing down. It is known. He knows it like he knows his son, Benjamin, and his wife, Laura, and his own name.

  Ex-wife.

  He gets to the restaurant twenty minutes early and orders a draft beer. “Anything you have that’s cold.”

  The waitress laughs and pats his shoulder. “You got it, Ed.” He should know her name—he knew it once—but he doesn’t anymore. She’s been waiting tables here for years.

  He lights a cigarette and shuffles the sugar packets.

  His beer arrives. “You meeting Pete today?”

  “Nope. Laura. She’ll be here around noon.”

  “I’ll check back.”

  He usually eats with Pete at Dorothy’s, and Benjamin, his boy, sometimes those bastard senators he’s still trying to squeeze funding from. Before them, it was his alone with Laura. They had their first meal in Helena here, and they ordered steaks, thick and bloody, baked potatoes, beer and more beer, and then they went back to the Third Street house and made love.

  He is good at passing time or, rather, letting time pass him. Minutes ebb by, eddying in circles before they flow on and away, minutes and then hours, days, months. Time passes while Ed sips his coffee and beer, smokes his cigarettes, eats his food, pinches and pulls the fabric of his pants. His brain keeps ticking away, counting seconds, marking them off in folds and drumbeats. He was young—forty—barely a gray hair on his head, and then he was old. It happened in the time between sitting down in Dorothy’s alone and seeing Laura walk in. It happened that quickly.

  He lumbers to standing. “Hello there, beautiful.”

  “Hi, Ed.” Laura seats herself across from him. “I don’t have long.”

  “We’ll order quick, then,” he says, and chuckles.

  She orders a salad, and he orders a burger, fries, ranch dressing.

  “Why are we having lunch, Ed?”

  “Old friends can’t have lunch?”

  “You said you were worried about Benjy.”

  Did he? Ed doesn’t remember saying he was worried about Ben. He doesn’t remember saying it or feeling it. Ben is fine. Ben is building block towers and climbing trees.

  “Ed?”

  He searches: Worry.

  “Was that just an excuse to have lunch?”

  Worry.

  “Ed, you can’t keep doing this.”

  Worry. Ed worries the inside of his pocket, fabric between his fingers.

  “Ed.” Her voice is lower, quieter, and calm. “Ed, Lynn would like to know if you need another beer.”

  The waitress is there. Lynn. That’s it, her name. And what’s more—her body. It was in his bed, he remembers, bare and lovely. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, ma’am.” He’s found a missing piece. He was searching, and something was found. The search is off. He is back here, in his favorite restaurant, with his beautiful wife, her voice that same beautiful voice that sang around campfires and in the living room and in Ben’s nursery, lulling the boy to sleep. Beautiful Laura. They spend their lunch talking about the weather and gas prices, and she tells him about the kitchen remodel she’s doing with her husband, Tim, and Ed sees the Third Street kitchen shift under her words, growing an island and new countertops, a refrigerator with ice and water in the door, a window box for herbs.

  When their meal is done, Ed pays with cash, insisting until Laura acquiesces, and they walk to the parking lot together, slowly, leisurely, to get every minute they can.

  “Same time next week?”

  “No, Ed.” Laura closes his car door and taps her fingers on the window, her goodbye. He should’ve walked her to her car, he realizes as he pulls away, should’ve been the gentleman. Next week. He’ll do it next week.

  Chapter 36

  — Laura —

  The phone wakes me too early again, Ed’s voice on the other end, singing, “Good morning, beautiful.”

  I have to be incredulous. This is my role now, everyone agrees.

  “We have to retrain him, Laura,” says Pete and Bonnie and Tim. “You can’t indulge this behavior.”

  But I disagree. What can I do for this Ed other than answer his early-morning calls?

  I say his name with exasperation, though, and I make a point of rolling my eyes at Tim when he sits up and turns on his bedside lamp. “It’s five-thirty,” I scold. “I’ve told you too many times not to call this early. Do I need to change my number?”

  “If you did, I’d find it out. Meet me for lunch.”

  Tim mouths, Hang up.

  “I can’t, Ed. I’m working at the gallery all day.” I’ve started showing my work at a small gallery downtown, working its retail hours several days a week.

  “I’ll bring you lunch, then!”


  Tim is shaking his head. I’ve spoken too soon, telling Ed my plans, sleep muddying my brain. I’m not supposed to tell Ed where I am. “No, Ed.”

  Tim takes the phone, and I swallow the resentment like I always do. He is firm and gentle, and right, he reminds me. This isn’t good for anyone. “Ed? It’s Tim. Listen, you can’t call this early. And Laura needs to work today, so you can’t stop by the gallery, all right? You want to meet me for lunch? I’d love to catch up.”

  I lie back on my pillow, childishly delighted by whatever Ed is saying to scrunch Tim’s face into such stern disappointment. Ed won’t have lunch with Tim. Ed ignores Tim, forgets Tim, and when he happens to place him in his role as my husband, Ed despises Tim.

  “Fine, Ed, that’s just fine, but you can’t go bothering Laura today, either.” Tim says goodbye and reaches over me to hang up the phone. “We need to switch sides. Let me start fielding the calls.”

  “You shouldn’t offer to have lunch with him.”

  “Why not? I know the guy’s been through a lot, but I think I have the right to tell him to his face not to call my wife at five in the morning.”

  “Would you be doing that for me or for you?”

  He has asked me the same kind of question any number of times. Is this for you or for him, Laura?

  We’re facing each other in bed, and he puts a hand on my face. It’s the same rough hand I was taken with that first time I met him. The hand of my old firefighter. The hand of my present builder. The hand of everything that is not Ed.

  Tim says, “I’d be doing it for both of us, Laura, and for our boys.”

  He has never before referred to Benjy as his own, and I am both warmed by his investment in my son and furious with his usurpation of Benjy’s father.

  “My being in Ed’s life doesn’t hurt the boys.”

  Tim’s hand moves to my collarbone, his mouth to my neck. “It doesn’t help them, either,” he whispers, and I want to be angry, but he is kissing me and his hand has snaked inside my nightgown, those calluses against my skin. My hair is a ratty mess, and we both have terrible breath, but he is rough and handsome and—in this early-morning moment—he is not boring.