Halfway House

by Katharine Noel

  The men were coming in from the backyard. Julie’s fiancé Matt was handsome, with the beginnings of a belly and a jovial insincerity. He and Julie worked as tellers in the same bank, but he was management track and she wasn’t. Wendy’s father let the screen door bang behind him. A big man, red hair yellowing with age, wearing an expensive Polo shirt. He hugged Wendy, then held out his hand to Luke.

  He asked Luke questions about graduating—Luke had managed to complete his requirements to graduate a year late—and about Madison. He didn’t use Luke’s name, and Luke wondered if he’d forgotten it.

  “Honey, get me a drink,” Mr. Miles said to Wendy.

  Wendy was standing at the microwave. The only indication that she’d heard was that the muscles at the back of her neck tensed. Julie and Cammie stiffened also, looking down at their work. In high school, Luke knew, Wendy and her sisters had put clear tape on their father’s bottles to track how fast the levels went down; they’d kept intricate charts. When Luke had asked why, Wendy gave him a confused look, as though she couldn’t believe he didn’t see. But then she’d laughed. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It made us feel more in control, I guess.”

  “Gwennie?” said Mr. Miles.

  “I’ll get it,” said his wife, jumping up quickly.

  Wendy continued to get forks and napkins from drawers. She folded the napkins in careful triangles. She took down glasses and asked Luke what he wanted to drink. He wanted a beer but he said, “A Coke?”

  When at last she turned back to the table, her face was perfectly composed to say nothing’s happened. She put their plates down.

  Matt asked Luke, “When are you guys getting married?”

  “We don’t have any plans.”

  “Good man.” Matt cuffed his shoulder. “Stay free as long as you can.”

  “Matt,” Julie said.

  He laughed, hooking his arm around her waist. “These girls make it hard.”

  That night, Luke woke to Wendy whispering his name. He was sleeping in the basement den, on a pull-out sofa.

  “Matt is awful. I don’t want Julie to marry him.”

  Half asleep, Luke said, “Hi, Wendy.”

  She whispered, “I feel like I barely even know her all of a sudden. She told me this long story about someone who hasn’t been paying his share of the coffee pool at the bank, and how annoyed she is.”

  He opened his eyes wide, forcing himself to wake up. Rolling onto his side, he pushed some hair back out of her face. “This is nice, isn’t it?” He put his hand under her shirt, along her stomach. “In New Hampshire we could sleep like this all the time.”

  “Shh.” She pointed at the ceiling; she didn’t want her parents to hear that she was down here. “Are you going to miss me?”

  Her inviting him to Iowa might not be a sign of wavering but its opposite: she wasn’t afraid time together might change her mind. He felt sick of it, suddenly—that she didn’t want to be together but wanted reassurance that he was unhappy about it. Unhappy, but of course not mad at her. She acted like his being near Angie was just a preference, not something he needed to do.

  Wendy kissed him. He let her, keeping his mouth still, until she moved back and said, “What?”

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “What do you mean?” In the thin light from the hallway, he could see her flush to the roots of her hair. He’d often thought how much she must hate it that the fairness of her skin gave away when she was embarrassed or angry or tipsy. “We still have two days. Just because I think we should break up doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”

  He said, “You tell me you don’t want to be together—”

  “I don’t want to move to be together.”

  “This is bullshit, then.”

  “Shush,” she hissed, jabbing her finger toward the ceiling: he’d forgotten to whisper.

  “God, listen to yourself.”

  She was on top of the covers; she began to shiver. “So why’d you come?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. Being cruel had a crazy energy to it, one that made him feel both jacked up and deeply calm. “But I’m going to sleep now.”

  He turned away. Wendy said, “Luke,” putting her arm around him. “Luke?” Then she rolled away from him and off the bed. Apparently not caring if she made noise, she ran up the basement stairs.

  At the wedding rehearsal Saturday afternoon, Luke and Wendy sat in a middle pew of the church. All nine bridesmaids were there, dressed in cotton skirts or short white shorts; he and Wendy, in their T-shirts and cut-offs, were the only people in the church wearing dark colors. At the front of the hall, Wendy’s sister and mother talked to the organist.

  Wendy’s hands were under her thighs. She looked tired and fragile, her pale skin blotchy. He’d hurt her last night. Realizing that made him want to hurt her again. Without saying anything, he got up and walked to the back of the church, where he made himself read the names of boys killed in World War II. One was Luke Palmer Tripp. He traced the engraved nameplate with his finger. Luke Palmer Tripp had been killed in 1943, when he was nineteen. Luke tried to feel some kind of tragedy or portent but didn’t feel anything but the itchy need for a cigarette.

  He walked outside, onto the front porch of the church. Across the street, a tractor was making slow circles in a field of green. People who didn’t smoke missed this, just standing on porches and balconies, watching the world for seven minutes without moving. He pulled the smoke down into his lungs; it was abrasive yet soothing.

  The second cigarette wasn’t as good and he was beginning to feel awkward out here. Weddings didn’t make any sense to him. You dressed to look totally unlike yourself and dressed your friends to look as much alike as possible—a girl team for the bride, a boy team for the groom. Then you read from the same script everyone else used, and it was supposed to be moving.

  When he went back inside, the dimness made it hard to see, and he thought at first that Wendy was approaching the altar in Julie’s place. He couldn’t distinguish colors clearly in the half-light; the woman at the front of the church had Wendy’s way of standing so straight she almost canted backward. Taped Pachelbel played on a small boom box. At the front of the church, Julie reached Matt, then shook her head. The shake of her head was like Wendy too, the same sharp certainty. She turned, and with a shock he realized it was Wendy, standing in for her sister.

  Up until now, he hadn’t really felt the loss of her. Now, for a moment, it gaped open in his chest.

  She walked to the back of the church and gave him a dispassionate glance. The music started again, and Mrs. Miles said, “Okay, first bridesmaid. Second bridesmaid. Third bridesmaid.”

  Wendy took her father’s arm.

  “Ninth bridesmaid. Okay, bride.”

  Mr. Miles had brush-cut hair and a military posture. He and Wendy moved down the aisle, backs straight as ironing boards.

  “Luke?”

  He turned. Julie was at his elbow. He asked, “Why is Wendy pretending to be you?”

  “What? Oh. It’s bad luck for the bride to be in her own rehearsal.” She watched Wendy for a moment, then asked, “Do you have a cigarette?”

  He pulled the pack from his pocket and tilted it toward her but she’d already started out to the porch. He didn’t feel like hanging out with Julie, though her prettiness and ease charmed him, in the same way he’d been charmed at first by Iowa, its long furrowed fields and flat horizon; charmed by the Dairi Shoppe where Wendy had once waitressed, the high school football field where she’d led cheers.

  Across the street, a thresher was making its way toward them, bringing down a long row of sunflowers. Julie lit one of his cigarettes, handed back his lighter.

  “Your hair is longer,” she said.

  “Yeah, that happens.”

  She laughed. Then, looking up at him through her bangs, she asked, “What about you guys? When are you going to get married?”

  It was a little bizarre, the flirtatiousness of her man
ner contrasted with the seriousness of the question. Had Wendy not told her sisters they were breaking up? “I don’t know.”

  “She’s crazy about you.”

  That all Wendy’s seeming nonchalance about his move might be self-protection depressed him. They’d known each other four years, five if you counted the year she worked at Cleveland’s.

  “I don’t know anyone who smokes Trues,” Julie said.

  “My sister smokes Trues.”

  Julie made a quick sympathetic face at the mention of Angie. She inhaled some smoke. Cigarettes had become so Pavlovian to him that just watching someone else smoke was pleasurable.

  “I have a favor to ask,” Julie said.

  “Shoot.”

  “It’s about the receiving line. Bridesmaids’ boyfriends and husbands and ushers’ girlfriends and wives are going to be in it.”

  “Oh, sure. No big deal.”

  Julie smiled and took a breath. So that hadn’t been the favor.

  “It’s just, everyone’s going to be dressed up.”

  “I brought a suit.”

  “Juliet, honey?” Mrs. Miles called from inside. “We’ve got the timing figured out.”

  “That’s great,” Julie said to him quickly, though there was an undissolved tension in her shoulders. “A suit’s great. I’m glad you brought a suit.”

  That night, they went to a bar called the Kennel. Wendy’s old boyfriend, Steve, was there. Before Luke, Steve had been the only person Wendy had slept with. Luke had also gotten her to confess that they’d slept together during Angie’s breakdown, which made Steve an asshole. His brown hair, still wet from the shower, showed comb marks, and his hands were large and knobby.

  Luke found himself talking to a girl named Sherry, round-faced and pleasant. He drank too fast and flirted with Sherry, who flirted back until the strap of her tank top fell off her shoulder and he pushed it back up with his finger. She frowned and leaned away and a minute later excused herself to go talk to someone at the other end of the table.

  Wendy looked over at him, smiling thinly, raising her glass in a sardonic toast.

  He pushed back his chair and stumbled into the men’s bathroom (labeled NEUTERED; the women’s was SPAYED), where he splashed his face with cold water.

  Later, Wendy took his car keys away. She acted annoyed, but he could tell she was self-righteously pleased. Back unnaturally straight, she drove them home, shifting hard when she changed gears. They were silent for a long time. He turned on the radio, finding a staticky song by Led Zeppelin.

  Wendy said, “I hate Led Zeppelin.”

  “How can you hate Led Zeppelin?”

  She said, “Just because you like something doesn’t make it good.” She snapped the radio off.

  As falsely as he could, he said, “You’re right. You’re always right.” He leaned his head back against the seat. They were on a long dark stretch of road; he couldn’t see farms but he could smell the water on the fields. He felt the same precariousness, the same sickly pleasure, that he used to as a child when he fought with his sister.

  They passed fast-food restaurants, a funeral home. Slipping lower in his seat, he could see stars through the windshield.

  “You can turn on the radio if you want,” Wendy said. When he didn’t, she clicked it on herself. All the stoplights blinked yellow. Slumped in his seat, he watched from beneath as they fell through the intersections.

  Wendy pulled into her family’s driveway. On the neighbor’s lawn, a plaster gnome in a red hat beamed, rosy-cheeked, holding up a lantern. “Nice gnome,” he said. Gnome, gnome, gnome. Who had come up with that word? Gnome.

  Wendy turned off the car but didn’t move to get out. “Julie asked me to ask you a favor.” The gnome’s smile was too merry, as though it knew wicked secrets. “She wants you to cut your hair.”

  “What?” He laughed, turning. She wasn’t smiling. “Are you serious?”

  She pressed her lips together, shrugging.

  He knew Wendy liked his hair long. She would run her fingers through it or sometimes, idly, make little braids. “Is that what you want?”

  “Julie’s the one who’s the bride.” She wore the haughty touch-menot face that meant she was embarrassed.

  “What do you want?”

  Crickets chirped, insistent, all around them. She looked away. “What Julie wants.”

  “You know what?” he said. “Fine. You’re the boss. Whatever. Fine.”

  * * *

  In the morning, Luke drove to downtown Greenfield and found a barbershop. The barber pole was white tin, painted with red and blue stripes and the slogan look BETTER. … FEEL BETTER! Hadn’t he learned somewhere that barbers used to bleed people? With leeches. Or had they used razors? Or was he thinking of dentists?

  Inside, he expected a kindly older barber, a crowd of newspaper-reading men waiting their turn. The shop was empty and cool, with a lone young woman in a pink smock talking on the phone. She had long permed hair that spilled around her head.

  She said, “I’ll call you back. I’ve got a customer.”

  After fastening a cape over him, she took out the elastic from his ponytail. His hair reached his shoulders. With her hands, she combed it out, long nails scritching gently against his scalp. Their eyes met in the mirror.

  Her breasts were half an inch from his head. Stroking his hair, she asked, “You want a pop?”

  “What?”

  “You want a pop? Pepsi, Seven-Up?”

  “Oh. Sure. Thanks.”

  She turned and bent from the waist, ass in the air as she reached into a low fridge. As she handed him the soda, she asked, “How about a nibble?”

  “A nibble?”

  “Fritos? Chips?”

  It was eight in the morning. The absurdity of the situation began to break up his bad mood. “I’m good with this,” he said, lifting the Pepsi can, silvered with frost.

  “Okay, then.” Putting her hands in his hair again, she steadied his head. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want it all off.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked, then surprised him by saying, “Your hair’s so nice.”

  It bolstered his anger at Wendy. “I want, like, a buzz. As short as you can get it.”

  She shrugged and reached for a comb. With each snick of the scissors—the sound so sharp he could almost taste metal—he thought, Fuck you, Wendy, fuck you fuck you. The woman switched to clippers. By the time she was done, he looked like a Marine. His forehead jutted forward, bony. Well, fuck that too.

  When he got back to the house, he went straight to the basement and started to pack. Wendy came down after him. She looked tense, and there was something strange about her face: a thick layer of beige foundation that hid her freckles. The pink dress was a bad color on her.

  “I was up all night,” she said. “Your hair’s so short.” She reached out to touch it, then stopped herself and fisted her hand and cried, “Oh, fuck! This whole trip. I don’t know how to fix anything. Everything’s so bad. I love you so much. Do you believe I love you?”

  “I guess,” he said.

  “I do. I love you so much it’s—I get all confused. I know I’ve been awful. I want to go to New Hampshire with you. Or something. I don’t know. I just want to be with you.”

  “I’m leaving now,” he said. “If you want to come, you have to come now.”

  “Now?”

  “I’m not staying for this wedding. If you love me, you’ll come.”

  He wanted her to say no. The truth was he would wait.

  Outside Cedar Rapids, they stopped for food at a convenience store. Luke sat on the curb, eating peanut butter crackers, while Wendy changed in the bathroom. She came out wearing clothes of Luke’s—a T-shirt, cut-offs. When they’d left, she’d grabbed only her purse.

  “Where’s your dress?” he asked.

  “Trash.” She’d washed off the foundation makeup and was very pale. His clothes hung on her small frame. She looked terrible, or else
very beautiful, he didn’t know which. Sitting beside him, she twisted her arms together and pinned them between her knees.

  She said, “Once, in high school, the Rowes needed extra hands, so I was walking beans.” He knew she meant weeding soybean fields. “We were near the east side of the farm, not far from the Millers’, the next place over. The Millers were spraying their crops, and this flock of blackbirds, a huge flock, came toward us. They flew right through the pesticide and out the other side, and then they started falling to the ground around us, straight down. And they’re pretty heavy, so there was this noise, like thud, thud, thud thud thud—”

  Luke found his cigarettes, fished one out, and lit it.

  Wendy was staring into space. Without breaking her stare, she said, “They’re married by now.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said cautiously, waiting for her to go on.

  She put her head down on her knees.

  He touched her back. “It’s okay, Wen. It’s fine.”

  “I’m just tired.” She sounded choked. After a while, she said, “Oh, God, I’m such a bitch.”

  “You’re not a bitch.”

  She nodded into her lap. For a long time she was still. Then she straightened and stood, picking up the wrapper from the crackers he’d eaten. She walked to the gas pump island to throw the cellophane away. His white T-shirt was so big on her it looked like a dress.

  They reached Cort at four in the morning. Wendy got out of the car, swaying a little with exhaustion.

  “I thought it would look different,” she said.

  “Different?”

  “I don’t know. Bigger?” She laughed. “Maybe smaller?”

  He looked at their brick Colonial, trying to see it as she might, but he was too tired. “I don’t want to wake them up.” Then remembering his mother was gone, corrected himself: “I don’t want to wake my dad.” He walked around to the side of the house, letting Wendy follow. “They don’t lock the upstairs windows. I’ll boost you.” He knelt, interlacing his fingers.