Seventh Heaven

by Alice Hoffman

  Hennessy took his package and went outside. He felt dizzy in the fresh air and he leaned against the brick wall, and he stayed there until the sales clerks began to take their lunch breaks. Donna came out at twelve thirty wearing a good English raincoat over a black dress. She was with a group of four women, and when they passed Hennessy, he ducked his head and inhaled the mixture of perfumes they wore.

  As he followed them to a coffeeshop called the Village Grill, he thought about the dust balls under the furniture at the Durgins’ house, and the wiseguy looks on the boys’ faces when Robert called and they refused to come in at suppertime. Hennessy stood at the cigarette machine, eavesdropping as the women talked about customers and weekend plans. Donna ordered a chef’s salad and iced tea, but when her food arrived she played with it, obviously more interested in talking to her friends than eating. What Hennessy needed was a good cup of coffee, but he thought about the woman from the domestic, the one who had moved to New Jersey, and when he remembered how he’d left her there, grateful he could walk away, he didn’t think he could stomach coffee. He went directly to Donna’s table.

  “Donna,” he said.

  She was holding her fork and listening to the woman across from her complain about her mother, and as she glanced up at him the smile on her face froze.

  “I’d like to talk to you,” Hennessy said.

  Donna’s gold earrings made a tinkling sound, even though she didn’t move.

  “Donna?” one of her friends said, concerned.

  “I’d like to have a cup of coffee with you,” Hennessy said. “That’s all.”

  “Donna, are you okay?” the woman next to Donna asked, looking over at Hennessy.

  “Sure,” Donna said to her friend. She grabbed her purse and squeezed past the other women. “I’ll be right back.”

  Donna walked to the rear of the coffeeshop, where there were tables for two, and Hennessy followed her. She sat down and watched him carefully as he sat across from her.

  “Thank God for coffee, right?” Hennessy said. He picked up the sugar dispenser and tapped his fingers on the glass. Donna Durgin was waiting, and finally Hennessy said, “You sure look different. You look great.”

  Donna continued to watch him; she sure as hell wasn’t making it easy for him.

  “People have been worried about you,” Hennessy said. “I mean, Christ, Donna, what happened?”

  “I can’t explain it.”

  “Well, look,” Hennessy said patiently, “a woman doesn’t just get up one day and decide, What the hell, today I’m leaving my husband and my kids and my house and I’m not saying a damned word to anyone. You obviously knew what you were doing. No one forced you, right?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Donna said.

  “Well, Christ, Donna, try me!” Hennessy said. Donna looked down at the table and bit her lip and he knew she was weakening. “Just try me.” Hennessy reached into the Lord & Taylor bag and brought out the black slip. “I mean, for God’s sake, I already spent eighteen twenty-five on a slip.”

  Donna laughed in spite of herself. When the waitress came over, Hennessy ordered black coffee. As he turned back to Donna he noticed that her nails were pink and that she wore a silver bangle bracelet.

  “No wedding ring,” Hennessy said.

  “You won’t understand,” Donna said. “I was dead.”

  “What about your kids? You haven’t even asked about them.”

  “What good was I to them?” Donna asked. “I was disappearing more each day. Is that what life is supposed to be?”

  Hennessy looked at her blankly.

  “Is it?” Donna said.

  “I guess it is,” Hennessy said. “That’s the way life is.”

  “Not for me,” Donna said. “Not now.”

  Hennessy’s coffee came, and when the waitress had left he leaned forward. “How would it be if everyone walked away? How would it be if I just up and left Ellen and the kids and the mortgage and just took off?”

  “I don’t know. How would it be?”

  “God,” Hennessy said. “I wish I knew.”

  They stared at each other and then Donna said suddenly, “I will have coffee.”

  “Good. I hate to drink poison alone.”

  He ordered for her while she went to tell her friends she’d meet them back at the store. Hennessy could see that they were excited for her; they thought he was a love interest, or at least a possibility.

  “They think you’re cute,” Donna said when she returned. “I go back sometimes,” she added. “I look at the house and it seems as if I never even lived there.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Donna took two saccharin tablets out of her purse and dropped them into her coffee. “I don’t know. That’s up to you.”

  “I brought over a box of clothes for Melanie yesterday,” Hennessy said. “He doesn’t know anything about dressing girls. He had her wearing the boys’ old jeans.”

  “Oh no,” Donna said.

  “He had her in high-top sneakers that were two sizes too big.”

  Hennessy watched, feeling nothing as Donna started to cry.

  “Well, hell,” he said. “What did you expect?”

  “You bastard,” Donna said.

  “Yeah,” Hennessy said.

  They both pushed their coffee cups away.

  “So,” Hennessy said. “Do you want to see them?”

  Donna Durgin stared him right in the eye; she stared him down. “More than anything,” she said.

  By the time Hennessy had paid the check it was agreed they would meet a week from Sunday at Policeman’s Field, a big windy lot used for baseball games on the edge of town. There was a small playground beside the fenced-in field and Hennessy would be there, with the children. Donna would borrow a friend’s car and watch from the street. It was not clear to either one of them how or why Hennessy had decided not to turn her in; he simply couldn’t do it. He didn’t go to Ellen’s sister’s in Rockville Centre that night. He made himself a sandwich and watched a game on TV and then he went into the bathroom, locked the door, and wept. When he was through, he went out to the car, got the bag from Lord & Taylor, and put it on his wife’s bed, just beneath her pillow.

  DONNA HAD A ONE-ROOM APARTMENT IN HEMPSTEAD, and although there wasn’t much furniture, not even a rug, she had spider plants balanced in every window and a row of coleus on the shelf behind the sink. She had brought nothing with her, and the clothes she’d worn when she left she had thrown down the incinerator chute. She had only a couch that pulled out to be a sleeper and a coffee table she’d found in the trash and had painted white and a closetful of good clothes. Every night for supper she ate tunafish with no mayo and a salad made with iceberg lettuce and chunks of tomatoes, even though she was now at her perfect weight.

  On the day she went to see her children Donna wore black stretch pants and a thick wool sweater and her English raincoat. She borrowed her friend Ilene’s car, and before she left for Policeman’s Field she slipped on dark glasses and tied a chiffon scarf over her hair. She didn’t think she was particularly nervous, but when she was in sight of the field she wondered if she might be having a heart attack. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t thought of her children while she’d been gone, but she had been pretending they were with her. She often went to the children’s department at lunch break and looked through the blazers and the velvet dresses, planning what she would buy. When she potted plants she imagined the look on her children’s faces when they saw her kitchen filled with colorful plants, all bending toward the sun.

  Donna pulled over and parked across the street from the muddy field. She rolled down her window so that the crisp March air came in and slapped her in the face. Hennessy was sitting on the edge of the sandbox; he hadn’t had the least bit of trouble getting the children—Robert had been grateful for a morning off. Now he watched as Melanie made sand pies and cakes. She was wearing a blue sweatshirt Donna had never seen before and pink corduroy pants that had onc
e belonged to Suzanne Hennessy. The boys were on the monkey bars, not wearing their sweaters, just jeans and long-sleeved T-shirts that were wrinkled and showed the base of their spines when they flung themselves, hand over hand, along the metal bars.

  Donna wished then she hadn’t come. She had expected them to be exactly the same as they were when she’d left, and to stay that way until she could reclaim them. But already they had changed, they’d grown taller without her. Still, she couldn’t take her eyes off them. She didn’t even notice that Hennessy had left the playground until he appeared at her window.

  “They’re great kids,” Hennessy said.

  Donna Durgin nodded.

  “Come see them.”

  “What?” Donna said.

  “I’ve been thinking it over. You can get visitation rights. If Robert bothers you, you can get a restraining order. Get a divorce, if that’s what you want, but you still have rights.”

  “You know an awful lot about divorce,” Donna Durgin said.

  Hennessy opened the car door and Donna looked at him, then got out. Watching her walk into the playground, Hennessy thought that there was nothing the same about her, except for her voice, and he was amazed when her children recognized her instantly; they ran to her and grabbed hold of her raincoat, nearly toppling her in the wind.

  At a little after eleven that night, after they’d all gone to bed, there was a pounding on the Hennessys’ door. Hennessy hadn’t been sleeping, though; he’d been waiting and watching the sky through his window.

  Ellen sat up in bed and grabbed her blanket to cover herself. “What is that?” she said.

  “Don’t answer it,” Hennessy told her.

  Ellen turned and looked at him in the moonlight. The pounding went on, harder and fiercer.

  “Joe?” Ellen said, scared now.

  “He’ll go away,” Hennessy said, hoping he was right.

  “Who will?” Ellen asked.

  Hennessy listened to the pounding. “Robert Durgin,” he said.

  Ellen looked at him, then got out of bed and grabbed her robe. Hennessy stayed where he was, listening to Robert shouting and the low murmur of Ellen’s voice; then he got out of bed and pulled on some clothes. He considered slipping on his holster, but only for a minute.

  “You lousy bastard,” Robert Durgin said when Hennessy came out to the living room.

  “Why don’t we talk it over tomorrow?” Hennessy said.

  “Are the children all right?” Ellen asked.

  Robert didn’t answer; he pushed her aside and Ellen gave a little gasp and then looked at him as if she didn’t know him.

  “Calm down,” Hennessy said.

  “You fucking lousy bastard,” Robert growled.

  Suzanne peered out of her bedroom, clutching her doll.

  “Mommy?” she said.

  “I’ll go tuck her in,” Ellen said, but she waited for her husband to nod before she made a move.

  “You know where she is,” Robert said once Ellen had gone. “Melanie woke up with a nightmare and told me she was crying because she knows she’s not supposed to lie but Mr. Hennessy and her own mother told her maybe she’d better. I thought you were on my side!”

  “I’m not taking sides,” Hennessy insisted.

  “Then tell me where she is,” Robert said.

  “I can’t do that,” Hennessy told him.

  “Can you even tell me why she left?” Robert said.

  “I don’t know,” Hennessy said, because he didn’t have the heart to tell Robert the truth. “I can take them to see her every other Sunday until you get the divorce proceedings going.”

  “Oh, shit,” Robert said.

  “Accuse her of anything you want,” Hennessy said. “She doesn’t care as long as she gets visitation rights.”

  Robert sat down heavily on the couch.

  “For your own sake, Robert,” Hennessy said, “let it go.”

  Ellen was watching from the hallway. She’d put on some clothes and combed out her hair. She came in and sat next to Robert. “Let me make you some coffee,” she said to him. “I’ll make some sandwiches.”

  Robert nodded, and they had ham-and-cheese sandwiches and coffee together, at the coffee table, so they could look out the front window and keep an eye on the house where Robert and Donna’s children slept. After he’d gone home, Ellen cleaned up the dishes without a word, but when they were both in the bedroom she turned to Hennessy and said bitterly, “Why you and not me? Why didn’t Donna call me?”

  “She didn’t call me,” Hennessy said. “I tracked her down.”

  “But she could have called me,” Ellen said, crying now. “She was my friend.”

  Joe Hennessy watched his wife cry; then he sat down next to her on the bed.

  “I didn’t even know anything was wrong,” Ellen said. She looked up at Hennessy. “And now,” she told him, “I do.”

  8

  GOOD BOYS

  AT THE END OF MARCH PHIL Shapiro packed up his Caddy and drove to Manhattan, but at least he had the decency to wait until after midnight, so that none of the neighbors would see him. He had a new job at Best & Co. and an apartment off Lexington, and he’d stacked everything in the world that he cared about into twelve brown boxes. It was, Rickie and Danny had been told, a trial separation, but anyone could see that it was the end, because Gloria Shapiro immediately started cooking like crazy. She made fudge brownies with cognac and chicken à l’orange and she even went over to Nora Silk’s and bought an entire set of Tupperware; Gloria spooned her concoctions into the plastic tubs and shoved them into the freezer until it was no longer possible to shut the freezer door. She made it clear to her children that they were to discuss their personal crisis with no one; if asked, they were to say that their father was on a business trip, which in a sense he was, and that their mother, who had never learned to drive, now walked to the A&P and back with a shopping cart not because her husband wasn’t available to take her but because she needed the exercise.

  Rickie Shapiro cried a lot in the girls’ room on the second floor of the high school, but she was emotional lately anyway because she had just begun to go steady with Doug Linkhauser, who was the captain of the football team and whose father had bought him a brand-new Corvair, white with a blood-red interior. Even though Doug was crazy about her and she was crazy about him right back, she still felt like everything around her was falling apart. What had happened to her parents? Nora Silk was the only divorced person Rickie had ever met, and clearly Nora deserved it. Rickie could tell that Nora had a man now; when she was looking through Nora’s jewelry box she’d found cigarette butts from someone else’s brand in the ashtray on the night table, there beside the bed for anyone to see. She’d picked one of the pillows off the bed and the pillowcase smelled like sweat and tobacco, and she’d dropped it on the floor, disgusted. She couldn’t even stand to baby-sit for the Silk boys anymore. Some Saturdays she phoned Nora and lied and said that she was sick, and Nora would be all flustered because then she would have to call up Armand’s and say that she was sick, too. Rickie no longer took Nora’s advice; she started to set her hair on big wire rollers again instead of leaving it wild, and as it turned out, Doug Linkhauser thought she looked beautiful in pink.

  When she tried to figure out what had gone wrong with her parents, she came up with nothing; they didn’t even fight. It wasn’t like them to humiliate Rickie and make her keep such an awful secret from everyone, even her best friend, Joan Campo. Danny was useless; he refused to talk about their parents at all, and the whole thing literally made Rickie sick. Her mother was cooking so much that the kitchen was always burning hot; you’d start to feel faint the moment you walked through the side door. On Sunday nights, Rickie couldn’t see Doug because Phil would drive from the city and take Rickie and Danny out to Tito’s Steakhouse on the other side of the Southern State and they’d all order steak and French fries and onion rings and then no one would eat. Rickie had to make conversation the whole time because Dan
ny wouldn’t talk, and then when they were dropped off at home, Gloria was waiting to quiz them. Rickie actually began to make lists of everything they had ordered at Tito’s and everything her father wore, just so she’d have something to tell her mother. On Friday and Saturday evenings, when Rickie got dressed to go out with Doug, she could hear her mother outside in the backyard, thinning the pachysandra. It was a horrifying sound, like a wild animal rooting around, but Gloria kept at it and she didn’t stop tearing out pachysandra by the roots until there was a tall pile next to the back patio.

  “God, you’re perfect,” Doug Linkhauser would whisper as he kissed Rickie when they parked in the Corvair behind Policeman’s Field, and she would just want to crack his head open. Oh, she loved him, she was crazy about him, and why shouldn’t she be? Everyone wanted to go out with him—it was just that sometimes she found herself thinking about Ace when she kissed Doug, and then she would pull away from him and feel the color rising in her face.

  Nothing was perfect, Rickie Shapiro could see that now. What had her best friend said when Rickie finally broke down and told her about her parents’ separation? “God, that’s awful, your family’s destroyed.” She could have kicked Joan, but she couldn’t let on that she was hurt. Everything seemed to be on shaky ground now, silt really, that gave way when you touched it with your toe. Rickie had been taught to respect and follow all the rules, at any cost, even losing her chance with Ace, and now it seemed there was a possibility that she’d been tricked. Parents like hers weren’t supposed to split up; a boy as smart and handsome as Danny should have been popular, instead of spending all his time locked in his room; even Joan Campo, who had been her best friend for six years, had deceived her. The rules had always been that you could let a boy kiss you and touch your breasts over your bra, but now Joan had more or less admitted she had gone all the way with Ed Laundy and she was probably going to do it again. When Rickie had seemed shocked, Joan had laughed at her and asked, “What do you think everyone’s been doing at Policeman’s Field?” and Rickie had been too embarrassed to admit that she’d thought everyone was doing what she was doing, being a good girl, and if she hadn’t thought that she would have been with Ace instead of being scrunched up in the backseat of the Corvair on Friday nights, letting Doug Linkhauser put his tongue in her mouth.