So the idea of a man who lives only a few blocks from her but wishes to have a correspondence with her has a nice old-fashioned feeling to it. She gives him her fax number. For a second there, she’s sure he’s going to kiss her, but he just takes her hand and holds it for a moment. Then he leaves.
Where were you?” her son asks her when she comes in, a little after ten. Pete’s sitting at the computer playing Flight Simulator with Jared, who is evidently sleeping over. They’re piloting an F-15 over Paris. The Eiffel Tower whizzes below in a blur.
“I had dinner with a friend,” she tells him.
“Nancy called,” he says. “Also, Dad wants to know if he can take us out Thursday night instead of Wednesday.”
“Fine,” she says. She’s thinking about that moment in the restaurant as she was telling Tim something Sam had said to her once, when it looked as if Tim had tears in his eyes.
“Of course I’m not ‘in love’ with you,” Sam told her one time. “Being in love is for teenagers and country music. We’re married, for Christ’s sake. We have kids.”
Claire is thinking about those big hands of Tim’s, and what they would feel like in her hair. She has never made love with such a big man. She wonders if he would crush her, knock the wind out of her, rip her skin.
“The garage door opener’s jammed again,” Pete’s telling her. “I had to bring my bike in the back door. Plus there’s something funny with the toilet. It keeps making this gurgling noise.”
He has a little girl. A motherless child. And who is Claire if not a mother? She is other things besides that, too, she knows now—better than she used to. But there is also this place in her that will always want to bend over other women’s carriages and pick their babies up, take other women’s troubled sons on her lap and help them churn butter. She thinks about the story Tim told her tonight, of how Ursula sits by the phone Sunday nights, and of the question Tim says she keeps asking him: What did I do bad to make my mother stop loving me?
Claire hasn’t laid eyes on this child, and already she wants to wrap her arms around her. Her and her father, both.
Early the next morning Tim faxes Claire a poem about estuaries. Estuaries and her neck. “I didn’t want to say good-bye to you last night,” he writes. “After you left I just sat there in the parking lot of the children’s museum, thanking God that I met you.”
Imagine Mickey saying something like that, Mickey thanking God. Mickey, who won’t even let Gabe sign up for Cub Scouts because of that line in the pledge about doing your duty to God and your country. Mickey, whose religion is Miles Davis and the American League. Usually when she compares some man she’s met with Mickey, the new man looks like a pale, flat stranger. This time, imagining the two of them side by side, Claire actually smiles.
She faxes Tim a drawing of herself fixing pancakes for Pete and Jared, who have taken off on their bikes now, happy that the snow has finally melted enough that they can get out exploring again. Sally won’t be up for hours. “Thank God I’ve still got one child who leads a wholesome, active life,” Claire writes. “All my daughter does these days is sleep, watch snowboarding videos with her boyfriend, and ask me t0 take her for driving practice.”
“I cant imagine what it must be like to see your daughter driving a car,” he writes back. “Mine’s just learning to ride a bike.” At the bottom of the page he has made a drawing of a man standing next to a bicycle. There is a little girl wearing a helmet on the bicycle, and a balloon coming out of her mouth with the words “There’s nothing to riding a two-wheeler, Dad.” The man is doubled over as he holds the bicycle, pushing her along. Buckets of sweat pour off him.
“After I take Ursula out on her bike this afternoon, I’m dropping her off at T-ball practice,” he writes. “So how about coffee?”
Claire could just pick up the phone to answer him, but she doesn’t. She faxes back a picture of herself—same bathrobe—tossing the pancakes into the air as she answers, “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.”
Tim stands over his machine watching as her fax scrolls out. His daughter is calling to him for another bowl of cereal but he doesn’t go right away as he usually would. He can’t leave his desk until he’s seen her fax.
There’s nothing glamorous about the cartoony way Claire has drawn herself in this picture. She’s wearing a ratty-looking bathrobe and her breasts seem to droop exaggeratedly underneath it. Tim remembers these breasts well from yesterday and they looked beautiful to him.
In the picture Claire’s short mop of hair is sticking up in tufts around her small thin face. There are bags under her eyes and though when he saw her he guesses she must have been wearing contact lenses, in her drawing she’s wearing glasses. In one hand she holds a spatula and in the other a bowl of pancake batter. All around her are broken egg shells, sticks of butter, maple syrup tipped over sideways and dripping on the floor. Even the flowers in the vase she has drawn, sitting on the counter, are drooping. Her kitchen is a mess.
But she’s wearing earrings. She has also given herself a heart-shaped locket in this cartoon. Her eyes, in the picture, are looking skyward, as if she’s just caught sight of a bird out the window.
He thinks about all the song lyrics he’s ever heard and how inadequate they are. He sits at his computer wishing he could play it for her like the most beautiful guitar she’s ever heard. Mark Knopfler. Ray Phiri. Gerry Scott-Moore. Chet Atkins. Django Reinhardt.
In the same way that he would love to touch her all over, he would love to pour all sorts of words over her. He would like to tell her that he wants to touch her like the map of a place he’s never been. He wants to say that from the moment he laid eyes on her, he knew as he has never known about any other woman that he would never run out of things he wanted to tell her or questions he wanted to ask. That he suspects the day isn’t long enough to finish loving her. He would like to tell her that he knows, looking at her thirty-nine-year-old face and her thirty-nine-year-old body, that he would still love her seventy-five-year-old face and whatever body it is that will come with it—and given the chance, and God help him, the strength, he would still want to be making love to her then too, the way he does right now.
In the next room, Ursula is calling to him, more insistently this time. “Daddy,” she says. “I told you, cereal.”
“Coming, Urs,” he says, but he doesn’t move.
What is there to say to her that’s substantial enough for how he feels without scaring her away?
“I have no destination in my mind but loving you.”
“I want to be the end of your search.”
“Let me be the next exit you’ve been looking for, the crack in old plaster that comes from nowhere and goes all the way across the room, the sound the constellations make wheeling across the sky unseen in the middle of the day, a phone call you’ve been waiting for, a song you like and haven’t heard in a while, coming on the radio. Let me love you like the weight of a lawn upon the ground beneath it, the movement of water down a slick rock in some quiet place you’ve always wanted to be.”
Maybe I’m getting in over my head, he thinks. Very likely so. But I would rather drown in your pool than swim in anybody else’s. My skin is turned inside out, and if you send me away and I never see you again, I know it will burn like acid through me, and still I have no regrets, because I could not feel as full of possibilities of extraordinary things as I do right now if I didn’t also know I have never been in more danger of more pain.
“You are the best woman I’ve come across,” he writes. “You make me want to be a better man than I have ever been.”
“I want to be a bench for you to rest on. I want to be your air.”
Pete has headed out early this morning to get to the ball field, where a couple of kids he knows—Ben and Will—have got together for some batting practice. He needs someone to catch him while he works on his pitching. Baseball tryouts are this week, and Pete is hoping for the starting pitcher position on his favorite team, the Cubs. Last winter he l
eaned an old mattress against a wall in their basement so he could practice his aim. He got to the point where he could hit the strike zone eight out of ten pitches, and most of those were right on the X.
Lately, though, he’ll get into his motion and he’ll be just at the point of releasing the ball when this little picture zaps into his head. Sometimes it’s a picture of himself doing something really dumb like peeing the bed. Sometimes he sees his father standing on the steps of their house telling his mom, “There you go again, Claire, making a mountain out of a molehill.” Sometimes it’s his mother’s voice on the phone late at night whispering things he can’t hear, or things he can hear that he wishes he couldn’t, or his sister and Travis, up in her room when nobody else is home and he isn’t supposed to know, breathing heavily. It’s not even pictures exactly that flash across his brain. It’s more like the split second that sometimes occurs on the computer, when it’s booting up and the screen goes dark for a moment, or what happens when you’re switching gears on your ten-speed and for just an instant there the chain isn’t engaged yet. The picture that zaps into his brain only stays there for a hundredth of a second most likely. Just long enough to screw up his pitch.
“Don’t sweat it, Temple,” Ben tells him. “You’re lots better than old Bobby Arnold or any of those others. You’re sure to get the top pitching slot.”
Pete doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t dare tell them how much he wants it.
Vivian, the chairperson of the children’s museum board, has stopped by Claire’s house this morning with a plate of extra appetizers from yesterday’s opening. “We had a lot of these left over,” she says, handing Claire a tray of biscuits. “My kids are so particular they won’t eat anything that isn’t fresh that day, but I thought you could use them.”
Claire and Vivian are not exactly friends, although they talk almost every day. Claire’s original proposal for the new exhibit was a room dedicated to Tibet, actually, but the board shot her down on the grounds that nobody in Blue Hills really cared about Tibet. “They have one of the oldest and richest cultures on the globe,” Claire had said. “And it’s being wiped out. They have this very beautiful religion, all built around the yak. You should see the craftsmanship of some of these Tibetans.” At the time, Claire had just seen a documentary about Tibet that had moved her to tears. Shortly after that she traveled to New York City to hear the Dalai Lama. Even though she was way at the back of the crowd, there was this amazing feeling of peace in the place. She didn’t manage to get any of this across to the board when she had presented the idea. They voted in favor of the pioneer idea instead. Even with the more crowd-pleasing theme for this year’s new exhibit, however, they’re way behind in meeting their fund-raising goal.
Now Claire figures Vivian must have some other reason for stopping by besides delivering a few day-old biscuits. “So,” Claire asks Vivian, “how did you think the opening went?”
“That sampler activity was cute,” says Vivian. Some people are concerned, though, she tells Claire, that they aren’t doing more with computers at the museum. “At this party Joe and I went to the other night, Harry Simons from the bank was saying the first question they always ask whenever he’s approached about corporate contributions is whether the organization’s online, technologically speaking.”
“I don’t know, Vivian,” says Claire. “It seems the whole point of the pioneer exhibit is to give children a taste of a simpler life. If you ask me, they’ve already got way too much technology in their lives.”
“I’m just telling you what I heard, Claire,” says Vivian. “It’s your job, not mine.”
Claire turns her wrist slightly so she can catch sight of her watch. She’s meeting Tim at two, and she wants to take Sally driving and change first.
“So who was the man you were talking with yesterday?” Vivian asks her. Nothing gets past this woman. “Veronica said it seemed like he couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off you all afternoon.”
“It was the hat, probably,” says Claire. “His name is Tim. He’s just a friend.”
“The friends we need to concentrate on right now are the ones with deep pockets,” says Vivian. “Times like these, in the world of nonprofit fund-raising, a person in your position needs to spend all her professional time drumming up the big bucks. Or you may not have a position. I don’t mean that as a threat or anything. It’s just how things are. A friendly word of warning, you might say.”
“Did you get a chance to try the butter churn?” Claire says to her. “You should, one of these days. I was a little worried about whether kids could stick with it long enough to get results. But it worked like a dream.”
“That’s great, Claire. Really,” says Vivian. “Just don’t lose sight of the big picture here. Bottom line: no money, no museum, no job.”
Next time my mother calls me up, I’m going to tell her I can ride a bike now,” says Ursula, sitting upright on the seat of her new two-wheeler with her helmet on while her father runs behind her, pushing. Tim has taken her to a parking lot out behind the elementary school so she can practice her riding. He hasn’t removed the training wheels yet, but he’s lifted them up a ways. He bends over low to steady her as she pedals—hands gripped tight to the back of her bicycle frame. Tim is a very large and strong man, but still, this is hard work. His back will be sore tonight.
“I’ll give you one of my special back rubs when we get home,” Ursula tells him. It’s not uncommon for her to read his mind this way. “I know how hard it is for you to push me.”
In fact, Tim has been pushing Ursula for a long time now. Not just on her bicycle and her tricycle, but on her Little Mermaid scoot-along before that, and before that, on her Ride ’Em My Little Pony. For eight years Tim has been pushing his daughter on swings, pushing her in the cart at the supermarket, pulling her on her wagon, guiding her along on her double-runner skates and her roller skates (also Little Mermaid) and her Tiny-Tot skis. Even when she was in a stroller it was always Tim who pushed Ursula along.
One time Joan had come upon him taking an infant Ursula out for a walk. She burst out laughing. She was on the way home from the art studio she had rented after Ursula was born, so she could concentrate someplace quiet. Tim didn’t know it at the time, but she had already embarked on her affair with Frederick, the chain-smoking poet.
“I can’t help it, you just look so silly,” she said. “A big old jock like you with a Snugli fastened on your chest. I should get you a piece of ribbon so you could wear a pacifier around your neck at all times. To complete the look.”
Ursula’s a lot bigger now, of course. Big enough that Tim has to ask her to stop pedaling for a second so he can catch his breath.
“You silly old daddy,” she says. “You can’t keep up with me anymore, I ride so fast.”
Tim is thinking about Claire, and how he will see her again in just two hours. Today he will kiss her.
“I’m going to get some streamers for my bike, okay, Dad?” says Ursula. “And those little beads the big girls have on their bikes that you put on the metal wires around the tires. And a bell so I can warn people to get out of the way when I’m coming, because I go so fast.”
“We’ll do that,” he tells her. Well go someplace dark and cool, in the woods, and, I’ll spread out a blanket and lean over her and she’ll press her body against my chest and wrap her legs around me and we’ll lie there for a very long time like that, with our tongues exploring each other’s skin.
“Okay, Dad,” she says now. “You’ve rested long enough. I want to ride some more.”
He takes his position again, bent almost double, like an old man. Ursula doesn’t pedal fast enough yet to keep the bike up by herself, but Tim would never let her fall.
“Now when my mom comes to see me, we can go bike riding together,” she says. “Just us girls.”
“I bet you will,” he says.
“And she’ll be able to keep up with me, too,” says Ursula. “Not like my silly old daddy.”
“I’m like Elliot in E.T.,” she says. “If I wanted to, I could just fly up into the sky and ride away over the tops of the houses and you’d never see me again. And you’d miss me so badly you’d never get over it. Because I’m your favorite girl in the world.”
Travis and Sally are driving. There is no place in particular they’re driving to, they are just driving. Travis doesn’t have a cassette player in his 1982 Chevrolet Impala, but they have put batteries in Sally’s cassette player so they can listen to music while they drive. At the moment it’s Nine Inch Nails.
The cassette player is on Sally’s lap. Travis’s hand is in the same vicinity, only instead of resting on top of her skirt, it’s underneath. He fingers the lace on her bikini panties. He has not yet attempted to place his hand inside them, but he has been thinking about it a lot. This could be the day.
“I saw Edie at Taco Bell last night,” he tells her. Edie is this girl in their history class that likes him.
“She is such a slut,” says Sally. “She’d screw a tree.”
“Yeah, well, she has her good points,” he tells her. He is talking about sex, as they both understand. Edie started going all the way in fifth grade.
“Sounds like you’d like to go out with her,” says Sally coolly.
“I didn’t mean that,” he says. They are on a dirt road, and he has pulled the car over now.
“All in all,” says Sally, “I can’t imagine why you’d be with me, considering how many good points Edie has. Although let me tell you from personal experience, since I was in gym class with her, she stuffs toilet paper in her bra.”
“I’m with you because I think you’re cool, and I like talking with you and stuff, and we have fun driving around,” he says. “Only you don’t know what it’s like for a guy. It gets hard.”
She laughs. “I noticed,” she says.
He doesn’t laugh back. “It’s a real problem,” he says. “Sometimes when I leave your house I think my balls are going to explode, I’m so hot for you.”
Where Love Goes Page 9
