Where Love Goes

by Joyce Maynard

  No, she says. I’m all right, really. She’s standing upright again.

  But it’s too late. Tim’s voice calling out has caught Mickey’s attention. He is looking across the street with a puzzled look. I know that face, he is thinking. But from where?

  There is a saxophone playing. Gerry Mulligan, she thinks. She barely remembers them all now. Which was Mulligan? Which was Stan Getz? Which was Coltrane? She sees Tim’s face, full of love and concern, and Ursula’s, so full of hunger and longing. She wants to run away, but she knows if she tries to run she will wet her pants. She hears the laughter of Mickey’s girlfriend, and she knows he has just told her that joke about the time Miles Davis met Chet Baker in Paris. She hears cars honking and Tim’s voice saying, “Hold on, honey, all you need is a cleansing breath.” She hears Ursula asking for Gummi Bears and the hoarse voice of Miles, introducing “Stella by Starlight.” She hears the wailing of a trumpet. And then she realizes it’s not a trumpet at all. It’s a baby.

  Gradually their lives fall into a routine. Weeknights when the kids are home, Claire helps them with their homework and cleans up after dinner, puts in a load of laundry, writes letters up in her office, explaining to potential donors who didn’t respond to her last letter why they should give money to the children’s museum. Nancy may drop by for coffee, and the two of them may do yoga together. Nights when Sally stays on the phone with Travis this may mean waiting until close to midnight.

  Once Pete and Sally are asleep, Claire gets into her car and goes the three blocks over to Tim’s apartment, although if it’s a nice night and she isn’t too tired she may walk. She lets herself in the smoky hallway of his apartment building and climbs the steps as quietly as she can, so she won’t wake Ursula. Tim is almost always asleep himself. Sometimes he will have drifted off in front of the TV. Other nights he’ll be in his bed, naked under the covers waiting for her. She peels off her clothes and lays them in a neat pile next to the door, knowing she will need to dress quickly, in the darkness, sometime around four or five A.M. Then she climbs in beside him.

  This is the best moment. Some nights just the sensation of slipping in behind him and pressing her body up against his back is enough to make her sigh. She slides her foot up his leg. Her hands, wrapped around his chest, stroke his belly. By the time she’s got to his cock, it’s already hard.

  No matter how difficult the rest of their time together is, this part always feels simple and good. The way he responds to her, even through his sleep. His total lack of ambivalence toward her in bed. His boundless and consuming desire for her.

  “You’re here,” he says. He always sounds surprised and grateful, even though she does this nearly every night. Not fully awake, he begins to kiss her. He finds her breasts. His hands are all over her.

  She may mutter something about the evening she has spent. “Pete had a project due,” she says, wrapping her fingers around the shaft of his cock. “George Washington Carver. He left it to the last minute as usual.”

  “Tuskegee Institute,” he says, nuzzling her hair. She loves the effortless way her other life falls away from her here in this bed, but she also loves the way he embraces that part of her.

  “Pete have a soccer game?” he asks her.

  “Tomorrow,” she tells him, cupping his balls. “Ursula?”

  “What can I do?” he sighs. “My daughter is hopeless. Some kid kicked her the ball today when she was standing right in front of the goal and it was wide open. She just stood there.”

  “How’s your proposal coming?” she asks him.

  “Ursula got mad that I wouldn’t play Barbies with her, and she pulled out the plug of my computer. I lost two hours’ work,” he says. He doesn’t add that he has seventy-two dollars left in his checking account.

  Claire starts to offer her opinion about how Tim should have handled Ursula in this situation, then stops. She doesn’t want to think about anybody’s children anymore today.

  “Come here,” she says. She slides under the covers.

  Sometime around one or two they fall asleep. His alarm goes off at four-thirty, and though it’s only Claire who has to get up, he rises with her, puts on his clothes too, although he may just sit naked in the semidarkness first, watching her dress. “I wish I could fix you a wonderful breakfast,” he says. “A goat cheese omelette. Raspberries and croissants. Steamed milk for your coffee.”

  She slips on her shoes and runs her hand through her hair. “I’ll call you later,” she says. He misses her already.

  Ursula rises at six. She no longer needs to wake her father. He’s up already, sitting at his computer. He keeps telling her he’s working on a report about estuaries and as soon as it’s finished they’ll have some money again and he’ll take her miniature golfing, but she doesn’t believe that anymore.

  “Cereal or toast?” he says. “Waffle?”

  She tells him she’s not hungry. This is the second day in a row she has said this, but he hasn’t noticed. If she got very skinny,like one of those girls in Sally’s Sassy magazine, then he’d be sorry.

  “I hate my hair,” she says. She has heard Sarah McAdam say this in the girls’ room at school. Although Sarah McAdam’s hair is perfect. Long and straight, and golden blond. This is where her father is supposed to say, “You have beautiful hair,” but he doesn’t. He is looking out the window, and she knows who he is thinking about. Ursula breaks off a piece of a Snickers.

  “So,” he says, turning back to her. “I’ll be finished with my class by four o’clock today. You want to kick around the soccer ball? We could bring Jenny.”

  “Would she come too?” Ursula asks him. Meaning Claire.

  “I don’t think so,” he says. “She has to be at the museum. Besides, I was thinking it could be just the two of us.”

  He is such a fake. The only time he wants it to be “just the two of us” is him and her. In bed together. Making those noises.

  “I know everything that happens,” she says quietly. “There aren’t any secrets.”

  He is making her school lunch, laying turkey slices on the bread.

  “What do you mean, Urs?” he asks her. He doesn’t look up but she knows she has him worried.

  “I figured out you sold our tape player and I figured out why. That’s not all I know, either.”

  “What are you talking about, Urs?” he says. He hopes he sounds casual.

  “You know what I’m talking about,” she says. She makes kissing sounds on Barbie’s hard, flat plastic stomach. She begins to breathe heavily. “Uh, uh, uh, uh,” she fake-moans.

  “If you have something to say to me, Ursula, why don’t you talk to me plainly?” he tells her.

  “I’ve told you enough,” she says. “I just didn’t want you to think you were fooling me.”

  She doesn’t like it when you pet her that way,” Ursula is telling Pete. She has ridden her bike over to their house to take Jenny for a walk and found Pete in the front yard, drinking a Dr. Pepper and scratching Jenny’s belly in the sun as he reads his new issue of Mad. “That’s not the right spot.”

  Pete shrugs and goes in the house. Ursula follows him in, still wearing her bike helmet.

  “Also,” she says, “I noticed there were some pieces of dog chow floating in her water. Jenny hates chow in her water bowl.”

  Pete is pouring himself a bowl of cereal as she tells him this. Who does she think she is, this twerp coming into his house telling him how to take care of her old dog he didn’t want in the first place? Pete wanted a puppy.

  “You miss me, don’t you, Jenny?” she says. She talks to the dog in this high little baby voice of hers that gets on his nerves something wicked. “You wish you lived with me instead of these people, don’t you?”

  “Listen,” says Pete, “why don’t you just take her for a walk?”

  “She’s not feeling good,” Ursula tells him. “I can tell her hip is hurting.”

  “What are you, a vet?” he says to her.

  “I know ever
ything about Jenny. I’ve had Jenny my whole life and you’ve only had her a few weeks. You think you’re so great, but you don’t know anything,” Ursula says.

  “I know you’re a little brat,” Pete says. He picks up his cereal and his Mad and heads to the computer. He turns on Wolfenstein at the loudest volume. The kid actually follows him.

  “I’m going to tell my dad you said that,” she says. “You’re going to get in trouble.”

  “Jeez, I’m scared,” says Pete, though the truth is, he suspects she probably could get him into trouble, on account of his mom is acting so dumb about these two. He has tried not to think about it, but none of her other boyfriends ever planted stuff in their garden or put up their storm windows.

  “My dad broke a guy’s nose one time,” Ursula says. “My dad knows this place on the back of a person’s neck that if you touch it they’re paralyzed.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think your dad wants to commit child abuse,” Pete tells her. “Grown-ups can get in big trouble for something like that.”

  “Well, I know something you don’t, anyways,” she says. “I know something I bet you wish you knew.”

  Pete has been trying to concentrate on Wolfenstein, but he has to ask. “Oh yeah?” he says.

  “I know my dad and your mom are going to get married. My dad bought her a jewel ring. I saw it.”

  This is a sickening piece of news. Pete moves the joystick and stares at the screen, but what he wants to do is smash her fat little face under that dumb helmet she’s always wearing, even now in the house.

  “Yeah, right,” he says. “I haven’t seen any ring. Don’t you think she would’ve told my sister and me?”

  “They wanted to work out the details themselves first,” she says. “Your mom was thinking I might get your room and you’d go down in the basement.” She is making this part up, but it makes sense to her.

  “Get out of here, twerp,” he says. “My mom would never marry a jerk like your dad.”

  “That’s what you think,” she says. “That’s because you haven’t heard them doing the F word like me.”

  “Liar,” he says. “Why don’t you just shut up? Why don’t you just beat it?”

  “Don’t you even know she comes over to our house in the middle of the night when you and your sister are asleep and takes off all her clothes and gets into my dad’s bed?” she tells him. “Don’t you know she stays there until it’s almost time for school, and then she puts her clothes back on and goes back to your house so you won’t know? You should hear the noises they make.”

  On the screen, Wolfenstein is slashing his sword. He has chopped off two warriors’ heads now, and he is moving on a third. There is blood dripping on the bricks. A bat circles over his head. Crunch. Got him.

  “She says, ‘I love your big cock,’ ” says Ursula, her voice deep and low. She is practically whispering this in his ear. “She says, ‘Nobody ever fucked me like that.’ She has a purple bra that she left at our house one time. My dad keeps it under his pillow.”

  “Get out! Just get out!” he screams.

  “I have to go now, girl,” she tells Jenny, in the baby voice again. “Bye-bye, baby girl.” A minute later he can see her riding down the street on that pink bike of hers. The last thing he sees is the top of her helmet disappearing behind a row of shrubs.

  The horrible truth is, Ursula was only partly going over to their house to give Jenny a run. She was actually thinking she was going to make friends with Pete when she went over there. Her dad said maybe he’d play soccer with her if she went over there. The horrible truth is, Ursula actually admires Pete. She has watched him on the playground at school, where he is a Classroom Buddy. He is one of the most popular boys. When she told Marcy, this really popular girl that helps her reading group, that she knew Pete, Marcy said everybody in sixth grade wanted to go out with him. “Don’t tell Pete,” Marcy said, “but Sarah McAdam thinks he’s cute and so do I.” Ursula had been planning to tell Pete that. The other stuff just came out by mistake.

  This happens a lot to Ursula. She makes this plan to do all these nice things, like Pollyanna. She thinks up how she’s going to give Ashley a Tootsie Pop and ask if she wants to come over to her house. Sometimes she even practices these conversations at home with her dad or Jenny, back when Jenny still lived with them, and when she does it with her dad it always works out right, but when she does it at school, it’s like there’s this little worm that starts squiggling around in her brain. And before you know it what happens is she’s telling Ashley that Derek said she had cooties and Ashley is saying, “Yeah, well, you should hear what Derek says about you,” and Ursula is saying, “Well, Derek is a big pecker head,” and Ashley is saying, “Now I know why nobody likes you,” and Ursula is saying, “I’ll tell the teacher,” and she does, and then those kids get in trouble and hate her more than ever.

  After the kid tells him that about his mother and Tim, Pete decides he’ll find out for himself. His mother’s bed is always rumpled up in the morning, but that doesn’t mean anything. She could just be doing that so they’d think she’d been there. The only way to know for sure is to watch.

  Ten o’clock, he calls out good night to her. She comes in his room, bends over him, kisses his cheek.

  “I love you, son,” she says. She’s wearing perfume. Did she used to do that on school nights?

  “You going to bed, too?” he asks her.

  “Soon,” she says. “You have a soccer game tomorrow?”

  He says he does. Also he’s been wanting to ask her something. “Could he please not come to my game this time?” he says. He’s talking about Tim, who came to the last game and cheered louder than his own dad, who was also there, when Pete made that goal in the second half.

  “Tim loves watching you play,” says his mom. Why does she have to make him feel guilty all the time, like it’s his job to make Tim happy?

  “And Ursula admires you so much,” she says. “I don’t know if you realize that, but she thinks you’re wonderful. She told Tim if she ever had a brother she’d want it to be somebody just like you.”

  She’s a desperate woman. Under her perfume, he can smell it.

  “I’d just rather they didn’t hang around all the time, okay?” he says.

  For a while there he’s almost decided the kid must have been making the whole thing up. He can hear his mother downstairs, playing the record of one of those wailing country singers she loves. He hears the faucet running. He hears the dishwasher start up. The porch light clicks off. His sister is off the phone now. He can hear the Tori Amos album she always puts on to help her get to sleep. No car ignition. He looks out the window just to check,and sure enough, there’s the Toyota sitting in their driveway in the same place it’s been all night.

  But then he catches sight of her. Not in the car, but partway down the block, under the glow of a street lamp: his mother walking in the direction of Tim’s apartment.

  Mickey has fallen in love. Not with one of his smooth-bellied twenty-six-year-olds this time, though. The woman is thirty-eight and divorced. She lives in Rhode Island. She has two children, one of whom is younger than Pete. Her name is Annalise.

  “So what does she look like?” Claire asks him. She is trying hard to remember how the routine goes even as the room begins to spin.

  “Small tits,” he says. “Long legs. Incredible neck. Fixes the best margaritas I ever tasted. And can you believe it, she actually owns a Milton Nascimento CD?”

  “Ethereal yet pithy,” Claire says. “What about her kids? How are you going to work that part out?”

  “You got me, Slim,” he says. “Send them to military school, I guess. I must be losing my mind.”

  He volunteers nothing about the sex and Claire doesn’t ask. “How’s Carrottop doing?” he asks her.

  “I wish Tim would take her to a therapist,” she says. “Actually, I think it might be a good idea if all of us went into family therapy together.”

  He sighs hea
vily. “You aren’t pregnant, are you?” he asks her.

  She shivers. “No.”

  “So,” he says, “you hear the new Crowded House album?”

  Early on in their time together—when she was fresh out of her marriage, and they were still in the phase she things of now as Mickey nursing her back to health—he asked her why she didn’t wear perfume.

  “I just never did,” she told him. “I never had any, I guess” Sam had bought her a bottle of Chanel Number 5 for Mother’s Day one year, in the aftermath of the birthday when she’d burst into tears after opening his gift of a pressure cooker. As with the black garter belt he got her that other time, Sam’s attempts at romantic gifts never rang true to Claire. It was as if some guy at one of his building jobs had handed him an instruction manual that said, “Garter belt, black. Perfume: Chanel Number 5.”

  “Well, you should,” Mickey told her. Wear perfume, he meant. “It’s one of life’s great pleasures.”

  He took her to Colonial Drug in Harvard Square. “Wait till you see this place,” he said as he led her in. It was the old-fashioned kind of drugstore, with Kent brushes and tortoiseshell combs and boxes of chocolates and dark wood moldings around the glass cases. One whole wall of the store was nothing but perfume testers. Next to every one was a hand-typed card describing the fragrance.

  Mickey studied these cards as closely as he would if he were reading box scores. When he had half a dozen fragrances picked out, he unbuttoned the cuffs of her blouse and rolled them up enough to expose her wrists and part of each forearm. He reached for one of the little strips of paper they kept in a jar on the counter and dabbed it very lightly on her right wrist. He dipped another strip of paper into a different tester and rubbed that on her other wrist. “Oh,” she said. “This one is wonderful, too.”

  Then the back of each hand. Then each of her forearms. He had taken out a three-by-five card, on which he wrote the name of each of the perfumes.