One day when the children were on a camping trip with their father, she drove to the old house. She knew he never locked the door. Neither of them ever had.
She wasn’t expecting Melanie to be there in her short shorts and the tank top she wears with no bra. Never mind, Melanie hadn’t expected her, either.
Claire greeted her pleasantly enough. Then she walked into the old house and began packing up the books. She filled the boxes and the two garbage bags she had in the back of her station wagon and there were still more books left.
So she began piling books on the seat of her car. Piling them on the floor. Making piles so high she could no longer see out the rearview mirror.
Melanie stood there saying almost nothing while Claire did this. She must have known Sam wouldn’t want Claire doing this. But Melanie was nineteen years old. Claire was thirty-six. What was she going to do?
“I think I gave Pete that book,” she said quietly as Claire was carrying out one of the last piles. It was a Berenstain Bears paperback.
“Oh, really?” said Claire. The sweetness in her voice must have been scary as a gun. “Well, then, maybe you’d like to keep it here?” She tossed the book on a lawn chair.
“Give Sam my best,” Claire said as she slammed the door of the trunk.
“I’m just house-sitting,” Melanie said. “I’ll be heading back to school pretty much as soon as they get back from Maine.”
“Too bad,” Claire said. She was drenched with sweat. Were her eyes yellow? Did her hair resemble the bride of Frankenstein’s? Probably.
She climbed into the car. Heading down their old driveway, she could feel how the weight of the books had dragged down her car. Its belly scraped the dirt.
The first time Sally and Travis did it was in his car. Sally hadn’t been planning on it. In fact, she had pretty much decided that she wouldn’t, at least until they’d been going out a year, and maybe not then either. But when he got to the part where he always said, “I’m begging you, Sal, just let me put it in a little ways, I won’t come,” she was as surprised as he was when she heard herself say, “Okay.”
He did come, but he had a condom on. And of course once you’ve done it one time, you never go back to not doing it.
It hurt actually. She knew from her friend Kim that this was likely to be the case, but since it’s never that way in the movies, it surprised her how much. She thought it would be like putting in a Tampax, but it was worse.
And still she keeps doing it. Who can say why? She doesn’t like sex exactly, but she likes how powerful she feels that he wants her so badly. Sally herself is pretty much the same person she always was before, but Travis is a totally changed person. It isn’t just that he’s calling her up so much now or the way he’s always there waiting for her at her locker after fourth period, and parked out front when she gets out of ballet class, to take her home. Well, not home maybe. Not right off.
It’s more than that. What has changed about Travis is the way he looks at her and the feeling it gives Sally that she could make him do anything, so long as she’s having sex with him. He’s an addict. Brainwashed.
They used to do all sorts of things together. They went skateboarding, for instance. They went miniature golfing, and one time they made a video of these scenes from “I Love Lucy,” with him being Ricky and her being Lucy. They talked about music and their friends and their parents and school even. He told her about Mr. Sullivan, the shop teacher, who’s always telling horror stories about people cutting off their fingers or getting their sleeve stuck in the planer. She told him about her father and Melanie and her mother’s wimp boyfriend and his whiny daughter. They’d order pizza and hang out.
Now what they do is have sex, mostly. At first they did it in his car. She was always bumping into the gear shift or getting a charley horse from having to do it in such a weird position.
They don’t have to do it in the car so much anymore, though. Not now that Sally has figured out where her mother goes at night.
So now after her mom leaves, Sally calls up Travis and tells him the coast is clear. His parents would be suspicious if they heard his car start, but he lives close enough that he can ride his skateboard over.
At first she thought it was too risky. Her mother could come back anytime, she figured. But now she knows her mother never comes back until close to sunrise. They take off their clothes and everything.
Lying there on her bed, she sometimes thinks about her mother and Tim. She doesn’t want to, she just can’t help it. These pictures keep popping up in her brain, of the two of them doing the stuff she and Travis do. It’s hard to believe her mother would do these things, but then her mother would probably never believe the things she does, either.
At least they always use a condom, anyway. All but that one time when they’d already done it three times and he ran out. Sally is sure she must have been safe then. What could he have had left in him anyway after all that screwing? Sally isn’t sure exactly how it works, but she doesn’t see how a person that already came three times in one night could have any more active sperms left in their balls. Plus she figured she was due to get her period sometime soon, although it’s hard to predict with Sally because she isn’t very regular.
That was three weeks ago, and she hasn’t got her period yet.
Claire’s life by day and her life by night are so disconnected it’s as if she were a double agent or a bigamist.
She sees her kids off to school, although days go by that Claire barely sees Sally, between the time she spends on the phone and the time she spends in the bathroom. Pete’s suspension is over, but he no longer kisses his mother good-bye when he goes off to school mornings, and after school he always seems to be out on his bike. Tim still sends her faxes sometimes, but though his expressions of love and lust are more extravagant than ever, there is a heaviness to them now. They no longer lift her heart. “I live in fear of not being a good enough man for you,” he writes. “I don’t ever want to fall in love again the way I’m in love with you. It’s just too draining.”
Claire lives with a different fear—the fear that she cannot be a good enough mother. She lives with the guilty dread that her own pleasure is drawn directly from the well that was meant to quench her children’s thirst. If the price of her happiness is their own, she knows it’s too high.
She no longer stops for coffee with Tim, and she seldom invites Ursula over anymore to bake brownies or putter around with her at the children’s museum. Tim may stop in to see her at the museum and he always calls her up several times during the day, but they seldom lay eyes on each other during daylight hours anymore.
Tim is busy, too. Money’s so tight he’s taken another job proofreading a computer programming manual so he can meet his rent money. After school he tries to be around for Ursula, who has made only one friend in the third grade—a girl named Brianne who hardly ever says anything and eats only dry cereal. “Where’s your mom?” she asked Ursula the first time they had her over. When Ursula told her New Zealand, she said, “Where’s your TV?”
He tries to make a healthy dinner every night, and they say grace now, the way Claire does. Tim gave up serving meals on TV trays after Claire told him it wasn’t very cozy and familyish. But the two of them sitting in the fluorescent glow of their tiny kitchen eating macaroni is not so cozy and familyish, either. Ursula doesn’t ask him so much anymore, “When do we get to go over to Claire’s house?” She knows the answer is, “When her kids are away.” And not always then, either. “I wonder how Jenny’s doing,” she says, and leaves it at that.
He has tried to make their bleak apartment a little more cheerful. That idea of Claire’s about checking reproductions out of the library, for instance—he did that. He and Ursula have started some begonias from cuttings he took at Claire’s house. He has found a rug at a yard sale. (“A rug is important,” she says. “So you can play board games on the floor.” She has a hundred rules like this, of how to make a happy home. All these year
s, he sees, he has been operating without the manual. No wonder he screwed up.)
Also in the interests of making his place homier, Tim has bought Ursula a beanbag chair and an easel that he found at a yard sale. Ursula has hung up a couple of her dresses on the wall in her room, the way Claire does, although the room itself is still a mess. Tim can’t keep up with the laundry. The trash. The grant proposals. The bills. For three weeks in a row he has missed the recycling day, and now milk cartons spill out of the kitchen into the hall. Tim never dreamed he could feel like this much of a loser.
All those great plans he had—for taking Ursula to Family Swim Night at the Y, the two of them building a dulcimer, making a terrarium. Those have evaporated. He is lucky if, at eight o’clock, he has enough energy to give his daughter her bath and read her a chapter of Charlotte’s Web without falling asleep in the middle, or—as often happens—discovering that though his eyes are open, the words he’s speaking are total gibberish.
“Daddy,” she says, poking him in the ribs. They’ve got to the place where Templeton the rat breaks the rotten egg and Tim has faded out again.
“Wake up, Daddy,” she says gently. “This is the best part.”
After he sings Ursula their song and kisses her good night, he usually turns on the television. He knows he should wash the dinner dishes, but he’s too tired. Never mind grant writing and proofreading. He usually falls asleep within the first ten minutes of whatever show he’s watching. Sometimes, when Claire arrives in the middle of the night, he thinks for a moment he’s just dreaming. She is the one miraculous thing in his day.
This is how Claire finds him when she lets herself in sometime around midnight. If he’s on the couch and not in bed she will kiss him very lightly on the cheek and tell him, “I’m here, honey.” He’ll wake up just enough to get up the stairs. He drops his clothes on the floor and climbs under the sheets beside her. His hands find her, if hers haven’t found him first. However weary he is, just the touch of her skin is enough to rouse him. He has never known this kind of wanting before.
One night she told him she was too tired to make love. “You mind?” she said. Of course he said he understood. It was enough just to hold her. Only then, exhausted as he was, he couldn’t get to sleep. He lay there all night, his body aching for her until he couldn’t stand it anymore. Three A.M., three-thirty maybe, he woke her.
“Claire,” he said. “I’m so sorry to do this to you, but I don’t think I can stand it, having you so close to me like this and not being inside you.” He felt like such a jerk.
“It’s okay,” she told him, not fully waking, just rolling over toward him and opening her legs to him. “I’m so sorry,” he said as he entered her.
Four-thirty the alarm goes off and she gets up. “Every time I see you climb out of my bed, I want to weep,” he says. “You shouldn’t have to be living this way. I hate it that I’m doing this to you.”
“I’m lucky I have a man I love enough to want to visit in the night,” she says.
“I want to be the man you get up with in the morning, and the man you have your coffee with. In the home where we live,” he says.
“Oh, well,” she says, pulling up her tights. “Nothing’s perfect.”
He walks her down the stairs. He stands on his front step watching her go until he can’t see her anymore. Then he goes inside to get Ursula up and make her school lunch and the day begins again.
It’s Parents’ Night in third grade and Claire has come with Tim. She has heard that Ursula’s been having problems at school, so she figured it would be good to meet the teacher, and maybe some of the mothers. Maybe she’ll be able to make friends with one of them and invite her daughter over to play with Ursula at her house after school on her afternoon off.
Claire and Tim are sitting at Ursula’s desk together while Mrs. Kennedy makes her presentation. They are studying the pilgrims at the moment, with the plan of visiting Plimoth Plantation next month. Mrs. Kennedy is still looking for chaperones if any parents might be available. Claire has been to Plimoth Plantation twice, as a chaperone with Sally’s class, and again with Pete’s. In a minute she knows Mrs. Kennedy is going to mention the First Thanksgiving celebration and ask who would like to help the students make the cranberry sauce and cornmeal mush.
“Third grade is such an exciting time in your children’s lives,” she is saying. “Now that they’ve got the building blocks under their belts, they’re ready to have a little fun with reading.”
Nothing Claire has heard about school from Ursula suggests that she’s been having fun with much of anything. “Isn’t there anybody you like besides Brianne?” Claire asked her the other day.
“Yes,” Ursula said. “The janitor.”
“One of our most fun projects so far this year has been writing our autobiographies,” says Mrs. Kennedy. “I thought that would be a good way of getting to know your children, and, of course, helping them get to know each other. You’ll find their work on their desks where they left them out for you. I know they’re going to be eager to hear your comments at breakfast time tomorrow. And while you’re looking at your children’s work folders, be sure and take a look at their dental hygiene pictures and their most recent penmanship practice sheets. The letter G is such a tricky one, and I think you’ll agree with me, they’ve been doing a super job with it.”
Ursula is right about this woman, Claire is thinking. She does sound like Marge Simpson.
Tim leans toward Claire. She thinks he’s going to say something about penmanship. What he says is, “I know you’re going to think I’ve lost my mind, but I have to tell you. You’re ovulating right now. I can sense it. It’s making me nuts.”
“… dioramas depicting the life of Squanto,” Mrs. Kennedy is saying. Claire is no longer sure what Mrs. Kennedy’s talking about. She feels Tim’s leg pressing against her thigh. In a way nobody but Claire would notice, his breathing has also changed. She tries to concentrate on the other parents in the room. She wants to find that mother she’s been looking for whose child can become a friend for Ursula. Somebody other than the very young woman, standing in the back, wearing the shirt with the words SHIT HAPPENS. She has a bruise on her arm. She’s very skinny.
“So,” the teacher says, “I’ll just let you wander around and explore your child’s world for a while.”
For some reason the first mother Claire introduces herself to is under the impression that Claire is the mother of a child named Courtney. “I’ve been wanting to get our girls together,” this other mother says. “It’s so important that they spend time with the right element. These days especially.” Then she bends closer to Claire. “And in this classroom, in particular, it seems there is such a rough element.”
“Rough element?” Claire says. “How so?”
“There’s that boy Ricky, terrorizing them on the playground with that trick where he turns his eyeball inside his head,” she says. “You hadn’t heard?”
Claire shakes her head.
“And that poor kid Brianne. Somebody should report her mother to Youth Services. Just look at her outfit.”
Claire can only nod.
“The worst is that disturbed child. Ursula something. The one who pinches. Courtney said she stole Ashley’s scrunchy the other day. She didn’t even wear it. Just threw it in the trash.”
Tim doesn’t have to introduce himself to Mrs. Kennedy. He has spoken with her many times, not only at their conference about Ursula’s problems socializing, but often when he picks her up and drops her off in the morning. Ursula has told him she no longer wants to ride the bus, so he drives her.
“I was hoping you might be seeing her warm up a little,” Tim says to the teacher. “Now that everybody’s getting in the groove.”
“It’s still early,” Mrs. Kennedy says. “And of course ever since hearing the news about her mother, she’s been more distracted than usual.”
“News about her mother?” says Tim. “What news?”
“Abo
ut her mother coming to see her from New Zealand at Thanksgiving, and taking her to Disney World,” says Mrs. Kennedy. “She already explained to me that’s why she’d have to miss the field trip to Plymouth.”
“I don’t understand,” says Tim.
“And then going to Nashville to meet Dolly Parton!” she says. “We were all so impressed. I hadn’t realized that your former wife is a musician, although after Ursula told us, I could see it, from how musical Ursula is.
“I think the visit will do her a world of good,” Mrs. Kennedy says. “I know you do the very best you can, both you and your friend. But there are just some things nobody can give a child besides her mother. I’m sure you know what I mean.”
MY LIFE
By Ursula Vine
I was born Aug. 17 1985. My mom almost dide wen I came out. Her name is Joan. Shes verry pretty. I look like my dad. His name is Tim.
I wish I dint have red hair.
My dogs name is Jenny. She duznt get to live with us any more. Jenny use to sleep on my bed. We had a speshl trick we did with newspapr.
My dad writes artacals about swamps. Sumtimes we go look for Tadpoles but not so much anymor. I have a pink bike.
Here is the most unuzl thing about me. I no what peple think even if its just in there hed. Like if they betend to like me but I know they really dont.
So you beter not say I hope Ursula drops ded. Even in your hed. Or I’ll no.
Thats me!
Here is the picher of me wen I was a baby. I use to be cute. I wish I was still a baby agen, but I’m not. I way 79 lbs.
Oprah has lost weight again. Ursula was too young to remember the last time she did it, but Oprah often talks about it on her show. The yo-yo syndrome, she calls it. You go up and down. My syndrome, Ursula thinks, is just yo. Stepping on the scale yesterday at Claire’s house when she was over to walk Jenny, she saw that she no longer weighs seventy-nine. She’s up to eighty-three.
Ursula pours herself another bowl of cereal. Oprah’s guest today is a girl about Sally’s age who found out a couple of years ago that the people who had been taking care of her all these years weren’t really her parents. These other people were, who lived in Florida.
Where Love Goes Page 23
