by Anne Tyler
I wonder if maybe he is never planning to write at all. If he is dead, or has left home himself, or is so angry he plans to drive to Baltimore and wait in person beside my post office box until I come looking for letters. The minute I enter the building every day, my eyes fly to the corner where my box is. No Guy. No letter. I take Darcy by the hand and turn away, feeling relieved, but meanwhile there are all these unused words backed up in my throat: “Oh Guy, I wish you hadn’t come. I won’t go back with you no matter what, you’re only wasting your …”
It’s true I wouldn’t go back. It just isn’t in me. Even if it doesn’t work out with John, even if there is nowhere else to turn. I can’t explain why. After all, what did Guy ever do to me? He worked hard, made a home, took good care of us. But I stopped loving him. I don’t know which takes more courage: surviving a lifelong endurance test because you once made a promise or breaking free, disrupting all your world. There are arguments for both sides; I see that. But I made my choice. “Come away with me,” John said. “We love each other, why waste your life? Where is your spirit of adventure?” The first time he said it, he took my breath away with shock. The second time it seemed more possible. He planted a thought in me that grew when he was not around, so that when he stayed away a whole week and then returned I was praying for him to ask me again. It looked as if he might have forgotten. He played all morning with Darcy, didn’t give me a glance. When lunchtime arrived he stood up, still not looking at me, not even touching my hand. “Are you coming?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
To keep Darcy quiet a while I gave her some blunt-nosed scissors and a magazine. I sat on the bed beside her, cross-legged. I pretended that we were in a house that John had built for us, and he was off at work but would be coming home shortly for supper. I even planned what I would cook for him. I love to cook. Lately we have been living on things from cans, heated in Mr. Pauling’s miserable kitchen, and I am starved for the smell of herbs and baking bread. I planned the meal by smells alone: hot dilled biscuits, roast beef, a fresh green salad. John would open the door and the smells would curl around him and draw him in. We would sit down at a table with a white linen cloth, in a house that was stable, calm, warm, clean, built to shelter us a lifetime. It would never even occur to me to run away again.
I cut out squares of paper to make Darcy a dollhouse. I showed her how to Scotch-tape them together. I cut an oval rug and gave it to her to color, and then we made curtains from a flowered shopping bag. Darcy bent over them with her tongue between her teeth, concentrating. The back of her neck was like a little curved stem, and I kept wanting to reach out and touch it but I didn’t.
You hear a lot about teenaged wives, how they’re bound to fail, but nobody mentions teenaged mothers. They are the best in the world; I’m convinced of that. While the neighbor women were nagging their children not to get the house dirty, I was down on the floor playing with mine. I carried her piggyback wherever I went; I dressed up in old clothes with her, read her my favorite storybooks, fixed tea for her dolls. Instead of shipping her off to nursery school I had other children come visit, and sometimes I felt as if I were running a nursery school myself. Six and seven children would stampede through the kitchen, playing tag or hide-and-seek, with me always It. On rainy days we made picnic lunches and ate them on the dining room floor. Gloria said, “Honey, you spoil that child. She won’t know how to amuse herself when her brothers and sisters start coming along.” I never told her about Guy’s not wanting more children. I kept hoping he would change his mind. But he said, “Ain’t this one taking all your time as it is? What you want to go and ruin your figure for?” He said that every time I brought it up. He never changed.
I would stand in front of the mirror and see how wide-hipped and expansive I was, how tall I loomed, bigger than life, full of life, with not enough people to pour it into. My world had turned out narrow after all—different from my parents’, but just as narrow. I looked out the front window and watched the people walking by, and I wanted to climb into every single one of them and be carried off to some new and foreign existence. I pictured myself descending from the sky, all wheeling arms and legs, to sink invisibly into their heads and ride home with them, to see how they arranged their furniture and who their friends were, what they fought about, what made them cry, where they went for fun and what they ate for breakfast and how they got to sleep at night and what they dreamed of. And having found out, I would leave; on to the next one. I wanted to marry a mad genius and then a lumberman and then somebody very rich and cold and then a poet who would dedicate his every word to me and who would have a nervous breakdown when I left him. Which I would do, of course. As soon as I had been absorbed into his world, as soon as it stopped feeling foreign; on to the next one. I didn’t guess back then that moving on would hurt so.
What would Guy have said if he’d known what I dreamed? His idea of change was to take in a movie on Saturday night. His greatest joy was attending motorcycle rallies. Hours and hours in someone’s hot cow pasture, with me trying to pick out the cloud of dust that was Guy from among a lot of other clouds. When I refused to go any more, he went alone. He was gone overnight, weekends. “That son of mine should stay at home more,” Gloria used to say, but I didn’t mind. It seemed to be part of the pattern that I had married into; the other women’s husbands didn’t stay home either. They were off bowling, or drag-racing, or playing billiards. On summer evenings we would pool all our children and go to Roy’s for hamburgers, which we ate at one of the outdoor tables—a double line of women and children, not a man among us. All the women laughing and scolding and mopping spilled drinks, filling every corner of their world. Then when Guy came home again his boots jarred the house and his bass voice took me by surprise, and when he plucked Darcy out from her dolls she squirmed and looked at me for reassurance, as if he were a stranger.
Which he had been, once upon a time. He was more a stranger than any boy I’d met. It wasn’t his fault that we finally got to know each other.
I walked with Darcy to the post office and we dawdled every step of the way. I was hanging back, hunting up excuses never to arrive at all. And when we got there, sure enough, a slanted blade of paper was showing through the window. One of my own envelopes, pale blue. It gave me a shock to see it. “Now can we go to the park?” Darcy asked. “No, wait,” I told her. We were supposed to meet John there at noon. I didn’t want him to watch me reading this letter. I leaned against a counter and tore open the envelope. The letter itself was written in pencil, on several sheets of the pulpy gray paper I kept for Darcy to draw on. Every word was smudged over. Guy is left-handed; his hand rubs what he has just written as it travels across the paper. I could picture him at the kitchen table with his hair falling over his forehead, his shoulders hunched with the effort of writing.
Dear Mary,
Now I have never understood you but this time is worse than usual.
I treated you real good Mary always gave you ever little thing you wanted, a house of your own clothes a baby even when I thought we should wait some. I thought you was happy, now I hear it wasn’t so. Come home one night to find it wrote out on the icebox door, your going and won’t be back and sorry you hurt me.
You didn’t hurt me worth a shit Mary I mean that. You could go clear on to California it wouldn’t hurt me worth a shit. I am too blasted mad.
We have been married six years now that I could have been playing around in and buying up fast cars instead of cookpots and I could have had me a lot of other women as well let me tell you but never did as I thought you loved me. I stood for a lot from you Mary. First off I near about raised you, you didn’t know beans when we were married and had my mama waiting on you hand and foot for years, secondly I let you correct my grammer and my table manners and change my whole way of doing things that you looked down on and drive off all my friends account of you thought none of them was good enough for you. Did you ever invite a one of my buddies to dinner, no. When you
r mama died you acted like it was my fault it happened to her, also that time your cousin came from Washington you didn’t even introduce me but went and ate supper at her motel leaving me a tunafish sandwich. Well I could take all that, what I couldn’t take was this, you held my own baby daughter seperate from me. You named her for your family and you raised her like your mother would do and never even let me hold her without fifteen pillows nor feed her nor have any good times with her, you and her just lived your seperate lives like I wasn’t around. You froze me out. Don’t you think I got feelings too? What do you think I been thinking all these years? Oh I don’t count I’m just a man. You put me in mind of a black widow spider, soon as you got your child then a man isn’t no more use to you. For years I been living a lonely life hoping you would change and you never did.
NO you can’t have a divorce. What is it you already met a man that wants 20 children? You can’t have a divorce as long as you live and don’t try coming back or I’ll kill you, I mean it, I’ll kill you and Darcy both of you don’t neither one mean a thing to me. I mean this Mary I’m glad you’re gone.
Sincerely,
Guy
I put the letter back in the envelope and slipped it into my purse. I took Darcy by the hand. She said, “Mom, can I buy a popsicle?” “Maybe later, baby,” I said. I led her down the steps, out into the sunshine that was baking the sidewalk, but inside I felt cold and hard and dark like a stone. I looked into a store window and saw my reflection and thought, There goes a black widow spider taking her daughter to the park. The whole world looked different. A different set of colors even, and bigger and flatter. When we got to the park I saw John on a bench and he seemed to have changed too. He wore a black suit with a white shirt; he was all black and white. The grass behind him was such a washed-out shade of green that I hardly recognized it. Some kind of cold white gauze was laid across everything. “What’s the matter?” John said. “Nothing,” I told him. I reached out to touch his sleeve. I thought, You are my only support. I am certain I love you. Certainly with you I won’t fail. “Race you to that tree,” John told Darcy, and they were off like two jittery birds. I was the only still thing in the landscape. I stood clutching my purse to my stomach, stone still. Yet when the two of them had touched base and returned to me, and John said, “Shall I take you out to eat?” I was able to smile the same as ever. I said, “That would be nice.”
We went to a delicatessen where he said they made wonderful sandwiches. It was cafeteria-style—a dangerous place to take Darcy. She always thinks she wants everything she sees. When we reached the cash register her tray was overflowing, and the lady who rang it up said, “Somebody’s eyes are bigger than their stomach.” Then she winked at me. What would she say if I grabbed both her hands and begged to go home with her?
Once we were seated John started acting nervous, tearing bits of bread off his sandwich and rolling them into balls. I wondered if he had noticed something odd about me. I would have to tell him sometime. I leaned forward and said, “I got an answer to that letter today.”
John said, “You did?”
“He won’t give me a divorce.”
John smiled, with the corners of his mouth turned down. “It seems we’re beset with troubles from all sides,” he said.
“All sides?”
“Carol has moved back into the house.”
I looked over at Darcy. She was separating her sandwich to get at the mayonnaise. I wanted to tell her not to waste a bite of it, eat all she could hold, take the rest home in a doggy bag; now we were going to starve. John said, “Well, it’s not so bad. You know Carol, she’ll tire of it soon enough. I couldn’t just throw her out of the house, could I?”
“You could move out yourself,” I said.
“Well, yes. Yes. In fact I will, but my studio is there. I can’t just up and leave my studio. What I’m counting on is her changing her mind, by and by. I’m certain she’ll leave again.”
“How can you be sure?” I asked him.
“She operates on whims, Mary. She goes through fads. She’ll get over it. Right now she’s taken with the idea of being a homebody again. Says she wants to settle down, have children, grow vegetables. For Carol that’s ludicrous, I told her straight—”
“Children?” I said. “You got as far as talking about children?”
“Carol did, I said.”
“You said she couldn’t have any children.”
“Oh, well, she’s talking now about going to a doctor for some tests. Wants me to get tested too.”
“What would they test you for?”
“To see if it’s me that can’t have them.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “It’s hardly ever the man.”
“Fifty per cent of the time it is.”
I stared at him.
“Why, sure,” he said.
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well, I’m not going, don’t worry,” he told me. He laid his hand over mine. “You’ll see, in a week she’ll move out again.”
“But—what about now? I mean, how are you arranging it? Where is she sleeping?”
“Mary. Look. There’s nothing to get upset about. I’m here with you eating lunch, aren’t I? I won’t let you down. Whatever happens, I think of you as my responsibility. Believe me.”
“Responsibility,” I said.
“I’ve been through a lot for your sake, Mary. I’m jeopardizing my divorce, I’ve given up motorcycle rallies—”
“Well! Are you sure I’m worth the sacrifice?”
“Be reasonable, will you?”
Reasonableness was why I left with him. He was so reasonable and cool; life with him would be so different. I said, “Tell me something. Why did you ask me to come away with you?”
“Now, Mary—”
“No, I mean it. Why didn’t you wait till you were divorced, if you were so reasonable?”
“Well, you know why. I said we might wait and you said no, we’d better do it now or not at all. You didn’t even stop to pack a bag. Once you’d made up your mind you wanted to get going, you said. You weren’t the kind to—”
“Oh, never mind,” I said. I didn’t want to hear what kind I was. I didn’t want to learn any more, ever, about how I appeared in other people’s eyes.
We took Darcy back to the boarding house because she was cross and sleepy. After I put her to bed we came out and sat in the parlor—I in an easy chair, John perched on its arm. He kept stroking the inside of my wrist. “Don’t,” I told him.
“This isn’t like you, Mary,” he said.
“It isn’t like me to go out with someone whose wife is waiting at home either.”
“In time,” he said, “this will all be over. It will seem like nothing. You’ll look back on it and laugh.”
“Well, it may be over someday, and it might seem like nothing,” I told him, “but I will never look back on it and laugh. I don’t feel as if I will ever laugh again.” Then I looked at his face and saw the boredom and irritation drawn across it like a curtain, removed as soon as he found my eyes on him. His mouth was tugged permanently downward by two acid lines at the corners; that much of his expression he could not remove. Think, I told myself, of the clean cut of him, the precision, the logic and decisiveness. Isn’t that why you’re here with him? His forefinger chafed my wrist like sandpaper, as if my skin were peeled back and he were stroking raw nerves. I stood up suddenly, pretending to have heard some sound from Darcy, and I went into the bedroom. Darcy was fast asleep. She lay sprawled across our bed, her mouth slightly open, her hairline damp with sweat. I heard John come up behind me and I felt his hand on my hip. “She’s asleep,” he told me.
“She’s tired out.”
“We’re all alone,” he said.
“No, we’re not. I’m sure Mr. Pauling is up in his studio.”
“Come with me to the couch.”
“Are you crazy?”
I moved his hand away but he stayed close behind me. “What d
o we care about Mr. Pauling?” he said.
“You’re crazy,” I told him. “I wish you would leave now. Will you go on home to your wife, please?”
“Suit yourself,” he said.
He stood there a moment longer but I wouldn’t even turn to look at him. I wanted him gone. I wanted to pick Darcy up and sit with her in a rocking chair, just the two of us, shut away from everyone. Yet when he did go (stepping too lightly, as if I were asleep as well), I was angry at him for leaving. I felt abandoned as soon as I heard the front door shut. I sat down on the bed; I took one of Darcy’s stockinged feet and held it tight for comfort, while the tears spilled over and came streaming down my face.
A long time later Mr. Pauling came by with a carpet sweeper and a dirty gray dust rag. I heard the sweeper’s wheels roll through my doorway and then stop short. “Oh,” Mr. Pauling said, “I’m sorry, I thought—”
“That’s all right.”
“I thought you were still—but I’ll come back another—”
“No, please. Go right ahead. Don’t let me stop you.”
I stood up, digging in my pocket for a handkerchief. Mr. Pauling remained in the doorway. When I sidled past him I could smell the Ivory soap on his white, white skin. I kept my eyes down, hiding the tears, so that all I saw of him was his pale plump chest above a fishnet undershirt. “Please, is there anything at all I could do to help?” he asked me.
That one single piece of kindness shattered me. “Oh, Mr. Pauling,” I said, and I took a step closer and bent to lay my face upon his shoulder. I don’t know why. I felt the shock hit him—a short breath inward, the handle of the sweeper clanging against the door and then dropping to the carpet with a thud. He kept both his arms behind him, like someone under surprise attack. Already I was sorry I had scared him so. I thought, Good Lord, I wonder what I will take into my head to do next. I had started trying to smile, to be ready to draw back and face him and apologize, when I felt one of his hands rise up and pat my arm. Little soft pats with the fingers tight together. Little warm breaths stirring a wisp of my hair. “Oh there, oh please,” he said, “please don’t cry, Mrs. Tell.” I shifted my face into the crook of his neck. I put my arms around his waist, which felt soft and had too much give to it. “I just can’t stand to see you cry,” he said. His voice wavered, as if he might start crying himself. Sad people are the only real ones. They can tell you the truth about things; they have always known that there is no one you can depend upon forever and no change in your life, however great, that can keep you from being in the end what you were in the beginning: lost and lonely, sitting on an oilcloth watching the rest of the world do the butterfly stroke.
