by Amity Gaige
It was then the telephone rang. Alice lifted her head, one child twisting the flesh of her arm, and the other one gripping a Kleenex in her mandibles. She hefted Frances over her shoulder, urine moistening her shirt. I must, she thought … At all costs …
“Hello?” she shouted into the telephone. “Hello?”
“Alice?” It was foggy voice, a voice from far away.
“Yes? Yes? This is Alice.” She pinned the phone against her shoulder, shutting her eyes, hoping, listening.
“Alice dear? It’s Luduina.”
Alice froze. “Hello, Luduina! How are you?”
“I’m not—I’m not well, Alice. May I speak to Charlie?”
Evelyn was now pulling her mother’s hair, pulling back with all her strength, in grief for the loss of her sovereignty, and her sister thrashed on her shoulder. I must at all costs …
“No,” said Alice. “I mean, no, I’m sorry. Please. Could you hold on? Don’t hang up. Please. I’m so sorry.”
The telephone slid crashing to the floor and she stepped back into the nursery and thrust both children into the same crib, Frances naked from the waist down, and Evelyn convulsing with outrage.
“There,” she said. “Devour each other.”
Catching her breath, pulling her unwashed hair from her mouth, she fetched the phone from the floor.
“Luduina? I’m sorry.”
Silence came through the receiver. Alice froze.
“Mrs. Shade?” she whispered. “Are you all right?”
“I’m afraid I have some sad news. It’s about Charlie’s grandmother.”
“Gran?”
“She’s passed away.”
“No.”
“She has.”
“Oh. I’m—sorry.”
“Yes. We all are.”
“Charlie will be—”
“He’ll be sad.”
“Heartbroken.” Alice paused. “He loved her. So much.”
“She loved him the same. He was her favorite. They were best friends, when he was a little boy.”
“I know. I’ve heard so many stories. He talks about her all the time. All of you, really, together—” Alice walked slowly down the hall to the front windows. She put one hand flat against the windowpane. “I never knew mine. My grandmother. We never met.”
The woman paused on the other line. A screen door slammed in the background.
“Yes,” she replied. “One doesn’t—get the chance in this life sometimes. To be with whom one wants. It can seem unfair.”
Alice drew a breath and held it. “But if you love someone very much, a million years with them could still seem—insufficient. Couldn’t it?”
“So,” the woman cleared her throat. “Can I talk to him?”
“To Charlie?”
“Yes.”
Alice turned, took three long steps across the room and brought her feet together. “He’s at work.”
“On a Sunday?”
Alice laughed. “Is it only Sunday?”
Mrs. Shade paused again. “Well, yes.”
Down the hall, the girls were murmuring at their toys. Alice walked back to the cold window. Outside, on the street, a group of children stood idly around a tree. A tall shadow approached, and out of the dusk came a man in slippers. He grabbed one of the children by the arm and marched her down the street. Alice put her cheek against the glass. Her eyes slid closed. She had tried to call Joanne; Joanne was on vacation. Her mother was gone—lost? Not answering. She knew no one. Her inborn bookish shyness, and the circle she and Charlie had drawn around themselves in their joy, now revealed her as a floating, unallied thing. The only person whom she could think of to help her was the boy she had destroyed everything with through touching. She heard herself speaking softly:
“What does it feel like?”
“What, dear?”
Alice’s hand slid slowly down the window, leaving a disappearing trail. “The end of knowing someone.”
“The—Well—” On the other end, the woman hesitated, confused. In the background, the sound of a man’s voice softly asking a question.
Alice blanched, shaking herself awake. She took her hand from the window.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I haven’t slept in a couple days. I’m not—making any sense.”
“It’s all right—”
“I’m sorry.”
“Alice. Is everything all right there?”
“Everything’s fine. Except this, of course. Charlie will be—” she pawed her hair from her face. I must at all costs go on. “I’ll have to tell him.”
“Alice. We would like very much for you and Charlie and the children to come home for the service. We were hoping we could talk to Charlie about arrangements.”
“Of course. Absolutely.”
“Might you—get in touch with him?”
“Absolutely. Right away. When is the—”
“Friday.”
“Yes. I’ll have him call you right away.”
Alice turned and crossed the living room and stopped in the middle of the wreckage. She had no idea where he was. He’d been fired, so he couldn’t be at work. She turned around in a circle. She tried to feel his consciousness in the world. She closed her eyes and hoped for it, but ended up choking on the emptiness. For he was still too angry to reveal himself to her. And this, in her fate-haunted, gray-skied Gloucester-born soul, was as death. She sat down, in the middle of the carpet. Evelyn, remembering herself, began to scream again.
“I’ll have him call you,” she said, controlling her voice.
“Thank you,” said her mother-in-law. Then she added, “And yes, by the way, you’re right. A million years would be insufficient. Completely insufficient.”
In her distant kitchen, the woman began to cry.
Alice sat, listening to the sound, wishing she could cry like that, faultlessly and deservedly. She could hear birdsong, too. A bird on a telephone wire in the Midwest. She went to the window again, to watch the children in the street.
But the children had dispersed. Instead, standing in the middle of the street, looking up steadily, was Hal.
Seeing her at the window, he waved. He returned his hands to the pockets of his jacket. He seemed prepared to stand there a long time. Just, to stand.
“I’m sorry,” Alice whispered into the telephone. “I’m so sorry.”
Standing in the door on Monday morning, watching Bruce leave for work, Charlie’s heart dropped, sliding loose and sick and frightened in his chest. He wasn’t sure if it was the state of his marriage or the fact that it was his first work day as a fired person or if it was simply the prospect of a day spent alone in a strange house. Or was it some genuine, almost wifely attitude he’d developed living with this man for three days, a kind of indebtedness at being taken in and being tolerated, despite the shipwreck of who he had claimed to be; he would even miss the sound of hacked-up sputum. Wincing at this thought, he lowered his hand from the screen door, and with a twist to his chin, cracked his own neck. In the driveway, Bruce gathered the folds of his trench coat and got into the front seat of his Jeep. He rolled down the window.
“Have a good day, honey,” Bruce said, touching the bill of his baseball cap.
“Ha,” said Charlie. “Yeah. Don’t forget to wear your galoshes, asshole.”
The gears ground to reverse. Bruce stuck his head out as the car rolled backward down the driveway.
“You know what I’ve always wanted for dinner? Pot roast. Nobody ever made me a pot roast once in my whole life. Can you make pot roast, Charlie honey?”
“How about a bowl of Fritos if you’re lucky?”
Bruce pulled the Jeep onto the road and flicked on the windshield wipers. It was starting to rain. Up and down the street, the suburban architecture wore the gloom poorly.
“So. What are you going to do?” Bruce called.
“I don’t know.” Charlie squinted up the street. “Stick my head in the oven?”
“Well, it’s
all clean for you. I never use it.”
The Jeep revved, rolled backward. Nearby, a dog barked.
“All right. So, should I be worried about you?”
Charlie considered it.
“I don’t know, Bruce,” he said sincerely.
“Stay in the game, Charlie. Stay in the game.”
But an hour or so later, still sitting unmoving at the breakfast table, cereal untouched, Charlie’s lungs were crushed by a force of grief so great he felt he was being driven over. He looked down at his sweater for the tracks. His mouth filled with spit. He was frightened. He considered phoning Bruce at the clinic. But it would have made it worse to call, since everyone would know about his dismissal by now and he would have to say it. So instead, he pounded on the table. Beating the table, like an enormous demanding baby, he felt better, and the pressure moved back off his chest.
“There,” he said, slamming the table, standing. “Motherfucker.”
He rifled through the kitchen cabinets. Surely Bruce kept a stash of something. For guests maybe? Some kind of fruit cordial? Or maybe he was the sort of guy who liked to keep a nice big bottle of the hard stuff around, as a kind of challenge? A nice broad-shouldered bottle of whiskey? He stood on a kitchen stool, rummaging with one arm in the uppermost cabinets, when, seizing a jar of canola oil, he began to laugh. If they could only see him now, the town fathers of Mattoon. His track coach, the police chief, or the Rotary president himself, Glen Shade, who at sixty-eight still repaired his own roof. Charlie stood laughing on the kitchen stool for what seemed like a long time. Then he came down and pulled himself out of the kitchen and up the staircase. He passed Bruce’s bedroom, and was lulled by the downy looking comforter. He fell on top of it, mouth open. Another hour passed.
He would go on, he could go on this way, hour by hour. Soon, time would collect into buckets of years. He tried to lie very still, practicing.
The sun came in at an angle. He rose on his elbow. There was a huge armoire in the room, in which he discovered only three plaid shirts and one tie dangling. Across the room, a small desk, with a cartoon thumbtacked to the wall over it. On the desk itself sat an empty can of Shasta, a pen, and a stack of peach-colored papers tied together with a piece of twine. Charlie stood there over the desk. He plucked at the twine that tied the envelopes. With a jerk, the letters slid loose across the desk. Why the hell leave them out then? He picked through them coolly, not caring, finally lifting one up and reading the front. The envelopes were addressed to Bruce, all of them five years old and postmarked within weeks of each other. Charlie lifted one to his nose. Faint, lingering perfume.
Slipping one open, he removed the letter itself. He sat.
“ ‘Dearest Bruce,’ ” he mumbled, then read on silently: “You have done everything to me including hit me with your hand but I was never so amazed by you as I am now. Why haven’t you written back? Everything is growing over. Mostly the garden is weeds now. I am less angry. I would be reasonable. Dont you believe it? If you are truly sorry you would want to comfort me well then come hold me. I feel the same. I am the same woman and you are the same man that once was happy. Please come home. Forever Yours With Love, Amy. P.S. As an afterthought to my last letter, I would like to change the word ‘betrayal’ to ‘disappointment.’ Please ladies and gentlemen of the jury strike the word ‘betrayal’ from the record in the case of Zabilski v. Zabilski.”
Charlie swallowed. He folded the letter back in its sleeve and picked the next.
“Dearest Bruce,
A blue jay flew into our deck window this morning. I heard it and there was this exploshion of tiny feathers. I went out onto the deck and it was there with its neck broken. I threw it out into the garden and am hoping more blue jays grow where I planted it. Ha. Ha. What would you like me to do with your Bow Flex because my brother wants it. It’s worth a lot of money. I could sell it and give you the money and you could buy liquor with it. Or I could. All this to say I’m drinking again too. Come on! How can you avoid me now! Now that I’ve fallen back to earth and broken my little neck? Forever Yours With Love and a Couple Other Things, Amy. P.S. I would like to reinstate the use of the word ‘betrayal.’ For now I’ve betrayed you too I have started to doubt you. Please come home. Don’t do it because it’s the right thing. Just do it.”
Charlie stood, tugging at the collar of his sweater. He stuffed all the letters back into a pile, and retied the twine. His face was burning, as if in shame. Shame of what? Of which? He stepped back and looked out at the view through the small window. But there was no view. There were only the gutters of the next condominium and the gutters after that. Again, he sat.
The following letter had no salutation:
“I wont yell. I wont scream or yell if you would just write or call. I know they have a phone at the Y where you’re getting these. Are you staying there or just picking up mail? I went there yesterday but nobody would tell me. They say on the street that the third floor of the Y is liquor and the fourth is heroin and up and up like that, and the top floor is death. Meaning, if you stay long enough at the Y to make it to the sixth floor you’re probably dead. Then you just step right off into the clouds heaven. What floor are you on? No seriously I know somehow you’ll make it out OK. You are resilient and smart. You are strong and alone. Me maybe I was actually always worse off than you. Turns out right underneath everything is this layer of fire. This thing you never saw burning me up because you were busy worrying about you. Women have it worse because they live for other people. And maybe they are happier briefly but that only means they will be sadder longer. I might go stay with my brother so would you come by the house and water the plants while I’m gone? The potted palm and the jade both need a gallon every other week the rest should be watered every other day or when dry. I enclose herein my brothers address. I know what your thinking. From the frying pan into the fire, right? Well I’m already on fire. But even on fire I will be Yours Forever With Love, Amy.”
Charlie rubbed his eyes, his chin. He shuffled through the remaining letters, but they were all dated before this one. This one, then, was the last. He turned the letter over. The back of the stationery was covered with a final postscript.
“P.S. In the future you will have to try and see through the anger in these letters. You know I’ve always been shy about the intensity of my feelings because I was pretty much made to feel like a freak show when I was a kid. I just want you to know Bruce you were the only one who never made me feel like that. You were the only one who ever really knew me as much as I could be known and I had a very good time with you on earth. You were it for me. Magic. Even when you were drunk you were just a little less magical. You loved me and I always knew it. And whatever I was in reality, however drunk or skinny or ugly I really was, you know what? I wore a ball gown and dimonds when I was with you.”
Charlie pushed the stack of letters aside and put his head down on the desk. Of course, he thought. The mantel—that’s where we put photographs of the ones we lost.
And the top floor is death.
He sat like that with his cheek against the desk for some time, the sun warming the side of his head. It took him a while to realize he was crying. A collection of water on the desk beside his eye. If he had to admit it, he couldn’t really take the news. The news of life’s obscurity. He did not know how to stay in the game when the game ceased to be about winning or losing it. For example, love. You fall down from heaven together and you’re separated for all those years until you find each other again. In some AA meeting. Some snowbound alley. You love with the intemperance of people waiting an eternity for the chance. But that force itself is a force too great. You buckle. You run. You go hide somewhere where you can’t be found. Then before you know it you’re running your finger over a face in a photograph and it doesn’t feel like her skin and you will never, ever recover. How can you recover from that? That you lost it all for vanity? Trying to be the clear winner. Trying to be king. Trying to trade places with the gods wh
en there they were, up there, desperate to trade places with you.
Charlie sat upright. Outside, the cooing of a bird, and the dewy dropping of moisture from the gutter to the roof. He stood, his throat tight, his hands open and loose, as one preparing to catch something. The chair fell backward behind him.
He ran. He was crashing through the house, snatching his jacket from the couch, cramming his feet into his shoes. He left the cabinets open, the bed in disarray. He snapped his watch onto his wrist, for suddenly time mattered. Pausing in the kitchen, he dialed his own number. Don’t don’t don’t, he whispered. But no one answered, and he did not feel her consciousness in the world responding. Don’t what? Don’t go? Don’t leave me? Don’t go to him? Don’t forget. Don’t suffer. Don’t give up. Don’t worry. Don’t die. Don’t let go of me.
He flung open the front door, slamming it shut behind him, diving off the steps where he had lain drunk three days before. He ran. He flew. He felt shocked awake. Forsaking the sidewalk, he leapt into the street. The horn of a dark-windowed SUV sounded, and the car swerved away from him, taillights glowering. But still he ran, the street underneath him slick with rain and motor oil, a wet fog obscuring the suburban houses, smelling of bones.
Run, he thought. You better run like you’ve never run. He sprinted. He’d been hiding, idle, watching television, but what if now his world ended where this fog ended? He began to fall into the trance of his pace, the suburban development giving way to coarse woods, and suddenly he remembered himself as an infant, in the sun-warmed parlor of that milk white house, pulling himself across a paisley carpet, pulling himself up like some evolving animal, in his diapers and short pants. His mother in the kitchen. His father in his den. And the whole unspeakable possibility of his life, suddenly known to him in a flash. The birth of his heart. The assignation of his fate. But this fate, he saw now, was never a given, was never irrevocable, but was merely the gentlest of suggestions, and could be attained or lost depending completely upon one’s capacity for joy and for suffering, depending completely upon one’s endurance, one’s ability to keep running. Fate was the countryside in which one was lost.
