— Eric. I’d rather not.
— Don’t you trust me? He leaned forward again, no longer looking at the little tab but keeping his eyes locked on hers. His face was kind. She thought for a moment he might kiss her. He reached out with one hand and cupped her breast.
— Come on, now. Let me see your sweet tongue.
Heike didn’t say anything, didn’t open her mouth. His hand stayed where it was, stroking her, the tip of his thumb catching her nipple.
— Or did you want to stay awake for some reason?
There was a sound on the stairs, and she jumped back a little.
— Eric, the girl.
She crossed an arm over her chest, brushing his hand away as she did so, but he only leaned closer. His lips almost on her neck. Heike, half-turned in her seat, heard the little footsteps start and stop again. Her body tightened, as though her arms were stitched to her sides. Daniel. She pushed Eric away, and he moved easily, her hand against his shoulder. Her throat hurt.
— Dani? Is that you? You should be in bed, my love.
He came shuffling into the room on his bum, sliding along the wooden floor. His blue pyjamas with race cars on them. Heike brought a hand to her forehead and rubbed it, a kind of relief. He clambered up into her lap and circled his arms around her neck.
Eric sat back in his chair, palms up in an expression of resignation. He looked to the ceiling and then back at Heike, an almost-laugh.
— I give.
She bit her lip.
— He’s still so little, Eric.
— He is so little, it’s true.
He leaned forward again, but it was casual, one elbow on his knee, one cowboy talking to another at a saloon:
— Shouldn’t you be in bed?
— I heard Mami talking.
Heike gathered him closer against her hip before standing up with him like that, his arms still wrapped around her neck.
— Come. I take you back to sleep.
Eric took up a pair of tweezers and began to carefully stash the paper tabs into two small brown envelopes.
— Aren’t you going to say goodnight to your father?
Daniel buried his face in Heike’s chest, then peeked out to whisper each word on its own before hiding again:
— Good. Night.
Eric set the little envelopes in the same drawer and shut it again.
SHE’D BARELY GOTTEN DANI back down when Eric made it to the bedroom: eyes slightly reddened, both happy-looking and oddly mistrustful of her. He pulled her away from where she was curled around Daniel, over to his side of the bed, and she lay quiet next to him, her hand against his back while he snored, unable to sleep herself. When she was sure he wouldn’t wake, she got up, taking Daniel along with her in her arms.
The house was still but not silent. It was just past three in the morning.
She stood at the top of the stairs and listened to the tick of the kitchen clock, the sound rising from the hall below. Daniel lay against her shoulder, deadweight. The girl, Rita, slept curled on the little bed in Dani’s room. Heike was glad enough of that now, glad there had been no witness, especially to Eric staggering up the stairs. She peered into the room. In her sleep, the girl moved a thumb to her mouth. At sixteen, her face looked not much bigger than Daniel’s.
Heike shut the door and walked down the stairs with Dani still on her shoulder, and lay down with him on the daybed in the white room. There was a crocheted blanket folded at one end, and she drew it up and around her shoulders; when she touched her lips to the back of Daniel’s neck, she found he was cool, not sweating at all. His breath came in little puffs. It calmed her, and she slept there for a few hours, until she heard the latch of the milk door opening and catching shut again.
She got up then and pulled the car into the garage and shut the door and went and got dressed in the laundry room. Daniel woke up, and Rita also, and Heike made pancakes: they ate them outside, so as not to wake Eric, and then she and Daniel watched Rita walk up the drive toward the gravel road, with her green satchel slung over her shoulder.
— Is she sweet to you?
— She makes popcorn, Daniel said. We made popcorn in the big pot and mooshed it with melty marshmallows in our fingers. Heike was holding onto his hand, and he yanked it up and down. I want to go swimming, he said. And play water-spiders with Tessa. I want to go in the canoe. He wrapped his other hand around her wrist now and pulled down with both arms.
Heike dropped down to crouch in front of him and shook her hand free.
— What did you say?
Daniel picked up her hand in his own again and squeezed. He jumped up and down on his toes.
— I want to go swimming, swimming, swimming with Tessa, Tessa, Tessa.
Heike pressed her lips together. For a second the sky stretched tall and bright above her, and she squinted and put a hand on the ground to steady herself.
— I think today we work in the garden, Heike said. No swimming today.
SHE WAS LOOSENING UP the earth around the tomatoes with a hand rake when she heard the sweep of tires on the dirt drive. Daniel was sitting underneath a pole bean teepee, snapping off the young green beans and eating them with dusty fingers. She had her blouse open at the neck, and a pair of high-waisted shorts on, peach-coloured, and she stood up and brushed the dry soil from her bare legs. It was past two. The sun beat off the brick path that led between vegetable plots. There was a thickness to the air, the scent of the fruit off the tomato plants, and this made it feel hotter. She heard the engine cut in the driveway, and then the slam of a car door. She thought for some reason of Dolan and looked up to the bedroom window to see if Eric had also heard. Her hands were too dirty to fix her hair, even. A little curl fell along her brow, almost in her eyes.
She caught herself thinking this and shook off her vanity. Probably the milkman, coming to collect. The upstairs curtains were still drawn. She called to Daniel to stay put and walked around the front of the house alone.
— I was hoping I’d find you home.
Heike started.
The car was a long red Eldorado, its roof peeled back in the sun. Not the milk wagon at all. Leo Dolan leaned against the hood with his hands in his pockets. He began walking toward her, but she waved him back and hurried up the drive. She did not want Eric waking to find another man in the front yard.
— Is there something I can do for you?
— All on your own again? Dolan leaned in and offered his hand.
— My son is in the backyard, playing. Heike regarded the hand, suspended more in beckoning than in greeting, and knotted her own hands behind her back.
— Eric Lerner, Junior? Or what kind of family names does a German girl have?
— It’s Daniel. But I think it’s better if you’re not here right now, Mr. Dolan.
— Daniel. That’s a fine name. A Bible name. You know who Daniel fought, don’t you?
— Mr. Dolan, Heike said. I’m pleased to see you, of course, but my husband is quite busy right now.
He stepped in close, and Heike tilted her head up and lifted a hand to shield her eyes.
— You can call me Leo. Dolan took hold of her other hand and pressed something into it: a card. You really should, too. Call me Leo. He gestured to the house. Lerner seems an odd duck. I’ve heard a few things, here and there. That card is in case you ever need a pal.
Heike glanced up to the second-floor windows again, and then to the front porch. She slipped the card into the pocket of her shorts and held it there, flat.
— It’s very nice to see you, Leo, but this isn’t a good time. I wish you would come back later.
Dolan threw a look around past her, toward the back of the house.
— You got a ball or something we could throw? With your boy?
Heike braced her feet against the ground a little more stiffly. She could imagine Daniel, in the backyard, chewing in his bean tent with the sound of a grasshopper.
— Why don’t we walk around and find hi
m?
— Mr. Dolan. Leo. I’m afraid I really must ask you to leave. Please.
— The buck stops here, huh?
She felt a pinch against the back of her leg and twisted to brush away an earwig that was crawling up in the soft place behind her knee. Dolan didn’t say anything more, but watched her do it. She still had the garden fork in one hand. When she moved, little clumps of dry earth shook off it to the ground.
— I’m afraid I offended you last night, Dolan said.
— It was your party. Heike brushed the hair out of her eyes with the back of her wrist, streaking her forehead with dust. You have every right to drink in your own home.
— You think poorly of me. I can see you think poorly of me.
— I shouldn’t have been hiding in your greenhouse, Heike said. She took a step away and leaned out to see if she could catch sight of Daniel in the backyard, but the garden hedge rose up high against the corner of the house, blocking her view.
— Did you learn anything? Dolan followed her lean, as though they were both looking for the same thing.
— What do you mean?
— In the greenhouse. Dolan reached out and took the hand rake from her. He hoed the air a little. Didn’t you learn any little thing?
There was a sharp chattering from the other side of the front garden, and Heike flicked her head toward it without thinking: a blue jay pecked at the ground near the cluster of birdhouses. What Eric called her bird village, the houses and feeders a gift for her, a kind of special treat. It wasn’t the jay but a little wren making the noise, from inside one of the shelters. Warning the jay off. Its beak just visible now, peeking out of the red-painted house.
Heike straightened and turned her back to the noise, oddly ashamed, unwilling for Dolan to notice or ask her about the birdhouses sitting high on their posts. A dryness in the back of her throat.
From the front porch, the slap of the screen door.
Eric came out and down the front steps, dressed in summer whites. Dolan’s jaw tightened and released. Heike grabbed the hand rake back.
— I told you, she said.
— In fact you didn’t.
Dolan said this without taking his eyes off Eric. He sank a hand into one pocket and sent up a high salute with the other:
— Lerner! Just the man I came to see. Dolan stepped away from Heike and walked on down the drive.
Eric had on a white linen jacket and shirt, and he slouched forward, the soles of his loafers brushing against each step. Heike could see that the shirt collar was half-popped under the jacket. He hadn’t shaved.
She slipped around the side of the house. Daniel wasn’t in the garden, but the back door to the garage was open, and she found him in there, kicking at a soccer ball that was wedged beneath the bumper of the car. It was dark inside compared to the brightness of the day and it took her eyes a moment to adjust to the change. She heard him before she saw him. There was a ringing sound as he knocked over a tin sand pail, and then the ball bouncing free.
At the front of the house, the Eldorado’s engine started up again, revving onto the road and away. Heike’s stomach tightened. She stood quietly, waiting.
Eric came to the doorway in his white suit.
— I thought you said you never talked to him last night.
— I didn’t, Heike said. She picked up the tin pail, avoiding his look, and began to sweep the old sand out with her fingers.
— He wants us over on the weekend. An old-fashioned clambake, he calls it. Dinner on the lawn and cards after.
The edge of Heike’s fingernail caught inside the pail, and she winced.
— But not just us? she said.
— Us and some radio people. A couple of dancers, show people. Says he’s going down to Cornell and has a few writers there he might ask.
— Sounds like a big party.
— He calls it dinner, Eric said. He picked up an edging tool and tapped the blade against the concrete floor.
— And you want to go?
— You don’t think it’s strange he wants you there?
— I think it’s more likely he wants you there, Heike said. Cards after dinner. You see?
She had her back half-turned to him now. Dani, she said, not so close to the car.
Daniel dribbled the ball off the back tire, then ran after it and kicked it again. Eric stopped playing with the tool and leaned it up against a wooden seed cabinet.
— Where did you sleep last night?
The question was hostile.
— I lay down with Daniel, she said. Downstairs. I couldn’t sleep. I walked around first.
— You sound guilty. Something troubling you?
There was a pause as Heike regarded him for a moment. He seemed dishevelled, unpredictable in his rumpled suit. She beckoned to Daniel.
— Dani, we go back out in the sunshine, yeah? She bundled him along toward where Eric was standing.
— Wait, my ball! Daniel balked and dug in his heels.
Heike turned and saw the edge of the ball, stuck again now, this time well under the chassis.
— Go on out. Mami brings it for you.
She watched him skim past Eric and then got down on her knees to unwedge the ball. She heard Eric move closer.
— Are you feeling quite well today? Her back was to him, and she turned her head only slightly to ask the question, guarded, over her shoulder. It’s so strange for you to stay home like this, she said.
— Look at me for a second.
Heike pulled hard at the ball to free it and sat up a little taller. She tilted her head slightly but looked out past his body, to the grass beyond the doorway.
— You think you’re smarter than me? He lifted a foot and touched the toe of his shoe to the ball in her lap, tapping it.
— I don’t know what you’re talking about.
— Asking Dolan to the house when you know I’m sleeping.
— I didn’t ask him anything, Heike said. He came to invite you to dinner. You just told me so.
She pressed a hand against the ground to push herself to standing, but he held her there, his foot hard against the ball.
— Eric, you’re being tiresome. She looked up at him but didn’t say anything more for a moment. Then: You’re hungover. Let me make you something to eat. You’ll feel better with something in your stomach.
He took his foot off the ball, and it rolled away from her. She followed it with her eyes but didn’t get up right away, keeping tabs on him instead from where she was. He seemed sharp at the edges. An entirely opposite effect from the soft sedative of the night before. She thought for a second of the way he’d swallowed the dose, blithe and easy as a cough drop.
— Maybe your sleeping medicine wasn’t a good idea.
He walked over to where the ball had landed and hooked a toe under it, kicking it sharply to one side. Heike winced. The ball smacked off the side wall of the garage, then bounced a few times, the sound of it tinny against the concrete floor.
— You need to get that canoe this afternoon.
— I can’t. I have Daniel, and I don’t want to take him back so far. Yesterday he almost drowned. We’ll go tomorrow. She pushed her hair back out of her eyes. Let me make you some breakfast, Eric.
— So, then, what? Your canoe floats down to the lake? Someone will take it. Go today.
Heike watched him, considering whether to keep arguing.
— Eric, she said. Eric, he talked about her today.
— About who?
— The girl. Tessa. The girl we saw.
— The girl you saw.
— I’ll go tomorrow, Eric. I promise. I just want to stay with him, nicely home today.
He came back to where she was sitting, crouching down to look her in the eye. She could see even in the low light where a crease cut into his cheek from the pillow. He’d slept all night without moving, the little iodine droppers doing their work.
— You should have stayed in bed last night. He reached ou
t a hand and cupped her jaw, turning her head to one side and then the other, as though examining her skin tone or the movement of her eyes. This is just a lack of sleep, he said. You should have taken something when I told you to. The hand shifted: he used his thumb to tip her chin up and hold it there. You always think you know best, he said. It’s emasculating, you know? The way you are.
Heike sat still and kept her eyes on the ground and watched his feet. Eric patted her cheek. He stood and turned his head toward the doorway, out to the garden.
— He keeps you so busy, doesn’t he? Little Daniel. He turned back and looked down at her. If you want to stay home, that’s fine with me. I’ll give you one of those new sleeping tabs. Something to calm you down.
Heike’s head fluttered.
— I’m not your patient anymore.
— You don’t have to be my patient for me to want to help. He stepped in, watching her. Heike, he said. You’re my wife. Remember?
She nodded slightly, still looking down but trying to keep her face easy and pleasant. He stood directly above her now.
— If you’re so anxious, the poor canoe will have to wait.
— No. No, I can go, she said. You’re right, I’m just being silly. She tilted her head back to look at him. If you’re home anyway, I can leave Dani with you, for his nap. I’ll go today.
Eric held out a hand, to help her up.
— Dolan’s clambake, he said. It’s Friday night.
Heike stayed where she was, her hands resting on her thighs. When she didn’t reach for him, he drew his hand back, sharply enough to make her flinch. But he only used it to pick a gardening tool from where it was hanging on the wall. A dull spade. He flipped it in the air and caught it again. Then:
— No man wants to be your friend, Heike. Keep that in mind.
He left the garage, but she still didn’t move right away. From the front of the house, the sound of the screen door slapping shut.
6.
An hour later Heike was in her own closet, picking out a thin, long-sleeved shirt in jersey that would be better for the long walk, and a pair of cotton ankle socks. The house was silent: she’d left Daniel in his room, the blinds drawn low to darken it for his afternoon rest. Outside, it was holding at eighty-five degrees.
Hysteria Page 8
