by Jo Barney
I’m not sure when I stopped the doing. Much later. Probably just before Brian got married, when I suggested we buy a new sofa and rug for the wedding events. “We can have the rehearsal party here. I’ll cook, and we’ll save money that way. We really need to spruce up the house anyway.”
Art leaped so quickly I didn’t have time to back away. “We don’t have to spruce up anything,” he growled, his fingers biting into my wrist. His face drew close and I could see into his black pupils and the narrow rim of blue containing them. “You’ll cook the dinner if we have to have it, but the money for it comes from your budget, not my pocket. Only a few coins rattle in that pocket at the end of every month.”
I yanked my arm away, rubbed what would be bruises the next day. Thirty years of bruises, a few physical, most emotional, joined forces in a declaration of independence, and I hissed, “I’m sick of hearing about your empty pockets. And if you touch me like that one more time, I swear I will leave you.” I didn’t know where the words, the courage to say them, came from. But I wasn’t finished. “Right now, I will be helping Brian address his part of these.”
I gathered the wedding invitations, made a neat pile. “And I’ll sit right here and make out a menu for his party.” I turned my back to him. “And you will find the money somewhere to pay for it.” My words still ringing in my head, in the air, against the walls, I could feel Art’s footsteps shaking the floorboards as he left the house.
That time I did say no and meant it. And things did change. Art paid the extra grocery bills. He never touched me again, in anger or in love. Only occasionally in lust. I found my new bitchy voice, made lists, new demands: his clothes left on the floor of the closet, his loud TV, the skimpy money in the envelope. Art retreated further from me, more silent than ever. That suited me just fine. Most of the time, at least.
I open the door. “Hi, Mom. I just wanted to check in on you.” Kathleen holds out the bag of scones. “And to have a cup of coffee. Hope you have time?”
Mom. Kathleen calls me that when she has something on her mind and is looking for a way into me. I know I’m being cynical, a condition that is hanging on even after its source is dead. “Of course.” I give my daughter-in-law a breeze of a kiss on the temple, take her jacket, and lay it on the back of a chair.
In the kitchen Kathleen unloads the scones on a plate, and looks for paper napkins. I point at the napkin drawer and pour the coffee. “Let’s sit at the table,” she says. “Gets a little sun in the morning.”
We both break our pastries in half, and then Kathleen sets hers beside her cup, sends her you-can-trust-me look at me. “I’m here because we’re worried that you are unhappy, maybe making yourself even more unhappy by going through Art’s pockets, perhaps even making some decisions that don’t need to be made yet, like selling the house?” Her lips settle into a lipsticked question mark.
“We? You and my son?” I will not respond to this determined mouth, this intrusive woman. “If Brian is worried, why isn’t he here?” I scoot my chair back, ready to stand up when she reaches across the table, her hand inches from mine.
“No, Edith, not so much we. Me. I’m worried. About you, not the house, about your—” She hesitates, trying, maybe, to find a word that won’t send me out of the room. “—about your need to find pieces of Art, to maybe reconstruct him, to understand him better now than when he was alive.” Her hand has slipped away; her eyes unblinkingly fervent. “It seems like fruitless scavenging, not knowing what you are looking for, unhappy when you don’t find it. What good will it do? You can’t change the past, and you have a future to look forward to.”
I hate her not-knowing guesses. “The pockets are not making me unhappy.” Confused, but not unhappy. And how can she, the perfect wife and mother, judge about unhappiness anyway? “And I’m not going to sell the house soon. Where’d you get that idea?” Brian and my new financial advisor must have been talking. “Why is my son checking up on me? Herbert Smith told me that it is my right to use Art’s retirement fund, to sell the house, whatever, in any way that I want.”
“Yes.” Kathleen nods as if she agrees; a little smile creeps back towards me. “It’s just that you don’t have to decide anything for a while, until you are really ready. Art’s death took all of us by surprise, you especially.”
“Actually, not. I imagined Art dead a number of times.” I take a bite of scone and wash it down with coffee. “Is that a terrible thing to say?” I enjoy the look on Kathleen’s face that says it is. “Don’t you ever try to imagine what life would be like without Brian? Most wives do, I’m pretty sure. And they do it more often when they don’t love their husbands.”
“You can’t mean that. You were married for almost fifty years.”
“Does that make a difference?”
“Love changes. I know that, after twenty years. But it still is there, under all of the other layers of stuff. Isn’t it?” She looks down, seems to be seeking something in her cup as if it holds the answer.
Something about Kathleen’s voice makes me take a good look at the woman across the table from me. Tears?
“What?” I ask.
A pale, ringed hand covers her brow and eyes. I have to lean forward to hear what she is saying. “This is so bad. One is not supposed to complain about her husband to that man’s mother, is she?”
I sit back, pull off another corner of scone. What could she possibly have to complain about? That he works too hard? Is too stressed out to go along with her orderliness? Doesn’t have time to help with the kids? All part of building a successful business, isn’t it? I wouldn’t know, of course, but I assume supporting Brian’s career is part of her contract with him, that she signed on as his helpmeet, just as I did, back when that word was part of the marriage vows. Most women, I imagine, feel frustrated in that role once in a while. But look what she’s gotten—children, a great house, a fine man to live with. She must have someone other than her mother-in-law to dump on.
But I’ve never seen my competent daughter-in-law teeter into tears before. I’m curious. “Try me.”
Kathleen clears her throat, moves away from the rays of sun coming in from the garden. “I suspect that Brian is seeing someone.” At these words, tears escape, leak along her nose. “Sometimes he comes home late.”
Now it is I who can barely speak. “And?”
“I peeked at the calendar in his planner. He’s blocked off time for the past few weeks, with just the initial P written in.” She closes her eyes. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
“No, probably not.” This is my perfect son we’re talking about. There must be a logical explanation.
Kathleen shifts in her chair, reaches for her cup, doesn’t pick it up, wipes a finger across a flooded cheek. “I’m too embarrassed to tell him I read his calendar, that I don’t trust him.” She hesitates. “This must be hard for you, Edith. You and Brian are so close.”
If our roles were reversed, she’d be telling me what to do right now. Is that what she wants? I can do that. I could say, “You have to talk to Brian, not me. I’m sure he has an explanation. Maybe he has dentist appointments or something, a dentist whose name begins with P.” I shake my head. Too easy. I’m the wrong person for this. I cannot accept what she is implying. “I’m no good at helping people, Kathleen. Especially when it concerns my son.”
She stands, walks into the living room and I’m off the hook.
“I came to ask if I could help you, Edith, and instead I’ve made you angry. Please don’t tell Brian about this. I’ll figure out what I should do.” At the front door, Kathleen slips into her jacket. “I was going to tell you that sometimes I can smell her on him. Would that have made a difference?”
Shit.
Chapter Eight
A surge of energy fired by my disappointment in Brian has led to a day of dumping everything connected to his father into the back of the car and leaving Art at Goodwill. Goodwill doesn’t take old photos or scraps of pocket papers, so those lef
tovers are waiting in wastebaskets in the front hall. However, I don’t feel better despite the purging. I make my way to my new light-blue lounger and settle back to try to decide what to do.
Nothing. I can do nothing about my son’s apparent decision to be unfaithful. Because I can’t make myself believe what she has told me, I can do nothing to ease Kathleen’s pain. In fact, I keep wanting to blame her. Is she imagining this? Paranoid? A bit unhinged? I have been aware that at times Brian has been unhappy at work, but who isn’t? He has confessed to me, once or twice, disappointment with the way his life is going, or is not going: his future, his marriage, and once, his relationship with his father. All normal disappointments, if I can judge by the advice column I read daily in the newspaper. However, if he is indeed heading into the arms of another woman, coming home carrying her scent, any apron strings still tying me to Brian are being stretched way too far.
The manila WHY? envelope sticking out of the wastebasket catches my eye. His father went out for some air. Why not Brian?
Because he won’t betray me.
At that thought, I struggle out of the chair and head for the kitchen. “I need a drink of something. I’m going nuts,” I say to the pantry door. I find a bottle with an inch of bourbon in it, pour it in a glass, add an ice cube and, having second thoughts about what I’m doing, add a little water.
How can I believe that a son’s having a lover betrays his mother? Nuts. Absolutely. I lift the glass again, pause. Maybe it is my hope for him that is betrayed, the happy-ever-after-hope. Not a betrayal of the mother, though. Really, only his wife. Of course, his wife. I finish my drink, wash out the glass, go to the desk, and call her. I need to find out more--about betrayal and truth.
Kathleen and I meet at a small restaurant on a side street in the center of town. My daughter-in-law slides onto her chair with a small sigh, meeting my eyes only for a moment.
“I am here to listen, Kathleen. I wasn’t ready before. I am now.”
Kathleen opens her menu. I tell myself to wait.
“Thank you. I’m sorry I dumped on you the other day. I feel better now.”
No, you don’t, I think as she turns a page, doesn’t look up at me. “I’m glad if you do.” I open at my own menu. “I wish I could say as much.” Again I wait, pretending to be trying to make a choice.
Kathleen’s head lifts. ‘What do you mean? Is something wrong? Besides Art’s dying, of course.”
“It’s not about his being dead.” I pause on purpose, know I need to do this, to go on. “I’ve discovered what seems to be Art’s secret life while he was alive. His life for a while, anyway. I won’t bother you with it. Let’s order.” I look for our waitress, but Kathleen shakes her head.
“What secret life?”
I have never had many friends. The three women that I still consider best friends, even though the years have changed what best means, became intimates when, as young women, we shared our worries about our mothering, our doubts about our marriages, our uneasiness about who we were becoming or not becoming. Over coffee, usually, while our children played a room away. This sharing was mutual. One day Eleanor would be in a funk. Sherry’s turn came the day she felt so awful she wanted to hide in a closet, and might have if it hadn’t been her turn to have the klatch at her house that morning. Lynne, quiet, listening, commenting only on what the others were saying, didn’t share much until the day she walked in and collapsed over the plate of cookies and revealed that Tim had attempted suicide the night before. Through those ten or so years, the years our children shared schools and infectious diseases, we didn’t see our morning coffees as complaining, only as a way of examining our days, looking for advice or just being listened to. It had all started with one of us opening up. It ended when we moved onto new houses, husbands, lives.
I take a deep breath, about to try to share in that same way with my daughter-in-law. Intimacy breeds intimacy, a truth I discovered over coffee years ago.
“You know, I’m sure, that my marriage was not joyful. I don’t remember a day of joy, in fact, although I suspect there were a few. I often wondered what life would have been like for me had I not become pregnant, but less so when I realized that Brian gave me the love his father could not. So we marched on, getting older, watching Brian grow up, get his own family. I kept a house and its meals as if I would always be a mother and a wife. Art went to work. Then he retired and our roles bottomed out. What I didn’t realize was that Art’s life was empty, as empty as mine. After he died, I found remnants of what he had tried to do to fill the emptiness. You know a little about my snooping into his pockets, his calendar, his desk.”
The waitress arrives and we both order the first salad on the menu. “And two glasses of white, dry wine,” I add.
Then I continue, not sure where I am going. “I’ve found out that Art’s leaving the house at night led him to a bar where he sat and talked with the bartender, to a restaurant where he had a late supper with a young black girl with curly hair, eating ribs that he wouldn’t ever let me cook. I don’t know where his pockets will take me next. Wherever it is, it can’t make me feel any worse about our marriage than I do right now. How could I not have known?” I realize I’m being a little dramatic, as I add, “I’ve never understood men.” This sentence comes straight from my friend thirty-some years ago, coffee the lubricant then, not the too-oaky chardonnay the woman has placed in front of us.
“Damn,” Kathleen sighs. “Neither do I.” She sips at her wine, raises her eyebrows, eyes wide. It’s her turn. “I thought I was a perfect wife. I keep a good house, have raised mostly good kids, have learned to cook everything ” She hesitates, apparently decides to say it. “I get myself ready for sex every night. You know what I mean.”
I’m not sure I do.
“So here I am, reading a book, waiting for Brian to come home from an increasing number of night meetings, cleaned up, diaphragm at the ready, and when he walks in, I notice it. I told you. Her smell. And he falls into bed. ‘Too hard a day,’ he says, ‘Good night, honey, next time,’ and he rolls over asleep.”
“Sex smell?” Faint memories of such a smell, my own, inspire me to ask.
“Sort of, perfumish. A little flowery with a hint of citrus.
Trust this perfectionist to have a perfect nose. Must be annoying at times, especially when the scent is leaking from the skin of a husband. Actually, I am remembering that a similar scent lurked under Art’s bourbon breath one night. But this isn’t the time to go there. Later. I pull myself back to Kathleen’s words. “How long has this lateness been going on?”
“A couple of months, I guess.” The salads have arrived, spinach with beets and feta. Kathleen stabs a fork into a maroon ball, which flies onto the table, rolls off to the floor. “I can’t even eat anymore!” She dabs at her eyes with her napkin. “Mom, I’m a mess.”
So this is what it must be like to have a daughter, an almost-perfect daughter except when she’s falling apart. So this is what it might be like being a mother to such a daughter. All I can do at that moment is reach out with my own napkin and wipe the snot from my daughter’s upper lip. “We can figure this out.”
Snuffling a little, Kathleen cuts into the next beet, forks a little cheese on the slice, gets it to her mouth. “I love beets,” she says.
Chapter Nine
After lunch, Kathleen hesitates as we head for our cars and our separate lives. She stops walking, and my next step brings me so close to her that I see the mascara draining from one corner of her eye. She’s crying again.
“What?”
She shakes her head. “I’ve been so busy working, being a wife, a mother, that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have someone to share secrets with.”
Kathleen’s coat sleeve is smudged as she brings her wrist away from her face. “Freshman year in the dorm, maybe. Broken hearts. Late night confessions. Who knew I’d need friends like that twenty-five years later? God…” Her lips tremble as she turns away.
“I
haven’t talked to my three old friends in a long time,” I say to her retreating back. “We haven’t needed each other, I guess. I didn’t even call them when Art died. I could have talked to you and didn’t realize it.” I’m struck by that thought. I find myself reaching out, wrapping my arms around the huddle of the woman in front of me. I’ve never liked hugging. First, that ginger-haired woman at the bar and now my once-difficult daughter-in-law. Hugging may become a habit.
When we separate, blinking away tears, we decide we will help each other unravel the tangles our husbands have created. We will spend a day or so on Art before going on to Brian. Kathleen will let her own mystery simmer for a while, waiting for the next P on her husband’s calendar. Eyes finally dry, she reassures me in her old decisive way as we part, “I’m so glad we have found each other.”
The next day, the credit card receipts we’ve emptied out of the bag in front of us capture our attention. Having lived their whole lives in Art’s pockets, the thin tissues are folded, smudged, almost unreadable. My daughter-in-law flattens one, squints, dials the number she manages to make out, the phone in speaker mode.
“Hilton Suites,” the voice says. “Can I help you?”
“Yes. Where are you?” Kathleen asks, eyeing me. Her eyebrows raise as she mouths at me, Have your ever stayed at a Hilton?
The woman tells her, “Right here in downtown Portland, on Broadway. A great location.” Kathleen hangs up.
“Art was never away all night.” That’s all I can manage to say. “Maybe somebody else?”
“Like he paid for a room for somebody else?”
I try to picture Art in the Hilton. He’d walk out of that ostentatious lobby before he could find the registration counter. No, not Art.
“Let’s look at the next receipt.” Kathleen is being efficient, but perhaps a little careless, not concerned about the consequences of her thoroughness. I am. What unbelievable place will we be directed to next? She reads the name aloud: “Jake’s Crawfish?”
