by Jo Barney
At that, Art grunts, which might have been the beginning of a ha.
“Just tell me.” My throat hurts from shouting, and I try swallowing, but I can’t. I reach for a glass of water. By now Art is sitting at the kitchen table, his hands stretched in front of him.
“You can’t know yet,” he says. “Maybe never, but it will be over in a while.”
“I can’t stand this, Art. You never talk, about anything. You have two speeds: angry and silent. I am your wife. I’d like to tell you things, but you don’t listen. I would listen if you talked to me. Just…”
“Like now?” he says. His face has folded into a mask contorted by sadness. “You haven’t listened for years. We’ve both tuned each other out. I, especially, and I’ve missed some good things. I took you for granted most of the time, and I missed listening to Brian. That has been the biggest loss, and there’s not much I can do about it now.” He shakes his head, gets up and walks like the old man he is out the back door. I don’t see him for a few hours, and when he comes in, he eats a sandwich and takes a nap.
In the days following, he doesn’t attempt to tell whatever he can’t tell me. Then he tries one more time, on Christmas Eve. The idea of his secret festers in me like an infected splinter, and I can’t listen. He dies.
Brian pours into his almost empty glass. I accept a plop in my cold coffee. “Go on,” I say again. I’m finished with remembering. No turning back now.
“I saw Patsy a couple of times, tried to get her to go to another treatment center. We met at a restaurant, Boo’s Soul, a place Dad told me about, because I didn’t want to meet her alone, and she came in late, hair wild, on something, and told me to go fuck myself when I suggested yet another time that she needed to get clean. Her screeching caused us to be asked to leave, and I took her home. I had to carry her into her apartment, and when I came home, Kathleen didn’t ask where I’d been.”
Brian doesn’t look at me, only into his drink. Even though I am leaning toward him, I can barely hear his words.
“I found my appointment book open on my desk. Kathleen had been looking for reasons for my being out at night. When I told him about Kathleen and the appointment book, Dad said I should stop trying to deal with Patsy, that he could take over. When I insisted that it was my problem not his, Dad said that this was the only way to save my marriage—maybe even my business, if Patsy went public, made scenes, told lies about our so-called relationship. Besides, he said, he still had some stocks. Maybe he could second-mortgage the house without you knowing.”
I am stunned into silence. I can’t imagine Art doing or saying any of this. “Christmas Eve?” I dare to ask.
“Mom, I’m going to try to tell about Christmas Eve just the way Dad told me. I’d never seen him like he was the night we talked about his plan to rescue me. Alive. At first, I protested, and then I finally agreed to his plan. He would go to Patsy’s apartment on Christmas Eve, talk with her, take money with him and bribe her into agreeing to get back into rehab. When she moved away from here, clean, she’d receive enough money to get her resettled in a new place. Dad said that Christmas would be a new beginning for all of us.”
A hollow space opens near my heart. “Did he ever mention me?”
“He said you were the best wife a man like him could have.”
“And?”
“He didn’t need to say any more, Mom.”
I am disappointed. But what did I expect? A forty years too-late Valentine? We need to move on. “So, Christmas?”
“Dad came by our house Christmas Eve after he met with Patsy, late. Kathleen was asleep, and I’d just finished wrapping gifts, about to turn out the lights. When I invited him in, he pointed to the car and said we’d wake up everyone in the house. He was pretty drunk; he stumbled down the sidewalk, and when we got in the car, he began to talk, the words rolling out so fast I had to slow him down once in a while.”
Again I can’t imagine it. Words rolling out of Art.
“Dad had a couple of drinks at the Metrobar to get his courage up, and then he drove to her apartment. He found her high and babbling, and he realized she wasn’t going to listen to any talk of rehab, ending the blackmail, a new life. She passed out, and as he left, he noticed her Christmas tree and what she’d hung on it.” Brian held up a tiny plastic band. “He took this out of his pocket and gave it to me. ‘Merry Christmas,’ he said. Then Dad said something very strange. ‘Even Patsy needs a tree.’”
I take the band between my fingers, read the words “Finlay girl.” I have a similar band in the album I devoted to Brian’s first year. “Finlay boy.”
“In a tearful mush of love and alcohol, Dad described the little plastic tree. ‘I didn’t know a person could live such a life,’ he said. Then he told me he was sorry he had failed me and added, ‘We need to help her, Brian.’ Somehow, he and I found each other in a whore’s room, and my father had learned to love. Me. And a woman in a room that smelled of orange spray. And his granddaughter.”
And maybe a woman lying awake in bed at that Christmas Eve. The best wife. That’s as close as I’ll ever get to touching Art’s love, and maybe that’s okay for now.
Brian rubs a hand over his eyes and continues. “I drove Dad home, made sure he got into the house okay and parked his car in the driveway. He said he was exhausted, hadn’t slept for a week. ‘Might try Patsy’s pills,’ he said. I told him to be careful, to not mix his meds. ‘It’ll be okay,’ he said. ‘I‘ve forgotten to take any of my own for days.’”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“So Brody, now we understand, don’t we?” The dog is lying beside me on the sofa, something I had forbidden when I had the strength to forbid. At the moment, I like the warmth of his body as it laps over onto mine.
Brian, relieved of a secret, has left after I advised him, like a mother is supposed to, to tell Kathleen the truth. Although perhaps painful, even destructive, this telling will lift the shroud of deceit that has wound itself around their lives. Kathleen will understand, forgive, make adjustments. Or not.
This is good advice for a guilt-ridden son. I’m not sure it works for a guilt-ridden wife. Because the man I should be talking to, listening to, touching, is dead. I had a chance to forgive, and I didn’t, blinded by the smell of alcohol and orange on my husband’s body.
How could I have known on Christmas Eve that the tears in Art’s eyes were real?
He’d come in late but instead of creeping into bed, he sat down next to me, the dip of the mattress bringing my body next to his.
“What?” I mumbled, ready to turn away.
“I want to talk.” His words slumped into each other. I could hardly hear them.
“You’re drunk.” I pulled at the coverlet, trying to dislocate him.
“Maybe. But that doesn’t make any difference. I still have something to tell you, if you’d just listen a minute.”
I remember wishing he weren’t there. I heard him swear, felt him stand up. “Fuck, I feel bad about some things,” he said.
“You should.”
“I haven’t been a very good husband. Even worse father.”
His back was to me, and I pushed into my pillow and hated him for saying the words I’d wanted to hear for years, but not from a man who wouldn’t remember saying them when he got up in the morning, shaky and sick to his stomach. “Go to bed.”
I heard him unbutton his shirt, drop his pants to the floor. “I don’t blame you,” he mumbled. “You have a right to be…”
I waited for the next word, but he walked into the bathroom, closed the door. I could hear him peeing, talking to himself. To be what? Angry? Disappointed? Free of him?
I buried my head under my pillow. This last thought was too close to home.
“Are you asleep?” He had climbed into bed, was lying very still.
I pretended I didn’t hear him.
“I’m a little drunk but listen. I’ve been doing some thinking lately. I’ve met someone, a young girl, who has helped me s
ee what I’ve missed––”
“Shut up!” I rolled over and hit him on his shoulder with both fists. “Don’t say one more word!”
“Edith.”
“Not one more word!” I clutched the headboard as I pulled myself away. “Don’t ever talk to me again! Talk to your new girlfriend. Drink with her. Do whatever you want with her, but do not talk to me!” I covered my head again, and I suppose I slept. In the light of day, that midnight scene seemed like a bad dream and it slipped away as dreams do when one wakes up and faces the morning and a Christmas brunch and a dead husband.
I must be crying because Brody is even closer, leaning into me. I wrap an arm around him, wipe a cheek on the top of his head, and then give in to the grief flooding me. We stay there, not moving, for a long time.
The next morning, maybe to lessen my guilt, maybe just to talk again to a girl Art had somehow learned to love, I call Latisha at her new apartment. A cheery voice answers on the first ring, tells me she is Kimberly and that Latisha won’t be home until about dinnertime. “She’s with her father,” Kimberly adds. “Left about an hour ago. Do you want to leave a message?”
I must sound like a safe old lady for her to offer that information. Or maybe Kimberly needs a class in telephone discretion, along with whatever else she is enrolled in. And I’m confused by the mention of a father, and I can’t come up with a message, except that I’m Edith, and I’ll try again later. I add, “She’s with Mr. Wright, right?” I don’t know how I remembered her foster father’s name.
“I didn’t catch his name. And I’ll tell her. Bye.” And Kimberly is off, and I am left holding a dead phone. Now what? I spend the rest of the day taping up paint chips on the walls of the dining room and pretending to make decisions. Then I turn on the TV and let the tube make decisions for me.
“You and Brody want to go for a walk?” Kathleen is at the door, smiling, and I grab the leash, a jacket, and we three head out in the late afternoon sun, down the sidewalk heading for the river. I find it difficult to look at her. I know too much.
“Great day!” my daughter-in-law says. “How have you been? You look a little peaked. Eating okay?” She’s full of pep, walking briskly and I have to take long steps to keep up with her. Brody slows us down at every tree, allowing me to catch my breath once in a while.
“I’m fine. You seem perky. What’s happening?” I’m quite sure her news, whatever it is, will not be the news I’m keeping locked inside, hoping it won’t leak out in some thoughtless moment. Not my business, I tell myself—unless Brian has confessed to her as he did to me last night. Listening to her soft laughter at one of Brody’s p-mail stops, I can guess he did not.
“Mom, I finally feel as if I have some control over my life. I’ve talked with a divorce lawyer, and on his advice, I’m going to ask Brian to move out. We can do this in a civilized way, the kids being the center of any negotiations, and they need to stay in their house, go to their school, have the same friends. Brian can go ahead with whatever or whomever he is involved without worrying about the children or me, and I am going to go back to work. I’ve already interviewed at a tech company.” She’s talking fast, smiling a little at that last comment as if she can see a new life ahead of her.
“And what does Brian say?”
“I haven’t told him yet. I wanted to be sure before I made any decisions. After the weekend you took care of the kids when I pleaded with him to tell me what was going on, and he didn’t, I realized that we were already separated, had been maybe for months. Then I found out about the $15,000 gone from our savings and that did it. I don’t do well when I’ve lost control of what should be my life.”
I can’t help saying it. “Maybe Brian has lost control, too.”
“Or not. Maybe he’s taking control of some part of his life I have no part in. So I’m freeing him to keep it up without a wife to fuck things up.”
Kathleen must believe that the word will make her brave enough to pull off this plan. Maybe it’s a symbol of her renewing self: strong, independent, not to be messed with by anyone. Including me. Although I’d like to grab her shoulders and shake her, I won’t. I will not tell her the truth, as much as I know it, about Brian. That’s his job. Once again, I hope my son is up to it. Why do I keep doubting his courage? Perhaps because I, myself, have so little of it. I’ve never faced up to anyone, to Art, without recoiling, sinking back into bitchy submission.
I stumble over a curb, and Kathleen takes my arm. “Careful, bifocals are dangerous.” It isn’t the bifocals that make me stumble; it is the realization that Art hadn’t turned away those last months. He had stepped right into the thick of Brian’s life and stayed there until the moment he died. When he tried to talk to me about what was happening to him, I shouted at him to shut up.
I stop, wait with Brody a moment, then I tell Kathleen I need to go home. “I know you are making difficult decisions right now, Kathleen. You need to talk to Brian tonight, to make sure you are listening to each other.” Brody and I turn back toward home. “I wish I had listened,” I call over my shoulder.
Kathleen just keeps walking, a little faster now.
Chapter Thirty
I know I have it somewhere, that poem I wrote on that napkin. What was I wearing that night? I check the pockets of my coats hanging in the closet, pull out odd bits and pieces and have just about given up when I feel a wad in the bottom of my red jacket pocket. I pour a cup of coffee and sit down at my kitchen table and remember that day I met Seth. If I’m careful as I smooth out the napkin, I will be able to reconstruct the words, remember a little more, perhaps. Ah, here it is: In this foreign place I may uncover a clue to a mystery I never felt, did not grasp, some scrap of truth that will lead me to a man I never met.”
Damn! The man I never met is being introduced to me by our son, and indeed a scrap of truth is floating up to the surface. To my surface, at least. Yesterday’s walk with Kathleen told me that she also has a man she’s never met, or has forgotten she’s met him in the rush of life, truth fluttering just out of her reach.
For now, I’ll try to decide what to do about Seth, whom I walked out on at that restaurant table.
Strange how truth makes a person do something she’s going to regret. I would like to apologize for my bad behavior, to explain how deceived I felt when I knew he had more truth than I did. Now my pot of truth is flowing over, and I’m astonished by it and no longer angry. I’m, what is the word? Anticipatory, like the moment just before Art and I married, and I had my whole life ahead of me. No, that’s not a good example. I was scared. For good reason.
I have to stop meandering in the past, both my own and my son’s. I need to go forward, to maybe next week. I will apologize to Seth, tell him I’m sorry for leaving him with two full plates and no one to talk to, ask him to come here, to my home. I am anticipatory. My fingers shake as I page through the telephone book, look for Boo’s Soul, punch the numbers, ask for Seth Benjamin.
“Sorry, Seth is not here today. Can I take a message?”
“MiKaela, is that you? This is Edith, looking for Art, except I’m not looking for him anymore, and I’d love to talk to Seth.” I’m babbling like a high school girl.
“Of course, Edith. Seth said he’d had dinner with you. Did he tell you what he was celebrating that night? He’s at his new restaurant, Magnolia, downtown. He’ll be there until all the bugs get worked out with the serve staff. I’ll be going over next week as maitresse d’ or whatever they call it. Come see us!”
“Magnolia? Does it have a phone?” Stupid. High school again.
MiKaela doesn’t seem to notice. “Sure! He’d love to show you the new place!”
I write down the telephone number, the pencil wobbling across the notepad, and I hang up and then without pausing, I dial. If I had even taken a deep breath, I would not have dared.
His voice, low, masculine, murmurs, “Magnolia,” and I squeak, “Edith.”
He laughs his growly laugh and tells me to come by. He�
�ll save me a table at six o’clock in the window. Then he laughs again. “I need you to attract classy ladies to come in.”
He gives me the address and adds, “I’m glad you called.” After we hang up, I go to my closet and wonder what I should wear. Being downtown, Magnolia is probably a little dressier than Boos, maybe even the Hilton. I call Lynne.
“You’re going to Magnolia? It’s gotten rave reviews in the Oregonian. I’m so impressed!”
Lynne doesn’t know the half of it. I’ll explain everything soon, but right now I want to know what to wear.
“Black pants, silk blouse, something bright over your shoulders, and don’t worry about shoes, except no Nikes. Short heels. Everyone is going bare-legged these days.”
“Not me.”
“Okay, knee nylons. And get a blow dryer for your newly blond hair. Drip dry only works on eighteen-year-olds. Little purse over your shoulder to hold lipstick and cab fare home if it doesn’t go well.”
“What do you mean, if it doesn’t go well?”
“It didn’t go so well last time, did it? So plan ahead and be ready for anything.”
“Anything?” Now I’m even more worried.
“Breath mints.”
“Oh.”
“And maybe…”
“What?”
“That’s for next time. Just go with the flow, and we’ll talk more tomorrow. I’m proud of you, friend.” She covers the mouthpiece. It’s Wednesday. “In a minute, honey, this is important.”
I don’t like to drive downtown, and I call Information and find out that Magnolia is on the bus line in the center of the city. I slide one dollar in the toll box and realize I’m the only one on the bus not in athletic shoes. I tuck my two-inch heels under me and hope I know where to get off. A purple-haired young man sits next to me.
“Tourist?” he asks.
“No, I live here. Where are you from?”
“Right now, here, but I’ve been in California for a while. Way too hot down there. This town’s cool. In lots of ways.”
