Patricia Gaffney

by Mad Dash

  “She’s at a friend’s house. Sock, yes. Don’t you like it?” I’m not satisfied with the name myself, but it’s too late now.

  Wolfie shrugs. “What’s that?” he asks next, and I turn to see Andrew wrapping the sleeve of his blood pressure monitor around his arm. He explains it to Wolfie, who must then have his blood pressure taken, too. “You sick?” he wonders, logically, when he sees Andrew’s morning pile of pills. He has to know what each one is for, the multivitamin, the E, the baby aspirin, the saw palmetto, on and on.

  Wolfie draws faces on his pancakes with syrup. “Hey, I missed you,” I tell him. “What have you been up to? How’s your mom?”

  “She’s okay.”

  “How’s school?”

  “Okay. Lookit this,” he says to Andrew, sticking a syrupy finger on a photograph in the sports section. They start talking about basketball. Andrew has the front page, as usual. He’ll keep it until it’s too late for me to read anything but the headlines.

  “I want some more hot chocolate.”

  “Dash,” I correct, “may I please have another cup of hot chocolate?”

  His beautiful brown eyes twinkle. “I said, gimme some more o’ this hot chocolate! Quick!” He and Andrew chuckle merrily, then look at me with identical complacent smirks.

  “You guys are such a riot.” I get up and boil more water.

  Andrew takes out his leather pocketbook and his thin silver pen, begins making notations. “Hobbes is just about out of arthritis medicine,” he says. “Could you stop by the vet’s and get some?”

  He takes my silence for assent and scribbles a line through an item on his list. He jots down a few more notes. When he’s finished, he twists the pen, a gift from his father, closed and returns it with the notebook to the inner pocket of his tweed jacket. Why does he pat the pocket afterward? Always, one reassuring or fond or paranoid pat on the front of his coat whenever he puts his notebook and pen back in the pocket. And he folds the newspaper in half lengthwise, just so, as if he were sitting on a crowded bus instead of at the roomy kitchen table. He takes his pills one at a time, spacing them out so the last one goes down with his last sip of coffee.

  I scoop up the sticky dishes and start to rinse them for the dishwasher, but stop myself. I dry my hands. I go out to the living room to retrieve my coat. They don’t look up from their newspapers when I return; I have to say, “Guys?”

  “Oh,” Andrew says absently, “are you going in this early?”

  “Just for a little while. Then I’ll swing by Greta’s for Sock on my way home.” I don’t say “home” on purpose, I’m not trying to communicate some mean message; it just comes out.

  But Andrew’s not sure what I meant. His high, handsome forehead creases; he blinks at me through his glasses.

  “Buy some food that’s good for you,” I say, my hand on the back of his neck. “Better put Hobbes’s medicine on your list. Last night was fantastic.” I kiss him on the mouth. I want to tell him I’m not really leaving because of him—I didn’t the first time, either. Not completely because of him, make that. In a way, Andrew’s the scapegoat for everything that’s gone wrong in my life for months. But I can’t say any of that in front of Wolfie.

  “And you.” Wolfie’s shoulders feel bony when I squeeze them, even through the padding of his coat. “You don’t be late for school.” I lean over and kiss his dusky, syrupy cheek—he’s too surprised to squirm away.

  “You coming back, right?” he asks.

  “Oh, sure.” I pause in the doorway. “See you next Thursday,” I tell Andrew, who’s staring at me now like a fish. “Let’s both pick Chloe up at the train station, shall we? And then go out for dinner someplace special. I’ll call and cancel Fogelman for that night.”

  “She coming back, right?” I hear Wolfie ask again as I cross the dining room to the hall.

  “Em…” I listen for the rest of the answer with the door open, but after a moment I have to go; cold air is blowing in the house.

  chloe

  eleven

  They divide her perfectly evenly, two days with Dad, then two days with Mom, as if they’re already divorced.

  Chloe watches them tensely at dinner the first night—they take her to the Spanish restaurant she loves—but there’s nothing to see. Are they acting? Her mother looks beautiful, candlelight softening her face, and she never stops smiling. She touches Chloe’s hand, her arm, and stares at her with wide eyes, as if Chloe’s been a hostage for months and the kidnappers just freed her. Her father is grave and funny, but he looks tired. They listen raptly to everything she says, regardless of how trivial. She can’t get a fix on them—they’re too intent on her.

  Will they actually go off in different directions when the evening ends? She knows it’s a possibility, but when it happens, it seems so foreign and wrong she can’t quite believe it. She feels embarrassed for them. She can hardly say good night to her mother, and when her parents give each other peck-kisses on the cheek, she has to look away. “See you Saturday,” her mother calls back cheerily as she walks toward her car. “Saturday,” Chloe echoes, following her father toward his.

  At home, her room is the same as always, neater but exactly the same, and yet it looks different to her. She remembers herself in it last summer, and that girl isn’t her anymore. The difference is complicated, she only understands pieces of it. It makes her lonely and sad to think that her mother and father, for all their attentive watching and listening, don’t understand any of it.

  “Night, sweetheart.” Dad pokes his head in the door, hesitant, always mindful of her privacy. He has on the tartan bathrobe she and Mom gave him two Christmases ago. “What are you studying?”

  “Antigone.” She moves some notebooks aside and pats the bed, and he comes in and sits down at the end, crossing his long legs, keeping his hands in his pockets. In some ways, she misses the days when he would sprawl on the bed and “accidentally” disarrange whatever she had just arranged so carefully on it: paper dolls, stuffed animals, her homework. “Daddeee!” He’d pretend to be horrified and apologetic, putting everything back wrong, and she’d end up laughing, or tackling him and starting a wrestling match.

  “Antigone,” he says, impressed. “Lend it to me, I’ve never read it. Who do you play, again?”

  “Eurydice, Antigone’s boyfriend’s mother. I commit suicide in the end.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my son kills himself, and it’s all Creon’s fault—my husband.”

  Her father smiles and shakes his head, looking pleased and perplexed. “You’re really liking this drama course.”

  “I love it.”

  “I was surprised when that was your elective.”

  “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Of course not. Mind?”

  “You don’t think I should’ve taken a writing course or public speaking? Something practical?”

  “Not if you like this better. You can be practical when you graduate.”

  It’s only since she got to college that Chloe appreciates how unusual her parents are in this respect. They never pressure her about grades, majors, careers, all the things her friends’ parents are obsessed with. Her mother thinks she’s brilliant; she jokes that Chloe is Andrew’s first wife’s daughter.

  “What do you want to do tomorrow?” Dad asks. “I’ve got a pretty full day, a ten-thirty class and then a meeting at one, so—”

  “Can I go with you? I could study in the library while you’re in class. I’ve got plenty of work to do.”

  His face lights up. “Really? That would be great. You’ll have to eat cafeteria food, though.”

  “I’m used to it.” They grin at each other. She hasn’t spent the day with him at school in a long time. It used to be one of their favorite things to do together.

  “And then, how about a movie tomorrow night?” he suggests.

  “Or a play. How about a play, Dad? Something incredibly obscure and avant-garde. With audience participation.” />
  “Chloe, my God, it’s uncanny. How did you know that’s exactly what I wanted to do?”

  “Dad?” she says seriously.

  “Hm?” He takes off his glasses and leans over to polish them on the hem of his pajama bottoms. He thinks she’s going to ask him about Mom.

  That wasn’t it, though. She was going to ask him what he would think if she decided not to major in history. But now she’s afraid. What if it hurt his feelings? And he has so many other things on his mind. It might be better to go through Mom on this.

  “I was just wondering how you’re doing,” she says instead. “You and Mom, it’s so…weird, isn’t it?”

  Without his glasses, his eyes always look defenseless; tonight they look sad, too. “You know it’s got nothing to do with you, right?”

  “Right. I do.”

  “Good. Okay.”

  “So…what does it have to do with?”

  He sighs. He rubs his forehead. His face looks craggier since the last time she saw him. He makes an empty-bowl gesture with his hands, then lets them flop back in his lap. “It’s just a break. After twenty years, sometimes people need a break.”

  People. His discretion makes her want to cry. It makes her want to yell at her mother. Nobody has to tell Chloe this is all her doing.

  She says, “Oh, okay,” as if he’s convinced her, and she agrees with him when he tells her not to worry, everything’s going to be fine. They’re seeing a counselor, and it’s going very well. This is a positive thing, he assures her, something all old married folks should probably go through every twenty years or so, whether they need it or not.

  She puts her arms out to hug him good night. He smells like toothpaste. He lets go before she wants to.

  “Could you believe that guy?”

  “What guy?” Chloe asks absently, slowing for a car trying to merge into their lane on the Roosevelt Bridge.

  “Joel.” Her mother gives Sock, who’s sitting on her lap like a hood ornament, a kiss on top of the head. “Greta’s boyfriend. What a clinger.”

  “I thought he was sort of cute.”

  “No, he’s too old. Did you see how he held on to her? Like she was his birthday helium balloon. Greta could hardly pivot.”

  Chloe met Greta and Joel this morning at her mother’s studio. He seemed fine to her, a typical young Washington professional—they’re everywhere. And he wasn’t old, he was about thirty. She can’t understand her mother’s hostility.

  “Greta’s great, though, isn’t she? I just love her. So bright and creative. She reminds me of you.”

  Chloe laughs. She thinks it’s more likely that bubbly, sweet, eccentric-looking Greta reminds Mom of herself.

  “Mm, smell the spring. Can you smell it?”

  “Mom, it’s freezing. What spring, it’s still February.”

  “Wimp.” Her mother puts her window up. “The earth is warming up a little every day. I’ve had crocuses behind the cabin for a week.”

  “Is it weird being there by yourself?” Chloe asks casually.

  “No! No, it’s great, I’m having the best time, it’s really…” She stops and backs up. “Well, no, I mean, but it’s not…oh, you know, it’s fine.”

  Chloe keeps silent. Let her put her whole foot in her mouth, she thinks. I won’t help out.

  Mom goes back to the subject of nature. “You could drop me down in an empty field and I’d know if I was in Maryland or Virginia just by the lay of the land.” She throws an arm around the back of Chloe’s seat. “And Maryland and North Carolina, they might as well be on two different sides of the planet. Mama used to say it’s because of the color of the rocks—ours are brown and theirs are gray. They being northerners.”

  She talks about her mother a lot. Chloe thinks that’s probably a good thing, therapeutic and all, but she wonders if her mother realizes that when she does it, she slips into a southern accent. It’s unsettling.

  “There’s just something about the hills in Virginia, the way they get vaguer in the distance, the long views. It’s…I don’t know…tolerant or something. Forgiving. I just like the loose, slatternly look of things so much better than the neat, tidy, uptight North, don’t you? There’s an attitude here. ‘Come on in,’ it says—doesn’t it?”

  Chloe looks around at the shopping centers and apartment complexes on Route 29.

  “Not yet,” her mother clarifies; “when we get out in the country. The valleys and hills, the fence posts, the tumbledown barns. Whereas up North they say, ‘Oh, hello. I wish you’d called first.’”

  Mom’s cackle sets Chloe off; they have a nice laugh. She sees that this is how the visit is going to go, her anger and exasperation with her mother constantly sidetracked by jokes and good times. The irresistible pull of her mother’s charm.

  Downtown Dolley looks dreary and even smaller in winter without the leaves of the maple trees practically meeting in the middle over Madison Street. It’s only four blocks long, with a two-way blinking yellow light at the intersection of Madison and Monroe. Chloe doubts any cars have ever collided there, though; they probably put the light up just so no one could call Dolley a no-stoplight town.

  Mom has a post office box, now that she lives here. She wants to get her mail, and she makes Chloe come in with her. “To show you off—you’ve never met the girls. They know all about you.”

  Lori, Carla, and Margie, the entire staff of the Dolley post office, are there, and back in the car, Chloe can’t disagree with her mother about how nice they are. “They’ll call you up if they think you’ve got a package that’s important,” Mom brags. “If you’re short on money, they say, ‘Oh, pay me when you think of it.’ They’ll let you use their phone for a local call—I mean, try that at any post office in D.C.”

  It’s true; you have to talk to the clerk through a scratchy Plexiglas shield at the one on Irving Street. Chloe thinks her mother’s trying too hard, though. Why is she so gung ho Dolley and the Virginia countryside today? Is she planning to move here?

  “You know who else is dying to meet you? Cottie Bender.” Mom looks at her watch. “We could pop in for two seconds—but only if you want to. Really, we wouldn’t stay.”

  “No, it’s fine, whatever you want to do.” They’re being a little stiff with each other, still a little polite. Because of the circumstances. And because her mother, Chloe can tell, is terrified that she’ll be bored. “Should we call first?”

  Mom leans over the dog and digs her cell phone out of her purse.

  Mrs. Bender isn’t at all what Chloe was expecting. She’s not glum and speechless like her husband, who scared Chloe when she first met him. Mrs. Bender comes to the door in jeans and a lavender turtleneck and says, “Well, hey! Come in, come on in, it’s so good to meet you, Chloe. Let me look at you.” She puts one hand on Chloe’s shoulder and one hand on Mom’s. “Both of you, you’re so beautiful.”

  Chloe doesn’t believe she’s beautiful, but her mother is. She envies her carelessness, the way she never fusses with her makeup or clothes, and yet she always looks great. She’s got so much life under her skin, she glows. She loves her mother’s “postmodern pompadour”—Dad’s term for her loose, floppy hairstyle. Next to her, Chloe always feels too well groomed. Buttoned down.

  They sit in the kitchen, where Mrs. Bender says, “Eat, eat,” like an Italian grandmother, pushing almond cookies, nut roll, peanut butter fudge, marble cake. “I see the church ladies are still at it,” Mom says, then tells Chloe about Mrs. Bender’s heart operation—she’s forgotten that she already told her. The church ladies must not have heard of coronary artery disease, Chloe muses, sampling a brownie.

  Mrs. Bender is good at drawing her out. She’s usually reserved with strangers, but she finds herself telling Cottie—she insists on being called that—about her classes and professors, her roommate’s parents’ upcoming divorce, her role in Antigone. “She’s majoring in history, though,” Mom mentions, as if Chloe might’ve forgotten. “Like father, like daughter.”

>   Cottie speaks of her own daughter, Danielle, who lives in Richmond.

  “She never went to college, just never had much interest in that direction. I wish we saw her more often, but she’s got her life.” Mom nods in sympathy. Chloe almost blurts out that she wants to live in New York City after graduation, but it doesn’t seem like the right time.

  They’ve stayed longer than they intended, but just as they’re getting ready to go, old Mr. Bender comes in the back door with another man. They both have on filthy dungarees and stained jackets, and their hands are black with grease. They’ve been out back working on Mr. Bender’s truck, Cottie explains, getting up to make introductions. “Shevlin, you know Chloe, Dash’s daughter.”

  Chloe says, “Hi,” and Mr. Bender actually grins, and tips his hat more pleasantly than he ever has before. Mom’s doing: She’s buddies with the Benders now, even grumpy old Shevlin.

  “And Chloe, this is Owen Roby,” Cottie goes on, “our son-in-law. Chloe’s just home from college for the weekend.”

  She’s heard about Owen from Mom, who hires him to do things around the cabin. He shrugs and makes a face at his dirty hands, as if he’d shake if he could. “Heard a lot about you,” he says with a shy smile. He has gold-tipped eyelashes and pale-blue eyes, a thick, aggressive body just short of stocky. He’s not that old, but he’s going bald. He reminds her of Garth Brooks.

  She says that later, in the car, when her mother asks what she thought of him.

  “Garth Brooks!” Mom is indignant, practically insulted. “Oh, he does not. You’re crazy.”

  “I thought he did. A little.”

  “He does not. Garth Brooks. Good God.” She shakes her head and mutters wondering disparagements under her breath for the next mile or so.

  Chloe perceives she’s said the wrong thing.

  “That was Emily.” She closes her cell phone and resumes her seat in the easy chair by the potbellied stove. Mom’s in the rocking chair beside her; they’re sharing the footstool. Sock takes turns sitting in their laps. It’s after midnight. The only heat in the cabin upstairs comes from the stove downstairs, so it’s important to put off going to bed as long as possible. Which is easy to do when you’re warm and comfortable and half asleep anyway from the long day and all the hot chocolate you’ve drunk.