“They’re not?” I said.
“No,” she said, tugging her shirttail from her jeans to get at the bottom few buttons, showing me her bra and the freckled skin at her chest. She was standing with one foot on top of the other, her toes curled under. “They can’t be. I’m in love with my husband.”
“And I’m in love with you,” I said.
“No, you’re not,” she said. “Pay attention.”
She smiled sadly and let her shirt fall backward from her shoulders, down her arms, the fabric gathering at her heels. I could feel the blood in my neck and fingertips. She pushed her hair out of her face and held it back for a moment, the candles drawing shadows on her skin like writing in an ancient language.
She said, “Tell me that you don’t love me. It’ll just make things too complicated. Say it, please. It will make me feel better to hear you say it.”
“I can’t say that. It wouldn’t be true.”
I stood and took a step toward her, but she took a step away. She undid the top button of her jeans and pulled the zipper down, and I could make out the lace waistband of light blue panties. She said, “I’m serious, Simon. We cannot be in love. It’ll be too hard. I keep thinking about that little girl.”
“Maddie Robinson?” I said. “What about her?”
“She doesn’t know that I’m a bad person.”
“You’re not a bad person,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows and said, “Look at me.”
The windows were blurred with rain, making everything wavery and slow like we were at the bottom of a swimming pool. She slipped her jeans down her legs and stepped free. I was having trouble catching my breath. She said, “Tell me, Simon. My husband will be home soon. I want to hear you say it.” Her lips were on my neck, her hands pushing across my chest, and I said, “I don’t love you. I don’t,” and I didn’t know whether or not I was telling her the truth.
Valium and Aviation
Sam Holladay was afraid of flying—he didn’t see the inside of an airplane until he was forty-one years old—and he supposed it showed because the woman beside him on the flight from Atlanta touched his arm and said, “Sir, would you like a Valium? You look a little worried. I never get on a plane unless I’m free and easy.” She was in her mid-twenties, blonde and going to fat. A baby was sleeping quietly on her lap. She smiled and motioned toward her purse. “I’d be happy to share. The baby only had a quarter tablet and look at her.”
He shook his head and returned to the window, watched lightning flicker in the clouds below them, rain streak the Plexiglas. It was a commuter plane, fourteen seats, propeller driven, and it dipped and shuddered constantly, his stomach falling down and away and up again. He gripped the armrest and clenched his teeth. A psychologist friend had told him to think pleasant thoughts so he called his wife to mind: Delia with a towel wrapped around her head, her foot propped on the coffee table so she could paint her toenails. He had told her not to worry about picking him up—his car was already at the airport and besides, he hadn’t known for certain when they would be cleared to leave—but now he wished that she was going to be waiting there, scanning the deplaning passengers for his face.
The plane bucked beneath them, sending his heart into his throat, and the woman giggled like she was on a carnival ride. He said, “On second thought,” and smiled at her and held out his hand. He waited while she searched her purse, then swallowed two tablets dry. She patted his arm and gave him a dreamy look and told him that everything was going to be fine.
She was right. By the time they touched down, Sam was feeling vaguely weightless and likable and everything looked slightly off-kilter to his eyes, like he had seen these things before, the baggage claim carousel, his old Cadillac, the cows asleep on their feet along the road to town, but he couldn’t quite remember when or where. He tapped the steering wheel in time to the windshield wipers, like they were playing jazz. He drove past his own house, realized his mistake and attempted a reverse entry into the driveway, knocking over his trash cans and drawing Delia out front with all the noise. She trotted over and opened his door. When he stepped grinning from the car, she said, “My Lord, are you high? You look like the cat who swallowed the canary.”
“Quite,” he said, leaning in to kiss her, missing by an inch or two and planting his lips against her eye. “A woman gave me Valium on the plane.”
Delia laughed and led him inside, got his shoes off and situated him on the bed. She made pancakes, brought them back to him and they ate until their cheeks were sticky with syrup. Sam said, “I had big plans to ravish you, but I’m mostly just tired now.”
“That’s a shame,” she said. “You haven’t ravished me in months.”
She fingered the bedspread, and Sam thought he detected a note of genuine sadness in her voice. She was wearing checked satin jogging shorts and he ran his hand along the smoothness of her thigh, rolled to kiss her breast through her T-shirt. She held his head against her chest. She said, “Soon, okay. But not tonight. You go ahead and sleep.”
He shifted his head into her lap, and she ran her fingers through his hair. He could feel a pulse between them but he couldn’t tell if was his or hers.
He said, “I’ll do anything to make you happy.”
“I know,” she said.
“Sometimes I think I’m losing you already,” he said.
“You’re wasted,” she said, brushing her knuckles along his cheek.
“I won’t lose you, Delia.”
He wanted to tell her about the first night of the conference when he couldn’t sleep and called her after midnight. He had wanted to say that he missed her very much and that he was thinking of her all the time, even when he was forgetting to rinse his whiskers from the bathroom sink, even when she had to be reminded that her husband was too old to be a father. He was thinking of her, that was all. But when he called, he’d let the phone ring forever, and she wasn’t home. He kept calling until morning was showing itself against the windows, anger and panic building in him in equal measure—that’s what he wanted to tell her—but now, with her soft hands in his hair and her pulse tapping faintly against the side of his head, all of that seemed impossibly far away.
Part 3
And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found, and then a new and glorious life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that the end was still far off, and that what was to be most complicated and difficult for them was only just beginning.
—Anton Chekhov
Independence Day
Every Fourth of July, the Speaking Pines Country Club put on a fireworks display. I didn’t want to go to the party alone, but Delia was going to be there with her husband. My intention wasn’t to cause trouble. I had the idea that I would stand in the background and watch her moving through the crowd, the careless glimmer of bottle rockets and Roman candles lighting her upturned face.
That afternoon, I hauled my father’s riding mower out from the garage and leveled the grass, the sun in my face, then on my neck, as I made the rounds. The sight of a newly mowed lawn always made me feel good, like if a man could assert his will over nature, even so insignificant a thing as crabgrass, neaten and shape it as he pleased, then it might just be possible to do the same thing with his life. When I was finished, I went inside and tried to nap but thoughts of the party kept me from losing myself entirely in sleep. I gave up after a while and hit the shower, shaved with the water beating against my back, then spent an hour trying to decide what to wear.
The clubhouse was set back away from the road, built as a sort of centerpiece for the neighborhood, all faux antebellum, fluted columns and hitching posts for horses that would never arrive. An immense American flag was hung above the entryway. There was a knot of women just inside the door, my lady golfers all, their voices as familiar to me as old songs. I pushed through the crowd, weaving in and out beneath patriotic bunting and smaller flags on wooden sticks tucked into potted plants. In the ballroom, the
band was playing a Wilson Pickett song.
I found Delia and Sam in the club dining room. She was wearing a plain, cream linen dress, lighter than her skin, and her hair was tied back with a burgundy ribbon. She noticed me looking at her and curled her fingers, giving me a private smile, her shy mouth working a bite of food, and it made me feel unexpectedly pleased to have this secret between us. The secret was ours alone and that was at least something.
The fireworks weren’t scheduled to begin until ten o’clock. There were two hours to kill, so I got a drink at the bar and walked out onto the back patio, which faced the golf course. I watched a group of children playing on the putting green. The sun was clinging to the horizon, bands of light pushing weakly through the trees. The kids were all dressed for the occasion, the girls in cotton dresses, the very young boys in those shorts-jumpers with embroidered collars that were such an embarrassment when you saw pictures of yourself wearing them as a child. Bob Robinson found me out there. He sidled up and said, “I told her not to get dirty. Her mother’s going to kick my ass for those grass stains.” He pointed at the children, and I picked Maddie out in the group.
“She’s a beauty,” I said, still feeling a little awkward from our last meeting.
He shook his head and said, “She’s gonna be trouble. Look at her bossing those boys around.” He paused and we watched Maddie organize four or five young boys into a seated circle, then walk around touching the tops of their heads. Her voice was faint and musical. “I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about the day one of those sons a bitches shows up at my doorstep with flowers in his hand and a hard-on in his pants. I swear to God.”
Right then one of the boys jumped up and began chasing Maddie around and around the circle. I could feel Bob stop himself from going out there. He reached into the breast pocket of his blazer, brought out a silver flask, and wheezed when he took a sip. I wanted to reassure him somehow that I was on the up and up, still on the same side of things as all the other decent people in the world.
“She’s a good kid, Bob,” I said.
“She’d be a better kid if I stuck her in a convent for about thirty years,” he said. “She’s already more trouble than my boys. You remember we talked about the toilet paper over in the Caldwells’ trees. That was her. She’s got this broken lock on her window, and she just lets herself in and out as she pleases. I tried to fix it, but it’s an old house.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much.”
Bob took another swig and said, “Whatcha got in there—bourbon?” When I said I did, he poured some of his whiskey in my glass. “You need to stay on your toes at these shindigs. They can be deadly.”
Maddie saw her father and trotted over and Bob tucked the flask in his jacket. She said, “What are you talking about? Grown-up stuff?”
“What we are talking about, honey,” Bob teased, his voice full of aching adoration, “is what a pain in the ass you are. We think you should go to a convent and become a nun. What do you think?”
He crouched so he was eye level with her. She made a face at him and said, “I don’t want to be a nun, Daddy. I want to go down to the duck pond with everybody else. Can I go, please?”
“Why don’t you stay here and dance with your old man?”
She stood between his knees and circled her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. “We can dance at home. I have to go now.” She kissed him a second time.
“See what I mean,” Bob said to me. “I can’t win. She’s working the voodoo already.” Then to Maddie, “How old are you?”
“Daddy,” she said, shocked. “I’m nine. You know that.”
“Nine years old,” he said. “You believe it? Working the voodoo magic at nine years old. This one’s gonna break my heart.”
When she was gone, Bob and I walked inside. There was an oldies band playing in the ballroom and six or eight couples dancing at the base of the stage. Bob found his wife in a conversation with Louise Caldwell, and tugged her away to dance while she muttered apologies over her shoulder. I didn’t see Delia anywhere. Soft-footed waiters made the rounds carrying drinks. The air was a jumble of voices. I was thinking, suddenly, about Betty Fowler. I was sure that she could hear the music from her house. There was nothing more lonely than distant music. I thought of her in my office, thought maybe I’d duck away from the party for a few minutes and pay her a visit. I did a quick tour of the party looking for Delia and, when I couldn’t find her, slipped out the front door and made my way down the street.
The road was dark, the clubhouse a dim glow behind the trees. The porch light came on while I waited. Betty Fowler answered the door in a robe and slippers and looked surprised to see me standing there.
I said, “Good evening, Mrs. Fowler. I was hoping you might want to dance.”
“Oh, Simon,” she said, touching her hair, smoothing her hands along the sides of her robe. “Don’t be silly. I’m a mess. I can’t dance with you.”
“What you mean to say-I think-is, ‘I look like shit,’ which you most certainly do not, and ‘I can’t dance with you, goddammit,’ which you most certainly can. Please,” I said. “We’ll dance right here on the porch. I would consider it an honor.”
“Well,” she said. “All right. Asshole.”
She smiled and let me put an arm around her back. We could barely hear the music, just the shiver of it on the air. She rested her head on my shoulder and we turned slow circles on the porch. Her hand was cool and dry in mine, her breath warm against my neck. She said, “You’re sweet to do this.”
“I was bored silly at the party,” I said.
“I danced with your father once,” she said. I waited for her to go on, but she didn’t say anything else. Our feet whispered on the wood planks.
I said, “You’re a good dancer.”
“So are you,” she said.
At some point, the music changed on us. I could hear bass now and the rattle of cymbals, a faster song, but we kept to our leisurely rhythm. I closed my eyes and settled my cheek on the top of her head. She was at least a foot shorter than me, and I had to stoop to reach her, but I didn’t mind. There was an assurance to the way she moved, the confidence of many dances past.
Amateur Astrology
Delia danced a jitterbug with her husband. He moved slowly on his bones and she found herself wondering where Simon had gone. She’d just seen him a half hour before when she was eating dinner. Then she felt guilty about letting herself think that way. She remembered how Sam had grown forlorn the night before, how he had fallen asleep with his head in her lap, then waved his sadness away the next morning, blamed it on Valium and exhaustion. She poured herself into the dancing now, sliding through Sam’s legs on the hardwood, spinning fast beneath his hand, her dress blossoming around her thighs. And Sam wasn’t really such a bad dancer. He had a certain grace, a casual aplomb. When she was a girl, her father had twirled her to Chubby Checker records in their front yard, fireflies making a string of lights in the trees, and she remembered all the old steps. The rest of the dancers made room for them on the floor. When the song was finished everyone applauded, and the singer said, “Let’s hear it for the flashiest couple in the house.”
“I’m about to have a heart attack,” Sam whispered in her ear.
She kissed his cheek and said, “We’ll get some air.”
They made their way out to the patio, walked away from the crowd to stand over by the pool. It was a perfect silver slate in the intermediate light. Across the water, she could see teenagers in deck chairs smoking cigarettes. Sam took a deep breath and said, “My God. My heart’s kicking like a mule.”
“Are you okay?” she said, giving his hand a squeeze. “Do you want to sit?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll be fine now.”
He put his arm around her and drew her against him. He laughed lightly to himself—about what, she didn’t know—and let his fingers trace the line of her bare shoulder. She was feeling oddly disconnected, as if she were
seeing herself from a great distance or watching herself in a movie. She had the sense that she should be urgently ashamed for what she had done to her husband or that something should have changed between them, but nothing had that she could tell. She stood in almost this same spot on this very same occasion last year—just a few weeks after their wedding—and felt almost exactly as she did now. Affectionate, vaguely blessed, serene. She liked the warmth of his rib cage and she remembered thinking that his heavy arm would make a buffer against whatever bad things might happen in her life. She thought nothing could crawl out of the darkness and find her there. And nothing ever did.
She said, “Do you remember telling me that we were nearing the end of the world as we know it? That you were getting a serious late–Roman Empire vibe and we were headed for a fall?”
“I remember,” he said. “You were in the tub.”
“Well,” she said. “It isn’t true.”
“It’s not?”
“No,” she said. “Ours will be remembered as a golden age.”
“I’m glad,” he said.
He hugged her against his ribs and laughed a little. She could feel his heart racing beneath his shirt. She lifted her face and kissed the underside of his chin.
“Thank you,” he said.
She said, “My pleasure.”
Just then, she heard footsteps clattering on the flagstones and saw Maddie Robinson laughing hard and racing in her direction. Her father was in hot pursuit, flexing his fingers in a playfully menacing way. Maddie ducked in between the two of them and said, “Mrs. Holladay—Mrs. Holladay, tell him to let me go down to the golf course and watch the fireworks with everybody else.”
Her father came panting up—Delia could smell whiskey on his breath—and said, “Can you blame a dad for wanting to spend some time with his girl? Maddie, let go of Mrs. Holladay’s dress. You don’t want her to get all wrinkled like your old man.” He bent over and put his hands on his knees, breathing hard. “Hi Sam, by the way. Hello, Delia. It’s nice to see you here tonight.”
Divining Rod Page 11
