by Lee Woodruff
And then they began to pick up speed, rising swiftly over the neighborhood, now the elementary school, the grid of their small town telescoped beneath them. They soared above the dark turgid waters of Lake Michigan, arcing over shores, lighthouses, and islands, and then swooped across the Great Plains with their checkerboard farmlands and circular irrigation systems. Beneath them in the dark, small towns with single intersections glowed like a hundred lit crosses. Now she could make out the Upper Peninsula above the mitten of Michigan, the shrinking comma shapes of the Great Lakes, and then she saw the whole continent, embedded in the ancient sapphire blue of the ocean. She and James flew past clouds luffing in the shapes of animals and physical things for which he no longer needed to remember the words. He continued up past stiff air currents and colliding weather patterns and up, up, up … and then all at once Maura’s forward movement dissolved as a golden warmth infused her veins, a glow, and there was a sudden sensation of uncoupling, like the second firing of a rocket ship in space. She observed James continuing above her as one watches a meteor, with a consuming sense of wonder.
The force that was her son soared now at even greater speeds. Unencumbered by weight he accelerated beyond the planets’ rotation, burning like a comet, compressed and focused into one tight pure glowing mass. And in Maura’s dream, as her son broke through the byzantine darkness to join the universal light of a trillion twinkling stars, all that had once been James expanded and then burst into a million particles of explosive, refractive love.
24
With Thanksgiving and Christmas behind them, Maura felt the blues set in doubly hard this year. She had always hated January, that long stretch of a month with no festive holidays and nothing but gray, ice, and the deep suck of cold. She had rejoined her Tuesday tennis group and was playing in the bubble two towns away with her old gang. And twice, she and Pete had been out to dinner without the kids. Maura considered that a form of progress.
Yet still, Art danced through her thoughts. It had been almost eight months now, and unanswered questions percolated in the backdrop of her mind. She was becoming less effective at pushing them away. That relationship, which she had tried to will into mental storage, lingered as unfinished and undone. It was hard to fully put herself back into repairing her marriage with Pete until she had filled in those blanks.
Maura lifted the phone off its base in the kitchen and walked into the living room, sitting on the couch. Anxiety and excitement zipped around like bees in her diaphragm, and she took a deep breath to calm herself. She let her head fall back on the couch and studied the room for a moment, the soft mint green walls and geometric fabric of the armchairs. Above the TV was an oil painting she and Pete had purchased at a local art show on the Navy Pier when they were first married. It was a view of Lake Michigan with the skyline of the city behind it. The giant Ferris wheel on the pier and the buildings were shaded in dusky violets and grays in the gloaming light that immediately chased sunset. How ironic that a painting purchased in her first year of marriage to Pete would be from the vantage point of a beach, similar to the one she had frequented with Art. Maura sighed and before she could reconsider, she furtively punched in the number she knew by heart. After four rings, he picked up.
“Hi, Art? It’s Maura,” she said cheerily.
“Maura? Hey. Wow. Maura.” Art had drawn her name out softly the second time in a long vowel sound, as if working to reassemble his composure. She had surprised him.
“In the flesh,” she had answered.
“Wow. I don’t think I expected this … I … ahhh … I left you those messages and … when I didn’t hear back …” His voice trailed off.
In those quick seconds, Maura tried desperately to determine what she detected in his words. She strained to process the nuance of his tone, his level of excitement. It was more difficult without the ability to study his face.
“I just wanted to … say hi,” Maura began unsteadily. “I know I’ve been awful. It’s … um … been hard. But I think of you, have thought of you so much. After everything that happened, all of it, and trying to not think about you … I can’t. Couldn’t. I’m calling because I need to see you, I guess. Maybe we could have lunch … if you want.” The words had all came out in one jumbled but stilted rush. And despite everything Maura had rehearsed and polished in her daydreams, it sounded awkward, childish, and pleading.
There was an uncomfortable pause.
“Well, OK. But … why now?” he asked, and she hesitated for a moment.
“Because I needed to wait, Art. For lots of reasons.” He seemed to accept that.
They planned to meet at the end of the week at the diner in Evanston, at twelve-thirty on Friday, although he would be coming from another direction, he explained.
Talking to Art on the phone after the abrupt curtain of silence for all those months had been harder than she’d imagined. They’d lost the ready intimacy, the easy back-and-forth banter. The distance between them now felt like a physical hurdle.
Imagining what it would be like to see him in person, she felt anxiety again rising up within her. She wanted desperately to feel nothing more than friendship, to experience the realization and relief that she had moved on, that her feelings for him had been an aberration. Maura imagined that some kind of logjam could loosen after she saw Art for this last time, which would obscure the past and dissolve the barriers to Pete.
Up until now, the great riptide of sorrow and guilt surrounding James’s death had made the thought of seeing Art almost inconceivable. But everything that lay undone between them had remained a restless spirit, a haunting in her head. She had come to understand that this was the last piece that needed to fall into place if she was going to make some real progress in her marriage. A sense of finality, of choking off any remnant of what had transpired, might be illusory, but it was something she needed to at least attempt.
That was the rational part of Maura. But she was not completely surprised to discover that there was another, smaller part of her that hoped Art still wanted her on some level, as ridiculous and painful as that might be. This was the part she would tamp back down, a vestigial emotional impulse, the irrational part of the human heart, with chambers complex and sometimes treacherous. This sliver of desire had the potential to undo all of the progress she had made if she wasn’t careful.
25
“I don’t understand what you mean … what are you telling me, the check bounced?” Margaret was standing in line at the bank, staring at the teller as if she were from another planet. Well, she certainly seemed to be close enough, Margaret thought. The woman was a foreigner. She could barely pronounce the name on her tag—Rasheema? Was that it? The girl was obviously from another country, and she had one of those Arab head scarves to prove it. That was the explanation. There must be some mistake. Why couldn’t the service industry hire people these days who understood, who spoke the native language clearly?
The young woman patiently enunciated each word, which only fueled Margaret’s sense of frustration. She, Margaret, understood perfectly. It was this Muslim foreign person who was confused.
“As I explained, these series of checks were cashed over the last two weeks and there were insufficient funds to cover them.”
“There should have been a paycheck deposited sometime last week …” Some of Margaret’s anger began to diffuse, as a whisper of doubt crept in. A tiny interior voice allowed for the possibility that this might not be the bank’s fault. What if it was their own error? Roger’s error? The thought occurred to her to back down a trifle.
“There have been no deposits,” the woman said in lilting English. “Not since a month ago.”
“Thank you for your time.” Margaret forced an inelastic smile and turned brusquely on her heel and out the bank’s revolving door. The crisp winter air and sharp gusts caught her breath in her throat, and she pulled her gloved hand up to adjust the scarf around her neck. Temperatures had remained below freezing for almost a week, but the
remnants after the most recent Chicago storm quickly tarnished into piles of blackened snow beyond the concrete strip of sidewalk. Margaret picked around a patch of ice that the merchant’s efforts at salting had not affected.
The next stop was the dry cleaner for Roger’s boxed starched shirts and then on to the butcher, where she purchased some organic sausages and a half pound of lamb chops, wrapped in waxed paper. During this time in and out of the local shops, Margaret scrolled through the possibilities of what might have happened to the check. What on earth could Roger have done with it?
There was really only one explanation. He had simply forgotten to deposit his paycheck. But in all the decades they’d been married, Roger had never forgotten to do something this basic. He had refused automatic deposit, in fact, because he was fond of saying he didn’t necessarily trust the system. “Computers can make mistakes too,” he routinely remarked to the kids. “And you can’t argue with a machine.” He liked to see his paycheck, make sure it was all there and the proper deductions accounted for. Roger had always been their financial maven, handling everything from the checking account to investment decisions, but she had to admit he had been distracted lately.
“Hello, Margaret.” The conversation inside her head stopped as Nancy Palmer passed her on the sidewalk with an armload of bulging plastic shopping bags.
“Oh, hi, Nancy,” she said, physically standing taller and forcing her expression to brighten.
“It’s so good to see you. It’s been ages.”
“There’s been a lot going on,” said Margaret, tilting her head to the side, slightly annoyed at having her thoughts derailed.
“Are you going to bridge at the club tomorrow?”
“I plan to.” Margaret shifted her purse to her other shoulder, trying not to look impatient. Her eyes narrowed and she turned her gaze down the street, toward the end of the block. “I haven’t been quite as regular as I usually am these last few months. I’ve spent a lot of time at my daughter’s house and with the grandkids.”
“Well, that’s just wonderful. I’m sure you’ve been such a help and comfort, but it’s just so terribly sad too, I’m sure,” said Nancy. “I can’t really imagine what you’ve been through. All of you. But is she coming out of it now? Maura? At least a little?” Nancy shifted her packages to her free hand and leaned in ever so slightly.
“Of course,” said Margaret. “As much as anyone can come out of something like that.”
People had the most annoying responses to loss and death, Margaret had noticed, almost as if they expected you to be dancing in the streets after a few months. Nancy was a kind enough person, but like her body, doughy and soft, she had no edge. She was the type of woman who had skillfully perfected how to pan for gossip under the guise of concern. Margaret’s guard was up, all right.
“And how is Roger?” she asked. “Teddy is just dying to hit golf balls. Honestly, this winter has already been so harsh. He’s going on a weekend trip to Arizona soon with the boys and he’s chomping at the bit.” Nancy chuckled. “He just announced his retirement this coming June, and frankly, Margaret, I don’t know what I’m going to do with him kicking around. I think I may have to go out and get a job.” She smiled, rolling her eyes with a pleased but patronizing expression.
Margaret returned the smile flatly. Nancy could drone on so.
“… certainly needs more interests. I keep telling him to get to the gym, he has put on about twenty pounds in the past year and he actually has one of those tires …” She gave a nervous titter and Margaret realized she had not been listening, her attention again drifting back to the bank account mix-up. She was bored by Nancy’s ready cataloging of her husband’s faults. Margaret believed it was a wife’s job to keep the exterior facade spackled and impenetrable, to prevent the cracks from showing on the outside. In her mind, a classy woman never broke rank.
“Well, winter will end sooner than we think. If we can just make it to the end of April, the course will be open and he’ll be out of your hair,” Margaret said, setting her mouth in a conclusive way. Nancy nodded and Margaret made a step backward, as if to signify that they had reached the outer boundaries of the conversation.
But Nancy was not quite done rubbernecking, much to Margaret’s dismay. “Now, Margaret, what about the boy. The Hulburd boy, was it? The one who was driving the car when your grandson was killed? Do you know what he’s up to? He didn’t go to jail as I recall …”
Margaret felt suddenly tired, exposed, and snappish. She tried to make her own face impassive. “No, no jail sentence. He was exonerated. Beyond that I wouldn’t know anything about him,” she said. “I wouldn’t know about his family either, frankly. Maura and Pete haven’t really had any contact.” She made a deliberate shuffling motion with her feet, indicating the need to move on. “Perhaps I’ll see you tomorrow then. At the club.”
“That would be lovely,” said Nancy, giving a little halfhearted queenly wave with her black leather glove as she began to wobble over the icy sidewalk toward her parked car. “I look forward to it,” she called out over her shoulder and into a gust of wind.
As Margaret walked to the end of the block, Nancy glided past her in her giant white Cadillac sedan. Margaret noticed the CHOOSE LIFE! slogan on the license plate holder, and the corners of her mouth fanned up slightly. That certainly fits, she thought smugly. Nancy was one of those people who wore their politics on their cars. That kind of advertisement of your beliefs just invited every crazy on the highway to weigh in with their opinions. No thank you. Margaret would make sure not to be in Nancy’s foursome if she made it to bridge tomorrow. They’d both just exhausted all they had to say to each other.
Back at home it didn’t take Margaret long to locate the check, balled up near Roger’s cuff link box on his dresser. It was crumpled, as if he had mistaken it for an old receipt. She smoothed it out in one swift motion with her palm. What was it that Stu had been saying for years? That she should come into the twentieth century and get one of those ATM cards? She had resisted all of that for so long, while Roger had rattled on about bank error and how everything was paperless these days. And then you had no proof. A machine couldn’t count cash in front of you and answer back if you were short by twenty dollars. Maybe her son Stu was right. He was a technology specialist at a Milwaukee software-consulting firm, and he knew a lot about these things. She’d give him a call this afternoon.
“I bounced a check today,” Margaret casually remarked to Roger over a dinner of broiled lamb chop and a baked potato with low-fat sour cream. She kept her voice even. It wouldn’t do to be accusatory.
“Oh?”
“It seems you may have forgotten to deposit your paycheck. Or that’s what the bank teller told me.”
Roger’s face registered surprise and then a brief shadow of something else, was it fear?
“Well, that’s a first,” he said, reaching for humor. “I’ve, uh, been so busy at work lately I guess. Where was it?”
“I found it on your dresser,” said Margaret. “It was all rolled up, like a piece of trash.” She couldn’t resist this last bit, driving in the knife and twisting it just a fraction. There was a part of her that still seethed at how casually he had called her by another name at Christmas. Julia. That had been a slap, but at the time she had stuffed it down and concealed the hurt. The sting of that memory would intrude at the oddest moments. And it had confirmed for her that the woman, Julia, was most likely still in his life. In the weeks since it had happened, Margaret had devised a dozen ways she would have liked to answer if the kids hadn’t all been in the kitchen at the time.
“I am not that harlot, Julia!” she had wanted to scream at him then. But that kind of damage, that sort of honesty, would have unraveled so many things that had lain neatly coiled over the years in their marriage.
“Sometimes I worry about you, Roger.” Margaret said this softly, in an innocuous tone, and as Roger looked up his expression made her think of a trout, on a hook somehow, his m
outh jerked to one side.
“What about?” His voice was light and carefree. But Margaret knew better.
“You. Your memory and focus, I guess. I really want you to make that appointment for a total physical. You’ve had to cancel twice due to meetings. And honestly, sometimes your mind just seems to be somewhere else completely. You’re not hiding some giant secret about our financial ruin, are you?” She smiled wryly.
It was relief she saw play over his face as his expression relaxed. He set down his fork and sighed for a moment, looking up at her sheepishly, like a sinner in the throes of forming his confession. If he truly had a concern over his health or his memory, a part of her wanted to hear none of it. She fought the sudden urge to clap her hands over her ears to block out what he might be about to tell her.
And then a sudden furrowing of his brow, an internal shoring up that rearranged his features back into the old capable Roger, the one who deposited checks and handled the finances, who held the door and slapped his buddies on the back over a Dewar’s and soda at the club’s putting green bar.
“Well, Margaret, I definitely have memory issues here and there,” he said calmly. “Like a lot of us do at this age, I suppose. Certain names don’t always fly to the tip of my tongue. Or yours either, for that matter, my love. But I guess the pressure of the deal in Florida is taking its toll,” Roger explained, his voice more in control and confident now. “I’m going to have to head down there next week for the final set of meetings, and hopefully we’ll come back with some signed contracts. This was all supposed to happen in December and it’s been delay after delay.”
