“You’re late,” she says, kidding, but waits for him to explain.
“Church.”
“Tara,” she calls, “your father’s here,” and in the minute it takes her to wander in from the bedroom, they stand there. Glenn regroups. He interrogates the furniture, picks up signals from the half-read Mademoiselle lying on the couch, the crayons piled like deadfall. The TV plays a bad movie, people being stalked down dark hospital corridors.
“How are your folks?” Annie asks.
“Sick of me. Your mom?”
“Good.”
“Good.”
Tara appears and gives them an excuse not to talk. She hugs a stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh to her chest. Bomber almost knocks her down; Glenn claps once and he sits, twice and he lies down. Glenn has never seen the overalls Tara has on, red corduroy with a kangaroo on the pocket. He kneels down to admire them and receive a hug. She smells like grape cough syrup.
“Mommy made it,” she says.
“They’re very pretty,” Glenn says. “Where would you like to go with your old dad today? Would you like to go to the mall and have your picture taken?”
“No.”
“Okay, where would you like to go—the lake?”
“Don’t ask her,” Annie says, “just tell her. And take boots if you’re going to be outside.”
“I want to go Grammy’s,” Tara says.
“No, honey,” Annie says, “you and Daddy are going to the mall. Mommy has to go to the store for Grammy.”
“I want to go to the store,” Tara says, glowering.
“We get to go to the mall,” Glenn says, trying to be cheery, “with the horse and the rocket ship.” He takes her hand but she snatches it back.
“I don’t want Daddy. I want Mommy.”
“Just grab her,” Annie says, putting her own shoes on. “She’ll scream and cry for five minutes, then she’ll be fine. She loves having her picture taken—don’t you, babe? Sure. She’s just cranky because of the ear infection.” She hauls her coat on. “Is Winnie-the-Pooh going with you?”
Glenn holds his hand out.
“Come on, pumpkin,” Annie coaxes, and still frowning, Tara takes it.
“Four-thirty,” Glenn says outside, over the hood.
“Make it five if you want,” Annie says. “I’ve got errands to run.” She folds herself into the Maverick and pulls out while he is trying to buckle Winnie-the-Pooh in with Tara. The rain has inexplicably stopped. They’ll go to the mall and then the lake if it’s cleared off. In back, Bomber is pouncing on a can like a wolf toying with a mouse.
Glenn starts the engine and backs out onto the road and thinks of Annie opening the door to him. That first instant, did she actually smile because of him? He sees her kneeling to pet Bomber, strands of her hair catching in his coat. For a moment his head goes completely empty, trying to make space for the memory, unsure if he wants to or not. The water tower grows in the rearview mirror. Beside him Tara is playing with the buckle of the other seat belt, clicking the button as if it’s a phaser and making shooting noises. She looks up at him and fires.
“Are you having fun with your big dad,” Glenn says, “or what?”
Annie’s mother, May, is waiting for her with a list of groceries and what she says is enough money to cover everything.
“If it isn’t,” May says at the door, “you can get rid of the Lorna Doones. I like them with my coffee in the middle of the afternoon, especially this time of year, but I don’t absolutely have to have them.”
“Ditch the Lorna Doones,” Annie says, and makes a mark beside it. It’s a game they play; she’ll buy them with her own money if she has to. She worries about her mother staying here alone, especially lately. She seems thinner, and after heating water for their coffee sometimes leaves the burner on.
“When will you be back?”
“Whenever I get back,” Annie says. “Around dinner. I’ve got to stop by the mall and run a bunch of errands.”
“How is Glenn?”
“Fine.”
“Say hello to him for me if you would.”
“I do,” Annie says, “all the time.”
“I just wish,” May starts, and then sighs.
“Ma,” Annie says, “forget it.”
“I just wish the two of you were happy.”
“I’m going. I’ll be back when I get back.” She crosses the porch and takes the three stairs down to the walk with a skip that makes May remember her as a child. Even then no one could talk to her. She was famous for quitting games and playing by herself. Charles worried that she wouldn’t have any friends, that with her pride and temper she would end up alone. May’s glad he’s not around to see his prediction come true.
“Lorna Doones,” May calls after her.
“Lorna Doones,” Annie says, waving the list over her shoulder, but she doesn’t look back.
The only thing perishable is the milk, and the weather’s cold enough, Annie hopes, that she can leave it in the trunk. The fields roll, dead wind-combed corn, white as bone. She is driving the back way through Renfrew so she doesn’t have to go past the country club. It’s not like Barb might figure out what’s going on between her and Brock just from seeing the Maverick, but they have to be careful. It’s hard enough as it is. Annie will see her tonight as the shifts change. For ten or fifteen minutes they’ll be at the same table in the break room, sharing cigarettes and laughing, glad that at least one of them is done for the day. Barb wants her to come over; they haven’t seen each other much since Barb started working lunch at the Rusty Nail. Annie keeps putting her off, saying she’s busy with Tara. “Bring her,” Barb says. “I really need to talk to someone. Really.”
Annie keeps looking for Barb’s yellow Bug, expects it at every crossroads. She’s not good at this. Brock is only her second since Glenn left. The first was someone from work, one of the summer help, a kid. It was one night, and worth it. She was just testing herself. This is different, weird, unreal. Barb was her maid of honor. Barb helped her get the job at the club. She and Brock have only been seeing each other for three weeks now but their affair has erased chunks of Annie’s past. It seems to her that she has always been a false friend, a slut; whatever punishment Barb chooses for her will be too lenient.
Yet at the same time, shooting along the empty blacktop with the Allmans whooping it up at the end of “Ramblin’ Man” and the sun beginning to peek out of the clouds, this is the happiest she’s been in years. The last time they made love was in Barb’s apartment, last Sunday while she was working brunch at the club. Brock wanted to use the bed, but Annie convinced him it would be more fun in the bathroom. It was a joke between them; the first time they did it was against the sink, at a party he and Barb threw. The keg was in the tub and Annie was wearing navy. She and Brock were talking as they refilled their cups, and then they were kissing—she could see herself in his arms in the mirror—and Brock locked the door and lifted her up onto the wet edge of the Formica. It was funny how it hadn’t frightened her when people knocked; last week every little sound from the hall had her grabbing for her clothes. When Brock suggested a motel she didn’t think he was serious. It’s still a joke to her, something out of an old movie, but she appreciates it. They don’t want to hurt Barb.
The place is at the south end of the county, off Route 8—Susan’s Motel. Waterbeds, color. It’s in back of a house crowned with TV antennae, half hidden from the road. Annie has passed it millions of times, has heard her mother remark upon it. She has to get in the middle lane to take the left and feels the eyes of the other drivers on her. The No-tell Motel. She beats a tractor-trailer across and zips up the drive and into the back, invisible again.
The parking lot is nearly full—and on a Sunday, she thinks. Football widows. Around the side are spaces for big rigs. All the cars are backed in so you can’t read their license plates; Annie finds herself memorizing the cars themselves. The number’s almost comforting. Brock’s Charger is parked in front of Room 9. She backs
in beside it, locks up and puts her keys in her purse.
The first thing that hits her is how empty it looks, how dead. There are no lawn chairs, no Pepsi machines, just glass on the walk, weeds in the cracks. The gutters are rusting. The curtains are drawn across every window but the office. Behind her, over the house, comes the whine of the highway. The door to 9 has a peephole and a steel plate riveted around the knob. Annie knocks. A car turns into the drive and suddenly she wishes she had tucked her hair up under a hat or worn a scarf. She wants to turn just to prove to herself that it’s not Barb, that she’s being foolish, but can’t. The door is dented, as if someone tried to kick it down. What kind of a person is she becoming? The car idles behind her, looking for a spot. She knocks again, harder, but the door is opening, it’s Brock, everything’s all right.
They’re into the second bottle of wine and Brock can’t believe how good the TV reception is. It’s snowing in Bloomington, Minnesota, and Fran Tarkenton is scrambling. The heater stirs the curtains, a crack of light sifting into the black room. They lie naked on top of the covers, sated, resting the bathroom glasses on their chests. Her long body, the smell of her shampoo. At times like these he thinks he can leave Barb—that he will—when he knows it’s not true. He’s been trying to come up with a way to tell Annie it’s not going to work. They both know they’re only postponing it.
He doesn’t think he’s in love with her, but how can he be sure? He and Barb hardly talk anymore. At night he tries but she’s tired, can’t he wait till morning? He lies there listening to her snore—and yet in everyone’s eyes she’d be the wronged one. Annie listens to him, gives him the attention he needs. All Barb seems interested in is when he gets paid next. It would be easier if he didn’t know how close Annie and Barb are. Even now Brock knows Annie is thinking about her, that after the flush of love cools she will ask how they are getting along, as if her first responsibility is keeping them together.
“All right,” he says when she finally does, but he can’t hide his annoyance. This is supposed to be their time alone. He’s been dreaming of it all week; his patients at the Overlook Home know something’s up, tease him for being happy. He listens to their stories of long-ago loves, Paris in the twenties, the war in Spain. Will his life ever be that exciting?
“I worry about her,” Annie says.
“She’s not going to know,” he says, impatient, then regrets it.
“I don’t know why I’m here.”
“Are we going to go through this again?”
“I’m sorry. Everything’s been so nice. I don’t know why I always have to ruin things.”
“Don’t apologize,” Brock says. The Steelers intercept and while he’s watching the runback he misses what Annie is saying.
“What?” he says.
“Forget it.”
“Tell me.”
She gets up and goes to the bathroom, closes the door and turns on the shower. Brock looks at the door, looks back at the game and sighs. He finishes his wine and gets up to kill the TV and for an instant sees himself in the mirror, the colored rush of the play painting his body, and wonders how he got himself into this. He thinks of Glenn Marchand—how only a fool would let her go—and takes the bottle from the ice bucket and follows her into the steaming bathroom.
The photographer says they make a lovely couple. For thirty-five dollars, Glenn says, he hopes so. Tara rides the motorcycle twice; he’s not going to fight her. When they get outside the sky is clear and they agree on the playground. Bomber’s been waiting patiently.
“Fifteen minutes,” Glenn promises him.
Glenn’s father and Glenn’s real father were born under the lake, and every time he drives alongside it (or at church, gazing out the big picture window behind the altar), Glenn thinks of the town down there, the streets and houses and farms the park service bought up. It’s still on some maps—Gibbsville. His father has a fat album of pictures. Glenn remembers him taking the whole family out to where the old road disappeared under softly lapping water, the double yellow lines wavy. He remembers seeing a steeple in the distance, only the tip visible, but in the pictures it’s too far away. Sometimes Glenn takes the album up to his room and walks through the town, past the house his parents lived in, the store they say his real father robbed. His walk always ends with his new family standing in the middle of the road, the water rising behind them. Why, Glenn thinks, are these people smiling?
The woman and the little boy they usually see at the playground are there, and Glenn makes Bomber stay in the truck. The sun’s out, blazing off the lake, but there are puddles beneath the swings and at the bottom of the slide. Tara sits while Glenn struggles with her boots.
“Do you remember the lady’s name?” he asks her on a long shot. Every time he has to remind her. “Do you remember the little boy’s name?”
“I think his name is Eric.” She has trouble with her r’s. It’s common but everything worries Glenn. When he was a boy friends teased him about his ears, and now he wears his hair over them.
“His name is Steven,” Glenn corrects.
The woman’s is Nan. She’s older, divorced, from town. Her husband got custody because she was an alcoholic, like Glenn’s birth mother. In spring when he first came here with Tara they traded histories, as if they were dating. When he was in the hospital she sent him a card that said, “I didn’t think you were a quitter.” Now they speak easily, pacing the grass or sitting at a picnic table while their children race from the jungle gym to the balance beam.
“Bomber’s okay,” Nan offers, but Glenn says he can wait.
“Look at him, he’s sad.”
“He’s fine.”
“You look nice,” Nan notes. “As usual. How’s Annie?”
“Better,” Glenn says, glad to share the news with her.
Nan wants, details.
“I don’t know. The last few weeks she’s been a lot nicer. I don’t know why.” He shrugs and she looks at him and he can feel himself blushing. “I might have a job.”
“Hey,” Nan says, giving his wrist a squeeze, “that’s really good.”
Annie goes home the back way, the drawn orange light of the dying afternoon shooting through the windows. She’s sore and her head beats with the wine. She keeps the radio off, trying to think. She hates this time of day, when the sky deepens and she knows she has to go to work and leave Tara with Clare or her mother. The thought of the motel disgusts her, the cinder block walls and bright, tiny bathroom. Right now someone is coming in to clean up after them, to strip the beds and spray Lysol on everything. At the club Barb is freshening coffees for the last remaining bridge players. Annie chews a stick of gum and punches the lighter in. There’s an old pack of Winstons in the glove compartment, a few doglegged stragglers left. Her mother thinks she’s quit completely, so she has to roll down her window to smoke. It’s stale but she drags on it hard, lets the first cloud out like a sigh.
She is going to stop seeing Brock—not that they were ever together. She comes to this decision each time she leaves him, but this time she means it. He’s not helping her. She still has to face the bills by herself, and take care of Tara and the house. She’s tired of coming home to nothing. Maybe her mother is right when she says she needs someone—meaning Glenn. He’s changed, her mother says, and while Annie agrees, she isn’t sure she likes those changes. She’s not sure what becoming a Born Again means, only that he’s even nicer, more polite—two things about him she never did appreciate. What are her choices? Brock is not permanent, Annie doesn’t expect him to be. Barb ought to at least know that about him by now.
It’s easy to think like this by herself in the car, but when she sees the one-mile marker of the Parkinsons’ house, her new resolutions evaporate. She slows and flips the butt out the window and chews another stick of gum. Her mother has the porch light on and, suddenly paranoid, Annie imagines someone has stolen her groceries from the trunk.
They’re still there, just spilled, the colonist on the fr
ont of the Quaker Oats box smiling reassuringly. The milk is cool to the touch.
“Steelers won,” her mother greets her from the porch. She is wearing slippers, and Annie wonders when she was out of the house last. Her father’s old Polara lists in the driveway, one front tire flat.
“You figured they would.”
“How was the mall?”
“Crowded.”
“It’s the rain.”
Annie carries the two bags into the kitchen and helps her mother put them away. The fridge is nearly empty. The door is heavy with condiments, but on the top shelf sit only a brick of butter, a tray of eggs and a carton of OJ.
“Ma, do you have bread?”
Her mother doesn’t answer.
Annie opens the tin on the counter. Just crusts. “Ma.”
“It’s all right,” May says, trying to play it down. She thought she’d put it on the list. “I’ll ask Louise to pick some up for me.”
“Mrs. Parkinson is busy. She can’t be running around doing errands for you.”
“She says she doesn’t mind.”
“You have to eat,” Annie says.
“I eat.”
“What are you having for dinner?”
“I really haven’t given it a thought,” May says. “There’s chicken in the freezer.”
“Come home with me. You can watch Tara there and I’ll drive you home in the morning.”
“I’ll have to get dressed.”
“Please,” Annie says. “Ma, c’mon.”
In the car her mother says, “You never get rid of the smell, do you?”
The sun is down by the time Glenn turns onto Turkey Hill, and the spotlight throws shadows of catwalks and guywires into the trees behind the water tower. Annie’s home. This is the hard part of Sunday, dropping Tara off. He pulls in behind the Maverick and kills the truck, but instead of helping her with her belt, he just sits there. Bomber’s excited, thinking he’s home.
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