by Andre Dubus
‘Come to bed.’
‘No. I want to clean my house. I’ve been a pig and I’ve beaten you and thrown things at you. I know it’s too late for you but maybe not for me, maybe I can at least be good for my babies. Or maybe you’ll miss them and want to come back and the house will be clean. Couldn’t you just stay and keep screwing Edith? Couldn’t you be happy then?’
‘You don’t want that.’
‘No, I guess not.’ Mopping again, bent over. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I could change. Go to bed, love; I want to clean my house.’
I slept lightly. Sometimes I heard Terry moving about the house, and I felt the night leave and the day grow lighter and warmer; at one warm and light time I heard a vacuum cleaner beneath my dreams. When I heard the children’s voices I woke up; but I would not open my eyes. I lay on my side and listened to their voices. After a while I heard Terry upstairs, in Sean’s room above me. She was walking from one spot to another; then she pushed furniture across the floor. I opened my eyes and looked into the living room: Natasha was standing in the doorway.
‘You should see the house.’
‘What’s she doing upstairs?’
‘She just fed us and cleaned up our mess and now she’s doing the upstairs.’
Sean called from the kitchen: ‘Is that Daddy you’re talking to?’ I winked at Natasha.
‘Is that true you don’t love Mom?’ she said.
‘Who told you that? The morning paper?’
‘I heard Mom last night.’
‘Oh? Who was she talking to?’
Sean came in, carrying a full glass of orange juice; he held it out in front of him, his forearm extended, and watched it while he stiffly walked to the bed.
‘Thanks, chief,’ I said, and kissed him.
‘I couldn’t hear you,’ Natasha said. ‘Just Mom.’
‘Are you getting divorced?’ Sean said.
‘Wow. You really know how to wake a fellow up.’
Upstairs the vacuum cleaner went on. I imagined what Terry had got from under the bed.
‘Natasha said you were leaving.’
‘That’s an idea. Where should I go? Join the Mounties?’
‘I want to live with you,’ Sean said.
‘I’m not going to choose,’ Natasha said.
‘Ah me. You shouldn’t listen to drunk grown-ups fighting, sweetheart. It’s always exaggerated.’
‘Mom said you were leaving and you love Edith and you screwed her.’
‘Do you know what that means?’
‘Yes.’
‘What?’ Sean said. ‘What what means?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, looking at him and feeling Natasha’s eyes on me. ‘Just grown-up foolishness.’ I looked at Natasha. ‘Let’s get on our bikes.’
‘You haven’t eaten yet.’
‘Let’s go to the river,’ Sean said.
‘We’ll stop someplace where I can eat and you two can have something to drink.’
I told them to get the bikes out while I dressed. When they were gone, I called Edith to tell her I couldn’t meet her. Hank answered.
‘I can’t run today,’ I said. ‘I’m sick. The flu. Tell Edith I have the flu and maybe she’ll feel guilty for spreading it to her friends.’
White clouds were piled in the sky, and from the southwest gray was coming. I led Natasha and Sean in single file down our street, to the river. From our left the air was turning cooler and the gray was coming. We stopped at a small grocery store and got a quart of apple cider and stood on the sidewalk, drinking from the bottle and looking across the blacktop at the dark river.
‘Is it true about you and Edith?’ There was in her eyes a will to know, a look of deep interest; nothing more.
‘Is what true?’ Sean said. He was down there, below our voices and souls, looking at the river.
‘It is and it isn’t,’ I said to Natasha’s eyes. ‘I don’t know if I have the wisdom to explain it to a little girl I love.’
She took a quarter from her pocket and gave it to Sean.
‘Go buy us something to eat.’
He hurried into the store.
‘Where’d you get that?’
‘My allowance.’
‘I’ll explain as well as I can,’ I said. I watched her eyes. ‘I don’t want to abort it.’ They hadn’t changed.
‘What’s that mean?’
‘To kill something before it’s fully developed. Like a party you’re planning. Or a baby inside the mother.’
‘Oh.’
Now I remembered Terry lowering her voice: I should have aborted; even in her raging grief the old instinct of an animal protecting her young was there. Then I looked at the river and the lush woods on the other side, turning bright green as the gray and black moved faster over us; at the horizon the last puffs of white and strips of blue were like daylight under a tent wall; I turned from Natasha because there were tears in my eyes, not for her because she was strong and young and there was hope, but for Terry and her trembling lip: Jack? Don’t you love me even a little? I am afraid of water; but looking out at the river I wanted suddenly to be in its flow, turning over once, twice, with the current; going down with slow groping arms, and hands opening and shutting on cool muddy death, my hair standing out from my head as I went bubbling down to the bottom. I shuddered, as much with remorse as fear. Then my wish was over. I stood alive again and breathed the rain-scented air and I knew that I would grow old with Terry.
‘Mother and I have made mistakes,’ I said. She was standing at my side, almost touching; I kept my eyes on the woods across the river. Seagulls crossed my vision. ‘You must trust us to make things better for everyone. Your mother and I love each other. She’s a good and wonderful woman, and don’t worry about anything you heard last night, people are all sorts of things, and one mistake is only a small part of a person, Mother’s very good, and Edith is very good, and—’
‘And so are you,’ she said, and slipped her hand into mine and I couldn’t go on.
The sky was completely gray now and it watched us ride home; we put our bikes in the garage and crossed the lawn and as we climbed the back steps it began to rain. We stood in the darkened kitchen and watched it coming down hard and loud. Sean was touching my leg. I tousled his hair, then turned on the light. The room changed: when it was dark and we had looked out at a day as dark as our kitchen, I had felt we were still out there in the rain, the three of us, somewhere by the river and trees; I could live in that peace, from one fresh rain-filled moment to the next, forever. Now with the light we were home again; our bodies were lightly touching but the flow, the unity, was gone. We were three people in a troubled house. I touched them and went to the bedroom. Terry was putting my clothes in a suitcase. She looked clean and very tired; she had showered and changed clothes. She tried to smile, failed, tried again, and made it.
‘Was it awful?’ she said.
‘Was what awful? Why are you doing that?’
‘I thought that’s where you went. To tell the kids.’
I pushed the suitcase to make room, and lay on the bed; I would not look at her.
‘Unpack it,’ I said.
‘Why? Couldn’t you tell them?’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘I’ll call them in and we’ll both tell them.’
‘I mean I don’t want to leave.’
She stepped closer to the bed and I was afraid she would touch me.
‘You really don’t?’
‘No.’
‘Is it the kids? I mean I know it’s the kids but is it just the kids? You could see them, you know. Whenever you wanted. And I’d never move away, I’d live here as long as you teach here—so if it’s just telling them, we can do it and get it over with, these things are always hard, but we can do it—’
‘It’s not that.’ I shut my eyes. ‘Unpack the suitcase.’
Across the bed I felt her pain and hope. I kept my eyes shut and listened to her moving from the bed to the closet and han
ging up my clothes. Then she came around to my side of the bed and sat on the edge and put a hand on my cheek.
‘Hey,’ she said softly. ‘Look at me.’
I did.
‘It’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘You’ll see. It’ll be all right again.’
She slept the rest of the afternoon, then woke to cook dinner; during dinner she and the children talked, and sometimes I talked with the children, but mostly I listened to their voices and the rain outside the window. After cleaning the kitchen Terry went back to bed and slept late next morning; then she called Edith and asked her to go to lunch.
‘Do you have to?’ I said.
She stood in the kitchen, in a short skirt and a bright blouse and a raincoat, looking pretty the way women do when they meet each other for lunch.
‘I’ve loved her,’ she said. ‘I want to keep loving her.’
The rain had stopped for a while, but now it was coming down again. They were a long time at lunch; the children were bored, so I let them watch a movie on television. It was an old movie about British soldiers in India; I explained to the children that the British had no business being there, then we were all free to enjoy watching the British soldiers doing their work. They were all crack shots and awfully brave. The movie hadn’t ended when Terry came upstairs and, smiling happily, said: ‘Don’t you want to come down?’
‘Just for a minute. I want to see the rest of this.’
I followed her downstairs and put on some water for one cup of tea. Her face was loving and forgiving and I could not bear to look at her, I could not bear the images of her in warm collusion with Edith; for I could see it all: we would gather again in living rooms, the four of us, as though nothing had happened. And perhaps indeed nothing had.
‘She wants you to go see her tonight.’ Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright, and she smelled of bourbon. ‘She’s going to tell Hank, she’s probably told him by now, she said he won’t mind—’
‘I know.’
Bubbles were forming beneath the water in the pot. I held the cup with the tea bag and waited.
‘I told her about Hank and me, right away, as soon as I’d told her I knew about you two, and it’s all right, I told her it was like her with you, because she wasn’t trying to steal you or anything, it was to save herself, she said, and—’
‘I don’t want to hear it.’
‘You don’t?’
‘No. I don’t know why. I just don’t.’
The water was boiling, and I poured it into the cup.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sure it was a fine afternoon with Edith.’
‘It was.’ I looked at her. She was watching me with pity. ‘It was wonderful.’
I went upstairs. Going up, I could hear the rifles cracking. That night I went to see Edith and Hank. They were drinking coffee at the kitchen table; the dishes were still there from dinner, and the kitchen smelled of broiled fish. From outside the screen door I said hello and walked in.
‘Have some coffee,’ Hank said.
I shook my head and sat at the table.
‘A drink?’ he said.
‘Aye. Bourbon.’
Edith got up to pour it.
‘I think I’ll take in a movie,’ Hank said.
Edith was holding the bottle and watching me, and it was her face that told me how close I was to crying. I shook my head: ‘There’s no need—’
But he was up and starting for the back door, squeezing my shoulder as he passed. I followed him out.
‘Hank—’
He turned at his car.
‘Listen, I ought to dedicate my novel to you.’ He smiled and took my hand. ‘You helped get it done. It’s so much easier to live with a woman who feels loved.’
We stood gripping hands.
‘Jack? You okay, Jack?’
‘I’m okay. I’ll be laughing soon. I’m working on the philosophy of laughter. It is based on the belief that if you’re drowning in shit, buoyancy is the only answer.’
When I got back to the kitchen, Edith was waiting with the drink. I took it from her and put it on the table and held her.
‘Hank said he’d guessed long ago,’ she said. ‘He said he was happy for us and now he’s sad for us. Which means he was happy you were taking care of me and now he’s sorry you can’t.’
I reached down for the drink and, still holding her, drank it fast over her shoulder and then quietly we went to the guest room. In the dark she folded back the spread and sheet; still silent and standing near each other we slowly undressed, folding clothes over the backs of chairs, and I felt my life was out of my hands, that I must now play at a ritual of mortality and goodbye, the goodbye not only to Edith but to love itself, for I would never again lie naked with a woman I loved, and in bed then I held her tightly and in the hard grip of her arms I began to shudder and almost wept but didn’t, then I said: ‘I can’t make love, I’m just too sad, I—’ She nodded against my cheek and for a long while we quietly held each other and then I got up and dressed and left her naked under the sheet and went home.
Like a cat with corpses, Terry brings me gifts I don’t want. When I come home at night she hands me a drink; she cooks better than any woman I know, and she watches me eat as though I were unwrapping a present that she spent three months finding. She never fails to ask about my day, and in bed she responds to my hesitant, ambivalent touch with a passion I can never match. These are the virtues she has always had and her failures, like my own, have not changed. Last summer it took the house about five weeks to beat her: she fought hard but without resilience; she lost a series of skirmishes, attacks from under beds, from closets, the stove, the vegetable bin, the laundry basket. Finally she had lost everything and since then she has waked each day in her old fashion which will be hers forever: she wakes passively, without a plan; she waits to see what the day will bring, and so it brings her its worst: pots and clothes and floors wait to be cleaned. We are your day, they tell her. She pushes them aside and waits for something better. We don’t fight about that anymore, because I don’t fight; there is no reason to. Except about Edith, she is more jealous than ever; perhaps she is too wise to push me about Edith; but often after parties she accuses me of flirting. I probably do, but it is meaningless, it is a jest. She isn’t violent anymore. She approaches me with troubled eyes and says maybe she’s wrong but it seemed to her that I was a long time in the kitchen with—I assure her that she’s wrong, she apologizes, and we go to bed. I make love to her with a detachment that becomes lust.
Now that it is winter the children and I have put away our bicycles, oiled and standing side by side in the cellar, the three of them waiting, as Sean says, for spring and summer. We go sledding. The college has a hill where students learn to ski and on weekends it is ours; Natasha and Sean always beg Terry to come with us and she always says no, she has work to do, she will go another time. I know what it costs her to say this, I know how she wants to be with us, all of us going shrilly down the hill, and then at the top a thermos of chocolate for the children and a swallow of brandy for mama and papa. But she knows that with the children I’m happy, and she always says she will go another time. We sled and shout for a couple of hours until we’re wet and cold, and when we come home with red cheeks Terry gives us hot chocolate.
Last week Hank sold his novel, and Saturday night he and Edith gave a party to celebrate. At noon that day Hank and I ran five miles; the sky was blue then; later in the afternoon clouds came and by night snow was falling. When I went up to his office he had finished writing (he has started another novel) and his girl was there; she is nineteen, a student, and she has long blonde hair and long suede boots and the office smelled of her cigarette smoke. Hank has not started smoking again. He is very discreet about his girl and I think only Terry and I know; we don’t talk about it, Terry and I, because she can’t. I know it bothers her that she can’t, I know she wishes she were different, but she isn’t. Edith knows too, about Hank and his girl; they don’t
lie to each other anymore.
