“Sure,” he said. “Bittler can go fuck himself. I’m not in any hurry.”
So I proceeded to tell him the story of the Madeline Dare Misspent-Youth Massacre, with full orchestration and five-part harmony.
At the end of it, Cary didn’t speak for a good thirty seconds—just stared at me with this look of tremendous sadness on his face.
“You think Dean’s right,” I said.
Cary shook his head but still didn’t say a word.
I dropped my eyes, whispered, “What, then?”
“I think you’re a goddamn hero,” he said, his voice hoarse, “and I’m going to tell your husband it’s about time to get his head out of his ass and start appreciating you for it.”
I closed my eyes. “Please, don’t.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Look, you aren’t married. It’s like a dance after a while. You hit a rough patch, and there’s stuff on both sides, and it’s not about taking sides or who’s winning. It’s never about that. But anybody external joins into the fray, it just bends things more out of whack.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I’m not kidding. Dean’s been through a ton of shit lately. And everything’s resting on his shoulders. He’s on the road at least two weeks a month, he’s worried about supporting all three of us. He’s worried about what Bittler’s doing to you, and this job, and whether or not he’s going to make it all work out—and he knows his father and brother would love to see him fail, come back to the farm with his tail between his legs. And it’s exhausting, having little kids. Just generally. He gets home from getting beaten to shit on the road and I’m exhausted and the house looks like a bomb site and all I want to do is order a fucking pizza and have him take the wheel for a while, you know?”
“Maddie, that’s not—”
“I’m serious, Cary.”
“If you can’t treat the person you’re married to as your friend, what’s the goddamn point?”
I shrugged. “Hell if I know. My mom’s on her fifth husband. I figure the best bet is you just suck it up, play it as it lays.”
“You deserve better. And Dean can goddamn well treat you better, starting today.”
“Cary, we’re okay. We’re going to be okay. We’ve got a good solid base and we’ll get through this bit. It’s just toughing it out a little longer, just getting a little more sleep. And he’s right, I haven’t been pulling my weight, not as well as I could be. I’m just so fucking tired. But this too shall pass. The only thing I want to explain to him is that for me, having something going on outside, in real life—that’s only going to help me be better at the homemaking shit. We all need perspective. You have to leave the fucking house every once in a while so you notice it needs vacuuming or whatever when you get back. That’s all.”
“I still don’t see where he gets off—”
“Cary,” I said, “don’t fuck with this, okay? Promise me.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah. I really am.”
“Okay. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye: I will not berate your husband for giving you crap for wanting to balance a career with being a mother. Much as I want to, and much as he deserves it.”
“Thank you,” I said. “And look, I’m not, like, the abused wife in a movie of the week here. I’m just married to a guy who gets cranky-pants with the occasional bit of stress overload. In real life, he’s got my back. And I have his.”
“I still—” But then he stopped.
“What?” I asked.
He looked away. “Nothing.”
“Cary,” I said, leaning forward to touch his arm. “You’re an incredible friend. To both of us. And that’s totally huge.”
He blushed a little, then helped me get the girls out of their car seats and carry them inside.
Setsuko must have taken off on her own lunch break, but the little red wagon was still safely stowed behind the reception counter.
I wrote a thank-you note on one of her pink Post-its, fixing it firmly to the desk’s prairie of speckled Formica.
I bumped a hip against her wheelie chair as I stood up, making it roll about ten inches to the right. Stowed neatly in front of its former position was a tote bag filled with ball after ball of pink and pale blue angora wool, edged by a stripy fringed triangle she was apparently constructing out of the yarn.
Good God, she’s crocheting a poncho. Or knitting it. Or something.
Now, here was a woman who’d make the perfect home, down to the last insipid hand-loomed fuzzy toilet seat cover.
I shivered, the chill of claustrophobia trickling down the nape of my neck, drawing my shoulders tight.
Poor oppressed bitch.
I thought about what Cary had told me concerning Setsuko’s predicament for the entire walk home, wondering if there might be some way Dean could help her stay in the country.
Probably because I didn’t want to think about my marriage. Or what an asshole Dean was being. Or what the hell I should do about it if he didn’t get the fuck over himself in a big fat hurry.
Well, to be honest I was thinking about that at the same time. It was just all mashed up together in my head.
Because Cary’s response was identical to what I’d felt when I’d had to watch Seamus tear Ellis a new asshole over the bottle of Elmer’s Glue. And I wondered at myself for being able to be more pissed off on my friend’s behalf than my own.
Not to mention angrier on Setsuko’s behalf, during that complete turd-fest of a business dinner. And I didn’t even really like her.
Yeah, solidarity. Even though I had to admit I’d spent that evening distracting myself from Dean’s having been a jerk with the idea that some other chick had it worse than I did.
Same shit, different hill.
I mean, not like Setsuko was facing suttee or genital mutilation or whatever back in Tokyo—I wasn’t that naive and ignorant a cultural chauvinist—and God knows I would’ve given my eyeteeth for the kind of subsidized health insurance and day care available in Japan. It was just… okay, yes… solidarity on the gender front mattered.
Sisters in arms.
Glass houses.
And like Arlo used to say, “You want to end the war and stuff, you gotta sing loud.”
I should ask Dean if there was any way he could help her out.
That would be the right thing to do.
Fuck me, though, what the hell was I supposed to do? Start giving my husband ultimatums? Dump his ass if he didn’t shape up?
Follow in Mom’s footsteps?
I’d already lost my father, did I really have to lose my best friend, too? Not just temporarily, but forever.
I wished I could shine a flashlight into Dean’s eye sockets and send up a couple of flares to see if my real husband was still inside there somewhere.
27
I was back home with the girls and on the phone with McNally.
It didn’t look like I’d be getting down to the paper in person anytime soon—Parrish was sound asleep in her crib upstairs but India was careening around the giant playpen like a one-toddler roller derby, still totally jacked up on my iced coffee and laughing her head off.
I’d called him about the Alice’s Restaurant review. But then he started talking arson.
There’d been two more fires. Stores near Pearl Street this time.
“Check with Mimi,” McNally said. “They’re holding a community meeting tomorrow night at some church. It would be great if you covered it for us. Write up what the fire department recommends people do to stay safe. You know the drill.”
“Listen, I have to—” and then I couldn’t figure out what to tell him.
I have to check with my husband, make sure I have his permission to write about anything but food?
“Have to what?” asked McNally, sounding testy. “Find a babysitter?”
“Something like that.”
“You do have a husband lying around somewhere, don’t you?”
I laughed. “Are you even allowed to ask me that, as my employer?”
“I didn’t mean…”
“Relax, McNally. Yes, I have a husband. He just travels a lot for work.”
“Look, all I wanted to say is that I understand perfectly well that men can be selfish shitheads—especially husbands. I should know, I am one.”
“A husband?”
“A guy.”
“I was actually aware of your gender, McNally.”
“Smart woman. No wonder you went into journalism.”
“Smart women go into advertising.”
“Is he traveling right now?”
“Who?”
“Your husband.”
“No.”
“So, can’t he watch your kids for a couple of hours?”
“Have you ever been a husband?”
“Once. Briefly. She wanted me to go into advertising.”
“I thought you used to be in petroleum.”
“This was later. And briefer.”
“Well, McNally, here’s the thing… my husband would like me to avoid the crime beat. Something about how I’m the mother of small children and dangerous assignments should therefore be verboten, considering. Stuff like that.”
“Did you tell him to get his head out of his ass?”
“Not exactly.”
“Madeline, I’m asking you to cover a community meeting.”
“Which happens to be about a string of arsons.”
“If you want to be all exact about it.”
“So, basically,” I said, “you’re suggesting I leave the whole string-of-arsons deal out of the discussion, when I ask him to babysit.”
“What are the chances he’ll actually read the article? Husbands are notoriously crappy at that kind of thing. Especially when their wives write about community meetings.”
“Or he might be, you know, traveling. When it actually gets published.”
“See, I knew you were smart.”
“And you, McNally, are a terrible influence.”
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
“Yeah, whatever. Did Mimi get the Mapleton-fire lab results back yet?”
“You’d be wasted in advertising,” he said.
“So would you. Answer the question.”
“You want to know what the accelerant was, I take it?”
“Obviously.”
“Find a babysitter and call me back.”
“Or I could call Mimi.”
“You could, if she weren’t in Denver today.”
India took her shirt off and started swinging it around her head, shrieking.
“What is that?” asked McNally. “A car alarm, or did they have another nuke spill up at Rocky Flats?”
“Um. That would be one of my daughters. The one who drank a liter of Thai iced coffee at lunch today while I was trying to review the restaurant.”
“Tell that husband of yours that you deserve a babysitter,” he said. “Then call me back.”
I took the phone into the bathroom and tried calling Mimi, just to see whether he’d been bullshitting me.
She didn’t pick up at home or at work so I left her messages on both machines, asking her whether she’d gotten the lab results, and when and where this meeting was to be held, and to please call me back whenever she had a minute.
India was no longer shrieking so I edged back out of the bathroom and sat down beside the playpen.
She waddled over and patted me on the head.
“Hey there, my cutie,” I said.
“Mummie Mummie Mummie. Hey,” she said back, then sat down and started piling up some wooden blocks.
I briefly considered calling Dean at work. Like, for a nanosecond. Or possibly less.
I leaned back against the wall and dialed Ellis, instead.
28
The asshole actually said ‘homemaker’?” asked Ellis. “You’re fucking with me, right?”
“Direct quote,” I said.
“Hold on a second…” I heard the palm of her hand smush over the phone’s mouthpiece, then her slightly muffled voice. “Perry, give me those scissors right now. You are not giving your sister another haircut…”
I laughed.
“Jesus,” she said, voice clear again. “Where were we?”
“Homemaker.”
“Exactly. What is wrong with him? Why’s he being such a dick?”
“Well, it’s not like I’m the greatest roommate in the world. I mean, you’ve lived with me…”
“And this comes to him as a fucking surprise? You guys lived together for a solid chunk of time before you got married. I’d say his caveat was entirely emptored.”
“I guess it’s wearing thin.”
“Let me call the rat bastard at his goddamn office, tell him to hire a goddamn maid already…”
“Then it will be my fault he has to spend money on a maid, and it will be worse.”
“Okay, then I’ll just fly out there and slap him around a little. He’s lucky to have you. I think he needs a little reminding.”
“He basically rescued me from being homeless,” I said. “Who the hell else would’ve married me?”
“I shouldn’t have to remind you of this: Dean got a gorgeous woman who’s brilliant and funny and an amazing cook and who likes to fuck. Plus you did three years’ hard time in Syracuse for him. More than he deserves. All of it.”
“Thank you for hating my husband for me.”
“Anytime,” she said, and we agreed to hang up.
Upstairs, Parrish resurfaced from her nap and started weeping—just as India was finally winding down in the playpen, eyelids already at half-mast.
I reached across the little wooden fence to pick up India and started for the staircase, relishing the warmth of her sweet weight in my arms as she drifted fully off to sleep.
When I’d tucked India into her crib and carried Parrish downstairs, I got walloped by my daily midafternoon wave of exhaustion.
It came on hard as a Jones Beach breaker, the kind that smacks the wind out of your chest and then scours you, tumbling, across the green-lit underwater sand.
I tucked Parrish into her booster seat and started slicing up a small red apple, sleep deprivation’s bone-deep illogic making me wonder yet again why I always had to stay awake with the conscious twin when at that moment I ached with such visceral longing to abscond into the luxuriant bliss of her sister’s nap, right there on the kitchen floor.
While I was arranging the apple slices into a happy face on the chrome-yellow plastic of Parrish’s chair tray, the phone rang.
I shoved the last slice into my mouth on the way to the phone.
So it was a one-eyed happy face, who’d know? And if my child remembered this when she grew up and felt deprived, I’d tell her Mr. Happy Apple had been winking.
“Yo,” I said into the phone, hoping that might be a quasi-intelligible salutation through my juicy mouthful of Red Delicious chunks.
“Acetone,” said Mimi. “That and using a cigarette for a fuse, I’d say it was definitely the same guy.”
29
My love for you is untrammeled and pure, chère Mimi. Among all the world’s questioners of things flambé, you are and shall remain my one and only heart’s forensic desire, ma petite chou-fleur.”
“It’s petite chou.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Why would you call someone ‘my little cauliflower’?”
“Like cabbage is somehow more deeply romantic? At least cauliflower has ‘flower’ in it.”
“Granted,” she said.
“So when is this neighborhood meeting thing supposed to be?”
She told me and I wrote it down.
“I have to wrangle a babysitter,” I said, sighing. “And avoid getting myself further into the spousal shithouse.”
“For what?” she asked.
“For masquerading as a cub reporter when I should be mopping and vacuuming, apparently.
”
“In your calico dress and prairie bonnet?”
Happy Parrish waved a spit-shiny apple slice at me, current mouthful giving her cheeks the hemispheric breadth of a nut-hoarding squirrel’s.
You, my darling, are the twin most likely to be Heimliched.
“Hey, I get it,” said Mimi. “I’ve been married.”
“Kids?” I asked, sliding down against the kitchen door frame until I was sitting Indian-style on its threshold, straddling the shag-linoleum border.
I wanted to ask her what her husband had thought about the kind of work she did—whether she’d waited until their kids were grown to get serious about it.
“Terry, Chris, and Stewart from his first marriage,” she said. “Then we had Michael and Laura.”
“Five children? Mimi… wow. I am so going to stop whining now.”
“I never had twins, which is a project of an entirely different order—Everest without oxygen tanks. And whining, by the way, is how we all survive this part: diapers and no sleep and striving husbands who can’t understand why we didn’t pick up the dry cleaning.”
Another exhalation from me, on that point.
“No, I take it back,” she said. “ ‘Whining’ is the wrong word, and it’s not what you’re doing. Talking is how we survive.”
“Everyone?”
“Women.”
I closed my eyes, letting my head loll back against the door frame.
“We narrate the truth to one another,” said Mimi. “Only way you can maintain perspective on all the thousand petty little crap details we’re supposed to keep raking into piles day after day, make sense of, weave into goddamn afghans, cook for dinner…”
I sighed.
“Fevers and vomit and we’re-out-of-milk and what-the-hell-did-you-do-with-all-my-clean-socks—”
“Wait a second, you got the sock lecture?”
“Constantly,” she said.
“You’re really making me feel better, here, Mimi. Just hang up when I start sobbing uncontrollably over the Moebius hamster wheel of endless, thankless shit that is my life: insurmountable, with laundry pile and juice box for all.”
“That’s why you have to talk about it,” she said.
Valley of Ashes Page 15
