“Five years.”
“Right? It’s a long time. But he’s a good dad, I guess. Quiet. A phone call is, like, excruciating. Three words: ‘How’s it going?’ I have to drink four cups of coffee and just talk. He used to spank me for the smallest infractions. Till I was, like, sixteen. I hated him for years. Maybe I still do.” Strum. Strum.
Eric found himself interested, also ready to sleep, very cozy with her, deep satisfaction and surfeit despite the thwarted kisses, a kind of inner glow, little guilt, none at all, no sign of Jim in his upper consciousness, her growing warmth, her compliments. There was the faintest flicker in the room from the stove downstairs, just the light that came through the vents in the firebox door, just those very small slits, and yet light enough for him to make out her eyes shining as she examined his face.
He murmured, “What does he do?”
“See?” Strum, strum. “You can do it. Ask me questions. I give you answers: He was a fireman when I was little. How cool is that? They brought the hook and ladder to my grade school and he let us climb all over it. You couldn’t possibly be more popular in first grade after that. And later he was the fire chief in town, then the fire commissioner for the county, I think, then for the whole state, a pretty important job. Very Republican. Now he’s head of Homeland Security for the state, which according to him means he does almost nothing at all for ten times more money than he got when he was doing everything. He’s racist. His mother speaks Irish.” Strum.
“Your mother was Sarah?”
“Sarah Elizabeth. She died when I was twelve. I thought of her when I was making ramen today. She’d cook me buckets of ramen. She wasn’t well for the last couple of years and could be heinous. Now I can see it wasn’t her fault but I wasn’t very sad when she died. I got so much attention, for one thing.”
“But the attention wore off?”
“Not really. I had some great teachers, and they took me under their armpits. I didn’t fuck them like you did. Mrs. Kurtosh—we’re still in touch. She’s why I wanted to teach. She came to my wedding, which was nice except it caused a ruckus with Dad and his date, this Monica cow, who makes a big scene at my rehearsal dinner, mine, because there isn’t a place for her, you know, but there’s a place for my old teacher?”
“Under their wings, you mean.”
“Don’t be a dick.”
Strum.
“Inness,” he whispered. Then covered the emotion, spoke louder: “Inness O’Keefe, no middle name. Went into the woods and was never the same.”
“Heh.”
He said, “Heh yourself. Where was this wedding?”
“In Providence, Rhode Island. Plain little Frenchy Catholic church. Jimmy’s grandparents and like nine-tenths of the extended family live down there, a couple of hundred aunts and uncles and cousins and step-this and step-that. Really fucking nice people, pffft. And half as far for my family as travelling to northern Maine from Jersey would have been. Even though I only had, like, six people: my dad and his parents, who are bizarrely weird, and then my brother Kit and his boyfriend, the two most flamboyant Creamsicles on the planet, sweetie pies. And Monica, who matched them pretty well, accessory for accessory. We had our sort-of honeymoon at a rental house on the water down there, his uncle’s property, but we had to pay for it, and not very nice, not compared to the Jersey Shore. Like, beaches made out of rocks.”
“Before you said the Samoset out on the coast here in Maine. You said that your honeymoon was at the Samoset.”
“Did I say that? I guess that was Danielle’s honeymoon. Jimmy and I went to the Samoset before he deployed, though. It wasn’t lovely. I lied. Your witness.”
“You didn’t say it was lovely.” He tried dropping his hand to her belly, but she held it harder, strummed her ribs more emphatically with it. He said, “Jimmy’s family is Catholic?”
“Catholic.”
“So that revival tent? That was for real?”
“No. That was Danielle. Danielle makes things up, apparently.”
“I’m getting it now. You were just protecting yourself.”
“We can discuss that on our date. But I, Inness, had to turn Catholic for the wedding. To please Jim’s mom. Because we’re like Irish Protestant, that old business. Like I cared. I took a class for eleven weeks, half of it in like French Canadian. I didn’t understand a thing. And it’s all so bloody, why’s it so bloody? All these Jesus dolls on crosses, dripping? Everyone in Presque was up in arms if I didn’t go to church every fucking Sunday. And Jimmy, he was into it. Put the host on his tongue and he’s got tears in his eyes, eating Jesus? What the fuck. He knew just how much to turn up at the cathedral, and he always did all the picnics and good deeds and everything. Somehow no one noticed that I was the one making the, like, Jell-O and fruit. He’d shout at me if I didn’t dress up perfect. He punched the refrigerator and broke the toilet off the floor. I mean that was funny—the water was spraying up to the ceiling—and I laughed, big mistake. Really, it’s too fucked up, what he would say to me. And what he’d do. I can never tell you. I never will tell you. It’s very, very private.”
Eric said, “You don’t want to betray him.”
“I just don’t want you to judge him.”
“Are you afraid of him?”
The front wall of the house gave a groan.
Thirty-Seven
WHEN HE WOKE it was only maybe five minutes later. Inness O’Keefe was still talking, something very involved about her sister. She still had charge of his hand. Her sister was not a lot of help. Her sister did not call. Her sister had disowned her, actually. Her sister lived in Maryland in a big house. Her sister was married to a finance guy. They had money. This was a moral deficit, it seemed.
When at last she paused, Eric said, “Say her name again?”
“You weren’t listening?”
“I just missed her name, is all.”
“It’s Siobhan.”
“Older? Younger?”
“You weren’t listening at all.”
“I fell asleep. Just for a minute. I heard about her kids. So she’s older?”
“Much fucking older. She’s like my spare mother. She’s a Terrible and always was. And I didn’t mention her kids. I never mention her kids. I’m not allowed to see her kids.” Strum. “I was a pretty bad not-daughter to her. I admit it. I put her through hell.”
His other arm ached, caught beneath him. So he rocked to free it and with one smooth motion pushed his hand underneath her, got his fingers on her warm back, his elbow under her, maybe not so comfortable for her, but she didn’t protest. He said, “So, okay. What happened to your ankle? You wanted to tell me.”
“It happened to Danielle.”
“Or to that ghost.”
“Let’s say angel, instead. An angel sent here to tear you away from Alison. Also to test you. And by the way, you’re failing.”
“You will get your wings. You will get them.”
“I hate that movie. The angel should have let him drown, I’m not kidding.” Something was rustling in the eaves. A mouse that had stumbled on riches, shreds of raw-milk Reggiano.
Eric said, “What about your ankle?”
Strum. “What do you want to know?”
“Well, how long has it been hurt? A couple of weeks? That’s kind of a long time for the kind of bruising you have. It might be broken. Seriously. Something’s not healing in there. Maybe a bone chip? We’ll get you an X-ray when we’re out of here.”
“Right, with my nonexistent health insurance.”
“You’ve got insurance through the military, no? Tricare, right?”
Strum. “Do I?”
“I’d practically guarantee it. Spouse of an active-service Army Ranger? If not, we’ll make it happen.”
“Fine. Eric. Seriously.” She pushed his hand off her, but didn’t let go of it, in fact gathered it back in. “You’re such a fucking lawyer. Am I under oath? Because I think I lied about my ankle. I can’t remember what I told you
. I’m sure I lied. But it was one of those first colder days, like two weeks ago, you’re right. Only two weeks ago. Like a little after Christmas? I wasn’t sure. I just guessed. I sang ‘Ho-ho-ho, who wouldn’t go.’ But it was warm like summer. A few days after that.”
“It was a long, warm fall,” he said. “And Christmas was actually hot. People were out on the golf course.”
“You play fucking golf?”
“Not any more. Very seldom.”
“And you played on Christmas?”
“A couple of us who were alone, yeah.”
“That is so lame.”
Now his arm underneath her was falling asleep. He stretched it further, his fingers sliding down her back, found he could reach the band of her panties, then a little further.
She dropped his one hand, reached to control the other.
“You’re a boy after all,” she said, firmly placing both his hands back on her side, pinching his fingers together forcefully.
“My cage is open,” he said. “Someone opened my cage.”
She didn’t seem to find that funny. She said, “You have to promise never to play golf again. Promise me. Golf? That’s sick. Promise me right now.”
“What’s in it for me?”
She pinched his fingers together hard and said, “I already gave you a fucking hand job.”
“Okay. No golf.”
“Really, never.”
“I promise.”
“The guys in Jimmy’s unit play golf. And Jimmy. He would kick your ass. He plays with one club, like a five-iron, even putting, and he still gets par, thinks he’s all that.”
“I’ve never gotten par.”
She pinched his fingers harder.
He said, “Can we get back to your ankle?”
The mouse began its return trip to the kitchen corner, subtle passage in the silent eaves. They kept listening. No other sound. Maybe the river shushing by, full of snow. The heartbeat of Inness O’Keefe, or maybe Eric. After a long while, she began to whisper, a kid telling a secret that he had to strain to hear, words on the breath out, words on the breath in: “I walked down to the rocks like I always did, with both of the good towels and my Pantene and everything, the soap and everything, my brush, all that stuff normal people use, all my Inness stuff, and I’d been bathing down there all summer, you know, so I just stripped—my good pair of pants and my real sweater and Jimmy’s thick, thick flannel shirt and my very good underwear, just piled it all on a rock, and then I stepped in and it was a lot colder than in the summer, of course, fucking freezing. And I dove.”
“You dove?”
“I dove. I dove as far as I could. Past the rocks, missed everything. It gets deep. I hit my knee, but not too bad, and got out into the deep part out there, way over your head. It was really strong. And really fucking cold. I couldn’t hardly breathe. And I’m shooting downstream. Professor DeMarco always said not to go out in high water, which it definitely was. She meant like don’t go out in high water in summer. I’m a great swimmer. Eric. And it’s a lucky thing, or anyway today it seems lucky, because I had to swim a long way. It was like my body took over.”
“You did this intentionally?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
“But you swam.”
She pinched his fingers together, controlling those hands, and a good thing. “My body kicked and swam. I was furious with my body. But now I’m glad. The river took me down a long way. Finally, I managed to pull up on a, like, beach—I’m nude and fucking freezing and there’s nothing there but sand so I run up through the woods, but then with like a hundred yards to go I caught my ankle in the rocks and fell really hard, really hard, and that’s when I hurt it, like crunch. And I hit my head, too. I barely got back up here, I mean crawling and shivering and bleeding and half knocked-out and panting and everything else. And all, like, ‘Heaven Awaits,’ which is what Jim’s mother was always saying. It’s all boulders down there. And I’m in the cabin and I’m like, you can’t even fucking kill yourself right! I was so distraught. I didn’t know what to do—I found that filet knife and couldn’t do anything, I don’t know, anything real. Instead I chopped my hair. I didn’t light a fire after, nothing, just nude and naked and my hair cut off and my ear’s bleeding like crazy and I’m fucking freezing and getting this feeling of floating off into the next world. But nothing like that, because I must have gotten in bed, anyway, I warmed up and was still here the next morning. I fell into total darkness after that. Like this total torpulent turtle under the mud with a twisted ankle. Barely alive, a couple of weeks maybe, no effort to live. Then one of those warm mornings came and I realized I needed groceries. I still didn’t go out. Too afraid. But finally I did. And that’s when I found you.”
“And you hadn’t eaten anything till that pizza I made?”
“I had a ramen left. And there was rice.”
They lay quietly. Maybe they were going to sleep. Eric’s post-orgasmic serenity had evaporated. His pants were plain wet. Inness O’Keefe’s grip on his hands began to falter. What had he done now? Her breath caught, deepened. Her grip loosened on his hands. What had he done?
Inness snoring, Eric slipped out of bed, climbed downstairs, the only safe course.
Thirty-Eight
AS FOR ALISON and him, they hadn’t fought, normally. They’d go through a kind of steaming détente, discuss whatever the issue was reasonably, no angry tones, though often carefully vicious phrases would go back and forth, stuff that would hurt only later and then echo and amplify, occupy whole afternoons and weeks of obsessive thought, phrases like “emotional impotence” from her mouth, and “coldhearted insecurity” from his. She might discuss his supposed low libido in clinical tones, but the very subject was meant to vanquish something in him, something that Inness O’Keefe had made rise again, and not his pecker. Alison was, in fact, nearly sexless, now that he considered the matter. Not an ounce of libido. Even in the height of their passion, those first few months of being in love, even then her hunger was muted, cautious, clipped and tidy. Anything more that arose was treated as a rebellion of her body. “Fingers aren’t made for that,” she’d said in the midst of passion early in their courting. Then how did she masturbate? He’d wanted to say. He hadn’t asked, never asked, never had a glimmer of such a thing on her part in their years of marriage, had the impression, simply, that she never thought about her body or his, cared little for the whole panoply of human sexual feeling.
Then, of course, came that buffoon of a state senator to explode the myth.
Eric had forgotten to bring the lamp down the ladder with him, but preferred the dark warmth of the closed stove anyway, just glimmers of flame through the air intake on the firebox door, and more efficient. Then, suddenly, he was exhausted. He cleaned his teeth as best he could with the rag at the tub, scrubbed his face with hot water from one of the small pots, then stripped out of his clothes, washed under his arms almost violently, dropped his besmirched trousers and boxers and washed his privates, washed his butt, what they’d done in the Navy on maneuvers, peacetime, when their lives had been almost luxurious. The washing had a Navy name he couldn’t recall, so what. He got dressed again fast and minus the underwear—realized that he still felt good back somewhere in him, some satisfied part of him, something slightly animal to pit against the guilty Apollonian: Dionysius, that’s who it was, awakened within him, ardor and laughter and abandon, but caring, too, and warmth, and fellow feeling, compassion, the stuff Apollo couldn’t muster.
Splash and dash, that was it, that’s what they’d called it.
The floor was brutally cold, even more so through his absurdly thin dress socks. He retrieved the heavy couch cushions—dense old horsehair—and made a bed, lay on it under the old coat shivering in its stench, the dispassionate side of him trying to rationalize, rehearsing speeches, even a confession to Alison, then an apology to Inness O’Keefe, whom he’d taken advantage of. He got up twice and added sticks to the fire, but they we
re only sticks and burned quickly, hopeless. His boxers on the floor suddenly embarrassed him, and he stuffed them in the fire, too: might as well get some BTUs from his folly. After what was likely considerably less than an hour, all but literally freezing, he gave in, carried the dense cushions up the ladder one at a time—disaster if he fell—carefully lifted them past the bed in the cramped space and past Inness O’Keefe so as not to disturb her, went back for the miserable coat, climbed with it cautiously, slipped past Inness, made himself a little nest under the eaves in the insistent warmth up there, lay on it, pulled the coat over him. He’d proved he couldn’t be trusted beside her, simple as that. The cushions were brutally cold. She’d had to fend him off. He had not even the excuse of wine, as she’d pointed out. He imagined Alison reacting when he told her. And he thought of all the men who’d used Inness O’Keefe before Jimmy grabbed hold, logs and sticks and twigs in the fire. He was no better than the rest of them. He’d trek her out in the morning, he’d follow up on all his promises, the help she needed, even the golf—he’d quit golf, show her what a man’s word meant, not that golf was so important. And he’d leave her alone except for that help.
Then he remembered he’d left the firebox door open a crack in his quest for heat—that would only eat their last wood faster. The thing needed banking. He slithered back out of his makeshift bed, stole past Inness in hers, climbed back down the ladder quietly, poked at the ashes of his underpants (still pinstriped!), found a piece of bark in the woodbox, a stick on the floor, a bundle of pine needles, several cones, offered these to the coals, covered it all with ashes, shut the door firmly, stood in the faint, orangey light. Something popped sharply under the house, popped again. Then silence, or not silence but a kind of shushing, the river moving past. And the stove sucking air as the volatile pine needles caught. That mouse, somewhere close. I wish I may and I wish I might. Goodnight, my someone, goodnight.
He heard Inness stirring. Rustling and squeaking and then her pee hitting the side of her bucket. Their first night together seemed a month past, more than that, when he’d resisted her, when he’d still known who he was. How had the poles gotten reversed? He heard her fixing the bed covers, heard her sit back on the bed, heard her pat the blankets around her. “Jimmy?” she said. Very sleepy. “Jim?”
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