Acts of God

by Mary Morris

  “You’ve said that before. I know you think I did but I’m not really sure,” I told him, “but, anyway, you could too.”

  “I’m going to.” He squeezed my neck. “Just watch me.”

  When we got back to the room, Nick wanted to take a Jacuzzi bath. While the bath was getting ready, we ordered dinner in our room—seafood, salad, a bottle of California Chardonnay. Easing his way into the hot tub, Nick took a washcloth, dipped it in the eucalyptus suds, and began to wash me. He scrubbed the back of my neck and behind my ears. He let the washcloth dip under my arms, down my back. He brought it around in front of me, massaging beneath my breasts, along the ridges of my face. He covered me with suds and I lay back as the hot jets and the smell of eucalyptus and the motion of his hand on my skin made me drowsy.

  I dropped my head against his chest as he reached down to my belly. I opened my thighs and he rubbed me between my legs. He moved his hand up and down, letting the washcloth reach farther and farther, coming back up slowly. Then he dipped back down again, rubbing me as I drifted, the air filled with the smell of redwood and eucalyptus.

  Then we both got out, wrapped ourselves in the big terry-cloth robes, and made love slowly on the bed until we fell asleep. We woke when there was a knock at the door and a young waiter discreetly brought our dinner tray in, leaving it in the entranceway. Over dinner, we talked about Margaret and what we were going to do. “When are you going to tell her?” I asked.

  “When I get back. We aren’t even sleeping in the same room. We’re hardly together.”

  “But still, I’d feel better—”

  “It’s not like you’re taking me away from her. In most ways, except for Danielle, I’m already gone.” I kissed him on the lips, and he kissed me back. “All right, if you’d feel better, I’ll do it in a few weeks when the time seems right. Then we can be together.”

  “Yes, we can be together.”

  Then he lay back, staring at the ceiling. “You know, I’ve never done anything for myself. Everything has always been what other people—mainly my father—wanted me to do. Of course, he didn’t want me to marry Margaret. He thought she was trash. Maybe I just did it to get back at him. Because I thought it was the way to have my own life. Anyway, it didn’t work.” He leaned over and pulled me to him. “I want something that’s mine. My house, my work. Not what other people want me to have. Do you understand that, Tess?”

  “Yes, I do understand.”

  “I know you do.” He rested his face in my hair. “I know.” In bed at night we made our plans. In October he would move out. He’d take a small apartment in town to be near Danielle. Then we’d decide what we were going to do. We’d figure out a way to divide our time. He’d help me refinance the Eagger house. I’d spend as much time in Illinois as I could. It all seemed fitting somehow. That after all these years I could finally go home.

  “I’ve got this idea,” he said. “We should plan to meet somewhere in town. At Starbucks or the bookstore. Run into one another as if we’d just met.”

  “Oh, we could do it in front of the Italian cookbooks.”

  “That’s good,” Nick said with a laugh, “I’ll be working on my cooking anyway.”

  “People will see us; they’ll think we’ve just met. So when we start to see one another, it won’t be such a big deal.”

  “Yes, let’s do that,” he said. “Until then it will be our secret.”

  “Yes,” I said, kissing him on the nose.

  That night there was an angry storm at sea. Lightning forks shattered around us, thunder rolled like in some B-grade horror film. “I think a monster’s going to walk in the door,” I told him. Nick held me, stroking my hair. I told him about the little boy who got out of bed one night to go to the bathroom and lightning burned a “Z” over his bed. Like Zorro, I told him.

  “What happened to the boy?” Nick wanted to know.

  “He became a poet; I live in his house.”

  When we drove back up to my place the next day, the kids had made a dinner of spaghetti with broccoli and a green salad from our vegetable patch, which they’d neatly tended while I was away. They’d uncorked a wine bottle and set the table. I can’t remember when they’d last done those things. Ted was dressed in a polo shirt and he shook Nick’s hand. Jade did the same, looking him up and down the way she can do. But if I’d brought home a Martian, they would have approved. “Well, it’s nice to meet you,” Jade said so politely I almost didn’t recognize her. “We’ve heard so much about you.”

  Over dinner Nick kept telling them how lucky they were to have me as their mother. He told them how in grammar school and high school I’d been such a popular girl. Their eyes widened in disbelief. I don’t remember being that popular, but it was nice of him to tell the children that this was how he remembered me.

  That night after we made love, I could just make out his face, those deep blue eyes. The house was quiet, only the katydids sang outside. They’d been brought out in the storm. From my bed we listened to the rise and fall of their song.

  37

  When early fall came, I was called back to Illinois in part because of my mother. Art told me she had left Post-its all over the apartment with our names, phone numbers, and birthdays written on them. But I was also drawn back, not only by Nick, but by something deeper in me than I can name. Even from California I could almost smell the crispness in the air, the scent of burning leaves. It had been so long since I’d seen the leaves turn, the seasons change.

  If there is a place on the earth from where my life springs it is this place. This lake and this land, the golden light shining through the leaves as they turn, the hint of winter in the air, or the wetness of trails, the pull of the ground sucking down on your shoes and spitting you back again whole. I felt the pull of what I had known and what I had left behind. If longing has a tug, it is like that wet Illinois earth sucking on the soles of your feet.

  I hopped into a cab at O’Hare and the driver, a West Indian man, asked me where I wanted to go. I hesitated because I wanted to go to Winonah, to find Nick and take him away with me. But we had both agreed that we had to be patient. We had to wait. He was sorting out what he needed to do with his marriage and Danielle. And I was still not about to rush into anything. Besides, my mother needed looking after.

  The cab driver asked me again, but I gave him my mother’s address on Astor Place in the city. As he drove along the expressway, giant murals of Chicago Bulls were everywhere. The faces of Michael Jordon, Scottie Pippin, Dennis Rodman covered the facades of giant buildings. The light was already waning and an orange sunset illuminated the buildings. I breathed in deeply as if a great adventure lay before me. On the dashboard the man had a photograph of four little girls with beaming faces. “Are those your daughters?” I asked him, thinking I could pass the time with idle talk.

  “Yes,” he muttered, “those are my little angels.”

  “They’re beautiful,” I said, looking at the four little girls staring at me with broad smiles.

  “Yes.” He nodded, not saying anything for a moment. “But they need their mother.”

  “She’s not here?”

  He shook his head and I noticed the heaviness in his shoulders. “She was killed. She went to work one day. Her girlfriends picked her up just like every day. And then they were all killed, just like that. Some guy ran right into them. He walked away with scratches.” The man’s voice was shaking and he seemed ready to burst into tears. “I don’t know how we’re going to make it without her. My little girls come to me and ask me to braid their hair. I don’t know how to braid hair. How can you explain this? One day she is there. And then she is gone. Nothing will ever be the same. It makes me wonder.…”

  He paused, unsure if he should go on.

  “What does it make you wonder?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I go to church and pray to God for strength and then my little girl comes in crying because there’s no one to braid her hair and I just start to wonder.
” He shook his head, but didn’t say another thing. We drove the rest of the way in the silence. When he dropped me off, I gave him a big tip and he looked up at me with his watery eyes.

  The smell off the lake was fishy and humid and it was already the start of Indian summer. Smelt fishermen lined the bicycle path along the beachfront. I didn’t feel ready to go upstairs because I knew that once I went up, that’s where I’d stay. Instead I dropped my bag off with my mother’s doorman and ran through the underpass beneath the drive. I tried to shake off the image of those four little girls whose father did not know how to braid their hair. It sent a chill through me.

  Along the shore the smelt fishermen sat with their pots, their sleeping bags, their small fires burning. Most would spend the night here. It was already growing dark and as I bent to look into the lake, I could see silver bodies, darting, rising to the surface, then racing back down again.

  * * *

  My mother’s apartment stank of cigarettes and despair. Sour milk was in the fridge, along with too many cartons of leftover Chinese food. She sat in a housecoat in front of the television, remote in her hand. When I kissed her hello, she seemed bewildered, as if she didn’t know why I was there. For two days I tidied up her apartment. I took her to the beauty parlor to get her hair washed and set, then to Bloomies for lunch. When she seemed better and her apartment was spic and span, I phoned Nick at his house. He picked up on the first ring as if he’d been expecting my call. I had already decided that if Margaret answered I’d hang up. “Thank God,” he said, his voice sounding relieved. “I’m so glad to hear from you. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, but I want to see you.”

  He told me he’d meet me the following night.

  The next night Nick met me at a restaurant in the Loop. He wore a jacket and tie and swept me into his arms, held me to him. “God, Tessie, I’ve missed you.” His hand slid to my back. We ate dinner slowly, talking about our plans. He had told Margaret he would be leaving.

  “How did she take it?”

  “She took it well. It hardly seemed to bother her at all.”

  “That’s strange, isn’t it?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing surprises me.”

  After dinner Nick wanted to show me something. We got in his car, headed east, then south, past Buckingham Fountain, past the Field Museum until he came to Soldier Field. He drove around it once, twice. Soldier Field rose large and circular in the dark, right in the middle of the Outer Drive, like some Roman amphitheater.

  Nick made the circle one more time, then pulled off into the parking lot. “Come on,” he said, “I want to walk with you around here.” We got out and stood in the empty lot, the huge round building looming before us. Nick stood, staring at the wall beyond, which was the field where the Chicago Bears played.

  “I never saw my dad play here,” he said. “But I’d always wanted to. I always wished I had.”

  “He wouldn’t let you?”

  “No.” He laughed. “I wasn’t born. I was born after his career was over. I saw videos and newsreels I saw him throw balls farther than anyone ever had, run faster, harder. Not bad for a Jewish boy. I went with him when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. He cried like a baby. He used to tell me how people would shout his name, hissing over the s’es like a snake to cheer him on. He said how he loved the applause and he loved the crowds, but more than anything he loved the game. He would have played his whole life if his knees hadn’t given out.”

  The thick, pale limestone of Soldier Field was illuminated by floodlights. Except for the whirr of traffic everything was quiet. “Sometimes I come here, just to try and imagine what it was like for him. The roar of the crowds, to be a hero like that. He did what he wanted to do and he did it well,” Nick said. He pulled me to him and kissed me. “I’m going to do what I want to do as well.” His hands groped under my shirt, touching the skin of my back, going up and down my ribs.

  There was something monolithic, impenetrable about the walls of the stadium that rose before us. “My father never did what he wanted either. Something held him back,” I said, wondering if this was the explanation for all that had transpired in my father’s life. “It’s good to do what you want.”

  Nick nodded silently. He led me to the car and we headed back past Buckingham Fountain, which was lit like a magic lantern, changing colors. He said, “My parents came here on their first date. They took off their shoes and jumped in the fountain.” I tried to imagine my own parents barefoot and splashing in the ornate fountain. “You know,” I said, “the lights and water are set from a computer in Atlanta.”

  “Really? How does that work?”

  “I don’t know. I just read it somewhere. I thought it was interesting that a fountain here would be controlled by something so far away.”

  “So, what’s the point?” His lips were pursed and he had a scowl.

  “There’s no real point. I read it somewhere.” I touched his arm. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I’m tired.” But it seemed as if he was angry about something. As if he needed to tell somebody off. I watched the speedometer climb to 70, 75, 80 as he sped down the Outer Drive. His strength was focused on keeping the gas pedal down.

  “Maybe we should slow down. We aren’t in a hurry, are we?”

  “I need to get home,” he said. His face was filled with worry. “And I have things on my mind.”

  “What things?”

  But he just shook his head. He turned off the Drive, cut through the side streets near where my mother lived. He was still driving too fast when we heard the thud. It had a dull, soft feel.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  He shook his head, sucked in his lip. He kept on driving. For a moment I thought he was leaving the scene of an accident, but he drove around the block. When we came around the corner, a small crowd had formed. I heard a woman crying. It’s a child, I thought. He’s killed a child.

  Nick pulled over, got out of the car, and fell to his knees. A chocolate-colored cocker spaniel lay limp by the side of the road. Blood seeped from its mouth. The woman who cradled the dog was crying. “I am so sorry,” he said, touching the dog, crying. “I am so sorry.… I thought it was a child. I thought I’d killed a child.”

  “Look what you’ve done,” she said, shaking her dead dog. “You better be more careful,” the woman screamed at him, “or next time it will be.”

  Tears streamed down her face. Her jacket was soaked in blood. Nick took out his wallet and tried to offer her money. “I don’t want your money.” She pushed him away. “You better watch out,” the woman said, clutching her dog.

  * * *

  The Motel 6 by the highway just outside of Winonah had generic rooms—plaid bedspreads, scratchy sheets. The room smelled of smoke and stale air. When I pulled back the curtain, it had a view of the parking lot and the highway. Of course, I knew these rooms well. They were the motel rooms of my youth, the “acancy” I longed for. It was where I’d once felt the most at home, but as I opened the drawer the Bible was in, everything smelled tacky and sad.

  When he had dropped me off the previous night, Nick and I had agreed to meet here. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. The dead dog seemed like an omen; of what I did not know, but I thought that something bad was going to happen to me. Besides, this motel didn’t seem like the place to consummate love. I wished there were a bed-and-breakfast in Winonah. Maybe I would open one.

  I checked in early and had about two hours to kill until Nick left work. I phoned my mother to be sure she was all right and she was, though she kept asking when I’d be home. Then I called Vicky to say I was in town. I paced and wanted to smoke a cigarette, which I hadn’t done in years. I didn’t think Nick would show up before seven and I didn’t want to sit in the room.

  A bowling alley was next door so I went over and ordered a Diet Coke. I was nursing it at the bar, the sound of smashing pins around me, when Patrick walked in with a couple of guys and a bowling bag. He
spotted me right away. “Tess!” He gave the boys a high sign and said he’d meet them in a few minutes. He sat down next to me and ordered a beer. “What’re you doing here?” He gave me a peck on the cheek. “Oh, you don’t have to tell me. I can guess.”

  “Can you?” I said.

  “You know, it’s a small town. Word gets around somehow.”

  “So what do you know?”

  He paused, breathed into his beer, rubbed his hands up and down the stem. “I know you’ve been seeing Nick. I’m not saying this because I’m jealous or anything—though of course I am…” He gave his funny little laugh, the one I’d always liked.

  “I thought it was our secret.”

  “This is Winonah, Tess. People talk. In fact, Margaret’s said things.… Nick’s a good guy, but I just don’t see the two of you. I don’t get it.”

  I was wishing I’d stayed in my room and started feeling annoyed. “There’s nothing for you to get. It is what it is.”

  He raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, sure. Look, you can do whatever you want.” He finished his beer, got up from the bar stool. “Of course, I wish it had been me, but it’s not about that. I’d just be a little careful.”

  “Because I might get hurt?”

  “Because someone might get hurt,” he said. Then he picked up his bowling bag, making a face as if it were heavier than it really was, and walked toward the lane where his friends were waiting. I finished sipping my Coke, watching Patrick’s lane. When he got up, he gave me a wink, hunched over the ball, and released it with a clear, even step, a good follow-through. Pins clattered as they tumbled down.

  * * *

  When I got back to the motel, Nick was leaning against my door. He had that pinched look he’d had on his face the night before when he was driving too fast. “Where have you been?” he asked, an impatient edge to his voice.