Tonight she’d fixed halibut steaks with lemon and parsley and bread crumbs, an iffy thing for the kids in the first place, since even the blandest fish tasted like, well, fish. There was white rice (brown had triggered some memorable scenes), and a selection of vegetables served in separate receptacles to accommodate the child who would not eat carrots and the one who would eat carrots but not broccoli and there was corn, which everybody ate, and some chopped-up iceberg lettuce with the gloppy pink bottled salad dressing they liked. Sometimes she added a little flaxseed oil or pumpkin seeds because she had to be sneaky about anything hard-core nutritious. Her kids were like anybody else’s kids. They’d live on Cocoa Puffs and chicken nuggets if she let them. Food in, food out. It was a constant effort to keep them fed, requiring guile and vigilance. Young humans seemed intent on either starving or poisoning themselves. You couldn’t relax for a moment. Because if she did, what else might she let slip away from her?
What if the children were not properly fed? What if one were to forget to feed them at all?
When Eric asked her how she felt these days, she always told him she was better. Sleeping better. Coping better. Fewer ups and downs. And he said good, good. It was what he wanted to hear. If she had said, I am dissolving at the edges, I answer to the same name as always, but I no longer wish to be that person, he would have been alarmed, he would have felt it necessary to intervene in some unpleasant way.
Jane turned the oven down to low. The halibut could hold a little longer. She went out into the living room and watched for Eric’s car. She shouldn’t let herself stand there waiting and waiting, worn down by dull fretting because he wasn’t home when she thought he should be, but it was irresistible to do so. It was part of her ritual of dinnertime, like a cocktail before sitting down to eat.
But on this evening, watching the long spring twilight deepen and the friendly lights coming on all along the street—wouldn’t her own house look just as serene and welcoming from outside—she saw the car turn in at their driveway. It paused there a long time, and Jane couldn’t see what, if anything, he was doing. Talking on the phone, maybe. Then the car moved on up the drive and into the garage.
Jane told the kids to turn off the television and wash up, and they straggled in at the same time Eric came in through the back door, and there was that pleasant bustle and confusion and warmth that made you feel, if only for as long as it lasted, that all was as it was meant to be. Mom and Dad exchanging a quick, busy-day kiss. Boy and girl setting out the glasses of milk as directed, jostling a little—“Quit it!” “You quit it!” Mildly reprimanded. Dad heading upstairs, saying he’d be down in two seconds, which of course he was not. He had to change clothes, he had to visit the bathroom, and the children had to be told, severely, to wait. Mom herself tired of waiting, but so she did, and eventually here was Dad, rubbing his hands and saying he was starved, and it all looked great.
Robbie said the fish tasted stinky, he didn’t want any. Jane said he should eat it anyway, finish what he had on his plate. Eric said that if this was some places in the world, say Japan, they would be eating fish for breakfast. Robbie said he wouldn’t live in Japan for a million dollars. Grace asked her mother if she could have boiled eggs instead of fish. Jane said she was not fixing different meals for everyone. Grace said her stomach hurt. Eric said Uh oh, they would have to do an emergency stomach transplant. Robbie said that was because Grace had worms growing in her stomach, and that made Grace start to whimper. Eric said that he was just kidding, she was such a silly girl, and got up to pour her some 7UP to settle her stomach. Jane objected to the 7UP on the grounds that it was empty calories, not to mention all the sugar, and why did they even have it in the house. Eric said a little wouldn’t hurt her. It was for medicinal purposes. Doctor’s orders. He came back to the table with a glass of ice and the soda can and reached over Jane to give it to Grace. Jane smelled the fresh, cutting scent of the aftershave he had just applied, an astringent, cedarwood scent, and that was when she knew.
She did not know the entirety of it, and she did not yet even fully understand what she knew. But she stiffened in her chair and her insides turned to gravel. Robbie said that he wanted a 7UP too and everyone waited for Jane to tell him no but she didn’t, and after a moment Eric headed out to the kitchen to get him his own glass. “Eat your vegetables,” Jane said, although it was unclear to whom she was speaking.
When the meal was over, Jane stood at the kitchen sink, feeding the food scraps into the garbage disposal. Its mechanical mouth the final consumer of some considerable portion of the dinner. Eric and the children were watching television together, some movie about a Saint Bernard that caused comic misadventures. Robbie wanted a dog. Grace wanted a cat. They had the names picked out already. Jingles for the dog, Socks for the cat.
Why else cover himself with scent, if not to disguise some other scent?
It should not have come as a surprise. Men were what they were and they did what they did. Did she care what he did? She wanted not to care. But even more, she had wanted not to know.
The television laughed and the children laughed along with it. Eric said something she couldn’t make out, his teasing tone of voice. He’d given up on her. Who could blame him? She had nearly given up on herself. She was the frigid freak, the cold crazy he was stuck with.
She had finished with the dishes and turned the kitchen light off so that the room was dim but still watchful, its machinery humming and at the ready. Now she stood, turned the lights back on, and went rummaging through the cupboards. Of course she had purged the kitchen of anything synthetically delicious, so the options were limited. She found an old package of instant butterscotch pudding, mixed it with milk, and poured it into four small glass dishes. The glossy brown paste quivered and firmed. There was not much in it that had anything to do with actual butterscotch. It was only a chemically stabilized, edible substance. Well, at least there was milk. She found a tray and some paper napkins and spoons and carried it all into the family room.
“What’s this?” Eric said. Surprised. She’d never done such a thing, a ’50s housewife thing, as bring something in on a tray.
“Butterscotch pudding.” She set it down on the coffee table. Robbie and Grace scooted off the couch to get to it. Eric gave her a smile that had a question in it.
“I just thought, you know, some more protein.”
“Well that’s nice.” He reached for one of the bowls. Jane caught another whiff of bottled scent. “What?” Jane shook her head. “Kids, what do you say?”
“Thank you.”
“Thanks Mom.”
“You’re welcome.” Someday they might issue thank yous without being prodded, and with some semblance of sincerity. Right now it was only a goal. Jane picked up the remaining pudding but could not bring herself, yet, to eat. The kids were wading into theirs.
Eric ate a few spoonfuls, then set his bowl down. “I’m still full from dinner. It’s good, though. I can’t remember the last time I had pudding. What gave you the idea?”
“It’s not some huge deal. I just felt like it.” It irritated her that she was apparently so fixed and joyless in her ways, so puritanical about what they ate, that it did seem to be a huge deal. On the television, the giant dog was running down the street with the family in a car behind it, honking and calling. Then the screen cut away to a commercial. “How’s the movie?” Jane asked.
“I want a dog. A puppy,” Robbie said. “Not a Saint Bernard. A police dog that would bite people. Everybody else has a dog but us.”
“Everybody else does not have a police dog,” Jane said.
Eric said, “We’ve talked about this.” He was using his most weighty and Dad-like tone of voice. “You need to be older so you can take care of it.”
“I am too old enough. I can feed it and play with it and teach it to shake hands.”
“There’s a lot more to it than that,” Eric
told him. “There’s getting home from school on time so you can walk it. There’s grooming. Then we’d have to take it to the vet, get it shots and checkups. It’s an investment of time and of money. A dog isn’t a toy you can leave on a shelf when you’re tired of playing with it.”
“Would you still want to call it Jingles?” Jane asked. “That doesn’t sound much like a police dog.”
“Maybe Killer,” Robbie said.
“A police dog, you mean like, a German shepherd?”
“I don’t think you should encourage him,” Eric said. “Unless you want to be the one doing all the work.”
“We never had a dog growing up,” Jane said. “It was like we missed out.” She had a vague, wistful notion of the dog revitalizing them, providing them a rallying point, something they could all love. Rin Tin Tin, the dog that saved my marriage.
“If he gets a dog, then I get a cat,” Grace piped up.
“My dog is gonna chase the stupid cat and bite it.”
“Mom!”
“This is a good way to not get either one,” Jane said, collecting the empty pudding bowls and piling them on the tray.
“Yes, you’re fighting like cats and dogs,” said witty Eric, with a smile at Jane. She smiled back.
Nothing had changed. Everything might go on as before.
And if nothing changed, if nothing either of them did made any difference, how important was this shared life?
Then it was time for bed, and all the hectic negotiations involved. Yes, they could watch the end of one video but not the beginning of another. Then on to which pair of pajamas was acceptable, how bright (or dim) the light from the hallway should be, who was not sleepy, who needed a doll, a snack, a kiss. Robbie was given permission to read one more chapter in his Heroes of the Revolutionary War book. Jane supposed there was a reason that the Revolutionary War was considered appropriate for younger children. No distressing subtexts like slavery or concentration camps. Grace, who was sensitive to disturbances of all kinds, especially those from the skin on in, said that one of her ears hurt. Her ear hurt and her head felt funny, which was the drill for so many previous ear infections. Grace’s bedspread was pink, as was the shaded lamp next to the bed. It gave her face a hectic, reflected glow.
Did she want Daddy to look at it? Daddy was summoned and looked in Grace’s ear with his big silver Ear Thingamajig, which made Grace squeal. “Hold still,” Eric said. Yes, the ear was a little red. Grace could have some children’s Tylenol and a warm compress.
Jane said that she’d take care of her, and Eric said, If you’re sure you’re OK with it. Eric could not be expected to sit up late with a sick child when he had to get to work in the morning. It was the way they were accustomed to arranging things. Jane turned out Grace’s bedside light and lay down beside her, holding the wrung-out washcloth to the sore ear. Her daughter’s body was still so small and light-boned, Jane could cradle most of her with one arm. Grace fussed, then slept, woke, fussed some more, slept. Jane slept for a time herself, and woke to darkness and a quiet house.
Eric must have gone to bed. Jane got up, careful not to disturb Grace, whose sleep had a damp, furious quality that spoke of fever. She used the bathroom in the hall, came out, checked Grace again. Instead of going in to her own bed, she went to the little back bedroom they used for storage and projects, cleared off the small single bed, wrapped herself in an old quilt, and slept on and off, waking to go in to Grace. She still felt warm, and her breathing had a clotted sound. Jane considered waking Eric but decided it was best to wait things out.
In the morning Grace had a temperature of 101 and threw up twice. Eric said he would take her to the pediatrician and let Jane catch a little more sleep. “Thank you,” Jane said. She wondered if he was being solicitous because of his secret misbehavior. But then, any distress involving the children made them close ranks and unite and turned them, at least for a time, into better partners.
They decided that Robbie could go to school, although he said he wanted to stay home too. “You’re fine,” Jane said, although if one child was sick, it was usually only a matter of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Jane took a shower and made up the bed that Eric had left rumpled. Then she went back into the spare bedroom and slept there.
Grace came home with antiviral drugs and Pedialyte. Jane put her to bed on clean sheets and with a plastic wastebasket next to the bed in case she couldn’t make it to the bathroom in time. Eric sat on the bed next to her and took her pulse and listened to her heart and lungs with his stethoscope. He told Grace that she was a silly monkey and that she had the monkey flu. Grace, pink-cheeked and teary, said that she didn’t want to be a monkey. Eric told Jane to call Dr. Jarling if the fever didn’t break or if she got dehydrated. “Call me too, I’ll make sure they know to come and get me.”
“How worried should we be?”
“Not worried, just cautious. Jarling doesn’t think it’s the flu. More like a stray enterovirus. Check and see if she gets a rash, or mouth sores. We should be able to keep her at home.”
Jane, parsing this, understood that there might indeed be reason to worry, but that Eric, like all doctors, was wary of getting too far ahead of himself. He put both hands on Jane’s shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. “So. Push fluids, once you’re sure she can keep them down. Check for fever. And rash. Any breathing difficulties, you get on it.”
“Yes,” Jane said, feeling off-balance. From lack of sleep, from anxiety over Grace. And like a reflection floating over a glass door, this other condition, in which she and Eric were husband and wife, and another reflection on top of that one, what people meant when they said those words, the weight of expectations and history, and yet another layer that had to do with bodies, the curious things that people did with them, the incongruity of those private episodes compared with the public ones, just as it was incongruous to think of their tired and worried selves, she and Eric, as bodies that might come together, break apart, and come together again. So that if she tried to keep the idea of Eric having sex with another woman in focus, she had to fall through different layers of seeing and knowing, each one blurring into or obscuring the other. And what would that have to do with her sick child? How could you hold any other thought but that in your mind? Sometimes Jane thought this was what was wrong, or at least different, about her: the world broke itself into these disconnected and jarring fragments that she could not assemble into a whole.
“What is it?” Eric said, and Jane said it was nothing, which she knew annoyed him, but for now they were both intent on their daughter instead of each other, and so there was no argument.
Eric drove away. She had almost three hours before Robbie would be home from school and would have to be entertained and catered to and kept out of Grace’s way. She took Grace’s temperature, which had fallen by half a degree, then brought her a soft-boiled egg and buttered toast cut into soldiers. Grace said she wasn’t hungry and Jane said to eat just a little of it. “Wait, first let me see the inside of your mouth.” Grace obediently opened her mouth and let Jane inspect its small, smooth walls and pink scallop tongue. “Do you have any itches? Pull up your pajama top.”
There was no rash, so Jane left her sitting up in bed with a picture book. When she looked in on her again, Grace was asleep. She was sick, but not in danger. One portion of her worry, at least, could ease.
Any time her daughter was ill, Jane found herself thinking back to her own childhood and the heart condition that she did not know she had. Jane told herself that Grace was her own person and she was not doomed to fragility or ill health or neurotic fussiness, was not doomed to anything at all. Nor would she have to marry a man who would deceive her, stop. Stop thinking about herself for once.
She was being ridiculous, worse, she was being one of those parents who thought of their children as some reflection of themselves. It was true that Grace resembled her, just as Robbie mostly r
esembled Eric. She was quiet, obedient, unassertive. She liked imaginative play, setting out her dolls or stuffed bears and constructing nests or hiding places for them while she made up stories under her breath. Just as Jane had shrunk away from all the jolly sports her father had pushed her into, Grace moped and dawdled through kid gymnastics, putt putt golf, swimming lessons, anything designed to build confidence and increase hand-eye coordination. “Come on,” Bonnie had said once, when Jane had mentioned her worries. “Relax, this isn’t Wuthering Heights. She’s not doomed.” Jane had acquiesced, although it was true she did not remember Wuthering Heights as clearly as she might have.
But no one was doomed, ever. Even herself.
While Grace slept, Jane carried some of the storage items in the back bedroom down to the basement. Most of it was outgrown toys and all the other gear you needed to raise children, the car seats and bath pillows and toddler gates, the different slings and carriers that often overwhelmed her with feeling, remembering when her babies were small, but now only spoke to her of excess and exhaustion. She cleared out space in the closet and transferred some of her clothes, the ones she wore most often. She made up the bed with a blue coverlet she had always liked and found a small lamp she put next to the bed. There wasn’t room for much of anything else, and that pleased her.
When Grace woke up she said she was thirsty, and after she drank some water, Jane gave her Pedialyte and orange juice and a bowl of lime sherbet. Grace, a fussy eater at the best of times, waited until the sherbet melted and then slurped some of it up. She still had a temperature just above a hundred. By the time Robbie came home from school, Grace was tired of being in bed and so was allowed a spell of sitting on the couch in the family room bundled up in a blanket so she could watch videos. Because she was sick, Grace got to pick the videos, which bored Robbie. He escaped to the backyard, where he spent some time thunking a ball against the wall of the garage.
She Poured Out Her Heart Page 23
