“What’s in the topping?” Bonnie asked.
“Wheat flour, thyme, ground walnuts, some of the cheese. Oh, and oatmeal.”
Bonnie used her fork to push aside the brown layer and tried some of the vegetables. They were orange, with the melted cheese adhering to them here and there in white curds. She tasted and got a blast of hot garlic. “Wow,” she said, fanning her mouth. “Spicy.”
“That’s the sriracha. I have extra in the kitchen if you want it.”
“No thanks. Wow, I really got a good hit there, I think I need some water. That’s OK, I’ll get it.”
Bonnie got up to run water in the kitchen sink and, since the others could not see her, put her scorched mouth to the faucet to drink directly from it. Then she filled a glass with water and returned to the dining room.
“You all right?” Jane asked when Bonnie came back in.
“Yeah, it just landed kind of funny.” She sat down, picked up her fork, and started in on the salad. Her eyes were still stinging. She didn’t dare look in Eric’s direction.
Jane got up then. “You know, I’ve got a whole different dish of it without the sriracha. I made it for the kids, I’ll bring it out.”
Out of reflex politeness, Bonnie started to tell her not to bother. But she stayed quiet and took a slice of the bread, for something to do. She was scarcely hungry. “Here you go,” Jane said, putting the new casserole down on a folded kitchen towel. “This should go down a little easier.”
“Thanks.” Bonnie spooned up some of the new glop. She was aware of Jane watching her.
She lifted a forkful. “Oh yeah, this is better, I can tell.” Nodded, yum yum. The vegetables had a peculiar, slippery texture in her mouth, like something that did not wish to be swallowed.
Bonnie’s stomach roiled. She had a sudden stupid panicky thought: Jane had poisoned her.
It was all a set-up, a monstrous plot, this new dish prepared just for her. The hot sauce a ploy. Jane would sit back and watch her eat, then later that night Bonnie would start to sweat and heave and kick. . . .
With an effort, she swallowed. “Yeah, much better,” she said, and took another bite.
“Like I said, it’s an experiment.” Jane ate a bite of her own portion, considered it. “You know, trying out some vegetarian options. But less sriracha next time. Definitely. It’s a little too punchy.”
“It’s slop,” Eric said. “It’s completely inedible. I don’t know what you’re trying to prove.”
Bonnie kept her eyes on her plate. In the corner of her vision she saw Jane take another bite of the casserole, chew, swallow, put her napkin up to her lips. “I suppose it proves that everybody has different tastes. Different appetites. I think it turned out fine.”
Eric pushed his plate away. “Slop. A possum wouldn’t eat it.”
“Well, I’m not a possum, am I? I’m sorry you don’t like it. Bonnie’s not a fan either, she’s having a hard time with it. But she’s trying to keep up a good front, aren’t you, Bon?”
Bonnie said nothing. “You two,” Jane began, then she reached for her water glass and drank.
They waited. Jane put the glass down. “You both seem to have a taste for any number of things that I don’t share. Fine. I’ve thought about it and I decided I don’t care. You should do whatever you want. Just don’t think I don’t know. And keep the children out of it. I shouldn’t have to say that, but maybe I do.”
Jane stood up and cleared her plate. She ran water in the sink, then she called back to them. “I made dessert. Brownies.” Then they heard her climbing the stairs.
Bonnie and Eric looked at each other, haggardly. “What happened?” Bonnie asked.
“This is how she’s been. I can’t stand it.”
Bonnie felt herself shaking, the tension coming out of her in rippling, hiccuplike waves. “I’m sorry.”
“Everybody’s sorry.”
“Does she know we’re not . . .” Bonnie stopped, embarrassed. She didn’t want to say, “Not sleeping together anymore,” although that was what she meant.
“I don’t know what she knows. Or how she knows it. She just does. It’s creepy.”
“I guess we’re . . .”
“What?”
“Not as smart as we think we are.”
Eric waved this away. “I haven’t felt very smart lately.”
Bonnie wished he’d unbend, let himself be something other than furious and ashamed and hostile. But she was not allowed to expect anything of him now. She guessed she never had been. “I should go.” She stood, steadying herself on the table edge. “I hope,” she began, but trailed off, because in fact she did not know what she hoped for.
She was already out the front door when he came up behind her and pulled her inside and held her body against him and kissed her face and hair and then released her and walked back into the house.
Bonnie tried writing a letter to Jane. She never got very far. Dear Jane, I know how you must feel. Except that she didn’t. Maybe she never had. Good old anxious, long-suffering Jane, so reliably preoccupied with so many small challenges. Now she was through with that, or no longer cared. No longer cared about her husband or about Bonnie. She’d said so. Friendships didn’t always last forever. Sad fact of life. People moved on. Things came to a bad end. So Bonnie told herself. But losing Jane was—and this was a dopey thought, but it came to her—like losing a tooth, when your tongue kept rooting around in your mouth, just to feel the hole.
And then Jane called her. It was a couple of weeks after the deadly dinner. Bonnie looked at Jane’s name on the caller ID with dismay, but in the end she answered.
“Eric’s miserable,” Jane started in, without preamble. “I can live with that, but it’s hard on the kids. They keep asking if Daddy’s mad at them.”
Bonnie muttered something about that being too bad. She’d thought she was out of the business of being responsible for Eric’s well-being.
“I meant what I said. I have no objections to the two of you—being together. In fact I can see where there would be advantages.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Bonnie said, “but last time I saw you, it hardly seemed like you were perfectly OK with the concept.”
“I was angry. Hurt. I had to process that. Get beyond it.”
“I don’t think I can ever eat squash or sweet potatoes again.”
“Oh come on. It wasn’t that bad.”
“Yes it was.”
“All right, look, it’s taken me a while, but I’ve made progress, you know, emotional and mental progress. Set aside a lot of my insecurities and come up with what’s best for everyone. You, me, Eric, the kids. That’s why I’m calling.”
“You’re calling because you think it would be better for your children if I went back to having sex with their father.”
“Do you always have to say things in the crassest possible way? But yes, something like that.”
“That’s really white of you.”
“I hate that expression, you know better than to use it even when you’re making fun of it.”
“Really Caucasian of you.”
“What were you like when you were actually in the eighth grade?”
“I was hell on wheels,” Bonnie said. “A worldbeater.” She allowed her mood to lift ever so slightly at this hint of their old back and forth, needling humor. She said, “Look, you know I’m—”
“Yes, I know you are all those things. Sorry and all. Let’s not dwell.”
“No, you have to let me say it. I apologize. We thought we could avoid hurting you. It was just easier to be dishonest.” Unworthy tears formed in her eyes. She had to stop feeling sorry for herself. It was one more unattractive character flaw.
“All right. Noted. I’m more interested in how we can . . . move forward.”
Bonnie thought she heard a hesitation, as if
Jane might still be trying to talk herself into this particular idea. She said, “Could I ask you something? Why don’t you just separate. Divorce. I mean, if you really don’t care what he does. It would be tough and scary, but that’s what people do when they come to this particular fork in the road.” It occurred to Bonnie that it sounded like she just wanted Jane out of the way. Impure motives. Not that her motives were ever particularly pure.
“Divorce came up. Not until the kids are older. We can tough it out. People do. But . . .”
“I don’t think I want to be in charge of babysitting your husband until you’re ready to get rid of him. No thank you.”
“Listen to me. It’s not that. Or it’s not all that. He needs, he deserves, somebody who loves him. In some . . . way I don’t.”
Bonnie was silent. Then she said, “I don’t know if you can expect things to work out that neatly.”
“But you do love him, don’t you? That’s how it works for you, isn’t it? Hormones. Biochemical processes.”
“Thanks,” Bonnie said. “You make me sound like a spawning salmon.”
Jane sighed. “But that’s exactly what the whole sex thing always seems like to me. Like a bunch of wriggling, copulating fish.”
“Why did you get married, exactly? Remind me.”
“I guess I thought you were supposed to. I was lonesome. And it’s not like I didn’t care for Eric.” Bonnie noted the past tense. Jane went on. “It’s better to get all this out in the open. A relief, really. The two of you gave off such a guilt vibe. Should I have Eric call you?”
“This is a totally weird conversation.”
“That can’t be helped,” Jane said, briskly. “At least now we don’t have to keep having it.”
“Well . . . what does Eric think about all this?”
“Who knows what he thinks. Mostly he’s been sulking and feeling sorry for himself. I have to go, the kids need to return their library books.”
Bonnie tried to wrap her mind around this new circumstance. There was something incongruous and off-putting about it. She and Eric would now be paired off like rabbits or racehorses, and the entire distressing problem would thus be solved. It would only make sense to someone like Jane, who by her own admission did not understand such things, did not know the nuances. Had the words but not the beat. It reminded Bonnie of hearing a group of Chinese people singing, with gusto, John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Road,” in which “road” became “roar,” and so on. John Denver, it seemed, was very popular in China.
And how would Eric feel? Maybe he would not like being given permission, or told what to do.
Maybe he would no longer want her.
This was her most shaming fear. He would take a new, cold look at their time together, decide that it was based on the cheap romantics of secrecy and betrayal, and if that was gone, not much else was left.
Bonnie spent an unhappy few days after Jane’s call. She didn’t hear from Eric but then she hardly expected to. It was possible that he felt as embarrassed as she did. That’s how it works for you, isn’t it? Hormones. Biochemical processes. As if love was only a matter of falling on her back some endless number of times. Something she had no choice in.
It made her angry to think how shallow and mindless she might be made to seem. A grubby pleasure-seeker, not to mention all the other choice language that got hung on women who had too much enthusiasm for sex. Although it was true that her enthusiasm had gone a bit downhill lately.
Thank God! Maybe it was age, some kind of menopausal early warning system. She could relax and lead some chaste and useful life. Take up beekeeping, like Sherlock Holmes. She would have to explain it to Eric, and now, perhaps, to Jane as well. Sorry. Hormone depletion. One of those inevitable biochemical processes.
Because that did happen. Not that there weren’t randy senior citizens out there. But everybody slowed down. So we’ll go no more a roving by the light of the moon, etc. The body failed and fell.
Then what happened to all that leftover love?
She didn’t want to believe it came to nothing. Amounted to nothing. Had no worth. But the more she went round and round, trying to come to some wisdom, the more scattered and inconclusive she felt. Yes, she would have said she loved Eric, and whether she ran hot or cold, dishonest or true, it was nothing you could simply wish away.
That was as close as she came to sorting things out. And then the call from Wisconsin came.
Claudia had gone into town for her morning yoga class, then stopped at the grocery for the items on her list. And at the bank to deposit a check that Stan had recently received for an installation in Connecticut. This had been a difficult project involving a difficult client, and Claudia had labored to smooth and soothe and to keep Stan from swearing into the phone and threatening to enforce the legal terms of the contract by extralegal means. But now it was over and done with. The check was a relief and a validation, a testament to her patience and her skills. And to Stan’s vision, of course, but she was the one who had steered it to its happy conclusion.
Stan simply lacked self-control. Not that he couldn’t be entirely charming when he wanted to be. And not that he wasn’t sorry—eventually—when he lost his temper and ranted and raved and insulted the very people whose goodwill and cooperation, not to mention money, he needed. He was incapable of thinking strategically, of using the right people smarts in difficult situations. Claudia liked to say, “I’ve raised three children and one artist!”
Arriving home, she put the groceries away and went through her cookbooks for a recipe she wanted to prepare for dinner, baked chicken dressed with a lemon-cream sauce and allowed to cool to room temperature. It was September but there had been a spell of sunny warmth, and she thought the chicken would taste summery but with a hint of richness, like the coming autumn. Alongside the chicken they could have artichokes and a rice pilaf and a simple green salad with garlic croutons.
And then there would be another dinner after that and another after that and so on and on, not to mention the meals that came in between, and lately the thought of all that needed to be done made her tired. She loved it but it made her tired, and there were times she could have slept for a week, and leave people to feed themselves! That was not a nice impulse. But then, she was sixty-three and not as young as she used to be. You were allowed to slow down.
Of course you were supposed to eat low-fat and the chicken was hardly that, but the rest of the meal was virtuous enough. Besides, Stan sulked and was difficult if she reminded him about his cholesterol, his blood pressure, or anything else that spoke of moderation and prudent habits. He was old-school, and believed that artists expended themselves in a blaze of reckless glory, mortal limits be damned, like Icarus flying toward the sun, etc.
Claudia went back to the bedroom to take her shower. She pulled off the unfriendly elastic of her yoga gear and stepped into the steam and spray, used some of the eucalyptus shower gel that she favored, dried off, and wrapped herself in her white terry robe. Then, because the mild air from the open window was so sweet and welcoming, and because she felt, once more, so unexpectedly tired, she sat down in the little upholstered chair next to the bed and closed her eyes.
This was how Stan found her when he came in from the studio in search of his lunch. Dead of a heart attack, with her hair still clean and damp from the shower.
Bonnie picked up her brother Charlie, since he no longer drove. They hugged but they didn’t talk much at first because their grief was a sodden and lumpy thing that did not give rise to graceful words, only stale and stupid ones of the sort they’d have to hear at the funeral service. I can’t believe, so sudden, such a shock. But as they approached the state line and the road opened up, Charlie said, “Stan should have gone first. The old bastard deserved it. She didn’t.”
“That’s a lovely thought.”
Charlie didn’t answer. Bonnie said, “Just
get it out of your system now. I don’t care, but it won’t go over big at the house.”
“He’ll find a new woman to cook and clean up after him and put up with his bullshit. I bet he’s already interviewing them.”
Bonnie thought this was probably true, or mostly true, but there was no need to chime in. She said, “Haley’s there now. Her and the kids. They got there day before yesterday. She’s making a lot of the calls and setting things up.”
“How about what’s-his-name?”
“Scott? He couldn’t get away.” Bonnie waited to see if her brother would comment on this, but he was looking out the car window at the fading green of the roadside fields. She’d already had one long conversation with Haley. She expected there would be a few more. “I didn’t know that Mom had heart disease. I guess she didn’t either. We should probably get our risk factors and all that checked.” More silence. “Are you still drinking?”
“Do you want me to lie to you?”
“Only if you think I’d believe it.” She wouldn’t. He had an alcoholic’s grainy skin and even, from time to time, a perceptible case of the shakes. He’d taken to wearing his hair slicked straight back with some kind of grease that showed comb tracks. It gave him an elderly, wasted look, like those photographs of farmers in the Great Depression.
“I’m keeping it under control.”
Bonnie figured that meant he was drinking at home, or mostly drinking at home. “Good.”
“Stan’s going to cut me off, isn’t he?”
“Cut you off, how?”
“Mom sent me checks. But it was Stan’s money.” Charlie gave her an irritated glance. “I didn’t ask her to, she just did. She felt bad because of my accident.”
Bonnie hadn’t known. A muddled anger rose in her. “Just how bad did she feel? I mean, how much money are we talking?”
“It wasn’t a regular thing. A few hundred here and there. Nothing Stan would ever miss.”
Bonnie let a mile go by before she spoke. “Unless you think that Stan’s going to keep giving you money for sentimental reasons, then, no, I wouldn’t count on any more checks.”
She Poured Out Her Heart Page 31
