She Poured Out Her Heart

by Jean Thompson

  “No? You should bring the kids next summer, they’d love it. Bring Eric too.” They had been speaking as if hers was still a functioning marriage. It made things easier.

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s so hard to take the kids anywhere.” Not to mention Eric and his limited enthusiasm for family outings.

  “So come by yourself and play beach volleyball with us.”

  “Ha ha, right.” Only slightly less implausible. “No thanks. I always got picked last for everything, you wouldn’t want me.”

  “Sure I would,” he said gallantly. “There’s all kinds of teams, some of them are just for fun. There’s coed and a women’s league. I bet you’d find one you liked.”

  “I don’t know if I’m the beach volleyball type,” Jane said, thinking of the girls you saw wriggling out of their bikinis as they jumped and lunged. Not to mention the sport itself, which she remembered from her miserable gym-class days.

  “Don’t be a wuss.”

  “I am a wuss. But I could come watch you play. Be one of your groupies,” she teased. She was sure he had groupies. Bonnie had said as much, muttering darkly.

  He looked away, his expression one of distaste. He didn’t like being teased, she had to remember that. “Sorry,” she said. “Just mouthing off.”

  “Everybody acts like I’m some kind of slut.”

  Could men be sluts? She wasn’t sure. “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m sorry. I meant, girls notice you, that’s only natural. It’s not your fault if some of them act silly.” Jane reached for his hand and after a moment he squeezed her hand back and they walked on that way, content.

  It was only their second date. Jane called it that to herself, date. Of course that was counting the day she’d smashed up Eric’s car as a date. Talk about acting silly. They’d talked on the phone a lot since then, mornings when Jane had the house to herself and Patrick was waking up after his late nights of tending bar. “Hey,” he’d say, still yawning, still in bed. Naked? Jane let the pictures roll around in her head. He yawned again, stretching. “So what are you doing for fun today?”

  And Jane would insist that she didn’t know what fun was, she was washing up the kids’ cereal bowls, or folding laundry, or some other dull chore. And Patrick would say they were going to have to do something about that, her lack of fun, and there would be a pause while that open-ended promise hung in the air.

  Jane told him about things the children had done, about Robbie getting chewing gum so matted into his hair that the barber had to shave a patch of it, about Grace’s allergy tests. “See? No fun.”

  “You’re a great mom,” Patrick would say, on the basis of no actual information, except what she told him. She liked hearing it anyway.

  He said, “My mom was the same way when we were growing up. Anything for the kids. She still lives to knock herself out. Don’t tell her there’s an easier way to scrub a floor than with a brush and a bucket, or you don’t have to iron sheets.”

  “She irons sheets? Who irons sheets?”

  “You know her favorite thing to say? ‘I was so busy today, I didn’t have time to go to the bathroom.’”

  He was the youngest of seven. Seven, that was nothing, he’d grown up with families that had ten, eleven, twelve kids. Real old school. Thank God people had wised up. His brothers and sisters had normal sized families themselves. He was the only one who wasn’t married. Don’t think that didn’t come up at every family get-together. There was the smart-ass brother-in-law who made the crack about being gay. Yeah, and he only ever made it once.

  “Not that I have one thing against gay people. But come on, show some respect.”

  He wasn’t really that Catholic anymore, even his mom had given up on him. His dad had died when Patrick was fifteen. Pancreatic cancer. Which was why, whatever else he did, he tried to keep in shape and eat a salad once in a while. He worried about stuff like that.

  “Of course you’d worry,” Jane told him. “But that doesn’t mean you’re going to get that particular cancer, or any cancer.” She wasn’t sure how people got pancreatic cancer anyway.

  “Ah, we all have to die of something, we do.” The brogue again. It came and went. It seemed neither entirely genuine nor entirely fake.

  “You can’t dwell on it,” Jane told him, aiming for a tone that did not sound like one of his female relatives. “Keep it in perspective.”

  “Perspective,” Patrick repeated. “Good concept. I should make that my next tattoo.”

  “No you shouldn’t.” Jane wasn’t sure how she felt about tattoos, except that her own kids had better never get any. She’d caught a glimpse of the two Patrick had across each enormous bicep: a stylized arrow and an angel that managed to look like a pinup girl. It was likely there were others.

  “On the back of my hand, so I can smack myself in the face with it.” He was the one teasing now.

  Jane almost said he should put it somewhere she wasn’t going to see it, but that remark might have seemed too racy, so she only sighed and said he should suit himself, he was the one who’d have to walk around wearing it, she was too old to understand such things. Patrick protested that she wasn’t old, anyway not all that much older than he was, what, five years?

  It was eight or maybe closer to nine, but Jane didn’t bother correcting him. She was smitten with him. Two kisses and a heavy dose of phone flirting and she was as goofy as a teenager, more so, since even as a teenager she’d never done such a thing as flirt. The boys she’d known then had not inspired it. Now she played music when she had the house to herself, old Fleetwood Mac and Joni Mitchell, singing along and imagining—what, exactly? Scenes of corny romance in which he rescued her from car crashes (likely, if she kept trying to drive in the city), or armed assailants, or perhaps a log jam in a frigid river. Because he was certainly the comic-book lumberjack that she and Bonnie had hooted over all those years ago, minus the elevated reading habits you weren’t meant to believe in the first place.

  They didn’t talk about Bonnie. Patrick either didn’t have much to say about her or else was trying to be tactful. As for Jane, she thought Bonnie already took up too much space in her life.

  She felt sorry for Patrick, even in the midst of mooning about him. He didn’t seem happy doing what he was doing, living as he was living, but he had no clear plan to do anything different. He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, as Jane’s father used to say about, well, about a great many people.

  Not much had been expected of him, youngest son of a big, hectic tribal Irish family. Just as, in different fashion, not much had been expected of Jane.

  They reached the northern terminus of the beach, turned and headed back to the parking lot.

  They’d dropped their joined hands, but continued walking side by side, taking their time. The beach had been Patrick’s idea. He had to work later that night, and Jane had only managed this free afternoon by arranging a play date for Grace. So there was only this brief window of time for all her foolishness, and that was reassuring, since she would hardly have the opportunity to do anything seriously stupid.

  Anyway, it was just her trashy unbalanced daydreams. Nothing real. Unless she climbed out of her fantasy and made it real.

  They reached the parking lot, but neither of them wanted to leave yet, and so they found a spot on the grass to sit. “You’re not too cold, are you?” Patrick asked, and Jane said she was fine. Of course she would have sat on a block of ice if she’d had to. It was so unlikely, the two of them being anywhere together in the first place. Talk about two different worlds. She’d even had to pick him up in the minivan, although Patrick had refrained from repeating his opinions about minivans.

  Now he looked out to the blue bar of the lake and the edge of tawny sand, then behind them at the rushing lanes of traffic and the city skyline, which even on a clear day was wreathed in haze and golden shimmer, as if it was some zone of impos
sible glamour. “This is great,” he pronounced. “Being outside and all. Something different. I spend too much time in the damn bars. Ah well, it’s a living.”

  “It’s a nice change for me too, from my routine. Not that I go to bars a lot.”

  “No I guess you wouldn’t.” Jane felt him watching her, enumerating her deficiencies and lack of verve, then he said, “Not with kids and all. You wouldn’t want to.” And Jane agreed that this was so.

  After a moment he said, “That’s messed up, Bonnie and your husband. Sorry. Maybe you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “No, that’s all right. I can’t really talk about it with anybody else.” This was true. It was a dismal thing to realize.

  “People step out on each other all the time, I’m not saying it’s good, but when it’s your friend? No way.”

  “They knew each other for years and years, we all did. They were attracted to each other and they crossed the line. You can understand how it happened.”

  “Yeah, but it didn’t have to.” Patrick shook his head. He had a head like a sculpted bust, something made out of marble or granite, and it looked just as heavy. “You oughta hire a hit man.”

  Jane shrugged. She didn’t want to kill anybody. She just wanted them to go away.

  He said, “All right, not a hit man. But you don’t have to put up with it. Jesus, I wouldn’t. You’re a pretty woman, you know that? And you’re smart and you’re nice and you deserve a lot better. If you don’t mind me saying so.”

  Mind, oh no. If she hadn’t been already sitting down, her butter legs would have melted and collapsed with gratitude. She wanted to put her hands on him, on his skin. She wanted to touch his hair. She wanted him to climb on top of her and turn her inside out. She dropped her eyes so she would look all sad and he wouldn’t see how shameless she was. “Thanks.”

  “I mean, I always got along fine with Bonnie; sure, she could be a little out there, but . . . OK, sorry. She’s like, dead to me. Her name is now a swear word.”

  “But you liked her, right?” In spite of herself, she had to ask. “You liked going to bed with her? It’s none of my business, I know that, go ahead and tell me so. But she was always the one who ended up with all the guys.”

  “Ah.” Patrick nodded. Then shook his head. Embarrassed. “Well she was, I mean it was fine. A normal kind of fine.”

  “I was never like that. I never figured out sex. Not in all this time.” Once she’d begun, she couldn’t stop.

  “Oh yeah?” Embarrassment replaced by a new attention. Some male Pavlovian response. Say sex. Ring bell. Arf arf.

  “So I can’t really blame my husband. I mean I can, but why wouldn’t he want that. Someone who has more enthusiasm. Who’s better at it. It’s only natural to want that.”

  “Huh,” Patrick said. He appeared to be working through a particularly knotty thought process. “That’s really tough luck. For everybody, I mean, especially for you.”

  “I shouldn’t have brought it up. I guess I wanted you to know, because you’ve been so nice about listening to me. I wanted you to know there’s this whole other part of the story.”

  “Huh,” he said again, making it sound more contemplative this time. “Do you think maybe it’s because you haven’t been with the right guy?”

  “I’ve thought that. I have.”

  He leaned over and kissed her, a brief, grazing kiss. “Is that OK? I mean do you like it?”

  “Yes.”

  They kissed again, and this time there was more intention behind it. “How about that?”

  “Yes. I like that too.”

  She guessed you’d call it making out, the touching and rubbing and more of the kissing too. He put his hands inside the jacket and made himself at home there. She liked it and kept liking it and she had to be careful not to let on how much she did, so that the exercise did not lose its pretense of instruction.

  They drew back from each other and laughed. Patrick said, “This is a little weird, you know? I don’t mean you’re weird; I meant, the situation.”

  “The other parties involved,” Jane agreed. She had trouble catching her breath. She set about making some necessary adjustments to her clothing.

  “Because, maybe you’re trying to get back at them? I could totally understand that.”

  Jane thought about this. “I guess that’s part of it. Maybe I wouldn’t be here in normal circumstances. But now I’m glad I am.”

  “Well I guess that’s going to have to do,” Patrick said cheerfully. He leaned in to kiss her again and worked one of his hands around to the back of her pants and slipped it inside her waistband.

  When they broke apart again Jane felt blurred or smudged, as if she were a drawing that had been partly erased. “I have to get back home.”

  “Right now?” Jane nodded. “Bummer.” He stood and then pulled Jane to her feet. It felt effortless, as if he could just as easily send her flying over his head.

  Jane drove him back to his apartment and, with some reluctance, returned his jacket. They kissed again. She was growing very accustomed to that part of things. “You could come up if you want to,” he said, his voice buzzing her ear, and Jane said no, she really had to leave. And she did, that was true enough, but what if she stayed? The idea horrified her. The idea fascinated her.

  “You can call me,” Jane said, feeling more and more like a teenager in an old song on AM radio. What if he never called again? Decided she was too freakish and unappealing, too much trouble? She would just up and die. No she would not, she was at least old enough to know that.

  “Of course I will.” He gave her nipple a quick, friendly tweak. “Drive safe, now.”

  So he wasn’t the most conversationally gifted or sensitive guy around. Did she even care?

  Jane got herself home and picked up Grace from her friend’s house and thanked the other mother for watching the girls, and said that next time Katie could come over to their place. The woman asked if Jane had gotten her shopping done and Jane had a moment of blankness before she remembered that this was the reason she’d given for the afternoon, shopping. “I mostly looked around,” Jane said, and for the briefest moment the other woman’s expression showed a flicker of interest or disbelief or mockery, and it filled Jane with sober fear.

  Jane drove Grace home and told her she could watch one video but first she had to bring her dirty clothes down to the basement. Then Robbie’s school day was over and the whole house took on the particular quality of his energy.

  Eric was home on time, or rather, on time for him, and the four of them ate the chili mac casserole with sufficient good cheer, and Jane thought how strange it was, landing back in the everyday, serving a meal, herding the children through their minimally required manners, and all the rest of it. This must be how it was for Eric, coming home after his time with Bonnie. Holding himself apart, watching himself as he eased back into the life of his house and became the ordinary, expected self who lived here. He saw Jane watching him. “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” He wouldn’t be able to tell if there was anything different about her. He didn’t pay enough attention to know.

  Once she lay down at the end of the day, her real first alone time, she tried to locate and hold steady any one idea or impulse, such as wanting to have sex with Patrick. But then, she also did not want to. She wanted him to be a means to an end, an obliging body, but his inconvenient human personality kept intruding. Her motives were both straightforward and not so. She wanted to get even, take something from Bonnie as Bonnie had taken from her. As if you could think of people in terms of belonging and stealing. But you did. There was no use pretending you were any better than you were.

  She hardly owed Eric fidelity, she had no reason to feel guilty. She felt guilty. “I am a mess,” she said aloud, though nobody outside the small room would have heard, and that seemed like the one true s
tatement she could make.

  Bonnie was better at this sort of thing. Bonnie and all her sexy drama. Well, maybe she could pretend to be Bonnie. Just this once, be the wild and crazy one who everybody wanted.

  Then Patrick didn’t call. And didn’t call. If Jane had wanted to be crazy, here was her chance.

  She worried and suffered, suffered and worried, imagining every bad and worse possibility. He was ill, injured, hospitalized, with a rotating troupe of Irish relatives camped out in the waiting room. Ha, no. He was with some other girl. He’d lost her phone number. It was no big deal to him. He didn’t care.

  Jane could have called him, she almost did, but every time she came close she sank into her familiar gloom and self-doubt. She was the least sexually interesting person on the planet, both in and of herself, and as a rapidly aging suburban mom. Why would Patrick or anyone else want to pursue her? She was romance-proof.

  Finally, he called. “Hey, how you been? How’s my beach buddy?”

  “Your what?” Jane said, but he was already talking past her.

  “Listen, sorry I’ve been out of touch, I had to fill in for somebody at work and it totally wiped me out.”

  “Really.” She was not inclined to listen to any breezy excuse he tossed her way. Should she hang up? Say something spiteful? Not if she wanted to see him again, which she did. It was one of those stupid dilemmas you thought you were done with once you got married.

  “Yeah, it was killer.” He didn’t bother sounding killed or even particularly weary. Presumably he had recovered. “What’s new with you?”

  “I can’t think of anything.” Stay mad? Invent an interesting anecdote? She said, “I guess I’ve been busy too.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Mmn.”

  “All right then! So, did you get your work done?”

  “My what?”

  “Your work that was keeping you busy.”