When he didn’t say more, Bonnie said, “So what do you think you should do?”
“I guess some of that’s up to Jane. Let’s see how far she wants to carry this boyfriend thing. Maybe she was just trying to get back at me, out of spitefulness. She has that side to her, you know?”
“She does,” Bonnie agreed, thinking of the Casserole of Death. “Do you want me to talk to her?”
“Is that smart?”
“I don’t know. I guess she could tell me to go to hell, or refuse to take my call.” Now that she’d voiced it, the idea solidified and began to summon arguments for itself. There was no reason they couldn’t talk once in a while, and after all, Jane had called her after Claudia died. Jane might have come up with the name Patrick just to aggravate her. There might, in fact, be no boyfriend and this was just another of Jane’s productions, and there would be nothing, really, to worry about. “I could at least try.” And if somehow, in the name of wonder, Jane had managed to align herself with Patrick, didn’t she want to know how? The idea began to glow with the certainty of not just a good but a necessary course of action. “I mean, I’d be willing.”
“Well . . . I suppose you could call and fish around.”
“No. It’s better to ask straight out.”
“If you think so.” He stood up. “Ask me how my day was.”
“How was your day, honey?”
“I repaired two mitral valves and chewed out a resident for not following up on his postop patients.”
“And you didn’t leave a scalpel in anybody’s chest,” Bonnie said, which was something they often signed off with, a lame joke—except when such things really happened—which had become a kind of shorthand for cheer up, it’s not so bad.
“Pretty sure I didn’t.”
They embraced and Bonnie let herself rest against him. “We’re OK, aren’t we?”
“More than OK.”
And then they drew apart and he left and Bonnie watched from the window as he got into his car, flashed the lights as a signal to her, and drove off. She thought they were OK, at least for now, and it was better not to look too far down the road since it was not as if he had promised her, well, anything.
Bonnie waited a couple of days to call Jane, and of course by then it was not feeling like such a great idea at all. But how else to learn what Jane might or might not be up to? Bonnie needed to be able to talk Eric out of any bad second thoughts he might be having. They’d managed their little bit of precarious happiness so far, but how easily it could be threatened.
She’d imagined Jane not answering, but she picked up right away. “I thought you’d probably call,” Jane said.
“Hello to you too.”
“Hang on a minute.” Jane put the phone down and there was the racket of some household machine starting up, the clothes dryer maybe. When you called Jane, her appliances were usually included in the conversation. She came back on the line. “OK, sorry.”
“So, can we talk?”
“Sure, why not.”
“All right, well.” Bonnie ran through and discarded the different scenarios she’d rehearsed. Jane sounded noncommittal, almost breezy, and there didn’t seem any point in guile. “Why don’t you tell me about your boyfriend.”
“You know what’s funny, the whole time we were in school, and even later on, we never went out with the same guy. Never liked who the other came up with. And now here we are.”
“Where are we exactly, Jane?”
“You remember those stupid comic books you used to love? Remember the story about the guy who was a big galoot? That’s who he is, isn’t he. A big galoot.”
“Who is?”
“Patrick,” Jane said, and Bonnie felt something settle inside of her. She had not really wanted to believe it.
“How did this happen? I’m not understanding.”
“I don’t think that’s really important.”
“We’re talking about the same Patrick, right? My Patrick?”
“We should probably steer clear,” Jane said, “of expressions of ownership.”
“Did you go looking for him? Were you trying to get back at me? Is that what this is about?”
“No,” Jane said after a moment. “No and no. But if it upsets you, I guess I don’t mind that.”
“What’s the plan here, huh? What does that mean, he’s your boyfriend, you think he’s going to take you on movie dates or to the prom? He’s not that guy. He’s not anybody reliable.”
“I know that,” Jane said, sounding patient. “But thanks for looking out for my best interests.”
That shut Bonnie up. Jane said, “I see no reason why I can’t live my own life while you and Eric are busy carrying on with each other. I’m in love with Patrick. I don’t expect you to understand—”
“Oh, now it’s true love,” Bonnie said, wanting to mock Jane, laugh her out of it. A kind of panic was rising in her, beating against her ribs.
“I don’t know about true love. But it’s some kind of love. Bodily. Erotic. Of course it came as a total surprise. A shock, even.”
“You don’t even sound like yourself,” Bonnie said, meaning it as an accusation.
“Really? That would be so interesting. You know what else is interesting? I’ve been doing some writing. I’ve never done that before. Poetry, mostly, but some journal odds and ends too. It’s as if all of a sudden, I have all these ideas and feelings I need to get down on paper.”
“I can’t believe this,” Bonnie began, trying to imagine the two of them, Jane and Patrick, even having a conversation together, let alone sex. “You don’t have one thing in common with him.”
“Well sometimes that’s what you need,” Jane said, again with her irritating patience. “And I’m going to keep seeing him. That’s what you’re trying to find out, isn’t it?”
“It won’t last.”
“However long it lasts it’s fine with me.”
“Are you going to leave Eric?”
“Why would I want to do that? Leave and go where? I guess he’s not very happy with me. Well you can tell him, since he doesn’t want to ask me himself, that I’m going to see Patrick whenever I can. Eric should get used to the idea that we have one of those zippy, modern marriages.”
“He doesn’t want that,” Bonnie said, aware that she was arguing not just a losing cause but an indefensible one. “I think he’d like everything to just calm down.”
“I’m being perfectly calm,” Jane said. “I feel, I guess, energized, and sometimes I get a little swoony, a little giggly about the whole thing, but I wouldn’t say I’m, what’s the opposite of calm. Rowdy? If you’re all of a sudden jealous, that’s your problem.”
“I don’t care about Patrick.”
“You sure about that? Because it wasn’t all that long ago you were going on and on about him.”
The panic rose up in her again. She shoved it back down. “That was nothing. Patrick’s nothing. I love Eric.”
“Well that’s nice. That makes everything all right.”
“Look, I don’t blame you for feeling raw about things, and nobody’s seen more of my sketchy behavior than you, all right? But this is different, I need it to be different. I’m done with all the crazy stuff. It’s not good for me. It never was.” Bonnie considered bringing up Carl Rizzi, and the way you thought something was normal, because you grew up with it. But she only said, “I need to settle down.”
“With my husband.”
“Yes.” Defeated.
“And you’re worried that if I’m not playing along, if I’m not the long-suffering idiot I’ve been all this while, it’s going to disrupt the status quo. I guess I’m not very invested in how tragic that would be. You know? But if you get in my way, I’ll tell Eric all about you and Patrick. Then you can explain to him about how you’ve settled down and this is d
ifferent for you. I have to go, Grace has another appointment for her allergies.”
Bonnie told Eric that Jane had been noncommittal, hadn’t said much. It seemed best to let things ride for now. She couldn’t imagine any blissful idyll with Patrick going on for very long.
Then Eric called her. “She brought him to the house! She introduced him to my kids, for Christ’s sake!”
“Who?” Bonnie asked, although she knew.
“Her loser boyfriend. She let him borrow one of our cars. I came home and asked her where the Toyota was and she said, ‘Patrick has it, he needed to do some errands, he’ll bring it back tomorrow.’ And Robbie told me he met Mommy’s friend and he was really really big and he showed Robbie how to match quarters.”
“Oh no.”
“This is just way, way out of line. We had a big fight about it. Well, I had the fight. She just stood there looking puzzled. She said she didn’t understand what the big deal was, since you came to the house too.”
“And what did you say to that?”
“I said that was different.”
“It is and it isn’t,” Bonnie said, wanting to calm Eric down. She couldn’t tell if he was most upset about the car, or the children’s involvement, or . . . “How long was he there? Were they . . .”
“I guess he was there just long enough to pick up the car and pollute my children. He came in on the train. Tomorrow when he brings the car back, excuse me, if he brings the car back, who knows. Maybe this will turn into a regular thing. Maybe I’ll come home some night and find him in the shower.”
“Jane wouldn’t do that.” Or perhaps she would. The new, sexy version of Jane might be one who had simply lost her mind. It was creepy, it promised ill, to have Jane bring Patrick into the family sphere. And the car would come back with an empty gas tank and the backseat full of fast-food wrappers. “What do you think she’s trying to do,” Bonnie asked. “Goad you? Get back at you?”
“It’s really been a long time since I could account for any of Jane’s motives.”
“I know you’re upset, but I’m not sure what you can do about it.”
“I can go talk to Loverboy and tell him to stay the hell out of my house.”
“That’s not a good idea,” Bonnie said, too quickly, before she could come up with all the reasons it was a bad, catastrophic idea. “Honestly, I’d just try to wait it out.”
“This is nuts. It makes my head explode. I can’t live this way.”
Then divorce her and make a life with me. But she couldn’t yet say that, not yet, and not over the phone, and not while Jane was being this wild of a wild card. What did Jane want, besides living out some stupid fantasy? Bonnie said, “Maybe there could be some house rules. Ones that would apply to me too.”
“No, that’s bullshit. Rules for screwing around? Please.”
Bonnie kept silent, and Eric said, “I’m sorry. That was a crummy thing to say. That’s not how I think of us.”
“All right.”
“I’m just floored by this thing with Jane.”
“All right,” Bonnie said again. Eric might be having some primal, jealous response. She never understood why men were so protective of their bad relationships.
“We’ll be OK,” Eric said. “It doesn’t matter what Jane does.”
“I don’t want it to matter.”
“You have to understand, I need a certain amount of calm. Predictability. Otherwise I can’t get through my day. I can’t do what I have to do for patients. And now it’s like I have Jane on the brain. She’s used me up. Even before this boyfriend stunt. All her mental health issues. Her constant, exhausting misery.”
But he didn’t seem to want her to go away, at least not anytime soon, and that was the wall Bonnie kept running into, but she could not imagine giving up on him now, or ever. “I love you,” Bonnie said, and waited.
“I love you too.”
“Where are you?” She thought that if he was still at work, he could come over, they could make love and close some of the sorrowful space between them.
“I’m at the liquor store, in the parking lot. Crap. It’s starting to rain, and the goddamn windshield wipers aren’t working. I have to get back now before the kids go to bed.”
It was not her fault that he could not make a call from home, or that his windshield wipers were not working. He had not said it was. But she had become part of some central, messy problem he might soon get tired of grappling with.
What should she do? What should she not do? Bonnie went round and round. It was late, after eleven, although that was not late for Patrick, when she decided to text him:
Her husband is really pissed about the car
She didn’t expect to hear back from him, but she did:
He should worry more about his woman
What a jerk. She wrote:
You aren’t helping anything
He wrote:
Like you ha ha
She couldn’t even tell what he meant. Even in person, he could be borderline incoherent.
Whatever just stay away from the kids
Her phone rang a minute later. “What’s that about the kids, what did he say I did to them?”
“He doesn’t want you around them. You can understand that, right?”
“What, I’m some child molester now? That is total bullshit. I only have like, thirty nieces and nephews, you think I’m not good with kids?”
“I think it’s more like he doesn’t want to have them asking about Mommy’s special friend. And he said you taught them some drinking game.”
A pause while he tried to remember. “Quarters? That’s a drinking game?”
“I’m just telling you. Back off. Try some discretion. Try not to wreck their car.”
“And you’re so concerned about this why, exactly?”
“They’re my friends, I care about them.”
“Sure. Daddy’s special friend.”
Bonnie said nothing. After a moment Patrick said, “Yeah, she told me. Real nice. So quit pretending you’re the good guy. Back off me and Janie.”
“She doesn’t know you the way I do.”
“Wrong. She knows me exactly the way you do.”
“Fuck you, Patrick. Really.”
“No thanks. Kind of busy.”
By the time Bonnie could manage any words, he’d ended the call. None of her interventions were turning out the way she wanted, as if she’d lost some instinct or judgment or maybe she had never done anything right to begin with and was just now figuring that out.
Four days later and Patrick still had not returned the car. What was he thinking? Was he trying to be a jackass or was he just clueless? Bonnie would have liked to ask him but she was through putting up with him and his fathead insults. Instead she fielded a series of increasingly pissed off messages from Eric. Jane, it seemed, was untroubled. Detached. Jane told Eric that they had too many cars anyway. Eric relayed this, incredulous. Who was this guy, a con man? (He did not expect Bonnie to answer, although she could have.) What was Jane going to do next, start giving away his clothes? He would call the police. No, Bonnie told him. You will not. The car’s title was in both their names, there was nothing actionable there. She did not say that whatever cop took his complaint would have trouble keeping a straight face, that he would be mocked, openly or behind his back, for allowing his wife to give a car to her boyfriend.
“Then what am I supposed to do, sit back and let her carry on like a . . .” He could not come up with a name for the rampant perfidy that was Jane.
Bonnie told him she was sure the car would be returned. And the next day it was. There was a half-assed explanation and a half-assed apology. News like this reached Bonnie indirectly, through Eric, and after the fact. She was relieved that Patrick was at least avoiding any outright criminal acts. He had always been good at
skating right up to the edge of serious consequences, then retreating. The infuriating luck of the Irish.
A week went by, then two. Bonnie kept reassuring Eric that Jane’s infatuation (or Patrick’s part in it) wouldn’t last, although she did not wish to tell him why she thought that. She waited for things to run their course, for Patrick to act like Patrick, that is, oblivious and faithless, for Jane to get tired of it. And that kept not happening. It was well into October, and Eric reported that Jane was still making trips into the city and not bothering to hide it from him, although she was at least circumspect around the children. Probably because it was the one thing she knew Eric would not tolerate. Bonnie told him, “It’s not good for you to get so worked up. I wish you could . . .”
“Get over it? Get used to it?”
“No,” she said, although she had meant something close to that. “Get the right perspective, maybe.”
They were in bed, although they had not yet made love, because Eric was still going on about Jane Jane Jane. He had taken off his shoes and tie, and his feet in their black socks kept knocking together as he spoke. Bonnie was curled up next to him, attempting patience. She was tired of hearing about Jane, worrying about Jane, analyzing Jane. She did not understand how Jane had made herself so interesting just by sleeping around. It hardly ever worked that way. Let Jane go, let her live her own life, she wanted to tell Eric. Take advantage of this really swell opportunity to untie the knot. Pay attention to the here and now. That is, herself, her more than willing body. She was aware of the evening slipping away minute by minute, she knew at what time he was accustomed to sigh and say he had to be getting home.
Not that they had to make love every time they saw each other. She only felt that way because of the stupid limits of their stupid situation, and everything meaning too much.
Eric said, “She could run off with this guy.”
Bonnie kept silent. And this would be a bad thing why? she wanted to say.
She Poured Out Her Heart Page 40
