And Sometimes Why

by Rebecca Johnson

  “I may not have their experience,” Darius answered, “but I have something they don’t have. I have hope.”

  She could tell from the way he emphasized I that he did not include her in that description. “If there was a chance Helen might recover using some experimental therapy, don’t you think I would want that as much as you do?” Sophia knew her voice had begun to rise, to become shrill and accusing, but she felt powerless to stop it.

  “I would have thought so, but lately I’ve begun to wonder.”

  “The difference between you and me is that I am realistic. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life staring at my daughter’s dead body, hoping for a miracle. It’s bad enough to have your heart broken, but I am not going to be a fool about it.”

  “If you think hope makes you a fool, you’re a sad woman.”

  “Fuck you. You’re not the only person in pain here. When are you going to stop thinking only about yourself and your feelings?”

  A low moan from the backseat made them both turn around. Miranda’s forehead was pressed against the window. A curtain of black hair hid her face.

  Sophia felt a stab of remorse for her childish outburst, followed by a more powerful wave of self-pity. She tried to protect herself from its hydraulic force by concentrating on her breath—in, out, in, out, she told herself—but it kept sucking her in, pushing her down so she couldn’t breathe. She drew her knees to her forehead and tried to ride it out. The rest of the way home, nobody said a word.

  When they got home, Miranda was the first out of the car. Sophia watched her daughter run up the flagstone path leading to the back door. Such a hurry to get away from us, she thought, sadly. The light in the kitchen went on, followed by a scream. Darius ran inside. Sophia followed more slowly. She could tell the scream was one of pique, not fear. The kitchen floor was strewn with the bloody cotton entrails of a used sanitary napkin that Monty had strewn across the floor.

  “This is disgusting!” Miranda snapped.

  “I’ll clean it up.” Darius took a broom from the utility closet.

  “Forget it,” Miranda said, grabbing the broom from his hand.

  Sophia knew her daughter was embarrassed over the sanitary napkin. “Why don’t you take Monty for a walk?” she said to Darius. The dog was staring meekly up at them, his body flattened against the ground in submission.

  In her mind, Sophia had asked gently, as a peacemaker, but every thing was so out of place in her head, she must have sounded accusing and angry. “Why don’t you stop telling me what to do?” Darius replied, leaving the room. For once, the dog did not follow Darius.

  “Great,” Miranda said, banging the dustpan against the garbage can.

  “Fine, I’ll walk the damn dog.” Sophia took Monty’s leash off the hook Darius had inexpertly sunk into the drywall. Monty’s tail whipped back and forth with such force, the whole rear end of his body shook. Sophia was beginning to see the appeal of a dog—who else, at this precise moment in time, took any plea sure in the fact of her existence, except for this needily neurotic dog looking at her so ecstatically? Outside, the light was changing so quickly from sepia orange to violet blue that she felt time and the planet itself racing forward at some incomprehensible Einsteinian speed. Normally, the feeling filled her with a vague melancholy, but that night she welcomed it. Only time could wash these wounds clean, and even then she wasn’t so sure. As Monty pulled her down the sidewalk past the neighboring houses, she could see the ghostly blue glow of television sets turning on as people began their evenings. Through a double-height Palladian window, she glimpsed a woman’s back as she leaned over to water a plant. Was that woman happy? Sophia wondered. Did she love her job? Her husband? Were her children healthy and strong, grateful to her for the years of work and worry? Was she afraid of death? Were her parents alive? Did they love her? Monty lifted a leg to pee on a lavender bush. Sophia looked around guiltily but nobody was around. The woman through the window straightened up and put a hand to her lower back.

  Suddenly, Monty jerked the leash taut.

  A few feet away, a squirrel peered down from the branch of a tree, its bushy tail flicking back and forth tauntingly, like a stripper with a boa.

  “Monty,” Sophia said, “no!”

  The muscles under Monty’s fur quivered with furious desire. Sophia thought about reaching down, unhooking the leash, and letting him go, but what would Darius say if she came home without the dog? Instead, she loosened the leash, letting the dog pull her with him on his mindless gallop. For the last several years, Sophia had faithfully attended exercise class three times a week at the YMCA around the corner from work. Since the accident, she hadn’t been once. Despite the wrong shoes and a bra that offered no support, it felt good to run. After ten minutes and two left turns, she looked up and found herself in front of Roy Beaudell’s old house. The whole time Helen had dated Roy, Sophia had been in the house only once, for a book party Roy’s father’s publisher had thrown him. The most vivid part of the evening had been the anguish she felt getting dressed. Everything she owned felt too old and conservative. Finally, she’d borrowed a miniskirt from Helen. When she caught sight of herself in a full-length mirror at the party, she’d been horrified at the sight of a middle-aged woman trying to look like a young woman. Mutton dressed as lamb. “How could you let me wear this?” she’d whispered to Darius, who’d shrugged and (rightly) pointed out that nobody in the whole place was looking at them. Like that was supposed to make her feel better. “Anyway”—he’d kissed her ear—“I think you look terrific.”

  Across the For Sale sign in the front yard, a red-and-white Reduced! sticker had been pasted. She’d heard from a neighbor that Roy’s father had purposely overpriced the house to annoy his creditors. Sophia felt her pocket for her keys and looked up and down the block. It would be good, she thought, to get rid of Helen’s key. Plus, she’d stomped out of the house without stopping to go to the bathroom. Going down the driveway, she felt like a kid sneaking into the neighborhood haunted house. The key went easily into the lock on the back door but then refused to turn. She held it up to the light from a neighbor’s lamppost. The metal was fine, neither bent nor rusted. She tried again, wiggling first one way, then the other. Nothing. She walked to the front door of the house but the key wouldn’t even go in. Monty watched her with an expression of pleasant incomprehension. How nice to be so utterly stupid.

  She walked home, fingering the keys like a rosary. Back home, she gave Monty a rawhide and called Siri’s number from the list next to the phone.

  “Hello?” Siri’s frightened voice.

  “I don’t have news.”

  “Oh.” She sounded both disappointed and relieved.

  “I have a question. Did you ever give Helen a key to your house?”

  “No,” Siri answered. “Why?”

  After they hung up, Sophia poured herself a glass of wine. She had just taken her first sip when the phone rang.

  “I think I might know what the key is,” Siri said in a strangled voice. “He gave her one, so she could let herself in if he was working late.”

  “Oh,” Sophia answered. It had never occurred to her the key might have anything to do with Bobby, but it made sense. Her girl had been becoming a woman. A man had given her the key to his house.

  15

  harry stopped leaving the house. He even gave up running for swimming. He told himself it was because of the reporters who’d camped in front of his house, but the truth was, the reporters had left after the first day. He stayed home because he couldn’t think of anywhere to go. He would have been happy to keep his appointments—the personal appearance at a fund-raiser for scleroderma, the paid endorsement of a casino opening in Vegas—but Fields had strongly advised against it.

  “But I want to go,” Harry said, misunderstanding.

  “Hairy,” Fields answered, “don’t get me wrong, but they don’t want you. You’re bad news right now.”

  “But—” Harry answered.


  “I know it wasn’t your fault,” Fields stopped him before Harry could say it. “But sometimes people can get an aura. Lack when you’ve been to a club where every body is smokin’. You weren’t, but you smell like you was. You just got to let your clothes air out, Hairy. People will forgayt, you’ll see.”

  “That’s just what I’m afraid of,” Harry said. “People will forget.”

  Fields laughed professionally. “You’re funny, Hairy. Nobody could ever forget you.”

  For a minute he let himself believe that Fields was telling him the truth. People would never forget him. He created that show. Practically.

  Catherine entered the kitchen. It had been a month since the accident, but still she looked surprised whenever she found him there.

  “Do you think I’m memorable?” he asked.

  Suspicion made her features hard and pointy. Like an okie. “In what way?” she asked, shaking a bolus of Red Zinger tea into a strainer.

  “In the ‘anals’ of television history,” Harry said.

  “Funny,” Catherine said flatly. She hated anything to do with the anus. The one time early in the relationship he’d suggested anal sex, she’d burst into tears. “If that’s what you’re into, I don’t think I’m the woman for you.”

  Harry sighed and sipped his now-cold coffee. “Never mind.” Of course the publicist was sucking up to him. That’s what they were paid to do. “Hey,” he asked, “how many yards are in a mile?”

  She looked pained at the question. Catherine’s parents had spent a great deal of money on her education—a “fortune” was the word her father liked to use—but the schools were the sort that ignored math in favor of art. For her college thesis, she slept in a tree for a week, then created a diorama made of toothpicks to represent the experience. “For, you know, the micro in the macro.”

  “It’s something like seventeen hundred yards,” Catherine answered, “or seven hundred. I’m not sure.” That meant Harry was swimming either a mile a day or ten miles a day. He liked how the exercise had changed his body, building up his shoulders and narrowing his waist.

  “Harry?” Catherine sat across from him, one hand cradling her steaming mug of tea. “We need to talk.”

  “You want a divorce?” he asked.

  “Be serious.”

  “All right. Hold on.” He slid off his stool and closed the door to the hallway where Rosalba, one of their housekeepers, was sweeping.

  “Okay.” Harry sat down. “You want to talk instead of just having sex.” A joke. They hadn’t had sex in seven weeks.

  “Don’t be flip. Not now.”

  “Sorry,” he said, without conviction. If not now, then when?

  “The point is, we need to come up with a plan. To protect our interests in this whole matter.”

  “I don’t know what you mean by our ‘interests,’” Harry said testily. “The accident wasn’t my fault.”

  “Exactly. Which is why I think you should talk to my brother.”

  “Your brother is a real-estate lawyer,” Harry said.

  “He knows people.”

  This was the crux of the issue. Catherine knew people. Catherine’s brother knew people. Harry didn’t know people. He was only married to someone who knew people. He stood up.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “To swim,” he answered.

  “Oookaaay.”

  When she was offended, Catherine had a habit of elongating her words. “What time do you want luuunch?”

  “You know,” he answered, “we don’t have to eat every meal together.”

  “We’re married.”

  “Married people usually eat one meal a day together. Not three.”

  “Which meeeaaaal would you like to eat with me?”

  “Probably dinner,” he answered, “it’s traditional.”

  “Right,” she said, smiling, “then we can talk about what we did during the day.”

  “Sarcasm?” he asked.

  “You can’t swim your problems away, Harry. This has to be dealt with.”

  From the pool, he could see Catherine’s pale, worried face watching him through the kitchen window as she talked on the phone. The laps began to add up. Twenty, thirty, fifty. The fatigue spreading through his muscles was like an answer to an itch. Catherine was on the verge of a decision about him, he could feel it. He felt he should help her out somehow. Talk it through or do whatever it was that couples did in these situations. He knew what women thought of him. God knew he’d heard it enough through the years. We’re not partners. You never talk to me. You live in your head. And then, finally, toward the end. I’m lonely. He tried to reassure his disappointed partners that they were missing out on nothing. The inside of his head was a remarkably uncluttered place. In the beginning, Catherine had seemed to appreciate his comfort with silence. The first time they drove up to Sacramento to see her parents they’d talked on the freeway as they left L.A., but by the time they reached Santa Barbara, there was nothing left to say. Instead of panicking, the way he’d seen some women do, by asking stupid questions nobody cared about. (What were you like as a child? What did you want to be when you grew up? What’s your favorite food? ) Catherine had simply shut up. They rode the next 300 miles in complete silence. Occasionally, he’d glance at her to see if she was suffering but she looked remarkably serene. Happy, even. It was on that trip that he first thought of marrying her. Now the silence had gone sour on them. During meals, she brought kitchen and bedding catalogs to the table. If he heard her coming down the stairs he wasn’t above hiding around the corner to avoid her. Partly, he feared telling her what he himself was slowly realizing. He wasn’t missing work. Not seeing Maury Shore or Gus Morbane every day turned out to be a great relief. Greater still was the relief he felt at not having to respond to the fans who were constantly besieging him with their annoying Hey, Harry, I’d rather be whatevering. Hey, loser, I don’t care.

  On his eighty-third lap, Harry noticed a pair of Adidas sneakers standing at the edge of the pool. He looked up. A short, muscle-bound man in a tight gray T-shirt, blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and green-gold eyes that glittered in the reflected light of the water, was watching him.

  “It’s good to see a person swimming,” the man said. “Sometimes you begin to wonder if anybody actually uses the darn thing.”

  “You’re the pool man?” Harry asked. He’d never been home during his monthly visit.

  “The one and only. Joe Fisher.” The man crouched and put a hand in Harry’s face. Despite the muscles, his grip was soft, like a dead fish. He gestured to a large plastic jug near his feet. “I usually tell people it’s not a good idea to swim for at least an hour after I put the chemicals in.”

  Harry hauled himself out of the pool. “Can I watch?”

  “Be my guest, but be forewarned: Once you know what goes into it, you might not want to swim again.” He cackled after he said it, and Harry wondered if he was stoned.

  Fisher dipped a glass vial into the water, added a few chemicals and shook it.

  “What are you testing for?” Harry asked.

  “Bacteria. You’d be surprised how dirty humans are.”

  “Piss?”

  “A common misconception. Urine is actually sterile. It’s all the other things we’re constantly shedding—hair, skin, oils. And then there’s bacteria in the water itself.” He put on a pair of plastic gloves, a mask, and opened a jug of chemicals. He said something to Harry that sounded like “Mumbai.”

  Harry moved. Fisher poured a yellowish liquid the consistency of vegetable oil into the pool. A chemical odor burned Harry’s nostrils. Joe Fisher was right. Seeing what he was swimming in filled him with dismay.

  “Do we have to use all those chemicals?” he asked.

  Fisher shook his head. “I know. And then we all wonder why we’re getting cancer at forty-five. I’ve been trying to convince my boss to sell the all-natural pool.”

  “How does that work?”

  “
You stock the pool with a couple of algae-eating fish—the Thai flying fox, a couple of candy-stripe plecos, a few rubber-nose peckies—add some oxygen-producing plants, keep the pump and filter on high, and you’re recreating the swimming hole as God intended it.”

  “You swim with the fish?”

  “Just like the ocean. Without the waves, the salt, the sand, the high parking fees. Or girls in bikinis. But no plan is perfect.”

  “Why is your boss against it?”

  “A man without vision.” Fisher tightened the cap on the jug.

  “But you know people who have done it?”

  “In Europe, I understand it’s very popular.”

  Harry watched as the yellow liquid dissolved. “Maybe we should try it here,” he said.

  “Yeah, right.” Fisher answered like Harry was making a joke.

  “No, I mean it. My pool could be, like, a test case. A beta model. People pay a lot of money to swim with dolphins, don’t they?”

  Joe’s golden eyes widened. “Are you shitting me?”

  Harry looked at Fisher more closely. A flicker of doubt leaped and danced inside him. Did he want to be in business with this odd little man who, he realized now that he’d had a moment to consider him more closely, strongly resembled a recent convict?

  “Why not?” Harry answered Fisher’s question.

  “You’re really serious?” In his growing excitement, Fisher began shifting his weight back and forth between his two feet, like a boxer getting ready for a fight.

  “Yeah. I’ve been looking for—” Harry had started to say, “a new project,” but stopped himself.

  “Because not only would we be making the world a better place, but I think we could also get very rich.” Harry opened his mouth to tell him he ought to be careful what he wished for, but then closed it. Let him figure it out for himself.