Hope Street: Hope StreetThe Marriage Bed

by Judith Arnold

  He poured himself a cup of coffee. He’d made it too strong, and it scorched the length of his digestive tract.

  He knew he should eat something. Instead he returned to the living room with his Number One Dad mug, sank onto the overstuffed sofa, rolled his head back and closed his eyes. The music washed over him like a warm tide. He wished it would lift him up and carry him to some other, happier shore. A golden beach where Joelle would be waiting for him, smiling, her arms spread wide.

  The sound of the doorbell jarred him from his trance. “Riders on the Storm” had been playing, slow and bluesy and mournful. He didn’t want to drag himself off the sofa. He didn’t want to see anyone. But what if it was the police? What if they were here to tell him something awful had happened to Joelle?

  He forced himself to his feet, strode across the living room to the entry and opened the door. Claudia stood on the porch, holding the morning newspaper he’d never bothered to bring inside. “What’s going on?” she asked, shoving past him and across the threshold.

  “Why are you here?” he retorted, too tired to bother with manners.

  “Mike phoned and said something was wrong. He and Danny had to go meet with a client because you said you were sick. Where’s Mom?”

  Claudia was as brisk and focused as he was hazy. He watched her poke her head through the living-room doorway before stalking down the hall to the kitchen, calling for her mother.

  Reluctantly, he followed her into the kitchen. She stood in the middle of the room, hands on hips. “Where’s Mom?”

  What was the point in pretending? “She left,” he said.

  “She left? What do you mean, she left?”

  He moved to the counter and located the wrinkled sheet of paper with Joelle’s note on it. “I mean she left,” he said, handing the note to Claudia.

  She read it, her brow furrowing. “When did she leave?”

  “She was gone when I got home last night.” He sipped his coffee. It had cooled off, but its bitterness scorched his throat.

  “Did you phone her?”

  “Twice. She won’t answer.”

  Claudia pursed her lips. “She’s got caller ID on her cell, right? Let me try her from my phone. Maybe she’ll take my call.” She set her purse down on the table and rummaged through it. “Have you eaten anything?”

  “I’m drinking coffee. Don’t baby me.”

  Her lips pursed harder, compressing tighter than a kiss. She dug out her cell phone. “Any idea where she might have gone?”

  “She took her car. How far do you think she’d drive?”

  “The airport isn’t that far,” Claudia pointed out. “She could be anywhere.” She tapped her thumb against the buttons on her cell, then held it to her ear. After a few seconds, she started talking. “Mom? It’s Claudia. Where are you?”

  Bobby dropped onto one of the chairs. He no longer had the strength to refill his mug. The comprehension that Joelle would accept a call from Claudia but not from him cut through him like a stiletto, so sharp it took him a minute to realize how badly he was bleeding.

  “Okay, I understand,” Claudia said into the phone. “It’s just…” She glanced toward Bobby. “No, he’s fine,” she said, and Bobby closed his eyes and nodded his thanks. “He says he tried to phone you.”

  “Tell her I want her to come home,” Bobby murmured.

  “He wants you to come home,” Claudia told her mother, then listened some more. “All right. Yes. I’ll tell him. I’ll talk to you again later.” She folded her phone shut, then regarded her father sternly. “She said she needs a little time to herself to think things through. She also said to let you know the Prius got excellent mileage on the highway.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Holmdell.” Claudia lifted the coffee decanter, studied the gravy-thick sludge inside it and emptied it into the sink. She rinsed it and prepared a fresh pot. Then she walked to the refrigerator, opened it and pulled out a package of English muffins and a tub of butter. Without a word, she slid two split muffins into the toaster oven and turned it on. While the muffins browned, she returned to the refrigerator, removed the platter of skewered shrimp and dumped its contents into the trash.

  Bobby felt a rush of gratitude that she’d disposed of the damn shrimp. When she presented him with a plate holding the toasted muffins, he felt a little less grateful. “You don’t have to feed me,” he said. “I’m not one of your babies. Where are they, anyway?”

  “They’re with their father,” she said crisply. She set the tub of butter in front of him. Then she filled his mug with the freshly brewed coffee, poured some into another mug for herself and joined him at the table. “Is this all because of me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mom’s disappearing act. Is it because of me?”

  He opened his mouth, then shut it and used the time it took to butter his muffin halves to sort his thoughts. “None of this is because of you, Claudia. I don’t ever want you thinking that.”

  “But if my real—I mean, my biological father hadn’t made the scene, Mom would be home right now.”

  “I don’t know.” Bobby lifted the muffin, then lowered it back to the plate. He ought to eat something, but he couldn’t. He was starving, but he wasn’t hungry. “Drew Foster opened a door we used to keep closed,” he said. “Whatever was behind that door existed, even when the door was bolted shut. Now it’s open. That’s all.”

  “What’s behind the door, Dad?” Claudia asked, her voice hushed and gentle.

  “I don’t think that’s your business,” he said, equally gently. She meant well, but Christ. She was his daughter.

  “It is my business. The person who unlocked this door you’re talking about was looking for me.” She folded her hands on the table in front of her, like a schoolgirl praying to do well on a quiz. She was dressed in a flowery sundress. Claudia was the kind of woman who’d put on a dress at eight on a Saturday morning just to check on her father. There was nothing pretentious about it, no attempt to impress. It was just the way she was.

  Her lovely grooming made him feel twice as rumpled. He hadn’t combed his hair, his cheeks were covered in stubble, the edges of his shorts were fraying and his bare feet were ugly. Thanks to Joelle, he’d learned not to be self-conscious about his scars, which had faded over the years. Along his side and back was a faint graph of pale lines. As for his legs, he could wear shorts and not care that someone might notice the tracks his surgeries had left on his skin.

  But even if he’d been left with huge, ugly scars, Joelle had accepted his body, and that had enabled him to accept it.

  He managed to swallow a bite of muffin. “Your mother married me so you wouldn’t be born out of wedlock,” he said. “Is that what you wanted to know?”

  “I already figured that out.”

  “Okay, then. You get the picture. We didn’t marry for love.”

  “But you do love each other.” Claudia studied his face, searching for reassurance.

  “I love your mother. I don’t think she loves me.”

  “Just because she went off to Ohio doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you.”

  “I’m not talking about this.” He gestured toward the note Joelle had left him. “I’m talking about our lives. She married me because she had to, because she couldn’t see any other way to keep you. And we made a go of it for a long time because we kept that fact locked behind the door. If you don’t think about something, you can pretend it isn’t there.”

  “She told me…” Claudia traced the rim of her mug with her finger. “She told me she would have gone out with you in high school if you’d ever asked her. You never did.”

  Bobby sat back, surprised. For a moment he regressed to being a teenager, Joelle Webber’s best friend and secret admirer. “We were pals,” he said.

  “You never asked her out. You were dating some other girl. Mom showed me everyone in her high-school yearbook. I don’t remember the girl’s name. She had black hair and too much ey
e makeup.”

  “Margie Noonan,” Bobby recollected. Then he shook his head. “Your mother was out of my league.”

  “She was a kid from the wrong side of the tracks, just like you.”

  “She was a Tubtown kid, but she wasn’t anything like me.” He sipped some coffee. It tasted wonderful after the crap he’d brewed earlier. “She was going places. She was destined for greatness. I wasn’t about to stand in her way.”

  “You were destined for greatness, too,” Claudia said. “Look at you, Dad. You own your own business. You own a beautiful house on a beautiful piece of land in a beautiful part of New England. You’re an American success story.”

  “I never thought I’d wind up like this,” he admitted. Even scruffy and agitated, his wife gone and his future threatened, he allowed himself a moment of pride in all he’d accomplished. Then he acknowledged the truth: “Whatever success I’ve achieved, it was because of your mother. I wanted her to have the life she’d dreamed of. When I came back from the war, I was a mess, inside and out. She had two babies to deal with, not just one. You and me. She deserved so much more—and I’ve spent my life trying to give it to her.”

  “That’s not the way she tells it,” Claudia argued. “She’s always told me you were the bravest man she’d ever known.”

  “There was nothing brave about getting drafted.”

  “She isn’t talking about your service in Vietnam,” she clarified. “She’s talking about when you came back. Mom said you were in a million pieces and fought your way back to health—and all the while, you were taking care of me. That took a lot of courage.” She smiled nostalgically. “She showed me this old music box you used to play for me. Do you remember? It played ‘Edelweiss.’”

  “Yeah, I remember that.” He shared her smile, then grew solemn. Would Joelle really have gone out with him in high school? They’d been such close friends, dating her would have seemed incestuous. “The bottom line was, your mother hoped to marry Drew Foster,” he said quietly. “She had to settle for me.”

  “I think she loves you more than you realize,” Claudia said, reaching across the table to squeeze his hand.

  “And I think you’re a daughter trying to keep her parents together.” Noticing a darkness on the inside of her elbow, he frowned. He’d glimpsed it earlier and assumed it was just a shadow, but when she extended her arm he saw more clearly that it was a bruise. “What happened to your arm?”

  “Oh, this?” She glanced at the discolored skin just below the crease of her joint. Then she met his gaze. “I went for a blood test yesterday.”

  “A blood test.” His heart pinged, like a car engine with a malfunction.

  She squeezed his hand again. “Whatever happened in the past wasn’t that boy’s fault. I don’t know how I feel about everything else, but I can’t just turn away and let that boy die. He’s my brother.”

  That boy might die anyway. Claudia might not be a match. And all the pain, all the brutal truths that had rampaged through that door when Drew Foster had forced it open might have been exposed for nothing. If Foster hadn’t barged back into Bobby and Joelle’s lives just one week ago, they might have gone on happily, forever.

  But now Claudia believed she had a brother. Not just Mike and Danny, but another brother. Drew Foster’s son.

  She broke into his ruminations, as if trying to tear him away from the idea she’d just presented to him. “Seeing a marriage counselor might be a good idea.”

  “I hate that stuff,” he said, not ready to be torn. He’s my brother, Claudia had said. Foster’s kid was her brother.

  “Sometimes it’s easier to talk your problems out with an objective outsider. You could get it all out in the open. You could say things to the counselor that you can’t say to each other.”

  “Like that’s such a great idea,” he muttered, then sipped his coffee. “I don’t think there’s all that much inside me, anyhow. And if there is, maybe that’s where it belongs. Inside me. Left alone.”

  Claudia finished her coffee and stood. Her hair was the color Joelle’s used to be before a few streaks of gray had sneaked in, but straighter. It fluttered around her face as she carried her mug to the sink and washed it. After propping it in the drying rack, she faced Bobby. “Either you and Mom can talk to each other and get things out into the open, or you can go back to pretending everything’s fine when it isn’t.”

  “We can’t go back,” he said.

  “Right. You can’t. Because even if you wanted to pretend everything was fine, you can’t pretend that I’m…” She drew in a breath and let it out. “You can’t pretend I’m your daughter anymore. I mean, I am, but…”

  “Yeah. I know.” From the living room drifted the sound of Jim Morrison singing, “You’re lost, little girl.” Bobby considered storming into the living room and shutting off the damn music—or maybe dragging the CD player off its shelf and stomping on it. What more did he need in his life? His wife gone, his daughter telling him she wasn’t his daughter and the Doors providing the sound track. And violent urges rising in him. Maybe they’d been behind that door, too, just one more nasty bit of truth, his father’s legacy. The door was open and now he was going to become the beast his father had been.

  He’d denied Claudia her genes. Maybe he’d denied his own, as well.

  “I’d better get back home,” she said. “Gary’s probably tearing his hair out by now. The kids can be pretty demanding first thing in the morning.”

  Bobby nodded. He pushed away from the table, stood and wondered whether he should kiss Claudia goodbye.

  She answered that question by crossing to him and kissing his cheek. “Things will work out, Dad.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  She shrugged, then patted his arm. “Promise me you’ll remember to eat. I’ll call you this evening to see how you’re doing.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he swore, hoping his words weren’t just another lie. “Will you tell me the results of the blood test when you get them?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said, then turned and left the kitchen.

  He should have accompanied her to the door, but he couldn’t bear to watch her walk out of his house and away. She was right; he could no longer pretend she was his daughter. You’re lost, the song reminded him.

  As if he didn’t already know.

  TEN

  May 1987

  THE SPRING SUNLIGHT WAS LIKE a warm, white bath soaking Joelle as she sat on the stiff folding chair. To her left was her mother, who’d traveled all the way from Ohio for this day. To her right were the boys, Mike flipping through the program and Danny squirming incessantly, kneeling, sitting, climbing down from his chair to get a closer view of an ant plodding through the grass. On their other side sat Claudia, just a couple of weeks short of sweet sixteen and acting as if she had no idea who the two rambunctious little boys beside her were.

  Joelle didn’t care if the boys were restless. She didn’t care if Claudia wished she were seated in another row, a member of another family. She didn’t care that Wanda was there—her mother could be a pain, but she’d insisted on coming and then requested that Bobby and Joelle pay her airfare, since she couldn’t afford it herself. None of that mattered.

  This was truly one of the greatest days of her life.

  Twenty rows in front of them, under a white canopy, a man in a long, black robe spoke ponderously into a microphone, his voice distorted by echoes and amplification as it drifted across the field.

  “I’m bored,” Danny whined.

  Joelle dug in her tote bag and pulled out an Etch-a-Sketch. “Here,” she whispered. “Play with this—but don’t talk. People are trying to listen to the speech.”

  “It’s boring,” Danny muttered, although he subsided in his chair, crossed his legs and twisted the Etch-a-Sketch’s dials.

  Amazing that they’d gotten here, Joelle thought. Amazing that they’d reached this day, this place, this sun-blessed corner of western Connecticut. Amazing that B
obby was graduating from college.

  How did people get from point A to point B? she wondered as the orator droned on. How did sixteen years fly by so quickly? It felt like mere days ago that Bobby returned his cane to the V. A. hospital. “I hate New Jersey,” he’d said as he’d left the rehab clinic for the last time, walking with only a slight limp. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  One of the physical therapists he’d worked with had a cousin who ran a masonry business in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Bobby and Joelle knew nothing about Bridgeport, Connecticut, except that it wasn’t New Jersey—and it wasn’t Ohio. Bobby phoned the cousin and got himself hired.

  Joelle and Bobby decamped for Connecticut and moved into a two-bedroom apartment they could barely afford. Bobby learned how to do brickwork and stonework for the new subdivisions and office parks sprouting across the region. People hated talking about the Vietnam War, but they seemed happy to hire a veteran. When Joelle suggested to Bobby that she’d like to return to college, he told her to go ahead.

  Claudia, fortunately, was an easy child. She loved her preschool and didn’t cling to her mother—probably because she’d spent so much time with Bobby during her first few years. Joelle was able to schedule her classes at Fairfield University in the mornings, so Claudia attended preschool for only a half day, which saved on the tuition. In the afternoons, Joelle played with Claudia and taught her the finer aspects of shopping: “Always use a coupon if you’ve got one,” she’d explain as she pushed Claudia up and down the grocery-store aisles in a shopping cart. “Always look for a Sale sign,” she’d instruct in a clothing store. After a while, Claudia began to recognize the letters. Sale was the first word she ever read.

  Bobby’s job healed him as effectively as the surgeries and physical therapy had. Bending, lifting, laying stone and lugging thirty-pound sacks of concrete powder honed his body. He came home every evening filthy and exhausted, but smiling. In the evenings, after dinner, he would play with Claudia while Joelle studied. Seated in the kitchen with her textbooks and notes spread across the table, she would hear Bobby and Claudia chatting and laughing and watching The Muppet Show together in the living room. Before bed, Bobby would always read to Claudia. “Make Eeyore’s voice,” she’d order him as he worked his way through Winnie the Pooh with her. “Make it funny, like you did last time.”