We Are Not Ourselves

by Matthew Thomas

  She marched inside and found him hunched over the stack of lab reports they hadn’t gotten to the night before. She felt she’d fallen into a film loop.

  “I took your wood to the curb,” she said. “I’d appreciate it if you could keep the backyard from looking like a junk heap.”

  “Okay,” he said without looking up.

  “That’s it? Just ‘okay’? No rage? No telling me not to mess with your stuff?”

  He kept working as though he hadn’t heard her. She could smell a musky odor coming off him. He hadn’t showered. He had changed his clothes, thank God, but he hadn’t washed before he left for work. Ed hated not to shower. He felt a layer of grime sitting on him all day when he didn’t.

  “What were you trying to make, anyway?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, swiveling in his chair. He gave her a look that said he was only trying to get an honest bit of work done. He was one of those aggrieved husbands who had to deal with the not-always-sensible ravings of wives who meant well but made things so difficult sometimes.

  “I’m talking about the pile out back,” she said pointedly. “Your little Stonehenge.”

  “I really have to focus,” he said. “Whatever I did, I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t remember the sheet you put over the pile of wood in the backyard?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes.” She could see that he remembered it, possibly for the first time since he’d done it; he was that absorbed.

  “Okay, fine,” she said. “Just tell me something, and I’ll let you work all night. What were you making?”

  “What?”

  She knew this gambit; he was pretending he hadn’t heard her, stalling for time.

  “What were you making?”’

  “Oh, you know.”

  “I don’t. That’s why I’m asking.”

  “I was making something. I told you what I was doing. You know this.”

  “When I left on Saturday you told me you had some projects in mind. Home improvement projects.”

  “Yes! Yes. I was making something for the house.”

  His answers sounded like those given over the phone by kidnapped people being watched for signs of betrayal.

  “What exactly?”

  “Well, it was a surprise.”

  “I don’t need any more surprises.” She looked at him for a few moments. “How did it go today?”

  “Fine.”

  “No problems?”

  “No.”

  “No students complaining?”

  “No.”

  She hesitated for a moment, then came out with it.

  “Do you want some help with that other stack tonight?”

  “Yes,” he said in an instant.

  • • •

  She had no energy to cook, so they ordered pizza. At the end of the meal she took a long, hot shower. Afterward, she wanted to rest for an hour before she helped Ed with the lab reports. She didn’t feel like drowsing in the musty air of the bedroom, so she availed herself of the couch. It was one of those times she wished they had a television in the living room. It had been a principled stance of theirs—of Ed’s, mostly, though she went along with it. At the beginning of their marriage, Ed didn’t hate television, precisely; he just didn’t like what it was doing to American life. It wasn’t always convenient to be without a set in their living room, but there were benefits. Actual conversations took place when people came over, unlike at Ed’s sister Fiona’s house, where the all-seeing eye made any exchange a series of distracted monologues. And when the three of them crawled into the big bed on Sundays to watch Fawlty Towers, it was an event. Recently, though, Ed had grown more severe about it, insisting she shut it off when she tried to watch Johnny Carson at night. It was part of a general trend in his thinking. He was becoming more reflexive, more reactionary. She was becoming the opposite. When they moved to the new house, she would get a big television for the den.

  She went to the bedroom and wheeled the little television out to the living room. She wanted to shut her brain off. She didn’t care if the noise bothered him. He couldn’t be doing anything of consequence, and it was only a matter of time before she’d be sitting with him at the kitchen table, running through the grades.

  She woke to Ed pounding on the television set.

  “Keep that off,” he said. “I’m trying to work.”

  She was too sleepy to take umbrage at what he was saying. She waited curiously for the next thing.

  “Take it inside. Take it away.”

  “I happen to live here too,” she said, her blood rising.

  “Get it out of here! I can’t concentrate.”

  She stood and fixed the pillows behind her. “We don’t talk to each other like that in this household. I didn’t let my father talk to me like that, and I’m not about to let you do so. You’ve been a complete jerk for I don’t know how long. I’ve had it. I can’t take another day of it. Either you stop this behavior right now, or I swear, Ed, I’m leaving. I won’t make a big production of it. I’ll just take our son and go. Do you have any idea how tired I am? How long my day was? Because I stayed up to help you. You want to do everything yourself, fine. Do it. It’s easier for me to have nothing to do with you.”

  He dropped into the armchair and sat looking at her. It almost unnerved her how intent his look was. Against her will, she felt herself warming to him. There was something in his gaze that could make her embers catch fire, even when they were buried under layers of ash.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You said that yesterday.”

  “I’m under so much stress at work.”

  “I am too,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Since when are you under this kind of stress? I thought one of the perks of your job was how low-stress it was.”

  “Lately it’s not.”

  “Your head’s not in it,” she said. “I think your mind’s not right. But you won’t talk to me. You won’t let me in.”

  “I’m dealing with a new generation,” he said. “I need to be perfect.”

  “You’re having a midlife crisis,” she said. “I don’t mean to diminish it, but that’s what it is.”

  “I just need to get through the next couple of weeks,” he said. “Then I’ll be fine. I need the summer to recuperate. I put a few things off, and now I’m dealing with them. I’ve tried to shield you from all this. I’m tired. I’m making mistakes. I haven’t been sleeping well. I just need to recharge my batteries.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

  “I know the feeling,” she said as she yawned. “When do you need to return those lab reports?”

  “Tomorrow is the last day of classes.”

  “Go get them and we’ll check them together. Then we can both get some sleep.”

  She put on water for tea. She felt as if she was moving through a thick soup. She stood by the stove, watching the kettle boil. She fixed her tea and with languid movements joined Ed at the table. She wanted to insist on a little ceremony. She was going to sip her tea, not gulp it. But she needed Ed to calm down first. His knees were jackhammering up and down in that way that sometimes overcame him.

  “Let me drink this before we start.”

  “Fine, fine.”

  She tried to let the warm liquid have a tonic effect, but she had put too much milk in it, and it wasn’t a good cup. It was foolish to make tea in order to stay awake; all her years of drinking it before bed had turned it into a soporific.

  “Let’s get started,” she said.

  He focused on the open grade book with the unwavering attention of a runner about to start a race. She thought back to the chaos at the end of the previous night’s efforts, the way a spirit of collaboration had devolved into a shouting match. If only there were a way to avoid the altercation that would ensue if—when—Ed made a mistake. She could feel it as a certainty for some reason, perhaps because of the barely contained mania in that pump
ing leg. He was in a place mentally where she couldn’t follow, where an entry error was a harbinger of doom. She thought of the bum rap women got: as hormonal as she’d been after delivering Connell, she’d never been certifiably nuts.

  An idea occurred to her and she saw right away that it was the correct one, the only one. It should have occurred to her last night, but she was on Ed’s terms then, and tonight he was on hers. Still, she hesitated. Any deviation from the pattern, however short-lived that pattern happened to be, promised to unleash in Ed a disproportionate fury. She had a vision of his overturning the table like a card cheat before a shootout.

  She cleared her throat. “I have an idea,” she said tentatively, and he didn’t respond. He was tossing aside, one by one, the gestures of nicety that accounted for much of conversation. “It can save us some time. Of course, if you want to do it another way, it’s up to you.”

  He nodded to indicate he was listening—an improvement. She sipped her tea.

  “I can just enter them directly into the book,” she said. “You can check it over when I’m done.”

  “Yes,” he said, lightning-quickly. At first she thought he hadn’t heard her. Then he looked up and said it again. She felt her body relax. She hadn’t realized it, but she had been bracing for a shock—a blow, even.

  “Good,” she said as she took the gradebook from him, but she didn’t mean it. He was so quick to relinquish control of the project, it was as if he had been hoping all along that she would take it over.

  She filled in the grades. It took no time at all. It almost made her laugh. She had let herself be convinced that this was a task that required the gravest concentration. In fact it would have been difficult to make a mistake once the first few were in place. They were already alphabetized. She shuddered to imagine how much time Ed had spent checking the alphabetization.

  “Done,” she said, closing the book. She hoped he wouldn’t insist on checking it himself.

  “Thank you,” he said, to her surprise.

  “Let’s go to bed.”

  They made love; it was a frenetic affair. Ed seemed to take his stress out on her body, but she enjoyed it anyway. They hadn’t made love with vigor like that in a while. There was something less than terrifying about his anger; it was that of a man in chains. He finished with a grunt; she climaxed along with him. As they lay in silence afterward, their bodies coated in sweat, Ed looking at her intently, she felt an invisible barrier between them had been breached. It would be easier now. She would be able to tell him about the house.

  26

  On Saturday she drove up to Bronxville to meet Gloria. No bids had been placed yet, and she wasn’t interested in seeing any other houses. Still, she drove up. The clutter on Gloria’s desk infused her with a feeling of unease.

  “What do you say we walk and talk.” Gloria gestured outside. “Take a look at the town.”

  Outside, Gloria extended the pack; Eileen demurred.

  “You don’t mind if I do, right?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Good. ’Cause I have to anyway!”

  Gloria laughed a raspy laugh and began to cough. She lit the cigarette and took a long drag.

  “Talk to hubby yet? What’s his name?”

  She didn’t know when it had happened precisely, but Gloria had dropped all pretense of formality with her. A hint of coarseness idled in her voice. At first their familiarity had been bracing. Now that Eileen was a step closer to living there, though, she felt conflicted about it. It meant a small diminution of her ideal. She thought of all the people Gloria probably knew in town. A real estate agent could wield a lot of power if she wanted to. She could control the narrative. She knew people’s secrets no less than a psychiatrist or priest did.

  “Ed. Ed’s his name.”

  “Have you gotten the thumbs-up from him yet?”

  “We haven’t discussed it. He’s been busy.”

  Gloria took a drag. Eileen could feel her gaze on her.

  “You’re afraid if you bring it up, you’ll hear a no, and then there’ll be no negotiating from there. I get it. I’ve been there—believe me.”

  Eileen bristled. It was far more complicated, and even if she had time to explain the subtleties of it in a way that did them justice, she wasn’t sure Gloria was the kind of person who could appreciate such subtleties. She wondered how she had managed to let her guard down with this crude woman.

  “I’m going to talk to him about it soon,” Eileen said, “and I’m confident we’ll be in a position to make an offer.”

  “You have a bit of time,” Gloria said philosophically. “But I wouldn’t wait forever. This house is under market. You can’t afford to get into a bidding war.”

  She had been thinking of the house as protected by the invisible bubble of her interest in it, and she felt a seed of panic take root. They did a loop around the block, Gloria waving to owners and salespeople, a few of whom came out to chat. Eileen felt edgy and ill-equipped to win anyone over. It was safer when they were in the car; it was safer to walk around alone.

  • • •

  She didn’t admit to herself where she was really heading until she had passed the on-ramp to the Bronx River Parkway. She kept driving until she came to the street with the two stone pillars at either side that Gloria had turned onto when she’d taken her there. She felt her way up a couple of turns until she saw the house. She didn’t have a plan. She just knew she had to be near it, to confirm her feeling about it.

  She parked in front, figuring the driveway was too conspicuous. She sat in the car for a while, looking at the stone wall that girdled the front yard, working up the courage to walk the grounds. She knew what she intended to do was technically trespassing, even though whoever was selling the house wouldn’t have minded if it helped to firm up her resolve to buy it. She walked up the driveway to the back stairs. No table and chairs sat on the patio, but she saw them in her mind. Someone was being paid to care for the plants and shrubbery. She saw where she could add a few flowers. In a house like this she would be inspired to learn to keep them alive. A path of stone stairs led up the hill in the back. She followed it to a flat area halfway up that had been left untended. She could put another table there. It could be the aerie from which she looked down on her domain.

  The property ran all the way up to a wall that abutted the yard of an Italian-style villa at the top of the hill. It dwarfed this house in grandeur and size, but there was no shame in being outstripped by a house that majestic.

  After a little while she saw a worker turning over soil in the backyard of the house next door. He hadn’t seen her, but all he had to do was look up. She hid behind a tree and watched till he disappeared inside. Then she scampered down the steps. The bush cover on the patio gave her courage to try the screen door to the den. It slid open, as did the glass door behind it, and in an instant she was in the house.

  She didn’t turn any lights on. Sounds echoed in the big empty spaces. She hesitated going deeper into the house, but a rustling of the leaves outside sent her scurrying into the living room.

  She headed upstairs. The place smelled different than it had; she picked up a faint hint of mildew, perhaps wafting up from the basement. It might only have been the close air trapped in the house. She went to the bedroom where Connell had lain on the floor. The room felt imposingly empty with no one else there, and she couldn’t stay in it long. She went to the guest bathroom and ran both taps. She looked at herself in the mirror, then looked away, afraid that something would appear behind her. In the quiet of the house every sound was magnified.

  She went to the master bedroom and sat leaning against the wall, by the windows. The longer she sat, the more nervous she grew, but she couldn’t bring herself to get up. She was waiting for external circumstances to dictate her next move. She felt like a mountain climber who had reached a longed-for summit and couldn’t bear to return to normal life.

  She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting when she hea
rd the voices. She shot to her feet and looked for a place to hide. She gave no thought to walking downstairs and forthrightly greeting them. She didn’t know who they might be: the owner, other prospective buyers, a neighbor, the police. She thought to hide behind the shower curtain in the master bath, but there was no curtain, and even if there were one, how would it look if they pulled it back and found her there? They’d call the cops for certain. She thought of the attic stairs hidden in a ceiling panel in one of the closets, but she didn’t know if she could pull them down quietly enough, and where was she going to hide up there?

  She stood by the doorway to the bedroom. Lights were being flicked on downstairs. She heard enough to tell it was a couple looking at the house and a real estate agent who wasn’t Gloria. She decided to stay in the bathroom until she had heard them start up the stairs. If she heard them go left at the top, she would slip out and head down. If they stopped her, she would burble something and keep moving. They weren’t likely to follow her or keep interrogating her. And if they turned right and headed into the master bedroom suite, she would say she had stayed behind after looking at the house.

  She listened to this foreign agent enumerating the house’s virtues. Hearing them presented to another couple curdled the joy she took in their particulars. They were taking forever down there. Anxiety and impatience combined to produce an unexpected boldness in her. She flushed the toilet for a bit of theater, then thrust herself out on the landing and headed down the stairs.