Pay the Piper

by Joan Williams

  “I got it for seven years and three are gone.” She thought of Hal’s lawyer saying, “Rehabilitative alimony,” and remembered how Hal mumbled, “If she’s getting the house, I’m not giving her anything else.” His lawyer had said, “She has to have it, Hal.” The lawyer would have known then what she found out later. As soon as the divorce was over, Hal sold his half of Matagorda and became an instantly rich man. He seemed to go on creating harm without anything touching him. Never once did he seem to understand he had done anything to her life.

  When she thought about the circularity of things, Laurel was haunted. One day Hal had asked if she would be home that afternoon? Leery, she had said, “Why?” The sheriff was coming by to deliver divorce papers. She fled to downtown Soundport like a hunted animal—but when she came home, the papers were on the newel post. Afterward, notice of the divorce having been filed appeared in the local paper in Court Reports. There for all to see was the fact Hal was suing her for divorce, embarrassing for her and Rick in the town where they had lived so long. She’d have filed for divorce if he’d told her he wanted one. That day the sheriff came to see her, she thought about William’s having been accosted at the railroad station, in the dark, and about William coming home laughing. She believed, this late, William laughed when he was hurt the most. No matter the circumstances, rejection hurt. She knew that hurt with Hal. The day they left the lawyer’s, having discussed alimony, he curled his lip. “You took me to the cleaners,” Hal said. She had that curious sense again that he was oblivious to anything he had done to her, and she thought how she and William had never stopped suffering.

  The day she told William she was married, he had come by her house to pick up clothes still stored in the attic, and he dropped an armload. He said, “Congratulations. You sure are a creature of impulse.” She had begun to cry and told him she was terrified about money since Hal had a year left in prison. “Don’t let anything terrible happen to me,” she said. William had put an arm around her and promised. Then he said he would be up to his ass in debt buying the house back and asked her not to take much furniture, but her loyalty had been with her new husband. She had said, “I have to be cruel. Hal doesn’t have money to buy any more, either.”

  “Was it this guy’s idea about the private detective?” William asked.

  “I didn’t even know Hal when I did that,” she said. She saw William realized how uncharacteristic of her the action had been, but William had not realized how desperate she had become.

  “I’d have fought you tooth and nail about that divorce,” William said. “But I figured you had another guy, and in the long run I’d save myself some money. When I get married again, I don’t care if my wife turns to stone, I’m staying at home. Middle-aged dating is for the birds.”

  They were teary, saying they didn’t know why they couldn’t have worked things out. If they had been the people they had become, they could have. “There was nothing I could do about whatever it was that kept me from being able to make love to you,” William said. “As you know, I had a fantastic sex life and was a shit and screwed everything in New York while we were married. I look back and blame myself for the fatal error. I broke the promise and went right back to that girl within a week after we agreed to no more affairs. If I hadn’t, I believe we could have made it. I blame myself entirely.”

  The fatal error was she had married Hal MacDonald, Laurel thought. That day when she and William were still teary, they decided to have a drink. She had said, “Could you keep paying me alimony and take it off the purchase price of the house when I sell it to you?”

  “Let me get this straight,” and William had put down his glass. He didn’t believe his lawyer would go along with that proposition, he had said. When he left the house that night, it was as if they were still crying. Before the year was over, she had to take money from Daddy till Hal got out of prison.

  When Rick asked about her alimony, she had gone on explaining it to him. “Seven years was decided on, based on the supposition that in seven years my mother will be dead. Isn’t that nice? I’ll have inherited her money.” I’m an unashamed alimony drag, Laurel thought. What otherwise could she have done? “The marriage was only for ten years,” Hal’s lawyer had said, bargaining. Only! she could scream that now. “And no children,” he ended. That wasn’t my fault, she had said to herself.

  Rick said, “What are you going to do if Gran hasn’t died?”

  “It’s quite simple. I have to kill my mother. I’ve done everything else I know to do. Gotten what jobs I could. Sold my collection of first editions. That broke my heart.”

  “I know. I always wanted to inherit those.”

  “Forget it. Your inheritance keeps shrinking all the time.”

  “Yeah. Thanks for getting a divorce. Now I’ve got Dad’s new family to share it with.” But he was smiling.

  “Maybe Paul Newman will make a movie out of my novel we dropped off at his house in Westport.”

  “I can’t believe we did that.”

  “I can’t either. But I’m tired of being what someone called ‘Soundport’s best unknown writer.’ Maybe we should have said more in the letter to him. This well-received novel is filled with potential for violence, sex—”

  “Mom, the book’s fifteen years old.”

  “I know. Maybe we should have written the letter to Joanne Woodward, too. Maybe I should drop off for her my other novel that—”

  “Mom. Seriously. Suppose Gran lives a long time in a nursing home and all that.”

  “She can’t. Or at least, she can’t die in a nice place, with dignity. Maybe a state institution. Or maybe we could put her in Grand Central Station. They take care of people there. I’ve read about it in the Times. They give them a nice sandwich, an apple, a carton of milk. She wouldn’t be lonely. Maybe I’ll find a nice eighty-year-old who’ll think I’m young. Only men that age marry twenty-year-olds too.”

  “You’ve been married for a quarter of a century,” Rick said. “Let’s find out who Laurel Perry is. I mean MacDonald.”

  “Wynn,” she said. “I changed my name back legally. I wasn’t dragging that MacDonald name around with me.” She had said, “Besides, I know who I am. A middle-aged divorcee in the suburbs without enough money. The last role I ever imagined for myself. One I always dreaded. I’m too stupid to sell real estate like the rest of the women like me. I’ve never made any money off writing. I look forward to grandchildren. That’s a hint.”

  “Dad’s strapped for money too. I’ve got to make it all on my own. I don’t know when I can afford to get married.”

  She would not wear the bra anyway tonight. She was going to a seminar she read about in the local paper: Adult Children of Alcoholics. Well, I’m one, she had thought. Any men there would be more interesting than the kind who went to singles groups. Her mother told her to give up. She couldn’t, Laurel thought. She dreaded meeting her mother at Bloomingdale’s, dreaded the accusatory look in her eyes: Look what you have done to your life. Only what her mother meant was, My life. Without a marital situation, Laurel did not offer the haven she once did. Now that she was older, Mrs. Wynn grew more lonely. Best of all would be if Laurel had never left William.

  Why didn’t her mother give her credit for what she had done since Hal left? Forget publishing a novel; that never meant much to her. But right away, she had gotten a job. And now, she was teaching Freshman English at the community college. Her heart was in her throat at every teaching job. At least this was the literature semester. She was slightly more familiar with the subject than when, back in Delton, she taught grammar to freshmen. Things had grown easier this semester since a student asked if they couldn’t use audiovisual aids. “What are those?” she had to ask. Finding out, she had had students constantly listening to records of writers reading their work, reading Shakespeare, looking at movies that took up two class times. As a teacher she had hardly had to say a word in class since discovering this other method of teaching.

  It was no
t easy getting Hal out of the house. She kept telling her lawyer everything was on her side, Hal’s past, his arsenal of guns in the attic, proof of his beating her. The law moved slowly and curiously. Hal went out every night. Newly alone, who was she supposed to know to go out with? Married couples never thought to invite you over for a simple supper, a sandwich, not to eat alone always.

  The day after Hal announced the divorce, she went to play tennis. A friend said, “I saw Hal Sunday in Stamford. He was there to play in a parade, but it was rained out. He was in a pet shop waiting for it to stop.”

  Something in the friend’s glance made her say, “We’re getting a divorce.” Though she had not thought she could tell anyone: divorced twice.

  “That’s good,” the friend said. “He was with a woman. They were all huddled up next to each other. That’s why I noticed them. When he saw me looking, the woman went out a back door.”

  She raced home in disbelief, because she believed in him. She threatened him with her tennis racquet. She threw his clothes out windows and threw a suitcase he kept in his room down at him. Dodging and running around, he kept crying, “You’re trying to kill me.”

  In her madness, she stopped and said, “With a suitcase? You damn sissy.” He ran out to his lawyer’s and came back and put away his clothes and said they’d be carting her off if she did anything else, the law on his side.

  Mr. Woodsum was no longer in the phone book. The new private detective was out of a dime novel. He brushed her breasts when he helped her off with her coat. She explained about the women in the band. “Forget one,” she had said. “Doreen. She’s too pitiful for Hal to fool with.” He would have to find out about other female members because she did not know them.

  Later the detective discussed them with her. “One is sixteen. Would your husband—?” But she said confidently, “No.” He followed Hal away from the house one evening while she watched him start out to tail him, and she felt more than ever curious about her life and the circles in it. She was summoned to the detective’s office and kept on her coat. “It’s Doreen,” he said.

  “Dough-reen,” she cried out, amazed. What a fool she had been when the woman stomped on her heavy haunches into her house, taking her husband away before her eyes, making no bones about it. But who behaved in such a manner? What a mouse she was in comparison. But, “Doughreen,” she could only say again. And she felt quite sorry for Hal.

  16

  Before Hal was put out of the house, he began asking if she did not realize he came home sober, that he was cutting down on his drinking. Yes, she had noticed he came home sober and began to drink afterward, no matter the hour. But he wasn’t drinking as much because of Doreen. “She doesn’t drink,” he said. Then one evening he told her, “Before I started seeing Sallie, she offered me some soup on a duck hunt one time. It was eleven o’clock in the morning and it was so laced with vodka I couldn’t drink it.” She stared at him, thinking, That was nearly thirty years ago, and you’re still trying to absolve yourself of guilt and blame things on Sallie. The way his family went on absolving him so that he went on destroying lives. “You caught me at a vulnerable time, my family says,” he told her. You were vulnerable! she wanted to scream. She pictured Doreen clucking over the story about Sallie, drawing out other tales so she could smooth and comfort and mother, the way he wanted. A big-bosomed woman like a pouter pigeon, one who had to be grateful to Hal because she had had nothing else in her life and never was going to. Laurel thought she would give her eye-teeth to know if Hal was still drinking. He had said, “I can’t put another woman through what I’ve put you through,” then left. A forty-year-old manicurist would get the best of him. He had found a level of superiority way below the one he was born to.

  When Hal was put out of the house, he rented a place near Doreen’s. It turned out Doreen lived across the street from her mother. “Streets I was driving over long before I ever thought I’d meet Hal MacDonald,” Laurel said to herself. The house was not far from the Scarabees’ old white house where they practiced the band. Those nights Hal dropped by to see her mother, when she thought sweetness prompted him, it had not been at all out of his way, as she had thought. The band had always practiced at seven thirty. She laughed about those nights Hal ate two dinners, hers, and then Doreen’s, when he was supposed to be at band practice early.

  Once the divorce was over, Hal moved his furniture, his furnishings from Matagorda. And he took Bud. Then the house was stripped nearly bare, and she rattled about with her heels echoing hollowly through rooms, and over stairs, that no longer had carpets. All the time, she longed for even the rattling of Bud’s dog tags; she longed to encounter him when she came home. Instead, always, there were the four walls and silence. To make up her bed, even though Hal had not slept in it for a long while, gave her a terrible, empty feeling. A sense of her solitariness. It seemed the saddest thing in the world to sleep by herself, to think that she always would. Laurel looked back to that same sense of emptiness and shock when William had started’ to sleep in a separate bedroom, a circumstance she had instigated. Rooms in her house were without lighting fixtures because the ones they used had been brought from Matagorda. Hal had promised to replace these and never had. When she went through echoing rooms, wires hung from the walls where the fixtures had been removed. There seemed to be no extra money for such expenditures. She worried on about the future and her monetary prospects. As soon as Hal moved, she rented out Rick’s room and bath. Then when Hal returned the day his moving van came, he snickered, “Renting out rooms.” How else can I make it! she wanted to cry out. Yet she did not wish to sound as if she was pleading for sympathy. His moving van broke off tree branches all along the driveway. She stood looking out into the silence and darkness when the movers had gone, and Hal and Bud. Then, indeed, her loneliness seemed so final. She thought staring into the yard and the dimly lit road beyond the house that never had she thought she would be living in Soundport alone, in a half-empty house, and taking in boarders to make ends meet. That night she had been particularly glad when her renter’s car turned into the driveway and soon she heard his footsteps going up the back stairs.

  Laurel hung up from Chris and dressed in her baggy-kneed old jogging suit. She ran along the beach, shadowy dogs from the past running at her heels, Buff, Jubal, and Bud. She thought again of the mystery of Hal, and how he harmed lives. The night they moved from the great stone house they rented to the one they bought, Buff disappeared. She had thought the old dog must have crept into woods near the house and died. In the morning, she phoned the humane shelter. Buff had been picked up in the road the night before, hit by a car. Buff, who had never gone into a road in fifteen years. That day when they moved, she had had no room for Buff. She had taken in her car, instead, a cat Tina left with them one summer. Hal took Buff and parked along the roadside and let her out. The old dog must have been confused by the moving. Had she taken Buff, Laurel knew, the dog would have been safely in the house. She never knew what happened to that cat, and she never asked Rick.

  They had had to go to the vet’s where Buff was taken and give permission for her to be put to sleep. She was too old for the necessary operation. Rick made a huge casket and painted a white cross on top. “I thought you didn’t believe in God,” she had said. “I don’t,” he said. “But Buff might.”

  He drove them a long way home to bury her and she finally asked what he was doing. “I’m taking her past every place in Soundport she used to go,” he said: past Little League fields, past William’s, the beach, his old ice hockey pond. Laurel had decided to take courage from Buff. As an old woman she would be as courageous as Buff had been. Arthritic, Buff plunged herself downstairs and slid on her belly when her legs wouldn’t work. Jogging along the beach, Laurel began to sing a simplistic song, “Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone.…”

  As instantly as Hal left her, she got up courage and went to Columbia University thinking she would enroll in their M.F.A
. program. She might learn to write a novel that would sell, and with such a degree she might get a job teaching. The woman who interviewed her thought Laurel might be a little advanced for the other students. Teaching? Laurel suggested timorously. “I’m sorry,” the woman said. “But this is really a tight, closed community. If our teachers have to leave, they recommend a friend.” The woman suggested the undergraduate department.

  She trudged across the large campus feeling another rejection, and quite alone. The undergraduate chairman said, “The Laurel Wynn? Why do you want to teach now?”

  “I’m getting a divorce.” Quick understanding crossed his face, and she thought what a familiar story hers must be. He flipped through folders in a filing cabinet, showing her how many applicants he had. “Do you have a vita?”

  Aveetah? She didn’t know what he meant and shook her head. He showed her an applicant’s letter out of one of the folders. She read about books published, awards, teaching positions held. “When you’ve had some experience, come back to see me,” he said.

  She did not dare ask him, If I can’t get a job teaching because I have no experience, how can I get a job teaching to get some experience?

  She decided to be like other people. She would be organized. She sat for days in Soundport’s library reading catalogs and copying down addresses of any feasible college within driving distance, mostly with adult education departments. Rick gave her advice from out west, what kind of paper to have her résumé typed on, what headings to use. He’d never heard of a vita either. She mailed out a bunch of envelopes feeling like a kid mailing valentines. She received a phone call one evening from the very college where she was working on her Master’s. It seemed late at night to her. She put down her after-dinner brandy and soda and hoped she sounded all right. Her application had been handed on from the adult education division. The freshmen writing class had so many students, they had to form a second class. “Teach freshmen? Sure, I guess so,” she said. Hearing about the class, she had said, “No textbook. What am I going to say?”