She held the bowl and looked at it. She bounced it slightly in her hands, unsure of how to accomplish the task that suddenly seemed imperative.
She struck it, hesitantly, against the dining room table. The wood was soft, the glass strong. She wandered into the bedroom, where stood a marble-topped vanity, passed down to Kate from her grandmother. Kate cleared off the jewelry boxes and perfume, the clips and elastics, the makeup, piling it all on the bed, but the vanity trembled as she cleared it and its instability dismayed her suddenly. She walked all around the apartment, holding the bowl. She thought of the entryway. She knelt by the door. She struck the glass against the stone—timidly, then with confidence. The bowl came apart in two curved and feminine halves.
Now she felt worse. She’d ruined something she loved. She sat back on her knees and let out a little moan of regret. She gathered the glass into a plastic shopping bag. She cut her thumb, and the blood began to run alarmingly down her wrist and arm. She tied the glass in the shopping bag and threw the bag away and took out the trash. Then she wiped the blood from the cut and wrapped up her thumb.
Finished, she searched for something else to do. The snow had eased. As her driver had noted, the walk needed shoveling—she would shovel it. She put on a coat and boots and took the shovel from the entryway closet. She bent to lace her boots. The colorful flat-weave rug lay askew on the worn floorboards and in spite of everything it pleased her—the bright but faded colors and the droll designs. She marveled at interiors, charmingly arranged, with their strange power to comfort.
The snow gave way, swallowed her boots and dampened her jeans. She shoveled awkwardly, tossing the snow off to either side.
When Wes appeared from the side door with his own shovel she jumped. She’d forgotten about him, about everyone else.
“Well, look at you,” he said.
She stopped and rested on her shovel.
“Everything well?”
“Fine,” she said. “Same old, same old.” The fib shamed her—she liked Wes. “I’ll finish this up.”
“I don’t mind.”
“You’ve done a lot.”
“My pleasure.”
“You’re just a little thing,” he said approvingly.
Obediently, she went inside. She leaned the shovel against the wall. She stamped her feet.
She showered and washed her hair, washing the hospice and death taint out of it. She didn’t want that smell associated with her anymore. Rudely, cruelly, she continued to live. She dressed in an old T-shirt, a short black jersey skirt, and socks pulled up to her knees. She tidied the living room, straightening the throw pillows, fanning magazines out on the coffee table. She lit a candle and made herself a scotch and water and got onto the couch and pulled a blanket over her body and turned on the television. She came across It’s a Wonderful Life on TNT.
Outside it went dark. The timed pink lamp and the television screen lit the small room. Kate drank her drink and made another. The Jeep sounded in the driveway and its headlights caught the window. Then there was Colin’s key in the door and a great stomping and rustling and banging. She saw him through the glass in his big coat.
“You’re here.” Colin paused in the door, surprised.
“I am.”
“How is he?”
“He’s conflicted. He’s deciding whether to go to college or stay in Bedford Falls and run the Building and Loan.”
Colin struggled briefly with irritation. Compassion overcame. “Not George Bailey. Your father.”
“Dead. He died.”
“What?” Colin dropped his coat on the floor. “Kate.”
“What?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I know you are.”
“I would have picked you up.”
“I know. It doesn’t matter. The storm.”
Though of course she’d had no knowledge of the storm before finding herself in it. Now, though, it seemed as though she had—that the day, the last two weeks, in fact, had happened all at once, like a lucid dream.
“I would have come up there.”
“It’s okay. It wasn’t a shock or anything. We knew how it was going to shake out. Right?”
“Why didn’t you want me with you?” He removed his knit cap. Snow melted on his boots, darkening the welcome mat.
She understood that what Colin needed from her now were tears and collapse, something to establish her innate hysteria and consequent lack of sense. Then he would excuse her for shutting him out—he would console her, and the death, the whole question of her father, would be celebrated and put away. He waited there at the door, anticipating her outcry and his show of support.
“You know,” she said. “Us Protestants.”
He scratched the exposed section of his scalp. He noticed the scotch. Without removing his damp boots, he went to the kitchen and made himself the same drink. Then he threw himself into an armchair, legs spread out in that territorial male fashion, boots seeping into the rug. She didn’t care. Maybe he wanted her to.
He questioned her about the death. Soberly, decently, tolerantly. As if her affairs came under his jurisdiction, his superior wisdom—all her emotional doings up for his consideration. He nodded. And she presented a report to him, obediently, albeit grudgingly. She unwound the parchment; she the surly messenger he—in his generosity! his tolerance!—chose once more to pardon.
Satisfied, he looked around and reviewed her other choices. The movie. The drink. The drink he could not condemn—he had partaken of the scotch himself—though for him a reasonable choice, for her a questionable one. The movie, though.
“Should you really be watching this?” he asked, quietly.
“Why shouldn’t I watch it?”
“Just seems so sad.”
“I want to feel sad.”
“But—more than you already do?”
“I don’t.”
He frowned. He chewed on his lower lip. Puzzled, disappointed.
“Well. You hungry?”
“Nope.”
“Not even a little?”
She raised her glass.
“You should eat something.” Transforming, expertly, from disapproving father to fretting mother. He noticed her thumb. Gently, he seized her hand. “What happened?”
“I dropped a dish in the sink. At my mom’s. Cut myself cleaning up.”
He shook off his boots and headed to the kitchen. “How do lamb chops sound?” he called back. In her absence he had shopped, carried on, purchased lamb chops.
Cooking smells developed: onions, butter, meat. She sat in the dark with her drink. She breathed in the scented candle, the onions. She reviewed the death and hoarded it, squirreled it away in little bits and pieces.
The journals.
The sandwiches, the cigarettes, Miles.
The choking.
The terrible dying erection.
She put one piece here, another there.
Colin set the table in the small dining room, attached, as in so many similar urban New England homes, to the living room by an arch and columns. He set out the blue-and-yellow ceramic plates. He opened a bottle of wine and put out glasses. The film ending anyway, Clarence receiving his wings, Kate took the place Colin had prepared for her. He brought out lamb chops in a cast-iron pan and slid one onto her plate.
Bits of fat melted from meat and bone. She leaned over, put her nose into it. “Divine.”
He had made Brussels sprouts as well, sautéed and chopped into a sort of hash. The butter and onion smell came from these. Colin sat and began to eat, occasionally glancing at her. She could not persuade herself, good as the food looked and smelled, to consume. She cut the fat from the chop and cut off a small piece, red at the center, and pushed the piece around in the vegetables. To eat on this day—tomorrow she would eat—seemed a betrayal of sorts.
Colin looked and looked at her. He ate faster and faster, the way he did when aggravated. “You’re not going to eat it?” he asked, finally. “Any
of it?”
She shook her head.
He looked at her sternly, as if he might force a bite of lamb or a forkful of sprouts down her throat.
“Okay, then,” he said. He took her plate and ate her share as well. Then he gathered up the plates and utensils and brought them to the sink.
She stood also and helped him wrap and put things away: half an onion, two cooked chops, and the remaining sprouts. She rinsed the cast-iron pan and wiped it out. He swept and sprayed down counters. She washed plates and utensils. Outside the window over the sink, cars ground by slowly and snow glittered. Somewhere a boy shouted. The windows of neighboring houses emanated light. A man struggled down the street, hood up, trudging slowly, hopefully on.
Colin came up behind her and put a hand between her shoulder blades. Certain sensations tumbled about in her. She turned and pushed her head into his chest and reached for his zipper. He intercepted. “Don’t.” He removed her hand and squeezed it lightly.
She reached for him with the other hand.
“Stop.”
“You kidding me?”
“I don’t know; it just seems wrong.”
“Well, then let go of me, please.”
He did. She went for him again and got her hand past his belt and down his pants. He extracted her, took her by the elbows, and marched her to the kitchen table. “You’re confused.” He sat her in a chair. “I’ll clean up the rest.” He put his hand on her head. “You want more wine?”
She slouched in her chair. “Yes.”
He poured the remaining Shiraz into her glass and took up the dishes.
“You don’t want me,” she said.
“Of course I do.” He ran water into the Brussels sprouts pan. She put her head down on her arms. “So what did you do all day, anyway?” he asked.
“Shoveled the walk.”
“Did you? The whole walk?” He looked out the window at her handiwork. “I noticed someone had done something.”
“Well, Wes did some.”
“You and Wes? Shoveled together?” He was teasing now. Her life one long hopeless antic.
“He took over. I went in.” She lifted her head and swigged at the wine. “No. That’s not what happened, actually. We did the walk together. Then the street. Together.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Then he told me he loves me. And has all this time! When we thought he loved Tara!”
“Ha.”
“Then he told me I have a gorgeous ass.”
“You’re in shock.”
“I told you, it’s not a shock!”
Colin shut off the water and turned around. Kate continued.
“Right there in the snow, on the street. He said that. He said he lives each and every day to catch a glimpse of my ass. Anyway. I invited him in for hot chocolate.” She paused, inventing. “No, wait. Then we went down to the basement to put the shovels away. Then he kissed me, right there against the dryer.”
Colin crossed his arms across his chest.
“He laid down his coat. He picked me up and threw me down on it. Then he fucked my brains out.”
“I get the idea.”
“He didn’t have anything so … he just came inside of me, no diaphragm, no nothing. Maybe we’ll have another little Lucy.”
“Okay, very funny.”
“Afterward I helped him fold her laundry.”
“You did, did you.”
“She has the cutest little underpants! So small, you wouldn’t believe they fit an actual talking thinking breathing walking person.”
Little feet sounded above.
“Cheers.” She lifted her glass toward the ceiling. “Wes! Wes! It was lovely, Wes!” she shouted.
“I think you’re hysterical. Not funny hysterical, the other kind.”
The footsteps paused.
“Wes, baby!”
“Stop it.” Colin shook his head. He turned back to the sink. He set the Brussels sprouts pan to soak.
“Lucy, your dad is a spectacular fuck!”
Colin crossed the small room in two steps and pulled Kate up from her chair. She struggled away and dove below the table, laughing. He pulled her out by her waist, dragged her up, and marched her into the bathroom. He lifted her into the bathtub and turned on the shower.
She screamed. Cold water pummeled her face and shoulders. It ran into her mouth and quickly soaked her shirt and skirt. He shut down the tap and hauled her out. She shoved at his chest.
“Are you crying?” Colin took her chin in his right hand and looked intently at her.
Water from her hair ran down her face and neck.
“I didn’t mean to make you cry. I just wanted you to snap out of it.” He wrapped his arms around her and stroked her back. “Doesn’t it feel good, though? Doesn’t it?”
She nodded into his chest.
His hands went from her back to her waist. He kissed her mouth and pressed her against the wall and squeezed her breasts through the wet cotton of her shirt. He pushed up her skirt.
“I thought you didn’t want to,” she said.
“I do now, baby.”
Above, Lucy banged out “Ode to Joy,” then scraped back the piano bench and slammed the key top closed.
· · ·
A WEEK LATER Kate dropped Colin at work and drove the Jeep up to New Haven to collect her father’s belongings. She took the gun and the rack and all the journals. She tossed the journals untidily into the middle seat and maneuvered the antlers into the back. Then she hurtled back down I-95. At home, she swept the piles of journals from the back of the car into the snow and burned them.
7
WO YEARS LATER, another storm surrounding the Bridgeport apartment, Kate and Colin sat up in bed a little before midnight on a Wednesday. He read Men’s Journal and she read a novel. She reclined against a European pillow and leaned the book against her pregnant stomach. Her due date had come and gone. Every now and then, the baby kicked and the book jumped.
He turned in her direction and scrutinized her before turning off his light. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.”
She was having pains, the same ones she’d been experiencing, off and on, for several days. Braxton Hicks, the pregnancy book said. She turned onto her side and tried to sleep. She couldn’t, though—the pain increased. Her rectal area felt tight.
“I think you’re in labor,” Colin said, also awake.
“No. Just indigestion, probably.”
She couldn’t see herself ever actually having the baby.
She got up and went to the bathroom and when she wiped her front, the paper showed blood.
She went into the kitchen and called her obstetrician’s office and a few minutes later one of the midwives called her back. She told Kate to wake up her husband and take a hot shower and have a big glass of wine.
Colin went down into the basement for one of their nicer bottles. Kate took her shower and then she got into bed and drank the wine and breathed through the contractions. “Hello,” she said to her glass of wine. “I’m back.” Colin timed the contractions. They went from being eight to ten minutes apart to five to six minutes apart, where they stayed for a while. The midwife called to ask Kate if she wanted to meet her at the hospital to get checked, or if she wanted to wait and go into the office when it opened at eight-thirty. By now it was seven, so Kate said she’d wait. The midwife told her to eat something, even if she didn’t feel like it, that she’d need the energy.
Colin brought her a scrambled egg and a piece of toast with butter and a cup of tea with milk and sugar. The tea tasted delicious—the egg she ate slowly, so that by the time she finished it had chilled completely. She took another hot shower. She stayed in a long time and bent against the wall when she had a contraction. Colin knocked on the door to say the office had just called and they were closing early, at ten, because of the storm. So Kate rushed to get ready and they got in the car. At the obstetrician’s office, her water broke on the examining table. The midwife
checked her and said that Kate was only three centimeters dilated, but that the labor would probably speed up now that her water had broken. They went home and waited. All afternoon, Kate tried to sleep between the contractions, which remained five to six minutes apart. She drank Gatorade, ginger ale, and water. In the living room, Colin watched a movie on television and ate pizza from the freezer. At six o’clock, Kate went out to watch with him. When the contractions hit she got on all fours on the couch and then got up and walked around. Finally they called the hospital and another midwife told them to come in.
Colin collected Kate’s things and they got back into the Jeep. She climbed into the backseat and curled up. She howled as the slowest person in the world ambled across the street. At the hospital, Colin went to park the car and an elderly male orderly took Kate up to Labor and Delivery. She stopped a few times for the contractions and leaned with her hands against the wall. A nurse met her in her room. She gave Kate the robes and got her settled and hooked her up to a monitor. The midwife came in and checked Kate’s cervix and told her she was now eight centimeters dilated. Colin returned from the parking garage and Kate got into the shower again—a private shower attached to the room, with a little white plastic chair that she leaned over and put her hands on whenever a contraction came.
Then she was back in the bed, on her hands and knees, the television on, playing Friends. She held an ice cube in her hand and squeezed. She breathed like the birthing classes had taught her. She drank ginger ale and sucked on ice. The contractions came again and again. Kate felt as though she were being carried away by them. She hung on to the bed. The midwife checked her and said it was time to push.
She tried different positions: squatting with the squatting bar, on her hands and knees, on her back, “curled around the baby,” the midwife kept saying. In this position Colin held one of her legs up and the nurse held the other one. Kate pushed through ER and then the local news.
“I want a C-section!” she cried.
Games to Play After Dark Page 8
