Games to Play After Dark

by Sarah Gardner Borden

  “You were what, thirteen, fourteen?”

  “More like nine. Ten. Early developer.” She put a finger in his mouth and ran it over his front teeth. “You never had braces, did you?”

  “Braces. My father drove a taxi. My mother cleaned houses.”

  Everything, everything about him was exciting and endearing.

  He examined her hip, where one bruise bloomed blue and red and another wilted into brown. “You sure you’re not anemic?”

  “I was tested.” She poked at her bruises. “I don’t even know how they happen. I don’t even know they’re there till I see them.”

  “No?”

  “Nope.”

  “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were a battered wife.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  “You sure?”

  “Trust me. He did throw pasta over my head. About a month ago? Angel hair.”

  “This story I need to hear.”

  “We went out to dinner. I ordered angel-hair pasta and I had a lot left over so we had it wrapped. We got into a fight on the way home. Then we parked in the driveway and we kept fighting and he grabbed the container from the backseat and dumped it over my head. Or kind of at my head, rather, through the window.”

  “I knew that guy was a jackass.”

  “I was being awful too.”

  “I went to this strip club once, in Chinatown. Years ago. Sort of an alternative-style strip club, if you know what I mean. And in this one act, the woman picked up linguine from a pot and kind of dropped it on herself. Through the whole number she kept picking up handfuls and smearing them on her stomach and her shoulders and her breasts. Weird but hot. And then once in a while she’d throw a handful at the audience.”

  “What was an upstanding citizen like you doing in a place like that?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “Don’t tell me my father—”

  “No, no, at least, not that I know of. No. It was a long time ago. I went with this woman. We were young, well, youngish.”

  “Lindsey?”

  “No, not her. No, the woman was my girlfriend before my ex-wife; she taught feminist theory at Barnard.”

  “Anyway,” Kate said, moving on from the exes, toward whom she felt a brief but intense spasm of sexual jealousy, “when we’re not getting on each other’s nerves, Colin and I, we actually have a pretty good family dynamic.”

  “But … surely the girls can pick up on the tension.”

  “A little, yes, of course. But mainly, I don’t think they care that much. I think they just like having us together, and they could care less if we get along when we’re on our own.”

  “It’s the atomic hypothesis,” he said. “Things attract when they’re a small distance apart. And when they’re crowded into each other, they repel.”

  “Things, by that do you mean people?”

  “Right. Things, people, animals. All living things are made up of atoms. All behavior can be explained accordingly.”

  “Accordingly …”

  “According to atomic laws.”

  “Oh, Professor Auerbach, I see! So the atoms attract and repel just like we sorry married people do.”

  “And the rest of us. Very good, dear girl.”

  “And so?”

  “Well, are you happy?”

  “Happiness is a dog—”

  “I know. Sunning itself on a rock. Coleridge.”

  “So, who cares?”

  “That’s bullshit. I mean, do you like your life or not?”

  “I should like it.”

  “Who says?”

  “Well, I’m fortunate in all the crucial ways. All my basic levels of need are covered. That isn’t true for the women I work with, trust me.”

  He stared at her and ran a finger across her belly.

  “What?”

  “I’m thinking about linguine sliding over this gorgeous white skin of yours.”

  What she loved about him, of course, was his appreciation of her—of her body, specifically. He served, gallantly, as an audience of one for a show about to close. She rolled on top of him and kissed his neck. He endured, uncomplainingly, while she gave him a hickey.

  “I love that you let me do that!” She admired her work. “Colin never lets me do that. Not anymore. Not ever, actually. He’s all like, ‘Oh, oh, someone will see!’ I wouldn’t put it anywhere obvious. He could hide it under his shirt. See, you can hide yours.”

  “The kids wouldn’t believe it was possible anyway.”

  He pushed her hair from her neck, his face clouded by amorous intent. “Oh, no,” she said. “You can’t. He’ll see it.”

  “You could hide it under your shirt.”

  “Ha!” She rolled over. The head of the bed met the brick of the wall. She lay on her stomach, chin in hands. The brick, coated with some sort of protective glaze, sparkled as with bits of mica. In between, the mortar rose roughly. “Anyway,” she said, “it was angel hair.”

  “But my girl in Chinatown, it must have been linguine, or at least spaghetti. Whatever it was, slippery. Angel hair tends to clump, no?”

  “It does. Yes. It did.”

  From his bedside table she picked up The Elegant Universe, which she’d been using as a coaster. “Oh, this is so beyond me,” she said, looking through it.

  “No, it’s not. If you get math you can get this.”

  “Right.”

  “You could if you wanted.”

  “In my next life.”

  “What do you do with your ladies? Meaning, what are some of your strategies; how do you construct the lesson?”

  “Well, I have them do worksheets. Math problems. Basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, percentages, fractions and decimals. Et cetera. Then we get into the whole vocabulary of money and finance. I have them match words and make sentences. Some people do fine with the math but then get intimidated by the vocab. I have them keep a mock checkbook and record mock transactions. They get the practice checkbook and a calculator and a pen and paper. Oh, my God, the things they spend their imaginary money on. Six hundred dollars for hair straightening. Fifteen hundred a year on soda, fifteen hundred on cigarettes. I mean, not that I should talk. It’s just basic stuff, two lists, one for deposits, one for withdrawals. They balance it every class; I want them to get in the habit of balancing it on a weekly basis. We also do this exercise with a scale; we use weights for the different amounts of money and one side is what they put in and one side is what they take out.”

  “What’s the goal? Are they going to go on to banking jobs?”

  “Maybe as tellers.”

  “Right.”

  “No. The goal is just to get them organized, help them remain solvent. That’s it. That’s a lot.”

  “That is. Your dad would be proud.”

  “Please.”

  ON THURSDAY she straddled him. She shed her sweater and T-shirt and bra. She unzipped him and got his pants down and slid off the couch and to her knees.

  He grabbed her hair. “Oh, God, you’re good at that.”

  He pulled at her hair and twisted it into a knot. Music played in the apartment below—something classical and celebratory and reflective, almost mystical, a work she knew but couldn’t identify. Jack pulled her up onto his lap. “Come here for a sec.” He kissed her and ran his hands over her shoulders. “Do you like that? Do you like doing that?”

  “What?”

  “Giving head.”

  “Well, not for just anybody.”

  “Oh. Ha. That’s good.” He grabbed her face and made her look at him. “You want to keep going?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to come if you keep doing that.”

  “I want you to. In my mouth.”

  22

  HE SECOND WEDNESDAY in December snow appeared, and by early Thursday morning it had covered all available outdoor surfaces. The strange cold light woke Kate at six, pushing in through the too-thin drapes. She looked at C
olin’s sleeping profile and turned away. She could see out the window from her side of the bed. A car rolled methodically down the loaded street, wavering a little. She closed her eyes and put her face back into the pillow.

  “Fuck,” she whispered.

  The phone sang from the carved antique bedside table, a hand-me-down from Kate’s mother.

  Snow day.

  Kate banged her head into the pillow twice, then answered.

  “What,” Colin said, waking.

  “School. Fucking snow day.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” He sat up.

  “No big deal.” But it was a big deal. Inside of her, the Valeries bridled with frustrated longing. They strapped on their boots and began to kick things apart.

  “What will you do?”

  “Errands, I guess.”

  The girls ran in, chattering over the snow. “I’ll take ’em,” Colin said. “Go back to sleep.”

  She tried. When she couldn’t she turned on her side and watched the neighbor, Ian Hesselgrove, trot with his mutt down the street. He appeared in one window, then the other. The Hesselgroves were a calm friendly couple in their fifties who always seemed to have enough time, always outside, gardening or shoveling or raking or striking up conversations. Their two boys were in their twenties and attended graduate school in Boston. Once when Lila was a baby Kate had lost control of the stroller and Mrs. Hesselgrove—Elaine—had helped chase it down the driveway.

  Kate got up and tied on her robe and went downstairs for coffee. The clean dishwasher stood open, a bowl and mug removed. She retrieved a mug for herself and poured herself coffee and burrowed into the family room couch with her laptop and the girls, who were watching Clifford’s Puppy Days, a spinoff that since John Ritter’s death had replaced the original show. She sent Jack an e-mail. She watched Clifford. Then, “This is the perfect moment for your project, Lila,” she said.

  Yesterday Lila had come home from school with an assignment. With an “adult’s help” she must conduct a small science experiment and record the results. She’d been given a list of ideas:

  Push an egg into a bottle without touching it

  Get a liquid to float

  Make fizzy lemon soda

  Clean a penny

  Water balloon toss

  Make an electromagnet

  The ideas came with directions and illustrations, which Kate scanned and evaluated. “Let’s do the last one,” she said. “Let’s make a magnet.” This suggestion seemed the least messy.

  “I want to push an egg into a bottle!” Lila cried.

  “Oh, okay, okay. You can watch more TV, Rob, if you want,” she said. Super Why! commenced. Robin nodded and wiggled more deeply into the couch, captivated. Lila followed Kate into the kitchen. The egg-in-a-bottle directions called for a widemouthed bottle, one peeled hard-boiled egg, matches, and a one-inch-by-one-inch piece of paper. “Eggs. Are there eggs?” She got up and opened the fridge. Yes, there were eggs. She put water on to boil and the egg in it. She added a few extra for the kids’ lunches. She procured matches and an old milk bottle and she cut paper into a one-inch square. The water boiled; the eggs hardened. Kate scooped them out and ran them under cold water.

  “Now,” Kate said. “Let’s see.”

  She read through the instructions again. She read the explanation of the concept behind the experiment. “This is all about high pressure versus low pressure,” she said. “Air flows from high pressure to low. So in order to get into the bottle, the outer air is going to push into the bottle and push the egg in with it. So … with the matches, you see, we’re going to lower the air pressure inside the bottle.”

  Lila nodded, biting her thumbnail.

  “Do you want to peel the egg?”

  Lila seized an egg and began to pick away at the shell.

  “Okay, great.” While Lila peeled the egg in tiny little increments, Kate unloaded the dishwasher and loaded it again.

  “Done,” Lila said.

  Bits of shell lay scattered about the counter. Kate put the egg at the mouth of the bottle to check the fit.

  “It should fit if you push,” she said to Lila, “but not too easily. It should slide in but only with a nudge.” She gave Lila the slippery egg to hold while she dropped three lit matches and the paper into the bottle. “Now, carefully, put the egg back on top!”

  Lila did so. She put the egg at the mouth and snatched her hand away. The matches went out. The egg slid into the bottle.

  “Cool! So cool!” Lila beat her hands on the counter.

  “That is cool.” Smoke drifted from the bottle. “Now write down what you saw, okay?”

  Lila got her notebook from her backpack and sat at the counter and meticulously formed letters, breathing through her nose, her tongue protruding from between her teeth.

  “You’re reminding me of Daddy,” Kate said, watching her.

  Lila looked up and smiled.

  KATE SHOVELED OFF THE CAR and got the girls into their seats and drove to Stop & Shop. A pickup truck passed with a wreath on its bumper. On the radio, Jon Bon Jovi sang “Please Come Home for Christmas.” Wire reindeer and sleighs posed on the rooftops of small clapboard houses. Kate thought about Jack. She felt that if she didn’t see him soon, she would collapse or die, or at least evaporate into sheer agitation. Her desire for him, for him in particular, calmed and organized and illuminated everything else. Her feelings for Colin, way back when, had done the same but had also involved specific ideas. Jack she wanted not toward any abstract end but an immediate physiological one.

  The girls bickered in the backseat.

  “Stop it, please!” Kate cried. “Stop fighting, you two.”

  “But she—”

  “She—”

  “Just leave each other alone. Find something else to do.”

  “There’s nothing to do back here!” Lila wailed.

  “Look out the window. Listen to the music.”

  “But Robin’s poking me.…”

  “Robin, stop it.” With one hand, Kate rummaged in her purse. She found a wrapped tampon and held it back over her shoulder. “Here.” Robin seized the offering and began, passionately, to play with it.

  “I want a tampon!” Lila cried.

  Unwrapping sounds commenced. “Oh, be careful what you wish for,” Kate said.

  “What are we going to do after the store?”

  “I don’t know, Lila.”

  “I hate errands!”

  “Me too.”

  “Can we go sledding when we get home?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Please! Please!”

  “If I’m not too tired.”

  She did feel too tired, as it turned out, after navigating the Stop & Shop with the two little girls and getting them home and out of the car along with bags and bags of groceries, out of the back and up the steps. But she pulled the snow gear out of the closet anyway, did up the girls’ boots and her own. She dragged plastic sleds out from behind the lawn mower and headed, the girls shuffling behind, to the nearest hill.

  Lila sledded alone and Kate rode the larger sled with Robin. Neighborhood kids, some from Wintergreen, almost obliterated by their coats and accessories, coasted alongside. After an hour or so, Kate begged out. The girls went down alone. Lila struggled up with her sled. Robin cried at the bottom of the hill.

  “What happened?” Kate asked Lila, as her elder daughter approached.

  “She’s tired. She says she can’t walk up the hill.”

  Kate shuffled and slid down to Robin. “I’ll carry you,” she said. “But this is the only time. If you want to go down on the sled you have to walk back up.” She lifted Robin to her hip, grabbed the sled with her other hand. She climbed the hill, breathing hard.

  She let Robin ride the sled home, while she, Kate, pulled it. Lila walked behind pulling her own sled. Robin’s sled featured an interfering steering contraption, which Robin tested as they struggled across the street.

  “Eyes on the road, Rob,” Kate
said. “Look where you want to go. If you look at the scenery you’re going to end up in the scenery.”

  Lila asked, “Will you pull me on my sled too, please?”

  “Oh, baby girl, I can’t do that. Thanks for saying ‘please,’ though.”

  “I’m tired too!”

  “I know. I know you are. We’ll be home soon.”

  Robin gave up the rudder and snatched a large stick from the sidewalk and dug it into the snow, the effect of which was to drag the sled sideways, severely compromising its trajectory.

  “Don’t do that, Rob,” Kate said.

  Robin kept doing that.

  “Robin, I’m losing my patience!”

  She kept doing it.

  “I’m going to yell!”

  “You’re already yelling,” Lila said.

  “Take that stick out of the snow and don’t put it back, or I’m going to take that stick from you and throw it away.” Robin removed the stick from the snow and held it close to her body. “And it’s probably dangerous for you to be holding a stick at all, while you’re riding the sled … it could poke you in the eye or something, Robin!” The sled swerved again as Robin jammed the stick back into the snow. Kate ripped the stick from her daughter’s hands and flung it away. Robin rolled off the sled into the snow, got up, and started walking after it.

  “Robin, stay on the sled, please!”

  Robin’s snow pants rustled together as she walked. Her little body pitched comically from side to side.

  “Or stay out and walk, whatever you want. But we are going home now, right now!”

  She ran after Robin and picked her up. She carried Robin toward the sled. She retrieved the sled string and tried to carry Robin with one arm, but Robin slipped down. Kate caught her by the neck. Robin coughed and screamed.

  “Mommy, choking me!”

  “Okay, okay.” She dropped the sled and held Robin with both arms. “Lila, would you pull that sled for me too, please?”