by John Searles
At one time in her life, Charlene used to read the wedding section of the local paper every week without fail. It seemed to her then that just about everyone in that column had a job with that sort of title, though Charlene didn’t have the foggiest idea what those jobs were. “What does that mean exactly?” she asks Margaret, figuring she’ll go along with the chitchat a while longer before focusing on Melissa. “I mean, what does a systems analyst or a controller do when they arrive at work in the morning and sit down at their desk?”
“Well, I—” Margaret stops. “I never thought about it. I suppose that Stacy analyzes systems of some sort. And Ted, well, he must control … things.”
“I see,” Charlene says, though she doesn’t see at all. She puts the photo back on the mantel and gives up on the discussion.
Margaret offers her a seat on the humpbacked sofa, and they both make themselves as comfortable as possible, though the cushions are thin and hard. Charlene picks up her water glass from the tray on the coffee table. As she takes a sip, Margaret asks, “You have another son, don’t you?”
Charlene thinks of Philip at home on the foldout bed, reading that biography as the television blares in the background. “Yes. My son Philip. He’s unemployed.” She laughs. “I guess that’s an easy job to explain. He doesn’t analyze or control a damn thing all day long. Not counting the remote control.”
Margaret smiles warily.
“That’s a joke,” Charlene tells her. “Kind of a joke anyway.”
“Oh,” Margaret says, and produces an unconvincing chuckle.
There is an awkward moment of silence between them then. Charlene senses that Margaret wants to get back to the topic of Melissa, but she finds herself thinking of Philip and his poetry. Charlene had never been very encouraging, which is the opposite of what one might think, seeing as she was a librarian. But Charlene had met too many poets at the library during National Poetry Month every April. Almost all of them had the same dazed look, and they seemed so full of regret and sadness. Frankly, she didn’t want that sort of life for Philip. What she wished for him was a career with some semblance of security, which didn’t seem to matter much in youth, though Charlene knew damn well it became important later. Now, though, she wonders if it had been a mistake to discourage him, because look how his life had turned out anyway. And who was to say those poets were any less happy than the thousands of systems analysts and controllers roaming the world?
The sound of Joseph’s footsteps creak on the second floor. Charlene glances up at the ceiling, and just then, she feels something vibrate in her pocket. The motion startles her until she realizes that she must have switched the cell phone to vibrate while playing with the buttons.
“Is something the matter?” Margaret asks.
“No,” Charlene says, letting the call go to voice mail again. She is surprised Philip called her back at all, never mind twice. Still, she doesn’t want to be rude and answer it, like those mothers who are always yapping away in line at the Genuardi’s.
“So can you tell me what you know about Melissa?” Margaret asks in a quiet voice.
Charlene takes another sip of water. “How long has it been since you’ve seen her?”
“Years. It’s not that I haven’t tried. I have. Not in a long while, but when she first left, I used to try all the time. I’d send cards and gifts. But she never responded. She just shut us out after what happened with—Well, after what happened that summer.”
“I’m sorry,” Charlene says and means it, since she knows full well how it feels to be cut off from your children.
“Does she still look the same?”
“If you mean, does she still have all those scars, I’m sorry to tell you that yes, she does.”
Margaret stares down at the carpet, where her feet are arranged side by side in flimsy, heel-less black shoes. She looks as though she is about to cry. “Missy was such a pretty girl, and I knew the scars bothered her. I would have done whatever it took to make her look better. Joseph and I have the money from the suit. We’ve had it for years now, but she refused it long ago.”
“You have the money?” Charlene asks.
“We settled out of court. Didn’t you?”
“No. The lawyers tried to get me to do that. But I’ll never settle.”
“Well, we just wanted the whole ugly business behind us,” Margaret says, her eyes still on the floor.
For Charlene, it’s just the opposite. All these years, she has been holding out for her day in court, just waiting for the moment when she could get up in front of a courtroom and give her side of the story. Sometimes she even dreamed about it, and when she looked out into the courtroom in that dream, she saw the faces of everyone she knew: Philip, Richard, Holly, Pilia, even her parents, who were long since dead, had come back from the beyond to hear her side of the story.
“Tell me about the baby. Is it a boy or a girl?” Margaret asks. “And what’s its name?”
Charlene realizes that she had not made herself clear earlier. “Oh, Melissa hasn’t had the child yet. She’s still pregnant. Nine months, actually.”
Margaret pauses to think that over, then asks, “Why did she come to see you last night? Did it have to do with your husband?”
“Ex-husband,” Charlene says as something coalesces in her mind. She thinks of Richard’s caginess on the phone earlier, of the way Joseph described her in relation to Richard instead of Ronnie, of Melissa looking up the stairs last night and asking, Is Mr. Chase home? “Why do you keep saying that?”
“Saying what?”
“Before at the door, Joseph referred to me as Richard’s wife. And just now, you brought him up again. Why?”
All Margaret says is, “You know.”
“No,” Charlene tells her, growing more suspicious by the second. “I don’t know.”
Above them, the ceiling creaks again. Margaret lowers her voice so she is all but whispering. “Richard never told you?”
“Told me what?”
“That Joseph caught them together.”
“Caught who together?”
“Your husband—ex-husband, rather—and our daughter. Melissa.”
“What do you mean, ‘caught them together’?”
“I don’t know the specifics,” Margaret says, “because Joe would never talk about it. All I know is that they started meeting at the cemetery that summer after the accident. My husband began following her to see where she was going and who she was with.”
“And she was with Richard?”
Margaret nods. “Apparently.”
Charlene puts her hand to her forehead. She wishes she’d taken off her cloak because she is sweating beneath. “Are you saying they had an affair? An affair that took place at the cemetery?”
“Please,” Margaret says, pointing toward the ceiling. “Keep your voice down.”
Charlene hadn’t realized that she raised her voice at all. In an exaggerated whisper, she asks, “Are you telling me they had an affair?”
“I don’t know if that’s the right word. Melissa denied that’s what it was. She said they had a friendship. A close friendship. But that wasn’t the way my husband saw things.”
“So what happened?”
“Your ex-husband gave her the money to rent a house and buy a car. Then she left us.”
Now Charlene understands the reason for Richard’s fumbling behavior on the phone this morning. Now she understands why Melissa kept asking about him last night. All day long, Charlene had been trying to make a connection between Richard’s medical expertise and her pregnancy. But that wasn’t the case at all. Charlene had been around long enough to know that when a man gave a woman money for a house and a car it could only mean one thing. That’s when an odd thought occurs to her: she wonders if the child could be Richard’s. Just the thought of it, just the thought of the two of them together, causes her to sweat even more. All the bread she had eaten in the parking lot of the library feels as though it has hardened into a cement ba
ll inside of her.
“Is there anything else you can tell me about Missy?” Margaret asks, her soft voice breaking through the haze of Charlene’s thoughts.
Charlene blinks. She wants to tell her that she should go to her daughter, that the girl is obviously troubled and needs her help, that she should find a way to make up with her and stop their fighting. But that would be hypocritical, considering the way she treated Philip all these years. And even though it might seem that Charlene’s instinct would lead her to call Richard right now, that is not what she wants to do at all. What she wants is to go home and give Philip that Robert Frost book, to sit in the family room and watch TV together, to have a conversation without bickering, and to let him get the last word if they do. She rises from the couch and says to Melissa’s mother, “I’ve told you everything I know. And now I need to go. My son is waiting for me at home.”
“I’m sorry if I upset you,” she says, standing too.
Margaret trails Charlene to the door, where they say a rushed good-bye. “If you see my daughter, will you please tell her that I miss her?”
Charlene promises that she will, then steps outside, where the sky is just beginning to grow dark. On the way to her car, she fishes through her pockets for her keys and pulls out the cell phone as well. On the glowing green screen, the words TWO MESSAGES blink beside a digital image of a mailbox. Charlene starts pressing buttons again in an attempt to retrieve Philip’s messages, but she cannot figure out how to access the damn things. Finally, she gives up and gets in her car, tossing the phone on the seat next to that strip of microfiche and the Robert Frost book.
Once she pulls out of the driveway and heads off down the street, Charlene allows herself to think of what she just learned about Richard. Yes, she knew he ran around with women like Holly after Ronnie died. But she never would have imagined that he would be so completely devoid of morals as to have an affair with his dead son’s girlfriend. And yes, there is a part of her that wants to get on the highway and drive straight to Palm Beach. But what good would that do now?
Instead, Charlene keeps going toward home.
When she pulls in the driveway ten minutes later, she comes to a stop outside the garage door and presses the remote control on the visor. Slowly, the door lifts and she begins to ease the car forward until she notices something that causes her to let out a small gasp: the Mercedes is gone. Charlene slams on the brakes and shifts into park. Only the nose of the Lexus is in the garage, but she leaves it right where it is. Without bothering to shut off the engine, she gets out and walks to the spot where Ronnie’s car has been parked for years. There in the corner, among the shadows, she sees the canvas cover she bought long ago to protect it.
Charlene doesn’t know why but she picks up the edge of that cover and holds it in her hands. For a long while, she stands there listening to the sound of the engine running, breathing in the cold, oily garage air, and wondering what Philip has done and where he has gone. Finally, she decides there is no way he could have possibly driven the car with his leg in the cast. With this thought in mind, she goes back to the Lexus and turns off the ignition, not bothering to pull the car the rest of the way into the garage. She cuts through the basement hallway, past Philip’s and Ronnie’s old ten-speeds and tennis rackets and that dusty, deflated alligator raft, and up the stairs.
The first thing Charlene notices when she opens the door is that the house is quieter than usual—eerily quiet in fact, just like the Moodys’ place. She doesn’t hear the television set. She doesn’t hear the papery scrape of Philip turning pages. She doesn’t even hear the ticking of that antique clock. “Philip!” she calls out, heading straight for the family room. “Philip!”
But Philip does not answer, and she finds the room empty.
At first, Charlene thinks that he must have gone back to New York just as she knew he would eventually. But then she notices that all of his belonging are still scattered around the bed. His duffel bag on the floor. His miniature reading light on the foldout sofa. His musty Anne Sexton book facedown on a pillow.
But where is he? Charlene wonders.
Had someone described this scenario to her one month before, she would have said that she’d be more bothered about him taking the car. At the moment, though, she only feels upset about the prospect of Philip leaving. Admittedly, she has her selfish reasons: Charlene dreads the thought of going back to living in this house alone. But there is also the fact that she still wants the chance to make amends with him.
After doing a complete check of the house, Charlene finds herself standing at the foot of the sofa bed, staring blankly at the rumpled sheets and wondering where he is. Finally, she sits on the mattress the way she did this morning after she woke him and before he turned on Judge Judy. Charlene picks up that Anne Sexton book and reads a passage, as though it might hold some clue as to where he is right now.
While it is obvious that Anne Sexton drew the worship of readers with a prurient interest in her suicidal tendencies, her psychotic breakdown, her numerous hospitalizations, it must be acknowledged that her forthrightness comforted the people who looked upon her poems as the Holy Grail…
Charlene puts down the book and shakes her head. How he could stand to read such nonsense she didn’t know. That’s when she looks up and sees the clock stopped on five-thirty—the reason the house is silent. Charlene had just wound the thing a few days before, since it was one of the few household chores she actually kept up with, so it shouldn’t have stopped already. She wonders if it should tell her something about where Philip has gone. When no correlation comes to her, Charlene reaches down and picks up his duffel bag. She knows he would be furious at her for looking inside, but she can’t help herself. And when she finds a packet of stapled pages inside among his clothes, Charlene takes them out and reads:
FROM: [email protected]
TO: PhlpChse@ mstc.com
DATE: April 16, 2000
Dear Philip,
First things first: You must gently open Baby’s mouth to see if there is any white mucus resembling cottage cheese in the back of her throat. If so, I’m afraid this could be an indication of mouth rot, which is not good. You see, my dear Philip, snakes have a slower metabolism, so they are often more sick than they appear on the surface. (The former is true of many overweight people who cannot help their size; the latter is true of almost all people, but we can ruminate on those tangents on another occasion.) As far as Baby is concerned, she is no spring chicken, or spring snake as the case may be, so we should not be surprised. Even Elizabeth Taylor has grown old on us and lost her luminous beauty, although that did not seem possible at one time. I digress. If you investigate Baby’s oral cavity and fail to discover any of that dreadful cottage cheese festering in there, then the symptoms you described in your last missive could simply mean that she is shedding. DO NOT—I repeat—DO NOT try to help her shed by picking and peeling away at the dead skin. Snakes need to shed in their own due time. No one can rush the process, and in fact, it is dangerous to try. (Again, the similarity to humans does not escape me.) Speaking of which, I imagine you are going through your own shedding, now that you have officially been a New Yorker for six months. In your missives, you tell me all about the loud neighbors and the pets and the progress of your poetry, but you say nothing of your own personal life. How are you? Where do you like to go? What do you do with your free time? Have you made any colorful new friends? Do tell. I trust that even your most boring tale will be vastly more interesting than Fauncine’s incessant deathbed howls. On that note, I must sign off now. It is time to administer her meds and she refuses to let the visiting health aide do it. (Yesterday she clocked her in the face when she was helping to change the sheets.) Enjoy your youth, my dear Philip. I am telling you, it’s fleeting.
Yours,
Donnelly
* * *
FROM: PhlpChse@ mstc.com
TO: [email protected]
DATE: April 17, 2000
Dear Don
nelly,
I wish I could tell you that I do much more than take care of the pets, read books, watch television, and write my poetry. The truth is, I have made no new friends. It is not that I don’t want to, I do. But I am not very good at it. The whole thing seems so easy for other people. I can make conversation, of course, but somehow I am never sure how to bridge that into friendship. The same was true when I worked at the restaurant. And the same was definitely true back in high school. I guess I am what people call a loner. But the thing about being a loner is, it’s lonely. There’s a guy about my age and a woman only slightly older who I always see at Aggie’s Diner where I go sometimes for coffee and oatmeal on Houston Street. I have listened to their conversations so often that I feel as though I know them. She is a novelist and he is working on his first book with her guidance. I gather that he babysits for her child while she teaches. Anyway, they seem like people I would like to become friends with. On so many occasions, I have wanted to go over and say hello and sit with them and talk and laugh, but something always stops me. I just don’t know how to go about it. Sorry to be rambling. I guess what you really want to know about is Baby. I tried to work up the courage to brave her oral cavity but could not. So instead, I put her in a pillowcase and brought her to a vet on First Avenue, a few blocks from Happy Pet where I get her mice. You’ll be glad to know there was no cottage cheese. Just a small amount of clear saliva, which the vet said is good. However, her eyes are cloudy, which the vet said is not good. It is an indication that Baby is about to shed. Apparently, shedding is very stressful to snakes so I need to take extra good care of her. Don’t worry, Donnelly, I am on the case.
Sincerely,
Philip
* * *
FROM: [email protected]
TO: PhlpChse@ mstc.com
DATE: April 18, 2000
Dear Philip,
Just a short note because Frankenswine is ready for her feeding and I need to tend to her trough. (By the by, I would not hold your breath for me to return to the grand castle on Sixth Street anytime soon. My stubborn sister seems to be getting stronger every day instead of weaker, though the doctor insists her condition is terminal.) More importantly, what wonderful news about Baby! Thank you for taking her to the vet. You can deduct the bill off next month’s rent.
