by T. Greenwood
“Well, good night ladies,” Devin says. “If you need anything, just come get us. I put a nightlight on in the bathroom.”
“Thank you for everything,” I say. “It’s so nice of you to have us.”
Effie comes over and kisses me gently on the cheek. “Everything will be okay,” she says. “Just get a good night’s sleep.” She looks at me and squeezes my hand. And for some reason, I decide not to say anything. Not yet. I’m sure I’m just tired. It was a long trip. I’ll wait until morning and see how I feel then. If I still want to skip the trip to Boston, I’ll tell Gussy in the morning. No need to get into an argument tonight.
Gussy and I settle into the twin beds in the guest room addition, and for a moment I am transported back to the childhood bedroom we shared. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to evoke the farmhouse, our childhood home. I remember the goose down pillows and the prickly spines that stuck out through the ticking. The chenille spreads with their bumpy ridges between my fingers. I remember the smells of the farm outside our window, the lowing of cows and lament of the bullfrogs. I begin to settle into a different sleep, not the sleep of an old woman but that of a child. And so when the phone in the kitchen rings, it pulls me suddenly not only from sleep into consciousness but from the distant past into the present.
I hear someone scrambling to get the phone, and then the muffled sound of Devin’s voice. And then there is the quiet knock on our door.
“Billie? I’m sorry to wake you,” Devin says. “But you have a call. It’s John Wilson?”
I wrote her letters, frantic ramblings etching out the monotony of my days, sketching the empty spaces she had left behind. I was no writer, but somehow I became both prolific and poetic in these missives. As Frankie dozed in front of the television, I disappeared into the rooms he couldn’t access with his crutches and scribbled my wishes, my regrets, my fears, and, most of all, my love onto page after page, which I stuffed into envelopes, sealed with my lips, and delivered via the U.S. mail, trusting that they would reach Eva. I imagined their journey, nestled and jostled among bills and advertisements, letters from soldiers and sons, from daughters and doctors, and all the other lovers. Her responses were sporadic and clearly censored by her own fear. They were quick, dashed off, I imagined, in the rare moments when she was alone. As a result, they were much more pointed, more poignant, the emotion behind them distilled and condensed. I love you. I miss you. I am so very alone.
The letters were my only solace those long weeks as Frankie hovered and healed in the house. He was unable to make the trek to the mailbox each afternoon after the postman came, and I learned quickly how to feign boredom as I brought in the stash of mail, the only correspondence that mattered safely concealed in my pockets. Sometimes it would be hours before I could steal away with them. When I was finally alone, I held them to my face and inhaled, struggling to smell the familiar scent of her fingertips.
If Frankie had known what I was doing, the other world in which I was living, I don’t know what he would have done. His days were consumed by the rituals of the wounded. I think he imagined himself a warrior of sorts: the broken leg resulting not from a drunken fall from the roof but from the very real war he was waging to get his life back, his wife back. His suffering became symbolic; his scars were battle scars, and the damage was not due to his own stupidity but to my indiscretion. I was the enemy: captured, conquered. These were the spoils of war. But I was only lying in wait. If this was indeed a battle, it wasn’t over yet. Frankie only thought it was.
What Frankie missed most, I knew, was his work in the workshop. His immobility had kept him from the treasure hunts, had prohibited him from collecting and gathering those things he could restore, the real things he could fix. And without this tangible proof of his ability to mend, he was lost. When I found the broken console hi-fi at the Methodist Church rummage sale right after New Year’s, I knew I’d found my peace offering. My olive branch. I loaded it into the back of the car, along with the bags of winter clothing I’d found for the girls, and smiled all the way home. The best way to defeat an enemy is to make them think you’re ready to surrender. If I could make Frankie think he’d won, I knew he might loosen his grip.
He was glowing as I dragged the monstrosity into the house. It was snowing out, and my bare hands were freezing, the skin chapped. I blew into my curled fists and smiled my biggest, brightest smile. “It’s a Grundig Majestic. It needs some new wiring, I think. Maybe something to shine up the cabinet. But it’s a real beauty, Frankie! And it will play all your old 78s, and the 45s and LPs too, of course.”
I had him. It was a project he would be able to do, right there in the kitchen if he liked. I’d even stopped by Aubuchon’s and gotten the tools he’d need. It would also take him a while, the way I figured. It would keep him occupied. Distracted.
The next day (I knew I had to wait a day, otherwise he’d be suspicious of my intentions), as I made his lunch in the kitchen, I said, “I have an appointment in the city tomorrow.” It was a bold move, but one I had to make.
He looked up from the cabinet, which he’d been stripping with rags dipped in Minwax. “Why?” he asked.
“I’ve been having some pains, and I need to see a specialist.” There were few things in the world that Frankie had no argument against, and my female health was one of them. And, of course, the pains were real, but I didn’t need a doctor to diagnose them.
“I’ll come with you,” he said. “We can make a day of it. I need to stop by work anyway, check in.”
I felt my heart plummet, but I didn’t allow it to show on my face. I had anticipated this, after all. Frankie was predictable, if little else. “No,” I said. “The doctor’s office is on the third floor, and there’s no elevator. I can stop by the post office for you.”
“Oh,” he said.
“I can also pick up some new needles for the hi-fi,” I said.
“Maybe go to that record shop you like in Cambridge and get some records? Is there something you’d like? I know the girls want that new Elvis album.”
He looked at me, studied my face, looking for cracks in my composure, for anything that might give me and my intentions away. But I was a stone. I had rehearsed this moment, my expressions contrived but expressing nothing but fear for my health and the innocence I hoped to convey.
“You’ll call me from the doctor’s office,” he said. “After the exam?”
“Of course,” I said, nodding, willing my face to remain stoic. Not to reveal the joy, the happiness, the excitement that I could feel rushing through my body in hot waves. I couldn’t believe it. It had worked.
Eva had written that most days Ted came home for lunch. And he always changed his lunch hour so she never quite knew when he would show up. Sometimes it was as early as eleven o’clock. Other times, he didn’t arrive until nearly one thirty. But on Tuesdays, there was a mandatory sales meeting over the lunch hour that he could never escape, and so Tuesdays she knew that he would not be able to check in on her except for the phone call he made during the break, which was always at twelve fifteen.
Eva wrote that she had asked Ted’s sister to watch Rose that day, that she told her she had some errands to run including a surprise for Ted and didn’t want to take Rose, who had been sick with a head cold, out into the bitter cold. Ted’s sister knew nothing of what had transpired in Hollyville and had happily agreed. She’d promised not to utter a word to Ted; she’d keep it a surprise for his birthday, which was just days away.
I had memorized her address, the numbers like a magical combination to the lock on a safe. I practiced them in my head like any good thief. When I left that morning, Frankie kissed my cheek and said, “It’s going to be okay. I’m sure you’re fine.” I’d almost forgotten what he was talking about, until I remembered the imaginary doctor, the real pains, my promise to call him as soon as the exam was over. I mentally ticked off the details of my lie, like a checklist: doctor, phone call, record store, post office.
The tra
in into the city after rush hour was quiet, no hustle-bustle. I had never understood how people could stand the crowds on the train. The few times I’d ridden the rush hour train I’d felt nauseated and anxious. All that cologne and perfume and breath did a number on my stomach. I was grateful today for the empty seats and the absence of the usual olfactory assault. There were a couple of other women on the train, gloved hands folded in their prim laps. I tried to imagine where they might be headed: to real doctors, I supposed. Shopping, I imagined. I was the only one headed into the city to find my lover, to make my way through the maze of streets to an apartment I’d never visited. I smiled at a woman who sat alone near the back of my car. She was holding an infant in her arms, the tiny, pink face peeking out of the swaddling. Eva was due in April, which made her nearly six months along now. I thought of the baby growing inside her, this child we had called our own. I squeezed my eyes shut to keep the hot tears that were welling up inside them from falling.
Their apartment was on Newbury Street in the Back Bay, just a few blocks from the Copley Square subway station, and so I took the green line from North Station, feeling motion sick as the car rocked and dipped until we finally slowed and stopped. Clutching Eva’s most recent letter, I got off and emerged into the bitter cold again. The walk to Newbury Street was not a long one in normal weather, but this was Boston in January, and the air had teeth. According to the thermometer outside our house that morning, it was just above zero, but with the wind that came off the Charles, it could have been ten below. My teeth felt loose in my head, rattling and chattering as I clutched my coat tightly around me and walked headfirst into the wind. By the time I got to the building that she had described, I was almost completely numb with the cold. The wind had beaten my face, and it felt as though I had been slapped. Every inch of my exposed skin stung. The tears that the wind and everything else evoked froze, matting my eyelashes together and rendering my nose hairs solid. I was sure I looked a fright, and I certainly didn’t want Eva to see me like this.
I stepped into the revolving doors of the building and was unprepared for the blast of heat that awaited me when the doors spit me out into the lobby. The warmth filled my lungs and made me cough. When I held my hand to my face, it was frozen in a grimace. I took off my hat and patted at my hair, which I knew had been undone by the wind and the woolen hat. I shook the snow off the rubbers that covered my shoes and then peeled them off and stuffed them in a baggie in my purse. I stared at my reflection in the giant oak-framed mirror that hung by the elevators. I barely recognized myself anymore. I had aged in the last two months. The color that had flushed my skin from a summer spent with Eva lying along the shore of the lake was gone, replaced with a ghostly pallor. My eyes were snuffed out, the sparkle I could usually locate there gone, the irises flat, dull green circles, brown at the edges. My hair even, which usually was the color of vibrant autumn maple leaves, seemed brittle and dull. Winter had descended upon me, and I was worse for the wear. I pulled a tube of lipstick from my purse and quickly outlined my lips. Then I squirted just a little of the Evening in Paris perfume from the bottle Frankie had given me (that Frankie always gave me) for Christmas. I smiled, my mouth resisting, still frozen in a grimace, and pressed the button for the elevator.
I had not spoken to Eva on the phone. The last correspondence we had had was my confirmation that I would be here on Tuesday, today, and that I was counting the minutes until I could see her again. I could only trust that she would be waiting for me in apartment 505. The fifth floor felt as far away as outer space as the elevator began to make its slow ascent.
“Billie,” she said as she opened the door. She leaned forward, looking down the dark hallway after me. “No one saw you come?”
I shook my head, and took her hand as she pulled me into the apartment.
I should have known something was wrong the moment I stepped across the threshold and into Eva’s arms. But my wanting everything to be normal, whatever normal was between us, was so strong, my desire so palpable, that I ignored the way her body tensed instead of relaxed in my embrace. I made mental excuses for why she wouldn’t look me in the eye as I cupped her face in my hands. I told myself it was just our separation that made her chest heave and tears spring to her eyes. I wouldn’t let go of her until I was convinced that everything was going to be okay now. That we had made our way back to each other, that there would be a way to be together again. I whispered her name against the soft, familiar skin of her neck even as she turned her head away.
The room smelled strongly of vegetables. It almost smelled like the root cellar at home. Musky and dense. Earthy. Her house on Beechtree Street had always smelled like baked goods. Sweet and cloying. All those smells of womanhood: cookies, perfume, shampoo. But this smelled like things dying.
She shook her head, blinking hard, and forced a smile as she took my hand and led me into the apartment. The living room was beautiful but dark and dingy. The walls were papered with velvety stripes, but the paper was peeling, and there were water stains like dark clouds on the ceiling. The furniture was too large in this cramped space. The windows were covered in a grimy film, making it nearly impossible to see outside.
“It needs some work,” Eva said apologetically. “It belonged to Ted’s crazy old aunt.”
“It’s nice,” I said, but it wasn’t. It was horrible.
“How is Ted’s job?” I asked. But I knew the moment his name escaped my lips that I had made a mistake. A shock seemed to pass through her body, no matter how hard she tried to hide the involuntary convulsion.
“What did he do, Eva? What has he done to you now?”
She sat down on the sofa and put both of her hands over her face. “If he finds out you came,” she said, shaking her head, staring at the floor. “If he so much as suspects that you’ve been here . . .”
“I know,” I said. “But he won’t know. He won’t find out. I promise.”
“You can’t ever come back,” she said. “This has to be the last time.”
“No,” I said, feeling my grip on the world loosening. We had been in this together. Without her, without us, what was left? “You know you don’t mean that.”
“I couldn’t write this to you in a letter. I needed to see you. To tell you in person.” She was weeping now, not even bothering to stop the tears. Her careful makeup smeared into muddy pools beneath her eyes. I rubbed them fiercely with my thumb, my face so close to hers I could smell the chamomile scent of her tea. “He will kill me,” she said. “He will kill you.”
I thought of Calder, and my chest swelled with anger and loss and fear. I could feel my heart beating in my ears, the blood pounding like fists at my temples. I reached for her hand and she pulled it away from me, shaking her head. “We can’t do this anymore. He’s right. It’s sick. It’s wrong. We were just confused. I am so confused.”
My eyes widened as she recited the words I was certain he had repeated like a mantra in her ears, as she minimized what had happened between us to an illness, to an accident, to a mistake.
“It’s over, Billie,” she said, wiping away her tears and taking a deep breath. “It has to be.”
I stood up then, feeling as though I might faint. My legs seemed to have disappeared out from under me. I stumbled, no different than Frankie, but drunk on love and filled with a lethal combination of rage and despair. I backed away from her, terrified by what she had become, by what he had made her. I backed up until I was standing in that foyer again, in that damp, dark place that smelled of rot.
“He can’t kill you,” I said, my voice coming from somewhere so deep it felt as though my very heart were being excavated. “You’re already dead.”
I didn’t call Frankie from the imaginary doctor’s office with made-up stories about my female troubles. And I didn’t go to the record store to buy Fun in Acapulco or to the post office to inquire about Frankie’s disability benefits. I didn’t get on the train and go home so that I could meet my children at the bus stop, and I d
idn’t stop at the market along the way to buy a roast or ground beef or a ham. I didn’t plan another menu in my head; I didn’t think once of the laundry that needed to be washed, the cookies I’d promised to bake for the Winter Carnival at the school; I didn’t think about anything but Eva. Eva and our baby. Eva in that dark prison of a home, with its dark walls with their velvet stripes like prison bars. As I walked through the blistering cold, I thought only of Eva. Eva’s head resting on my lap each night in Vermont, the way I wound her hair between my fingers and the soft sounds that came from her lips as I did. As I soothed her. I thought only of the way she laughed, those big, hiccupy laughs that seemed so incongruous with her dainty doll face, her delicate lips parting in joy. I thought only of her tongue as it skipped across my body, as it pried and pleaded, as it soothed and sated. I thought only of the way it had felt that one night in New York to hold her hand as we walked down the street together, as we danced with each other in front of the whole world. For everyone to see. For that single night without the presence of shame.
Ashamed. I was ashamed that I hadn’t stayed there, waiting for Ted to come home. I was ashamed at my own cowardice with Frankie, ashamed that I had bought into his dream to erase the last three years. I was ashamed that I hated my body for all the ways it had failed me: by its inability to carry a child. Its inability to want a man. Its inability to resist the pull toward Miss Mars and then Eva. I was ashamed of my shame.
The new Prudential Tower rose like a monolith on Boylston Street. It towered over everything, dwarfed everything around it. Fifty-two stories high; they said when it finally opened, you’d be able to have a panoramic view of the city from the skywalk. That you’d practically be able to see the entire world from up there. This is where Ted would be working. Ted, watching Eva, never losing sight of her. Towering over her, a force so large, a force so big and so grand, there was no escape.
