“Hungry?” I asked Sonny now, and he looked up from his Lego. Those coffee bean eyes.
“What’re we having?”
“What would you like?”
“Pizza pockets and Sara Lee?”
Sonny’s love of junk food made cooking ridiculous. I could’ve been a microwave—or the reverse of Jeannie slipping from her magic bottle in that sixties TV show. Turning on appliances, then slipping down the drain instead. This was twenty years later. “You’re out of luck, Sonny boy.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking to,” he said, and mumbled into his fist, “Earth Base to Flight Zeeero-Zeeero Nine: is there a humanoid on board?” Then he made a siren noise and pressed a button. The light on the spaceship’s nose flashed red. “Emergency landing! Personnel clear the runway, unless you want your heads blown off!”
“Willa? What the hell is this?” Charlie yelled from the kitchen.
He was standing by the sink with burger blood dripping from his wrist.
“I was planning to make —”
“Some of us like to eat at suppertime?”
Idiotically, I felt the prick of tears.
“Charlie?” I grabbed the package, ran it under the tap. “Do you think it’ll be good for him, this place?” He looked at me, baffled, and without a word got out a leftover pork chop and disappeared to the basement.
“Dad’s had a rough day,” I told Sonny when the two of us sat down to eat.
Charlie had never been the talkative type. But his silences were like weather fronts, breezes that blew into gales or petered out. You just had to excuse them, because his moods were a storm that mostly never hit. Still, that coolness dampened everything it passed over. This wasn’t the first time Sonny and I—Alex, Alex, I repeated in my head: call the child by his name for God’s sake—sat alone at the table almost hating to chew in case the sound drove his dad deeper into the basement.
Maybe he was down there looking for something to unpack, or fix. That’s what Charlie did when he wasn’t away or at work or watching TV. It was good that he had a purpose, things to do. It made me jealous.
And it wasn’t that we feared him, exactly. He loved Sonny. I guess he loved me, if love was a wind that blew hot and cold. A propeller that beat the air, invisible enough that it was easy to doubt it existed.
But as we munched our burgers, as the clock ticked and a tap dripped, it was like the floor was tin. The last thing in the world you wanted was to disturb Charlie. God knows he did his bit for us every day. The least we could do was let him tinker in peace.
3
TIDES
Charlie took me dancing at New Year’s—a party at the mess. A slew of people were invited, everyone connected to the squadron. There were pilots, navigators and AESOPS—airborne electronics sensor operators—and technicians like Charlie; even snowplough drivers, and their wives. Wet snow fell like cow flaps that evening. We were late and he was fidgety, worried about missing the free drinks because the babysitter, Joyce’s daughter from three doors up, took forever coming over. Not that Sonny was a baby. He was in a snit, figuring he could mind himself even though he knew he wasn’t old enough.
“I can get my own freaking 7-Up,” he said as the three of us paced in front of the living room window. I’d bought barbecue and sour cream and onion chips and there were Twizzlers in the cupboard. Sonny said he was going to watch videos all night, frig what Carleen the babysitter asked him to do. She could pass out and pee herself in the basement, he said, going on and on; what were we doing anyway, spending good money, when everyone knew she’d just lock herself in the bathroom and smoke dope. “Yes she does,” he insisted. “You can hear her in there choking—oh, wait, now I remember: it’s her boyfriend sucking on her neck like a vampire—”
“Sonny. You have some imagination. Carleen must be a whiz if she can jam all that into an hour.” I was thinking of parent- teacher night, the one other time we’d hired her. The sole occasion Charlie and I had gone out alone since the move.
“Jumpins,” Charlie blurted, fed up. “Give it a rest, son.” He adjusted his collar, not used to being dressed up. He probably would’ve been happier going to work.
“Rest in pieces!” Sonny shot back, taking over his dad’s chair and gluing himself to the screen. Swear to God, at times he was like a forty-year-old trapped inside a kid’s body.
“Makes you wonder about reincarnation,” I mumbled to Charlie, when Carleen had arrived, finally, reeking of gel, and we were heading to the car. “If I get to come back, it’s gonna be as a bee.” I poked his arm. Once, he would’ve laughed. He’d have made a buzz in my ear and said, “Frig that, I’m coming back as a—never mind.” Now he grimaced—a migraine smirk—as if he were working on an engine, cleaning and greasing parts. His look didn’t change as we entered the hall.
There were already quite a few people there, party-doll couples like the kind on top of wedding cakes; and all of us miniatures in this big, hollow room. It could’ve been an old hangar, with its girdered ceiling. But it felt good just to be out. I spotted Sandi with a short, stringy guy who must’ve been her husband—I hoped he was, the way she kept tailing him. A lot of the women were dressed like her, in slippery-looking dresses so skimpy they must’ve been freezing. They looked smaller somehow, slighter, without their kids. The men were decked out in sports jackets and pants knuckled from hangers, and there was the distinct smell of Brut in the air. Charlie had just shaved, and his skin had that pinkness that made it easy to forget we’d been married this long. He smelled faintly of my Nivea.
The dancing hadn’t started, partiers drifting around like bits of tinsel in the echoey room. Someone had set up rows of stackable tables. On one wall was a giant poster of a Sea King, its nose painted like a red and blue target. Someone had taped streamers to it, a limp burst of colour over the big propeller. Bands of crepe paper dangled from some lower rafters, and strung above the bar—another stacking table covered in blue—was the year in gold numbers: 1987. A new year: this one would be better. It made me think of Sonny’s first day of school, of holding my breath in hope while fighting a loose, sinking feeling. The way it felt being out. Like regaining the use of your legs after having them in casts, and hoping you could still dance. Or run.
Right now I was worried about my slip showing; my dress climbed the backs of my legs, plus I’d put on a pound or two, which dragged at my pantyhose. It was the only pair I owned—there wasn’t much call for pantyhose, frying burgers or scouring the sink. Minutes before Carleen had shown up, a run had started in one heel, which I’d caught with a dab of Cutex.
Charlie was the best-looking guy in the place, pink-faced and bull-necked in his blue sports jacket, his sandy, not quite silvery crewcut glistening. Each table had a hurricane candle in the middle, and crepe paper streamers taped to the sides. The ends swished the floor, the lights bobbling every time someone set down a drink. Charlie beelined to the bar where two of his buddies were serving beers from coolers, and shots from the table set up behind. Somebody’d cut 87s out of Christmas wrap and stuck them to the tablecloth, and one of the bartenders had the numbers painted on his forehead in blue glitter.
Joyce drifted over with a glass of something red, cooing about the job they’d done decorating. She asked me if Carleen would be very late, her eyes all the while fixed on Charlie downing a beer and laughing at something Mr. 87 was saying. I looked around for her husband and saw him carrying in a stack of chairs.
“Someone’s put in a lot of work,” I said to make conversation, as she nudged me towards a punch bowl and an assortment of glasses that would’ve rivalled a spring fling sale. I took one patterned with clubs and diamonds and she ladled in an inch or two of punch, stabbing a cherry with a plastic sword and poking it in.
“Hubby looks happy,” she said; and suddenly, who knows why, I imagined Sonny watching TV while Joyce’s daughter sat on the edge of the tub and inha
led. I pictured him on the couch, his hand paused in a bag of Lays, guzzling his fifth glass of pop. It made me forget my skirt riding up and Joyce raising her glass.
“A’right!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands, then lighting a cigarette. The hall had filled like a tank, making it less drafty; already the air was blue with smoke. “I was scared there for a bit,” she said.
I followed her twinkly gaze. The band had arrived with their instruments and were starting to set up. One fellow had a guitar the colour of the car Charlie dreamed of—a red Mustang. Another, dressed in a turtleneck, scowled as he assembled the drums.
After a while, a fellow in a suit arrived lugging a bass and an amplifier, and a few minutes later, a lanky, gaunt-looking man appeared carrying a brown case. He looked wet and kind of rushed, as if he’d been waiting outside somewhere. His cheeks were ruddy, almost like Sonny’s after a bike ride in the wind, and he kept blowing on his hands and rubbing them together. It almost looked as though he’d gotten the address wrong, or shown up by mistake; he was wearing jeans and hiking boots with red laces, and when he took off his jacket he had a sweater underneath. Grey, with red and white around the neck and cuffs, like the kind I’d sent my brother one Christmas. Maybe he was the manager or, in a pinch, the singer. He wasn’t a roadie: a chunky fellow with a mullet had arrived and was moving about, plugging things in. The two of them disappeared, maybe outside for a smoke.
After a little while they came back, the guy in jeans joking with the others as they tuned up. When he finally opened the case, he took out a saxophone. It was sleek and brassy, with buttons neat as engine parts. He blew a couple of notes, aiming at the bassist’s ear, then threw his head back, laughing.
“Ladies and germs—the amaaaazing Hughie Gavin!” the bass player razzed, giving the sax a shove.
Saxophone wasn’t my favourite instrument. We were paying Carleen how much an hour? At least it wasn’t trumpet, and with any luck we’d be home in bed when the crowd requested reveille.
Sandi drifted by with her husband, hanging off him like a coat. “Jesus,” he muttered, and she backed off a little, reaching to fix her strap. He lit two cigarettes, poking one into her mouth. Charlie was on the other side of the room, deep in conversation with another guy, the two of them swigging beer.
I found two seats at an empty table and listened to the band warming up. Jangly notes bounced from the ceiling, the way you’d imagine music might sound in a prison. Then the sax player started in. He angled himself sideways as he blew. After a few bleats, he stopped and pulled off his sweater. He had on a blue button-down shirt underneath that looked new: it was stiff and still held the folds from the package. I couldn’t help noticing how it stood out from the waist of his jeans; as he swung sideways, his body almost looked concave, like a satellite dish, or bellows with lots of room for air. And as he played, his cheeks flexed, almost like the sides of an animal breathing. He didn’t get that googly look of a trumpeter, like Louis Armstrong, as if he’d explode. He looked wiry, tight, as if all the work was in his mouth.
Finally the band struck up a tune I vaguely recognized. Possibly from childhood: trips to the grocery store before my mother got sick. “Fly Me to the Moon”? Jazz, anyway. No wonder I didn’t quite get it. Honking like the sound of geese fleeing winter. Charlie had a few tapes like this, but I never played them. I liked music with words you could latch onto. Charlie wasn’t big on words, but when I glanced over he was still going at it with that buddy of his. A good old good old, a heart to heart.
I was hoping he’d come and dance. Once in a while, at functions like this he would—with coaxing. Though he didn’t have great rhythm. He’d pump his hands like pistons, making me think of that golden oldies tune “The Loco-Motion,” then move them to my waist as if I were a cocktail, his hands a shaker—or a cellulite-reducing gadget. But he tried, and tonight I was game.
More than once the sax player blared his horn my way. I don’t think I imagined it. Quite possibly I blushed. Each time was a little like being pinched, like having a stranger touch your waist, no chance at all to suck it in. I kept looking around for Charlie, who was talking to a short, dark-haired woman now, the captain in charge of training pilots. She looked older, serious, and probably had been pretty once.
To anyone who noticed—the Sandis and Joyces—I must’ve looked stung with boredom, humming with it, my eyes on the rafters, mentally swinging from them, waiting to leave.
But that wasn’t quite true.
The band played on and Sax Man took a little break, snapping his fingers and nodding along. Perhaps his eyes wandered over to Charlie talking to his friends again, sitting on the floor with the wall for a backrest, his tie undone. Maybe. Because he looked right at me and smiled. Not a friendly smile; and certainly not an “I feel for you” smile. More one of curiosity, or maybe contempt. Suddenly I was witheringly aware of my metallic dress and the net of spray holding back my hair. It was easy to lump me in with everyone else, the crewcuts and their spouses. Maybe, quite simply, he was on the lookout for someone to sleep with. A nature girl, as Charlie called them: girls who slept under the stars. But everyone was married; why else would we be there? Never mind the slipping straps and rundown bitch sticks, as Charlie called high heels. We wives aimed to please, which wasn’t easy in out-of-date shoes dug out of boxes once a year.
The band tooted out something Herb Alpertish, the guitarist swinging right into it. I tried to focus on the drummer and the bass player—everyone but the saxophonist, who had his eyes closed and was blowing at the ceiling, one long, screechy raspberry. My eyes kept flicking to his shirt.
Waving to Charlie, I tried concentrating on my drink, stabbing the ice cube with the little sword. I was on my second drink—ginger ale—when he came and put his hot hands on my shoulders, pulling out a chair with his foot. He smelled of beer and his face was flushed. As he sat down, I reached for him, my hand brushing his side. His ribs, through a pad of flesh and his jacket. Or the memory of his ribs. I thought of them almost as if they were my own, neither taking them for granted nor feeling any particular attachment. It was so different from when Sonny was a baby, sleeping, when I’d counted them in the sun streaming through the window.
He rocked back in his chair, then, after a minute or two was off again in search of more punch and another beer.
Breathing in, I glanced up at the band. The sax player was leading a slow number, the bell of his instrument buffing the air. The dance floor was empty, laughter and chit-chat so loud the notes got lost. But he didn’t look as if he minded; he could’ve been telling himself a story.
Charlie returned with our drinks, and we watched a couple, quite drunk, doing the monkey, then the bump. “Hold me back,” he joked and his eyes glazed as he picked the label off his Keith’s. I patted his leg. After a little while he said, “That’s enough. Let’s get out of here.”
For the five minutes it took to drive home, I felt a rosy kind of hope inside; I wouldn’t quite call it expectation. But I thought of sunlight playing over his chest while the baby snoozed in the other room.
In bed, I put my hand on his stomach, left it there. Waiting. He kissed me gently on the forehead then rolled to face the wall. Almost instantly, his breathing became a snore, and a tightness spread through me, moving from my thighs right up into my lungs.
4
TRUE NORTH
A snowstorm turned the base into a Fluff sandwich, as Sonny remarked, gawking outside. He still had to get dressed. It was one of those mornings there wasn’t much in the house besides ketchup. I made porridge and left some jam and the last of the milk on the table, then slipped out to the store while Charlie was showering. A purpose, I thought. A mission.
A drift and a two-foot bank left by the plough blocked me in. I managed to dig the car out, a plank of snow sliding off the roof as I backed onto the street. Didn’t they ever have storm days in this place? Making it to the highway was tric
ky, but it was pretty clear sailing to the Superstore, with hardly any traffic. The sky looked like fibreglass insulation gone mouldy. At least the supermarket was bright, with all those huge, blown-up photos of fruit. For a moment I felt right at home, almost cosy, the way I had moving with Charlie into our first married quarters, back at the ripe old age of twenty.
Empty of people except for a stock boy and some checkout girls, the store was like the inside of an orange, or the sun turned down low. The endless aisles and raftered ductwork made me feel tiny. I was checking through a carton of eggs when I heard humming. That Beatles song “Across the Universe” competing with ABBA on the PA. I’d just put the eggs in the cart when someone came around the corner. He looked vaguely familiar, despite his navy toque pulled low. His jaw had a bristle of beard; his cheeks were ruddy as if he’d been outside forever. He had on a brown canvas coat that, even from a distance, smelled like a tent—not unpleasant. He stared at me, blue eyes fixing on my plaid scarf. He looked puzzled, as if he’d seen me before.
He had. The pa had switched to an instrumental of “Hotel California” before it hit me. The guy from the New Year’s dance—the sax player. I caught a whiff of something else—wet wool, and fuel. Gasoline? I reached for some margarine. He was poking through a family pack of eggs. When I glanced back our eyes met and he smiled. I felt myself go as pink as the child safety belt on the cart. What’s her problem? I imagined him thinking as I scooted to the next aisle.
Throwing some coffee into the cart and some Quik for Sonny, I remembered the milk and scuffled back to the dairy aisle. He was still there, selecting butter. Pounds of it. Must have a pile of kids, I thought, picturing them. A wife, too. A female version of him in hiking boots. No make-up. The type who ate organic grains and used lichen shampoo, not tested on animals, or humans either. I pictured them in a kitchen with jars of beans and plants in the windows, the smell of nut butter and sprouts steeped into the woodwork. I envisaged the wife nursing a baby, and tried to imagine her name. Penelope? Elizabeth? Sandra—no, that was too close to Sandi, with her sweatshirts and feathered bangs.
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