by Anne Tyler
But he didn’t appear to see it. “Jumping off Ferris wheels,” he said. “Running away to your folks. Did you hear us tonight, Pauline? Did you hear what we were saying? All of our remember-whens were quarrels. I don’t think I’d ever noticed before. Did you see our kids’ expressions?”
“Not all of them were quarrels, Michael. Goodness!” Pauline said. (Meanwhile, she was rapidly reviewing the kids’ expressions. It was disconcerting when Michael popped up with one of these uncharacteristically sharp-eyed observations.) “I was telling how you bandaged my forehead,” she said. “You were telling about my red coat—”
“Hauling forth yet again the one and only peaceful moment the two of us ever experienced,” he said.
“What?”
He didn’t answer. His mouth was a straight line and his eyes had that dark, dense look they got sometimes when his hip ached.
She stepped closer to him and set a hand on his arm. “Oh, Michael,” she said. “Why, that’s just not true! We’ve had all kinds of good times! Times we were romantic, times we told each other our fears and worries, times we laughed. The comical things the children used to say when they were little—remember? Remember how Karen used to call club soda ‘busy-water’? And the griefs we shared, all the troubles with Lindy, and how you were such a comfort to me when my mother’s mind started going . . . So what if we fight a bit? I just think that proves we have a very spirited marriage, a marriage with a lot of energy and passion! I think it’s been a fun kind of marriage!”
But he said, “It has not been fun.”
She dropped her hand.
“It’s been hell,” he said.
She thought even as she was hearing the words that she was mishearing them. He couldn’t be saying what she thought he was, could he? And not even in the heat of battle! In a perfectly reasonable voice!
“All this shouting and weeping and carrying on,” he said. “Stalking off, slamming doors, kicking furniture, throwing my clothes out the window, locking me out of the house—”
“Why don’t you leave, then,” Pauline said.
He stopped speaking.
“If you’re so miserable, leave! If I make you so unhappy. If your life is such a torment. Go! What are you waiting for?”
He looked at her a moment longer, and then he snatched his car keys from the bureau and turned on his heel and walked out.
So. Some anniversary night. Pauline took off her ribboned slip and rolled it into a tube shape to remind herself to launder it on Delicate in the morning. Her hands were a little shaky, she noticed. She felt weak and empty, as if she had gone too long without eating, and her heart was beating too high in her chest the way it sometimes did when she was afraid.
She took off her bra but not her underpants, and she put on a long-sleeved nightgown. (Any time she was anxious, she slept in her underpants and her most modest gown—a habit left over from girlhood.) She washed her face, brushed her teeth, removed her pearl button earrings and placed them in her jewelry box. She padded down the hall to Pagan’s room to make sure his light was off, and then she returned to her own room and climbed into bed.
He would be back. No question of that! As soon as he had cooled off he’d come back, but she would be sound asleep without a care in the world. He’d rattle around, shutting a drawer too noisily, dropping his shoes too heavily to the floor. That was how he operated, not apologizing but just pointedly presenting himself, Here I am, waiting for her to make the first move. He could be aloof and uncommunicative for days, and she’d say, “Michael, please don’t act like this!” and he’d say, “Act like what? I’m not acting any way.” Lying through his teeth. He was not an honest man. He fought in a dishonest manner. He didn’t have a tenth of her forthrightness.
Look at how he behaved with the children, for example. “Your mother says this,” and “Your mother says that.” “Your mother doesn’t want you out so late.” “Your mother wants you to phone us when you get there. You know how she frets.” Always putting her in the role of the bad guy; it was never “I want such-and-such.” He did that to this very day, with Pagan. As recently as tonight he’d asked, “Didn’t Grandma say it was bedtime, Pagan?” And then he got to look so easygoing, so lenient, so let-it-be by comparison.
She switched off the lamp and lay flat, pulling just the top sheet over her. It was a warm, humid night, more like summer than fall, and through the open window she heard the chitter and buzz of insects in the shrubs. A car swished past out front, but it didn’t slow or turn into the driveway.
And the way he called her “old lady” during those three months of every year when she was older than he was—thinking he was so witty although he knew, she had certainly told him often enough, that her age was a sensitive topic. “What?” he would ask, all injured bewilderment. “What did I say? I was only being funny. Can’t you take a joke?” So she would look like the humorless one; he would look happy-go-lucky.
When the truth was that he was as dour as a judge, and as lacking in feeling.
After they lost track of Lindy in San Francisco that time, Pauline had wanted to hire a private detective to look for her. She’d heard of a man named Everjohn, recommended by a friend of a friend, and she proposed to Michael that they call for an appointment. But Michael had refused. Why bother, was how he had put it. “She knows where we live. She knows we have her son. Suppose this guy managed to find her, what then? Would he rope and tie her and carry her bodily back to Baltimore? She doesn’t want to see us, Poll. So, okay. I don’t want to see her, either.”
Michael in a nutshell. Give up, as easy as that. Wash your hands. Never cared anyhow.
Once he’d told her, out of the blue, that he’d learned a new phrase from a customer: “killing the frog by degrees.” “Guess where it comes from,” he said.
“I don’t even know what it means,” Pauline said.
“It means doing something so gradually that nobody happens to notice. Like reducing the size of a cereal box; that’s what brought it up. ‘The prices stay the same but the boxes get smaller and smaller,’ this customer was saying. ‘They’re killing the frog by degrees.’ I said, ‘Excuse me?’ Guess where it comes from.”
“Where?”
“Seems if you put a frog in a kettle of cold water and light a slow flame underneath, the water heats up one degree at a time and the frog doesn’t feel it happening. Finally it dies; never felt a thing.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Pauline asked.
“Hmm?”
“What made you mention it?”
“Why, I just thought you’d be interested, hon.”
“You meant something by it, didn’t you.”
“What?”
“You told me this for a reason, I know.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“You think we’re being killed by degrees, don’t you. Our marriage. And you’re trying to claim that I’m the one who’s doing it.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
No, she was not out of her mind. She supposed it might sound that way to an uninformed observer, but she’d been married to Michael long enough so she knew what he was implying, all right. She could read him like a book. She knew.
Eventually she dropped off to sleep, although she was so keyed up that she hadn’t thought she’d be able to. She woke with a start some time later and looked over at the clock: 3:15. It was pitch-dark and silent, the insects quiet, no traffic, and Michael’s side of the bed was empty. Maybe he’d had an accident. Yes, he must have! She knew it with such certainty, all at once, that it seemed she had received some kind of telepathic transmission. How else to explain his absence? He would never spend the money for a hotel room. He didn’t have any friends he could stay with. No, he’d driven into a ditch somewhere, befuddled with champagne and lack of sleep. And now he was bleeding to death underneath his car, and it was up to her to telephone the police. Except she was too embarrassed to phone. What would she say? “My husband
walked out in a snit and I know he must have been in a wreck; I can feel it.” “Sure, lady,” they’d say. Besides which, she had the illogical sense that she’d used up her quota of calls to the police when Lindy left. “Hey, Sarge, it’s that Mrs. Anton. Seems as how she’s mislaid another loved one.”
Michael had no right to put her in this position. No right at all. She willed herself to sleep again.
In the morning while she was fixing breakfast she had a sudden realization. He must have spent the night with one of the children. Wasn’t that spiteful of him! He’d have told them she’d kicked him out of the house; they’d have felt sorry for him. Karen was the more likely possibility, because she had an apartment downtown, very convenient, just off the Jones Falls Expressway. Pauline stopped buttering toast and turned to eye the phone. Call Karen and ask? Or not. She could hear sounds from Pagan’s room—the rat-a-tat of last night’s baseball scores on his clock radio. If she did call, she should do it before he came into the kitchen. She considered for another moment, and then she picked up the receiver and dialed.
“Hello,” Karen said.
“Hi, sweetie! Did I wake you?”
“No, no, I’ve been up for ages. I’m trying to finish a paper that’s due first thing tomorrow.”
“Well, I just wanted to thank you for making time for dinner in the middle of the week.”
“Oh, that’s okay.”
“I know how busy you are.”
“That’s okay.”
There was a pause.
“And thanks again for our gift,” Pauline said. “What a wonderful idea!”
“That was all Sally’s doing.”
“Yes, I sort of figured. Sally’s such a good organizer. But it was nice of you to chip in on it.”
“You’re very welcome,” Karen said.
“So!” Pauline said. Pagan’s radio grew louder, which meant he must have opened his door. “So, did Dad stop by your place last night?” she asked in a hurry.
“Dad? Stop by . . . here?”
“I guess not.”
Pagan entered the kitchen, carrying his knapsack by the straps. “Why would he come here?” Karen asked.
“Oh, no reason, really!”
“I thought he was home with you.”
“Yes, but we had this little . . . you know; something blown way, way out of proportion . . .”
Pagan dropped his knapsack to the floor with a thud, or more like a boom—what must it weigh?—and settled into his chair and looked over at her expectantly.
“What,” Karen was saying, “you had a fight on your anniversary?”
“Well, not exactly a—”
But she didn’t want to say the word “fight” in front of Pagan. “It was nothing, really,” she said. “Heavens, look at the time! I should get Pagan to school.”
“Are you saying Dad has gone off someplace?”
“Hmm? Oh. Well, he isn’t here right at this moment, but—”
“Can I have Cheerios?” Pagan asked her.
“No, Pagan, I already made toast. Sorry, sweets, I have to go!”
“Wait,” Karen said, but Pauline hung up.
“I’m tired of toast,” Pagan said. “I had toast yesterday. Can’t I have Cheerios?”
“Fine. Here,” Pauline told him. She took the Cheerios box from the cupboard and set it down smartly in front of him. Then she reached for the phone again and dialed George.
“But where’s a bowl? Where’s milk?” Pagan asked, at the same time that Sally said “Hello?”
Drat. Oh, well. “Good morning, Sally!” Pauline said.
“Oh, hi, Pauline.”
“Just wanted to thank you for coming last night and for that lovely, lovely picture!”
“I’m so glad you liked it. You don’t think the gilt is too froufrou, do you?”
“The gilt. Oh, my, no! No, it’s lovely, Sally.”
“George said it should have been just a plain white mat. When I brought it home he said, ‘Why the gilt edging?’ I said, ‘Now you tell me. I asked you before I took it in; I said, “Do you have anything special in mind you want to do with this?” and you said you didn’t know anything about such things; you’d leave it in my hands.’ But if you’d like me to get it rematted, Pauline—”
“Goodness, no! I love the gilt! I think the gilt’s the best thing about it!”
“Oh,” Sally said. “Does that mean . . . Do you wish there’d been gilt on the frame as well?”
“Absolutely not,” Pauline said firmly. “Both of us like it just the way it is. Michael expressly said so. He isn’t here right this minute or I’m sure he’d want to tell you himself. Gosh, I’m not sure where he is! You haven’t seen him, have you?”
“Seen . . . Michael? Wouldn’t he be at work?”
“Well, I’ll have him call you when he gets home so he can thank you in person.”
“Oh, there’s no need for . . . Was he supposed to be coming here? I don’t understand.”
“Not as far as I know, he wasn’t,” Pauline said. “Well, thanks again. Bye-bye!”
She hung up but went on standing at the phone a moment, pinching her lower lip between her thumb and index finger.
“Grandma,” Pagan said, “I need a bowl for my Cheerios.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Pagan, you’re old enough by now to get your own bowl!” Pauline said.
But she reached for one anyhow, and slammed it onto the table so hard that Pagan blinked.
Driving back from Pagan’s school, she passed by the grocery store. It was right on her way, almost. She just had to dip the eentsiest bit to the south to come upon it: a narrow, one-story brick building set between a pharmacy and a real estate office, with a long black signboard across the top reading ANTON’S FINE FOODS in gold italic letters. Tasteful plantings occupied so much of the gravel parking strip out front that Michael himself always parked in back, among the Dumpsters and trash cans; so she had no way of knowing whether he was there. She pulled into a space near the pharmacy, as far from the grocery as possible, and shut off her engine and sat a moment, debating. Then she made up her mind and got out of the car.
Funny how this new Anton’s—so much airier and brighter than the old one—still had the same smells, more intimate somehow than the smells in a supermarket. But the shelves were lined with expensive foods nobody in St. Cassian’s could have afforded, and there was a meat counter here and even a florist’s department. Over by the produce section Pauline spotted Michael’s manager, a pale, fat, damp-haired man who always wore a gold cross on a chain so tight that it seemed embedded in his neck. She walked up to him and said, “Morning, Bart! I guess he’s in his office”—using an indulgent, wifely tone of voice.
“Yes, ma’am,” Bart said. “Or somewheres nearabouts. I just saw him.”
So there hadn’t been any accident, any car overturned in the ditch. Her worries had been for nothing. She felt more angry than relieved. “Well, thanks,” she told Bart. “I’ll go track him down,” and she set off toward the rear of the store, bypassing two young women in identical layered hairdos who were arranging a tennis date.
The office door, she saw, was open. Michael leaned against the door frame with his back to her, listening to what’s-her-name, the girl who’d taken over the books when Mrs. Bird retired. Letitia, that was it. Letitia was skewed around in her chair asking Michael some question, and Michael was nodding slowly and deeply. There was no reason that he should have grown aware of Pauline’s approach—she had a light step, she wore Keds—but he turned, all at once, as if he had somehow sensed her, and the look that came over his face was such a guilty, cornered look that she fancied, for an instant, that she’d interrupted a tryst. Then she understood that this was something worse, that he was sorry she had found him. (Had “tracked him down,” to use her own phrase.) She couldn’t have said how she knew this, but she knew it for a fact. He wasn’t happy to see her. The knowledge slammed into her so cruelly that she took a sharp step backward, bumping into
someone’s grocery cart.
“Hi,” Michael said, and Letitia said, “Oh, hi, Mrs. Anton,” and gave her a cheerful wave and swiveled around to her adding machine.
Pauline said, “I was just wondering if you’d be home for supper tonight.”
Michael glanced toward Letitia, and then he came forward, closer but still at some distance. Almost too softly to be heard, he said, “I don’t think so, Pauline.”
The way he added her name at the end was humiliating—so solicitous and concerned, as if he were trying to break bad news gently. She felt stung. She said, “Well, good!”
Some tension eased in his expression. She heard herself say, “Wonderful! Just wonderful! Just stay away forever!” Her voice was somebody else’s, some wild, elated madwoman’s voice. She spun around, bumping again into a grocery cart—maybe the same one—and rushed down the aisle, past the registers, out of the store to her car.
She told no one. She spent the day discarding things, straightening drawers, cleaning closets. Supper was thrown together from stray tins she had unearthed while reorganizing the kitchen, but only Pagan ate. Pauline herself just watched from her end of the table. “Where’s Grandpa?” Pagan asked.
“At a meeting,” she told him.
He seemed to accept this, although Michael had never been known to attend a meeting before.
After supper Pagan went downstairs to watch TV and Pauline settled on the living-room couch facing the picture window. Dusk fell as she sat there but she didn’t switch on a lamp. She pleated the hem of her sweater between her fingers, over and over, and stared out at the trees growing steadily blacker behind the house across the street. From here the TV sounded like barking—ruff-ruff-ruff—cowboys shouting orders to each other above the gunshots. She knew she should go downstairs and check on Pagan, ask if he had any homework, offer to read him a book or play a board game, but she didn’t.
When the headlights blazed into the driveway she felt her pulse take a leap. She thought of Michael’s description the evening before: “seemed like all the blood came rushing back into my veins.” She reached for a magazine and opened it, blindly, so that when he walked in she appeared to be reading in the dark. He flicked on the overhead light and stared at her. She squinted against the brightness.
