The Half Moon: a Novel, page 24
“But—” he said.
He tried to pinpoint exactly what he wanted to say, tried to find the precise thing that was nagging him. People didn’t get away with this, or else they’d do it all the time. Everywhere, times get tough, buildings would be burning. But they weren’t. Or were they? He thought of what happened at the café on Vanderbilt. Three in the morning, an electrical fire. They had to close the place for a few months, but when they finally reopened, they had a new kitchen, state of the art. They had beautiful custom shelves installed in the dining room.
He imagined being interrogated. All of his answers would be right there, adjacent to the truth. Such a strange set of days, all the rules were different until the power came back on.
They took Maureen Ryan’s car. Jess drove with her mouth pinched into a straight line. As they passed each house, he understood what she meant about people hunkering down, looking only to themselves and the people they were stranded with. No one was thinking past getting salt on their own driveways, a way to get a hot meal into their kids. There was chimney smoke coming from a few houses, not many. The roar of generators churned up the silence. Driving through town, Jess cruised by the bar as if it didn’t mean anything to her and parked a block away. They entered through the alley door, out of range of the camera trained on the front door. Once inside, he was relieved that she didn’t go directly to the stairs.
“You want a drink?” she asked.
“Now?” he asked.
“Sure. Fifteen minutes won’t make much difference.”
“Okay,” he said. One drink and then they’d begin the plan. One drink and then he’d put one foot in front of another, and then again, again, come what may. But for now the bar was still standing, he’d done nothing wrong, he was just there with Jess, company in hard weather. She moved seamlessly as she made them each a Manhattan, her slender hands. She placed the napkin down in front of him first, then the glass on top. She would have made a great bartender.
He drank slowly, small sips, long pauses, but he reached the bottom anyway. He said he’d go move the generator while she moved the space heater downstairs, but told her to take her time, finish her drink. He took a detour on his way outside to jog up the back stairs and check the second story, to make sure whoever had been crashing there hadn’t come back. But it was still empty, and he stood by the window for a moment to watch the street fill with snow. When he returned downstairs and carried the generator around to the back, he knocked on the basement window from outside. She had to hammer it with the butt end of a screwdriver to get it to pop open. For a second he thought it was all over, the plan wouldn’t work if they couldn’t get the window open, and he couldn’t decide whether he was disappointed or relieved. But then she shimmied it open a crack, just enough to snake the cord through.
“What are you going to do after this?” he asked when he joined her in the basement. He didn’t know how to frame the question except to simply ask.
“Go to my mom’s I guess.”
“No, I mean what are you going to do, Jess? What am I going to do?”
It was darker outside now, the snow coming down harder.
“I don’t know.”
They both walked to the window, stood on tiptoe and looked out. The second canister of gas was at Malcolm’s feet.
“You want to do it?” she asked, holding out a book of matches.
“No way,” he said. “This was your idea.”
She seemed to have expected that. He watched her light a match. He watched her crouch down and hold it to a corner of the bottom box. Malcolm’s heart was beating very fast. He wanted to warn someone that this was happening, someone who could manage the next steps without putting anyone in danger but who wouldn’t rat them out. But who? The flame grew brighter for a few moments but then burned out, leaving only a wan curl of smoke. Jess rearranged the boxes and reached for a second match. But she hesitated for just a second, and Malcolm felt something tighten in his chest. He thought of Emma’s cardigan on a hanger in the broom closet. He thought of the picture of Scotty’s kids that was taped to the side of the microwave. He thought of the framed photo of Gephardt’s that he hung over the bar when he took over: 1982. His father standing under the sign with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, the blur of a yellow cab as it sped out of the frame.
“Hang on,” he said, staying her hand. “Hang on a sec.”
He knelt down beside her on the packed dirt floor. “We need to think for just a minute.”
She dropped the book of matches into her pocket and let out a long breath.
Was she relieved? He couldn’t tell. It was harder to read her than it used to be. She’d always been a doer, that was one of the things he loved about her. She was a worker, a problem solver. If someone got dumped, then she set them up with someone new. If someone needed a job, then she asked around until that person got one. She paid attention to how things were done so that she’d know how to do them herself. When they bought their house and had zero money to spare after the down payment, she took classes at Home Depot to learn how to tile, how to grout. When they were short on food at Siobhán’s baby shower, it was Jess who took everything to the kitchen, cut what they had in half, and rearranged it on more platters so it seemed as if it had doubled. “It was just like the loaves and the fishes,” Siobhán said when she recounted it for Malcolm later. “A miracle.” She felt stuck in her job, so she left. She felt stuck in her marriage, apparently, so she left that, too.
They sat in silence for a while.
“I’m out of ideas,” she said eventually.
“I know,” he said. “I just have to talk to Hugh. I have to make him talk to me. I’ve called and called but—” He shrugged. “Listen. Let’s just go, okay? The snow must be coming down hard by now.”
“This is our chance. We won’t get another. You need to be sure.”
“I’m sure.” Malcolm unplugged the power cord, pushed it back through the window. He told her he’d move the generator back to the original spot, and asked her if she wouldn’t mind carrying the heater upstairs.
* * *
“I can’t move,” she said. “What’s wrong with me. I can’t move. It’s like I’m stuck.” She was sitting there hugging her knees in the dark. So he carried the heater upstairs, set everything up as it had been. He filled the motor with gas and started it up.
“Jess,” he said when he returned to the basement. “Time to go. Come on.” She held out her hand and he took it, gently pulled her forward.
Outside, the snow was pounding hard. Malcolm used his sleeve to clear the windows.
Jess stood there without helping. She kept rubbing her face with her cold-reddened hand. “Jess?” he asked, and then he reached into her coat pocket and fished out her mother’s key. He opened the passenger door for her and guided her in. He went around to the driver’s side and started the car.
“You’re fine.” He looked over at her. “Nothing happened. We’re fine.”
“We’re fine,” she repeated. She had her forehead pressed against the cold glass. The rear wheels fishtailed a little and then found traction.
“Malcolm,” she said. “Do you ever think about what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten pregnant?”
Somehow, he knew that she meant the first time. At twenty-five. If they hadn’t rushed into marriage. If they hadn’t been so giddy as they applied for the license without telling a soul, Malcolm stuck in traffic coming from Gillam and Jess glazed with sweat after a short walk from the subway, unseasonably warm for May. He caught sight of her crossing the street that day and tried to decide whether she looked pregnant yet. There was a blank on the application where she had to write her new name, if she chose to change it. “Oh,” she said. “I have to decide right now?”
“You can always change it later on,” the woman behind the desk said.
“I haven’t thought about this,” she said, the pen still poised above the blank.
“I like your name,” Malcolm said. His way of telling her that it didn’t matter to him either way.
“And I like yours. And we’re getting married,” Jess said, and quickly wrote Jessica Lee Gephardt in the blank space.
“Holy shit,” she said when the woman collected the forms, told them where to wait. She threw her arms around him and squealed.
They drove to Gillam together after, riding a wave of momentum, of raucous joy.
* * *
When they finally got back to the house, the wipers barely able to keep up with the snow, Jess said, “I’m coming in.”
It felt as right and natural as anything that had happened in four months.
“Okay,” he said. “Listen. We’re going to figure everything out.”
She looked at him. “How?”
“I don’t know, but we will.”
Once they were inside, he reminded her that she had plenty of clothes upstairs if she wanted to change.
She went up and he soaked in the sound of her moving around above him. She eventually came down in her old leggings, a long flannel shirt he hadn’t seen her wear in years peeking out from beneath a wool sweater. She put her coat back on.
Inside they sat close together on the couch for warmth. He pulled across their laps the heavy down comforter he’d carried downstairs several days earlier.
“Didn’t we talk about getting a fireplace?” she asked.
“Yes, but—” he said, and figured they could both fill in the blank. They’d talked about lots of things, all of which were put off until until until.
The snow tinkled against the windows.
“Hey, Malcolm?” she said. Her head was somewhat below his. He breathed her in and realized he probably didn’t smell too fresh. He didn’t want to talk about anything big. He didn’t want to get into it. He was so tired, and so cold, and so hungry, and he just wanted to rest there for a bit, her body fitted to his despite all their bulky layers. Whatever might happen, he wanted to be quiet there with her for a few hours.
“Yeah?”
“I know I made a mess of things.”
He didn’t say anything, so she continued. “I know what I did is not the same as what you did with buying the building.”
He thought about all the things he saw at the bar and looked away from. The little nods of agreement and the silences because that was his job, to be dependable and neutral. To have no opinion. Would he have told her about his side deal with Hugh? If she hadn’t figured it out so fast? Probably not.
“I made a mess of things, too,” he said eventually.
She didn’t say anything, but he felt her shift, felt her relax against him.
“Freezing in here,” she said.
ten
In Malcolm’s dreams they heard sirens. They ran to the window to listen and then they tried to remember their prayers, as if God would help a pair like them, two sinners who’d not stepped inside a church since they were kids except for their friends’ weddings. Mr. Sheridan was in his dreams, too, pushing a snowblower with huge, muscular arms that unsettled Malcolm. Dr. Hanley appeared with his notebook. Hugh showed up, squeezed behind the steering wheel of his Cadillac. Emma was there, pulling at the end of her ponytail. But in reality, during the many times he woke during the night, he heard nothing except wind, the trees outside groaning as they swayed. It felt right sleeping side by side on the couch instead of upstairs. They’d reached not a truce, exactly, but more of a pause, a taking of breath.
Over and over, as she slept and he stared at the blank ceiling, he tried to pinpoint the moment when the line that had been rising so steadily year over year reached a summit and began to fall. All that promise. They just frittered it away, and they didn’t even notice until it was too late.
Until it was almost too late, Jess would say. “Almost too late” was actually the same as “in the nick of time.”
When Malcolm opened his eyes next, the world outside was brighter and Jess was still sleeping, heavy against his shoulder.
“Hey,” she said, hoarse, when he stood into the cold. It was very early, he could feel it. They both looked at their phones.
“Mine’s dead,” Malcolm said.
“Mine too.”
He walked to the front door and looked out, but there was nothing but a bracing white, so bright Malcolm had to shade his eyes. The snow had stopped. His skin was so cold under his clothes. He wondered how his mother had fared at Mr. Sheridan’s.
“Your mom is okay in this?” Jess asked, as if reading his thoughts.
“She went to stay with her friend.”
“Oh, good.”
What she didn’t tell Malcolm: that she’d invited her own mother to come to Neil’s, since he had heat and lights, but her mother had declined out of loyalty to Malcolm. Malcolm would be surprised by that, moved maybe, but to tell the story she’d have to say Neil’s name.
“The power’s been out for too long,” he said. “Some people aren’t going to make it.”
“It’s crazy. I don’t remember anything like this.”
“I’m starving.”
“Me too. Is there any food here?”
“Some old meat loaf I meant to throw away,” he said. “I can’t find matches to light the pilot.” He’d had a splitting headache the day before but now he felt light-headed. Neil Bratton probably kept a half dozen travel chargers on hand at all times. He probably had a ten-thousand-dollar generator.
Besides the meat loaf, the fridge was empty except for a jar of pickles and a tub of butter. That was where Malcolm’s search usually ended, but Jess went over to the pantry, reached into the way back, and withdrew a can of black beans. She rustled around some more and came up with a large can of diced tomatoes. She went to the drawer where they threw random things to search for matches hidden beneath old bills, menus, and dried out pens.
“Oh wait,” she said, remembering. She reached into her coat pocket and withdrew the book of matches from the previous day.
She went to the spice rack and removed this and that. She measured rice into a small pot, covered the rice with water. Never in a million years could Malcolm have looked at the random things she assembled and make his mind see a meal.
“Plenty here,” she said. Malcolm lit the pilot on the stove and in twenty minutes they had hot food. Just like the story of the baby shower, she’d made something out of nothing. When they finished their first bowls, eating in silence, they each had another. It was so elemental. Cooking. Eating. Washing up after with the water Malcolm had collected. Two white bowls left to dry on a worn kitchen towel. A cobalt blue sky beyond the window. It was an extravagance, thinking only about the present moment. There was Jess, next to him. He already felt warmer, his headache fading.
“We’re in trouble,” Jess said. “What are we going to do?”
“Let’s not talk about it. Let’s not talk about anything until later. Okay? For this morning let’s just pretend nothing’s wrong and then maybe something will come to us. I know that’s nuts but—”
Whatever Jess might have said to object, she swallowed back. “Okay,” she said. What harm? He was different than he was before she left. She’d first noticed when they were in the basement of the bar. Something in the way he held himself apart from her. Something about the solemn way he listened as she spoke. And now she was seeing it again. Where was the guy who clapped a dozen backs when he walked into a room? The guy who parted the air just by walking through it? Where was the kid who sprang for ice cream cones for the whole neighborhood, without having the first idea what the tab would come to? Gone, as far as she could tell. Humbled. Crushed. By her and what she’d done, yes. She made herself acknowledge that fact. But also, the slow-motion failure of a dream. She’d seen that failure coming, but he hadn’t. She saw that it hadn’t just been denial; he truly had not seen. And then it hit her that it was the same for him when it came to her dream. He knew long before she did that she would never deliver a baby. But he’d stood aside and hoped she’d arrive at that conclusion on her own.
Outside, they worked in synchrony. Jess put Malcolm’s phone on his car’s charger first, said she didn’t want to hear from anyone anyway. Not even Neil, Malcolm added in his mind. He shoveled while Jess used a broom to clear the car windows. What are we going to do? he thought over and over. What are we going to do what are we going to do what are we going to do? He knew she was asking the same. They discussed the weight and texture of the new snow, how it felt different from the heavy, sticky snow that had fallen on Friday. It was like they were in a play, acting like normal people, making their faces calm for the world. Jess asked Malcolm if he knew the Inuit people have fifty words for snow, and Malcolm reminded her that they watched that documentary together.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. Once the cars were clear, she went at the steps, at the windowsills. She reached up and waved the broom overhead to knock down icicles, one hand clutching the broom’s handle, the other crooked over her head to shield herself.
“Why don’t you check my phone,” he said, wincing as an icicle almost caught her in the eye. If he simply told her to stop, she wouldn’t. He wondered where Neil thought she was.
“Anything?” he asked, when she sat in his car to check.
“Emma,” she said. “She said, ‘How’s it there?’ ” Jess squinted over at him. “Do you want me to reply?”
“Nah,” Malcolm said. “Anything else?”
“Roddy. Wants to know if he left his headphones at the bar. He said they’d be next to the register.”
“Oh my God that kid. What else?”
“Mary. Wants to know where your Mom is. She’s not answering the landline at home.”
“Can you write back? Tell her she’s fine. Tell her she’s staying with a neighbor. Ask her if she remembers Artie Sheridan. Ask her if she remembers when his wife died.”
