Someplace Like This, page 9
And at last Anna and Robin and I are too tired to go on. They have lost interest in tussling and I haven’t got the wind to continue anyway. I had forgotten how much work this sort of play is. Hope, in the meantime, has combed her hair, fixed her face and two more drinks. No glass has ever looked so good.
“How hot is it?” I ask her, reaching for the glass with one hand and pushing my hair back from my face with the other. I can smell myself.
“Too damn hot,” she tells me, smiling. “I don’t know.”
“It’s got to be ninety.” I sit on the bench beside her. My rough-and-tumble seems to have subdued her as well, despite her refreshed appearance. “God.… I’d forgotten what it’s like …,” I moan.
Hope is serious. “I don’t think you ever forget,” she tells me.
I would answer her, but for her tone. The hollowness in her voice tells me that the horseplay here has come to an end.
We sit silently over our drinks. I cannot tell what Hope is thinking, but she is pensive, staring down into the frosted glass as though into some deep, clear pool. And I wonder what she sees in there.
“CHOW!” It is Finch’s call.
The two of them, Evan and Finch, are striding towards the table, platters of ground beef in hand, bags of buns, a tray of mustard, ketchup, onion, pickles, lettuce, tomato. The two of them have emerged, renewed, from their TV trance and are ready to join the world again. They are funny together, funny friends.
“A person could die of thirst,” Evan says, looking around him. “Finch? Something to drink?”
Finch is sculpting burger patties. He looks up. “I left a beer on the table in front of the TV,” and then he’s back, intense at molding.
“Hope?” Evan asks.
“I’m ginned out,” she says, shaking her head, and then, when the new thought hits her, “Cinzano and soda, I think, Evan. With a twist.” She is watching Finch at the grill. “Thanks.”
Evan looks my way, but I shake my head.
“OK, then,” he says, “I’m gone.” Behind him he leaves a trail of sound, a martial hum, something he no doubt heard on TV.
I follow, a tagger-along.
I pass him by in the kitchen where he is busy bartending and poke my head into the living room, looking for the kids. Only Doug is there, slouching in the chair in front of the TV screen. He seems to be listening intently to something about patriotism. A fat man on the screen, wearing a three-piece suit and sporting a mini-flag as his boutonniere, is waving his arms, gesticulating like a madman. Doug’s eyes are riveted to the screen even though I know he’s heard me behind him.
“Doug? Can I get you anything?”
He doesn’t turn around. “No, thanks,” and he holds up what is probably Finch’s abandoned beer can. “Thanks anyway,” he says to the TV.
“We’ll be eating soon,” I tell him. “Get hungry.”
I rejoin Evan in the kitchen and ask him, “Did something happen with Doug?”
“When?” He’s surprised.
“During the parade? Did something happen?”
Evan looks bewildered. “He didn’t watch the parade,” he says. “I thought he was with you.”
I begin to sense more than I really want to know. I snort a dull “huh,” as if I must have been mistaken, and I let it go. Evan obviously has no idea of what I’m talking about, has begun to hum his tune again, and I am certain that the matter is out of his head before I have finished speaking.
We go back out, drinks in hand. A new beer for Finch, Hope’s Cinzano, Evan’s gin.
And outside again, instead of joining the adults, I go in search of the two smaller kids, to see what’s up with them, to gather the clan for the meal. I follow the drift of childlike voices.
I find Robin lovingly petting the stone ducks. Anna lies on her back on the bench behind him; she has her eyes covered with her arm, engrossed in telling Robin a story about a goose family and its adventures on migration. She seems to be a master of her subject, and Robin interrupts her only to ask questions about geese in general, not the geese in her story. They are so rapt, both of them, that neither hears me come up.
“Do geese really do that?” Robin asks.
“Of course they do,” Anna tells him adamantly.
“Food!” I shout and startle them both.
Anna jumps as though she has been caught in some indecent act. “… and they all lived happily ever after,” she says suddenly, perfunctorily cutting the story off as though it were an aborted mission. She stands and straightens her shorts and the skimpy top which have twisted around her awkward young body, and she makes headway towards the others. “I’m hungry,” she says, and nearly runs me over.
Robin is left sitting in the close-cut grass, staring at the stone mama duck. When I sweep him up in my arms, he says, “That was a stupid end.” I nod. I have nothing to say, no excuses for the nature of geese or of little girls. We are both suddenly sullen, as though we have been fantastically, blatantly cheated. Robin looks as though he will cry, and I brush the hair from his eyes. To him it must seem a terrible muddle.
“What’s the matter, Robinbird?” I ask. “Bored?”
He does not know how to answer me. He has been briefed, I am sure, on what he can and cannot say. Even at this age, he is trying to weigh his answer. I feel sorry for him.
“It’s OK, Robin. I’m bored, too.” I give him a light kiss on the forehead, and feel I’ve got to make up for this bleak conversation.
“Did Evan tell you about the squirrels?” I ask.
He shakes his head “No” and looks me right in the eye, cautious, as though I might tell a squirrel story on the order of Anna’s goose story, might cut him off, leave him unsatisfied.
In the meantime, Anna has come back for us. She pulls in closer at the mention of the squirrels. If I am going to tell a story, well, she is bored enough to want to hear it too.
“What squirrels?” she asks.
And I tell them. I tell them that only one has survived.
“Where is it?” Anna believes she has found the antidote to this afternoon’s tedium.
Robin’s eyes widen.
“In the garage,” I tell them, but I wonder if I am doing the right thing. “He’s very small and he’s been sick,” I tell them again. “We can go see him, if you like, but we can’t bother him for long. We can’t touch him. OK?”
The two heads are nodding continuously, silently, bobbing like heads on springs.
“OK,” I say. “Let’s go see him.”
“What’s his name?” Robin is excited.
“Name? His name’s Banker.”
“Why? What’s Banker?” His young mind, his questions.
“It’s just his name, that’s all. Don’t you like it?”
Robin bobs his head again, quick short strokes, a small bird pecking at the ground for worms.
Anna is walking ahead of us, faster, towards the garage. I catch up and open the door. The bucket and the unplugged light are clearly visible in the center of the floor.
Anna dives for the box.
“ANNA! DON’T YOU DARE!”
I fly forward and pull her back from the box as though it is her life that is in danger, not Banker’s.
My heart is beating up behind my eyes. I force myself calm. “Please, Anna,” I say softly, reasonably, too slowly. “Don’t lunge at him. Don’t frighten him. We can’t be rough with him. He’s been through a lot.” I explain again about the feedings and about how we have been keeping him warm at night. I know to them it sounds like a needless, stupid adult lecture, but it seems like the thing to do.
Robin, frightened by my outburst, is still standing at the entrance to the garage. He probably thinks I’ve exploded into the crazies again. I don’t want him to be afraid of me.
“Come, Robin,” I say softly, and I beckon gently with my hand. “Come see Banker.”
And we huddle over the box.
They are calm now, quiet and concentrating. They are utterly fascinated by poor Banker, curled, like a fetus or a cat, into the corner of the box, around a shred of blanket. I watch them as they watch him. Anna is penitent, her hands at her sides; Robin is, I am almost certain, holding his breath, and I draw their promises from them once again and leave them alone with him so that they can share their small folks’ secrets, so that they can feel trusted, responsible, redeemed.
“Three minutes,” I tell them. “Come out for dinner in three minutes.” I leave knowing that, if I am lucky, they will be out in ten. I go into the house, fix myself a stiff gin, and join the adults, rejoin the world that I am supposed to understand.
The sun sets late, and the darkness, like mist, seems to rise from the earth, milky and opaque; it envelops the house from the ground up. We are exhausted and raucous at the ceremony of leave-taking. Hope is effusive, Finch is the card. Evan, I think, is drunker than I’d figured. He is kissing everyone he can get his hands on—Hope, Finch, the kids, each, one by one, and Hope again, and again. The jays, never far from our view, chatter their way into the banter, the promises, the goodbyes, the good intentions. And I am thinking even while it is happening that the jays are wily. They are present for more than their evening pickings; they are there to see them go, to watch because there is something of note going on. And I am with them: I know, too, that something important is happening, something that I should take note of, though I can’t name it, couldn’t define it if I had to. I have known since they arrived, known throughout each step of this long up-and-down day. There is no mistaking signs such as today’s, no misunderstanding. As their car pulls away and the bright red eyes of their taillights withdraw from our yard, Evan’s fragile demeanor cinches the certainty. It is not paranoia; it is fact.
When we go back in, we sink deep into the sofa. We are wildly tired, spent. Evan looks as though he has been on trial, looks as though he has been acquitted, acquitted but in a procedure that has left him with a sense of the possibility of guilt. And I wonder what it is Evan might have done in this instance, what it is he could be guilty of.
We are both bone dry and anxious.
Two drinks: a gin and tonic for Evan, Amaretto and cream for me. And we begin to talk. We talk tentatively at first, as many silences as there are words. Then the momentum builds, builds more in Evan than in me, and the words take precedence, they tumble, break out on him like a rash, the truth—Hope, Hope is leaving, she is leaving Finch and the children, leaving the house, the family, she has another life, she is happy, not sad, and nothing, nothing will ever be the same again—and we are both left vacant and nearly inside-out, and there is nothing left to say to fill the space that crouches inside us both like a hunger.
And the questions turn about and make themselves my own: What the hell can have happened to the certainties? Are there no sure things? What the goddamn fuck is all this about? The recognition looms as hard and as ungiving as concrete. There is no escaping it. Not at all. The only sure thing now seems to be the unraveling, the not-knowing. The accident of any particular lifetime. What the hell is all that for? How does one outwit it? Outrun it?
And suddenly it is too real, the fact that Evan must leave tomorrow, must return to the city, even for the short while of the week. There is no escaping that. As much as both Evan and I would like to let it ride, as much as we would rather simply go hide ourselves beneath the comfort of sleep, feed him later, any other time, Banker must be fed once more before we can go to bed, must be tended to so that at least for him life will be safe and reliable. Although he is bone-weary and sad, Evan is good enough to take on the task while I pull myself together, while I go upstairs, turn down the bed, and wash up, compose myself for sleep.
I am toweling my face dry, scrubbing at my scratchy eyes, when I hear his footsteps on the staircase. The sound is hollow. When he enters the room, his face is stricken, sickly. I turn to him, thinking that he has been injured somehow, or that he has suddenly fallen desperately, seriously ill. And then I know. He doesn’t have to tell me.
Evan and I bend into one another, huddle as though we are frightened, children who are afraid of the dark. We are tangled into each other and we move towards the bed as one. We crawl onto the blankets and we cry.
Banker is dead.
IX
SOME DISTANCE
For Hope, July 5th is Independence Day.
It is my first thought, too early in the morning.
Then, gradually, as I lie there, the thought is displaced by the silence. Stone silence. There has never been such a stillness, and it makes me feel very small, shrunken and dry, in a house made for bigger, juicier things. I curl up tighter, slip down further. I pull the blankets up over my head and I go back to sleep.
Morning begins at noon.
I am hungover, physically, emotionally. My blood reverberates in my veins like some tight, hymen-like membrane, tympany, each breath I take, each hair that falls limply around my face. Evan did not wake me when he left. I heard nothing. Not the airport taxi, not the door. Without thinking, I reach to his side of the bed.
The scorched smell of coffee forces me onto my feet. It is like the smell of burning tires. I blunder sleepily down the stairs, towards the kitchen, and, yes, Evan has left the pot on for me—good Lord, how long has it been on? I pull the plug and try to get my bearings. I pour the coffee into the sink and rinse the dregs from the pot. Evan left at five. The coffee has been on seven hours. I open the window above the sink and hope the smell will go away. I put on another pot. Eight cups. I am going to drink them all.
While I wait, I pour myself a glass of grapefruit juice. The first sip is worse than swallowing moonshine. Instantly my sinuses are flooded with the same sharp, flaming sensation. I cough again, twice, to clear the passage. I wipe my eyes and take another sip. It is bracing.
I am coming to.
In the living room, I throw back the curtains and find that at least some of the drumming that has been going on in my ears is real. I can hear the steady tattoo of rain beating on the grass outside, hear it tapping the leaves on its way down. I cross the room slowly, flick on the radio, and twiddle the dial until I come across a voice that is neither whining nor howling. An indifferent voice. The storm hit south, this voice says; what we are experiencing is just the northern tip of something much larger. Our area, the voice assures me, will get no worse; the storm will pass us by completely by late this afternoon. And I wonder if Evan flew through the storm; I wonder what it’s like in the city where he is now. Surely he has remembered galoshes, umbrella, or there will be some in his father’s apartment. When he calls, I will ask him. I must remember to ask him what he was doing at this moment, at 12:25 p.m. I must remember to tell him I was thinking about him. I turn away from the radio and back to the empty room, and it is like staring at a face devoid of features. I am struck dumb. I will be alone in this house until Friday night. Four days, four if you don’t count the full morning and more that I’ve already slept away. All that time and space, mine. And I can do whatever I want.
With my coffee, I sit, and the stillness and the expectation wrap around me like fog. There is no gnashing of mower blades, no clank and thrash of hoe and rake, no voices, no footsteps. No promise of them. Even the birds seem to be napping. There is only the thrum of the rain and that is steady enough to be no noise at all. The walls themselves seem to pulse larger with the silence; every concrete thing within my line of vision seems dwarfed by it, everything but the empty spaces in between which are now somehow cavernous and looming. I am thinking: I can do whatever I like. But the thought does not alleviate the silence.
And I can do whatever I damn well like. It’s a gift. A gift. My gesture is emphatic; I spill my coffee. It runs across my knuckles, onto my wrist, into the lap of my robe. I lick the skin at the base of my thumb, then across the knuckles and the rest of my hand, and then I drink.
I can hear myself swallow.
Hope confided in her brother. Evan told me the two of them talked after we ate, sometime after the air had hung heavy with inactivity and we had all become restless. It was while we walked on the beach, Evan and Hope far ahead, Finch and I lagging behind, keeping our attention on the younger two who were, in turn, boisterous camels, mysterious Arabs, and giant radioactive crabs. We kept busy, kept one ear open, one eye wide for Doug who had jogged far ahead of us all, who turned back only once for a quick glance, as though he were checking on a companion who had fallen behind. It was then they talked, while Finch and I kept things ordinary, kept the kids in tow, kept our thoughts to ourselves.
Hope is leaving Finch.
She has found work in the city; she will share a small one-bed-room apartment with a friend, a man friend. She will see the children every other weekend. She is glad she married Finch, glad she bore the children. They are all her friends. Now it is time for her, time before it is too late. Mostly, she told Evan, it is the act of leaving that will be difficult. Her degree has come in handy after all. All those Tuesday and Thursday nights away from home have paid off in kind—a life away from home. She will not make much money. Enough to live. She will give Finch nothing for the kids because she will need all she makes to carry her end of the new arrangement. She loves them, loves them all, but she cannot, will no longer live with them. She leaves today. Has probably already left.
