She was dreaming of Ida the next morning, an odd, unsettling dream of Ida turning to strike her with a silver mirror. When she woke up, arms thrown over her face, Neal was nuzzling her. They had not made love since Christmas. Why was he aroused now, the day she was finally supposed to meet Charles Lichtman? She struggled with about ten different emotions, then gave up. Maybe he loved her after all. Maybe it was as simple as that. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he said back, his voice sweet and deep.
“Hey,” she conceded. She brought his hand around to her breast, settled it on top like a baby’s cap, and cuddled back into his embrace as he water-witched around, looking for entrance. She shivered with welcome as he finally slipped inside. What a sweet connection. Surely she had never done anything this warm—this friendly—this human—with her father. Again she realized that whatever had happened that night with Francis, it hadn’t been sex. Sex was too innocent and too easy and too much fun. She let herself relax and open in a soft rush.
“Whoa,” Neal cautioned. “Slow down.” His low, excited breathing filled her ear; married music. Drenched and dreamy, she gazed out through half-opened eyes into a charcoal grey room. The curtains glimmered, the alarm clock glowed. Somewhere down the valley a rooster crowed. What a good feeling it was to be alive after all—fresh-throated, headache-free—no wine last night, she remembered, no cigarettes either. Neal, inside her, felt young and strong, a little slow. Slower. Very slow. Stopped.
“What is it?” she whispered. “Are we waking Nicky up?”
“Garbage.”
She heard it too, the high whine of the garbage truck down at the corner. And that was another good thing: the world was in fine working order this morning, all those strong men running up and down the streets of town, hauling everyone’s rubbish away. “Umm,” she said, reaching back to cradle Neal’s small velvety balls, like tomcat balls, she’d always thought, high and firm and that plush pretty pink.
“I didn’t carry the can out last night,” Neal said.
“It doesn’t—”
She was about to say “matter” when Neal slid out of her, pulled on his robe, kicked into his slippers, and slammed out the front door. She lay still for a second in shock, feeling the cold air pass over her body. Then she went to the window, parted the curtains, and watched him hurrying down the driveway with the big green can of trash in his arms. She heard him call out to the garbage men, heard them call back, heard a word or two of cheerful morning exchange, a rumble of laughter.
She went back to bed and sat straight, hugging her knees, staring blearily at Mrs. Sorensen’s framed photo on Neal’s side of the dresser. She touched her ankle, which still ached from her fall in the woods, and rubbed her shoulder, which still ached from her fall at her father’s. “Why did you do that?” she asked when Neal returned.
“Choose the garbage over me.”
“Don’t go into one of your spirals please.” He hung up his bathrobe, slipped back into bed, and reached for her. But his skin felt clammy, his erection was gone, and his fingers smelled like compost. She pulled away. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing,” he warned.
“Am I? Sometimes I feel like I’m trying to make a whole life out of nothing.”
Neal raised his hands in the air and clapped. She stared at him as he sat up, threw his covers back, and began to get dressed. What a remarkably unattractive person he was. That double chin. That big mole like a greasy salmon egg right between his eyes. “The way you behaved last night …” Neal said.
“What do you mean?”
“That crack about Glo Sinclair was totally unnecessary.”
“Glo Sinclair is unnecessary.”
“You owe her some thanks.”
“For what?” Kay turned on the pillow, waiting.
“Big thanks. She got us out of debt.”
“What debt?”
Neal didn’t answer.
“What debt?”
He left the room. Kay pulled on a long sweatshirt and followed him. The house seemed foreign to her in the early morning dusk; someone else’s, always had been. A dim ugly place she was visiting. She stepped on a loose nail in the flooring and swore, her anger sparking around her like an electric outline. I can go to Charles Lichtman tonight with a clear conscience, she thought. There is nothing to stop me. She stumbled into the kitchen where she switched on the light and stared at her bent husband. “What debt?”
“All right,” Neal said after a minute. “Sit down. We’ll talk. I should have told you about this before.” He plucked at a corner of the place mat as he sipped from a glass of wheat juice. “You know I bought the stables.”
“No, I didn’t know.” Kay sat. “When?”
“Last October. I was going to surprise you on our anniversary, but you had a lot on your mind, with your mother—”
“You always blame my mother.” Kay rose and looked in the refrigerator. Maybe there was an overlooked Marlboro in there after all. No. Just the remains of last night’s dinner; nothing else. She closed the door and sat down. “How did you get the money?” She leaned forward. “You didn’t ask my dad, did you? I have asked you and asked you never to borrow from my family.”
“Calm down. Yes, I did, but he said no. So I borrowed from a loan shark.”
“I hate you, Neal. What’s a loan shark?”
“A so-called broker who charges thirty percent interest.” Neal’s voice rose for the first time and he sounded aggrieved. Righteous. As if he had a point to make. As if he had a case. As if he had not betrayed her trust and in some essential way her honor. He held her eyes, willing her to sympathize. Slowly she remembered the junk mail she’d seen him reading all year, the “literature” he’d been “studying.”
“Oh Neal. Not that Dominic DelGotcha person.”
“Delgardo. And yes okay, you’re right, the guy’s a crook. But it could have worked. Only I had to put the business up for collateral. And the house.”
“This house?”
Neal was silent.
“Your mother’s house? You know I will say one thing about not drinking. I don’t have a hangover. Do you? I just feel worse than I’ve ever felt before in my life. But clear. Pretty clear. So go on.”
“Well. I paid the first installment on time …”
“How.”
“We had. Oh babe. You know. Your mother’s money.”
“That ten thousand? It’s gone?”
“You’ll get it back. Triple, I promise. So then the second installment came due. And I hadn’t landed the other investors I’d beentrying to get. So I didn’t have the money.” He took a last sip of juice. “And then Glo Sinclair dropped by the shop.” Kay, impatient, clicked her tongue; Neal ignored her. “So we started talking, and I told her what I wanted to do with the stables and it turns out she had some capital gains tax she needed to invest so it made perfect sense that she invest in me.” His voice rose. “Thanks to her, I’m going to make it, I’m going to make a minimall. It’s going to have shops. Restaurants. A health food store. You know how you’ve always said there’s no good music store around here? I thought you could open your own music store, stock it yourself, run it yourself.”
“You want me to run a music store?”
“Why not? What’s wrong with that?”
Nicky came to the kitchen doorway, Coco clattering at his heels, took a look at both of them, and said, “I’m going back to bed.”
“Good idea,” Neal and Kay said together.
“Everything’s ‘wrong,’” Kay said at last. “With all of it.” She thought of all the nights Neal had dragged home and she had met him at the door, taken his jacket, handed him a towel and a cup of steaming miso, all the times she had pattered after him like a trained dog, barking the same old questions: How was your day, dear? See anyone? Talk to anyone? Anything interesting happen? Have any thoughts, dreams, desires, plans, fears, feelings? “I can’t believe you never said a word to me.”
“I know. I should have. I tried to once. You’d been … I don’t know … you were drinking. You made some crack about … you seemed to think I was going to convert the stables into feed stalls and give pony rides and sell alfalfa, I don’t know, so I”—he raised his head—“kept the rest of my plans to myself. I wanted to be sure before I told you.”
“I don’t remember making jokes about it, Neal.”
“You have a sharp tongue. I’m sorry. But you do.”
“So it’s my fault you don’t talk to me.”
Neal met her eyes. “Sometimes,” he said. “Yes. It is.”
Kay took this in. It wasn’t bad. Like throwing a few lit firecrackers into a clothes dryer already loaded with ball bearings. “There’s a lot I haven’t told you either,” she said at last. “You’re not the only one sitting on secrets. I’ve been going through a lot too.” She waited. If she could talk to Neal about her last night with Ida, her last night with Francis, there would be no need to go to Charles Lichtman.
But Neal said, “You don’t know what worries are,” drained his glass, spun it wearily between his palms, and added, more to himself than to her, “I know I screwed up. But it’s all over now. And it’s worked out fine.”
“I don’t see how.” Kay let her breath out. “We’re still in debt. Only now we’re in debt to Glo Sinclair.”
“Yes, but now,” Neal explained, “we have time.”
Kay shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Us. You and me. We just ran out of time. Our marriage just ended.”
“Don’t do this, babe. I know I screwed up, but—”
“It’s not just you. It’s everything. You know what I think it is? I think it’s the garbage.”
“I have my priorities, all right?”
“No. Not all right. We’re married. Married people have each other as priorities. Married people talk about major investments that affect both of them. They make plans together. They make love together. They share what they’re going through.”
“The way your parents shared their cigarettes and booze?”
“We can’t hold a candle to my parents, Neal. We’re amateurs. We’re nothings.”
Neal opened his mouth, but closed it. He knows I’m right, Kay thought. He knows we’re through.
“So you think we should separate?” he asked cautiously.
“We are separated. How could we get any more separated? This is it.”
“Look. I know you’re mad right now but things are going to work out. I’m going to pull this whole stables thing together for you.”
“It has nothing to do with me, Neal.”
“It has everything to do with you. Everything I’ve done I’ve done for you.” Neal pushed his glass away and stood up. “I’ll stay at the shop for a while,” he said, “until you cool down. Tell Nicky I’ll call him.”
“Tell him yourself, he’s standing right there.”
But Nicky was gone by the time they both turned, the front door slamming as he ran down the street.
“You look like two ties twisted,” Mrs. Holland said.
Kay paused, her arms full of books. “I had a rough morning,” she admitted. She thought about telling Mrs. Holland that Neal had moved out and that she’d spent the last half-hour coaxing Nicky back into her car, but decided against it. “I still can’t find that ring,” she said as something to offer.
“I lost a diamond once,” Mrs. Holland said. “It fell out of its setting when I was walking in the city. The minute I saw it was missing I turned right around and retraced my steps. You know how shiny those sidewalks are. They put mica in the pavement. It looked like the whole block was paved with little diamonds. I thought I’d never find it.”
Kay waited. “But you did,” she prompted.
“It was lying right by the curb next to a fireplug.”
Kay nodded and stacked the books onto the cart. She was about to wheel the cart away when she saw the college catalogue Mrs. Holland had placed there with a red arrow pointing to the Library Science section. She picked it up, turned to the page that gave admissions information, and jotted the phone number down. One day at a time, she reminded herself. One day at a time until five-thirty tonight.
· · ·
But five-thirty still seemed far away as she dragged up the path that afternoon at three.
“You ought to paint this porch.” She looked up to see Victor perched on a piece of newspaper on the top stair. Oh-oh. Victor never just dropped by. She smiled cautiously but he did not smile back. He continued to scrape at the stair with a pocketknife. “You could probably get Stacy’s brother’s friend Ed, he’s in the trades, to give you an estimate,” he said. “God, look at it. It flakes right off.”
Kay settled beside him, kicked one shoe off, and rubbed her aching ankle. “You said ‘God.’”
“What?”
“You took the Lord’s name in vain.”
“Yeah, well it’s an old habit. A bad habit. I’ve been working on it. Thank you for pointing it out to me.”
Victor cracked his knuckles, snapped his knife shut, and shifted on the step. He rolled the closed knife back and forth between his hands the same way he used to roll his marijuana cigarettes. Kay closed her tired eyes. “Do you miss Mom?” she asked.
“I don’t think about her much,” Victor admitted. “She was closer to you.” He pinched a dead leaf off a begonia and threw it away. “So what’s happening with you and Neal? I dropped by the frame shop and Neal said he was sleeping there tonight.”
“And tomorrow night and the night after that.”
“But it’s just temporary, right? A temporary misunderstanding?”
“No. I don’t think so, Victor. I think our marriage is over.”
“Because?”
“Because I was a bad wife and he was a bad husband.”
“What? He hit you? Beat you?”
“No. He withheld emotionally, as they say. He kept secrets. He lost money.”
Victor smiled and shook his head. “If it’s just money …”
“‘Just money’ are two words I never thought I’d hear from you. You take money more seriously than anyone I know.”
“Well, sure, but I don’t let it come between Stacy and I. Money doesn’t have anything to do with love, you know. And sometimes, you got to consider this, love doesn’t have anything to do with marriage. Marriage is holy. A holy contract you have to honor no matter what. So what is it besides money? Is it sex? Because sex, you know, that’s not important either. You already have a child.”
Kay shivered and pulled her sweater tighter across her shoulders. It was March but still felt like winter. For a minute she wondered what the summer would be like, if she would be sitting here rocking and fanning and growing old behind the fence by herself. No, she thought fiercely. I’ll be in Iceland or Jamaica or sailing the South China Sea with Charles Lichtman.
“I just need some time,” she said.
“That’s what I told him. I told him you’re the type who takes things hard. But after you sort it out you come back.”
“I do? That’s how you see me?”
“Course it might speed things up if you both came in and talked to my pastor. Okay, okay, don’t have a cow, just a suggestion. But Stacy and I hate to see you guys so unhappy. It’s not good for Nicky. And Dad’s got enough to deal with.”
“Dad doesn’t care.” Kay bit her cuticle. “Did Neal tell you Glo Sinclair loaned him a lot of money? Why would she do that? Is she trying to snag Dad?”
“Snag him? No, Kay. She’s just a nice woman.”
“She doesn’t strike me as nice.”
“She just bought a pickup from me a few weeks ago. I think she’s nice.”
“A truck? Glo Sinclair in a truck?”
“I wouldn’t worry about her. She’s too skinny for Dad. Besides”—Victor looked, for a moment, as puzzled as Kay felt—“Mom just died.”
Kay hugged her knees. “Mom and Dad were happy, weren’t they? They had a good marriage. Remember how he used to whistle when he came home from work, and she would whistle back? I loved that. It made me feel safe. I always wished Neal would whistle.”
“Teach him,” Victor said.
“I can’t. I don’t know how myself.”
They were silent for a while, then Victor said, “I never felt safe. Dad was always gone and Mom was always mad about something. Or sick.” He rubbed his forehead. “You did all the cooking, didn’t you? You made my lunch. What were those coconut cookies you used to make? Macaroons? I liked them. And I liked those stories you used to tell me at night.”
“What stories?”
“About the brave brother and sister who escaped from the witch and lived on the moon.”
Witch? Again Kay heard the tune Zabeth had sung in her ear the afternoon of Ida’s memorial—and again she tried to suppress it. The Munchkins’ singsong had insinuated itself into some mental repertoire and she found herself humming it when she was driving or working at the library, always stopping with a frown, hand pressed to her lips, guilty. Caught.
“I always felt bad about my own escape,” she said now, adding, as Victor looked at her blankly, “about leaving you alone with them, when I dropped out of school to be with Biff.”
“Were you gone long? I don’t remember. You came right back, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Oh yes. When Mom had her hysterectomy. But I should have taken you with me. And then we both should have stayed away.”
“Why? Was it that bad? I just remember being cold. Every new house we moved to got colder and colder. The truth is,” he continued, “I don’t remember much about Mom or Dad or our childhood. None of it matters anyway. My real life didn’t start until I found Jesus.”
Kay glanced at his handsome face set against her in profile. She remembered enough for both of them—Victor wiping Ida’s red lipstick off his mouth, Victor squirming as Francis flicked his report card aside, Victor sitting under the piano counting the coins in his piggy bank while Kay banged through Bartok. “At least you found your real life,” she said. They sat in silence for a while and then Victor looked down at his watch and stood.
“I gotta go. But hey. I’ll pray for you. And Neal. And your marriage.”
“Do you think prayer will help?”
“God, Kay! Are you kidding? Of course it will help.”
“There you go. You said ‘God’ again.”
“Your trouble,” Victor said, shaking his trouser crease straight, “is that you’re a joker. You can’t take anything seriously. You’re always looking for ways to make fun of people.”
Kay opened her mouth to say, I don’t have to look very far, but closed it and waved as Nicky kicked through the gate.
“Daddy home?” Nicky asked as he trudged toward them, his sweatshirt hood pulled up over his head.
“No, honey, he’s not.”
Nicky went into the house and slammed the door.
Kay looked down at the porch floor after Victor left and noticed he had scraped a bare spot on the stairs that almost matched the bare spot Francis had picked off the shingle. Between the two of them, she wouldn’t have to do any prep work before she painted the porch for repossession. She rose to go in and prep herself for Charles Lichtman, then remembered something. The garbage. She went down the driveway and lugged the empty can back in from the street.