8
Shoard Downs
With Wesley gone to call without me most evenings, the bruisy blooms of lonely sunsets found me running old scenes with myself.
It was the least I could do for my sanity. Our apartment used to be alive with it, the chatter of practice—Wesley would amble through the rooms, fiddling with his dailies as he decreed his own lines with easy grace, and I would reply from my usual spot pacing tightly at the end of the corridor: between the bathroom and the bedroom, inwardly counting my steps along the runner, able to watch myself in my old gilt mirror hung up in the hall.
“Your face, my thane,” I recited, staring hard at my own steely expression, “is as a book where men may read strange matters.”
How have you been feeling about not working? Dr. French asked me at our last session. I had the sense he was particularly intrigued by my case, given that most of the other women in his waiting room looked like housewives whose origin point of a mental break had been motherhood.
What do you mean by ‘how’?
Has the medicine been helping?
I would have been a terrible mother. I’d had enough of my own horror show already.
“To beguile the time, look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue. Look like th’ innocent flower, but be the serpent under ’t.”
I haven’t tried to hurt myself in a long time, I’d told Dr. French, careful not to lie. I was boring myself numb with inanities like shopping, coffees or drinks with Edie at places with names like Saffron Sugar and Brother’s, the nail and hair salons, and walks through the parks—it still hurt too much to sit and see a production. The closest I got were cabarets, where at least the immersion wasn’t so complete.
Dr. French had nodded sagely. Good. That’s good.
“He that’s coming must be provided for: and you shall put…shall put— Damn it!”
I tore away from the mirror and pressed both fists to my eyes until blotches bloomed at their edges. My breath was shaking. It felt as though I had lived six thousand lifetimes in the distended stretch of these past several months. The unknowns of my future made me shy away from thinking of it.
What awaited around the next hairpin turn, the next veer in the road I wouldn’t see coming until I was careening head-on into it?
Wesley was out, and would be until morning. I made for the bedroom to seek my medicine compact in the front drawer of my vanity. As though tucking a saintly bone into its reliquary after pilgrimage, I always put the powder back amid my hairbrushes and bottles of perfume when I returned home.
I stopped when my fingertips met the bare floor of the drawer.
It was gone.
A ringing started at the root of my skull and rose to a thumping whine. My veins beat hard against themselves with each pulse.
It was gone.
It couldn’t be gone.
I needed it. It wouldn’t have just disappeared, it—
Nobody could have taken it. Wesley never touched my vanity, and he told me when I first showed him the medicine about how the pep pills Andrew used to feed him made him want to climb the walls and crawl out of his skin. He didn’t touch drugs anymore, only drink.
So then it was still gone, but how? Walked away on its own two feet? Forgotten in someone’s bathroom as I stole away to soothe my nerves, pretending to use the toilet? Slipped out from my purse and dashed to the street?
A steady whimpering built to join the buzzing in my head as I tore apart the vanity—drawers out, bottles scattered, liners peeled up to check if anything slipped underneath. Nothing. I ripped open every drawer in the apartment, even in the spare room; I slammed that nightstand shut again at the sight of a jar of oil that was not Wesley’s hair pomade.
Still nothing.
The whimpering was me.
I barreled into the bedroom closet and stood amid the rows of clothing like the hollowed-out corpses of every woman I used to be—the dresses, the tennis skirts, the slacks, the blouses—waiting to be filled.
I feared for my safety in earnest in that moment for the first time since my dressing room.
My purse. I had taken a different purse to dinner last night, to match the teal of a new skirt.
I tore at the wicker basket beside the laundry hamper where I stored my clutch bags and pawed through the shucked shells of them until I found last night’s slid down to the very bottom. My hands were shaking. A cold sweat built at my temples.
I let out a sob of relief when I pried at the clasp to find the powder sitting there, like a giddy child jumping out from a well-picked hiding spot—Found me!
I bullied it open with a trembling thumb and stared at the powder, glimmering white, pressed and flaky and taunting me with its assured peace. “Found you,” I breathed, and measured out a dose.
It burned. I shut the compact, slipped it into my pocket, and stared numbly across the closet at Wesley’s clothes.
A jacket he had worn two or three nights ago to a party was hanging against the dark battery of his other blazers and sport coats, waiting to be taken to laundry. The sleeves were still rolled at the cuff as he tended to ruck them after a few glasses of wine, baring the firm lines of his forearms and lending his habit of talking with his hands a sense of effortless grace.
What must it be like to be him?
He had told me one night not long ago, when I was keeping myself awake with my own shortcomings, that there were six words for love in Greek and they all meant different things. I had teased him for sounding like Ezra, and he had hugged me close.
Which one would we be? I asked into his chest. He was pulling a hand through my hair with slow, roving movements. It was finally putting me to sleep, but I so loved hearing him murmur low.
Philia, he whispered. A soul-bond, wrought on the battlefield. We know each other as we would know ourselves, in mind and body alike.
Do I know your body? I teased him lightly, and he had sniffed a chuckle and kissed me on the crown of my head.
Enough to count.
Enough. Was it really enough, to adore him through the glass like that? Was it enough for him to adore me? I crossed the closet and took his jacket from the hanger. It slid easily over my arms, broader in my shoulders where it tapered so neatly against Wesley’s.
Tell me another, I’d said against the knot of his throat.
Philautia.
What’s that one?
Love of the self.
I had scoffed lightly and wrestled the side of my head briefly against his chest at a more comfortable angle. As I stood in the closet and stared at myself in Wesley’s husk in the mirror, I lifted the collar to my nose and found his cologne and the threads of someone else’s smell persisting alongside it.
I don’t know how to love myself, I had whispered into the bend of his neck.
Of course you do.
How?
You’re still here, aren’t you?
I leaned back into the billow of my Technicolor dresses with Wesley’s jacket wrapped around me. Pillowed in cottons and silks and taffetas, I watched in the mirror the incongruity of it; the divergence of my very self.
The powder began to work with a soft fizz. It blurred across the back of my mind like a thumb smearing lipstick from the corner of my mouth. I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead and forced myself to breathe.
The soft bleed of the drug billowed upward, from the soles of my feet to the rushing tingle of my temples. I blinked rapidly and took my time; in, and out.
I gathered an armful of skirts on either side of me. I drew them in close and inhaled: laundered, textile, lightly camphored, and, even lighter still, the soft animal scent of my own skin clinging to them just as Wesley lived in his jacket, between every little stitch.
He lived.
We lived.
I owed it to both of us to do the same.
The sensible hat and brown oxfords by the door I noticed as I came in from the grocer the next day did not belong to Wesley. I stared at them for a moment as I stepped out of my own shoes and hung up my hat on the hook above the umbrellas. I had worn one of Wesley’s old sport coats out like a chic ladies’ blazer, unbuttoned and pinned neatly along the midline to tailor the waist.
I tried to imagine what the man who wore the oxfords might look like. I didn’t often meet the men Wesley courted. Only occasionally if we were out together would I notice a friendly acknowledgment across the restaurant or nightclub, angled at my husband from all manner of serious-looking types. In those moments, I saw his personal life flickering into view like the vague shapes of yards shooting past behind fences along a motorway.
After I set both armfuls of paper sacks on the kitchen counter, sure to be courteously quiet, I leaned out into the side hallway to see the spare bedroom door securely shut. I put away the week’s sundries on tiptoe, opening and closing cabinets in silence, and prepared a pot of tea.
Bringing a small tray of cream and sugar to the sitting room, I placed it on the settee and curled my knees up under me to settle in with a book. Right as I dropped my second sugar cube into the cup, the bedroom door opened down the hall. Soft socked feet walked into the bathroom—not Wesley’s gait.
The sink ran, a low voice whistled a light and pleasant warble, and then the toilet flushed. The sink ran again. A short silence. I took a sip from my cup. The bathroom door opened, and the man came out again, this time making for the sitting room.
“Wes,” called an unfamiliar voice—he was rounding the edge of the hallway, coming closer, “I think I’ll— Oh.”
Frozen like a brown mouse in the middle of a snowbank, the visitor gawped at me. He was perfectly handsome, studious, and—of course—professorial. I guessed that he worked at one of the universities, perhaps lecturing on things like fate and purpose and mankind’s place in the universe. He looked suited to the activity of pondering.
I set my teacup down in its saucer and smiled at him. He was mostly dressed, save for his shoes, which were still by the door. “Would you like some tea?” I offered.
The man cleared his throat and fussed at the neat part of his hair. “I’m so sorry, I—”
“Cream or sugar?”
“I don’t…” the man foundered, glancing wildly over his shoulder at the bedroom as though bidding Wesley to come rescue him from his mortification. I stood up and smoothed my skirt before sticking out a hand.
“I’m Margaret,” I offered. He stared at it for a long moment before taking it and shaking once, distracted and firm in a businesslike pump.
“Thomas. Tom. Uh, Dr. Hunt.”
“Pleasure to meet you. Medical doctor?”
“It’s, ah.” Dr. Hunt rubbed absently at one elbow and did not meet my gaze. “Yes. Ophthalmology.”
“A good specialty. Everyone has eyes.”
He glanced away from my smile. “Quite. I, um, you have a. Beautiful apartment…Mrs. Shoard.”
“Thank you! I didn’t used to think I had an eye for decorating, but it’s just like any other habit; keep practicing, and suddenly you have strangers complimenting your choices. Do you like the wallpaper in there?”
I nodded down the hall at the spare bedroom. Dr. Hunt cleared his throat and gestured at the door. He refused to meet my eyes. “I’m going to…”
“Oh, of course. Don’t let me keep you. Lovely to meet you, Doctor.”
I sat down and turned back to my tea when he mumbled something that sounded like You, too. As he fumbled with his shoes and crammed on his hat, the bedroom door opened again.
“Here, Tom, you— Oh. You’re back?”
I looked up from another steady sip of tea to find Wesley stopped at the edge of the sitting room with a tie in his hand. He was shirtless, his hair tousled, and his belt was gone. He looked at me without accusation, only light surprise.
“I didn’t have to go across town, after all,” I said, “they had the perfect size roast at the closer butcher’s.”
“Oh. Good.”
Wesley still seemed to be calibrating, standing there with the tie in his hand. Dr. Hunt stalked over and snatched it from him, fastidiously slinging it around his throat and wrestling it into a knot. Wesley blinked, coming back to himself, and ushered Dr. Hunt by both shoulders to the door. I curled my legs up under me and peeled the book open again.
I stared through the page and sipped steadily at my tea as I listened to the low patter of their hurried conversation. Dr. Hunt seemed rattled, as was his right—Wesley was speaking in the dewy tones of someone trying to diffuse a delicate tension. Ultimately, the door shut. The apartment fell quiet.
Wesley dragged a hand along the back of his neck as he came back into the sitting room. “That drink I had with the director in Midtown got moved up,” he said, as though I had asked a boy to explain how a crayon doodle got all over the wall. “Tom’s Thursdays are always…odd. So. We seized the moment. I thought you’d still be out, obviously. I’m sorry.”
“You would have kept it all very tidy if I’d stuck to my plan,” I said, still staring at the pages I held open in one hand. “No fault for trying.”
Wesley gazed past the couch, out the window and over the city. The leaves in the park had turned a particularly virulent green lately with the deepening of springtime, visible between the buildings. “Was he terribly awkward about it?”
“Only gently mortified.”
“Hell. Sorry.”
“Oh, please. That was the most fun I’ve had in days. Met him at a party, did you?”
Wesley looked at me and let his hedging break with a soft smile. He shook his head to himself. “Yeah. Met him at a party.”
When I stuck out my foot to prod him companionably against the knee with my toe, Wesley reached down and patted my ankle before returning to the bedroom to dress again.
He seemed jittery, so after I finished my first cup of tea, I decided to give him some space. I dumped the rest of the pot down the sink and went upstairs to see Edie.
She was making a very tall pour of gin for herself when I knocked twice and let myself in. I stopped in the atrium of her sitting room, and she raised the glass to me.
“What’s the occasion?” I asked.
Edie made a carping sound. “It was once a beautiful girl’s birthday. Would you like one?”
“No, thank you. Was she a ballerina?”
Edie smirked dryly at me and mocked a toast. “To love,” she said, and drank down half the glass. She scowled at herself, her eyes fixed to the middle distance of the carpet. This wasn’t her first drink.
“I’m sorry,” she said, glowering. “I’m being miserable.”
“You’re not miserable.” I drew up close to rub companionably at Edie’s shoulder. “I know miserable, and you aren’t it.”
“Distract me. What’s the latest on the fifth floor?”
“Wesley was having a tryst with an ophthalmologist who didn’t know I was home.”
Edie laughed. “How was he?”
“I offered him a cup of tea, but he didn’t want any.”
“He always falls in with such tight-asses,” Edie said. She pulled a humorous face to herself. “Well.”
I pinched benignly at the back of her arm as Edie chuckled. She fixed me with a look that was much brighter than before. “Here’s hoping he might branch out a little in New Mexico.”
My expression twitched to confusion as I felt the sudden lurch of being left out of a joke. “What’s in New Mexico?”
Edie blinked at me. “Shit.” She took another wide sip. “He’s still deciding whether or not to take the job, then.”
“What job?”
Edie mulled something over to herself for a moment before giving up. She sat down on the fine paisley of her sofa and patted the cushion. “There’s a director based in Jersey, Vaughn Kline—fancies himself a Renaissance man, more money than he knows what to do with. Old associate of Ezra’s. He’s hosting a festival at some…lake in the middle of the desert. Big tract of land, new theater space, all of it. Two hundred dollars a week for the actors, board included. I’ve been helping with the logistics.” Edie swirled her glass and seemed to consider something, staring through the window. She didn’t say anything else.
“A lake,” I said slowly, “in the middle of the desert.”
Edie shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. It would be something new, that’s for sure.”
I stayed standing. “Has he said anything to you about whether or not he was going?”
“Last he told me, he was trying to find a graceful way to tell you about it. They’re doing Titus.”
“Graceful, how?”
Edie sighed. “He wants to go, but he doesn’t want to leave you alone here.”
“I wouldn’t be alone. You’d be here.”
“I don’t know, Margaret, he’s very particular about you.”
Affection stung in me, welling liked a pricked finger. I picked up a glass and began to throw a cocktail together for myself in lieu of examining the feeling too closely.
“Did you do much summer stock?” I asked her as I chipped ice into my glass from the block slowly melting in its filigreed bucket.
Edie snorted. “I did plenty of summer stock.”
I took the opening for a distracting conversation. We shared two drinks and fond, old memories of our separate summer days, and I tried not to think about Wesley leaving me behind for a job.
When I caught sight of the time and hurried to get myself back downstairs, Edie took my empty and followed me to the front door.
“Where are you headed tonight?”
“The cabaret on Eleventh, Chap hosts there now.”
Edie air-kissed me goodbye on one cheek. Her sandy perfume wafted close, enveloping me briefly in the acute smell of her. I could always think more clearly when I was near Edie. “Tell him hello for me if you see him after the show, won’t you? He owes me twenty dollars.”
Inside our apartment again, I heard Wesley bustling in the bathroom. He was whistling “Some Enchanted Evening,” which meant he was shaving. I approached the open door and stood there to watch him in the mirror, until he noticed me over his shoulder and smiled. The left half of his chin was still lathered white.
I stepped over the threshold and slid my arms around his waist. Holding him from behind, I pressed my cheek between his shoulders.
We stood together for a moment. The faucet in the tub had taken to dripping again.
I smoothed my hands up, passing over the firm strength of his midsection, and squeezed him gently. “Are you happy, Wes?”
Reaching under his arm, I took up his razor and peered over his shoulder to carefully shear off an inch of shaving cream from his cheek. He smiled at me. “Very,” he murmured.
I had to believe him. What other option did I have?