Everyday People (29 page)

“For tomorrow,” he said. “I know everyone's getting up early.”

He seemed so pleased with himself she couldn't tell if it was a lie. He could walk to the 7-Eleven in five minutes, leaving him ten, maybe fifteen to meet someone. If they had a car, then a full twenty minutes in a parking lot somewhere. She'd grown so tired of checking up on him that it was easier to believe he was lying about everything. It was
his
job to prove his innocence, not the other way around.

“Good night,” Eugene said, and closed his door.

“Good night,” Harold said to the door, and she could see the two of them would be like this for a while. She wanted to tell Eugene that his father had not hurt her—or that him hitting her was nothing compared to how she felt. She had honestly wanted to kill him that night; now she wondered if she'd been insane. He wasn't worth it. But wasn't he everything, wasn't her entire life with him? If only she could care nothing for him, the way he felt about her. It was unfair. That's what hurt the worst: that he'd tricked her into loving him, and now he'd disappeared. Twenty-five years, and every one a lie.

She looked in on Chris again. He was in bed, saving his strength for tomorrow's walk in the park. She was tempted to sit down beside him, tell him not to get his hopes up so he wouldn't be crushed, but how could she truthfully do that when Harold was waiting for her?

She wanted to be wrong—she was not her mother.

“Sweet dreams,” she said, and he said it back, a reflex. What did he dream of—running, driving a car? She cut the lights in the living room, then the kitchen.

“You all done in here?” she called, and Harold said yes.

He was already brushing his teeth, wearing the bathrobe she'd given him for Christmas. They were shy around each other now, their bodies no longer common property. It might have been exciting if she didn't know the reason why.

Stop, she thought.

“You just decided to go out and get some doughnuts,” she asked despite herself.

“We needed milk anyway.”

It might have been a real answer. He might have actually done it out of boredom, just to get out of the house, away from all the reminders of his life with her. Every time she imagined his girlfriend, she saw an airy apartment with hardwood floors and slanting light, jazz seeping from the stereo. No children, no bills. They made love all day in clean sheets, ate gourmet food she fixed for him buck naked. Now here he was in the bathrobe she'd gotten on sale then hidden in the closet for six months, the bow gathering dust. And
she
wanted romance?

While he covered himself with a lover's sense of privacy, she kept to herself out of shame. He didn't want to see her body, its sags and pouches, its heaviness. She only shed her robe as she slipped between the cold sheets, and then she didn't search for his warmth, thinking instead of the doughnuts, why he didn't get them earlier. Just once she wanted to come home and find him right where he said he'd be.

Cattin', her mother called it. “Man starts cattin' around, you got to lock your door on him.” That simple. But her father was long gone by then; she was locking the door on nothing. Wind.

She thought of Marita, how she needed to talk to her, and then of her little dog. She'd have to go see her. They could lean on each other.

“Hey,” Harold said softly in the dark, “you going to be all right tomorrow?”

“I'll be fine,” she said. Like you care.

His hand crept across her stomach, and she rolled away. He let it rest on her ribs, stilled. “I'd like to come with
you.” But the way he said it wasn't convincing. It tempted her to make him go, rub his face in it.

“I'll be fine,” she said. “You go ahead and do whatever it is you do.”

He sighed and withdrew his hand, and then she wished he hadn't. It only verified her worst fears—that he hated her even more now, that she was pushing him away. Didn't he understand she couldn't help herself, that she had to keep at least some of her pride? She'd let him lie to her for so long, even as she felt him moving away from her, escaping the gravity of their marriage, flying off to someone else. She'd lied to herself, pretending at first that it wasn't actually happening and then that he would see things clearly and come back to her. Now
she
could see clearly that he had no reason to return to her, that his life would be so much easier without her, and by this kind of logic discovered why he'd strayed in the first place.

Not that it was her fault, no, it was all his, but she could see his side of things, selfish as it was. Heartless. Sometimes at night she wanted to punch him in his sleep, stop his snoring by splitting his lip. Because that was how it felt, being blindsided and knocked out of your life, and not for anything you'd done. She had to be satisfied with a few elbows, an occasional knee as they rolled over, with pushing his hand away as it reached for her, and still she was just punishing herself.

“Why do you give up so easily?” she asked now, and his hand reached for her again, on cue. She shoved it away. “No,” she scolded, sad. “I shouldn't have to tell you.”

“I'm trying.”

“You shouldn't
have
to try.” She wanted him to come to her desperately, like a lover, everything new between them. Why was she surprised when that didn't happen?

She needed to be won again, but he didn't seem to know this. And even if he did, would he feel the need to? Could he?

“I love you,” he said seriously, as if she could believe it.

“You're not
in
love with me,” she said, emphasizing the difference, though he continually refused to acknowledge it. Did it seem simple only to her?

They did not talk beyond this, just turned the same circles they had for weeks now, knowing they'd be tired tomorrow morning, that it was pointless. Strangely, she felt most intimate with him then, in their shared failure, their admission of how important it was to find an answer to her problem. Because that was how it felt now, as if it were her fault for not letting him back in. That he was probably still seeing the bitch—that her paranoia could not be verified one way or the other—was conveniently ignored, forced into its own separate court in which he pleaded innocence while she threatened him, stormed, cried.

They slept then, or lay awake, waiting for the release of sleep. The anger she'd felt all day dissolved into emptiness. Surely Daphne's marriage had these loveless minutes. Everyone's did. The hardest part now was looking back at those old beaus like Alvin Reese and Gregory Mattison and realizing they were phantoms. Harold was the one love of her life and she had lost him, he had betrayed her—it didn't matter; whichever way you looked at it, she was alone now and would be for the rest of her life, unless—and this was ridiculous—she could win
him
back somehow. She felt
powerless. Everything seemed to be in the past, nothing up ahead but days and nights she would have to fight her way through. For what, more of this?

There was tomorrow, seeing where Chris had fallen. What else was she looking forward to?

In her dreams she was running through an abandoned building, a school or an old factory, racing up the stairs and then down again, pursued by a mob she could only hear, and then she was in a car in Los Angeles (how she knew the city she couldn't say, maybe from TV), riding along with the windows open, the summer air pouring over her skin, parked cars glinting, the scent of taco stands, then something about Harold's fingers, the palms of his hands turned up to reveal his lifeline. In the morning, she thought she could almost make sense of it—something to do with her worries—but after her first cup of coffee she couldn't bring back the connection.

Did it matter? It wasn't something hidden that was troubling her.

Chris's chair didn't fit through the bathroom door. She had to wedge the shower stool in the corner of the stall and then, with Chris's help, deadlift him across the few feet of floor and prop him on it—really a job for Harold. His ankles were tangled, and she had to bend down and reposition them, feeling the watery heaviness under the skin, as if they were filled with blood. He wanted a towel to cover himself, and she gave him one. She ran the water onto her hand, shielding him until it was just right—like making a baby bottle, she thought. He grabbed the soap and started with his chest, giving her a look that said she could leave. It went
faster if she did it, but he didn't like her touching his skin, stiffened when she reached behind him. She drew the curtain.

“Let me know when you're ready for me,” she said.

It didn't take long. There was only so much he could do.

The steam rose up around them. She soaped the washcloth, keeping it between her hand and his skin. They'd installed a handheld showerhead with some of the insurance money, and she went over him with it (she could not stop the thought) as if watering a plant. She had not gotten used to the scars or to the wasted thighs, each week narrower, the knees seeming to bulge out further. He was heavy in the chest now, and his gut was round, his belly button a tunnel. Even his face was slowly becoming someone else's; only his hands were the same, stained with Magic Marker, fingers slashed with ink. He turned away as she did his bottom; she rinsed him with the showerhead, then clicked it off, as if her efficiency had saved him some humiliation.

But it did not stop there. She had to haul on his underwear and then his jeans, the legs baggy and then so tight at the waist they no longer buttoned. She tugged on his socks, fitted his feet into his sneakers and double-knotted them like a toddler's. He could barely manage his shirt, and even that she had to pull down in the back, tuck into his jeans. There were no thank-yous, no bitter jokes as there had been at the beginning, just an abiding silence between them.

Vanessa was right on time, with Rashaan in her arms. Except for a brief greeting at the door, Jackie stayed out of their way. Chris asked after Martin Robinson, who was in
Western Penn where her mother worked. Vanessa shrugged, uninterested. Nothing new, she guessed.

Jackie tried to read the way she approached Chris, alert for the smallest hint of pity, watching where she let her hands land and then rest. She gauged Chris's stiffness, listened for any tremor in what Vanessa said, any false giddiness, knowing Chris was in no mood. She compared the girl's composure to her own. Was it selfish, thinking she was better with him, or just jealousy?

Chris held Rashaan on his lap, doing a Daffy Duck voice, trying to smile for him, but as soon as he looked up at Vanessa, his face snapped back to serious, as if it were an effort.

“Ready to jet?” he asked, and she was. They never stayed long. The city had finally installed the lift they promised, so he didn't need Eugene's help with the stairs. He could go out every day if he wanted, but he never did, just Saturdays when she came over. Jackie knew not to walk them out, waited for the hum of the elevator, the clash as it rolled open its doors.

What did he feel, she wondered. What did he miss? Sometimes, walking across a room, she paid attention to her movements, how easily they came to her. Harold said some of the people in Chris's therapy were learning to walk again. How did anyone learn in the first place?

A doughnut and then it was her turn to get ready. She zipped her robe into a hanging bag, made sure she had some honey-lemon cough drops in her purse. Harold and Eugene both asked if she wanted them to go with her, but she held
fast. One thing all this trouble had done was make her stronger. If she had to rely on herself, she could. Wouldn't her mother be proud?

She stopped by Marita's place first. There was no mail in the mailbox, no
Courier
slipped inside the storm door. She rang the bell five times, then stood on the porch, listening for her. Nine hundred dollars, she thought. She must have really loved that dog. Maybe she'd paid in advance and the burial was today. She hoped so. All the other explanations Jackie could come up with were too depressing.

The van was full of altos. They went quiet when she got on, and she took a seat in back by a window so she wouldn't feel stared at. It was cloudy out, and Penn Circle was empty. They were finally tearing down the Sears. Crossing the busway, she looked down and caught a glimpse of the road, workers grooming the dirt on both sides, then pulled back as if she might fall.

No one was looking at her. She was ready to freeze the first person that did, but everyone was talking and drinking coffee, bumping along. So that was how it was going to be. People were such cowards.

She thought of Harold, how he couldn't say it to her face. When she demanded to know her name, she could see he was lying. Did he really think that would satisfy her?

Nothing would. Not for a long time.

The truth.

They changed in the basement, zipping each other up, going over the hard parts. Jackie stuck with the sopranos, pretending like the rest of them that this was just another
practice, as if it were possible not to think of Chris. This wasn't betraying him; this was something she needed to do. Sister Turner had just had her hair done, shiny waves caught in midbreak rising above a skirt of bangs. She had new glasses too, clear frames with a red tint, the lenses square as TVs. “Give me tenors,” she said, and had them line up before sending them off. “Baritones, you're next.”

They marched to the site like troops, drivers honking at them, children waving. She watched the altos ahead of her, their feet hidden beneath their robes as if they were gliding. She was walking without even thinking of it, lifting one foot, putting the other down, over and over, the muscles working automatically, triggered by a signal, a chemical. She thought she should be grateful for it, stop taking it for granted like the rest of them, but it only made her angry, as if she'd been cheated.

The closer they got to the site, the more she realized she'd been mistaken. People were looking back, stealing glances at her. It reminded her of going to school when the other children found out her mother cleaned houses—whispers, fingers pointing from the swing set. But she'd had Daphne then, and that had not been her fault.