Facing the Music (12 page)

“Right,” I say. First eight years, now ten years. I must deal with her, get rid of her. “But it ain't none of my business. Let me explain something to you. When I go out on the weekend, all I'm looking for is to have a good time. All right? I mean I don't think I have to go to bed with every girl I meet. I've been married. Not as long as you, but I've been married. I know what it's like.” I'm not saying what I mean to say. “You just act too damn strange for me, okay? You get depressed, and I don't need to be around somebody that's depressed all the time. It gets me depressed, too. Now that's all it is. If you still love your husband, fine. You need to try to work everything out with him. That's between you and him. I don't have anything to do with it. I just don't want you to call me anymore.”

That should do it. That should make her mad enough to where she'll say something, then hang up on me. She doesn't.

“Oh, Gary. Don't be mad. I've been thinking over everything today. Listen. I called my husband and you know what I told him?”

“What?” I don't want to hear this shit.

“I told him I wanted a divorce. I told him I was going to try to get eight hundred dollars a month out of him. He started
talking sweet then. He wants us to get back together now. What you think about that?”

“I don't know,” I say. “I don't care,” I say. I open the icebox and find a beer. Then I look a little longer and find the schnapps.

“I told him I saw him last night. At that motel. But anyway, that ain't what I called you about. I called you about something else.”

“What?”

“I got us a room tonight. Just you and me. At the Holiday Inn. I already got it. I got the key right here.”

I don't really believe that. “I don't really believe that,” I say.

“Listen, Gary. I know I ain't acted right. I don't blame you for being disgusted with me. But it was just all that stuff with my ex. He's been going out on me for the longest. Friday night was the first time I'd ever been out without him. In ten years. Honest.”

“Is that right?” I say. She's probably lying. She's probably just telling me all this so she can get me off again and drive me some more nuts telling me some more about it.

“I swear. Gary, I swear to God. May God strike me dead if I ain't telling the truth.”

“Well,” I say. I take a drink of my beer. Maybe she is telling the truth. Maybe they've had what she thought was a good marriage. It's happened before. You can go along fine for years and it can fall apart in a second. You can do things to each other that can never be forgiven. One word can lead to
another word. You can lose control and a whole lot more. They can make you pay for one second of anger. They can make you pay with your house, and your car, and your money and self-respect. She doesn't have to tell me about marriage. I know already. Marriage is having to live with a woman. That's what marriage is.

But I won't have to see her after tonight. I won't put up with any more shit from her. I don't have to. I'm not married anymore. I won't be again.

“How's that sound?” she says.

“I guess it sounds all right,” I say.

“Listen, baby, I'm gonna make up for everything tonight. I mean, everything.”

“Well, okay,” I say. She's convinced me. There's only one thing. I don't want her to pick me up here, at my mother's. “Where do you live?”

“I can come get you,” she says.

“No. I'd rather you wouldn't,” I say. “Listen. I've got a friend who'll give me a ride out to your house. You staying in the house?”

“Hell yes,” she says. “I'm not gonna give it to my ex.”

“I'll just get somebody to carry me out there, then. Where do you live?”

She tells me. I say I'll be there by seven. I feel a lot better about everything when I hang up the phone.

“You sure this is it?” I say to my friend.

The boy I'm riding with looks at the mailbox.

“That's the number. One hundred Willow Lane. Hell, Gary, there ain't nothing but rich people live up in here.”

“Well damn,” I say. “This is the address she gave me.”

“Well, this is it then,” my friend says. “You want me to wait on you?”

“I don't know. You might ought to.”

“We'll just pull up in here and see if this is it.”

We drive up a blacktopped lane to a house designed like a Swiss chalet. I guess that it's over four thousand square feet under this roof. It has big dormers and split shingles and massive columns of rough wood on the porch. There is a pool full of blue water in the backyard. The Lincoln I've been riding in and nuzzling her knockers in is parked in the drive.

“Hell. That's her car,” I say. “I guess this is it.”

She comes to the kitchen window and pushes the curtains aside.

“This is it,” I say, when I see her. “I just didn't know it was this fancy.”

“You better hang onto her,” my friend says.

“Yeah. Maybe so. Well, thanks for the ride, Bobby. Let me give you some on the gas.”

“Get outa here,” he says.

I start pulling five dollars out of my billfold, but my friend leans across me and opens the door. “Get your butt outa here,” he says. “Put that money back up.”

“Hell, Bobby,” I say. “It's a long way out here.”

“I may need a ride from you sometime.”

“You better take it.”

“Go on. I'll see you later.”

I get out, sticking the money back in my billfold, waving to my friend backing out of the driveway. The headlights retreat, swords of light through the motes of dust that hang and fall until he swings out and grabs low and peels away with a faint stench and high squeal of rubber. I listen to him hit the gears, to the little barks of rubber until he is gone. For a moment I wonder what I'm doing here. On another man's concrete. Another man's ride. Everything about this house is elegant. It's hard to believe this woman comes out of this place. But there she is, opening the door. I go up to her. She kisses me.

“Come on in,” she says.

It's a dream room. High, vaulted ceilings, enclosed beams. Rams, bucks, bear heads mounted over the fireplace, and it of massive river stones. Carpet that covers my toes. I don't know what to say. I know now she wasn't lying about the contractor and the real estate. Or the kids. Two beautiful little girls are seated on the thick carpet in their nightgowns, one about two, the other about four. Dark hair like her, shy smiles.

“Hi,” I say. They look up at me, smile, look down. They have toys, trucks, Sylvester the Cat on the floor. The remnants of their suppers are on paper plates beside them. Potato chips. Gnawed hamburger buns. They whisper things to each other and cast quick glances at me while they pretend not to watch.

“I'll be ready in just a minute, Gary,” she says.

I look around. “Yeah. Okay,” I say. I'm watching the little girls. They've taken my interest. They're so precious. I know they cannot comprehend what has happened to their daddy. I feel myself to be an intruder in this house, a homewrecker. The
husband, the father, could come home and kill me this minute with a shotgun. Nothing would be said. No jury would convict the man. I don't belong here.

She has gone somewhere. I sit on the couch. The girls play with their trucks and croon softly to each other little songs without words, melodies made up in their own fantastic little minds. They move smooth as eels, boneless, their little arms and legs dimpled with fat.

“I'm ready,” she says. I look around. She has her purse. She seems brisk, efficient. She has her keys. It's like she's suddenly decided to stop slumming. She has on trim black slacks, gold toeless shoes with low heels, a short mink jacket. Diamonds glitter in the lobes of her ears. Her breasts hang heavy and full in the lowcut shirt, and I know that tonight she will deny me nothing. She's smiling. She takes my arm as I stand up and she kisses me again. The children watch this puzzle in soundless wonder, this strange man kissing Mommy.

“Okay, girls, we'll be back after while,” she says. They don't look up, don't appear to hear. “Sherry?” she says. “We're gone.” She must be talking to somebody else in the house, somebody I can't see, the babysitter, I guess. “Sherry?” she says. “Did you hear me?”

“Let's go,” she says to me, and she starts toward the door. She's searching for a key on her key ring.

“Bye, girls,” I say. The oldest one gives me a solemn look, a dignified nod.

“Stay in here, now,” she says. “Don't mess with the stove.” We're halfway out the door when it hits me.

“Wait a minute,” I say. She's locking the door, locking the
children into the house. I hear the lock click. “Where's your babysitter?”

“They're all right,” she says. “We won't be gone long anyway. Not over a few hours.”

“Wait
a minute,” I say. “You gonna leave them alone? Here?”

I've got my hand on her arm, I'm turning her to look at me in the lighted carport. She looks down at my hand and then up at me, surprised. She steps away.

“Well, it's not gonna hurt anything. They'll be all right.”

“All right?” I say. “They're just little kids. I thought you said you had a babysitter.”

“I couldn't get one,” she says. “Now come on. Let's go. They've stayed by themselves before.” She's going toward the car. I stand watching her dumbly, like a dumbass, like the dumbass I am.

“What if something happens, though?” I say. “What if the fucking house was to catch on fire?”

She stops and looks back. She holds her face up slightly, puts one hand on her hip. “Do you want to go or not?” she says.

“You told me last night the babysitter had your number so she could get ahold of you,” I say. Then I realize. She's never had a babysitter. They've been locked up in this house the whole weekend, these children.

“Do you want to go or not?” she says.

I look through the curtains on the door. The girls have been watching it, but now they look back down at their toys. The
youngest one gets up and walks away, out of sight. The oldest rolls her truck. I look at the woman standing by the door of a new Lincoln, waiting to carry me to a Holiday Inn. She's ready now, finally. And so am I.

“Come here,” I say.

“What?”

“I said come here.”

“Why? Get in, let's go.”

I go around the hood after her, slowly. Her face changes.

“What is it?” she says. “What's wrong with you?”

“Come here,” I say, and I know my face has changed, too.

“Hey,” she says. “I don't know what you think you're doing.”

I know what I'm doing. I have my hands on her now, and she can't pull away. She probably thinks I'm going to kill her, but I'm not. I'm going to keep my hands open this time, and not use my fists. I don't want to scare the little girls with blood. They would be frightened, and might remember it for the rest of their lives.

Her name was Myra and I could smell whiskey on her breath. She was nervous, but these days, you don't know who to let in your house. She'd seen my ad in the paper, she said, and wanted some new doors hung. We talked on the porch for a while and then she let me in.

It looked like she didn't have anything to do but keep her house clean. She gnawed her fingernails the whole time I was figuring the estimate. She kept opening and closing the top of her robe, like a nervous habit. Both the doors had been kicked out of their locks. The wood was splintered. She needed two new doors, some trim. Maybe two new locks. She wanted new linoleum in her dining room. I gave her a price for the labor and went on home, but I didn't think I'd get the job.

He was a polite young man. His name was Richard. He seemed to be very understanding when I explained that Harold
had kicked the doors in. Of course I didn't tell him everything. All I wanted was to forget about Harold, and every time I looked at the doors I thought about him.

I tried to talk to him a little. I told him that I was divorced now and that it was a lot different when you're used to two salaries and then have to live on just one. I told him I didn't want to pay a whole lot for the work. He said the doors would run about forty dollars apiece. I had no idea they would be that high.

He had very nice-looking hands. They looked like strong hands, but gentle. I doubted if they'd ever been used to slap somebody, or to break down a door.

He didn't talk much. He was one of those quiet people who intrigue you because they keep so much inside. Maybe he was just shy. I thought the price he gave me was twenty or thirty dollars too high. I told him I'd think about it. But I needed the work done.

After he left, I fixed myself another drink and looked at the doors. They were those hollow-core things, they wouldn't keep out anybody who wanted in bad enough. I kept thinking about Richard. I wondered what it would be like to kiss him. I could imagine how it would be. How warm his hands would be. My life is halfway or more than halfway over. There's not much time left for things like that. I don't know why I even thought about it. He had the bluest eyes and they looked so sad. Maybe that was the reason. Whatever it was, I decided to call him back and let him do the work. I couldn't stand to look at those doors any longer.

I was feeding Tracey when she called. Betty was reading one of her police detective magazines. The phone rang three or four times. Betty acted like she didn't hear it. I got up with Tracey and went and answered it.

I was surprised that she called back. She'd already talked like I was too high. But people don't know what carpentry work is worth. You have to have a thousand dollars' worth of tools to even start.

She sounded like she was a little drunk. I guess she was lonely. When I was over there, she'd look at the doors and just shake her head. But I'd given her a reasonable price. It was cheaper than anybody else would have done it for. I didn't tell her that. She wouldn't have believed it.