He's Gone (20 page)

Ian and I sat in that damn car again. This time, we were parked on the leafy campus of the university. It was near his work but not near his work. I loved it there. On other days, we’d met on that lawn with a blanket, under the old Denny Hall clock, the ancient elms standing sentry on either side of a stone walkway. You could feel relaxed among students. Lots of young couples were out there on blankets. This day was different, though. We had met there to bring in the field reports and discuss strategy. It was clear that we were being defeated. Ian could take Mary’s anger but not her tears. The sad look in his children’s eyes crushed him, as did the judgment of his friends. Neal and his wife, Rory, all those people they used to have over to their house—their disapproval was Paul Hartley Keller a thousand
times over. And Mark. A broken countertop, a shattered windshield (he’d put his fist through it—how that was even possible, I don’t know), the smashed glass of a painting that had hung in our home … His most useful weapon was his strength, while Mary’s was her weakness. Oh, we wanted out so badly, didn’t we? Ian and I struggled so hard to get free. Still, I caught Abby getting cereal out of the cupboard one morning, actually tiptoeing, trying not to make noise. That was the feeling in our home. Glass was everywhere, cracked in its spiderweb fashion, barely holding together. The slightest move or sound might cause the final, drastic break.

Home
—it felt unfair to use that word. It’s a word cross-stitched in delicate thread, a word for wedding cakes and the flushed cheeks of sick toddlers, a precious, priceless word. But it had become a bad word then, a place to avoid.

All the damage we’d caused—we’d harmed other people, and even each other. And all the damage that had
already
been done before that, between us and our “loved ones,” all the damage over the damaged generations, people trying their best to love one another and maybe feel a little safety in the process … Ah, human beings. We cause problems to solve problems.

The situation brought out the best and worst in all of us, though the truth of who we really were was still in there somewhere. When you’re holding on,
fighting
, for your security, all kinds of sudden transformations and tactics are possible. Mark became the perfect husband for a short while but then changed strategies, taking sadistic competition to new heights. Mary exploded first but then changed strategies, becoming the perfect wife. She cut down on her spending and eliminated the parties; she cut down on her drinking, which had gotten excessive. She read books and tried to discuss them with him after he acknowledged his need for depth in his life. She bought him that motorcycle
he wanted. She grew her hair long like mine and turned to him for sex every night, or so he confessed later.

I think we need to separate for a while
, he said to me. It was fall, appropriately. The leaves were falling; we had fallen in love; things had fallen apart. The leaves were vivid orange, red, yellow, but, of course, those leaves were dying.

All right
, I said. I didn’t feel
all right
. I felt used and abandoned, as we all did in one way or another. I felt like wailing my protest. But I also felt relieved.

I need to do everything I can to save my marriage before I end it
.

I heard the illogic. If you know you’re going to end it, you’re not doing what you can to save it. But I understood this, too, the primary conflict: What does it mean to be a good person? Do you owe someone else your life? When you want to be a good person and you’re not being one (in their eyes or your own), you’ve
got
to twist the logic to be able to live with yourself. Your heart knows when it’s over. Something
dies
. You know it, whether you’re ready to face what it means yet or not. So what do you do? The least you can do is check-mark the right boxes. Therapy, whatever. Marriage counseling, “trying.” How else do you sleep at night?

I know
.

He sobbed into his hands. We held each other and grief filled my chest.
I love you so much
, he said.
I love you so much
, I said. It felt like the future was over, or at least our vision of it—the joy and the possibilities. This way, that way, this way, that way. The torment of indecision. This way, our future was over. That way, Mark’s and Mary’s were. It was devastating. It was “the right thing.” You weren’t supposed to choose yourself.

It was temporary. To go back to something that was already broken even before you stomped on the shattered pieces—the destruction is too great. Mark’s revenge could go on for a lifetime.
Mary’s best behavior couldn’t. A choice like ours … Well, somewhere inside you know that you’re pulling the plug on your dying marriage the minute you enter a relationship like that. You’re closing your eyes and turning away and cringing, but you’re still pulling the plug.

It’s over
, I told Mark.
Between Ian and me
.

He said nothing. I could read his face; it held righteous conviction. He was taking the higher road. His intention was to move on but to never forgive. I realized I’d given him a permanent excuse to do what he never had an excuse to do before. If I stayed, that is. Now I could never stay. As Dr. Shana Berg said, it wasn’t the best plan, but it was a plan. The sorry old soldier that I was put the butterfly between my own lips and promised myself rebirth.

Mark made me scrambled eggs because I was depressed and devastated. Let me repeat that:
Mark
made
me
scrambled eggs. He assumed my tears were contrition, and my lack of appetite was remorse. My weakness had transformed him from killer to nurse, though he was still the kind of nurse who might put deadly medicine in your IV while you slept.

He took my hands. His touch made me cringe. When it’s over, even your skin knows it. He looked into my eyes.

I want us to know everything about each other. No holding back. I want to
know
you
.

I said nothing. I was a thousand miles away by then. We were in our bedroom, but I was at some gas station in the desert, with a warm breeze at my back and a credit card in my own name in my wallet.

I want you to know me
. He squeezed my hands. He paused. Then:
I had a near miss, too. A woman at work. Maria. Diego
.

The name was familiar. I remember passing a desk where a dark-haired woman sat. There was a picture of two small boys in
a frame.
We talked. A lot, you know? I met her after work. We had drinks. Nothing happened
.

Outside, someone started up his lawn mower. I heard the revving, the chomping of grass and fallen dead leaves. In my head, a semi truck whipped past on that desert highway, and my hair caught in my mouth. The keys to a fast car were in my hand.

Finally my marriage was over.

“Mom, what are you
doing
?”

“This …” I shove those sheets in. I pour some bleach into the rising water.

“Laundry?
Now?
” She is shouting over the sound of the washing machine. She holds the phone with her hand over the mouthpiece.

“I just want them clean.” I think of Lady Macbeth. How can I not? I think of Medea. There are ancient themes here, as I replace the cap on the Tide.

“It’s for you.” She nods her head toward the phone.

“I didn’t hear it ring.”

“Over this noise? What a surprise. It’s Bethy.”

I shake my head. “I don’t want to—”

“Mom!”

“No!”

“Fine.”

She turns her back to me and leaves. She’s pissed. I am a contemporary parent; we can’t stand the displeasure of our children. I clang the lid of the washer down. It starts to rumble vigorously. Ever since I moved it here from my old house, it hasn’t worked correctly. Maybe it’s the floor or something, the occasional tilt of the houseboat, I don’t know. What I do know is that it tries too hard. It shimmies its little appliance heart out. One time I came
back to find it in the center of a room, as if it had attempted escape but had given up.

Right then the thought crosses my mind:
I’ll have to ask Ian about it when he comes back
. And then comes the sick rush of truth. The truth I’ve been avoiding all morning. It has been one week. One week without even a phone call. One week must mean he’s never coming back. One week could mean he’s dead.
Don’t think it!

I pour a cup of coffee. Abby made it strong. My grandma would have said,
Strong enough to curl the hair on your chest
. It was one of those things that you were pretty sure was a joke at age seven but were a little uneasy about anyway.

“I told her you were in the shower.” Abby gets a bowl for cereal. She slams the cupboard door. She looks at me disapprovingly. She gets that look from my mother. I am part of the unfortunate generation that first had to please our parents and now has to please our children. We never got our time in the sun. No wonder we rebel.

“I at least need my coffee before I take her on.”

“They want to see you. Can you blame them? Their father is missing! You’ve got to talk to them, Mom.”

Still. All the best parts of you can end up in your children, can’t they? His power, your generosity, but in the appropriate amounts. It can give you some faith that maybe there
is
a bigger plan in action, one that might succeed, even if we poor misguided souls continually do our best to fuck it up.

I want to get back to that laptop. I want to sift through all of Ian’s electronic stratums, all of the things he keeps hidden deep down beneath a password. It is the thing to do: Lift up and look underneath. It’s important to
see
. This is all about unfaithfulness, I’m
sure. How can it not be? It runs through our bloodlines, and it runs through the history of us. Maybe more than that—I can see his hand on the back of that woman’s dress that night and her hand on his sleeve. I need to find out who she is.

But first I have to meet Bethy and Kristen. I do the right thing, of course. I return the call after my bolstering cup of coffee, and I arrange a meeting. I will go to them, because going to them is how it generally works. Our house “never felt welcoming,” Bethy once told Ian. I suppose it wouldn’t if you walked in shooting your shotgun eyes at everything there, at every piece of furniture or artwork that wasn’t from the old homestead. If you walked in as a reporter, ready to write down the details to bring home to Mother, then those details could be made ugly and certainly “unwelcoming.” Every verbal misstep of mine, every look that did or didn’t pass between Ian and me, a rug they thought was ugly, a runny sauce—they were all good stories to snicker over later, or even right then, just loud enough for me to hear. Perhaps if we had hung their family portrait over the fireplace, perhaps if I had made their mother’s recipe for stroganoff but failed it miserably, then maybe I could have somehow once and for all shown that I acknowledged their mother’s superiority. We could all move on then. I had trumped their mother with Ian, and that was the problem.

This sounds bad, because I got what I deserved from them; I know that. They were a family, and I had helped to ruin that. It was understandable for them to make their point again and again. Still, it had gotten tiring, and that’s what I am now, tired. If people in general cannot see the dark universe that sits between a couple, well then children, most of all, are unable or unwilling to see it. I guess it’s true no matter what the situation: A parent’s experience is an unknowable one. How, after all, can a
child fathom what it means to be a parent, let alone a parent of a certain generation, with a certain personal history, with a certain spouse, with even a certain child?

I get ready for my meeting with them. I take a shower, and then I become stuck in front of my closet. As the clock ticks, my indecision about what to wear shifts from a nagging concern to an all-out panic. On certain occasions, the choice of black pants versus a black skirt can feel full of meaning and possible consequences. I stare at my clothes, paralyzed, and then, worse, begin heaping desperate piles of options on my bed. And shoes—God. Why is it that heels, boots, covered toes or bare ones, all carry different messages? It becomes about nuance, appropriateness, sensitivity. Fashion is a communication problem to solve, and I have enough trouble speaking with words, let alone footwear.

Then again, every encounter I’ve had with Bethy and Kristen has prompted this same fashion crisis, along with those other self-destructive acts you commit right before a dreaded social outing. Cutting your bangs, for example. Spilling coffee on a just-ironed blouse. Some people just bring out every small part of you, all the little self-hatreds, and so the evil inner trolls take the scissors out of the drawer and chop the hell out of your hair. I swear to God, the more anxiety I feel about an imminent event, the shorter I cut my bangs. I’ve gone to many intimidating places looking like a nine-year-old on picture day.

When I look into my closet now, all of my clothes suddenly seem old and defeated. It’s the museum of my life—there are stretch pants in there and even (way back) a blue silk jacket with humongous shoulder pads. I need to find something that is not exhausted from history and pale from too many washings. I need energy and confidence; good luck, old clothes. Good luck to you. Jeans and a T-shirt, my standby pals? No. Bare arms are too vulnerable
and unprotected. Tennis shoes? Too childlike. Boots are more authoritative. Ian’s daughters will want things from me I can’t give, like
answers
.

A time like this could bring Ian’s daughters and me closer in our mutual loss and fear, but of course this won’t happen. The usual suspicion in their voices has amped up now, and every time we’ve talked, their words have been cuts and slashes. It’s another form of the hatred that’s always been there, but still the animosity gathers in the center of my chest. It isn’t fair to feel this way about them, but years of sniping remarks and spiteful glances have worn me down. We need Ian between us. He’s both the cause and the solution to our rift.