Preston Falls : a novel (31 page)

But of course you can be only so compulsive. Like, she obviously could never ever say anything about what colors Helen should wear, or what kind of flowers she should put in the vase. So there'd be days when Helen would be sitting there in like a burgundy jacket next to these blazing orange lilies or something, and you would just cringe. And Jean so much wants to chuck the tacky gold frames Helen has for pictures of her husband and daughters—Lechter's has these white ceramic ones—but she has to tell herself Stop, just stop.

"Good morning," Helen says, hanging up the phone. "You had one call yesterday."

Jean takes the slip out of the K section. (These pink While You Were Out slips are another irritant.) Champ, 4:16 p.m., will call hack. Willis's brother never calls here: he must have news. She's afraid he does and afraid he doesn't.

She goes on past her office to the end of the hall. Jerry Starger's assistant, Martha, isn't at her desk, but his door is open, so she peeks in.

"Hey, there she is," says Jerry. "You get everything squared away?" On the phone yesterday, she told him she had some family business.

"Pretty much, I guess," she says. "For now." With her index finger she tries to smooth out a bubble under the tape at one corner of the poster on his door. (This beautiful bleached-oak door.) A grinning little girl with metal crutches and leg braces, and the legend Help jerry's Kids.

"All we can ask in this life," he says. "Meeting at eleven?"

"Fine."

"In the meantime, think beautiful thoughts. Think: Marietta, Georgia." The latest branch office, due to open December 1. Decent-sized space in a hopeless strip mall.

Jean closes her office door behind her, logs on and gets PHONE. PRSNL up on her screen, scrolls down to W. Two numbers for Champ;

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try the work one first. Right, and there's Sylvia's number. She never returned Jean's call, of course—though in fairness, maybe she did try Preston Falls. A man at the Counter Spy Shop says Champ called in sick; he sounds annoyed. Jean punches in Champ's home number.

A machine picks up, Jim Morrison sings Hello, I love you, won't you tell me your —then Champ says, "Wait-wait-wait, let me get this fucking thing. Hello?"

"It's Jean," she says. "Are you okay? They said you were sick?"

"On the record? Food poisoning. Off the record? Mai de something. Mai de lingering."

"Oh," says Jean. "I just got your message from yesterday. Actually, I was about to call you. "

"You did call me. Nurk nurk."

"Listen, have you heard anything from Doug?"

"Hey, great minds," he says. "See, / was hoping—shit. So he hasn't come back yet?"

"No. He was supposed to be back at work yesterday. I drove up to Preston Falls on Sunday, and it didn't look like he'd been there for a while. When was the last you heard from him?"

"Shit, a long time," he says. "Actually, I don't think I've talked to him since we were all up there for Labor Day. I tried to get ahold of him a couple weeks ago and never heard back. So then I tried him yesterday at work, because I remembered he was coming back on Halloween or something, and they said he was quote out of the office. So I thought I'd bother you for a change."

"Right." Jean's scratching white lines on the back of her left hand with a pushpin, from the center of the wrist to each knuckle.

"So when did you talk to him last?"

"Well," she says, "things were sort of at the point where we'd more or less agreed not to be calling."

"But how about the kids?" says Champ. "Oh fuck me, that was out of line, wasn't it? Doy-yoy-yoing, sor-ry. It's not like I'm a total animal."

Jean touches tongue to fingertip and starts rubbing the scratches away. "Oh look," she says, "it's stupid at this point for everybody to still go around being discreet."

"Right. But you weren't actually, like legally—or were you?"

"No. God, I've made such a mess."

"Hey, you had help. He said like a low-down disloyal un-brotherly dog."

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"I'm sorry," she says. "I don't mean to be carrying on."

"You're not carrying on. You may not believe it, but I've always been a fan of yours."

"Is that so. But what could you say, right?"

"Well," he says. "Like you say."

When she gets off the phone, she takes the key to the ladies' room out of her drawer, stands up and feels she'd better quick sit back down. But she rides it out, standing there swaying, palms pressed on the desk as the buzzing and the sparkly blackness deepen, then dissipate. She finds she's staring at the picture of Mel and Roger: the two of them in their bathing suits, arms around each other's shoulders—a reach up for Roger—and showing teeth in grins she tries to see as unforced. Labor Day. When the pictures came back, she immediately bought a frame for this one and put it on her desk. Because she was afraid not to.

In the ladies' room, she runs cold water, gets a double handful and lowers her face into it. She pumps the soap dispenser, gets nothing—as usual—then lifts the lid the way you have to do and dips two fingers into the pink liquid. One of these days she's got to remember to pick up a traveling soap dish, so she can keep a bar of Neutrogena in her desk. ThafW. fix everything. She dries her face with a paper towel and sees she's going to have to put on more Cover Girl. For what, the third time this morning? And of course she's managed to splatter the front of her shirt. Willis's shirt, actually, that he bought years ago at a yard sale: a garage shirt or something, with Dan embroidered above the left pocket. She'd liked it for its grayish shade of green and for how the gabardine had softened just the right amount.

There's a story about the shirt too. Willis said he'd bought it just so he could say, if anybody asked, "I don't know why, my name is not Dan." She forgets what that was supposed to be a hne from; just one of his endless things. But it started to get a little snug on him, so he ended up not wearing it much. Finally she put it in the drawer with her tops. And bided her time for a month or so, until, one morning, she wore it to the table, and he said, "Hey, where'd you find that? Looks better on you than it ever did on me." Why hadn't she just asked him for the stupid shirt? Maybe because she has a thing about asking for anything. Your marriage, she used to assume, was a safe place to play out these harmless little things.

Back in her office, she gets Sylvia's number off the screen and picks up the phone. Five rings and, again, Willis's voice. She hangs up.

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What it is, she's furious at him.

And at his mother, who should've done a better job with him— though who is she to say? And at herself. Oh, of course, dear, if you need to go up and stare at trees and play your guitar . . . Think no more about it: I will take care of our home and our family and our life. And fine, let him hold that against her too, that she's another angry woman. Like when she was reading Sandra Cisneros and told Willis he should really check her out, and he said the idea of a woman hollering didn't exactly do it for him. And it was like, Thanks for one more precious insight into you.

Five of eleven. She's not prepared for this meeting: her dreams and schemes for raw space in a strip mall in Georgia.

But really, isn't it his mother's fault for screwing up his whole attitude toward women? (Right, as if every other man is so fabulously healthy.) Early on, when Carol first asked about Willis, Jean had said. Well, the sex is great. Which it really wasn't: him working away at her, trying to get her to give up and come first, while as a man he could let go anytime. All over her feet, once. And demonstrating in the process what great shape he kept himself in, back when he kept himself in shape. Like just daring her to run her hands down his ass and find any flab, though she's got to say, even then. ... So the more he worked away at her, the colder she got. The more observant.

One thing she observed, the act meant to degrade her—^which of course he secretly liked best—actually gave her power: he would lose command after three strokes, at most, and it was over. His half-babies mixed with her wastes, and away it all went, leaving her free and clean and empty. She was supposed to trust him enough for it to be safe to act out her fantasies of being degraded. Or something. The old porno propaganda, which they've now got women believing. All it did, really, was allow her to see him.

Though not really. As it turns out. And in fairness, she didn't always think sex with him was stupid.

The phone rings, and she leaps for it.

Jerry Starger says, "Meeting."

When she gets home, only Rathbone greets her. Mel's upstairs, and Roger and Carol are in the living room, watching Rocky and BuUwinkle. The kitchen smells of microwave popcorn. Jean guesses it's good they show the old Rocky and Bullwinkles on cable; at least they're not violent, and the values probably aren't the worst, though the Dudley Doright stuff does make fun of heroes and chastity She calls Hi, then sticks her head in: they're both staring at the screen, and Roger's hand is feeling for the popcorn. It's like a diorama.

She goes back into the kitchen. Somebody's left a knife smeared with peanut butter just sitting on the counter; they're going to be the first family in Chesterton to have cockroaches. God, she's starting to sound like Willis, the difference being that she doesn't actually say anything. She wills herself to go wash the stupid knife, as well as the JOE mug, which has been in her purse all this time. But her legs suddenly feel like they're going to give out, so she sits down at the table. She's still sitting there when a commercial comes on, and at least Carol deigns to get off her duff and come in.

"Tough day for you?" she says, putting a hand on Jean's shoulder. "What would you like—tea?" She begins running water into the kettle. "How about a little something in it?"

"Regular tea is fine. Thanks."

"You haven't eaten, right? We were just having some popcorn."

"I gathered."

"What happened," Carol says, "poor Roger was starved when he got home, because today was Sloppy Joes. Why, after all these years, they insist on giving kids Sloppy Joes . . . Anyhow. Mel said she was hungry too, so I fixed them alphabet soup and got some bagels out of the freezer, and then Roger discovered peanut butter on onion bagels. So none of us

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are hungry. But there's more bagels, and you're welcome to the rest of that soup."

Jean thinks, I'm welcome? "I don't know," she says. "I guess I should eat." She wills herself to stand and goes into the living room. In the commercial, some obnoxious teenager's saying, "I gotta have my Pops." She gets no acknowledgment of her presence from Roger except a slight intensification of his frown at the screen. She kneels and kisses his knee through a rip in his jeans: that startles him. He jerks his leg away and says, "We're watching Bullwinkle."

"Okay, enjoy it." She gets to her feet and goes upstairs, passing Mel on the way down. Who gives her a Hi and keeps going. She sits on the edge of the bed and surprises herself by beginning to weep, listening between sobs for footsteps. When she reaches the gasping stage, where you either keep on or decide to get yourself under control, she takes a couple of deep breaths, goes into the bathroom, washes her face without looking in the mirror and dries off with a smelly towel. She can hear the tv going and can't for the life of her make up her mind whether to ask Carol if their homework's done or to ask the kids themselves.

She opens the hamper to put the towel in, and it's right up to the top with dirty clothes, mostly Mel's. And God knows what's on the floor in Roger's room. Well, so much for getting to bed early. Does Carol do anything around here besides feed them any crappo food they want anytime they want and then park herself with them in front of the tv? (Jean knows she's so out of line here it's not even funny, like a husband who comes home and runs a gloved finger over the mantelpiece.)

She goes back downstairs and finds Mel, who's lately been on this tv-is-for-losers thing, is watching too; Bullwinkle's into the Boris and Natasha part. These are kids, bear in mind, who don't know why it's funny that he's called Boris Badenov, though as a matter of fact if you put a gun to Jean's head all she'd be able to come up with is that there's something called Boris Godunov, so she's a great example. She opens the refrigerator and finds the saucepan of alphabet soup; Carol has added chopped green pepper, which Jean could do without. Their mother used to say Carol was "fixy," meaning she liked rearranging the furniture or trimming old dresses with lace and binding tape or fiddling around with the proportions of recipes. Alphabet soup and Bullwinkle and Sloppy Joes: you could really believe for seconds at a time that everything's the

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way it used to be. She dumps the leftover soup in a bowl and sticks it in the microwave. She punches numbers, it goes beep beep beep beep and Mel calls, "Mom? What are you making?"

"I'm warming up some soup," Jean hollers back. "You want some?"

"I don't think so. I don't know, maybe."

"Yes or no?"

"I'm thinking, Mother."

"Shut up, I can't hear," says Roger. "You made me miss that part."

"Chill out, Roger," says Mel. "Mom? I don't want soup, but is there anj^ihing else?"

"I don't know," says Jean. "Why don't you get up and look?"

She immediately wants to apologize, but maybe all that's called for is to make the next thing you say kinder.

She opens the refrigerator again to see what there is to drink—then remembers the tea. Steam's billowing out of the kettle. She turns off the gas and hefts it: well, still enough left. She squirts green dish soap into the JOE mug and scrubs around with the sponge, rinses and dries, puts in an Irish Breakfast tea bag and pours the hot water over it.

The microwave beeps; she carries the bowl of alphabet soup over to the table, sits down and almost starts weeping again when she sees she left the mug of tea on the counter. Just get up and get it, she tells herself.

Soup's good. She must've been hungry.