Tempted (30 page)

I don’t know how Evelyn found out Alex had gone, but she started her thrice-weekly habit of phone calls again. I let James answer. If he wasn’t home, I let the answering machine take her call, and I erased the message without listening to what she’d said. When he asked me if I minded if his parents came to dinner, I said I didn’t, but when they came I pleaded a headache and stayed in my room until they’d gone.

“Maybe Anne ought to see a doctor,” I heard her saying the second time they came for dinner and I used the same excuse. Her voice carried from the kitchen down the hall, like a drill in my ear. “She’s been sick a lot, lately.”

I didn’t wait to hear James’s answer. I locked myself in the bathroom and stood under the shower for as long as the hot water lasted. By the time I came out, they’d gone.

He caught me the next day as I stood at the sink, wrist-deep in soapy water and washing the dishes he’d left undone from the night before.

“Anne.”

I turned only halfway, gave him half my attention. Half of myself.

“Are you ever going to be happy again?”

It took a long, quiet moment for me to answer, and when I did it was with a shrug. I turned back to the dishes. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He sighed. “Are you ever going to smile again?”

I shook my hands free of suds and dried them. I took my time doing it, getting each individual finger. I faced him. I smiled, hard and sharp.

“You mean like this?”

“That’s not what I meant.” He looked smaller to me than he had a few minutes ago.

I did it again, the way I’d done so many times. Tilting lips, crinkles at the corners of the eyes. Slow and easy. A smile.

“Like this?”

Feeling flickered in his eyes, a stream of emotions passing over him so fast I couldn’t have determined them all even if I’d been trying.

“That looks more like you. Yes.”

I turned back to the sink. From behind me I heard him move closer. I tensed, waiting for his touch.

“Are you ever going to smile at me like that again?”

“I just did, James.”

“Are you ever going to mean it again?”

My fingers slid through soap and grease and found the sponge. I circled it in the pan, over and over, hypnotizing myself with repetition. “I don’t know.”

When he put his hands on my shoulders, I went stiff. “I wish you did.”

I wanted to let myself melt back against him, to let him ease me with his touch the way he was trying. I didn’t. “I do, too.”

He kissed the part of my shoulder exposed by the neckline of my T-shirt. My hands stung from the hot water, and I lifted them out to put one on each side of the sink. The scents of lemons and last night’s dinner bathed my face. I closed my eyes against it. I waited for James to put his arms around me and pull me close, to force me to forgive him so I could forgive myself.

“I’m going to run out to get a new pair of work boots. Do you want me to pick up anything for you?”

“No.”

He squeezed me with gentle fingers and withdrew. I scrubbed the dishes until my fingers ached. James came home much, much later, smelling of beer and cigarettes.

I didn’t ask him where he’d been.

With only two weeks to go until the anniversary party, I expected life to feel a little hectic. Certainly it seemed to affect my sisters that way. There were plenty of calls back and forth about the caterer, the decorations, who was going to pick up what. A few months before I might have been as hyped up and stressed out as the three of them, no matter if I didn’t show it, but now I was genuinely calm about the entire affair.

“It’s fine,” I assured Patricia, who was almost in tears about the scrapbook, because she couldn’t decide whether or not to include a place for guests to write congratulations. “Put the pages in.”

“But then I’ll have to put the book out where people can get to it, and you know someone will splash barbecue sauce on it!” she cried. “It will look awful!”

I cradled the phone against my shoulder while I stirred a pot of chicken soup. I didn’t have much appetite. James had called to tell me he was going to be late. I hadn’t asked him why.

She sounded tired, but she’d told me things with Sean were getting better. He’d come up with the cash for the mortgage, though she hadn’t said from where. He was coming home earlier, not missing work, not going to the track. He’d agreed to counseling, though they hadn’t yet gone.

“Just put out one page at a time near the drinks table,” I told her. “Check them during the party and when they get filled, put out another. That way you’ll only add the ones that have all the messages on them, you won’t have any blank pages and you can keep the scrapbook someplace out of the way so nobody spills something on it.”

“I guess that will work.” She sighed. “I will be so glad when this party’s over.”

“I think we all will. It’s been a stressful summer.”

“Tell me about it.” Patricia made a rueful chuckle. “I think the only one who hasn’t had disaster strike’s been you.”

“Lucky me.”

“I don’t know what Claire’s going to do,” she continued, moving away from the scrapbook and party plans into the far juicier realm of sisterly gossip. “She’s not ready to have a kid. But she says she’s going to keep it, and she does seem on the ball. I would never have expected it of her, Anne, but she’s doing all the right things.”

“She is.”

“But Mary…I’m not sure what’s up with her, that whole moving in with Betts thing. What if that doesn’t work out? I mean, I know she’s trying to save money and everything, but…what if it doesn’t work out?”

“Patricia, I’m sure she and Betts have talked about all of it.”

Patricia’s sigh sounded loud, even through the phone. “It’s just craziness, that’s what it is.”

“Oh, Pats. C’mon.”

“Well, at least we know she won’t get pregnant.”

Her dry comment hit me right between the eyes. It took me a second to laugh, but once I started the guffaws ripped out of me, one after another. On the other side of the phone, she started, too. We laughed together, and it felt so good I didn’t notice I’d started to cry until the distinctive sound of the call waiting tone beeped.

“Hold on,” I said, my voice hoarse. “Got another call.”

“Anne. You need to come over here right away.”

I didn’t recognize Mary’s voice at first. She sounded like she was whispering into the phone while standing in a closet. Maybe she was.

“Mare?”

“You have to come over here,” she repeated. “I don’t know what else to do, and you’re the one who deals with him when he’s like this.”

My guts churned. “Wait a minute, what’s going on?”

“It’s Dad,” she said, and I didn’t ask any more questions, just hung up with her and switched back to my other sister.

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Patricia said at once. “The kids are spending the night with Sean’s parents. He’s at a meeting. I’ll be there in twenty.”

We hung up without even saying goodbye.

We pulled into my parents’ driveway at the same time, even though she lived farther away. Mary’s car was parked by the garage, along with my dad’s. The one my mom usually drove was gone. Patricia and I got out, both of us pausing to listen for voices inside the house. I didn’t hear anything, but that didn’t mean anything wasn’t going on.

Claire opened the door as soon as we got on the front porch. She’d pulled her hair back from her face in a high ponytail and wore no makeup. Her eyes were red, but if she’d been weeping she wasn’t now.

“It’s Dad,” she said. “He’s gone fucking nutso. You have to talk to him, Anne, you’re the only one he’ll listen to. He just went ballistic.”

Patricia and I shot glances at each other, then followed Claire into the house. Most of the lights were off, making each room dim. Back through the dark hall we saw a golden square of light falling from the kitchen doorway. That’s where Claire took us.

In the kitchen my father sat at the kitchen table. A bottle, mostly empty, of his favorite whiskey sat in front of him. So did a glass, also mostly empty. His eyes were redrimmed, his hair askew. He looked up at us as we came in.

“There she is,” he said with a nod at Claire. “Did she tell you? What she’s done?”

“Yes, Dad,” Patricia said. “We know.”

My father gave a harsh, nasty laugh. “Goddamned whore’s what she is! Shows up here, flaunting her belly like she’s got something to be proud of….”

He filled his glass. He drank. We all watched him. Mary leaned against the counter, arms folded tight over her stomach. Claire filled a glass of water from the sink and drank it almost defiantly. Patricia and I moved to opposite sides of the doorway. Our father put his glass down with a sharp crack of glass on wood.

“I oughta throw your ass right out on the street!”

“You won’t have to,” Claire said. “I told you, I’m getting my own place.” She looked at me. “I told him I was getting my own place, and he asked me why.”

“Because she thinks I was too stupid to notice before,” he said with a scowl. “Everyone else in the world knows, but not me. Not your dad.”

“Because I knew you’d act like this,” Claire cried and tossed up her hands. She was the only one who’d ever talked back to him this way.

“And now she tells me she’s planning to keep the bastard!”

“Dad, for God’s sakes,” Claire snapped. “Nobody calls them bastards anymore!”

He turned on her. “Shut your mouth, you little tramp!”

The insult had to sting, but she put on a show of rolling her eyes and making a whirling motion with her finger on the side of her head. Our father got up from his chair so fast it fell back with a crash against the linoleum. He picked up his glass and threw it at Claire’s head. It missed but hit and broke against the wall next to Patricia, who yelped and jumped aside.

Our father pointed a trembling finger at Claire. “You goddamned little slut! Just like your mother!”

“Don’t you talk about Mom that way!” Claire screamed. “Don’t you dare, you asshole!”

My father, when drunk, had often been melancholy or temperamental. He’d been careless, suicidal, morose or sometimes vicious with his mouth, but he’d never hit any of us. When he advanced on Claire I really thought he meant to strike her.

“Little bastard bitch.” The alcohol had made him slow, and he stumbled. Mary put herself between him and Claire. Patricia and I flanked him. “Little goddamned whore.”

We stayed like that, a tableau of family dysfunction, until he turned. His arms swung, catching me and Patricia with unintentional blows. He went back to the table and drank directly from the bottle, finishing it.

“Where is your mother, anyway? Run off again?” His muttered words were directed at the bottle, not at any of us, but he turned in a shambling half circle to confront us all. “Well? Where is she?”

“She went to the grocery store,” said Mary.

His laughter made the hair rise along the back of my neck. “Did she? Annie, c’mere.”

I didn’t want to, but my feet moved by themselves.

“Give your dad a hand upstairs. I need to lie down.”

“You need to sober up,” snapped Claire.

He whirled on her, reaching out for my shoulder to keep from falling. I staggered under the sudden weight. We both might have fallen but he caught himself at the last minute.

“What did you say?” he demanded with all the righteous indignation of a falsely accused man.

Claire turned away. “Nothing.”

He looked around at all of us. “Any of the rest of you have anything smart to say?”

Nobody said anything. He snorted, derisive. “I thought so.”

What is it about our parents that can send us back to childhood with a few words or a look? We’d stood this way before, in this same room, with my father leaning on my shoulder to help him upstairs. With Mary and Patricia cowering in opposite corners of the kitchen. For an instant my vision blurred and wavered, showing me them as they’d been that summer. Little girls with wide eyes, ready to but afraid to cry.

Claire hadn’t been there, and it was seeing her that reminded me more than anything that we weren’t children anymore. We didn’t have to be afraid to show our feelings. I didn’t.

“C’mon, Dad, let’s get you upstairs.”

I’d made this journey many times before, though it was easier now that I was taller. In the bedroom I led him to the bed, where he flopped with a boozy sigh and swung his legs up on the bed. I untied his shoes and slipped them off, and put them away neatly in the closet.

He wasn’t snoring, but his breath came in wheezing sighs. I drew the shade to keep out the light. I turned on the air conditioning unit to cool the room. I was ten again, and eight, and five. I was waiting for my mother to come home and make it all better. I was waiting for him to fall asleep so we could be sure he was finished for the night.

“You always were a good girl, Annie.” His whiskey-thick voice floated in the darkness.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“I’m sorry I yelled at Claire. You’ll tell her, won’t you?”

“You should tell her yourself.”