The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (21 page)

‘I saw your light on, I wanted to see if you needed anything. My mother has a friend who works in the ICU; that's how we found out.'

‘My son is with him. The idea is I'm supposed to be sleeping, but I can't.'

‘I could drive you around a little bit.'

‘Don't you have to work?'

‘I'm off till five.'

‘Maybe just for half an hour.' She went into the house, tiptoed down the hall, and peeked into her bedroom. Grace was asleep, huddled under the duvet. Pippa wrote a note, propped it up on the bedside table beside Grace, took her cell phone out of her handbag, drew her sweatshirt off the back of a kitchen chair, and walked outside. Chris was already in the driver's seat.

They drove around Marigold Village for a while. Pippa called the hospital to check on Herb, made sure they knew to call her cell. Then she looked out the window and stared at the wooden houses with their slanted roofs, the American flags drooping sleepily, as if resting for the night. ‘I can't believe I ever lived here,' Pippa said.

‘It's a weird place all right,' said Chris. He drove her past the convenience store, through the mini-mall parking lot where the fish man parked, to the river. He turned the engine off but left the headlights on; immediately, hundreds of white moths were whirling inside the columns of illuminated air, their wings flapping desperately, as if feeding on the light.

‘They hatched,' said Pippa. They sat like that for a long moment, looking out at the moths.

‘You said your father was a minister,' said Chris. ‘Did he ever pray with you?'

‘No. I went to his church every Sunday. But he wasn't praying with me.'

‘Do you … anymore?'

‘Yes. I don't know if I believe in anything, but I still pray. It's sort of automatic.'

‘What do you pray for?'

‘To be good.' She laughed. ‘It sounds so childish when I say it out loud.'

‘It's the only thing to pray for. The rest is wish lists.' There was something about him – so hard to put into thoughts – something genuine and transparent that she had only seen in children.

‘Come on,' he said. He reached over her to pull open the latch of her door, then pushed the door ajar. His arm brushed the tops of her thighs. She got out. He came around to her side, took her hand, and led her to the back of the truck. There was a little door there. He opened it and drew her inside the orange shell. A match flared. He was lighting a candle. She could see now that there were several candles fixed on saucers along the wall and windowsills of the low plastic dome. He lit them, one by one. She shut the door so the candles wouldn't go out. The floor was covered in brown plush carpeting. A thin mattress was rolled up neatly and made a tidy couch. He patted it. Pippa sat down on the mattress ticking. He knelt in front of her.

‘Do you want to pray for your husband?'

She felt irony pressing in on her.

‘It's hopeless. His brain is dead.'

‘Not for his brain. For his soul.'

‘Oh. I don't know how to do that.'

‘I don't, either,' he said. ‘Let's try.' Chris took off his shirt. She had forgotten his tattoo. Jesus was in the room with them now. His fierce black eyes burned out of Chris's chest; his intricately drawn wings arched up over Chris's shoulders. Chris closed his eyes, clasped his hands, and looked at the ground. Pippa stared at the image on her friend's chest, and it stared back at her, unblinking, all seeing, awesome. This was not any Christ she had known. This was elemental, crushing divinity. She felt as though this truck was standing at the edge of space; she could not imagine anything beyond this moment, so foreign and yet so familiar, repellent and irresistible.

At last, Chris looked up at her, his face above the other face. He moved toward her. With deliberate, calm movements, he guided her off the rolled up mattress, pushed it so it flopped flat. She
crawled over to him. She lay down. As he kissed her, she felt her mind fill up with him and nothing else. Candles glimmered behind his head. His hands were very warm. Her eyelids were heavy. There was a slowness in her now, a torpor, like a drug in her veins. She was slipping further and further into the moment until she felt herself at its very pit, where there were no images, only one color, only red, behind her closed eyes. She felt his hand on her sex. She opened her eyes. The tattoo loomed over her; the wings of the Christ seemed to spread wide and real above her, pulsing up and down, making the sound of two dry hands rubbing against each other as they brushed the sides of the plastic shell. This can't be real, she thought. And then, out of nowhere, a pleasure ballooned from her sex, swelled to fill her body until it burst, the sensation running down her legs, and she cried out, her head falling lifeless on the mattress, her body lank as the neck of a dead swan. Sadness trailed behind the pleasure like the tail of a comet. Grief and rage shot out of her mouth like flames. He held her head between his palms as she sobbed.

*

She did not know how she had gotten to the other side of the shell. She was zipping up her sweatshirt. ‘I have to go back to the hospital,' she said.

She said nothing on the drive; words seemed distant as the stars. She didn't dare look at him, now that he had regained his human form. When they arrived at the hospital, she ran out of the truck; the glass doors slid open to let her in, then glided shut behind her.

Herb was breathing deep, difficult breaths, the plastic elephant's trunk strapped to his face, eyes closed. Ben was sleeping, curled up on the narrow cot by the window. Pippa shook him awake. Clutching the pillow, he jerked his head up to check his father. ‘It's okay,' Pippa said. ‘It's just time now. Go call your sister.' Ben pulled on his jeans, his shirt, and padded out into the hall in his socks. Then he turned. ‘I'll go get her.'

‘She can take my car,' said Pippa.

‘How did you get here?'

‘Just call her, sweetheart.'

He walked off.

Pippa sat with Herb for a moment. ‘I love you anyway, you know. I'll always love you, you bastard.' She stroked his head. Husband. Always and forever.

Ben came back in the room. He sat on the other side of Herb's bed, and they each held one of his big hands until Grace came in. She was already crying. She knelt and put her face on her father's arm.

A figure opened the curtain, a stocky lady with teddy bears printed all over her nurse's smock. ‘Are you ready now?' she asked gently. Pippa nodded. The children were keening. The nurse removed the oxygen mask from Herb's face. His lips were blue. He took in a long breath, his chest straining. Another breath. His eyes snapped open, seeing something distinct, it seemed, just ahead. He began breathing hard, terrible breaths, as if he was in a battle, as if it was very difficult to die. His hand pawed the drip in his arm. He wanted it out. He wanted his dignity, Pippa knew. He wanted to go out whole.

‘Can the drip … come out?' Pippa asked. The nurse gingerly eased the needle from Herb's arm, leaned in very close to his face, looked into his eyes. He focused on her, expectant. She held his arms and said firmly, ‘It's okay.' Pippa squeezed his hand. The nurse moved to the corner of the room. A long moment of quiet. Then, finally, one long, gushing exhalation, as if a great animal were breathing his last. The nurse set the stethoscope on his chest for a moment. ‘He's gone,' she said. ‘I'm sorry.' Then she slipped past the curtain. Ben and Grace came to Pippa and held her and wept. She kept her eyes on Herb's face. It was already changing, becoming sharper, meaningless, a mask.

Chris was waiting outside the hospital when they walked out, after Herb had been taken away to the crematorium, and the
papers had been signed. He was standing by his truck. Pippa halted, seeing him, and Ben looked at him curiously. Then she got into her son's car, deeply embarrassed by what had happened in the truck. A fifty-year-old woman, fooling around in a pickup truck with the strangely spiritual, feckless son of her neighbor in the old folks' home! How Herb would have laughed. The whole thing was grotesque. She wished she could erase it.

‘Stephanie and I want you to come stay with us,' Ben said.

‘Hm?'

‘We want you to live with us, Mom, Stephie and I. For as long as you want. We're going to take care of you.'

‘Oh. Thanks, honey,' she said vaguely, imagining the clouds of cat hair that would rise up as she opened the foldout couch in their study, made ready to lie down. There you go. Yes. She would pack up their things as fast as possible, she would sell that death trap of a house, and she would stay with Ben and Stephanie, find a little place near them. Wait to be a grandmother.

That night, Pippa dreamed she was driving into a dense cloud of white moths, thousands of them beating their wings against the windshield. Then she woke up, and she was driving inside a cloud of white moths. She felt blinded, claustrophobic. She stopped the car. But how would she get out? What if she was in the middle of the road? Someone would crash into her. She crept along, panicking, disoriented, trying to see the edges of the road so she could figure out where she was. She wondered if this could possibly be real. Had she had gone insane? Was she dreaming? Or maybe she was dead.

At last the creatures were thinning out. She could see through the fluttering wings, into the night. She was driving along her own narrow road, toward the intersection. She could see the convenience store across the road. It glowed with the cool blue light of a Hopper painting. So that's where she'd been headed. She tapped the gas pedal, rolled the car across the road tentatively, pulled in, and parked. She could see Chris inside. He was alone, leaning back, arms crossed, staring out the window, his skin stark white under the fluorescent light. She looked down at what she was wearing. Sweats and a T-shirt. Thank God, no nightgown. She got out of the car. The sound of tree frogs outside was shrill, continuous. She walked up to the store, swung the glass door open. As he saw her, his eyes followed her, but he didn't move, his expression didn't change. She walked up to the counter. They looked at each other. ‘I'm awake,' she said.

Pippa stood at the threshold of the door to the bedroom and watched the children down the hall in the kitchen. They were sitting across from each other on stools, elbows on the counter, speaking softly, so as not to wake her. Grace was weeping, shaking her head. Ben was talking, looking out the window. He was telling her about Moira, Pippa was sure of it. To think they had once been inside her, those two people. She picked up the canvas bag at her feet and walked down the hall. She couldn't remember when she had packed such a light bag. Ben and Grace looked up at her.

‘Hi, Mommy,' Grace said softly.

‘Hello, my darling,' Pippa said.

‘What's the bag for?' Ben asked.

‘I'm going on a little trip,' Pippa said.

‘A trip?'

‘Yes I – I was wondering if you would mind – just go through the house and take whatever you want, then call these movers here.' She took a card from a drawer. ‘They'll pack up the rest and take it to Goodwill.' The kids were watching her carefully. ‘I left a check for them on the desk in my room. I don't want any of it,' she said.

‘What about the memorial service?' Ben asked. Pippa hooked the Rolodex with her index finger and let it swing there. ‘Pick a date and invite everyone on here. Except for Moira. Or invite Moira. What the hell.'

‘Mom. You're actually leaving right now?' Ben was looking at her with a mix of disbelief and concern.

‘Sweetheart. Your father was about to run off with a woman
I cooked for practically every other night over the past four years. I gave her advice on her love life, listened to her endless, egomaniacal complaining until I thought my head would explode, and then it turns out she's crying about my husband. I am not organizing his memorial service. I mean, I'll come to it. I'm just not buying the flowers.' Righteous outrage felt exhilarating and unfamiliar. Pippa took a breath and saw that Grace was staring at her with a trace of a smile, something dawning. Could it be – admiration? Just then, Chris's truck drove up.

Ben stood and went to the window. ‘Who
is
that guy?' he asked, turning.

‘My friend,' Pippa said.

‘Your
friend
? What is going on here?'

‘I'm sort of … hitching a ride,' Pippa said.

Ben put his head in his hands.

‘I'm not driving off into the sunset, sweetheart,' Pippa said. ‘I'm just … seeing what happens next.'

‘I don't believe this,' Ben said.

Grace turned to him. ‘She gave us half her life,' she said. ‘Don't you think she deserves a vacation?'

*

Filtered through the dusty glass, the landscape looks smeared and faint, like a yellowing photograph. I roll my window down and watch the picture go vivid: flat, sandy land the color of rust; great, hulking slabs of brick red cliffs against the deep blue sky. I am skimming over pure planet, cut loose again. I glance over at him staring ahead into the clear distance as he drives. I feel as though he is driving me across a bridge of rock and sand. I don't know what is on the other side. I see little towns along the way. As I pass each one, I wonder, Could I live here? I try to imagine my other life, the one I left, but it is evaporating from my mind. I can remember images – Herb, the house in Marigold Village, my favorite vegetable knife –
but they are bloodless and unreal. I will go back, of course. Ben, Grace, the memorial service. But I feel an unfamiliar story unfurling in me. I have no idea how it will go, I don't know who I will be in it. I am filled with fear and happiness.

Thanks to my editor, Jonathan Galassi, for his subtlety and intuition; to my first readers: Cindy Tolan, Julia Bolus, Mary Ellen Peebles, Michael Blake, and Honor Moore, for their honesty and time; to my stalwart friend and agent, Sarah Chalfant; to David Turnley for lending me his experience; to Jane and Tom Doyle for getting lost with me; to Robert Miller for his memories; to the Jesuit Brothers of New Jersey for their kind help; to the Galway Literary Festival for giving me a chance to present Pippa to an audience; to Claire Hardin, Kate Brady, Charissa Shearer, Emma Wilkinson, and Angela Trento for giving me the peace of mind to write; to Ronan and Cashel, for the lines, and all they've taught me; to my mother and father.