Wildlife (16 page)

‘Tell me what it is, Jean,’ he said. ‘I’m just running on here. I’m sorry.’

‘I’m going to move into another place. I’m going to move in tomorrow,’ my mother said, and her voice seemed louder than it needed to be. She looked as though she had just said something she hadn’t understood herself, and that had scared her. It is probably not how she thought she would feel.

‘What do you mean by that?’ my father said. ‘What in the world?’ He was staring at her.

‘It’s a surprise, I know,’ my mother said. ‘I’m surprised myself.’ She had not moved, had kept her knees together and her hands very still on her lap.

‘Are you crazy?’ my father said.

‘No,’ my mother said very quietly. ‘I don’t think I am.’

My father suddenly turned and looked out the front window. It was as if he thought someone was there, outside on the porch or in the yard or the street, watching him, somebody he could have reference to, somebody who could give him an idea about what was happening to him. The street was empty, of course. Snow was coming down through the streetlamp light.

He turned and looked at my mother again, quickly. He had forgotten about me. They both had. My father’s face was pale.

‘I’m coming down with something,’ he said, and he clenched his fist on the arm of the chair. ‘Probably a cold.’ My mother just stared at him. ‘Are you stepping out on me?’ he said. He tapped his fist on the chair arm as if he was nervous.

My mother looked at me. Maybe she didn’t even want to have to go through with anything now. But she had gone too far, and I don’t think she saw any choice. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Yes. I am.’

‘Who is it?’ my father said.

‘Oh, just somebody I like,’ my mother said.

‘Somebody from the country club?’ my father said. He was getting furious, and my mother must’ve felt she couldn’t stop it now.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But that’s not what it’s about. That’s just a circumstance.’

‘I know that,’ my father said. ‘I believe that.’ He got up and walked around the room. It was as if he wanted to hear his feet hit the floor, hear the loud noise his boots made on the wood. He walked around behind the couch, then back into the middle of the room. I could smell him, the ashy smell, and I knew my mother could too. Then he sat back down in the chair by the television.

‘I don’t know what makes life hold together at all,’ he said. He did not seem as mad now, only very unhappy. I felt sorry for him.

‘I know,’ my mother said. ‘I don’t either. I’m sorry.’

My father squeezed his hands together tightly in front of him. ‘What in the hell are you thinking about, Jean?’ He looked up at me then. ‘I don’t even care who it is.’ He said this to me, for some reason.

‘It’s Warren Miller,’ my mother said flatly.

‘Well, good for him then,’ my father said.

‘Your attitude toward things changes,’ my mother said.

‘I know that,’ my father said. ‘I’m aware of that.’

My mother put her hands down beside her on the couch.
It was the first time she had moved in several minutes. She must’ve thought the worst part of this time was over with, and it’s possible that for her it was.

‘I don’t want you to be mad at me,’ my father said, ‘just because I went to a fire. Do you understand?’

‘I understand,’ my mother said. ‘I’m not mad at you.’

‘Love is one thing,’ my father said. And then he just stopped talking. He looked all around the room for an instant as if something had startled him, something he heard or expected to hear, or just something he thought of while he was talking that made the rest of what he was about to say fly out of his mind. ‘Where are you going to move to?’ he said. ‘Are you moving in with Miller?’

‘The Helen Apartments,’ my mother said. ‘They’re down by the river. On First.’

‘I know where they are,’ my father said abruptly. Then he said, ‘Christ almighty, it’s hot in here, Jean.’ His canvas shirt was buttoned all the way to the top, and he suddenly unbuttoned three buttons right down to the middle of his chest. ‘You should turn it down in here,’ he said. I remembered that I was the one who had turned the furnace up earlier that day when I had been alone in the house and cold.

‘That’s true,’ my mother said. ‘I’m sorry.’ But she did not get up. She stayed where she was.

‘Have you had a hard three days?’ my father said.

‘No,’ my mother said. ‘Not very hard.’

‘Good, then.’ My father looked at her. ‘Are we not getting along? Is that it?’

‘I think so,’ my mother said calmly. She touched her neck with her fingers. The mark was below her collar and the white bow, but she must’ve just become aware of it and wondered where it was and if he could see it, which he couldn’t. He knew nothing about it.

‘I’d certainly like to see the world the same way again. Have things be all right.’ My father said this and smiled at her. ‘I feel like everything’s tilting. The whole works.’

‘I’ve felt that way,’ my mother said.

‘Boy,’ my father said. ‘Boy, boy.’ He shook his head and smiled. I know he was amazed to have all this happening to him. He had never dreamed that it could. Maybe he was trying to think what he had done wrong, go back in time to when life was set straight. But he couldn’t think of when that was.

‘Jerry,’ my mother said. ‘Why don’t you go out and take Joe for something to eat. I didn’t cook tonight. I didn’t know you were coming till too late.’

‘That’s a good idea,’ my father said. He looked at me and smiled again. ‘This is a wild life, isn’t it son?’ he said.

‘He doesn’t know what is and isn’t.’ My mother said this crossly, in a scolding way, without any sympathy for him. She got up and stood behind the table with the decks of cards on it. She was waiting for us to leave.

‘I think I’m wasted on you,’ my father said. He was angry again in just that instant. I didn’t blame him.

‘I think you are, too,’ my mother said. And she smiled in a way that was not a smile. She just wanted this moment in her life to be over, and for something else–probably anything–to happen next. ‘We’re all wasted on everything nowadays,’ she said. Then she turned and walked out of the living room, leaving us in it all alone, just me and my father with no place to go but out into the night, and no one to be with but each other.

We drove down to Central Avenue to where there were cafes and some bars I could get a meal in. It had gone on snowing in tiny flakes that swirled in front of the headlights, but the pavement was already damp and shining with water, and the snow had begun to turn to rain by the time we were downtown, so that it seemed more like spring in eastern Washington than the beginning of winter in Montana.

In the car my father acted like things weren’t so bad. He told me he would take me to a movie if I wanted to go to one, or that we could go stay in a hotel for the night. The Rainbow, he’d heard, was a good place. He mentioned that the Yankees were playing well in the World Series so far, but that he hoped Pittsburgh would win. He also said that bad things happened and adults knew it, but that they finally passed by, and I should not think we were all just an
accumulation of our worst errors because we were all better than we thought, and that he loved my mother and she loved him, and that he had made mistakes himself and that we all deserved better. And I knew he believed he would make life right between them again.

‘Things can surprise you. I’m aware of that,’ he said to me as we drove down Central in the cold car. ‘When I was in Choteau I saw a moose, if you can believe that. Right down in the middle of town. The fire had driven it out of where it normally roamed. Everybody was amazed.’

‘What happened to it?’ I said.

‘Oh, I don’t know that,’ my father said. ‘Some of them wanted to shoot it but some others didn’t. I didn’t hear about it later. Maybe it did okay.’

We drove down to the end of Central and parked in front of a bar that had bright lights inside, and walls that were painted white and very high ceilings. It was called The Presidential, and I could see through the windows from the street that men were playing cards at two tables in the back, but no one was at the bar drinking. I had looked into this bar on my walks through town and thought that railroad men went there because it was near the train stations and the railroad hotels. ‘This is a fine place here,’ my father said. ‘They have good food and you can hear yourself think a thought.’

The bar was a long, narrow room and had framed pictures of two or three presidents on the wall. Roosevelt was one. Lincoln was another. We sat at the bar, and I ordered navy bean soup and a pasty pie. My father ordered a glass of whiskey and a beer. I had not eaten since morning and I was hungry, though as I sat at the bar with my father I couldn’t help wondering what my mother was doing. Was she packing her suitcase? Was she talking on the telephone to Warren Miller or to someone else? Was she sitting on her bed crying? None of those seemed exactly right. And I decided that when I had eaten my meal, I would ask my
father to take me back home. He would understand someone wanting to do that, I thought, especially for your mother, at a bad time.

‘A lot of what’s burned, you know, is just understory.’ My father’s hand was on his glass of whiskey, and he was looking at the scarred skin on the back of it. ‘You’ll be able to go in there next spring. You’ll live in a house one of these days made of that timber. A fire’s not always such a bad thing.’ He looked at me and smiled.

‘Were you afraid out there,’ I asked. I was eating my pasty pie.

‘Yes, I was. We only were digging back trenches, but I was afraid. Anything can go on. If you had an enemy he could kill you and no one would know it. I had to stop a man from running straight into the fire once. I dragged him down.’ My father took a drink of his beer and rubbed one hand over the other one. ‘Look at my hands,’ he said. ‘I had smooth hands when I played golf.’ He rubbed his hand harder. ‘Are you proud of me now?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said. And that was true. I had told my mother that I was, and I was.

I heard poker chips clatter in the back of the room and a chair squeak as someone got up. ‘You can’t quit now, I’m winning,’ someone said and people laughed.

‘I’d like to live up on the eastern front,’ my father said. ‘That would be a nicer life than down here. Get out of Great Falls.’ His mind was just running then; whatever he thought, he said. It was a strange night in his life.

‘I’d like to live up there,’ I said, though I had never been closer to the eastern front than when I had gone with my mother two days before, and everything there had been on fire.

‘Do you think your mother would take a chance on it?’ he said.

‘She might,’ I said. My father nodded, and I knew he was thinking about the eastern front, someplace where it was
not likely he’d be suited for things and my mother wouldn’t be either. They’d lived in houses in towns all their lives and made good with that. He was just taking his mind off the things that he didn’t like and couldn’t help.

My father ordered another glass of whiskey but no beer. I asked for a glass of milk and piece of pie. He turned around on his stool and looked at the men in the back who were playing cards. No one else was in the bar. It was seven o’clock and people would not come in until later when shifts let off.

‘I guess I should’ve known about all this happening,’ my father said, facing the other way. ‘There’s always someone else involved somewhere. Even if it’s just in your mind. You can’t control your mind, I know that. Probably you shouldn’t try.’ I sat without saying anything because I thought he was going to ask me something I did not want to answer. ‘Has this been going on for some time?’ my father said.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘You get into these things and they seem like your whole life,’ my father said. ‘You can’t see out of them. I’m understanding about that.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said again.

‘It’s the money,’ my father said. ‘That’s the big part of it. That’s the way families break up. There’s not enough money. I’m surprised about this Miller, though,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t seem like a man who’d do that. I’ve played golf with him. He has a limp of some kind. I think I won some money once off him.’

‘He said that,’ I said.

‘Do you know him?’ And my father looked at me.

‘I did meet him,’ I said. ‘I met him once.’

‘Isn’t he a married man himself?’ my father said. ‘I thought he was.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘He isn’t. He was.’

‘When did you happen to meet him?’ my father said.

And suddenly I felt afraid–afraid of my father, and of what I would say. Because I felt if I said the wrong thing something in me would be ruined and I would never be the same again. I wanted to get up from my seat at that instant and leave. But I couldn’t. I was there with my father, and there was no place I could go that would be far enough away. And what I decided was that what people believed–that I knew nothing about my mother and Warren Miller, for example–didn’t matter as much as it mattered what the truth was. And I decided that that’s what I would tell if I had to tell anything and if I knew the truth, no matter what I’d thought before when I was not face to face with it.

Though I think that was the wrong thing to have done, and my father would have thought so too if he’d had the chance to choose, which he didn’t. Only I did. It was because of me.

My father turned on the barstool and looked at me, his eyes small and hard-looking. He wanted me to tell him the truth. I knew that. But he did not know what the truth would be.

‘I met him at our house,’ I said.

‘When did this take place,’ my father asked.

‘Yesterday,’ I said. ‘Two days ago.’

‘What happened? What happened then?’

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘And you never met him again?’ my father said.

‘I met him at his house,’ I said.

‘Why did you go there?’ My father was watching me. Maybe he hoped I was lying, and he would catch me at it, lying maybe to make my mother look worse, for some reason he imagined in which I would want to do something for him, to make him feel better by taking his side. ‘Did you go to his house alone?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I went with Mother. We had our dinner over there.’