E
va and I could have gone on like this forever, I suppose: the stolen hours, the long walks. I imagine we could have found a certain happiness, a contentment, in this secret life. We could have contained it, kept it small and safe. I’m sure we would not be the first to settle for this kind of love. But right before Christmas that year, Ted finally lost his job, and this set into motion everything that followed. Of course that’s only something you can understand in retrospect. At the time, it had seemed a minor inconvenience, a small wrench thrown into the cog of our quiet machine. But now, later, I can see it as the beginning of the downward spiral. It was simply the beginning of the end.
Eva said only that it was his drinking that caused him to get fired, but Frankie was able to glean the details from their driveway conversations. As he and Frankie shoveled after the first snowfall, Ted told him he’d gone to lunch with a potential client, had a few too many lunch-hour martinis, and lost his temper. Ted claimed the man had attacked him first, but I knew how Ted’s rage worked. It took little to provoke him, and he was never to blame. Later, as they hung Christmas lights on our respective houses, Ted suggested that there was another agency that had already offered to snatch him up. But Christmas came and went, and Ted’s car remained in the driveway each morning. Eva’s phone calls were sporadic and hushed. I don’t know what Ted did all day, but he almost never left the house; I pictured him standing guard and wondered even if he had somehow planned this.
If not for our nightly walks, Eva and I might never have gotten to see each other. That winter was the harshest winter in my memory, and I had grown up in Vermont, where the wind can feel like the cold blade of a knife, where most people hibernate from December to April, leaving their homes only when absolutely necessary. But each evening, Eva and I continued to meet under the muted glow of the one streetlight on our street, though sometimes even Calder, with her thick golden coat of fur, was reluctant to head out into the bitter cold. Eva told Ted that her doctor had mandated this exercise, to help in her recovery, to maintain her health. What could Ted say to this? I simply told Frankie I needed fresh air.
On the nights when Calder refused to put her paws beyond the front door, Eva and I would walk anyway, sometimes all the way into the village to get a cup of coffee or, on the weekends, see a movie. Even though Eva was young and healthy, the recovery process was a gradual one. She did not complain, but I could see the pain in her tiny winces and the occasional shudder. And so we walked slowly, me holding her elbow like an elderly woman’s so that she wouldn’t slip on the icy pavement. I let myself imagine sometimes growing old with her, knowing that this is how it would be. By the time we had trudged through the snow all the way into town, our feet and faces were numb, and the warmth of the theater was a welcome reprieve, the opportunity to sit down a welcome one. We also discovered that we were often alone in the dark theater, other people in town opting to stay out of the storms, which seemed to come one after another, creating the cumulative effect of an endless barrage of snow. That winter we hunkered down and watched whatever was showing:
Lawrence of Arabia
and
To Kill a Mockingbird
and
How the West Was Won
. In the uncomfortable seats, we held hands underneath the jackets on our laps. I got fat on buttered popcorn and candy. Eva also began to regain some semblance of her former self.
Because of Ted’s unemployment, I knew Eva was worried about money, and so I always offered to pay. The weekly allowance Frankie gave me for groceries and other household expenses went a long way when I started to more carefully shop the sales and clip coupons. I gave up certain luxuries (the expensive shampoo I liked, the better cuts of meat at DeMoulas) in exchange for the extravagance of two hours alone in the dark with Eva, even if it meant suffering through
The Birds,
which terrified us both. Sometimes, we’d see the same movie two or three times. We could almost recite every line from
Bye-Bye Birdie
. And inside the dark theater Eva slowly healed, though it wasn’t until spring that I saw her scars.
In May, Ted finally got a job interview at another insurance agency. After the kids left for school and Ted and Frankie took off that morning, I had to keep myself from running across the street. It was the first time Ted had left the house in months. Early on, he’d optimistically sent his resume off to dozens of companies, but to no avail. For the last couple of months he had spent his days drinking and listening to old records, passing out soon after dinner. This was how Eva had managed to escape for our movie dates.
I let myself into Eva’s house, and Calder met me in the foyer, leaping with excitement. “I’m happy to see you too, Calder!” I exclaimed, as she stood up, her big paws pushing at my shoulders. She wasn’t a puppy anymore; she had to have weighed nearly seventy pounds now. “Where’s Eva?” I asked her.
She dropped back down to all fours, her ears perked up, and she looked around, confused, jerking her head around as though she were looking for her.
“That’s okay, girl, I can find her. Eva?” I hollered up the stairs.
I could hear the shower running, and I took the stairs two at a time. I peeked into Rose’s room and saw that she was asleep in her crib. I stood outside the bathroom door and knocked gently.
“Teddy? What are you doing back?” she said.
“It’s me,” I said, gently pushing the door open.
The room was steamy and smelled of her. I breathed her in, let her fill my lungs. I opened the shower door, and it took my breath away. Her back was to me; I studied the familiar curve of her waist and hips. The endless expanse of her legs. The two dimples on either side of her spine. She was so beautiful, I felt my entire body tremble and my heart fly to my throat. She turned toward me, her arms covering her chest.
I shook my head. “You don’t have to hide.”
She slowly, tentatively, lowered her arms, and I felt tears welling up hotly in my eyes. I blinked them away. It was so disconcerting: this obliteration, this elimination. I felt the way I had as a child when my father’s farmhand, Link, lost his arm in a thresher. My mother had taken us to see him when he came home from the hospital, and I couldn’t seem to make what I was seeing and what should have been coalesce: that spectral limb somehow more present in its absence. I knew I needed to touch her, to make this real for myself: to make
her
real.
She stepped out of the shower, dripping water on the linoleum. She stood before me, her skin still hot from the shower as I touched her, gingerly, tenderly, tracing the scars that ran like violent red rivers across her pale skin. We didn’t speak. We didn’t have to. I knew that I was the first, the only, person to have touched her like this since the surgery.
It was several more months before we were alone in this way again. But I dreamed those scars nearly every night, the shimmery red rivers on her flesh.
Ted did not get that job, or the next three he interviewed for either, and so while the winter of 1962 was harsh and long, the days of spring and early summer of 1963 passed by even more slowly, dripping like sap from a maple tree into a cold bucket. Calder started coming with us on our walks again, and so we stopped going to the movies. I couldn’t wait for August, but August seemed far away, distant and unreachable. August teased us with its possibilities, its promise of freedom. Of being alone together at the lake again.
In the hazy, early summer evenings, our two families sat outside watching the children chase fireflies: Ted and Frankie drinking too much, and Eva and I always dreading the possible aftermath of these binges. Ted was a live grenade since he’d lost his job, always on the verge of explosion. And you never knew what would ignite his fuse. What little spark. I was afraid of Ted, and worried for Eva. Still, Ted and Frankie enjoyed each other’s companionship, making these weekend get-togethers possible, and I would have tolerated just about anything if it meant getting to spend time with Eva. Even Ted.
On the Fourth of July, we had the Wilsons over for a barbeque. Our plan was to head into town for the fireworks after the sun went down. That summer Frankie had found a Ping-Pong table in a Dumpster and brought it home. I told him he was not allowed to put it up in the basement. There would be no room for the Girl Scouts if he did, no place for the girls to play. And so he’d reluctantly set it up in the backyard, covering it with an old tarp when it rained. Ping-Pong was not my game, but Eva was a stellar player, a match even to Frankie, whose Ping-Pong skills were remarkable.
“It’s all reflexes,” he said, grinning. “And I’ve got great reflexes.”
And so Ted and I sat watching them compete.
Frankie and Ted had been drinking all afternoon, and so had Eva. I noticed that she did this sometimes when Ted was drinking. Perhaps it bolstered her, made her less afraid of him and his tirades. I watched her confidence and bravado grow with each sloe gin fizz, her need to appease him slipping away.
Before she served, she took a long sip and set her glass down. “Ready to lose?” she said to Frankie, playfully, winking.
Ted stiffened next to me. His anger was a palpable thing. It filled his body, but it also filled the air around him. It buzzed like the cicadas that had come that summer. It was electric.
“I’m ready to beat the pants off of you,” Frankie joked back.
“But I’m not wearing pants, Frankie!” Eva said, swiveling her hips, her pencil skirt hugging the curves she had been able to keep.
Eva had prosthetic breasts, pads that she inserted into her bras. With clothes on, she looked exactly the way she had before the surgery. The illusion was perfect.
As she leaned forward to grab her paddle, kicking one leg up behind her, Ted stood up. “Time to go home,” he said, grabbing her arm.
She turned to him, scowling. “But the sun hasn’t even gone down, Teddy,” she said. “What about the fireworks?”
“I said, it’s time to go home.” Ted’s words were mushy in his mouth: oatmeal, soggy grits.
“Well, I’m busy playing a game right now,” Eva said, tottering a little on her heels as she pulled away from him. She picked up the paddle and tossed the ball into the air. But Frankie wasn’t watching the ball. He was watching Ted.
Ted yanked her arm back, and the ball bounced off the table and landed in the grass.
“Ow,” she said, jerking away from him again, and I stood up, feeling my own sloe gin fizzes in my knees. I felt weak, dizzy, and sick.
“Stop,” I said, my voice softer than I meant for it to be.
But he didn’t stop. Instead he grabbed her shoulders, and as she twisted away from him, he held on. Her bra strap slipped in the struggle, and her breast, that fake breast, shifted. When she stepped back away from him, she looked deformed. Wrong.
I felt my whole body grow hot in shame. In anger. But as I was about to hurl my body at him, to start pounding my fists into that enormous chest of his, Frankie stood up.
“It’s time for you to go home, Ted,” he said.
“What’s that, Mailman? You think I’m going to leave my wife here with
you?
”
Frankie’s chest expanded. He was trying to be taller, bigger, stronger. That too filled me with white-hot shame. And then Frankie was pushing his hands against Ted’s chest. “At least I’ve
got
a job.”
“Don’t, Frankie,” I said, reaching for him.
“Stay out of this, Billie,” Frankie warned.
The children came running around the side yard just then; they had been playing “house” out front. Rose was nearly three now, and she led the way.
The children
. My first instinct was to get the children away from this. I rushed to the back porch and ushered them all through the back door and into the house. “Let’s make those root beer floats I promised,” I said. “Who wants a float?” Distracted, they all squealed, “Me! I do! I want one!”
“Why is Daddy pushing Mr. Wilson?” Francesca asked once we were inside the kitchen.
“They’re just playing around,” I said, and Chessy scowled.
“Just come on,” I said, handing her a corked bottle of Frankie’s homemade root beer. “I need you to help me.” Obediently, she nodded and grabbed the tub of vanilla ice cream from the icebox and went to the kitchen table.
From the kitchen window, I couldn’t see what was happening outside. It was horrific listening to the muffled sounds, unable to make out what was going on. I could hear Ted bellowing and Frankie trying to match that voluminous voice with his own, but what really bothered me was Eva’s silence. Strain as I might, I couldn’t hear her at all.
Not long after I’d scooped ice cream into six tumblers and poured root beer over each one, Ted barged through the back door and said, “It’s time to go home.”
The children seemed to know better than to protest, and they silently gathered their things, leaving their ice cream melting in their cups.
“Where’s Eva?” I managed to squeak out.
Ted either didn’t hear me or chose not to acknowledge me. He ushered the kids out into our foyer toward the front door. I was staring at the back of his head.
“Ted,” I said again, louder this time. “Where is Eva?”
Ted turned on his heel and growled at me. “She’s not feeling well. She’s gone home to get some rest.”
Frankie had come in through the back door, and he was sweating. He kept slicking his hair back nervously with one hand. I knew this meant something terrible had happened outside. Something awful that he had not managed to stop.
As Ted and the children disappeared out the front door, I said to my girls, “Why don’t you take your floats upstairs?”
“We aren’t allowed to take food or drinks upstairs,” Chessy argued.
“I said
go
.”
They slipped up the stairs, and I watched as their feet disappeared through the railings. Frankie was sitting down at the table, head in his hand.