Fridays at Enrico's (20 page)

He forgot himself and just read. He started giggling, then laughing out loud uncontrollably as he read his wife's book. He knew Jaime could hear him, so he didn't try to restrain it. The stuff was really funny. And touching, though so far from Charlie's own early life that it seemed to be from another planet. Instead of having to make excuses, he finished it easily by five that evening. He sat at his desk, curiously empty. He had nothing to say to Jaime. He'd been sitting there laughing his ass off for three or four hours. She'd figured out by now that he thought the book was funny. Something his own book was not. And finished. And, as far as Charlie was concerned, literature. Which his book was decidedly not.

The only question before Charlie was how to let Jaime know how much he loved her book without getting into the business of his own. He got to his feet and went to the door, placing his hand on the cold knob. Shitty old iron fixture, rusty and ratty like all the fixtures in this house. He turned the knob, put a big smile on his face and pushed open the door.

Jaime sat feeding Kira. The kitchen smelled of spaghetti sauce, which simmered on the stove. Charlie looked around, conscious of Jaime's eyes on him. He liked this kitchen. He'd been happy here, they all had. This had been a wonderful part of their lives.

“Your book is everything you hoped,” he said.

“What do you mean?” He heard anxiety in her voice, and it made him feel good. What was that? He'd have to get over that.

“I always said, you're twice the writer I'll ever be,” Charlie heard himself saying, damn it. Just what he didn't want to say, but here was Jaime coming into his arms.

“Is it good?” she begged him.

“Better than good,” he improvised. Was this to be his life? “I need a beer
and some dinner,” he added lamely. What was he supposed to do, dance around the room?

But dinner put things into perspective. As good as her book was, it at least had a chance of getting published, could even make money. It if got through the agent barrier, the editor barrier, the publisher barrier, the critical barrier, then at last the public barrier. Wasn't that the point? To make one's living as a writer? And now his wife had proved, at least to him, that she was going to do exactly that. Never mind his feelings about his own book. Work In Progress. He was after a lot. He wanted to get it all in. Etc. He could not get away from the absurd feeling that if Jaime had been sent to Korea, captured, left to rot in a prison camp and then stuck in an army TB ward for over a year, she'd have come out of it with a great novel.

“Well, you gonna send it to Mills?” he asked her the next morning.

“Why don't we go to New York? We could fly there, take a room at the Algonquin Hotel, and walk around introducing ourselves to agents.”

“I have to teach,” Charlie heard himself saying. “But you could go.” It would be fun for her to see New York. He remembered Frankie Pippello from Kim Song. He wondered what Frankie was doing. He could look him up.

“It wouldn't be any fun without you,” she said, pretending to pout.

“It's so impractical.”

“Expensive and foolish. I crave doing it.”

Charlie had to remember that Jaime was a beautiful twenty-one-year-old girl, which wouldn't hurt. Not that she needed it, but maybe she did, maybe everybody did. It was a tough game, just ask anybody they knew. Ask Dick Dubonet, fighting his lonely war against
Playboy
. There were things to be said in favor of not being published, Charlie realized.

“Let's do it,” he said. “Fuck 'em.”

She laughed. “Let's think about it.”

Just before Charlie left for work the phone rang. “It's for you,” Jaime said to him. She handed him the phone and then walked out onto the back porch where Kira played in her pen.

“Hello?” he said.

“Charlie,” said Linda. “I hate to interrupt your writing—”

“I'm just on my way to the air base,” he said. “I teach typing today.”

“Oh, I was hoping you'd be downtown . . .”

“What's up?”

“I just feel like talking to you, is all. Nothing important.”

“I can be late,” Charlie said. “I'll call the base.”

He got dressed for work. They were casual at the air base, so he wore comfortable clothes, jeans, boots, old dress shirt. It was a nice day for a change, sunny and cool. He stepped out on the back porch to kiss Jaime and the baby good-bye, but they weren't there. He could see Jaime, holding Kira, out among the trees. “Bye!” he yelled, and Jaime waved. He went back into the house and into his office. He didn't need his briefcase today. He looked around. His manuscript, neat in its cardboard boxes. He picked them up. Heavy. He carried them out the front door and down the graveled drive. He set the two cartons next to the trash cans beside the mailbox and went back and got into his car, started it, and drove off.

He met Linda at the corner of SW Fifth and Alder. She was dressed for work in a black suit with a red blouse open at the throat. She smiled up at him. “Coffee?”

“Sure.”

She led him into a little café and they sat at the counter. They were the only people in the place apart from the old man in a dirty apron behind the counter. They ordered coffee and sat quietly waiting until the old man brought it and went back to his corner. Then Linda said, without looking up, “I'm leaving Dick.”

“Oh?”

“I'm going sailing.” She turned to him. “I'm tired of Portland.”

“When do you leave?”

“In a few days. The boat's in Astoria.”

“Where you headed?”

She smiled. “Greater Polynesia. Around the world. I don't know. Hawaii first.”

“Sounds great,” Charlie said.

“I just wanted you to know. I always thought there was something between us, you know?”

“Yeah,” Charlie admitted. “Does Dick know you're leaving?”

“He should, but he doesn't. It's just that I'm up to here.” She held her hand to her neck. “I could leave today, in fact.” She sipped her coffee. “You're my only regret.”

“Where's Astoria?” he asked. She told him and he said, “Let's go.”

She looked at him. “I'll cut class,” he said.

They got into his green Volkswagen. “Are you sure about this?” she asked him.

He looked at her blankly. He felt nothing. Had felt nothing all day. Whatever held him together all these years had dissolved, at least for now, and he felt pleasantly empty.

“I've always wanted to fuck you,” he said to Linda. He started the car.

“Now's your chance.” They drove west, out of Portland.

36.

When Jaime took out the garbage she found Charlie's book and right away she knew. She picked up the two cartons and carried them back into the house, trying not to think. Kira was asleep in her playpen, lying on her stomach holding her teddy bear. She'd lost her old teddy bear and Stan Winger had given her this new one, a cinnamon bear with a white vest. “Every kid should have a first-class bear,” he'd said when he handed it to Kira. Jaime thought about calling Stan. But he had no phone. She could call the air base, but she knew Charlie hadn't gone there. A man doesn't throw away ten years of work and probably his wife and child, and then go off to teach typing. She knew what that phone call had meant. Charlie and Linda were together. Jaime sat at the kitchen table, stomach hard as a rock. She knew Charlie was with
Linda because that's what she'd have done under the same circumstances, with some man. She didn't want to think Charlie might be gone for good. She assumed an insane wild romantic running off, followed by a sheepish return. The question was, how would Jaime make him pay? Or would she?

Charlie wasn't even really missing yet. He'd gone to teach typing. That left him free at four in the afternoon. His next class was Comp at six forty-five, and he usually went downtown to the Portland library or his office at Multnomah to correct papers. Sometimes to movies, or to hang out in a pool hall. Sometimes Jerry's or the Caffe Espresso. He wasn't due home until after night class, and even then sometimes he'd go out drinking beer. Charlie wasn't officially missing until well after 1:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. She wouldn't worry until then.

Shortly after dinner, while Kira made noise in the background and her mother sat at the kitchen table looking at her, Dick Dubonet called and said that Linda hadn't gone to work and was missing. “I hoped maybe she was out there,” Dick said. “Can I talk to Charlie?”

“He's at work.” Just then Kira let out a shriek. After some meaningless words, she hung up. Her mother stared at her.

“Where's Charlie?” she asked.

“I don't know.”

“Oh God.”

Jaime pulled Kira out of her chair and held her, patting her back as if she were an infant. “Tell me, Mom,” she said, a hard edge in her voice. “How did you deal with it?”

“With what, honey?”

“Am I supposed to take him back? He's obviously out fucking Linda.”

Edna looked unsurprised. “Are you sure, dear?” Edna was fine, Edna was getting married again, to a man whose entire life was devoted to box scores. Edna hadn't read the manuscript, didn't know what it was about. Jaime wondered if she'd ever have the courage to tell her. “It's about you swallowing Dad's adultery, about our life of sham and deceit on Washington Street, and how wonderful it all was.” Yeah. In the book she'd forgiven her father. Was that what sent Charlie running to Linda?

But lying in bed that night, stomach tight, she considered the devastating effect her novel must have had on him. Such a good man probably couldn't face the swelling of jealousy, the envy, the rage at her for doing what he himself could not. Couldn't face such a mass of ugliness coming up out of himself. So, recognizing his inherent evil, he flees to a woman. Not just any woman. The one Jaime herself might have run to, if she'd been a lesbian. A woman with a beautiful ancient face. Just the opposite of Jaime's modern mug. The same with their bodies. Jaime's was slender, small, perfectly proportioned, unless Charlie was a liar as well as an adulterer, while Linda's was spectacular, her breasts a little too big, her waist a little too narrow, her behind smaller than you'd expect, yet still voluptuous. No wonder Charlie sought to bury his suffering in her voluptuosity, if there were such a word.

Jaime awakened at three, thinking she heard something. Going into the kitchen all she saw was Isis. “Where's Charlie?” she asked the cat. She got a glass of water and then checked Kira. Looking down at her child she knew she'd forgive him. It was that or wreck everything. She wasn't going to do that.

Charlie rarely spoke of his time in the prison camp, but once Marty Greenberg had asked him how many of the POWs had cooperated with the Chinese. “We heard a lot about brainwashing,” Marty said. He smirked. “Does it really work?”

Charlie laughed. They were sitting around a booth at Jerry's eating burgers. “Brainwashing? Hell no, anything they asked, we told 'em. There wasn't any fucking resistance. Two guys escaped and made it back to our lines and got court-martialed for their trouble. They're still doing twenty in Leavenworth.” Charlie had been drinking. He pointed a finger at Marty. “Brainwashing is something the government made up to cover the fact that everybody cooperated. Good clean American boys wouldn't tell the Chinese shit, right? So there better be some weird oriental method of making us talk. Brainwashing my ass!”

Lying in bed waiting for the noise that meant he was home, she wondered now if Charlie had been brainwashed. Maybe that was why he couldn't finish his book. Simple as that. Or Charlie's book might be so big, so important,
that it was simply going to take years and years to write, and she'd have to help Charlie stay on track. Certainly forgiving a little adultery was part of the deal. Even the way it made her feel. Betrayed. Abandoned. Down below the hurt, rage, hate, revenge. When she got him back she'd make him pay. No, that was terrible. Either let him go or keep him. And if you keep him, forgive him.

She awakened to Kira's cry. She looked at the clock. It was after 6:00 a.m. Charlie was not beside her. She rose and tended her child and then made herself a cup of tea. Her mother came in dressed for work and sat down. Edna's eyes were sympathetic.

“Do you want some tea?” she asked her mother. Why did she feel so humiliated?

“I'll get something at the drug store,” Edna said. “Have you decided what to do?”

“No,” Jaime admitted. The phone rang. Dick Dubonet. He was hysterical, and Jaime had to be superior to him and ease his mind, telling him not to jump to conclusions, Charlie and Linda were probably somewhere drinking coffee and talking. “They are friends, you know,” she snapped at Dick, and got off the phone.

“Is that a possibility?” her mother asked.

“No.” Jaime began crying for the first time. She sat at the table and cried while her mother stood behind her holding her shoulders and murmuring in her ear. Jaime felt about fourteen. Fourteen and jilted.