Listen to Me (9 page)

“Sorry,” Maggie said. “I should be going even slower.”

“There's no one I'd rather have beside me,” he said.

“If you died, you mean?”

“If anything,” he said. “Maybe put the hazards on, though. Until the rain lets up. Might as well.”

She turned on the emergency lights.

Westbound, other cars followed suit one after the other, until soon the darkened highway seemed an uninterrupted stream of steady whites and blinking reds.

Maggie could no longer see the dotted lines of the road before her. Instead she leaned forward and concentrated on the milky water trails from the station wagon's tires.

“Dinner,” she said, reducing her speed even more. “Sure. Fine. My choice.”

And it was fine. Everything would be fine. Dinner in this neck of the woods would be a disappointment whatever they chose. But she'd take the fall. Mothers were always taking the fall. Sometimes it's just what they had to do to keep the family happy. True, Maggie wasn't an actual mother, but if you counted Gerome, they were an actual family. And sometimes women—whether they were mothers or not—just needed to take one for the team.

          “Just park and I'll walk with you,” Mark said.

“No point in both of us getting soaked,” she said.

Maggie had pulled over at the curb of a squat brick building with neon cacti and sombreros in the windows.

“Seriously,” he said. “Just park. We'll go in together.”

The wipers, still hiked up to their fastest speed, went quiet when Maggie put the car in park, and now the front windshield was a streaming mess of water and neon.

“This is stupid,” she said.

Gerome stood up in the backseat. He yawned.

“I'm not getting out without you,” said Mark.

“Fine,” she said.

The truth was he made her nervous when it came to parking. He should have just gotten out of the car like she wanted, but what kind of husband left his wife alone to park in the rain?

The lot was surprisingly full. Maggie circled it once, then twice, passing up two different empty spots.

“You hated those spaces?” Mark said.

She shook her head.

“There's one,” he said. “Another one.”

She was still shaking her head.

“You're mad?” he said.

“Stop talking,” she said.

“Park,” he said.

She slammed on the brakes. They were back at the curb.

“Get out,” she said.

He laughed because it was ridiculous. “You get so worked up.”

“You treat me like a child,” she said.

“You act like a child.”

“I'm not hungry anymore,” she said.

Gerome gave a little yowl.

“Well, I am,” Mark said. “So park the car.”

He could see Maggie was on the brink of laughter but determined not to let it out. With his forefinger and thumb, he zipped his lips shut then swallowed an invisible key. She put the car into drive and did another lap.

“So you know,” she said, “it's not that I think I can't park with you in the car.”

He pointed to his lips and shrugged, eyes wide.

“I just want a spot where I can still see the car from inside,” she said. “I want to be able to check on Gerome.”

“You think someone is going to steal the dog?”

“I thought you swallowed the key,” she said.

“In this weather?”

“So you didn't swallow the key,” she said. “You were lying.”

“I keep a spare in my pocket,” he said.

In spite of herself, she laughed. “Should have known,” she said.

A car backed out of a spot immediately outside the front windows of the restaurant. Maggie put on her turn signal and pulled in.

“I try to get mad and you turn instantly charming,” she said. “I married a snake oil salesman.”

“You break it, you buy it,” he said, which was something she'd whispered to him on their wedding day. He'd never forgotten. It had become something they both said now and then—a way to acknowledge the fleas and ticks of their relationship, but also to acknowledge how good they had it:
Elizabeth and muggers be damned!
Or that was his take on the saying anyway. That's how he imagined she'd meant it when she said it the first time and how he meant it anytime he'd said it since.

“Gerome'll be fine,” said Mark. He put a hand on her knee.

“He's just a dog after all,” she said.

“That's right,” he said.

“Just the world's best dog,” she said.

They both turned inward in their seats to look at the dog. He was still standing, staring at them, dread in his eyes. He was just a dog, but he knew they were about to leave him in the car alone, the rain pounding the roof.

“Should we make a run for it?” Maggie said.

“Now or never.”

Ten seconds later, they were standing under the canopy of a Mexican restaurant somewhere just east of Chillicothe. Mark's jeans were drenched. He looked down at Maggie. Her legs were glistening from the rain. He wanted to run his hands up and down them, an animal desire for ownership.

“You're a mess,” he said. He felt suddenly lusty.

“Let's get inside.”

They took a booth along the front windows, which were fogged. They could just barely make out their car and, inside, Gerome, who was still standing. But he'd give up in a minute or two and pass out. Then, when they returned, it would be like they'd never left at all.

Maggie scanned the menu. “Do you think this is safe?” she said. “Like, do you think we might get sick?”

Mark sighed. The Maggie he knew didn't ask questions about the safety of food. The Maggie he knew had made them go to Mexico for their honeymoon because she'd read about a no-kill shelter in need of supplies and thought it would be fun to do a little volunteering while they were supposed to be celebrating their marriage. “Just wait,” she'd said. “Just wait and see how much more you enjoy life after you've done some good for no reason other than that you can.” While they were down there, she'd eaten everything she could get her hands on—from a cart, from a trolley, from the back of a truck. Her digestive tract was indestructible. That was his Maggie. This one Mark wasn't so sure of.

“Do you know what you want?” he said.

“Do you want to split something?” She ran her finger up and down the page.

A waitress appeared.

Mark looked up. “What's good?” he said.

The waitress leaned toward him so that her cleavage was showing. She pressed her index finger onto his menu, next to a blurry picture of a plate piled high with food. “Spinach quesadilla,” she said. “Popular.”

When she removed her hand, the sweaty crosshatch of a fingerprint remained. With his thumb, Mark smeared the small grease stain away.

In the back of the restaurant—the kitchen, maybe—there was a small explosion, or what sounded like an explosion. The place went quiet. A few seconds later, the lights flickered. A few seconds after that, the lights went out altogether. The restaurant was pitch-black.

“Mark?” said Maggie.

“I'm right here,” he said.

“Shh. Just wait.” It was the waitress. She was whispering. She had leaned down even lower, her face close to their table. Mark thought he could feel her breath on his forehead, taste its salty foreignness in his mouth. His lustiness intensified and he pushed himself down into his seat. He considered sucking his thumb. “Just wait one second,” she said. “The electrical panel. It's been popping all night.”

A minute later there was the sound of another small explosion, and then the lights were back. Then, a moment after that, a sound system started up, the televisions behind the bar powered back on, and the place filled with a sort of Mexican ska that hadn't been playing before. The other diners—who Mark now realized must have been moderately to very drunk—cheered. The waitress beamed. “Told you,” she said. But it wasn't addressed to them so much as it was to the pad in her hand and the people around them.

Mark looked at Maggie. She was sitting dead still, her posture perfect, her lips pressed together so that he couldn't see that cherished gap. Her shoulders were high and tensed. Her immediate atmosphere had gone cold.

“Maybe we need a minute?” Maggie said. “I'm not ready to order yet.” She was looking at Mark, imploring him with her big eyes. What they were saying—her big doe eyes—was,
Let's get out of here, let's go right now, let's leave before there's trouble and we all wind up dead, dead, dead.
But he couldn't do it. He was tired. He needed some food and maybe a quick beer to help with the tension in his knees.

The waitress—petite, dark-skinned—was still standing there. She didn't have the body type or facial features that, twenty years ago, Mark would have found attractive. But now, a middle-aged man, he was able to see the appeal in the roundness of such a jaw, the fullness of such a thigh.

“One Corona,” he said.

“What are you doing?” said Maggie. “I thought you were driving next.”

“I am,” he said to Maggie. To the waitress he said, “And a lime.”

The waitress wrote it down. She didn't care about Mark and Maggie or who was driving next. For that matter, neither did she care about the jumpy electric panel in back or the encroaching storm outside. What she cared about was the tip jar and her next shot of tequila and her two or three little babies waiting for her at home. What she cared about had nothing to do with them, and for that—for her supreme, nearly palpable indifference—Mark felt his entire heart open up.

          When the waitress brought a third beer, Maggie reached for it before Mark could. She took a long, slow swig.

“Ten-thirty,” the waitress said, putting a bill on the table. “Closing time.”

The rain had stopped. The window they sat next to was bulleted by the occasional sheet of wind, but other than that, it seemed perhaps the worst of this particular storm might have passed. Gerome hadn't raised his head—not that Maggie had seen from where they were still sitting in the booth—in at least a half hour.

It wasn't so much that Maggie minded the idea of having a drink and then getting back in the car. In fact, one of her favorite things to do in Virginia, in Mark's home state, was drink and drive on the small back roads that zigzagged between farmland and country life. She loved the freedom of it, the thrill of an open container combined with a curving flat road late at night. But this wasn't a quiet private lane in Virginia they were talking about. This was a full-scale road trip. This was a late-at-night, middle-of-nowhere drive across five states, and the idea of adding booze to the equation just seemed thick. It hadn't been her idea, but there was no going back now.

She took another slow swig. Her mugger had been drunk. She'd smelled it on his breath, in his clothes. He'd been at a bar, some place that still let regulars and old-timers smoke inside. She often thought about which bar it might have been—was it a place close to where they lived? She wondered whether or not he still went there. Sometimes, lately, she wondered if he'd been too drunk to remember her the next day or if, even now, even still, he thought about her from time to time. Her hand trembled slightly. She didn't like the idea of that man out there, existing, conjuring her up whenever he wanted.

She closed her eyes, took another drink, and tried not to think of the coed. She would finish this beer and still be fine enough to deliver them to the closest hotel, which was no longer up for debate: getting a hotel was now a must.

Funny how she'd come 180 degrees in just one day. That morning you couldn't have paid her to consider stopping, but now, in this weather, alcohol in her blood
and
in Mark's? She'd sooner chew off her own hands than try to make the Blue Ridge tonight.

They'd have to start looking immediately. They were a half hour from Jackson, an hour from Gallipolis. They'd pass probably a half-dozen hotels in that hour. Not the best places, but one of them would get the job done. No problem. She'd check them in, walk Gerome by herself just to show Mark that she could—there was a small canister of mace in a zippered pocket of her purse—then she'd shower, slip into bed, pass out. She'd put this day behind her.

In the morning she'd wake up and they'd be halfway to Virginia. The storm would be a thing of the past, and everything could just go back to normal. On Monday she'd have Gwen saddle up one of the older mares for her, and she'd make a routine of it while they were at the farm. She'd get some riding in, go for regular runs in the mornings. Maybe she'd drive into town with Robert, hit a few golf balls at the country club with him if he didn't mind. The club had only recently let women on the course, and she wasn't sure how Robert felt about that. But she'd suss him out, and if all was copacetic, she'd hit some balls with him. Ten years ago she'd had a decent swing, or so Mark had told her.

The important thing—once they got to Virginia—was that she leave Mark alone. And that Mark, for a little while at least, leave her alone. They needed some time. Not
away
from each other exactly, but to themselves. And being with his family would allow them both some breathing room. It might be a strange thing for a daughter-in-law to admit, but Maggie genuinely looked forward to these trips, to his parents. They had a way of pampering her to just the right degree. All the love she never felt from her own parents, she felt from his. She drank up their attention. Plus, it was always so nice not to have to walk Gerome on a leash. That was something she always looked forward to, seeing him romp, watching his elegant vaults over the log jump-course near the lavender fields where Gwen sometimes worked the horses. He really was a beautiful dog.

It occurred to Maggie—as she watched Mark pull his wallet from his pants pocket—that he might want to have sex when they finally got to the hotel. Nothing turned Mark on more than a night in a strange place. Maggie shuddered at the thought. Don't get her wrong: she was still attracted to him. Of course she was! He had a beautiful head of hair. She liked to run her hand through it, grab a small fistful, then lean in close for a deep inhale. He had zero belly fat, but not in an obsessive caveman way. He was, in her honest and unbiased estimation, a visually perfect specimen of a real and total man. She'd marry him all over again for his looks alone. Probably every one of his students had crushes. Textbook scenario: If they were girls, they wanted to date him; if they were boys, they wanted to be him. But who cared about students? Mark was hers.