Roadwork (20 page)

“Oh, Bart. How are you?” Impossible to read her voice.

“Fair.”

“How are the Southern Comfort supplies holding out?”

“Mary, I’m not drinking.”

“Is that a victory?” She sounded cold, and he felt a touch of panic, mostly that his judgment had been impossibly bad. Could someone he had known so long and whom he thought he knew so well be slipping away so easily?

“I guess it is,” he said lamely.

“I understand the laundry had to close down,” she said.

“Probably just temporary.” He had the weird sensation that he was riding in an elevator, conversing uncomfortably with someone who regarded him as a bore.

“That isn’t what Tom Granger’s wife said.” There, accusation at last. Accusation was better than nothing.

“Tom won’t have any problem. The competition uptown has been after him for years. The Brite-Kleen people.”

He thought she sighed. “Why did you call, Bart?”

“I think we ought to get together,” he said carefully. “We have to talk this over, Mary.”

“Do you mean a divorce?” She said it calmly enough, but he thought it was her voice in which he sensed panic now.

“Do you want one?”

“I don’t know
what
I want.” Her calm fractured and she sounded angry and scared. “I thought everything was fine. I was happy and I thought you were. Now, all at once, that’s all changed.”

“You thought everything was fine,” he replied. He was suddenly furious with her. “You must have been pretty stupid if you thought that. Did you think I kicked away my job for a practical joke, like a high school senior throwing a cherry bomb into a toilet?”

“Then what is it, Bart? What happened?”

His anger collapsed like a rotten yellow snowbank and he found that there were tears beneath. He fought them grimly, feeling betrayed. This wasn’t supposed to happen sober. When you were sober you should be able to keep fucking control of yourself. But here he was, wanting to spill out everything and sob on her lap like a kid with a busted skate and a skinned knee. But he couldn’t tell her what was wrong because he didn’t precisely know and crying without knowing was too much like it’s-time-for-the-loony-bin stuff.

“I don’t know,” he said finally.

“Charlie?”

Helplessly, he said: “If that was part of it, how could you be so blind to the rest of it?”

“I miss him too, Bart. Still. Every day.”

Resentment again.
You’ve got a funny way of showing it, then.

“This is no good,” he said finally. Tears were tricking down his cheeks but he had kept them out of his voice.
Gentlemen, I think we’ve got it licked,
he thought, and almost cackled. “Not over the phone, I called to suggest lunch on Monday. Handy Andy’s.”

“All right. What time?”

“It doesn’t matter. I can get off work.” The joke fell to the floor and died bloodlessly there.

“One o’clock?” she asked.

“Sure. I’ll get us a table.”

“Reserve one. Don’t just get there at eleven and start drinking.”

“I won’t,” he said humbly, knowing he probably would.

There was a pause. There seemed nothing else to say. Faintly, almost lost in the hum of the open wire, ghostly other voices discussed ghostly other things. Then she said something that surprised him totally.

“Bart, you need to see a psychiatrist.”

“I need a what?”

“Psychiatrist. I know how that sounds, just coming out flat. But I want you to know that whatever we decide, I won’t come back and live with you unless you agree.”

“Good-bye, Mary,” he said slowly. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

“Bart, you need help I can’t give.”

Carefully, inserting the knife as well as he could over two miles of blind wire, he said: “I knew that anyway. Good-bye, Mary.”

He hung up before he could hear the result and caught himself feeling glad. Game, set, and match. He threw a plastic milk pitcher across the room and caught himself feeling glad that he hadn’t thrown something breakable. He opened the cupboard over the sink, yanked out the first two glasses his hands came to, and threw them on the floor. They shattered.

Baby, you fucking baby!
he screamed at himself.

He slammed his right fist against the wall to shut out the voice and cried out at the pain. He held his wounded right in his left and stood in the middle of the floor, trembling. When he had himself under control he got a dustpan and the broom and swept the mess up, feeling scared and sullen and hung over.

He got on the turnpike, drove a hundred and fifty miles, and then drove back. He didn’t dare drive any farther. It was the first gasless Sunday and all the turnpike pit stops were closed. And he didn’t want to walk. See? He told himself. This is how they get shitbirds like you, Georgie.

Fred? Is that really you? To what do I owe the honor of this visit, Freddy?

Fuck off, buddy.

On the way home he heard this public service ad on the radio:

 

“So you’re worried about the gasoline shortage and you want to make sure that you and your family aren’t caught short this winter. So now you’re on your way to your neighborhood gas station with a dozen five-gallon cans. But if you’re really worried about your family, you better turn around and go back home. Improper storage of gasoline is dangerous. It’s also illegal, but never mind that for a minute. Consider this: When gasoline fumes mix with the air, they become explosive. And one gallon of gas has the explosive potential of twelve sticks of dynamite. Think about that before you fill those cans. And then think about your family. You see—we want you to live.

“This has been a public service announcement from WLDM. The Music People remind you to leave gasoline storage to the people who are equipped to do it properly.”

 

He turned off the radio, slowed down to fifty, and pulled back into the cruising lane. “Twelve sticks of dynamite,” he said. “Man, that’s amazing.”

If he had looked into the rearview mirror, he would have seen that he was grinning.

He got to Handy Andy’s at just past eleven-thirty and the headwaiter gave him a table beside the stylized batwings that led to the lounge—not a good table, but one of the few empties left as the place filled up for lunch. Handy Andy’s specialized in steaks, chops, and something called the Andyburger, which looked a little like a chefs salad stuck between a huge sesame seed roll with a toothpick to hold the whole contraption together. Like all big city restaurants within executive walking distance, it went through indefinable cycles of inness and outness. Two months ago he could have come in here at noon and had his pick of tables—three months hence he might be able to do the same. To him, it had always been one of life’s minor mysteries, like the incidents in the books of Charles Fort, or the instinct that always brought the swallows back to Capistrano.

He looked around quickly as he sat down, afraid he would see Vinnie Mason or Steve Ordner or some other laundry executive. But the place was stuffed with strangers. To his left, a young man was trying to persuade his girl that they could afford three days in Sun Valley this February. The rest of the room’s conversation was just soft babble—soothing.

“A drink, sir?” The waiter was at his elbow.

“Scotch-rocks, please,” he said.

“Very good, sir,” the waiter said.

He made the first one last until noon, killed two more by twelve-thirty, and then, just mulishly, he ordered a double. He was just draining it dry when he saw Mary walk in and pause in the door between the foyer and the dining room, looking for him. Heads turned to look at her and he thought:
Mary, you ought to thank me
—
you’re beautiful.
He raised his right hand and waved.

She raised her hand in return greeting and came to his table. She was wearing a knee-length wool dress, soft patterned gray. Her hair was braided in a single thick cable that hung down to her shoulder blades, a way he could not recall having seen her wear it (and maybe worn that way for just that reason). It made her look youthful, and he had a sudden guilty flash of Olivia, working beneath him on the bed he and Mary had shared so often.

“Hello, Bart,” she said.

“Hi. You look awful pretty.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you want a drink?”

“No ... just an Andyburger. How long have you been here?”

“Oh, not long.”

The lunch crowd had thinned, and his waiter appeared almost at once. “Would you like to order now, sir?”

“Yes. Two Andyburgers. Milk for the lady. Another double for myself.” He glanced at Mary, but her face showed nothing. That was bad. If she had spoken, he would have canceled the double. He hoped he wouldn’t have to go to the bathroom, because he wasn’t sure he could walk straight. That would be a wonderful tidbit to carry back to the old folks at home. Carry me back to Ol’ Virginnie. He almost giggled.

“Well, you’re not drunk, but you’re on your way,” she said, and unfolded her napkin on her lap.

“That’s pretty good,” he said. “Did you rehearse it?”

“Bart, let’s not fight.”

“No,” he agreed.

She toyed with her water glass; he picked at his coaster.

“Well?” she said finally.

“Well what?”

“You seemed to have something in mind when you called. Now that you’re full of Dutch courage, what is it?”

“Your cold is better,” he said idiotically, and tore a hole in his coaster without meaning to. He couldn’t tell her what was on the top of his mind: how she seemed to have changed, how she seemed suddenly sophisticated and dangerous, like a cruising secretary who has bartered for a later lunch hour and who would refuse any offer of a drink unless it came from a man inside a four-hundred-dollar suit. And who could tell just by glancing at the cut of the fabric.

“Bart, what are we going to do?”

“I’ll see a psychiatrist if you want me to,” he said, lowering his voice.

“When?”

“Pretty soon.”

“You can make an appointment this afternoon if you want to.”

“I don’t know any shr—any.”

“There’s the Yellow Pages.”

“That seems like a half-assed sort of way to pick a brainpeeker.”

She only looked at him and he looked away, uncomfortable.

“You’re angry with me, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Yeah, well, I’m not working. Fifty dollars an hour seems sort of high for an unemployed fellow.”

“What do you think I’m living on?” she asked sharply. “My folks’ charity. And as you’ll recall, they’re both retired.”

“As I recall, your father’s got enough shares in SOI and Beechcraft to keep the three of you on easy street well into the next century.”

“Bart, that’s not so.” She sounded startled and hurt.

“Bull
shit
it’s not. They were in Jamaica last winter, Miami the year before that, at the Fountainbleau no less, and Honolulu the year before
that.
Nobody does that on a retired engineer’s salary. So don’t give me that poorbox routine, Mary—”

“Stop it, Bart. The green’s showing.”

“Not to mention a Cadillac Gran DeVille and a Bonneville station wagon. Not bad. Which one do they use when they go to pick up their food stamps?”

“Stop it!”
she hissed at him, her lips drawn back a bit from her small white teeth, her fingers gripping the edge of the table.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“Lunch is coming.”

The temperature between them cooled a little as the waiter set their Andyburgers and French fries before them, added minuscule dishes of green peas and baby onions, then retired. They ate without speaking for a while, both concentrating on not drooling down their chins or in their laps. I wonder how many marriages the Andyburger has saved? he wondered. Simply by its one providential attribute—when you’re eating one you have to shut up.

She put hers down half-eaten, blotted her mouth with her napkin, and said, “They’re as good as I remember. Bart, do you have any sensible idea at all about what to do?”

“Of course I do,” he said, stung. But he didn’t know what his idea was. If he’d gotten in another double, he might have.

“Do you want a divorce?”

“No,” he said. Something positive seemed to be called for.

“Do you want me to come back?”

“Do you want to?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Shall I tell you something, Bart? I’m worried about myself for the first time in twenty years. I’m
fending
for myself.” She started to take a bite of her Andyburger, then set it down again. “Did you know I almost didn’t marry you? Had that thought ever crossed your mind?”

The surprise on his face seemed to satisfy her.

“I didn’t think it had. I was pregnant, so of course I wanted to marry you. But part of me didn’t. Something kept whispering that it would be the worst mistake of my life. So I roasted myself over a slow fire for three days, throwing up every morning when I woke up, hating
you
for that, thinking this, that, and the other. Run away. Get an abortion. Have the baby and put it up for adoption. Have the baby and keep it. But I finally decided to do the sensible thing. The sensible thing.” She laughed. “And then lost the baby anyway.”

“Yes, you did,” he muttered, wishing the conversation would turn from this. It was too much like opening a closet and stepping into puke.

“But I was happy with you, Bart.”

“Were you?” he asked automatically. He found he wanted to get away. This wasn’t working. Not for him anyway.

“Yes. But something happens to a woman in marriage that doesn’t happen to a man. Do you remember when you were a child how you never worried about your parents? You just expected them to be there and they were, same as the food and the heat and the clothes.”