Separate Flights (11 page)

‘I don't know.'

‘You might as well go today.'

‘I guess so.'

‘Is Edith leaving?'

‘We've never talked about it.'

‘Oh, you must have.'

‘No.'

‘So you might be like the coyote.'

It was a joke we'd had from the Roadrunner cartoons; one of us trying something fearful and new was like the coyote: poised in midair a thousand feet above a canyon and as long as he doesn't look down he won't fall.

‘It doesn't matter,' I said. ‘I wouldn't take her from Hank anyway, if he wants her.'

‘So it's not her: it's me. Well Jesus. I've been telling you and telling you you don't love me. But I never really meant it. I never believed it at all. Was it the house?'

‘I don't know.'

‘No. I guess you can't know, anymore than I can know why I still love you. Jack?' Her lip trembled. ‘Don't you love me even a little?'

I looked above her, over the pots on the stove, at the wall. Then I closed my eyes and shook my head and said: ‘No, Terry.' Then without looking at her I left. I went to the bedroom and undressed in the dark and got into bed. I heard her in the kitchen, weeping softly.

Sometimes I slept and all night she did not come to bed and all night I woke and listened to her. For a while she stayed in the kitchen: she stopped crying and I went to sleep listening to her silence, and when I woke I knew she was still there, sitting at the table under the light. I had not been heartbroken since I was very young; but I could remember well enough what it was like and I wished Terry were leaving me, I wished with all my heart that she had come to me one afternoon and looked at me with pity but resolve and said:
I'm sorry but I must go
—I wish I were now lying in bed grieving for my wife who had stopped loving me. I rolled one way and then another and then lay on my back and breathed shallow and slow as though sleeping, but I couldn't; I felt her sitting in the kitchen and I felt her thinking of me with Edith and me divorced laughing on a sunny sidewalk with some friend, and I felt her heart's grieving, and then I was nearly crying too. I sat up, slowly shaking my head, then lit a cigarette and lay on my back, listening to her silence, then my legs tightened, ready to go to her, but I drew on the cigarette and shook my head once viciously on the pillow and pushed my legs down against the mattress. Then I heard her taking pots from the stove: footsteps from the stove to the sink, and the sound of the heavy iron skillet lowered into the dry sink, footsteps again and this time the higher ringing sound of the steel pot and then higher again of the aluminum one. She began scraping one of them with a knife or fork or spoon. She knocked the pot against the inside of the plastic garbage can and started scraping another. Then she washed and dried them and hung them on the pegboard. She ran water into the sink and I lay staring into the night as she washed the dishes. She washed them quickly, then she was moving about and I guessed she was circling the table, wiping it clean, and after that the stove. Still she was moving with quick steps, into the laundry room and out again, to the sink, and she lowered a bucket into it and turned on the water; I swung my feet to the floor and sat on the edge of the bed. When she started mopping the floor I went to the kitchen. She knew I was there at the doorway but she didn't look up: she was bent over the stroking sponge mop, her head down, toward me; water had splashed on the front of her yellow dress; she was mopping fast, pushing ahead of her a tiny surf of dirty water and soap. Finally she had to stand straight and look at me. Her forehead was dripping, her hair was stringy with sweat, and I could not imagine her with Hank a few hours earlier.

‘Come to bed.'

‘No. I want to clean my house. I've been a pig and I've beaten you and thrown things at you. I know it's too late for you but maybe not for me, maybe I can at least be good for my babies. Or maybe you'll miss them and want to come back and the house will be clean. Couldn't you just stay and keep screwing Edith? Couldn't you be happy then?'

‘You don't want that.'

‘No, I guess not.' Mopping again, bent over. ‘I don't know. Maybe I could change. Go to bed, love; I want to clean my house.'

I slept lightly. Sometimes I heard Terry moving about the house, and I felt the night leave and the day grow lighter and warmer; at one warm and light time I heard a vacuum cleaner beneath my dreams. When I heard the children's voices I woke up; but I would not open my eyes. I lay on my side and listened to their voices. After a while I heard Terry upstairs, in Sean's room above me. She was walking from one spot to another; then she pushed furniture across the floor. I opened my eyes and looked into the living room: Natasha was standing in the doorway.

‘You should see the house.'

‘What's she doing upstairs?'

‘She just fed us and cleaned up our mess and now she's doing the upstairs.'

Sean called from the kitchen: ‘Is that Daddy you're talking to?' I winked at Natasha.

‘Is that true you don't love Mom?' she said.

‘Who told you that? The morning paper?'

‘I heard Mom last night.'

‘Oh? Who was she talking to?'

Sean came in, carrying a full glass of orange juice; he held it out in front of him, his forearm extended, and watched it while he stiffly walked to the bed.

‘Thanks, chief,' I said, and kissed him.

‘I couldn't hear you,' Natasha said. ‘Just Mom.'

‘Are you getting divorced?' Sean said.

‘Wow. You really know how to wake a fellow up.'

Upstairs the vacuum cleaner went on. I imagined what Terry had got from under the bed.

‘Natasha said you were leaving.'

‘That's an idea. Where should I go? Join the Mounties?'

‘I want to live with you,' Sean said.

‘I'm not going to choose,' Natasha said.

‘Ah me. You shouldn't listen to drunk grown-ups fighting, sweetheart. It's always exaggerated.'

‘Mom said you were leaving and you love Edith and you screwed her.'

‘Do you know what that means?'

‘Yes.'

‘What?' Sean said. ‘What what means?'

‘Nothing,' I said, looking at him and feeling Natasha's eyes on me. ‘Just grown-up foolishness.' I looked at Natasha. ‘Let's get on our bikes.'

‘You haven't eaten yet.'

‘Let's go to the river,' Sean said.

‘We'll stop someplace where I can eat and you two can have something to drink.'

I told them to get the bikes out while I dressed. When they were gone, I called Edith to tell her I couldn't meet her. Hank answered.

‘I can't run today,' I said. ‘I'm sick. The flu. Tell Edith I have the flu and maybe she'll feel guilty for spreading it to her friends.'

White clouds were piled in the sky, and from the southwest gray was coming. I led Natasha and Sean in single file down our street, to the river. From our left the air was turning cooler and the gray was coming. We stopped at a small grocery store and got a quart of apple cider and stood on the sidewalk, drinking from the bottle and looking across the blacktop at the dark river.

‘Is it true about you and Edith?' There was in her eyes a will to know, a look of deep interest; nothing more.

‘Is what true?' Sean said. He was down there, below our voices and souls, looking at the river.

‘It is and it isn't,' I said to Natasha's eyes. ‘I don't know if I have the wisdom to explain it to a little girl I love.'

She took a quarter from her pocket and gave it to Sean.

‘Go buy us something to eat.'

He hurried into the store.

‘Where'd you get that?'

‘My allowance.'

‘I'll explain as well as I can,' I said. I watched her eyes. ‘I don't want to abort it.' They hadn't changed.

‘What's that mean?'

‘To kill something before it's fully developed. Like a party you're planning. Or a baby inside the mother.'

‘Oh.'

Now I remembered Terry lowering her voice:
I should have aborted
; even in her raging grief the old instinct of an animal protecting her young was there. Then I looked at the river and the lush woods on the other side, turning bright green as the gray and black moved faster over us; at the horizon the last puffs of white and strips of blue were like daylight under a tent wall; I turned from Natasha because there were tears in my eyes, not for her because she was strong and young and there was hope, but for Terry and her trembling lip:
Jack? Don't you love me even a little?
I am afraid of water; but looking out at the river I wanted suddenly to be in its flow, turning over once, twice, with the current; going down with slow groping arms, and hands opening and shutting on cool muddy death, my hair standing out from my head as I went bubbling down to the bottom. I shuddered, as much with remorse as fear. Then my wish was over. I stood alive again and breathed the rain-scented air and I knew that I would grow old with Terry.

‘Mother and I have made mistakes,' I said. She was standing at my side, almost touching; I kept my eyes on the woods across the river. Seagulls crossed my vision. ‘You must trust us to make things better for everyone. Your mother and I love each other. She's a good and wonderful woman, and don't worry about anything you heard last night, people are all sorts of things, and one mistake is only a small part of a person, Mother's very good, and Edith is very good, and—'

‘And so are you,' she said, and slipped her hand into mine and I couldn't go on.

The sky was completely gray now and it watched us ride home; we put our bikes in the garage and crossed the lawn and as we climbed the back steps it began to rain. We stood in the darkened kitchen and watched it coming down hard and loud. Sean was touching my leg. I tousled his hair, then turned on the light. The room changed: when it was dark and we had looked out at a day as dark as our kitchen, I had felt we were still out there in the rain, the three of us, somewhere by the river and trees; I could live in that peace, from one fresh rain-filled moment to the next, forever. Now with the light we were home again; our bodies were lightly touching but the flow, the unity, was gone. We were three people in a troubled house. I touched them and went to the bedroom. Terry was putting my clothes in a suitcase. She looked clean and very tired; she had showered and changed clothes. She tried to smile, failed, tried again, and made it.

‘Was it awful?' she said.

‘Was what awful? Why are you doing that?'

‘I thought that's where you went. To tell the kids.'

I pushed the suitcase to make room, and lay on the bed; I would not look at her.

‘Unpack it,' I said.

‘Why? Couldn't you tell them?'

‘I don't want to.'

‘I'll call them in and we'll both tell them.'

‘I mean I don't want to leave.'

She stepped closer to the bed and I was afraid she would touch me.

‘You really don't?'

‘No.'

‘Is it the kids? I mean I know it's the kids but is it just the kids? You could see them, you know. Whenever you wanted. And I'd never move away, I'd live here as long as you teach here—so if it's just telling them, we can do it and get it over with, these things are always hard, but we can do it—'

‘It's not that.' I shut my eyes. ‘Unpack the suitcase.'

Across the bed I felt her pain and hope. I kept my eyes shut and listened to her moving from the bed to the closet and hanging up my clothes. Then she came around to my side of the bed and sat on the edge and put a hand on my cheek.

‘Hey,' she said softly. ‘Look at me.'

I did.

‘It'll be all right,' she said. ‘You'll see. It'll be all right again.'

She slept the rest of the afternoon, then woke to cook dinner; during dinner she and the children talked, and sometimes I talked with the children, but mostly I listened to their voices and the rain outside the window. After cleaning the kitchen Terry went back to bed and slept late next morning; then she called Edith and asked her to go to lunch.

‘Do you have to?' I said.

She stood in the kitchen, in a short skirt and a bright blouse and a raincoat, looking pretty the way women do when they meet each other for lunch.

‘I've loved her,' she said. ‘I want to keep loving her.'

The rain had stopped for a while, but now it was coming down again. They were a long time at lunch; the children were bored, so I let them watch a movie on television. It was an old movie about British soldiers in India; I explained to the children that the British had no business being there, then we were all free to enjoy watching the British soldiers doing their work. They were all crack shots and awfully brave. The movie hadn't ended when Terry came upstairs and, smiling happily, said: ‘Don't you want to come down?'

‘Just for a minute. I want to see the rest of this.'

I followed her downstairs and put on some water for one cup of tea. Her face was loving and forgiving and I could not bear to look at her, I could not bear the images of her in warm collusion with Edith; for I could see it all: we would gather again in living rooms, the four of us, as though nothing had happened. And perhaps indeed nothing had.

‘She wants you to go see her tonight.' Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright, and she smelled of bourbon. ‘She's going to tell Hank, she's probably told him by now, she said he won't mind—'

‘I know.'

Bubbles were forming beneath the water in the pot. I held the cup with the tea bag and waited.

‘I told her about Hank and me, right away, as soon as I'd told her I knew about you two, and it's all right, I told her it was like her with you, because she wasn't trying to steal you or anything, it was to save herself, she said, and—'

‘I don't want to hear it.'