She Poured Out Her Heart (25 page)

She was slipping into the kind of bad and unhelpful mood that led nowhere, only fed on itself until it consumed anything hopeful, rational, or right, and just then, reflected in the dark glass, Eric came around a corner and scanned the room. Not seeing her at first, then finding her, and coming up behind her. Bonnie saw his face, vivid with relief and wanting, wanting
her
?

The impact of this made Bonnie take a step and lose her balance and sit down hard on the nearest aesthetically pleasing sectional couch.

“Well hello,” Eric said, amused, smiling down at her. He was wearing a set of blue scrubs, his picture ID hanging from a lanyard. Both the picture and his face showed his normal, friendly Labrador retriever expression. Had she seen right? Immediately Bonnie began to doubt herself. Her skirt had traveled up over her knees and she yanked it down.

“I guess I tripped over nothing. Ridiculous.” Meaning herself, of course,
and every wrong thing she had ever done or said. “So this is your place. Nice.”

“Sorry I'm so late. I have a patient who hasn't been doing very well, we had to do a procedure.”

“Of course.”

“It'll take me just two more minutes to sign out and change.”

“Of course,” Bonnie said again, and watched him sprint back to the elevator. What was she doing here, why had he called her in the first place? She didn't like the answers she was giving herself. She had come under false pretenses.

Then he was back. Bonnie joined him and they rode the elevator down to the ground floor. Other people crowded in on them and they had to stand close together, although they did not touch, and they smiled at each other, embarrassed, comradely smiles. Eric said hello to someone, a woman. Bonnie wondered if the women he'd slept with worked at the hospital, but she shut that thought down as quick as it came.

They came out into the lobby and crossed the floors to the entrance. He said, “I'm parked in the garage. There's a place on North Clark, we can get a bite to eat there if you like.”

“Eric?”

They were out on the sidewalk now. Bonnie stopped just beyond the lighted entryway, and he had to stop also and look back at her, eyebrows raised, quizzical.

“This feels like a date.”

“I didn't . . .” He managed to look both irritated and guilty. “You don't have to think of it that way.”

“I'm thinking we should just say good night now.”

“Come on. I thought we could talk.”

“Go home and talk to Jane, why don't you.”

“Because she doesn't want to talk to me.”

“Maybe you could try harder.”

“She can go a long time without talking these days. All right, look, I'll give you a ride home. No compromising food or beverage. God.”

He stalked off toward the garage and Bonnie followed, miserably. There seemed no way in which anything between them could come out right. Too many layers of hurt and sex and trouble. They walked up a long concrete ramp to Eric's gray Honda. He used the remote to click the doors open, though he didn't bother opening Bonnie's for her. Fine, be that way. She got in, settled herself, fastened the seat belt. Eric started the car and put the heat on full blast so that a whoosh of roaring air, cold then hot, blew over her. In protest, Bonnie rolled her window down.

They came out of the garage too fast, because he was driving mad, but Bonnie was damned if she was going to say anything and braced herself against the floor and the door.

He turned north on Michigan Avenue and took it all the way up to Lake Shore Drive and then they were hurtling along the lakefront, the startling darkness of the water on one side and the constellation of city lights on the other. She was ready to wait him out as long as she had to but he said, in his normal voice, “Every time I drive along the lake, I think about how it's free. The poorest, most miserable people in the city can come down here and enjoy the water.”

“A lot of them do,” Bonnie said. “It's made for some bad crowd control situations.”

“I keep forgetting you're sort of a cop.”

“A liaison. No enforcement powers. I keep forgetting you're a brilliant and highly trained cardiac surgeon.”

“Sort of.”

They drove on, slower now, Eric's automotive tantrum over. He said, “I'm sorry. I shouldn't keep trying to get you in the middle of me and Jane's problems.”

“I'm already right in the middle. You couldn't get me any more in the middle if you measured it out.”

Eric took the Belmont exit, and they passed under the viaduct and out
into traffic again. They crossed the Inner Drive, and then he pulled over to the curb and shut the engine off. “Let's just sit here a minute,” he said, and Bonnie didn't answer, only looked out the window to where there was nothing to see. Her own sorrowful heart beat and beat. It was as if something had already been decided. As if everything that was about to happen had already happened.

She felt his hand touch her face, turning her chin to look at him, and then they were kissing, and in spite of the impossible weight of everything that was wrong and would continue to go wrong, they did not stop. Who were you once you took that step outside of yourself, beyond what you had always believed yourself to be? What name did you call yourself, and to what name did you answer?

They sat on the edge of Bonnie's bed, clothed at first, taking their time. Their hands turned more purposeful. Their clothes loosened. “Let me see you,” Eric said, and she stood before him to finish undressing. He put both hands beneath her breasts, cupping their weight, and she knelt between his legs. His hands pushed her hair away from her face so that he could use her mouth. After a time he pulled her onto the bed next to him and put one hand on her head, guiding it, while with the other he explored and entered her with his fingers.

She couldn't keep her concentration then and raised up off of him. “Sorry.”

“It's fine. Roll over.” He moved himself to one side of the bed and pulled at her hips and rearranged them so that she was face down in the mattress, her arms and legs outstretched. She tried to rise up on her knees to meet him but he spread himself on top of her so that his mouth was at her ear. “Stay still,” he whispered. “Don't move.”

She stayed as still as she could while he fit his penis into her. Pushing at first, then finding his path and sliding full in. It was the most extraordinary sensation, feeling him in her and wanting to move and having to keep herself from doing so. His breath warmed her neck. “Stay just like this,” he whispered.

“All right.” Nerves plucked and raced within her, ready to spark.

“Remember this. Whatever happens. Remember how good this is.”

“I will,” she said, and then he started to move within her and everything began all over again.

But how are you? How are you really? Are you lonely? How could you not be, how could I not be?

R
obbie said he was hungry right
now,
and Jane said they had to wait for Daddy. Robbie said he did not want to wait and he wanted macaroni and cheese. Jane said that he could not always eat macaroni and cheese. Robbie said what was that smell, it smelled yucky. Jane said it was dinner and there was nothing wrong with it. She cut up some apple slices and put them on a paper plate and told him he could eat them if he was hungry and Robbie said he was not hungry for apples. “Then you aren't that hungry.” Jane sent him off to watch television. “You share those with your sister if she wants any,” Jane told him, but she didn't hear any answer back from him, only the television's happy noise.

She supposed she could call Eric and try to find out when he might get home, but either he wouldn't know or wouldn't answer his phone. There were times when he knew he would be too late to eat with them, and then he did call, but more often Jane kept a hopeless vigil in the kitchen, monitoring the food until she judged it was just on the verge of overcooked, or sometimes past that. Telling the children another five minutes and then another, until the effort collapsed in on itself and she fed them a hurry-up meal, just the three of them, and covered Eric's food with aluminum foil so that it could be reheated later.

She was taking a different antidepressant now, one considered more suitable for moms. There had been some concern about side effects from the original prescription, meaning she had alarmed people by talking too much about the death of the self and the all-encompassing spirit. Her new pills made life both easier and harder. Easier to keep up with the things you had to do to get through a day. Harder to remember why any of it might be important. It was like living in a very busy train station with people constantly coming and going, while you yourself went nowhere.

Tonight she'd fixed halibut steaks with lemon and parsley and bread crumbs, an iffy thing for the kids in the first place, since even the blandest fish tasted like, well, fish. There was white rice (brown had triggered some memorable scenes), and a selection of vegetables served in separate receptacles to accommodate the child who would not eat carrots and the one who would eat carrots but not broccoli and there was corn, which everybody ate, and some chopped-up iceberg lettuce with the gloppy pink bottled salad dressing they liked. Sometimes she added a little flaxseed oil or pumpkin seeds because she had to be sneaky about anything hard-core nutritious. Her kids were like anybody else's kids. They'd live on Cocoa Puffs and chicken nuggets if she let them. Food in, food out. It was a constant effort to keep them fed, requiring guile and vigilance. Young humans seemed intent on either starving or poisoning themselves. You couldn't relax for a moment. Because if she did, what else might she let slip away from her?

What if the children were not properly fed? What if one were to forget to feed them at all?

When Eric asked her how she felt these days, she always told him she was better. Sleeping better. Coping better. Fewer ups and downs. And he said good, good. It was what he wanted to hear. If she had said, I am dissolving at the edges, I answer to the same name as always, but I no longer wish to be that person, he would have been alarmed, he would have felt it necessary to intervene in some unpleasant way.

Jane turned the oven down to low. The halibut could hold a little
longer. She went out into the living room and watched for Eric's car. She shouldn't let herself stand there waiting and waiting, worn down by dull fretting because he wasn't home when she thought he should be, but it was irresistible to do so. It was part of her ritual of dinnertime, like a cocktail before sitting down to eat.

But on this evening, watching the long spring twilight deepen and the friendly lights coming on all along the street—wouldn't her own house look just as serene and welcoming from outside—she saw the car turn in at their driveway. It paused there a long time, and Jane couldn't see what, if anything, he was doing. Talking on the phone, maybe. Then the car moved on up the drive and into the garage.

Jane told the kids to turn off the television and wash up, and they straggled in at the same time Eric came in through the back door, and there was that pleasant bustle and confusion and warmth that made you feel, if only for as long as it lasted, that all was as it was meant to be. Mom and Dad exchanging a quick, busy-day kiss. Boy and girl setting out the glasses of milk as directed, jostling a little—“Quit it!” “You quit it!” Mildly reprimanded. Dad heading upstairs, saying he'd be down in two seconds, which of course he was not. He had to change clothes, he had to visit the bathroom, and the children had to be told, severely, to wait. Mom herself tired of waiting, but so she did, and eventually here was Dad, rubbing his hands and saying he was starved, and it all looked great.

Robbie said the fish tasted stinky, he didn't want any. Jane said he should eat it anyway, finish what he had on his plate. Eric said that if this was some places in the world, say Japan, they would be eating fish for breakfast. Robbie said he wouldn't live in Japan for a million dollars. Grace asked her mother if she could have boiled eggs instead of fish. Jane said she was not fixing different meals for everyone. Grace said her stomach hurt. Eric said Uh oh, they would have to do an emergency stomach transplant. Robbie said that was because Grace had worms growing in her stomach, and that made Grace start to whimper. Eric
said that he was just kidding, she was such a silly girl, and got up to pour her some 7UP to settle her stomach. Jane objected to the 7UP on the grounds that it was empty calories, not to mention all the sugar, and why did they even have it in the house. Eric said a little wouldn't hurt her. It was for medicinal purposes. Doctor's orders. He came back to the table with a glass of ice and the soda can and reached over Jane to give it to Grace. Jane smelled the fresh, cutting scent of the aftershave he had just applied, an astringent, cedarwood scent, and that was when she knew.

She did not know the entirety of it, and she did not yet even fully understand what she knew. But she stiffened in her chair and her insides turned to gravel. Robbie said that he wanted a 7UP too and everyone waited for Jane to tell him no but she didn't, and after a moment Eric headed out to the kitchen to get him his own glass. “Eat your vegetables,” Jane said, although it was unclear to whom she was speaking.

When the meal was over, Jane stood at the kitchen sink, feeding the food scraps into the garbage disposal. Its mechanical mouth the final consumer of some considerable portion of the dinner. Eric and the children were watching television together, some movie about a Saint Bernard that caused comic misadventures. Robbie wanted a dog. Grace wanted a cat. They had the names picked out already. Jingles for the dog, Socks for the cat.

Why else cover himself with scent, if not to disguise some other scent?

It should not have come as a surprise. Men were what they were and they did what they did. Did she care what he did? She wanted not to care. But even more, she had wanted not to know.

The television laughed and the children laughed along with it. Eric said something she couldn't make out, his teasing tone of voice. He'd given up on her. Who could blame him? She had nearly given up on herself. She was the frigid freak, the cold crazy he was stuck with.

She had finished with the dishes and turned the kitchen light off so
that the room was dim but still watchful, its machinery humming and at the ready. Now she stood, turned the lights back on, and went rummaging through the cupboards. Of course she had purged the kitchen of anything synthetically delicious, so the options were limited. She found an old package of instant butterscotch pudding, mixed it with milk, and poured it into four small glass dishes. The glossy brown paste quivered and firmed. There was not much in it that had anything to do with actual butterscotch. It was only a chemically stabilized, edible substance. Well, at least there was milk. She found a tray and some paper napkins and spoons and carried it all into the family room.

“What's this?” Eric said. Surprised. She'd never done such a thing, a '50s housewife thing, as bring something in on a tray.

“Butterscotch pudding.” She set it down on the coffee table. Robbie and Grace scooted off the couch to get to it. Eric gave her a smile that had a question in it.

“I just thought, you know, some more protein.”

“Well that's nice.” He reached for one of the bowls. Jane caught another whiff of bottled scent. “What?” Jane shook her head. “Kids, what do you say?”

“Thank you.”

“Thanks Mom.”

“You're welcome.” Someday they might issue thank yous without being prodded, and with some semblance of sincerity. Right now it was only a goal. Jane picked up the remaining pudding but could not bring herself, yet, to eat. The kids were wading into theirs.

Eric ate a few spoonfuls, then set his bowl down. “I'm still full from dinner. It's good, though. I can't remember the last time I had pudding. What gave you the idea?”

“It's not some huge deal. I just felt like it.” It irritated her that she was apparently so fixed and joyless in her ways, so puritanical about what they ate, that it did seem to be a huge deal. On the television, the giant
dog was running down the street with the family in a car behind it, honking and calling. Then the screen cut away to a commercial. “How's the movie?” Jane asked.

“I want a dog. A puppy,” Robbie said. “Not a Saint Bernard. A police dog that would bite people. Everybody else has a dog but us.”

“Everybody else does not have a police dog,” Jane said.

Eric said, “We've talked about this.” He was using his most weighty and Dad-like tone of voice. “You need to be older so you can take care of it.”

“I am too old enough. I can feed it and play with it and teach it to shake hands.”

“There's a lot more to it than that,” Eric told him. “There's getting home from school on time so you can walk it. There's grooming. Then we'd have to take it to the vet, get it shots and checkups. It's an investment of time and of money. A dog isn't a toy you can leave on a shelf when you're tired of playing with it.”

“Would you still want to call it Jingles?” Jane asked. “That doesn't sound much like a police dog.”

“Maybe Killer,” Robbie said.

“A police dog, you mean like, a German shepherd?”

“I don't think you should encourage him,” Eric said. “Unless you want to be the one doing all the work.”

“We never had a dog growing up,” Jane said. “It was like we missed out.” She had a vague, wistful notion of the dog revitalizing them, providing them a rallying point, something they could all love. Rin Tin Tin, the dog that saved my marriage.

“If he gets a dog, then I get a cat,” Grace piped up.

“My dog is gonna chase the stupid cat and bite it.”

“Mom!”

“This is a good way to not get either one,” Jane said, collecting the empty pudding bowls and piling them on the tray.

“Yes, you're fighting like cats and dogs,” said witty Eric, with a smile at Jane. She smiled back.

Nothing had changed. Everything might go on as before.

And if nothing changed, if nothing either of them did made any difference, how important was this shared life?

Then it was time for bed, and all the hectic negotiations involved. Yes, they could watch the end of one video but not the beginning of another. Then on to which pair of pajamas was acceptable, how bright (or dim) the light from the hallway should be, who was not sleepy, who needed a doll, a snack, a kiss. Robbie was given permission to read one more chapter in his
Heroes of the Revolutionary War
book. Jane supposed there was a reason that the Revolutionary War was considered appropriate for younger children. No distressing subtexts like slavery or concentration camps. Grace, who was sensitive to disturbances of all kinds, especially those from the skin on in, said that one of her ears hurt. Her ear hurt and her head felt funny, which was the drill for so many previous ear infections. Grace's bedspread was pink, as was the shaded lamp next to the bed. It gave her face a hectic, reflected glow.

Did she want Daddy to look at it? Daddy was summoned and looked in Grace's ear with his big silver Ear Thingamajig, which made Grace squeal. “Hold still,” Eric said. Yes, the ear was a little red. Grace could have some children's Tylenol and a warm compress.

Jane said that she'd take care of her, and Eric said, If you're sure you're OK with it. Eric could not be expected to sit up late with a sick child when he had to get to work in the morning. It was the way they were accustomed to arranging things. Jane turned out Grace's bedside light and lay down beside her, holding the wrung-out washcloth to the sore ear. Her daughter's body was still so small and light-boned, Jane could cradle most of her with one arm. Grace fussed, then slept, woke, fussed some more, slept. Jane slept for a time herself, and woke to darkness and a quiet house.

Eric must have gone to bed. Jane got up, careful not to disturb Grace, whose sleep had a damp, furious quality that spoke of fever. She used the bathroom in the hall, came out, checked Grace again. Instead of going in to her own bed, she went to the little back bedroom they used for storage and projects, cleared off the small single bed, wrapped herself in an old quilt, and slept on and off, waking to go in to Grace. She still felt warm, and her breathing had a clotted sound. Jane considered waking Eric but decided it was best to wait things out.

In the morning Grace had a temperature of 101 and threw up twice. Eric said he would take her to the pediatrician and let Jane catch a little more sleep. “Thank you,” Jane said. She wondered if he was being solicitous because of his secret misbehavior. But then, any distress involving the children made them close ranks and unite and turned them, at least for a time, into better partners.