She Poured Out Her Heart (41 page)

Was it? (And what, if anything, about Dougie suggested peach?) She still had to get herself home and decide what to tell Eric (“I was giving one of Bonnie's lovers a ride home when . . .”), file an insurance claim, get the car repaired. Oh, and fix dinner. She hoped the GPS hadn't gone haywire, since she still had no idea where she was. Some welter of bars
and check cashing stores and Thai restaurants and signs offering tattoos, phone cards, credit counseling, and everyone but her with purposeful, important places to go. She watched in the rearview mirror as Patrick, Richie, and Dougie conferred on the sidewalk, Patrick acting as her representative, she guessed. They spoke their own language of hierarchy and casual violence, they understood the ways in which the world worked, its machinery of laws and money and power. Wasn't this always how it went for her? Wasn't she always excluded by her own fear and weakness? Sitting and waiting while men decided what would be done to her, for her, on her behalf. And she let it happen. It was as if she had never before really noticed, or found this remarkable.

After a time, Patrick came back to the car and climbed into the passenger seat. “So here's the deal, Dougie's going to write up an accident report, but nobody gets a ticket. Which is so very, very good. You and Richie get to fight it out with your insurance companies.” He waited for Jane to say something.

“Thank you,” she said, since he was that pleased with himself, and she guessed he really had saved her from at least one layer of trouble. “That's great.” She was noticing all the things about him that were alien, male: his sweat smell, his enormous hands, the creased, mysterious territory of his crotch. She said, as if this followed from their conversation, “I've never trusted men. Never understood them. My whole life.”

“Yeah?” He had no idea what she was talking about. And why should he? “Well, a lot of guys, they're the same way. About girls. Women,” he corrected. “No clue. All right, you know not to tell anybody you stopped. OK? He just hit you.”

“Bonnie's sleeping with my husband. So she and I had a, what did you call it, a dustup too.”

“You're kidding.”

“Not kidding.”

She felt him staring at her. “When, like, now?”

“Probably not right this minute.” If only because Eric had the children with him.

“But, wow.” He contemplated this in silence. “For how long?”

“A while.”

He was busy asking himself his own questions. “Good old Bonnie,” he said, finally. “She does get around.”

“Doesn't she though.”

“So, I have to ask, not that it's really my business, but why is it you were taking her cookies?”

“Because I felt . . . bad. There was a scene. I said some things.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

“No, I should have handled it differently.”

“You were upset,” Patrick suggested. “Sure. Finding out a thing like that.”

“I already knew. I told them to go ahead. That neither of them mattered that much to me.”

Patrick nodded, making a visible effort to understand.

Jane said, “But it wasn't really true. Not for her. Him, maybe. We have kids. You don't want to rock the boat.”

“That's messed up.”

Jane said yes, it was. She looked behind her to where Dougie was still sitting in his squad car, taking his sweet time about the paperwork. What happened if they had an actual, serious accident, would they move any faster? Richie had taken himself off already in a blast of acceleration.

Patrick said, “Hey, do you think I could have the rest of those cookies?”

Jane retrieved the upended basket and handed it over. Patrick ate with one hand cupped beneath his mouth to catch the crumbs. Once he'd swallowed he said, “If you don't mind my asking, what's your husband like?”

“He's very smart. He's a doctor, a surgeon. People like him, he's fun to be around.”

“A doctor.” He shook his head, marveling. “Now that's something the likes of me could never do. He's not so much fun for you though, huh.”

“No,” Jane said. “Not lately. Not for a long time.” She looked behind her again. No Dougie. No one paying them any attention. “Would you do something for me? One more thing?”

“I kind of have to get ready for work.”

“Oh, sure. Never mind.”

“No, what?” Smiling, but already thinking of the next thing he had to do. Ready to move on.

“Would you let me kiss you?” Instantly and horribly embarrassed. “You don't have to if you don't want to. Never mind.”

“Wow. I wasn't expecting that one.” He was looking at her with more interest now. “I mean, no one ever comes right out and asks. That's so cute.”

“Never mind,” Jane said again, feeling both shamed and irritated. He could have just said no. “Forget I—”

He leaned over and wrapped around her, lifting her out of her seat, and then he was on her, his big face pinning hers down, his mouth working on hers as if it wanted something, wanted something, insistent but soft, and then he drew away and set her back again.

“Oh.” She touched her mouth. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome.”

They both laughed and looked away. Then they both spoke at the same time.

“I hope that was—”

“I wanted to—”

“You first,” Patrick told her.

“I don't know anybody like you.” She didn't want to say, anybody as sexually healthy as you seem to be, so she said, “It's great the way you jump right in and take charge of things. Thanks for helping me out.”

“Hey, no problem.” He seemed relieved that there might be no more
to it than gratitude. “Yeah, it's my neighborhood, so I know these guys. Of course.”

Of course, she would not have been in his neighborhood to begin with if she had not been taking him home. “Well, I appreciate it.” She wanted to kiss him again.

“Yeah, I've been here four years? Three. One year I lived in Lakeview, I thought that was really far north. My whole family's back in Bridgeport. They think I moved to Alaska or someplace. It's like they have their feet in cement. Don't get me wrong, I love em to death. I just don't need to see them every morn, noon, and night.”

Hadn't Bonnie said something about his family? Something about them living next door to the Daleys, back when the Daleys had lived in an ordinary house. Patrick said, “I actually do think about moving to Alaska. First I need to take a trip there. Check it out. Like, a camping trip.”

Jane agreed that a camping trip in Alaska would be a real adventure. Bears, Patrick said. They had actual, real bears. You had to watch out for them. He seemed energized by the idea of bears, of going up against one. There was a movie, it had Brad Pitt in it, and at the end he went off into the woods and fought bears. Did she know that one? Jane did not. The movie had not been in Alaska but it was someplace wild like that. Patrick said, “There's times I think I'd be better off where life is just, you know, the basics. Food, shelter. Survival. I mean, I'm a city boy born and bred, but I get these flashes. Like, maybe I'm supposed to live some other way. You know what I mean?”

“Yes,” Jane said. “And you have to pay attention to feelings like that.” It seemed that once she decided to make a man into a mindless sex object, he started confiding his heart's desires.

“Ah well.” Patrick raised one hand and let it fall, dismissively. “Alaska, what would I do there anyway? All I have on me is a strong back and a weak mind.”

His brogue, Jane noted, grew stronger whenever he said something self-disparaging. “Don't give up on it,” she said. “Why shouldn't you go there? Who says you shouldn't?” In her side mirror she saw Officer Dougie approaching with papers in hand. “Here comes your friend.”

“He's not exactly a friend. It's more like, professional courtesy.”

Jane rolled down her window and Dougie handed back her license and insurance. He went through the accident report with her. He still looked like he would have liked to arrest her for something. Jane did not have to appear in court. She should notify her insurer. Here was the file number they would ask for. Here was the time, date, location. She should call her insurer without delay. She should be careful about making sudden stops unless it was necessary to avoid hitting a pedestrian or another vehicle. Did she understand that?

Jane said that she did. Dougie leaned down to put his head in the window. “Pat. Keep your nose clean.”

Patrick gave him a mock-salute. “Yessir, Officer sir, and thank you for your service.”

Dougie shook his head and walked back to his cruiser. Patrick said, “I could tell you stories about that guy. He knows I could.”

Jane decided not to ask. She started the engine. Patrick gathered up his jacket and opened his door but didn't get out. “Thanks for the ride. Sorry about your car.”

“It's all right. It's actually my husband's car. I don't mind it getting knocked around.”

“Ha ha.” Still he wasn't leaving. “Look, would it be all right if I called you sometime? I know you're married and all, but it sounds like, well, special circumstances.” When Jane hesitated, he said, “Just to talk. This sounds corny and all, but I feel like I already know you.”

Jane found a pencil and a note pad in the console and wrote down her cell phone number. Her name too, in case it didn't stay with him. “Here. Oh, don't forget the cookies.”

“Cookies, right.” He gathered them up, hesitated, then turned back
and kissed her again. Slower this time, more inquisitive and exploratory. Then he drew away, stepped out to the curb, and shut the car door. “See you.”

Jane watched him until he rounded the corner and disappeared. Small explosions, like static electricity, went off in her skin. She turned on the GPS and waited for the bright mechanical voice to guide her home.

E
ric sent her flowers. Actual flowers. He had never done this before. Nor, with a couple of exceptions, a couple meaning exactly two, had any other man she'd ever known. She had not been a flower kind of a girl.

Bonnie studied the bouquet, first from the chair she drew up next to it, then getting up and moving around the apartment, trying out different angles and distances. There were roses, lots of them, big champagne-colored blooms of a sort she had not seen before. Also some ferny stuff and smaller, trailing sprigs, white and fragrant. The flowers came in a tall vase that was sprayed gold to go along with the general magnificence of the thing.

Bonnie tried to decide what it meant, sending flowers, especially ones as extravagant-seeming as these. The card said
Love, Eric
and it was written out in his own handwriting. He'd gone into the shop himself rather than ordering them over the phone or online. You were meant to pay attention to such flowers. She guessed she was meant to look upon his suit with favor. Take him back into her bed. Which she had not yet decided to do.

She was at a low point and by now nothing she might do or not do seemed like a good idea. She missed him but she didn't know if the two
of them made sense anymore; in fact, she was pretty sure they did not. By now there was so much difficult history between them, their affair had become almost like another marriage. They'd had their honeymoon of sexual ecstasy, their doubts and bruised feelings and reconnections. And now they seemed to have circled back to courtship.

Or maybe she was reading things wrong? Maybe when Jane had outed and shamed them, that had been a final and insurmountable blow, and the flowers were meant as a kind of kiss-off. A sentimental (and expensive) farewell and thanks for the memories. Maybe he had decided the question for her, and all her back-and-forth, yes-or-no, should-or-shouldn't drama was beside the point. Maybe they would never see each other again. Except perhaps in some safe and sexless territory that would never be anything other than glum and awkward, everything over over over.

She bounded up from her chair. She couldn't stand it, she had to talk to him. It was the end of the workday, of her workday at least. There was no guarantee of reaching Eric, who often enough stayed late at the hospital. Or else he might have gone home on time for once and was already in the bosom of his family, doing penance. Maybe Jane had gotten flowers too.

Bonnie punched in his cell phone number and listened to it ring, once, twice, three times and the fourth meant voice mail.

Eric answered. “Hey there.” A distant, tin can sound to his voice.

“Are you on speaker?” She hated the speaker phone.

“Sort of. I have a rental car, it has Bluetooth. So the call goes through the car.”

“Why do you have a rental?”

“Ah, Jane was driving my car and somebody hit her in a parking lot. So it's in the shop.”

“Oh, sure.” It was not how she had planned to begin. She tried to regain her momentum. “The flowers are beautiful, thank you.”

“You like them? I thought they were pretty.”

“They're this wonderful color.” It occurred to her that they were the
color of fancy lingerie. She hurried past this thought. “Kind of a peachy, pale gold. Very elegant.”

“Good, that's good. I wanted to . . .” His voice cut out, then back in. “. . . for you.”

“I can't hear you.”

“I said, I thought they'd brighten your day.”

That was not what he'd said, but there was no getting it back now. “Where are you anyway?”

“. . . home.”

“Why don't you call me sometime when you're not driving, OK?”

“Wait, I'll pull over. Hold on.” There was some scattered, ambient noise as he put the phone down and maneuvered the car. Bonnie waited. One of the things you could really get tired of was never being able to have an uninterrupted phone conversation. Either Eric was trying to juggle the phone while he drove or else he was getting calls from home or his pager was going off. “All right, sorry.” At least he'd turned the Bluetooth off. “What were you saying?”

“Nothing. Just, thanks. Have a good evening.”

“No, wait, I do want to talk to you. How've you been?”

“Fine,” Bonnie said, still feeling difficult and pissy, roses or no. “I bet you're fine too.”

“They gave me a pretty cool rental. A BMW.”

“Uh huh.”

“Want to see it? It's sharp.”

“How am I supposed to do that, exactly?”

“Look out your front window.”

“What?” Bonnie took the phone away from her ear and stared at it. Put it up to her ear again. “What are you talking about?”

“Just go look.”

Bonnie went to the window and pulled back the curtain. A car at the curb flashed its lights.

“What are you doing here?”

“I miss you. I wanted to see you.”

“No, what are you doing here right now? Did you think the roses would soften me up?”

“You called me,” Eric reminded her.

“Were you out there waiting to see if I'd call? Huh?”

“I was hoping you'd call,” he admitted.

“Ha,” Bonnie said. She had him dead to rights. “Sorry, that's a little too cute for me. When I was a kid, Charlie and I used to set rabbit traps. We'd get a cardboard box and prop it up with a stick and put a carrot on the ground. So the rabbit would go for the carrot and knock the stick and the box would fall and trap it. Needless to say, it never worked. You didn't use a carrot, you used roses. Nice try.” She felt idiotic looking out the window at him and dropped the curtain.

Eric cleared his throat. “I drive by here a lot. On my way home from work.”

She was incredulous. “You've been
stalking
me?”

“That's such a melodramatic word,” he said, sounding annoyed. “It presumes all these hateful motives. Was Romeo stalking Juliet when he showed up under her balcony?”

“Now you're Romeo.”

“I don't know what I am.” He coughed and tried to suppress it. “Sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” For coughing, maybe.

“For being stupid and miserable and missing you.”

There was a space of silence. Then Bonnie said, “I'm not going to let you inside.”

“Yeah, OK.” He sounded droopy and hopeless, in a way she found irritating.

“But I'll come out and talk to you. Give me a minute.”

She ended the call, went to the bouquet, and extracted one of the
roses. She rummaged around in a bathroom drawer for bobby pins. Of course there were none. Victorian ladies probably had all sorts of hair pins and miniature vases for such purposes. In the end she settled for braiding the stem into her hair and securing it with a paper clip. She didn't bother to change out of her sweatshirt and jeans. She thought she looked badass.

She locked the apartment door behind her and stepped out into the early dusk. The passenger side of the BMW was at the curb, and Eric reached over to open the door for her. Bonnie got in and shut it behind her. “Nice ride,” she said. “I'm all sorts of impressed. Take me, I'm yours.”

He touched the flower in her hair with one finger. “Pretty.”

There was enough of the last daylight for her to get in a sideways look at him. “You look tired,” she said, although she had not intended to say anything. In fact he looked worse than tired, he looked worn down. Old, even.

“I'm always tired.” Not a complaint, just a statement of fact.

“You do have the original high-stress job.”

“I'm used to that by now.”

“You don't sound convinced,” Bonnie said, who was happy to keep the conversation away from herself. “More like a punch-drunk fighter.”

“I'm used to being tired,” he corrected. “But I'm not tired of the work. Not most days. Most days you feel like you're doing something almost nobody else can do. And it's important, it's needed. Although there are times I wish everybody could just be . . . healthy. Let the body do its work without all these violent interventions.”

Bonnie looked at him, wondering. Eric was famous for his annoyingly positive attitude about his profession. It was practically an article of faith that he loved medicine and everything to do with it. If he was getting a case of burnout now, that was something new. Or maybe admitting to it was something new.

“But listen to me go on,” Eric said, as if he was aware of a lapse. “Tell
me how you are. I really was sorry to hear about your mother. I'm glad I got to meet her, I liked her.”

“Thanks. I'm fine. There's always family stuff to get through, but everybody's coping.” Haley and the kids were staying in Wisconsin, which suited Haley since she wouldn't have to go back to her marriage, and suited Stan since someone would be there to run the house and be an audience for his tantrums. The kids could go to a normal school and learn swear words and how to play video games. Charlie was supposed to be doing another stint in rehab, though no one was too hopeful by this time.

“Death of a parent,” she said. “It's one of those milestones everybody gets to experience.” She didn't want to talk about meeting Carl Rizzi. It was a sore place in her heart that she didn't like touching. “This really is a sharp car,” she said, wanting to move the conversation along.

“I had to put down some of my own cash for it but I thought, why not. A little self-indulgence.”

Another thing that was not really in character for him. He seldom spent money on himself. Bonnie found this new, restless version of Eric interesting; severely, she damped her attraction down. She listened to him recount the car's many luxury features. The 50/50 weight distribution. Zero to sixty in some ridiculous time measured in seconds. Heated seats, blind spot detection. Speed limit information. Automatic door closers. She'd heard it said that men regarded cars as substitutes for women. Or had it been the other way around? Regardless, she would be at a disadvantage. She was not very well equipped with top of the line options.

“I'm thinking, even when I get the Toyota back, I could lease this.” He shrugged, looking glum, which she knew translated into embarrassment, probably at his own excitement over a fancy car. He would regard it as one of those guy things he was supposed to be immune to.

“You should do that, if you want. Go for it.” She almost said, “Live a little,” but she did not want to sound too encouraging.

“We could see each other,” Eric said, as if this was the conversation
they'd been having all along. “There's no obstacle now with Jane. She doesn't care what I do.”

“Oh yes she does. And she cares that I'm the one you were doing it with. Don't be mistaken about that.”

“She's done with me.”

“Well you're not done being married, are you? Or living under the same roof, or raising children together. It's a screwed up situation. I can't do that kind of thing anymore.”

“Since when did you—” He stopped himself. “Sorry.”

“Since when did I get so scrupulous? Fuck you. Like, sincerely.”

“All right,” he said, meaning, he gave up. Which made her, perversely, more angry with him. How dare he send his giant extravagant roses, cruise her neighborhood in his ridiculous extravagant car, if he was only going to weakly concede?

“Let me try and explain it to you. Why I can't go back to what it was.” She still didn't want to talk about Carl Rizzi, but maybe she could talk around him. “You want to hear it or not?”

“Of course I want to hear it.”

Now she wished she hadn't said anything. But she guessed she owed him this much of an explanation, after all those damned roses. “I'm a slow learner,” she began. “I always thought I was pretty crazy-adventurous, you know, a thrill seeker. That's who I was. Prided myself on it, actually. Venturing where others dared not.”

She paused, waiting for Eric to say something, but he wasn't about to interrupt. Nowhere to go but onward. “So you do all these outlandish things, you carry on with all these bad idea men, no, let me finish, and you get this romantic notion of yourself as, I don't know, passion's plaything? Shipwrecked on the wilder shores of love? I don't even want to think about the crap I used to tell myself. Then one day, the short answer is, I figure some things out. I was raised with all these addicted people and I grew up addicted to chaos and drama and I guess, acting out to get attention.” She stopped, feeling depleted, even a little
nauseated. “So that's the deal. It's all sickness. And I have to try and get better. Bonnie 2.0.”

It was entirely dark by now, the cool light of the many dashboard gizmos the only illumination.

Bonnie looked out to her own apartment windows, her hand already on the door, ready to take her leave. Then Eric said, “I don't think I'm a bad idea.”

“Oh?” Disbelieving. “Come on, you're the ultimate bad idea. You're like, original sin.”

“Maybe at the beginning. Not now. Now we're the best thing each other has. Or you are for me.”

He waited, but now it was Bonnie's turn to keep silent. He went on. “You think you're the only one second-guessing yourself? Exhausted with yourself? OK, we shouldn't have. But we did. And where we are now, it could be pretty great. I wish it wasn't sideways and upside down and backwards. In spite of all that, here I am. Up to you.”

He was done with talking. Bonnie reached out and took his hand. “I think I'm going to need some more flowers.”