She Poured Out Her Heart (46 page)

Bonnie told Eric that Jane had been noncommittal, hadn't said much.
It seemed best to let things ride for now. She couldn't imagine any blissful idyll with Patrick going on for very long.

Then Eric called her. “She brought him to the house! She introduced him to my kids, for Christ's sake!”

“Who?” Bonnie asked, although she knew.

“Her loser boyfriend. She let him borrow one of our cars. I came home and asked her where the Toyota was and she said, ‘Patrick has it, he needed to do some errands, he'll bring it back tomorrow.' And Robbie told me he met Mommy's friend and he was really really big and he showed Robbie how to match quarters.”

“Oh no.”

“This is just way, way out of line. We had a big fight about it. Well, I had the fight. She just stood there looking puzzled. She said she didn't understand what the big deal was, since you came to the house too.”

“And what did you say to that?”

“I said that was different.”

“It is and it isn't,” Bonnie said, wanting to calm Eric down. She couldn't tell if he was most upset about the car, or the children's involvement, or . . . “How long was he there? Were they . . .”

“I guess he was there just long enough to pick up the car and pollute my children. He came in on the train. Tomorrow when he brings the car back, excuse me, if he brings the car back, who knows. Maybe this will turn into a regular thing. Maybe I'll come home some night and find him in the shower.”

“Jane wouldn't do that.” Or perhaps she would. The new, sexy version of Jane might be one who had simply lost her mind. It was creepy, it promised ill, to have Jane bring Patrick into the family sphere. And the car would come back with an empty gas tank and the backseat full of fast-food wrappers. “What do you think she's trying to do,” Bonnie asked. “Goad you? Get back at you?”

“It's really been a long time since I could account for any of Jane's motives.”

“I know you're upset, but I'm not sure what you can do about it.”

“I can go talk to Loverboy and tell him to stay the hell out of my house.”

“That's not a good idea,” Bonnie said, too quickly, before she could come up with all the reasons it was a bad, catastrophic idea. “Honestly, I'd just try to wait it out.”

“This is nuts. It makes my head explode. I can't live this way.”

Then divorce her and make a life with me. But she couldn't yet say that, not yet, and not over the phone, and not while Jane was being this wild of a wild card. What did Jane want, besides living out some stupid fantasy? Bonnie said, “Maybe there could be some house rules. Ones that would apply to me too.”

“No, that's bullshit. Rules for screwing around? Please.”

Bonnie kept silent, and Eric said, “I'm sorry. That was a crummy thing to say. That's not how I think of us.”

“All right.”

“I'm just floored by this thing with Jane.”

“All right,” Bonnie said again. Eric might be having some primal, jealous response. She never understood why men were so protective of their bad relationships.

“We'll be OK,” Eric said. “It doesn't matter what Jane does.”

“I don't want it to matter.”

“You have to understand, I need a certain amount of calm. Predictability. Otherwise I can't get through my day. I can't do what I have to do for patients. And now it's like I have Jane on the brain. She's used me up. Even before this boyfriend stunt. All her mental health issues. Her constant, exhausting misery.”

But he didn't seem to want her to go away, at least not anytime soon, and that was the wall Bonnie kept running into, but she could not imagine giving up on him now, or ever. “I love you,” Bonnie said, and waited.

“I love you too.”

“Where are you?” She thought that if he was still at work, he could come over, they could make love and close some of the sorrowful space between them.

“I'm at the liquor store, in the parking lot. Crap. It's starting to rain, and the goddamn windshield wipers aren't working. I have to get back now before the kids go to bed.”

It was not her fault that he could not make a call from home, or that his windshield wipers were not working. He had not said it was. But she had become part of some central, messy problem he might soon get tired of grappling with.

What should she do? What should she not do? Bonnie went round and round. It was late, after eleven, although that was not late for Patrick, when she decided to text him:

Her husband is really pissed about the car

She didn't expect to hear back from him, but she did:

He should worry more about his woman

What a jerk. She wrote:

You aren't helping anything

He wrote:

Like you ha ha

She couldn't even tell what he meant. Even in person, he could be borderline incoherent.

Whatever just stay away from the kids

Her phone rang a minute later. “What's that about the kids, what did he say I did to them?”

“He doesn't want you around them. You can understand that, right?”

“What, I'm some child molester now? That is total bullshit. I only have like, thirty nieces and nephews, you think I'm not good with kids?”

“I think it's more like he doesn't want to have them asking about Mommy's special friend. And he said you taught them some drinking game.”

A pause while he tried to remember. “Quarters? That's a drinking game?”

“I'm just telling you. Back off. Try some discretion. Try not to wreck their car.”

“And you're so concerned about this why, exactly?”

“They're my friends, I care about them.”

“Sure. Daddy's special friend.”

Bonnie said nothing. After a moment Patrick said, “Yeah, she told me. Real nice. So quit pretending you're the good guy. Back off me and Janie.”

“She doesn't know you the way I do.”

“Wrong. She knows me exactly the way you do.”

“Fuck you, Patrick. Really.”

“No thanks. Kind of busy.”

By the time Bonnie could manage any words, he'd ended the call. None of her interventions were turning out the way she wanted, as if she'd lost some instinct or judgment or maybe she had never done anything right to begin with and was just now figuring that out.

Four days later and Patrick still had not returned the car. What was he thinking? Was he trying to be a jackass or was he just clueless? Bonnie would have liked to ask him but she was through putting up with him and his fathead insults. Instead she fielded a series of increasingly pissed off messages from Eric. Jane, it seemed, was untroubled. Detached. Jane told
Eric that they had too many cars anyway. Eric relayed this, incredulous. Who was this guy, a con man? (He did not expect Bonnie to answer, although she could have.) What was Jane going to do next, start giving away his clothes? He would call the police. No, Bonnie told him. You will not. The car's title was in both their names, there was nothing actionable there. She did not say that whatever cop took his complaint would have trouble keeping a straight face, that he would be mocked, openly or behind his back, for allowing his wife to give a car to her boyfriend.

“Then what am I supposed to do, sit back and let her carry on like a . . .” He could not come up with a name for the rampant perfidy that was Jane.

Bonnie told him she was sure the car would be returned. And the next day it was. There was a half-assed explanation and a half-assed apology. News like this reached Bonnie indirectly, through Eric, and after the fact. She was relieved that Patrick was at least avoiding any outright criminal acts. He had always been good at skating right up to the edge of serious consequences, then retreating. The infuriating luck of the Irish.

A week went by, then two. Bonnie kept reassuring Eric that Jane's infatuation (or Patrick's part in it) wouldn't last, although she did not wish to tell him why she thought that. She waited for things to run their course, for Patrick to act like Patrick, that is, oblivious and faithless, for Jane to get tired of it. And that kept not happening. It was well into October, and Eric reported that Jane was still making trips into the city and not bothering to hide it from him, although she was at least circumspect around the children. Probably because it was the one thing she knew Eric would not tolerate. Bonnie told him, “It's not good for you to get so worked up. I wish you could . . .”

“Get over it? Get used to it?”

“No,” she said, although she had meant something close to that. “Get the right perspective, maybe.”

They were in bed, although they had not yet made love, because Eric
was still going on about Jane Jane Jane. He had taken off his shoes and tie, and his feet in their black socks kept knocking together as he spoke. Bonnie was curled up next to him, attempting patience. She was tired of hearing about Jane, worrying about Jane, analyzing Jane. She did not understand how Jane had made herself so interesting just by sleeping around. It hardly ever worked that way. Let Jane go, let her live her own life, she wanted to tell Eric. Take advantage of this really swell opportunity to untie the knot. Pay attention to the here and now. That is, herself, her more than willing body. She was aware of the evening slipping away minute by minute, she knew at what time he was accustomed to sigh and say he had to be getting home.

Not that they had to make love every time they saw each other. She only felt that way because of the stupid limits of their stupid situation, and everything meaning too much.

Eric said, “She could run off with this guy.”

Bonnie kept silent. And this would be a bad thing why? she wanted to say.

“How would the kids feel? Or what if she tried to take them with her? I don't trust her. I don't trust her to make good decisions. And this character she's hooked up with, who the hell knows? That's the kind of thing that's driving me crazy.”

She almost told him then. Told him not to worry about Patrick, he wasn't anybody who would entertain thoughts of settling down with a wife and children, especially someone else's wife and children, and then she would tell him how she knew. Get it said, get it out there. But she could not find a way to begin, and with any luck she wouldn't need to.

“I'm not going to let this go on indefinitely,” Eric said, and Bonnie shook off her worries for this new dread.

“What do you mean, you won't let it? What do you think you're going to do, punch the guy out and wreck your million dollar hands?”

Right away she was sorry she'd said it. Eric's face closed down. He
might have a surgeon's borderline-arrogant pride in what he did, but he resented being reminded of the downsides. There was a kind of male vanity that Bonnie knew she should not underestimate. Although, punching out Patrick? You would not do that unless there were two or three of you. She said, “You have to think this through. You don't want to make anything worse.”

“I don't know what I'll do. Tell her she has to cut it out. For the kids' sake.”

“And what do you suppose she'll say to that?” Bonnie asked him, and that ended their conversation, but not her sense of time running down and down and down.

Bonnie stretched herself along the length of him and rolled over so that one of her legs was between his. Her ear was against his chest and she heard his heart bumping along, and then she slid her hands down to his stomach and took hold of him. His heart seemed to beat, not faster, but louder. He rolled over so they faced each other. He pulled her clothes loose and then his own, though they did not bother to undress entirely. There was always a moment, or a series of moments, when one of them might ask, with or without speaking, Do you want? Like this? And the other would answer, yes. But on this night the questions went unasked, or unheard, and what they did felt uncomfortable, furtive, perfunctory, something they might have done while asleep or otherwise not entirely in their bodies, and when it was over Eric said, “Sorry.”

“It's OK.” She was disappointed in him. In the two of them.

“It's this thing with Jane. It feels like she's taunting me. Like she wants to mess with me.”

“I'd say it's working.”

“Let me make it up to you.” He reached for her but Bonnie said no, that was all right. She didn't want to come in that lonely way, as an afterthought. She rolled away from him and after a moment he said he should be thinking about getting home.

Neither of them wished to leave on an unhappy or unquiet note, so Bonnie dressed and walked out to the car with him. It was a warm night with a damp wind blowing through a sky of low clouds and bits of grit in the air. Bonnie wrapped her sweater around her. Her hair blew into her eyes and she pushed it back, then it blew and tangled itself again and she resigned herself to looking unkempt. Eric started his car and came around to the sidewalk to say good-bye. They kissed and he said, “I'm sorry I let this whole thing with Jane get to me.”

“No, don't be. I mean it. You'll think this is weird but—”

He waited. “What's weird?”

She shook her head. She wanted to say she was almost glad. That she loved him in spite of their disappointments, or maybe because of them. Normal people had disappointments, and disappointing sex, all the time. She so wanted to be normal, to lay down the sword and shield. Stop fighting the same losing fights, chasing after one or another dumbshit sensation, imagining herself in love when she was only desperate and needy and foolish. And he was her best and possibly last chance of something finer, more generous, a chance to be something other than what she had been. In spite of everything flawed and failed and sad between them.

But since she could not say any of this, she told him that they were just tired and stressed, and who would not be, and what she meant by “weird” was, how weird to think that the three of them had known each other for so long, she and Jane even longer, and what a long strange trip it had been, right?