She Poured Out Her Heart (48 page)

She saw a mom and pop shepherding a small, duded-up cowboy, stopped and asked them if they had seen a little boy in a dinosaur costume. They had not, but they would keep an eye out. She stopped two groups of trick-or-treaters and asked them the same and got the same answer. She wanted to be the one who found him. She wanted to find him so that Eric would be grateful to her and forget all the crummy, sketchy things she'd done, and once you admitted that you were willing to use a child's safety as a means of shining yourself up, there was not much more to say.

She thought of calling someone, Eric or Jane or their home phone, but no one was calling her.

It was getting later and trick-or-treat hours were drawing to a close. Surely they would have called her if Robbie had been found? Or maybe they would not. Finally she returned to Eric and Jane's house, which was now lit up inside and out, which meant that Robbie was still out there. Eric was not back either.

Bonnie let herself in the back door. Patrick and Jane were seated at the dining room table.

They'd taken off their costume items and Jane had scrubbed the cat off her face. Grace, still in her blue dress and sparkly shoes, sat on the living room floor, sorting through her bag of candy.

Jane said, “Eric went to the police station.” She was pale, remote, suffering. Patrick slumped in his chair, giving Bonnie the stink eye. He hated her and she hated him right back.

“I can go out again,” Bonnie said. “If there's anywhere we haven't looked yet, just tell me.”

Neither of them answered. Bonnie didn't want to sit with them, nor
did she want to leave again just yet, so she joined Grace on the floor. “Wow, you got a lot of candy. What's your favorite?”

“Where's Robbie?”

“He's still trick or treating. He'll be along later.”

A car door slammed. Eric came in through the back door, alone. He didn't seem to want to sit at the table either. “They're sending the squads out to look for him. They'll call us. Grace, don't eat any of that tonight.”

“I told her she can have three pieces,” Jane said.

“All right, three. No more.”

“Can Bonnie have some?” Grace asked.

No one spoke. Bonnie said, “I don't need any candy, sweetie, but thank you anyway.”

They waited, minute by minute. It was almost nine and Robbie had been gone for more than an hour. Bonnie got up to use the bathroom, embarrassed at having to do so. When she came back downstairs, Eric was in the kitchen making phone calls. Jane and Patrick were still at the table. Jane was saying something about a taxi and Patrick said No way, he wasn't going anywhere, and Jane reached out and held his hand. Bonnie went back to her seat next to Grace. None of them wanted her here. One minute kept sliding into another. How long could she remain here, if Robbie didn't come back and didn't come back? To get up and leave would be to allow for that possibility. And so Bonnie stayed, and was allowed to stay.

Eric said, “I'm going out again. He could have ended up downtown, somewhere a lot farther away.”

“He knows his address and phone number,” Jane said. She was crying, quietly so as not to upset Grace.

Patrick kneaded her hand in both of his. “He's a fine, strong little boy and he'll come through for you,” he pronounced.

Eric picked up Patrick's green derby, held it out with one hand and with the other drove his fist through the crown.

The front doorbell rang. Jane reached it first, Eric a step behind. Jane cried out, a choked sound, and there was a confusion of voices, Jane's, Eric's, someone else, a woman, and then they all, including Robbie, stepped into the room. Robbie still wore his dinosaur costume but the hood was off. Jane bent over him with a smothering hug that he tried to wriggle out of. The strange woman said, “The babysitter thought he was another one of my son's friends. I am so sorry. My husband and I only got home ten minutes ago. They were playing video games and I'm afraid they probably ate quite a lot of candy.”

“I bet I still have more than Grace,” Robbie said, escaping his mother and plopping down on the floor.

“That's because you cheated and went to a bunch more houses.”

“It's because you have a really stupid costume.”

“All right,” Eric said. “Cool it. Don't eat any more candy, either of you. Thank you so much,” he said to the other woman.

“Boys,” the woman said, “they never know when to quit, do they?” The three of them moved back out to the porch, talking, then the door opened and closed and they said good night.

Bonnie stood when Eric and Jane came back in. “I think,” she began, but Jane was talking to Patrick and she was cut off.

“We can still do this,” Jane said. “There's just enough time.”

Patrick reached across the table, picked up his hat, and wiggled his fingers through the broken crown. “I don't suppose I can get some compensation for this.”

“Patrick.”

“All right OK.” He stood, displacing a couple of chairs in the process. “Let's do this.”

“Do what?” Eric asked.

“Get to the airport,” Jane said. “Patrick has a red-eye flight.”

“To where,” Bonnie put in. The others looked at her as if they might have forgotten she was in the room.

“New York, Dublin, Donegal,” Patrick said grandly. “Reverse migration. Back to my roots. A fresh start. A cousin's going to take me on at his car lot.”

“Don't look that way, Eric,” Jane said. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“When are you coming back?” Bonnie said, hoping that did not make it sound as if she wanted him to.

“I give it a year or two. More, if I like it. If they like me. I'm thinking they will, I mean, why wouldn't they?”

He waited for Jane to find her coat and purse and to hug Robbie and Grace and then Robbie again, then the two of them headed toward the back door. On his way past Bonnie, he picked up the broken derby and clapped it on her head. She swiped it off. Asshole.

“Would you get the kids settled in and ready for bed?” Jane asked Eric. “I won't be long, I'm just dropping him off. Robbie, your dad and I are going to talk to you about some things.” Her eyes flicked over Bonnie. “And I think it would be nice if we had the house to ourselves.”

Bonnie waited until she heard Jane's car start up and pull away. Then she too got up and put on her coat. “Bye kids, Happy Hallowe'en.” And then to Eric, “Bye.”

He followed her out the front door and held it shut behind him so the children would not hear. “I'll call you tomorrow and we can talk.”

“No, don't.”

“You don't want to talk.”

Bonnie shrugged. The night was frosty and she could see her breath, and the houses along the block had gone dark now that all the candy had been handed out. The Vigil of All Hallows. A time for lonesome ghosts and broken love. She hugged herself against the cold and told herself not to get all wrapped up, for once, in the stupid romance of her third-rate, sloppy, sentimental heart. The weather was the weather. And it didn't matter what day it was.

He didn't understand. “Look, tonight was just, tonight. I got upset. Is that it? You're mad because I got mad. You can't exactly blame me for having an initial poor response.”

“No, Eric.”

“Then what?”

“It's too much crazy love.”

“What, you mean that guy? He's leaving. Yeah, and if he misses his plane, I'll buy him a ticket on the next one. What is he anyway, some kind of God's gift to women?”

Bonnie didn't answer that, and Eric must have realized he did not want an answer. He said, “Look, we can sort this out.”

“I can't do crazy anymore,” Bonnie said. He shook his head: what? “I kept telling myself I could turn it into something different. Less selfish. More, well, worthy. Boy did I get that wrong.”

“You're not making sense. If anybody's crazy, it's Jane. I'm sorry if I overreacted. If you hadn't come out here tonight—”

“But I did, didn't I? Jumped right into the middle. Couldn't help myself. I never can. And that's bad for me. I don't mean you're bad for me, you by yourself. But you're not by yourself, are you? I think I need to be in some kind of detox program. A detox for the lovelorn.”

The more she said, the more confused and angry Eric was becoming. She had at least hoped to end things well. A clean break and a meeting of the minds. Nope.

She tried once more. “I'm not saying I never want to talk to you again—”

“Yeah, well that's not entirely up to you, is it?”

He turned and went back into the house. Bonnie heard him speaking to his children. And because she knew him as she did, knew the quality and reach of his anger, and that before very long it would burn itself out and he would allow himself to be coaxed back into some other mood, she recognized this as her chance to go. Almost she wanted to offer it up, this deep and tender knowledge they had of each other, tell him, See,
there is this good, this very good, splendid part of us that I will never regret. And neither should you.

But that would make it too easy to linger and change her mind. And so Bonnie followed her feet down the stairs and out to the sidewalk and onward, and a part of her heart broke off and scattered and left a trail of longing like spilled candy.

I
've burned my boats. Is that what they say? Burn your boats?”

“It's bridges,” Jane told him. “You burn your bridges so you can't go back again.”

“Well I've burned those too,” Patrick said, and laughed. He was nervous, but in an excited way. “This is only the second time I've been on a plane. You believe that?”

“I've never flown across an ocean. So you'll be way ahead of me.” She was just now recovering from the fright over Robbie. It had left her feeling weak and languid, so that Patrick's leaving had an unreal quality, like a disappearing trick. But it was all settled, she had helped to bring it about, and sometimes you had to make yourself make sense.

It wasn't a long drive to O'Hare and at this time of night the Tollway traffic wasn't anything to slow them down. Up ahead, a plane was coming in for a landing, lowering itself over the highway so dramatically that you imagined, for a moment, the crash, the fireball, the shrieking unreal Hollywood moment. And then the plane passed on, headed for the runway. Patrick had been leaning forward, watching. “Whew. What keeps planes in the air anyway? How does that work?”

“The engines,” Jane said. “Propulsion. What keeps birds in the air?”

“What if I don't like it there? What if it's too, you know, foreign for me?”

“If you really don't like it, you can come back. But you have to give it a real chance. You need to move on to the next thing. Set yourself a challenge.”

“You're right. Sure you are. I'm just spinning my wheels here. I mean, aside from you, Janie. You're the best.”

“You're pretty great yourself.”

He put one hand between her legs, exploring, and they drove on that way for a time until their exit came up and he took his hand away. He said, “I'm sorry if I was kind of a jerk. You know, earlier.”

“You were provoked.”

“Eric seems like a pretty nice guy. I mean normally. I wouldn't want him to have an entirely negative impression of me.”

“I imagine if you'd met under different circumstances you would have gotten along just fine,” Jane said, and that seemed to please him.

“Oh yeah, and Bonnie. I wasn't much of a gentleman.”

“There's a history there,” Jane said. “So it's understandable.”

“I guess. Why are you always so nice to me? Nobody else sticks up for me like you do.”

Jane didn't answer, only pointed to her cheek, and Patrick leaned over and kissed the spot.

She took the deck for Departures, and slowed the car as she looked for a place to pull over by the United signs. It was cheaper for him to get his Aer Lingus flight from JFK, and he said he could catch some sleep at the airport, he could stretch out right on the floor. He was like, a champion sleeper. Jane said he should tell somebody to wake him up, she was worried he might sleep through the boarding announcements, and Patrick said he would be fine. They talked this way so as to avoid saying anything too mushy or difficult. Jane found a place at the curb and Patrick got his backpack and suitcase out of the trunk. They stood next to the car and hugged, conscious that time was short.

“I'll call.”

“It's expensive.”

“I'll figure out how to text or e-mail or something. We can Skype too. All kinds of stuff.”

“You know I'll want to hear from you,” said Jane, and she did, although she was not sure Patrick was the staying in touch kind. “I'll want to know you're doing all right.”

Patrick took off his leather jacket and handed it to Jane. “Here you go.”

Jane thought he needed her to hold it and so she was confused when he said, “Go ahead, try it on.”

“What? What for? Patrick.”

He helped her take off her own coat and then slide her arms through the jacket sleeves. It was large on her but not hugely so. “I want you to have it.”

“No, Patrick, come on. You're going to need this, it's cold over there.”

“I'll get a new one. Take it. I don't have anything else to give you. You really helped me work some things out, you know? You cared about what happens to me. You took an interest. Nobody's done that before. Talked to me the way you do.”

“This is really, really . . . You're sure?” The jacket was heavy on her shoulders. The leather enveloped her, its rich smell filling her head. Jane was touched. And she could not help thinking that talk was not, perhaps, the only important thing they had done together. “Thank you. I will love wearing it, I'll think of you every time I put it on.”

“That's the idea. I got something to show you. Look.”

He held up his left arm. On its inner surface, between the wrist and elbow, was a line of flowing blue ink:
PRESPECTIVE
.

“See?” he said. “Prespective.” Or close enough. “So I won't forget to stay cool.”

“I know you won't. Now you'd better get to your gate. Do you have your boarding pass? Passport?”

They faced each other and he drew her up into one of his huge, smothering hugs. “Bye, cutie.”

“Good-bye.”

He lifted his backpack and suitcase and walked through the automatic doors into the terminal, and turned once more to wave, knowing she would be watching.

Jane got back into the car and set off for home, and she shed a few tears, but they had more to do with sentiment than loss, as you might cry at the end of a sad, but satisfying, movie.

The house was quiet when she let herself in the back door. All the Hallowe'en candy had been transferred into a bowl in the middle of the dining room table, a lurid heap of Tootsie Rolls, lollipops, peanut butter cups, toffee, red hots, Skittles, miniature wrapped Milky Ways, more. Robbie's dinosaur costume hung over the back of a chair like something that had been trapped and skinned.

Upstairs, Eric's door was closed. The hall light was on and Jane stepped into both the children's bedrooms and watched their quiet sleep. Then she returned to Eric's bedroom and knocked.

He opened the door, still dressed in his day clothes from the hospital. He said, “I put the kids to bed, they were both ready to crash.” His eyes took in Patrick's jacket, registered it.

“We need to talk to him, to both of them, really, about safety issues. A little more plainly than we have up to now.”

“You mean about sexual predators?”

Jane gave him a hush sign, and Eric motioned her inside the room and closed the door. He said, “Maybe you don't want to use those exact words, but some kind of stand-in. People who do bad things.”

“And their next question would be, what kind of bad things.”

“We could work it into a more general discussion, things like traffic safety.”

“I suppose,” Jane said. It had been a long time since they had both been in this bedroom together, and it felt queasy, too intimate, the space now entirely his with its pile of bedside reading and the unfresh sheets and the rings on the dresser from his soda cans and coffee cups. She had refused to clean up after him in here but maybe it was time to relent and
do for him whatever unremarkable things might make for calmer waters between them. Then she looked again at Eric. “What?” she asked.

“I didn't say anything.” Jane kept her gaze on him. “What?” he said, irritated now.

“Nothing.” Although it seemed clear to her that something had distressed him, beyond the already distressing events of the evening, that he was suffering and only with an effort speaking, standing, keeping the sense of himself together. But if she were to insist on asking, there were too many other things that might be asked. It was late and neither of them knew where or how they might begin. “Nothing,” Jane said again. “Let's try and come up with some gentle way of saying ‘child molester.'”

Eric groaned. “Maybe there's an instructional video.”

“I expect there is.”

They stopped talking, and there was a moment when they looked at each other with—curiosity, perhaps—and then looked away, and Jane said good night and went out into the hall.

She visited the bathroom and got herself ready for bed and checked once again on her son and daughter, thankful that certain nightmares would not visit them, at least not tonight. Then she got into bed and turned on her small light and took up the pen and yellow legal tablet she kept within reach. She had filled several similar tablets with her neat, scratched handwriting. They were stacked along the wall next to her shoes and purse. They contained the poems and the odd thoughts that came to her, in no particular order. She had not yet gone back and read through them but she would do so as soon as she filled this latest tablet.

And then at some point she would spread all the pages she had written out before her and put one next to another and then another, and move the order around and write more pages to go in between. And the result would be a book, which against all odds would find someone to put it between two covers and send it out into the world, where it would claim a certain amount of unexpected, surprised attention. It would not
make her a celebrity, oh no, nothing like that, but it would allow her to shed certain assumptions that might have been made of her.

All this came to her as a certainty but without fanfare, as her visions always did. She held the pen above the paper and then let it touch down. She wrote:

There was a game I used to play with my daughter when she was younger, one that we turned to at the end of a disappointing day when she needed cheering up. I'd tell her to close her eyes and imagine a door, any old kind of door, and she had to guess what was behind it. Sometimes she was sulky and didn't want to play, but once she got going, her guesses, or wishes, turned enthusiastic. Behind the door might be a birthday cake, or a kitty, or someone from a favorite cartoon, come to life. Like all magic, it only works if you aren't too greedy with your asking.

“What do you see behind the door, Mommy?” she'd ask me, and I would always say that she was behind the door, her and her brother and Daddy. And on some days they were. But there were other days, or perhaps other doors. Here was my own childhood and its paintbox green grass and blue skies. Here was sleep when you needed it most, and an ocean you had never seen. Behind one door was a lover who spun you round and round and who polished your skin like an apple.

And one door opened to what seemed like nothing at all, a space of white and tender light and buoyant joy, and only over time would you learn that this was love for all things within yourself and all things beyond it, and one name for that was heaven.