She Poured Out Her Heart (8 page)

T
he rose, the gold, the leaping sunlight: did everyone see such things as she did? The beautiful seeing filling you up so entirely that there was no room for the rest of you? She didn't think so, but how would you know? It was nothing anyone ever talked about.

T
hey walked out into a swirl of snow that had already coated the streets and sidewalks. Cars passed by on muffled tires. Veils of moving snow dimmed the streetlamps. It was as if it had all been arranged for them. Their breath sparkled with frost and once they were far enough away from their friends' apartment they stopped and kissed, the first private kiss of their marriage. It was cold, but not brutally so, and once they reached their car and started it up and the heater began to work, the cold only sharpened their pleasure in being warm and enclosed.

They went slowly, since you had to drive with care on the unplowed streets. Neither of them felt the need to say anything grand or important-seeming. When they arrived home and climbed the stairs and unlocked the door and went inside, they remembered too late about the carrying
over the threshold part, and there was nothing to do but laugh about it. It wasn't as if they hadn't gone in and out and in and out, separately and together, for months and months, and any good or bad luck involved must have already been sealed.

They removed their wedding garments, hanging them in the almost-bare closet. They turned out the lights so that they could open the curtains and watch the snow falling in the high window while they made love. The snow sifted down and down.

Some trick of reflection made the sky beyond it almost white. After they had finished, they lay quiet, watching, until they both sighed.

“I hate to say it, but . . .”

“Yeah.”

They got up and dressed in their ordinary clothes, jeans and sweatshirts. There was still so much to be done to get ready for their trip.

It was Jane's apartment, but Eric had moved in for the last months of school. After graduation he had gone down to Atlanta on his own, taking only what he could fit in his car. It would be easier that way, he told her. He was going to be swallowed whole by the new routine and the new schedule. Better he go alone and tough it out for a little while, sleep in a dorm or on somebody's couch, then look around for a place for both of them.

There had been some unhappy discussions. Of course they would get married, he said, when pressed. It was only a question of when. So, when?

Jane made some trips to Atlanta. Eric went back and forth to Chicago. Their relationship had always had its share of time apart, but inevitably their time together now took on the unnatural quality of needing to pretend the time apart did not matter. Jane was not sold on Atlanta; it was all so brand new and hyperdeveloped, the whole of it could be picked up and set down several hundred miles away without anyone noticing. In October, Eric asked her when she was going to be visiting again, and she said she wasn't sure. Two weeks later Eric bought a ring and came to Chicago.

It had all come together in the end. He had just needed reminding that there was more to life than work. He would need further reminding. She knew that. Every marriage had its stress points, everybody signed up for their share of good and bad. You could say she was fortunate to know ahead of time what the issues would be.

Although she could not help thinking there was a great deal he had taken for granted.

They still had a lot of the kitchen to pack up, and the bathroom to be cleaned out, and all the cumbersome wedding presents they had begged people not to give them, things like blenders and casseroles, that now had to be dealt with. It did not seem unglamorous of them to be doing this on their wedding night; rather it felt as if the real, serious work of the marriage had begun, and they would undertake it together.

Jane started in on the kitchen while Eric took the framed pictures and mirrors off the walls, bubble wrapped them, and slid them into oversized boxes. They turned on the radio for some noise and found a station that played jukebox hits. ZZ Top, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison. Eric sang along in his loud, blissfully out of tune voice: “Cause you doon't love me, so I'll aalways be, crahahaing, over you, crahahain . . .” Jane wiped down the refrigerator shelves and pretended they had been married for years and years and Eric's singing was by now an established joke, something that no longer bothered her.

She filled a black plastic garbage bag with unwanted refrigerator odds and ends, jars of mustard and half-eaten applesauce, dead vegetables. She carried the bag out the kitchen door to the trash—they were the first floor of a four-flat—and when she turned to go back inside, she found the door had locked behind her. She'd forgotten to flip the latch, which she'd done a time or two before, and as before, she called herself an idiot.

Jane rattled the back door and knocked, but of course Eric was busy with his oratorio and didn't hear. She wasn't too worried; eventually he'd miss her and come looking for her. Or if she had to, with some effort, she
could go out of the yard to the alley and around again to the front of the house and ring the buzzer.

The snow had slackened to a sparse, thready shower. Two or three inches had fallen, not the first snow of the season, but the biggest so far. Colder air was filtering in behind the snow. Jane tried knocking again. Waited, rubbing her arms for warmth.

She left the back step and walked around to the side of the house where, if she balanced on a window well and pulled herself up, she could see into the living room. The curtains were open and the old-fashioned wooden blinds left plenty of space to see in. Here was Eric, bent over one of the packing boxes, using great gobs of tape to put it together, taping over tape, then reinforcing the seams crossways. So this was what his face looked like, singing without sound. His mouth making shapes, shoulders pumping, tossing his head with rock star gusto. She had to smile; he was ridiculous. And although she had believed herself to be thinking fondly, playfully about him, as if this too were a joke they might tell years later—
did you know your father locked me out of the house on our wedding night?
—there was a coldness in it too, as she watched and waited for the moment when he realized she was no longer there.

B
onnie's stepfather, StepStan, was raised sort-of Jewish, and he celebrated an aesthetic holiday known, informally, as Christmukah. The Wisconsin homestead where he lived with Bonnie's mother took on a new aspect. An old GM half-ton truck sitting in a field beyond Stan's studio was outlined and criss-crossed in multicolored lights, the world's trippiest ride. Some number of Stan's sculptures were set about the property, towering structures of anodized or case hardened or polished metal in the shape of spheres, wings, ribs, cages. These too were bedizened with special lighting effects, on one occasion, twirling red and green, on another, electronically programmed displays of starry blue-white lights going off like flashbulbs. Metallic ribbons were strung on wires, bumping and clanking together. The effect was not always festive. Often it was as if a crew of Jurassic Park dinosaurs had decked themselves out for the holidays.

One year there had been a twelve foot high metal stick figure with jointed arms that swung back and forth, and a triangular red Santa hat, but this looked disturbingly like a hanged man, and it was not repeated.

Indoors, Bonnie's mother, Claudia, tried to represent the traditional. There was always a tree of some kind, and candles and felt decorations, and a menorah, and an old carved wooden nativity set that had belonged
to Grandma Somebody, its colors gone soft with age. Stan liked to add the occasional figure to the set. One year there might be a small rag doll among the shepherds and magi, a calypso mammy-figure in headscarf and hoop earrings. Or a plastic Batman, or a squadron of army men. That Stan! He was such a kidder!

A week after Jane's wedding, Bonnie headed north across the state line for those portions of the holidays that her family observed, eating and gift giving. She made a trip to a north side bakery for
mandelbrot
and macaroons, and to the liquor store for wine and spirits, God forbid they should ever run short. She bought a number of all-purpose gifts, books, mostly, and wrapped them up to distribute as needed. You could never tell who might or might not show up. In addition to Stan and Claudia, there would be, most probably, Bonnie's older brother Charlie. (Their BioDad lived in New Mexico, and neither of them had seen him since they were little kids.) Their half-sister Haley was supposed to be there, along with her husband and twin babies. Beyond that, perhaps some assortment of Stan's children from his previous two marriages, who were technically Bonnie's stepbrothers and -sisters, although she hardly knew them. And anyone else Stan and Claudia might be cultivating or paying off with hospitality.

Jane once spent three days with Bonnie's family over the holidays, and later said, “Well, I see you weren't exaggerating.”

It had not been easy for Bonnie to get time off at Christmas. If anything, the crisis meter spiked during the holidays, as families collided and people went off their meds and the alcoholics stepped up their game. There was always some sick-making headline in the middle of the news coverage of midnight mass and the charity dinner. A beaten child, a murdered wife, somebody robbed and shot dead while picking up the sweet rolls for Christmas morning breakfast. Of course some of this was just run of the mill crime, as her cop boyfriend, Denny, pointed out. Meat and potatoes, head-banging fun. But somebody in her office had to be on call and nobody much wanted to do it, and in the end Bonnie had to
make extravagant promises to her co-workers before she was off the hook. There was no reason for her to stick around; Denny would spend Christmas with his wife and kids and that was just the way it was.

Although now, fighting traffic and thirty miles of sideways snow on the Tollway, she wondered if it might have been better to stay in town and tough it out. Not that she was inclined to mope and pine overmuch about Denny, who had been a stupid idea from the get-go and they were probably pretty close to through with each other. He was just the cop iteration of all the other bad boys in her life, and totally full of himself. She could have made some excuse to her mother about working. She could have called around to her friends and found somebody to go out for drinks on Christmas Eve, or a movie Christmas Day. It wouldn't have been so terrible.

But here she was, racing a snowstorm and hoping she could outrun it before she had to turn off the interstate and onto the two-lane. Snow was beginning to sift across the pavement in wind-driven, snake-like ropes. Her car, a little Dodge product, was good enough for city driving, not so great out in serious weather. She guessed if she ran off the road, she could eat pastry and drink the liquor until somebody showed up to tow her out of the ditch.

Her luck held, and by the time she reached Madison the storm had taken itself elsewhere. She kept on 39 north for another hour, then turned west onto the county road, two lanes but decently maintained. The snow pack on either side looked like it was there to stay. Just as the light was fading in a cloud-muffled sky that had no hint of color, she made the last turn and climbed the ornery hill that led to Stan and Claudia's. It was not Bonnie's childhood home; she wasn't sure she had such a thing, with all the ruptures and dislocations involved. But it was where whatever combination of memories and DNA she could call her own resided, and she guessed that was why she had to keep coming back.

At least she'd arrived at the right time of day to see the lights. She slowed the Dodge at the crest of the hill to take it all in. Stan always tried
to top himself year after year, just like, Bonnie had pointed out, everybody with icicle lights on their gutters and inflatable Santas on the roof and spiral cones meant to represent trees. This year, he'd gone in for holograms.

Here was a new sculpture, a solid steel wall almost house-high. It was set up as a kind of screen, pulsing from blue to violet and then quickly through the spectrum, settling on a burnt orange. This gradually extinguished itself, turning once more to blue. And just in that last flare of light, a herd of galloping deer! She had to watch the cycle one more time to determine that the deer were, in fact, projected shadows. It was quite lovely and Christmas card–like. Perhaps Stan was losing his edge.

She drove downhill along the S-curve road to the main house, past a few more eruptions of colored lights that reminded Bonnie, unworthily, of the special effects at old Polynesian restaurants. A number of cars were parked out front, some of which she recognized, some not. Her mother had been vague about the holiday schedule when Bonnie had last called. “I think we'll have a few people stopping by. Oh, I don't know. Whoever Stan runs into. Whoever Charlie brings. No point in planning ahead.” As usual, there was the chance of at least one thundering party while she was there.

Bonnie parked and hauled her luggage up to the front door. The air was already biting cold, and she didn't want to have to go out again. The house, as her brother Charlie liked to say, practically screamed “Artist in Residence.” It was a long, rambling structure with a dramatic roofline, sided in reclaimed barn wood. You approached the front door along a curved portico that gave the effect of walking through a barrel. The main room had a twenty-foot ceiling and an L-shaped fireplace. Around the fireplace was an expanse of severely modern couch seating. People at the far ends could only wave to each other.

Entering and dumping her bags, Bonnie heard a man whose voice she did not recognize say, “But design in itself is not sufficient. Design does
not replace reality. Design must be a reflection of life yet also be itself. As is true of all living things.”

“I couldn't agree more,” Stan said. “Unless, of course, you're talking about the idiotic decompositionists. Then all bets are off. Bonnie! You look like the orphan of the storm. Come here and warm yourself by the fire and be taken into our collective bosom.”

Still wearing her coat, Bonnie advanced into the room. The fire popped and snapped, but the room was so huge—a goddamned Viking mead hall, Charlie called it—that it hardly seemed to heat any of it. She nodded at the guest she did not know and allowed herself to be embraced by Stan, a process involving more enthusiasm and whiskers than she cared for. He wasn't a big man, but he was gut heavy and muscled, used to hauling chunks of metal into place. Released, she took a step back and said, “I like the deer. I thought they were the real thing.”

“The real thing, although not replacing reality. Bonnie, this is Franklin. My blended daughter, Bonnie.” This last being Stan's clever joke about blended family.

Bonnie shook hands with Franklin, who rose slightly from his seat and then fell back again. He had a jowly, dark-bearded face, severe eyebrows, and a head that was perfectly bald except for two fringes of dark hair that resembled earmuffs. One of Stan's art guy friends. They tended to come in two varieties, the happy drinkers and the melancholy ones. She put Franklin down as melancholy, but maybe that was just the eyebrows. “Nice to meet you,” Bonnie said, then, turning to Stan, “Where's Mom?”

“In the kitchen, attending to her womanly chores. So you liked the lights? The little deary deer?”

“I did. I like representational, I wish you'd do more of it.”

“Representational,” Stan said, “is interior decorating. I just put it outside.” He spoke dismissively, but Bonnie knew he soaked up praise of any kind. Artists, in her experience, were all attention whores.

“What's the structure, the tall one, is it headed somewhere?” Stan often had partially assembled pieces on the property so he could troubleshoot them.

“Kansas City. Guy there wants a waterfall for his stately home. They all want waterfalls. They're big on fake nature. Are you going out to the kitchen? As long as you're passing the bar . . .” Stan wagged his empty glass at her.

Bonnie collected their glasses. She paused on her way to contemplate the Christmas tree, which stood, as always, in the juncture of two windows. It was an ordinary enough Douglas fir, probably purchased from the Kiwanis lot in town. And it was decorated with an ordinary string of multicolored lights and some gold bead garlands. But the rest of it had an unsettling, Druidic air. Sheets of moss and lichenlike growths draped the branches, also a number of twigs and dried leaves. A large black crow sat on the topmost perch, its yellow eyes glittering.

She put the packages of sweets on the dining room table and draped her coat over a bench. Like every other piece of furniture in the house, the table had some design pedigree she couldn't remember, like the chairs in the shape of artful gnarled branches, like the enormous glass globe suspended lights, like the bathroom vanities made of pickled wood and the sink basins of volcanic stone. Jane, and anyone else who she brought home with her, always marveled, surprised that there was so much money to be made in giant metalworks, that Bonnie herself had that kind of money, though they didn't always put it so crassly. Bonnie shrugged it off. It was Stan's money, or more accurately, his mercantile grandfather's, and Bonnie's access to it was controlled by Stan's whims and by a system of legalities that resembled plumbing, complete with capped pipes and shut-off valves.

Claudia was standing in front of the stove, enveloped in a cloud of fragrant steam. “Hi Mom.”

“Honey! Did you just get here?” Her mother turned and embraced her
with one arm. She held a wooden spoon in the other hand. “Were the roads horrible? I was so worried.”

“They were fine.” Bonnie had to bend down to get her mother's welcoming kiss. She wasn't tall, but Claudia was a shorty. “What's for dinner, you need any help?”

“Cioppino. Pasta. I got it under control. Go find out if Frank is allergic to any seafood. He just showed up and I already had dinner planned.”

“Showed up from where, exactly?” It wasn't like they were in the middle of a flight path.

“New Jersey, maybe? He lost his job, or something else bad, I forget. Stan's going to help him. Isn't that nice of him? Are you starving? Do you want wine, there's some open. How about you put some salami and antipasti stuff on a plate and take it out to them, so they don't get too carried away.”
Carried away
meant drunk. “There's olives and breadsticks and mozzarella. If they want anything else, they can come fix it themselves.”

An idle threat, Bonnie knew. Claudia fed the multitudes. Bonnie took a platter from the cupboard and ate salami and cheese as she put the food together. The kitchen had a six-burner Wolf range with a custom hood and mosaic backsplash, a central island with its own bar sink, and a separate butler's pantry. It had been designed so as to console Claudia for living out in the Wisconsin wilds. Bonnie couldn't cook her way out of a Glad bag. It was one more piece of mirthful family lore.

She fixed Stan and Franklin their new bourbon and waters, brought it and the food in to them, and interrupted the conversation long enough to learn that Franklin would eat whatever was put before him. She went back to the kitchen and relayed this to Claudia. “Who else is here, I saw a bunch of cars.”

“Charlie brought some friends. They're in town playing pool, they'll be back later. Haley and Scott and the babies are down in the family room, that's where they're staying. You haven't even seen them yet, they're precious. You're in Haley's old room, I hope that's all right.” All
the while she was talking, Claudia was opening cupboards and drawers, stirring, tasting, chopping. She cooked, she ran the house, she kept up her looks with yoga and antioxidant facials. She tracked Stan's commissions and managed his money and arranged for his appearances and interviews and believed in his genius as if it were a religious vocation. “Talk to me, how was the wedding? Did Jane look happy?”

“You know, she did.” It was a mild surprise to realize this. “Kind of a small scale thing, but that's what they wanted.” Hoping to steer the conversation away from weddings, which might lead to difficult questions, like when was she going to have one herself, Bonnie said, “Whose idea was that tree? It looks like Hallowe'en.”