Authors: Elizabeth Strout
“Helen—”
“She made him feel important, that’s what he said. He gave her advice about her divorce. Thirty-three years old, his
daughter
is almost that age. She kept a record of everything, then turned him in. Does he tell me? Of course not. Instead he lets himself slide farther down the sewer pipe and decides he’s headed for hell—no, wait, says he was
in
hell, can you imagine, I’m supposed to feel sorry for Jim Burgess who put himself in hell, he actually acted like that, Bob, like maybe I was supposed to feel sorry for him, always, always, always, about
him
—so he goes off with a
life coach
, Bob, just in case you don’t think it’s unbelievable enough, and she takes him out to Fire Island, her husband’s away, and Jim tells me he’s in Atlanta. I found out because she called him here. After he’d gone. Can you believe that? After lying to me for so long, what’s another lie?” Helen gazed blankly in front of her. “Nothing. Another lie is nothing. Because everything is nothing.”
There was silence for a long while. Then Bob said quietly, more to himself, “Jim did all that?”
“Jim did all that. And probably more. The kids are a mess. They all flew home to help me, but I could see they were scared to death. You want
parents
, Bob, no matter what age you are. They lost the golden image of their father, which is terrifying to them, I couldn’t let them see a wretched mother. So I had to act strong and comfort them and send them away and it was just exhausting, you can’t know.”
“Ah, Helen. I’m sorry.”
And he was. He was terribly sorry. He was also unspeakably sad. It was like the universe had cracked in half; Helen and Jim were one unit, they couldn’t possibly be two. He felt a sickening pity for their kids, he felt like he had lost what they had lost. But they were younger and it was their parents and it was so much worse— “Oy,” he said. “Oy.”
Helen nodded. After a moment, she added, reflectively, “I did everything for him.”
“You did.” Bob saw this clearly. Helen had been picking up Jim’s socks right here that day he tossed them onto the floor and the coffee table while Bob was telling about Adriana calling the police on her husband. (Adriana! Bob had felt sorry for her, standing on the sidewalk that morning!) “Oh Christ, Helen, I’m sorry I mentioned Jim’s law firm to that woman. It just fell out of my mouth. I should have known she wasn’t trustworthy. I kept saying that day I didn’t think what she told the police was true.”
Helen looked at him vacantly. “What?”
“Adriana. You’re right, I should have known she was no good.”
Helen smiled sadly. “Oh, Bobby,” she murmured. “Don’t take that on too. He would have found somebody else. Like the life coach. They’re just out there waiting, I guess. I don’t know, it’s a foreign language to me. I wouldn’t even know the words that are used to start an affair.”
Bob nodded. “You’re a good person, Helen.”
“He used to say that.” Helen raised a limp hand, dropped it back into her lap. “And it made me happy to hear. God.”
Bob looked slowly around the room. Helen had made a beautiful home, been a patient, warm mother, she’d been friendly to the neighbors when Jim walked arrogantly past them. She’d filled the house with plants and flowers, been good to Ana, she’d packed suitcases for their expensive vacations, waited while he played golf, and mostly (Pam was right about this) listened while Jim talked about himself endlessly, how smart he’d been in court that day, how he was the
best
in the business and everyone knew it.… She had bought him a drawer full of cuff links, a ludicrously expensive watch, because, he said, he’d always wanted one.
But, still: A home should not be destroyed. People didn’t understand this: Homes and families should not be destroyed. He said, “Helen, did Jim tell you why we haven’t been speaking for months?”
Helen lifted a hand vaguely. “Some girl you were with, I don’t know.”
“No. It’s because we had a fight.”
“I don’t care.”
“But you need to care. Didn’t he tell you about the fight? About what he told me?”
“No. And I don’t need to care. I need the opposite. I need to be free of caring.”
He told her what Jim had said on the balcony of the hotel when Zachary was missing. “Jim’s been living his whole life with that, Helen. The guy killed his father, or he thinks he did, and he was too scared to tell anyone. Helen?”
Her eyes were squinting hard. She said, “Is this supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s to make you see why he’s all messed up.”
“It makes me feel worse. I’ve been telling myself that he’s had some kind of midlife crisis, but he’s been a scheming liar all his life.”
“You can’t call that lying, Helen. That’s fear.” He was pleading now, lawyerlike, trying to keep the pleading from his voice. “Any kid will do that, try and get out of something. He was eight years old, Helen. He was a child. Even the law says an eight-year-old is a child. So he did this thing, or he
thinks
he did this thing, and time goes by and he can’t tell, because the more time that goes by the harder it is to tell. So he ends up living with fear all his life, like he’s going to get found out and punished.”
Helen stood up. “Bob. Stop. You’re making it worse. Now there isn’t one day of my marriage, not one day, that I know was truly mine, with a good and honest husband. I don’t know what to do, I have no idea how to get through the days. That’s the truth. I’m jealous of dead people, Bob. I don’t even cry, because the sound disgusts me, the pathetic, pitiful sounds I make here alone at night. I have lawyers drawing up the agreement, and then—I don’t know what. I’ll move somewhere. Please go.”
“Helen.” Bob stood up, one arm reaching forward. “Helen, please. Feel some pity. You can’t leave him. You can’t. He’s all alone. He loves you. You’re his family. Come on, Helen, you’re his wife. Jesus. Thirty years. You can’t just toss it over your shoulder!”
Oh, the poor woman went nuts. She was crazed, or allowed herself to be crazed, Bob was never—when he thought about it later, as he did often—sure how much of the outburst she could control. Because she said some pretty incredible things.
She said (and Bob would whisper “Jesus” every time he recalled it) that she’d always, deep down, thought the Burgess family was kind of crappy. Close to trash, really. Hillbilly, rube trash, that god-awful little house they’d grown up in, Susan being a bitch. Susan had been cold-hearted to Helen from the moment she’d met her years ago. You know what Susan gave Helen for Christmas one year? An umbrella!
Helen said Bob must leave, so he went out the door, and he was halfway down the sidewalk when he heard Helen yell after him, “A
black
umbrella!
No thank you!
”
11
Bob drove and drove and drove. The car swooped around a curve, up over a hill, down past a creek, through a town of few houses and one gas station. He drove for hours before he saw a sign for the college. For the last many miles the road had been winding and narrow, and on both sides hills rose up, golden in the autumn sun. At times the road went along the top of one of those hills and he could see for miles around him the soft rolling curves of the earth, the varied tones of fields, brown, yellow, green, and spread out above a sky that was endless and blue with white clouds scattered. Its beauty did not touch him.
“Oh Christ,” Bob murmured as he drove into the small town of Wilson, where the college was. He spoke aloud to get it straight: “Jim’s teaching at this college. Things change. This is not a horror film.” But that’s how it felt; Bob couldn’t shake it. There was something about the little town, the one small main street—there was something bad about it. He felt that hidden eyes were watching him, the lone red rental car going through the empty streets on a Saturday afternoon in Wilson.
He found his brother’s apartment not far from the campus. The building was tucked into a hill, and there were many wooden steps that had to be walked up to even reach the front door. Bob buzzed the buzzer and waited, finally hearing the sound of footsteps within.
Jim opened the door partway, leaning against it. There were purplish circles under his eyes, and he wore a sweatshirt with no shirt beneath; his neck was corded and his collarbone jutted out. “Hey,” Jim said, raising a hand laconically. Bob followed him up the stained carpeted stairway, watching his brother’s feet in dirty socks, and his jeans that were too loose. Passing a door on the second landing, Bob heard a staccato foreign language coming from inside, and there was an acrid smell of sweetened garlic and spices; the smell was insidious. Jim looked back over his shoulder and pointed upward: Keep going.
In his apartment, Jim sank down onto a green plaid couch and nodded toward a chair in the corner. Bob sat tentatively. “Want a beer?” Jim asked.
Bob shook his head. The apartment seemed to have little light, in spite of the large window behind the couch where Jim sat. Jim’s face seemed gray.
“It’s pretty awful, huh.” Jim opened a Band-Aid box next to a lamp, and brought out a joint. He licked his fingers.
“Jimmy—”
“How are you, brother of mine?”
“Jimmy, you’re—”
“I hate it here, I have to say. In case you were going to ask.” Jim held up a finger, put the joint between his thin lips, found a lighter in his pocket, and lit, dragged, and held. “Hate the students,” he said, still holding in the smoke, “hate the campus, hate this apartment”—exhaling now—“hate the—whoever they are, Vietnamese, I guess—downstairs who start that fucking smell of grease and garlic at six in the morning.”
“Jimmy, you look like shit.”
Jim ignored this. “Creepy place, Wilson. Football game today. But you never see anyone. The faculty live out in the hills, students in their dorms, fraternity houses.” He took another hit on the joint. “Horrible place.”
“That smell coming from downstairs is just sickening.”
“Yuh. Yuh, it is.”
Jim looked cold. He rubbed one arm and crossed his legs. He leaned his head back onto the couch, exhaled, stared at the ceiling for a moment, then picked his head up and looked back at his brother. “Nice to see you, Bobby.”
Bob leaned forward. “Jesus, Jimmy. Listen to me.”
“Listening.”
“What are you doing here?” It was the stubble on Jim’s face that made it gray.
“Running away,” Jim said. “What do you think I’m doing here? I figured, sweet campus, smart kids, new chance. But I don’t know how to teach, that’s the truth of it.”
“Do you like any students?”
“I hate the students, I told you. Wanna know something funny? They don’t even know who Wally Packer is, not really. They go, Oh, yeah, I know that song. They think he’s practically like Frank Sinatra; they have no idea about the trial. They don’t even know who O. J. Simpson is. Most of them don’t. They were babies when that was happening. Don’t know, and they don’t care. They’re very, very privileged kids, Bob. The sons of the captains of industry. That’s who they are. One guy on the faculty told me this is where the corporate guys send their kids, knowing they’ll still come home Republican.”
“How did you even get this job?”
Jim shrugged, smoked more of the joint. “Some dude here Alan knows had surgery and took a leave or something. Alan fixed it up for me.”
“Do you do that a lot?” Bob nodded toward the joint in Jim’s hand. “ ’Cause you’re kind of skinny for a pothead.”
Jim shrugged again.
“What—you’re doing more than that? You’ve never— Oh God, Jim. Is this something you started with your new now-I’m-going-to-crack-up life?”
Jim waved a hand tiredly.
“You’re not doing coke or anything, are you? You might just think about your heart.”
“My heart. Yeah. I might just think about my heart.”
Bob stood up, went and looked in the refrigerator. There was beer, a quart of milk, and a jar of olives. He came back to where Jim was. “Well, they should know who O.J. is now. He’s back in jail. Or released for the moment, I guess. But going back to prison for good.” He sat down slowly in the chair. “Along with your friend Wally.”
“Yep. Yep, that’s true.” Jim’s eyes were getting red around the rims. “But no Wilson student gives a shit.”
“I don’t think anyone gives a shit,” Bob said.
“No, I think you’re right.”
After a moment Bob asked, “So have you heard from Wally?”
Jim nodded. “He’s on his own with this.”
“Think he’ll go to prison? I haven’t paid much attention.”
Jim nodded. “He will.”
It was a sad moment. There are sad moments in life, and this was one of them. Bob thought of his brother in his tailored suits and expensive cuff links, speaking into the microphones on the front steps of the courthouse at the end of each day. The glee of the acquittal. And now the defendant was headed, possibly, probably, after all these years, to prison, for being careless, reckless, obstreperous. And here was his defender, Jim Burgess, sitting skinny and unshaven in a small apartment out in the woods with awful smells of acrid garlicky something seeping through the walls—
“Jim.”
His brother raised his eyebrows, tapped out the roach in an ashtray, preserving it carefully in its little baggie before putting it back into the Band-Aid box.
“I want you to leave this place.”
Jim nodded.
“Tell them you can’t stay. I’ll tell them.”
Jim said, “I’ve been thinking about things.”
Bob waited.
“And one of the things that is so clear to me, so strikingly clear—and trust me, not much is clear, but one thing is: I don’t have any idea what it’s like to be black in this country.”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean it. And neither do you.”
“Well, of course not. Jesus. Did I ever claim to? Did
you
ever claim to?”
“No. But that’s not the point.”
“What’s the point, Jim?”
Jim looked confused. “I forget.” Then he suddenly leaned forward. “Listen to this, my brother from Maine. Listen to this. When you meet a stranger and get introduced, you’re not supposed to say, Nice to meet you. That’s vulgar. Too familiar, lacking class.” He sat back. “You’re supposed to say, How are you?” Jim nodded. “Bet you didn’t know that.”