The Dwelling: A Novel (44 page)

“That’s right,” she said, as if buying that.

She followed him to the back door and stood framed in it while he dropped steaks on the barbecue, its newly filled canister of propane gray against the soft white snow that had fallen around it. She talked incessantly about mundane matters, what friends were doing, her job, the new place she’d moved into, her mother. She asked about RJ and he told her about bedtime. She suggested a compromise of trying out a new no-bedtime rule and seeing how he managed his time. He said that was a good suggestion and he would mention it to Janis. She asked about Janis. He responded, and slowly, painfully, most of the moment passed.

Oh, Richie.

The steak had been good, and the potatoes came out nicely roasted on the outside, soft and white on the inside; the salad was salad. Richie barely tasted any of it.

The cozy, warm, intimate feeling he had expected for the evening was completely unaccounted for, replaced instead by a growing feeling of mortification.

The food had gone down because he’d chewed and swallowed. He’d nodded at her statements and laughed at her small jokes and added his own here and there, but at the core of it was that mortification, that horrible, beyond-embarrassed feeling, that was growing in him, even as he tried to ignore it. As it grew, he seemed to feel it physically. Hotly.

It was just hot in the house. While coffee brewed and filled the dining room with its benign smell, they swirled their wine in their glasses and looked around the room at everything but each other. The news seemed spent.

It was too hot. Richie slipped off his carefully chosen sweater and tossed it in the general direction of the couch. He sat at the table in his T-shirt, his face flaming, although hopefully she couldn’t see that in the glow of the stupid candles. He stood and turned up the lights in the dining room with the dimmer switch. Jennifer did not remark on it.

The coffeepot made its last gasping burps before quitting and Richie, who did not feel like coffee at all unless it was coffee-flavored vodka, poured the rest of the wine into his glass, stopping just before the bottle was empty and gesturing with it to Jennifer.

“No thanks, I have to drive,” she said primly.

Fuck you.
When she looked away, he made a mocking face at her.
No thanks I have to drive.
A small, too small, voice inside told him to cool it. Watch it. Don’t be stupid.

Fuck you too.

“Coffee?” he offered Jennifer, his voice controlled, pleasant.

“Yes, thank you,” she said, almost gratefully. He went into the kitchen to pour her a cup. She took it with milk and sugar. Just a touch of sugar. She dipped her spoon into the coffee, just at the tip, and then dipped the wet end into the sugar, that was how much she took. Just enough to take the edge off, she would explain. It used to drive him crazy, the little brown lumps in the sugar bowl. He did it for her, though. Carefully. Stirred it. He pulled himself together. Some of the growing anger was pushed down.
Just because today wasn’t the day didn’t mean it wasn’t coming.
He’d just jumped the gun, was all. Probably scared her. Too much, too fast. He understood that. He stirred her coffee, staring into it, moving the spoon gently around the mug.

From the dining room, she called, “I’m so glad to hear you’re working again,” and he stiffened.

Slowly, a sneer grew on his face.
She was glad he was working again?

The two points in his head, Jennifer and work, separated by what he would likely think of—given a chance—as his soul smashed together inside him, crushing him. How dare she even assume to think about him and his
work?

How dare she?
I’m so glad to hear you’re working again.
Condescension. Pity. Maybe pity.
Oh I’m so glad to hear that you can still work even without me in your life poor baby.
His teeth gritted together and a vein in his jaw throbbed. He felt the wine in his head. It felt mushy and vague, angry. He realized that through dinner Jennifer had only had one glass of wine and he had drunk the rest. Not the rest, there was still a nearly full glass on the table.
How dare she?
A nearly empty glass on the table.
How dare she?

He gritted his teeth and tried to get straight. His good work over the last two days felt tainted.
It’s not. Calm down.
Little voices inside.
Settle it. Get straight.

Through teeth still mostly gritted he called back, “Thanks.” And then he took her the coffee. And sat down with his wine. But with every intention of sipping it. She looked hopefully at him, her eyes wide, over the lip of her coffee cup, and he softened. He felt like an asshole.

So he said, “The work’s good.” And kept his smile stiffly on his face.

She nodded brightly. “I’m so glad to hear that. I was worried when I saw you Saturday night. I know from the guys that you haven’t been writing.”

He pressed his lips together. It’s not the heat…“So you guys just sit around talking about poor old Richie?” he said, shaking his head.

“Of course not! Nobody
said
anything—”

He raised his hand and rubbed his face. “Don’t…let’s not go…there. I don’t want to talk about this. Let’s talk about you. Painful subjects about you,” he spat. “How about that boyfriend? He know you’re here? He doesn’t care if you go visit the ex?”

She looked down, stared at the table. Her eyes filled with tears and her chin wobbled and he felt like an ass again.

“Hey—” he said, with a sigh.

“Richie—” she started, and he saw an opportunity in her face, and he shifted his chair around and got close beside her.

“Hey,” he repeated, and put his arms around her. “Hey.”

She shook her head, no, and moved only a little away from him, so he got closer, inching his chair awkwardly on the shining wood floor. She let out a sob and allowed him to hold her, leaning into him with equal awkwardness, her head and shoulders ending up somewhere near his heart.

“Hey,” he said dumbly.

“Richie, I have to tell you something—” and she cried.

He buried his face in her hair, the smell of her scalp close and familiar, like one of those memories from childhood that hit you when you feel bad and vulnerable. He pressed his face into her and ran his hands gently over her back, into her hair, along her shoulders. He ran his fingers up her spine, feeling and remembering each knob of bone. She was warm beneath her sweater. He longed to put his hands up under it and feel her skin; it was not lust, but her; he wanted to feel
her
“It’s okay,” he breathed into her hair.

She shook her head again, and began pulling away. He let her. He wanted to see her face. When she cried, her nose got red and her lips quivered. He wanted to see it.

He was distracted by her and hardly noticed that she was still shaking her head,
no.
And when she stood up and moved away from the table, he stood too, and followed her. She was still crying. He thought of a Kleenex, but the only thing he had was toilet paper, all the way upstairs in the bathroom—glancing through his mind quickly on another level was the option of getting her upstairs for tissue and then leading her into the bedroom and making love to her but he let go of it (remembering to think
asshole
but not really feeling it) and ran into the kitchen, grabbed the roll of paper towel by the sink and brought it to her. She took the whole roll, laughing oddly, and pulled off a sheet. She blew her nose, but kept crying.

“What’s wrong? What’s going on?” he asked gently. Some boyfriend trouble. If he was writing it, the boyfriend was history, she couldn’t forget him, but was afraid, was it right? She would hurt the other guy, gentle creature that she was, she couldn’t face that, but couldn’t live without—

“He asked me to marry him and I think—” She sobbed hard into the towel. “I don’t know what to say—” she said, and buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook and Richie stared. “I’m so sorry, Richie, I’m so sorry,” she repeated several times, not taking her hands off her face.

He stared, incapable of saying anything. The room was filled with the sound of her crying, more softly now, and it occurred to him to ask her why the hell she was crying. It occurred to him to ask her to repeat what she’d said, he’d heard it wrong—
on Saturday you were cooling it off.
It occurred to him to ask her to die. To get lost. To
fuck
off.

“I thought you were taking a break,” he said stupidly. It sounded flat. He was flat. He was one-dimensional. A stick man.

She nodded. “He came over Sunday night. He said he didn’t—” She wiped her eyes on the towel, looking up for the first time, although not at Richie yet. She looked at the opposite wall, something in the tone of his voice making her feel safe.

“Didn’t what?” he screamed.

“Don’t
yell
at me!”

They stood, separated by a room and a host of options. Neither spoke. Richie’s mind tried to grasp
Jennifer’s marrying someone they said she would it was a joke how could she marry someone she was his what the hell do I say—”

He had no idea what to say, but they both stood there, motionless and dumb, and before he could stop it, he asked the last question he wanted the answer to, tried to stop himself and still asked it anyway.

“Are you going to marry him?”

Jennifer wiped her nose needlessly. She stared at the floor, and said nothing. His eyes widened and he raised an eyebrow, willing her to answer. But she didn’t.

She was.

“Well,” he said softly, “congratulations.” Then he laughed.

She looked sharply at him. “I haven’t
decided,”
she screamed at him.

When he finally moved, his body responded as though on a five-second delay. He spun around too fast, his head light, and went and got his glass of wine. His heart thudded in his chest, but it was dull, like an ache. “Well, let me make it easy for you. I don’t care what you do. That’s what you wanted me to say, right? You wanted me to say it was okay. It is. I don’t care.”

He sat at the table and glared at her, tried to pretend it wasn’t a glare. She looked around the room, the candles burning, the flowers.

He shook his head, “I wanted to get laid,” he said. “Pardon me.”

She closed her eyes and sighed heavily, put-upon; that sound was also familiar, the patented Jennifer’s-had-enough sound. Fuckin’ princess. “Don’t do this,” she said.
Took the words right out of my mouth.

He downed the wine in his glass. He stood up and went into the kitchen and came back with the bottle Jennifer had brought. He opened it with the same jerking motions with which he had opened the first. “So when’s the happy day?” he snarled. “Am I invited?” She wiped her nose again with the paper towel and then went to the hall. “Come back. Let’s toast the
union.”

Jennifer crossed her arms over her chest and stood framed in the doorway between the hall and the living room. She screamed at him, her body leaning toward him.

“I didn’t want it to be this way! I wanted to talk to you about it! This is my life!”

Richie poured himself another glass.

“Go ahead, drink until it hurts. Or doesn’t hurt,” she said evilly. He did not respond.

“I’m sorry,” she said, starting to cry again.

“Just fuck off.”

Stick your sorry.

That would be “sorrow,” Mr. Bramley.

Oh, pardon.

She grabbed at her coat and it stuck on the hook. She tugged angrily at it, her pretty face contorting in a sneer. “I knew it would be like this.
I knew it.
Never mind,” she said. She shook her head and pulled her coat down. The zipper clacked on the floor.

“Don’t scratch my floor,” he said petulantly, from behind a fog. Rajah looking down on the Kingdom of All Right.

“Another pleasant evening with Richie Bramley, author of nothing but his own demise,” she snarled back. It had the distinct flavor of a speech written some time before and practiced. He knew these speeches well. And in this honor he raised his glass to her in
salud
but by then she didn’t see it, because she was tearing open the door and slamming it hard, leaving behind her a whirl of snowflakes, big and fat and white and happy. They danced into the hall and descended, elegantly, to the floor.

Richie drank.

It was a dangerous sort of drinking, filled with abandon, no holds barred, untethered, unfettered and completely (for a change) justified. There would be no stopping.

He stared at the wine bottle. The bottle she’d brought.
Well, let it bring me pleasure. And it will. And it was good, so sayeth Lord Richie Bramley, Rajah of the Kingdom of All Right.
It was a Merlot. She had a fondness for Merlots, in the way that a passenger has a fondness for a Mercedes.
She had no idea, not a grand clue of the pleasures made possible by a decent Merlot. She might know a decent Merlot, but she wouldn’t know a decent drunk if she stepped on him, ha ha.

Richie had watched the door for a good half hour after she’d slammed it shut, expecting (not really, but expecting) her to come back through it again, and tell him once more,
I’m sorry I know how difficult this is for you I know how difficult you are and I love you anyway I know how difficult.
But, of course, she didn’t. He did not so much give up on it as forget to watch after a while. There were other things going on.

He stared at the dishes on the table. He felt that humiliation. He let the candles burn, enjoying the horror of their witness.
Ha ha you thought you were going to get the girl did you we have seen all the love and we knew all along ha ha.
He rewrote every line he said in his head. By the time the third glass of the last bottle of wine was drunk, he didn’t come off quite so bad.

So many things he could have said.

Simple.
What do you want to do?
Because even three sheets to the wind he knew,
knew,
that that was the crux of the matter, and the right thing to say. So simple. But he had instead baited her with anger and then got the spatter back.