“Yeah. Look, go to the wedding and act really sweet—we’ll get you a nice wig to wear—and then you can pitch it to him that we want you to live with us. He’d save a lot of money that way, right? Maybe he’ll go for it.”
To be in the same house with Evelyn for the whole year? To come here at night after classes like a day student? To have Evelyn holding her hand like this, to have dinner with Evelyn every night, to drive beside her in the car on the weekends, to drink wine coolers, to—Ray was in this house too. The thought of Ray, of his mouth pressed desperately against hers, made her feel sick at her stomach again.
She asked, “Is that Ray’s idea, to have me live here in the fall?”
“No, mine,” said Evelyn proudly. “I was going to tell him last night, but he wasn’t feeling well and then he fell asleep. How about we put it to him when he gets home? He’ll go for it—you know Ray loves you.”
Ingrid was silent.
“Okay?” Evelyn asked.
Ingrid looked down at Evelyn.
Tiger scar. Tattoos on her arms. Gun in her drawer. Hair permanently on fire. The love of my life, Mister.
“Okay,” she said, in a voice that came out small.
Ray pulled into the driveway and shut off the Saab’s engine but did not get out of the car. He had been downtown at a job site most of the day, and had only seen Joanne for a moment as he hurried past her desk while she was talking on the phone. Ingrid would be even more disgusted with him than she already was if she knew he’d cheated on Evelyn. Ingrid would—he broke off the thought, disgusted with himself: Ingrid, Ingrid, Ingrid—he should be thinking about his wife. Where was Evelyn in all this? He remembered a story his college roommate had once told him. A drunken night in Paris, during which the roommate had accepted an invitation from some Moroccans to drive with them to a bar outside the city. The roommate had gotten quite drunk, and when the bar closed hours later, he discovered that his new friends and their car had disappeared. He had no idea where he was, so he simply began walking through the deserted streets of the suburb, looking for someone of whom he could ask directions. But his French was so limited that when he finally met a man stumbling home from some other pub, all Ray’s roommate could say was,
“Ou est Paris?”
Ray had laughed and laughed hearing that story, because how could you lose an entire city, and of all cities, Paris? How could you not know in which direction Paris lay? But that was how he felt about Evelyn now; he had lost all sense of which direction he needed to turn to come back to her. How was it possible? She was his wife. The first woman he’d ever fallen in love with, the first woman he’d allowed himself to be changed by. He had thought he could see her lights from everywhere.
But
ou est Evelyn?
Ray got out of the car and took a deep breath to rid himself of the day’s anxiety. Hoping the contents of his mind did not show on his face, he went through the house and out to the back yard and up to his wife where she was turning chicken on the grill.
He kissed her, sweet and sweaty, kissed her again. Only then looked over at Ingrid, who was sitting on a towel in the grass.
She’d cut all her hair off. Shaved it right off. Like what girls do before they enter a convent. He felt a fresh wash of shame break over him. Was this uglification intended for him? Because of him?
“Hi, Ingrid,” he said in what he hoped was a neutral tone.
Ingrid nodded her head slightly to show she’d heard him but didn’t answer, got busy lighting a cigarette.
Well, that was how she should react; she shouldn’t look at him. He didn’t deserve it. She was upset, afraid, angry; that was how you should feel when someone twice your age kisses you. Oh, what could he do to undo what he’d done? He wanted to make peace. He wanted to tell Ingrid that the last thing in the world he wanted was to hurt her, and yet he had. He wanted her to forgive him and not hate him. To look at him at least. And he wanted to kiss her, oh yes, there it was, welling up inside of him again, he wanted to press his mouth to hers and drink her, gather her body into his arms and hold her there.
I have fallen into some kind of dementia, he thought. Anything that passes through my head becomes something I actually want to do.
He turned from the women—one with hair the color of flames, leaning over the barbecue turning chicken breasts; one with a shaved head smoking herself to death. He went inside and made himself a drink in the kitchen.
This is not really me. I am not a man who kisses teenage girls, fucks his receptionist, cheats on his wife.
The only thing to do was force all this back into whatever crack in his psyche it had crawled out of. Force it back in and go on.
His wife was calling him. Ray went back outside with his gin and tonic and sat down on the porch steps, watched his wife heap chicken and corn onto paper plates.
“So, I’m thinking,” Evelyn said. “What if we called Ingrid’s dad and offered to let her keep living here instead of going back to the dorms at Newell?”
Ray choked on his drink.
“We could call her dad, or rather, you could, Ray, you’re good at that kind of thing, and just say she’s so happy here and we love having her around, and he could save a lot of money on boarding school fees if she were a whaddaya call it, a day student, and we’d be happy to have her.”
Oh, how we’d be happy to have her, Ray thought. Oh how we’d be happy to ruin three people’s lives for an hour of caresses.
He glanced, just glanced, toward Ingrid, and oh hell, she was looking at him. Her dark eyes went into him, the color of brown glass, lighter than you’d think brown eyes could be and still be brown, and her cheeks had that damning roundness that meant she was years too young for him and that he wanted to put his own cheeks against, feel the softness there.
What an evil thing the body is, he thought wildly. His own body had turned on him like a dog he had thought was tame. He could feel the energy of desire course through his body like the drug it was. He would not do this; he would not lose control. When he was nineteen and had to have surgery for a ruptured appendix, he’d fought the anesthesia, trying to hold his head a little off the table even as he complied with the request to count backward from ten. He’d got all the way to six, two more numbers than most people, he’d learned later.
I will control myself, he thought. I will.
Evelyn and Ingrid were both waiting for him to say something.
“But he’s her father,” Ray said.
“Meaning what,” Evelyn asked.
“Meaning if Ingrid’s father wants her to go back and live there, that’s what has to happen. It’s not up to us.”
“But we could at least talk to him,” Evelyn said.
You kissed her, you love her, you want her, it’s too late for talk.
Ray looked out past the trees toward the town green. People lived in Randall who had never met Ingrid or Evelyn, never married a failed circus performer covered in tattoos, never fallen in love with a teenager half their age.
I can do the right thing. I can.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said. God knew that was true. He drew courage from this and faced his wife. “We’d be interfering.”
“Why are you doing this?” Ingrid said.
He let himself look at her again. Her mouth was bunched up in an effort to keep from crying. She was miserable and he was making her so. She was beautiful and young and hating him and on the verge of tears.
She stood up and came to the foot of the porch steps and stood right in front of him. “You’re talking about me like I’m not even here,” Ingrid said. “I’m right here, Ray. I’m right in front of you. I can hear everything you’re saying.”
Oh, his name in her mouth was music, a Bach cello suite. Ingrid gave it a color that no one else could. What could he say that would make her understand, what could he do, short of grabbing her and kissing her again, that would get the obvious through her horribly shorn and ragged head?
He reached out toward Ingrid’s chair and patted her arm, once, twice, oh God, took away his hand.
There, you little fool, do you feel it? Do you feel that wild ache and spark?
Pressed his lips together hard, wished the ground would open beneath him.
“I want what’s best for you,” he said. “What’s best for you is that you should leave.”
Ingrid turned away, crying. “I hate you,” she said, and ran to the shed, yanked up her bike and pedaled unsteadily down the driveway.
“Ingrid, wait,” Evelyn called. And to Ray, “What the hell has gotten into you?”
Ray felt a ripping in his chest as his heart tugged free and ran after Ingrid. Empty hole in his chest, he looked at his wife.
“I mean, Jesus,” Evelyn said, “haven’t you been listening to anything she’s said all summer? She hates living in California. Her family doesn’t understand her at all. She said her new stepmother was giving her some line about how she needs a stable family, not a boarding school. So maybe if she lived here—”
“This is a stable family, you’re thinking?”
Evelyn scanned his face. “Why do you say it like that?”
He looked at his feet. “She needs to find some friends her own age.”
“No, you said it like
we
aren’t stable, you and me.”
Ray realized he was supposed to contradict this. He opened his mouth, closed it again.
“I mean,” she said, “I know we’ve had some hard times, and I’ve been unhappy and stuff, but not lately. Not since Ingrid got here, in fact. I mean, don’t you think things are good now?”
“Between you and me,” he said.
“No, between you and Nancy Reagan. Yes, between you and me.”
“Things between you and me are fine,” he said. He could never tell her about Joanne, ever. He would have to hold that lie forever and let it eat him.
“Well, then what’s your point?” Evelyn said. “Ingrid doesn’t need to be with her parents if she’ll be miserable there, and anyway, her mother’s dead, this would just be another new stepmother she doesn’t even like. And we love having Ingrid here with us, so why send her away? Hello? Ray, I’m talking to you.”
He loved his wife, he knew he loved her. He had fallen in love with her, falling in love expressed as a man leaping out the window of a burning building. His life the building. She the window and the net. And now this terrible, terrible thing: he was in love with a sixteen-year-old girl and his entire body was on fire.
He shook his head to clear it. “I’m just trying to think of what’s best for Ingrid.”
“What’s best for Ingrid is if we help her out.”
“She needs to find friends her own age,” he said weakly.
“She’s too dependent on us. The best thing we can do for her is to send her back to her family.”
Evelyn shook her head. “I don’t get you, Ray. I really don’t.”
She started up the back steps.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To see if I can find her—and comfort her, since you made her cry. The Olds is still at the shop—I’m taking your car.”
She went inside, and a moment later he heard her start the car. He closed his eyes.
If it were a good thing and not a bad thing I would find Ingrid down whatever road she’s riding, beneath whatever tree she’s thrown herself. If it were the right thing and not the wrong thing, I would gather her up in my arms. I would hold her and tell her that if I could give her the gift of time, of patience, of trust, she would see she has nothing to worry about, that she’ll be all right because she knows how to love. If it were a good thing and not a bad thing I would hold her against me and let it flow into her like heat how much I love her. I wouldn’t kiss even the top of her head, and I wouldn’t look in her eyes, in case she saw there all the wrong ways that I want her as well. I would just hold her until she stopped crying, and then I would let her go.
A car door slammed, and he realized he hadn’t heard Evelyn drive away. Had Ingrid come back by herself? Now Evelyn was coming around the side of the house with a panicked expression on her face.
“Is Ingrid all right?” he asked.
“What the fuck is this?” Evelyn said, and held out a scrap of pink phone message paper.
He had seen hundreds like it; he had received hundreds of messages written on this identical message paper, all in Joanne’s handwriting, but this one was not going to say
Pls. call H. Gibson,
or
Weber mtg changed to 3:30.
“I don’t know,” he heard himself say, time slowing down, igniting.
“Then why the fuck is it addressed to you?” She threw the paper at him and it fluttered ineffectually to his feet. He picked it up and read, in Joanne’s familiar, slanting, Catholic school penmanship:
Dearest Ray,
A beautiful afternoon yesterday. Thinking of you always. We need to talk—not at work! (smiley face) When, where, how soon?
J.