The Last Cadillac (6 page)

“It looks like a story out of Edgar Allen Poe over there, Mom. The cat will get nightmares.”

“I thought they had cats.”

“They do, but they're all scared, and weird.”

The to-do list before our move kept growing. And then there was Jack. I was going to prevail upon him to babysit the cat until further arrangements could be made. Maybe
the cat would like Florida, some day. I kept saying “the cat” because it had so many names, including Pansy, Kitty, Blackie, Wart, and Puny, which is what Tick called it. Puny seemed to stick.

Jack appeared one evening as I was taking lasagna out of the oven. I'd been thinking about Puny, and I was just about to bring up the warm and fuzzy subject of finding a temporary home for the cat with Jack. A smile came over me. Here he was, taking the time to sit down with his father and his big sister and have dinner.

But he wasn't there for Italian, or to talk about the cat. The expression on his face was anything but warm and fuzzy. He was there to give me instructions.

“I want to see the checkbook and all the receipts,” he said.

“For what?” I was stunned, yet again, especially since Jack knew the accountant and banker were involved in financial decisions for Dad.

“What do you mean, for what? For your purchases, with Dad's credit card.”

The blood rose to my head. I was sure it would spurt out my ears. His cold tone filled every space in the kitchen as he stood there, with his hands in his pockets. He didn't even sit down. He just stood there, watching me, irritating me.

“Are you serious? May I ask why?” I wanted to drop the lasagna on his new Cole Haan loafers.

“I need to know.”

“Once again, why?”

“We need an accounting of everything you spend.”

“Joe Glotzbach is getting a detailed accounting of every check I write and every charge I make.”

He deflated like I'd stuck a pin in him.

“I can't believe what I am hearing.” I muttered the last
and shoved the lasagna to the back of the stovetop. Tomato sauce leaped out on to my blouse.

“Don't take it the wrong way.”

“Really? How should I take it when my little brother demands that I give him an accounting of the expenses for taking care of our Dad? How should I take it?”

“Julia wants to know, too. I haven't gotten hold of Lucy yet.”

He didn't move, or change his frigid tone.

“Why don't you ask Dad?” I said, and immediately thought better of it. “No, call Joe. He does Dad's taxes. I'm sure he'll be happy to oblige you.”

I was dumbfounded. Jack had his own business, and Jack was insisting that I give him an accounting of the American Express bill. His insinuation that I didn't know what I was doing, and that I was profligate, was doubly insulting.

“I think this conversation is over.” I felt ill. I felt confused. I did have to use Dad's credit card for a number of expenses, not the least of which was running the dollhouse. Last I checked, I hadn't been to Saks for a new outfit, although I certainly could have used one.

I left Jack standing in the kitchen with his fists stuck in his pockets and a self-righteous look on his face. There was absolutely no love lost at the prospect of getting the hell out of there as fast as I could and getting down to Florida, using Dad's American Express Card.

I cleaned up the lasagna. And the next day I had another mess on my hands. The Ex appeared at the front door. I opened it, and we stood practically nose-to-nose. It was a shock. I still had trouble looking him in the eye, but I had no other choice. It was that, or look at my shoes. His hair, more grey than I remembered, was clipped very short, military style, and his cheeks were smooth and scrubbed pink like he'd taken a wire brush to himself. He was a strong, trim man, but he wasn't happy about his short legs, which placed him among the short people of the world. He hated Randy Newman's song about short people who have no reason to live—which Lucy, in one of her devilish moments, sang to him. But he was short, and standing a step down at the front door, he was even shorter. It never mattered to me. He'd been adorable, a sort of Paul Newman straight out of Hud. Once we'd nearly seen eye-to-eye, all the better to get along nicely. We'd made mad love in the Indiana dunes, the West Point library, and every place in between; we'd sworn “everything forever,” and believe me, it finally came down to that: a world of joy and hurt and regret. Except there was never any regret
about those kids. We were ever so blessed with the kids. That blessing, however central to the marriage, did not hold us together, and now we stood, on opposite sides of the brick threshold of my parents' condo. We might as well have faced each other across the Grand Canyon.

“Who let you in?” I said.

“What's that supposed to mean?” he said.

“This is a gated community.” I sounded snobbish. It came out the wrong way.

“Yes, I know.” He stood squarely, almost like he was at attention. I had the urge to say, “At ease,” but I didn't care if he were ever at ease again.

“They didn't call from the guardhouse and warn me you were coming.”

“Sorry. I guess I should have called you.” He spoke like a courteous stranger, this person I'd been married to for more than twenty years. For some reason, the distance between us felt good.

“That's all right. I'm not doing anything, except about a million things. How did you get in here?”

“I'm a member of the country club. The guard let me in. It's on my sticker.”

“We should all come with warning stickers.”

He looked at me blankly, and patiently, which was unusual for him. He was making me nervous.

Finally, I said, “You're a member of the country club? I thought you didn't like country clubs, too elitist and all that.”

“I've changed.” He didn't say that his new wife was a member of the country club, and that was the reason he was a member. He didn't bring that up, or that he'd moved into her house, mortgage paid, with all the dark, gloomy furniture
of a museum, and the heavy draperies and other frippery to keep him warm and cozy, and secure, the shithead.

“You've changed. That's nice.” I didn't ask him in. He seemed pleasant and subdued enough—but he was stiff and poised, sort of like a snake, before it strikes.

Then, he struck.

“She threw me out.” His face went from pink to pale, and he shifted to his other foot.

My mouth dropped open, but nothing came out.

“Then she threw every piece of paper and clothing I own down the stairs and out the door. Except for the computer, which I guess was too heavy.” He trailed off on the last detail.

“Crazy,” I said. I'm surrounded by crazy people, and it's making me nuts. He'd married the woman before the ink had dried on the divorce, and I should feel sorry for him? But I did feel sorry for him. God help me, I did. What could I say? I was glad that the father of my children was on the street? What exactly was I supposed to do with this bit of news?

“Want to go to lunch?” he said.

We sat in a brown, sticky plastic booth at Wing Loh Fat's Chinese restaurant on Indianapolis Boulevard, which ironically is US 41, and a direct, if ponderous, route to Florida. How far away from Florida I felt, looking at oriental glazed broccoli and beef, shiny pineapple-candied chicken and fried rice, and the face of a stranger, my ex-husband, in a restaurant not fifteen minutes away from the gross steel mills of Gary. I cracked open the cookie and wondered what my fortune would say. “You will meet a tall stranger.” Boy, that was wrong, too.

We hardly said a word, but I noticed some things had not changed. His appetite had not dimmed; he shoveled large forkfuls here and there, with nauseating speed and a lack of discrimination about the food itself. I either had to keep up or lose my appetite, which was quickly happening. His smooth jowls bulged in and out like a squirrel, a creature he had a lot in common with. They both ate with abandon and on the run, except that the squirrel sat in the tree. Hubby, on the other hand, often reminisced fondly about the “field” of his old Army days when he ate a variety of C-rations dumped into a helmet and cooked over an open fire. He was the type of person who needed to consume all those, and everything, around him. He once stuck an entire Big Mac into his mouth in two bites, and given the assortment of Chinese in front of us, he was about to eat the whole table in five minutes.

His cell phone rang and he answered it, lowering his face almost into his rice. His wife's screams came through the tiny black holes of the phone into the large hole in his head. I could hear the hollow echo of her voice and imagine the tiny impotent woman trapped inside that phone, and trapped in a life with him. She had taken him, and she could have him, if she could get him back.

Suddenly, I pushed away my plate. In the place of an appetite for Chinese, I felt a sense of possession, of a future without him and a time of possibilities. Yes, she could have him. I was good, very good, with that. It came to me like a door opening in my head, and I felt better than I had for a long time. I was free of him. Really free. There was no knot of dread anymore for the fits he would spring on me; I could just walk away, or hang up, or do whatever it took to get away from him.

He flipped his wife closed, back into the tiny black holes from which she emerged to scream at him, and he put her in
his pocket. He gave me a sheepish look. I knew that look. He was embarrassed, and he knew that vulnerability often won me over.

“I love you,” he said.

“Oh, please. It's a little late for that.”

“I've always loved you. You're my girl, my woman.”

He reached for my hand and turned it over. The pleading. This was truly incredible—he actually thought I would go back to him, like I'd done many times. I pulled my hand away.

“I'm tired,” I said. “I want to go home.”

“You know I love you. Say you still love me.”

“I can't say that. I won't say that. You're married.”

“So?”

“What do you mean ‘so?' You left.”

“You were going to leave me. You said you were.”

“I said that after you went to see a divorce lawyer, while you were diddling with that trash from southern Indiana, and God only knows how many others, and finally that fuzz ball you're married to now.”

“You're my wife,” he said. “She's just my spouse.”

“Are you planning to leave your spouse?”

“Will you come back to me?”

So, that was it. He wanted a commitment from me before he pulled the plug on his latest marriage. I almost choked on the nonsense he was making up as he went along. In fact, I would choke before I told him that I would go back to him. I'd jump off a bridge before I'd break up their happy little duo.

He had just called me up one night and simply said, “I'm filing on Tuesday.” I remember that night. He'd been gone a lot around the time of that miserable Christmas, trysting
away, moving his computers, going on “business” trips. And he was the one who was “filing.” I'd felt very cold at the sound of Hubby's voice over the phone—so cold and impersonal. That night, I only said, “Good-bye.” That was it. After all the years, he was filing on Tuesday, and to this day, I'm sorry I didn't see his face when he said it. But I knew what I'd see there. Nothing. Just the empty cold look of the needy.

My family didn't say much about the divorce, except to keep reminding me that I'd known Hubby for years before I married him. But Dad was finally resigned. “You're a strong one,” he said. “You'll be fine, whatever you decide.” Dad was the only one who gave me a vote of confidence, and maybe Lucy. But I didn't feel fine, not until that moment over spicy beef and broccoli and glazed chicken with fried rice.

I slid out of the booth and walked toward the door. I hoped he would follow me out of the restaurant, because I didn't want to walk three miles back to the dollhouse on a hot, August afternoon, but I would gladly do it to get away from him.

He still had the same sad, pleading question on his face.

“No,” I said.

Later that day, mopping the floor, which usually rattled some sense into my brain, it occurred to me—he still hadn't said a word about the kids and our move to Florida. I'd filed the paperwork with the lawyer, who served Hubby the notice. Then I waited. Nothing. What a strange man. And I thought I knew him, but actually it showed me I didn't know all that much about the person I'd married. Why on all of this good green earth did I ever think I knew the man I married?

I splashed the mop around and whacked into the walls. It felt good, but I couldn't help remembering, and wondering, why he would even think to try and come back to me. He had the most convenient memory of any person I'd ever known.

It might have been different for us—even with the misery that preceded the divorce. We'd had our arguments and broken furniture. But I always held that very small glimmer of hope that things would change for the better. Such is the goodness of hope; it doesn't die easy.

Then it did. Everything changed in one day's time. I'd known him for so long, and all it took to end it—definitively—was the space between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m., on a dark, cold morning. I can say that for sure now—with the hindsight of the lucky, and my sanity relatively intact. That one time hit me like a rock hits water. After that morning, the events rippled out and enclosed us in larger and larger circles until we were all floating in the warp with no way out of what we fell into: the divorce, the family fights, the fleeing to Florida.

It was very early that day when I heard the annoying rattle of the garage door going up. It woke me up instantly; but that was easy. All those mirthless nights, I slept on the edge of disaster, ready to jump to God-only-knows-where. The clock said 3:09 a.m., and I was alone in the bed again. The garage door was disturbing; but it was not just the clackety-clack that made me sit up in the dark. Something was different, even though this had been his routine for many weeks. He left in the night, and he was still gone in the morning when I woke up to get the kids off to school. He told me he had to work at odd hours because the office was moving to another building. He and his staff needed the time to relocate computers when business was shut down.