The Longest Night (35 page)

T
he night before the restart, Paul woke from a postdinner doze in the armchair to spy Nat bustling around between the tiny laundry room and their back bedroom. She was scrubbing and bleaching his work coveralls; she went at them with a vengeance, the stout swish of bristles scouring fabric. Next she pulled his khaki uniform from the dryer (this he wore on the bus and for meetings; the coveralls were for the reactor floor and break room), flapped them around, pressed and ground them with the iron. Then, apparently having blown off a little steam, she laid them out over the bed and calmly pinned all his badges into place, marking distance with a tape measure. He had the odd sense of having watched her fight someone without her knowing. When his uniforms were finished she emerged from the bedroom slightly sweaty and placidly smiling. She reported, sheepishly, that the kitchen sink was clogged. Paul was not surprised. Nat wasn't careful about separating out grease; she was always in a hurry while cooking. Several times a year the sink would stop up.

He tried suctioning the drain, to no avail. Then, staring at the two inches of greasy gray water, he decided to take the sink apart from underneath. He fetched a metal pan, a drain snake, and his wrench from the laundry room, pulled off his collared shirt, and slid all of Nat's cleaning products out from under the sink, setting them off to the side like an unspeaking audience. He was on his back loosening the metal slip nuts when Nat returned from putting the girls to bed.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” she sighed. “I was hoping you wouldn't have to do that.”

“It's nothing,” he grunted.

She pulled a kitchen chair over and sat. “I'll cheer you on,” she said.

“This won't take but a minute.”

“Okay,” Nat said. Still, she sat. Paul wiggled the P trap loose and turned his head as water and grease spilled into the pan. It wasn't clogged, so he moved on to the trap arm, squinting.

“Are you mad at me?” she finally asked.

“Well, I wish you wouldn't put grease down the sink.”

“No, I mean, about something else?”

He paused. His heart gave a jitter midbeat. “No.”

She leaned forward and enunciated as if her words alone could shake him. “Did I do something to make you angry?”

He ran a screwdriver along the inside of the pipe stub-out. It came out with old potato peels and a wad of coffee grounds. He stuck it back in and this time it returned several balls of fat, beaded with water. He wiped them on a rag.

“Paul?” Nat said.

“I'm trying to fix the sink here. Would you please stop nagging at me?”

There was a hurt silence. “I'm not nagging. I want to talk to you. I want to know why you've been so cold to me ever since you came home. You were away for six months and now it's like you can barely look at me.”

“It's been an adjustment coming back,” Paul said. “I'm tired. Everything feels different.”

“Nothing is different,” Nat said. “Everything is exactly the same here.” She thought for a moment. “Well, there's Sadie. But she's good different. What can I do to make it easier for you? I've been cooking your favorite meals. I've tried to keep the girls occupied. I've been trying to make conversation—”

“It just takes time,” Paul said.

“I feel like it's more than that, this time.”

“Nope,” Paul said. He didn't like feeling watched. Her pale, humiliated face just gaping at him as if he'd slapped her. He picked up the drain snake, his hands shaking not from the task but from knowing that she was forcing his hand.

He threaded the tip into the stub-out and tightened the setscrew. He cranked and pushed until the tip finally felt loose and then wound the snake back out. It emerged with a fine plug of rotten garbage, which gave him an upswing of satisfaction. “There,” he said quietly, scraping the clog into the pan.

“Did you get my last letter?” Nat asked.

“I think so.”

“I only got four letters from you, all those months, and none toward the end. Were you busy?”

“Sort of. You know I'm not much of a writer.” He waited a moment and said, “Neither of us wrote many letters.”

“You could have called on the phone. Patrice said”—she faltered slightly and recovered—“she said her husband called sometimes when he was deployed. I was so embarrassed; I didn't even know someone
could
call home from deployment.”

“I don't think a phone call would be worth much, over all that distance.” She looked doubtful and he sighed. “We'd have had to shout over the cackle, some bored intel guy listening in. It didn't seem worth the effort.” He could tell that this wasn't what she wanted to hear, and he felt angry again: It wasn't fair for her to judge him, to pepper him with questions and demand answers, after what she had done. He squinted into the open pipe, pushing the drain snake through.

“Are you disappointed that we don't have a son?” she blurted. “That we have only girls?”

His head snapped up. “Of course not.”

“Really?” Nat was chewing her thumbnail. “I just wondered, because my mother said she thought you might be—”

“That never even crossed my mind,” Paul said, genuinely taken by surprise. “I love our girls.”

“Oh, I'm glad. I love our girls, too.” She smiled but then it dimmed. “Sometimes I feel like you love them more than you love me.”

She was all over the place; it made Paul nervous.

“And I wish your family could have met them,” she went on.

“What? Why?”

Her smile faltered. “Well, because…it would have been nice for them to know their grandchildren. I wish I could have met your parents.”

Paul scoffed. “No, you don't. Anyway, my whole family's been dead for years. My mother, my father.”

“I know, Paul. I'm so sorry.”

“Don't be. It's really better for them that way.”

“How can you say that?”

“They were miserable people.”

“But no one is better off
dead
.”

“Some people might be.”

“You scare me sometimes, Paul. You can be very cold.”

“I just told you that I love our daughters.”

“About other things.”

“Well,” Paul shrugged, “you knew what I was like when you married me.” He paused. “Did
I
know what you were like when I married
you
?”

“What do you mean?”

He screwed the slip nuts back on with a quiet grunt. “Do you think I had a good idea of what you were like when I married you?”

“Why would you ask that?”

“Ow. Christ.” His hand tore slightly against the sharp edge of a metal nut. He sucked on the knuckle once, hard.

“Why don't you finish that later? It's hard to talk to you like this.”

“I'm almost done.” He stood, wiping his palms on a dish towel. He turned the sink on hot and watched the water go down. “Good,” he said to himself.

“That's terrific!” Nat said, hopping to her feet. “You fixed it.” Her persistence toward goodwill was admirable. She tried to look at his hand. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“It's a stupid scrape,” he said, jerking away. “I'm fine.”

She nodded, rebuffed; turned the water on and off, still trying to rally. “I wish I knew how to fix things around here like you do. Then I'd be prepared for your next deployment. Maybe you could teach me sometime.”

“But then you might be lonely.”

Nat's brows knit together. “What?”

“Then you might be lonely when I was deployed,” he said, a little louder. “If you didn't need to call someone to come over. In fact, maybe I should just break this again right now? Then you could call someone.”

“That's absurd,” Nat said, staring at him.

“Then maybe you wouldn't even have to be lonely while I was at work.”

“Paul, stop shouting.”

“I know how you hate to be lonely,” Paul said. He realized that he was repeating himself. “Everyone seems to know it, I've heard.”

Nat asked, “What do you mean?
What
have you heard? Paul, listen.” She reached for him and he stepped back. “Whatever you've heard is not true. People are stupid. They'll say anything.”

“People just make things up? They just invent some story about you having a man over here all the time while I was away?” Paul felt sick, saying this. He stared at the countertop instead of at her.

“People see something perfectly kind and decent and they think it's scandalous—”

“I'm not talking about ‘people' here. I'm talking about what you did. Was it decent? Was it decent of you to have this…man over to our house while I was away? Did you think about how that would make me feel? Did you think about me at all?”

“I thought about you every second.”

“Well, Nat, you sure didn't act like it,” Paul said. He felt hot saliva gathering in his mouth and he spat into the sink.

“I did a stupid thing,” Nat said. “I was stupid. But I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't do anything with that man. He's a really nice person, a local person, and he just helped me out and fixed some things for me. I swear to you.”

“I'm sure he was really nice,” Paul said. “He sounds like just a wonderfully nice local person.”

“Paul, please.”

“Don't even worry about it,” he said, raising a hand. He was shaking. “It's my fault. I should have known better. All the signs were there, and I ignored them.”

“All what signs?” Nat asked in a small voice.

Paul stared into the sink drain, flecked with bits of food and soapy froth. “I tried to tell myself you were this pure and innocent girl, but I knew it wasn't true. I'm not going to be that stupid again. I was away and you acted like a hooker.”

Nat sucked in her breath. Her eyes sparked tears.

“Listen,” Paul said, in nearly a whisper. “We are never going to talk about this again. Do you understand? We will pretend that this never happened. And if you ever mention it, I will leave this house.” He looked her in the eyes. “I will never be able to trust you. Do you understand?”

“Don't say that,” she said.

“You will have to help me,” Paul began.

“All right—” she said, almost eagerly.

“You'll have to help me pretend to trust you,” he finished, and she turned away. “But do not ever talk about this.”

“I never meant to—”

“Nat!” he shouted. “Shut up.”

She was crying openly now. “I didn't do anything. You have to believe me—”

He grabbed her upper arms and she looked almost relieved. “Do you understand what I said?” he asked. “I want you to
shut up
.”

He released her with a backward shove. The sick feeling kept gathering in his mouth. He spat one last time into the sink, and headed for the back room. His sparkling-clean khaki uniform dangled on its hanger in front of the closet door like a flattened man. He yanked it down and slung it over his shoulder and on second thought grabbed his coveralls, too. He strode past Nat in the hallway without looking at her, stepped carefully into his shoes and laced them as if he had all the time in the world, not wanting to seem rushed or erratic. He wanted her to know that his actions were solid.

Nat still stood in the kitchen, making unbearable sloppy weeping sounds and holding herself around the waist with one arm. He did not feel even the slightest bit sorry for her. He stepped into the freezing air and closed the door behind him.

The car started up after several tries. He drove away, through the deserted downtown, out across the Snake River Plain as fast as he could, as if the yellow line of the highway were his train of thought and the car, racing alongside, could catch up to where it began and erase it.

D
EER EYES FLASHED GREEN
in the fields, and the world beyond the road was dark. Paul felt the car skim eerily over a patch of ice and then straighten out. He felt disembodied. He did not want to go home.