“Thomas has been under the weather for a bit,” I said.
“I heard, I heard.” He nodded slowly. “Some of the guys putting in your pool were around here for lunch the other day. Sounds like you’ve been doing a lot of work over there.” He winked at me. “Lots of money being thrown around.”
“Like it’s going out of style,” I said. “It never ends.” I do not know what happened next, except that I started crying a little bit. I think because I felt comforted there. I had been in that diner a million times. It was a safe haven. Like a church.
Most of our neighbors actually went to church—there were at least twenty in town. There were a lot of faithful people around. Not me and my husband, though. “Church is boring,” Thomas had said more than once. “All that sitting and paying attention. It feels like class to me.” I agreed with him. I did like to pray by myself though. I liked to shut out all the noise and have a clear space in my head. So there was enough room for me and God, who did not want anything from me but just to listen and help me feel better. Growing up, I only ever went at Christmas and Easter, and Thomas’s dad had abandoned his faith entirely to the love of his farm. No one was missing us at church.
But Timber would miss us, and we would miss him making us breakfast every Sunday morning. I counted on feeling good at the diner. And yet there I was, tiny hot tears making their way down my cheeks. I had gone from hot to cold to hot again, all in one day. I did not like the change in temperature.
Timber handed me a paper napkin from the dispenser. I wiped my eyes. Then he put both of his hands on my free hand.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I looked to see if anyone was looking.
“No one’s in here,” said Timber. “They’ve all gone home. You’re okay. Come on. You’re going to be fine.”
“It’s just . . . change is hard,” I said.
“No one ever enjoys home improvement,” he said. “It’s a lot of work. You got all those people in your house, there’s all that noise. And it always takes longer than they say it’s going to take.”
“I know!” I said. I was happy to talk to someone about it all, even if we were having two different conversations.
“Pop says I’m crazy, but I’m going to redo this place. I could really do it up.”
“You should,” I said.
Papi rang a bell in the kitchen. Timber squeezed my hand and winked again. “Your order’s up,” he said.
I wiped my eyes again, and pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of my wallet. I laid it on the counter. Timber came back with our food in a plastic bag that said, “Thanks for your order” on it. It was coming out of the mouth of a smiling cartoon dog wearing a chef’s hat.
“Those are new,” I said. “They’re cute.”
“There’s going to be a lot of new things around here,” he said. “Wait and see.” He leaned over the counter and kissed me on my cheek. “You hang in there. It’s all going to be over soon,” he said. And I knew he was right.
On the way home I watched the whir of the fields. It was late summer by then, and the corn stood tall, and the sunflowers and prairie flowers bloomed in the ditches. I opened the window and stuck my hand outside. I thought about how those fields got quieter than an ache late at night, except for the cicadas. They made a nasty noise that sounded mean-spirited to me. Eventually the asphalt turned to gravel and I picked up some speed. I believed I was heading home to something good. I believed that my husband would be healed, and that I would be healed, too, even though I could not rightfully say what was wrong with me, though I guess I had an idea.
I pulled into the driveway and almost hit the neighbor’s dog. I felt my heart jump when I stopped short. He was sniffing around our garbage. I yelled at him to scoot when I got out of the car and he looked up at me so mournfully I forgave him. They must not be feeding him right, I thought. What kind of people ignore their dog? I scratched his head and then he licked my ankle. He had long red hair, and it was soft. I wove my fingers in it. In the distance a car horn honked and the dog perked his ears up. He licked my ankle one more time and ran in the direction of his house.
I called out Thomas’s name as I walked in the kitchen door, and he called back to me. He sounded excited. He limped to the kitchen and stood in the doorway. (He had started limping around after the surgery; I was not sure why. There was nothing wrong with his legs.) He crossed his arms across his chest and smiled. He was waiting for me to ask him something. I felt tired all of a sudden. I pulled out some plates from the cabinet and opened the carryout bag from the diner. I dumped the contents of each container onto a plate.
Finally, I broke.
“What’s been going on round here since I’ve been gone?”
“Just watching some TV,” he said. “Thinking about tomorrow. Thinking about that checkup.” He was all jazzed up.
“It’s about time,” I mumbled. I do not know why I said that. I was not ready for it to be time yet. I picked up the plates and walked to the living room. I told Thomas to grab the forks as I passed him. He looked disappointed that I wasn’t more excited.
He followed me into the living room and said, “You know what that means, right?”
I sat down on the couch and put the plates down. I picked up the remote control and flipped through the channels. I stopped on a behind-the-scenes look at the life of Rio DeCarlo. They were on the early years, when she was a teen model. Rio DeCarlo looked like an angel. Her lashes were so thick and dark and stared upward toward the sky. She was a natural, said the narrator. Headed for the top, only to burn out once she got there. Thomas sat down next to me.
“If everything checks out, I can start using it again. We can, you know,
do it
,” he said.
“I know what it means,” I said. “I’m just worried. What if it’s not like you wanted?” I took a bite of eggs. They were cold by then.
“It’s going to be perfect,” he said. “It feels different already.”
I put a piece of bacon in my mouth. I bit off some, but I did not chew it. I just let it sit there, savory in my mouth. The salt sank into my tongue.
“Come here,” he said. He patted his lap. “Come on.”
I got up and bent over him.
“But—careful,” he said. He stroked near his knees. “Sit there.”
I straddled him. I was very careful not to go near his crotch, but I leaned the top of me closer to him. He put his hands on my waist, and then he slid them under my shirt. He moved them up the sides of me. Then he was near my breasts, and then he was touching the undersides of them.
“This is the softest part of you,” he said. His hands felt nice there. He looked so happy. “Right there,” he said. I was hesitant to be happy, too, but the sight of his joy made me want to join him.
Behind me on the television set the narrator was saying something about a breakthrough performance. I turned away from my husband and looked at the screen. Little Rio DeCarlo held a knife in front of her. “I’ll use it,” she said. “Don’t think I won’t do it.”
I turned back to my husband.
“Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow,” he said, as he buried his head in my breasts.
16.
H
e left the house singing in the morning. He stood in the doorway of the kitchen, watched me wash the “#1 Husband” and “#1 Wife” mugs we used every morning for breakfast, and he sang to me. It was a stupid old rock song about feeling like making love. It made me laugh. I did not even think it was funny, but there was something about Thomas Madison. The way he did everything with such extreme feeling, held his hands out so high, his body swung with the sound of his voice, like one of those crazy southern preachers giving a sermon. It caused these little ripples in me, and then all of a sudden I was snorting, and then there was a noise coming from my throat, and I was laughing at him, with him, whatever. He swaggered toward me and swept me up in his arms, he spun me around. He dipped me. I laughed again.
“Moonie, you and I are going to make sweet, sweet love tonight,” he said, and then he kissed me. It was a delicious kiss, full of tongue and moisture, and we sucked on each other’s lips afterward. “Don’t get me too excited,” he said. He lifted me up. “I need the doc to check me out first, make sure I’m GTG.” He backed away from me. “Good.” He punched the air like a fighter. “To.” He punched again with the other. “Go.” Punch.
And then he left me there, all alone, and I wished he had not. I was not at ease by myself in that moment, and I felt the stir of something dark in me. It felt like those cramps I get early in the morning sometimes a few weeks before I get my period. They’re called mittelschmerz, my mother told me once. There’s no reason for the pain, but it’s part of being a woman, she told me. No reason for it all.
I went to the living room and turned on the television set. One minute I was watching the TV, and the next I was on my knees praying. I needed the comfort. I was allowed to pray even if I did not go to church. I turned on the news, I remember that. I was taking a break from celebrities and their glamorous lives I would never have. Even if you had money, that did not mean you got to live that kind of life.
At first I heard everything the newscaster said. He was talking about one of the wars. There was one starting, another one ending. I guess it was just time for our government to win something. There was a picture of a map on the screen. I stared at the border between two countries. I thought about what divided my husband, my love, the man of my dreams, and myself. It was something so small to me, but so big to him. I could not convince him otherwise.
I was angry with him suddenly. He had left me alone for hours. I had been filled up with him for a week, and then when he left it was like someone had stuck a needle in me and drained out all the love. And all that was left behind was frustration. I guess I was addicted to that man, but he had made me that way. I tried not to be angry. I tried to love him because I knew when he returned he would want to go to bed. I could not do that angry. I could not let him in when I felt that way. I tried not to think of anything. The words coming out of the newscaster’s mouth turned to one long noise. They were not separate anymore, just a jumble of sounds. I turned up the volume louder, but still I could not hear anything right. I tried to make my mind work, but the words would not form into anything. The noise sounded like a truck hurtling by me. I could almost feel the hot rush of dirty air against me. I started to shake, just my hands at first, but then there was a rumble through me. I tried so hard to focus. I let the noise wash over me. I stared at the screen. And then I was there on my knees praying, the soft thrush of carpet gliding against my knees and calves. I felt like I was sinking into a joyous sea of words. At last, they were my words. At last, I could be heard.
I prayed for my sister, Jenny, first, because I thought she needed the most help. I prayed she would not get pregnant, and I prayed she would learn to accept our mother as I had. To not take it all so personal, those things my mother said. Because it was not personal. It was all about our mother, and nobody else. And I prayed for her to get her act together and get the hell out of town. Even going to school in Lincoln would be better than the life that awaited her if she stayed put. I was living proof of that, almost-finished outdoor pools and everything. My life was not the kind of life she needed.
And then I prayed for my mother, for her to find some sort of joy in her life. It seemed like everything was waiting for her, if she would just reach out and take it. She should not be suffering at all. It was her own creation, this torturous life. Jenny was trouble, for sure, but she did not need to put every last ounce of herself into us, into her children. She needed to free herself, though I did not imagine it happening in this lifetime. Still, I prayed for her freedom.
I prayed for my father a little bit, but not as much as my mother and Jenny. All the time I wondered who he was, and I still did not know. We had lost each other a while ago, and had never found our way back. So I just prayed for him the same as I prayed for Jenny, for him to have the strength to deal with my mother. I would have prayed for something else, anything else, but I did not know what he needed to have fixed. He seemed all right, my father, in his own little world.
I prayed for Timber, too. I do not know why I added Timber in there. I just did. He popped into my head, he was giving me a silly wave, where he just bent his fingers at the knuckles, like the ones he gave me when I walked into the diner. I prayed that all of the changes he wanted to make in his life would work out just as he planned. I prayed, too, that he would find a nice woman to marry him, so that he would feel complete. I wanted a life of ease for him.
For me, I just prayed that I could feel. That was all I wanted, was to feel.
I saved Thomas for last. There were so many things I wanted for him. I knew every little part of him that needed changing, not for me, but just for him. I spent so much time with him, and even when I was not with him, I was thinking about him, focusing on who he was, down to his very core. I felt like I even knew what his blood tasted like. Salt water. And that his bones would be smooth and solid in my grip. And if I could see all the tiny little atoms and molecules in him it would be like looking through a kaleidoscope at the sky on a cloudy day. I knew how he hated the hair that came out of his ears, and I knew that he wished he talked quieter sometimes. I knew, even if he did not admit it, that he missed his dad, and he wished he had been there with him, that there had been some peace in the end. He needed his heart to be soothed. I knew he wished he were taller. I knew he wished he were smarter. I knew sometimes he felt alone even if I was sitting right next to him. I sent a wave of prayers, I wanted to wash over him with my thoughts. Release him. Freedom for him. Freedom for everyone.
My last words for him felt ridiculous in my head. I was embarrassed even thinking them, but then I thought: this is coming from a pure place.