30 Pieces of a Novel (82 page)

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—and goes to her room or somewhere in back. She's angry or disappointed about something, he's almost sure it's nothing that he did, though it could be, she could have been up late last night when he again yelled at his wife about how she's always dropping things—“Forget the pan and broom I once mentioned, now I need a shovel sometimes”—and then said, “Sorry, just kidding,” but much lower, so Josephine wouldn't have heard; she seemed fine this morning when he came home from driving Fanny to school and sat at the table with her a few minutes while she ate breakfast and then saw her off at the bus stop, seemed in a good mood, showed him the lanyard she's yarning (“Very nice.” “Do you like the colors?” “Beautiful, and it's so well made.” “I'm getting better at it, but I'll never be as good as Fanny.” “Oh, now, don't be silly; this one's every bit as good as any she's made.” “She taught me.” “So, to your credit, you learned very well”), smiled, let him kiss her goodbye when they heard the bus coming, and he goes to her room and says, “Anything wrong, dear?”—she's sitting on her bed reading a book—and she says no and returns to the book and he says, “Please put it down for a second. You want to read, read, I love it when you do, but I know something's wrong. I can tell by the way you came in and your scowl then and a little now … what's disturbing you?” and she says, “Nothing,” and he says, “Come on, don't tell me,” and she says, “Whatever it is, I'll get over it,” and he says, “Friend trouble at school? Maybe a low mark on a test you don't want to tell me about yet but know I'll have to sign?” and she's shaking her head. “A boy: somebody say something nasty or stupid—even on the bus?” and she says, “It's none of those. I just want to read before I start on my homework; they gave me a lot of it,” and he says, “Something I might've done?” and she says, “You ask too many questions and I'm not in an answering mood. That's all right, isn't it?” and he says, “Why shouldn't it be? and I don't want to appear snoopy,” and leaves the room,
quickly looks back, and she's
looking at him and quickly looks at her book and seems to read for a few seconds and then turns the page, and he says, “Like me to make you a snack? You usually have one when you come home, and I'd be happy to,” and she continues reading without looking up at him and he goes into the living room and hears her door click shut and he thinks how he loves her. How could he ever think of leaving, even for a few days, for the reasons he was thinking of? He knows he could never go, because of her and her sister and of course his wife too. “I've got to get the goddamn hell away from here,” he says to his wife, and she says, “As they say about something else—one's urinary tract and I wish mine—if you got to, do, otherwise, it'll be—oh, dreadful of dreads—painful to you. Not that I want you to go, naturally,” and he says, “Thank you, and I don't really want to either, in addition to knowing I can't. That was funny, what you said: another reason I should stay. Where else am I going to find such humor? I'll try to work things out, don't worry, and she says, What is it that's troubling your?” and he says, “Now you've gone too far; you know I don't talk about such things,” and she says, “Give it a go; I'll provide intermittent comic relief,” and he says, “All right, I can try,” and starts and they have a long talk about it and she cries a lot—“You're supposed to be funny; you're not being funny,” and she laughs and he says, “Laughing isn't funny; it's a response to something that is or being tickled,” and she laughs—and after a while he starts crying too and she looks at him with a please-come-here-I-want-to-hug-you-and-maybe-you-need-to-be-hugged-too look and he goes over and hugs her and says, “I hate hugging like this; it's like politics,” and she says, “Be quiet,” and at the end of it he says he feels things are going to be better from now on, “I just know it, with only some reservations, or at least for the time being, but I'm hoping for the extended run,” and she doesn't say anything, and he says, “So what do you think to what I just said?” and she says, “You did talk about what's bothering you, which is a start, but you have a history of being unreliable with your promises,” and he says, “Who promised? Anyway, I'll buy that, but just watch.” He's in the car with his older daughter and says, “I have to confess something to you. Sometimes I feel—recently, that is, or more often recently—” and she says, “What?” and he says, “Out with it, right?” and she says, “Not that, I just don't know what you're getting at,” and he says, “That I feel sometimes like I want to run away from home. Now doesn't that sound foolish? Almost like a little kid talking. There in fact was a joke about it years ago—something like ‘But I wasn't allowed to cross the street by myself,'” and she looks at him that she doesn't understand, and he says, “That's the punch line. The boy wants to run away from home and leaves but can't go any further than the street corner of his block because his parents—” and she says, “I get it now. But you really have wanted to leave us? That's sad,” and he says, “It has nothing to do with you kids or Mom, meaning nothing any of you did to make me feel I wanted to leave. And just for a week or a few days, you understand: that I'd go, I'm saying. But, you know, I just feel—felt—still get the feeling sometimes, I suppose, that I have to be off by myself for a while. That I'm mostly a terrible father, a lousy husband, a good provider, though—” and she says, “What's that mean?” and he says, “A term my dad used for himself, and he was. We didn't have a lot but we never lacked for anything, I think, except for tuition for a private university I wanted to apply to but really didn't have the high school grades or college-board scores or any of that stuff for, so was deluding myself I'd get in. But anyway, he said, ‘Why spend good money'—that was another expression of his: ‘All money is good,' he said; ‘what could be bad about it?'—'when there is a very decent free public college system in New York?' And I said, ‘Look, I'm your only child and I'll pay for half of it myself, living expenses included'—because I wanted to go out of town—'by working at jobs while I'm in school and summers,'” and she says, “But the other thing, your wanting to leave us. You didn't finish that.” “I know. And I realize being a good provider doesn't make up for being a lousy husband and father, which I often am, but I felt you'd all be better off with my being gone—and for more than a week, actually—than my sticking around and making life hell for you, that's all,” and she says, “But we don't want you to go,” and he says, “And I'm not. Though sometimes you must want me to,” and she says, “Sometimes, when you're very angry and acting sort of scary with your yelling and temper and not finding anything right with anything we do or that there is. But most times, or the majority of them, you're not like that,” and he says, “As I said, it's just a thought that comes from time to time, when I'm feeling particularly miserable with myself and that I've been a tremendous disappointment and bastard to you all, doing the things you said and worse, but nothing I'd ever carry out. It would destroy me—or maybe do a little less than that, though who knows?—but disturb me deeply to leave you and your sister and Mom. No, disturb me to the point of destroying me, I'm sure, because it's more than just making your own bed and lying in it, I'd think,” and she says, “What's that mean?” and he says, “You never heard the expression?” and she says no and he explains it and she says, “Oh, yeah, but what does it mean to what you were saying before?” and he says, “What was I saying?” and she says, “Disturbing yourself to the point of destroying yourself,” and he says, “Right, it's more than that, whatever I meant by it. But you have to know that most times I love being with you and I'd miss you kids and your mom so much and hate myself so much for leaving you that I'd probably die—that's it; I probably really would,” and she says, “Not literally,” and he says, “Close, though,” and she says, “Then don't go.” I got to get out of here, he tells himself, and thinks, You got to?—then go, and he thinks, I'm only just talking; I don't mean it. It's an idea—What would happen if I did go seemingly forever?—and I know what would. And it's really not so bad here, when you think what I am, and he thinks, No, not so bad at all, so stay.

So finish. They're in a car heading to Maine. Get closer. Sally and he, Gould: eventually they'll get married, have children, but now they're about to spend their first summer together. They met in November, about a week before Thanksgiving. Why's he mention that holiday? Because his mother was giving a Thanksgiving dinner, and though he'd only known Sally for a week and had gone out with her just once, he invited her to it. A cousin and his family and a couple of his mother's friends were there. They later told his mother, This looks like the girl for him. When his mother told him that, she asked was it true, she's a very nice girl and does he think she's the one? He said he hopes so but he's had this hope before so he doesn't want to pin any—well, hopes on it and be disappointed. “For now,” he said, “it's going fine, and for maybe the first time in my life I'm going to take it slow.” He's driving; she's looking at him. He can see her out of the corner of his eye. Corners of his eyes. (He'll find out which one's right later, probably by looking in a dictionary of slang or asking his wife.) He can see her, though, and she seems to be looking at him, and when people look at him he looks back, so he turns to her and smiles and she smiles, and he puts his right hand on her cheek, other hand holds the wheel, and she kisses it and then holds it and he says—

They left the city two hours ago. Packed, loaded up the rented car, got the cats—her two and her parents' two—into two cat carriers and started out. She tells him which roads to take. He's been to Maine only once before, on his way back from hitchhiking through Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia more than fifteen years ago. (That's not relevant, so delete it.) She's made the trip several times, always taking the same route, which she got from someone who belongs to Triple A. They're going to a cottage she's rented the last three summers. She said a few days ago she doesn't think he'll like it up there: the quiet, solitude, almost nothing to do at night, and if it rains or stays foggy for a few days you feel like a prisoner in the place. And the bugs—black fly season's only just ending; mosquitoes will be pestering them till a week or two before they head home, if they're lucky—her few friends in the area he probably won't get along with: older academics, mostly, and she knows what he thinks of academics. He said how can she say that: she's one, and she said, “You know what I mean.” Anyway, he said, nights will be cool; days, she's said, never get too humid or warm, and he'll be with her, and if he just has that he can put up with anything. His one regret, he now thinks, is that his mother will be in New York the whole hot summer, and every time he calls her, which he'll try to do every day, he knows he'll feel guilty and terrible about it. Though he is glad for a stay in a real vacation place after working the entire year adjuncting those dumb and useless continuing-ed creative writing courses four to five days a week, hardly any rest. (Make that clearer and more concise. Or just skip it or say, working at poorly paid jobs almost every weekday with barely an hour a day to do his own work.) This is their first summer together. (He said that.) They're going for two months. (Thinks he said that too.) He'll have to split the rent and expenses and car rental fees with her, which will be a sacrifice. She doesn't earn much either as a teaching fellow and also has no money saved, but she'll be getting a check every two weeks from her university while his school stopped paying him the week his work ended. It's something he always wanted to do: spend a few summer weeks or more in the country or at the shore with a woman he's in love with and who says she's in love—once even said “deeply in love, and that's the truth”—once even said she's never been so happy or felt so comfortable with a man as with him. He says to her—

She points out a highway sign for a rest stop in three miles: gas, food, information, the symbols on it say; buses and truckers welcome. He can't believe his luck. Two summer months with this beauty. This beautiful person. This brain-clever woman with all the right values, it seems, and a heart like—well, something, and a magnificent soul. (He used to say whenever he sees the word “soul” in prose he bolts the other way. So strike out the soul and don't try to fiddle with it, since nothing can take its place.) He thinks about what they'll do tonight after they arrive. It'll be dark. Won't take long to unpack the car. Or maybe just dusk, remnants of a great sunset, though he doesn't know yet how much sky hell be able to see through the trees there. Their bags, his typewriter and writing supplies, her box of books, a few of his, mainly his big dictionary and thesaurus—“There's a terrific library in town,” she's said, “with a steady stream of new books of all categories, though mostly poetry and fiction, furnished by the book editor of
The New Yorker
, who summers in the area but keeps to himself except, I suspect, to drop off his weekly bags of books”—some provisions from New York and a little they bought on the way, and, of course, the cats and litter box. There'll be cleaning up to do: mouse nests, maybe some dead mice and even a carcass of a bird that got down the fireplace chimney, dirt and dust that accumulated over the year, but she's said there's never much. Cottage will have been aired out by the caretaker, all he'll do other than get the hot water heater and refrigerator going and prime the well pump. “The place isn't entirely mouseproof,” she's said, “but the moment the cats are carried across the threshold, the mice disappear.” (Does he need all that? He'll decide when he goes back. And add “case of wine” and “boxed Cuisinart” to what they bring in from the car.) She'll take care of most of the cleaning and putting away clothes, she said last night. She has a system that gets it done in less than two hours, and she knows where everything goes and was stored last year. If he wants he can take their suitcases upstairs and set up his desk and make dinner: pasta, a quick pesto for it or just good olive oil and freshly grated romano cheese, wine and bread, and a simple salad. They have all that in the car except the lettuce. That they'll buy, as well as a few things for breakfast and maybe a dessert for tonight at a market about twenty miles from the cottage. (He already said that but in a different way, so it's okay to let stay.) Tomorrow they'll do their first big shop in the next town over, she's said. If he doesn't want to come along and wants to work or look around or nap, she'll do it herself. No, he said, he wants to be in on everything with her at first and start getting to know the area. Cats will have to be fed right after they get there, she said, and litter box refilled. He'll do that, don't worry, he said. “Pasta, sprinkling of cheese, little white wine in their drinking dish, right?” But which first? Probably the box, since it'll be a number of hours since they last used it. (The two sinces. That's always been a problem, since “as” or “for” or “because” just don't seem right in a sentence like that.) Phone will have been turned on, so he'll call his mother, if it's not too late, to see how she is and tell her—she'll really just want to hear his voice—that the trip went fine and the cottage and grounds, from what he can see, are quite pretty, all of which, because of what Sally's said about them, he assumes. (He didn't say that right, though he thinks the meaning got across, but he'll change it.) Her mother's coming up for a week. He wonders if she'd mind if his mother visited too. For five days, two less than her mother. His mother's frail but still gets around, and she can use a break like that from the city. It'd mean a lot to him, he'd say, and he won't ask for anything else, no other visitors, though she can have as many as she wants. (No, that's too much like something a kid would say, but for the time being keep.) He should ask her now. They'll have lots of time to talk about it if she has any objections. That way, if it's yes, he can tell his mother right after they get there. Or not that quickly. He doesn't want Sally to think he's a momma's boy—she knows he isn't; he just wants to make his mother happy—so maybe a half hour after they get there, if it isn't way too late. He says to her—