A Stranger's House (16 page)

When the game resumed, our knees touched even more, and we filled in the slow places in the game with the obligatory small talk, talk of roommates and classes, futures. He told me he was a year out of college and a stringer for the
Hampshire Gazette;
within a year he planned to be a full-time reporter. I told him about the possibility of a position as a research assistant in Neuroscience and Behavior.

The game over—we had thrashed Holy Cross, I remember—we had filed out of the bleachers and into the night air, air at once cutting and welcome after the hot, smelly air of the old gym.

We stood outside, light from inside the gym falling down on us, and his face was half in light, half in darkness. I hadn't known his face then, I thought as I kept walking on State, the leaf still tight in my hand, my steps still heavy. I remembered I had been afraid of him that night. Not afraid in the sense I wanted to flee or to hide—not the fear that gnawed at me now, a car passing as I walked, its brights on and blinding me until the driver flicked them off only a few yards before passing me—but fear of departure, of taking off. The fear, expectant fear, welcome fear, of the prospect of love.

We'd gone from the gym to a loud bar in town, the place packed but all the more joyous to me for that. I wanted to be around people, wanted to hear laughter, wanted to feel my throat and lungs fill with warm air again after the cold walk, the two of us with our hands in our pockets, watching the sidewalk and our steps instead of looking at each other.

We stood just inside the front door, and Tom, taller than me, surveyed the room. He looked back at me, said something that was lost in the noise of the place, but I nodded, smiled. Then he took my hand, just reached for it and held it, his hand big but tender, and led me through the crowd, past the waitress station and bathrooms to a smaller room in the back where he was able to round up two chairs for us, but no table. We held beers in our laps, and talked.

I pictured him as he had been that night, his hair longer, parted in the middle and with no gray hairs, no small creases beside his
eyes. He was younger, of course, but much younger than I could ever know because I, too, was young, and had thought we were both such adults. Now I knew enough to be confused about that word, still not knowing exactly what the term meant, what being an adult entailed.

And then I pictured him at different times in our lives, different places, different events: I saw his face our wedding night, a night at an inn in Yarmouth Port, the room filled with dark wood furniture and the sound of wind in trees outside, saw in his face his delight in me when I let the straps of the white chemise I wore slip from my shoulders, let the silk fall about me; I saw his face looking off at a sunset as we sat on the terrace of the Plantation House up in Charlemont, where we were celebrating our second anniversary, saw that he was looking forward to something, his eyes to the west, looking beyond the long, green lawn before us, beyond the stone fence that bordered it, beyond the forest and the Berkshires and the horizon to something else.

Looking toward children, I knew, because we had started planning then, started scheduling amounts of money we would have to save, promotions and raises we would need to have secured, all for the sake of our children.

I saw his face on any one of the thousand days we had talked of those kids, saw the shine of dreams in his eyes as he talked of trips to sugarhouses to show our children exactly how maple syrup was made, the roaring fire, the long, shallow pans filled with boiling, steaming sap; talked of picnics to the Quabbin and Mount Tom, and tours of the museums in Boston, and playing catch and making up nonsense words.

I saw his face the moment we finally decided we would begin to try, saw his face after an evening's calculations, sheets of yellow legal paper spread out on the kitchen table, pages littered with numbers, account balances, goals, years, our lives mapped out before us: if the baby were born within the next year, we figured, he or she would graduate high school in 2002, college in 2006.

We looked at each other then, both of us smiling. He reached his hand across the table, and I took it.

He said, “Now the real work begins,” and I felt as though I were blushing as my eyes fell from his to the tabletop, and I nodded.

We had stood, still holding hands, and went through the living room, the apartment dark, and through the bathroom into the bedroom, where Tom let go my hand, went to the nightstand and turned on the light.

I was already at my dresser, pulling open the top drawer. I brought out a small tissue-wrapped bundle, tied off with a white ribbon.

He'd stood there, his hands on his hips. He tilted his head, and said, “What's that?”

I said, “A surprise,” and I turned, went back to the bathroom.

Inside the tissue paper was a sleeveless white cotton nightgown, the low neck and shoulders done about with lace and pink ribbons. It was something I'd bought a few weeks before at the lingerie shop downtown, when I'd sensed that this night would be coming soon, our savings recently having reached the level we'd decided four years ago would be adequate.

I put on the cool, white gown, felt it soft against my skin, saw in the mirror the lace and ribbons and the pale skin of my shoulders and my chest and neck, and I brushed out my hair, touched up my makeup rather than take it off as I did every other night. I smiled at how I felt: perhaps even more nervous than the first night in Yarmouth Port, though this evening, this making love, would be no more than a symbolic gesture of our beginning; tomorrow would be my first morning off the pill, next week I would get my diaphragm, and we would wait three more months, we had agreed, before I stopped using it, three months to wash from my system all the drug that had for years given me periods like clockwork, the blood coming just after noon of the second day the last pill of the month had been taken. Now would come the waiting for that period, the surprise of it, my periods before the pill never having been regular occurrences, some coming three weeks apart, some five. A constant surprise. But if all went well, I thought as I brushed my hair again, we would see only a couple of more periods, and they would be gone, and I would be pregnant.

All that waiting would begin the next day, I knew, but there before the mirror, my hand bringing the brush through my hair one last time, I felt in me some quiet adrenalin, the brink of beginning, of bringing into the world what we had waited so very long to bring, and then I placed the brush on the counter, and I turned out the light

Tom lay in bed on his side, propped up on his elbow, his shirt off, the sheets at his waist. The light was off, too, but he had lit the candle in the small hurricane lamp I kept on the dresser. He still had his glasses on, his face lit with pale orange light, the reflection dancing in his glasses. I stopped at the footboard, put my hands to my sides, and took hold of the gown, brought my arms up so that the gown was out to either side, and I turned in a circle.

“For you,” I said when I had made it around to face him again.

He said, “My,” and smiled. He put out his hand to me, drew me to him. I lay next to him, and I reached up, took off his glasses. I said, “We don't need these now, do we?” and I turned and placed them on the nightstand.

I turned back to him, and there was his face, his fine nose and soft brunette hair, his cheeks and chin rough with a day's growth. He was nearsighted, and wore his glasses all day long, so that whenever I looked at him without them I was astonished, surprised at the face familiar yet new, eyes warm and deep brown, pupils nearly lost in that dark color. I looked at him, and he smiled, said, “Now I can see you,” and he kissed me, his lips warm and soft on mine. He pulled back. He said, “Shall we begin?”

I said, “Let's.”

Finally, me walking on a cold street at night, my steps hard, my toes growing colder, my feet heavier, I saw his face again the day we had stopped at the barn, saw his twisted and quivering mouth, saw the pain in the color of his cheeks, and I ended with seeing his face that night, just a couple of hours before, the engine ticking, the windows fogged over.

I reached Sunset, turned and headed down the hill to the intersection. The cold wind I'd felt up on the railroad tracks had begun to pick up now, my hands burrowed deep into my coat pockets, the leaf still there. Home wasn't far away anymore, just across the intersection and under the railroad overpass, then right and then left. I would be on our street, and I would be home.

And suddenly it didn't matter that we had fought, that we had had fights before, that we would fight again. It didn't matter, either, that I had left, had walked these streets to think about things for a while. None of that mattered, because there were years behind us,
I saw, and years ahead of us, and tomorrow I would wake up, and there would be his face, I hoped, that same face. The only constant I knew.

Then I knew the fear I'd felt at the foot of the driveway, knew that it was a fear he would be gone with his steps up the stairs, the kitchen door being pulled closed, the hand descending inside the curtain, and I nearly ran under the overpass, a train now passing overhead, tearing across the metal, screaming above me; before the train was gone I was on our street, then mounting the stairs, the wind suddenly hard, a strong autumn wind that shook through limbs already bare, and I shuddered, opened the kitchen door, closed it behind me, my breathing hard and loud.

Tom was at the kitchen table, all the lights in the house off except for the fixture above him.

Library books were spread out over the table. They were how-to books, do-it-yourself books, each opened to specific details about rebuilding a house that we would have to face once we started in on ours. One book lay open to a chapter on sanding and staining hardwood floors, another to chimney repairs, another to clapboards.

I pulled my hands from my pockets, took deep breaths, and leaned back against the door. I closed my eyes a moment, opened them and let my head fall. My hands were in fists, my knuckles and fingers white, the scar still there on my left hand. I turned the hand over, and opened it. The leaf, an even duller green than I'd thought it would be, lay crumpled in my palm, stiff.

Tom looked up at me, then back at the book he was reading. One elbow was on the table, his forehead in his hand, the other arm flat on the tabletop. His glasses were off, lay on one of the other books. He leaned closer to the page, peering into it.

I said, “You're here,” and started to the table, my steps slow and deliberate, though my breath hadn't yet come back.

He looked up at me again, squinting, trying to see me. “Where else would I be?” he said. “Where would I go?”

I stood at the table, pulled one of the books over to me and started looking at it. It was the chapter on chimneys. I hadn't yet taken off my coat, didn't, in fact, know if I had the strength.

I said, “Nowhere. You wouldn't go anywhere.” I looked in the book at different chimneys in differing stages of decay. One picture
was of a chimney top, the little lip of bricks around the top edge—what the book called “corbeling”—falling apart, the mortar between them all gone, two or three bricks missing; another picture was of a hearth, the bricks before the fireplace itself sunken an inch or so below the wood floor. I turned the page, wondering precisely how much work would have to be done on our own fireplace, but there were no pictures on this new page, only words. I looked at the words, studied them, but I could not put them together into any real sentences I understood. I turned back to the pictures of the chimney top, the fireplace. Pictures I could just look at, not think about.

Tom closed his book, and brought his hand to his face, rubbed his eyes, the bridge of his nose. He squinted, looked across the table for his glasses. My blind husband.

He found the glasses, put them on, and leaned back in the chair, his hands behind his head. The apartment was still, and I looked through the doorway into the living room. It was dark in there, black. I could see nothing beyond what was in this room: the brown-and-white gingham curtains on the kitchen door and windows, the gray radiator, the shelf and the plants above it, the old white enamel gas stove, the table, the books. Books that showed us how much work it was going to be.

Later, the house completely dark, we lay in bed side by side. As every other night, there was with us the moment of silence once the sheets had been pulled up, the light turned out, our bodies settled. We lay there, and I heard the wind lift and fall, the windows give with the sudden push against frame, the wash of sound from leafless trees.

“Oh,” Tom whispered, breaking the moment of no talk between us, bringing us into that time when we would whisper until all the small things we'd forgotten to say, little incidents we'd wanted to relate, were through; whispering, as if there were guests in the house who might overhear us. Whispering, I thought, as if we had a baby in a crib at the foot of the bed.

“Oh?” I whispered.

“Nothing,” he whispered. “Something I wanted to tell you about, but I don't need to. It can wait.”

My eyes were closed, and I could feel him move his arm, could hear the shift of sheets.

I opened my eyes, and in the darkness I could see his profile, his hands clasped on his chest.

“Just say it,” I whispered. I closed my eyes again.

“Okay,” he whispered, and he took a deep breath. “This press release comes across my desk today. From some group called the Women's Union for Self-Reliance and Perpetuation. I'm not joking. That was the name. You ever heard of it?”

Another of his stories. “Nope,” I said. My eyes were still closed.

“Well,” he went on, “neither has anybody else at the office. But this press release comes to my desk. Judy hands it to me and tells me she'd gotten it in the mail. It was on good quality bond letterhead, with a printed envelope, too. They even had their own logo, this double-edged ax, behind it, this stylized flame, and beneath it was printed ‘Founded 1979.'”