All Things Cease to Appear (12 page)

Something kept them together, frustration possibly. Like they were two parts of a troubling equation that neither could find the answer to. It was out there somewhere, in infinity, she often thought. Maybe they’d never find it.

Up in Buffalo, she tried dating other boys, but George, like a tedious splinter, was the one in her head. Occasionally, when she could afford the fare, she’d visit him in the city, wearing her signature black turtleneck and wrap-skirt, red lipstick, her hair twisted up in a barrette. He was renting a room in a frat house on 113th Street that resembled sailor’s quarters, with a narrow twin bed, just off the common room where the frat boys shot pool and dabbled in disorderly conduct, abrupt disruptions of drunken ceremony that always ended badly. In bed, he was greedy and possessive, provoked, it seemed, by the percussive brutality of the pool table, the smacking collision of balls before they slammed into pockets and the uproarious chorus that followed. When they’d finally emerge from the room, attracting the frat boys’ snickering gazes, she felt as if she were on display. They’d go to O’Brien’s, a dark, wood-paneled, smoke-filled neighborhood bar that was favored by students from his department, a solemn, cautious group who would drink cheap beer and eat oysters and analyze the tortured geniuses of Western art, the fanatics, the fakes and the drunks, until, at closing, they were herded out into the street.

Toward the end of the spring semester, he called and said he had something important to discuss. Not over the phone, he added, and invited her to come down. On the bus, it occurred to her that he was going to propose. But when she arrived, it soon became clear he had other plans. He took her to a dimly lit bar and told her he was ending the relationship. With the assurance of an undertaker, he gave his reason. His program was demanding, he needed to focus on his work and, more important, they essentially had opposing philosophies. I’m letting you go, he said, as if she were some expendable employee.

She walked to Port Authority alone, inured to the wind, the trash blowing against her ankles, content to inhale the stink of the buses as she wandered up to her gate. She wasn’t smart enough for him, she told herself. Or pretty enough. Later, on the trip home, she became ill. Overcome with a sudden nausea, she vomited in the bathroom, tossed from side to side in the tiny compartment. She looked at herself in the grimy mirror and knew, at once, what was wrong. Back in her room, she called George to give him the news.

He was quiet for a moment and then said, I know a place you can go. It’s legal now.

I can’t do that, she said after a long pause. It’s against my religion. You don’t have to marry me.

That’s very noble of you, Catherine, but I don’t do anything because I have to.

She waited for him to say more, but he hung up. Weeks passed and she didn’t hear from him. At the bakery, the smells of powdered sugar and vanilla made her sick. Future brides would order their cakes, zealous and determined, their eyes glazed with pride and something else—some deep, unspoken compliance. When she wasn’t at work, she took to her bed, incapacitated by the guilty terror of becoming a single mother. She knew her parents would disown her. She’d have to get a job somewhere, go on welfare or food stamps, whatever women in her situation had to do.

Then, two months later, on a rainy August morning, he showed up at her room with a dozen roses and a wedding ring. Pack your things, he said. You’re moving to New York.

—

THEY WERE MARRIED
in her hometown church. They held the reception in the grange next door, which was all her parents could afford. George’s mother had her nose up; she was French and had black hair like Cleopatra and a smoker’s voice. His father was tall and square-shouldered and had the same mud-puddle eyes as George.

After the wedding, George took her to their gray saltbox on the Connecticut shore. His parents were a breezy couple, terribly pleased with themselves in their oxford shirts, whale-dappled trousers and Top-Siders, drinking gin-and-tonics. They were, she thought, like people in a cigarette commercial. Their house was full of breakable things, with not a single object out of place.
She
felt out of place, as if George had brought his parents some ridiculous gift.

From the living-room windows she could see George’s boat moored a few yards from shore. He wanted to take her sailing. I don’t know, she said, a little afraid. I’m only in my third month.

You’ll be fine. You’re in very good hands.

They sailed in an inlet, then out to a small island, where they beached the boat and went exploring. Nobody was there, only the sprawling trees, the warm sand, the birds. His mother had packed them a picnic, sandwiches and iced tea and cold beer for George. Later in the afternoon, the wind picked up, the waves rocked the boat—whitecaps, George called them. They swelled up and broke on the deck. The current was strong. He’d have to tack strategically now, he explained, in order to get back. He pulled in the sails and the boat reeled up on a keel.

She gripped the side, terrified. George, she said. Please.

This is fun. This is what sailing’s all about.

It’s too rough, she said, clinging to the side. I feel sick.

Not in the boat, he shouted, pushing her head down and holding her there, hard. Through the blur of sickness, she became aware that he was right behind her, his hand on her neck, and she sensed in its sudden tentative weight that he was considering something, and then the boat dipped again and she went over, smacking the water and sinking under the surface, her hands floating up, the current sweeping her under the hull, the air squeezing out of her. She could see the boat sliding away, slow as a parade float—until, as if a dark hood had been pulled over her head, she blacked out. A minute later, or maybe seconds, she felt her abrupt transition back into the world as he pulled her up, placed her hands firmly on the side and shouted that she should hold on, for Christ’s sake, just hold on.

Somehow, he hauled her onto the deck. It was a kind of birth, she thought.

You’re all right, he said, dripping over her. Jesus Christ. Don’t ever fucking do that again. You could’ve drowned.

That night, in his boyhood room, she lay in bed alone, listening to her husband relay the story of the accident to his parents downstairs, conveying the succession of events in a strangely methodical manner, as if he’d thought it all through ahead of time.

She’s a lucky girl, his mother said.

When she called the next day, hoping for sympathy, her mother snapped, You had no business going out on a boat in your condition. What kind of a foolish thing was that to do?

3

THEY HAD
a daughter, Frances, named for her great-aunt, who’d had some success as an opera singer. Frances had never married and died unexpectedly in her forties. Visiting her aunt in the city had been the highlight of Catherine’s childhood, but her mother disavowed her, speaking her name in a grave whisper, as if she were terminally ill. Frances was the only woman in Catherine’s family who’d had a career, whose life wasn’t determined by the needs and interests of others. So for her, now beginning to understand her own limitations, naming her baby Frances was a private victory.

They bought a crib, and George took hours putting it together. Next time try reading the instructions, she scolded.

Being a mother was hard work, especially when the father was little help. She supposed she was grateful to him, that’s what she told herself. She didn’t ask for much.

They had a small collection of friends they’d meet at restaurants near the university, mostly people from George’s department. As a couple, they projected a sense of domestic ease, their cordiality routine, habitual. But in truth they rarely spoke of anything beyond the superficial. He rarely confided in her, and in turn she neglected to ask any probing questions; perhaps, on some level, she knew he continually deceived her and somehow could not admit to it. Her personal pride wouldn’t allow it. Instead, she drew conclusions from the way he looked and moved, the gloom in his eyes and, if they chanced to make love, his aftermath-smile, as if he’d done her a favor.

As the months passed, she concluded that he was living two lives—one with her and Franny, in which he was mildly, distractedly engaged, and another out in the city, where he could pretend to be his old self, going around in a seedy suede coat from the Salvation Army, stinking of cigarettes. Sometimes he’d come in late. Sometimes he’d be drunk. Once, in a frenzy of alcohol, he told her he didn’t deserve her. She could have said something to confirm this fact, but that wasn’t how she’d been raised. While he slept, she’d lie awake planning her escape, though when she thought of raising Franny on her own, living on half his paltry fellowship, facing the shameful consequences of divorce, she lost her nerve. Women in Catherine’s family didn’t leave their husbands.

They were like two commuters, randomly paired on a train, their destination undeclared. She felt she hardly knew him.

She called Agnes and begged her to visit, and for a few weeks her sister took up residence on the couch, despite George’s obvious dissatisfaction, claiming, after only a few days, that she’d overstayed her welcome. It’s having an effect on my work, he told Catherine.

Too bad, she thought.

Happily, for the first time as adults, she and her sister were getting to know each other. Agnes made a fuss over Franny, buying her toys and books, playing with her for hours on end. She’d listen tirelessly to Catherine’s worries and complaints.

It could be he’s not so interesting, Agnes said. She’d never really liked George. He was, she thought, an elitist. To be fair, she herself had an inferiority complex. She’d always been an average student. I’m not a nerd like you, she complained back in high school whenever they compared report cards. Agnes had excelled at swimming. All through school their mother had forced Catherine to swim with her on the team, but she’d hated it. She could remember driving home after a meet, wet-haired, the windows fogged with winter outside, and Agnes gloating.

Their mother had raised them to be good wives, to make the best of things—a philosophy that had helped the Sloan women through hard times—and Catherine had bought into it with a greedy, childish ease. The women on her side were devoted wives and mothers. They distracted themselves from minor bouts of unhappiness with housecleaning, gardening, children. They tore recipes from magazines and copied them down on index cards. They made Bundt cakes and Jell-O molds and casseroles, cleaned closets, organized drawers, folded laundry, darned socks. They’d mollify their husbands with sex. As Catholics, they had their own deliberate traditions, and denial was one of them.

4

THEY’D SEEN
the ad in the real-estate section of the
Times,
with a picture of a white farmhouse captioned
First Time Offered.
It was a blurry shot, as if the photographer had been startled, and a peculiar brightness flourished around the windows. George made an appointment with the realtor, and the following Saturday they drove up to see it, just the two of them, leaving Franny at home with Mrs. Malloy. This was in March, just after he’d accepted his first real job, as Assistant Professor at an upstate college she’d never heard of. They were moving in August.

They took his beloved Fiat for the two-hour drive up the Taconic. He’d bought the car after college and garaged it in Harlem for more than they could afford. It was one of those mornings when the world seemed paralyzed by the anticipation of some unknown calamity, the city silent, cold, windless. The roar of the engine and rattling windows deprived them of small talk, Franny’s latest developmental feats being their recent topic, so instead they listened to the jazz station, watching cluttered neighborhoods turn into anonymous suburban yards and then true countryside, like home for her, where icicles as thick as elephant tusks dripped from the great boulders that bordered the parkway, and the bleak landscape unfolded before them. Soon there was nothing to look at except fields and farms.

At last they turned into a town that resembled one of the samplers she had stitched as a child, featuring an old white church and a country store with a sign that advertised
Fresh Pie
in its window. Catherine watched two dogs trot off into a field, one black, the other yellow, following them until they disappeared behind the trees.

That’s where we’re going, George said, nodding in that direction, and they passed old houses and farms. Fields of sheep and grazing horses. Men on tractors. Pickup trucks full of hay.

At an unmarked road, she considered the map. Turn here, she said.

It was aptly called Old Farm Road, and ran a mile down through open pasture. They passed a small house with a barn, sheets up on the line.
Pratt
was the name on the mailbox. A bit farther along they came to the house they’d seen in the photograph. George parked next to a station wagon with a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute decal on its back window. Looks like she’s here.

They got out. Catherine buttoned her coat and gazed around the perimeter, holding a hand over her eyes in the glare. Brown fields stretched behind the house. Distantly, she could hear the whine of the interstate. The house resembled one of Franny’s crayon drawings, with crooked shutters and smoke curling from the chimney. It was badly in need of paint. Catherine wondered what it would be like to raise their daughter here on this old farm. Off to the side were a couple of whitewashed barns, one with the words
Hale Dairy
in brown flaking paint over its doors and a copper rooster weathervane that turned and squealed in the wind. The other had a cupola whose windows flashed with sunlight, disrupting her vision intermittently, like Franny’s toy View-Master. Tiny starlings darted in and out of the darkness below.

Used to be a dairy farm, George said, already in love with the place. The house is nice, don’t you think?

To her, it seemed dreary and old. She supposed with some paint it could be nice. It has good bones, she said. That’s the important thing.