B000FCJYE6 EBOK (31 page)

He smiled, surprised, his grin tilting his face to the side. My face burned and I excused myself to go to the bathroom. I sat on the toilet, holding my hands to my cheeks, trying to cool them off. What were you thinking? I thought. What on earth did you just say? I splashed water on my face and went back out.

“I tell you,” I said hurriedly. “I don’t know how it’s got so late.”

“Oh, it ain’t that late,” he said. “Don’t leave yet.” As I slid back into the booth, he said calmly, “I know a thing or two.” We glanced at each other, and smiled, and suddenly laughed, embarrassed and relieved. I waved my hand in front of my face to cool it off and shook my head at him.

“You’re a funny man,” I said.

“I’ve heard that’s so,” he said, smiling, looking me over. Looking me over very carefully, the way a man looks a woman over, as if he’s enjoying a good meal or a glass of wine.

It reminded me of the way a young man had stared at me in a New York club, arrogantly, from across the room, his white teeth shining in a private smile as he stood up to ask me to dance. The way a young man had pressed his hand into my back firmly, the first time I ever felt I could lean into someone else and let them lead, if only for a minute or two.

How wrong I was, I thought, and stared into my empty coffee cup.

“You must miss him something awful,” Frank blurted, startling me. “He was a good man, Claire.”

I stared at him. “I don’t.” The words fell out of my mouth, nakedly angry, and I didn’t know what to do with them. I found myself trying to wipe them off the table. “I mean, I do, of course. Of course I do, he was my husband. But not like you’re saying.”

“I don’t know what I’m saying, Claire.” He looked mortified. “I’m sorry I said anything.”

“It’s all right,” I said irritably. “Why does everyone apologize for talking around here? I do miss him and I don’t. It gets easier. I’ve got my kids.”

We drank our coffee.

“And he wasn’t such a good man in the end,” I said, shocking myself. I looked up at Frank. “Now was he.”

He didn’t look away. With his strange, extreme care, he said, “I can’t say that he wasn’t. And no, I can’t rightly say that he was.”

I got up to put another five songs on the jukebox. The Coca-Cola clock read 1:00. I decided I’d kill Donna when I got home. I’d wake her up no matter how drunk she was and wallop her a good one. It was her fault I was having this conversation.

I sat back down.

“Loved you something awful,” Frank said. “Arnold did.” He studied a point just northwest of my shoulder.

After a minute, I said, “For a while, sure. But that doesn’t make it work.”

He nodded. “Best not forget it, though. Not everybody has that.”

I smiled. “That’s true.” I looked at him. “You ever been crazy in love?”

He laughed. “Lordy. Sure have, Claire. Terrible stuff, ain’t it?” He turned his head to listen. “Great song.” He looked at me. “Dance?”

“Now?” I sat there, stunned.

“Sure, now. Nobody to bump into.”

We stood at the center of the dance floor. He put his arms out and said, “Telling you, I got two left feet.” I laughed and gingerly folded my hand over his, put my hand on his left shoulder. It was solid under my hand, I wanted to squeeze it, to feel it resist. I wanted to grapple with him, simply to feel his strength. Instead, I cupped my hand over his shoulder, nearer his neck than I probably had any business going, and rested the pad of my thumb on his skin.

We stared past each other and spun slowly in our stocking feet, as awkward as two kids in dancing class, around the floor.

The song ended. I started to pull away. His hand pressed so lightly into mine he could have just been leading, and he led me into the next song. Out of the corner of my eye, I studied the salt-and-pepper curl behind his ear. I could hear him breathe.

I can’t do this, I thought. It’s too soon.

I closed my eyes and breathed in his smell of smoke and soap and a faint tang of sweat.

I can’t stop.

I don’t know how long we danced. The last record dropped. I froze. Then I pulled away and headed for my raincoat. “I have to go,” I called. “It’s so late.” I pulled my raincoat on and he ran after me into the parking lot, into the rain.

“Claire,” he yelled.

“Good night!”

“Can I—”

I ran.

My front door was unlocked. I stepped in, shook myself off, and leaned back against the door.

I looked over the dark, dusty parlor that we never used, my eyes bumping at the edges of shadows of antiques and heirlooms, Arnold’s and mine. We used to use this room, I thought. Arnold and I had company, and we used this room. The grandfather clock still ticks and gongs. I watched its brass bell swing from side to side in the dark, the only motion in the room. God knew how long it had been since I’d taken a dust rag to the piano, or how long it had been since anyone touched the keys.

I missed him.

I missed him such that it felt like a physical pain in the area below my ribs. I opened my mouth to accommodate it. I put my hand to it. A hollow, aching, piercing place. And I knew for the first time and with certainty that it would always be there a little, and I missed him, and I grasped the sides of my waist and bent over to wait out the mute hurt of this missing, and I wanted to say, very specifically,
Husband,
this is my husband, you are my husband, I am your wife.

But that was no longer technically true.

I went down the hall to my bedroom. I lay myself, carefully, facedown on the bed. And then I beat his pillow with my fist.

A week or so later, rain drumming on the roof, I woke up with a splitting headache and a row of trolls peering at me from the edge of the bed.

“What’s wrong with you?” Kate asked.

“Are you sick?” Davey asked.

Esau stood there wringing his hands. “Are you sleeping all day?”

I rolled onto my stomach and pulled the cord that dropped the curtain to make the horrible light go away. I’d been drinking the night before.

“Do you have
any
idea what time it is?” Kate shrieked.

“Enough!” I said. “No more questions until I have some coffee.”

“Do you—”

“No more!” I commanded. “I mean it.” I pulled the pillow over my head and said, “Go away.”

There was silence. I lifted the pillow and they were still standing there, staring at me. “Oh, for Chrissakes,” I said, and swung my legs over the side of the bed.

“We want a soft-boiled egg,” Kate said plaintively.

“All right,” I said, steadying myself and following them into the kitchen. I poured myself a cup of cold coffee from the night before and gulped it down while the water came to a boil. I dropped three eggs in and the doorbell rang. “For pity’s sake,” I muttered. “Someone get the door,” I called, hunting for bread.

“Mom!” came Kate’s voice. “There’s someone here to see you!”

“Who is it?”

There was a mumbling. I turned my head toward the sound of a man’s voice.

“It’s Frank!” she yelled. “Can he come in?”

I dashed down the hall, calling, “Tell him I’ll be right out. Get him something to drink.” I slammed my bedroom door and heard her say, “We have apple juice.”

I jumped into the shower, scrubbing furiously. I smelled like a bar. Why didn’t Frank smell like a bar? I wondered, washing my hair. It was full of tangles. I gave up, rinsed, and told myself to calm down. I stood naked in front of my closet. There was nothing to wear. It was hot and steamy and still raining. I yanked an old sundress out and tugged it over my head, remembering just in time to put on my underwear before I opened the bedroom door.

I tied my hair in a knot on my way down the hall. “Hi, Frank,” I called. “I’m just about to put some coffee on.”

“Mother,” Esau said, pacing back and forth in the kitchen, rubbing his hands together. “I am feeling very anxious.”

“Okay,” I said, holding still and looking around wildly. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right. Why is he here?”

“Who, Frank?”

“Yes, Frank!” Esau said urgently, hopping from foot to foot. “What does he want?”

“I thought you liked Frank!”

“I do, but that is not the point at all!” He pounded his thighs twice for emphasis and hopped up onto the counter. He craned his neck around the corner, looking into the living room, then backed up against the wall as if he were in a police chase.

“I am only saying,” he hissed, “I am only saying that this is out of order! He is out there playing cards with Kate and Davey!”

“He is?” I asked.

“Yes! Do we need to adjust the
routine,
is what I am asking.” He pointed and flexed his feet over and over, put his arms above his head, and waved his hands in the air. “What I am asking,” he said loudly, frustrated, “is do you have a crush on Frank, and if so, is he coming for breakfast very often?”

I dropped the can of Folgers and chased it across the kitchen. “Don’t panic!” he said, hopping down and helping me clean up the grounds. “I’ll make it myself. You have to go be the host. Also, the eggs are hard-boiled. You should probably start some new ones.”

I grabbed him and kissed both his cheeks. “You are so, so wonderful,” I said. He stared at me blankly. “Never mind,” I said.

“Your dress is backward,” he said. I looked down. “It’s not that obvious, though,” he said, so I took a deep breath and went into the living room.

Frank looked up from his hand of cards. He stood up and said, grinning, “Claire.”

“Frank. Good morning.” I fidgeted with the label of my dress.

“Mom,” Kate said importantly. “It’s afternoon.”

“Right.” I laughed.

“Sleep well?” Frank said, smiling.

“Don’t even start,” I said. “You hungry?”

“No, I ate, thanks. I was just—” He gestured. “I was just sitting down to play some cards.”

I nodded. “I see.”

As if to prove his point, he sat, picked up his hand, and started moving cards around. Esau came in with one cup of coffee, gave it to Frank, bowed regally, turned on his heel, and went back to get another cup.

I sat down on the couch next to Davey. “Where’s my mom?” he asked, not sounding too worried. Sarah was asleep in my room.

“She’s running some errands,” I said.

“Where to?”

“Here and there. Had to get some shopping done,” I said, wanting to kill her. “She’ll be back soon enough.”

That seemed to satisfy him. I drank my coffee and looked out the window at the rain. This, I thought, was very strange. I set my coffee cup down and went to cut oranges for breakfast.

Frank appeared at the doorway. I glanced up from the cutting board. “Hi there,” I said.

“Hi there.”

“Long time no see.”

He laughed and leaned against the counter. “Donna didn’t come back last night?”

“She did. She left again.”

“She ain’t at home.”

I arranged the orange sections on a plate. “Is that so?”

“Dale came by the bar this morning.”

I nodded. “Who’s minding the bar?”

“Jackson’s kid Pete fills in for me when he can. Gives me a little time off. I just stopped in this morning, see things were in order. Dale was there. That man is in a world of hurt.”

I ran my hands under the water and dried them on my dress. I kept my face still. “I can’t say I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Well, it worries me.”

I carried the oranges and a few plates out to the dining room. I came back in, crossed my arms, and leaned against the stove. He had ironed his shirt. A T-shirt, he had ironed a blue T-shirt. Maybe his jeans too. He smelled like Old Spice. His dark skin gleamed from a shower. Just having him in the house made me short of breath. The six or so feet between us were an intrusion, and I wished they’d go away, and I wished I’d stop noticing space every time he was around. It seemed I’d suddenly taken an excessive interest in the distance between here and him.

“He’s on a bender and he’s talking,” Frank said, scowling down at his shirt and brushing at it as if there were crumbs. I wondered wildly if he had much chest hair, belly hair, and I turned bright red. I swore at myself and asked whatever powers that be to clean my head out with soap. But it was so strange to see him standing there where Arnold had stood, his broad back against the wall where Arnold had leaned, much like this, talking to me while I cooked. The phone on the wall to his right, the coffee cup on the end of the counter. The thick hands shoved into his pockets. All this, and a different man’s face.

I felt ashamed to have him in the house and yet I could not have asked him to leave.

“Shut the whole bar up this morning,” he said. “Had to ask him to leave. He didn’t like that one bit.”

“Talking. About Donna?”

He nodded. “Knows something’s going on.”

“How’s he know that?”

Frank shrugged. “Doesn’t much matter. I’m just saying.”

“What?”

He winced and shoved his hands into his pockets. Clearly he didn’t like this conversation. “Maybe she needs to come stay over here, don’t you think? Figure things out before she tries going home again. He’s not right, Claire. Not right.”

I drank my coffee and refilled both our cups. “He’s not threatening her,” I said, and willed it so.

“Hell, you know he’s just talking. Still.” He looked intensely miserable. “You gotta know I don’t like getting into people’s business,” he said.

“No, I know it.” I looked out the back screen door. “Looks like it’s starting to let up.”

“Little bit,” he said. He cleared his throat and I looked at him. “So I was going to say,” he said, crossing one ankle over the other. “I was going to see if you might like to go on over to the supper club tonight. Have a bite, maybe dance.” He stared at the floor, stunned.

I opened my mouth and nothing came out.

“I was gonna ask you last night, but, you know, you ran off so quick I didn’t get a chance. I understand it’s not polite, short notice—”

“Yes.”

He looked up, surprised.

“I’d love to,” I said.

The front door opened and I heard Donna go into the bedroom. She walked into the kitchen carrying a sleepy Sarah. “Well, hello there,” she said to Frank.