Between Husbands and Friends (34 page)

The evening is endless. Margaret leaves her room to rustle around in the kitchen. She carries a plate of sandwiches and a glass of milk back to her bedroom, clicking the lock on her door loudly. For a while Jeremy and I stare at the television, because we’re too exhausted to do anything else. Jeremy falls asleep at nine, his body hot and limp in the bed. I’m too drained for any thought or emotion. This day has been catastrophic. At ten o’clock, Margaret stomps from her room to use the bathroom, then returns to her bedroom and turns off her light. I slide down into my bed next to my son, eager for the escape of sleep.

I wake all at once, my heart pounding. “Jeremy?”

It’s twelve-thirty. My bedroom is dark. The night-light in the hall glows steadily. Rain batters the windows; my God, I think, how much rain is there in the sky? I rub my hands over my face. Max’s side of the bed is empty. My heart seizes up, clutches tight like a fist in my chest.

“Jeremy?”

Hurrying into the bathroom, I can
feel
no one is there, but I turn on the light for my eyes to verify that sensation. Perhaps Jeremy returned to his own bed; I hurry into his room, flicking on the light. He’s not there. I rush into Margaret’s room. Her blanket is up to her neck. Midnight is curled at her feet, a natural furnace; the cat narrows her eyes at me in a silent hello.

I run down the stairs and into the kitchen. The room is dark and empty. All the rooms are dark and empty. I run through them, flicking on light switches, scanning the rooms, expecting to find Jeremy curled up on the sofa, or in a chair in my study.

“Jeremy.” I do not yell it, not yet, I don’t want to frighten Margaret, we’ve got enough going on in our lives, there has to be a reason, something I’m missing, something logical that explains where Jeremy is.

The back door is closed and bolted.

The front door is closed, but the closet door is open to the hall, and at once I see what is missing: Jeremy’s rain slicker and rain boots.

All right.
Think.
No one has kidnapped him, no one could have come into the house and lifted him from his bed and dressed him in his rain gear. He’s not crazy, he wouldn’t have gone out to play in the rain. So he went somewhere on purpose.

He went to see his father.

That has to be it. Jeremy is worried about his father, and confused because Max has been away for so long.

I race up the stairs and into my bedroom. I pull on sweatpants, sneakers, sweatshirt. I
scribble a note to Margaret and stick it on her bedside table. Grabbing up my car keys, I head out into the rainy night.

Steadily the rain pounds down, banging on the roof and the hood of the car, like hundreds of evil spirits trying to get in. Most of the houses on our street are dark, with a porch light shining here, the blue flicker of a television screen shining through the window there, the steady glow of a stove light in a window further down the street. This is a safe town. It’s a small town. It’s only a matter of perhaps twenty blocks between here and the newspaper. A child could walk there. Which way would Jeremy go? These streets should all be familiar to him, but then again he’s just a child, and it’s dark, and rain obscures everything. We have walked from our house to the Little Red Schoolhouse, about eight blocks away. We have walked from there into town, to the library, the post office, the pharmacy where we buy ice cream cones. We have walked from there to the other side of town, where
The Sussex Gazette
is. Jeremy could figure it out. He could find his way.

It’s a safe town, I keep telling myself. There will be no perverts, no monsters lurking to steal a little boy, not in the middle of the night, not in a downpour like this. I drive six blocks without meeting another car on the streets. As I turn the corner onto Main Street, a blue pickup truck goes around the corner, a woman with bleached blond hair driving. She’s driving carefully, concentrating in the heavy rain. People would be driving carefully, they wouldn’t be speeding, the chances that they would accidentally hit a small child walking on the sidewalks are low. Really low, I would think.

Still I wish I had called the police. The police department is only three blocks away from the newspaper. They would be there by now.

And then I am there, pulling into the parking lot. No cars are parked there. Through the picture window a light gleams, illuminating the empty office. Rain pellets slam my windshield so furiously it’s like a swarm of bees, splattering noisily, trying to break through the panes. Rain hits the pavement of the parking lot in pops, ricocheting back up in little bursts. The shrubs beneath the window and on either side of the front door shiver violently in the wind.

Between the bushes, sitting on the front step, head bowed over onto his knees, is a small figure, a little boy in a yellow rain slicker. He looks up as my headlights play over him. His face is streaked with tears and rain.

“I want my daddy!” Jeremy insists as I lift him and carry him to the car. “I want my daddy!”

“Daddy’s going to be furious with you for leaving the house in the middle of the night.” I dump him in the backseat and fasten his seat belt. My teeth chatter with adrenaline. “You were a very bad boy, Jeremy. You did a very dangerous thing.”

“I want my daddy,” Jeremy weeps. “Where is he? I thought he was here. You said he was here.”

I pull a tissue from my pocket and wipe off Jeremy’s wet hands and face, wishing I had a towel. Jeremy sneezes.

“Daddy’s not at the newspaper tonight. He’s at a friend’s house.” I start the car, turn the heater on full blast.

“Is my daddy dead?” Jeremy asks.

“Dead? No! Where did you get such an idea?”

“My daddy would call me if he was alive.”

“Oh, Jeremy.” I turn to look at my frail, wet, weeping son, and my throat closes up with pity and remorse. “I tell you what. I think I know where Daddy is. I’ll show you his van, okay?”

“Okay.”

It takes only about ten minutes to drive through the dark night out along Route 16 to Garrison’s house in the woods. We meet no other cars.

The porch light is on at Garrison’s house, the rest of the windows dark. Kate’s Mercedes convertible is in the driveway; Max’s van behind it.

Is it anger? Is it jealousy? Is it idiocy? I park the car behind the van, storm around the side, undo Jeremy’s seat belt, and lift him in my arms. He seems weightless as I stride up the front steps and pound on the door. It’s as if I have three arms, four, I hold him and beat on the door while the rain plummets down all around us.

A light comes on inside. Figures move behind the curtains.

Max opens the door. He’s wearing only a quickly tied robe.

“What the hell?” he says, blinking.

“Daddy!” Jeremy whoops, and hurls his entire body at Max with absolute unthinking assurance that his father will catch him.

Max catches him. Jeremy hugs his father’s neck, clings to him like a wide-eyed baby lemur.

“Can we come in?” I don’t wait for Max to answer. I step inside, out of the noise and assault of the rain.

Kate enters the living room clad in a pale cream negligee beautifully ornamented with lace. I am aware of my thoroughly drenched hair, my drowned-rat appearance.

“Daddy, you didn’t come home, you didn’t answer my phone calls, I thought you were sick. And I threw up tonight!”

“Jeremy sneaked out of the house,” I tell Max. “He got up when I was sleeping, and dressed himself, and walked to the
Gazette.
In the dark. In the rain. Alone.”

“Mom said you were working, Dad. But why can’t you come home at night like you always do? Why don’t you call me on the phone? Are you mad at me? Why—” A series of sneezes overcomes the little boy.

“You’re all wet, pal,” Max says.

“I’ll get a towel.” Kate hurries from the room.

“Don’t you love us anymore, Dad?” Jeremy asks.

For one long moment the room is silent except for the plopping of beads of rain off my clothes onto the wooden floor and the steady drumming of rain on the roof.

Max looks so sad it breaks my heart.

“Of course I still love you, Jeremy,” he says.

Kate hands Max the towel. For a moment Max’s dark head is bent as he rubs the towel over the golden-streaked hair of the little boy nestled between his forearm and his chest.

“Will you come home with us, Dad?” Jeremy asks.

Max doesn’t answer right away but intently rubs the towel over Jeremy’s legs. He’s looking down; I can’t read the expression on his face. I can hear Kate breathing and the crackle of Jeremy’s raincoat as he shifts in his father’s arms. I hold my breath.

Max says, “All right.”

He sets Jeremy on the floor. “I’ll get my things.”

Oscar has been wriggling around our feet ever since we came into the house, and now the little dog stands on his hind legs and does a wriggling dance of ecstasy as Jeremy greets him. Kate follows Max out of the living room. I hear their voices but not their words.

Max returns, a duffel bag in one hand, a briefcase in the other. Without speaking, he hands me the briefcase, then picks Jeremy up with one arm. “Okay, sport. Let’s go home.”

Oscar whimpers and jumps at our feet. Kate walks over to pick him up; as she bends, the low neck of her negligee falls forward and I can see clearly her small high breasts. I think of Max touching those breasts. I thrust the thought away. Kate stands holding the dog to her chest.

Jeremy says, “Is Aunt Kate going to come home, too?”

“Not tonight,” I reply. “She’s staying here to take care of Garrison.”

“Want an umbrella?” she asks as we open the door to the windblown rain.

“No, thanks,” I tell her. “We’ll be all right.”

Back home, I stand in the shower, letting hot water scald down over me, until I’m warm again. Max is putting Jeremy into dry pajamas, blowing his hair dry, and he’s brought out an electric blanket for Jeremy’s bed, and layered it above the sheet but beneath a quilt, so that Midnight’s and Cinnamon’s claws won’t snag a wire. I don’t like using an electric blanket with the children, but I understand Max’s logic tonight, to make the bed as warm as toast. And I’m so glad he’s back I’m not going to fuss about a thing.

I blow my hair not completely dry—that would take forever—but dry enough, and I pull on my flannel nightgown and knee-high cotton socks, a far cry from Kate’s negligee, but I don’t feel very seductive right now. I’m exhausted. It’s 2:00
A
.
M
.

And Margaret is awake; I find her sitting on my bed when I come out of the shower.

“Dad’s home,” she says.

“I know. Did you see my note? Your dreadful little brother walked all the way to the
Gazette
in the dark.”

Margaret’s eyes go wide with surprise. “Oh, man, he’s going to be grounded for life.”

“At the very least.”

“But he got Dad to come back from the newspaper.”

Something bitter stirs in me, longing to tell Margaret exactly where Max was tonight. Instead I say mildly, “He would have come back sooner or later.”

She eyes me warily. “Dad’s thumping around in the guest room.”

“Well, we still have a lot of stuff to discuss. But he’s here. So stop worrying and get some sleep.”

To my utter surprise, Margaret comes over and wraps her arms around me. “I love you, Mommy,” she says, her voice muffled by my nightgown.

I hug her against me tightly. For a moment I cannot even speak. Then my breath comes and I say as if I never doubted it, “I know you do, darling. Now go to sleep. You’ve got school tomorrow.”

I walk her to her room and tuck her into bed. She’s asleep the moment her head hits the pillow.

In his room, Jeremy sleeps soundly, too. Both Midnight and Cinnamon are on his bed; they like the warmth of the electric blanket.

The light is already out in the guest bedroom. I stand in the doorway.

“Max?” I can see that he’s already in bed, turned with his back to the door. “Thank you.”

“It doesn’t change anything, Lucy. It’s just for tonight.”

“Can’t we talk?”

“I’ve got to get some sleep.”

“All right.” Still, I linger, waiting for him to say something else, wishing I could say one perfect thing. After a few moments, I say, “I love you.”