Bitter Sweet (25 page)

Mike laughed ruefully and dropped down to sit on a log.

He sighed and mumbled “Aw, shit...’ then stared a long time before raising a look of dismay to Eric. ‘You know how old I’ll be when that kid graduates from high school?

Retirement age, that’s how old. Barb and I were looking forward to having a little time to ourselves before then.’

Eric dropped to a squat, inquiring, “So, if you didn’t want it, how did it happen?’

‘Hell, I don’t know. I guess we’re just one of those statistics. What is it? Ten out of a thousand, even with birth control?’

‘I don’t know if it’ll help, but I think you and Barb are the best parents I’ve ever known. The way your kids turned out - why, hell, the world ought to be grateful to have one more.’

The remark finally raised a partial grin on Mike’s face.

‘Thanks.’

The two brothers sat in silence for some time before Eric spoke again. ‘You want to know something ironic?’

‘What?’

‘While you’re sitting there upset about having another baby, I’m sitting here envying the hell out of you because you’re going to. I know how damned old you are because I’m only two years behind you and my time’s running out.’

‘Well, what’s holding you up?’

‘
Nancy
.’

‘I thought so.”

‘She doesn’t want one.’

After several seconds of silence, Mike admitted, ‘Everyone in the family guessed as much. She doesn’t want to give up her job, does she?’

‘Nope.’ Eric let that settle before adding, ‘I don’t think she’s too crazy about the idea of losing her shape either. That’s always been so important to
Nancy
.’

‘Have you talked to her about it, told her you wanted a family?’

‘Yeah, for about six years now. I just kept waiting, thinking she’d say yes one of these times, but it’s not going to happen. I know that now and it’s got to the point where we fight about it.’

Again the two sat ruminating while a noisy flock of sparrows settled in a nearby sumac copse. ‘Aw, hell, it’s more than that. It’s Fish Creek. She hates it here. She’s happier when she’s out on the road travelling than when she’s home.’

‘You could be imagining that.’

‘Yeah, I could be, but I don’t think so. She never wanted to move here.’

‘That might be so, but that doesn’t mean she hates coming home.’

‘She always used to say how she hated leaving on Mondays, but I don’t hear that anymore.’ Eric studied the sparrows awhile. They were pecking on the ground beneath the sumac, murmuring soft cheep-cheeps. He’d grown up with lots of birds around, both water and land birds. The first Christmas after they were married,
Nancy
had given him a beautiful Audubon book and had written on the flyleaf, because you miss them. Before moving here from
Chicago
she’d boxed up the book with a bunch of others and had given it to the Goodwill without his knowledge. Watching the sparrows on the chill autumn day he grieved not over the loss of the book but over the loss of affection it represented.

‘You know what I think happened?’

 
‘What?’

Eric turned to look at his brother. ‘I think we stopped giving.’ After a stretch of profound silence, Eric went on. “I think it started when we moved here. She was deadset against it and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I wanted a family and she wanted a career, and it started this cold war between us. On the surface everything appears free, but underneath it’s al turned sour.’

The flock of sparrows flew away. Off in the distance a pair of crows called. In the clearing all was still beneath a steely grey sky that seemed to reflect Eric’s morose mood.

‘Hey, Mike,’ he said after some moments of silence, ‘do you think people without kids get sort of selfish after a while?’

‘That’s a pretty broad generalization.’

‘I think it happens though. When you’ve got kids you’re forced to think about them first, and sometimes, even though you’re bone tired, you get up and you relieve the other one. When kids are sick, or whiny, or when they need you for one thing or the other. But when there are just the two of you.., aw, hell, I don’t know how to say it.’ Eric picked up a piece of bark and started flaking offbits with his thumbnail. After some time he forgot his preoccupation and gazed into the distance.

‘Remember how it was with Ma and the old man? How at the end of a busy day after she’d manned the office all day long and washed clothes in that old wringer washer and hung them on the line between customers and fed us kids and probably acted as referee in about a dozen fights, she’d go out there and help scour down the fish shed? And the next thing you know they’d be laughing down there. I used to lay in my bed and wonder what they found to laugh about in the fish-cleaning shack at ten-thirty at night. The crickets would be squawking, and the water would be lapping down by the boats, and I’d lay there and listen to them laugh and feel so damned good. Secure, I guess. And one time - I remember this so dearly, it’s as if it just happened yesterday - I came into the kitchen late at night when all of us kids were supposed to be asleep and you know what he was doing?’

‘What?’

“He was washing her feet.’

The two brothers exchanged a long, silent glance before Eric continued. “She was sitting on a kitchen chair and he was on his knees in front of her washing her feet. She had her head back and her eyes were closed and neither one of them said a word. He was just holding her soapy foot above a wash basin and rubbing it real slow with his hands.’ Eric paused thoughtfully. ‘I’ll never forget that. Her lumpy old feet that always hurt so much, and the way the old man was doing that for her.’

Once more the two brothers sat in silence, bound by the memory, in time Eric went on quietly, ‘That’s the kind of marriage I want, and I don’t have it.’

Mike settled his elbows on his knees. ‘Maybe you’re too idealistic.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Different marriages work for different reasons.’

‘Ours isn’t working at all, not since I forced her to move back here to Fish Creek. I realize now, that’s when our trouble really started.’

‘So what are you going to do about it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You going to give up fishing?’

‘I can’t do that. I love it too much.’

‘Is she going to give up her job?’

Disconsolately, Eric shook his head.

Mike scooped up two twigs and began snapping them into pieces.

‘So... you scared?’

‘Yeah...’ Eric glanced over his shoulder. ‘It’s scary as hall the first time you bring it out into the open.’ He chuckled ruefully. ‘As long as you don’t admit your marriage is falling apart, maybe it isn’t.., right?’

‘Do you love her?’

‘I should. She’s still got a lot of the qualities I married her for. She’s beautiful, and smart, and hard-working. She’s really made something of herself at Orlane.’

‘But do you love her?’

‘I don’t know anymore.’

‘Things okay in bed?’

Eric cursed softly and threw away the bark. He propped his elbows on his knees and shook his head at the ground.

‘Hell, I don’t know.’

‘What do you mean, you don’t know. Does she play around?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Do you?” ‘No.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘It all harks back to the same old problem. When we’re making love...’ It was hard to say.

Mike waited.

‘When we’re making love everything is okay until she gets out of bed to use that goddamned contraceptive foam, then I feel like...’ Eric’s lips narrowed and his jaw tensed.

‘Like taking the can and throwing it through the goddamned wall. And when she comes back, I want to push her away.’

Mike sighed. He considered at length before advising, ‘The two of you ought to talk to somebody - a doctor or a marriage counsellor.’

‘When? She’s gone five days a week. Besides, she doesn’t know how I feel about the sex part.’

‘Don’t you think you should tell her?’

‘It’d kill her.’

‘It’s killing you.’

‘Yeah...’ Eric replied despondently, staring off through the skeletal trees at the tarnished silver sky. He sat for a long time, hunched like a cowboy before a campfire.

Finally he sighed, stretched out his legs and studied the buckled knees of his blue jeans. ‘Hell of a deal, isn’t it? You with more kids than you want and me without any?’

‘Yeah. Hell of a deal.’

‘Does Ma know yet?” Eric glanced at Mike.

‘That Barb’s pregnant? No. She’ll have something to say, I’m sure.’

‘She’s never said anything about our not having any. But she says plenty about
Nancy
being gone all the time, so I suppose it’s the same thing.’

‘Well, she was raised on old-fashioned ways, and since she worked beside the old man her whole life long she thinks that’s the way it ought to be.’

They pondered awhile, thinking about their lives as they were now and as they were when they were younger.

Presently, Eric said, ‘You want to know something, Mike?’

‘What?’

‘Sometimes I wonder if Ma is right.’

Three days later, on a Saturday night after a late supper at home,
Nancy
sat back, toying with a glass of Chablis and eating the last of her green grapes. The atmosphere was intimate, the mood lazy. Outside the wind plucked at the shingles and sent the cedars swaying against the metal rain gutters, sending out a muted screech that filtered through the walls. Inside, candlelight reflected off the surface of the teakwood table and enriched the texture of the cutwork linen place mats.

She studied her husband appreciatively. He’d showered before supper and had come to the table uncombed. With his hair loose and unstyled, he made an arresting sight. He was dressed in jeans and a new designer sweatshirt she’d brought him from Neiman-Marcus, an oversized pewter grey slop-top with a rolled collar and immense raglan sleeves that made him look rugged and negligent as he sat slant-shouldered, drinking Irish coffee.

He was a handsome thing, as handsome as any man she’d ever seen, and she’d seen many. In her job, she bumped shoulders with them in eve town, in the best department stores, dressed like fashion plates and smelling good enough to stuffin to a dresser drawer with your lingerie. They had haircuts like girls and wore wool scarves over their suit jackets and dressed in flat Italian slippers of exquisitely thin leather, without socks. Some were gay, but some were overtly heterosexual and made it no secret.

She had grown accustomed to parrying their advances, and on the few occasions when she returned them, she made sure the tte-i-tte lasted only one night; for, once in bed, those men never quite measured up to Eric. Their bodies were small where his was large, their hands soft where his were hard, their skin white where his was brown, and with none of them could she achieve the sexual harmony it had taken her and Eric eighteen years to achieve together.

She studied him, relaxed and appealing across the table, and hated to mar the mood she had so carefully cultured with the candlelight, linens and wine. But she had cultured it for a purpose, and the time had come to test its effectiveness.

She slipped one nylon-covered foot onto Eric’s chair.

‘Honey?’ she murmured, rubbing the inside of his knee.

‘Hm?’

“Why don’t you put the boat up for sale?’

He studied her impassively for some moments, tipped up and emptied his cup of coffee and silently turned to study a woven wood shade.

‘Please, honey.’ She leaned forward provocatively with her forearms lining the table edge. ‘Advertise it now, and by spring you’ll have it sold and we can move back to
Chicago
.

Or any other major city you like. How about
Minneapolis
?

It’s a beautiful town, lakes everywhere and it’s a mecca for the arts. You’d love
Minneapolis
. Eric... please, can’t we discuss it?’ She watched a muscle tic in his jaw while he continued avoiding her eyes. Finally he faced her, speaking with careful control.

‘Tell me something. What do you want out of this marriage?’

Her foot stopped caressing his knee. This was not going at all as she’d hoped. ‘What do I want?’

“Yes, want. Besides me, or... or having sex with me on the Saturdays and Sundays when you don’t have your period. What do you want,
Nancy
? You don’t want this house, you don’t want this town, you don’t want me to be a fisherman. And you’ve made it perfectly clear you don’t want a family. So what do you want?’

Instead of answering, she demanded sharply, ‘When are you going to get over this?‘

‘Get over what?’

‘You know what I mean, Eric. Playing the Old Man and the Sea. When we left Chicago I thought you’d play fisherman with your brother for a couple of years and get it out of your system, then we’d move back to the city so we could spend more time together.’