Love in Mid Air (34 page)

She takes Pascal from me, ascertains the situation at a glance, and pushes through the door. She heads straight back to one
of the offices and she must have put him down on an examination table for she is back immediately. I raise my eyebrows in
question and she nods. Gone, yes, completely gone, and then she asks if I want them to cremate him and I nod, still speechless.
Even though a sign on the counter says
PAYMENT DUE AT TIME OF SERVICE
, she insists that they will bill me.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, and she sounds like she means it, although they must deal with this kind of thing every day. “Do
you want your towel back?” I can’t seem to understand her question. It’s as if she’s speaking French. I shake my head. She
says something about how maybe I should come into the back and lie down, maybe I should call someone to drive me home. I suspect
that I am very pale. I feel pale. I shake my head again, and she lets me go. She even holds the door open. Of course she’d
like to get me out of the lobby as soon as possible, before the regular customers start showing up in their business suits
and workout gear, come to drop off Max or Ridley for their vaccinations. I am standing here at the front desk in my nightgown
with my breasts and arms crusted in blood, looking like some sort of early-rising angel of death.

She keeps the towel. I go home.

Phil has evidently gotten Tory up and dressed and off to school. An open milk carton stands on the counter. I walk in and
drop my purse on the hardwood floor. I pick up the remote and cut off the TV.

I look around the house. I can see that it is a nice house. I see the mantel above the fireplace, obviously custom built,
and the collection of pots clustered beneath it on the hearth. Someone has taken a lot of time with the aesthetics of their
arrangement. The smallest one is artfully balanced on its side as if something were spilling out. There is a wicker basket
by the TV holding video games and DVDs. A child lives here, most likely a girl, based on the preponderance of princess stories
represented. There are books stacked beside a leather chair. A man who reads… a man who reads history… a man whose particular
interest is the American Revolution. There are some dishes in the sink, a newspaper scattered on the counter, a pile of tennis
shoes beside the back door. A little messiness, but no real dirt. Someone cleans this house on a regular basis.

I push against the walls as I walk down the hall, half expecting them to give way beneath my palms, half expecting them to
collapse and drop with the pressure of my touch like walls in a movie set. But the house stands firm. I go out into the yard
to call for Garcia but I don’t see her anywhere and I wonder if whatever killed Pascal has gotten her too.

Finally I climb back up to the deck, unroll the hose, and begin to wash away the evidence of the monumental effort it took
Pascal to die on his own doorstep. The bloody pawprints near the back gate are quite beautiful, like flowers, but they soon
give way to the violent red smear that grows wider and wider, ending in front of the French doors. I let the hose run until
the entire deck is dripping and then I strip off my nightgown, throw it into the trash can, and climb into the shower.

Afterwards, with my hair still wet, I go to the bank. They know me here. They know that I am not ordinarily mute. I slide
a note across the counter to the teller, as if this were a stickup, informing her that I want to rent a new safety deposit
box and open a new checking account. She takes me into the vault and I use the oversized keys to open first the box that Phil
and I share and then the second one, which is smaller and empty. I move a few things into the second box—the savings bonds
my aunts have sent Tory over the years, my passport, the gold coins from South Africa my dad gave me when I graduated college,
the utility stock that’s still in my maiden name.

Phil has never seen the safety deposit box. He works across town and he works all day so I’m always the one who removes and
returns documents. Opening the checking account feels riskier. I transfer two thousand from our money market into the new
account, and as I do this I watch the teller carefully. Is she the same helpful woman who called Phil when I opened the money
market, who explained why it would be so much more logical and cost-efficient for me to never have anything of my own?

But I’m just being paranoid. The teller isn’t interested in me, or what I’m doing. She and the woman beside her are discussing
where they will go for lunch. That new Mexican place on the corner, they may as well try it. There’s nothing strange about
any of this, is there? A woman moves money from a joint account to a single account but her name is on both of them, right?
It’s just a little juggling of funds, some financial housekeeping. Maybe she’s hiding the cost of her shoes. The teller only
seems upset that I pick the plain blue checks and points out to me that for the same price I can have checks with kittens
or lighthouses or my initials entwined in Old English script. It all costs the same, she tells me, whispering as if we are
in some great conspiracy together, but I point at my watch to show her I’ve got places to be. Just the blue ones.

Next I drive to the apartments behind the coffee shop where I meet Kelly. I know that even a one-bedroom here will cost me
twelve hundred a month because I have looked up these units several times in the
Apartment Finder
magazine. But this complex is in Tory’s school district, on the side of town where I feel comfortable, and when I step inside
the model, I can see at once that the apartments are okay. Not great, not like home, but okay. The girl behind the table tells
me March is a slow month. She might be willing to waive the security deposit if I sign a twelve-month lease. She hands me
a packet of floor plans and she says I can even choose my own carpet color if that’s what’s holding me back. She doesn’t seem
to notice that I don’t speak.

G
arcia finally makes it home about three. I pick her up and feel her small heart galloping in her chest. The carpool mom drops
Tory off just a few minutes later. When Tory finds out I have a sore throat she is very grown-up about it. She does her homework
without prompting and calls the number on the refrigerator magnet to order a pizza for dinner. She doesn’t ask about Pascal
and I wonder what, if anything, Phil has told her and how he explained where I’d been that morning. It may take her days to
even notice he is gone. Pascal was a wild cat, prone to sudden leaps and fits of scratching, and I think Tory has always been
a little afraid of him. I have never seen her pet him and it occurs to me that Pascal was one of those creatures who is so
difficult to love that I—perhaps along with his sister—will be his only mourner. When the pizza man comes Tory pays him with
the twenty I have left on the counter and sets the box on the table.

I lie on the couch in my underwear and watch
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
. Elizabeth Taylor surprises me every time with how good she is, how her frustration comes straight out of the screen at you,
how her desperation rises right through the glass. Unhappy women have always scared me. When I see a woman who is openly distraught
I usually back away from her so fast that I knock over cups and stumble against the chair, and I think that perhaps that is
why I came to this neighborhood and chose this church, why I elected to live in a place where the women hide their pain so
well. But today something is different. Elizabeth does not disturb me, she reassures me. Today, for the first time in all
the many times I have seen this movie, I am relieved that Maggie decides to stay with Brick. The universe requires certain
sacrifices, a certain kind of math. Ten women must stay for every one who leaves, something like that, and surely the sacrifice
of Elizabeth Taylor counts more than that of a normal woman. She is so beautiful that she is like some sort of angel, and
if anyone is qualified to take on the suffering of all womankind, it’s very likely her.

I look up to see Phil standing in the kitchen. I don’t know how long he has been watching me, but he looks worried.

“Why didn’t you call me?” he asks.

I put my hand to my throat and shake my head to show him I can’t speak. Stupid me, stupid hopeful me, stupid to the end because
there is a part of me that thinks, even now, he has come home to talk about something important. Maybe he is going to tell
me he’s sorry for not coming to the vet with me or ask what happened to the cat.

“You should have called me,” he says. “I had pizza for lunch.” Then he gazes at the screen, watches Elizabeth climb up the
dark stairs to her husband’s bedroom, trying one more time, against all odds, to make her marriage work.

“She sure was pretty, wasn’t she?” he says. “Before she got fat.”

Marriage is full of so many small deaths that I’m not sure why one matters more than another. I open my mouth and tell him
I want a divorce.

T
he cat died and now she wants a divorce,” says Phil. “She thinks everything’s my fault.”

Jeff frowns. “You blame him for the cat dying?”

“I wanted him to go with me to the vet. I was driving through rush hour, very upset, and he should have come with me.”

“You didn’t have to rip out of there right that moment. The cat was already dead.”

“He wasn’t dead, he was dying.”

Phil looks at Jeff. “It was a gut cut. He had to be gone before she was out of the neighborhood.”

“He was still moving until I got all the way to Alexander.”

Jeff jumps to his feet. He does this often. Like many small men, he is quick and darting, and when he first came to the church
he used to scare everyone by suddenly leaping out from behind the pulpit and walking up and down the aisle during his sermon.
And it startled me and Phil in therapy too, the first time Jeff bounced up and started to pace, but now we’re used to it.
“Okay,” says Jeff, “we could sit here all day debating exactly when the cat died. I think the point is Elyse doesn’t feel
she was supported at a time when she needed your help.”

“It was six in the morning, for God’s sake. Tory was still in bed asleep and I had three surgicals scheduled before noon.
What was I supposed to do, call my patients and say, ‘I’m sorry you fasted last night to get ready for your procedure but
I have to stay home today and drive around town with my wife and a dead cat?’ ”

Jeff tries not to smile.

“I’ve done all I can do,” says Phil. “I’ve changed all I can change. I’ve always been the one who tries to fix everything
and I’m sick of it. I park out in the street so she can turn the garage into a studio and all she does is sit there breaking
pots with a hammer. She disappears and flies to wherever she flies and my mother comes and her mother comes and we all try
to pretend like this is normal and okay because everybody knows that you do whatever it takes to keep Elyse calm. It’s like
we’re drowning. She pulls me down and I pull her down…”

“I understand you’re frustrated—”

“What’s wrong with her? Besides the cat, I mean. What’s really wrong with her? Most women would be happy if they had what
she had.”

“It doesn’t matter how most women would react,” Jeff says. “You only have one wife.”

“Maybe she should leave. She’s always talking about leaving, so maybe fine, she needs to just pack up and go. Move into an
apartment and pay for everything by herself for a change, see how much she likes that. Elyse needs to take a big bite out
of a reality sandwich.”

“What does that mean?”

“He means he doesn’t think I can support myself.”

“Well, can you?”

Now Jeff looks mildly panicked. “I can see you’re both upset about the cat…”

“Tory gets out of school June first,” I say. “That would be a good time to separate.”

Jeff is blinking rapidly, looking from me to Phil. “You’re talking about a trial separation? Or a legal separation? Are you
talking about divorce?”

I shrug. “We could sit here all day debating exactly when the cat died.”

“Hold on,” says Jeff. “Let’s not be dramatic. You two were doing so much better and now you’ve had a little setback. It happens
all the time in counseling and there’s no need to make any big decisions…”

“It’s like we’re dying,” Phil says. “Go ahead and say it.”

“We’re dying,” I say.

“I can see that you’re both very upset,” Jeff says, “which is precisely why you shouldn’t—”

“Didn’t you hear her? She said we’re both dead.”

For a moment, for the first time in a long time, I feel a rush of sympathy for Phil. For just a moment we’re connected, even
if all that connects us is our despair. How do things get to this point? All those years back, when he was coming in from
work and I was handing him Tory and heading out, should I have turned and stayed? Kelly said something a few weeks ago when
we were at her house making soup. She said something about how you let go of somebody and then you try to find your way back
to them, how sometimes you make it and sometimes you don’t. That’s the way Kelly’s mind works. She believes that everything
is in the hands of fate. It’s part of what makes her kind, it’s why it’s so easy for her to forgive, and it is probably why
she will be married forever. It’s why her face is so unlined, serene almost, and mine is scrunched up with wrinkles, my brow
furrowed, my eyes darting from side to side. Always looking for a way out of the inevitable. Always looking for the exit.