The Barter (6 page)

She had been thinking about her future, knowing she was about to step back in time to meet it. She had come to some conclusions, but not enough of them for her own peace of mind. Unlike the world in which, say, Rebecca's German grandmother had been raised—the Doctor's mother, who had in fact been married to a forty-eighter—the world that Rebecca had inhabited here in a small town in the beginning of the new age was one in which a woman received both less and more training than her mother had had. She knew that until now, she had needed to be neither talented nor clever nor useful. Indeed she had needed to be very little to anyone, even to herself. And now, she thought, she would step backward into a place where a woman, her comfort, and everything she cared about could be destroyed in one bad season if she weren't all three.
Am I talented and clever and useful? Dear God, please let me be. Don't let me fail myself—it's the only test I'll ever get to take.

Her mother, Florencia, by all accounts talented and clever, had not been especially useful, at least not in the traditional way. Rebecca had grown up listening to chapters in the saga of Florencia's ineffectiveness at keeping house; it was one of Frau's more hilarious subjects. Most of Frau's stories about Florencia concerned some disaster brought on by an unwise choice or impulse, for reasons that perhaps
seemed plain given the strange choice Florencia had made in marrying the Doctor to begin with, and given the fact that she died so young, so far from her family, and after only a few years of marriage.

As Frau told them, the stories of Florencia's adventures in housekeeping were never intended to help Rebecca absorb any of the useful knowledge that her mother might have lacked. The stories tended more toward fairy tales than
Practical Housekeeping
, and usually traced the same plot: Florencia has decided to do something she's never done before—make a cake for a church social, get out a bloodstain in one of the Doctor's shirts, sew a dress for a party—only to fail resoundingly, with consequences ranging from sorry to ridiculous to dangerous. In one story, Florencia almost burns the house down; in another, she almost kills one of the Doctor's patients after ambitiously restocking the medicine vials in his traveling bag. The young woman's pride prevents her from asking for Frau's help, which would have been gladly and lovingly given (no doubt for the younger Rebecca's benefit, when Frau told these stories, she tended to paint a portrait of Florencia as a bright but inexperienced child rather than a grown married woman). Just as Frau discovers Florencia's predicament and is on the point of teaching Florencia the right way to do whatever it is she's attempting—and at this point in the story, Frau always leaves the kitchen to go down cellar for more apples for the cake, or goes upstairs to find her needlework kit and put it to use—the good world intervenes on Florencia's behalf. A magic stone smashes the bloodstain out of the shirtfront; a cat knocks a tin of milk into the batter; a bird singing to her from the backyard reminds her to check something twice. “The good world loved that girl as much as she loved the world, and it never once forgot her,” Frau liked to conclude.

Rebecca finally found her father out in the yard, near the small shed where they normally kept the buggy and the Doctor's one horse, the mare whose name Rebecca liked to change every month or so since she had always figured horses to be too indifferent to care—on her wedding day the horse's name happened to be Lucy.

Even though she had gone to search for the Doctor, the effect of actually finding him was still as if he'd come around a corner to surprise her rather than the other way around. She had been tired and dispirited, but the sight of his trim, compact self, whiskered and competent and yet endearingly helpless, invigorated her as it always had. Nothing could be so wrong in a world in which her father still lived. The Doctor was sitting on a low bench near the horse shed, squinting into the dusty stillness where Lucy stood, bored, staring in the way that some horses do.

“Papa,” Rebecca said, then cleared the dust from her throat. “We are going.”

“Yes, Mrs. Hirschfelder.” Dr. Mueller stood as briskly as if she hadn't just found him in an attitude of inert melancholy and faced his daughter. “Come here and give me a kiss, dear girl. And you had better rename my horse one last time, too.”

Rebecca moved toward her father and embraced him tenderly. It wasn't his fault. However she felt now, however unprepared and unstudied and untethered, it wasn't the Doctor's fault. She could only blame herself for never having bothered, never having tried. And now she would see what she was made of.

“Primrose,” she whispered, and gave his cheek a peck. “Or, no. Patience.”

“Patience,
ja
. Like ‘patients.'” Her father smiled at her. His eyes were wet. “
Sehr gut.
”

“
Ja.
” She smiled.

“You are not a German girl,” Dr. Mueller reminded her. “You are an American girl. Go be an American wife.”

He led her on his arm around the house to the farm wagon in the street in front of the porch, where John Hirschfelder waited to take her away, and where the wedding guests had gathered to see them off. When her father had led her down the aisle that forenoon, Rebecca had hardly been aware of him. She had been thinking of how good her dress smelled, the fresh, clean linen smell of the new fabric, and how hot it was in the church; she had been thinking about the cool, stiff stems of the rosebud nosegay she held; she had been thinking about John's arms, the yard, the nighttime. She had allowed her father to relinquish her at the altar without so much as a second glance back at the old man, and she had stepped toward the spot where she would stand and be married like a high-strung pony steps into a market stall, all the same bright anxiety and prancing dismay and all the same fundamental lack of understanding of how she had come to this place.

Now, as she neared John's wagon, she turned and embraced her father again the way she felt she ought to have in the church. She was sorry for him, sorrier by far than she was for herself. What had he raised her for, after all. To keep her dead mother as close to him as he could, for as long as he could, until at last he had to open his fingers and watch her walk toward another.

A
s Bridget and Julie drive home from the coffee shop, avoiding mommy yoga with Gennie while driving heedlessly into something more terrible by far, Bridget distracts herself by telling Julie a story. Other than imagining the worst that can happen every day all day long, she's learned that the other main job requirement of motherhood is being able to summon a story on command whenever the occasion demands it.
On your way home to confront a ghost? Not sure you can think straight? Worried that your baby girl can smell the fear rising from your skin like smoke? Time to play Scheherazade. Extemporize.
This, too, seems like a skill from her working life that she's redeploying in a new way. In fact, when Bridget is short a plot line for a Julie story, she will often borrow one from an old case (heavily tarted up with fantastical objects and locations, since as an estates attorney her cases had not tended toward the entertainment of a baby, or anyone else) or from games Mark has worked on at PlusSign. For an attorney, she has a pretty good imagination, and she's got something of a knack for magical powers, escape hatches, and talismans, more than a few of which even made their way into some of PlusSign's early successes, back
when she and Mark used to talk to each other about work. Or anything much.

Bridget is pulling into her driveway when her phone begins ringing, and so she parks and answers it, thinking it's probably Martha buzzing her about the estate case she gives absolutely zero fucks about.

“Bridget! Where are you? Class is starting. I thought you were right behind me.” Gennie's tone is fretful. “Are you okay?”

“I'm sorry, Gennie.” She is extemporizing again, talking fast. “I was partway there and then Julie had this enormous poop—it's all over her car seat. I had to take her home. I just pulled up, actually.” Bridget has to wonder sometimes where her advanced powers of invention, which some would call
lying
, actually come from. Her father, probably.

“Oh God. Good luck with that. Your car seat probably has the removable cushion, right?”

“Right into the washing machine. Serenity now, goddamn it,” Bridget says, and Gennie laughs, because everything Bridget says is funny to Gennie, even if it's not—just another of Gennie's gratifying personality traits.

“See you Friday? You're still bringing your friend Martha to the cookout this week, right? I can't wait to meet her.”

“Yep. Have good limberness and inward focus. Tell Miles to really work for that shoulder stand.” As she signs off, Gennie is still giggling, which leaves Bridget feeling a bit wistful for Martha after all—she's harder to amuse. Bridget wouldn't mind having to work a little harder for the laugh track.

Sitting in her car in her driveway, the engine ticking and cooling, Bridget feels the familiar conflict arise, feels her breathing accelerate.
Go in. See her. Don't go in. Don't see her.

“What do you say, Miss Jujubee? Should we go inside?”

Julie looks expectantly at her mother in the twin mirrors and lets loose her pterodactyl screech.

Meanwhile, Bridget is still holding her phone. Before she can second-guess herself again, she taps the button for Mark's work number, hoping to catch him between meetings.
Be there, love. Be there, love. Be there, love.

Julie squawks. “Ssssssh, baby,” Bridget says, and that is when Mark picks up.

“Bridge. What's up. Everything okay?” His voice is not altogether warm. He does not sound altogether happy to hear from her. Once, he told her (and was promptly forced to acknowledge that it had been a mistake to do so) that sometimes at work he forgets that she and Julie exist, and that it doesn't even have to be a particularly busy day for this forgetting to happen, although most of his days are busy. Sometimes he'll just be putting out fires over email and drinking his coffee from his travel mug and thinking about whatever project he's going to do next, and it'll be an hour or so before he'll even remember who he is, much less that he has a family, a rosy little baby girl and a fine, strong, lawyerly wife. He'd meant to sound amazed at himself, Bridget thinks. He'd meant for it to sound like he couldn't believe the way his mind worked. But it had just sounded cruel, at the time, and she wept, and then a few days later she told her mother.

“Yeah. Thank God you're there.” Bridget closes her eyes and puts her head on the steering wheel. Julie screams again, once, without much conviction.

“What's going on?”

“Nothing,” Bridget lies, light-headed, heart pounding.

She'd wept at the thought of Mark forgetting them partly because she needed so much to be remembered, to leave a part of herself in the world outside of her car, her errands, her playdates, her daughter, her daughter's naps, even if that part was just the figment that Mark carried around with him through his day. But she'd also wept, she thinks, because she remembers that feeling herself, that absorption into the hours. She remembers feeling that way, of course she does. She can't say it's the best feeling or the healthiest—how good for anyone can it be, after all, to tether blank-brainedly to a corporation that runs on her time, her talents, her precious life's minutes and hours. Losing oneself in one's work is a pathology, not a badge of honor. But so is losing oneself, period, and there are plenty of ways to do that. Plenty.

She remembers being absorbed in something important but small. Work never felt like an enlargement of herself, exactly. But she misses how the hours would pass, quickly, and she misses being able to lose them.
And now there are two women lurking around the house, looking for something. Maybe I should just tell her to get out because
I'm
supposed to be the ghost around here.

Mark says, “Where are you guys? You sound echoey.”

“I'm in the car. In the driveway.”
Now, why didn't I think to lie about that, I wonder.

“In the driveway? It's like ninety degrees out. You guys should get inside. Do you want me to call you back?”

“I want you to call me back. Yes. Please. Do that little thing.”

“I will. I promise. I will. Twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes.”

“Are you all right? Bridget?”

“Oh . . . Oh, I'm fine.” Bridget rubs her eyes. This isn't going the
way she thought it would. She realizes what she wants is a little bit of bickering or bantering, something to remind her what it feels like to be a normal married couple whose house isn't haunted. She must sound awful. She must sound frightened out of her mind. Or maybe Mark is just overcompensating to prove he's a sensitive guy. Men do that oftener than they like to admit. “I'll talk to you later. Sorry to bug you at work. Are you having a good day?”

“Mired. I'm mired. I feel like a stubbed-out cigarette.”

“That's quite a metaphor.”

“I don't think it's really what I'm trying to say, which I guess is what makes it a metaphor.” She understands what he means. They think alike, the two of them. And now he sounds tired, too.

“Don't think about it too much. It's just games. No one will be hurt if you don't give two thousand percent.”

“I know. I'm not saving lives. I know,” Mark says irritably. Now Bridget feels badly: She has said the wrong thing. Of course. No one likes to hear that his contribution to the world doesn't really matter and that he might as well just stay home and fold socks and wait for something cool to be invented without his help.

“Sorry. You are saving lives. What about all those poor people who would otherwise die of boredom? What about the poor children, all across the country, with nothing else to do but look out the car window or talk to their parents? You're saving their
lives
. We've
got to think of the children
.”

“Someone, please, think of the children,” Mark agrees, deadpan.

“They're our only hope for the future.”

“Do it for the children. Save the children!”

“Somebody save my baby!” Bridget cries.

“I left my baby in that burning building! Save it!” Mark rejoins,
a little dorky, just the way she likes him. Then says, “How is my baby, anyway?”

“She's good. I think she's starting to get hot. I should go inside.” Bridget feels better. It is comforting to know that someone else out there is as unspecific and strange-feeling as you are, and that is why, she thinks with satisfaction, human beings get married to each other.

“Okay. Do you still need me to call you back in twenty minutes?”

“I don't
need
you to call,” Bridget says, with a lightness she does not quite feel, not quite. “Would I
like
for you to call? Maybe. Yes. Probably.”
And if I don't pick up, it's because the ghost got us; send help. Send Bill Murray.

“I have a meeting but I'll call you after that. If you probably maybe would like me to.”

“A
meeting
. How intensely professional. I didn't think PlusSign even had conference rooms.” Here she goes again—she can't seem to help herself. Cheer him up, tear him down. Praise his effort, belittle his work. Where, where, where does it come from, this compulsion to make him hate what he's doing? She used to make him feel proud of what he did. And now, now that they're all dependent on him, now that all three of them need him more than he's probably ever been needed in his life, she makes these remarks, where do they come from, like the tiny moths in the closet that you never see but that you know must be living there because they've contrived to ruin your favorite sweater.

“Where else are they going to keep the Ping-Pong table?” Mark sighs. It is of course a relief that he hasn't allowed himself to be baited, but in another way it's a measure of her diminished influence. Which she shouldn't be measuring at all, much less in units of passive-
aggressive snark.
Where, where, where does it come from.
“I have to go. You got my text? I'll be home late tonight.”

“That's okay,” she promises, even though it isn't, exactly. She has to make up for herself. “You got the picture I sent?”

“Yes. My little muncher. Give her a kiss from her daddy. I miss Jujubee today,” Mark says longingly, and she doesn't doubt it. She would, too.

“I'll kiss her enough for you and for everybody else in the world besides. What time will you be home, do you think?”

Mark sighs again, musically this time. “Ohhh, God, I don't know. I sort of don't want to think about it, you know?”

This again.

“Okay. Love you.”

“Love you, too, Bridge.”

And here she is, in her car again, with her baby, running out of ways to avoid going into her own house.

As usual, the instant she's off the phone with her husband she wants to call him right back and do it all over. Whatever else she and Mark may lack as a pair, they've always enjoyed a little telephone banter—indeed, phone conversations, as Bridget has pointed out to Mark on more than one occasion, probably make up well more than three-quarters of their marriage.

Mark is a hard worker—he's always excelled. Mark also happens to be a good-looking geek, so his was not the typical story of the nerdy, scrawny guy with the small coterie of similarly nerdy guy friends, one skinnier, one fat, one acne scarred. He and Bridget met online, like about forty percent of the couples they know, when they were in their late twenties, but they also went to the same college at the same time about ten years ago, where their paths never crossed.
Mark didn't leave the computer lab much in college, except to smoke up with his friends and listen to jam bands. Bridget, too, was a grindstoner, so determined to get into a good law school and get internships and then an associate position at a good firm that she hardly looked up for about four years, and then for about another seven years after that.

They bought a house together—this house—right before they were married, at about the same time that work began to pick them both up and propel them windward. Bridget has always loved their house, but never more than when they first bought it. She loved how smoothly all the new fixtures operated. Sometimes she walked from room to room and just squeezed things, the overstuffed arm of a chair or a smart, shiny banister. This was before they really knew any of the other young married couples in the neighborhood—although she and Mark both saw their next-door neighbors sometimes, in their cars, in their driveways.

And then, once they were finally married, they fell into lonesome habits almost right away. She would bring home casework and nod off at her desk at home, waiting for him to be released from his office, where product delivery dates kept his entire team on a maddening schedule and a debilitating diet. She drank what seemed to be oceans of tea, but she never managed to stay up long enough to see Mark come in. She slept next to him every night, both hands closed into loose balls. He slept heavily; he slept through her alarm every morning. She reset it an hour later for him. She left before he rose. That was her whole week.