The year She Fell (16 page)

But she shook her cropped fair hair and one piece of popcorn flew out. And she started to laugh. It never got past tentative, but it was the first time I’d heard her laugh in—well, in as long as I could remember. Then, just as we started to laugh, she stopped and turned serious again. “But how? What does Tom do that’s sexy?”

I didn’t want to think about that, remember the way he moved, the way glanced at me with that laughter in his eyes, the way he whispered endearments. But this was Theresa, and she’d never asked anything like this before, and who could she ask if not her sisters? I took refuge in the universal. “There are some things a man does that just seem so . . . masculine. I don’t know. The way he loosens his tie, as if he’s been tethered and now he’s free.”

Theresa frowned at this. “It doesn’t seem like much.”

“No, I guess not. But it’ll get to me every time. I think it’s symbolic. You know, that he’s able to restrain himself, but he loves freedom too.”

“Don’t forget the shirtsleeves,” Laura added. “You know what I mean?” Always the actress, she pantomimed a man unbuttoning one cuff, slowly rolling it up his forearms, and then repeating the action at the other wrist.

She was good. As she moved, I could almost imagine a man’s sinewy forearms gradually emerging instead of her own smooth pale wrists. “That’ll do it for me too. Much sexier than Chippendales.”

We had to explain Chippendales to Theresa, and that inspired me. I found my cache of old disco albums in the cupboard behind Mom’s ancient hi-fi, and Laura and I put on Donna Summers and showed her how Chippendale dancers operated.

“You really missed your calling,” Laura said admiringly, as I demonstrated how, if I’d had only one more glass, I might full monty. “You’d make a great stripper.”

Fortunately, before my wine-loosened tongue could explain how I got so accomplished at bump and grind—or for that matter, why the first bars of “Hot Love” were guaranteed to inspire a ready, willing, and able husband in my house—we heard the rattle of an engine out front, and the beams from two headlights pierced the dark hallway.

“Mother,” Laura said, the panic in her voice rising over Donna’s relentless disco cheer.

“She’s in the hospital,” I said, guilty that I hadn’t even thought of her for hours. “It must be someone else.”

But Laura was right. Mother appeared in the parlor archway, back in her creased gray linen suit, a Band-Aid on her wrist where the IV had been, her light hair swept up in an attempt at her usual chignon. She looked weary and ill and something close to angry as she took in the popcorn-strewn floor, the empty wine bottles, the shamed faces.

Theresa, oddly enough, was the first to react. She rose, swaying only slightly, and crossed to switch off the stereo. In the sudden silence, she said, “You were supposed to stay in the hospital until they did a CAT scan.”

“I feel fine. So I checked myself out. I’m not going to waste any more time there.”

“Mother—”

It was hard remonstrating with her at the best of times, when I was sober and lucid. Now I stumbled through an insistence that she go right back in the morning. She looked scornful; as well she might, considering she was facing three drunk daughters and a trashed front parlor.

“I don’t want everyone to know my business. I am on the hospital board. The neurologist went to high school with Theresa.”

I sighed. More of that small-town reticence.

Before I could speak, Theresa said calmly, “So we’ll take you into Buckhannon. The hospital there must have a CAT scan too. And no one will know who you are.”

“There is no need for that,” Mother said. “I am fine. It was nothing but a low-blood-sugar problem this morning. I won’t waste my time or yours—”

“Yes, you will.” I made my voice firm, as if I were talking to a recalcitrant deacon, or one of my former second-graders. And I used what always worked with that crowd: threats and rewards. “After we see the neurologist, we can stop by the computer warehouse there in Buckhannon. You wanted to learn more about computers and the Internet. I’ll buy you your own PC. You won’t have to use my little laptop anymore.”

Amazingly, it worked. She hesitated, then said, “You’ll show me how to get on the Web? And do emails and chats on that PC too?”

I promised. And she acceded.

Of course, she had to have the last word. Once we’d reached an agreement, she cast an assessing gaze across the room. “It’s time,” she said, “to clean up this room and get on to bed.”

And she turned on her heel and headed upstairs, leaving the three of us sullen and silent, our camaraderie smashed, our party busted.

As we picked up popcorn and stacked plastic glasses, I assured my sisters that they could sleep late in the morning and let me handle the drive to Buckhannon. Neither protested, but neither seemed cognizant of my sacrifice either. I reminded myself that I was the eldest now, and that sacrifice was my duty.

I was just getting into bed when the cell phone rang. Somehow I knew it was Tom. I hesitated, then crossed to the dresser and dug the phone out of my purse, hoping that he’d tell me that he was on the road back home. Instead he said, “Let’s go to lunch tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“So we can talk this through. This isn’t much, compared to all we’ve been through, and I want you to know that, and know how much you mean to me—”

“Tom.” I took a deep breath. “Look, I’m trying to deal with this. You refuse to tell me the truth, so I’ve been investigating it myself. And if—when—I track down that woman, well, then I’ll know why it happened.”

“Track her down? Jesus, what is it you’re planning?”

I felt a tiny thrill of pleasure. I’d scared him. “Figuratively. If you’re not going to tell me, I’m going to find out for myself, even if it means calling the hospital and—”

I hoped for an
oh, all right
, a concession from him, the truth, or at least some start towards it. All I got was silence. I felt the crush of reality on my chest. “Not that it really matters. This is just the final act, you know. It’s just what’s making it clear it’s over, and it’s time to go on, both of us. I think it’s been wrong for a long time, but I didn’t have any real concrete explanation before. Now I know. This has always been between us.”

“No, it hasn’t. It’s never been important—”

“It should have been. It’s important to me. If I’d have known, we would never have gotten married, or have lasted this long, and you know that’s true. Even as it was, with this big secret still secret, it wasn’t really any good anymore.” I broke off. I couldn’t quite bring myself to say what I’d never said out loud before.

“What? We’ve been together almost twenty years, and if it’s been bad, it’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

“I know. You didn’t notice.”

“Say it. Whatever you’re going to say.”

He asked for it.

“I was going to tell you. After you left that last time, when I wanted to live here in the states and you wouldn’t stay. I was going to tell you when you got back that it was time to end it, that we weren’t really together anymore, that I wanted to have a real home for Sarah and a real job and I wasn’t ever going to get that if I kept following you around.”

“You were going to divorce me?” He sounded as if the idea was unknown to him, as if he’d never imagined it. Then his voice hardened. “So what happened? Why aren’t we divorced?”

“I couldn’t. Not when you came back from
Tehran
. You needed me.”

I heard his quick breath, and then, harshly, he said, “That was temporary. I don’t—I don’t
need
now.”

“I know. I realize that. That’s why I can leave.”

Another moment, and he hung up—not abruptly, not angrily, just a disconnection. I sat there with the phone in my hand, waiting . . . waiting for him to call back, waiting for the moonlight to dim, waiting for something to happen to mark this moment. But all that happened was my hand getting stiff, so I closed the phone and slid it back into my purse.

I’d done it. Whatever it was, I’d done it. It was over now. Either he would call me and tell me the truth, and we’d find some way to go on, or I’d make my way alone. Either way, I suspected our life together was ending in some sense. But then, looking back, I realized we’d been living separately, or at least in separate marriages, all along. Secrets did that—they split reality into two parts, one for those who knew the secret, and one for those who didn’t.

We were still on opposite sides of the line. But at least now I knew that much.

Mother was up and dressed,
but then, she always was, by
seven o’clock
, no matter what. Her cool silence didn’t bode well for the hour-long trip into Buckhannon. I decided I needed an infusion of coffee and a couple aspirin before I could pick up the keys and get in the car with her.

At the last minute, Theresa came down the stairs, dressed in one of her plain new outfits, her eyes rimmed in red and her mouth drooping with weariness. I guess her years of abstinence hadn’t won her any indulgence when it came to hangovers.

“I’ll go,” she said.

“Good. You can translate the medicalese.” I was about to transfer the whole unhappy task to her, but then I looked down at my keys. Theresa probably hadn’t driven in years, and
West Virginia
driving required some recent experience. “I’ll drive.”

Considering how hung over I was, I should have asked Theresa to recommend me to the Pope for canonization. Instead, I herded a reluctant Mother and Theresa to the Volvo and unlocked the back door.

“What’s this?” Theresa reached in and pulled out an overnight bag I recognized from home.

A bag I’d left at home.

She handed it over and I unzipped the top. Two blouses, some underwear, a pair of slacks and a skirt. One pair of casual canvas shoes. All compatible colors. A Ziploc bag with my toothpaste and toothbrush and other necessities.

If almost two decades as a foreign correspondent had taught Tom anything, it was how to pack efficiently.

 
I’d left my car locked—I always do—but of course Tom would have the keys, just as I had the key to his jeep on the key ring dangling from my hand.

That was marriage. You might be breaking apart, but you still packed for each other.

As Theresa got Mother settled in the car, I took the bag into the house and hung it from the staircase newel post. Then, glancing around to make sure no one was listening, I made a quick call to the Super-8 out on the bypass. I didn’t know what I was going to say, but as it turned out, it didn’t matter. When I asked for Tom’s room, they told me he had just checked out.

He’s given up and gone home, I thought. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

But the desk clerk went blithely on. “He’s made a reservation for tomorrow, though.”

I thanked her and hung up, puzzling over this. It was a three-hour drive back to our house. Maybe he suddenly decided to go there. Or maybe he decided to go visit Sarah at her camp in
Maryland
. But why? Did he mean to tell her about our problems? Surely not—not without talking to me first. We weren’t
that
separated, I hoped.

I could call his cell phone—no. I wasn’t chasing him. He knew my number.

Slowly I put the phone away and went back to the car.

I was stopped at a traffic light on
Main
when I saw the boy emerging from the Wakefield Herald office.

He was here in
Wakefield
. The boy. Brian. The love child.