There Must Be Some Mistake (21 page)

I TOLD
Jilly and Morgan I'd meet them later at the condo, dropped Diane at her hotel, and drove down the coast to see Chantal. It was still light out, after seven, and the light was speeding up, taking its bows, and traffic was thin as usual. All the seabirds were flying back where they'd come from earlier in the day. What I thought was that things were a little out of whack. The people I wanted to see were heading to the house and I was going south to see Chantal, drawn there by—what? Something I'd started and was caught in—expectations, mine and hers, hopes, the same pair—and I knew way too little about her, and what I did know, or thought I knew, wasn't choice. Chantal was something the cat dragged in, as my mother used to say. A cipher, not a zero but a mystery. A woman I might have been interested in if we'd met thirty years ago, with a whole life out in front of me and the time to do anything, the time to work on it, the time to invest in a prospect, to play a thing out, to see what might come. But now all that seemed a little silly, something from a fairy tale, a fantasy that we grow up with, that we have something enough and time, whatever that line is. World. And here I was losing another night on this woman I had been charmed by some weeks before, but for whom the interest had faded. I suddenly felt real distaste for her. She scared me, depressed me. Or maybe the depression was just mine, a wave of it swept over me. That used to happen all the time, about anything, coming out of nowhere. Overtaking me, heavy on my shoulders, at the neck, a weight. I let the car slow down, then pulled off to the side of the road shy of an elaborate combination gas station, truck stop, and restaurant, and sat there for some time with the engine idling. I watched the sunset off in the west, which was in all ways extraordinary, exquisite, a remarkable panoramic canvas rendered with utmost delicacy, and yet it seemed ordinary to me, another pretty sky, a showy repetition of yesterday, a duplicate due tomorrow. I went into the glove compartment and got my pills. Took a couple, shook the bottle to gauge how many were left. Plenty. I didn't seem to have the strength to steer the car, to turn it around and head back home, and now I didn't want to see Jilly and Morgan, either, not feeling the way I was feeling. I didn't want to see anyone I could think of, anyone I knew. I felt a little sick to my stomach, felt pressed into the car, my shoulder aching, my hands resting on the edges of the seat. Anywhere but where I was, I thought, I would prefer to be. Anybody that I wasn't, I would prefer. To be. The hissing in my ears grew louder the more I listened to it. A whistling, a wire, a sizzle. I knew I wasn't going to see Chantal after all. Maybe another day. And not Jilly and not Morgan, and surely not Diane, and not Jean Darling or Bernadette, or Bruce and Roberta, and not Oscar Peterson, not Duncan Parker, or Mrs. Parker. Not the gay neighbors or the new neighbors. Not my first wife, God rest her soul. Not my mother or father or my brother Raleigh, whom I kept alive in my heart but who was, in fact, long, long gone. I wanted to weep about all this, I thought that would be fitting, but my eyes wouldn't cooperate, they were desert dry, arid. I wanted a cat, a monkey, a pet of some sort, a companion dog, a bakery. Comfort. Relief. Rest. I put the car in gear and rolled forward on the side of the highway, slowly, then turned into the parking lot of Tommy King's Highway Oasis. I rolled through the parking lot to the car wash, which was a drive-through unit at one end with five additional wash-it-yourself bays. I stuck my credit card in the meter for the drive-through, punched up my desired wash, and pulled forward as instructed, shut my eyes while the water and the soap streamed over the car, sprayed and misted and sprayed again, and the soap curled on the windshield, and the great U-shaped arm of the wash swept back and forth alongside, around, over the car. And when the thing stopped, when the buzzer buzzed and the light came on and said
DRIVE AHEAD
, I did that, I drove ahead, circled around through an empty wash bay, and inserted my credit card in the meter again. I pulled forward. I waited for the rain.

DIANE CALLED.
“She's in love with you,” she said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Jilly,” she said. “You really ought to do something about that, one way or the other.”

“Where are you calling from?” I said. My phone said it was midnight and I was still in the car, in the car wash, where I'd been for the last three hours or more. I'd taken a good nap. It took me a minute, like it always does, to get my bearings. “You at the hotel?”

“Airport,” she said. “Houston. I was going to leave without a word, but decided I needed to help you out with this problem. Did you see Chantal? I called the house and Morgan said you had not returned from Chantal-land.”

“That's what she called it?”

“Word for word,” Diane said. “I get the impression she's not too thrilled with your late-stage dalliance.”

“What are you doing at the airport?”

“Returning to my snug harbor in the Northeast,” she said. “I decided it was easier than coming back. We don't know where Cal's going to be anyway. One of his guys said he thought they'd send him out to Marfa, some special penitentiary out there for sex offenders. Apparently Cal is dead lucky he didn't get huge time.”

“I wondered about that, the girl being, you know, a ten-year-old.”

“Not funny,” Diane said. “Anyway I grabbed a plane up east and I'll be gone before sunrise. Are you going to miss me?”

“I think so,” I said.

“I'm serious about Jilly,” she said.

“Don't be messing in my stuff,” I said. “You are entitled to many things, but that isn't one of them.”

“You are so sweet, Wallace. And I'm telling you what you already know. Jilly has hung on with you, kept you upright, washed, dried, and folded for these many years, way before you and I went south. You owe her, and more than that, you love her.”

“You think?” I said. “Not your call anyway. And Jilly needs lots of room, lots of time. I don't see her pushing for consummation.”

“Oh yeah, right. It's only what? Fifteen years you've been hanging out with her?”

“I'm not discussing this, Diane.”

“So what? Are you with that dangerous chanteuse of yours?”

I looked around at Tommy King's Highway Oasis from my spot in the car wash and said, “Not hardly. I'm taking a rest at Tommy King's Highway Oasis and Car Wash. Been here since nine or nine-ish. Car is real clean and I've been sleeping.”

“That a joke?”

“Nope. I had one of my spells. You may remember my spells.”

“I do? Oh, you got sad. Sudden-onset melancholy.”

“Whatever. Yes. I didn't want to see anybody, so I pulled into Tommy's place and then I washed the car maybe forty-nine dollars' worth, which would be seven times at seven dollars a pop—the Semi-Deluxe Detail Wash—and on the last go-round I must have fallen asleep. I would still be asleep save for your call.”

“So here's what I think,” Diane said. “I think you ought to ask Jilly to marry you, and you guys ought to move someplace new, away from Forgetful Bay. Didn't you go look at property in Florida?”

“How long before your plane takes off?” I asked.

“Hour and forty minutes. Why?”

“Are we going to talk the whole time? My job is to help you wait for the boarding call?”

“That's one way to look at it. Or you could say that we're old friends and former lovers, ex­­-husband and ex-wife, still close after all we've been through together, and I'm taking this opportunity to clue you in on your love life, about which you have not an inkling, as per usual.”

“You are kind,” I said. “I'll give you that. Especially in these later years.”

“I try,” she said. “We both do. Plus, I'm the only remaining wife in your stable at the present, may Lucy rest in peace, so I am assuming the duties.”

“OK, got it. Will think about taking action per your prescription. Can you hang on about twenty minutes? I've got to pee.”

“No fun for Wallace and Diane. Call me back, will you? If you get done before I take off.”

“Love you, dear,” I said.

“You, too,” she said.

I went into Tommy King's Highway Oasis store and sought the key to the lavatory, which was freely given. Having concluded my business there in a timely fashion, I returned the key and purchased a three-dollar bag of peanut M&M's and mounted up, slipped the car back onto the highway headed north this time, and considered punching up Diane's number on the iPhone, which was, naturally, linked to the hands-free Harman Kardon twelve-speaker stereo system in the car, including four satellite tweeters. Then, instead of calling Diane, I turned on the radio and scanned the spectrum of stations available until I found something suitable for my mood and cranked that up to earsplitting and rocked all the way home. Van Morrison.

Jilly was on the couch when I arrived. She wore shorts and a little shirt. She was watching one of the Lisbeth Salander pictures, the one where she throws the gasoline on her father in the car and lights him up. “I think we need to watch these all over again,” she said when I sat down next to her. She sighed, as if she felt a heavy responsibility that she did not particularly want to discharge.

“Why?” I said.

“They're all tied together and if you read the
Wikipedia
page the whole thing makes sense, but I never quite got the whole story before.”

“I'm guessing that's not so important,” I said.

“No? Why not?”

“It's more the fabric of the thing, the atmosphere, the climate, the mood, the character, the feel of it, this girl, against all, this wonderful girl, her extraordinary power, David and Goliath, the feel overall, the way everything feels is what's important.”

“That's a pretty negative attitude toward narrative in film,” she said.

“It's like
The Killing,
” I said. “It's all about the tiny stuff that goes on between the characters, the shadows, eyebrows, looks in the eyes. All that endless rain. Her face through a smeared car window. His voice coiling up an octave then fading when teasing her.”

“Got it,” she said.

I stared at the flat-screen TV. “This is great,” I said. “I'd like to watch them again. They remind me of forties movies somehow.”

“Forties?”

“Never mind,” I said. “A previous time period. Is Morgan sleeping?”

“Think so.”

“Is there anything to eat?”

“Peanut butter and ice cream,” she said. “So how did things go with Chantal?”

I got up and headed for the kitchen. “Didn't see her,” I said. “I stopped at a roadside place and took a nap.”

“A nap? Since eight-thirty?”

“Don't ask,” I said. “Then Diane called from the airport. She's headed back to Rhode Island.”

“I thought she was coming back to join the force,” Jilly said.

“Nope. She's waiting on Cal. Seems to have a thing for Cal. Strange as it may seem.”

“More power to her,” Jilly said. “I wish her well. He may have changed by now, anyway. When he was up here talking to me that time, that night? When you were out? He didn't scare me that much.”

“Good to know,” I said. I got the raisin bread out of the freezer and dropped two slices into the toaster, then fetched the chunky peanut butter, the Breyers chocolate ice cream, a knife, and a spoon and a bowl. All these I arranged on three sheets of Bounty paper towels on the countertop where the toaster was doing its job. I tapped the knife on the countertop, drumming unconvincingly. I was a drummer once but so bad at it I didn't deserve the name. Now I couldn't keep time with one hand, let alone two. And the feet.

“Quit that, will you?” Jilly said.

I stopped, the toasted bread popped up, I made my sandwich and put a half cup of ice cream into the bowl. I put away the ice cream and the peanut butter, wiped the knife and placed it carefully in the sink, slipped the spoon into the bowl of ice cream, and took my snack to the dining table, which was small, seated four, and Scandinavian. “Want to join me?” I said to Jilly.

“Sure,” she said, and punched
PAUSE
on the remote, stopping the TV in its tracks.

“I wonder if you might want to go back to Florida?” I said. “Look for a place there.”

“What? A vacation place? It's already a vacation right here, isn't it? You got water, boats, oysters, scenery, guys in Bermuda shorts everywhere you look.”

“Just wondering,” I said. “Don't get overwrought.”

“I wouldn't mind,” she said. “I don't know. Sure. If you want to. I'm the baggage here, you know?”

“Come on,” I said. “You're more like the jewels of the Madonna.”

“Oh yeah? Good to know. When did that happen?”

“Dunno,” I said. “Long time ago.”

“I don't remember an announcement on this point,” Jilly said.

“It was truncated,” I said.

“And then some,” she said.

She was having a good time. I was wondering why I'd let years go by since the divorce without saying something. It wasn't only Diane's instruction, it was time, it was time going by faster than it could be counted. Diane was right. Something had to be said.

“I'm kind of attached to you, Jilly. Terminally. If that's OK with you. I mean, if you want to be, you know, terminally attached to. I don't know why you'd want to, but I'm not all that bad, I guess. You could do worse. There's Cal. He's an outlier. But maybe you'd rather hunt up a couple dozen guys your age.”

“Sounds great,” she said. “Clubbing, scouring date sites, posting on Craigslist, putting butt-naked pictures on all the better meet-a-man sites. Good idea. Did that all last week. Turns out I'm the runt and ugly duckling rolled into one and all those great guys won't touch me with a striped stick.”

“I must have phrased that wrong.”

“A little bit,” she said.

“And I think you mean buck naked,” I said.

We sat there for a minute regarding each other. It was a long minute. One of the longest. It kept on unraveling. After a while she picked up my sandwich and helped herself to a sizable bite. Then she put the sandwich back where she found it. “You think I would actually say
butt naked
in the real world?”

“Ah,” I said. “I'm slipping.”

“Do tell,” she said, and she covered my hand with hers. Covered might overstate it.

“How about some ice cream?” I said, inching the bowl her way with my free hand.

“Why not?” she said. “You're going to discover the truth of me sometime.” And she gave up my hand and took the bowl and spoon and wolfed down what ice cream remained.

“Maybe we can talk more tomorrow,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, licking the spoon as she got up and headed for the kitchen, the bowl in tow. “Let's revisit this issue then. Meanwhile, I am going to retire secure in the knowledge that tomorrow will bring satisfactions beyond measure.”

She came back to kiss me on the cheek. The lips were wet, soft and parted.