He waits, and I hear myself say quietly, “I’ve been hallucinating.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I’ve done that,” he says. “I’ve seen Jeannie lots of times. She passes through rooms, I see her in the corners, I hear her voice, I feel her beside me in bed. She touches the back of my neck, I swear I feel her fingers there.”
“I haven’t seen Jay. But I feel his presence. I mean, I feel him there when I talk to him.”
“Do you really?”
“Yes.”
He sighs. “I wish so hard I would. But when I talk to her, I feel as though I’m standing in front of the ocean, throwing out words to nothing.”
“Maybe you’re just so exhausted—”
“No,” he says. “It’s been like that since this first happened. I’ve never felt she heard me since the day she came back from her surgery. I don’t feel any connection. And I feel so guilty, I feel like I’m just doing it wrong. But I don’t know what to do. I feel like my life has no balance. I feel desperate, I just—” He stops, looks at me, waiting. Asking. Say the handcuffs he wore were visible. They’d be made of flesh.
All right. All right. “So what does she make you for dinner?” I ask. “Is she a good cook?” I lean back to listen. I know that my job is to tell him it’s all right and I intend to do that. Next time will be my turn. Next time, I’ll ask him if what I’m doing is all right: listening to a ghost woman talk, seeing her everywhere in my house. Maybe he’ll say, “Seeing ghosts, having affairs, what’s the difference? It’s all to do the same thing, isn’t it? It’s all to get from ten o’clock to eleven.”
* * *
On the way out, I collect the kids from the day room. Flozell wheels along behind them. “Thanks for baby-sitting again,” I tell him.
“That’s all right,” he says. “I like kids. It’s when they older you got trouble. These kids told me they ain’t about to grow up. We friends for life.”
“Good,” I say.
“How’s Jay?”
“Oh, he’s … you know, he’s about the same.”
“Can I meet him?”
“Can you meet him?”
“That’s what I heard myself say.”
“Well, he … I mean, he doesn’t exactly respond.”
“Yeah, I know. But I like to say a few words to him. Why don’t you take me there. Just be a minute.”
I say nothing, and then he tells the kids, “Y’all wait here. We be right back.” He begins wheeling quickly down the hall toward Jay’s room. When he arrives, he waits for me outside the door.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Just let me come in a minute. Introduce us.”
I look into Flozell’s face, see a kind of honest earnestness I haven’t witnessed outside of children. “Oh, all right,” I say. “Come on.”
Flozell follows me in, wheels up to the side of the bed. Jay is on his back, hands arranged over his stomach. “Jay,” I say. “There’s someone here I’d like you to meet. Who’d like to meet you. This is Flozell.” I turn to Flozell, say quietly, “I’m sorry. I forgot your last name.”
“Smith,” he says, disgustedly. “How you forget that?”
“Sorry,” I say, and then, to Jay, “Flozell Smith.”
A little moment, and then Flozell wheels closer, takes Jay’s hand. “My man,” he says, gently. And then says nothing, just stays there, looking into Jay’s face. I step back, look at the massive hulk of Flozell holding the thinning hand of my husband, and I want to weep. I cannot for the life of me say the particular reason why.
When I come home, Ed is sitting out on the porch. I nod at him, start to walk past. “Lainey?”
“Yeah!” My voice is brittle with brightness.
“Want to take a walk?”
“Well, you know, I just got home.”
“Just for a few minutes.”
I want to say how difficult this would be, but it wouldn’t be. It’s still early. Amy and Timothy are at his house. Sarah won’t be home for another half hour.
“All right,” I say. “Just let me tell Alice.”
“She knows.”
Great. “Oh. Well, then.”
He stands up, tucks his shirt in.
“I’ll just put my purse away,” I say. “It’s too heavy.”
“Right.”
I go inside, notice the message light blinking, play it back with my hands clenched into fists. It’s only Dolly. I push the save button, stop listening. Later.
Just before I go out the door, I think about calling Alice, to whisper, This is it. We’re going for a walk. Want me to say anything in particular? I almost do, but then decide no, I’ll talk to her later. After it’s over.
I close the door behind me, smile falsely at Ed as we walk down the porch steps. I have an awful sensation, much like that of being disappointed by a blind date. In situations like this, the core that is your real self stays behind, feeling sorry for you, waiting for you to come back and reenter yourself.
“Don’t be so nervous,” Ed says.
“I’m not!”
He looks at me.
“Well, I mean … Okay. Fine.”
Nothing for a little while, except the soft sound of our shoes on the sidewalk. I notice that I am thirty-five years old and still avoid the cracks. I hope my mother appreciates this.
“I thought maybe the park,” Ed says.
“Well, I was thinking more … you know, just around the block. I need to return some calls. I have to get back.”
We pass a bus stop, and Ed gestures toward the bench. “Can we just sit here for a minute?”
I sit down, turn expectantly toward him.
“You know what I want to talk about, right?”
“I guess.”
“I’m not doing what she thinks, Lainey.” I nod.
“I’m really not.”
“Okay.”
“I get … I don’t know, removed, sometimes. I know that. I’m kind of hard to reach. But it’s just a mood. I’m not seeing anyone. I love Alice.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’d like you to try to help me, Lainey. I don’t want her to think there’s someone else.”
“Well. I kind of think that’s your job, Ed.”
“But she doesn’t believe me!”
“I have to tell you, Ed. I’m really uncomfortable about this whole thing. I mean, talking to you. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to tell you. Alice thinks you’re having an affair. I asked how she knew and she said she could just tell. She didn’t give me any details.”
“All right, I’ve been working more hours. That’s the only thing.”
“She didn’t say that.”
“She doesn’t know that. I don’t want her to know that. She doesn’t know where I’ve been. I’m … Listen, Lainey, I know you’re good friends. But I have to tell you something now that I don’t want you to tell her.”
“I don’t think I can promise you that.”
“Please. Listen. I’m working more hours for a reason. It’s … It’s because I want to save enough so we can buy a house. She really wants a house, and I’ve almost got enough. I want to surprise her. That’s all.”
“I see.” I don’t think Alice wants a house. She would have told me. She likes where she lives. She wouldn’t even move to the farm.
“All right?”
“Yes, all right.”
“So can you sort of … I don’t know, can you just tell her that I’m not involved with another woman? I swear it’s true. I swear it. I don’t want her to … I don’t want her to have to suffer like this.”
“I don’t think she’s suffering, Ed.”
“Well, I think she is.”
He’s right, of course. I just don’t want him to know it. I want him to think her broken heart is the equivalent of a hangnail, that losing him will be a passing inconvenience like having to switch laundry detergents. What is this talk for? What can he be thinking? That I’ll walk back to the house and invite Alice over
and defend him because he told me to?
“Ed?” I hate his name. I hate the name Ed. It’s too short. The letters are ugly together. The name sounds like you’re starting to say something and a fishbone catches in your throat. That’s what I’ll tell Alice, that we had a talk and I hate his stupid name.
“Why do you love Alice?” I ask.
“Pardon?”
“I said, ‘Why do you love Alice?’ ”
He laughs. “Well, why do you?”
“That’s not the question.”
“Well, I … I think that’s kind of personal, Lainey. Frankly, I find it odd that you ask.”
“Never mind,” I say. “Sorry.” I find it odd that he can’t answer. Alice is right. He’s lying.
The message is from Dolly, asking me to call her on Monday, she’s got an idea for me. A plan for working at home. That’s not a bad idea. It’s May already. I think Jay’s benefits decrease dramatically mid-month. I’ve got to find out. I’ve been thinking it’s beside the point, what the benefits are. But maybe it’s not. Maybe I’d better find out about long-range benefits. Maybe I’d better see if Frank can let me work full-time. Maybe Jay will lie there and lie there and lie there and lie there. Or not. Maybe he will not keep lying there. Maybe he’ll die. Is this it? Is this the time just before I become a widow working full-time at Beverage World, finding gray hairs at my temples one morning and turning from the bathroom mirror to show no one? I hear the screen door bang shut and I’m so glad Amy’s home. I will ask her to sit on my lap and I will braid her hair. Things like that help, when you feel suddenly made of glass, when if it weren’t for your sorrow you’d start screaming.
Ten fifty-five. The kids are in bed, asleep, I think. I don’t want to check because if they’re not asleep I don’t have the energy to do anything about it. I made Amy go to the bathroom twice before bed. I’m tired of her wetting the bed. The second time, I leaned against the doorjamb, watching her, and heard Evie’s voice in my ear. “A teaspoon of honey will help her. It’ll attract and hold the fluid. She’ll wake up dry.” And here is the dream world I live in now: when Amy came out of the bathroom, I brought her down into the kitchen with me and gave her a teaspoon of honey as though the pediatrician had called me, saying, “You know what works?”
“Why do I have to take this?” Amy asked.
“To help you sleep,” I said. And then Sarah, who was at the table watching, said, “What about me?” and I gave her a teaspoon, too. Couldn’t hurt. My children love taking medicine, even when it tastes terrible. It’s very unusual. I worry about it. They probably can’t wait to grow up and be hypochondriacs.
Now I make myself a cup of tea, sit at the kitchen table, look across from me and here she is again, her simultaneously vague and too-real presence.
“Go away,” I say, so quietly I’m not sure I’ve said it.
She stares at me with a calm kind of compassion, and I put my hands over my face, squeeze my eyes shut hard.
I hear a noise and look up, expecting her to be over at the sink, doing something useful. But it is not Evelyn Arlene Benson, ghost of a woman who lived here and now does not—but does anyway. It is Alice, letting herself in the back door.
“I saw your light,” she says, sitting down.
I nod, then remember that I haven’t spoken to her since I talked to Ed. “So. You ready?”
She nods.
“You want me to tell the truth?”
She nods again.
“I think he’s … I think you’re right.”
“Did he say anything about her?”
“No. He denied it.”
“How? What did he say, exactly?”
I think for a moment, and realize that I don’t remember. There is a point at which a muscle simply will not work any longer, and I feel as though my brain is like that lately, that what I need is to let it alone for a good long while.
“That bad, huh?” Alice says.
“No, it’s … You know, Alice, I’m having a hard time remembering. I’ve been having some things happen that make me think … Well, never mind. I remember. He said he was being distant, he knew that. He said he does that sometimes. But that he isn’t seeing anyone. He’s just working more. He wants to save money to … Well, he wants to buy you something. That’s what he said. He’s working more to buy you something and he’s not fooling around. And oh, he loves you.”
“He said that?”
“Yes.”
She chews at her lip, thinks a little. Then, “Buy what? What’s he going to buy?”
“Well, I don’t know if I should tell you, Alice. I mean, what if he’s telling the truth?”
“Then I’ll be happy.”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me.”
“All right, fine. He said he was going to buy you a house. That you wanted a house.”
Quiet, except for the low hum of the refrigerator. She looks frozen, staring off into space.
“Alice?”
She looks at me.
“Is it true?”
“You know, Lainey, I wonder if it would be all right with God if we exchanged situations. If we could have Ed in that bed instead of Jay. Because that would make some sense. Wouldn’t it?”
I say nothing.
“Maybe I could go home and bonk him on the head a little, do you think?”
“Alice, I’m sorry.”
“You know, what’s really insulting is that he uses that. A house. I never wanted to own a house. I mean, couldn’t he have said … I don’t know, a car? A car, that would actually run? That doesn’t make weird noises all the time? It’s an insult to say I want a house when I love living here so much. I love it here! I love duplexes, I love having you as a neighbor, I love our big front porch and the wood trim we have that you can’t find anymore and the size of our kitchens and the wide sidewalks out front. I love that we can walk to the store and the little library. I love that this house is so old, that there’s such a strong sense of other lives that have been here.”
At this, I start listening even harder. But she stops talking.
When I turn out the light for sleep that night, I close my eyes and, as I often do, remember how it used to be when I didn’t sleep alone. This seems to be painful necessity, the way the tongue seeks out the sore in the mouth. I close my eyes, think of the pleasure it was to back up to Jay, to feel his arm around my middle, his face against the back of my neck. Everything was in place when we lay together that way. I knew I was home. His smell was a kind of blanket to me. Safety. I notice that I still stay on my side of the bed, leaving room for him. If this goes on for years, will I still do that? If this goes on for years, will there ever be a point at which I am able to laugh with all of myself? It doesn’t seem so. And if that’s true, if my spirit must stay forever restrained because his is, wouldn’t it be better if he died? Maybe it would be. It would be cleaner. And after a while, perhaps even easier.
I sit up, turn on the light. I want to know the thing I should say stop to, the thing I can tell I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean that. I put my hand to my mouth, rock back and forth. I didn’t mean it.
Wednesday morning, I am putting on lipstick, getting ready to go to the nursing home, when I hear the front door open. “Lainey?” Alice calls.
“In the bathroom,” I yell, and then stand back, look to see if I stayed in the lines for once.
Alice sticks her head in. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Are you leaving?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Could you do something for me first?”
Her voice is different than usual. I turn around to face her. “What’s up?” I have a sudden and terrible feeling she is going to tell me she’s pregnant and wants me to go with her to have an abortion. It’s that kind of face, full of conflict. But what she says is, “I want to go to her house.”
“Whose house?”
“You know.”
“Her house?”
“Yea
h.”
“You want to meet her?”
“She’s not home.”
“So why do you want to go to her house?”
“I just want to see it.”
“Alice—”
“Don’t—tell me anything. I want to see it. I have to see it. Don’t say anything about it. Just come with me.”
“Well, how do you even know where it is? How do you know who she is?”
“I found out.”
“How?”
“I followed him. After work. Last night when Timothy ate dinner at your house? I followed Ed when he left work.”
“Oh, Alice.”
“No! I wanted to see. For sure.”
“And?”
“And he went into a town house and came out about forty minutes later, looking … happy. And with a wet head from a shower.”
“Well, then you saw her house already.”
“No, you don’t understand. I want to see it slowly. I want to look in the windows. I want to see her furniture.”
I turn out the bathroom light, walk past her. “Come and sit down with me, Alice.”
“No! Listen, Lainey. I know what I’m doing. I have my reasons. I’m asking you to come with me. I need someone to … help me. To watch for people to come.” This last she says in a lowered voice, looking down. Apparently she knows how she’s sounding.
“Alice,” I say gently. “Won’t this just make you feel worse?”
She looks up. “Of course. That’s the point.”
“Oh,” I say. “All right.” I get it. Sometimes, just when you think you’re going to die from pain, rage steps in to save you. There’s only so much room in a human heart. Thank God.
The town house is a tasteful gray structure with white trim, located in the arty part of town. There’s a pot of red geraniums on the little front porchette. The unit is an end one, toward the back of the complex. My job as lookout won’t be too hard. Alice goes up to the front door, reads the brass nameplate. “S. Hermann,” she says.
“Ugh,” I say. “It’s probably ‘Suzanne.’ I hate ‘Suzanne.’ ”
“It’s probably ‘Slut.’ ” Alice opens her wallet, takes something out, slides it in the crack of the door and up, and the door opens.