“Everything’s taken care of,” he said to Julia after he hung up the phone.
Julia wondered if this wasn’t something she should think through, but Scott was so confident as if he’d done this sort of thing a hundred times before, and his confidence made it seem like this was the only rational course of action. So she didn’t say or think anything, but simply sat in the passenger seat and let Scott do the driving. She watched as they passed one of the city parks. The autumn trees were blurred as they flew by her window. In only a few seconds her window went back to displaying the concrete world to which she had grown accustomed, and her life felt blurry and surreal.
When she walked into the building everything seemed so simple, efficient, and commonplace. It seemed to Julia like she was just being run through the procedure. Even the questions about whether or not she really wanted to go through with her decision seemed like just another part of the procedure.
When she and Scott walked out of the clinic into the afternoon sun it was like waking up from a bad dream. And maybe it all had been just a dream, something dead and in the past. Holding her boyfriend’s hand, Julia literally skipped across the parking lot.
“Thank you so much,” she said when they got to his car.
“Don’t mention it,” he replied. And that being said, they went out for hamburgers and ice cream.
* * *
On Thursday afternoon Peter didn’t come home after work. He had told himself that he wanted to devote himself to finishing all of his paperwork so he could get out of its shadow, and then devote all his time and attention to Hannah. He knew that his logic had holes. He knew that if he worked hard and got completely caught up he’d just be given something else. Nevertheless, Peter stayed in the office buried under pages of new policies and procedures, occasionally working towards his goal, but spending most of the evening just sitting, unsure of what he was doing at the office or why he hadn’t gone home. The ringing of the phone brought him out of one of these stupors and he answered it, not knowing who could be calling him at the office so late in the evening.
“Hello?” Peter asked as he picked up the phone.
“What are you still doing at the office?”
The voice was Stanly’s and within two minutes Peter had put things in order and was on his way to a sports bar to watch basketball. Stanly was there waiting at a table and they ordered a pitcher of Budweiser to go with the free chilidogs that came at halftime. The pitcher was empty by the time the game had ended, another unbearable defeat; ninety-seven to ninety-five on a buzzer beater was more than he could take. Another pitcher of beer was ordered to take the edge off of such a heartbreaking finale. Neither of them had noticed who had drunk the lion’s share but when it came time to leave Stanly had to drive Peter home.
“It’s just that I really was going to try to patch things up with Hannah as soon as I found some time,” Peter slurred remorsefully as Stanly helped him into the car.
“So what were you doing at the office?” Stanly asked. “I know you don’t like work that much.”
“I don’t know. I was just . . .just . . . just,” Peter was having a hard time maintaining his train of thought.
“Just waiting on me to call so you could go do something else. I don’t know what the problem is, and I’m not the type to be giving advice, but you’ve got to get,” Stanly didn’t bother to finish his sentence because Peter had closed his eyes and leaned his head on the window.
“I tried to hold her and kiss her like I used to,” Peter said after some silence.
“So what happened?”
“I couldn’t do it because, well I don’t know why. It didn’t feel natural anymore. It was like I was forcing it and then I got nervous because I didn’t know how she would respond, my own wife and I was afraid to, because it’s been so long and it was like I didn’t, but I don’t know if she loves me, if I love . . .”
Peter’s voice trailed off again and he put his head back against the glass.
“Listen, look at me man,” Stanly said until Peter gave him as much of his attention as he could muster, “most of the time the things you gotta do don’t come natural, but if it’s important you’ve got to go ahead and do them anyway. You understand?”
Peter nodded his head, exaggerating the motion, and let his chin rest on his chest.
“You can’t pass out yet,” Stanly said as he nudged Peter, “you’ve still got to give me directions to your house.”
Peter remained conscious until they got to his house and Stanly helped him to the front door. Hannah was still awake reading a book in the living room. Peter felt certain that she had stayed up because he hadn’t come home. He was afraid that she would be upset and he knew that he was in no state to have a “discussion.” He stumbled back to the bedroom as quietly as he could, knowing how much Hannah hated him drunk. He climbed into bed and pulled the covers up over his head hoping that everything would be fine in the morning. He was glad that Hannah had pretended not to notice the loud thumping noises he made when bumping into the walls as he had worked his way down the hallway.
“It’s the first time he’s come home drunk since Lewis was born and I’ll be out of this life soon enough,” she told herself. She hated the book but stayed up and read for another hour before slipping back to the bedroom where her husband lay safely asleep, or passed out, on his side of the bed.
* * *
Thomas was sitting on a shag couch with his bare feet buried in shag carpet, wondering if it was left over from the seventies and hoping that he was still sober enough to drive.
“You think you can make it home?” Mark asked. “I’m gonna head out. I’m going to another party.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been drunk before but I’m pretty sure that I’m fine. Just a little buzzed,” Thomas said.
“Well I’ve got bigger fish to fry and bigger kegs to tap. See you around. But I’m glad to see you’ve finally loosened up some, you know, given into all that peer pressure and all.”
Mark stumbled out the door and Thomas realized that he couldn’t name one person inside the house.
“Peer pressure,” he mumbled. Nobody heard him. How could they have with the music blaring loud enough to drown out even the possibility of real conversation? “Nobody here cares if I’m drinking or not, really nobody here cares if I’m here or not. How is it that partying could get popular? Man I can’t stand the smell of this place, all the cheap perfume and colognes mixed with smoke and alcohol and air freshener. Maybe there isn’t any air freshener, but there should be. Why don’t people stop when they wake up in the morning with headaches? Mark’s always swearing ‘never again,’ but he’s always going back on his oaths by the time the next weekend rolls around.”
Somewhere in his monologue Thomas stopped speaking out loud, and sometime after he had stopped muttering a cute girl sat down next to him. At least he assumed that there was a cute girl attached to the low cut shirt, which was all he noticed.
“What’s your name?” it asked.
“Thomas.”
“You a friend of Marks? I saw you come in with him,” she went on in a friendly voice.
“Yeah.”
“You don’t look like you’re having a good time. You haven’t been to many parties have you?” she continued.
“Nope.”
“It didn’t feel right for me at first either but after a while it’s like second nature, and you learn to deal with the people who can’t hold their liquor.”
She pointed to a guy who had managed to lose his shirt and seemed a little too interested in a girl wearing a tank top. There was a long awkward pause.
“If you wanted to get out of here I’d be up for going someplace. It looks like you aren’t having a good time and it also looks like you need someone to drive.”
“Thanks but I can walk back to my dorm room,” Thomas answered.
“Maybe some other time then.”
“Yeah, some other time.”
* * *
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On Friday morning Peter vowed to himself, “Never again,” as the alarm went off and he dragged himself out of bed. It had been a long time since he had made that vow, and he was noticeably anxious as he got dressed and poured his bran flakes. His fear was the fear of a criminal who sees a police car slowly driving down the street. The only question left in his mind was when. Hannah was also eating breakfast and so Peter hid behind the sports page. They didn’t normally eat together but it happened that a few times a week they would both be at the table consuming their food at the same time. Peter scanned the box scores knowing that it wasn’t just a coincidence that his wife was sitting there, taking her sweet time between each bite, killing him first with anticipation. He could hear Julia and Lewis putting pop tarts in the toaster behind him but didn’t turn around.
When Hannah finally spoke she asked, “What all did you do last night?”
There was no accusation in Hannah’s tone. In fact, if Peter had been paying attention he would have realized that she was completely uninterested.
“I was really on a roll up at the office and wanted to finish going over all of the new policies.”
The lie was obvious. His body language was fidgety, he stammered, and his response was delayed. But if Hannah noticed she didn’t let on.
A minute later he could hear an engine starting in the driveway and knew that Julia was taking Lewis to the elementary on her way to the high school. Now he would hear what Hannah really wanted to say. He had been foolish to think that she would create a scene while the kids were still in the house. “She knows as well as I do that we have to maintain the façade in front of them, especially Lewis,” Peter thought.
It had been a long time since their last argument but Peter knew how it would go. Hannah would accuse him of something far worse than what he had actually done. Her imagination always convinced her of the veracity of the worst possible scenario. Then, in order to disprove her allegations, he would tell her the whole truth and she would yell at him. He would apologize, she would go cry, and he would feel terrible. Neither of them would say anything to the other, and after a day or so she would give him some indication that everything was forgiven and this would make him feel even worse, but at least it would be over.
But as Peter sat at the kitchen table with his bran flakes getting soggy, the silence was more than he could stand. Soon every little sound that he normally would never have noticed stood out. Hannah’s chewing and the soft ticking of the grandfather clock in the living room became unbearable, and he tried again to focus on yesterday’s box scores.
“I’m leaving for the office,” Hannah said as she got up from the table and slung her satchel over her shoulder. She seemed aloof as she walked past him and out of the kitchen, and for the first time Peter thought that he might have dodged the bullet. As his fear of being caught subsided, he began to rationalize his actions. He hadn’t gotten that drunk and it would be a stretch to call his conversation with that young blonde woman at the table across from him flirting; besides she was a smoker and he could never have a relationship, or even an affair, with someone who smoked. By the time he left for work his conscience was clear and he even reproached himself for being such a coward.
* * *
Hannah had gotten up early on Friday morning, having decided that it would be the day she would finally say something. How long had it been since she and Abigail talked over coffee? How long had she been putting off what she knew she had to do? It seemed that all of her life, if she was ever to have one again, hinged on this one moment that was always just out of reach.
It was like when she had taught the children to swim. She could see herself standing in the pool no more than two yards from David with her arms stretched out as if reaching for him.
“I’m right here; just swim to me.” Those had been her exact words to all four children. She remembered how each time David began to swim toward her, confident in his ability to swim so short a distance, but deathly afraid of the deep end of the pool. She remembered waiting until he had almost reached her and then taking a step backwards and then another, always staying just out of reach until he floundered. Then she would reach out and pull him close to her.
“Look how far you made it!” she would say each time, until he was finally able to swim the length of the pool. That is how they learned, spurred on by the hope that just a few more strokes would bring them to the goal.
“But I’m floundering now,” she thought, and she poured some bran flakes into her bowl. “And I’m nowhere near the end. She asked Peter what he had done last night but didn’t care enough to listen to his answer. Instead she fingered her wedding band. She took it off and rubbed her little finger along the inner rim. She could feel the engraving: ‘till death do us part.
How long would that be? If it were only a week, a month, even a year away she knew she could make it. But they were both middle aged and in good health, at least compared to most people their age. The far end of the pool looked so distant and so deep.
“And I’m floundering now,” she thought. Then for the first time all morning she actually took notice of Peter. His head was buried behind the newspaper as he slurped cereal and milk from his spoon. Or was it her spoon. She was almost positive that her grandfather had given them the silverware. Or maybe it had been her aunt. Regardless, she felt fairly certain that it had come from her side of the family. She caught herself letting her thoughts wander.
“No. A spoon doesn’t matter. None of that is important, just freedom, just life. It feels like I’ve been dead for so long. And it’s all his fault.”
Peter was still slurping milk, something that had never bothered her before, but now she made an effort to eat each bite of soggy bran flakes with as much grace and precision as possible. She remembered how her mother had always cooked breakfast and they had all eaten as a family. Now she could hardly remember what it was like to smell pancakes and sausage. She ate and thought about bacon and eggs and weekends at the lake. All of her life was behind her.
“I can’t keep putting it off. As soon as we’re alone without the kids. As the words passed through her mind, she heard Julia’s car start outside. She looked at her watch. “But if I tried to tell him now it would make us both late for work,” she thought.
Then she found her voice and said resolutely, “I’m leaving for the office.” The wrong words seemed to have escaped from her mouth. It was what she had intended to say, but she had hoped that the other words, the words that had been eating at her for so long, would somehow find their way out instead. She slung her satchel over her shoulder and walked into the garage hating herself for letting another morning go by without saying those words that had been welling up inside of her for too long now.
* * *
When Julia woke up on Friday morning she had slept less than her father. The peaceful oblivion that came with sleep had eluded her. She watched the minutes tick away on her alarm clock trying to convince herself that she was only concerned with not being able to stay awake in her classes if she didn’t get to sleep soon. The alarm went off at too early o’clock, as Thomas used to call it, and she went through her morning ritual.
Those first few hours of wakefulness that she had once despised were now her only escape. Her body was engaged in mechanical tasks that it was trained to do without any thought, and her mind wasn’t awake enough to begin rerunning the myriad of thoughts that must have gone through her head a thousand times already. Reality was distant.
The first thing that went through her head when she had finished waking up was getting out of the house without having to talk to her parents. She hadn’t been able to talk to them since she and Scott had gone downtown.
“Hurry up Lewis or you’re going to make me late,” she yelled from the bathroom. Lewis was closer to being ready than she was, but she needed to occupy her mind. “He’s always running behind,” she thought as she walked into the kitchen. Lewis was just in front of her and they put all four Pop Tart
s into the family sized toaster at the same time. From the kitchen she could see into the dining room where her father was reading the paper with his back to her. Her mother was sitting across from him eating a bowl of cereal. Despite the fact that the toaster was on the fastest setting Julia couldn’t stand the waiting. As soon as the Pop Tarts were ready she handed two to Lewis, took two for herself, and without saying anything, ushered her little brother out of the front door and into the car.
As she drove him to the elementary he kept her busy with silly questions about flowers and candy bars. As Lewis got out of the car she told herself, “Now all I have to do is make it to first period. Then I’ll have to focus on school all day.” She put in a CD and turned the volume up. She sang along until she pulled into the school parking lot.
* * *
Lewis was the only person in the house who had slept soundly through the night. He had dreamed about being able to fly and woke up without the slightest twinge of guilt. He got dressed and wetted his toothbrush. He didn’t see any reason to brush his teeth first thing in the morning when it was the last thing he had done before going to sleep. He had also learned that his mother could tell if he was lying about having brushed them if the bristles were still dry.
He had just completed his own morning ritual when his sister yelled at him to hurry up. He grabbed an already crumpled piece of paper that was sitting on his dresser and shoved it into his right pants pocket and went into the kitchen to cook his Pop Tarts, which he ate in his sister’s car. He gobbled them down because he had important things to talk about.
“What are the best kinds of flowers?” he asked Julia, still chewing the last bite of his breakfast.
“I don’t know. Daffodils I guess,” Julia said without looking at her brother.
While Lewis felt that the motivation behind his question was perfectly clear Julia couldn’t seem to be able to figure out what he was after, and had only responded with the first type of flower that came to mind. Lewis couldn’t understand how anyone else’s mind could be occupied with anything other than asking out Summer Wallburn.