Five Tuesdays in Winter(34)

On the way back to Vermont I thought about words and how, if you put a few of them in the right order, a three-minute story about a girl and her dog can get people to forget all the ways you’ve disappointed them.

It was close to two in the morning when I got home and all the lights were still on in our apartment. Mandy was having one of her episodes. I hadn’t seen one yet. Wes had told me that every so often she drank herself into a sort of trance. I had laughed and said I couldn’t wait, but he’d said it wasn’t funny. She was pacing in the kitchen. Wes was at the table, which was covered with all sorts of bottles and glasses and mugs.

“Go straight back to your room,” he told me. “Let me deal with her.”

Mandy’s head snapped toward me. She stopped moving. Her face was all rearranged, like this toy Wes and I once had with the outline of a man’s face and a bunch of metals filings you moved around with a magnetic pencil underneath to alter his features and make him happy or sad or mad. Mandy was mad.

“There she is, Little Miss Scribbler. Little Miss History of the Fucking World.”

“Here I am.” I was sober and very tired.

“Dressed like a fairy princess.”

I tried to curtsy but the bridesmaid’s dress was too narrow. I looked like a misshapen purple mermaid.

Wes made a slight flourish with his finger for me to keep moving to my back room.

She saw him. She was too close to the drawer with the knives for my liking. But she said, “Baby, I love you so much.” Her voice was empty of any emotion, like the identical oarsmen giving their toasts at the country club. “So much.” She moved to where he was, stiffly now, as if her knees had never healed.

I hummed, very low, barely a sound, a few notes of “Psycho Killer.”

He was looking at her as she came down heavily on his lap, but he heard me—or at least he understood without hearing me—and a tiny corner of his mouth flinched up though he was fighting it hard.

Mandy leapt up. “What’s this?” She grabbed at the air over the table between Wes and me. “What is all this? I hate it. I hate it.” She was fighting it now, some invisible swarm over the table. Her hand swiped at a glass and it went flying behind her, then more of the glasses and the bottles flew in different directions, and Wes just sat there waiting it out. When she stopped, she looked like she had so much she wanted to be hollering but it got stuck somewhere. The metal shavings of her expression rearranged again to a defiant brokenness.

There was tapping at the door.

Her head swiveled again. “I wonder who that could be,” she said mechanically.

“Maybe it’s Ethan,” I said.

“Ethan who?”

“Ethan Frome.” I moved to get the door before I could see her reaction.

It was William. In that fucking turquoise sari. He ducked. A Jim Beam bottle sailed over his head, skittered along the porch boards, slipped under the railing and smashed on the pavement below. He must have followed me three hours on the highway from the church parking lot.

Mandy came after me in her stiff-kneed way, but I quickly got around the table. She chased me, but the imaginary knee thing really slowed her down and I had to be careful not to go so fast that I caught up with her from behind.

“Are we playing Duck, Duck, Goose?” William said, coming into the kitchen.

“Oh fuck, is that your asshole?” Wes said.

“It is I,” William said. “Her asshole.”

“Definitely not what I expected.”

“It’s all very sexy under there, unfortunately,” I said, still speed walking around the table.

Mandy stopped in front of William. “This is so intricate,” she said, fingering the gold embroidery of his neckline.

Another knock on the door. William was closest.

“Hey man.” It was Jeb. “Cool dress.” He took in the room, saw me against the far wall. “Lucy,” he said, his voice rising. He came over to me. “You’re back.” He kissed me. His lips were cold and tasted of smoke and pine. “I had this fear you wouldn’t come back from Massachusetts. It was weird.”

“You’ve been in the woods.”

“Mhmm.” He kissed me again. “Party.” And again. “Bonfire.” He was young. He didn’t care who saw all the desire and energy he had.

“Petra had the baby,” William said. “A little girl named Oriole.”

It was the first time I’d felt alone in my body, like somebody was missing. I hadn’t felt it before.

I don’t know how Mandy knew—I hadn’t told Wes about either of the pregnancies—but she came around so fast and held me tight.

The sirens came then. Two cop cars into our lot. Of course we thought they were coming for us, but they banged on the door below. They banged and they banged and Stacy’s kids did not answer. We all stayed quiet. Wes shut off the light. Anything we said would get Stacy in trouble, he said.

Another car pulled into the lot. Stacy’s ex. I’d seen him once leaving her place. But he never came when he was supposed to—on Sundays, his day with the kids.

We heard him outside with the police, talking at the door.

“It’s okay, guys. Open up. It’s me. It’s your dad. It’s okay. Michael, Allie, A. J.” He said their names slowly and separately, like a new teacher would, like he was worried about mispronouncing them. “Open the door now.” Nothing. Then: “Your mom knows I’m here. She’s on her way. C’mon guys. Open up.”