French Braid(32)

He was a good husband. He worked hard, and he loved her. And Mercy did love him back. But occasionally, for no particular reason, she used to entertain fantasies of leaving home. Oh, not seriously, of course. They were no more than the idle, he’ll-be-sorry fantasies that she assumed must flit through all women’s minds on those days when they felt taken for granted. She enjoyed picturing what disguise she might choose—dyeing her hair a vivid black, for instance, and switching to tailored black slacks with creases ironed down the front, and perhaps even taking up cigarettes, because who would ever dream that Mercy Garrett would be smoking? She could sashay right out of the neighborhood, blowing smoke rings all the way to Penn Station, and no one would give her a glance.

At least she had not acted on that fantasy, she thought now. At least she had dutifully stuck around, fixed untold thousands of meals, cleaned house each day and then risen the next day and cleaned the same house all over again. And now she looked back on that time quite fondly, in fact, even though she had no earthly desire to relive it. She could still feel her children’s soft cheeks pressing against hers. She could still feel their little hands tucking themselves into her hands. She heard Lily’s comically sultry voice singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider”; she heard David’s infectious chuckle. Oh, and the birthday card that Alice had made her in third grade! “Dear Mama promise me you will never ever ever die.” And that lovely carefree week they had spent at Deep Creek Lake, their very first vacation and, in fact, their last, with the girls almost grown up by then and halfway out the door. It all happened so fast, she thought, even though it had seemed endless at the time. And generally, she had managed well. She had nothing to reproach herself for.

Still, she dreamed now that she lived in some sort of police state and she was walking down a gray street in a gigantic black fur coat. A man in uniform stopped her and said her coat looked to him like the coat belonging to X, a well-known revolutionary, and what should he make of that?

She said, “Well, let’s just say it would be very, very difficult to get in touch with X these days.”

And she blew out a long whoosh of smoke, and both of them laughed evilly.



* * *



—

Mr. Mott telephoned twice—first a week or so into Desmond’s stay, just asking how things were going with him and saying their daughter had had her surgery but would be longer in the hospital than they’d originally expected; and then in early February, apologizing for how much time this was taking but giving no further information. Nor did Mercy ask; she sensed she shouldn’t. “Don’t you worry about us,” she said. “We’re doing just fine here.” And she meant it.

One Sunday morning, she woke to a foot and a half of snow. The round metal table on the Motts’ patio wore a dome of snow like an igloo, and their roof so exactly matched the opaque white sky above it that she couldn’t see the line dividing them. The two dormer windows seemed to be hanging in empty space.

She felt cozy and secure; she made herself a big breakfast and she ate it in her bathrobe. The cat, meanwhile, perched precariously on the windowsill and stared out at the snow, transfixed. “Quite a surprise, isn’t it?” Mercy said, and Desmond turned briefly and raised his eyebrows at her.

The phone rang: Robin, of course. “You okay there?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” she said. “How are things at the house?”

“Pretty good. They haven’t plowed the roads yet, though. I’m going to come over on foot and bring your boots so you can walk back with me.”

“Oh, don’t do that! I can manage!”

“It’s no trouble; the walk will do me good,” he said.

“Robin. Really. I’m smack-dab in the middle of a painting right now. I was planning to work all day anyhow, and I have plenty to eat and drink. I could stay holed up for days!”

“Well, but I was thinking I could light us a fire in the fireplace,” he said.

“Yes, do that! Light yourself a fire and get all comfy and be glad you don’t have to go anywhere. I’m certainly glad!”

“Oh.”

“I’m going to get so much done!”

“Oh.”

“I’ll come by later. Bye!”

But “later” was three days later. By that time, they’d cleared the roads, if not the sidewalks, so she could walk back to the house if she kept to the street. Robin was off at work when she got there; it was early afternoon. She found the kitchen a bit scattered-looking—cocoa tin left out on the counter, dishes stacked in the sink—and from the afghan and pillow lying on the couch she guessed he might have spent at least one night in front of the TV instead of going upstairs to bed.

First she started a load of laundry, adding the clothes she found in the bathroom hamper to those she’d brought from the studio; and then she tidied the kitchen and mixed a meatloaf, using the ground beef from the fridge. It was her plan to put it in the oven at about four thirty or five, so that they could have it for supper. But it wasn’t even two yet, and once she had gone through the mail, and vacuumed the living-room rug, and switched the laundry from the washer to the dryer, she changed her mind. She wrote Robin a note, “Bake at 350o one hr.,” and she taped it to the loaf pan, which she set in the fridge at eye level where he couldn’t miss it. Then she put on her snow boots and walked back to her studio.