My Last Innocent Year(35)
“Tom. Darling.” Joanna spoke softly, as if she were trying to lure a dog out of the street.
“Leave me alone!” Tom’s voice was ragged. He’d been crying. He was also, I could see, terribly drunk.
“My love. Please. Let’s not do this here.”
“Why not? Why not do it here?” Tom wailed. Blood was dripping from the towel, collecting in a puddle at his feet. “Let them see what we really are. Let them see what becomes of people.” He shook his head, sending a spray of water around the room. Roxanne took a step forward, but Joanna waved her back.
I looked around, wondering what we were supposed to do. Andy and Kara had finished clearing the glass. They stood together by the counter, Andy holding the dish towel, Kara biting her lip. Igraine stood behind her mother, her face twisted up like a rag.
“Hey, buddy.” Connelly stepped forward with the calm authority of a paramedic. He whispered something to Roxanne, and she nodded, an almost imperceptible movement. Then he put his hand on Tom’s shoulder.
Tom startled, then blinked. “Randy,” he said, as if awakened from a trance.
“I’m here, man,” Connelly said. “I’m right here.” He pointed at Tom’s arm. “Why don’t we get that cleaned up?”
“None of this is mine anymore,” Tom said, his voice thick with tears. “It’s never been mine, any of it. Why are you doing this to me, Joanna? Why?” He lunged for her, and the room let out a collective gasp as he reached for his wife with a bloody hand.
Connelly pulled Tom back and Roxanne stepped forward decisively, wrapping one arm around Joanna and grabbing Igraine with the other. Joanna buried her face in her hands as Roxanne peeled Igraine’s fingers from her mother’s skirt. The girl’s silent sobs turned into wails as Roxanne hurried her out of the room. Joanna collapsed onto a chair Andy held out for her as Tom fell to his knees. The leg of his boxer shorts puckered open, and I could see the pale skin of his upper thigh. For the first time since I’d stepped into the kitchen, I had to look away.
“Okay, guys,” Connelly said. “Show’s over.” He held my eyes for a moment, then looked away. Joanna gave us all a weak smile as we began to depart. The last thing I saw before I left was Connelly putting an arm around Tom’s shoulders, helping him to stand.
We took our things and staggered quietly down June Bridge Road. We’d seen too much, the world of adults revealed in all its glory and despair. I was reminded of the needlepoint designs my mother used to make that looked so perfect from the front, but when you turned them over, you could see every knot and string.
The crowd broke up around Frat Row, people searching for late-night parties, wanting to blot out the memory with cold beer and loud music. Jason and I walked slowly together past Jack Frost. He was a sad, soggy mess, the bulk of him disintegrating before our eyes. It would rain all night; by Monday, he’d be little more than a puddle.
“Poor Jack,” Jason said, before turning down the street that led to his dorm.
No one was there when I got home. I peeled off my dress and climbed into bed without brushing my teeth. I was exhausted but knew I’d never sleep. Images from the night played over and over again in my mind like frames in a filmstrip: Igraine’s tiny fingers, Tom’s waterlogged sweater, the plume of blood on the towel. I don’t know why it shocked me but it did, how quickly violence descended upon us.
Moonlight streaked the room, and before long the bloody scene in the kitchen faded, replaced by memories of the coatroom and Connelly’s kiss. Because what did I care about Joanna and Tom and their sad, pathetic decline? Nothing; as small and unimportant as I mostly felt, the egotism of youth hadn’t left me, and I placed myself firmly and squarely at the center of the universe.
I held my arm above my face, cold marble in the moonlight, traced the crisscross of veins through the skin. I remembered the feel of Connelly’s lips on mine, the scratch of his cheek, felt everything inside me straining toward the surface. Then I closed my eyes and slept a hard, dreamless sleep.
12
IT turned out Tom had jumped into Corness Pond, off one of the platforms set up earlier that day for the Polar Bear Plunge. A neighbor, watching from her kitchen window, saw him take off his coat, boots, and pants, lay them neatly at the water’s edge, then jump into the icy water.
I heard it all the next day from Whitney, who’d stayed behind to help Roxanne clean up after Connelly took Tom to the emergency room and they’d finally gotten Joanna to bed. They were still there when the neighbor, an elderly woman in curlers, knocked on the door to make sure everything was okay. Roxanne poured them all some Scotch, and they sat at the kitchen table listening as the woman told them how it had taken her several desperate minutes to coax Tom out of the water and up onto the platform. When Roxanne asked why she hadn’t called the police, the woman said, “I didn’t think there was time.”
Within twenty-four hours, everyone knew what had happened, even people who hadn’t been at the Mingle. In the dining hall Sunday night, a group of us sat and examined the evening from every angle, piecing our stories together like a puzzle, fitting and refitting the pieces to be sure we had the whole. Holly and Alec had been outside smoking when they saw Tom stumble up the back steps. Jason was talking to Amos and Whitney in the living room when they’d heard the crash, which turned out to be Tom knocking over a chair, then smashing a bottle of gin against the kitchen counter, cutting his hand badly enough that he’d needed thirty-four stitches, according to Whitney—forty-four, according to Holly.