My Last Innocent Year(63)
I pulled up to Connelly’s house, a small yellow ranch at the end of a quiet leafy street. He’d told me a little about the house he’d lived in with Roxanne for five years. There was a garden that was constantly being raided by a family of rabbits who lived under the porch. “Mint’s taken over everything,” he said once, as if this was something everyone knew about mint. There was a sofa on the back porch where he liked to sit and read on summer nights and an elm tree in the front yard that was under the care of a tree doctor. Such a thing existed? I’d asked him in delight, picturing a man in a white coat pressing a stethoscope to the tree’s thick middle.
As I turned into the driveway, the front wheel of my bike skidded out from under me. One of my sneakers flew off as I sailed over the handlebars and slid across the driveway, coming to rest at the place where the asphalt met the grass.
The screen door slammed open, and Connelly ran out.
“I’m fine,” I shouted as he hurried over. My knees were stinging, the right more than the left, but my hands had borne the brunt. I picked a pebble out of the fleshy part of my palm as Connelly kneeled down next to me, but I could barely look at him.
“Come on,” he said, helping me to stand. “Let’s get you cleaned up.” He picked up my sneaker and led me into the house. He brought me to the bathroom and sat me down on the edge of the tub while he rummaged through the cabinet under the sink.
“What’s that?” I asked as he pulled out a bottle of something.
“Cállate,” he said. He shook the bottle, then sprayed my hands with some sort of antiseptic.
“Ow!”
“Oh, stop. This’ll keep them from getting infected.” He gave my knees a quick squirt, then took a couple of Band-Aids out of a waterlogged box.
“I can do it,” I said.
“It’s easier if I do it. Hold still.”
I sat back and let him tend to me. He took his job seriously, and I could see, for a moment, the kind of father he would have been: tender, gentle, a little overprotective. As he dabbed my knees with a washcloth, I looked around the room. The walls were covered in pale yellow wallpaper, and there was a bathrobe hanging behind the door. On the edge of the sink, there was a ceramic soap dish full of jewelry.
“That should do it.” He sat back on his heels to admire his handiwork. My right knee was covered with a crisscross of bandages; the left had three in a row, like a ladder. It was too difficult to bandage my hands, so he gave them an extra spray of antiseptic.
“Thanks,” I said. “I wish you could have seen me before I hit the driveway.”
He smoothed the bandages with his fingers. “Yes. ‘Hit’ the driveway is exactly what you did.”
I punched him lightly on the shoulder. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You are indeed. And I’m sure you were amazing.”
I followed him into the living room, a cluttered room with low ceilings and a worn gray sectional. My eyes moved quickly around the space, trying to take in everything: the flowered curtains, the antique sideboard, the laundry basket in the corner. Connelly went into the kitchen, and I walked over and studied the bookshelves. There was an entire shelf devoted to Roxanne’s books; another housed a collection of Bibles. One was bound in navy-blue leather, the pages tipped in gold. A couple looked as if they’d been swiped from hotel rooms. I took one off the shelf. Its cover was soft, like an old leather jacket; on the lower right-hand corner, the initials RHC were stamped in gold. I flipped through the pages: Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy. Ezra, Joshua, Samuel, John. It sounded like a poem, or a fraternity house roster.
“Come,” Connelly said, handing me a glass of wine. “Let’s eat.” I put the Bible back on the shelf and saw there was another one behind it, pressed flat against the back of the bookcase.
In the kitchen, more signs of life: dishes drying by the sink, a calendar hanging on the refrigerator, a lazy Susan stocked with vitamin bottles. Copper pots dangled from a rack above the stove where Connelly stood, stirring something.
“What’s that?” I asked, peering into the pot. “It smells amazing.”
“Soup. And there’s salad and fresh bread. I hope you’re hungry.”
He insisted I sit while he finished cooking. The window was open, and a soft breeze blew through the room along with the sound of crickets. I watched him add salt to the pot, deftly toss the salad with a pair of tongs. I wished I’d brought him something—the scarf still wasn’t finished—but I had the feeling he wanted to do this for me and expected nothing in return. When I was older, I would learn that there were other men like him, men who would bandage your wounds and make you dinner and hold your injured hands across the table. But at twenty-two, I thought he was the only one, and I wondered how I would live the rest of my life without him.
He placed two bowls on the table and lit a candle. I took a sip of wine and it felt as though the light of the candle was moving through my chest, down into my legs. We ate and talked until the soup grew cold. We talked about my book and the work we would do together this summer: changes to the time line, his thoughts on the ending. I watched the candle drip rivulets of wax onto the tablecloth and decided that I would untangle myself from my other plans and stay here with him because this was where I belonged.
We made love that night in the bed Connelly shared with his wife. I never asked whether he and Roxanne still had sex. The closest I came was when I asked if he ever worried she would smell me on him, and he said, “She never gets close enough to notice.” In Connelly’s telling, their marriage was over. They’d been close to negotiating a separation several times, but the timing was never right. I understood, although he’d never told me, that they stayed together for financial reasons. He worked only part-time at the Citizen and whatever money he’d made from his books was gone. As for teaching, those jobs were few and far between and arranged by Roxanne. I may not have understood the intricacies of a long marriage, but I knew what it meant to have your choices constrained by financial realities.