Sunburn: A Novel(48)

She didn’t care. She didn’t need ’em. Curtis was good about money, if not much else. She got to raise her boy the way she wanted, which was to be all-man. The way Savannah saw it, if you treated a man right, he could afford to be benevolent, generous. It’s only when you pick at a man’s power that he turns mean.

She was so disappointed when he brought Pauline home. And not fooled for a minute. She knew the girl—woman, in her thirties already, although she was trying to play it younger—was knocked up the moment she saw her. It was the only possible explanation for the swift marriage down at the courthouse, never mind all that talk about the honeymoon. Eight months later, Jani proved Savannah right.

She would have rather been wrong. Not that she doesn’t love Jani, dote on Jani. But she wasn’t ready to be a grandmother yet. She was too young, barely fifty when Jani was born. Once, the cashier at the Bel-Loc Diner even asked if she and Pauline were sisters. Oh, Pauline was insulted, but it was right after Jani was born, so she was looking a little puffy and exhausted.

“Girl,” Savannah had told her, meaning to do nothing but good. “Don’t do what I did. Don’t let yourself go. Your man is job number one.”

“Really? Then why did you let your man go?” Oh, she had a mouth on her when Gregg wasn’t around. She was full of sass, that Pauline.

“I didn’t let him go. But when he left, I admitted it was my fault.”

Savannah has to give Pauline credit: she starved that baby weight off her. Fact is, she went too far. She wasn’t meant to be skinny, Pauline. In a bathing suit, she had those telltale silvery tracks, the sign of a big weight loss at some point.

Ah well, Savannah Hansen’s One-Baby Day-Care Center is closed for today. She’s going to make herself a kahlúa with a splash of skim milk, then have some Lean Cuisine manicotti while she watches Entertainment Tonight.

The woman she saw today, parked across the street in a truck—Savannah was pretty sure it was Pauline. But, as Gregg says, it’s not the first time lately that she thought she saw her and why would Pauline be driving a big truck like that. Maybe when you fear something, you see it hiding around every corner. And Savannah has always had an uneasy feeling around Pauline. That look she gave her, when the man at the Bel-Loc said they could be sisters. She is not a woman who will tolerate rivals, Savannah thinks, adding some ice cubes to her drink. Which is a problem because Pauline is always going to have rivals. It’s not her looks, it’s her lack of confidence, pure and simple. She already has a rival in Jani.

Oh, and now come to find out that she had a past. Gregg told Savannah that he found out this summer that Pauline was that woman who killed her husband and lied about it. Something like that. Savannah went all over cold, hearing that. Imagine, her sweet son lying in bed next to that woman. Thank God they’re getting divorced. They better be getting divorced.

Savannah puts her feet up on her hassock. Her just-so house is beginning to look a little worse for wear. It’s no place for a sticky toddler. Much as it pains her, Savannah has to put Gregg on notice that this is a temporary arrangement. She loves her grandchild, but she didn’t sign up for another round of this every day shit. She has served her time.





28


A song plays in Adam’s head as he looks at the gas gauge on his truck. Where did you go, my Handsome Polly-O? Half full. That’s consistent with a trip to Dover. Only the odometer isn’t. The truck has turned over to thirteen thousand miles, which means she traveled more than two hundred miles yesterday. Did she really think he wouldn’t check the mileage?

Yes, you sick fuck. Because she thinks you believe every word she says. Which means she either trusts you or she’s playing you for a fool.

In which case: Yes, you dumb fuck.

Either scenario, he’s hosed. If she loves and trusts him, he can never reveal to her the real reason they met. And if she’s playing him, he’ll end up another chump, abandoned at best.

This much is clear: Polly returned from wherever she was in a mood that is new, at least to him. It’s as if she’s changed her hair color, but by no more than a shade. Always self-contained, she now carries the air of someone with a secret, a pleasant one. She smiles without seeming to be aware of it, hums in careless moments. They get up, go to work, come home, make love.

Everything is the same as it was.

Or is it?

It takes him a few days to pick up on the changes. She doesn’t read the real estate ads anymore. Strange, he used to hate seeing the paper lying on the table, the house ads circled in bright blue marker. But now that she’s stopped, he feels unnerved. Why has she stopped planning for the future, their future? She no longer talks about B and Bs, or what the High-Ho could be in the hands of an ambitious young couple. She doesn’t push him to add new dishes to the menu. She doesn’t brainstorm about specials or theme nights.

In bed, she is more passionate than ever.

Where did you go, my Handsome Polly-O? What do you know, my Handsome Polly-O?

Polly-O. His mother had sung that old folk song to him in her off-key yet pleasant warble of a voice. She had an autoharp. Of course she did. And, once again, the world has caught up to his mother, with people going crazy for this album by a pretty young bluegrass artist. When Adam was young, he hated his parents’ music, but then—teenagers are supposed to hate their parents’ music. Does it still work that way? If he had a kid, how could the kid dare to say no to the Clash and the Pogues and Elvis Costello? A kid would have to tie himself in knots, making a case against the musicians Adam loved in his teens and twenties, still loves.