What's Mine and Yours(63)

“You don’t even know me.”

“I’ve heard good things.”

“From who?”

“Around. You interested?”

“You sure this isn’t Mr. Riley? Cause he’s weird. He’s got a thing with me.”

“Look, the truth is, I’ve got an agenda.”

Gee laughed without meaning to. Noelle was strange, in her trench coat and big boots. She talked as if she were much older, so direct, so plain.

“I’ve been thinking this could be a good way to bring us all together. You know, old students and new. We could work together on something, really piss off those shitty concerned parents or whatever. Plus, it could be fun.”

“That’s cool,” Gee said, without knowing whether he meant it or not. He was so used to saying things he didn’t mean just to get through a moment, to get someone to look away.

“But I don’t know,” he went on. “I don’t think I’d be good at acting. I’m not really a big talker.”

“Then you’d be perfect,” Noelle said. “All the words are already written for you.”





11



October 2018


The Piedmont, North Carolina

Noelle’s phone rang in the dark. Nelson. She fumbled to answer, desperate to hear his voice. She pressed the phone to her ear and heard nothing. “Hold on,” she said, “let me step outside.” She rushed to pull a coat on over her pajamas, a pair of slippers. She was groggy but quick.

She stepped onto the porch, and it was still quiet on the line. “Hello? Hello? I’m here,” she said. She wasn’t afraid to seem eager anymore. He had broken the silence between them by calling, and it was a sign they could find their way back. It had been their custom for one of them to seek out the other after an argument, or a long spell apart. They would come together briefly and kiss, as if to touch the cornerstone of their marriage, to be sure it was still there. Nelson would find her reading on the couch, lay his head on her lap, and thread their fingers together. She would find him in the kitchen, scrubbing counters, and she’d grab him by the waist, lean her body against his, to let him know that he was loved.

The sky was the deep blue black of night; it was probably lunchtime in Paris. She sank onto the steps and peered across the yard at the woods. A coyote stood by the dumpster at the end of the lawn. It turned its shining eyes on her and then slipped back into the trees.

Noelle heard a voice on the line, but it was muffled. She strained to listen. “Nelson?”

The voice was high, thin. It belonged to a woman. She went on listening. Eventually, she heard Nelson’s voice, too, but not well enough to know what they were saying. There was no background noise of cars or clinking glasses or other conversations. They were somewhere private, just the two of them, their voices volleying back and forth, although Noelle still couldn’t make out their words. Noelle kept the phone pressed to her ear. She felt her blood beating behind her eyes, in her throat. It must have been no longer than a few seconds when she heard the first moan. It rose suddenly—hers—and then it was met by a gasp, a groan she recognized. Nelson’s. The moaning went on for a few moments, and then a slap, a louder grunt. Noelle hung up before she knew she’d done it, without deciding whether she wanted to hear more. It was instinct, unthinking. She threw her phone down on the porch, and then she was lurching to stand, bowing over the stairs to vomit. She retched into a patch of monkey grass, high and blue in the dark. When she was empty, she wiped her mouth, fell back onto the porch steps.

She decided to call back. She rang once, and he didn’t answer. She rang again. A third time, a fourth. Every time he didn’t answer, she hung up and dialed anew. She didn’t know what she would say to him if he answered. She thought, briefly, there was no way he could see his phone, not while he was with another woman; and, if he could see it, he wouldn’t be fool enough to pick up. It would take just a few clicks for him to realize what had happened, and the horror would overtake him. She supposed some part of her expected he would try to make things right—he was, after all, her Nelson. She was crying when the phone rang the ninth time, the tenth. She wondered briefly if she’d misheard it all, but then she shook the thought away. It made perfect sense, although she hadn’t entertained the thought before, not really. It was an ill thought that crept around the edges of her mind from time to time but that she never indulged. A delayed flight, a turned-off phone, the vestiges of perfume on his coat. Why would she have given in to wondering? Her life was held together by trust and vows and benefit of the doubt. To be aloof was not to be out of love; to not answer your phone was not to be fucking someone else. She had no reason to think herself an idiot until it happened to her.

He answered on the twelfth time. This time there was noise: street sounds, the wind. He was somewhere outside.

“Sweetheart,” he said. “Everything okay? I saw all your missed calls.” He was playing it calm, waiting to see if she knew anything.

Noelle was sure he would hear all the crying she’d done in her voice, but she played along. “I’m just returning your call. You called me.”

“Did I? It must have been an accident.”

“Of course it was an accident. You haven’t called me in weeks.”

“You haven’t called me either.”