Any Day Now (6 page)

Jocelyne laughed one of her old throaty, cigarette laughs. “
Non
,” she said. “
Mais tu comprendras toute, je te promets
.” She made him sit down on the folding chair next to her. “Do you want some punch?” she asked. And when she saw him looking around uneasily, she took his hand in her surprisingly warm one. “It's all fine,
bonhomme
.”

And then she told him a story. “Once upon a time there were three little brothers: Antoine, Sylvain and Normand. There were four sisters, too. They were very interesting, maybe even more interesting, but this story is not about them…so!”

They were good boys, all of them, obedient to Jean-François, their father, who was a tough case. He was never satisfied with how they did in school or at catechism, how they did their chores on the farm, or played hockey. “Not that he ever saw them shooting pucks on those lumpy backyard rinks,” said Jocelyne. “Too busy with the pigs and cows and knocking Maman up again. Ooops!” she said. “Forget that part of the story, OK?”

“OK,” said J-P.

But if you thought Jean-François was severe, you'd never met J-F's father, Patrice. “He made our pa look like a sugar pie,” said Jocelyne. Patrice never smiled, not even at his grandchildren, not apparently even at his wife of fifty years. “Stiff-necked old SOB,” said Jocelyne. She was drinking a Coke with ice, normal as anything, looking out at the room of people trying to act as if they weren't having
too
good a time at her expense.

“In our family, we've had lots of papas like this,” said Jocelyne, eyes back on J-P. “Full of corrections when they should have been full of love.”

Isabelle was dancing with Alain's oldest son. She picked up the little guy and whirled him around.

“You understand?” said Jocelyne.

Was she telling him to be different than Patrice and Jean-François? Different than Pa, too? Well, that shouldn't be too hard.

Jocelyne drained her glass. “I'll sure miss these.”

Pa was in conference now with Antoine and Sylvain. Antoine's hand rested on Pa's arm. “OK, them,” said Jocelyne. “They're another story, but OK.”

When Pa was sent south, Jocelyne said, their father went into a terrible slump. “No one had ever seen him cry before and no one ever saw him cry again.” Antoine and Sylvain tried to cheer him up, to distract him with questions about feed stocks and frost conditions, but J-F told them to get back to work and not make him feel more sorry than he already did that he hadn't sent them instead.

“Jeez,” said J-P.

“We all paid,” said Jocelyne, and for a moment looked sadder than she ever had in life. She took a last swig of Coke. “But OK, you want to know the
real
reason Sylvain and Antoine have it in for your pa? The real reason? Because he's taller than they are. OK, only by an inch, but…” and Jocelyne laughed and laughed. “Go dance with your cousin,” she said and practically pushed him off the chair.

On the long drive back through Vermont to Massachusetts that night, J-P remembered one last thing Jocelyn had said before she left — “I'll make it quick because I seem to be heading out for someplace new.” It was also about Pa, and it was simple and hard. “Love him for me?” she said.

“He's psycho,” the woman said.

“Jackie,” the woman next to her said, “you don't mean that.”

“I do,” said Jackie. “He's psycho. Five hundred percent.”

“Good you're getting out tonight, girl.”

Ben had been watching and listening to them for the past slow fifteen minutes. They were young in the way of thirty-something women together at a bar on a Friday night. The one who wasn't Jackie looked as if she'd just come from work: navy polyester suit, white blouse, matching navy pumps, a secretary probably, dressed in her
Working Girl
version of success. The one who was Jackie looked as if she'd come from the gym — black leggings with a long, peach-coloured sweater. Streaked hair in a who-cares ponytail. Slender legs, and — he leaned a little into his curved end of the bar to get the fuller picture — yes, large breasts. His ex had been the opposite, a little pear in her best days. The thought of new architecture, a shift in design, bucked him up.

“I'm on the top of the world, I'm on the…” Some jerk had put in, who? Karen Carpenter? He'd always heard a desperate, plangent something in her voice, even before she'd keeled over from lack of food.

“I'm on the bottom of the world,” he sang, “looking up at creation.”

The woman in leggings glanced over at him, a who's-this-clown? look. She whispered something to the bartender, rinsing glasses across from her. He laughed.

“Watch out,” he said to Ben. “This is one broad you don't want to
begin
to mess with.”

“Broad?” said Ben and whistled.

“He can call me any friggin' thing he wants to,” said Jackie and crossed her legs like a show girl. “And you know why?” she said to Ben, smiling still. “Because he just loves Karen Carpenter.”

“I wasn't the one who put her on, though,” said the bartender. He said it so quickly, so defensively, they all laughed.

“She had a good voice,” Ben admitted.

“It's real sad,” said the friend. And then that was it for sparkling conversation.

Studying his microbrew while keeping an eye on the women, Ben thought about how nerdy Richard Carpenter had looked and how they had all looked pretty nerdy back in the seventies, and after a bit, the friend climbed off her stool. This was the moment of truth, when a woman got off a bar stool. This one was short, thick, unremarkable.

“I'll kiss the psycho for you,” Jackie said.

All-navy put an arm around her and said something. She left, and the place seemed to empty with her. It got really quiet.

“Who's the psycho?” Ben asked after letting a few minutes blow by. “Some guy at work? The guy at home?” He felt safe asking since it didn't really matter.

“My son,” said the woman.

It wasn't until they'd fucked twice — once on her futon couch, once standing up in her tiny stall shower — and they were towelling off, not each other, too friendly, that he got back to her on this. “You didn't mean that, what you said about your son.”

She laughed into her towel, into a faded picture of Minnie Mouse. “Why would I not mean that?”

“Because it's not the way mothers usually talk about their kids.” He had turned away, tucked himself into the towel she'd given him, suddenly aware of his desk-job paunch.

She dried herself roughly, no mercy or shyness. He'd been right and wrong about her body. She went to the gym, but not just on Friday nights when there was nothing else to do. She had the worked-out quads and abs of a body-builder. Her breasts (firm! spectacular!) were part of the conditioned package. Could an amazing body be the basis of a relationship? Yes, by God, yes. “Nice muscles,” he said, reaching out and moving in again. She laughed, her head falling back.

This time they came together, like swimmers streaking down parallel lanes, then emerging into the same air. His neck was damp from her hair.

“OK, those muscles,” he tried again later.

“Yeah, so I work out,” she said. She'd made some good coffee for him and they were sitting at her glass and steel table, his feet on top of hers. “Like it?” she asked, when he tapped the glass appreciatively. “Got it last week at Ikea. I had a screaming fit half-way through putting the idiot thing together.”

“You don't get biceps like yours from putting together a table, even an Ikea table,” he said.

“My son,” she said.

“Is that your answer to everything? My son?” He noticed her eyes, a shade of golden brown, change.

“He's big, he's tough. I had to do something.”

“How old?” he asked, wondering at what point he could get up, walk across the room, open, then close, the door and have it be OK that they'd never see each other again.

“Nine,” Jackie said.

“I don't get it,” Ben said.

“Don't worry about it,” and she was up and fussing over their cups. She wore a long, white T-shirt and as she turned back to him, he saw the shape of her inside it. Maybe he wouldn't leave
right
away. “It's not your problem. Got any kids?”

“Nope,” he said, because why get into it?

“By the way, what's your last name?” she asked. “I know this is real personal.” She widened her eyes, coy.

“Beaulieu,” he said, “though all my life I heard it as ‘Bolyer.'”

“Know that story,” said Jackie, “Lachance.”

“Where in Quebec?” he asked.

“Drummondville. I still go up once a year. See my aunts and cousins, entertain them with my awful French. I love it up there. It's so different from here.”

“Ma's family's from around there, too,” said Ben.

“I had a feeling,” she said and smiled.

“OK,” he said. “Your son.” Trying to be the nice, considerate guy before he left.

Jackie took his cup to the sink. “You really don't want to know,” she said.

“I asked,” said Ben, already losing heart, energy, too. These situations took so much effort.

“Spinning. Better than weight-lifting or bikes or whatever. It builds up the muscle and makes you able to endure.” Jackie turned back to him. “He's got what they call global developmental delays. Plus behavioural problems, meaning he's basically impossible. He's also epileptic.”

“His dad?”

“Your basic deadbeat. Can you beat that?”

And then she started to sing. She wasn't Karen Carpenter, but she could carry a tune and the words hung in the room, alive. “There is wonder in everything I see, not a cloud in the sky, got the sun in my eye…” She stopped after the first verse as if suddenly reminded of who they weren't to each other.

“I felt like singing,” she said.

“You're amazing,” he said, and knew then he could leave.

He'd gotten her number — part of the wacky etiquette — but he didn't get around to calling. Wednesday morning he went in to work and the project manager on the mall renovation had the brilliant idea of sending him to New York to consult an engineering firm. Let them spend money, he didn't mind, especially now that he wasn't worried about having to call Dayna, his ex, to tell her he was heading to Logan instead of home down the Mass Pike.

What had that woman wanted anyway? On the way back from the airport late that night — the car thankfully where he'd left it fourteen hours earlier — the volume went up on the past. This still happened when he was played out. The New York meeting had only produced more questions, more unknowables and now he'd have to go in tomorrow and start working on
those
.

He'd tried, she'd tried. And…failure. “At least I kept my marriage vows,” Dayna said once and that had broken him more than anything. He'd been the one who'd transgressed, fondling his secretary's breasts in his idling van one night after a late meeting, then letting her, begging her to touch him. It had been a small moment and had nothing to do with love. He'd even confessed to Dayna. But it figured in both their (complicated, modern) Catholic codes as betrayal. Not having any children, it hadn't been too hard to get lawyers and split up the numbered prints, the computer equipment. Not hard even to be grown-ups about it. He'd packed her himself. It was all easier than the non-stop negotiating that was marriage.

Still, there was this: driving home in midnight silence from the airport. Dayna had — quick like a bunny — bought an old house in South Hadley and landed a geeky-but-rich dot-com guy who did home renovations as a hobby. Ben had retaliated by repainting their West Springfield condo in colours like raspberry and mustard. He'd had some great sex with some great women in his all-white bedroom. (Goodbye, florals!) But there were nights like this, too.

“Hey,” he said. “Still on top of the world?”

Jackie laughed. “Slipping a bit.”

“I know it's late,” he said. “I just got in from New York.”

“I'm awake,” she said. The boy was at the deadbeat dad's, she said. Ben gave her the directions.

“Wow,” she said when she stepped into the vast, blanched space of his bedroom. “Kinda Zen.”

Her hair, lighter than he'd remembered, was down and soft at her shoulders. She looked small, but built, in black slacks and tight white T-shirt. “Looking pretty Zen yourself,” he said, deciding he liked her.

“Don't feel it,” she said. “I had one of those meetings today. You know, one of
those
meetings?”

“You mean, like, we're sorry but your numbers are down and we're also downsizing and…” Ben realized he didn't even know what she did.

“Mr. Bolyer, honey, I work in a daycare, and the numbers I'm dealing with are number one and number two. No, it was about Barbies.”

“OK,” he said.

“I tried not to raise my voice.” She sat on the recliner Ben kept in the corner for rocky nights. “But one mom pissed me off so much.”

“Uh-oh, that Ken. He didn't give her herpes?”

Jackie seemed to find this very funny. She had a way of tilting her head way back when she laughed. He remembered that.

“Bad role model for little girls. It encourages them to get too thin and aim for impossible bodies. That's what the mom said.” Jackie slipped off one black flat with the toe of the other. The shoe sat on the white carpet, unmoored. “Of course, this woman looks anorexic herself. People are so crazy.”

“What did you say to her?”

“Oh, it's what I didn't say. What I was thinking the whole time was, Lady, get yourself a real problem, would you?”

Her skin was incredibly soft on top of all that worked muscle. And that softness worked on him. They had this knack already of being able to come together. It had taken such work with other women, when it
did
work. She left at 5:00, hair a tangle. “Not a cloud in the sky,” she said when he let her out.

He washed clothes at home Monday night instead of dropping them off at the expensive laundry he'd been using since Dayna left, ordered a salad at lunch on Tuesday instead of a sub and fries. He called Wednesday. Any new developments with the Barbie mom? She'd backed off, Jackie said. She asked about his mall project.

“Any chance of seeing you this weekend?” he asked.

She'd arrange something for Joey, she said. It was the first time she'd mentioned her boy's name and he was embarrassed he hadn't asked before.

They met back at the bar. It was more crowded this time, with people standing two abreast. The same bartender was on and when he spotted them together, he said to Ben, “Nice work.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Jackie. She was looking really fine in a short white dress and white heels.

“I mean he's a lucky guy,” the bartender told her, and to Ben he said, “She's good folks. Treat her right.”

They danced together — slow dances, fast dances, sexy dances. She was good with the moves, and Ben was feeling, like the guy said, pretty lucky. When she went to the bathroom, he slipped over to the jukebox and cued up the Karen Carpenter. He couldn't have timed it better: she'd just come to sit on his lap when “Top of the World” came on.

“Sing it with me,” she said. Ben tried, but he couldn't get the syncopation right, so in the end it was Jackie lip-synching in her white dress from the table.

“Hey, baby,” one guy called from the bar, “I'll take you to the top o' the world.”

“Already got my ticket for that ride,” she called back, and led Ben onto the floor again where she slow-danced him till midnight. “Touch me when we're dancing,” she whispered in his ear at the very end, and when he did, sliding his hands down the white sides of her, she said, “That's another Karen Carpenter song.”

“You're ruining me,” he said.

It was crazy, but lust was crazy. In the days after, he couldn't stop thinking about the way they were together, the things they made each other feel. Dayna could really get into sex, but on her terms and timing, and some of the women since had been pretty hot. But not like this. He was a straight guy, not a bad lover, according to reports from the front, but stratospheric lovemaking had been for movies, not for real life, not his life.

He made it to Tuesday before calling. It was looking good for both Friday and Saturday nights. “You're getting greedy, Mr. Bolyer, sir,” she said.

“
C'est vrai
,” he said. “That's about the limit of my French.”“I bet the French is all there in your head like it is in mine,” she said a few nights later while he traced small circles on her back. “It's still our mother tongue, right?”

They'd already compared family notes and decided their mothers were so much alike they might as well be twins. “Mine drives me crazy,” Jackie said. “Five hundred per cent. I have no idea how my dad puts up with her.” Ben said his dad had taken to playing a lot of bingo at church. “It's the only time Ma doesn't bug him. She doesn't want him to lose his place and miss out on a free supper for two at Friendly's.”