Bathing the Lion (2 page)

It was all he wanted to know because it was the only thing he cared about now. He did not care if she was angry or hurt by what he’d said. Her act put them way past that. He had a temper too. Sometimes he flared up and acted rashly without thinking. But he would never do what she had just done. When he read accounts of domestic violence, he questioned himself and invariably came to the same conclusion—no, I couldn’t do those things even if I were furious. If a situation ever got
so
bad, I’d leave. Get out of the relationship while you both still had your sanity and dignity. You did not act like that toward another person, especially not your partner, no matter how angry you were.

His instincts now said go find her and ask what the hell she was thinking. But it might have been exactly what she wanted, her way of making him stay at home now. He wasn’t going to give her anything. Looking at his watch again, he was surprised to see only four minutes had passed since he last looked at it and told her he would return in twelve hours. Standing there with coffee still dripping down his coat, he reviewed the last few minutes. Perhaps there was something he had missed or forgotten about their confrontation, a word or significant sentence gone unnoticed before or after the violence of her gesture.

No, he was not going to try to find a logical, acceptable reason for her act. What she’d done was wrong—out of limits, way over the line wrong. He hated how people always searched for reasons to justify others’ bad behavior. Because sometimes it
isn’t
justifiable—it’s only bad: period, end of discussion. Sometimes people are just shits and their acts prove it.

He went to the sink, wet a sponge, and brushed it briskly across the front of his jacket. Then he tore off a paper towel and patted the jacket dry. He was wiping her act off his body now, not the coffee.

An incident from a few nights ago came to mind. After working late at the store, he stopped at the town diner on the way home for something to eat. The place was almost empty so he noticed the other customers. In a booth directly across the room a couple were eating hamburgers and horsing around. Probably twenty years old, they were obviously crazy for each other and their happiness was as thick as the smell of spring lilacs. They ate and talked with the liveliness and intensity of children. You forget what it is like to be new in love. You forget how you want to tell your flame everything and hear everything they have to say. It does not matter what it is, so long as they keep talking.

His food came and he ate while sneaking glances at them whenever possible. He didn’t want to be too obvious so as not to embarrass the couple or make them feel self-conscious. What he liked most was, neither of them was trying to be cool or aloof. Even from this distance he saw the flurry of goofy loving expressions on their faces, the constant touching, the giggling and talk talk talk. They weren’t trying to impress or play superior. They were wholly comfortable showing each other their joy. It was lovely to see. After his meal he ordered a cup of tea he didn’t want just so he could stay a while longer and watch them some more.

Eventually the young man stood up and walked to the toilet. Almost as soon as he disappeared behind the restroom door, the girl began crying. Sitting there alone, her face tightened and then the tears came. She cried silently but made no attempt to hide it.

Dean couldn’t believe it. Why was she crying? Moments before she’d been laughing and flirting, touching her boyfriend’s arm and slapping a hand over her mouth in giggly delight. Now her face was tight as a fist and red in anguish. Why? Had something been said? Or had she waited till her boyfriend was gone before showing her real feelings?

Fascinated by this disturbing change, he could not stop staring at the distraught girl. In the end she noticed Dean and looked over at him with hatred in her eyes—as if
he
were to blame for her tears and sadness, whatever the cause. He was so flustered and distressed by her glare that he threw some money down to pay for his meal and left.

Standing now at the kitchen sink, he looked at the damp white, brown-stained paper towel in his hand. Had the same thing happened to his wife? Had she thrown the coffee at him because he mentioned separation, or because of other things in their past building up over time to this boiling point?

He would love to have known why the girl in the diner suddenly started crying. He could find out right now why his wife had tried to hurt him.

“Vanessa?” He waited for an answer but none came. Dropping the towel in the garbage beneath the sink, he went to find her. A few steps out of the kitchen, he heard a car start and knew by its signature sound it was hers. He stood in the hallway while a picture of him racing out the front door and trying to stop her glided across his mind like a news ticker at the bottom of a television screen. But the image evaporated because it was wrong. Why should he run after her when she had hurt him? Come back come back—I’m sorry for making you burn me. She wanted to leave? Fine. He’d return in twelve hours and if she was here, they would talk. If not, he would deal with it then.

What kept him standing there was the sudden realization he felt no curiosity about where she was going now, absolutely none. He had not been curious about her life for a long time. What she did with her days, what she thought about things, what mattered or distressed his wife … he was indifferent to all of it now. It was ambient sound to him. Granted, some of it was louder and some softer. Generally though it was all just background noise, or the soft tune playing in an elevator as you ascended to your floor. Familiar and trivial, the most effect it had was to stay in your mind a few seconds after you’d left the elevator. Perhaps you whistled a few notes of it before moving on to what mattered, but no more. For years she had been one of the most important parts of his life. But in recent times what she did, what she thought, where she went, or what left her lips was like hearing the song “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” for the 2,000th time.

He walked to a window with a view onto the street and saw her red car moving away down the block. It stood out vividly against the background of white snow everywhere. He was certain she would have music playing. Classic rock and roll or dance music, most likely Jagger singing “Gimme Shelter,” or something up-tempo from The Brothers Johnson. She played fast, fist-pumping-in-the-air music when she was upset. Whenever he’d walk into their house or get into the car and she was driving, if there was dance music on loud he would not know what to expect. It generally meant something bad had happened and she was playing it to lift her spirits.

Some people want you to share their moods, feel their pain, hate or rejoice or get drunk along with them. Others want your sympathy, a foot rub, their hand held, or a cup of hot tea. His wife, Vanessa, wanted none of those things. Give her space and silence and be sure to leave her alone. If you happened to be around when she was unhappy, the best thing to do was retreat to the other side of the house and ignore her until she showed she was ready to communicate again.

Locking his hands over his head, he stared out at the snow and wondered if telling her how he felt had been wrong. But what was the alternative? Going on for more months or even years in a house full of barbed wire conversations and too many instances when it was very plain neither of you wanted to be in the same room together? He assumed she felt the same way, especially judging by how she had acted toward him the last six months. Someone once told him most people would rather die than change. At the time he thought that was generally accurate, but now? Sometimes death came if you
didn’t
change. Not the stopped heart/no pulse/flatline kind, but the death of curiosity, optimism, and desire.

On impulse, he put out a hand and touched the window. Feeling the cold beneath his fingertips, he slid them around and around on the glass as if they were skating. “I have a question. Can I ask you a question?” He did not think it odd to speak out loud now, although his wife was not there. He had a question he wanted her to answer. He knew she was gone. He watched her car move away down the street. “I have a question for you.”

TWO

The steering wheel was icy cold. Vanessa kept lifting her hands off it one at a time, making fists and blowing on them to bring back some heat. Everything was quiet except for the car heater and the muted sound of the tires crunching snow. When she entered the car minutes before, her first impulse had been to turn on loud music. But her heart wasn’t in it and she let the quiet stay where it was.

In such a rush to escape the house, she drove three blocks before pulling the car over to the curb to check and see if she’d brought everything she needed. The last thing she wanted right now was to have to go back home and sheepishly retrieve her cell phone or wallet while he watched.

Thank God she’d brought it all. But what was she going to do now? Where was she going to go for the rest of the day? Out of the blue, her life had capsized and suddenly she was hanging on to a piece of shipwreck in the middle of a vast and dangerous morning.

Picking up the phone, she pressed #9 and held it down to speed-dial Kaspar. While waiting, she prayed he would answer. He was the only one she could talk to about this.

“Hi. This is Kaspar. Leave a message.”

Grimacing, she said to
please
call her back as soon as he got this message. It was an emergency and she was desperate for his help. Vanessa was certain her message would grab his attention because in all the time they had spent together she’d never used a phrase like “desperate for his help” or any other like it. With Kaspar she was the Queen of Cool and Independence. Even in bed, where they devoured each other, she held certain things back. This was the first time she had ever said she
needed
him. It was going to be interesting to see how he responded.

Still holding the telephone in her hand, she wondered who else she could call now for help. Her sister was a horror and a judgmental twit. Her parents lived a thousand miles away and loved her husband much more than her. She didn’t blame them though because Dean
was
a much nicer person than she. Vanessa loved that about him and had often used his kindness either against him or to her advantage.

If she had been someone else, Vanessa probably would have been upset or disheartened to realize there was no person other than her lover who she could call at this paradigm moment. But this was Vanessa Corbin, who placed “friends” down around number twelve on her list of the most important things in her life.

She dropped the phone into her lap and picked up the wallet. Inside it were fifty-seven dollars and three credit cards, two of them on Dean’s account. Lifting her head and looking through the windshield, she began to smile. One T-shirt she owned said, “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping,” and that’s exactly what Vanessa would do now. Go to the mall and spend a lovely long morning shopping and charging things on her husband’s credit cards. No, even better—she’d shop as if she were going on a long trip. Since she didn’t know where the trip would take her, she’d have to buy both winter and summer things to cover all possibilities. Afterward she’d have a gorgeous lunch at her favorite restaurant near the mall and then perhaps see a movie.…

She had a plan now. Whether or not Kaspar called, there was plenty to keep her busy for the next few hours. Reaching forward, she pushed a CD into the machine. An old woman shoveling snow ten feet away looked up quickly when James Brown’s voice exploded from inside the little red car as it pulled away from the curb.

*   *   *

A quarter of an hour later, Dean Corbin’s telephone rang again. This time he answered it. Pulling the phone out of a pocket, he momentarily wondered if it was Vanessa. But it wasn’t her style. When his wife was wrong about something she did not like to admit it. Prove her wrong and she turned stony. She was an Aries. People born under the sign evidently think they’re never wrong about anything. Dean didn’t much believe in astrology, but this detail was correct about her. Over their years together he had learned the best way to keep things peaceful between them was to back off when confrontations arose about who was right. Generally he was an easygoing man and letting his wife have her way didn’t bother him. Besides, he had always enjoyed Vanessa’s passion. It was one of the first things to attract him years ago. Her passion and her talent lassoed his heart and bound it tight to her. A person cannot be passionate without a strong ego, because “I” plays the main role in any kind of passion: I love. I want. I need.

Before they met, Dean’s life had been relatively pleasant, quiet, and uneventful. Then one night after work he walked into a bar in Greenwich Village for a drink with some friends and there she was at the piano singing The Beatles’ haunting song “For No One.” Dean loved that tune, but the way this woman sang it was like nothing he had ever heard before. He was absolutely spellbound. Somehow she managed to imbue her voice and phrasing with grief, longing, passion, and even contrarily hope—all at the same time. After ten minutes of listening to the singer, Dean had forgotten his friends and his drink and was thinking, “I have got to talk to her. I’ve got to tell her … I don’t know
what
I’ve got to tell her, but I have
got
to talk to this woman.”

At the end of the set, she went and sat alone at the bar. After several deep breaths to rouse his courage, Dean Corbin got up and walked over. Because he could not think of anything else to say, he shyly asked if she’d recorded a CD he could buy.

Without hesitating she patted the red leather barstool next to her and said, “Sit down. You are wearing a very beautiful tie; the most beautiful tie I have seen in I don’t know how long. Any man who likes my singing and has such great taste in ties, him I want to talk to. Sit.”