Circle of Three (29 page)

I lay down beside Jess. He put the picture back and took my hand without saying anything. I talked more than he did.
I had with Stephen, too, but that was different. Jess’s silences were safe, intriguing, not indifferent, never dangerous. He was like a—a thermometer, something with mercury in it; my symbol for him in my mind was a tall blue column, upright, running the length of him, and all for me. Jess was true-blue.

“You never ask me about Stephen,” I said, draping an arm across his stomach.

“Tell me anything you want.”

“Don’t you want to know anything?”

He thought. “Me being here—what’s it like? I’ve got my head on his pillow.”

“I know. I know, I’ve been feeling guilty because I don’t feel guilty. Enough. I didn’t wait long enough, most people would say. In a way, I’ve been unfaithful to Stephen twice. With you. Once when he was alive, and now.”

Jess brushed the back of my hand across his lips, watching me.

“Do you want to know why I married him? One reason?” He nodded, but he didn’t have the same compulsion that I had to confess, thrash out, make sense of. “I knew what I’d be getting into. He’d be a college professor, and that was certainly a life I understood, but with Stephen I’d really belong, I’d be his equal.” Not like my mother, who had never belonged. “I would be an artist and he’d be a genius. And we’d have perfect children.”

“And that’s why you loved him?”

“That’s why I married him. I fell in love with him because I thought he was someone else. Or maybe he
was
someone else and he changed. Or I changed.”

“Who did you think he was?”

“Somebody like you. But safer.” This was a hard confession. “I was twenty-three when we met, living in Washington, trying to be an artist. Failing. I’d run completely out of money, and I was down to two choices, get a job or go back to school. The end of my life, I thought. And either one meant caving in to my mother, who always said I should get
an education degree and teach art in the public schools. Stephen and I weren’t dating anyone but each other, but it wasn’t that serious yet. When he finally understood my predicament and what it meant to me, he said—he said, ‘Come live with me, and be my love.’ In those very words. I guess it sounds silly, but it meant the world to me. His first and his last poetic utterance. He was offering to save me, and he had no motive except generosity. I thought he was like that. I thought…I didn’t know that this was…uncharacteristic. So I fell in love with him.”

“And then?”

“Oh…we moved in together, but it didn’t save me. We fell into marriage, too quickly, and then Ruth was born, and life turned very practical. No more poetry, no more art. Crafts—for money, I started making wreaths and selling them, wreaths for all occasions. Then I made wreath
kits
, and they did pretty well until I got sick of them. Literally. My first depressive period. Is this much, much more than you ever wanted to know?”

“I don’t think we can save each other,” Jess said.

“No. But—you don’t think you saved me?” He smiled. “No, I know,” I said, “but it
feels
that way to me.”

He began to put his tongue in the spaces between my fingers. “If I didn’t exist, if I disappeared, you’d be all right.”

“Oh, no.” I kept saying no, but it occurred to me that I had changed, and that I would be stronger if I lost Jess than I had been when I lost Stephen. Where was the sense in that? “The sheepdog factor,” I realized. “You’re saying it’s the work. Well, I don’t know. I still think it’s you.” I rubbed against him, pressing kisses on his throat, under his ear. Two months of ark building had made his hands even more rough and jagged, and I liked the feel of them coasting over my skin, pinkening it, arousing me. “Let’s not talk about our spouses anymore, not for a while. Let’s have a moratorium.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t sound so reluctant.” We began to make love again. Slowly this time, not so frantic. At the moment when I began
to shudder and spiral up, Jess paused, and I heard it, too—a familiar sound. The squeak of a footstep on the staircase.

I twisted up, fast as a snake, and raced to the closed door, which had no lock. “Hello?” Ruth called from the hall.

“Don’t come in.” The door knob turned. “Ruth, don’t open the door.”

“Why? Mom? Who’s there?”

My bathrobe lay on the floor at the foot of the bed, but I was afraid to move. Jess rolled off the bed, snatched up the robe, and threw it at me. “I’m coming out,” I said, shoving my arms inside the sleeves, yanking at the belt. He’d gone around to the other side of the bed, invisible from the door. I tried to smile—
Sorry—can you believe this?—
but it came out a grimace. He pushed his hair back with his hands, baring his teeth in comical sympathy, and just for a second it calmed me. Just for a second I wasn’t sorry. I opened the door.

Ruth looked white and ill. “Are you all right?” In a reflex, I put out my hand, but she flinched away, out of reach.

“Who is it?” she whispered. Fear made her sharp features stiff, like carved wax. Oh, Jesus—she thought it was Stephen. I could see it in the frightened, irrational longing in her eyes.

“Sweetheart,” I said, “let’s go in your room.”

“Who is it?”

“It’s Jess.”

Incomprehension. Then a split second of relief—oh,
Jess
, well, then—and finally, understanding.

My chest hurt. “Oh, baby.” I saw clearly and for the first time that I’d picked the most heartless thing, the worst way to hurt her. She backed up, her mouth open but no words coming out. I followed because I thought she was bolting for the stairs, but she dashed past them and into her room, slamming the door in my face.

Jess, half-dressed, took me by my ice-cold hands and pulled me back into the bedroom. I could hardly feel his arms around me. “Let me stay,” he said, but I said no, go, he
had to go. He hugged me tighter, even when I tried to push him away. In spite of myself a little warmth began to seep in. I rested my head on his shoulder. “What have I done? I don’t mean that, I’m not sorry—but if you’d seen her face—oh God, Jess, I don’t think I can fix this. You have to go, please, I can’t talk to her, I can’t do anything until you leave.”

But after he was gone, it was worse. What if this was unmendable? My fingers were shaky when I tried to button my blouse; I put a sweater on over it, I put my shoes on—trying to look
dressed
, I realized. I was afraid to look in the mirror.
Stop
, I thought, but I could feel it coming on, the old contempt for myself. No, a B-movie situation, that’s all this was. I’d explain everything to Ruth and—it would break her heart. But she’d recover, and afterward at least there would be no more secrets. But that was a good outcome for
me
: what about this dreadful situation could ever be good for
her
?

I found her doubled up on her bed, arms folded around her stomach. “Are you sick?” When I touched her shoulder she scuttled away, sitting up, pushing back against the head-board. Her eyes looked black in her pale, pinched, merciless face.

“How long has it been going on?”

“I’m so sorry you had to find out that way. I was going—”

“I’ll bet. How long have you been screwing him?”

“Stop it. Stop it.”

“What, you don’t like my language? Hey, I’m really really sorry, I deeply apologize.” Her shoulders were jerking in spasms. “How long have you been having sexual intercourse with Jess Deeping?”

“I want to tell you. I would have, but not yet. Because—”

“Because you were ashamed.”

“Because I knew it would hurt you.”

“Because it’s shameful.”

“Ruth—I’ve loved him my whole life—”

I saw how wrong that was as soon as I said it. She recoiled,
jumped off the bed. “So did you—did you do it with him while Daddy was still alive?”

“No.” But I didn’t answer quickly enough.

“You did. God! God!”

“It’s not like that—I wasn’t having an affair with Jess. I loved your father, you know I did.”

“Then how come you’re so happy now that he’s dead? Anyway, you’re lying, I can tell.”

“Ruth—”

“You deserve each other. I hate both of you, I can’t stand you.”

“
Wait
. Hold it!” She hung in the doorway, radiating insolence and loathing, except that her eyes were swimming. “Don’t walk out when I’m talking to you. Come back here.”

“No. Talk to me from there.”

But what could I say? I didn’t know any words that could fix this, and I couldn’t stop internalizing her disgust. I’d lost sight of my side of the argument, I could only see hers.

“Did you cheat on him or not? Just tell me that, Mom, just say one honest thing. Did you?”

I let too much time go by again. “Once.” She winced. “And it was a long time ago.”

“A long time ago?
”

“I don’t know how to explain this to you! Anything, anything I say will hurt you. If only you were—”

“That’s right! So don’t say anything, okay? I don’t want to hear a word from you.”

I hadn’t seen her bottom lip quiver since she was ten years old. It happened when she was trying not to cry. “Darling, please listen to me. If you were older—”

“I’m not too young to know what you are. A slut! Keep away from me, okay? Maybe we’ll talk when I’m older. Like five years from now!”

She ran out of the room. My heart stopped—I thought she would fall on the stairs, her loud, banging footsteps sounded so clumsy. I waited for the front door to slam. Instead, a moment later, the kitchen door slammed. Was she going next
door? I hoped so—although I hadn’t wanted Modean to know about Jess yet. Too bad: exposure was a price we sluts had to pay.

In my room, I stood over the rumpled bed and wrung my hands. The scene of the crime. How could we have been so careless? What kind of a mother did such a thing, took such a risk in her own house? And why was it so easy to feel guilty about my own happiness? Who taught me that, my mother? But she’d been the convenient scapegoat all my life. This time I knew it was me, just me.

I wandered from room to room, unable to settle; in the kitchen, I peeked through the blinds, searching for a sign of Ruth next door. Should I go over there? She might not even be there, she might’ve gone for a walk.

I took a shower—because I needed one, I told myself, not out of any neurotic Freudian motive. Afterward I went outside and sat on the front porch step. Something felt wrong. The sun was too high—it seemed much later than four o’clock. Milking time; Jess would be thinking of me, worrying about me. I wished I could call him, tell him I was all right. But that I’d blown it with Ruth. But that we’d live.

It took a few more seconds before I figured it out, the thing that wasn’t quite right. The piece in the landscape that was missing.

My car.

R
AVEN WASN’T HOME.
His mother looked like an old sitcom mom, like Florence Henderson or somebody, and his house was all wrong, too. He should live in, like, the Addams family mansion, not a long rambler with green aluminum siding and white shutters.

“No, I’m sorry, Martin’s not here right now,” Mrs. Black said, standing in the front door and drying her hands on a paper towel. “He went to Richmond for the weekend. To visit his father,” she added, like she thought I looked sick or lost or something and it would help if she gave a longer explanation.

“Oh,” I said. Raven’s parents were divorced. He lived with his mother, but he saw his dad pretty often. “Okay, well, thanks.”

“Can I tell him who came to see him?”

“Oh, Ruth Van Allen. I just was, um, driving around. It’s not anything important. I’ll see him Monday.” I smiled, walked back down the flagstone walk very casually. Got in the car and started it up like nothing was funny, I drove around by myself all the time. In the rearview mirror I saw my gray, pasty face and the sweat on my forehead. I could almost throw up. I kept the window open as I drove, just in case.

Where should I go? Not Jamie’s or Caitlin’s. Not Becky
Driver’s. Krystal’s was all that was left. I could park the car in the alley where nobody would see—in case somebody came looking for me. It was only four o’clock; the Palace would be open for two more hours, but Krystal would let me lie down upstairs in her apartment. She might even have Midol or something. No, probably not. Well, some more Menstru-Care, then, but so far its unique combination of B-12, black cohosh, and kava-kava wasn’t doing squat.

I parked in back of the store, blocking Krystal’s garage, but that was okay. Better than trying to parallel park in the alley. Using the key she gave me, I let myself in the back door.

Krystal was up on the ladder, getting a box down from the top shelf in the storeroom. “Ruth!” She almost lost her balance, she was so surprised. “Wow, you startled me. I thought you were home in bed with a heating pad. It’s not that busy, you didn’t have to come back.” Out in the store, the phone rang. “Oh, shit, can you get that?”

I started to go, then stopped. “Um. That might be my mom.”

She gave me a funny look. “Okay,” she said, coming down the ladder. “So I’ll get it. And I should say—?”

“I’m not here. I went home early with cramps, that’s all you know.”

She raised her eyebrows and pushed her lips out, fishlike:
Interesting
. Then she made a dash for the phone. I’d never asked her to do anything like this before, lie for me or anything, but I wasn’t surprised that she was doing it. Krystal was somebody I could trust.

I couldn’t hear what she was saying on the phone, and I didn’t want to go any farther into the store. After she hung up, she had to wait on a customer, so I sat on a cardboard box and rocked back and forth, hugging my stomach. Having cramps feels like everything is going wrong inside, like a war happening in your guts. I really could throw up. The more I thought of it, the sicker I felt. The bathroom was only about six long steps away, I could make it. But just then Krystal came back, and I got distracted.

“What happened?”

“It was your mom, all right. She asked if you were here and I said no, you went home early because you were sick.” She wrinkled her forehead. “The Menstru-Care didn’t work?” I shook my head. “Well, so that was about it, she just asked were you here and I said no. What’s up?”

“Can I lie down upstairs for a while?”

“Sure. You running away from home?” she said, grinning. The bell over the front door tinkled. “Go on, I’ll bring you some cramp bark tea as soon as I get a break. Fix you right up.”

“Cramp bark tea?”

“Absolutely. For muscular support during cyclic changes. Go.”

Krystal’s apartment was awesome, like in a movie from the 1960s only much cooler, not kitschy at all but, like, retro. She had big orange and brown sculptures on the walls that looked like mud pies, and thick tapestries hanging and sort of finger painting artworks, and the rugs that she’d made herself out of yarn and rope. The furniture was really rough and primitive, twig chairs and splintery cabinets with the nails showing and a couch that was just big upholstered pillows piled on top of one another. And everything in earth tones, and for some reason the shades were drawn, plus she had an electric fountain shaped like a grotto and you could hear water dripping. Being in her apartment was like being in a warm, dim, furnished cave.

I had to pee, plus I needed a new tampon. God—what if Krystal didn’t use them? What if she used—leaves, or moss, or recycled cloth made out of—hemp or—

Tampax. There it was behind the toilet, the little blue box. Whew. Then I wanted to check out the medicine cabinet, just
see
if she had Bayer aspirin like everybody else, or Listerine, or Crest toothpaste. It felt a little creepy, being a snoop, so I only opened the mirrored door a crack and peeked inside very quickly. Huh. A mixture. She had some Aspergum and a tube of Ben-Gay, but she also had a bottle of Natrol
soy isoflavones and some Earth’s Bounty Bladderex with the ancient all-herbal Chinese formula. Cool.

The only thing wrong with the pillow-couch was the cat hair all over it. It was hot in the apartment, which must face west because the sun was baking behind the hand-painted shade over the big window. But the heat felt good; I’d been cold and shivery all day. I pulled a knitted throw over my legs and curled up in the fetal position. Rather than think about Mom and Jess in my father’s bed, I went to sleep.

Cramp bark tea tasted like dirt. Krystal made me drink a quarter cup every fifteen minutes, and I told her it was working because if it didn’t, the next remedy was two eight-ounce glasses of apple-celery-fennel juice. “For the phytoestrogens,” she said. “But what you really need is some reflexology.”

Reflexology was a pretty good deal. I got to lie back on the sofa and let Krystal rub my feet. The top of my arch controlled the fallopian tube, and behind my inner and outer ankles were the uterus and ovary, respectively. Sure enough, after about ten minutes of stimulating finger massage, my cramps started to get better.

“Hey, this is working,” I told Krystal, who was actually drinking a cup of cramp bark tea, too, and there wasn’t even anything the matter with her. I gently shifted the white cat, Charmian, a little lower down on my stomach, closer to my pelvis. I liked the warmth, but after a while the pressure didn’t feel so great.

“Sure it is,” Krystal said. She had her eyes closed; she might be meditating while she did the reflexology. Right now, she was studying healing touch by mail; in two months she’d have her certificate, then she was going to offer it at the store. Forty dollars an hour, which was a lot, but she planned to
guarantee
results. “Nobody leaves unsatisfied” would be the slogan.

I kept waiting for her to ask questions, like what I was doing there and why I couldn’t go home. But she didn’t, and
that was cool, that was the thing I liked best about Krystal, her live-and-let-live attitude. But on the other hand, if you wanted to talk about anything, you had to bring it up yourself. Which was hard.

“So,” I said. “Guess what.”

“Hmm,” she said dreamily. She was doing the finger walk across the top of my left foot, making little snapping sounds with her index finger joint.

“So. So today I go home early, right? Because I’m sick. And nobody’s there. But Jess’s truck is in front of the Harmons’house, so I figure he’s over there talking to Mom, who had to sit for Harry this afternoon.”

“Mm hmm.”

“So I get a glass of milk and I—”

“Milk? Oh, Ruth.” She scrunched up her face. “The worst, the absolute worst. Almond milk, okay, maybe, but
milk
? Oh, baby, no wonder.” She shook her head and began to do the finger walk harder.

“Oh. I didn’t know. Well, so anyway. So I was feeling really lousy, but I wanted to see Jess, you know, because he’s…he was like…” A friend. “So I was going up to my room first to comb my hair, try to look less sick, you know, put on some blush or whatever. I get to the top of the steps, and what do I hear in my mom’s bedroom? Behind the closed door, which she
never
closes?”

“What?”

“Her voice and some guy’s.” Except it wasn’t voices, because they weren’t talking. It was sounds.

“Oh—my—God.”

“She goes, ‘Don’t come in, don’t open the door!’ So I just stand there. Then she opens up, and she’s—she’s got on her bathrobe. And her hair all messed up and her face red. It was weird—I barely recognized her, it was like she was her own sister or something. And she looked totally in shock, like somebody just shot her.”

“So
who was the guy
?”

“It was Jess. My pal Jess.”

Krystal stopped rubbing my foot. Her round eyes got big and wide. She whispered, “Oh, no shit.”

“Pretty funny, right?” I laughed, and then I almost started to cry, but I kept swallowing until I got over it. No way, they didn’t deserve one tear out of me. “Yeah, it turns out they’ve been carrying on forever, even before my father died.”

“Get
out
. Your mother? No way.”

“Way. She told me, she admitted it.”

“Oh, Ruth. Oh, man, what a bummer. That is really awful. Are you okay? That is so, so heavy. Jeez, how could she do that? So is the guy really hot or what?”

“I don’t know. How should I know?” What a dumb question. “I thought he was our friend, I used to go—over to his house—Ugh.” I pretended my stomach hurt and stopped talking until my voice got strong again. I wasn’t going to be a baby about this, not in front of Krystal.

“Did you talk to him?”

“No, he left. My mother tried to wriggle out of it—”

“What did she say?”

“Just bullshit, about how she’s always loved him.
Always
—get that? Oh, but she loved my dad, too.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Right—I told you it was bullshit. Basically what she told me was to grow up. So I just left, I walked out and stole the car. Screw it.”

“Bitch.”

I blinked, thinking she meant me. “Oh, yeah,” I said when I realized she meant Mom. “What a total bitch.” It sounded ugly and mean, and it felt great.

“I mean, really. That’s the lowest, to cheat on your husband.”

“I know.”

“Even if she loves the other guy, it’s still cheating.”

“I know.”

“You must feel awful.”

“I keep thinking about my dad. He would never have done that to her, never. He was so good, and he really loved us. He
was the best. One time when I was like eight, she had the flu and he did everything—he cleaned the whole house, he did all the cooking, drove me to school, he did everything.” Krystal didn’t look impressed enough. “I mean, that’s just one thing I remember. He never forgot her birthday or Christmas, and he’d always give me money ahead of time so I could get her something. He was
thoughtful
. And I know he never cheated, I
know
it. How could she? How could she hurt him like that when he never did anything to her?”

“You think he knew?”

“No, I’m—”All of a sudden I was freezing again. “What if he did, what if he saw. Oh, my God. And then he died. His heart broke.”

“Well, but you said he had coronary disease.”

I pulled my feet out of her lap and curled up over my knees. “What if she did it. What if she made him die.” I bit one of my knees until it hurt.

“Wow.” Krystal kept shaking her head. “That’s too much.”

“Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe it just happened.”

“Yeah. Probably. Still. Kind of a coincidence.”

My mouth was making too much water, I couldn’t swallow fast enough. I stumbled up and ran, willing the nausea back, not letting it escape until the exact second I got the toilet seat up and my head centered over the bowl.

Then—explosion. Garbage and bile and glue, I made myself sick, I nauseated myself. It didn’t stop until all I had left was strings of spit.

Krystal stayed in the doorway, but she wouldn’t come in. Mom would’ve come in. She’d’ve held my arm or touched me on the back while I threw up, and afterward she’d’ve talked very calmly so I wouldn’t be embarrassed or scared or weirded out. Thinking these things gave me a desperate feeling, a mixture of being mad and feeling hurt, some of it was old and childish and some of it was new and grown-up, and I never wanted to feel that combination again.

*   *   *

Krystal had a date with Kenny, her current boyfriend. She offered to cancel if I was really sick, but of course I said no, go, it’s Saturday night, I’m fine. Before she left, I asked if I could park the Chevy overnight in her garage. “Just in case anybody’s looking for me.” The police, I was thinking, but I didn’t want to say that out loud; it might freak Krystal out. She was being so cool about everything, but I worried that if she thought it through very carefully, she might change her mind. She said sure, put the car in the garage right now, so I went down with her and we switched places.

Kenny came at nine, but I didn’t see him. Krystal said she’d go downstairs and meet him in the store so I wouldn’t be disturbed. I like him, so I was a little disappointed. Kenny’s cute, he always talks to me, he tells funny jokes. He’s a lineman for the telephone company. Krystal likes him okay, but she’s not in love; once she told me her problem with Kenny is that he smokes too much grass.

After they left, I got hungry. Krystal had said I could help myself to anything I wanted, but when I looked in the refrigerator, except for milk, I couldn’t recognize anything as food. Even the vegetables were mysteries, not to mention all the stuff in plastic containers. Everything was beige and looked like oatmeal. I found some granola-looking stuff in Baggies in the bread box and put milk on it in a bowl. Yes—cereal. So then I cut up and added a few pieces of a pinkish yellow fruit I’d seen in the grocery store but never tasted before because it wasn’t on Mom’s boring shopping list. Delicious. But what was it, a persimmon? Pomegranate? Papaya? The fact that I had no idea just went to show, didn’t it? I might as well be living my life in prison. Clayborne—what a joke. If you want to know anything or do anything, if you want to
change
anything, you better make it happen yourself, because nobody around here is going to.