In the Middle of All This (16 page)

When he came out with his face scrubbed by a dozen wet paper towels and sweat in pronounced lines at the backs of his knees and down each underarm, he saw his place at the bar had been emptied and neatened.

“Back from the dead already?” the bartender said.

He nodded tentatively. “I'd like to pay.”

“It's not necessary.” She reached over and patted him maternally on the shoulder. “Just take better care of yourself. Right?”

“Yes,” he said, already turning for the door. “Thank you. Yes.”

How he made it home he hoped he would never recall. The thing was that long after he'd expected it, he was finally climbing up the stairs at Dunkers Green and gaining the sidewalk not three blocks from their row-house, and it wasn't even ten o'clock and the streets were still gritty with the day's crap. He stepped through it and down the long, long residential block and made the right turn, something inside his head just hammering away at his temple—hammer, hammer, hammer—and there at last was their place, and he had the key in the door and opened it and shut it quickly after him and pounded up the stairs to his beloved ibuprofen and took three with an enormous glass of water and threw himself on the bed and hoped for sleep.

“We're home,” she called to the backseat triumphantly as she wheeled the car into the driveway. Sarah said something disdainful, and Max merely grinned and nodded his head. “What a day, huh?”

She pressed the garage-door opener and watched the wide, heavy door begin its slow rise up into the ceiling. A foot off the ground it stopped. It was temperamental like that. She pressed the clicker again, and the door sunk back to the concrete drive. Max whined.

“One minute,” she said. “Sometimes you have to hit it twice.”

She hit it again, and again the door rose grudgingly from the cement, and three feet off the driveway again it stopped, only this time it was crooked, as if the whole house were listing into the ground.

“Uh-oh,” she said.

“Uh-oh?” Max said. “What's uh-oh?”

“The garage door,” Sarah said.

“Not working?” Max said.

“Exactly.”

“Wait here.” Lauren got out from the car and walked slowly to the door. She didn't want that thing coming down on her. It hung at a twenty-degree angle about waist-high off the ground. She wouldn't touch it. It looked like a kind of guillotine.

“At least the car's out and safe,” she told the children back in the car. She hit the clicker again. The door didn't budge. Now the damn thing wouldn't even go down. Shoot. “All right,” she said. “Let's go in.”

She went around and got Max and his schoolbag out of the car and made sure Sarah got herself out without any incident and they trooped up the breezeway stairs, she unlocked the door, and now they were inside.

“TV?” Max said.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She turned to Sarah. “Can you guys get settled in front of the TV while I see about the door?”

“Will you stay inside?” Sarah pouted.

“Yes, I'll be inside. Now go on.”

She waited until she could hear the TV and then she pulled out the phone book and looked under Garage and then Garage Builders and then Doors and Gate Operating Devices and actually found something called Potters-town Overhead Door and called and arranged a service visit. Quietly she ducked into the breezeway and eyed the car. Windows up. Doors locked.

It was a little late to call Martin but it wasn't too late and besides he'd said that Elizabeth and Richard would be out all evening. She let it ring and ring. When the answering machine picked up on the seventh or eighth time, she was relieved. He'd be furious about the door. She dug out the homeowner's policy and checked to see if the item was covered. In boldface they made sure she knew it wasn't.

While the noodles and broccoli cooked, she emptied the dishwasher and put everything away and checked Sarah's schoolbag for various notes and announcements and the homework assignment and bagged the trash and put it on the breezeway and set the table. She drained the noodles and made one bowl with olive oil and parmesan and another bowl with pesto and arranged the broccoli on an oval plate that the kids liked and put a cup of ice water at each of the three places.

“Dinner,” she called.

Sarah came and sat at her place, and Lauren helped her to the pesto pasta and the broccoli and then served herself and sat watching happily as Sarah began to eat. It was always wonderful to watch either of them eat, as if some miracle was happening. When they were babies neither took a bottle and it was always just her and her breasts, and even when they moved on to rice cereal and all the little jars they still favored breast milk. She'd breast-fed them each for eighteen months, and Martin argued that if it hadn't been so long the transition might have been easier, but he just felt left out. Martin. He was probably on the town—a quaint phrase—knowing him, alone with nothing to do. She hoped he didn't end up regretting it too much.

“Max!” she said loudly.

No answer. She looked at Sarah and Sarah shrugged.

“Max, it's dinner!” Lauren shouted.

“Not yet,” Max said.

“Oh brother,” Sarah said.

“Don't,” Lauren said. She sighed and got up from her chair and walked into the living room. The cartoon crime-fighters show was almost over. She waited. When the credit roll started, she picked up the remote and turned off the TV.

“Hey!” Max said. “I want to see the credit roll.”

She was amazed he even knew the term. “It's dinnertime,” she said.

“I WANT TO!”

“All right, all right. But just the credit roll.” She switched it back on, and he wagged his shoulders and squirmed his butt to the music. At last it was over. She switched off the TV again. “Now dinner,” she said.

“Okay. Okay.” He trooped into the kitchen as if on a forced march and climbed up on his chair and looked at his plate, while she delicately arranged a bit of the parmesan noodles and some broccoli. “Yuck,” he said.

“Honey, it's one of your favorites.”

“Don't want it.”

Sometimes she would let herself be pushed into getting up and making something else. “This is what we have,” she said firmly.

“Yuck,” he said again.

Sarah laughed with her mouth full and shards of pasta sprayed on her plate. Max giggled.

“Dessert?” he asked.

“When you eat your dinner.”

“Yuck,” he said. He picked a noodle from the pile, inspected it suspiciously, and ate it. Sarah drank water and began on her food again. In the silence Lauren lifted her fork. That hadn't been so difficult, and now she had a nice view of her two children eating and the new bookcases gleaming at her from the living room.

Then the house shuddered as if it had been slammed against a wall. Her fork dropped on the table. They were all out of their chairs, staring at one another, moving at once to the breezeway, squeezing through the door, her head ringing, a new migraine just beginning to express itself behind her left eye.

“Don't go in,” she hissed, holding them back from the garage.

They went out the breezeway door into the driveway. In the distance a fire alarm sounded, as if someone had already called for their rescue. The garage door sagged and buckled into the pavement, as if it had been brought to its knees. Cracks spread in glaring webs up its spine and along its edges; flakes of paint were littered on the driveway.

“Wow,” she said, holding the children away from it.

“What happened?” Max said.

“It fell and broke itself,” Sarah said. “Or first it broke, and then it fell and broke some more. Right, Mommy?”

“Right,” Lauren said. The siren seemed to be in her head, but she knew it was nowhere near.

“Why?” Max asked.

“Because,” Lauren said, “sometimes things just fall apart.”

“And break?” Max said.

“And break,” she said.

The beeping was stunning him, just stunning him as it pelted him with the gleeful fact that he'd even managed to set the alarm. He was getting up, moving expertly to turn off the noise, no hangover in sight. What luck! He didn't deserve such luck. But there was something. Shit. Now he was wide-awake, out of bed, in his underwear, moving to the door. He'd forgotten to order a car.

Downstairs in the cold morning light he paged through the business cards and found the one, hustled to the phone in the kitchen, dialed.

“Morning,” a voice said.

“Is it possible,” he started, his voice cracking into dry little pieces of hungover hoarseness, even though he still had no headache. “Is it possible to still order a car for Heathrow?”

“Yes,” the voice said languidly, “I suppose it's possible.”

“In forty minutes?”

“I don't see why not.”

“In Dunkers Green?”

“Certainly.”

“Wonderful,” he said, his voice now rising, then shutting itself down as he remembered the sleeping people upstairs. Quietly he gave the address.

Now he even, unbelievably, had time for a shower. He hurried up to his room, found a clean set of clothes, and poured himself into the bathroom. He let the shower beat him for a while with its thudding heat. They had much better pressure here. Then he got dressed and brushed his teeth, tried not to whistle as he packed his bag, took it downstairs and set it by the door. He checked outside. The car was already waiting. He still had five minutes. He took the stairs two at a time and tapped lightly on their door.

No answer.

He tapped again and opened it soundlessly. The bed was empty. Still made. He looked around quickly. They hadn't ever come home. Shit. He remembered hearing ringing last night. He raced downstairs. No message on the machine.

Outside, the car still waited.

He scrawled
I'll call from the airport. What happened?
At the front door he tried to remember how to set the alarm, punched in numbers, heard the damn thing beep earnestly, shut it down, and shut himself from the house, the key inside. He felt a pang at that. In a minute he was opening the back door of the little compact and squeezing in.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“What?” the driver said, turning to look at him, an older guy with an indifferent face.

“Never mind,” he said.

“Is it Heathrow, then?”

He settled back in the seat, the hangover flooding him with nausea, regret, and ache. “Yes,” he said.

They chugged down the lane. These services always took the most roundabout and clogged route. He shut his eyes and willed himself to sleep. Where the hell were they? Maybe having a special night at a hotel? Richard was too cheap for that. Not even a message. Maybe they just got stuck somewhere. They would have taken a taxi home. That had to be cheaper than a hotel. He rattled the pence in his pocket, making sure he had change for the call. At least he had gifts for everyone. Pockets of air flung themselves around inside his empty stomach. The restaurant at the airport was so crappy. Where the hell were those guys?

The car seemed to be strolling through the bleakest neighborhoods, two-story houses jammed up against one another along barren streets clotted with parked cars, the occasional convenience store just opening its shutters to show off its stacks of tins and boxes. Standstill places. It would be so nice to get home, where there were grass and trees and a fireplace, the kids would nuzzle him and he'd even pet the cats. Do you even know where you are? someone said.

“What?” he said.

“What?” the driver said, without turning back.

“Nothing,” he said.

Finally they were on the only bit of highway that the damn service was willing to take. Could he sleep? Forget it.

At Heathrow he overtipped, pushing for some karma. He found a pay phone and called. The answering machine. What to do, what to do. He just had a bad feeling.

It was only four in the morning back home. If he called Lauren now, she'd probably reach across the ocean and throttle him.

He had an hour before he absolutely had to check in. He called them every ten minutes, watching his pence run out. He was probably just being paranoid, or suffocating. Or hangover stupid. Lauren would know. He gave up and dialed.

It rang all four times and the machine picked up, and then he heard her voice through his own taped voice
You've reached the home of Martin, Lauren, …
“Hello? Hello?” she was saying. “What is it? What is it?” as if she had to say everything twice to hear that it was herself who was actually talking.

“It's me,” he said. “From Heathrow.”

“What?”

“You told me to call. Remember?”

“I didn't mean it,” she said.

“What?”

“You know, not this early. You never call this early. You call around seven. Before takeoff. Around then. Don't you?”

“They never came back.”

“Who?”

“Elizabeth and Richard.”

“Oh.” She swallowed loudly and took a breath into the phone. For some reason he imagined her breath smelled quite bad, and he winced. “So?” she said.

“Don't you think it's weird?”

“They probably just wanted to have some privacy,” she said.

“She didn't even call,” he said.

“Yes she did. You told me she did.”

“She didn't call
again,”
he said.

“She has to call more than once?” She yawned even more loudly than she swallowed.

“Christ,” he said.

“So.” She was trying to wake up. “Is your flight on time?”

“Yes, I have to check in.”

“Well, then go check in.”

“You're not getting this at all.” He heard the anger in his voice and stopped himself.

“Getting what? Maybe you're not explaining it at all. Maybe you're just making something out of nothing. Maybe you had too much to drink last night, and you have no idea what's going on.”