Nell (47 page)

And he had no specific thoughts on the subject of living with Nell and her children. Such thoughts had not even entered his mind. Obviously, his plan for his life was to remain solitary.

I don’t want to plead with him, Nell thought. I don’t want to demean myself. I don’t want to say: Andy, what are the rules of our relationship? Do we have any future? I want him to initiate the discussion; I don’t want to have to drag it out of him.

But she also did not want to lie there all night long dwelling on the fact that he had not thought about a future with her, that he was content to let things go on as they were, seeing each other occasionally, nothing more.

She didn’t know what to do.

“I love you,” he said to her before falling asleep.

“I love
you
,” she replied. But she was not content. She lay awake late into the night, her stomach twisted into a knot, her thoughts twisted, too.

She had been trying to hide the truth from herself, but Andy had set it before her with what he said about children and with what he continued not to say about the future.
She could ignore it no longer. She had hoped for a long time to marry him. Clearly, he did not entertain similar thoughts. She was ready to change everything in her life to be with him, for she needed and wanted him more than she had ever needed and wanted anything in her life. But for him, their relationship was not so serious. He did not miss her terribly when they were apart; he did not include her in his thoughts of the future. When he told her he loved her, he really didn’t mean much by it at all. They meant two completely different things by their love. Nell did not think she could live with the difference.

She did not think she could go on like this, loving him so strongly yet never really
with
him, always coming and going, touching only to be left, warming up only to be hit by the cold, arriving only to leave. She had found the one place in her life where she wanted to
stay
, and she knew she would rather turn her back on it and never see Andy again than to live her life in a teasing, tortuous routine where the joy of joining was always overshadowed by the knowledge of the sure and imminent pain of separation.

Nell looked at her watch at one point in the night: It was almost three-thirty. She was exhausted, and at last, some time after that, she managed to fall asleep.

But in the early morning she was awakened by Andy. He was shoving her sideways. She scooted closer to the side of the bed, thinking he needed more room, and almost fell out of bed. But the bed was king-size; he couldn’t have needed more room. She was mystified. She lay on her side, quiet, and heard the sound of Andy breathing in a deep sleep. Perhaps he had had a nightmare, she thought. After a long while, she managed to fall asleep again.

But around dawn, Andy shoved her again. She awakened because he had reached out to put his hand on her shoulder and rock her back and forth roughly. She was stunned. She turned over on her side to face him, but he was once more asleep. She lay on her pillow, looking at what she could see of his face in the dim light, and began to cry. What more do I need to know? she thought. How much clearer can a message be? Andy does not want me in his life, she thought. In the deepest recesses of his mind and soul, he does not want me, and so when he sleeps, he tries to push me away from him, out of his life. What other conclusion could she reach? Why else would he shove her away so?

She could see from the streetlight’s gleam on the window that it was still raining.
Rain streaked down the window. Nell raised her arm and looked at her watch. It was five-thirty. If she hurried, she could wake the children and get them up and dressed and packed in time to make the six-thirty ferry. They could be home by one, in time for them to have friends over. Tonight she could take them to a movie. They had done well in school, worked hard, made good grades, practiced their piano and violin faithfully. Nell felt they deserved a little fun on their school holiday. She could tell by looking out the window at the overcast sky that today would be like yesterday: chilly, gloomy, wet. If they stayed, Nell would spend the day trying to keep her children entertained, trying to keep them from irritating Andy, remembering his words of the night before and her decision. There was no reason to stay. She had to forge ahead with her life.

She looked at Andy sleeping beside her. He was beautiful. She truly loved his long rangy body and his handsome doggy face. There was no good reason for it, but she loved this man and she was certain that she would never again in her life love another man as much. Only with him had she known real joy and days of consistent contentment. She would have given years of her life, she would have given almost anything to be able to live with him, for when she was with him, she was at peace … until this night she had just passed in despair. Oh, she would have given anything to live with him, to stay with him—anything except her children’s happiness.

And he had not asked, would not ask, her to stay with him. Through this long night he had twice literally shoved her away.

Nell rose, slipping out of bed quietly. She had brought few things, and it did not take her long to dress and pack. She tiptoed down the hall to wake the children.

“Sssh,” she said to them as they sat up, rubbing their eyes, confused with sleep. “Ssh. Be as quiet as you can. It’s going to rain all day today and so we’re going to go back to Arlington. Get up now, sweeties. You can sleep on the ferry and the bus. And you can invite friends over this afternoon.”

She supervised them as they dressed and packed their few belongings in their backpacks. Downstairs, she poured them glasses of apple juice to drink while she called a cab. She kept hushing the children, wanting to leave the house without waking Andy.

They succeeded. They slipped out of the house as silently as ghosts and ran through streaming rain into the waiting taxi. On the way to the ferry, Nell frantically
searched her purse and the children’s packs: She could not find their return tickets for the ferry. The taxi got them to the boat in time; Nell paid the driver and hurried into the office to buy new tickets. They rushed onto the boat just before it pulled up the ramp and away from shore. For a while then they all stood inside, staring out the window at the gloomy sea, at the steady rain, at the lightless day. The world outside the boat was as colorless and cold as old ashes.

Nell gave the children her only large bill—a ten-dollar bill—and told them to go buy themselves breakfast. She sat on one of the benches, leaning her head against the window, staring at nothing much at all. She felt dead. She had had little sleep, and now the rocking of the ferry as it passed over the stormy waters made her feel slightly sick. She was too exhausted to think anymore, and her cold had come back full force.

The children came back from eating and curled up in chairs near her. They all snoozed on and off during the rocking voyage. Nell drifted in and out of sleep, stupefied by misery. Just before the boat landed, she decided to buy herself a cup of coffee. But when she asked the children for the change from the ten-dollar bill she had given them for breakfast, they gave her only a one-dollar bill and a quarter.

“My God,” she said, nearly crying. “What on earth did you two eat for breakfast?” She hadn’t counted on paying for a taxi back to the ferry or on buying more boat tickets. She hadn’t brought enough cash. She decided she couldn’t buy coffee; she needed all the remaining money to pay for a taxi from the ferry to the bus depot. It was raining too hard for them to walk.

It was pouring rain in Hyannis, too, and they had to stand in the rain looking for a taxi for what seemed hours. At last they found one and got to the bus depot to find they could board a bus to Boston in only twenty minutes. The Hyannis bus depot was one of the grimmer spots on earth, Nell decided. It had public toilets, but it cost money to even get in the door. The children both needed to use them, so Nell fished out her last bits of change from the bottom of her purse. She had been embarrassed to give the taxi driver only a ten-cent tip, but now she was glad to have the change. There was no coffee machine or snack machine in the depot, but Nell had no money left anyway. She was glad the children had eaten on the boat. But while she stood with her children in the depot, which smelled of old cigarettes and damp hair, her stomach growled. It was after ten, and
she was hungry. She was tired. She was sad. She had a cold. Her sleepless night had left her stunned, so that she couldn’t think sensibly about herself and Andy, but though thoughts were no longer coming through to her with any force, feelings were. She felt teary and heartbroken and stupid.

Getting onto the bus was a major project today, because so many people were traveling on this holiday weekend and fewer buses were running. Strangers in wet woolen coats shoved and bumped against Nell and Hannah and Jeremy, trying to get in front to be assured of a place on the bus. Tickets did not mean a seat; it was first come, first served. Nell hated it, hated having to elbow her way along, clasping the hand of each child, dragging them with her. A man hit her in the back with his suitcase, and a woman walking beside them carried a cigarette in her hand. Her arm dropped to her side so that the burning end was right at Hannah’s eye level. If Nell hadn’t kept pulling Hannah close to her, the woman would have burned Hannah’s face. Stupid old bitch, Nell thought crossly. The world suddenly seemed full of stupid, mean, hopeless, nasty people.

Nell gave the driver her tickets and marshaled her children onto the bus. Jeremy and Hannah were tired and cranky and fussed over who got to sit next to Mom on the trip. Since Hannah had received that honor on the way down, it was logically Jeremy’s turn now. But Nell felt it would be better for her son, who was after all bigger and older, to sit next to some grimy stranger, than Hannah, who was so tired she was practically vibrating with tears. Nell had to decide: She made Jeremy sit alone and was rewarded with a look of pure anger from him. She collapsed in her seat next to Hannah and watched to see which nasty stranger would take the seat next to Jeremy.

Each new passenger that passed by their row of seats carried his own particular smell: gasoline, dirty feet, cheap perfume, garlic, dead fish. Who
rides
this bus? Nell thought. She felt as though they had all climbed into the Twilight Zone.

Then a lovely girl about college age wearing a peacoat and carrying a bag of books came down the aisle and smiled at Jeremy.

“May I sit here?” she asked.

Jeremy’s face lit up and he smiled. “Sure,” he said, and scrunched up next to the window so the girl could have her seat and most of his. Hannah, seated by the window next to Nell, watched all this taking place and her eyes narrowed in envy. Hannah loved
being around college girls, loved just looking at them.

“Would you like a doughnut?” the girl asked Jeremy, and pulled out of her bag a big fat sugar-covered doughnut.

“Sure! Thanks!” Jeremy said.

Nell watched in childish amazement as her son took the plump sugary doughnut from the girl. Her own stomach growled and rumbled and threatened to revolt: She had been up five hours without any food or liquid. Beside her, Hannah too had noticed the doughnut.

“Mom,” she whispered. “Jeremy got a doughnut!”

Jeremy looked over at his mother and sister, grinning triumphantly. Nell and Hannah could only glare back.

The girl followed Jeremy’s look across the aisle and saw Nell and Hannah. She turned to speak to Jeremy.

“That’s my mother and sister,” Jeremy admitted grudgingly. “We just got here on the boat from Nantucket and we’re going back to Arlington.”

“Oh,” said the girl. She turned and leaned forward to talk to Hannah. “Would you like a doughnut?” she asked.

“Oh yes, please!” Hannah said.

The girl took another sugary powdery doughnut from her bag and handed it across the aisle to Hannah.

“Thank you!” Hannah said.

Nell looked at her daughter’s doughnut. Her mouth watered. Her stomach turned. The bus started up and began rolling down the road, rocking its passengers gently side to side in a lumbering sort of rhythm. The movement of the bus and the mingled smells made Nell’s empty stomach even more demanding.

Nell lost all her dignity. “You had breakfast on the boat,” she whispered to Hannah under her breath, between clenched teeth. “I gave you
all my money
for breakfast on the boat. I didn’t even get a coffee.”

Hannah looked at her mother, assessing the seriousness of her implied demand. Nell squinched up her eyes at her daughter, trying to send desperate pleas and threats by ESP. After an eternal moment, Hannah reluctantly pulled her doughnut in half and
handed half to her mother. Then she leaned forward, around her mother, to talk to the college girl, who was, Nell discovered, watching them.

“Mom didn’t have breakfast,” she said. “She’s hungry, and she gets sick when she’s hungry.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I don’t have any more doughnuts,” the girl said. “My friends gave me a bag when they brought me down to the bus, and I ate two of them. I’m really sorry,” she said to Nell earnestly.

To Nell’s terrible chagrin, this girl’s kindness made tears spring into her eyes and streak down her face. “That’s all right,” she said. “You’re so nice to give the children doughnuts. It’s so nice of you.”

The girl looked slightly uncomfortable at the extremity of Nell’s gratitude. “Oh it’s nothing, really,” she said. “It’s just doughnuts. I have to watch my weight, you know.”

“Well, thank you very much,” Nell said. Then she felt compelled to add, “Please don’t mind my crying. I always cry when I’m tired.” She forced a huge false smile on her face.

The girl smiled back, a gentle puzzled smile. She reached into her bag and took a textbook and began to read. Nell crammed the entire doughnut half in her mouth and chewed. There, she thought, that would hold her until she reached home. She leaned her head back against the bus seat. She would take a long hot bath when she got home. She would make a pot of coffee and drink it thickened with milk and sugar. She’d put on her elephant robe. She’d let the children invite friends over to play. She’d spend the afternoon and evening in bed, trying to recover from her cold, trying to recover from love.