Ordinary Life (15 page)

George took the kids to his mother’s while Phyllis finished packing. She had kissed their foreheads, looked into their eyes seriously, promised to bring them something—clothes for the twelve-year-old, a stuffed animal for the eight-year-old. “Okay, okay!” they said, and pulled away. They were ready to stay up late, eat sweets for breakfast—they liked staying with Grandma.

Phyllis lined the suitcases up by the front door. When George came back, she pointed to them. “All set,” she said. Her voice had lost some vitality—she was nervous. George nodded. She carried out the small one; he took the bigger two. He complained a little—“What’s
in
here?”—but it was rather flirtatious, and Phyllis thought, Already it’s better. Those magazines are absolutely right.

They drove for a while, talked about how the kids would do. Then it seemed there was nothing to say. It felt like diving into a shallow pond, hitting your head on a bottom you thought was far away. Phyllis felt it was her responsibility to think of something to say, since the trip had been her idea. She wanted to be entertaining. She asked George, “Say you had no money, and you found someone’s wallet who was loaded. I mean, there were hundreds and hundreds of dollars in there—the thing was just bulging. Would you take out any money before you returned it?”

“No.”

The brevity of his response disappointed her. He didn’t understand what she was trying to do. “No, I mean … Well, suppose your mother was starving. Or dying. Or both.”

He looked at her severely. “No, Phyllis. I wouldn’t take any money.” Then he returned his gaze to the road, shifted in his seat uncomfortably. I know where he wishes he was, she thought—not with me. Somewhere else. Work, or alone. She remembered the print she’d shown him recently that she’d wanted for the living room. He’d said nothing, stood far away from it, jangled change in his pocket. She’d said, “Well, I mean, I just liked those colors …,” and then stopped, humiliated. They hadn’t bought it.

She turned to look out the window and considered the possibility that she was being oversensitive, unfair. Perhaps she
should
see someone, a therapist in some peaceful office. But she didn’t know how that could work. They would be, after all, only two human beings. She would sit in a chair with pain expanding inside her. She would try to talk about it, and cry. The therapist would hand her Kleenex. At the end, Phyllis would write out a check in the amount equivalent to a cartful of groceries. She doubted she’d
feel better. She thought she’d end up saying she would like to stop coming. “I don’t see that you really figure anything out here,” she would say.

She sighed, a small sound, and stared out the window at the landscape. There was nothing to see, really. George had taken the interstate, dismissing Phyllis’s suggestion to take the more scenic route. “That way is hours longer,” he’d said. “Let’s just get there.” She looked at his profile, saw, surprised, a certain softening around his chin. Midlife, she thought, and the word seemed foreign to her, made up, an object she could hold away from herself and look at.

It bothered her how George could be so comfortable with their silence. They could say anything now! She wanted to know about him. She remembered her girlfriend telling about something she did with license plates: “Let the letters you see suggest a phrase to you,” she’d said. “You’d be surprised at what you come up with. You find out what’s
really
going on in your head. No kidding—just try it.” Phyllis looked at the plate on the car ahead of them. DTH, it said, and Phyllis thought, Don’t Think Hard. She saw LBU and thought, Left Best Unsaid. She smiled a little. She started to tell George to try it, but then didn’t. She waited for more plates. She saw MNL and thought, Maybe Now Leave. Then she thought, My God, I think she’s right. She saw ADI and MHI and thought, All Day Insane and Me Hurt Inside.

“George,” she said.

“Yeah.” His face was calm, open. He was being friendly.

“Lisa told me this thing, about license plates. That if you look at them and make phrases out of the letters you see, it will tell you what’s going on in your mind.”

“I know what’s going on in my mind. I’m starving.”

“No, I mean subconsciously. I just did it, and it’s true. Try it.”

He looked at the MHI plate and said, “My Home Intact.” Neither of them said anything at first, and then Phyllis swallowed and said, “Uh-huh.”

He said, again, “I’m starving,” and she said, “Then let’s find a place to eat. I could eat.”

IJG passed on the back of a blue station wagon. I Just Groan, she thought. She saw MYY on a red Honda Civic and thought, My Yearning Yells. She laughed a little. George looked at her and said, “What?”

She shook her head. It was nothing, her gesture said. An accident. PDT she saw. Please Don’t Tell.

They pulled into the parking lot of a restaurant: a low, white building, red-and-white gingham curtains, hand-lettered signs, huge trucks parked at manly angles off to the side. Phyllis was pleased. She liked places like this, and they were hard to find anymore. “Maybe they’ll have meat loaf,” she told George. He reached for her hand, and she felt a rush of displeasure. She pulled away to rummage in her purse. “Want a mint?” she asked.

He looked at her. “We’re going in to
eat
, Phyllis.”

They sat at a corner table. Phyllis looked out the window. Cars were lined up, license plates all in a row. At the end was a battered pickup truck, MPL 709. My Poor Life, she thought. Many Problems Living. She looked at George reading the menu, studied his hands. His left thumbnail was deformed from a peach can falling on it when he was seven. She knew this about him. His hair was thinning in a small, cruel circle at the back of his head, and he ached about it. She knew that too. She heard the crunch of gravel as a car left the lot and looked at its plate. NKA 746. Never Know Another, she thought, and then thought, Won’t I? Something
inside her crumpled, fell in on itself. I will see a therapist, she thought. Something is so wrong.

They ordered cheeseburgers, onion rings, and chocolate shakes. They were being bad together, and it was fun. She knew every pair of socks he owned. They ate routinely from each other’s plate. They had made two children together, astonishing cellular miracles, the best things in their lives—they had done this together. George had been there when each girl had been born, had seen them recoil at the sudden brightness of life, had heard them wail with tiny, trembling jaws, had seen their chests rise evenly as they breathed alone for the first time. But even then, Phyllis thought, even then there was this missing of each other. George hadn’t cried, not even the first time. He’d looked embarrassed; and though he sat next to her it was as though the essence of himself was across the room, staring out the window. Phyllis had hidden the few tears she’d shed, kissed George on the cheek as he left, reminded him to let the dog out. It was after he was gone that she’d unwrapped the baby. She’d caressed the tightly clenched fists, the apricot cheeks. She’d traced the whorl of hair at the back of her daughter’s head, watched the rhythm of her heartbeat in the soft spot. “I am your mother,” she’d said. And then she cried freely, happily, staring in grateful disbelief at the size of the baby’s toes.

Recently Phyllis had had a brief affair. All the time, the man said things to her like this: “I want your presence. I want your being. I want you to brush up against me in the hall in the house where we live.” He told her her collarbones were beautiful; he kissed the gums above her teeth, telling her he wanted to be everywhere on her. He read poetry to her, fed her slices of fresh fruit. Her love for him was huge, frightening, and invigorating,
but she quit the affair for the way her children looked asleep, and for the touching hole in George’s underwear that she found on the day she was going to tell him she wanted out. But she missed that man. Sometimes his memory would spear her, and she would need to take a deep breath to keep on.

George was making noise with his straw. She looked at him, wondered if he had ever had a lover. She could ask him. But if she asked him, he would ask her, and then what? Their relationship was like a complicated arrangement of pickup sticks. Who wanted to go first? It was too dangerous.

Still, she wanted something. She said, “Know what I read the other day? That there was this mystery out in the country: A man found a house sparrow, decapitated. Then there were four more found, all by other people. Everyone was really upset, and they called ornithologists and everything, but no one could explain it. Then some guy saw one day what was happening: a grackle did it—just pecked at the necks of the sparrows until their heads came off.”

George pushed away his plate. “Jesus.”

She sighed, leaned forward. “Oh, I’m sorry. I just mean, my God, isn’t it incredible? Why do you think he did that?”

“Well, he cracked up. I suppose birds do that, too.”

“But it’s so unsettling if birds go crazy, too. It makes everything so untrustworthy.”

“Everything
is
untrustworthy. Anything can happen, at any time.” He seemed so cold saying this. She wondered what he was telling her.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean what do I mean?” He signaled for the check. “The world is imperfect, Phyllis. You always forget.”

They got back into the car. “Do the license plate thing with me,” Phyllis said. She wanted to know.

George snorted lightly, then pointed to a black Saab. “Okay, T-I-N. Telling Is Nothing.” Time Is Now, she thought. “F-N-W,” he pointed to next. “First, Never Whine.” Find New Woman, she thought.

He got back onto the freeway, put on the radio, turned the volume low. “Did you see what Rach was studying last night? About stars. She wants a telescope. I think we’ll get her one.”

“Don’t you think they’re too expensive?”

“Just a little one, used.”

“Okay.” She stared out the window, bit at her lip. Then she turned off the radio and said, “You know, Rachel told me about this one kind of star, a white dwarf. It collapses inward.”

“Yeah, I know.”

You don’t know, she thought. Oh, no you don’t. “I feel like that star, George.” There. She’d said it.

“What do you mean?”

“I feel like I’m collapsing inward. Like the star.”

“Jesus, Phyllis! Can’t we ever just have a good time?”

She examined her fingernails, held her breath. Here was the moment. She thought of her lover standing in the middle of his kitchen in his flannel shirt and brown corduroy pants, stroking her hair and telling her she didn’t even know how beautiful she was. Then she thought of Rachel reading about the stars, sighing contentedly before sleep, both of her parents in the room right next to hers.

“Where do you think we could get a telescope?” she asked.

“I don’t know—we’ll look in the paper, I guess.”

A Porsche passed them, going fast. She saw the plate before it
roared ahead. It was a funny one, a triple letter. NNN 733. Never, Never, Never, she thought, aching. “Hey, look,” George said. “No News Nearing.”

“Right,” she said. She thought of the star being polite, sparing the universe the wreckage of its destruction. She thought of the grackle, its brain off-kilter, its own kind of destruction no better understood. She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes.

George cleared his throat. “Phyllis?”

“What?”

“Please don’t leave me.”

She opened her eyes. He was staring straight ahead, immobile. She said nothing for a while, then wondered if she’d heard him correctly. “What did you say, George?”

“I asked you not to leave me.”

“Well, I … I’m not going to.”

“I know it’s hard for you,” he said.

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

She turned to face him. “You know, George, so much would be helped if you’d just
talk
to me.”

“Well. Men don’t talk.”

“Some men do.”

He was quiet then. His face hardened, the air in the space between them seemed to change, and she understood that he knew. She made a small gesture with her hand toward him. “I’m sorry, George. It’s over, you know.”

“I know. For a while now.”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t see any point in discussing it, Phyllis. These things happen.”

She nodded, looked out the window. She saw a huge field of flowers. They were tall, an impossibly beautiful purple color. They grew straight toward the sun, sure of themselves. Phyllis thought about saying she wanted to stop and pick a bouquet for their room, but she knew George would object.
Let’s just get there
. But then, at that moment, he pulled over, got out of the car, and went into the field. He picked several flowers, handed them to her through her open window with a shy flourish. “Here,” he said. His feet were sinking slowly in the black mud.

He climbed into the car and started driving again. He wouldn’t look at her. Phyllis stared into the center of one of the flowers. There were four fragile filaments, arching up, leaning forward, expectant. She felt her eyes fill with tears and she closed her lids against them.

“I made this snow tunnel once,” George said.

She looked at him. “Pardon?”

“I said I made this snow tunnel once. The winter I turned eleven, it snowed about three feet. Alan Hirschfelt and I dug this really long tunnel in my backyard. It was freezing out—our moms made us wear those dopey hats with earflaps and chin straps and we were mad as hell about it. It took us hours to make that tunnel. We met in the middle just before it got dark. The snow looked blue. We were so excited when we were done—no breaks, just one long, perfect tunnel. We met right in the middle.”

“So what did you do?” Phyllis asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean when you were finished, what did you
do
?”

“Why, we shook hands. I remember that. We shook hands and then we went home.”

“Oh,” Phyllis said. She took in a breath. “I appreciate your telling me that, George. I like those kinds of stories very much.”

“Okay.” He turned the radio on, and she closed her eyes again. When she felt his hand over hers, she pushed her fingers up to slide between his. She had memorized his knuckles long ago, but the feeling now was quite new—full of hope, she realized, and full, too, of the exquisite relief of forgiveness.