She Poured Out Her Heart (45 page)

“What did it look like?” She had a dread of making weird noises or crossing her eyes or worse.

“You went kind of limp. Your eyes were still open. Like you were having an attack. I'm glad you came to, I wouldn't know what to do if you were dead. Does that happen a lot to you? Do you have some condition or something?”

Jane guessed she couldn't blame him for not wanting to end a date with body disposal. “It's nothing dangerous. Sometimes I zone out. It's like I was talking about, living in my head. It's like . . .” She hesitated. “Like an orgasm in my brain.”

“You're kidding.” His eyes grew round, trying to fathom this. “Wow, you should teach people how to do that. Can you do it whenever you want?”

“No, it sneaks up on me.” She wasn't used to talking about her episodes—orgasm in the brain, how had she come up with that?—and she hurried to change the subject. “Anyway I'm fine now. Better than fine. You're . . .” She searched for a compliment. “. . . I think you have superpowers too.”

“Yeah?” He was pleased. “Yeah, the Amazing Dick Man!”

Jane shook her head. “Eww. Too much.”

“Sorry.” He took the empty bowl from her and set it on the floor. “Come here,” he said, pulling her onto his lap.

“I have to go home.”

“One for the road.”

“Patrick, I'm already dressed and everything.”

“And I bet you can do it all over again.”

This time she was on top of him while he put his hands on her hips and bounced her up and down. It took him longer this time and she
started to get sore and chafed and she didn't think she could manage to come again but he had her turn around so that she was still on top but with her back to him, and he reached around with one hand to tickle it out of her. This one was different, almost painful, her insides clenching and unclenching, and there was no rest because now she had to hold on while he took his turn, a hard ride to the end.

They rolled apart and let their hearts and breathing calm, and Patrick got up and fetched a blanket from the bedroom and they wrapped up in it, and in each other, and slept.

Jane woke suddenly, not knowing what time it was but judging from the quiet of the street outside that it was late, probably very late. She rolled away from Patrick, who was on his back, snoring lightly, made her way to the bathroom, and tried not to think any hard thoughts.

Back in the living room Jane found her purse and pulled out her phone. It was twenty after two. She'd turned the phone off at the start of the evening and now she saw that she had two texts from Eric:
Where are you?
, and,
Are you all right? Call me
. There were also three missed calls and two voice mails, the last one an hour ago. Her first guilty thought was that something had happened to the children, but she recognized this as something she had fabricated, and anyway, Daddy Doctor could handle a crisis on his own for once.

Jane got dressed, all except for her shoes, which she carried to keep from making noise. She crouched down next to him. “Patrick?” she said, but softly, since she didn't really want to wake him, only wanted to admire him, lying there as if he were dead, this beautiful dead thing she had killed. She let herself out the door, managed the stairs as best she could. Her legs felt weak, as if she was a puppet come unstrung. Her car was where she'd left it, and there was no one on the street to waylay or distress her. She was glad when she got as far as sitting in the driver's seat, the doors locked, the engine starting up like a champ; she thought that after this achievement, everything else might be managed. She was a mess indeed, but she was beginning to get used to being a mess.

The radio news station played the same ads it always did, the GPS announced the route in miles and hundreds of yards, everything was the same except herself. Her skin seemed to be dissolving into molecules, her head was full of clouds and ache, and every so often her secret parts sent out a tremor. Maybe she should have called Eric at some strategic point, made up some story he'd have to believe; well, too late for that.

Too late also to have any hope of slipping inside and climbing the stairs to her own bed, because the lights were on downstairs. She pulled the car into its space in the garage and came in through the back door. Then opened the refrigerator, took out the orange juice, poured herself a glass and drank. She heard Eric coming down the stairs and then he was in the doorway, trying to decide what sort of unpleasant face to make. “What happened to you?” he demanded.

“Nothing.” Which was not really true, but was true in the sense he meant. “I'm fine.”

“Where have you been all this time? Don't tell me the play went on this late.”

He was wearing one of his sleep costumes, plaid flannel pants and a gray T-shirt printed with the Beer Nuts logo, something he'd thought was funny back in med school. Jane allowed herself a detached thought about the clothes men wore for lounging. As Eric's hair receded in front he'd taken to growing it longer in back, which seemed like the entirely wrong sort of vanity. Jane was aware that she was comparing him to Patrick and for a moment she felt sorry for him, then all that went away. She said, “Since when did you care what I do?”

“I care that you said you'd be home at a reasonable hour, not three in the morning.”

Jane finished her orange juice, rinsed the glass, and put it in the sink. “I believe I said that I might be late.”

“The play got out at ten thirty. I checked. What did you do, close a bar?”

He'd folded his arms, an absurd posture given the plaid pajama pants,
the shelf of belly he'd developed over the last year or two, his untidy hair, everything she no longer loved about him.

“I didn't go to the play. I went to see my boyfriend.”

Jane waited but it was taking him some extra effort to speak, to choose among his options, anger or disbelief or scorn, and she took advantage of this to leave the kitchen through the other door and so not have to pass by him. “His name is Patrick,” she said, on her way out of the room.

H
ere is the poem Jane wrote a week later:

The angel on his arm

rising from her scrolls of purple ink

her wings her twirly hair her angel gown all drawn

in curves, said:

Darlin', sweetie-o

pretty pretty pretty

oh honey babe

you two, you and him, should go for a ride

without a car. All alone

except for of course, me.

Because I go everywhere with him.

I am the angel of taverns and bottles and dollars left on the bar.

I am the angel of last call

in charge of sobering up and good intentions and bad days

when my name is Screw It All To Hell

or Who Cares.

But remember, skin is where I live

and sometimes

sugar bear, sis, ladyface,

I can make you fly.

S
he said Patrick? Patrick Doyle?”

“Just Patrick, that's all.”

“And you're sure about that.”

“It's the one thing I'm sure about,” Eric said, irritated and glum. It was Monday night, almost nine, which was late for them to be meeting, and ordinarily they would be in bed together instead of sitting at Bonnie's kitchen table. He'd called and said he needed to talk to her. He needed to talk to her about Jane. Jane told Eric she was going into the city to see a play and instead had come home looking like something the cat dragged in and announced that she had a boyfriend. Whose name was Patrick.

Bonnie said, “I doubt if . . .” and then stopped herself. She didn't want to get into the saga of herself and Patrick. Specifically the part where she'd had sex with him not so very long ago. Or the part where she'd called him two days earlier. Which had been a mistake she didn't want to be reminded of. Anyway, for Eric, the important part was “boyfriend.”

He said, “I mean, Jane? Where would she even find somebody? It's not like she has some big social life. And when? She's almost always with the kids.”

Bonnie did not point out that even busy surgeons were able to find such opportunities. She said, “I guess she wants to get even with you. With me.” Patrick? No way. It was Jane making things up, throwing out the name for a reason. Though she didn't care to think what that reason might be.

She didn't want to think about Patrick either, and now she had to. She'd called him because she was still angry, and because she never could get over things, and always wanted the last, or at least the loudest, word. She didn't want to sleep with him anymore, she really didn't (unless perhaps, immediately afterwards they could both be hit in the head hard enough to forget all about it), but maybe she had wanted him to want to so she could tell him to drop dead.

The conversation had not begun well and then had gotten worse. He'd answered, at least. Bonnie had not been sure he would. “Hey, listen, it's not a good time for me to talk, I'm trying to get someplace.”

“Oh. Work?”

“No, just out.” He wasn't going to tell her where. Bonnie heard street noise. He'd be walking since he no longer had a car. His not having a car now seemed like one more thing to hold against him.

“Well, I won't keep you. Just wanted to know how you've been.”

“Fine.” After a moment, he said, “How about you?”

“Great. Well, normal. I guess nobody says they're normal, huh? It's always ‘great.' I wonder how come?” Bonnie waited but he didn't register any opinion. “How's work going?”

“Yeah, it's busy. Real busy. Nuts.”

“Lots of job stress in those executive positions,” Bonnie said. It came out sounding meaner than she'd intended.

“What? Listen, I can't talk now, I've got too much going on.”

“Uh huh. Being busy sure comes in handy when you owe people money.” She had not meant to bring up the money. But he wasn't paying any attention to her.

“What's that supposed to mean? Look, I'll pay you back. I tried to. I had the money but I couldn't find you.”

“I'm sure you looked real hard.” It wasn't all that much money. But she didn't want to feel used, ripped off, although that was exactly how she felt.

“If I get you your money, would you leave me alone? Because I don't think this is such a good idea, you and me seeing each other.”

The hurt part of that didn't reach her right away, like stubbing your toe and the nerve taking a moment to twinge. She said, “We're not ‘seeing each other.' This is a phone call.”

“Whatever you say.”

It infuriated her that he didn't care enough to fight with her. “I know it's not a good idea. You were never a good idea, I hate to break it to you. Just a really available bad idea. Have fun with whatever lucky girl's buying your drinks tonight, I'm sure you found one.”

“Yeah? I hear you've been keeping pretty busy yourself.”

In the space of silence before she could come up with a response, he said he had to go and hung up.

Why had he said that? She'd raged and wept, thinking too late of all the hateful things she might have said. It served her right; calling him was the kind of thing the old crazy Bonnie would have done, the addicted-to-drama Bonnie she'd been trying to leave behind. Calling had been backsliding, falling off the wagon. How many different, tangled ways could she feel guilty? Now, trying to navigate between explanations and lies, she told Eric, “I know a Patrick but Jane's never met him. I can't imagine it's the same guy.”

Eric had not been listening, she realized to her relief. He was still preoccupied with Jane's declaration. But now she had at least inoculated herself against possible accusations. Eric said, “I can't get over it. I know it seems kind of hypocritical of me—”

Here Bonnie made her face of polite disbelief: Come on. “OK, really,
really hypocritical of me, but this is going to take some getting used to. If Jane has somebody too. Go ahead, tell me I'm a pig and a jerk.”

“You can't really blame her. That's not fair.”

“It's not about fairness. It's not really rational. But it changes things.”

“How, exactly.” She didn't have much patience for whatever male prerogative he was attempting to access. Though you had to admit, it wasn't anything you could have seen coming from Jane. Maybe Jane was really through with Eric, and the two of them would go their separate ways.

Maybe Bonnie and Eric could then have a life together: patched together, imperfect, happy. So her mind raced ahead with devious, hopeful plans, when she ought not assume any such thing. Because everything between them was balanced as if on the edge of a blade. “How does it change things?” she repeated.

Eric didn't answer right away. Bonnie waited him out, sick with foreboding. Then he said, “It's one more fault line. One more piece of instability my kids shouldn't have to put up with. She's their mother, I know it's not fair to expect more of a mother, but that's the breaks. Kids may not know exactly what's going on but they're intuitive, they know when something's not right.”

When he didn't say more, Bonnie said, “So what do you think you should do?”

“I guess some of that's up to Jane. Let's see how far she wants to carry this boyfriend thing. Maybe she was just trying to get back at me, out of spitefulness. She has that side to her, you know?”

“She does,” Bonnie agreed, thinking of the Casserole of Death. “Do you want me to talk to her?”

“Is that smart?”

“I don't know. I guess she could tell me to go to hell, or refuse to take my call.” Now that she'd voiced it, the idea solidified and began to summon arguments for itself. There was no reason they couldn't talk once in
a while, and after all, Jane had called her after Claudia died. Jane might have come up with the name Patrick just to aggravate her. There might, in fact, be no boyfriend and this was just another of Jane's productions, and there would be nothing, really, to worry about. “I could at least try.” And if somehow, in the name of wonder, Jane had managed to align herself with Patrick, didn't she want to know how? The idea began to glow with the certainty of not just a good but a necessary course of action. “I mean, I'd be willing.”

“Well . . . I suppose you could call and fish around.”

“No. It's better to ask straight out.”

“If you think so.” He stood up. “Ask me how my day was.”

“How was your day, honey?”

“I repaired two mitral valves and chewed out a resident for not following up on his postop patients.”

“And you didn't leave a scalpel in anybody's chest,” Bonnie said, which was something they often signed off with, a lame joke—except when such things really happened—which had become a kind of shorthand for cheer up, it's not so bad.

“Pretty sure I didn't.”

They embraced and Bonnie let herself rest against him. “We're OK, aren't we?”

“More than OK.”

And then they drew apart and he left and Bonnie watched from the window as he got into his car, flashed the lights as a signal to her, and drove off. She thought they were OK, at least for now, and it was better not to look too far down the road since it was not as if he had promised her, well, anything.

Bonnie waited a couple of days to call Jane, and of course by then it was not feeling like such a great idea at all. But how else to learn what Jane might or might not be up to? Bonnie needed to be able to talk Eric out of any bad second thoughts he might be having. They'd managed
their little bit of precarious happiness so far, but how easily it could be threatened.

She'd imagined Jane not answering, but she picked up right away. “I thought you'd probably call,” Jane said.

“Hello to you too.”

“Hang on a minute.” Jane put the phone down and there was the racket of some household machine starting up, the clothes dryer maybe. When you called Jane, her appliances were usually included in the conversation. She came back on the line. “OK, sorry.”

“So, can we talk?”

“Sure, why not.”

“All right, well.” Bonnie ran through and discarded the different scenarios she'd rehearsed. Jane sounded noncommittal, almost breezy, and there didn't seem any point in guile. “Why don't you tell me about your boyfriend.”

“You know what's funny, the whole time we were in school, and even later on, we never went out with the same guy. Never liked who the other came up with. And now here we are.”

“Where are we exactly, Jane?”

“You remember those stupid comic books you used to love? Remember the story about the guy who was a big galoot? That's who he is, isn't he. A big galoot.”

“Who is?”

“Patrick,” Jane said, and Bonnie felt something settle inside of her. She had not really wanted to believe it.

“How did this happen? I'm not understanding.”

“I don't think that's really important.”

“We're talking about the same Patrick, right? My Patrick?”

“We should probably steer clear,” Jane said, “of expressions of ownership.”

“Did you go looking for him? Were you trying to get back at me? Is that what this is about?”

“No,” Jane said after a moment. “No and no. But if it upsets you, I guess I don't mind that.”

“What's the plan here, huh? What does that mean, he's your boyfriend, you think he's going to take you on movie dates or to the prom? He's not that guy. He's not anybody reliable.”

“I know that,” Jane said, sounding patient. “But thanks for looking out for my best interests.”

That shut Bonnie up. Jane said, “I see no reason why I can't live my own life while you and Eric are busy carrying on with each other. I'm in love with Patrick. I don't expect you to understand—”

“Oh, now it's true love,” Bonnie said, wanting to mock Jane, laugh her out of it. A kind of panic was rising in her, beating against her ribs.

“I don't know about true love. But it's some kind of love. Bodily. Erotic. Of course it came as a total surprise. A shock, even.”

“You don't even sound like yourself,” Bonnie said, meaning it as an accusation.

“Really? That would be so interesting. You know what else is interesting? I've been doing some writing. I've never done that before. Poetry, mostly, but some journal odds and ends too. It's as if all of a sudden, I have all these ideas and feelings I need to get down on paper.”

“I can't believe this,” Bonnie began, trying to imagine the two of them, Jane and Patrick, even having a conversation together, let alone sex. “You don't have one thing in common with him.”

“Well sometimes that's what you need,” Jane said, again with her irritating patience. “And I'm going to keep seeing him. That's what you're trying to find out, isn't it?”

“It won't last.”

“However long it lasts it's fine with me.”

“Are you going to leave Eric?”

“Why would I want to do that? Leave and go where? I guess he's not very happy with me. Well you can tell him, since he doesn't want to ask me himself, that I'm going to see Patrick whenever I can. Eric
should get used to the idea that we have one of those zippy, modern marriages.”

“He doesn't want that,” Bonnie said, aware that she was arguing not just a losing cause but an indefensible one. “I think he'd like everything to just calm down.”

“I'm being perfectly calm,” Jane said. “I feel, I guess, energized, and sometimes I get a little swoony, a little giggly about the whole thing, but I wouldn't say I'm, what's the opposite of calm. Rowdy? If you're all of a sudden jealous, that's your problem.”

“I don't care about Patrick.”

“You sure about that? Because it wasn't all that long ago you were going on and on about him.”

The panic rose up in her again. She shoved it back down. “That was nothing. Patrick's nothing. I love Eric.”

“Well that's nice. That makes everything all right.”

“Look, I don't blame you for feeling raw about things, and nobody's seen more of my sketchy behavior than you, all right? But this is different, I need it to be different. I'm done with all the crazy stuff. It's not good for me. It never was.” Bonnie considered bringing up Carl Rizzi, and the way you thought something was normal, because you grew up with it. But she only said, “I need to settle down.”

“With my husband.”

“Yes.” Defeated.

“And you're worried that if I'm not playing along, if I'm not the long-suffering idiot I've been all this while, it's going to disrupt the status quo. I guess I'm not very invested in how tragic that would be. You know? But if you get in my way, I'll tell Eric all about you and Patrick. Then you can explain to him about how you've settled down and this is different for you. I have to go, Grace has another appointment for her allergies.”