The Amateur Marriage (26 page)

“Why are you telling me this?” Pauline asked.

“Hmm?”

“What made you mention it?”

“Why, I just thought you’d be interested, hon.”

“You meant something by it, didn’t you.”

“What?”

“You told me this for a reason, I know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“You think
we’re
being killed by degrees, don’t you. Our marriage. And you’re trying to claim that I’m the one who’s doing it.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

No, she was not out of her mind. She supposed it might sound that way to an uninformed observer, but she’d been married to Michael long enough so she knew what he was implying, all right. She could read him like a book. She knew.

Eventually she dropped off to sleep, although she was so keyed up that she hadn’t thought she’d be able to. She woke with a start some time later and looked over at the clock: 3:15. It was pitch-dark and silent, the insects quiet, no traffic, and Michael’s side of the bed was empty. Maybe he’d had an accident. Yes, he must have! She knew it with such certainty, all at once, that it seemed she had received some kind of telepathic transmission. How else to explain his absence? He would never spend the money for a hotel room. He didn’t have any friends he could stay with. No, he’d driven into a ditch somewhere, befuddled with champagne and lack of sleep. And now he was bleeding to death underneath his car, and it was up to her to telephone the police. Except she was too embarrassed to phone. What would she say? “My husband walked out in a snit and I know he must have been in a wreck; I can feel it.” “Sure, lady,” they’d say. Besides which, she had the illogical sense that she’d used up her quota of calls to the police when Lindy left. “Hey, Sarge, it’s that Mrs. Anton. Seems as how she’s mislaid another loved one.”

Michael had no right to put her in this position. No right at all. She willed herself to sleep again.

In the morning while she was fixing breakfast she had a sudden realization. He must have spent the night with one of the children. Wasn’t that spiteful of him! He’d have told them she’d kicked him out of the house; they’d have felt sorry for him. Karen was the more likely possibility, because she had an apartment downtown, very convenient, just off the Jones Falls Expressway. Pauline stopped buttering toast and turned to eye the phone. Call Karen and ask? Or not. She could hear sounds from Pagan’s room—the rat-a-tat of last night’s baseball scores on his clock radio. If she did call, she should do it before he came into the kitchen. She considered for another moment, and then she picked up the receiver and dialed.

“Hello,” Karen said.

“Hi, sweetie! Did I wake you?”

“No, no, I’ve been up for ages. I’m trying to finish a paper that’s due first thing tomorrow.”

“Well, I just wanted to thank you for making time for dinner in the middle of the week.”

“Oh, that’s okay.”

“I know how busy you are.”

“That’s okay.”

There was a pause.

“And thanks again for our gift,” Pauline said. “What a wonderful idea!”

“That was all Sally’s doing.”

“Yes, I sort of figured. Sally’s such a good organizer. But it was nice of you to chip in on it.”

“You’re very welcome,” Karen said.

“So!” Pauline said. Pagan’s radio grew louder, which meant he must have opened his door. “So, did Dad stop by your place last night?” she asked in a hurry.

“Dad? Stop by . . . here?”

“I guess not.”

Pagan entered the kitchen, carrying his knapsack by the straps. “Why would he come here?” Karen asked.

“Oh, no reason, really!”

“I thought he was home with you.”

“Yes, but we had this little . . . you know; something blown way, way out of proportion . . .”

Pagan dropped his knapsack to the floor with a thud, or more like a boom—what must it weigh?—and settled into his chair and looked over at her expectantly.

“What,” Karen was saying, “you had a fight on your
anniversary?
”

“Well, not exactly a—”

But she didn’t want to say the word “fight” in front of Pagan. “It was nothing, really,” she said. “Heavens, look at the time! I should get Pagan to school.”

“Are you saying Dad has gone off someplace?”

“Hmm? Oh. Well, he isn’t here right at this moment, but—”

“Can I have Cheerios?” Pagan asked her.

“No, Pagan, I already made toast. Sorry, sweets, I have to go!”

“Wait,” Karen said, but Pauline hung up.

“I’m tired of toast,” Pagan said. “I had toast yesterday. Can’t I have Cheerios?”

“Fine. Here,” Pauline told him. She took the Cheerios box from the cupboard and set it down smartly in front of him. Then she reached for the phone again and dialed George.

“But where’s a bowl? Where’s milk?” Pagan asked, at the same time that Sally said “Hello?”

Drat. Oh, well. “Good morning, Sally!” Pauline said.

“Oh, hi, Pauline.”

“Just wanted to thank you for coming last night and for that lovely, lovely picture!”

“I’m so glad you liked it. You don’t think the gilt is too froufrou, do you?”

“The gilt. Oh, my, no! No, it’s lovely, Sally.”

“George said it should have been just a plain white mat. When I brought it home he said, ‘Why the gilt edging?’ I said,
‘Now
you tell me. I asked you before I took it in; I said, “Do you have anything special in mind you want to do with this?” and you said you didn’t know anything about such things; you’d leave it in my hands.’ But if you’d like me to get it rematted, Pauline—”

“Goodness, no! I love the gilt! I think the gilt’s the best thing about it!”

“Oh,” Sally said. “Does that mean . . . Do you wish there’d been gilt on the frame as well?”

“Absolutely not,” Pauline said firmly. “Both of us like it just the way it is. Michael expressly said so. He isn’t here right this minute or I’m sure he’d want to tell you himself. Gosh, I’m not sure
where
he is! You haven’t seen him, have you?”

“Seen . . . Michael? Wouldn’t he be at work?”

“Well, I’ll have him call you when he gets home so he can thank you in person.”

“Oh, there’s no need for . . . Was he supposed to be coming here? I don’t understand.”

“Not as far as I know, he wasn’t,” Pauline said. “Well, thanks again. Bye-bye!”

She hung up but went on standing at the phone a moment, pinching her lower lip between her thumb and index finger.

“Grandma,” Pagan said, “I need a bowl for my Cheerios.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Pagan, you’re old enough by now to get your own bowl!” Pauline said.

But she reached for one anyhow, and slammed it onto the table so hard that Pagan blinked.

Driving back from Pagan’s school, she passed by the grocery store. It was right on her way, almost. She just had to dip the eentsiest bit to the south to come upon it: a narrow, one-story brick building set between a pharmacy and a real estate office, with a long black signboard across the top reading
ANTON’S FINE FOODS
in gold italic letters. Tasteful plantings occupied so much of the gravel parking strip out front that Michael himself always parked in back, among the Dumpsters and trash cans; so she had no way of knowing whether he was there. She pulled into a space near the pharmacy, as far from the grocery as possible, and shut off her engine and sat a moment, debating. Then she made up her mind and got out of the car.

Funny how this new Anton’s—so much airier and brighter than the old one—still had the same smells, more intimate somehow than the smells in a supermarket. But the shelves were lined with expensive foods nobody in St. Cassian’s could have afforded, and there was a meat counter here and even a florist’s department. Over by the produce section Pauline spotted Michael’s manager, a pale, fat, damp-haired man who always wore a gold cross on a chain so tight that it seemed embedded in his neck. She walked up to him and said, “Morning, Bart! I guess he’s in his office”—using an indulgent, wifely tone of voice.

“Yes, ma’am,” Bart said. “Or somewheres nearabouts. I just saw him.”

So there hadn’t been any accident, any car overturned in the ditch. Her worries had been for nothing. She felt more angry than relieved. “Well, thanks,” she told Bart. “I’ll go track him down,” and she set off toward the rear of the store, bypassing two young women in identical layered hairdos who were arranging a tennis date.

The office door, she saw, was open. Michael leaned against the door frame with his back to her, listening to what’s-her-name, the girl who’d taken over the books when Mrs. Bird retired. Letitia, that was it. Letitia was skewed around in her chair asking Michael some question, and Michael was nodding slowly and deeply. There was no reason that he should have grown aware of Pauline’s approach—she had a light step, she wore Keds—but he turned, all at once, as if he had somehow sensed her, and the look that came over his face was such a guilty, cornered look that she fancied, for an instant, that she’d interrupted a tryst. Then she understood that this was something worse, that he was sorry she had found him. (Had “tracked him down,” to use her own phrase.) She couldn’t have said how she knew this, but she knew it for a fact. He wasn’t happy to see her. The knowledge slammed into her so cruelly that she took a sharp step backward, bumping into someone’s grocery cart.

“Hi,” Michael said, and Letitia said, “Oh, hi, Mrs. Anton,” and gave her a cheerful wave and swiveled around to her adding machine.

Pauline said, “I was just wondering if you’d be home for supper tonight.”

Michael glanced toward Letitia, and then he came forward, closer but still at some distance. Almost too softly to be heard, he said, “I don’t think so, Pauline.”

The way he added her name at the end was humiliating—so solicitous and concerned, as if he were trying to break bad news gently. She felt stung. She said, “Well, good!”

Some tension eased in his expression. She heard herself say, “Wonderful! Just wonderful! Just stay away forever!” Her voice was somebody else’s, some wild, elated madwoman’s voice. She spun around, bumping again into a grocery cart—maybe the same one—and rushed down the aisle, past the registers, out of the store to her car.

She told no one. She spent the day discarding things, straightening drawers, cleaning closets. Supper was thrown together from stray tins she had unearthed while reorganizing the kitchen, but only Pagan ate. Pauline herself just watched from her end of the table. “Where’s Grandpa?” Pagan asked.

“At a meeting,” she told him.

He seemed to accept this, although Michael had never been known to attend a meeting before.

After supper Pagan went downstairs to watch TV and Pauline settled on the living-room couch facing the picture window. Dusk fell as she sat there but she didn’t switch on a lamp. She pleated the hem of her sweater between her fingers, over and over, and stared out at the trees growing steadily blacker behind the house across the street. From here the TV sounded like barking—
ruff-ruff-ruff
—cowboys shouting orders to each other above the gunshots. She knew she should go downstairs and check on Pagan, ask if he had any homework, offer to read him a book or play a board game, but she didn’t.

When the headlights blazed into the driveway she felt her pulse take a leap. She thought of Michael’s description the evening before: “seemed like all the blood came rushing back into my veins.” She reached for a magazine and opened it, blindly, so that when he walked in she appeared to be reading in the dark. He flicked on the overhead light and stared at her. She squinted against the brightness.

“I came for my clothes,” he told her.

“Oh.”

“Also, I’d like to arrange about Pagan.”

“Arrange . . . ?”

“I wouldn’t just desert him. We should talk about when I can see him.”

“Oh!” she said. “Well, go ahead! See him all you want! Keep him for good, if that’s how you feel! I’ll collect his belongings.”

“Okay,” Michael said, shrugging. “Fine.”

“No, wait! No!” She stood up, clutching the magazine to her chest. “Oh, Michael,” she said. “Why do we have to be this way?”

He gave it some thought before he answered. Then he said, “I don’t know.”

She saw that this was the literal truth. It was true for both of them. She sank back down on the couch, and he hesitated but turned, finally, and went off toward the rear of the house.

Every sound he made was identifiable. She didn’t have to be present. The attic stairway sliding through the trap door in the hall ceiling; his uneven tread up and down, twice, with suitcases clumsily knocking against the wooden steps; and then the stairway sliding back. Drawers in the bedrooms opening and closing, hangers in the closet grating along the rod, medicine-cabinet door squeaking in the bathroom. Then he went down to the rec room. She heard his murmur beneath the cowboys’ barks, but no response from Pagan. Probably Pagan’s voice was too thin to carry. Another murmur; then a silence. Was that for a farewell hug? (Michael was far more demonstrative with his grandchildren than he’d ever been with his children.) Footsteps—heavier and slower—climbing the stairs again and approaching. When he reappeared in the living-room doorway he had a suitcase in his right hand, a smaller suitcase hanging by its strap from his left shoulder, and a garment bag folded over his left arm.

“I’d like to take Pagan on weekends,” he said. “Pick him up Saturday mornings and bring him back Sunday evenings, if that’s all right with you.”

“Take him where?” she asked.

“I’ve rented an apartment in that new building across from the store.”

Ridiculously, she spent several seconds trying to think which building he was talking about. She believed it might be a beige stucco.

“I’m moving in on Friday,” he said. “Till then I’m at the Colts Road Hilton, if you need to get in touch with me.”