Thief of Dreams (11 page)

Whatever, by the time he'd carried in the last of the kindling and washed up for supper, almost all his sadness had drained away. Still, they had only just pulled up to the table and begun to pass around bowls and platters when the telephone rang two longs and three shorts, which meant it was for them and not one of the other parties on their line; and before Clara could set down a bowl of potatoes, Virginia was up, had snatched the heavy black receiver from its hook and shouted: “Virginia Marshall speaking!” Since the local telephone company was small and poor and used terribly outdated equipment—if you wanted to make a call, you had to crank the old black contraption to get an operator and then yell to be heard—there was no such thing as privacy, and everyone at the table listened openly.

“What?” Virginia shouted into the mouthpiece. “Who?” she yelled. But then her face lost all its anticipation, and she shouted: “I'll put Grandmother on!” and held the receiver out to Grandmother Marshall. “It's Uncle Edward,” she said with an embarrassed glance at James.

A current made of equal parts hope and fear ran through his stomach while his grandmother talked, repeating over and over again the bare circumstances of his mother's employment and the times when she might be found at home. “This Sunday morning would be the best time,” she said. “Yes, this Sunday morning!” she said in a loud but remarkably kind voice. “But James is here!” she shouted. “I say, James is right here!” And suddenly she was holding the receiver out to him and saying, “Come on, son, quickly, it's your poppa.”

At first he couldn't seem to hear anything but a great hum and crackle, but finally, submerged under that, he recognized snatches of his father's voice, deep and nasal and touched with the constant humor and sadness that always seemed to color it. Although the noise of long distance kept him from understanding most of what his father said and sometimes broke off pieces of words he did understand, he knew his father was telling him about streetcars and parks and telling him that something else wasn't so bad either. He had hoped his father was going to say he was coming home, but he knew from the familiar tone of salesmanship that his father was up to another matter entirely, which both thrilled him and frightened him completely. He heard his father say quite clearly that he missed them, and then the noise on the line closed in again like a fire popping and crackling. For a while he couldn't make out anything, and then he realized he was being asked a question.

“What?” he shouted, but he couldn't hear. “What?” he shouted again, and this time he heard two words: “… doin, son?”

“I'm doing fine,” he yelled.

Of the next question the only word he heard for sure was “school.”

“School's good!” he shouted.

Into a roar of static his father managed to slip four words: “… Sunday … tell … love her.”

“I will,” James shouted. “I will!”

He understood nothing of what his father said after that, except that it sounded final. “Good-bye,” he shouted, and as though beneath the sound of heavy rain, he heard the reply.

MADELINE TALLY

“It's just, you know, the
continuity
you miss. Is that the right word?” Madeline said.

Holding his hands together as though in prayer, Leslie touched his lips with his fingertips and gave her the slightest nod, his eyes looking straight into hers in a way that made her uncomfortable or at least unsure of herself.

“As though continuity were the whole purpose of it all, no matter what the marriage is like,” she said and took her eyes away from his—which were just a little too intense and intimate to suit her—and tried to glance casually around the restaurant as though the matter under discussion weren't really so important, as though it were actually quite trivial. She laughed briefly. “I'm sure my parents would agree that continuity is the whole point. And I feel like I'm committing a mortal sin. It scares me, as though I'm harming everyone's future in a way that can't be mended—mine, James's, my parents, yours.…” She looked at him again and found that his eyes were just the way she had left them.

“Are you sure you don't dread talking to him in the morning because you still love him?” he asked and gave her an indulgent smile across the dome of his fingertips.

“Don't be silly,” she said. “What reason has he ever given me to love him?”

“That wasn't my question,” he said. “What reason did he give you to marry him? You did marry him after all.”

“Well,” she said and laughed miserably, “that was probably because he was just about the only young man my poppa didn't scare away.”

Leslie looked up at the ceiling. “Jesus, but you confirm a man's worst nightmares sometimes, do you know that?”

“I don't understand,” she said. “You'll have to explain.”

“I don't think I care to,” Leslie said. “I'd rather order dessert. The pecan pie here is very good.”

“I don't know why I married him. Maybe because I was a young girl and didn't know anything. Maybe I was crazy. I don't know.”

“I just hope you don't look back on what's happening now and say the same thing,” Leslie said.

The thought had never occurred to her, at least not exactly in those terms. She felt what she felt. Sorrow. Resentment. Betrayal. Although she wasn't sure whether Edward Tally had betrayed her or she had betrayed herself, she knew her marriage had been one long series of unhappy situations. And of course she felt a great sadness, not only for all the years lost, but because she was going to have to look like a bad and selfish person, an evil woman, just for trying to put her life in order, just for trying to find a little bit of the happiness everyone else seemed to take for granted. But she wasn't likely to look back and think she'd been crazy. If anything she would look back and recognize the painful days when she'd first been able to see things with some clarity.

“I know exactly what he's going to do,” she said. “Tomorrow when he calls he's going to pretend that we've both been acting foolish, but he'll really mean I have. Oh, he'll admit he hasn't been treating me the way he should have, and he'll promise to do better. But he won't really change. He'll act just the way he's always acted because he doesn't see anything wrong with it. He'll expect me to come to Pittsburgh where nothing is familiar and I don't know a soul, and he'll stick me somewhere to cook and clean and make things nice for him, and pretty soon, maybe he'll come home and maybe he won't. No. I don't love him, and I want a divorce.

“Do you know what's funny?” she asked and tried to laugh, although her eyes welled up. “I don't think I ever did love him, but I wanted him to love me. If I could have made him do that, I might have been able to love him back.” She knew her face was doing something between laughing and crying and probably looked peculiar. “But he couldn't even see me. Does that make any sense?” she asked him. “Why are you looking at me like that? I want a divorce, that's all.”

Leslie held his hands up, palms toward her, as though she were pointing a gun at him. “I can't tell you if it makes sense, but I can tell you that you don't have any grounds for divorce.”

“How can you say that?” she asked him. “It isn't any good, and I'm miserably unhappy.”

“Darling,” he said, leaning across the table toward her and speaking in the sort of voice that let her know she was being too loud and probably had been being too loud for a long time, “the law does not recognize unhappiness as grounds for divorce.”

Her chin crinkled, and through blurred vision she saw that, indeed, other people in the dining room were looking at her and still others seemed arrested with forks halfway to their mouths or coffee cups poised before their lips as though they were listening. She was, she realized, behaving badly, but she couldn't seem to help it. It seemed absolutely predictable, somehow, that her unhappiness counted for nothing in the eyes of the law. But something, she was sure, could be made to serve, whether real or imagined. “Well, then what grounds are there?” she asked in a small, ragged voice.

“Maidy …” he said, using the nickname only her family and the oldest of her friends from high school ever used; he patted her thigh secretly beneath the table to comfort her. “Maidy, now's not the best time.…”

It was too much and she bent her head and wept, but after a few moments, she dried her eyes on her napkin and sat up straight, determined to get control of herself. “I need to know,” she said.

He looked off across the restaurant and sighed unhappily. “Desertion,” he said.

“He's in Pittsburgh.”

“But he sends money and he wants you with him.”

“What about infidelity?” she said. “I can't prove it, but I know it. Somehow I know it.”

“Adultery, yes,” he said and nodded. “But it really wouldn't matter if you could prove it, and prove it a dozen times over with a dozen different women, not if he wanted to fight it. Not unless he'd actually set up housekeeping with another woman and refused to give her up. No judge I know would grant you a divorce because he's sowed some wild oats.”

“That's outrageous,” she said. “I don't believe you!”

Leslie shrugged and tried to smile at her. “I'm a lawyer, darling, it's what I do. I know the laws in this state.”

“What other grounds are there?” she said, feeling her chin start to tremble again but fighting to stop it and stop the tears she could feel rising.

“Cruelty,” he said. “But not showing up for dinner on time, coming home drunk or not coming home at all, buying a house without asking your opinion, or quitting his job and taking another one somewhere else—those things wouldn't count for much.” He shrugged again, helplessly. “He would have to do physical violence to you, and frankly, he'd have to do it repeatedly. A broken nose, black eyes, a broken jaw, the sort of injuries a doctor could verify.”

“Go on,” she said.

“If he were insane and in an institution, or a convicted felon in prison, you might be able to get a divorce, and you might not. Women have been denied divorces in such cases. Sometimes the court seemed to feel there was reasonable hope the husbands would get well, or be released. Sometimes it seemed to hold that marriages are ‘for better or for worse,' and this sort of thing falls under …” he made a helpless gesture with his hands, “ ‘worse.' Sometimes the court, I guess, pitied the insane husband or the felon more than it pitied the wife.”

He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Look,” he said, “in most cases, maybe not all, but in most cases it's just as hard for a man to divorce his wife. It's just that, well, it's the end of the week and you're tired and I'm tired, and you've got that call coming tomorrow, and we'd do better to talk about all this another time.” He looked at her, smiled hopefully, and even laughed a little. “If he disappeared for seven years, and no one saw him or heard from him, we could have him declared legally dead,” he told her and cocked his head to one side as though he were inviting her to laugh with him. “You wouldn't have your divorce, but you'd be a widow in the eyes of the law.”

But she didn't feel like laughing. “You're saying it's impossible to end this marriage? Is that what you're telling me?”

“Jesus, Maidy, no, not exactly,” he said. “What I'm telling you is that, in this state, you just don't have any legal grounds for divorce, not a one, not if Edward wants to fight it.” Leslie raised his eyebrows and cocked his head, letting his eyes slide away from her face. “If he decides he doesn't want to be married either, and you're both willing to perjure yourselves, then, sure, I can get you free. At least after you've been here long enough to establish this as your legal domicile.”

“I think I want to go home now,” she said.

“Look,” Leslie said, “this should have been a nice evening.” He caught one of her hands and held it, even though for a second she tried to tug it free. “I know how difficult all this must be for you, but I promise there's a solution. It's just that, no matter how much you mean to me, I just can't snap my fingers and get you out of your marriage. I swear, Maidy, the best solutions happen outside the courtroom, and if you can make Edward realize that, this won't …”

She pulled her hand away, rose, and left him at the table. She didn't look into any of the faces of the other diners, but she felt some of them searching her own, and she meant for her expression to give them nothing whatever.

Once inside the ladies' room, she thought she'd cry, had even planned on it, but she didn't. She felt so drained there didn't seem enough left of her to cry; instead, she found herself staring at her reflection in a long makeup mirror, staring into her own eyes as though for some understanding, but they seemed as blank and depthless as the eyes of a doll. If Edward wanted a divorce, she was thinking, then she could get one; if not, then not. So. The end of her marriage, if it came, would be just like the rest of it. What Edward wanted to happen would happen, and that, as they say, was that.

Many moments later she found herself still standing before the mirror. Strangely numb and almost tranquil, she set her purse on the marble counter and turned to a sink where she ran cool water into her hands and bathed her face, which felt feverish. She took her time with her makeup, and when she had finished, she entered the dining room where Leslie was drinking coffee and looking worried and unhappy. He rose to greet her.

“I've taken care of the bill,” he said, “so we can leave this minute if you want, or we can stay, and you can have some coffee and dessert.”

“I'm sorry,” she told him. “I was upset. I know I've ruined our time together, and you didn't deserve that.”

He waved away her apology. “Lots of people expect the law to fix things, but it seldom does.” He smiled weakly. “It's just that I'm not usually in love with them.”