14 Abbott, Pierced by the Subjunctive
Not entirely sober, Abbott finds his wife standing at a living-room window that looks out upon what might initially appear to be a low bright moon, but which is in fact a yellow streetlight in a cloud of moths. Abbott is reminded, later, of something he once read: A human might mistake a rock for a bear, but never a bear for a rock. This is the type of window in front of which you might hold a crying infant. He puts his hands on his wife’s shoulders, which neither relax nor tense. Indeed, it seems to Abbott that she has not noticed his touch. The cat watches them from the corner of the room. It looks unhappy. “You OK?” Abbott says. When his wife does not answer, he says, “Maybe we should have waited another year.” Without seeming to move, Abbott’s wife sheds his hands from her shoulders. He takes a step backward. With her teeth she says, “Be that as it may.”
15 Abbott and the Case of the Mysterious Thing in the Driveway
“Those couches,” Abbott says. “I know,” his wife says. “I saw one with hexagonal arms,” he says. “Did you see the one with rhinestones?” she says. “I saw that one,” he says. “It also had about twenty overlapping cushions.” Abbott’s wife turns off the engine and opens the door. She moves both legs to the side, so that her feet are on the driveway. Then she grabs the edge of the door with her left hand and the top of the steering wheel with her right. After a deep breath, she hoists herself out of the car. Abbott gets out, too. He knows it’s boring to talk about the heat, but my God it’s hot. In August it is hard to believe this is Ethan Frome’s hometown. As Abbott unbuckles his daughter from her seat, he sees his wife looking intently at the ground. “What is it?” he says, his head still in the car. His wife either does not hear him or ignores him. There is a big difference. He sees her kick at something in the driveway. She seems to be trying to nudge it into the grass, but without success. Then she leans down into a squat, picks the thing up, examines it, and tosses it underhanded into the grass. The motion of her toss might best be described as a scattering, as of birdseed or ashes. The tips of her fingers are together, her knuckles are facing up. “What was that?” Abbott says loudly. “Nothing,” she says. Abbott knows it was either nothing or something. “Well, what was it?” he says. Abbott’s wife comes out of her squat — the expression on her face suggests it is one of the most difficult things she has ever done with her body. Then she walks into the house without saying anything. Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of Abbott knows that he is not going to let this go. All afternoon his wife continues to say the thing in the driveway was nothing, convincing Abbott it was something indeed. He stops just short of pleading. He attempts to make his interest seem primarily academic, scientific. Then at dinner Abbott’s wife casually elaborates — she says she thought the thing in the driveway was a coin but then she looked at it and found that it was not a coin. “A coin?” Abbott says. “Yes,” she says. They pass food and say please and thank you. “Then what was it?” he says, trying to match her composure. “Just a little piece of foil or metal,” she says. “Hm,” he says. Then they tell some funny stories to the girl and have a nice family dinner. But later in bed, after the books are on the nightstands and the lights are out, Abbott says, “Let me tell you why that is a lie.” Abbott’s wife says, “What are you talking about?” “First,” he says, “if that’s all it was, some coinlike object, you would have told me right away. There would have been no reason to be so secretive. Second, if it was a coin — if you thought it was a coin — you would have tried to pick it up before you tried to kick it in the grass. But you tried to kick it first. Why would you kick what you thought to be a coin into the grass? You kicked first and then squatted down to look at it, which is not consistent with the actions of someone who thought she saw a coin and then discovered it wasn’t. Come to think of it, I don’t know why you would kick a little piece of foil or metal into the grass, either. You’re someone who is concerned about the environment and also about our lawn. Not to mention the fact that when I went out there after dinner to look for it, I didn’t see anything resembling the object you describe.” “The object I describe,” Abbott’s wife says. “And speaking of squatting,” Abbott says, “exactly what type of U.S. coin would entice you, in August, in the ninth month of pregnancy, to bend down and pick it up? A fifty-cent piece? A Susan B. Anthony silver dollar?” “It was a gold doubloon,” she says. “Lastly,” Abbott says, “nobody says coin. No native speaker of English would ever say, I think I see a coin in the driveway. You would say quarter or nickel or whatever it was, though again, I can’t imagine you would bend down to pick up a nickel, knowing you may never get back up.” “OK,” she says. “And also, lastly, the way you threw it, your throwing motion. That was not—” “OK,” Abbott’s wife says. “Please stop. Do you really want to know what it was?” “Yes, I do,” Abbott says, suddenly not at all sure that he does. “Fine,” she says. “It was a lock of hair. I tried to kick it off the driveway, but I couldn’t, so I picked it up and tossed it in the grass, using the motion you so scrupulously observed. It isn’t easy to throw hair.” “Hair?” he says. Abbott is momentarily confused by the fact that a lock of hair bears no resemblance to a coin, but he recovers. “A lock of hair,” she says. “Probably from earlier in the summer. Maybe it blew out of the pachysandra. On the driveway it looked, I guess, mildly disturbing, and I knew if you saw it you would have a—” Abbott says, “What would I have?” Abbott’s wife says, “You would have a reaction.” So many words in the dark. Abbott has imagined all this marital talk discoloring the walls and ceiling like nicotine. “So,” Abbott says, “you hid it from me, and then you lied about it all day.” “That’s right,” his wife says. “Because I know you.” The static of the monitor sounds to Abbott like the sound of his own thinking. He does not know whether his wife’s deception is an instance of compassion or cruelty. Furthermore, he does not know the scale or the degree of the compassion or cruelty. It could be insignificant, but it could also represent something large, some kind of turning point. It could be the moment he understands something — either the fact that the marriage is so deep he will never touch bottom or the fact that the marriage might not work out. This would be the time to go down to the basement and walk around for a while, but his wife rolls over and puts her hand on his chest. Her hand is warm and small. The pressure of her touch is not heavy, but neither is it light.