“And the way Joe drove: those crazy left turns. Tell me those weren’t suicidal! Directly into the path of oncoming traffic. More than once I ducked under the dashboard; I bet you had that experience. Or did he do that only with me.”
No, he had done it with Rebecca.
When they were courting, it hadn’t alarmed her. She had been so trusting, back then. She remembered riding blissfully next to him, cradling his right hand in her lap as he made a dashing one-handed swerve across two lanes of speeding cars. But later she grew more anxious — especially after Min Foo was born. They had even had a couple of quarrels about it. “Who’s behind the wheel, here: you or me?” he had said, and she had said, “Yes, but my life’s at stake too, after all; mine and the children’s. I have a right to object!”
“You don’t think that’s the behavior of someone who wanted to do himself in?” Tina asked now.
For once there was a question mark, American-style, at the end of her sentence. But even so, Rebecca didn’t answer.
“In any event,” Tina said finally, “at least he didn’t take you along the night of the accident.” She glanced around the table. “I don’t suppose there’s orange juice.”
“I may have some in the fridge,” Rebecca said, not moving.
“Ah.”
Tina waited for a moment. Then she said, “Why don’t I fetch it,” and she slid back her chair and stood up. Her dressing gown made a sound like sand running through a sieve as she crossed the linoleum.
It was true that Rebecca had sometimes sensed some other quality, a glimmer of something like desperation, lying just beneath the surface of Joe’s exuberance. On occasion she had thought she detected a hollow note in his voice, a forced heartiness as he welcomed guests. Or was it just that in any marriage, you end up knowing more than you should about the other person? (The inner meaning of that sudden hitch to the shoulders, or that flicker in one temple.) Once or twice, after a party, she had found him slumped in the darkened front parlor, staring into space. “Joe?” she had asked. “Aren’t you coming to bed?” and he’d given his head a sharp shake and struggled to his feet.
She had felt at certain moments — but not always! not for long stretches! — that she was dragging him through an invisible swamp, and Joe was hanging back while she herself, to compensate, grew quicker and more energetic. See how easy it is? We’ll get through this in no time!
Through Mother Davitch’s stroke, and Aunt Joyce’s death, and Poppy’s moving in with them. Through the constant threat of financial failure — blank squares on the appointment book, painful calls from creditors. Through Mother Davitch’s death, too, and the time they nearly lost Patch to appendicitis.
But through the good things, as well. Min Foo’s birth. The older girls’ gradual adjustment to Rebecca. Zeb’s admission to medical school. The little pleasures of everyday life, like a perfectly weightless snowfall on a clear December night, or the sound of the children’s jump-rope chants outside on a summer evening.
“Yeah, sure, sweetheart,” Joe said when she pointed these out, and he would sling an arm around her and draw her close. Even then, though, she might catch a certain clouded look in his eyes, as if he were listening to some private voice that Rebecca couldn’t hear.
She did believe he loved her. But she couldn’t help feeling, sometimes, that he loved that private voice more.
Had she been a disappointment to him? That was her greatest fear. Consider how he had first seen her: the girl enjoying the party more than anyone else in the room. He had clung to that image obstinately, no doubt hoping that her happiness was contagious. And it hadn’t been. And besides, she was really no more or less happy than most other people she knew.
“This place is like a time machine,” Tina said out of the blue.
Rebecca started, wondering if her head was so transparent. But Tina was drifting obliviously around the kitchen. “Same old round-edged sink as when I was living here, only maybe a mite yellower. Same sticky wooden cabinets. Same scummy little plastic drinking glasses.” She raised her glass of orange juice, demonstrating. “Same baggy, rusty screen door,” she added, turning to gaze through it. “Why! It appears that some young man is carpeting your backyard.”
“Really?” Rebecca said. She stood up and went over to check. Sure enough, Brick Allen — bronzed and muscular, wearing shorts and boots and nothing else — was unrolling what appeared to be a bristly green stair runner. “It’s grass,” she told Tina. “We’re putting it in for the wedding.”
“How American. An instant lawn,” Tina said. She opened the door and called out, “Very impressive!”
Brick raised his head to see who was speaking. He took in Tina — her shimmering robe, the cant of her hip as she leaned against the doorframe — and then he said, “Well, thanks. I’ve been working out with weights.”
There was the briefest pause, and then Tina gave a husky laugh and turned to include Rebecca. But Rebecca didn’t laugh back.
She was thinking that if she’d been wise, she would have granted as much significance to Joe’s behavior that first night as he had granted to hers. Goodbye, he had said. Just that easily.
Not Au revoir, but Goodbye.
* * *
Imagine she was walking down the street one day and who should round the corner but Will Allenby. He would look the same as always, except older. (As an afterthought, she grayed his hair and etched two faint but attractive lines at the corners of his mouth.) “Rebecca?” he would say. He would stop. He would look at her. “Rebecca Holmes?”
Conveniently, he would not have married; or he would have married but found the woman lacking in some way, just never quite up to his memories of Rebecca, and now he was divorced and living nearby — say in one of those luxury high-rise condos overlooking the harbor. Oh, it wasn’t so far-fetched!
Might-have-been slid imperceptibly into could-still-be — a much more satisfying fantasy. He would invite her for an intimate supper. She would show up with a bottle of wine and he would seat her at a table next to the picture window, with the boat lights twinkling like stars below them and the Domino Sugars sign glowing in the distance. “So tell me, Will—” she would begin, but he would put his hand over hers and say, “Don’t we know each other well enough not to bother with small talk?”
And he was right; they did. They fit together perfectly, both of them so serious and cerebral and nonsocial, content to spend their evenings reading on the couch. Sometimes they would go to plays or concerts. She hadn’t been to a concert in years! It would be wonderful to walk down the aisle holding somebody’s arm; to have him remove her coat in a sheltering, cherishing way after they were seated; to feel his shoulder pressed against hers as they listened to the music.
“Where’s Beck?” the girls would ask each other.
“I think she’s out on a date.”
“A date!”
At that moment she would walk in the door, smiling a mysterious smile, her lips a little squashed-looking as if someone had been kissing her.
* * *
Macadam College had a vast selection of telephone numbers now, where once there had been only one. “Administration? Admissions? Alumni?” the operator offered. Rebecca said, “Alumni,” in a voice that was already shaky. And when she reached the Alumni Office, she felt her heart speeding up. “I’d like to have an address for one of my old classmates,” she said, gripping the receiver too tightly. She was relieved when she was transferred to another desk. It gave her a moment to compose herself.
Tina had taken her daughters to lunch, and Poppy was having his nap. This would be Rebecca’s one chance all day for privacy. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, about two inches of it, with her head bent close to the receiver and her free hand cupped protectively around her mouth.