He said she’d have to go over to someone’s house some days so he could paint, and he asked whose house, naming the two women who did day care, Sheila and Maryanne, and she said Sheila, which he already knew.
He turned up the heat. When it warmed, he combed her hair and got her in a nightgown. Then they lay on the floor, the two of them around her lamp, and he read from something she’d picked from the bookmobile. He also had a stack of poetry books he’d taken from a free box, the pages blooming with water damage. He read Brodsky poems, then Hayden Carruth, finding a poem about a cow. You’ll like this, he said. The moon was like a full cup tonight. You like Sheila don’t you?
Yes, she said.
If you decide you don’t like it we can talk about the options, but let’s try this.
He woke on the sofa to her rustling in the kitchen. He sat up to see what she was doing, and watched her put a bowl on the floor and pour cereal over it.
After breakfast they walked the dirt road past the jumble of cottages, trailers, shacks, to Sheila’s sturdy ranch with a front room painted yellow. Sheila let Leigh in, then smoked with him on the steps. He asked her how much she’d charge, and she said an amount that he knew was too low. I’ll cook dinner for you, he said, you can come over and have dinner with us. Leigh cooks.
I would believe it, too, Sheila said. She asked if his wife was coming back, and he said he didn’t think so. I only ask, she said, because I wanted to know what Leigh thinks, what you told her.
She hasn’t asked, he said.
It might be better if you don’t wait for her to ask, she said.
He went to see an apartment above a bar — one that was cheaper and better insulated than theirs — but it was dark and filled with trash. He picked up cans, then gave up and headed toward the harbor. Some of the houses had new woodpiles, the wood so fresh the color was iridescent. He walked to the bird sanctuary, then couldn’t think of another place to walk. He got to Sheila’s hours early.
We were about to have a snack, Leigh said as they walked down the path.
We can have a snack at the restaurant, he said.
The sign by the register said to wait, but you only had to look to be sure the waitress saw, then you found a table. They sat in a booth with vinyl so stiff it barely pressed in. Leigh ordered a brownie. Paul drank coffee and watched out the window. You know why we need to move, right? he said. That we could get a warmer place to live? That the winter gets really cold? He wondered if at that age you understood winter, if you could remember it from the year before. She detailed the project she was making, a construction-paper basket for trick-or-treating. What color? he asked. The other kids were using orange but she was using green. Why? he asked. She wanted to.
That night they had dinner on the sofa again. He couldn’t handle the intimacy of being alone with her, so he let her watch cartoons while they ate. After, she said she wanted to sleep in the living room, and there wasn’t much of a point he could make against it, so they brought in her mattress.
They got a bag of potatoes from a neighbor’s cousin. They had done this when he was a child, stored a bag in the cellar and eaten them all winter, but the cottage didn’t have a cellar. Shit, he said, then went outside so he wouldn’t swear in front of Leigh.
The sun set. Light stretched over the harbor. Red lines formed under the clouds. He thought how everything could be the same each day, and how the only change was the light and the kinds of colors it made. On nights like this, drinking used to help, or he would drive to Portland to visit friends, leaving Leigh and her mother together like polite strangers. Now Leigh was in the living room, her eyes like saucers watching the screen, waiting for him to return so the steps of the evening could be gone through.
I don’t want mashed potatoes, she said when he came in. What she wanted was the french fries they used to make in the oven. He switched off the television. Wash your hands, he said.
They’re washed.
Let me smell them, he said. They smelled like skin, like the oils that came from skin. Wash them, he said. He grabbed towels from the kitchen chairs and threw them on the sofa. He made her eat at the table. He didn’t speak while they ate. She found small things to complain about. The crusts that in better moods he cut off. You’re getting spoiled, he said. She watched him. He said, I’m just saying that it’s not something you should be expecting, having someone cut your crusts like you’re the queen of Sheba.
What’s that? she said.
I don’t know, he said, but you’re becoming like that, just like the queen of Sheba.
I’m not like that.
Eat your potatoes then, he said.
They’re yellow.
That’s the margarine.
What’s margarine?
They were ludicrous, the two of them sitting there.
He took out the sweatshirt they had bought at the church; the neck was tight and didn’t go around her head. He ripped it open. There, he said, putting it on her.
That night he read to her. A road that had wound us 20,000 miles stops, with a kind of suddenness, at home. At home and in midsummer. The snow has gone. He read under her lamp. They had brought it from her bedroom. He had asked if she wanted it and she had said yes. Her eyes sank at the sound of his voice. There it was, better. She had eaten some of the potatoes and had hated him. He put the book down, turned the lamp off. He cleaned the table, put the dishes in the sink. He did everything quietly. It wasn’t going to work, he knew. After ten minutes there was nothing to do but what he did the other nights, read in a chair while drinking. She was asleep, had rolled to face the wall. The heater came on in a sigh. He turned off all the lights except the one over the stove, then went out the door. He looked in the window to be sure, but she didn’t move.
Sheila kept him outside while she stayed behind the door. I was just walking by, he said. And I saw your lights.
Where’s Leigh?
She’s asleep.
Is she alone?
What else can I do? I can’t sit there every night.
He tried to get her to come to dinner the next night. She told him that she wanted him to be able to come in and for her to come to dinner, but that it would be lonelier after, and this — how she was now — was as lonely as she could handle. She looked older than usual, and this made her prettier to him.
When he got back Leigh woke up and asked where he had been.
I had to ask Sheila something, he said.
What did you ask her?
Go to sleep, he said.
Are you going out again?
I only had to ask Sheila something.
Where did you go?
I’m not going again, he said.
She lay back down. Several times while he read he looked over expecting her upright but she stayed down. It was so dark outside. Sometimes you can’t imagine it, how beautiful it had been there.
At the end of November they had to drive to Portland. He needed to pick up the work that hadn’t sold at the gallery. They hadn’t asked him to bring new work, so he imagined that was that. In the truck he let Leigh pick any station she wanted, and she kept turning the dial. Okay, he said, there we go. He took over the dial and stopped on a news station. He looked to see if she was pleased or not, and she seemed pleased.
They parked near the harbor and walked through the cobblestone streets. She rose on her toes to balance, and he teased her, because suddenly she looked like an orphan, when she hadn’t looked that way up north.