He didn’t answer. He couldn’t look at her eyes, so he turned away from her altogether and faced the darkening sea.
Finally, he said, “You can quit that job. Tonight, if you want. You don’t have to go in. Just call and say you quit. I made … I made good money this trip.”
“Running drugs.”
“No, no. Fishing. A big party. Big spenders.”
“Bob,” she said, and she sighed. “I just don’t … I don’t believe you, Bob.” She looked at his broad back, a wall, and shook her head slowly.
“Well … what if I did, what if I did do something that was illegal … and got away with it? What the hell difference, what would that make different, to you, I mean?”
“I’d think you were stupid,” she said. “And lucky. For once in your life. No, I don’t know what difference it’d make, really.”
“Well, let’s say I did, okay? Let’s say I came out with a lot of money. Not a whole lot, but enough to let you quit that fucking job. Would you? Quit the job?”
She was silent for a moment, and he turned back around and faced her.
“Well?” he asked.
“No. No, I wouldn’t quit.”
“Why not?”
“Because … because it’s drug money, Bob. It’s not like winning the state lottery or something, for God’s sake. It’s drug money.” She tilted her head up at him and examined his large, dark face. “This is what I mean, about not knowing you anymore. No, you keep your drug money. Buy yourself a new car with it, if you want. Anything. But don’t buy anything for me with it, or for the children. Just don’t. As far as I’m concerned, you can throw it in the ocean. I don’t want it touching me or my children, that’s all.”
“Why, for Christ’s sake? What’s the big deal it’s illegal? Lots of things are illegal and we do them.”
“Like what?”
He hesitated a second. “Well, you know. Little things. Drinking and driving. You know what I mean. And what about Eddie, for Christ’s sake? You think he wasn’t doing anything illegal? And Ave? You didn’t seem to mind it when what Eddie or Ave did ended up benefiting you.”
“They’re not you, Bob. And Eddie’s dead. Ave’s in jail. But even if that wasn’t true, even if they were still out there, still getting away with it, like you think you just did, it’d be the same. Look at me, Bob. I’m not crying. Not anymore. And I’m not yelling. Not that anymore, either. I’m just saying. I’m not upset, and I’m not angry. I’m just saying.”
“Saying what, for Christ’s sake? You don’t love me anymore? Is that what you’re saying? I’m too stupid, or … or I’m too illegal, or … or immoral? Or what?”
“No. Not that, none of that. Something else. It’s more complicated.” She seemed genuinely puzzled. “I don’t know … something worse, maybe.”
“What could be worse?”
“To love you and not know you, I guess. That’d be worse. For me.”
“Jesus H. Christ, Elaine! You know me.”
“No. Not anymore. And I don’t know why, if it’s because you’ve changed who you are since we left New Hampshire, or because things have happened to you since then. Bad things. Things I didn’t even know were happening, some of them. All I’m sure of is I don’t know who you are anymore.”
“You know me.”
She smiled. “I’m going to be late for work. Let me have the keys. We can talk later if you want.”
He gave her the keys. “I hate that fucking job. More than you can ever imagine. That you have to do that.”
“I hate it too, Bob. More than you can ever imagine. But it’s legal. And right now, it’s the only job we’ve got.” She turned and started toward the car.
“Elaine! What … what can I do?”
She kept walking.
“Do you want to go back to New Hampshire?” he called out. “Is that what you want?”
She stopped, turned and said, “Yes. Yes, I do.” Then she opened the car door and got in. A few seconds later, she was gone, and it was dark. Slowly, Bob crossed the yard and went inside to his children.
Elaine came home at one-fifteen, stopping only for a moment in the living room, as if to give Bob a chance to look up from the David Letterman show and ask her to sit down, have a cup of tea, talk things over. He didn’t. All he did was glance at her when she came through the door and then look back at the TV screen as she crossed the room. She called from the kids’ bedroom, “ ’Night, Bob,” and he answered, “’Night,” and that was it. They no longer slept together.
He watched the TV screen inattentively, as if instead it were watching him, until the National Anthem was played at two-thirty and programming ceased. A half hour later, he realized that the blue eye in front of him was dead, and he reached over and flicked it off. With the lights on, he lay back on the sofa and tried to sleep. He squirmed and bent and unbent himself, but his body felt like a sack of nails to him, painful in any position, until finally he gave up trying, sat and smoked cigarettes, finished all the beer in the refrigerator and read People magazine twice, until it disgusted him, and he threw it on the floor. All those happy, pretty, successful people — he hated them because he knew they didn’t really exist, and he hated even more the magazine that glorified them and in that way made them exist, actors, rock musicians, famous writers, politicians. Those aren’t people, he fumed, they’re photographs.
At six, he heard the baby wake, burble and yap to himself a few minutes and then cry to have his diapers changed. Bob rose slowly from the couch, got the bottle of apple juice from the refrigerator and headed down the hallway toward the children’s room. Elaine appeared at the door, crossed the hallway silently, as if alone there, and went into the bathroom, closing the door tightly behind her. As he entered the bedroom, softly gray in the predawn light, he heard the splash of the shower behind him. Ruthie and Emma, accustomed to their brother’s morning howl and the sounds of a parent tending to him, slept on, grabbing at the last, fat hour of sleep before they themselves had to get up.
Ruthie lay curled away from Bob, facing the wall, her thumb jammed into her mouth; Emma, in the other bed, slept on her belly, arms and legs splayed, as if swimming underwater. In the crib, which was squeezed between the dresser and the back wall of the small, crowded room, Robbie lay flat on his back, scowling and red with discomfort, until suddenly he saw Bob towering over the crib and ceased to cry.
Bob handed him the bottle, and while the baby noisily sucked at it, proceeded to strip away the sopped, plastic-lined paper diaper. When he had the baby’s bottom naked, he stopped for a moment and thought, almost amazed, as if seeing it for the first time, My God, he has a penis. Just like me. An ordinary, circumcised penis. A doctored tube coming out of his digestive tract, that’s all. It was contracted and short, shrunken to little more than thimble-sized from the cold and sudden exposure to the air. Below it swelled the testicles in their tight pouch, like the breast of a tiny, pink bird. There was no mystery, no power, no sin, no guilt. Just biology. It was terrifying for that, and for an instant, wonderful.
“Oh, Robbie,” Bob whispered.
The baby, large blue eyes peering over the cloudy bottle, looked up at his father, and though his lips and cheeks yanked furiously at the rubber nipple, the baby seemed to be smiling. Bob returned his son’s gaze for a moment, then began to examine his own hands, huge against the infant’s tiny, smooth torso, legs and feet. They were coarse hands, scratched and hairy across the tops, with thick veins zigzagging over the surface like blue bolts of lightning, and suddenly his hands looked like weapons to Bob, weapons with wills of their own, like stones that could hurl themselves, and he hauled them out of the crib and jammed them into his pockets.