Ray watched his wife’s muscular, long legs slipping down the stairs to his studio, telling himself, don’t say anything. Don’t let her get to you.
But it wasn’t easy. The epic nature of his feelings frightened him, like his first sight of Godzilla had when he was a child. Big, mean, and evil. That described him lately, and he didn’t like that about himself, but didn’t know how to change it, either.
At nine o’clock on a summer night, the dark already frank outside, Ray’s bright white basement workshop remained timeless and chilly. Although tonight, caught up in a bigger emotion, he felt immune to its pleasures, usually he liked it that way, bland. He concentrated best in a non-distracting environment. Leaning forward in his Herman Miller chair, he pasted a small stick of plywood meant for model airplanes onto the model house he was building out of balsa and Styrofoam, remembering the way the garage on Bright Street had always listed slightly to the side.
“Hi.” Leigh lingered at the bottom of the stairs. Specs dangled around her neck and long, light hair drifted down over her shoulders. Silky nylon shorts cut into her pale skin. She chewed her lip.
“Hi.” Give her that much. Reveal nothing because he dreaded another confrontation with her. They got nowhere, except farther down the downward spiral. He had an awful feeling they were close to saying something irrevocable, and it scared him so much he felt afraid to talk at all.
Looking down at his architectural model, she walked over to the table. She placed a hand on his shoulder. Her touch felt forced. His heart beat harder.
“Which one is that?”
“From when I was ten. There were three that year.”
She tilted her head. “The foundation seems to be slanting.”
“Just like the real thing.” Six other models sat lined up on the shelf above the massive wooden table. He continued to work, lining up a few dozen tiny shakes for the garage roof. He squirted some glue onto one, then tried to place it, but his hand fumbled, and the shake went on crooked. He took a deep breath, then adjusted it.
He wanted her to go away right now, give him an opportunity to cool down and put his vile feelings where they belonged, somewhere besides in this room with them. “Is it still hot outside?”
“Down to ninety-two,” she said. “I turned the a/c down a little.”
“Good.”
Leigh sat down on the leather daybed, a fair copy of a van der Rohe original.
She was not going away.
Ray finished pasting a few more shakes. Leigh watched, although she appeared preoccupied. “You missed dinner.” He tried for a normal tone. He did not want her to have the slightest clue about how very, very upset he had been about the images that arose in his mind during her absence. See, this was the thing about relationships. His mother had warned him that the heart was the nastiest place in the body, not the genitals. She had encouraged him to have loads of girlfriends but to keep his heart private, but then Leigh had come along and plucked it right out of him as easily as if she were picking a wildflower along a road.
How could she?
“I thought you said you would cook tonight,” he went on. How surprising, to continue operating as if they had something to salvage.
Did they? The thought confused him, and for a moment, he stopped working and tried to think.
She looked startled. “I did? Oh. I guess I did. Sorry. I forgot. I really am sorry, Ray, but I had something else to do, and so I just-” She tried to squeeze his arm, but he moved away. Instead, she picked up a piece of balsa he had formed into an intricate porch trim, then put it down when she saw the look he was giving her. “I stopped by the drugstore to get a few things.”
“That took, generously, one hour,” Ray said. He tinkered with a small step leading up to a porch. He couldn’t seem to get the porch right. Memory failed him sometimes. How many people could remember such detail, going back twenty-five years or more? He did pretty well, considering how the mind worked, how emotions colored and distorted memory.
He tried again, but couldn’t get the stair to sit right. He had trimmed it too tight. He pushed through it with his thumb, breaking the lightweight wood in half. “What else did you do?”
A wrinkle between her brows registered something in his voice. “Errands,” she said. She eyed the now ruined porch step.
“Must have been a lot of them. Errands.”
“I drove around, okay? I wasn’t ready to come home.”
“It’s the anniversary of Tom Tinsley’s death, isn’t it? You went to the cemetery. You always do, Leigh. I’ve known it since we got married.”
She didn’t answer.
“Brought him flowers. Had a chat with a dead man. I never could understand that routine. See, it seems to me you should celebrate someone’s life, not their day of death.”
“It wasn’t a celebration, Ray.”
“No. I guess not. But I get tired of eating alone, Leigh, and it seems I eat alone an awful damn lot these days.”
“Look, I didn’t come down here to fight with you, okay? I poured us some wine. Why don’t you put this stuff away for now. Let’s talk, okay?”
The glue flowed, balsa wood meticulously slid into place. He had it exactly right this time, and stepped back to admire its perfection. “Maybe later.” He suppressed the urge he felt to start in on her, but that didn’t stop the heat rising inside him or the emotions preparing to launch like fireballs. He studied the architectural model of the house, the tiny floor plan fully visible as though a hurricane had blown the roof off. He admired its neatness, although possibly the front window should be larger?
“Damn it!” She slapped at his hand, knocking a small piece of wood out of it. “What is wrong with you? What is all this crap? Your own sick celebration? I mean, you lived in a bunch of houses when you were a kid. Millions of kids do, but they move on, not pissing life away on a screwy hobby, trying to resurrect a screwy past!”
He picked up the piece that had fallen and laid it carefully on his table next to a pile of scraps. “I’ve explained it to you,” he said, with what he thought was amazing restraint. “I developed my love for architecture living in these funny little boxes. It’s a hobby, like boatbuilding or hunting. It makes me feel good.”
“You used to say every house you lived in had an aura. I thought about that. I thought, what, was this one warm? Did this one protect him? Did this one scare him? I forgave that thing that took you so far away from me. But you’ve become obsessed. You’re at it all the time. You won’t even go to the movies with me anymore.” She stopped and he saw the effort she expended calming herself. “Look, Ray. I just can’t live so disconnected from you or from how we used to be. We were so close. We told each other everything!”
“Not anymore, we don’t.”
“I’m trying, okay? I’ve got things to say. Things I need to tell you.”
“Okay.” He slammed his fist down on the table, keeping his voice steady but unable to unclench his hands. “You want to talk? We’ll talk.” Fear came up in her face, and while he hated himself, he also could not stop himself now. She wanted an adult. She had one, had his full fucking attention now.
“Not here. Come upstairs. Please.”
“First why don’t you tell me about where you go when you don’t go to the store or to work or to the cemetery. How about let’s start with that?”
A silence as palpable as the haze hanging over the canyon outside sucked the oxygen from the air. Ray let his hand dig down into his pocket.
Her voice sounded small. “I get lonely.”
He pulled out a key and threw it on the table. It spun, then landed in front of the miniature garage.
“I was going to tell you, Ray.” She wiped tears from her eyes. “Tonight.”
“You left it on the TV.” The cheesy motel on Pacific Coast Highway still used old-fashioned keys, which had surprised him. He thought metal keys were becoming as obsolete as dial phones.