He would throw away Mary’s floor-bucket and open the garage to air out the stink of gasoline. Make up a story to explain the broken back window if anyone asked about it. And most important, he would try to prepare himself mentally for a visit from the police. As the last resident of Crestallen Street West, it might be perfectly logical for them to at least check him out. And they wouldn’t have to sniff up his back trail very far to find out he had been acting erratically. He had screwed up the plant. His wife had left him. A former co-worker had punched him out in a department store. And of course, he had a station wagon, Chevrolet or not. All bad. But none of it proof.
And if they did dig up proof, he supposed he would go to jail. But there were worse things than jail. Jail wasn’t the end of the world. They would give him a job, feed him. He wouldn’t have to worry about what was going to happen when the insurance money ran out. Sure, there were a lot of things worse than jail. Suicide, for instance. That was worse. He went upstairs and showered.
Later that afternoon he called Mary. Her mother answered and went to get Mary with a sniff. But when Mary herself answered, she sounded nearly gay.
“Hi Bart. Merry Christmas in advance.”
“No, Mary Christmas,” he responded. It was an old joke that had graduated from humor to tradition.
“Sure,” she said. “What is it, Bart?”
“Well, I’ve got a few presents… just little stuff… for you and the nieces and nephews. I wondered if we could get together somewhere. I’ll give them to you. I didn’t wrap the kids’ presents-”
“I’d be glad to wrap them. But you shouldn’t have. You’re not working.”
“But I’m working on it,” he said.
“Bart, have you… have you done anything about what we talked about?”
“The psychiatrist?”
“Yes,”
“I called two. One is booked up until almost June. The other guy is going to be in the Bahamas until the end of March. He said he could take me then.”
“What were their names?”
“Names? Gee, honey, I’d have to look them up again to tell you. Adams, I think the first guy was. Nicholas Adams-”
“Bart,” she said sadly.
“It might have been Aarons,” he said wildly.
“Bart,” she said again.
“Okay.” he said. “Believe what you want. You will anyway.”
“Bart, if you’d only
“What about the presents? I called about the presents, not the goddam shrink.”
She sighed. “Bring them over Friday, why don’t you? I can-”
“What, so your mother and father can hire Charles Manson to meet me at the door? Let’s just meet on neutral ground, okay?”
“They’re not going to be here.” she said. “They’re going to spend Christmas with Joanna.” Joanna was Joanna St. Claire, Jean Galloway’s cousin, who lived in Minnesota. They had been close friends in their girlhood (back in that pleasant lull between the War of 1812 and the advent of the Confederacy, he sometimes thought), and Joanna had had a stroke in July. She was still trying to get over it, but Jean had told him and Mary that the doctors said she could go at any time. That must be nice, he thought, having a time bomb built right into your head like that. Hey, bomb, is it today? Please not today. I haven’t finished the new Victoria Holt.
“Bart? Are you there?”
“Yes. I was woolgathering.”
“Is one o’clock all right?”
“That’s fine.”
“Was there anything else?”
“No, huh-uh.
“Well…”
“Take good care, Mary.”
“I will. Bye, Bart.” “Good-bye.
They hung up and he wandered into the kitchen to make himself a drink. The woman he had just talked to on the phone wasn’t the same woman that had sat tearfully on the living room couch less than a month ago, pleading for some reason to help explain the tidal wave that had just swept grandly through her ordered life, destroying the work of twenty years and leaving only a few sticks poking out of the mudflats. It was amazing. He shook his head over it the way he would have shaken his head over the news that Jesus had come down from the sky and had taken Richard Nixon up to heaven upon wheels of fire. She has regained herself.
More: She had regained a person he hardly knew at all, a girl-woman he barely remembered. Like an archaeologist she had excavated that person, and the person was a little stiff in the joints from its long storage, but still perfectly usable. The joints would ease and the new-old person would be a whole woman, perhaps scarred by this upheaval but not seriously hurt. He knew her perhaps better than she thought, and he had been able to tell, strictly from the tone of her voice, that she was moving ever close to the idea of divorce, the idea of a clean break with the past… a break that would splint well and leave no trace of a limp. She was thirty-eight. Half of her life was ahead of her. There were no children to be casually maimed in the car wreck of this marriage. He would not suggest divorce, but if she did he would agree. He envied her new person and her new beauty. And if she looked back ten years from now on her marriage as a long dark corridor leading into sunlight, he could feel sorry she felt that way, but he couldn’t blame her. No, he couldn’t blame her.
December 21, 1973
He had given her the presents in Jean Galloway’s ticking, ormolu living room, and the conversation that followed had been stilted and awkward. He had never been in this room alone with her, and he kept feeling that they should neck. It was a rusty knee-jerk reaction that made him feel like a bad double exposure of his college self.
“Did you lighten you hair?” he asked.
“Just a shade.” She shrugged a little.
“It’s nice. Makes you look younger.”
“You’re getting a little gray around the temples, Bart. Makes you look distinguished.”
“Bullshit, it makes me look ratty.”
She laughed-a little too high-pitched-and looked at the presents on the little side table. He had wrapped the owl pin, had left the toys and the chess set for her to do. The dolls looked blankly at the ceiling, waiting for some little girl’s hands to bring them to life.
He looked at Mary. Their eyes caught seriously for a moment and he thought irrevocable words were going to spill out of her and he was frightened. Then the cuckoo jumped out of the clock, announced one-thirty, and they both jumped and then laughed. The moment had passed. He got up so it wouldn’t come around again. Saved by a cuckoo bird, he thought. That fits.
“Got to go,” he said.
“An appointment?”
“Job interview.”
“Really?” She looked glad, “Where? Who? How much?”
He laughed and shook his head. “There’s a dozen other applicants with as good a chance as me. I’ll tell you when I get it.”
“Conceited.”
“Sure.”
“Bart, what are you doing Christmas?” She looked concerned and solemn, and it suddenly came to him that an invitation to Christmas dinner and not to some new year’s divorce court had been the thing on her lips inside. God! He almost sprayed laughter.
“I’m going to eat at home.”
“You can come here,” she said. “It would be just the two of us.”
“No,” he said, thoughtfully and then more firmly: “No. Emotions have a way of getting out of hand during the holidays. Another time.”
She was nodding, also thoughtfully.
“Will you be eating alone?” he asked.
“I can go to Bob and Janet’s. Really, are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Well…” But she looked relieved.
They walked to the door and shared a bloodless kiss.
“I’ll call you,” he said.
“You better.”
“And give my best to Bobby.”
“I will.”
He was halfway down the walk to the car when she called: “Bart! Bart, wait a minute!”
He turned almost fearfully.