Again, we didn’t say much as we made the meal, but we had a good time, bustling around together in the kitchen, in mutual effort. The meal was as enjoyable, and as silent, as its preparation. Debbie dimmed the lights in the kitchen, obscuring the contrast of shiny new appliances and ancient wall of cabinets, plopped a fat red candle down center-table, and lit it, sending a soft glow of light around the table as we ate. The candle was scented-strawberry, I think-it added much to the romantic atmosphere. All we lacked was some damn fool playing a violin.
After the wordless, candlelit dinner, Debbie shattered the mood with a flick of a light switch, and we were back in a kitchen again. I helped her clear the table (getting a raised eyebrow of wonderment) and went to the sink and got a sinkful of soapy suds going.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m washing the dishes. You dry.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“No big chivalrous deal. I’m just used to a bachelor existence, in which I have to do my own chores anyway. I can’t afford a live-in maid.”
She joined me at the sink, got a towel from somewhere, and I handed her the dishes one by one as I cleaned them. “Well,” she said, “it’s a pleasant change from Pat. He likes me in the kitchen or in bed, and that’s about it.”
I shrugged. “I might be the same way if I were a married man. It’s pretty well instilled in our culture, don’t you think? We see our parents behaving in a pattern and we just fall into it ourselves after a time.”
“Even when we don’t like it?”
“Sure. Because it’s all we know.”
“I suppose you’re right. Mal?”
“Yeah?”
“What would it have been like?”
“What would what have been like?”
“Us. You and me. If we had gotten together instead of Pat and me.”
“I don’t know. Different than you and Pat, sure. But not like it would be now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if I’d married you straight out of high school, I’d be a different person than I am right now.”
“You mean if you hadn’t bummed around like you did for those years.”
“I take some issue with the term ‘bummed,’ my dear. I worked. Did a little of everything. Construction and cop, and a reporter for a while…. That was the best, I suppose, that last one. Bummed is not the word. Bummer might be, for the short time I was involved in the Haight-Ashbury scene.”
“How heavy were you into that? Drugs, I mean.”
“Not very heavy. Got scared out before much happened… to me, anyway. Was doing grass, which is no big thing, and was just into speed when, fortunately for me but unfortunately for him, this friend of mine overdosed on the stuff.” I shuddered at the involuntary image that flashed through my mind: my buddy Chuck, floating dead in his bathtub, his eyes two big, lifeless marbles, hair like so much dead seaweed. “It was a long time ago,” I said. I gave her a look that said I didn’t want to talk about that subject any longer.
But she pursued it just the same, in an oblique way, asking, “What made you do all that?”
“All what?”
“All of it… all those different jobs, and then the drugs….”
“I don’t know. I suppose it was just getting out of the service, after goddamn Vietnam. Coming home and having my folks die. Had nobody here in Port City, really-no relatives; most of my friends were moved away or married; I couldn’t see sticking around. So I took off and searched around, trying to find some way to make life… mean something, I guess. Same reason for the drug bit, too; some kind of half-ass search for meaning, for identity.”
She thought about that a second, then said, “Mal?”
“Yeah?”
“You think you’ll find it back here? In Port City?”
“No. I quit looking.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I decided to quit wasting my time looking for the Holy Grail. There ain’t none. I decided to accept my lot in life as just another dumb animal who won’t ever understand a goddamn thing.”
“How come you never got married?”
“Don’t know. Maybe I’m gay.”
She smiled and said, “I don’t think you’d have much luck convincing me of that.”
“Well, maybe I just haven’t met the right girl yet. Maybe I never really got over you, Debbie.”
“Don’t be silly! Besides, I’ve heard about you.”
“Heard what about me?”
“I got an aunt that lives over by you.”
“Oh?”
“And she’s told me about you. She’ll say, ‘You know what your old boyfriend’s up to now?’ And then she tells me. I know you sold a mystery book, too. I saw the article in the paper.”
“I didn’t know you’d stayed that interested in me.”
“Who says I was, silly. Maybe I just have a busybody aunt who likes to gossip.”
“Are you talking about Thelma Parker? Is she your aunt?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you do have a busybody aunt at that. Ole Thelma Parker spends half her waking hours giving me the evil eye.”
Debbie giggled. “She even has binoculars.”
“No kidding?”
“She told me you were seeing a girl who worked at the hospital. What was she, a nurse or something?”
“Nope. Dietician out there. She’s the one you can thank for my being so well trained into doing the dishes and such. A real liberated female, that one.”
“I’m jealous.”
“Jealous? Christ, girl, you’re the one who’s married! I’m a poor bachelor who gets it on maybe a dozen times a year if he’s lucky, and you’re a mother and the veteran of a well-worn marriage bed to boot. It’s not like you been sitting around in a chastity belt for the last ten years, waiting for me to come home from the Crusades.”
She laughed and took the last of the dishes from me, wiped it off, and stacked it with the rest on the counter. “I’ll put ’em away later,” she said, and led me into the living room, back to the couch.
“I’m sorry, Mal,” she said, twining her fingers in my hair. “I can’t help being nosy about you. Can’t help wondering what you been up to all this time. And I can’t help wondering what it would’ve been like if things had worked out… different… with you and me.”
The shrill sound of the phone ringing out in the kitchen cut into our conversation.
Debbie rose to answer it, saying, “Be right back,” and headed out there.
I could hear her muffled voice, but couldn’t make out the words. She came back a few moments later, visibly shaken.
“It’s Pat,” she said.
“Yeah? Where was he calling from?”
“Downstairs. There’s a pay phone in the bar downstairs.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he knows you’re up here with me.”
This time he was right, wasn’t he? We had confirmed his suspicions; paranoia, as usual, was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Does he have a key?” I asked.
“No. I had the locks changed after he left.”
“Then to hell with him. We won’t let him in.”
“He says he wants you to come down there and… fight him like a man.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
“He says if you don’t, he’ll come up here and break the door down. He… he has a knife.”
Pat hadn’t changed much over the years, had he? He was still sending people around telling me about him and his knife.
“What’s he going to do?” I asked. “Stab down the door? I say the hell with him. Forget about him.”
“No. No, that’s not the way to handle him. I’m going down and talk to him. Maybe he’ll listen to reason.”
“Oh Christ, Debbie, get serious….”
“Let me try.”
“Debbie.”
“Please.”
“Okay. He’s your husband. Do it however you want.”
“Thanks, Mal.”
“For what?”
I followed her through the bedroom into Cindy’s room. I stood beside the squat brown heater and watched her open the door and disappear from sight, going down the stairs. Her footsteps made slow, steady clops.