Who was going to unload it all, with Jared at school? she wondered. Unless she did it herself, she was sure the supplies would remain in the open trailer to be ruined as soon as the steadily building storm broke. And when Ted heard about Father MacNeill's visit to Phil Engstrom, she knew exactly what would happen.
First he'd get mad.
Then he'd get drunk.
Then he'd start feeling sorry for himself.
Then he'd start blaming her, or the kids, or anyone else he could think of. And given the hangover he was still undoubtedly nursing after last night, she suspected he'd probably already had a couple of drinks this morning. She braced herself for the scene to come, wishing there were some way to get Marge Engstrom out of the house, or at least to warn her. But it was too late. Ted was already coming through the back door.
"Do I smell coffee?" he asked. "Boy, would a cup of that taste good right now!" Janet, already on her feet, started toward the stove, but Ted waved her back to her chair. "Sit, sit! I can get it myself." Picking a cup out of the sink, he rinsed it, and, as he filled it with coffee, offered one of his dazzling smiles to Marge Engstrom. "I'm Ted Conway," he said. "And you'd be Phil Engstrom's wife, right?"
Janet stared at him, bewildered. After last night, his eyes should be bloodshot, his face haggard, and his mood even nastier than it had been yesterday afternoon. But his eyes were clear, there was a buoyancy to his step, and he was treating Marge Engstrom to the brilliant white smile Janet hadn't seen in years.
A smile she knew would darken into black rage as soon as Marge explained why she'd come, to invite them to a dinner party she was proposing for Saturday evening.
But Ted's smile didn't darken. It simply softened into an expression that looked more like sympathetic regret than anything else.
"Well, I guess I can't expect everyone to think my idea's as terrific as I do," he said. "I'm just glad we're not going to be totally on our own." His eyes shifted to Janet. "Do we have any plans for Saturday night?"
As if we've had plans for any Saturday night in the last ten years, Janet thought bitterly. She shook her head.
Ted turned back to Marge Engstrom. "Then we'll see you on Saturday. Can we bring anything?"
Bring anything? Janet silently echoed. The only things Ted had ever taken to a party were the half-dozen drinks he'd belted down before they got there. But what did it matter, really? With her and the kids gone, the odds of Ted even remembering the dinner party were next to zero, and the chances of him showing up sober were far less than that. And whatever chance he might have had at enlisting the mayor's support would vanish.
But it wasn't her problem anymore.
"I'll have to check the calendar," she said. She'd been covering up for Ted for so many years that her voice betrayed none of her emotions. "Perhaps I'll call you tomorrow?" But when Marge left a few minutes later, the neutrality vanished from her tone. "Where have you been?" she demanded. "Do you have any idea what it's like to wake up and find that your mate-who was so stinking drunk he couldn't stand up straight the last time you saw him-has taken off in the car?" Ted opened his mouth to reply, but Janet didn't give him the chance. "Of course you don't! And you never will, as long as you're married to me. But that's going to end, Ted. I've had it! Do you understand? I've finally and forever had it!" She paused, her breath momentarily spent, and braced herself for the explosion.
"I'm sorry," he said softly. "I don't know why you've put up with it all these years."
The genuine contrition she heard in his voice threw Janet totally off stride. She'd been prepared for the usual scene: a fight, building until she was finally reduced to tears. Only then, after he'd shouted her down, battering at her defenses until she had none left, would he finally gather her in his arms and promise that things would be different. But never, not in all the years since the drinking had started, had he suggested that she shouldn't have put up with his drinking at all.
But even now she was certain that whatever he said, his motivations were simple-to keep her with him, to keep her taking care of him. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Why would you know?" she asked, her voice reflecting the exhaustion she suddenly felt. "You've been too drunk to know anything, haven't you? Too drunk to know why you lose your jobs, and too drunk to know how frightened your kids are of you. And way too drunk to know what you've done to me."
Molly, standing up in her playpen and clutching at the netting with her tiny fingers, began to cry, and Janet reached down to scoop her up. "It's all right, baby," she cooed. "Mommy and Daddy aren't going to have a fight. We're not ever going to fight again." Her eyes shifted back to Ted. "I'm leaving this afternoon," she told him, "as soon as I get the few things I'm taking with me into the car." Scout, who had been curled up on the floor, suddenly rose, whining almost as if he knew what she was saying. "Don't worry, boy," she told the big dog. "We'll take you, too." Once again she braced herself against the attack Ted might mount on her determination, marshaling her grievances like an army, ready to repel anything he might say. Once again, he surprised her.
"Let me tell you what happened last night," he said so quietly it commanded her full attention.
But she didn't lower her guard an inch. "You mean you remember?"
Ted nodded. "Every bit of it. After you left, I kept drinking, and started wandering around the house. And everywhere I went, all I saw was a mess." A painful smile twisted his lips. "It was like looking at myself," he went on, his gesture sweeping over the kitchen and beyond, to the tangled mess of the grounds surrounding the house. "Everything about it's been let go, just like I've let myself go. Another few years, and it's literally going to fall apart," He turned back to Janet and met her gaze steadily. "Just like me," he went on. "Last night it finally came to me. I'm not just killing our marriage, and my relations with my kids, and my career. If you can call that job at the Majestic a career," he added derisively, but without even a hint of the self-pity Janet had always heard in his previous pleas. "I'm killing myself, too. I decided I didn't want to die."
Janet felt the first tiny crack develop in her defenses, and fought against it. "And," she asked, deliberately edging her voice with sarcasm, "having stumbled drunkenly upon this great truth, what exactly did you decide to do about it?"
Ted flinched, but didn't try to turn away. "I made myself sick," he replied. "I went down in the basement, and I threw up more than I've ever thrown up in my life." For the first time since he'd begun to talk, a genuine smile played around the corners of his mouth, and a sparkle of humor lit his eyes. "And you have to admit, I've thrown up some doozies in my life." When Janet failed to respond to his stab at a joke, his smile fled. "Look at me," he said softly. "Just look at my eyes."
Don't do it, Janet told herself. But she could feel the cracks in her resolve widening, and finally she allowed herself to look into his eyes.
Something had changed.
It wasn't just their clarity, which was surprising enough, given how much he'd been drinking last night. Still, if he'd really thrown up most of it, it might be possible that he'd slept it off.
It was as if he read her mind: "When you drink as much as I've been drinking, it takes a hell of a lot to bring on a hangover."
Janet made no reply, but still she gazed into his eyes. There was something familiar there, something dimly remembered.
And then she knew. It was as if she were looking into Ted's eyes when they'd first met, and she'd felt as if she could sink right into him through his eyes, or float in their blue clarity forever, needing nothing else but him, and his caress, and the look in his eyes when they beheld her.