9
He surprised himself, or his body surprised him, his heart. But maybe, for the first time with a woman, he was not focused on sex. His body had changed. Slowed. It was less reliable in ways that made the idea of sex something that filled him with as much anxiety as excitement. He worried that his body might not come through in the clutch. Might not respond. Or respond confidently. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Didn’t want his feelings hurt either.
There had been a time in his life when a woman smiling at him was enough to fire all the cylinders, to make him lightheaded with desire. But things were moving so smoothly with Vivian, and he was content for now—no, delighted—just to steal kisses. Hold her hand. He hadn’t seen her now for a few days, but the other night they had driven to Eau Claire to walk the city’s downtown and bridges, and they’d held hands for miles. Just talking. And the feel of her bare skin, her soft palm, her fingers. It felt better than he remembered sex ever being. Steadier. When she squeezed his hand, he knew it was her. Her doing that. It was like they were communicating just through their hands; he had no memory of sex being like that. Touching her in these small ways felt like the most important thing in the world. Like they were nurturing something together.
They texted every day. First thing in the morning, he would all but rush to his phone to see if any messages awaited him. At night, they talked on the phone for hours. Like teenagers. Almost without exception, she tired first, and he could hear her breathing slow and slow, as her words came fewer and fewer, until he knew she was asleep. And that was okay. He imagined the phone on her pillow, and he saw her hair arrayed around her head, or swept behind an ear. That red hair that had always undone him. Red now with traces of white. She reminded him of Bonnie Raitt.
Darling, he would whisper.
Darling, he would say, lightly.
Darling, he would say, louder yet, a hint of laughter now.
I’m sorry, she would say suddenly. I must have fallen asleep.
Good night, he would say.
Good night, she would say.
Days drifted by, like the dry autumnal leaves on a breeze. He puttered around the house. Various projects. Tuck-pointing the old fieldstone walls of the basement before applying a whitewash. Sanding the floors. Mowing the expansive lawn one last time before winter truly set in. Chopping and stacking firewood, surely one of his favorite things. That rhythmic work culminating at day’s end with a stack of wood all neatly organized and the satisfying exhaustion that settled over his body. The old barn was an endless series of repairs, but he moved slowly from one task to the next: wiring, the construction of new stalls, insulation. But in the evenings, when the work was complete, or his body exhausted by the labor, the old farmhouse, as beautiful as it was, provided little comfort. Comfort was often a bottle of wine, and a fire in the woodstove. One glass followed by another, and then another, until the bottle was empty, and he faded, unintentionally. Until he passed out in a leather chair, startling himself awake and disturbing Blueberry, who, in such moments, stood suddenly, then surveyed him, before moving into another room, abandoning him.
It was late afternoon, the magic hour, when he arrived at her house on Halloween, the fading light platinum and gold. It was the first time he had been properly invited into her home. Most of the time, she met him on the stoop or sidewalk, and he’d become curious. Somewhat suspicious even. But now he thought he understood. It maybe wasn’t about him. Maybe she was embarrassed of her house. There was a smell in the air. A smell that reminded him of poverty. Fried hamburger. Old dog. Kitty litter left out in the rain. He saw no pets—except the goldfish, of course—but could smell the memories of animals that had lived in the house. Other sad smells too. Very old cigarette smoke in the stained paint; ash ground into the tragic carpeting. Mice. The little house exuded those smells.
He hadn’t noticed it before, but the neighborhood was broken. On the decline. The sidewalks were wonky. The driveways splattered with oil and gasoline. The houses all seemed to sink into the earth, as if the planet were slowly swallowing them. Porches sagged. Roof shingles cupped. Saplings grew in the gutters. Cloudy windows dripped with condensation. It wasn’t every house on the street, but it was most of them. The sort of neglect that begins to infect a neighborhood when there is never enough time or money.
He didn’t like it. It offended him in ways he knew weren’t fair. It wasn’t because he hated poor people, which he didn’t, of course. There had been many years of his life when he did not have two nickels to rub together. But he hated poverty. Hated the way it exhausted people and stole their light. What troubled him was he wanted more for her, for them. They deserved more, this family, and he actually had the means to help them.
Dressed as the Cowardly Lion, he stood inside the claustrophobic entry, shoes and hats and gloves cluttering the floor, jackets piled here and there. His dog, Blueberry, stood beside him wearing what looked like Dorothy’s blue gingham dress. There was a flask of whisky beneath his costume and two beers in his stomach. He was warm and happy. He shouldn’t have had any alcohol and he knew it. But he hadn’t had a drink in days, and he wanted to be relaxed for the granddaughters, for Ainsley and Addison.
The girls came to the door. Dressed like comic book or movie characters. Thor and—
Who are you supposed to be? he asked the one dressed like a princess or a queen.
I’m a princess, she replied proudly.
Princess who? he asked.
Princess Me. Princess Addison.
He nodded appreciatively. Makes sense, he said.
Vivian came to the door now. She wore a wig, the hair jet black on one side, shockingly white on the other, an unlit cigarette dangling from her fingers at the end of a long filter. She wore a black cocktail dress and black pumps with a fake fur wrapped around her exposed shoulders. He rummaged through the foggy corners of his vocabulary and then remembered: stole. She wore a stole.
Cruella, he sighed.
Well now, what do we have here? she asked evilly.
He kissed her on the lips, aware of the metallic taste in his own mouth, the whisky, the alcohol on his breath. He had chewed a mint in the truck on the way over, and hoped it would do its work.
Well, he said, is your daughter coming too?
No. She’s going to a bar tonight. I told her we’d take the girls.
In the month since they had begun seeing each other, he had never so much as seen her daughter. He was beginning to wonder if Vivian was embarrassed of him in some way. Or if Melissa already had her mind made up that he was an unredeemable loser, the man who had broken her mother’s heart. What stories might Vivian have told Melissa about him?
But wasn’t Melissa at least curious to meet him? He and Vivian had been married once, before her birth, sure, but they had been married. No matter how this went, he was a chapter in her life, or her mother’s life anyway.
***
They walked from house to house holding hands. Cruella de Vil and the Cowardly Lion. With Dorothy trotting beside and behind. Normally, he avoided Halloween. Avoided the rookies at the bars and taverns. Avoided the roads with drunk drivers. Normally, he thought costumes childish and unbecoming of adults. But she had asked him to join them on Halloween, and he knew it would not do to be a stick-in-the-mud. Knew that it was far better to show some honest enthusiasm. Maybe the alcohol helped, he thought. So, as she was talking to a neighbor, he stole two quick sips before popping another mint.
Dusk descended and the moon was up. A big orange harvest moon. Many evenings and early mornings while he was working on the railroad, the moon had been his friend. He liked the sensation of turning his back to it to go about his work, but knowing that it was there, looming, unseen behind and above him, glowing on. Some nights, alone in his bed, unable to sleep because of the pain in his joints, he would talk to the moon, or even sing quietly, mournfully. He wondered what she would think about that, if they ever again shared a bed. Shared a moonrise. A sunrise. He wasn’t sure he wanted to stop talking to the moon. It was no less odd than talking to the dog. Or talking to himself. What do you sing to the moon? You sing Hank Williams. You sing Patsy Cline. You sing the Cowboy Junkies. Maybe you sing a little Louis Armstrong, a little Billie Holiday.
The girls tired quickly, and night settled over the city, cold and sharp. The smell of bonfires in the air. Burning leaves. They returned to the house and now the smell, that smell bothered him. He couldn’t let it go. Felt trapped by it. Trapped by the smells caught in the old carpeting, the yellowy walls, the flooring, the drapes, the wood of the cabinets… He could tell, he just knew, that there were mice in the house. He had lived in enough shabby apartments to know that smell. The smell of animal hair and feces. He wanted very badly to open a window, or light a candle, but that would have been rude. So he excused himself to the bathroom, and there, sitting on the toilet seat, drank the remainder of the flask. Then he washed his face off in the sink, rubbing the bar of soap close to his nose, hoping the smell would linger on his skin and whiskers. He opened the bathroom window and gulped down fresh air.
After the girls had gone to sleep, they watched a movie. When Harry Met Sally. Blueberry the dog asleep on the floor.
We’ve never watched this together, she said.
Meaning, they were already divorced when the film was released.
No, he admitted, but we’re watching it now. The first movie we’ve watched in forty years. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder. The movie was just beginning. Harry and Sally were in Chicago, and they were young.
I’ve never been to Chicago, she admitted. Is that sad?
His first thought was, Yes, kind of. But he didn’t say that. He said instead, I do love this movie.
What was the last one? she asked. The last movie we watched together?
He racked his memory but came up empty. In those days he never considered what she might have wanted to watch. It had never dawned on him. That embarrassed him now; he felt regret.
I’m sorry, he said. I wasn’t a very good husband to you, Viv. I could make excuses, I guess. I was young.
You were drunk a lot of the time.
Yes, that’s true. I don’t drink as much as I used to.
You were drinking tonight, she pointed out. Did you think I didn’t notice? That I couldn’t tell?
I was drinking, he admitted. A little.
Why were you hiding it? Are you ashamed, Charlie? Do you have some kind of drinking problem?
He didn’t know how to answer her question. The movie was playing. All that smart dialogue, but he wasn’t even listening. Now his ears burned. Don’t screw this up, he thought, don’t screw this up.
But also, quietly, he thought, Why does it matter? And also, Lay off, I haven’t done anything wrong. Also, darkly, You’re not my wife. You couldn’t tell me what to do back then, and you can’t now. Because I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m not doing anything that half this city isn’t doing. That your own daughter isn’t doing.
He took a deep breath. He’d worked on this. On his anger. His emotions. His honesty. You couldn’t do better, couldn’t become a better human, if you didn’t try, if you didn’t admit you were fallible. That you regularly made mistakes. That you were, in fact, human.
He had worked very hard on this notion of sloughing off his old self and becoming new. The kind of human who was curious about other people. And gentle. He didn’t need to be so strong, to act so strong. He could be softer, and that was okay. Strong things broke, and when they broke, they were difficult or impossible to mend. He didn’t want that.
She shrugged away from his arm and stood, ran the faucet, and drank a glass of water.
Now the smell of the house assaulted him again. It was the furnace. The furnace kicking on, stirring those smells. Mice. He imagined them in the drawers, running over their mismatched cutlery. Hopping in and out of chipped porcelain coffee mugs. Cheap mugs. The sort of free mugs an insurance agent gives you. The sort of mugs that are door prizes, too ugly or plain to pay for. He imagined the mice again. Chewing at cardboard boxes and plastic bags filled with food. Marauding their bread and fruit. Little mice, everywhere. He didn’t know why he was so fixated.
He closed his eyes and concentrated. He said something he did not expect to say and had never said to another soul. I think, he started, then paused. No, I know—well. I do have a drinking problem.
She turned to look at him. One of her hands on the counter, as if for balance. She was surprised, he could see.
I think I’ve almost always had a drinking problem. Since I was twelve or thirteen. Since the first beer I drank. You know, the first beer I ever had was with my uncle Wally. You remember him? He was wonderful. I was twelve. We were in his garage, where he drank in the summertime. It was hot and we were watching the fireflies on his lawn. And I liked being included by him. Listening to baseball on the radio with him. What can I say? I like the way it makes me feel—the alcohol. The happiness I feel. The—lightness. I like the way the world laughs, the way the world shines, the way it sings when I’m drinking. I like almost everything better when I’m drinking, and I know that’s wrong. I know there’s another way. But…I’m afraid to quit. I’m afraid it won’t be the same.
She sat down beside him. She touched his face. The movie was still playing, and they were just about to dine at Katz’s Deli, that famous scene when Sally pretends to have an orgasm. It was a terrible moment to waste in this way. He felt remorse. That he had ruined this, their first movie together in forty years. Ruined it with his drinking. With that stupid flask.
She paused the movie, but there they were, frozen on the television, Billy Crystal and beautiful Meg Ryan, sitting at a cramped table in a bustling deli. These characters had barely begun living their lives.
Then Vivian shut the television off. She stood and reached for his hand.
He knew something was going to happen. Something. Something very important. Something possibly very lovely. He stood and followed her into her little bedroom. She closed the door behind them. His heart was beating faster than it had in a long time; he could not say how long. He felt as if he were running. He could feel his pulse in his forehead, in his ears.
She turned off the light.
The room smelled different from the rest of the house somehow. He breathed her. Breathed her clothing. The lotions he had just seen on her bedside table. He breathed the scent of her bedding and knew she must wash her sheets frequently. Now she was standing very close to him. He could feel her breasts brushing against his chest through her shirt.
He took a chance and touched her, held her breasts in his hands. It was almost too much. The weight of her breasts and the size of her breasts and the feel of her breath against his neck.
They were still wearing all their clothing, and he didn’t know what he wanted. Did he want to shuck off all his clothing and risk her laughing at him, at his old-man body? But wouldn’t that feel exquisite? To stand there, naked and vulnerable, to feel her breasts against his chest. Her nipples against his chest, or between his fingers. His head felt light, delirious. They were kissing in the dark. Passionately. He slid his hands between the blue jeans she had changed into and her underwear. The light fabric of her underwear. He felt the soft skin of her butt. Oh my, he thought, oh my.
I want to see you, he whispered. His hands held her very lightly, just above her hips.
He felt his body responding in the way he feared it might not, and there was a moment of splendid gratitude.
No, she said, not tonight.
But the way she said it was beguiling, alluring. Not tonight sounded to him like, Soon. Maybe even, Maybe. He could hang his hat on maybe. It was something.
Not tonight? he repeated, the way he imagined he might have, back when he was a teenager.
No lights tonight, please, she said.
Should I stop? he asked, moving his fingers back and away from her skin, almost imperceptibly.
No, she said, keep going. Don’t stop. I just… No lights tonight.
So, he went that way. They kissed for a long time, very slowly. And then he dropped to his knees. It was painful. His knees on the unforgiving wood floor, but he was so thankful to be alive, to be in this darkened room with this beautiful woman, that he ignored the discomfort. He unbuttoned her jeans and pressed the fabric down. Not a forbidden amount. But the amount a teenage boy might, a teenage boy exploring new boundaries. He rolled the denim down an inch. Maybe two. He kissed her hips and her belly button. He ran his hands all over her thighs and her breasts and her stomach, and he appreciated everything that was her.
Can I, may I undress you? he whispered.
Yes, you may, she replied.
He gently slid her jeans off, helping her to step out of the fabric. Then she hooked her fingers around the hem of her underwear and tugged gently down, and she stepped out of the underwear and moved to the bed, leaving him kneeling there and nearly breathless. He held her underwear in his hands and felt the soft cotton. He touched the cotton like a blind man feeling a paper map for some mysterious geography. He pressed the underwear to his face and inhaled her like a blessing, like forgiveness, like the wind that pushed a spring thunderstorm.
He undressed, clumsily. Now he too was thankful for the darkness. That she would not see how pale his skin was. Or the hair on his shoulders and back. Or the hundred moles that dotted his skin. Or the way his hair had grown white everywhere, even some of his pubic hair. No, he was thankful for the darkness, as he slid into bed on top of her, feeling her calves rest against his. Feeling his penis between her legs. Against her thigh. Kissing her again and again until their bodies were joined.
They moved very slowly. The sound of a car driving by. The dance of headlights in the curtains. He heard her breathing heavily, heard her coming, and it was the most beautiful sound he could remember. That sound of her pleasure, her infinite happiness, it might have been the most exquisite present anyone had ever given him. For many years into the future, he would return to that sound. Roll the sound around in his memory. The sexiest thing he could remember. Her voice, quiet in the darkness, quiet for fear of anyone else hearing, her voice, I’m coming, oh my god, I’m coming.
They stood in the yellow glow of the porch light, and she kissed him goodnight. When he slung into the cab of the truck and started the engine, she was still standing there, in an old robe, arms crossed over her chest, her face looking, he thought, young. Younger than she was. She looked tired at this hour, sure, but the way a person felt tired on a Sunday morning. Just waking up. Just after making love. Relaxed.
He rolled down the window and said, I love you. He had not planned that either. The words had just fallen out, like stars.
I love you too, she said. Drive home safe.