Chapter Three #3
That was mean, even while it made a maddening sense to him.
The situation also jabbed at his ego, because it had to do with the house and what happened in it, and he’d always felt that the house was more hers than his.
He almost said this out loud. Instead, he left his egg half-eaten, folded the newspaper and dropped it onto the table, then stood, kissed Skip but not Becky, and left for work without saying goodbye.
For him, it was a histrionic exit. Her heart was pounding nearly as hard as his was by the time he backed the car down the driveway.
—
Mrs. Dodson was closer, but Mrs. Dodson wasn’t her mother. Plus, Becky didn’t want to complain about her husband to a widow any more than she wanted to call Janice and bend her unmarried ear long-distance. She left the baby with the widow, borrowed the widow’s car, and drove to London Hill.
As soon as she laid eyes on her mother, she began to cry.
It was so irritating. So embarrassing. “Good lord,” Ida said.
“Where’s my little doughboy?” What she called Skip.
He was with a neighbor, Becky said, and Ida asked if anyone was hurt, trying to attach some event to the tears.
Upon learning that everyone was okay, she made a cup of Dari-Rich and told Becky to drink it in front of her, then convinced her she needed a nap.
“Go to bed and get yourself settled down,” she said, “then we’ll talk. ”
It turned out to be an excellent idea—just like when Becky was little.
She opened her eyes sometime later to find herself in her old bedroom, and it hadn’t changed at all: same peppermint-striped wallpaper, same white dresser and nightstand and desk accented with pink Bakelite knobs.
A lemony light came through the drawn shade.
Her mother drifted past the open doorway, stopped, drifted back.
Held a lit cigarette away from her body as she walked into the room.
“Mr. Tig-Tig!” she said. The stuffed tiger of Becky’s childhood, normally perched atop the pillows, now on the floor.
She placed it on the nightstand, sat down on the edge of the bed, and smiled at her daughter.
“Tell me what this is all about,” she said.
When Becky seemed at a loss for words, Ida tried to be helpful.
Was it Cal? Was he drinking? Had he hit her?
Forced himself on her? Those were her guesses—except infidelity, and she couldn’t imagine that, with Becky so pretty and her and Cal so obviously in love.
It was nothing like that, Becky said, and Ida said, short of something that would land a person in jail, there wasn’t much else.
Then went on in her mellifluous voice: of course, there was the constant opinionating, and the contradicting, and the condescending, but wives put up with that all over the world.
With her free hand, she held one of Becky’s wrists and rubbed her thumb over the pulse place, as she’d done to help her fall asleep years ago.
Becky told all. The ad, Cal’s reaction to people coming over, how he didn’t believe in what she did, just because she was doing something out of the ordinary.
The bottom line: he didn’t take her seriously.
“Oh, pumpkin.” There was no ashtray in the bedroom. Ida used the decorative scoop at the base of the lamp and made a mental note to clean it up later. “You’ll find a squirrel who can sing ‘Mairzy Doats’ before you find a man who takes you seriously.”
Her advice was to care less. Even better—don’t care at all.
She didn’t mean about Cal, but about the things that came out of his mouth.
“You have to love him, and you have to let him love you back. But you don’t have to care about every dumb thing he says, because I can guarantee you, tomorrow he’s going to say something dumber.
” Becky’s eyes widened at the irreverence of that.
“It’s not just Cal,” Ida said. “It’s all of them.
They think they’ve got all the brains, but if they did, they wouldn’t walk around sounding like idiots half the time.
When you give Cal a hug, squeeze extra tight.
That’s what I do with your father. He says I only know how to give bear hugs, and I want to say, ‘That’s because I’m trying to squeeze the stupid out of you, honey!
’ ” She waved that away. “It doesn’t work, but you’ll feel better. ”
That said, Ida was still eager to talk to Roman about this.
Over the years, they’d had more than a few conversations about the crystal ball business, the ghost-talking, conversations wherein they’d worried no one would ever understand their daughter the way they did—and there were parts of her they didn’t understand at all.
They’d crossed their fingers that Mr. Right-for-Becky was out there and would manage to find her.
And that’s what had happened. As far as the Hanovers were concerned, Cal and Becky were a fairy tale of chance—one that could have a happy ending if everyone kept a level head.
The ad, though. That was hard to swallow.
She called the hardware store and played dumb with Cal, asked if she could speak to Roman. Cal reminded her that Roman was at the luncheonette in Tiffin that day. She called the luncheonette, listened to the bustle through the line, and when Roman got on she said, “There’s trouble in Paradise.”
Roman drove the half hour back to Bonhomie as a light snow wafted slantways through the air. He walked into the hardware store at closing time and told Cal they were going out for a beer. When Cal looked momentarily confused, Roman said, “It’s not an invitation.”
The bar was called the Kill Shot, and there were more dead animals inside than there were people.
They hung their coats on hooves. Roman knew the bartender and most of the other men there.
He introduced Cal, got them two glasses of beer, and led them to a red leather booth in the corner.
“Stardust” played on the jukebox. Cal waited while Roman drank his beer, then slid his glass over when Roman’s was empty.
“You saw the ad,” Roman said.
“What was she thinking?”
“It’s a tough one.” Roman said he’d known about it for a week and had seen the consequences of it firsthand.
Two days ago, he’d gone over to retrieve the pruner Cal had borrowed, and who did he see coming out of the house but Fred Yulin.
Cal knew who Fred Yulin was, but Roman went on to tell him anyway.
“Black guy, works at the Sporting Nook. You know, the type that’s got nothing to prove.
In your neighborhood, coming down your porch steps in the middle of the afternoon. ”
Roman didn’t seem to be aware that the Yulins lived in Brookdale, on the border of Tiller’s Flat. “Who else?”
“Jesus, you tell me,” Roman said. “I don’t live there. Is it a parade of men, is my question? All types welcome?”
Cal felt a wave of anger at the implication that he was asleep at the wheel. Still, he didn’t know who else there was to step in and help, advise. He certainly couldn’t ask Everett. “Are you going to talk to her?”
Roman pursed his lips and shook his head.
“Then what are we going to do?”
“Not we. You. This is your problem.”
Cal glanced around the bar. “Didn’t you bring me here to tell me how to fix it?”
“What am I, your boss?”
“Yes, actually, you are.”
“Well, I’m not your guru. The training wheels are off, kid. You’ve got to figure out a way to make this not a problem.”
“By stopping it.”
“Noooo…by doing whatever you have to do so that it can still happen and not be something that causes fights.”
Cal watched Roman finish the second beer. “And how would you go about that?”
“Since you asked, I think you should tell her you’re sorry for whatever you said, and tell her you’ve had a change of heart.
You believe in the séance stuff now, hook, line, and sinker.
Why you felt the need to tell her otherwise, I’ll never know, but you’ve had a revelation and, boy, have you seen the light.
You just don’t want to participate in it, because, I don’t know, it gives you the heebie-jeebies.
But you couldn’t be happier that she’s doing it.
Your only request is that she meets with these people downstairs, in the parlor, which is five feet from your front door.
That way, they’re not wandering around the entire house, for chrissake. ”
“You want me to lie to her.”
Roman’s eyes dollied forward under his brow. “If it means living in peace? Absolutely. That’s one of the reasons we have lies.”
Cal couldn’t do it, though. She would see through that in a minute. It would make everything worse.
He ended up taking two-thirds of Roman’s advice.
That evening, after they’d put Skip down and were getting ready for bed, he told Becky he was sorry for the way he’d reacted to the ad.
She apologized—again—for not discussing the ad with him first. Then he suggested the parlor idea, holding out the slimmest hope that she might be so moved by his apology and his (really Roman’s) suggestion that she would decide to nix the ad entirely.
Instead, she said the parlor sounded practical and assured him the ad would cut down on the disruption to their lives.
It was a mutually considerate but glum endcap to the matter—a stepping-over more than a repair, because there was still the matter of his disbelief.
But the day had been long, and they were tired.
—
A month later, they were decorating the Christmas tree when the phone rang.
Becky went to answer it in the kitchen, and a few minutes later she came back into the living room with an excited look on her face and said please don’t get mad, but two people from a magazine were coming to interview her.
A specialized magazine called The Séance Précis, published once a month in Toledo.
Now? Cal asked. Soon, Becky said.