Both dogs decided to poop at the corner. There was a bunch of dead buckeyes already there and the poops blended in. Jack had a quick look around at the empty street, then continued walking slowly, swaggering rat-pack-ishly.
He imagined a novel in which every chapter was the same man walking to the same woman, over three decades. Weather – that would be the thing to hang chapters on. The way even the air smelled completely different, month by month. Times of day had different smells too. Sometimes he felt like he was drinking the air, that it was entering his lungs through his stomach, that he breathed deeply sometimes because he was thirsty. He supposed breathing wasn’t so very different to drinking, not really. Moods, as well as economies and planes in the air and boats at sea, could be affected by air pressure and moisture content. Air, since he read Storm by George Stewart back in ’52, had never been just air. Maybe he’d begin writing that novel when he got home. Yes, now was the time. He had a good feeling about this one. The others had never felt this right at the beginning.
Jack took the long way, because thinking about this potential masterpiece distracted him, and he forgot his mission. In any case, the rhythm of putting his feet one in front of the other, of feeling the dogs pull on the leash, was soothing him in the old way. He took several slow walks around these streets every day. Since retiring, he found the house claustrophobic after a few hours. Each house he passed, he told himself a potted version of the history. Blonde kids with stingray bikes. German family, wife had hair to her waist. Cocktail hour always included wieners tooth-picked to chunks of pineapple.
Then he came to 10 Bay View, Ernie and Bernice’s house. He sighed, not because Ernie was dead (he wasn’t), but because Ernie always reminded him of his own youth and that made him nostalgic. He thought of their Saturday walks to the Sebastiani Theatre for the double feature, that summer before they’d started high school. They’d talked about girls and sung snatches of random songs, or walked in an easy silence, their muscles loose, their arms and legs swinging, the sun hot on their heads. An exquisite sense of anticipation all that summer. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever been as aware of sheer potential since.
Ah, youth!
Then Jack passed two other houses that used to contain friends, and he saw them sitting on their deck chairs, lighting cigarettes, or pulling tabs on a Coors while tending the barbecue, or throwing Frisbees for the dog – God, all those Frisbees, and the never-ending fun of buying new ones. They moved, they smiled, they opened their mouths in recognition of Jack, and by the look in their eyes were about to say something slightly sarcastic, slightly funny and irreverent. They’d been his buddies, after all. They moved their mouths but nothing ever came out.
At the end of the street, there was Colette’s third dead husband, opening his mouth to reveal his terrible teeth and cackling lewdly as if to say: Jack, you checking out my wife again? You old dog!
Jack didn’t feel sad. He passed these houses too often, and the nostalgia was too familiar. He felt flat. But now for no particular reason (what had changed?) he felt his heart pumping quicker, and his steps felt less effortful. Thank God, he thought, here it comes again, that old renewal. He had two seconds’ worry about his heart, then remembered the magic pacemaker in his chest, keeping tabs on things. And the stent. He was all loaded up with metallic magic. He wished he was still a smoker. This was a lighting-up moment.
‘Jack!’
She stood in her doorway, a cell phone in one hand, wearing a paint-stained apron over jeans. Looking, with every atom, mid-stream in some engrossing activity. Jack shivered with the thrill of being unimportant to a woman. And an ex-lover who had become unattractive! Colette was stripped down to the bones of her personality: sharp cheekbones, burning blue eyes, pale skin transparent as cling film. Even her protruding abdomen seemed angular somehow. She’d reinvented herself as a Room Improver, and resided entirely in her eyes and her brush-wielding hands. Her body existed to support these parts, and the rooms in her house were continually changing colour.
‘Come in, man! Look at you, in shorts in the middle of winter. Merry Christmas!’
‘It’s not Christmas,’ he said, untangling the leashes.
‘Pretty damn near. Christmas Eve.’ She gestured behind her, to the artificial tree with twinkling blue lights.
‘No! Is it?’ Jack laughed, a short barking sound. Time! He had to take his hat off to Time – what a sneak, what a scoundrel. It was exactly as Waugh had described it in Jenny Kissed Me. And it was so satisfying when Time didn’t catch him out. He pictured the present he’d bought for Milly, wrapped and hidden under his socks. A watch. Her old watch was not broken, but she loved watches.
‘Yes, of course, it’s Christmas Eve, you silly old man. You know it is.’ Then she squinted at him. ‘How are you?’
Pause.
‘Not good.’
‘Okay. Tell me everything.’
He noticed the wrinkles around her pursed mouth. They reminded him of something distasteful, but he didn’t want to think what. Regardless, he had an urge to kiss her right there on the doorstep, out of sheer gratitude for inviting him to speak his mind. A loud wet kiss. Colette sidestepped him, and almost skipped into the kitchen to get Jaspy and King a bowl of water. Light-footed and saucy, a bit like Ivy, actually. All his crush women were versions of his big sister, come to think of it. Including Lizbeth? Especially Lizbeth. Who may not even be alive, for all he knew.
‘Is August around? He mentioned he’d be here for Christmas.’
‘He’ll be here tomorrow. Sit down, Jack. I’ve got some news about August.’
‘Not again.’
It was as if their son had entered the room anyway, with that look, half sheepish, half proud. Jack used to love that about August. Colette made their martinis and came to sit next to him on the sofa.
Meanwhile, Milly was sitting on the window seat she claimed for her own about five years ago. Like Goldilocks, she’d tried other seats, but this one fitted the best. She could look out of the window and see the path leading to the front door, as well as the main rooms of the house. She could watch television if she chose; the remote was on the table next to her. There was also a magazine nearby, ready to hold should Jack reappear. She tried not to gaze vacantly into space in his presence; she was too vain for that, and besides, he inhibited her space-gazing. Jack had never caught her picking her nose. That she knew of.
The mention of August, and therefore Colette, was still hanging in the air. She absent-mindedly turned on the television and clicked through dozens of commercials. ‘Jingle Bells’ and ecstatic children ripping paper. Somehow Christmas was here again, but she was prepared even if the Christmas ornament box remained in the basement. She’d ordered gifts by phone weeks ago, wrapped them and hidden them in her closet. She had not told Jack – not because he liked surprises or hated Christmas, but because she thought Christmas should be full of secrets. She had bought Jack a grey cashmere pullover from Brooks Brothers. Yes, they were living more frugally now, but she refused to consider lambswool.
There were also commercials about haemorrhoids and erectile dysfunction, enlarged prostates and incontinence pads and cures for arthritis. She smiled at the long list of dire side-effects, intoned as if they were pleasant little nothings, like freckles occurring from prolonged exposure to the sun. She was never going to be as old as these people. Never so stupid as to get that old and sick. She stopped clicking when she came to one of those new reality programs, some kind of talent show. Ideally, she’d now open a pack of Junior Mints. She relaxed into the naughtiness of watching daytime junk alone, but after a while, the programme seemed familiar in an unhappy way. All those vulnerable faces, those fevered eyes, those songs and dances they poured their hearts into. At least one of them cried every five minutes, unrehearsed, raw. It was hard to watch, and hard to turn off. It reminded her of a phase of her marriage. That same cruel pause before the verdict. Would he betray her? Leave her? Love her? Carry them to the next round? She’d tried so hard, but was it hard enough?
While a mile away Jack tasted a dry martini in silence because that honoured Colette’s martini-making skill, Milly turned off the television, and her thoughts rolled this way and that. The windows looked out on trees, leafless and winter black. If a monitor was measuring her heartbeat, it would register mild fluctuations as the distant past threaded into the recent past. Today her thoughts all contained Jack, in one incarnation or another. She had been cursed by the fates, and married her true love. Her face was slack, but she was still a beautiful woman. She had a clear jaw line, and her neck had loosened but not turned to crepe. Her skin was moist and delicate. Her blonde hair had faded to white, not grey, since she’d stopped dyeing it. She would like to leave the chair, leave the house like Jack, of course she would, but just imagining the process was wearying enough. If she wanted to go out, she needed assistance getting down the gravel path. Then the complex manoeuvring into the car. Dropping down into the car seat, then lifting her left leg with her right hand as if it belonged to someone else. Hazards every inch of the way. Last time she went out she fell, despite the stupid cane. Elisabeth kept mentioning walking aids. Get a Zimmer frame, Mom, it’ll make your life much easier.
‘Forget it!’ she said right now out loud, as if her daughter was present. Mild enough words, but in a venomous, determined tone. Know-it-all child, that Elisabeth. Anyway, she was not going to fall any more. She was not, darn it. Falling was very…irritating. There was pain of course, but worse was the humiliation of lying on the floor, sometimes with her skirt up to her underpants. Once she lay all afternoon in the backyard, by the leeks. Darn near froze to death. If only she’d been more careful driving Sam to the hospital forty thousand years ago. If only.
No, it was not worth going out. There was enough to deal with here, without taking extra risks. Every impulse, from picking up a dropped sock to a trip to the bathroom, was enacted in slow motion, with much strategic thinking. If, for instance, the kitchen phone rang and she was in the hall, she thought, twelve rings. It will be twelve rings before I can get to it. If the phone rang and she was in the bedroom, she said, ‘Oh, nuts.’
No, this seat was fine, and she’d stop wanting things she couldn’t have, like legs that worked and a faithful husband. She used to pray for things, but when she got them, they nearly always backfired so what was the point? She’d stopped trusting herself to know what she really needed decades ago. Now she was just grateful things were not worse.
Jack was grateful that Colette had finally stopped talking about August’s child maintenance issues with his ex, but now she was talking about her latest plan to transform the guest bathroom. She could never just say paint the bathroom, it always had to be a metamorphosis or transformation. It was much more fun when they talked about life in general terms, or about his own past triumphs and travels. Why couldn’t she ask him again about the time Dulcinea won Best Small Publisher of the Year? Or when his star writer came out of the closet? Why could they never refer, even obliquely, to the times they tore each other’s clothes off? My God, had visiting Colette become boring? Another thing that had slipped away. He watched her puckered mouth move, and her words had a soporific effect. The gin and vermouth in his blood had begun dissipating, and he knew she’d not pour more. He roused the dogs and reattached the leashes. Apologised for their stink, and not for the first time expressed his wish that they would die soon.
‘Give my love to dear darling Milly,’ said Colette, without irony.
‘Okay,’ said Jack.
On impulse, perhaps because he looked like a sulky ten-year-old in his shorts and scabby knees and desert boots, Colette kissed him smack dab on the lips, just like his fantasy.
Jack toddled home with Jaspy and King, in a kind of trance. He was attached to home with an umbilical cord, and whenever nothing else was going on, whenever he was hungry, sleepy, bored by an ex-lover, home reeled him in like a trout. But was it really so involuntary? As he approached his house, his steps quickened. Suddenly, he could hardly wait to see his wife. Milly was many irritating things, but she was not work. He didn’t have to be witty or smart around her. He didn’t even have to make conversation.
It was early evening, and he noticed Christmas lights on trees in windows, and plastic Rudolphs pulling Santas on lawns. He remembered vaguely that his children and grandchildren would visit tomorrow, with a cooked turkey. In fact, August would probably come too, the cuckoo in the nest everyone adored. Billy would bring Maria and all ten of their children – being the only MacAlister child to stick at Catholicism and marriage. Jack was surprised to find he was looking forward to this too, to having his house full of chaos, and Christmas paper and carols. Kids whining and babies crying, but loud laughter too. He’d light the fire, open that bottle of Chateau Buena Vista Reserve. He wondered if it was too late to get a tree. A real tree, not some damn fake thing. You needed the smell of pine, or there was no point.
Inside, at the sound of her husband’s footsteps, Milly grabbed the National Geographic and miraculously lost twenty years: cheek muscles tensed, a smile in her eyes, back straight. A pretty marionette whose strings had just been pulled taut.
‘Is that you, Jack?’
‘No! It’s one of your boyfriends!’
Milly’s stomach tingled with pleasure. Was this, Milly wondered, what love boiled down to? A physical symptom, like an infection or inflammation, that flared up now and then. Nothing that could be faked or imitated or summoned or ignored. She still wondered things like this, forgetting that she had wondered them many times before. Why did Milly still love her faithless husband? Maybe, she thought, it was simply because he still loved her. She was convinced she was beloved. Stomach tingles didn’t lie. Or so she told herself.
