Jack headed to his office and she got up to make dinner. They sighed, shook their heads slightly, and slipped back into their ancient way of being – aggravated and comforted in equal measure. As if he was an old armchair with a misshapen seat that she had push back in every time, and she was an heirloom table with one leg the wrong length so his cup of coffee was always spilling.
Outside, as the day wound down, the rain began again. It made a light steady patter on the roof, and because they hadn’t cleaned the roof gutters for years, it soon overflowed and splashed down the sides of the wooden house with Jack and Milly inside, feeling cosy. Jack poured himself a large glass of Two-Buck Chuck. Every bit as good as any of those fancy wines he kept for company. All the money he’d wasted over the years! Milly began frying hamburger meat, and fretted about the ants. How did they get in the house? Not one thought of Christmas returned.
JACK IS NOT DEAD
FIVE YEARS EARLIER
July 16 2002
San Miguel, Marin County 10:01am
Milly sat in the window seat between the front door and the living room. A habit she began yesterday, but already it felt like a tradition. It was hot, and predicted to hit ninety-five later. She wore a short-sleeved blouse and a cotton knee-length skirt, with Birkenstock sandals on her feet. She could get the phone if it rang and she could see who was at the door without getting up. She sat very still and looked at the book she held. Under her book, a small dictionary lay cradled in her lap. She frowned softly and concentrated. She read the same sentence over and over again. He takes her hand and guides it to his cock. She didn’t understand. She hoped she didn’t understand. Goodness, it was so hot! The book belonged to her husband, whom she much admired and respected, even if he drove her nuts, and it said Everyman’s Classic Library on the spine. Surely it wouldn’t be about – that. She tried to read on but came back to the same passage:…guides it to his cock.
She could not say cock out loud, even to herself. Actually, even the word penis repulsed her. There was no good word for it, she thought. Her boys – all four of them, counting Louise’s two, and not counting poor Charlie who never got old enough to call his anything, and also not counting Jack and Colette’s August, who probably found a more obscene word for it – had called their penises willies when they were little. A house full of willies! How hilarious they used to think it was, that Willy was called Willy (before he became Billy). They used to have peeing contests in the yard, and aim at each other when they lost. For at least ten years, one of Milly’s daily chores had been to mop the pee-sodden area around the toilet. And sensitive, serious Elisabeth actually learned to pee standing up, one summer.
A bee buzzed lazily in and she looked up in gratitude for the distraction. She followed its course through the open kitchen door, then lost it as it made its way into the hall. A diminishing drone. She felt a lovely numbness come over her. It had happened yesterday too, when she first relaxed in this chair. All her life, Milly had been rushing, rushing, rushing, then falling into bed with chores half done, lists half crossed out. And now suddenly it seemed her body was putting on the brakes. It wasn’t even waiting for her conscious surrender. Every muscle was limp. She closed her eyes and entered – not sleep, because then she’d fall off her seat – but a half-sleep. Irresistible. Like sliding onto an air mattress and just floating away down river. Ah!
This was how Jack caught her when he returned from his doctor’s appointment, new blood pressure instrument tucked under his arm. He froze. Was she sick? Certainly not drunk, anyway, no daytime martinis for his Milly, but she’d never been a napper either. Her mouth was open and her book was on the floor. She looked odd, but also relaxed and a tiny bit like she used to. Not angry, anyway. She snored a little, a soft feminine snorting. He picked up her book and decided not to wake her. The party wasn’t for a few hours. He quietly walked past her, into his office. He was working more from home since his heart attack six months ago, and there was always a pile of manuscripts on his desk. He stared into space instead. Behind him, on the wall, were framed book covers, and photographs of his staff and some of the more successful authors. Old Andy Frances, holding his first bound copy of Here I Am. None of this could cheer him today because Dulcinea Press was going to the dogs. He had to offer his A-list writers less for their new books than they’d got for their first. He’d tried everything. Cheaper production materials, less on marketing, discount rates, more on marketing. Writers would write regardless, readers would read regardless, but publishers could not publish without money. He never could have predicted this downturn. It felt like a trick. This heat was giving him a headache. He had a sudden longing for fall. For fog and football games and sweaters.
A loud adolescent car horn woke Milly. She jerked her head up and frowned. She saw dusty footmarks on the rug that hadn’t been there before.
‘Jack! Are you home?’
‘I’m here. Working,’ he shouted behind a closed door.
‘I wasn’t sleeping,’ she shouted back.
‘I didn’t say you were sleeping.’ He left his office and gave her back her book. ‘Here you go, sweetie. Of course you were wide awake.’
‘I only closed my eyes, is all. Where’s the dogs?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You said you were taking them with you.’
‘Did I?’ He was always in the wrong about the damn dogs.
‘They could be anywhere. Out on the road.’ She glared at him. ‘They could be dead right now!’
King and Jaspy came padding down the hall on their clumsy puppy paws. They licked her bare legs. She glared at Jack, but couldn’t keep it up. It was one of those times. Since she hit her seventies, three years ago, these times were more frequent. Mercurial, that was Milly now. Mercury Milly.
‘Listen,’ he heard himself say. ‘There’s just time before the party. I’m sure it’s open. Let’s drive to St Mary Magdalene.’
‘What for?’ She couldn’t make the connection. It was like the cock and hand all over again.
‘Milly. Milly!’ Boyishly reproachful. ‘What happened fifty years ago today at St Mary Magdalene?’
She laughed out loud this time, not at his words, but his face. It was absurd. Wrinkled and wistful.
‘Very funny, is it? Well, get your shoes on, then. Let’s go.’
It was a forty-minute drive to Bolinas. The rounded hills were blonde, and the few trees hunched their branches, parched. As the road wound into the town, they both said ‘Ah!’ at the same time. The clapboard houses, the dusty sidewalks, Smiley’s Bar and the old grocery store. Oysters in the shell. There was not much to say it wasn’t 1952, aside from the style of cars and the price of oysters. Three dollars each! The sky was delphinium blue, the town was stunned with sun. Even the seagulls were quiet, perched on fences and porch roofs.
The hillside steps were blinding white, leading to the small church. Jack took her arm going down. He’d brought her cane in the car, but she refused it as usual. Walking was a slow process, but neither commented. No people around. Would the door be unlocked? Yes, the heavy dark door swung inward and waves of coolness wrapped round them. Woke them up. They’d not been here for many years, but it was the same: the narrow stained-glass windows letting in just enough light, the simple brown crucifix, the ashy cinnamon smell of incense, the white wooden walls. They stood in the aisle, her hand touching his sleeve. Then without speaking, they turned into a pew and sat down.
Whole minutes passed. They faced forward and so close they touched shoulders, arms, legs. Hands touching. This was not like them at all.
Milly wondered who she would have become if she’d married someone else. It was a fact that who you married altered you. And God knows, thought Milly, identity was a nebulous thing at best. Did it matter who you loved? It mattered very much how that person changed you. If she’d married too-nice Jimmy, she might have discovered her own potential for cruelty. If she’d married sexually ineffective Larry, she might have become a wanton woman. Shy, fat Harry might have made her outgoing and chubby, and low-earning Andy might have turned her into a career woman. With Timmy, she might be living in a mansion by now, with maids to do her beckoning. She might have become an aimless alcoholic, from boredom and a sense of unimportance. But she’d married Jack. Here they were, and the people they’d become were not so bad. At any rate, they’d made some nice kids. And raised two others to be nice, and then August too. Six nice human beings in the world, thanks to them. Not to mention all those grandchildren. Yessiree!
Suddenly, she was relieved all over again that Jack was not dead. Since his heart attack, she’d stopped taking his aliveness for granted. Bliss, to feel him next to her. And bliss, to be out of the sun and off her feet. She’d forgotten why exactly they were sitting in this empty church. She was at peace, rare enough. Then it came to her, rising up from her contentment, and she thought, Yes, I was here for a wedding and it was mine. I was late and I was worried about my deodorant not working and the flower girl tripped and fell. She wondered if she still had any memento of that day – dried flowers or confetti. She doubted it – Jack was a terror for clearing stuff out. Her wedding dress had been thrown out when it began to decay, and in any case, Elisabeth would never have squeezed into it. Milly looked down at her hands and there was her wedding ring. It was her third one, she kept losing them, but it was on her finger and her finger had definitely been here at the wedding. Not to mention her entire body. And Jack, who was not dead. She looked towards a side window, sneaking a glimpse of his profile. He was an old man! The skin below his ear hung in a little fold, and his jaw was drooping. An old man, yet inside the old man was the young man she’d made promises to. Vows spoken not ten feet from where she sat now.
She’d meant to be such a good wife. To make Jack happy.
She sighed. Time spent sulking and snapping and shouting, it might amount to years now. To decades.
It occurred to her marriage might be like an imperfect haircut one just had to endure till it grew out, only it never really grew out. A haircut that looked good sometimes, in certain lights, and other days just plain ugly. She’d never found the right hairdresser, that was the curse of her life. Her fingers went up now, and she pushed the hair off her face.
Jack saw his young bride, she was right there at the altar. Clear as the old woman next to him. There he was too, and look how skinny he was! Goddammit, he was one handsome guy, and she couldn’t be more gorgeous. What a couple of kids they were, but they’d felt so mature. Sure, they’d slept together, lots of times. They thought that meant they knew each other, but really they’d been strangers. Which had made their kisses constantly wonderful. He recalled her taste – lipstick and a whisper of all she was happy to give him. He bowed to them now, to their smooth-skinned, cherry-cheeked courage. About to tumble, eyes closed and all tangled up together, into the unknown.
But it was not that simple, because Jack could also see someone else. He visualised himself and another woman. They stood right now outside this church, perhaps looking at the view of the ocean. Lizbeth? Yes, well, why not. It could have been Lizbeth. A woman made happy by him, a little overweight and wrinkled, but all the lines were in pleasing places. He sighed happily, full of unlived lives.
About the same time, they both remembered the anniversary party. Their children had done all the organising: the food, invitations, the wine, the cake, but it would occur in Jack and Milly’s home, so there were still tedious things to do, like checking for toilet paper, and clean towels, and floors to be mopped. Not to mention dogs fed and walked, then secreted away in the garage. And the exhausting task ahead of small talk and remembering names.
‘I wish we weren’t having a party,’ whispered Milly, half to herself. ‘I wish it was a normal day.’
‘Me too, hon.’
The church receded even before they left it, their thoughts flying towards chores. Blinded by the sun as they walked slowly back to the car, they leaned towards each other. They felt wrong together, mismatched, a mistake taken too far. But from a short distance they looked like many couples did to outsiders – exclusive, close. From a greater distance, they looked like a single person.
It wasn’t late – not eleven yet, but no time had been wasted. Ernie and Bernice and their diminishing group of friends – five in total – had been seated by 8:00, dancing by 9:00, drunk and gone by 10:00. A wild time, a good party. Even the arguments had been condensed, so from kick off to forgiving hug, they’d lasted about ten minutes. Sure, a few tears when dead friends were mentioned, but a lot of laughter of the loose, cackling variety. How hilarious, that they were the age they were. What a joke! It felt downright rebellious to be getting old and still swinging to Glenn. They were quite sure their own parents never felt this young, this irreverent at seventy something. This proved they’d never die. How could they, right?
