By the time Milly registered that her car was no longer moving, people were running up to her. She heard an odd grating noise, and it turned out to be her own cries. She knew because her throat hurt. So did every other part of her body. Especially her left leg. Someone opened her door and reached across to release her belt. When they pulled her out, she immediately fell down. She sat on the roadside and as if she’d just come out of an elocution lesson, explained to the stranger leaning over her:
‘Excuse me. I need to get to the hospital immediately. Immediately, do you understand? My son is hurt. He is in the back seat.’
Perfectly crisp and clear.
‘Excuse me. I said, excuse me. Did you hear me? And my name is Milly. No longer Billie. Mill. Ee.’
Jack was Jack, meanwhile, and sitting eighteen miles away in the living room of the poet from Nebraska, Betty Lou Schmidt. In his left hand was a Manhattan that might just be the best cocktail he’d had in his life. In his right hand was a cigarette. Screw those Gauloises and Gitanes. Screw those huge tankards of schwarzbier. He’d meant to drive straight home, but his plane had landed early and Billie wouldn’t be expecting him for another hour. Why rush? He needed this. The flight was murder.
‘Tell me all about it,’ said Betty Lou, stretching out the word all. She sat next to him. Close enough so he could smell perfume, but not touching.
He’d head home in a half hour. He wished he didn’t feel this way, but the truth was, he didn’t want to go home. Billie would be dressed up for him, and she’d skip back and forth to the table serving his favourite steak and salad with Thousand Island dressing. Oh, that sweetness and servitude could drive him crazy sometimes. It could feel accusatory, and he’d done nothing to feel guilty about. This was an innocent situation right now, him and Betty Lou.
‘And how did the publisher justify that?’ Betty Lou was saying softly. ‘Bastard! When you’d come all that way! Well, their loss.’
‘Krauts. They always have to win.’
Pause, while he lit her cigarette. More perfume wafting.
‘Actually, Jack, that is not a word people use anymore. Kraut. You know that, right?’
Pause. Jack chuckled indulgently, as if she was a child. He noticed, suddenly, his own odour. That particular sour airplane stink. His head hurt and his skin felt greasy. He wanted a very hot shower and bed. He remembered a few nights ago in Frankfurt: drinking too much and getting lost walking around. Those prostitutes had started following him – giggling at him, it had seemed. He hadn’t been able to remember the name of his hotel to tell the taxi driver. He’d just wanted to be home then, with his Billie frying hamburgers, wearing that old denim shirt-dress, her hair tied back in that cowgirl scarf. The kids all bickering about something trivial. Willy’s broken fire truck. Danny’s new record being scratched by someone. That cold Frankfurt night, Jack had wanted nothing more than to lie on his bean bag in front of the television, his feet up on the hearth, a cold can of Hams by his side, and to watch The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Secretly, he loved that show.
LEMONADE ON THE DECK
TWO YEARS EARLIER
October 4th 1970
Billie’s house and Colette’s house 10:12am
All the terrible things Billie had expected to happen actually happened. She’d watched Peyton Place; by the time they happened to her, adultery and separation were old hat. She’d almost ticked them off a list. Less money – tick! Loneliness – tick! Social exclusion – tick! Despite the presence of four teenagers and a toddler, there’d been the unsurprising emptiness in her home. And her bed was cold and too large. She’d huddled up on one side – at first her side, then his side. She bought a floral bedspread Jack would have hated, but still huddled and shivered, especially around 3am. She’d noted the absence of invitations and didn’t mind, curiously. Though she was shocked when Bernice dropped away. It turned out she was part of a package with Ernie, and Ernie belonged to Jack.
Actually, had Bernice ever really been her friend? Did she have any friends left at all? Any real friends? There was that Irene from across the street. She kept making overtures, since her son and Willy were the same age, and she was single too. She seemed to think she and Billie were soulmates, but Billie was not been drawn to her. Her sister, Louise, Bernice and Jack were the only people she actually liked, and they’d all jumped ship. The image was particularly apt in Louise’s case, since her most recent postcard was from a cruise ship, where she had a temporary job working in the kitchen. The gallie!!! she’d called it. Her sister’s spelling mistake and exclamation marks had made Billie weep. It was so like her. She missed her sister. The missing of Jack was expected and justified; it sat smack dab in the middle of the kitchen table every night at dinner. But over the fourteen months since Jack’s departure, missing her sister had become visceral and obsessive. A chronic pulling down in the area just above her abdomen, and couldn’t be explained with words like grief or love or even sister. It ached all the time. Sometimes Billie rubbed her belly absent-mindedly, as if trying to loosen it.
Then very early one morning in October, suddenly, Louise was back. Her maddening sister was following her around again with her caustic comments. Why now? Had she been biding her time till Billie’s life calmed, emptied? Or till Billie could no longer do without her? Heavens to Betsy, it hardly mattered. And it certainly didn’t matter that Louise was just a manifestation of Billie’s own desperate need, because the relief of her was so very…relieving.
Louise had been forty-one when she disappeared with Coffee Enema Bob, but she seemed to be about twenty now. At dawn, and later at breakfast, it was just her voice – her spirited younger voice intruding into Billie’s thoughts. Just little grunts of agreement or dispute, sometimes a comment on the way her sons were changing. On how Billie was raising them. Sometimes she just grunted her approval. Then she got louder and louder until, while Billie was in the shower, Louise contradicted her in person. Billie dropped her soap.
I should have worn micro-minis and fishnets, Billie had been thinking. Shouldn’t have been such a prude. Should have learned how to give a decent blow job. What a stupid thing to call it, anyway. No blowing involved at all, sadly – blowing would have been easy. But if I’d been serious, and really loved Jack properly…
Don’t be stupid! Stop blaming yourself! Louise was on the other side of the shower curtain, sitting on the toilet, lazily filing her nails. You are such a sissy, Billie. You always were. Time to buck up, gal.
Louise was full to the brim of encouragement, in her bullying way. And Billie’s heart didn’t skip a beat, seeing her sister when she knew for a fact she must be hallucinating. It was too wonderful to worry about, and the ache in her abdomen dissolved. But after a few days, Louise became annoying in the old way.
‘You’re not really here, Loulou,’ reminded Billie politely. She said this out loud. She always talked to Louise out loud when she was on her own, or with just Willy. He never noticed because he often chattered away to his imaginary friend, a four-foot squirrel called Alfredo. Louise was her Alfredo. ‘You’re a figment of my imagination.’
Your point?
‘And anyway, Jack’s leaving is partially your fault. I forgot all about being a wife, after you left and your boys moved in. It was all I could do, to keep…’
Louise yawned, and for a second was her ten-year-old self. It was that kind of wholehearted melodramatic yawn.
Uh-huh. Blame it on me, if it helps.
‘It’s true, though. I took my eyes off the ball, and whoop! In walked cute Colette.’
Colette Schmet! What a pretentious loser name. Collettey Spaghetti.
‘That’s how I talk.’
Your point?
Then one morning, Billie was woken by Louise sitting on her bed; in fact, right on top of her feet, which now had pins and needles. They’d shared a bed growing up, so in her first waking moments this felt entirely normal.
‘Gee, Loulou. What is it now? What do you want? It’s not getting-up time yet.’ She whispered, because all the kids were still asleep. It was hours before get up time.
I was thinking – when you are you going to get rid of all his stuff?
Billie shrugged, avoiding eye contact. Then she got up and went to the kitchen to eat a yoghurt. She often did this because yoghurt seemed to make her sleepy again. She glanced around the dim living room, and down the hall with the bedroom doors shut. The house felt full of kids, in a muffled way. Adolescent boy sweat and the cotton-candy-scented hairspray Elisabeth used on her back-combed hair. (Ratted hair, she called it.)
Jack had taken a suitcase, a few grocery bags full of clothes and shoes, a pile of manuscripts, his file of important papers and his two work briefcases. He’d not expressed interest in claiming anything else. Not even his collection of hardback Everyman Library novels, or his Glenn Miller albums. Evidence of Jack was still everywhere she looked, as if he intended to keep his territory well marked.
As she finished the yoghurt, she pictured packing all his things up. She smiled a little. But what about everything else? Each piece of furniture was soaked with Jack memories. Even the wallpaper (grass) and the kitchen tiles (terracotta). Even the pair of slippers she was wearing right now. They belonged to her, but they were not completely devoid of Jack. They’d argued over the blank chequebook stub which should have said slippers – Macy’s 9/10.
Ditch it. Ditch it all. You’re a divorced woman now, said Louise. She appeared suddenly, perched on the kitchen counter, reading the fashion section of the Chronicle.
‘Louise Molinelli! I am not divorced!’ she whispered.
Hey, it’s not a dirty word.
