‘Anything I can do, Billie?’ He tried to catch her eyes. She was wearing a baggy sweater over her robe. His sweater. He remembered opening the gift box containing that sweater, one of those Christmases that had now blurred into one morning of pine-scented chaos. ‘You don’t like it, do you?’ she’d accurately guessed. ‘I’ll return it,’ she’d promised, but evidently never had.
She turned from her half-whispered conversation with Irene, looked at him wandering slowly in the kitchen, and for a brief second there was her old look. Half giddy, half knowing. His heart lurched. But:
‘Thank you for coming, Jack. I was upset when I rang, but I’m all right now.’ In a low voice.
Irene said, ‘Nice to see you, Jack.’ Dismissively.
He looked away, towards Elisabeth, who was watching Gidget on television now.
‘Hey, you got a colour TV!’ His voice sounded peevish to his own ears.
‘Yeah,’ said Billie guiltily. ‘Mom gave me some birthday money.’
‘Where’s the black-and-white?’
‘Our bedroom. The bedroom.’
He was momentarily confused. He felt oddly pleased about the new colour television, as if it was his too. He had to stop himself from going over and inspecting it. Then Sam loped into the room with his usual mixture of gangling cockiness and deference. Turned to his father, and said so maturely it made Jack’s heart stop:
‘Nice to see you, Dad. But I guess it’s time for you to head out, yeah?’ He remained standing, as if waiting to escort his father to the door. A distant politeness in his face, more upsetting than all their heated arguments to date. Jack looked around at the living room with the framed family photos and the stain on the rug where the kids spilled orange Shasta one hot August day. The rug he remembered buying and laying while the Shangri-Las sang ‘Leader of the Pack’. And there was nothing for him to do now but leave. Move, he told his legs. Walk, he told his feet. Go! Jack had never properly noticed gravity before.
‘All right, Billie,’ he said thickly. ‘Let me know…’ He didn’t know how to end this sentence, and so opened his hands in a helpless gesture instead. And managed to move finally, with the kitchen clock ticking very loudly and the rain outside dropping very slowly.
When Jeff heard the knock at the door, perhaps he imagined it was her. Perhaps he thought: that was women for you. No meant yes, and no matter what anyone said, women loved to be dominated. He could hear his wife vacuuming the staircase; she was always vacuuming those damn stairs. He stepped over a toy fire engine, opened the door, and pow! Jack knocked him flat on his back.
STEPPING OUT
TWO YEARS EARLIER
December 31st 1968
San Miguel, Marin County 11:02pm
Jack was a little drunk, walking down the stairs from the bathroom. He could hear voices of course, and laughter, but mainly it felt like he was descending into a pool of jazz. It was one of his favourite records from the old days. ‘Cry Me a River’, with the Harry James band. Nothing but noise, the music these days. Then before he reached the last step, it changed to a dance tune, and he had to pause because the room had become a throbbing mass of bodies, all dancing away like they were teenagers again. He sat on the middle step and watched. Maybe they were young again. He was still holding the high ball glass that he’d carried upstairs to the bathroom without spilling. 100% gin. He understood everything in the world now. He saw himself joining the dancers in a while. He’d join in clumsily at first, then he’d become one of them. He knew he wasn’t a good dancer, but no one would notice. He decided music made the life force audible: an energetic pulsing stream, and musicians and dancers and anyone who lived intuitively could join in. Himself after a few drinks, for instance.
Then ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ came on, and Jack kept sipping his gin. He started thinking that maybe life was more like a moving train, than music. If you had enough nerve, or equally if you did not give a damn, you ran alongside it till you could leap on, and then you too were part of the action, part of the world, you were going somewhere with a bunch of people who were also holding on tight and going somewhere. But if you couldn’t run fast enough, if you were too old, or tired, or sad, or drunk, then you would have to sit back and watch it all happening without you. Feel the wind of its passing, and sigh. He was lonely suddenly. If only Ernie and Bernice would move to Marin. If only they could afford it. They met a few times a year, not nearly often enough for Jack. He’d never admit it, but he only really felt like himself, his true self, with them. And of course, with Billie. But she got his less fun true self. The simple truth was, Billie was not the wife he’d hoped for. In the beginning they’d had similarities in abundance, but now he only noticed their differences. She didn’t get drunk with him, didn’t share his love of oysters or mussels or scallops, didn’t read literature, didn’t like the same movies, didn’t laugh at the same things that made him laugh. It was hilarious, when you considered it. It turned out it was possible to love a woman who was not your type. He shook his head in drunken wonderment. Who would have thought?
Then he rose and glided down into the dancers. When the song ended, he found himself next to Colette, who asked what his resolutions were. He immediately said: ‘Get divorced.’
‘Jack! He’s just kidding, Colette,’ said Billie, who appeared by his side looking stunningly sober.
As soon as Billie walked away, he gave an exaggerated shrug and lifted eyebrows. Colette gave him a quick tight hug as if he had just done something too adorable to respond to verbally.
‘How are your kids?’ She had to shout over the music.
‘Nightmare. Sam’s become impossible. Billie doesn’t see it, but he’s a complete pain in the ass. And Danny and Donald – well, of course, I feel sorry for them, who wouldn’t? But they hardly ever wash, they won’t even get haircuts. Plus, they all hate me.’
‘Crap, Jack.’
‘I don’t get it. They’re so lucky, compared to how we grew up. But they’re rejecting all the good stuff. Everything’s gone to hell.’
It was true. The boys were breaking his heart, so was Elisabeth. She used to be the one who always laughed at the same things he did. And since Willy, they were back to sticky surfaces and the smell of sour milk.
‘Never mind. Well, better mingle,’ Colette said, giving his hand a squeeze.
They’d known each other for years. He’d always liked her slightly gauche way of acting, especially when drinking. And her amorality – she was single again now, with two wealthy ex-husbands supporting her life style. Plus she never wore a bra. He could see her nipples clearly outlined in her dress. Those have never had a baby sucking on them, he thought. Women without kids were sexier. When midnight came, he conspired to be next to Colette.
‘Happy New Year,’ and he kissed her long and daringly hard, on closed lips. He thought Billie was in the kitchen somewhere, still sober. She’d be talking to the host’s father, a doddery man who drooled and adored Billie. Jack remembered hearing Billie describe Colette as fast. Kissing Colette felt numb at first, the loose kiss of drunkenness. But when he pulled away, she grabbed his head and pulled him in for a deeper kiss. For a second, she parted her lips and he felt the quick flick of her tongue. Suddenly, it was as if they were alone. Did a police siren begin and people hose them off, and shout: Stop! That kind of kissing is dangerous and life threatening and terribly against the law! Nope. So they kissed again, parted to kiss others and shouted Happy New Year! Then moved to a dark hallway and dived straight back into it, mouths open, tongues deeper and deeper till Jack was afraid finally.
‘Billie, honey, ready to go home?’
She turned to him and smiled beatifically. God, she was something. The only un-blurry person in the house, and she was his wife.
‘Yes, ready when you are, honey.’
That would have been that, but Colette was determined to call his bluff. And a devil in him wanted his bluff called. It took another seven days of ambiguous phone conversations, and a bad mood brought on by his wife’s extravagance in I. Magnin. Damnit! Did she think money grew on trees? She was such a child in some ways. Not like the independent Colette. Colette was a woman, all right. She knew what a man wanted. And she had his number in every way possible. As he drove to her house, he was stone-cold sober, telling himself with every mile this was not a mad impulse.
As soon as entered his own house again, he knew life would never be the same. Everything was different. Of course his own body felt different, and it should, given where it’d been recently, but why did his furniture look odd, and the children’s voices seem thin somehow, and his wife’s expression seem…well, so unsuspicious? Didn’t she know him at all? Couldn’t she see the imprint of Colette on him? It was glaring, goddammit; it was blinding. Another reason to betray her. His own wife was virtually a stranger, but a stranger he was tied to, someone he had to support financially. Not to mention the life’s sentence of eating, sleeping and watching television with her. God! It was only just now dawning on him, what marriage was. To literally be with a specific other person until you were dead. Dead! The price was quite simply, quite obviously, too high.
And then, of course, all his life Jack had been dishonest regularly in small ways. He and Ernie had stolen Hershey bars from the corner store all one summer. And it was a fact that Jack neglected to inform the checkout girl when she undercharged him, he parked illegally in the staff-only slots behind the courthouse, he told fibs about being sick when he was just hungover, and he cheated annually on his income tax. He even lied to the IRS about that money Louise sent once, when she’d had a lucky day at the races. Doing these things diminished some kind of vague resentment; evened things up. This thing with Colette was not like that at first, it was too big. But as with the stolen Hershey bars, when he wasn’t caught, he became accustomed to not paying and kept stealing. A bit more each time. Three Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, a Snickers, ten Milky Ways. Once, a whole carton of Milk Duds. After a while, it hadn’t even felt like stealing, or cheating. Anyway, didn’t everyone do it? Hadn’t John Kennedy, bless him, done it too? It was human nature to want to get away with things. Jack told himself he was not a bad man, just a man trying to find a way to make his existence bearable without hurting anyone. His first affair felt like getting drunk for the first time. Discovering that intoxication made nonsense of his worries, and realising that while a bit naughty, it was also something pretty much everyone else already knew about. Opening a door to a room he hadn’t really believed was accessible, and finding no need for even a key. It was unlocked and inside, a big crowd of partying people. Hey, Jack! Where the hell you been?
Probably faithful spouses were just spouses without choices. Anyone in their right mind would be an adulterer, if the right temptation came knocking on their door. Within a month, he convinced himself he was actually a kind of saint. That Colette was doing his marriage a huge favour. That, given his wife’s extravagance, the sudden burden of his nephews, his sinless marital track record and human nature itself, he was entitled to Colette.
Billie didn’t know about the New Year’s Eve kiss, but she knew about Colette. She hadn’t noticed much since Louise had left – it’d been a teary blur of a year – but of course she noticed. She knew her own husband, didn’t she? He was in love, it was as clear as day. It began with the phone calls. His animated voice, the giggling. Jack was not a giggler, not unless she was tickling him. But all this wouldn’t have given the game away, if he hadn’t lied so badly.
‘Who was that?’ she had asked after he hung up the phone.
‘Who?’ A second’s beat. ‘It was Peter.’
With those two syllables, Billie had felt herself slip into a fearful place.
