‘What? Oh yeah. It was Thanksgiving. We had a terrible meal in the cafeteria, after we saw you. Turkey like leather.’
‘Did you? You never said.’
‘Well. Guess you had enough on your mind.’
‘Don’t know why, but I often remember that time. I was so sore, so tired. All those stitches, I was afraid to even look down there, much less touch it. Elisabeth wouldn’t suck, remember? All I wanted to do was sleep, anyway. I felt sore and ugly and strange. Then you and Sam walked in.’
‘Sam threw up later, after the terrible dinner.’
‘He did?’ she said after a second, very softly and slowly. As if his voice was like one of the radio stations, briefly cutting into the air. ‘Did he get food poisoning from the turkey?’
‘Think it was just the excitement.’
‘Yeah, he was so thrilled about the baby, wasn’t he?’
‘No, I mean the other kind of excitement. You know. I mean, there he was, going along in his own little world, two whole adults at his beck and call, when suddenly you disappear, and when he next sees you, you’re all gloopy over some squally baby. He was upset. He wasn’t happy-excited, Billie. He was jealous. Sick-to-his-stomach jealous.’
‘Funny. That isn’t how I remember it at all.’
‘No. Well.’
Billie yawned. ‘I just remember how awful I felt before you walked in. The anaesthetic was wearing off, I guess. I felt…brittle. My head had broken off from my body. But the minute I saw you.’ She stopped here. Looked away from him, out the window. ‘The minute you came in, it was like all the bits joined up, and I was me again. I remember I felt…’
‘Great?’
‘Normal. I felt normal again.’
‘Huh,’ said Jacko, quickly glancing at his wife. ‘All I remember is cleaning the puke out of the car later. Stunk for months.’
She didn’t reply, but that seemed okay. After a while she started singing softly: ‘All of me, why not take all of me. Can’t you see, I’m no good without you.’ She couldn’t hold a note, but she told herself it didn’t matter. Jacko probably thought it was a sweet lopsided way of singing.
‘Damn right,’ said Jacko, who liked her singing some days, but not today. ‘Let’s see what’s on the radio. Might be something about that accident.’
There wasn’t, and he turned it off. Ten minutes passed. The mountains had given way to a valley, and it was dark now. Winter dark.
‘I keep thinking of how someone’s waiting for him right now to turn up and wondering why he’s so late. Someone who loves him. His mother maybe.’ Pause. ‘His dinner’s in the oven, getting all dry.’ Pause. ‘I was talking about that poor boy,’ she said.
‘I know you meant the boy.’
The house was dark when they got home and they tiptoed into their bedroom. The room was freezing, the sheets almost damp.
‘Doesn’t your mother ever put the heating on?’
‘Shush. She’ll hear you.’
They spooned closely for warmth, Jacko around Billie, then he rolled over, so they were back to back. Billie thought that nothing had changed. The extravagant and inconvenient rekindle experiment had not changed a darn thing. Her eyes were open, and she looked at the Gauguin print on the wall. Two women, baring three breasts. She remembered the day they bought it. Before the kids, because she’d been wearing that blue skirt she’d not been able to fit into since. A summer day, and a shopping list with items like wine glasses and pineapples, limes and gin, a wicker laundry basket. Still nest-building. They’d been holding hands all day, and had gone to an art gallery. Billie had never been before. She’d liked it very much, it made her feel calm and reverent, as if she was in church. But she didn’t really know what to say about anything, aside from I like that. In the gift shop, Jacko had spotted Two Tahitian Women by Gauguin, and had been so enthusiastic, she’d cried: ‘Well, let’s buy it then!’
Putting it on their bedroom wall had made her feel very much not like her mother. Jacko and her, well, they were very cultured. So what if they didn’t have much in common, she suddenly thought now. She wanted to make him happy – wasn’t that bigger than compatibility? They’d lived through two house moves, had two children and endured countless sleepless nights with infant colic, not to mention changing hairstyles, changing presidents and changing states. They’d fought, made up, fought, made up. Gone away alone for a weekend to a hotel! They really had done that. Already, she was remembering it with nostalgia, though last night she’d felt disappointed. Was there something perversely romantic about it being unromantic? It seemed now that she’d been happy in that mildew-smelling room. Why hadn’t she known it at the time?
She closed her eyes, pictured the bedroom they were lying in right now, inside their own apartment, in their neighbourhood, their town, their state, their country, and the whole indifferent world orbiting through cold space. Really, there was just their bedroom and the rest of the world. Us and them.
Five minutes passed.
‘Jacko.’
‘Jacko.’
‘Jacko, are you asleep?’ An accusing tone.
‘Yeah.’
‘I love you. I love you, darn it.’
‘I know.’
‘I know you know.’
‘Well, shut up then.’
‘You shut up.’
‘I said it first.’
Then he turned round, so he was facing her. Eyes closed. She noticed the scar on his chin from the champagne disaster. Not a good start to the honeymoon, but hadn’t it been wonderful later? She traced the scar tenderly with one finger.
‘I was just kidding. I hate you, really.’ She whispered this.
‘I know, honey,’ he whispered back. ‘I hate you too. Like crazy. Did I ever thank you for that Valentine in my lunch bag?’
