I turn, lean on my elbow, kiss him again, on the cheek this time. The hair down low, behind his ears, is already turning white. I think, we did that just in time. It was almost too late.
Chapter 65
I enter sleep angry and dread waking up, and when I do wake I lie beside the sleeping body of Jon, in our bed, listening to the rhythm of his breathing and resenting him for the oblivion he still controls. For weeks he has been more silent than usual, and home less. Home less, that is, when I am home. When I’m away at work he is there all right, even when Sarah’s in preschool. I’ve begun to find signs, tiny clues left in my way like breadcrumbs dropped on a trail: a cigarette with a pink mouthmark on it, two used glasses in the sink, a hairpin that is not mine, beneath a pillow that is. I clean up and say nothing, hoarding these things for times of greater need.
“Someone named Monica called you,” I tell him.
It’s morning, and there’s a whole day to get through. A day of evasion, suppressed anger, false calm. We are well beyond throwing things, by now.
He’s reading the paper. “Oh?” he says. “What did she want?”
“She said to tell you Monica called,” I say.
He comes back late at night and I’m in bed, feigning sleep, my head churning. I think of subterfuges: examining his shirts for perfume, tailing him along the street, hiding in the closet and jumping out, red-hot with discovery. I think of other things I could do. I could leave, go somewhere unspecified, with Sarah. Or I could demand that we talk things through. Or I could pretend nothing is happening, continue on with our lives as usual. This would have been the advice offered in women’s magazines, of a decade ago: wait it out.
I see these things as scenarios, to be played through and discarded, perhaps simultaneously. None of them precludes the others.
In real life, the days go on as usual, darkening to winter and heavy with the unspoken.
“You had a thing with Uncle Joe, didn’t you?” Jon says casually. It’s a Saturday, and we’re making a stab at normality by taking Sarah to Grange Park, to play in the snow.
“Who?” I say.
“You know. Josef what’s-his-name. The old stick man.”
“Oh, him,” I say. Sarah is over by the swings with some other kids. We’re sitting on a bench, having cleared the snow. I think I should be making a snowman, or doing some other thing good mothers are supposed to do. But I’m too tired.
“But you did, didn’t you?” Jon says. “At the same time as me.”
“Where did you get that idea?” I say. I know when I’m being accused. I run over my own ammunition: the hairpins, the lipstick, the phone calls, the glasses in the sink.
“I’m not a moron, you know. I figured it out.”
He has jealousies of his own then, wounds of his own to lick. Things I have inflicted. I should lie, deny everything. But I don’t want to. Josef, at the moment, gives me a little pride.
“That was years ago,” I say. “Thousands of years ago. It wasn’t important.”
“Like shit,” he says. I once thought he would ridicule me, if he found out about Josef. The surprise is that he takes him seriously.
That night we make love, if that is any longer the term for it. It’s not shaped like love, not colored like it, but harsh, war-colored, metallic. Things are being proved. Or repudiated. In the morning he says, “Who else has there been?” Out of nowhere. “How do I know you weren’t hopping into the sack with every old fart around?”
I sigh. “Jon,” I say. “Grow up.”
“How about Mr. Beanie Weenie?” he keeps on.
“Oh, come on,” I say. “You were hardly the angel. Your place was crawling with all those skinny girls. You didn’t want strings, remember?”
Sarah is still in her crib asleep. We are safe, we can get down to it, this telling of bad truths which are not entirely true. Once you start, it’s difficult to stop. There is even a certain relish in it.
“At least I was open about it,” he says. “I didn’t sneak around. I didn’t pretend to be so goddamn pure and faithful, the way you did.”
“Maybe I loved you,” I say. I notice the past tense. So does he.
“You wouldn’t know love if you fell over it,” he says.
“Not like Monica?” I say. “You’re not being very open right now. I’ve found those hairpins, in my own bed. You could at least have the decency to do it somewhere else.”
“How about you?” he says. “You’re always going out, you get around.”
“Me?” I say. “I don’t have the time. I don’t have time to think, I don’t have time to paint, I barely have time to shit. I’m too busy paying the goddamn rent.”
I’ve said the worst thing, I’ve gone too far. “That’s it,” says Jon. “It’s always you, what you contribute, what you put up with. It’s never me.” He hunts for his jacket, heads for the door.