I meet the lawyer later at the house. He arrives in one car, his men in another. They carry heavy cases and remind me of exterminators.
"Top of the stairs on the right," I say, sending them up.
"What the f.u.c.k happened here?"
"What do you mean, what happened?"
"The place is a mess."
"You told me not to touch anything," I yell up the stairs.
"It f.u.c.king stinks."
Tessie follows me up. Halfway, the smell hits me.
"f.u.c.king s.h.i.t," the lawyer says.
The dog looks guilty.
Tessie, home alone, did a kind of clean and purge: she licked Jane"s blood off the floor, made b.l.o.o.d.y pink tracks across the floor, and then had diarrhea on the bed.
Tessie looks at me as if to say, "It"s been crazy around here. Something had to happen."
"S"okay, girl," I say, going downstairs and getting a box of Hefty bags. The dog has done me a favor. Whatever evidence might have remained on the sheets has been obliterated. I stuff the sheets into two Heftys, open the windows, and fire off a can of Lysol.
The trash has been taken out. The lawyer and his men are leaving. "The situation is less than satisfactory," one of the men says to another as they make their exit.
"No s.h.i.t, Sherlock."
I stand in the kitchen, obsessing about the sheets: Is in the garbage good enough? Would it arouse suspicion if I took them to the dump? What would happen if I tried to burn them? Would it send s.h.i.t smoke signals for miles?
I dial Speedy Mattress Service. "How quickly can I get a new mattress?"
"Where"s it going?"
"To 64 Sycamore."
"And what are you looking for? Do you have something specific in mind: Serta, Simmons, plush, pillow-top?"
"I"m open to suggestions, it"s got to be a king, soft but not too soft, firm but not too firm, something just right."
"You"re looking at twenty-eight hundred-that"s mattress and box spring."
"Seems high?"
"I can do twenty-six fifty delivered, and if you buy our mattress cover you get a ten-year guarantee. It"s usually one twenty-five, but I can give it to you for a hundy."
"And will you take away the old one?"
"Yes."
"Even if it has stains?"
"They all have stains."
"When?"
"Hold on."
I dig Jane"s credit card out of my pocket.
"Between six and ten tonight."
I get a bucket of hot water, scrub brush, roll of paper towels, Mr. Clean, Comet, a bottle of vinegar, and Jane"s latex gloves from Thanksgiving. I weep as I pull the gloves on.
I am on my hands and knees, scrubbing. The blood is dark, dry, and flaky. Wet, it softens to a swirling pink, spreading like beet juice through the paper towels. I slice my finger open on shrapnel, a shard of porcelain that tears the skin, and my blood mixes with the mess. Later, I use a tube of Krazy Glue to seal the wound. As I am working I have the sensation of being watched, spied upon. I feel something pa.s.s over, brushing against my leg. When I turn to look, something sails over my body, leaping. I spin. I slip on the wet floor, landing on my a.s.s. There is a cat, sitting on the dresser, staring, his tail flicking this way and that.
"Motherf.u.c.ker," I say. "You scared me."
He blinks and looks at me, hot green eyes like emeralds shining.
A creature of habit, I stop only when the job is done, the b.l.o.o.d.y water bucket emptied, the rags thrown away. I work, and then I look to see what"s for dinner. Standing inside the open door of the refrigerator, I pick at the leftovers, at what we had the night before. I eat random bites of things, thinking of Jane, of our evening snack, of our lovemaking. I make a plate and lie on the sofa in front of the television.
The echo of gunfire wakes me. I come to thinking George has once again escaped and has come to kill me.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
A heavy knocking on the door.
Tessie barks.
The mattress has arrived.
"Nice thing is, mattresses aren"t breakable," one of the men says, as they wrestle it up the stairs. "I used to do plasma-screen televisions-that was a nightmare."
They take the old mattress and box spring without comment.
As they exit, a flash goes off in the yard.
"What the..." Flash, flash-flash.
One of the men drops his end of the outgoing mattress and plunges into the darkness. I hear scuffling sounds from within the bushes. The mattress man comes up, holding an expensive camera.
"Give me the camera," a stranger says, pulling himself out of the flower bed.
"Who are you?" I ask.
"That"s my camera," the stranger says.
"Not anymore," the mattress man says, hurling it towards the street.
I have to go home. It"s almost 11 p.m. I lock up the house, lead Tessie to the car, give her a boost up, and head for the highway. Tessie shakes.
"No shots," I say. "No vet. We"re going to the city, Tessie."
The dog pa.s.ses toxic gases. I pull to the side of the road, and Tessie explodes onto the edge of the highway.
"Did you have a good trip?" the night doorman asks. I don"t answer. "Your mail, your packages," he says, filling my arms, "your laundry." He hooks the hangers over my crooked finger.
"Thank you."
He says nothing about the dog, whose leash I"ve lashed around my wrist.
The apartment has a certain smell, familiar yet stale. How long have I been gone? It"s as though everything is frozen in time, has been frozen, not only for the days I"ve been away, but maybe the entire decade preceding. What once was modern, sophisticated, looks like the set of a period piece, Edward Albee circa 1983. The phone is a push-b.u.t.ton trim-line, rarely used. The sofa arms are worn. The carpet pile is uneven along a certain path, a well-traveled route from room to room. The piles of magazines are dated eighteen months back.
And still I am grateful to be in a place where everything is familiar, where I could go blind and still find my way. I sink into it, want to roll in it, I want none of what"s happened to be true.
The orchid is still in bloom. I water it, and, as if I were watching a time-lapse sequence, within the hour the petals fall off, as if suddenly released, springing to certain death on the cabinet below. By morning, only the bare stick will remain.
The refrigerator seeps the curdled scent of sour milk, half of a dry grapefruit, a jar of ageless peanut b.u.t.ter, some brown bread white and furry on the edges, old rice pudding brewing a green bull"s-eye center in a plastic deli container. In a frenzy I open every cabinet and throw out what"s expired. I wonder, does everyone do it the same way-gla.s.ses here, dishes there, dry foods and cans together? Where do you learn it, the grouping of like things? I take the trash down the hall and order Chinese. The man recognizes my phone number and says, "You call late tonight, long time no see; hot-sour soup, fried chicken rice, moo-shu pork?"
While waiting, I take the elevator to the bas.e.m.e.nt, unlock the storage bin, and wrestle out an enormous ancient blue suitcase. Upstairs, I open the bag on the bed and begin to fill it. Unsure of exactly what I am thinking, I pack as if to consolidate, to minimize myself. I a.s.sume that when Claire returns I will no longer be welcome. Pulling open the drawers, the closet, the medicine cabinet, I am impressed with the gentility with which things coexist, how they hang, nestle, rest side by side without tension or judgment. Her floss, toothbrush, Nair, mascara, my gargle, nose spray, nail clipper. All of it intimate, all of it human, all of it divided his and hers-there is little overlap.
We married late; Claire had already been married once, briefly. It was two years before I took her to meet my parents. The first thing she told them was "It was a small wedding, just friends."
"Why did you keep her from us for so long?" my mother asked. "She"s beautiful and has a good job. You thought we wouldn"t approve?"
My mother took her hands. "We thought there must be something wrong with you-a reason he wouldn"t bring you, like you had a cleft palate, or a p.e.n.i.s or something?" she said, raising her eyebrows as if to say, How "bout it?
What is the take-away? There is no logic to what goes in the bag-a few photos, trinkets from my childhood, a couple of suits, shoes, the canvas bag with the most recent draft of my unfinished ma.n.u.script on Nixon, the small black clock from her side of the bed. I don"t want much, don"t want to be obvious; I purposely leave my favorite things-I don"t want to be accused of abandoning ship.
Long after midnight, the doorbell rings. I tip the deliveryman heavily and sit at the table eating straight from the boxes, eating like it"s been days since I was fed. The flavor is amazing, hot, spicy, the textures a treat, everything from slimy mushrooms and tofu to hard cubes of pork. I paste plum sauce on the pancakes and douse it all in soy sauce-the extreme sodium and glutamate breathe life back into me.
Tessie sits patiently at my feet. I give her a bowl of plain white rice-the starch will be good for her stomach. She eats quickly. I give her more, and then she again pa.s.ses toxic gases.
I think of looking it up on the computer, Googling "Ill effects of drinking blood," but don"t want to leave an electronic record of my visit.
"Tessie, how old are you? Are you twelve? That makes you over a hundred in human years-you"re someone Willard Scott should celebrate. Who was that cat? Do you know him from somewhere? You didn"t seem to mind that he was there." I continue: "Here"s what I"m thinking: we"ll stay here tonight, and we"ll go back in the morning, in the full light of day."
I"m talking to a dog.
I call Claire in China, figuring to give it one last go.
"I"m in a meeting," she says.
"We can talk later."
"Is Jane better?"
"She"s on a ventilator."
"I"m glad she"s feeling much better," Claire says.
The rhythm of the line is the same; the rest has been lost in translation.
In bed, I pull a pillow from her side, close, against my chest, missing her in a routine kind of way, Claire standing over my shoulder while I balance the checkbook, insisting that we have his/hers accounts as well as one joint. Claire in the bathroom, using a squeegee stolen from a gas station to rake the shower door dry, Claire at the kitchen sink taking a gla.s.s of water and then washing and drying her gla.s.s and putting it away. Claire, who leaves nothing out of place, nothing to chance, always on it. What I liked about her, of course, became the problem-she wasn"t there. She asked very little of me. And that meant she wasn"t there and gave very little back.
Tessie walks around, looking confused. I take a towel from the bathroom and make a place for her by the side of the bed. She is an old setter, bought as a pup at a time when there was hope and promise, when it still seemed like things might turn out okay.
We sleep.
She comes at me, whacking me with a pillow. "Get out of my house, get out of my house," she repeats. A man in a suit stands behind her. "That"s enough for now. We"ll get him again later," he says. I rush for the door; a man is there, changing the tumbler.
I wake. Who was she-was it Claire, was it Jane?
The dog wants to go out. The dog wants breakfast. The dog wants to go back to her own home.
The children are coming, arrangements have been made, cars have been hired to chauffeur them home. There have been phone calls behind their backs.
"What about the children? Where should the children go?" Jane"s parents ask on a conference call.
I don"t like the children, I"m thinking to myself, but remain silent.
"They can stay with me," Jane"s sister, Susan, says. "We have an extra room."
"An office," Susan"s husband says.
"There"s a bed," Susan says.
And twins on leashes looking for trouble. I am thinking of Susan"s toddler terrorists, who are in constant motion, often running towards a precipice. I imagine Susan and her husband on vacation with the children, having contests on the beach where they let the twins loose and see who can catch one first.
"They have a dog," I say.
"You"re allergic," the mother reminds Susan.
"Well, it"s too much for my parents," Susan says. "Two mentally disturbed teenagers."
It"s too much for the children as well. They would be driven crazy governed by grandparents who spend most of their time discussing the consistency of their bowel movements and whether or not they should drink more prune juice.
I ignore the reference to mental disturbance-they are no more or less disturbed than the rest of us.
"The children need to be in their own home," I say.
"We have lives," Susan says. "We can"t give up everything, and besides, I don"t even like that house, I never liked it."
"It"s not about the house," I say.
As we"re talking, I climb the stairs to the master bedroom. I"ve already made the bed, and moved the "matching" lamp from George"s side of the bed into the closet. As much as anything can look normal, it does. I take a plant from the kitchen windowsill and put it on the night table on Jane"s side of the bed.