Carousel Court (35 page)

“You don't think so anymore.”

“You're predictable. You did what was expected when you called me about that rental house. When you made calls to D&C. When you told me you could fly to New York that night, just like that.”

“I see” is all she manages. She draws her fingertip lightly along the smudged surface of the votive candleholder, delicate precise lines through her own fingerprints. She writes her own words, her last response:
I see
.

What she sees are ropes and climbing men no longer ascending but holding on, straining, muscles burning, fatigued, their final trembling moments. She sees how small they look over JW.

“You should sit. You don't look so hot. Better yet, come here.”

“My neighbor gave me this pink gun,” she says. “I've never fired a gun.”

“Do you want to shoot someone?”

With each glimpse of the bronze men, she sees not Nick's faded promise but her own.

“Lie down with me.”

She goes to him and, without hesitation, swings the heavy glass votive candleholder, connects with his temple. He recoils and curses, but his voice, or the way she hears it, becomes something else, softens. She sees her father and Nick and so many men on that wall and the bloated giant on the king-size bed is laughing at her, at all of them. She's nowhere. A million miles from the little brick twin in Delaware, the abandoned drive-in theater, her first and only fight as a child. The last time she hit someone until she met Nick. She swings again. He blocks her. She may be swinging again, but she's not sure. He is holding her by the jaw, squeezing hard. His fingers sink into her dry skin. She stops. All at once she deflates. She laughs.

“Oh shit,” she says to herself. “Come here,” she says, still with her eyes closed. She pulls him close, wraps her free hand around the back of his bleeding head.

“What the fuck, Phoebe?” He pulls her hand from his head and it's red with his blood. “You're so fucked.”

He tries to pull her down, but she resists and he falls instead. She says she's leaving. He's mumbling, holding his head with both hands. The blood streaks down the back of his neck. It's worse than he knows. She stares at the exposed beams of the ceiling. She hears him breathing. He's asleep. She closes her eyes and listens to the winds and the debris pelt the walls and roof and feels the earth move beneath her as her eyes close and she falls into darkness.

• •

She wakes with a start. A door slammed or something rocked the house. Her mouth is dry and the room is blackness. She feels around the bed for her cell phone, a habitual tendency to check for messages from JW. But he's here, next to her, facedown on the bed. There are no messages from JW. No invitations or promises of new careers or apartments for Phoebe. This is her life, awake in the darkest hour of night next to a man who is not her husband, unsure where she'll go next, fires bearing down.

The breeze washing over her is too warm. The window is open or broken. The wind is the heat from outside. The dress she wore last
night remains on, though she can't find her shoes. She tries to recall what they did and can't. She finds her phone. It's 1:13
A.M.

She pushes the door open. The heat and wind are a black storm she's braving barefoot, up the cobblestone path to her car. Only when she starts to drive and descend the narrow two-lane road deep into the canyon does she realize she has no idea how she got here, where she is, or how long it will take to find her way home.

73

S
he's been knocking on Mai's front door because her calls have gone straight to voicemail and she's not going in the house tonight without Jackson. She's not living another day without her son.

She is apologetic to Mai's husband when the door opens. “Can I get him?”

She is told to wait. The door closes. Phoebe knocks again, and this time when the door opens, it is Mai and she's holding Jackson, who is asleep with a pacifier in his mouth. Phoebe reaches for her son. Mai hesitates. She asks Phoebe if she knows what time it is.

Phoebe apologizes, but Mai still refuses to hand Jackson over. “May I?” Phoebe says. There is no movement. “Is there a problem?”

Mai suggests tomorrow may be better. She says Jackson is better off sleeping through the night at her house. She says she'll bring him over first thing.

“Is this Nick? Did Nick tell you to do this?” Phoebe flushes. “It's time for him to come home.” She grabs Jackson, pulls him from Mai's
arms, and the blanket he was wrapped in falls to the ground, but Phoebe is walking across the lawn and not looking back.

Only after laying him down in his crib and turning on the bathroom light does Phoebe see the handprint on her face from JW, the smeared lipstick and mascara, the tangled hair, a tragic clown of a mother.

74

M
orning comes with a blast of white light. Jackson is standing up in his crib. Phoebe is facedown on his floor, wearing last night's dress. She can open only one eye, a migraine splintering her skull.

She reaches for and opens her small black bag, digs out the sterling jaguar head. Jackson was jumping up and down, saying her name, but has stopped now, watching her hand, wondering what's in it.

She wraps her hand around it, tells herself not today, she can handle one day with nothing in her system.

• •

Mai is gone. Phoebe calls her cell and gets voicemail, so she calls the house and is told by Mai's husband that Mai is in Houston for two weeks, left this morning.

She messages Nick.
You didn't tell me Mai was leaving.

Nick is contacting Phoebe or responding to her texts only when it has to do with Jackson.

How is he?

Why didn't you tell me? What if I have things to fucking do?

Is he okay?

When will you be here?

Soon.

Today?

Nick?

Oh fuck you.

• •

The eggs are cold and the juice is warm. The coffee she brews is too watery. She dumps it and tries again. The milk is expired. The whole refrigerator is rotten. Jackson is crying. He's hungry and wet, the show she put him in front of ended, and he's staring at previews for upcoming movies available on demand.

She heats up the eggs and changes his Pull-Up and she's thinking about money. She has none. She has the rental car, which she can't pay for but needs if she's going to leave, go anywhere. But where can she go? She's home.

• •

She has three bottles of sauvignon blanc in the house and allows herself one full glass from the first bottle. The kitchen island is clear and clean. She stares at her cell phone. It's midnight. She sends Nick messages and finishes her wine and pours a second glass. She asks him to be honest: Did he ever really think they would survive this marriage? She adds,
You couldn't handle it. You weren't mature enough, Nick, to process the shit people go through to get somewhere.

Her fourth full glass finishes the first bottle.

I'm not claiming purity. You're justified in leaving and not coming back. It's not as though I didn't give you reasons. I GET that. But you kept coming back. You tried and tried and no, Nick, you weren't the only one trying.

When she's sitting outside on the patio, she lights a cigarette and finishes her first glass from the second bottle.

Did I hold you back? Is that what you think? I think we held each other back. I think you underestimated yourself and I overestimated me and us and it's just shitty to feel that way but it's real.

She walks to the edge of the pool.

Will you fucking respond?

The wind shifts and the stench rises from the floor of the pool.

How do you even calculate whether Jackson will be better off with us together or apart? Would he learn a better lesson seeing us fight for something instead
of quitting? What kind of lesson is that? How damaging is that?

His response comes, finally, when she's on her back, dizzy, next to Jackson's crib.

The point you're missing, Phoebe, is that the decision is made. And the answer is obvious: no, he's not better off as it is or has been. He's better off now. Now that this is over.

75

T
he floodlights are out. Phoebe borrows a ladder from Kostya. Jackson sits in his high chair eating Cheerios in white sunglasses and a floppy hat. She should wait until later in the day, when it's not so hot and bright, but she's bored and has been awake since five this morning and has the bulbs and Kostya needs his ladder back. Only when she is near the top does she feel it bend. She can see Kostya's backyard from the top, and the batting cage and pool, and the kids are throwing firecrackers into the wind. The bulb in her hand is too large and the one she tries to unscrew is rusted to the socket and she's squeezing it too hard and it explodes in her hand and white residue and glass shards drift to the ground and Jackson. When she looks down again, the bright white of Jackson's hat blurs with the garden hose and concrete. She sways, steadies herself, and the ladder shifts at its base and she plants an open hand on the side of the house and is frozen there, cursing Nick over and over.

• •

The lights don't come on outside when she flicks the switch. She doesn't know whether it's the bulb or a short. But it's after nine and
Jackson is still awake, waiting for stories, and the only light outside the house is the single patio bulb.

Jackson is restless and she tells herself it's all the noise from the wind or because he's overtired, but as she makes small circles on his back, she knows he senses what's happening—his father is gone.

There's four hundred dollars between her checking and savings accounts. Her mother calls back. Phoebe lets it go to voicemail. Her mother tells her she always knew Nick was a prick. She says Phoebe should take him to court. She says that her new boyfriend is ten years younger and is taking her to Atlantic City for the weekend. In the message, she asks Phoebe if there are any numbers she wants her to put money on at the roulette table. Phoebe doesn't call her back.

76

S
he can't sleep, and according to her phone, it's 2:29
A.M.
She opens the blinds in Jackson's room and sees Metzger's orange tent, dark inside, and the trash spread out over Carousel Court is hers, the plastic bins on their sides from the wind or coyotes or Kostya's dogs. She pulls the string, slows Jackson's ceiling fan. She refills his humidifier and closes his bedroom door until it clicks. Her closet is a mess. She pulls dirty clothes from the floor and the hooks and throws them on the bed until the pile tips and spills. The black box is from Dolce & Gabbana. She removes the pink gun, cold and heavy in her hand, and gently flicks at the base of the handle, tries to remove the chamber. She checks the safety switch and turns it off and then on again. She slaps the base and feels it unlock. The chamber slides out easily. She holds the smooth steel thing and studies it. She marvels at the tip of each bullet as she empties the chamber into her palm. In the glow from the face of her cell phone, she reads the word
Winchester
and
40 S&W
as she rolls the cold copper thing between her thumb and forefinger. She places the single bullet in the empty chamber and slaps the chamber back into the butt of the gun, where it clicks. She cocks it. She releases the safety. She closes her eyes and exhales but can't
manage a deep breath. The cracks in her skull are real. The spiderwebs of shattered bone are the nerve endings crying out for chemicals. She's wincing from the pain. She holds her head in her hands and rocks on the bed until she falls back on the pile of dirty clothes. The gun is in her hand. The disease is in her head, scraping the paper-thin layer of bone and scalp until it escapes. She'll blast it back in with overwhelming force. She screams so loud and long that her throat burns and she's no longer on the bed when she finishes. She's slumped on the floor with her head between her knees. She wakes Jackson. She hears him crying out for her. She lifts him carefully, clutches him tightly to her chest, managing to keep the nose of the gun, which she holds by her side, toward the ground as she shushes her son.

77

I
changed my mind,” she says when she calls her mother. Her mother asks about what. Phoebe pauses, watches a cicada bouncing wildly against the inside of the wineglass, struggling. Phoebe trapped it on the kitchen island and hasn't decided what to do with it. Her mother says her name, her tone nurturing and filling Phoebe with nostalgia. She wants to be lying on her mother's bed, watching her mother's hands massage her thin little-girl feet. She wants to feel her mother's fingertips massaging her scalp, warm hands breaking an egg over her head until she's somewhere safe. She drops the call and turns off her phone. There is nothing anyone can say to her now. The cicada is frozen. Its swollen red eyes see nothing.

“Look at it.” She holds Jackson in her arms. All the lights are on in the kitchen and living room. The cicada remains trapped, buzzing loudly. Jackson is confused, sleepy, unable to process the details: upside-­down wineglass, cicada, his mother's voice with an unnerving edge to it. All he likely knows is that it's not time to be awake. “Isn't it amazing?”

Phoebe turns music on, hers and not Jackson's, so the vibe is off, too loud and rough for the hour, for any hour with Jackson. She turns the
television on and props Jackson up in a small throne of throw pillows on the sectional. She puts on a cartoon, but she's unable to focus on any one task longer than a minute, her heart racing, and she's reacting to the meds because she took too much too fast, and she drank too much wine and gulped the last of it to empty the glass she used to trap the cicada.