Men and Dogs (17 page)

17
Warren, Again

I
N HER NEW life, the first person Hannah sees every morning is Mr. Mitchell. Everyone else is always gone. Even DeWitt has vacated the premises by the time she rises, and he doesn’t even really have a job, other than visiting his various properties to make sure other people are working. But she’s been sleeping late. She sees no reason not to. At first she made an attempt to fit into the routine, but the truth is, she has no routine. So it serves her well to pass as much of the morning as she can in bed; that way, she’s closer to afternoon, which is closer to night, which means another day here has come and gone.

The thing is, Hannah’s not a sleeper. By ten, she can’t stand it anymore—the light streaming in the windows, the insistent rustle of the magnolia leaves outside. Every morning, the same thoughts drive her out of bed: It’s a nice day, and here you are, an adulterous lazy blob. The world is moving on without you. Get up.

This morning she descends the staircase in a pair of high school flannel pajamas printed with various images of Madonna. Her body is roughly the same size as it was then; apparently her mind also.

“Good morning,” Mr. Mitchell says, watching Hannah fumble with the coffee. It’s become their unspoken tradition as of late to have coffee together. He seems to like Jon’s rigid French-press recipe.

“Hi.”

“Another big sleep?”

“I was reading.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Hey, how are your kids?”

“Good. One of the grandkids went to Harvard. He’s a doctor now.”

“Congratulations.”

“So you doing OK, then?”

“Sure, I’m great.” Out of the corner of her eye, she catches a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror. Her hair is standing three inches off her head, and her bandage is frayed and dirty. “You know.”

“Sure.”

“Mr. Mitchell,” Hannah says, “you knew my father, right?”

“Sure. Dr. Legare. My sister’s doc and my wife’s, too. Best doctor in town.”

“So you remember what he looks like?”

“Sure.”

“You ever see anyone in town who looks like that?”

Mr. Mitchell drains his cup carefully and puts it down. “Can’t say that I have.”

“Maybe out on Johns Island?”

“I haven’t seen your dad since he died.”

“Since he disappeared, you mean.”

“Yeah, I haven’t seen him since then.” He says this pleasantly. “Have you?”

“Thought I did a couple of times, but it wasn’t him.”

“Well, we see what we want to see.”

“You think I’m crazy?”

“I think we all have ideas. Personally, I think your dad’s in heaven.”

“I don’t believe in heaven.”

“Well, that’s too bad for you.” He picks up his toolbox. “All right. I’m going up. Somebody’s comin’ up on the porch. Why don’t you go see.”

He leaves the room. Hannah wrestles her hair back into a ponytail and peeks out the French doors. Warren Meyers is standing on the piazza, dwarfed by the marble columns. She tries to dart back before he sees her, but either she’s too slow or he’s too quick.

“Hannah,” he says, knocking on the window. When she opens the door, he looks her up and down with an uncharacteristic expression of amusement. “I remember those pajamas.”

“Yeah.” She steps aside to let him in. “Seems I’m stuck in a different era in multiple ways.”

Warren doesn’t answer.

“You want some coffee?” Is this my life now? she wonders. Sitting around her parents’ mansion in her Madonna pajamas, offering people coffee?

“Sure.”

She decides to make a fresh pot, mostly because she doesn’t feel like talking just now. He sits at the table silently as she grinds, boils, and stirs. Even during the three-minute steeping process, they say nothing.

“I guess I’ll talk first,” Hannah finally says. “Can you believe the size of that rubber plant?”

Warren frowns. “I just wanted to come by and apologize for being short with you yesterday. About the book and Jenny.”

“That’s OK.”

“I should have shown it to her.”

“Probably.”

“It was just—back then I was still really pissed at you.”

Hannah pulls her knees up. “Glad to see you’re not anymore.”

“No, I’m still pissed. Just not as much.”

“That’s good, I guess.”

“But I didn’t want her to know that I still thought about you. I wrote an entire novella about you, for Chrissakes.”

“Aren’t ministers not supposed to say things like that?”

He doesn’t answer. They hold their coffee cups aloft, like little shields.

“Are you going to show it to her now?”

“I threw out all the copies.”

Hannah almost says, Oh, wait, I have a copy with me. But then he would know how pathetically much it means to her. And, worse,
he might give her copy to Jenny White.

“Anyway,” she says, “sorry I brought it up.”

“Well, sorry I was rude.”

“Yeah, well. What’s done is done, I guess.”

“You know,” she says, “I’ve never gotten that expression. That, and ‘It is what it is.’ What ‘it’ are they even talking about?”

She can tell he thinks she’s being difficult now. Well, people are difficult, Warren. Sorry. Deal with it. She lies back on the sofa, arms over her head, wrinkling her nose at the smell of old coffee and sleep.

“So I talked with your mom,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“We barely talked at all, really. I just showed her the picture.” Warren plays with a succulent on the table. He breaks off a leaf and kneads it between his fingers.

“I didn’t know that she was in love with my dad.”

Warren looks up, surprised. “Is that what she said?”

“No, I just figured it out.”

“Huh.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Hannah asks. “Don’t you think it’s kind of screwed up that you didn’t tell me?”

He grins. His teeth are startlingly white against his tan. He’s wearing the old uniform today—faded jeans, boots, a flannel shirt. She feels the urge to reach out and touch the cloth. “What’s done is done,” he says. “It is what it is.”

“If it’s true, then that’s just sad.”

“Why?” Warren is indignant. “It’s important to love someone.”

“Even if you can’t have that person?”

He destroys another leaf. Then another.

“This plant needs water.”

“It’s a cactus.”

“It’s not prickly, though.”

“It’s in the cactus family.”

“I think caring for someone is never a bad thing, even if the situation you idealize, I don’t know, doesn’t happen for you.”

“You sound like a self-help book.”

“I think anything that gets people through the day is a good thing.”

“Like God?”

“Like God.”

“What happened to you?” Hannah asks. “How can you believe in all that?”

His leg jiggles. Up. Down. He pushes the plant toward her.

“I don’t care if this is a cactus. It’s still dying.”

“That’s a shame,” Hannah says. “It’s really a very nice plant.”

So they end up alone together in her closet.

This is not Hannah’s fault or even her idea. Usually it would be—she knows she’s entirely capable of such things. But today all she does is say, “Wait down here. I’ll go get more photos of your mom. There are some good ones in a box upstairs.” And so she leaves him in the solarium, where he is supposed to wait, but then she takes too long. She changes her clothes (necessary)
and puts some makeup on (vanity) and then discovers that there are not just one or two pictures of Virginia but scores of them. She turns on the lantern and starts to shuffle through and edit them, and then there he is, saying hi and ducking through the door.

“I thought you were downstairs,” she says.

“Yeah. Nowhere is still here.”

“I forgot you called it that.”

He nudges the pillows with his foot. She slides the pile of photos over. “Look.” She spreads them out, a fan of images. In most of them, his mother’s not even with anyone. She’s alone.

“You know, I always sort of prayed you’d be back in here someday,” she says.

“Ha.” He taps her knee with his foot. “So you do pray sometimes?”

“Fine, OK. You got me.”

“Should I sit?”

“I don’t know.”

“Me neither.”

“Well, probably not,” Hannah says. He bends over closer to the photographs. “We could bring these downstairs.”

But Warren is suddenly entranced by the pictures of his mother. “Oh, look, Hannah. Look at these.”

“I know.”

“Can you turn up that light?”

“Of course.”

He sits.

*    *    *

It’s a tricky substance, the familiar. Resilient as tar. Hannah thinks of Palmer and Tom and her mother and DeWitt. Their familiar routines have almost become their religion. They wake up, have the same breakfast, drive or bike or walk the same way to work. DeWitt checks the stock market on his computer and eats his bacon; Daisy plans a new way to save money; Palmer grooms himself or tends to his plants.

Now she and Warren are in their familiar place. He sits on his old pillow and leans over to look at the pictures by the lamplight.
His brows knit in concentration. He is excavating, his knee just inches from hers.

“Look at this one,” he says. His mother is laughing, her knees drawn up.

He should never have come, she thinks. I should never have let him in the door. What was she thinking? Oh, she knew exactly what she was thinking. She knew he would follow her. She came to Nowhere, because.

He doesn’t look at her when he does it. That’s what she means by the familiar. It’s a trap. I’m sorry, Warren, she wants to say. But it’s inevitable. You don’t want to do it, but you have to. Even if, while it’s happening, you’re so guilty you can’t even look over. You have to look at pictures of your own mother as your hand reaches up under your old girlfriend’s shirt. You have a wife, you have daughters. Still, you put your palm flat on my waist, as if you’re pushing open a door.
You have to make sure it still feels the same way. Does it? It does, it does. Thank God it still does. We are both still here,
not too old, still alive. Familiar.

Still it’s wrong, somehow. All wrong. She’s with Warren, and it’s delicious. He’s kissing her just like he used to. But it just doesn’t fit anymore. The person she wants to be with here is her husband. Jon. Where is Jon?

“Stop,” she says.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s OK. But you don’t want to do that.”

“Oh, God. What am I doing here? I can’t be here.” He gets up too quickly and knocks his head. The smack shakes the roof. Holding his temple, he hurries out into the bedroom, where the light blazes in.

Back out here, they are old again. Graying. Pale. Thinning skin pulled to the ground by insistent gravity.

“Nothing happened,” she says.

“I think my head may be bleeding.”

“But you and I shouldn’t be together. Seriously, we shouldn’t even see each other at all. I’m a real fuck-up, Warren. I’ll fuck everything up.”

“Fucking hell.” He looks at the bit of blood on his fingers.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s my fault for coming over.”

“We didn’t do anything. Pretty much. You don’t have to worry.”

“God.”

“You rubbed my back. We kissed. Something you’d done a thousand times already. Just lump it into the high school stuff.”

He shakes his head.

“Look, whatever happened in there—which is nothing, sort of—just know it’s my fault.”

“Hannah.”

“It’s true. I—” Hannah puts her hand out and moves it back and forth, as if it is a fish swimming. “I wander.”

“No.”

“I ruin things. I don’t even know why. I have a problem with faith.”