Michael’s Wife (15 page)

“Tomorrow morning.”

But Myra still shook her head as she stepped off the patio and headed home.

Laurel stood Jimmy in front of the toilet in the bathroom when he woke up from his nap. She tried to explain what she wanted of him, but he just looked blank. When she finally gave up, he hosed down the floor, one wall, and her slacks.

That afternoon she scrubbed the bathroom. Motherhood wasn't as easy as it looked.

She waited dinner until six-thirty and then fixed eggs and bacon for the two of them, turning on the radio that sat on the kitchen counter, to relieve the loneliness of their dinner.

“… of the rioting at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Officials at the University in Tempe say that they will be ready for any such student disorders on their own campus but don't look for any trouble during the hot summer months.

“Newsmen report that summer has forced the hippies from their winter encampments on the desert and that even the largest colony, near Florence, has been evacuated.

“Officials report that the incidents of hepatitis have decreased in the southern part of the state as the hippies have moved north.

“On the weather scene, tomorrow will be clear with temperatures ranging over 100 degrees in the Valley of the Sun and.…”

Laurel switched off the radio. The mention of hippies always reminded her of Harley and his mistaking her for one. Where was Harley now? What was he doing?

Michael didn't come home until after they were in bed. When she got up the next morning, he was dressed and was going out the door. He paused only to say good-bye to Jimmy.

Laurel finished the breakfast dishes by seven-thirty and decided to try out the new washer. Lifting the lid of the plastic diaper pail she choked on the acrid smell of ammonia. Picking up the pail, she closed her eyes and dumped the whole grim mess into the machine. Then she worked on the sticky spot on the kitchen floor where Jimmy had spilled his pop. Finally she gave up and scrubbed the whole floor. It was barely eight-thirty in the morning and already her back ached.

At first it sounded like an explosion. The floor trembled beneath her, the windows rattled, and there was an answering tinkle from the cupboards, a roaring noise from outside the house.

“Jet, Mommy!” Jimmy, jumping in his excitement, tried to open the sliding doors and point all at the same time.

They both rushed out onto the patio and watched as one jet after another, sun glinting off their silvery sides, rose from the base, crossed the road, and screamed over the house.

Laurel dashed back into the kitchen, her hands clamped over her ears. Her body trembled, her heart raced. The noise … something about that noise sent her into near panic. She didn't know why.

Some time after the last plane had soared above them she finally stopped the trembling in her legs. Tears smeared her cheeks as she stood gripping the cool edge of the sink, trying to understand her reaction. Just as she turned from the sink, a picture floated before her inner vision.

A picture of gently swaying tall-tipped pines encircling a patch of sky … a contrail drifting diagonally across it … the white streak in the intense clean blue outlined in moving jagged green-black … as if she were lying on the ground looking up at the sky.

Suddenly she began to tremble again.

11

A sleepy-looking blonde sat at the table drinking coffee with Myra. Laurel tapped on the glass.

“Come on in!” Myra filled a third cup from the percolator. “Laurel, this is Colleen Houghton.”

The blonde was beautiful, small and already made up over a glorious suntan. “Welcome to the ghetto.” Colleen Houghton gave her a dreamy smile and then looked at Jimmy. “So this is Mike Devereaux's little boy.”

“Do you know Michael, too?”

“No, but I've heard a lot about him.” And in a languid drawl that had to be Texan: “You're going to be something of a shock around here.”

Myra's house was identical with her own, less shabby, with more color to the walls. A little girl in a sundress and ponytail peeked around the partition wall. Jimmy leaped onto Laurel's lap and glowered back at her.

“Sherrie, come meet Jimmy,” Myra said. “He's going to live next door and you'll finally have someone to play with.”

Sherrie moved timidly toward Jimmy, reaching out to touch his leg as if she couldn't believe he really existed. It took some persuasion to get them out the door, but before long the children sat in the sandbox throwing sand at each other.

“Are you Air Force, too?” Laurel asked Colleen.

“Well, sort of. I'm what you call a hanger-on.”

“Don't be silly,” Myra said matter-of-factly. “Colleen lost her husband last year in Vietnam.” Neither woman even blinked.

Colleen shrugged. “I've just never got up the gumption to leave. My friends are here and it's cheaper living near a base with the BX and all. More eligible men, too.” She gave Myra a knowing look and said, “You might as well tell her.”

Myra bit her lip and looked away. “I'd just gotten Colleen around to saying I could fix her up with your husband. I honestly didn't know he had a family, Laurel, and it's the same Mike. I saw him leave this morning.”

“Oh,” Laurel said a little lamely. She could see Colleen's blonde next to Michael's dark; they'd make a stunning pair.

“No harm done, I guess. I hadn't said anything to him about it. Don't tell, huh?” Myra refilled the cups. “I feel pretty silly.”

The conversation promised to last until noon, settling into woman talk, Myra's recipes, Colleen's golf, gossip of the base that Laurel couldn't follow, dull nothing chatter to pass the time. Laurel was soon bored and disturbed. She felt no more at home here than she had in Tucson. Using the excuse that she still had some unpacking to do, she left.

Taking Michael's Polaroid camera outside, she snapped pictures of Jimmy in the sandbox and on the swing. When Colleen left Myra's, she asked her to take a picture of the two of them.

All afternoon the jets returned home. Michael didn't.

Another late lonely dinner, and when she'd put Jimmy to bed, she sat on the lumpy couch with pen and paper. She'd had an uneasy feeling that time was running out for her since morning when the roar of jet fighters had sent that strange vision bubbling up from the shadows of her mind. Laurel couldn't explain why; she didn't know if it was a memory. It could have been a picture she'd seen on a postcard or something irrelevant her subconscious had let surface at random as it might in a dream. But it had made her resolve early in the day to write that long overdue letter to Lisa Lawrence. Pride would not let her go to the phone to talk to this remote mother who could give her up so easily. But fear drove her to at least write her plea for help.

Her first inclination was to start the letter with “Dear Mrs. Lawrence. But she wrote instead, “Dear Lisa,” looked at it and started again on a fresh piece of paper, “Dear Mother.” She began her letter in a breezy style, explaining that she was back with her family, living near the air base, much of Jimmy, little of Michael. And then she moved abruptly to a detailed list of what she had learned about herself, pleading with Lisa to fill in the gaps.

“This will sound strange, I know, but I can't remember anything before last April. No one here will believe that. I want to know about you, my father, my home, myself—anything you can tell me may help me to remember. I am so afraid, not knowing about myself and what I have done in my life. But worst of all, I don't know what I might do. How I will react to things. It is like living a nightmare, watching myself and others but unable to change anything or control my life at all. And this will sound the strangest yet, but I sense that I'm in some kind of danger and I don't know what it is. I must remember before it closes in on me. The one thing that keeps me going is Jimmy. I am trying hard to make up to him for what I did. I love him so.” Laurel asked that her letter be answered at once, enclosed the pictures, and sealed the envelope.

Then she sat back and considered all the things she hadn't said, couldn't say. The threatening shadow in the courtyard. The hearing in Denver. The probationary sentence. The fact that her husband didn't want her. That everyone loathed her and she didn't remember one good thing about herself.

If Claire could have convinced Jimmy he really was a “bad boy,” would he have grown into one? If she could see herself only as she was mirrored in the eyes of others would she become what they thought she was?

With Jimmy asleep and the cooler off the house lay in prickly silence. An occasional car would go by on the road running between Myra's and the base. Her nerves jumped when the old refrigerator clicked on. During the day it was easier to forget the fears that haunted her nights.

Saturday morning she awakened before Jimmy, dressed, and walked to the kitchen only to stop in the doorway and stare.

Michael stood in front of the sink in pajama bottoms, filling the coffee pot.

There was something incongruous about this large half-naked man in the tiny kitchen. He looked now more like the “Mike” Myra spoke of than the sophisticated reserved Michael she had known in the elegance of Tucson.

But when he turned to face her, she was looking at the old Michael with the cold pale eyes and steel set to his jaw. Michael could look arrogant even in pajama bottoms.

Laurel felt the answering sullen pout forming on her lips as she moved into the kitchen to prepare breakfast for three.

Jimmy did most of the talking at the table, regaling his father with his activities of the week. Since he'd been playing with Sherrie his vocabulary had at least quadrupled.

Michael watched him with interest. “So you like living here?”

“Yeah. It's good. Sherrie pays wis me and Mommy tell me story and.…”

“Don't you miss Claire?”

“Claire's a bad boy!” When he'd finished his breakfast, Laurel turned Jimmy out to run through the sprinkler with Sherrie, and she and Michael sat over a second cup of coffee.

He looked tired, the worry lines on his forehead too deep for his age, his movements slower, less abrupt. She wasn't surprised. If he'd slept much that week, it hadn't been at home.

“What do you do? On the base, I mean.”

“Train pilots.”

“Do you fly?”

“Some.”

“Shouldn't you get more sleep?”

“Are you worried about me, Laurel?” His eyebrows lifted in mock surprise as he rested both elbows on the table and held the cup to his lips.

“It just seems dangerous, is all.” She met the coldness in his eyes above the coffee cup and looked away. He seemed to be able to go forever without blinking.

It was unreal sitting in this room with him. To an outsider they would look like a normal couple talking idly over the breakfast table. She tried hard to remember a time when they might have done this before. She couldn't even imagine it. “What was I like … before you went to Vietnam?”

“Oh, for God's sake.”

“No … please … just pretend I know but I want you to tell me anyway.”

“What do you want now, Laurel, compliments?” He took a long time stacking his dishes and then rose, holding them in one hand, and stood by his chair for a moment looking down, not at her but through her. “You were … just like you are now.” And then his eyes focused on hers. “But all that's in between hadn't happened.” He took his dishes to the sink, effectively closing the subject.

Laurel thought that anyone changes in two years surely. It was as if she'd stepped into some kind of suspended time when she walked out of that hospital. As if she had skipped those two years while everyone else lived, grew, changed.…

A brief rap and Myra slid the screen back and stepped into the kitchen. She stopped as she noticed Michael, her dimples fading uncertainly. “Oh … hi, Mike.”

“Myra.”

“Excuse me for barging in. But I wanted to know if you all would come over tonight for a barbecue? Colleen's bringing the beer, and you could bring a salad and bread. I'll have the rest. Kind of late when it gets cool?” she blurted out nervously, one hand still on the screen.

“Do we dress?” Michael looked amused, at her discomfort over finding him home.

“Well, you could put on your pajama top and a tie. Can you come?”

“We'll be there,” he answered for both of them, as if he did it always.

Laurel was surprised that he hadn't already made plans of his own for a Saturday night.

With Michael home, her day was confused. The heat drove them inside with the cooler, which did at least move the air around, but the three of them seemed to stumble over each other in the tiny house. Laurel felt self-conscious with Michael ever-present and strangely unable to find anything to do.

Jimmy watched television. Michael settled with a book at the kitchen table while she set yeast dough to rise for the patio party. Although she felt Michael's critical eyes on her back, whenever she turned to glance at him he seemed engrossed in his reading. She started nervously every time he turned a page. When the sunlight began to fade and she could prepare the greens for the salad, she sighed with relief.

A distant roar and then a fighter screamed overhead. She cut her finger instead of the onion she was chopping.

Just as she felt the now familiar panic rise in her throat at the sound of the plane, an image literally exploded into her mind.

Laurel stood transfixed, letting her finger bleed into the sink, her eyes closed … five mounded graves stretched side by side on the desert with little wooden crosses … tall cacti standing guard over them.…

“What are you going to do? Stand there and bleed to death?” Michael's curt voice cut through her thoughts, forcing her eyes open, driving the image away.

Stinging sweat ran into her eyes. Laurel sat down on the kitchen floor before her knees could buckle beneath her.