She Poured Out Her Heart (10 page)

T
wo years ago. More than two, August. Every morning the city woke up to heat haze and the same forecast, two, six, ten days in a row, hot and hotter. Bonnie's air conditioner couldn't keep up. Bonnie and Will drank cold beer and ate popsicles and took showers with towels that never quite dried. In bed they lay in the grand ruin of the sheets. A rotating fan sent a current of silky air across them. Outside, buses coughed exhaust. Somebody's radio played at headache volume, tamped down by glass and the window air conditioner.

Oh holy God, the way they'd had each other. It was not quite a memory. It was still in her skin. She stayed as still as she could to keep what they'd done from receding, minute by minute by minute, into the past. A losing fight against time and an already-forming sense of loss. The fan revolved once more. The small wind passed over their salt skins. He put his mouth to her ear. “I have to go . . .”

If only you could stay in bed forever! But sex was the opposite of forever. So insubstantial, and yet it was the root and branch of everything, seed, flower, tree. It was ravishment and chiming skin. She was always getting it mixed up with love, or maybe you were supposed to. And what happened when the sex got tired or went stale, because of course that happened, in spite of everyone's best efforts. She didn't know. She hadn't stayed around for that part often enough to know.

Will had not stayed around. He was moving to Phoenix to work for
Honeywell. An engineer, he would work in aerospace technology. It was all set up before they met. Phoenix, another hot place. “I'll find an apartment with a pool. And a swamp cooler. You can get used to weather.” What was the name for that hollowed out space beneath the collarbone? It should have a name. She wanted to open his shirt and rest her two hands there. Confound everybody in the nice restaurant where he'd taken her to say good-bye. He was leaving in two days.

Bonnie wasn't going with him. His plans were complete. They did not include her. He was excited about his brand new life, all the splendid possibilities. Bonnie was something that had already happened. Why secret? Why not tell people? Well, he was her brother's friend, it was a little embarrassing. Good Time Charlie. She didn't want Charlie knowing her business. He talked about all the wrong things to all the wrong people. So they kept it on the down low. Who would they tell, anyway? Then, as time went on, they liked having a secret, an
intrigue,
like something out of an old French scandal, everybody dressed up in wigs and satin. Not that there was, technically, anything scandalous. They were both healthy, unattached, of age. But what they did with and to each other was meant to be secret.

“I've never been to Phoenix,” Bonnie said. She'd ordered a salad that was composed of a great many confusing things: slices of egg, beets, olives, knobs of cauliflower. Every so often she raked through it with her fork, but that only brought up more alarming ingredients. Was that bacon? No, an anchovy. She hadn't been paying attention when she'd ordered. She was waiting for him to say she could at least come visit him and he wasn't saying it.

“It has a lot going for it. Did you know that it's the sixth largest U.S. city?”

“I did not know that.”

“Golf is huge there. You can play all year round.”

“I bet.”

“Don't hate me,” he said, switching tones. “Would you rather it had never happened? I don't.”

“Yeah, great memories. I can never have too many of those.”

“You're angry, you're hurt. I wish you weren't but you are. I'm sorry if you thought it was going to end some other way.”

“I guess I wasn't thinking about the ending.” Bonnie gave up on the salad. She could say she was going to the ladies' room and just leave, spare herself this part. But she wouldn't. Soon enough she wouldn't be able see or hear him at all.

He reached across the table and took one of her hands in both of his. “You are the most amazing, lovely person.”

Bonnie snatched her hand away. “Don't make me hate you.”

A heaviness came over his face. “You aren't being fair. Come on, we never had enough time. It's not like we even know each other all that well.”

“So when you tell me I'm ‘amazing' and ‘lovely,' that's just something you pulled out of your ass?”

“You know I mean it,” he said, and then they were both quiet for a while.

Bonnie looked down at her salad. It looked back. She said, “How long is enough? Is there some established minimum? OK. We could make more time. But you won't. You could but you won't. It's only Phoenix, it's not like you're going off to war.”

“I can't ask you to leave everything and move out there. It's not fair, I'd feel responsible for you.”

“You could stay here,” Bonnie said, in a smaller voice, and she watched him go miles and miles away without ever leaving his chair.

Some of the things she knew about him: Where he grew up (Pennsylvania), his parents' names (Wade and Virginia), siblings (two sisters), the dog, a terrier, who slept on his bed when he was a kid, the shin splints he got running cross-country, his sensitivity to insect bites, fondness for terrible crappy science fiction, his beautiful squared-off handwriting,
how particular he was about his car and how you were not allowed to tease him about it, his sense of fair play when it came to competitions of all sorts, his devotion to those incomprehensible, to her at least, calculations and computer models and metrics which made up his profession. His mouth, his hands, his voice. How he whispered, “Wait, wait,” while he teased and stroked his way into her. How, when leaving, he always looked up at her window so they could wave good-bye.

C
harlie said: “You remember Diane, right? Well, they broke up for a while, then when he got out to Arizona they started up again, long distance at first, your basic hot and heavy rendezvous, and I guess they decided to just go for it, kind of a surprise, you never know, but they seem real happy.”

It was true that Bonnie had her well-articulated objections to marriage. But she would have married him. “My ex,” Will had called Diane, with a raised and wriggling eyebrow, as if he might have said more, except for gentlemanly restraint. Nice girl, everybody said so. Pretty. Lacking in some respect? Too smiley-anxious? Needy? Clingy? Maybe all that meant was that she had demanded he take her seriously.

Coming into the large and laughing room, Bonnie spotted them first thing. They were sitting together on the hearth. Don't look. Claudia was saying, “‘Have a Holly Jolly Christmas' is not a carol. A carol is something like ‘
Adeste Fidelis
.'”

“What's that?”

“‘O Come All Ye Faithful' in Latin. Not that any of you heathen are aware of that.” Stan, who liked to demonstrate that he knew a thing or two about a thing or two. He was sitting in his oversized leather chair. It made him look both regal and stunted, the king of the dwarves.

“So, ‘Frosty the Snowman' and ‘Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer' don't count either? Mom, all those years, you let me believe. You suck.” This from her brother Charlie. He was standing at one end of the
fireplace, throwing pistachio shells into the flames. He wore an old, too-small Christmas sweater, a joke one, with panicked gingerbread people being scooped up by a big Santa hand.

Claudia said, “Where did I go wrong with you, Charlie?” Only pretending to be displeased. She loved it when her men acted up. Scott and Haley, along with the babies, were bestowed at one end of the sofa. Presumably they had an opinion about sacred music, but they were keeping it to themselves. Other people standing around, who were they? And that sad sack Franklin guy.

“Bonnie!” Her mother turned and extended an arm, draping it around her. “You used to love Christmas carols, ‘Silent Night' and ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem.' She had the most precious little voice,” Claudia informed the room. “She had just the slightest bit of a speech defect, so it was ‘Thilent Night.'”

“Yeah, precious. Hi Charlie.”

“Hi Bon. So, everybody, this is my sexpot sister.”

“Nice.”

“Charlie,” their mother scolded.

“It's OK, Mom. Nobody believes him.”

Haley said, “Honestly, Charlie. Some things are not funny.”

“Did you want to be the sexpot sister? I didn't think so. Hey Bonnie, this is Jack and Irina and Sam and and . . . oh, you know these guys.”

“Nice to see you again,” Bonnie said, in her most comradely voice. Will said Nice to see you too. Diane gave her one of those great big smiles, like she'd been waiting all day for whoever she was smiling at to show up. But that was the worst Bonnie could say about her. Hers was a purely technical hatred.

Charlie poked at a log with a fireplace iron. The log broke and sent red sparks shooting out onto the rug. “Sparks fly,” he said, to no one in particular.

Stan said, “How about you quit messing with the fire? It was burning just fine.”

“Well it just got a little stirred up.”

“Claudia,” Stan said, “do I hear the dinner gong?” He was not a big fan of his stepson's theatrics.

“Table's already set, I just have to . . .” Claudia already halfway to the kitchen.

Bonnie crossed the room and went to sit next to Haley and the babies. She couldn't tell if Will watched her, but Franklin seemed to be looking at her ass. Creep. Thanks, Charlie, for that one. “They fell asleep,” Haley said, as Bonnie sat down. “Right in the middle of all the commotion. They were exhausted.”

“They look like somebody flipped their Off switches,” Bonnie said, examining their tiny, slackened faces. “And fortunately, they're too little to remember any of it.”

She'd meant, the gas pains, but Haley rolled her eyes and muttered, “I wish I could say the same.” It always took Bonnie a little while to get used to seeing Haley again. They resembled each other, but in an inexact way that cast both their faces into doubt, as if one or the other was the imperfect version. “Scott, please go see about that crib so we can get them settled.” Scott got up and went looking for his coat. Bonnie wondered if he'd always been so compliant, or if it was a new dad thing.

“You know,” she said, “I don't think I've brought a boyfriend home with me since high school. They'd have to be made of pretty stern stuff to handle it all.” Will certainly didn't count as a boyfriend. He was there under entirely different auspices. “I guess once you're married, they have to show up. Did your in-laws meet the babies yet?” Scott's parents were missionaries in Lagos and had not been able to leave their posts.

“No, but they're hoping to get back this summer. Of course we send them all kinds of pictures. And they write the sweetest letters. They're so strong in their faith.”

Charlie left the fireplace and retrieved his glass from an end table. “The Lord loveth a cheerful drinker.” His friends, a rat-faced girl and the two hipster boys, looked particularly out of place, as if they'd been
expecting a party with a DJ. Charlie always did cast a wide net. He was almost thirty, and managed a bar in Lakeview, but mostly Stan paid him money to stay away. Will was an old friend from college, back when Charlie had briefly gone in for college.

Will and Diane—Bonnie could see them without turning her head—were having some whispered conversation. Bonnie hoped they were rethinking their plan to stay the night. Diane stood up and left the room. She wore a red sweater, a short suede skirt, patterned tights, and high boots. She was one of those women who looked good from behind. Was there a ring? Bonnie couldn't tell. She got up and went to sit next to Will, close enough to make him look at her with lurking dread. Chickenshit. “So, how's Phoenix?”

“It's good, yeah, real good.” He didn't seem to believe she was going to put him through this. Believe it. “How's things with you?”

“Never better. Processing those who are a danger to themselves or others just as fast as they surface. I'm still in Wicker Park. I can't remember if you ever saw the place. Nothing fancy. Just where I hang my hat. You must tell me all about your golf game. Does Diane play?”

“A little. She just started.”

“Give her time. I bet she'll really, really get into it.”

No one was paying them any attention. Will dropped his voice. “Can't you just leave it?”

“Not yet,” Bonnie said, at full, cheerful volume. “Maybe later. I haven't decided yet.” She had drunk quite a bit of the wine by now, but something tight within her was keeping her from feeling it. She didn't know what she wanted from him, but something other than this limp-dick, skulking fear.

Fear of her? It made her furious. She wanted him to be worthy of all the feeling she'd invested in him. All those times when the very fact of his absence had made him so spectacularly present, when the edge of her longing was so sharp, she could have cut herself on it. Was his face different now? Weathered? Sure, the desert sun. She was staring. Don't.