Authors: Sarah Pemberton Strong
The Fainting Room (44 page)
As he said this, he realized he had no way of knowing whether it was true. If he told her of his feelings for Ingrid, he was sure she would leave him. But he could not imagine what she might say that would make him leave her.
“But something has to change,” she said.
Ray raised his head from her shoulder. “I know. I meant it won’t change the fact that I love you.”
Evelyn leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I know you do,” she said. “That’s the nicest thing about you.”
Then she kissed him again, and he could not remember a time when things had felt so easy, so uncomplicated. It gave him hope. Then Evelyn got up and opened her closet and began pulling clothes off hangers, making piles on the bed.
That was how he fell asleep again, to the sounds of his wife packing a suitcase he had not seen her use since she moved in.
When he next woke his body felt better. The bedside clock said it was three a.m., but as sometimes happens with night wakings, he found himself clear-headed, more so than if he’d slept until morning. He got out of bed and dressed in the darkness, careful to avoid knocking his injured shoulder. He knew what he wanted to do: he would drive in to Dunlap and Scott right now, and bid farewell to the place in private. He would clean out his desk and leave his keys, no onlookers to make a scene about his sudden departure or his black eye.
As he went downstairs he realized how hungry he was. So he detoured into the kitchen and began cooking a full breakfast—frying bacon, boiling water for poached eggs and tea. With the dark silence of the house all around him, he recalled how it had been before he was married, how lonely he’d been here, and how he’d thrown himself into his work because he hadn’t known what else to do.
If he had drawn a picture of a house to represent his heart, in those days before Evelyn the drawing would have been a child’s idea of a house: a square with a triangle roof on top, a tiny rectangle for the chimney, another for the door.
And now? Now his heart would need pages of drawings to describe it. There were rooms he had never known existed, whole wings he would have to venture into. They were complicated, unbuildable perhaps, and some of them were not pleasant. Not what he would have chosen. But they were his.
He would be alone in the house for an entire week while Evelyn was in California with Ingrid. He wouldn’t be able to throw himself into work as a means of distraction. He thought of the broken window upstairs—that might make a suitable project. All summer he’d held onto the idea that it could be repaired so that you would never know it had been broken. He cracked the eggs into the boiling water and allowed himself a minute of thinking that he might still accomplish the window repair himself: why not learn to steam and bend hardwood, why not take up glass blowing? But he recognized it for the fantasy it was. If he wanted a window at all, he was going to have to settle. The new window would not be craftsmanship raised to the level of art. It would simply be serviceable—light would come through the pane and it wouldn’t leak. And whenever he looked at it he would be reminded that his wife had thrown a rock through it because he had failed to understand her in time. He hoped it was not too late now. He hoped he was up to the task.
As he was filling the teapot, some tiny sound, separate from the sounds of boiling water and sizzling bacon, penetrated his consciousness. He turned and nearly dropped the kettle: Ingrid was there, leaning against the doorway, watching him.
She was wearing a pair of threadbare men’s pajamas, over which she’d belted the trench coat in lieu of a bathrobe. On her head was the fedora he’d given her. He stammered a moment, his heart speeding up in his chest, his hand clutching the kettle.
And then he understood what he was looking at. The trench coat, the hat pulled down so far that she had to tilt her head back to see out from under it. Her jaw in the air, and the way she leaned against the door frame, and the look on her face: deliberate, cool.
“Detective Slade,” he said.
“At your service,” Detective Slade answered, and touched a hand to the fedora’s brim.
Despite everything, after everything, they both smiled.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” Ray admitted.
“I’m quiet.” Ingrid lit a cigarette on the stove burner and took a long drag. Very sure of herself.
“I hope I didn’t wake you up, banging around,” he said.
“I was already awake. I heard you banging around, so I came down. I wanted to tell you something. Hey, that bacon’s burning.”
He shut off the skillet and Ingrid began rummaging in one of the cabinets.
“Pop Tart?” she asked, and held out what looked like a slice of frosted cardboard.
He loved her. In a few hours she would be leaving him forever. His hand reached out and accepted the Pop Tart, brought it to his mouth. It was sugary and flaky and awful, and his tongue wanted more of it even as his mind said no. His body stayed where it was, a few feet away from her. Nothing between them but bacon smoke.
“What did you want to tell me?” he asked.
Ingrid finished chewing, dusted sugar off her hands and went back to leaning against the door frame.
“Well, the first thing is, I need you to take care of Melvin for a couple weeks while I’m away. If I don’t come back to Newell, my friend Jessica will come get him.”
“Of course.” Ray had lost his appetite for bacon and eggs; he poured his tea and sat down at the kitchen table, still holding the Pop Tart.
“And the other thing I wanted to say—” Ingrid paused and ran her toe over the linoleum, her bare feet the one flaw in her detective garb. He wanted to kiss those feet. Oh wretched Achilles heel. He put the Pop Tart down.
“Well, what I really came down to say was, I’m sorry I shot you.”
Ray felt his whole body sigh. “You showed great resourcefulness in the face of danger,” he said. “But I must say, I’m glad your aim wasn’t better.”
“I wasn’t aiming.” Ingrid scowled. “If I’d been aiming, I would have hit you full on. The gun went off by mistake—I think I cocked it without meaning to. Did you know revolvers don’t have safety catches?”
“I didn’t even know my wife had a gun,” Ray said.
“Yeah.” Ingrid smiled a quick, mocking smile. “Like I said, in real life I don’t think you’d be much of a detective.”
What is my real life now, Ray thought.
“Aw, hey,” said Ingrid. “Don’t feel bad. Look at it this way: thanks to you, I got to be a real private eye. I found a missing husband and I made a drunk guy lay off his wife. I even got to fire a gun in a crummy motel.”
“I’m glad I was good for something,” Ray said.
Ingrid pointed at his Pop Tart. “Are you going to eat that?”
“It’s yours.”
“Thanks. Well, I should get back to packing now.” She stood up and started out of the room.
“Wait a minute.” There was something he needed to say before she disappeared out of his life forever, something he needed to set straight. “Ingrid. I would never have—” he trailed off. All that separated him from her was a few steps across the kitchen floor. He knew he would not move, that he would not touch her. That counted for something redemptive, surely? But he wanted to touch her, still. He began again. “You didn’t need to take the gun to protect yourself from me. I would never have made you do anything you didn’t—”
He was watching a building about to be demolished; one swing of the wrecking ball and all would be gone, falling in dust, never to be restored. He had lost her, that was what he understood. He was looking at her for the last time.
“I didn’t take the gun because of you,” Ingrid said. “I needed it for another reason.”
“What was that?”
She hesitated. “I needed to find something out.”
“Want to tell me what it was?”
She shook her head no. “You can read about it, maybe, if I finish writing my story.”
A thought came to him. “Ingrid, why don’t you take the Underwood with you. As a gift. I think you should have it.”
Then she smiled, a real smile this time, the sideways one that made her whole face open up, and for a moment everything was as it had been before and there was nothing ruined between them, nothing betrayed or broken. For a moment it was just the kitchen at three in the morning and Ingrid grinning at him barefoot and both of them with Pop Tart sugar on their fingers and neither of them speaking, because they didn’t need to.
Ray breathed it in. The moment contained a forgiveness that almost soothed the knowledge that he’d lost her. Almost but not quite.
But it was all he had, and he was in love with the moment itself while it lasted.
Then Ingrid said she had to finish packing and went back upstairs, leaving him alone at the kitchen table with his uneaten breakfast, wondering at the world and at himself.
28.
This trip will be fine
, Evelyn told herself as they lugged their bags across the parking lot to the terminal.
Everything will be fine.
She was carrying her old circus suitcase with a week’s worth of clothes, and Ingrid had a big Army-issue rucksack and the typewriter case with Ray’s old typewriter in it. She had stashed the remainder of her belongings in the Shepards’ basement, believing that if most of her things remained on the East Coast, the greater the chance was that she would return to school there.
, Evelyn told herself as they lugged their bags across the parking lot to the terminal.
Everything will be fine.
She was carrying her old circus suitcase with a week’s worth of clothes, and Ingrid had a big Army-issue rucksack and the typewriter case with Ray’s old typewriter in it. She had stashed the remainder of her belongings in the Shepards’ basement, believing that if most of her things remained on the East Coast, the greater the chance was that she would return to school there.
It will be fine
, Evelyn repeated in her head as they went up the escalator, found the United counter and stood in line to check in. She’d get them separate hotel rooms, not just separate beds, make it clear to Ingrid that what happened at the Lone Pine Motel was a one-time occurrence.
, Evelyn repeated in her head as they went up the escalator, found the United counter and stood in line to check in. She’d get them separate hotel rooms, not just separate beds, make it clear to Ingrid that what happened at the Lone Pine Motel was a one-time occurrence.
The line at the ticket counter was long. Long enough for Ingrid to tell Evelyn how since she had a California learner’s permit she could drive Evelyn all over the place with no fear of getting busted—to the Santa Monica Pier, where they could go to an amusement park even better than Paragon, and to the Chinese Theater, where Evelyn had said she wanted to go, and to Roscoe’s for chicken and waffles in case they were hungry in the middle of the night. We can do whatever we want, Ingrid was saying, we’ll just show up for the wedding only, and the rest of the time we can go off by ourselves.
“Ingrid,” Evelyn said, “I need to talk to you.”
“So talk.” Ingrid kicked her rucksack a foot forward across the floor as the next person moved up to the counter. Now there were only three people ahead of them.
“This is kind of a crazy idea, isn’t it, me coming with you to your father’s wedding?”
“So crazy it just might work.” Ingrid spoke out the side of her mouth the way she did when she was mimicking some movie actor; Evelyn never knew which one. The line moved forward again and Ingrid gave her rucksack another kick. There was just one couple ahead of them now.
“Ingrid. Oh, Ingrid, I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“I can’t do this. I can’t get on the plane.”
“Of course you can. We’re here, we’re going. You’re just nervous.” Ingrid linked her arm through Evelyn’s. “You’re way more likely to die in a car accident than in a plane crash. Just keep telling yourself that.”
The ticket agent was waving them over.
“Come on,” Ingrid said, “it’s our turn.”
“Wait.” Evelyn picked up her suitcase and shoved it under the ticket line ropes, then ducked under herself.
“What are you doing? It’s our turn. You’ll be fine once we’re airborne, I promise.”
The agent was getting impatient. “Ma’am, please come forward.”
Evelyn looked from the ticket counter to the man in line behind Ingrid. “You go,” she said to him. “Ingrid, come over here.” Without waiting for Ingrid to move, she went toward a bank of plastic chairs against the plate glass windows.
Ingrid came after her, dragging her rucksack and typewriter.
“Evelyn, what are you
doing
? We have to check in.”
doing
? We have to check in.”
“I can’t run off with you like this.”
“But you want to go to California. You said yourself, you’ve said it a bunch of times, you’ve always wanted to go to California.”
Evelyn sat down in a plastic chair and looked up at Ingrid. “I’m sorry. I can’t now. I should never have let anything happen between us.”
“Forget about that. I won’t tell my dad, or Ray, or anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“It isn’t that. Ingrid, you don’t understand how this will seem to you later. You’ll see, you’ll meet a boy, someone at school, who you’ll feel something for that’s different from what you feel for me—”
“I will not!” Ingrid cried.
“Shh, lower your voice.”
“I will not lower my voice.
I love you
.”
I love you
.”
I love you.
Evelyn felt the weight of it, the truth of it, the responsibility press into her. It was ready to crush her beneath its mass. She looked around helplessly. People hurried by, people who knew where they were going and what they were supposed to do. She looked back at Ingrid, standing there in front of her. Ingrid loved her. Beneath the brim of that crazy fedora, tears were spilling down her cheeks.
Evelyn felt the weight of it, the truth of it, the responsibility press into her. It was ready to crush her beneath its mass. She looked around helplessly. People hurried by, people who knew where they were going and what they were supposed to do. She looked back at Ingrid, standing there in front of her. Ingrid loved her. Beneath the brim of that crazy fedora, tears were spilling down her cheeks.
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