Vacation (3 page)

Her moving out was the best thing she could do for their marriage, they’d decided.

Can anybody imagine what that might mean? Does that make any sense whatsoever? No.

It was the best possible course of action, considering, they’d agreed. They’d each be fine once they settled in. Almost nothing would change. They’d each keep taking the subway in their triangles or squares or walking in them. Leaving would be hard, no question. Leaving is a large dog blocking the way of the exit. But it would all work out. They were joined, after all, just by paper, mostly, and by awkwardly shaped pieces of wood, porcelain, glass, metal, bits of cloth, ideas about soap, beliefs about historical events, sleeping habits, memories of rainfalls and other watery things (oceans, ponds, faucets) that they had visited or seen together in pictures.

She leaned in. I see you’ve made it all the way to a suitcase, she said.

He had a pile of shirts there.

Do you have a destination or are you just going to flap your arms and hope you hit something safe?

I’m going to see someone. Don’t look for an apartment.

Who?

A friend.

What friend?

You’ve never met him. (This was true, technically.)

What friend of yours haven’t I met?

From college.

What friend do you have from college?

One you’ve never met.

Don’t you have to work?

I’m taking vacation time.

You’re not eligible for vacation time yet.

The suitcase was open on the bed. A brown zipper carry-on.

Socks and so forth. Two-ply.

Yes, the job was new and an issue.

Gray was—who knows—lifting and lowering a cup, tying on a shoe for another unhappy contention with the outdoors. Gray, upright, at home (also gray, perhaps).

Don’t you think you need a plane ticket to go somewhere? she said.

Don’t you think you need to let your boss know that you’re planning to not show up?

Don’t you think you need to let this “friend” know you’re coming?

You’re not taking the car, she said. If you had any ideas like that.

She stood there, tapping her foot.

You could take the train, she said.

Items to divide, clutch, abandon, or destroy: Items that looked like animals but weren’t—the duck pitcher, the turtle placemats. Flat items or items with flat sides—bookshelves, nightstands. She would just move over a little, that’s all, to a new spot, her spot.

(…had agreed at last and then he had spent the night at the window, his wife gone to bed…)

And no, he was not going to take the car. What did she think, he was going to drive to his vacation? What sort of holiday is that, dealing with traffic tickets and gas stations and flats? No, he’d dropped the friend an email. The friend would pick him up at the train.

He’d sent this friend an email?

Sidekicked it. Into his box.

He’d written the email, sent it, received an email back, and he was now telling her the accurate information contained in it?

He was going to do it. He was about to.

So he hadn’t actually sent an email.

He hadn’t gotten to it. What with this suitcase all over the place.

Oh, she sees.

He’ll do it, he’ll do it.

Her, with her eyebrow. Skirt, hem.

All right, all right. He left the suitcase sitting there all over the place.

The way that man went (he could see it, Gray, walking over a vast expanse, past piles of bricks and under bridges, over cracked earth and broken stems and shingles)…

Or Gray, clothed, indoors, a frozen likeness.

Hey Gray, he typed. Yes, he had the email address. Haven’t seen you forever. Remember me, from undergrad? Thought it time for a talk. I’m headed your way. Taxi, train, taxi, that’s the plan. Arrival at your place with a suitcase. That sort of day. Nothing to worry about. A few days off. Rest. Old friend, new conversation. I’ll explain when I get there.

Myers

He looked at it. He heard her back in the kitchen. He sent it.

There were also the mirrors, the photos, and other inaccurate reflections. The razor, the bathtub. The kids and the dog, although they had none. The idea of dog, that. The possibility of dog that now would not be possible. Her mother, or her mother’s dislike of him, who would get that? Surely that would come with him. Along with the rooster clock that she loved, that he hated, that she bought when she started to hate him.

He could admit to being difficult in this last hour. The clutter on the bed and in his mind was like a pile of timber, shaved planks. But she was worse. She really made the thing impossible:

1. arguing with him when he asked for a ride to the train (couldn’t be bothered to drive her husband to the train, he said, well, maybe he couldn’t be bothered to go) and, after her finally agreeing,

2. refusing to bring the car around so that he had to carry his belongings three blocks—his suitcase, his laptop briefcase, his raincoat, his overcoat (in case of actually arriving at his destination, the coldest, bleakest spot on the earth, a town that should be torn off and tossed), umbrella…

3. not popping the trunk for him (what, did she expect him to put everything down, find his keys, open the trunk, pick everything up—his overcoat slipping to the (wet) ground—while she sat in the driver’s seat with the heat on? Not today, lady. Pop the trunk!) so that each step of what should have been an easy affair took a long time, then,

4. not driving him to the door of the station, insisting on letting him off at the end of the block on the other side of the street,

5. citing traffic,

6. citing the right turn she claimed to have to make, though she could have gone straight,

7. (she adjusted a barrette in the rearview)

8. citing the time,

9. –

Fact: She hadn’t always been like this. She’d been warm, she had loved him.

They sat in the car on the corner.

So long then, was the line he was taking.

Have a good trip.

Up ahead, the station looked like an imprint on the sky, or perhaps done in stencil, colorless, two-dimensional.

At the ridiculous wedding she had loved him. In the new overapplianced apartment she had loved him, amid all those packages and boxes and houses of Styrofoam and glass. She had touched his face when he was tired, when he’d had another bad day at the office. He remembered that, the way she used to do that, the way she expected nothing back, it was gentle. As a nice rain. It had been there, it had drizzled. He recalled it with clarity. And the image hurt him, felt less like a drizzle than like an actual cutting into his brain, a piercing, bleeding. She had arrived as one thing and now, as he parted, she was another, some strange folded-up broken thing—and at the least he had done nothing to stop it and at the most he had caused it all.

I’ll be back in a few days. I’ll bring you something.

Not necessary.

A snow globe?

Fine.

A holiday T-shirt.

Whatever you like.

I’m going now.

Does it seem like it to you?

The station before them, sketched on, or stamped to a backdrop.

Don’t look for a place until I get back. Will you do that one thing?

There’s traffic, she said.

Sure, of course. The cars behind us, the assholes in the cars behind us, are more important than your husband—

They’re honking.

People who work hard at, say, lifting heavy objects or running in sand or covering sheaves of paper with printed letters or pushing rocks around or up hills, they speak of it, they know how this feels, the miles of frustration, the weeks.

She’d always had this lonely air to her, and Myers, who’d had his own solitary life, had always felt protective. She was emotionally unmoored. A couple of times a year her parents came through and she grew sullen. She and Myers endured a few uncomfortable meals, answered their questions politely, let them pick up the bill exactly every other time. He did this with her even after she’d begun behaving the same brooding way with him.

Gray, stooped. Myers imagined him. Feet on floor wax maybe, walking up an aisle of desks—no, of laundry detergents, softeners. His feet and the floor, the shoes of him. Myers tracked the steps.

There was no proof anywhere, nothing he could point to except certain stretches of pavement, certain stop signs and traffic lights. Photos of the scene would show nothing but figures and moisture and streets. The prints were washed away years ago. But she knew and he did too what went wrong. She went wrong. She wronged, was wrong.

He should have taken care of this years ago. It was pride that had kept him from it. That and the belief that everybody would go back to their starting places, sulk or weep or whatever was needed, time would pass, the sharp pain lessen to a livable ache. But that hadn’t happened. Everyone had coasted back to their corners, yes, and believe him, Myers had kept a toehold in just who was where and with whom, but time had dulled nothing, had only made it worse. He couldn’t look at her without thinking of him and he couldn’t be nice to her and he couldn’t tell her about it or demand some answers and this was the state of things.

Last piece of her: palm, purse, thigh. He got out, watched her turn her face away, the car pull out into traffic. Gone.

None of their family members were buried in the same graveyard. He had often said how when he and she were laid out together, as they planned, it would be the first true joining of the families. Gross, she said.

Chapter Four

Had Myers done anything wrong or was everything her fault?

Everything?

Okay, there was the following. That one thing. He used to follow her.

Around the house?

Outside, on the street.

Where?

Wherever.

Like a stalker?

Not like a stalker. She’s his wife.

People stalk wives. No wonder she threw him out.

She didn’t throw him out, for God’s sake. Did you see him back there? He left, he woke up and said he was leaving. Besides, she didn’t know. She never knew about the following.

She might have known.

No.

Still, a thing like that affects.

What was he supposed to do, let her promenade all over the city in her stockings without him?

That’s the way it works these days.

Not any way Myers knows of.

There’s a word for it.

No word Myers ever heard of.

Employment?

Oh, that. Don’t make him laugh.

In fact, he started following her in the first months of their marriage or thereabouts. Maybe month three. About two and a half years ago. Their normalcy back then was stunning and thorough. It wasn’t this fun house he lived in now—distorted images, trapdoors, a lurching car. Back then they went to work, they came home. Sometimes they rode the train together, he carrying her bag. Sometimes they stayed in the city for a fish dinner, their favorite stools-and-counter spot. They made love, ironed. They discussed their belongings and the positions their belongings held, both in their esteem and in the apartment. And he hoped it would always be this way, marriage, adding more objects, subtracting a few, making love a little less but still frequently. Each day he came home elated, astounded by his luck. This graceful brilliant woman, this beautiful adorable creature loved him, of all people. He had not been a happy man before. He was determined not to mess this up.