Within Arm's Reach (4 page)

“Louis, did you attend church this morning?” Kelly’s mother asked. She was a small woman, amazingly trim for having given birth to so many children. I looked at her with some measure of awe. My own mother had given birth only once. She was always talking about how painful that experience had been and what havoc it had wreaked on her body. “Look what you did,” she would say, and point to her plump stomach.

Everyone at the table turned polite faces toward me. This was clearly an important question. “I went to five o’clock Mass last night,” I said.

“Do you go to Mass every week?”

“Yes, ma’am. With my parents.”

Catharine had nodded, and I had been relieved. I planned to ask Kelly to marry me, and I knew that as a suitor I did not have Patrick McLaughlin’s approval. Kelly had warned me that he’d written me off because I didn’t come from money and though I did have Irish in me, I wasn’t one hundred percent. Clearly, I couldn’t make up for these lacks, but I was determined to succeed. I’d met Kelly at Bloomingdale’s, where she was working at the time, and since then I hadn’t been able to think of anything but her. She was so sweet, she laughed at all my jokes, and I suddenly wanted nothing more in life than to take the sadness out of her blue eyes. It seemed clear that she was meant to be my wife. So I thought that if my cause could get some support from Kelly’s mother, perhaps she could reason with her husband and I would have a chance. If I only had the opportunity, I was confident I could run with it.

Kelly held my hand under the table during the meal, and that helped me survive the strange, uncomfortable experience. Since Patrick was in charge of leading the conversation from the head of the table, and my presence had rendered him silent above his plate of sliced turkey and his glass of scotch, everyone had to stay quiet. He was a very stubborn man, and even though I believe he grew to like me, it would be nearly a year before he spoke directly to me.

However, there was a wordless current that traveled above and below the table. I was aware of Kelly’s legs swinging, kicking at Johnny, who was on her right. There was a shuffling of feet over by Meggy, too, and at one point somebody took a shot that brushed the hem of my pants. Meggy was making eyes at me, her aim more to annoy Kelly than to flirt with me, as far as I could tell. I didn’t know who to look at, or whether it was more appropriate to smile or appear expressionless. I felt like I had walked in on a high-level card game for which no one had told me the rules. In many ways, I was to realize as the years went by, I had been right. The McLaughlin family has their own means of communication, secret ways of attack, and fierce allegiances that are unreadable to outsiders. And I have always remained an outsider.

What I did not realize then was that by that point it was fairly rare for all of the McLaughlins to be under one roof at one time. It was school break time—Johnny was only a few weeks from dropping out of high school to enlist in the army, Meggy was home from her Catholic boarding school, and Pat from graduate school. Kelly, Theresa, and Ryan still lived in the stately house in Ridgewood. When the McLaughlins were all together, Catharine was on guard, her eyes moving from her husband to her children’s faces and back again. The children, Kelly included, were a bundle of nervous energy, crackling from time to time in a sharp comment, a kick under the table, a pass at a visiting boyfriend. Ryan laughed hopefully at anything even resembling a joke. Theresa pet the small dog under her chair. She had just found the mutt on the street, and it would be promptly evicted by Patrick after lunch. Kelly held on to my hand as if she were a kite in danger of taking off and I was the sturdy post she happened to grab hold of at the last minute.

My own family rarely ate together. My father, who was going to die of a swift, severe attack of pneumonia in two months’ time, always ate at his office. My mother, a flighty woman who a few years after my father’s death descended into the murky grasp of Alzheimer’s disease, served me dinner each night and hovered while I ate, asking if I needed any extra salt, pepper, or ketchup. It didn’t matter what I was eating— she always eagerly offered those same condiments. I never saw her sit down and eat a proper meal. She liked to pick at food, she said, and she picked all day long in the kitchen.

In any case, due to my unfamiliarity with the experience of a family meal—much less with a family this big and uneasy—and my unpopular aspiration to take Kelly away from this family to live a different, happier life at my side, I was relieved when Patrick pushed back his chair and the meal officially ended. I stayed at the table with Johnny, Pat, and Ryan while the women cleared the dishes. We fiddled with the silverware until it was taken away, and awkwardly chatted about Jack Kennedy and the Dodgers. Then Catharine called me into the kitchen.

This summons seemed fortuitous, since I had been hoping to have a private word with her. The first thing that struck me as I walked through the swinging door was how clean the kitchen was. We had finished eating a big meal no more than ten minutes earlier, and the counters, the floor, the stove, everything was spotless. All the McLaughlin girls had disappeared.

“Thank you for the delicious meal, Mrs. McLaughlin,” I said. “I really enjoyed it.”

Catharine held up her hand. “I realize that you have serious intentions toward my daughter, Mr. Leary. I know about your engineering degree, and your position with the architectural firm. I know that you can provide for my daughter. But I saw you looking to me for approval or assistance during the meal, and I wanted to address that. You need to know that my husband makes the decisions for this family. He cannot be gotten at through Kelly or through me. I will not be able to help you.”

My breath was gone. I realized that the whole house was silent. I imagined all the McLaughlins pressed up against the door behind me, listening. I now understood why Kelly jokingly called her mother “the iron glove.” All I could manage to say was, “I see.”

“Good. Now, are you certain you’ve had enough to eat?”

It took me two more months and a shot of whiskey before I had the nerve to ask Patrick McLaughlin for his daughter’s hand. Patrick didn’t turn off the golf game on the television set while I asked, or while he answered. He kept his eyes on the small white ball the entire time. He said I had his permission to marry his twenty-six-year-old daughter, but only because Kelly was already an old maid and not that good-looking. I was thrilled with Patrick’s response—he had said yes!—until I turned around and saw Kelly standing in the doorway. Until I saw the look her father had put on her face.

BY THE time I drop Catharine off at the assisted-living center and fill the head nurse in on what happened, the day is shot. I sit in my truck in the parking lot for a long minute, arguing with myself. What I should do is drive straight home and tell Kelly what happened. What I want to do is drive to Wyckoff, the next town over. I want to drive into the maze of residential streets and pass the rows of nice, but small, homes, and pull up in front of the house with the yellow shutters. Eddie’s house.

Earlier this week I called in a favor from a competitor of mine and had him stop by and offer to do some fixing-up work for a ridiculously low fee. I had wanted him to clean out the gutters, which I could tell were clogged, and check the roof and the basic structure. Obviously I would have offered to do it myself, or sent one of my guys, but I suspected that Eddie’s widow wouldn’t accept a handout from her late husband’s crew. I’d been pleased when my competitor called and said Mrs. Ortiz had accepted his offer. I want badly to stop by now and check on his work. To check if the lawn needs cutting. To check if the kids are playing outside, and if they look happy.

In my several drives by his house since the funeral, I’ve only seen Mrs. Ortiz and her children once. They had just arrived home and were unloading groceries from Eddie’s old white Cadillac. Eddie’s wife was wearing her nurse’s uniform. There was a boy, who must have been about seven years old, and a slightly older girl. The kids were both dark-haired and hyperactive, bouncing around the car and then chasing each other into the house. Mrs. Ortiz had long hair, so dark it was nearly black, but her skin was several shades paler than her husband and children’s. She looked to be in her mid-thirties. I watched her duck in and out of the car, adjusting the bags. It was clear from the slope of Mrs. Ortiz’s shoulders that she was tired, but she held her thin frame upright. She gathered an impossible number of brown grocery bags into her arms, shut the car door with her foot, and then made her way into the house. As she passed the shrubs beside the front door, I noticed they needed trimming. When she climbed the front steps, I thought I saw the railing wobble slightly under her hand.

I restart the engine of the truck and drive out of the parking lot, the ache in the back of my head telling me that I am not going to allow myself any relief today. I am going to do what I should do. But, as a small rebellion, I take the long route home, which passes all the pieces of land I own in Ramsey. The route grows longer all the time. I have done a lot of buying lately. Eddie’s death soured me on construction. I still do it—the business makes me too much money to stop—but I prefer to buy and sell or rent out land. It’s a cleaner business. There are no faulty plans, rusty nails, loose boards, bad weather, incompetent workers. No one is going to lose life or limb over a real-estate deal. You stand only to gain.

I drive the route slowly. I pass the bank on Main Street, the Green Trolley, the vacant lot beside the fire station, the apartment building on Dogwood Terrace, the two houses on Lancaster Avenue, and the house on Holly Court, where Gracie lives. As always, when I pass by her house I consider stopping in, but don’t. I think it’s important to give Gracie and Lila their space. Most of my friends’ kids have flung themselves across the world in an attempt to put as many miles as possible between themselves and their parents. I don’t know why my girls have stayed in Ramsey, but I’m glad they have. I don’t want to chance making any mistakes that might drive them away.

After I pass Holly Court I turn left, a tactical decision that adds an extra three minutes to my trip. This final detour is different from the others—it is about avoiding a piece of land as opposed to seeking it out. I want to stay far away from the construction site on Birchwood Lane where Eddie died. I do my best these days to steer clear of that part of town.

KELLY IS sitting at her computer in the living room when I get home.

“Have a good day at the office?” I ask after kissing her cheek. This is my usual question, which I use to gauge her mood.

“Decent,” she says. “No major crises. Sarah and Giles actually did some work, miracle of miracles. It was a nice change to have a little help.”

“Great,” I say over my shoulder as I head into the kitchen for a beer. “Have you heard from your mother, or Lila?”

Kelly looks up from the screen. “No. Why?”

“Your mother had a small car accident in front of the Municipal Building. She’s fine, though. I happened to be there, so I drove her to the hospital.”

I have apparently decided not to tell my wife about the possibility of the stroke. I will give Catharine the benefit of the doubt this time. If she thinks she can fix this on her own, I will give her the space to try.

“Dear God.” Kelly turns sideways in her chair, a sudden movement that focuses all her attention on me. “When did this happen?”

“Around two o’clock, I guess.”

“And no one called me? Louis, why didn’t you call me? You’re sure she’s fine? What did the doctors say? My God, I should have been there.”

“I knew you were busy, and everything happened pretty fast. Lila was working at Valley, so we spent a few minutes with her. There didn’t seem to be any reason to disrupt anyone else’s workday.”

“Louis.” Kelly shakes her head, and her frosted hair shakes, too. “She’s
my
mother. You have no right to make those kinds of decisions.”

“For God’s sake, Kelly, doesn’t thirty years of marriage make me . . .” I trail off, knowing I’ve made a mistake. I shouldn’t have pointed out our marriage. We never mention our marriage anymore.

Kelly sits perfectly still. “You barely have time to speak to me anymore. I don’t know where you are half the time. How are you in any position to be sanctimonious?”

She is right. Kelly is a woman I have to work to love well. She is constantly changing, a fact that has kept me on my toes for over three decades. I have always liked that about her, and about us, even at the moments when I’ve failed to chart her changes properly. I enjoy the challenge. But I don’t deserve her right now. I am unable to step up to the plate and do the work. I wish it were late at night so I could close myself in the den and turn on the television, sound low.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and shrug.

“I don’t like what is happening here,” Kelly says, and for a moment she looks like Lila as a little girl, about to have one of her temper tantrums. “You’re not trying! You’re not even making an effort.”

She throws this at me as if it is the greatest of crimes, and I know that to her it is. But there is something inside me that keeps me from reaching out, keeps my wheels from turning in the direction they should. That something is rock solid and unmovable, and it sits on my chest. It makes me sink down on the couch, sink down in the grass beside Eddie’s still body, sink down under the heaviness of the air in this room.

“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” There is a note of disgust in Kelly’s voice.

I don’t have anything to say. I wish I did.

“Fine.” She stands up, her thin body a collection of sharp angles. “I need to call my mother, then, and Lila, to find out what’s really going on.”

GRACIE

I know I have to tell Joel. I have to. (A) He’s the father, and (B) even if I broke up with him right now, he lives in Ramsey. He’s a local volunteer firefighter. He would find out two minutes after I started showing. There is no town gossip that gets past firemen. You’d be surprised to hear those big burly men talk dirt. And Weber, Joel’s best friend on the force, who swears he’s psychic, has been giving me weird looks lately. I’ve actually started keeping the fat slob’s favorite brand of beer in our refrigerator so that when he stops by the house with Joel, he’s happy and distracted.

In any case, I know I don’t have much time. I try to tell Joel when he spends the night, but I end up feeding him instead. I hand him a Heineken when he walks through the door, because I know he likes to have a few bottles at the end of the day. Over the past two weeks, I have made two meat lasagnas, a key lime pie, a roasted chicken, seafood risotto, and turkey sausage chili. I realize, as I cook, that I am making my favorite foods, not his. We haven’t been together long enough for me to know his favorites. Or maybe most women know their boyfriends’ tastes by the four-month point. Maybe I should have asked.

When I serve him the seafood risotto at eleven o’clock one night, I study his face to see if he likes it. He seems to like everything. Joel is very agreeable. He is very nice. He is someone I was probably a few weeks from breaking up with, before this whole pregnancy thing happened. He’s not in love with me, which is fine, but he is in love with someone else. He is not even close to being over his last girlfriend, a loudmouthed redhead named Margaret. He’s actively terrified of her. When he and I are out in public, Joel is always looking over his shoulder, checking to make sure she’s not in sight. I wonder if she used to hit him. He denies it, but she must have done something pretty terrible to make him this nervous. Sometimes, while we’re having sex—and the sex is pretty damn good, which is probably the best explanation for why we’ve stayed together for four months—I catch him glancing over at the bedroom door with that same look of fear on his face, as if he fully expects her to walk through any minute.

It may be that the spying Joel does in his other job has helped make him paranoid. He is the assistant to Ramsey’s mayor, Vince Carrelli, which sounds impressive, but Joel got the job because his dad is on the town council. He took the position because it gives him the flexibility to devote most of his time to the fire department. What he does for Mayor Carrelli is check up on activities around town. Joel drives by the local parks and keeps an eye on the high school (which is conveniently right across the street from the fire department), the alley behind the 7-Eleven where most of the small-town drug deals take place, and various construction sites. He runs into my father frequently on his rounds, as many of the construction sites in town are my father’s. Mayor Carrelli also owns and works part-time in the barbershop on Main Street, so between the gossip in the barbershop and the information Joel comes up with, the mayor is able to maintain a nearly complete knowledge of what goes on in Ramsey.

Clearly, if I want Joel to hear the news from me, it’s imperative that I tell him about the baby soon. I’m lucky he doesn’t know already.

On the afternoon following the second meat lasagna, when I am driving down Main Street with the ingredients for a key lime pie in a grocery bag in the backseat, I stop at a red light and Weber opens the passenger-side door of my Honda. He climbs in and slams the door behind him.

“Jesus Christ, Weber.” I press my palm against my collarbone. “You can’t do that to a person! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

Weber smiles. His crew cut looks freshly mowed. He is wearing a black T-shirt covered with Jon Bon Jovi’s smiling face. “Can you give me a ride to the fire department, please, milady? My truck’s in the shop.”

“Fine.” Now that the fright has passed, I am annoyed. I have enough to worry about without car doors flying open when I’m not expecting it.

I haven’t driven ten feet before he opens his big mouth. “How about you let me read your tarot cards?”

“My what?”

“Your tarot cards. Let me read your cards. Your aura has been really screwed up lately, and the cards will let us know what’s going on.”

I stare over at him. “You’re a crazy bastard.”

“I’m betting the deception card will come up big time.”

I look for an opening in the traffic, so I can pull over and kick him out, but I am blocked in on all sides. I have no choice but to drive forward.

He leans against the passenger-side window, his eyes half-closed as he studies me. I hate the feel of his eyes on my skin.

He says, “Are you cheating on Joel?”

I try to stay calm because of the baby. “Get out of my car.”

“Answer the question first. It’s not like you haven’t done it before. I know you cheated on Douglas.”

His words, so unbelievable in the middle of the afternoon in my car on the way home from the supermarket, hang in the air between us. I shake my head. If this could happen, then anything is possible. My life officially makes no sense.

Then I actually think, Wait a minute, maybe there’s an opportunity here. Maybe I should tell him I did cheat, and then he will tell Joel and we’ll break up, and when Joel hears later that I’m pregnant, he’ll think it was from the other guy. And then because there was no other guy I’ll be like the virgin Mary. It would be an Immaculate Conception. I would have conceived this baby with a night of sex that had never happened. I would be redeemed.

The idea seems brilliant, providential. I have found the answer and, in some way, the truth. My grandmother would look at me with love
and
approval in her eyes for the first time. I’d be above reproach. My mother wouldn’t be able to touch me with her sarcasm. I would have achieved purity. My child and I would bask in God’s light. We would be blessed.

Then the car behind me honks, and I come to my senses.

I shout at Weber, “No, I did not cheat,” and shove him out of the car at the next light.

I DIDN’T lie to Weber. I never cheat on my boyfriends, but I do sometimes hasten the end of a relationship so I can go back to having fun. The boyfriend-girlfriend scenario feels good at first. It is a comfort to know that someone is looking forward to seeing me at the end of the day, to know that I have a hand to hold, to know that someone likes me and has strung that feeling across a series of days, weeks, even months. But eventually the structure of the relationship and the sameness of the boyfriend makes me antsy. I start to think about going out at night, dream about it, and at that point the relationship is as good as over.

I always go back to wanting the same thing: to visit the Green Trolley and sit next to some strange man at the bar. I want to sip beer and flip my hair and feel my eyes come alive under his gaze. I know who I am in those moments. I recognize my reflection in the eyes of men who are interested in me. They have to be strangers, and it only lasts the first night, but it is the most wonderful night. I love every part of that night. I walk through the door of the Green Trolley, a bubble of anticipation lodged in my chest. I am usually wearing my favorite jeans, which hug my hips in just the right way, and a tight T-shirt. I glance over the room, separating the people I know from those I don’t. I walk slowly to the bar, take my favorite seat at the end and order a Corona Light with a lime from Charlie, if it’s a weeknight, and Leonard if it’s the weekend. And then it’s as simple as finding someone new to talk to. I start a conversation. I introduce myself with any or all of the following information: name, age, occupation, where I live, political party, religious orientation. I have had some stimulating conversations about God at that bar, and about the meaning of life. Sometimes I make up my answers, sometimes I tell the truth. It really doesn’t make a difference. Either way, the information is brand new. It has the crisp authoritative sound of fall leaves crackling under footsteps as it comes out of my mouth.

And then, in the middle of one of my sentences, or at the end of a fully realized thought, expected and yet unexpected, there is a kiss. A delicious first kiss. When I pull away, the man looks at me as if I’m beautiful and amazing and the best thing he’s ever seen. And in that moment I am all of those things. I am flush with self-confidence. I am who I want to be. And then it just gets better. I am tipsy and my eyes close, and the way home is paved with soft laughter and more kisses. And then there is darkness and his hands and soft, wet, back-arching kisses sinking into nothingness. There are miles of skin to run fingertips over. There are corners and curves and sharp turns to explore. There is the sense of always pushing forward, always reaching for the next moment, always waiting, the back of my mouth dry, for everything I am to explode.

I HAVE a meeting scheduled with Grayson at the office on Tuesday to talk about my column. On Monday morning I call him during the regularly scheduled senior writers meeting so I can leave a message on his voice mail. I can’t deal with talking to Grayson right now, and I certainly can’t deal with seeing him. I need to sort out Joel, and get myself a little more under control, before I face him.

Grayson was my longest relationship; we were together for nearly a year. I broke up with him and quit my job in one message on his answering machine. I know that’s pathetic, but I’m not good with confrontation. I am not brave. Grayson didn’t call me back, but later that week I received a new batch of Dear Abby letters in the mail with a Post-it that read,
I’m not letting you quit—Grayson
. And that was it. I went back to work without a fuss. I loved my job and had only quit to save Grayson the trouble of firing the girl who had just dumped him.

But Grayson and I had become friends during the year we spent together, as well as lovers. (Actually, I think we had become friends in part to compensate for the sex, which was uninspiring.) He never asked me why I broke up with him. We simply went back to being boss and employee. But there is no denying that there is always something a little too intense between us. The terrain can turn rocky if I’m not feeling entirely confident.

“Happy Monday, Grayson,” I say into his machine. “Sorry, but something’s come up and I have to cancel our meeting tomorrow. Don’t worry, though, my column is going really well this week and it will be on time.” I hesitate, feeling like there is something more I should say. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Then I hear myself launch into a nervous laugh, and I hang up the phone before I have a chance to completely fall apart on my ex-boyfriend/boss’s answering machine.

I BELIEVE that you can learn from history. Pay attention to the mistakes that were made before you, and don’t repeat them.

My uncle Pat, who alternately tried to run away from, please, and horrify my grandfather right up until his death, teaches me that I need to come to terms with my mother. I do not want her to own my life
in any way
. I am still working on that.

My uncle Johnny is a prime example of how you need to hold on to the essence of who you are. He was mischievous and wild as a boy. He spent a portion of nearly every afternoon seated at the dining-room table with his hands folded in front of him and his feet flat on the floor thinking about what he’d done this time under Gram’s watchful eye. But he didn’t like school and found it hard to concentrate, so when the Vietnam war started, without telling anyone, Johnny joined the army. In the pictures taken of him the day he left, he is a skinny eighteen-year-old boy with a wickedly charming grin. By the time he came back home, the fire was completely stamped out of him. He is among the most serious, unhappy adults I have ever met.

But Meggy has the lesson I need to learn from now. She married Uncle Travis when she was twenty because she got pregnant. I don’t think they were ever in love. They are united in resentment, and eternally disgusted with each other for not standing up and demanding better.

It is Meggy I am thinking about when I finally tell Joel. We are in bed with the lights out. We have just had sex because we always do when he sleeps over. Otherwise, what is the point of him staying the night?

I cup my hands over my abdomen. When I press down on the center I feel a solid area the size of my palm. I say exactly what I have said to different men so many times in the past. “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

I listen to Joel’s breath catch, and then grow shallow. In my experience, men hate to be broken up with. They’re usually not upset about breaking up, but about being on the receiving end of the decision. He says, “What do you mean? I thought we were having fun.”

“The sex is good,” I admit.

“It’s better than good.”

I smile in the darkness. I am sure that for all her scary qualities, Margaret, with her no-nonsense demeanor and helmet of red hair, is not a great lover. Then I remember what I am doing, and why this breakup is different.

I take a breath and say it. “I’m pregnant.”

This is the first time I’ve said the words out loud. The news has lived only in my head for weeks. It sounds massive in the air, and irrevocable. I immediately want to take it back. That’s all I can think: I want to take it back.