David Gates - The Wonders of the Invisible World

“ You’re humiliated?”

“Don’t,” she said. “Listen, would you do something? This is crazy, but do you think you could pretend with me? Please? It would just be for a while, okay? Like until tomorrow? Can we just pretend we’re all right? One more day?”

We managed it by drinking lots of wine. Or I did — I lost track of you. We called the good Chinese place for cold hacked chicken and cold sesame noodles, and I dug out my prescription sunglasses, and we lay on the bed in our underwear and watched an old Jackie Gleason variety show on cable. It seemed to be about a fat, unhappy man who dressed himself up on Saturday night to watch things happen around him. When he introduced the orchestra leader as Sammy Spear, I pounded the mattress. “God, it’s too fucking perfect. It’s like, the spear and the wound. Look at him — he’s the open wound. He’s the walking wounded.”

“You’re the walking drunk,” you said. “You’re so cute like that.”

“I’m not walking,” I said. “Lying right here. Check it out. Too goddamn smart to even think about walking.”

• • •

Sunday morning, catnapping. I opened my eyes, looked at the clock, closed them, felt your thigh against mine, opened my eyes again, saw it was ten minutes later, closed them again. Wanted to keep on and on.

Then I woke up and saw you standing at the dresser, bareback, in underpants; I imagined a steely look on your face. I said good morning and you turned around. Your large, flat nipples. You came and took your watch off the night table and strapped it on. It was the look I’d imagined.

You said, “I’m going to pack some things, and then I’m going to go, okay?”

“Go where?” I said. “Would you tell me what’s going on? I thought—”

“Please don’t be stupid,” you said. You took a T-shirt out of the drawer.

I closed my eyes before you pulled it over your head.

“Listen,” you said, “you’re going to come out of this just fine. If your platonic friend and coworker Kate won’t take you back, you can always find another platonic friend and coworker. And if that one doesn’t work out, then you go on to the next one. You know, until you find exactly the right one. So why don’t you just go back to sleep, and when you wake up — presto: wifey’s just an unpleasant memory.”

“Where are you going?” I opened my eyes and you were pulling on a pair of jeans.

“To Unpleasant Memoryland. Poof.” You raised a palm to your lips and blew.

“Cindy. Where?”

You zipped up and looked at me. “Boston,” you said. “I should give you the address.”

“Oh,” I said.

You shrugged.

“He’s a lowlife,” I said.

“He’s not so bad,” you said. “Fact is, he’s a little like you. Anyhow, he’s probably not forever.”

“And then what?”

“Not your problem.” You sat down on the bed to put on your running shoes. “Look, I promise you, this will be very easy. I don’t want money, I don’t want any of the stuff except for my grandfather’s chair, which I’ll come and get at some point. I guess I want the little rug that’s in the other room. My books. I’ll let you know when I’m coming down. And I’ll call Marie tonight, to spare you any further embarrassment. Okay?” You picked up your purse and slung it over your shoulder, and said in your Robert DeNiro voice, “Don’ worr’. I take care ev’ryt’ing.”

“I can’t believe this,” I said.

“Look,” you said, “I have to crank it, you know? If I’m going to make my plane.”

“Can’t I at least drive you to the airport?” I said. “And we could talk on the way? I really need to understand what’s going on.”

You sighed. “If that’s your idea of a good time. But I don’t know what you need to understand. Your bad wife is leaving you. For another man. You’re a wronged husband. Now you can be happy.”

Because Kate wasn’t about to leave her husband and I wasn’t about to leave you, she and I had agreed to be responsible. No hang-up calls, no leaving the office together, no being at each other’s apartments even if it seemed perfectly safe, no overnighters anywhere, ever. But you and I had rules, too, though never codified: the gist was that neither of us was to go looking for what we didn’t want to see. You were the one who violated that rule, by following me into the subway at lunch hour, riding to West Fourth Street in the next car, walking a block behind me to Kate’s sister’s building and watching from a bus shelter as I was buzzed in. I was the one who was trying to be protective.

Basically it was no different from the lie I told you about the Hav-a-Heart trap. We thought it was so ingenious, the way the trapdoor would fall away from under the mouse and tumble him into the box for deportation. But the day we baited it, I got home before you did, opened the thing to check, and voilà: a twitching, squealing mouse, hopelessly wedged into a corner between sharp edges of metal. He’d been trying to worm himself out through a place where the box didn’t quite fit together. I watched awhile, then went looking for something. Nearest thing to hand was a screwdriver: I pressed the tip into his neck until I felt a snap. Then I hid him at the bottom of the trash, wrapped in the paper towel I’d used to wipe the inside of the box. When you came in, I told you the trap turned out to be useless.

“It’s only been a day, ” you said.

“Right,” I said. “But. One of them already managed to steal the bait and get away. We’re either going to have to put up with mice or go to Plan B.”

You shook your head. Sighed. “I don’t know. I guess we can’t really put up with mice, can we?”

One of our Great Conversations, in which nobody had to come right out and say it. And if I had a whole additional thing I wasn’t telling, that was called being a good husband. Back then I loved to play the part.

I tug the shade back down, check the phone book and call the number for towaways. Busy. Eight million stories in the Naked City. I pull off paper towels, mop up the gin, pick up the pieces of broken glass — gingerly, remembering I’m in a stressful period. They go into a paper bag, which goes into an empty Tropicana carton, which goes into the trash so no one gets hurt.

A week ago today, at just about this time, I was driving you to LaGuardia. I asked you what that last weekend had been about, why you’d bothered to come back and put us both through it. You wouldn’t talk. I insisted — it seemed wrong not to — but all the while I was thinking, Why not just admit this is a relief? So much traffic: people heading for the beaches. Sun glinting off windshields and bumpers. Good I had those sunglasses. We weren’t moving fast enough to get a breeze going, and my shirt was soaked through. Shifting from low to second and back to low, temperature gauge getting close to the red. I remember passing a black van with an orange volcano painted on its side panel, then the van passing us. Its windows were up and the driver, a blond thug, was singing away unheard, beating time on the steering wheel as his girlfriend painted her nails. When we finally got to the terminal, you let me park and carry your suitcase as far as security. I put it on the moving belt, you set your purse next to it and turned to me before stepping into the frame.

“ ’Bye,” you said.

“This is really it?”

You smiled, beckoned with your forefinger and raised your chin. I cupped my hands around your shoulders and bent to kiss you — at least your forehead. You laid a palm on my cheek, pushed my head aside and whispered, “This is what you wanted.”

Somebody cuts the lights and Seth backs into the dining room pulling the wheelchair. He swings it around, then pushes it toward the table: Holly’s birthday cake, a single candle flaring, sits on a board laid across the armrests. Her sister and her sister’s new boyfriend are on their feet applauding. Holly gets up and starts clapping too, then feels stupid, stops and just stands there in the dark, her fingertips on the disagreeably coarse tablecloth. She’s way too high. But if she doesn’t dwell on any single thought too long, she can get through this. She hears Seth take a deep breath: he sings out the syllable Haaaaa, the others find his note and come in on ppy-birthday. She’s deciding whether to sing along when they finish and start clapping again.