Frederick Busch - Girls

“I’ll remember that. Are we finished warning each other off?”

“All right.”

“Do we agree that something’s going on here? Between us?”

I nodded.

“Say ‘yes,’ ” she said.

“Yes.”

“And you’re coming back here? Or, we’re meeting? We’re going, you know, on from here.”

I nodded.

She said, “ ‘Yes.’ ”

“Yes.”

Then her face grew less beaky, her eyes less angry. Then that wide smile came out. She stood up, she took the coffee cup from me, and she set both of our cups on the stack of books on the table next to the chair. She leaned over me, supported herself on the chair arms, and she kissed me very softly on the mouth. She let herself down a little and she kissed me harder. She bit my bottom lip, then let her teeth apart, then bit me again, harder. In the same position, she very slowly licked where she had bitten me, and then she stood up.

I said, “My wife accused me of making love to you in a security vehicle and in strange places on the upper campus.”

“Are there strange places up there where we could have been making love?”

“Yes.”

“You know them? You have access to them?”

“Yes.”

Pulling the tails of the baggy flannel shirt down straight, she said, “Well, well.”

The dog waited at the drawer we kept his food in, and by holding on to the countertop with my fingers, I let myself down to my knees and got out the plastic bin of kibble. I gave him a lot, then put the food away. Still on my knees, I checked his water. I worked my way up and I let him out to run. It had been a mistake to get up, I thought. I wondered if ribs could bleed, because I sensed a loose, runny material inside. I thought I might feel better on my knees again, and from there it was a very short trip to my back.

I made a few unworthy noises, and I put my hand on my side. There was a scrabbling sound, and I knew it was the dog, ready to come inside and be celebrated for doing so.

“In a minute,” I said.

The door bounced again, and I said, “Lie down and wait, goddamn it.”

The noise stopped and I was sorry I’d shouted. I saw him, curled on the snow on the porch, lying against the door. That was interesting, because I wanted to curl on the other side of the door and surround the pain. I couldn’t make that shape anymore, though, and I said to him or me or both of us, “Sorry. Sorry.”

I came up from it saying that again, but it wasn’t the dog. It was Fanny. Then the dog, his fur cold and his tongue wet, came over to lick my face.

“Why are you sleeping on the floor, Jack?”

“I was?”

“You still are. Look.”

“Jesus, Fanny, I can’t look. I’m in the middle of doing it. Why do you have to sound pissed off right away because I fell asleep somewhere?”

“And left the dog on the porch all night. You were passed out, weren’t you?”

“Could I have some of those pain pills?” I asked her.

“When’s the last time you took them?”

“Afternoon.”

She got on her knees and worked her arms under my back and kind of pushed me forward and over, and then I climbed up from my knees by holding her hands. Her power was very impressive. She got me into the living room and onto the sofa, where I made a lot of small noises. She brought me the pills and some water. She was still wearing her opened coat when she sat down on the coffee table and said, “What’d you do?”

“I went on some errands. I guess I wasn’t ready to.” I told her about the Indian.

“You sound pleased,” she said.

“He made a living at it for a while. He can walk. For a nobody in the fights, that’s significant.”

“Jack, what’s this male warrior shit? The man and his friends put you in the hospital. They could have driven a rib through your lung. Did you ever watch someone’s face while their lung is inflated? You could have died.”

I let myself say, and I never should have, “That would be the easy way out, wouldn’t it?”

She sat back. She flinched back.

She said, “Dying?”

“Just a thought,” I said.

“Dying? As opposed to what — to life with me?”

“No,” I said. “I was being, you know, philosophical. That’s all. It’s what happens after you accumulate two or three college courses over a lifetime. You look at the big picture. You know.”

But she was not reachable by jokes, if that’s what they were. Her eyes were immense and bewildered. In the near darkness of the living room, I thought, My wife has been so wonderful to look at for so many years, and now she’s getting … scuffed. The edges have been treated hard. I wanted to cup my hand on her chin and cheek. I wanted to run my fingers over the lines between her eyes and over her nose. I wondered if she would smell Rosalie Piri’s skin.

“Is this about the missing girl, Jack?”

“What this do you mean?”

“Don’t stall.”

“Yes. Partly. Yes. I went to see her mother.”

“Why don’t you go see Hannah’s mother?”

“You?”

“That’s who I mean. Why do you have to build yourself a fever and damage yourself, running all over the county chasing a girl who you know is raped and strangled and cut into pieces and, I don’t know, eaten. Some of these creatures pickle parts of the children, don’t they? They eat them and use their skin to draw illustrations on. She’s so dead and gone, Jack. And I’m not. I’m a little crazy sometimes, and I know I’m getting harder to live with.”

She was doing me the worst hurt, by then. She was weeping without covering her face or blowing her nose. The dog let his tail brush the floor, but he wasn’t enthusiastic. He feared it when we fought or wept too noisily. He had a low threshold of emotional pain. Fanny sat on the coffee table and her nose ran and tears poured down her face.

“Fanny,” I said.

“And I know I’m right about your little professorette,” she said.

“No.”

“You’re not having an affair with her?”

“ No. I told you. No, I’m not.”

“Then what was the little furnace in each of her cute little eyes about at the hospital?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t looking at her eyes.”

“What, then? Her legs? She shows enough of them. Nice, if you like miniatures. I know what I saw, Jack. She was choosing between the enema bag and the sponge bath. Miss Professorette, Girl Nurse. If you’re not involved with her—”

“Fanny, come on.”

“Then she’s involved with you.”

I tried to shrug. It hurt a lot.

“Don’t you be strong and brave and silent, you son of a bitch.”

“I promise not to be brave or strong or — I forget the other one.”

“Silent. That’s your middle name.”

“I won’t be silent. What shall I say? You know, these stitches in my mouth keep pulling. It hurts to talk.”

“It hurts you to talk with or without them. We’re a mess, Jack.”

I said, “I’m sorry. I really am. I’m sorry.”

“Here’s what I was thinking. Would you like to know what I was thinking?” She stood and she wiped her face with her woolen hat, then took off her coat. “As soon as you’re better a little bit, just so the ribs don’t hurt you so much, I’m going to stop being your nurse for a while. You remember Virginia, the nurse on your ward. She lives in town, it’s a big house, and she has a room to rent, and I’m taking it. I don’t know how long. I’m just taking it. I can cook in her kitchen, and I’ll have my own bathroom.”

“This is because of Professor Piri?”