Anne Tyler - Celestial Navigation

What would Guy have said if he’d known what I dreamed? His idea of change was to take in a movie on Saturday night. His greatest joy was attending motorcycle rallies. Hours and hours in someone’s hot cow pasture, with me trying to pick out the cloud of dust that was Guy from among a lot of other clouds. When I refused to go any more, he went alone. He was gone overnight, weekends. “That son of mine should stay at home more,” Gloria used to say, but I didn’t mind. It seemed to be part of the pattern that I had married into; the other women’s husbands didn’t stay home either. They were off bowling, or drag-racing, or playing billiards. On summer evenings we would pool all our children and go to Roy’s for hamburgers, which we ate at one of the outdoor tables — a double line of women and children, not a man among us. All the women laughing and scolding and mopping spilled drinks, filling every corner of their world. Then when Guy came home again his boots jarred the house and his bass voice took me by surprise, and when he plucked Darcy out from her dolls she squirmed and looked at me for reassurance, as if he were a stranger.

Which he had been, once upon a time. He was more a stranger than any boy I’d met. It wasn’t his fault that we finally got to know each other.

I walked with Darcy to the post office and we dawdled every step of the way. I was hanging back, hunting up excuses never to arrive at all. And when we got there, sure enough, a slanted blade of paper was showing through the window. One of my own envelopes, pale blue. It gave me a shock to see it. “Now can we go to the park?” Darcy asked. “No, wait,” I told her. We were supposed to meet John there at noon. I didn’t want him to watch me reading this letter. I leaned against a counter and tore open the envelope. The letter itself was written in pencil, on several sheets of the pulpy gray paper I kept for Darcy to draw on. Every word was smudged over. Guy is left-handed; his hand rubs what he has just written as it travels across the paper. I could picture him at the kitchen table with his hair falling over his forehead, his shoulders hunched with the effort of writing.

Dear Mary ,

Now I have never understood you but this time is worse than usual .

I treated you real good Mary always gave you ever little thing you wanted, a house of your own clothes a baby even when I thought we should wait some. I thought you was happy, now I hear it wasn’t so. Come home one night to find it wrote out on the icebox door, your going and won’t be back and sorry you hurt me .

You didn’t hurt me worth a shit Mary I mean that. You could go clear on to California it wouldn’t hurt me worth a shit. I am too blasted mad .

We have been married six years now that I could have been playing around in and buying up fast cars instead of cookpots and I could have had me a lot of other women as well let me tell you but never did as I thought you loved me. I stood for a lot from you Mary. First off I near about raised you, you didn’t know beans when we were married and had my mama waiting on you hand and foot for years, secondly I let you correct my grammer and my table manners and change my whole way of doing things that you looked down on and drive off all my friends account of you thought none of them was good enough for you. Did you ever invite a one of my buddies to dinner, no. When your mama died you acted like it was my fault it happened to her, also that time your cousin came from Washington you didn’t even introduce me but went and ate supper at her motel leaving me a tunafish sandwich. Well I could take all that, what I couldn’t take was this, you held my own baby daughter seperate from me. You named her for your family and you raised her like your mother would do and never even let me hold her without fifteen pillows nor feed her nor have any good times with her, you and her just lived your seperate lives like I wasn’t around. You froze me out. Don’t you think I got feelings too? What do you think I been thinking all these years? Oh I don’t count I’m just a man. You put me in mind of a black widow spider, soon as you got your child then a man isn’t no more use to you. For years I been living a lonely life hoping you would change and you never did .

NO you can’t have a divorce. What is it you already met a man that wants 20 children? You can’t have a divorce as long as you live and don’t try coming back or I’ll kill you, I mean it, I’ll kill you and Darcy both of you don’t neither one mean a thing to me. I mean this Mary I’m glad you’re gone .

Sincerely ,

Guy

I put the letter back in the envelope and slipped it into my purse. I took Darcy by the hand. She said, “Mom, can I buy a popsicle?” “Maybe later, baby,” I said. I led her down the steps, out into the sunshine that was baking the sidewalk, but inside I felt cold and hard and dark like a stone. I looked into a store window and saw my reflection and thought, There goes a black widow spider taking her daughter to the park. The whole world looked different. A different set of colors even, and bigger and flatter. When we got to the park I saw John on a bench and he seemed to have changed too. He wore a black suit with a white shirt; he was all black and white. The grass behind him was such a washed-out shade of green that I hardly recognized it. Some kind of cold white gauze was laid across everything. “What’s the matter?” John said. “Nothing,” I told him. I reached out to touch his sleeve. I thought, You are my only support. I am certain I love you. Certainly with you I won’t fail. “Race you to that tree,” John told Darcy, and they were off like two jittery birds. I was the only still thing in the landscape. I stood clutching my purse to my stomach, stone still. Yet when the two of them had touched base and returned to me, and John said, “Shall I take you out to eat?” I was able to smile the same as ever. I said, “That would be nice.”

We went to a delicatessen where he said they made wonderful sandwiches. It was cafeteria-style — a dangerous place to take Darcy. She always thinks she wants everything she sees. When we reached the cash register her tray was overflowing, and the lady who rang it up said, “Somebody’s eyes are bigger than their stomach.” Then she winked at me. What would she say if I grabbed both her hands and begged to go home with her?

Once we were seated John started acting nervous, tearing bits of bread off his sandwich and rolling them into balls. I wondered if he had noticed something odd about me. I would have to tell him sometime . I leaned forward and said, “I got an answer to that letter today.”

John said, “You did?”

“He won’t give me a divorce.”

John smiled, with the corners of his mouth turned down. “It seems we’re beset with troubles from all sides,” he said.

“All sides?”

“Carol has moved back into the house.”

I looked over at Darcy. She was separating her sandwich to get at the mayonnaise. I wanted to tell her not to waste a bite of it, eat all she could hold, take the rest home in a doggy bag; now we were going to starve. John said, “Well, it’s not so bad. You know Carol, she’ll tire of it soon enough. I couldn’t just throw her out of the house, could I?”

“You could move out yourself,” I said.

“Well, yes. Yes. In fact I will, but my studio is there. I can’t just up and leave my studio. What I’m counting on is her changing her mind, by and by. I’m certain she’ll leave again.”

“How can you be sure?” I asked him.

“She operates on whims , Mary. She goes through fads. She’ll get over it. Right now she’s taken with the idea of being a homebody again. Says she wants to settle down, have children, grow vegetables. For Carol that’s ludicrous, I told her straight—”