Tania James - Aerogrammes - and Other Stories

Here, he laughed just like Jeremy— Hah! — a single huff that punctured her heart.

To Hank, Gina confessed her hope to someday open a sophisticated beauty parlor that would double as a bar. She had heard of such a place in New York, where a woman could sip from a martini in one hand and receive a manicure on the other. Why not in Louisville? She was sick of salons with names like Swift Clips and Mane Attraction. She envisioned a black-and-white tiled floor, counters edged in chrome. Hank loved the idea. He suggested a jukebox and maybe, on some nights, a live band. “I’ll keep an eye out for spaces to rent,” he said.

They talked all morning, until 11:00, at which point Hank gave her a brisk kiss on the cheek, put on his hat, and headed out the door.

After he left, Gina would garden, or watch TV, or try a cardio hip-hop DVD, hoping he wouldn’t come home early and catch her in action. She had quit her job at Swift Clips, but she still made occasional house calls to her oldest clients, the ones for whom driving had become a hazard. Several of the women remembered Hank Tolliver. When Gina told Mrs. Fenton about Hank and his girlfriend going to the Hilltop Theater, Mrs. Fenton laughed. “Girlfriend or girlfriends?” she said. “I don’t think he could keep track of them all, that old sly boots.”

Whatever she did during the day, Gina always made sure to be home by 8:00 sharp. At that hour, a humid coolness would sweep through the house and a vapor would creep up the mirrors. She would hurry down the stairs, tracking the scent of smoked dirt as it grew more potent, until she found Hank hanging his trench coat in the closet. He always greeted her the same way: “Hey, kid, where ya been?”

But Hank seemed preoccupied in the evenings. Sometimes they played a board game or watched a movie, but most of the time he was in bed by nine. “All that walking,” he’d say, though he never explained where he went, never asked her to join him. He simply wished her good night and retired to the guest room. In the contract, he had ceded the master bedroom to her, an arrangement she now regretted. She had never lain in a bed so big it made her lonely.

•

Over the next few days, Gina began to wake up earlier, thumping down the hall in the hopes that she would wake Hank. He seemed surprised to see her out of sweatpants, her hair up and fussy, pearl studs in her ears. Some nights she slept in rollers.

One morning, as Hank was folding up the newspaper, she asked if he might stay home tomorrow, since Ami was stopping by for lunch. Hank paused, smoothing his hand over the crease of the paper. “The sister who didn’t come to the courthouse?”

“There was that field trip,” Gina said quickly. “It might be nice for you both to get to know each other.”

“She didn’t want to know me before. Why now?”

“People change,” she said. “I’ve changed.”

“Yeah …,” he said, and looked away.

Gina stared at him, suddenly afraid of what he might say next. “Never mind. Forget it.”

She got up from the table but was stayed by a subtle sensation across her palm. This was what it felt like when Hank took her hand, not the blunt force of human touch but something delicate, like a soft cloth wrapped around her skin.

“The contract said mornings and evenings, Gina. I can’t be here whenever you want me to be.”

She shook his hand off. “Where do you go all day?”

Abruptly, he rose from the table and said he had to get going. She felt a kiss glance off her cheek.

Watching him head for the door, she blurted, “I looked in the guest room last night. You weren’t there.”

Hank stopped. He turned halfway, his brow creased. “That’s allowed. Check the contract.”

He continued out the door, his peaty fragrance dissolving from the room.

•

Later that night, unable to sleep, Gina crept up the stairs to the guest room. The door was closed, a faint slip of light beneath it. She tapped her fingernail against the door. “Come in,” he said.

Hank was sitting up in a bed so high, it required a wooden step stool to climb aboard. He wore red plaid pajamas. The bedside lamp brightened the side of his face and the cover of the book he was reading: The Count of Monte Cristo .

Hank lowered his glasses. “Hello, warden.”

He watched her walk to the other side of the bed and climb on top of the covers.

“Gina—”

“I tried Ambien, I tried counting sheep. Nothing works.” She peeled back the comforter and wiggled her way in until she was laying on her back, the sheets pulled up to her chin. She closed her eyes. When Hank began to protest, she whispered, “Just five minutes.”

She kept her eyes closed. After a moment’s pause, she heard the book thump shut and the click of the lamplight. She felt him settle noiselessly into bed. He didn’t move.

“Why did you and Helen divorce?” she asked.

Hank gave a long, bored sigh. “I fooled around on her. More than once.”

“Do you know what happened to her?”

“Nope.”

“And you don’t want to know?”

Hank rubbed his eyes. “Come on, Gina. We shouldn’t talk about that stuff. You read the Primer.”

Gina had skimmed it. A Primer to Interlife Relationships . She had found its tone condescendingly bright. Too much looking back will lead to a nasty case of whiplash. Leave past relationships in the past .

In a small voice, Gina asked if he ever missed Helen.

Hank flung off the covers and hopped out of bed. “It might be the mattress that’s keeping you up,” he said. “Sleep here tonight. See if you like this one better.”

Tucking his book under his arm, he left.

The next day, Ami came over for brunch. Gina toured her around the garden and pointed out the tomatoes that had just begun to plump. She liked them green and taut, lightly fuzzed in down, like newborns. Ami kept wrapping her sweater tighter and asking, “Is he here? Can he see us?”

Gina pinched a tomato from the vine and moved on, pretending not to hear. Ami and her family lived in a grand colonial house with a hot tub whose novelty had worn off among the kids, leaving her to dutifully boil alone once a week. Gina suspected that Ami was jealous, now that hers was no longer the larger house.

“All right, fine, I’m sorry,” Ami said. “It’s not that I’m against you marrying a ghost, in theory. I just don’t know anybody who’s done that. It’s a generational thing. Maybe in fifty years our kids will look back and think we were just a bunch of uptight assholes.”

“If we make it that far.”

“Just tell me you have a plan. If something goes wrong.”

It wasn’t the first time Ami had raised that concern. Normally Gina would have dismissed her sister, assured her that everything would be fine. But the night before had left Gina with questions that took root in the fertile dark, and by morning had flourished into the inevitable: Hank was having an affair with Helen. Two weeks ago, this would have meant much less to Gina. But lately she’d found herself dwelling on him when he wasn’t around, thinking ahead to what they might discuss the next day. She was frustrated by his reticence in the evenings, when he returned to her slightly sad, and yet somehow fortified.

“I could divorce him,” Gina said. An image came to her, of Hank tracing his finger over the fleur-de-lis hinge. “But no, I couldn’t do that to him.”

“Why?” Ami’s eyes widened with more wonder than worry. “What would happen to Hank?”

“He’d go back there. Wherever he came from.” Gina wrenched a handful of sinewy weeds from the earth, wrung the dirt from their roots. “And I’d lose everything — the money, the house, the cars.”