Joy Williams - Taking Care

“A neighbor,” Sarah said, “one of Mommy’s friends.”

When Sarah told Tommy about Genevieve coming to visit her, he said, “It’s harassment. It can be stopped.”

It was Sunday morning. They had just finished breakfast and Tommy and Martha were drying the dishes and putting them away. Martha was wearing her church-school clothes and she was singing a song she had learned the Sunday before.

“… I’m going to the Mansion on the Happy Days’ Express …” she sang.

Tommy squeezed Martha’s shoulders. “Go get your coat, sweetie,” he said. When the child had gone, he said to Sarah, “Don’t speak to this woman. Don’t allow it to happen again.”

“We didn’t talk about that.”

“What else could you talk about? It’s weird.”

“No one talks about that. No one, ever.”

Tommy was wearing a corduroy suit and a tie Sarah had never seen before. Sarah looked at the pattern in the tie. It was random and bright.

“Are you having an affair?” Sarah asked.

“No,” he said easily. “I don’t understand you, Sarah. I’ve done everything I could to protect you, to help you straighten yourself out. It was a terrible thing but it’s over. You have to get over it. Now, just don’t see her again. There’s no way that she can cause trouble if you don’t speak to her.”

Sarah stopped looking at Tommy’s tie. She moved her eyes to the potatoes she had peeled and put in a bowl of water.

Martha came into the kitchen and held on to her father’s arm. Her hair was long and thick, but it was getting darker. It was as though it had never been cut.

After they left, Sarah put the roast in the oven and went into the living room. The large window was full of the day, a colorless windy day without birds. Sarah sat on the floor and ran her fingers across the smooth, varnished wood. Beneath the expensive flooring was cold cement. Tanks had once lined the walls. Lobsters had crept back and forth across the mossy glass. The phone rang. Sarah didn’t look at it, suspecting it was Genevieve. Then she picked it up.

“Hello,” said Genevieve, “I thought I might drop by. It’s a bleak day, isn’t it. Cold. Is your family at home?”

“They go out on Sunday,” Sarah said. “It gives me time to think. They go to church.”

“What do you think about?” The woman’s voice seemed far away. Sarah strained to hear her.

“I’m supposed to cook dinner. When they come back we eat dinner.”

“I can prepare clams in forty-three different ways,” Genevieve said.

“This is a roast. A roast pork.”

“Well, may I come over?”

“All right,” Sarah said.

She continued to sit on the floor, waiting for Genevieve, looking at the water beneath the sky. The water on the horizon was a wide, satin ribbon. She wished that she had the courage to swim on such a bitter, winter day. To swim far out and rest, to hesitate and then to return. Her life was dark, unexplored. Her abstinence had drained her. She felt sluggish, robbed. Her body had no freedom.

She sat, seeing nothing, the terrible calm light of the day around her. The things she remembered were so far away, bathed in a different light. Her life seemed so remote to her. She had sought happiness in someone, knowing she could not find it in herself and now her heart was strangely hard. She rubbed her head with her hands.

Her life with Tommy was broken, irreparable. Her life with him was over. His infidelities kept getting mixed up in her mind with the death of the boy, with Tommy’s false admission that he had been driving when the boy died. Sarah couldn’t understand anything. Her life seemed so random, so needlessly constructed and now threatened in a way which did not interest her.

“Hello,” Genevieve called. She had opened the front door and was standing in the hall. “You didn’t hear my knock.”

Sarah got up. She was to entertain this woman. She felt anxious, adulterous. The cold rose from Genevieve’s skin and hair. Sarah took her coat and hung it in the closet. The fresh cold smell lingered on her hands.

Sarah moved into the kitchen. She took a package of rolls out of the freezer.

“Does your little girl like church?” Genevieve asked.

“Yes, very much.”

“It’s a stage,” said Genevieve. “I’m Catholic myself. As a child, I used to be fascinated by the martyrs. I remember a picture of St. Lucy, carrying her eyes like a plate of eggs, and St. Agatha. She carried her breasts on a plate.”

Sarah said, “I don’t understand what we’re talking about. I know you’re just using these words, that they mean other words, I …”

“Perhaps we could take your little girl to a movie sometime, a matinee, after she gets out of school.”

“Her name is Martha,” Sarah said. She saw Martha grown up, her hair cut short once more, taking rolls out of the freezer, waiting.

“Martha, yes,” Genevieve said. “Have you wanted more children?”

“No,” Sarah said. Their conversation was illegal, unspeakable. Sarah couldn’t imagine it ever ending. Her fingers tapped against the ice-cube trays. “Would you care for a drink?”

“A very tall glass of vermouth,” Genevieve said. She was looking at a little picture Martha had made, that Sarah had tacked to the wall. It was a very badly drawn horse. “I wanted children. I wanted to fulfill myself. One can never fulfill oneself. I think it is an impossibility.”

Sarah made Genevieve’s drink very slowly. She did not make one for herself.

“When Stevie was Martha’s age, he knew everything about whales. He kept notebooks. Once, on his birthday, I took him to the whaling museum in New Bedford.” She sipped her drink. “It all goes wrong somewhere,” she said. She turned her back on Sarah and went into the other room. Sarah followed her.

“There are so many phrases for ‘dead,’ you know,” Genevieve was saying. “The kids think them up, or they come out of music or wars. Stevie had one that he’d use for dead animals and rock stars. He’d say they’d ‘bought the farm.’”

Sarah nodded. She was pulling and peeling at the nails of her hands.

“I think it’s pretty creepy. A dark farm, you know. Weedy. Run-down. Broken machinery everywhere. A real job.”

Sarah raised her head. “You want us to share Martha, don’t you,” she said. “It’s only right, isn’t it?”

“… the paint blown away, acres and acres of tangled, black land, a broken shutter over the well.”

Sarah lowered her head again. Her heart was cold, horrified. The reality of the two women, placed by hazard in this room, this bright functional tasteful room that Tommy had created, was being tested. Reality would resist, for days, perhaps weeks, but then it would yield. It would yield to this guest, this visitor, for whom Sarah had made room.

“Would you join me in another drink?” Genevieve asked. “Then I’ll go.”

“I mustn’t drink,” Sarah said.

“You don’t forget,” Genevieve said, “that’s just an old saw.” She went into the kitchen and poured more vermouth for herself. Sarah could smell the meat cooking. From another room, the clock chimed.

“You must come to my home soon,” Genevieve said. She did not sit down. Sarah looked at the pale green liquid in the glass.

“Yes,” Sarah said, “soon.”

“We must not greet one another on the street, however. People are quick to gossip.”

“Yes,” Sarah said. “They would condemn us.” She looked heavily at Genevieve, full of misery and submission.

There was knocking on the door. “Sarah,” Tommy’s voice called, “why is the door locked?” She could see his dark head at the window.

“I must have thrown the bolt,” Genevieve said. “It’s best to lock your house in the winter, you know. It’s the kids mostly. They get bored. Stevie was a robber once or twice, I’m sure.” She put down her glass, took her coat from the closet and went out. Sarah heard Martha say, “That’s Mommy’s friend.”