A. Homes - May We Be Forgiven

The refrigerator seeps the curdled scent of sour milk, half of a dry grapefruit, a jar of ageless peanut butter, some brown bread white and furry on the edges, old rice pudding brewing a green bull’s-eye center in a plastic deli container. In a frenzy I open every cabinet and throw out what’s expired. I wonder, does everyone do it the same way — glasses here, dishes there, dry foods and cans together? Where do you learn it, the grouping of like things? I take the trash down the hall and order Chinese. The man recognizes my phone number and says, “You call late tonight, long time no see; hot-sour soup, fried chicken rice, moo-shu pork?”

While waiting, I take the elevator to the basement, unlock the storage bin, and wrestle out an enormous ancient blue suitcase. Upstairs, I open the bag on the bed and begin to fill it. Unsure of exactly what I am thinking, I pack as if to consolidate, to minimize myself. I assume that when Claire returns I will no longer be welcome. Pulling open the drawers, the closet, the medicine cabinet, I am impressed with the gentility with which things coexist, how they hang, nestle, rest side by side without tension or judgment. Her floss, toothbrush, Nair, mascara, my gargle, nose spray, nail clipper. All of it intimate, all of it human, all of it divided his and hers — there is little overlap.

We married late; Claire had already been married once, briefly. It was two years before I took her to meet my parents. The first thing she told them was “It was a small wedding, just friends.”

“Why did you keep her from us for so long?” my mother asked. “She’s beautiful and has a good job. You thought we wouldn’t approve?”

My mother took her hands. “We thought there must be something wrong with you — a reason he wouldn’t bring you, like you had a cleft palate, or a penis or something?” she said, raising her eyebrows as if to say, How ’bout it?

What is the take-away? There is no logic to what goes in the bag — a few photos, trinkets from my childhood, a couple of suits, shoes, the canvas bag with the most recent draft of my unfinished manuscript on Nixon, the small black clock from her side of the bed. I don’t want much, don’t want to be obvious; I purposely leave my favorite things — I don’t want to be accused of abandoning ship.

Long after midnight, the doorbell rings. I tip the deliveryman heavily and sit at the table eating straight from the boxes, eating like it’s been days since I was fed. The flavor is amazing, hot, spicy, the textures a treat, everything from slimy mushrooms and tofu to hard cubes of pork. I paste plum sauce on the pancakes and douse it all in soy sauce — the extreme sodium and glutamate breathe life back into me.

Tessie sits patiently at my feet. I give her a bowl of plain white rice — the starch will be good for her stomach. She eats quickly. I give her more, and then she again passes toxic gases.

I think of looking it up on the computer, Googling “Ill effects of drinking blood,” but don’t want to leave an electronic record of my visit.

“Tessie, how old are you? Are you twelve? That makes you over a hundred in human years — you’re someone Willard Scott should celebrate. Who was that cat? Do you know him from somewhere? You didn’t seem to mind that he was there.” I continue: “Here’s what I’m thinking: we’ll stay here tonight, and we’ll go back in the morning, in the full light of day.”

I’m talking to a dog.

I call Claire in China, figuring to give it one last go.

“I’m in a meeting,” she says.

“We can talk later.”

“Is Jane better?”

“She’s on a ventilator.”

“I’m glad she’s feeling much better,” Claire says.

The rhythm of the line is the same; the rest has been lost in translation.

In bed, I pull a pillow from her side, close, against my chest, missing her in a routine kind of way, Claire standing over my shoulder while I balance the checkbook, insisting that we have his/ hers accounts as well as one joint. Claire in the bathroom, using a squeegee stolen from a gas station to rake the shower door dry, Claire at the kitchen sink taking a glass of water and then washing and drying her glass and putting it away. Claire, who leaves nothing out of place, nothing to chance, always on it. What I liked about her, of course, became the problem — she wasn’t there. She asked very little of me. And that meant she wasn’t there and gave very little back.

Tessie walks around, looking confused. I take a towel from the bathroom and make a place for her by the side of the bed. She is an old setter, bought as a pup at a time when there was hope and promise, when it still seemed like things might turn out okay.

We sleep.

She comes at me, whacking me with a pillow. “Get out of my house, get out of my house,” she repeats. A man in a suit stands behind her. “That’s enough for now. We’ll get him again later,” he says. I rush for the door; a man is there, changing the tumbler.

I wake. Who was she — was it Claire, was it Jane?

The dog wants to go out. The dog wants breakfast. The dog wants to go back to her own home.

The children are coming, arrangements have been made, cars have been hired to chauffeur them home. There have been phone calls behind their backs.

“What about the children? Where should the children go?” Jane’s parents ask on a conference call.

I don’t like the children, I’m thinking to myself, but remain silent.

“They can stay with me,” Jane’s sister, Susan, says. “We have an extra room.”

“An office,” Susan’s husband says.

“There’s a bed,” Susan says.

And twins on leashes looking for trouble. I am thinking of Susan’s toddler terrorists, who are in constant motion, often running towards a precipice. I imagine Susan and her husband on vacation with the children, having contests on the beach where they let the twins loose and see who can catch one first.

“They have a dog,” I say.

“You’re allergic,” the mother reminds Susan.

“Well, it’s too much for my parents,” Susan says. “Two mentally disturbed teenagers.”

It’s too much for the children as well. They would be driven crazy governed by grandparents who spend most of their time discussing the consistency of their bowel movements and whether or not they should drink more prune juice.

I ignore the reference to mental disturbance — they are no more or less disturbed than the rest of us.

“The children need to be in their own home,” I say.

“We have lives,” Susan says. “We can’t give up everything, and besides, I don’t even like that house, I never liked it.”

“It’s not about the house,” I say.

As we’re talking, I climb the stairs to the master bedroom. I’ve already made the bed, and moved the “matching” lamp from George’s side of the bed into the closet. As much as anything can look normal, it does. I take a plant from the kitchen windowsill and put it on the night table on Jane’s side of the bed.

Nathaniel gets home first; the car pulls into the driveway, and he climbs out, dragging an enormous duffel bag behind him.

With one hand on Tessie’s collar, I hold the kitchen door open. The dog is relieved to see the boy.

“Hi,” I say.

He doesn’t answer. He puts his bag down and talks to the dog. “What is going on around here, Tessie?” he says, mussing her ears. “What is it, girl? It’s madness!”

He turns to me. “Can I give her a biscuit?”

“Sure,” I say, not expecting to be asked. “Give her a cookie, give her two. Are you hungry? Do you want a sandwich?”