Alice Hoffman - Here On Earth

“Are you going to tell me it’s anemia?” Susie asks.

“It was nothing.”

Susie laughs; she can’t help herself. “March. That’s what they all say.”

“No, it really was nothing,” March insists. “We were arguing and he grabbed me. Believe me, if he ever hit me, I’d be gone.”

“Eat,” Susie suggests, and she stands there and watches March devour the pizza.

Someone in the living room has switched on the radio; there’s already a countdown to midnight. Hank has made himself comfortable on the couch, so he can concentrate on eating. There’s smoked salmon on crackers, bluefish pâté, marinated mushrooms, French Brie. He’s eating so fast and so much that Susie’s dogs have switched their allegiance from Ed and are now stationed by Hank’s feet.

“If you slow down,” Bud Horace, the animal control officer, advises when he sits beside Hank, “you can fit more food in. The salmon is good, but you should try the pizza.”

Hank is directed toward the kitchen, but it’s hard to get through the crowd. He’s doing his best to elbow his way past the bar set up in a comer near the front window when he sees Hollis’s truck pull up.

“Fuck it,” Hank says under his breath. He’s the one who’s going to be held accountable for this and he knows it.

Hollis comes in through the front door, wearing a black overcoat made of soft Italian wool, bringing in cold air and suspicion. He stops to greet two members of the town council, to whom he made sizable contributions, but his eyes flicker over the room. Before he can spy Hank, Hank makes his way into the kitchen.

“Hollis is here,” he tells March.

March looks at him; then, without saying a word, she goes to the back door and wrenches it open. She’s so panicked she doesn’t even think to retrieve her coat. Hollis is probably walking through the living room right now.

“Wait a second,” Susie says, grabbing March’s arm and holding her back. “The man you’re living with is here and you’re running out the back door. Think about it, March.”

“You don’t understand,” March says. She has said this so often it probably sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. “He’ll see my being here as a betrayal. He’ll see me as one of you.”

“Gwen left a plane ticket here. You could use it. You could leave-even for a little while. Take some time and think.”

March has to laugh at that. You do not think about such matters; you fall into them, head over heels, without a safety net, without a rope.

That’s what Hollis sees when he comes into the kitchen-March laughing at the back door-and that doesn’t please him one bit. Earlier tonight, Hollis met Alison Hartwig at the Lyon; then they went over to her place-she had managed to get rid of the kids and her mother-but he let Alison know he had to be home before midnight. And then, after all that, when he got back to Guardian Farm, no one was there. Since that time, it’s taken close to an hour for him to track March down. This doesn’t please him either.

“Hey, Susie,” he says, as though he isn’t annoyed in the least. “Great party.”

“Yeah, too bad you weren’t invited,” Susie says.

Hollis grins at that. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll hurt my feelings?”

“Nope,” Susie says.

Hollis leans closer to March and kisses her. His lips are cold, and there’s snow in the folds of his coat. “You’re the most beautiful woman here,” he says. “As usual.” He notices Hank now, and wonders if perhaps the boy hasn’t taken it too much on himself to think over matters that are none of his business. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” he tells Hank. “You’d better head out.”

Hank looks at March, uncertain as to what he should do.

“Go on,” March insists. You can’t even tell that she’s nervous. She laughs, then has a sip of wine. “Find some folks your own age. Just don’t freeze in that car of yours.”

“Sure,” Hank mumbles.

“Hey.” As Hank is about to pass him by, Hollis puts a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t tell me you’ve been drinking.”

“Just a beer,” Hank says. “One.”

“You don’t want to go in that direction,” Hollis says. “Considering your background and all.”

It is the worst possible thing Hollis could say to Hank and he knows it-the threat that he might take after his father. March can’t quite believe she has actually heard right.

“He had one beer,” March says. “I bought it for him. That doesn’t mean he’s an alcoholic.”

“Maybe I’ll stick to Coke.” Hank grabs a can from the counter. “It’s probably not a bad idea.”

“We’d better head out too,” Hollis tells March after Hank has left.

He says it easily, but he doesn’t mean it that way. Nothing is easy with Hollis. March looks at him closely. The evidence is in his eyes. That’s where the anger is.

“You could spend the night,” Susie says to March. She’s not fooled by Hollis’s pleasant manner, and she never will be.

Hollis laughs. “Aren’t you girls a little too old for pajama parties?”

March hugs Susie. “Thanks,” she says. “Another time.”

“You can come back whenever you want to,” Susie tells her, low so that Hollis has to strain to hear. “You know that.”

By the time March gets to the front door, Hollis is waiting with her coat and scarf. There’s confetti in the air and slow music playing, but Hollis pays no attention. He holds open the door for March, then lets it slam once they’re out of the house.

“Don’t ever do that to me again,” he says as they start down the snowy walkway leading to the sidewalk. They can still hear voices from the party drifting out of Susie’s place. Hollis is so furious that the air around him pops. “You should have been there when I got home, but you weren’t, and that’s the problem.”

He grabs her by the arm, to make his point, to make certain she’s listening and to reel her in, closer.

“I don’t like an empty house,” he says, in a voice so mean it’s barely recognizable.

March hears Susie’s front door slam as another guest leaves the party. Some man has stepped out onto Susie’s porch and March is mortified to think of the tableau which greets this stranger: an angry man, a woman who looks frightened, snow falling, ice on the herringboned brick path.

“What are you looking at?” Hollis is facing the stranger, whom March now recognizes as someone who works at the paper with Susie. The sports editor, she thinks. Bert something-or-other. Whoever he is, he was about to take his gloves from his overcoat pocket-he’s already got his car keys in his hand-but he stopped when he saw Hollis holding on to March.

“Hey, buddy,” he says to Hollis, his voice soft, as though he were talking to some maniac. “Come on. Ease up. It’s New Year’s Eve.”

March blinks back her tears. That’s how they look to him: A couple on the edge. A woman who’s about to be hurt somehow. And maybe he’s right. When it comes down to it, who is she anyway? The woman she thinks she is or the woman she appears to be?

“What did you call me?” Hollis says. He lets go of March and takes a step toward Susie’s front door. He used to talk this way to Alan and his friends when they followed him home, those boys who tossed rocks and curses just above his head. Buddy is just another way to say he’s nothing, and he doesn’t have to listen to that. Not anymore.

March is breathing frigid night air, but she’s burning up inside. What she wants is for Susie’s guest to go back to the party-then she and Hollis can walk away from this without any permanent damage. She wants that so badly she can taste it, but the taste is bitter, a cold soup made of stones.