Elizabeth McCracken - Niagara Falls All Over Again

“No, you’re not.” She slid to the very edge of her chaise and pinned the false beard to the floor beneath her toe. “Of course you’re not. Why a week? Why on earth would she wait a week to leave?”

“She needed to pack.”

“Take it from me, Mike. Take it from one with years of experience. Nobody needs to pack. Especially if you’ve been thinking about it. Even if it’s just the smallest niggling thought, I might leave, you somehow walk around with escape supplies: money, passport, car keys. Extra underwear in your purse. Why let her go?”

“I’m not. She’s going anyhow.”

“Don’t let her,” Penny said. She crossed her arms under the bib of her overalls. “You’re one of those people who can’t be alone. Anyone can see it. You know,” she said, “you’re not near so suave as you think you are.”

“My suavity’s at an all-time low, Penn.”

“You never were. Girls wanted to take care of you, that’s why they like you. They think, he’ll starve to death without me. I know I did. Nobody ever looked at Rock and thought that, and I don’t just mean his weight. But he’s the same as you, he just doesn’t know it. He can’t be alone. Can’t take care of himself. Doesn’t like his own company. I had to be married to him for a while before I saw that. And once I did, he started picking fights with me. He throws people away, Mike. You’re the only one he doesn’t. You know he’s going to leave Lillian? He wrote me a letter. Take a lesson from your partner. Whatever he does matrimonially, do the opposite.”

“Which is?”

“‘Faint heart ne’er won fair lady.’ You know that. Maybe you’re not so slick as you believe, but you never were fainthearted. Go home. Tonight. Talk to her. Don’t let pride make you stupid.”

“Do I look like a proud person?” I spread my arms to display my sorry self.

“It’s pride or cowardice,” said Penny.

The door opened, and Rocky walked in, his arms around a stack of bedclothes. He switched on the light with his elbow. “Why’re you sitting around in the dark, children?” he asked. Lillian had darkened his chin with a slightly opalescent eye shadow. He was drunk; he probably hadn’t noticed at the main house, among his sozzled peers. You could tell, though, that here in the sober outpost he felt a little self-conscious.

“The head hobo.” Penny gave him a little salute.

“You’ll be okay out here, Penn? I told Lil some buddies of mine are sleeping off a few too many drinks, so she won’t bother you. I’ll come out at breakfast time.”

“Sure. Thanks. And in the morning you’ll toss me out on the street?”

“Don’t say that, Penny,” said Rocky. “You can stay as long as you want, if you lay low. And anyhow, you keep turning up.”

“Like a bad Penny,” she said.

He said, cheerfully, “ Very bad.”

He set the sheets behind her on the chaise, then sat upon them. He looked at both of us, then, sighing, set his cheek on the back of his ex-wife’s shoulder. “Don’t mention it. We’ll harbor anyone. The Carter Home for Little Wanderers.”

This little wanderer, however, wandered home. Rocky shook my hand, bewildered, and Penny kissed my cheek and said, “Nobody ever takes my advice!” Faint heart ne’er won fair lady . I did feel fainthearted. I’d felt that way all week. Not brokenhearted, which suggests that you know that your life is over, but faint, which is why I’d spent so much time in bed. Should I get some flowers to court my wife? No, it was late, no florist would be open, and in my hobofied state, if I crawled through someone’s garden I’d probably be arrested. I considered this: would it be romantic to be taken in and tell the desk sergeant to call my wife to make my bail? Look what trouble I get into without you . Then I remembered that it would be written up in the papers — Mike Sharp Arrested for Pinching Peonies — and that would be hard to explain to our sponsors.

Even though I’d spent the past week repenting the misery I’d inflicted on my wife and my boys, I hadn’t really fathomed it. In the car, as I drove to the house, I began to. I tried to plan what I would say to Jessica, but no matter what I came up with, I saw her frowning at me. I nearly turned around at one point, so I could ask Penny, Okay, so I’m going back, but what do I say?

Fact was, Jess had been right a week ago: I hadn’t forgiven her. Now I somehow had. (I knew better than to make this the thesis of my speech.) I’d spent a week suffering like she had for a year: inconsolable, and in private.

There was my driveway. At the end was my house. Inside was my family.

Everyone was asleep when I went prowling in, the boys in their beds, and Jessica in a nest of blankets on the carpet at the foot of ours. I heard a voice — my father’s, actually — bawling me out: What did you do to that girl? Apologize, right now. On the way over, I’d imagined her the way we’d last met, in bed, lying like a tin soldier beneath the covers, plenty of room for me to crawl in next to her. Instead she lay on her side, knees tucked up and heels behind, soapy water going down a drain. I didn’t recognize that blanket; she’d probably packed her aunt’s quilt. The moonlight at Rocky’s was cheap nickel, but the light from our hallway was rose gold. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled toward her. I tried to fold myself into that swirl.

She woke up. She looked at me. I’d gotten a long streak of fake coal dust on her pillow. She said, “Where have you been?”

“Out riding the rails,” I answered. “Tramped around. Saw this place and figured the lady of the house was softhearted. Can you spare something?”

“Always with the jokes,” she said, but with some love. We both knew: for the past year, it had not been always with the jokes . It had been ages since I cracked wise unless paid to do so.

“This leaving,” I said.

“Whose?”

“Everyone’s.” I brushed the hair at the back of her neck, and then just kept brushing, at the feathery edge at one side of her nape, then the place at the very back where her hair came down in a point. Not a widow’s peak: that was the V of hair on the other side of her head. What was this called? “Cancel everything,” I said. I couldn’t tell if she didn’t argue because she was so sleepy. Then she turned around underneath the blankets and looked at me.

“You’re in a good mood,” she said. “I hardly recognize you.”

I nodded. If that’s what she thought, I could ease into one.

All through that night, I made promises, I explained things, I swore to be better, less angry. She stayed under the covers, and eventually I wormed my way under them, too, in my wrinkled suit. I kept talking. In the morning, I went to the boys’ room and woke them up and kissed them. They seemed mostly confused that I had been away on a trip and had come back without any presents, an unheard-of thing in our house.

For a while, I believed that I’d apologized my way back into the house, that my eloquence convinced Jess not to go. That wasn’t it, though. She only let me talk to make me feel better. It was that first joke, she said, and the way I brushed the hair off her neck: she could tell my misery had broken like a fever, and it had been my misery that she planned to leave.

Not that all was forgiven, of course, on either side. Still, we vowed to be kinder to each other. It’s amazing how far a vow can go. I had the pool filled in, and the entire back lawn torn out and then reseeded. We started a foundation in Betty’s name, for underprivileged children, and Rock and I did a benefit to get it going.

“How’d you do it?” he asked me, looking at Jess and the boys.