Authors: Wendy Walker
“I
HEARD A CAR!”
Henry yelled from the playroom. He ran to the back door and watched as his mother’s van pulled into the driveway. Jessica was right behind, standing on her tiptoes to reach the glass panels of the door.
Gayle came up behind them, watching as Love retrieved Baby Will from his car seat and made her way up the walk.
“Hello, Lovey,” she said, giving her friend a hug. But she was quickly outnumbered by two children, now jumping up and down at their mother’s feet.
Love bent down and took them in her arms. “Hi, guys! How was school?” It was over in a second. The
we missed you, where have you been all day?
guilt show had been duly performed, and the performers had returned to the project set up in the other room.
“Great interview’as always!” Love said.
Gayle brushed it off. She never would learn to take a compliment. “Was it OK? I couldn’t hear it over all this.”
“What exactly is going on in here?” Love asked, following her children to the back of Gayle’s house. In the center of the wood floor was an enormous sheet of white paper. On each of the four corners of the paper, were little puddles of paint. Blue, red, purple, orange, yellow, green. There were paintbrushes of every size and shape, sponges, crayons, glue pens, and glitter. Olivia and Suzanne were making footprints’stepping in the squishy goo, then walking across the paper. Jessica was busy doing the same with her hands, and Oliver was using three brushes at once to make a rainbow. In the far corner, usurping all the crayons and employing great determination to stay within the lines he had created, Henry was making a picture of a Bionicle Lego.
None of this would have surprised Love had it not been Gayle’s house.
“Paint,” Gayle said.
Love was still standing in the doorway. “Wow. This is an incredible mess in the name of artistic development.”
It was more than a mess. Paint had dripped onto the wood floor, glitter had scattered across the room, landing on fine upholstered sofas and the felt top of the pool table. And it would only get worse when they tried to wash all those little feet and hands.
With the wry smile that had returned to her face in the past few months, Gayle answered her friend. “I know’but it’s not what you think. When all of you are gone, I’ll be in here with the scrub brushes, vacuum cleaner, glitter-dust detector. By the end of the night the room will be cleaner than it’s ever been. Then I’ll have a
really big
glass of wine.”
Love laughed. In truth, Gayle probably would do those things, or come damned close. Certainly, no one believed she had transformed that drastically. But it was also true that she was aware now’more aware than ever’of the forces that had been driving her into a state of total containment. With incredible grace, she had exorcised Troy from her life and helped Oliver navigate the path of a broken family. She had pared down her commitments, serving as the clinic’s spokeswoman for the Smart Choices program, but nothing else’spending the time with Oliver instead. And she had found a new psychiatrist to help her get off the drugs. Now she was pushing herself, going to therapy, facing her childhood and her marriage. She was beginning to figure out what was real and to trust her instincts again. And she was testing her own limits in these small ways’messy paint and children on the loose.
Walking over to her friend, Love squeezed her shoulder and gave her a smile. All of this suited her. It showed on her face.
“And the packing?” Love said, turning to Marie, who was sitting on the couch.
With a cup of coffee in her left hand, Marie held up the right one, which was now adorned with three tiny Princess Band-Aids.
“Boxes?”
“Tape dispenser.”
“Ah. I can help tonight’after the kids are down.”
“Great! I’ll supply the wine.”
Gayle frowned at both of them. “Wine? How come you only see me over coffee and kids?”
Marie raised her mug at Gayle. “You come, too. Oliver can sleep over.”
Love gave Marie a sad smile. The clock was ticking on these gatherings, and Love could already feel the huge void that Marie’s departure would leave.
It was just after six before they had the children clean enough to transport home. One after the other, they marched them to the back hall, put on jackets, sorted backpacks and lunchboxes, and loaded them into cars. Marie and Love thanked Gayle for picking up their kids. They gave each other hugs, which were longer today, and then they were gone.
Turning to Oliver, Gayle bent down to see into his eyes. “Did you have fun?” she asked, and he nodded. “Go on inside. I’ll get the mail.”
The days were growing shorter, and the sky was almost dark. Without the sun’s warmth, Gayle felt a chill as a gust of wind passed through, blowing up the leaves. She pulled her sweater tightly around her and turned her face away until it was gone, until the leaves had returned to the ground. Making her way down the long driveway, she started to think about the paint on the floor, wondering how best to remove it without dulling the finish. Then she stopped herself before the thoughts turned to actions, before she found herself rushing inside to restore the perfect order she had been fighting to disrupt. She would not clean up. She would go in, have dinner with her son, play a game or watch a movie. She would feel the small joy of those things and keep at bay everything else. As she waited for the electric gate to swing open, she drew a long breath. This was how it had been, one thing at a time.
The mailbox was full, as it always was this time of year, with catalogues and other junk making up the bulk of it. The wind picked up again, blowing the leaves around her feet. She carefully pulled the mail out and held it close to her chest. She closed her eyes until she felt the gust settle, then walked to the foot of the driveway. As she waited for the gate to open again, she pulled the mail from her chest and began to flip through it. From between two oversized catalogues a small postcard slipped out and fell to the ground. When the wind picked it up, she thought of letting it go. Her arms were full, the gate was now open, and her eyes were starting to water from the cold. Postcards in the fall were invariably solicitations for some sort of home repair operation’painters, landscapers, and the like. Still, there she was, chasing after it into the road. At least she was smiling at herself’her confounding inability to let a damned thing go. As she caught up with the card in a pile of leaves, she made a promise to let the next one go.
It was later that evening, after Oliver was asleep and she was alone in the kitchen, that she finally found the card again mixed in with the other mail. It was a white card with a sketch of a mountain scene, and she took a small moment to guess the name of the service company that would appear on the other side.
Alpine Lawn Care. Everest Remodeling. Colorado Cleaning Company.
She flipped it over, hoping to be amused, but instead found herself without a breath. The handwriting was unmistakable.
It was postmarked in Oregon, and that was the last place she’d heard he’d gone. Through the agency that had sent Paul to them years before, she had pieced together his journey after leaving her home. He’d been abroad for a while. Chile, Brazil. Then to Mexico and up the California coast. She had asked that he not be told of her inquiries, nor had she explained the reasons for his departure. She had not expected to hear from him again.
His note was brief.
Dear Gayie,
What can I say to you after all this time? I have held on to the conviction that leaving was the right thing, but I fear I was wrong. I have prayed that you and Oliver would be all right. I planned a journey, something that was overdue. But the change in the weather has me longing to return. Are the leaves as beautiful this year as last? I hope to reach you by the end of the month. Of course, I will call first. Give my love to Oliver.
Paul
So little was written, and yet so much was said. He knew Troy was gone. He never would have written had he not known. And he addressed her as
Gayie,
making her think now how foolish she had been not to insist upon this from the very start. Clinging to formalities had left her house so sterile, so lacking in humanity. But he was not her employee anymore. There would be no more
Mrs. Beck.
He had never been the cook, or the butler. He was a man, an honest, compassionate man who had done nothing less than hold their house together’listening to her daily dilemmas, teaching Oliver to dribble a soccer ball. Countless little things, everyday nothing things that together constituted life. It was not until he was gone that she realized what he had been. The string that holds the beads together.
These past months, she had come to know this’to see who this man really was. And yet, at the same time she had become all of those things for herself, and her son. Together they had filled the void and created a new home, and it was a good home’somehow complete even in the absence of a man. Marie would be proud of her now, thinking as she was about the failings of marriage, hers in particular. She had done a lot of thinking about the state of affairs between men and women and the attempts they made to share one life, one home. Was there ever really harmony without one person’s submission? And even then, was misery not inevitable?
Still, as she searched for the date of his writing, she felt the pull within her, the unabated excitement as she imagined answering his call before the month’s end’hearing his voice, then seeing his face, this time with nothing standing between them. She was a damned schoolgirl again, a wise schoolgirl, but still so easily carried away by the daydreams that were sneaking into her thoughts. After everything she had seen, everything she’d been through, and the mountain of evidence that was undeniable, irrefutable’there she was, just the same. Standing on the edge of a deep pool of possibilities.
Knowing she would dive in.