O My Darling Read online

  “No, all the time. I love you all the time. Forever. When you leave me, I won’t even be angry with you.”

  “Shhhh. Raise your arms. There you go. There’s my girl. There’s my silly girl. You know I love you too.”

  “All the time?”

  “All the time.”

  Charlotte was now standing at the door, eyes wild. She faced the crack in the door, and put her eye to it. She could see only a sliver of the room, though she swore she could hear—right there on the other side of the door—the sound of two live people breathing. Then all at once she shoved the door open, leaping backward against the banister as if from some horrible brightness.

  She heard her own cry fade, and lowered her arm from her face. But there, in the bedroom, was no one. The bedroom was shadowed with the blue evening. The bedspread glowed white, and the television flickered mutely on the dresser.

  “Charlie!” Clark hollered from downstairs. “I’m home! I got takeout from Happy Palace. All your favorites. Everything you like. With extra duck sauce, since I know you eat it plain. Charlotte?”

  Clapping her hand to her mouth, Charlotte ran from the room. In the hall, still clutching her drink, she doubled over and heaved.

  “Charlotte?” Clark came to the foot of the stairs.

  His shadow leapt hugely across the stairwell.

  “One second!” Charlotte said. She looked down with horror at the gin glass, smudged with fingerprints.

  In the bathroom, she dumped the contents of the glass down the drain. She dumped the contents of the entire gin bottle down the drain. Then she thrust the glass into the garbage can and it landed with a crash. She pointed one finger at herself in the bathroom mirror.

  “Drunk,” she said, pointing. “Crazy. Ridiculous.”

  “Charlotte?” said Clark, leaning up. “Everything all right up there?”

  “Yes,” said Charlotte, wiping her mouth and stepping onto the dark landing. “Everything’s perfectly fine.”

  NUDE TRAVEL

  They sat in the living room on either end of the sofa, like ballast. Clark was reading the newspaper and Charlotte was pretending to read a book. She raised her head at the merest noise, and kept looking toward the stairwell. Finally she put the book down and folded her hands and just sat there, blinking out at the daylight.

  “So,” she said. “How are you, Clark? How’s life?”

  Clark looked up from his newspaper. “How am I?”

  Charlotte nodded.

  “I’m fine,” said Clark, taking a bite of toast.

  “Good. It’s a nice day. Isn’t it?”

  Clark smiled, then looked down at his paper, chewing. After a moment he dusted off his hands and stood. Charlotte stood also.

  “Going somewhere?” she said.

  He squinted at her. “The kitchen,” he said. He shifted his weight.

  “I’ll join you,” said Charlotte, glancing back over her shoulder, as if she might see another woman in a bathrobe sitting in the chair she had just vacated.

  In the kitchen, she leaned against the counter, watching Clark drink an entire glass of orange juice. She knew she was behaving strangely, but she couldn’t quite shove out the words: Somebody else was in here last night. She laughed aloud, realizing just how crazy that would sound. She looked down at her bare feet. She tried to think of something else to say.

  “Oh gosh,” she said at last, remembering, “The funniest thing happened the other day. I was going through the mail, and I saw this magazine with a photograph of a couple on the front. The couple was sitting on a beach. I said to myself, there’s something weird about this photo. And I looked a little closer, and it turned out, they were naked! Too far away to see, you know, the specifics. The magazine was called Naturally: Nude Recreation Travel. Can you believe it?”

  Clark blinked. “What did you do with it?”

  “Well, I threw it out. Somebody must’ve gotten your name from some list, because it had your name on it. Can you imagine, a whole magazine devoted to nude travel? I’ve never heard anything so silly.”

  “I ordered it,” said Clark. “It came free with National Geographic. Well, you could pick a free magazine off a list.”

  Charlotte put a lock of hair in her mouth. “You what?”

  “Why did you throw it out? It had my name on it.”

  “I… I didn’t realize you had an interest in nude travel. I thought it was safe to assume…”

  “Don’t assume.” Clark turned to the sink and dumped the last bit of orange juice out. “It’s actually very interesting. The relation between naturism and nudism. It’s not about sex. There’s not even any nude photographs in the magazine. It’s a family publication.”

  “Those people were naked on the cover.”

  “You said yourself they were too far away to see anything,” Clark folded his arms over his chest. “I just thought it was interesting. That’s all. I was trying to be open-minded. I was trying to open my mind. Do you think I want to be a junior high school guidance counselor forever and live here and always do the same things forever? I want to be open-minded. I want to be free. I want possibilities.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you. I…” Charlotte swallowed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry I threw out your magazine.”

  “It’s all right.”

  Clark reached in the cabinet and took down a jar of cocktail olives. He unscrewed the jar and sniffed inside.

  “That’s a weird thing to eat,” said Charlotte.

  “Me weird?” he said. “You’re the one who followed me into the kitchen.” Clark sighed heavily, and then waved his hand. “Listen, Charlotte. Is everything all right? You’re so jumpy—”

  As if on cue, Charlotte screamed. She pointed toward the back door. Clark spun around to look, upsetting the glass by his hand. The glass shattered on the kitchen floor in a hundred tiny shining pieces. In the back doorway was the head of a boy, peering in. The boy waved.

  “Hey, Jimmy!” said Clark. “Hold on a second!”

  Clark turned to look at Charlotte, whose hand was pressed to her heart.

  “Jesus, Charlotte,” he said. “It’s just the kid. I told him I’d take him to the park today to feed ducks.”

  They looked down at the glittering floor.

  “Can I please come with you?” Charlotte said.

  “To feed the ducks? That’s not quite your thing. Is it?”

  Clark lowered his eyes. Then he reached out his hand.

  “Come,” he said. “You can come.”

  But there in her own kitchen, in a field of shards, she was stranded.

  BOUNTY

  Clark stopped and rolled away.

  “Damn,” he said. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “It’s all right,” Charlotte said, pulling up the bed sheets over her nakedness. The morning sun lay in stripes across her skin. “Don’t say anything.” She looked out the window. The trees were totally bare by then. She reached for her robe, but it was not there.

  “Damn it,” she snapped, surprising even herself. “Did you take my bathrobe?”

  “No,” he said.

  She looked at him.

  His eyes widened. “I swear, Charlotte.”

  She lay back down, closed her eyes. “I can’t find my pearl necklace either. I spent an hour looking for it yesterday.”

  “I’m sure it’s around here somewhere.” Clark picked up his new Naturally and began to thumb through its jam-sticky pages.

  “Do you think someone could have stolen it?” said Charlotte. “My necklace?”

  Clark put down the magazine. “Who?”

  “No, never mind. I don’t know.”

  Charlotte looked out again at the gray treetops. In this, the deep of November, she could see clear to the next town. If only spring would hurry up and come again, she thought, so she could not see so far. In the wind, the house made its creaking sounds like a ship.

  “Do you want some jelly toast?” she asked him.

 
“No thank you.”

  “You’ve been eating too much junk. You’ve been eating like a teen. When’s the last time you had a leafy green? I made you pork chops last night—your favorite—but you weren’t hungry.” Shivering, she burrowed away from him. After a moment, she raised herself up and said, “Does anyone find it peculiar, you spending all this time with those kids? Is it wise, Clark? I mean, what does Stanberry think?”

  “I’m a guidance counselor. I’m supposed to give guidance. I’m sure that Stanberry thinks I’m doing my job. Besides, I like being with them and they like being with me. They think I’m pretty damned interesting.”

  “All right. Don’t be so defensive. I’m just asking. We’re just lying here, so I’m striking up a conversation.”

  “You want to have sex? You want to send another million sperm into obscurity?”

  “What?” Charlotte clawed the hair off her face. “What did you say?”

  “Leafy greens,” muttered Clark. “Poor kid has to take care of her brother when she can hardly take care of herself. Fifteen years old and nobody cares about her. You should understand how that feels better than anybody.” He looked her straight on.

  “But you don’t know anything about them. Who are they?”

  “They’re children. Children. Besides,” Clark said to the ceiling, “I don’t care what other people think. So I take James home after school every once in a while. So what?”

  “The other day you took him to our home. I came out of the shower and he was there. Standing at the top of the stairs. You don’t think maybe… he took anything?”

  “You sound so jealous.”

  “Jealous! It’s creepy, having this child around all of a sudden. And he hardly speaks. Once I caught him in the yard talking to some birds. Talking, like conversationally. I asked him if he was talking to the birds. He said, ‘No ma’am. I’m talking back.’ Why would I be jealous of a child like that?”

  Clark rolled over on his back.

  “I’m often jealous of children,” he said. “I wish that I could go back in time. Go back into the past and retrieve something.”

  “What in the world would you retrieve?”

  “I don’t know.” Then he said, “Bounty.”

  “Bounty,” she said.

  “Possibility. Innocence. Amnesia. I don’t know. Sometimes I’d like to let go of all these heavy adult things—problems and history and disappointments and things, and be reborn into bounty. Back to the wide open.”

  Charlotte swallowed.

  “I don’t think we are born into bounty,” she said.

  “Well that’s one big fat difference between you and me.” Then Clark looked over at her, and softened. Her eyes were fluttering, lost. “Aw, come on. I don’t mean to be harsh. It was just something to say.”

  “Our marriage?” she said. “Is that one of the heavy things? Do you sometimes wish you weren’t married to me?”

  “Oh come on, Charlotte. Don’t make an issue out of this. It was an innocent thing to say. It was about me.”

  “But—” she gasped, and just as quickly felt ashamed, for she had no real objection. “I just don’t trust them,” she said.

  “If you spent some time with us, you’d trust them. You’d see how great they are. But you’re always begging off. When did you get so busy at work? Was there some sweatshop fire I haven’t heard about?”

  “I stay late at work because I don’t want to be alone in the house. I get… frightened alone in this house.”

  She rolled over, cold, and put her feet on the floor. She wanted to tell him about the laughter in the guest bedroom. She wanted to tell him she was terrified of hearing the laughter again. But it was crazy. And she didn’t want to leverage all her credibility that way. He did not believe her even now, about the robe and the necklace.

  “Never mind,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on anymore. I guess I can’t trust myself.”

  Behind her, Clark rubbed his nose slowly and then folded his hands over his chest. His face assumed a soft, rather philosophical expression.

  “Maybe, Charlotte, you should consider confronting your demons.”

  Charlotte turned and opened her mouth. “Me confront my demons?

  “For example,” said Clark, rolling up onto his elbows. “Why do you hate kids so much?”

  Charlotte looked at him. “Who me? Hate kids? I love kids.”

  “No you don’t. Why do those little kids scare you? Why don’t you ever want to have children of our own?”

  “You’re just trying to get out of the hot seat!”

  “Probably,” he said. “But I’d like to know.”

  Charlotte looked at him, blinking rapidly.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, think about it,” Clark said, not unkindly. He lay back and looked up at the ceiling. “I’d like to know what we’re so afraid of.” They lay there breathing beside one another. He opened his hands. “I mean, what is it?” he whispered.

  After several minutes of silence, he reached over and stroked her hair. The motion was so tender and disarming that a tear fell across the bridge of Charlotte’s nose and landed on the pillow.

  “Oh, Charlie,” he whispered. “Doesn’t it ever get lonely, just you and me against the world?”

  “There is no ‘world,’ ” said Charlotte, wiping her face with her wrist. “There’s just a bunch of separate people.”

  IT BURIES US

  Out of the air, out of the breadth of December, the first flake squeezed itself into being and tumbled out of the sky.

  “Snow,” said Clark, looking up.

  “Snow!” said Charlotte, taking off her pompom hat. “Our first snow at Quail Hollow.”

  The flakes chased one another out of nothingness, little white jots, like ashes of some extinguished star. The snow had not been forecasted, and brought no noise and no ceremony. It fell as precisely as a cat steps. And then it was everywhere, collecting in the dimples of the trees and blanketing the grass.

  Charlotte stepped into the street and looked down the hill at the town. The spires of churches were already frosted white. She could see, even from there, the green glowing face of the clock at the center of town. Above, the sky in the valley had become gray, exactly the color of the naked treetops, which made the earth and air fuse along the horizon. The streetlights had the look of lanterns, each with an orange gloriole that caught the motes of snow. She wished very much that she could stop time in order to see the snow idle in the air. She wanted to see the flakes hesitating under the lights that way, over the ground, like a good idea that takes its time in coming to mind.

  “Look,” she whispered.

  Clark wrapped her in his arms. He opened his mitten, and they watched as several flakes fell upon the wool and melted.

  “I hope it snows forever,” said Clark. “I hope it buries us.”

  “When I was a girl,” Charlotte said, “I used to dress for snow, thinking if I were ready, it would come.”

  Clark put his chin on her shoulder. “The summer that Mom, Dad, Mary, and me lived in Florida, the kids there used to ask me about snow. ‘What do you mean it doesn’t taste like anything,’ they used to say. ‘It’s got to have a taste.’ They were very upset. They also thought snow was alive. They thought you could keep it in a jar, like fireflies.”

  Below them, at the foot of the hill, two bundled figures ran across the highway and turned up the road. One figure had a sled.

  “Ha,” said Clark, “They’re going to sled down our street.”

  “That’s nuts,” said Charlotte. She shifted in his arms. “Daddy Gagliardo used to take me to the city park when I was very young, right after they brought me home to live with them. I liked going over the little wee hills, thud thud thud, that big funny man chasing after me with his dress coat on.”

  The snow was coming down at a slant by then. White currents were whipped up into the darkness, then backslid to earth. The silence of the snow
fall was now joined with the scraping of shovels. Busy voices from somewhere on the other side of the orchard. It was difficult to locate the sources of sounds, which was why, until the children were yards away, they did not hear them calling, Mr. Adair! Mr. and Mrs. A!

  The smaller figure, dressed in ski pants, slid a foot or so down the hill before the other helped him to his feet. Neither of them wore boots.

  “I know it looks crazy, us coming here in a blizzard,” shouted Judy when she was in earshot, pulling a balding scarf from her mouth, “but crazier things have been done.”

  “Maybe one or two crazier things,” laughed Clark.

  The little boy took off his Steelers knit hat. A small plastic sled was tied to his wrist like a pet.

  “Hello again,” said Charlotte.

  “Hello again,” said the kids.

  “Look at it,” said Clark. “Isn’t it gorgeous?”

  They all turned and looked back down the hill at the snow, falling over the town. The sky was titanic. Streams of taillights went out of town in glowing red lines.

  “Sometimes,” said James, “it would snow and snow without stopping. The settlers had to eat dried berries and cracked-up corn.”

  Clark smiled down at James, who was loosely reciting information from the Historical Society. He put his hand on the boy’s head. “That’s right,” he said.

  “We were sitting around doing nothing,” Judy said, “and me and Jimmy decided to get back to our roots. You know, get out in the snow.”

  “Your roots are in the snow?”

  “We’ve got Eskimo blood,” said Judy.

  “You haven’t even got boots on.”

  A gust stormed up the hill and pressed against their chests.

  “What?”

  “You haven’t even got boots on!” cried Charlotte again. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to go sledding without boots!”

  “Oh, we aren’t going sledding for fun,” Judy replied. “We came to give you another surprise.”

  “What?”

  “A present!”

  “Come inside,” shouted Clark. When they moved, they left black footprints.

  As the children sat drinking Swiss Miss, the snow worsened. A plow labored up the road, its headlights beaming in the dark afternoon. Noses were running. James had stopped to fish the marshmallows out of his chocolate, and Judy’s head was a horrendous federation of hairs, making her look, as she peered into her cup, like a child clairvoyant.