O My Darling Read online

  As if to keep the outrageous image from intruding, she put both hands on the frozen windowpane. The trees outside were laden white, as if wracked by blossom, hanging without life. The nearby houses were shuttered and dark. The street had not been plowed, but there was a large dark hole in the snow just under the window. The car was gone. She blushed, feeling foolish for hollering. She thought of how much she disliked it when Clark shouted across the house. She let the curtains collapse in front of her. What had someone said about the snow? Just yesterday, was it? Well, it’s not going to bury us.

  She shuddered. A wave of nausea sent her running to the toilet.

  The hole of the toilet stared back at her. Her memory rustled, heaved, and drew out of itself, like a cruel trick, the terrible argument of the previous night. She remembered the sound of her own pleading. The way his eyes stared back without love or mercy. Please don’t leave me here alone! She remembered his overgrown shadow retreating down the hall and how she lay there sleepless and broken, listening to the sound of his snoring in the guest room until she’d gone and taken some of his sleeping pills, which had sent her this utter insentience. But the price of the insentience, the price of sleep, she saw now, was a strange and grotesque emotion that had grown in the meantime, shocking in its pureness. She clutched her stomach and heaved. But the emotion would not disgorge.

  In a panic, she fumbled for a towel, soaked it in cold water, and buried her face inside. Then, looking at her bloated image in the mirror, she tried to smile. She was not to be trusted. After all, she was only coming down with something.

  With some spirit, she emerged from the bathroom and dressed, deciding that it did not matter what time it was. She felt too ill to go to work, and besides, nobody could be expected to go out in this. She had never seen anything quite like it before. The houses up the street were buried to the bottom windows. Coming slowly down the stairs, she noticed that it had not grown any lighter since she awoke. Rather, the blue light was deepening, as it does at dusk. Her mind trailed somewhat behind these observations. She rounded the banister and crossed the cold, dim room, getting halfway across before stopping short.

  She put her finger to her lip. What was it—the particular bareness to the room? She ran her hand across the top of the side table. Where was the silver set? Daddy Gagliardo’s brass compass? The little baubles and inheritances and even, on the bare wall, the framed photograph of Clark and Charlotte embracing on the beach? She spun around, her hands going out to touch the things that weren’t there. She put her hand on the wall where the photograph had hung. She turned around, turned around again, disbelieving. Dizzy, she collapsed in a chair.

  And then she thought of her own captured face traveling in the lap of a small child across—where did they say they would go with their daddy someday—California? She couldn’t wait for Clark to return from wherever he was, so she could gloat. She would say, See? Still think those kids are angels? Still think childhood is a bowl of cherries? A bounty? But instead of satisfaction at being right, she felt, against her will, the sting of envy. California. Theft. In her own shipwrecked childhood, she would never have thought of it. She would never have got her little orphan hands around such a plan of self-rescue. And they were sort of sweet to have bothered to steal the photograph. Come to think of it, she would not miss the silver set or the compass or any of the baubles and detritus that had trailed behind their lives until now like a string of tin cans. She heard a creaking sound and stood, expecting to see Clark walk through the front door in his snow boots. But the door did not open and she had to brace herself against a wall, hit with a fresh wave of nausea.

  Only Tecumseh came clicking across the floor from the kitchen, whimpering. He brushed against her legs. At least she was not entirely alone. To be alone—it was the worst thing imaginable.

  Outside, the dog picked his way through the snow and peed at length. Charlotte saw that above the house, a large bird was flying in great circles, making a tense, delicate call. Its white breast flashed in the dim light. She watched the bird make two careful passes over the house.

  She went back inside, to the kitchen, head in her hands, where even the wall clock was missing. The countertop gleamed with its lack of appliances. Outside, the shadow of the bird crossed the hardening snow. On the kitchen table, she discovered a note, written in a black magic marker, which had been left there, to the side, as if for her to make her useless reply. She held the paper up to her eyes. It read:

  Dear Charlotte,

  I don’t know where I’m going. I’m sorry, but I’m taking the car. Don’t worry about me. I don’t know what to write. I’ve never done anything like this before.

  I saw what the kids did. They sure took a lot of stuff. So hey, you were right. That’s unfortunate about the compass. The rest of it, God they can have it.

  When I was little I used to think that what was right would always be obvious to me. I don’t know. There’s no secret buried covenant of truth or at least I don’t know where the hell it is. Do you know?

  I love you, but I guess you think so what?

  Charlotte, maybe love just kind of rings and rings like a bell for no reason. Maybe you have to be crazy.

  Your husband,

  Clark

  Charlotte put the note down. Suddenly she felt again that she might vomit, and she stood and walked unsteadily through the house. In each corner she passed, each room, in each doorway, for one moment again she actually felt she saw him—the flash of his eyes or pretty white teeth, the disorder of his curly hair, his body collapsed in laughter—such was the strength of who he’d been when he was there. He was her husband, and sometimes his presence was confusing, but as if she had been granted some horrible wish, she now had his absence, which was completely unambiguous.

  After a while she found herself once again outside in the bracing air, standing in her slippers and nightgown on the snow-bound porch, sobbing. The wind blew hollowly down the street. Up in the sky, the darkness was now dissolving the forms of the clouds, replacing them with stars. The large bird swept across her view again, lower this time.

  “Go away!” she cried, waving her arms, as the bird made its wide, measuring circles. “Get away from here!”

  FEVER

  Several indistinct days passed and her fever grew. At first, she spent the time in front of the television in the guest bedroom. She liked the loud wheedling voices going on and on, obscuring the thumps that might have been melting off the roof but seemed in fact to be getting closer, footsteps, inside. Under her blanket, she clung to herself. She had stopped crying. The phone did not ring. She did not eat. She hustled Tecumseh out into the cold only to beat her return to the screaming television as soon as she could. The illness was in her joints and her stomach, but it also began to cloud her mind.

  Then, in one unremarkable moment, she grew too sick to watch television, too sick to be afraid, and stepped out at last into the hallway. Into the quiet aloneness. Standing there, she felt how weakened she really was. Her bones seemed to be rotting and she could barely trust them to stand. Her skin itself felt raw and fluish and extraordinarily sensitive, as delicate as the film that forms over hot milk. She shuffled down the hall to the room she was most afraid of. There, from the doorway, she gazed at their empty bed. Sheets twisted, pillows askew—the empty stage of marriage. She lay down upon it. There at last, the fever overcame her. She wondered if the heat of her body would ignite the bed sheets. She gazed at the increasingly hazy view out the bedroom window.

  Aside from being a source of true physical suffering, the fever soon began to inspire confusing thoughts—flashes, bright as day, but without context. She tossed in bed, trying to find a position that would make them cease. But in the fever’s increasingly hot smear, the images arose faster, one after the other, then flew past, leaving behind them shimmering, colored trails. Nothing—mere irrelevancies, unexplained: a hat on a bed, a bandaged finger held up for inspection, a piece of kite string. The images seemed to be coming fr
om her own mind, and yet the hat, the finger—they weren’t her own. And then, as in a symphonic movement, the soft rising of the many isolated notes of the human day: a stuttered word, tuneless humming, the squeaking sound of windows being washed. Weakened, overruled, she succumbed to these things. She no longer pined for Clark, whose continuing absence made a terrible sort of sense in this heat, and when she rolled over on the bed, the sheets peeling off her like skins, she was almost glad he was not there, hogging the mattress. When, on the edge of sleep, she heard piano music coming from the other room, she felt she finally understood where she was. She was in a museum of time. She was wandering around in the museum of discarded moments—lost, loose, left memories, brief as sighs. A cloud of baking flour bloomed in the air. Spilled milk ticked off a countertop. Daffodils. Excited footsteps. The clicking of a caliper or knitting needles. The bitter smell of orange rinds. An argument about Canada. A paper airplane. A man calling Maaaarion, Maaaarion, very softly, as if trying to wake somebody. Charlotte felt a great tenderness wash over her. For that moment she did not care where the moments came from. They were lovely; the air was dense with them. She reached up to touch a child’s mobile that was now spinning overhead. Just as she felt the satisfying roundness of the mirrored circles, the drunken laughter resounded down the hall. Glass shattered. Charlotte turned her head bitterly away.

  “Leave me alone now,” she muttered, turning over on the mattress. “Just go away.”

  But through the fibers of the pillow that vainly covered her ears, she could still hear: an amorous sigh, a jangled key ring, a struggle to lift something large. And gradually, very pronounced entire sentences: Great, Evelyn. You throw my shoe at me and I have to go after it. And, elsewhere, Save some hot water for me, Manny, why don’t you. A crow yawed at the window. A pogo stick persisted in the street. Do you love me all the time? Yes, came the soft reply. All the time. A conductor’s wand kept time against the edge of a piano. Out of breath now, Charlotte surfaced to see the second hand of the clock inching around the face. Beyond that, on the bedside table, the bottle of aspirin. In a moment of lucidity, she sought the bottle with her hand. Trembling, she tried to shake out a couple tablets. But none came out. She looked into the bottle, then threw it empty on the floor.

  “Clark,” she groaned. “Go get me some medicine. I need something for the flu.”

  “There’s nothing you can do for the flu,” said Clark, poking his head out of the bathroom. “You know that. You just have to suffer through it.”

  “Oh yeah?” she said. “Well, I’ll make you suffer too.”

  “I bet you will.”

  “You probably gave it to me, you bum.”

  Clark’s head disappeared behind the door.

  “Oh yeah?” he said from inside the bathroom. “Then how come I’m not sick too?”

  “I don’t know,” said Charlotte. “That’s your diabolical secret.”

  She rolled her head on the pillow, smiled at the bathroom door.

  “It even hurts to smile,” she said. “Clarkie?”

  She could hear the tapping of his razor against the sink.

  “Come on out and fuss over me. Please? Just for a second? You always make me feel better when you fuss over me. Clark?”

  “I suppose,” sighed the woman, “we could always repaint.”

  Charlotte turned quickly. Next to her on the bed was a woman just about her own age, lying dressed, with her arms over her head. Her golden hair was bobbed and she played thoughtfully with her bangs.

  “What did you say?” Charlotte asked the woman.

  The woman took a lump of something waxy out of her skirt and fingered it, not responding. A tall, broad-faced man in a black turtleneck came to the doorway. He hesitated for a moment outside the room and looked in at the young woman. “Sure we can,” he said gently. “We can make the best of this.”

  The woman said nothing, staring at her cube of wax.

  “The best of what?” asked Charlotte.

  “Sweetheart,” the man continued, leaning against the doorway. “Why always the sad thoughts, at yourself day and night? Don’t you like this house?”

  “It’s strange,” said the woman. “I don’t ever feel as if I’m alone. It’s the strangest sensation.” Charlotte felt the woman shudder beside her. “It’s a sad house, Bobby,” murmured the woman. “There’s too much caught in it.”

  “Well, it’s a starter home,” said the man, trying to smile. “It’s just for starters.”

  When the woman did not laugh, the man entered the room.

  “I’m sorry, Marion,” he said, a faint lilt to his voice. “I’m sorry I can’t give you everything you want. But I love you. Couples who love each other get through all sorts of things. Why, we’ve only just gotten started. We’re just at the beginning. Isn’t that exciting?”

  The woman turned her head. She and Charlotte faced one another for an instant.

  “No,” said the woman. “I can’t feel it.”

  Then the man whirled around and struck the bedroom wall with his fist. He leaned back from the broken plaster, cradling his hand.

  “Jesus, Marion,” shouted the man, his eyes wet with tears. “Jesus, quit blaming everyone else. Don’t you get it? We have to make ourselves happy. We’re the gods of our own life! We could do anything.” He looked at his wounded hand, then he looked back at the woman on the bed. Charlotte sat up now, reaching out. “The question is,” the man said, “are you brave enough?”

  “Yes!” cried Charlotte. “She is. Aren’t you—”

  She turned, but the woman was no longer lying beside her. Now there was a banging on the front door that was startling, and a woman’s voice screaming from the front of the house: Jason, goddamn it, let me in. I’ll stand here and scream! This whole stupid neighborhood will hear me again! Charlotte stood up and ran to the door of the bedroom. Then the woman’s voice could be heard again, more intimately, Jason, please. I love you. Open the door.

  Now Charlotte was running down the hallway, but the hall was endless, with dozens of rooms full of people conferring and fighting and sitting in silence. Through one doorway, an adolescent girl sat at a desk, the trash can beside her filled with crumpled pink stationary. In his corner, a red-haired infant furiously rattled the bars of his crib. A young woman crossed the room, holding out a dress, saying, “I can’t wait to see their faces when we tell them. Save some hot water for me, Manny, why don’t you.” Just then a shoe sailed over Charlotte’s head and slapped against the staircase wall. She whirled around to see a middle-aged man in pleated dress pants and undershirt come out of the bedroom and stare after the shoe. “Great, Evelyn,” the man muttered. “You throw my shoe at me and I have to go run after it.” He turned and looked at Charlotte. “Well, is there anything else you’d like to throw at me, as long as I’m standing here?”

  Charlotte steadied herself against the banister. She heard a voice, further down the hall, in faint conversation, “So now you want to break my heart?”

  “I can’t break it. That’s what I’m saying.”

  “But you can break it. Please don’t. Please come back to bed.”

  Cautiously, cautiously, Charlotte inched back down the hall, looking around each doorway. Could she bear to see herself as a moment—wretched, abandoned, on the bed? She turned the corner of the very room. But there, barely making a dent on the bed’s edge, sat a girl of eight or nine, holding a hand mirror. With her other hand, she brushed her long, yellow hair. Hair the color of sugar corn. The brush made soft hushing sounds as she pulled it through. The girl appraised herself in the hand mirror. She flashed a crooked smile. Outside, it was raining. The silver rain filled the window. Charlotte stepped closer to hear what the girl was singing. Oh wasn’t it a bit of luck that I was born a baby duck. With yellow socks and yellow shoes so I may go wherever I chose. Just then, downstairs, the phone began to ring. Suddenly, as if she was not sick at all, Charlotte spun around and ran down the stairs toward it.

  “Coming!�
�� she cried. “Wait! Wait!”

  Dashing into the kitchen, she picked up the telephone.

  “Clark!” she cried. “Is that you?”

  “Is it,” the voice said tentatively, “who?”

  “Have you found Clark?” Now she was smiling radiantly. She looked down at the counter and her hair hung in wet, sweaty spirals around her face. This was good, she knew. She was sweating out the fever. “I really… need to… talk to him.”

  “No, silly,” said the voice. “It’s me.”

  Charlotte swallowed, breathing hard. She rubbed her eyes with the palm of her hand. Over the sound of her breathing, the regularized sound of machinery echoed through a large hall.

  “Mommy,” said the woman. “It’s Mommy. They gave Mommy a little break to call you at home. ’Cause you’re sick. Is Grammy taking good care of you?”

  Then, as if summoned to the task, Charlotte began to cry.

  “Oh sweetie,” said the woman. “Don’t cry. What’s the matter?”

  Charlotte cried now with great sobs. Tears fell on the countertop and she shook from exertion. She almost laughed. She literally could not stop herself now.

  “It’s all right, baby. It’ll be all right,” soothed the voice on the telephone. “Why don’t you get yourself a washcloth and put it under the cold water. Can you reach? Yes? Put it against your face.”

  Trembling, Charlotte obeyed. She wet a dishrag under the kitchen faucet, and pressed it to her forehead.

  “How about after you ask Grammy to get you some warm milk,” said the woman. “Doesn’t that sound good, Charlotte honey? Can you say ‘milk’ to Grammy?”

  Charlotte wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and nodded. She stood listening to the voice and then she closed her eyes. She took a deep breath.