The Amateur Marriage Read online

“I have to know when to come and get you, Pagan.”

  Pagan thought about it. Then he said, “Why don’t I just walk back to Grandma’s whenever I’m done. Me and the guys might go to Keith’s house after, and you’d have to drive me to Grandma’s all over again this evening. So why not say you’ll just leave me off now for the week.”

  “What about your things?” Michael asked.

  “Everything I need is at Grandma’s. It’s just clothes and stuff at your place.”

  “Okay.”

  Michael stopped at the foot of the hill. It was a long, gentle slope—not really breakneck at all—leading from a wooded ridge to the northern boundary of Elmview Acres. Colorful little figures dotted the expanse of white, climbing up or coasting down on sleds and plastic saucers and sheets of cardboard. It looked like a scene from a Christmas card, and after Pagan had set off with his sled Michael sat a while taking it in.

  Now where?

  Anna would be getting ready to leave for her concert. He still had time to drive back to her house and offer to go with her, if he wanted. But he didn’t. Let her go by herself, if she was miffed with him. Let her be as independent as she liked!

  He shifted gears and pulled onto the road and headed for home.

  She could be off-putting, on occasion. She could be almost too honest; not that honesty was a flaw. “What did you used to think of me, back when we were young?” he’d asked once, and she had said, “Why, I didn’t think anything, really.” He had been offended, although he knew that was unreasonable of him. Of course she hadn’t thought anything! He was merely a chance acquaintance, the boyfriend of a casual friend. But he almost wished that she had lied; or not lied, exactly, but fooled herself. “I always did sense that there was something special about you.” Anna Grant, however, was not a woman who fooled herself.

  He turned into his parking lot and parked on the bare rectangle his car had occupied during the night. Most of the other cars were still buried in snow. It was a Sunday, after all; people hadn’t needed to get out. He pictured those young married couples sleeping late, eating in, snuggling close on the couch as they read or watched TV. But he himself had more in common with the widow ladies, he thought as he stumbled through the snow, all alone, to his empty, echoing apartment.

  When he walked in his front door it seemed that the smell of sleep had spread from Pagan’s room throughout the entire place. And Pagan’s history homework still lay scattered across the coffee table; so it wasn’t true that he had all he needed with him at Pauline’s. Now Michael would be expected to gather it up and make a special trip to Pauline’s before school. Damned if he would, though. Let Pagan deal with that on his own! It was no affair of Michael’s.

  He sat a while in the armchair, looking out the living-room window even though all he could see was sky. It occurred to him that he had no hobbies. No interests. Nothing to do. How had he filled the time before he met Anna?

  Forget about Anna.

  He was used to bringing home a newspaper from his store and therefore had none today, when the store was closed. And the effort of standing up to switch on the TV seemed insurmountable.

  At three-thirty, when the phone rang, he was still sitting idle in the armchair. He started and then stared at the phone while it rang again and then again, six rings in all without his lifting a finger. Served her right. But when the phone went silent he thought, Wait! He sat sharply forward. He’d made a terrible mistake. He stood up, already moving toward the phone to dial her number—”Did you call? I was in the bathroom,” he’d say—when it started ringing again. He lunged for it. “Hello?”

  “Michael?”

  “Oh, hello, Anna.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Obviously, I’m at home.”

  “I mean . . . I was expecting we’d get together after the concert.”

  “I had something to do.”

  “Oh.”

  A little pause.

  “Well, should I come to your place?” she asked. “Have you collected Pagan yet?”

  “No, I won’t need to. He’s going to walk to Pauline’s when he’s done sledding,” Michael said.

  So that Anna was forced to ask again, “So should I just . . . come to your place?”

  “I’ve got an awful lot to catch up on,” he said. “Why don’t we skip it.”

  “Oh. All right.”

  “The world won’t end if we fail to get together every single evening!”

  “That’s true,” she said, after a moment.

  “Okay, then. Bye,” he said, and he replaced the receiver.

  Then he went into his bedroom and settled at his desk and paid his bills. Sealed the envelopes. Pounded stamps onto the corners. Jerked out all his drawers and cleaned them, throwing away old circulars and paper clips and rubber bands and business cards.

  After that he went to the kitchen and cooked himself an actual, time-consuming meal. He boiled rice and he blended several canned soups and stews to form a sort of goulash that he ladled on top. He cut up vegetables for a salad—unfortunately a larger salad than he needed, once he’d combined what he’d chopped, but he ate every bit of it anyhow. He ate standing at the counter, forking the salad straight from the salad bowl and the goulash straight from the saucepan. Then he cleaned the kitchen. Then he went back to the living room and turned on the TV.

  Shortly after eleven, while he was watching the late news, his doorbell rang. He rose to peer through the peephole. Anna’s face was small and distinct and, he thought, expressionless, but when he opened the door he saw that tears had made shiny trails down her cheeks. He said, “Anna?”

  “I don’t know why you’re behaving this way,” she told him. “I don’t know what’s made you angry.” She stepped inside, wearing a quilted red jacket that he hadn’t seen before, keeping her arms crossed over her chest. “I thought we were having a perfectly nice Sunday together, and now you don’t want to be with me!”

  He said, “That’s not true, Anna. Of course I want to be with you.” Then all at once he was horrified. “My God,” he said, “what have I done? I didn’t mean to hurt you! Anna, don’t cry. Please,” he said. He’d never seen her cry before. He wrapped his arms around her and led her into the room. “Please, Anna . . . here, have a seat. Oh, God, where’s the Kleenex? Please don’t cry!”

  He placed her on the couch and settled next to her, trying to take her hands except that she was digging the heels of her palms into her eyes. “Please. Please,” he kept saying. He hugged her. “You have to listen to me. I don’t know what was wrong with me. I’ve been just sort of crazy all day; I jumped to all kinds of crazy conclusions. I think maybe I’m just . . . unsure of you. We’re in such an unsure relationship. Always juggling our time, spending our nights apart when Pagan’s here . . . I think we ought to get married.”

  Anna gave a little snorting laugh as if she didn’t take him seriously, but he said, “No, I mean it.” And he did. “Just so this won’t happen anymore!” he said. “These strains, these misunderstandings, each of us not certain of the other . . . Please, Anna. Marry me.”

  She lowered her hands and drew away and looked at him. Her face was wet and her lashes were damp and the whites of her eyes were pink. She drew a shaky breath and said, “Well. Maybe you’re right.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “I guess,” she said.

  “You’ll marry me?”

  “I guess.”

  “Oh, Anna, you won’t regret it! I’m going to take such good care of you!”

  And he gathered her close again.

  He should have been the happiest man in the world at that moment. But even as she relaxed in his arms he felt a kind of leftover, lingering ache. It seemed that somehow this day had done some damage, not to her but to himself, or maybe to the two of them.

  8. A Cooler Spot on the Pillow

  It was ironic that Pauline overslept, because all night long she had wished for morning. At one point, surfacing from an edgy half-dream abou
t a bill she’d neglected to pay, she had been relieved to see that her alarm clock read 6:10—an acceptable time to get up. But the room had seemed strangely dark, and when she checked the clock again she’d realized that it was actually 2:30. She had groaned and thrown off her blanket, turned onto her back, yawned aloud, retrieved the blanket (it was April, a betwixt-and-between time of year), switched to her side . . . and all at once it was nearly nine and the world had started without her. She could hear the Bennett children next door jumping on their trampoline, and the garbage men clanging trash cans in the distance, and, oh, Lord, she’d forgotten to put the garbage in the alley for the Saturday pickup. She hauled herself out of bed and went over to the window, pried two slats of the blind apart and saw the tail of the garbage truck just disappearing around the bend. Carrie Bennett was planting pansies in the plot between their backyards, and the sun was a bright, warm yellow and much too high in the sky.

  Then she couldn’t get any hot water. What on earth? She stood naked on the bath mat, one hand reaching behind the shower curtain to test the temperature, for one whole minute and then for two. Stone cold. There were days when she felt this house was out to get her. She turned off the water and considered awhile. All she knew about hot water was that it came from a tank in the basement. And it was heated by gas—a scary, invisible substance. What if gas were flooding the basement at this very moment?

  Pagan was away at college, and she didn’t like to phone Michael because his wife might answer. It would have to be George. She checked the clock once more as she tied her bathrobe sash, and then she sat down on her bed and dialed George’s number.

  “Hello?” Samantha said.

  Oh, goody. Pauline felt a little rush of happiness just at the sound of Sam’s voice. She said, “Hi, sweetheart! It’s Grandma.”

  “Hello, Grandma,” Samantha said. She was one of those comically middle-aged children—eleven going on forty, with a self-assured, declarative manner. “Guess what, we’re getting a puppy,” she said.

  “A puppy! I thought Jojo was allergic.”

  “He is, but Mom read in the newspaper that even allergic kids can have poodles, because poodles don’t get dandruff.”

  “I didn’t know any dogs got dandruff,” Pauline said. “Can that be right? And poodles: aren’t they sort of high-strung?”

  “Not the big kind. Mom’s done research. Also poodles are one of the most intelligent breeds and they’re especially known for—”

  “Pauline?” Sally broke in.

  “Oh, hi, Sally. I was just—”

  “I hate to interrupt your conversation, but we have an appointment with this dog lady out in Phoenix.”

  “Yes, Samantha was just telling me, you’re getting a poodle! Isn’t that exciting!”

  “Can we call you back this afternoon?”

  “Well, actually I wanted to speak to George about a household emergency.”

  “George has gone to the hardware store. Tell you what, I’ll leave him a note to phone you when he gets in. Okay? Bye, now.”

  There was a click. Pauline was left holding a dead receiver. She couldn’t help but feel hurt, a little, although she knew that Sally was merely in a rush.

  She phoned Karen. “Karen?”

  “Oh, hello, Mom.”

  “The most upsetting development: I don’t have any hot water.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I went to take a shower and the water just ran cold, never even got to lukewarm.”

  “Well, gosh. Maybe you should call the electric company.”

  “It’s not electric, though. It’s gas. At least, I’m pretty sure it is.”

  “So? The gas and electric company; they’re the same thing. Look, Mom, I’ve got to run. I’m late for a meeting at work and I haven’t had my breakfast.”

  “It’s Saturday! You don’t work on Saturday!”

  “Not usually, no, but if we don’t get on this case a whole family’s going to be evicted by Monday morning, so . . .”

  “Oh, fine. Go, then,” Pauline said, and she hung up.

  Far be it from her to take Karen away from her precious Poor People.

  Unshowered, unshampooed, irritable and hungry, Pauline dug through her bureau drawer for lingerie. It was at times like this that she especially missed Lindy. Lindy had always been the most sympathetic of her three children, the most watchful and attuned, whereas Karen was too wrapped up in saving mankind and George was, face it, under the thumb of that Sally. (Illogically, she knew, Pauline blamed George for not being there when she phoned.) The pair of them; what a disappointment they were!

  Whenever somebody warned Pauline that an experience would be difficult—complicated or painful or requiring great stores of patience—her answer was “Are you kidding? I’ve had children!”

  She stepped into a pair of slacks and pulled a T-shirt over her head. This past couple of years she’d been wearing her hair cut very short and fluffy, but since she hadn’t been able to wash it this morning it clung too closely to her scalp and made her look like a monk. She ran a brush through it with brisk, snappy strokes, frowning into the mirror. The underside of her upper arms reminded her of their old Dodge’s felt ceiling, which had somehow come unstuck from the roof and used to hang down in loose swags.

  It never failed to amaze her that she was sixty-four years old now. Sixty-four sounded to her like some other person’s age.

  She padded barefoot to the kitchen and turned on the stove, braced for disaster, but the burner lit right away; so the water heater’s problem couldn’t be the fault of the gas line. What, then? She thought about going down to the basement but decided against it. Instead she started a pot of coffee, poured herself a glass of orange juice, and put two slices of bread in the toaster. Really, she reflected (settling with her orange juice at the sunlit kitchen table, curling her feet around her chair rungs), things were not so bad. It was going to be as warm as summer today, and the trees were sprouting green stars of new leaves, and the chittering of the birds outside the window gave her hope that there might be a nest in her little dogwood this spring. She loved her house. The children had urged her to move to an apartment after the divorce, but she’d lived here so many years—thirty-six come September—she couldn’t imagine feeling comfortable anywhere else. Even its dated elements soothed her: the kidney-shaped coffee table in the living room, the out-of-synch “Colonial-style” maple cobbler’s bench in the foyer, the rec room’s ridiculous built-in brick TV niche too shallow for a color TV. She could have redecorated if she wanted, but why would she? She could remember when every piece of furniture had been her dream possession, pored over in magazines for months ahead, scrimped and saved for. It would have broken her heart to see it all out in the alley waiting for the bulk-trash collector.

  She wasn’t like some people, who could toss away the past without a backward glance.

  Her sister Sherry called. Still the baby of the family at age fifty-six, she was ever ready to throw a tantrum over one thing or another, and today it was the dry cleaner. “I walk in, I tell the man I’ve brought six sweaters. He asks me where’s my ticket. I say, ‘What do you mean, where’s my ticket? I’m just now bringing these in!’ He says, ‘You brought six sweaters, you told me. What was I supposed to conclude?’ All short-tempered and crabby, like I was the one at fault.”

  Pauline tsk-tsked. She said, “You’ll never guess—”

  “This is the very same cleaner that gave me the wrong dress that time, a nasty unbecoming magenta, size twenty-two. Twenty-two! I ask you! I almost think it was deliberate.”

  “I have no hot water,” Pauline said.

  “Hmm?”

  “I got up this morning, went to take my shower, and not a thing came out but cold.”

  “I had that happen once.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I don’t know; Pete took care of it.”

  Pauline said, “Oh.”

  “Or probably it was the plumber,” Sherry went on blithely, �
��but Pete was the one who called him.”

  “Nice for you,” Pauline said.

  “What? Oh, honey, I’m sorry; I wasn’t thinking. Oh, it’s awful that you have to see to these things by yourself! It’s just not fair! You want me to try and wake Pete?”

  “No, that’s okay. George is supposed to phone me as soon as he’s back from the hardware store.”

  “I don’t know how you can bear it,” Sherry said. “I would be so mad! I’d be calling Michael up and saying, ‘Get over here this instant, you rat!’”

  “Now, now,” Pauline said. It made her feel sublimely tolerant when Sherry went on the way she did. “Really I’ve gotten past all that,” she said. “Well, I’d be pretty bad off if I hadn’t! I’ve moved on. I’m not going to waste my energy nursing grudges.”

  “You’re amazing,” Sherry told her.

  Pauline said, “It’s not so hard.” And she meant it. Over the years, she had lost her rancor toward Michael. Or maybe she’d just expended it all, worn it out with overuse. She could tell herself, nowadays, that she might very well be better off without him; for what kind of man would discard a whole marriage on the basis of one little quarrel? His problem was that he was not a forgiver. Things were so permanent, with Michael. Words once said could not be unsaid; deeds could not be undone. So there he was, stuck forever with that stiff-faced, dull-faced Anna.

  Pauline would have to admit that she did still hold a grudge against Anna.

  When the doorbell rang she thought for a moment that George might have come in person, but it was one of those itinerant workmen who stopped by in the spring and the fall. “Want me to clean your gutters? They’re a mess,” he said, but Pauline said, “No, thanks. Theoretically, I have a roofer who does that.”

  “Theoretically?” he said. He laughed. He turned to a teenage boy hanging back at the curb and called, “Lady’s having her gutters cleaned ‘theoretically’; never mind.”

  So Pauline didn’t ask if he knew anything about water heaters, which she’d half planned to do when she saw who it was. “Thanks anyway,” she said with as much dignity as possible, and she closed the door in his face.