His car was a powder-blue Mercedes. Well, I suppose he is quite rich. He drew up soundlessly and peered toward the house, and I pushed the children out before he could honk and attract Jeremy’s attention. “Hurry, now,” I said. “Give me the baby, Darcy. Don’t forget that basket. Where’s my purse?” I was preceded by a parade of belongings, like some pampered movie star. Children, grocery bags, stuffed animals — I was padded with belongings. I felt I should apologize to Brian for having so many children, but during the first few minutes he was out loading things into the trunk and I was passing around Dramamine tablets. I had forgotten who was prone to car sickness; we so rarely drove. I gave Abbie a tablet by accident and then made her spit it out again. “Oh look,” I told her, “you ought to know if you get sick or not—” All of which helped me get over being embarrassed in front of Brian. I knew that he must be shocked at me. I have a very clear picture of how I appear to others: I am so big and slow and unexcitable, and women like that don’t act on impulse. They never leave people, certainly. Now when he was back in the car and maneuvering the rush hour traffic he kept throwing me sideways glances, maybe worrying that I would burst into tears or list all my grievances or spill some dark secret that he didn’t want to hear. I didn’t, of course. I kept the tears away by refusing to look behind me all the while that our house was in sight — that narrow, funny, lovable house with its potty bay window and the children’s old tattered construction paper Valentines glued to the upstairs panes and the dead Christmas tree on its side in front, dripping tinsel, waiting all these months to be collected — and who knows, maybe Jeremy drawing back a frayed lace curtain high on the third floor and peering out, dim and cloudlike, trying to understand what I had done to him.
What was my purpose, sailing away in this ridiculous baby-blue car?
We headed out through stretches of Baltimore that I had only seen once or twice before in my life, rowhouses layered over with ugly new formstone, dead-looking saplings scattered along a divided street so wide and gray that looking at it seemed to bleach my eyes. Meanwhile the children said nothing. I had never known them to keep so quiet for so long. They sat in a row in back, each of them framed by stuffed-in bits and pieces that couldn’t fit into the trunk. They gazed dreamily out the windows. Maybe they were in a state of shock, suffering through an experience I would never be able to erase. Maybe they were just admiring the view. Who knows? Children live in such a mist. I believe that most of what happens comes as a total surprise to them even when you think you’ve explained it. I said, “Abbie? Are you comfortable? Pippi?” They looked at me blankly, then looked away again. Hannah wet her finger and drew an H on the windowpane.
“In a week or so it will be spring,” Brian told me. “Then would be a good time for you to be out there.”
“It’s a good time now,” I said. “It’s spring now.”
“This morning I could see my breath.”
“We’re not made of glass, you know.”
“Mary, that cabin is no better than sleeping out. Maybe you’ve forgotten. There’s no heat, no—”
“I remember that,” I said, “but it’s the only place I know of to go.” Then I saw his face close over, braced for me to begin my story. I said, “And I certainly do thank you. Last time we were there the children loved it.”
The closed look didn’t fade. He said, “Tell me this, Mary. How long were you planning to stay?”
“Well, I hadn’t made any definite plans yet.” I mean—
“Probably not long,” I said. I felt I had to help him out.
“I hope you don’t mind my asking, but do you have enough money?”
“Oh yes,” I said.
“Because if you don’t, now—”
“Brian, you know better than anyone that Jeremy’s just sold four pieces,” I said.
Actually the little money Jeremy had made was still in the bank, and I had left the checkbook on his bureau, where he would be sure to find it. I wasn’t a genuine burglar. What I took was my household-hints money, my money-back-offer money, my coupon money, which I had been saving against trouble all these years as I once promised myself I would. It had mounted up. Fifty dollars for telling how I use old bottle crates to make spice racks, twenty-five for the third-best recipe based on sliced pasteurized processed cheese food and a dollar back for ten labels off canned beans. The money was in a plastic refrigerator container in my purse, and I reached in to touch it and felt strong and competent and too big for the car. Never mind, children; I might carry you away without ever saying why but at least I will be with you, and I will provide for you. I learned my lesson the first time around. Women should never leave any vacant spots for the men to fill; they should form an unbroken circle on their own and enclose each child within it.
We passed barren stretches now, where the fields had been peeled back and naked buildings sat on jagged slabs of concrete, looking as if they had recently been uprooted from some more crowded place. We passed long avenues of service stations and cut-rate tire dealers and machine shops, and then oil refineries and warehouses and strange mechanical monsters standing alone in tangles of dry grass — electrical objects on wiry, spraddled legs, tanks and cylinders, gigantic motors with bolts as big as grown men and twisted black pipes that could suck up a house, all silent and unused. The cars around us now were rusted and crumpled, fantastically finned, driven by gum-chewing men; we were close to the Bethlehem Steel Works. “Look!” said Pippi. “Country!” and she pointed to a matted gray line of tree branches far, far beyond an auto graveyard. “When we get to the river, can we swim?” she asked.
“Philippa Pauling! You’d get pneumonia.”
“Typhoid, more likely,” said Brian. “Bubonic plague.” He looked over at me. I thought he might be about to smile, although it was hard to tell beneath that beard of his. And the children were perking up too — pointing out sights on the road and quarreling over whose turn it was at the window. The junkyards gave way to houses, all tiny and papery-looking but with signs of real people in them, at least. Wooden donkeys pulled wooden carts across the front yards, and there were bird baths and flowered mailboxes and silvery balls on pedestals everywhere we looked. Some people had set up housekeeping in trailers with cement bases built in under them. Now, why would anyone want to do that? All those temporary objects resting on permanent foundations? Well, maybe it was just my mood that made me wonder. I felt like a solid stone house, myself, jacked up on little tiny wheels when I had no business going anywhere.
Now the space between neighbors grew larger and we passed through woods — scrubby and meager, but woods all the same. We turned off onto a gravel road lined with more houses, most of them smaller than the boats that sat in the driveways. Cabin cruisers — ugly things. I never could see why some people like boating so much. I’ve never cared for the water at all, not one way or the other.
To get to Brian’s house you go straight down to the river, through a cluster of bleak shacks and a store and a long shed where they do repair work in the wintertime. There were only a few boats tied up at the docks. The season had hardly begun. We went plummeting along a dirt road that ran alongside the water, and then Brian braked and we looked up to see his cabin: a gray weathered rectangle with a tin roof, and not a perfect right angle anywhere on it. Everything was sagging, leaning, buckling, splitting. The tops of both steps were missing; anyone entering would find himself stepping into wooden boxes, sinking down into cold black spidery caverns. I knew all that ahead of time, of course. I had meant what I told Brian. But still! There are some things you can’t actually summon up in your memory — smells, they say (although I always could) and then the exact atmosphere, the weight and texture and quality of air, that exists in certain places. I knew that Brian’s shack was dismal but I had forgotten how just standing next to it would make you feel dank and chilled, a despairing feeling, and how when you went in some heaviness would press down on your skin and cause your heart to sink. This is not just myself I am talking about. The minute we were inside Brian reached out and touched my arm, unnecessarily, as if the gesture had been startled out of him. “Mary!” he said. “You can’t stay here.”