The boy went to college in late August. Burf and Arlene watched his games on TV, and Burf thought that maybe the girl would see Horace play and write to him. Write to him, Burf thought, don’t forget. Find her, Arlene thought.
Only Believe
Elizabeth was back for the last three months of school, sooty eyes and lank hair, but back. She wouldn’t look at Max, lurching through the halls like a wounded man. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, crusty and egg-shaped behind his glasses, and she drew in her breath when his hands came too close. He was functionally drunk every weekend and putting vodka in his orange juice at breakfast. He got himself to work, he kissed his children without exhaling, he gave a passing grade to any student whose parents would have come in to complain. He didn’t fall down, he didn’t break things, and he refused to drive with the boys for fear of killing them. Greta would not get in a car with him after four o’clock on Friday. The boys rode their bicycles into town, and Greta had begun to give Dan money for groceries. Max couldn’t do other than what he was doing, so he bought Dan a wire basket for his bike and all the comic books he wanted.
“Hey there, Elizabeth, welcome back. How’ve you been? Have you finished that paper on Edith Wharton?” Manic with despair, he sounded nothing like himself; the voice he’d used with her and hundreds of students and their parents and his own children, the sound of compassionate authority, shriveled in his throat. Rachel stood guard three feet away.
Elizabeth shook her head at Rachel, who edged a little farther down the hall and sat at the bottom of the staircase.
“I’m okay. I lost the baby.”
“I know. I’m so sorry, sweetheart. Was it awful?”
He tried to steer them toward his office, but she clung to the wall like a hostage.
“No, I lost the baby. It died. I didn’t have to have it killed.”
Max reached up, pulling handfuls of air.
“You miscarried?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, so am I. I’m sure the baby’s sorry too.”
And Max kept talking just to talk. Trying to turn what they had into a bold, star-crossed romance, love’s honorable defeat, as if the two of them had wept in each other’s lap on the floor of Mrs. Hill’s kitchen. Elizabeth said nothing. She saw his thoughts and closed her eyes. Max kissed her forehead, kissed her right through her unwashed bangs, and leaned back against the wall beside her.
“Where’s the boy?”
She shrugged, and he thought it would be nothing to break her jaw.
“The boy. The boy who got you pregnant. Where is he?”
“He’s gone. His father sent him away.”
“Well, I’m still here, sweetheart. You call me if you need me. Just call me.”
Elizabeth slid along the cinder-block wall, shouting, “I’m coming. Wait up,” and when she was halfway down the hall and safe by Rachel’s side, she called back to him, “Uh-uh. No thanks, Mr. Stone. Thanks anyway.”
And he saw her speak quickly to Rachel, her arm around her friend’s waist, and they glanced back at him and broke into sharp, disbelieving laughter.
Max had thought of affairs, normal men’s affairs, as a kind of Tabasco for the ego and libido, a little zip for the everyday burgers and scrambled eggs. His own affairs now seemed impossibly lighthearted and kind, the motels pink-and-gold operetta sets, all unhappiness and endings hidden by heavy, friendly thighs around his waist, a good-natured soft throat swallowing wine, a slightly slack belly becoming round and tight under his fingers. This, this girl, was poisoned water in a thousand-mile desert, and he must drink and know he’s dying.
That first terrible summer without her, two years ago, he drank Scotch until the back of his head pressed so tightly on the front and his mouth was such a compost heap that he had to stop for three days, and then he switched to dry white wine, buying it by the case. He felt good whenever he saw one of the pretty labels in a restaurant or at someone else’s house, and he told people it was a great wine for the price. (Not that Max and Greta were invited much anymore. Max had always been the charmer, the half of the couple that people wanted to have over. A sad, charmless drunk and a religious agoraphobic are not much in demand at dinner parties and barbecues.) He felt, as drunks do, that if other people drank the stuff for legitimate reasons, he might, too.
After the formal yielding to Mrs. Hill and his conscience, vanquished in that overstuffed blue parlor, he had stayed away, hoping that such visible goodness would be rewarded, that he would become who he had been. Elizabeth had stayed away for months more, finally walking into his office with a handsome Italian boy, with carefully torn T-shirt, incomprehensible speech, and long black curls. Max thought, He’s not really her boyfriend, she’s just hired him for the afternoon, to torture me for staying away from her, which I had no right to do and which I swear to God I will never do again.
So beautiful, Max thought. Am I supposed to be ashamed for being such a dirty old man, another Humbert, disgusting in my obsession? I try to imagine the man who would not love her, the cold-hearted pervert who could look at her without passion. My deadpan baby doll, as beautiful as the day, and when I compliment her on the arrangement of red roses appliqued across the ass of her jeans, she blushes so deeply the sheer white of her T-shirt pinkens. I know she’s only fifteen, for Christ’s sake. I offend myself, never mind the world. Fifteen. I looked at her the first time and I wanted to pull her to me and make love to her with such tenderness and skill that even God would forgive me. And then I would kill myself, because I know I would never be forgiven, least of all by myself.
Instead of saying that every time he saw her his thoughts were of gentle fucking and violent death, Max shook Tony DiMusio’s small hand and made pleasant, avuncular inquiries. Tony demonstrated interest in Max’s stick-shift Volkswagen, and they argued equably about cheap versus expensive cars (Elizabeth and Tony thought cheap was morally superior; Max had been poor and they had not) and stick-shifts versus automatics (they shared a preference for stick-shifts, even though Elizabeth and Tony didn’t drive).
They didn’t talk about literature; Max assumed that Tony didn’t read. He knew Tony could make out street signs and menus without assistance, but he didn’t read. And he hated Bob Dylan (Elizabeth had made Max listen to Bringing It All Back Home eleven times just last year, and what he did not find sophomoric and obvious amused him, even as he was tempted to point out to Elizabeth all of her Wunderkinds plagiarism), because Dylan was so fuckin’ serious, man, and Tony’s life ambition was to own a cherry-red Porsche with four on the floor, man, and just groove. So Max knew just what they had in common and knew why she’d brought Tony for a visit, and he played dumb through to the end, expressing admiration for Porsches, disdain for Bob Dylan, and best wishes for their future happiness. He believed, furiously, that he had acquitted himself well, even admirably, and that Elizabeth got what she came for.
Tony’s hand was on the doorknob and Elizabeth had dropped her flat-lipped kiss on Max’s cheek when Max surprised them all with a wild cruel lie: Greta and I are thinking about having another baby, I think we really will. Elizabeth lost her color and left, and Max had another year of no Elizabeth at all, in which to repent.
A whole year in which to slide right out of the Little League games, clarinet lessons, food fights, animal-filled movies, and endless doctor appointments that make up family life, into a sea of terror and lust so bright it seemed like the love of penitents for the Lord. Danny played two sports every season. Benjie, who would become Ben by the end of the next year, sat in the corner of whatever room Max was in and watched him. Benjie was Max’s conscience, the repository of his own burnished childhood virtues and the one who got the five-dollar bill Max waved around for assistance before he lay down on the couch. Benjie took the five bucks, untied his father’s shoes, and put a pillow under his head. Benjie had three accidents on his bike, breaking his arm, his collarbone, and two ribs, and each time he winked up at the doctors with Max’s own look of jovial despair. Marc hid candy in his room and drew small-headed superheroes and screaming girls.