The Breakdown Lane by Jacquelyn Mitchard
Leo got up and walked over to my mom. He put his hands up through her long hair as she stood there, with her arms locked at her sides. “The softest hair I ever felt,” he said. “Julieanne. My girl.” She grabbed his wrists.
“Please, Leo,” she begged him, “please don’t. I ask this of you. I’ve never asked anything serious of you. Look at Aury. Please.” He picked up his huge panier with the big frame and hefted it onto his back.
“Don’t you know how this feels to me, Julie?” he asked, in genuine wonder. “I’m scared to death.”
“Awwww, shit, Leo, it must really suck,” my mom said, dropping her hands, suddenly no longer pleading.
“Well, it does, Julie.”
“You ought to be going to a nice, big hospital with cheerful wallpaper, Leo,” my mom said. “Either that, or you are the most coldhearted—”
“Take care of your mother, guys,” he said to us.
“That would be, uh, your job description,” Caro said.
“Caroline, let me give you a hug, please,” Leo answered.
“Go…hug a tree,” she said. I knew what she wanted to say, but our little sister was there.
“Dada!” Aury screamed, as Leo walked toward the door, where we could see the cab outside the window. My mother had refused to drive him to the airport. So had my grandparents, who would not even answer the telephone to say good-bye. “Dada! I want to come! Take me, Dada! Good girl! I’ll be good!” She fell down and began to kick her fat little legs, and her face got red, then purple. Leo, crying hard, opened the door and closed it behind him.
We all ran over and picked Aury up, as if we were playing blanket toss at a picnic. As she kicked and sobbed, my mother began to sing that old song Elvis turned into “Love Me Tender,” the one she sang all the time to my little sister, “Aura Lee, Aura Lee, maid with golden hair…” She turned Aury away from her, so that Aury couldn’t kick her or hurt herself, and hugged Aury’s arms firmly down at her sides. Aury screamed so piercingly that Caro shut the windows. Finally, she seemed to deflate.
“She’s okay,” my mom said. “She held her breath too long. She’s fine. She’ll be a little dizzy.” My mom got up and laid both her palms against the front window. We went to stand beside her. We heard a car door slam. It was Liesel and Klaus. He waved. At them.
I’m sure that I’ll hate people more in my life than I hated Leo at that moment. I’ve even hated Leo more since that moment. But the truth is, probably because of hormones, I thought about that fucking gun.
ELEVEN
Job
EXCESS BAGGAGE
By J. A. Gillis
The Sheboygan News-Clarion
Dear J.,
I have a problem I’m sure that many men of my age share. I’m in love, truly, solidly, deeply, with a woman I intend to marry. She shares this commitment. Now that we recognize that our future will be together, I feel that in order to be a husband who will never stray, I need to pursue other encounters before I place that ring on her finger and seal my fate. It’s not that I want any other woman particularly. My intended is beautiful, talented, and bright. But I do not want to have any regrets, and because we are both rather young, 25, I know that the experiences I do not have now are experiences I might want later. My loved one simply does not understand. She says that I had ample time, in college and afterward, to explore other relationships. She believes that finding her should be a signal that I am ready to give up my bachelor pursuits. J., I truly want a happy marriage. But I also know that too many marriages fail because one or the other partner feels cheated of things that are only possible when you’re single. How can we resolve this standoff and move forward toward the future we both deserve?
Suffocated in Sullivan
Dear Suffocated,
First, I want to offer congratulations. To your girlfriend. She is indeed bright. She’s avoided marrying you thus far and has doubts about marrying you at all. Secondly, I want to pose a question: Just how do you define falling “truly, solidly, deeply” in love? If it means that you hear the bell ring for the medal round in the race to prove your masculinity, I congratulate you, too, for self-knowledge that, I fervently hope, will prevent you from ever adding your contribution to the gene pool. What you want is not experience. You want a wedding cake frozen while you sample a tray of fresh strudel. And don’t worry. I predict that you’re virtually guaranteed the future you deserve.
J.
Dear J.,
Admit it. Just like the great cats and the mighty gorilla, the male of the species is not intended to be monogamous. That’s an invention of women who want to have babies and take it easy living off men. If men were meant to be with one woman, why would so many of us have fathered so many children? Come on, J. There’s a bet riding on this. You always tell it straight.
Manly in Menomonee Falls
Dear Manly,
You’re absolutely right about lions and gorillas. Not only do they sleep around, their only activity besides sleeping and eating the food provided by the females is making more babies. Some humans have an equally sweet deal—we call them deadbeat dads. Lion cubs don’t wear out their Reeboks, eat macaroni and cheese, or go to college. They don’t need to be taught to read, drive, shave…or learn sexual responsibility! They don’t get AIDS, smoke, or use drugs. A one-year-old lion can hunt and survive on his own. A one-year-old human can’t survive a night outside. You’re absolutely right. Women invented monogamy! Out of desperation. Men wanted to ease it in and then ease it on down the road. Along with that space between their legs, they evolved one between their ears, but it’s empty. And if you think women have it easy, ask your mother.
J.
This is how it felt, the first time I was laid low.
Days of dark-edged linen light revolved around nights and mornings of thick bunting, in which occasionally I was touched by shadows that moved. I was either freezing and burning in a clammy bed. Simply getting up to go to the bathroom was not like moving, but like making a long list, a Thanksgiving list for the grocery store—swing feet to floor, measure distance to door, hold the bladder with one hand like an expectant belly until the destination; don’t forget to lift nightie, to use tissues. Moving my legs was like dragging unevenly filled bags of sharp-edged rocks. I would make my path, clinging onto the bureau, the bedstead, the sink, and finally the wall. I never looked into the mirror.
After a long, dirty braid of those days, I woke up. And I was myself. Suddenly and completely.
It was a Sunday morning, because the children were asleep. The house was quiet and clean.
I could see a brown cardinal on the branch outside my window, picking at a suet cake Aury and I had long ago mounted on the half-gourd feeder she’d made at school. I watched the bird’s guarded, eerily serpentine movements, observed the separation of feathers on her modest little beige cowl, and realized suddenly that I could see the bird! My vision was not blurred. I did not have to focus by closing one eye. I lofted my legs easily over the side of the bed. My thigh tingled, a sparkling of miniature daggers, but I could stand, first swaying like a boat in the wake of a larger vessel, then settling, calmed, still. I walked into the bathroom. I got into the shower and washed every cleft and hillock of my body, rinsing my hair over and over with animal delight. I put on my own socks, my own jeans, a white shirt that smelled of starch. I buttoned it myself.
I walked out into the kitchen and broke brown eggs into a blue bowl. I poured milk onto the eggs and shook rosemary, pepper, and salt on top of the floating orange islands, then whisked in shredded cheese. The butter was melting on thick slices of wheat bread when Cathy came scuffling out of the bedroom with Aury in one arm and holding Abby Sun by the hand. “Oh, holy Christ!” she cried, ruffling her auburn spikes and literally taking a step back, as if she’d seen her great-grandmother Gleason, who Cathy told us died on the Titanic, scrambling eggs at my stove. “You scared the hell out of me! I thought the house was on fire. I was getting ready to evacuate the troops.”
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“Mom,” he all but whimpered, bewildered, finger-combing his hair. “What are you doing up?”
“I got better,” I said. “That’s all I can tell you. I woke up, and I was better. Do you want some eggs? I’m starving.” We all sat down and ate the eggs and toast spread with Cathy’s mom’s homemade raspberry jam. “How long have you been here, Cath? How long was I…out of it?”
“Two weeks,” Caroline said. “Either Cath or I’ve been sharing a bedroom with two babies for two weeks, Mom. I don’t mean that in a bad way.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. Sorry I couldn’t sleep on the hall floor, Princess Caroline,” Cathy said. Caro pursed her lips and tossed her extravagantly blonde hair (perhaps blonder than before?). An eerie sense stole over the table.
They were talking to each other like…like mother and daughter.
“Are you going to stay up now, Mom? Are you over having catatonic depression?” Caro asked.
“Is that what I had? I don’t think it was. And anyway, I’m sure Cathy already has an appointment to find out what it really was.” I reached around Abby to squeeze Cath’s arm tenderly.
“Caroline!” Cathy reproved my daughter, and Caro rolled her eyes. “Well, Julie, you’re right. You’ve got your appointment on Thursday. Let’s hope that’s what it was, because depression, and she’s certainly earned it, responds really well to medication….” Cathy was cutting Aury’s toast upinto one-inch squares, and Gabe was twirling the lid onto the top of her Princess Jasmine sipper cup, which she refused to give up. They were not just a family. They were also, all of them, talking about me as if I weren’t there, as if I hadn’t made the food they were eating, as if I were a house-plant they hoped didn’t have scales. What would they do if I did, douse me with coffee and leave me outside? And yet, the smell of the coffee was as overpoweringly sensual as anything I’d ever experienced with a baby, or a man, at my breast. I wanted to pour the creamy liquid into my hands and hold it close to my face, touch the beans, feel their shape and smell them individually. Orange sections with trembling drops of juice suspended on their lips transparent as tears. The sounds of a child chewing with an open mouth, swish, gnash, gnash, smack. No flutes. No far-off voices. No sound of wet wind’s constant baritone humming through a dark cave. Sunday morning ordinary.
Without saying anything that would have hinted at my asking for permission, I got up, opened the front door, and brought in the newspaper. I didn’t imagine the gaze Cathy and Gabe exchanged. After years of practice, with my fingernail, I was able to flip to the front of Your Life, my section, immediately. I sat down with a second cup of coffee—coffee I could taste!—and read my column, yes, with the paper at arm’s length, but without reading glasses. I read it once. I read it again. “What in the hell is this?” I asked.
“We…sort of…thought…” Cathy began.
“I’m going to get fired!” I spluttered, the coffee sloshing over the rim of the table. “You can’t…insult people! You can’t…use vulgar…Gabe! You know better than this!”
“Relax, Ma,” Gabe told me, with an exaggerated feline stretch. “He likes it! Cathcart says you’re pushing the outside of the envelope. He’s sent you, like, four e-mails, saying the readers are calling in, and they’re crazy about the new Gillis….”
“They’re like…give ’em hell, Julie!” Caroline said.
“That’s not me.”
“Did you ever…want it to be, not so you?” Cathy asked.
“What?”
“Did you just ever want to…tell it like it is? The way we do when we talk about the letters?”
“I don’t know,” I said, appealing to Cathy with my eyes. I set the newspaper down. “You know, I don’t know anything anymore. You guys are probably right. I should be thanking you instead of blowing up at you.”
“Well, we didn’t know any other way to write it, so we wrote it honestly,” Gabe said.
“I thought I was being discreet, and objective and polite. Wasn’t I? I was…”
“Dull,” said Gabe.
“Thanks, son,” I said with a sigh. “Oooh, I hate your being right.” I allowed myself a sharp little laugh, one I couldn’t stifle. “I just hate it!”
“Mom, don’t take it wrong,” Gabe said in his soothing like-Leo voice. “You were barely there for two weeks and totally out of it for…We had to do something,” Gabe said, sternly now. “Cathy has been totally great. She knows everything about human relationships….”
“You did the right thing. I’m only snarky because I’m embarrassed.”
“You don’t have to be,” Cathy said. “Really. Julie, we’re your family.”
“I know you feel lousy, Mom, and not just about being sick,” Gabe said. “Because nobody’s heard from Dad…”
“Really?” I asked, looking into every pair of guilty eyes, until each of them looked away. “He hasn’t called?”
“He send a card!” Aury said cheerfully.
I burst into tears. “I feel so…forgotten! I wake up, and my kids have a new mother. Cathy, don’t take that the wrong way. You’re better at it than I was.”
“Julie! ” Cathy cried, horrified. “Julie. Stop it. I’ve stayed here and helped these kids handle grief, fear, and American history, and yeah, I’m proud of it. But it’s not like you wouldn’t have done the same thing. You would have, and you would have painted a room or two on top of it. You don’t owe me anything.”
“I do, and I can’t ever pay you back.” I gripped my coffee mug, now cold.
“Julie, listen. If you’re ashamed, it’s normal. But it’s not fair. Look, the husband you and everyone else believed was perfect took a long walk off an emotionally very short pier over the past several seasons, and because you’ve been handing out tea towels and sympathy…no, wait, Julie, you think you should have seen it coming and maybe you could have, but you didn’t. You’re a person, and we’re programmed to believe people we trust will treat us right. And Leo is behaving like about the most coldhearted piece of shit in the lower forty-eight if he isn’t in Hawaii by now—the way he walked out on his screaming baby makes it impossible for you to ignore that there’s more going on than he said, Jules. And that scares the shit out of you. It would anyone—”
“Wait!” I almost shouted, more violently than I meant to. I was crying harder now. The little girls jumped. My head drummed. I didn’t want to have this deconstruction played out in front of my children, because perhaps, just perhaps, it wasn’t true. Perhaps I really still had a husband who was even now recovering from his midlife crisis and heading home to me. I tried to cling to this, just as I kept clinging to the paltry hope that I’d only succumbed to a bout of…the flu or something for the past fort night. “Wait!” I tried to make my voice familiar, jokey. “Caroline Jane! Gabe. Don’t you have somewhere to go? Like, the moon?”
“I’m actually fine here, Mom,” Caro said. “It’s very dramatic. And it’s nice to hear you call me something other than ‘Hannah’ or ‘Connie’ or ‘Janey.’” Connie was Cathy’s mom.
“You can be a little shit, Caroline,” I said. “That wasn’t my fault.”
“Oh, I know that,” said my daughter. “And I know I can be a little shit.”
“I’m not going to stop right now,” Cathy insisted, pouring more coffee for me. “Even if you want me to. When you got sick, it seemed to correspond exactly with when Leo left. So on top of everything else, you’re not just an ordinary bat from the bat farm, you’re really wacko! Institutional quality! What does all that mean? Except, what if you’re not? What if you’re really sick, if you have a malignant brain tumor—which you don’t—the blood tests show you don’t have any cancer cells in your body. But what if you have something else? What’s going to become of the kids? What??
“I want to tell you to go jump, Cathy, and not psychoanalyze me,” I told Cathy wearily.
“No, go ahead,” Caroline urged, leaning forward. “It is like a movie on Lifetime.”
“Where is she, Julie?” Cath went on, ignoring her.
“At the bottom of a well, and…” I said.
“And what…?”
“It’s dark and the sides are slippery and filthy and it’s a place for dirty things, and I don’t know if I can climb out. I’m too small….”
“What else?”
“Well, I don’t know if I want to get out, either.”
“Why, Julie?”
“Because there are no mirrors in here.”
“Who’s the fairest one of all?” Caroline asked.
“Shut up!” Cathy and I said simultaneously.
I looked up, then, and said to Gabe, “I apologize. Cathy’s so right, it’s like having the sun hurt my eyes. We’ve got some facing up to do, guys.” I turned to Cathy. “If you can forgive my being jealous of your being able to handle everything without me, and recognize how scary it is to be me…”