Love Maps Page 17

  “Great. I need a cigarette. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No. Go ahead. My father didn’t like tobacco, but the doctor did.”

  They turn off the highway and head southeast along the bumpy road that leads to Tori’s house. Behind them, the sun sinks, and the sky and land become an inscrutable haze of gray and purple. The shape of Tori’s house comes into view. She slows down and peers over the steering wheel.

  “No light in the windows,” Tori says. “Doesn’t look like he’s come back.”

  “Maybe he’s taking a nap,” Sarah says.

  Tori shakes her head and continues driving. “He’s in the shaft, Sarah. He’s not coming out anytime soon.”

  Sarah twists her head, watching the retreating house. The sky gets blacker, and the road becomes more rutted, then peters out completely. Tori shifts into first, and they bump over small rocks and bushes. Moths flutter in the glow of the headlights and ping off the windshield. They hear coyotes and owls, and some high-pitched cricket or grasshopper. Tori stops the car. The headlights shine on the scaffolding, and the planks of wood, piled in a haphazard heap, glimmer palely. Sarah jumps out of the truck and heads toward the shaft.

  “Careful!” shouts Tori. “He took off the planks. The ground around the lip is loose.”

  Sarah stops a few feet from the mouth of the shaft. “Philip!” she calls out as Tori wobbles over with a flashlight. “It’s me. Are you down there? Philip?!” She inches toward the rim. The air is steamy and sulfuric and adheres to her skin, leeching out a thick, greasy layer of sweat. “Please answer! Are you in there?”

  A muffled yell rises up out of the hole, his voice distorted by the tunnel echo. “Go away!” or “Okay!” She can’t tell what he’s saying, only knows that the smell is making her gag.

  “Tell him we’ve got more tequila up here,” Tori says.

  “I don’t want tequila!” he yells. “I’m fine! Leave me alone!”

  “Sweetheart, please!”

  Everything is still, except for the moths, their wings shining and translucent, spinning in the headlights. A coyote yelps.

  “Philip … come on up! You can see the Milky Way! Come up or I’m coming down!”

  He doesn’t answer. She hopes Tori will try to stop her. Instead, Tori hands her a Maglite.

  Sarah flashes the light around the rim of the shaft and finds a metal rung. “All right! I’m coming down.” No comment from Philip. She looks at Tori. “Do you think it will hold?”

  “It held him, didn’t it?”

  Sarah clamps the Maglite between her teeth, grabs the top rung, lowers a foot. She groans as the smell gets worse, almost losing the light. Slowly she descends, feeling the way with her feet and hands. She doesn’t know why she cares so much about the Mag; it is tiny and ineffectual in the tight, inky darkness. The only lights that mean anything are the stars in the sky. Everything is quiet except for her breathing and the slip of her soles on the iron rungs. She keeps going down; the sky hole gets smaller. She stops to wipe the sweat off her palms. It’s awful not being able to see. She steadies her breathing. She gets closer; she can hear him raggedly gasping. Why won’t he say anything? She slips on a rung. Then her foot finally touches something solid. She steps off the ladder, shines the light around. A few feet away lies Philip, curled up like a pill bug. She starts toward him, realizing midway that they’re on a platform. Over the edge is a blackness that makes her shudder. Philip’s teeth chatter. She puts her hand on his shoulder and the bone shoots through the skin.

  “Philip,” she says softly. “Come on, honey. What are you doing? We’ve got to get out of here.”

  He squints, pained by her Maglite. “Leave me alone.”

  She sits beside him and strokes his hair which is oily and tangled. “It’s all right, baby.”

  “I can’t go back up there.”

  “You have to, Philip. Tori’s waiting. She’s old. She needs to go to bed.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Well … I can’t leave you down here.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m your wife.”

  Philip wheezes, then chuckles.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Matrimony.”

  Sarah laughs too. But the smell is awful. “Come on. It’s not far to the top.”

  “No, I’m staying here.”

  “Philip,” Sarah says sternly.

  “Tell Maya that she won. Maybe that will make her happy.”

  “Pull yourself together. You fucked up. People fuck up. Do you think you’re the first person in the world to have killed a man?”

  He rises, unsettling her. She’d been thinking he might not have the strength to stand on his own two feet, but in an instant he’s up, pushing past her, dangerously close to the edge. “He smiled at me, Sarah. He was that sure I wouldn’t. And so I did. He was surprised, that was all.”

  She pulls him toward the ladder and he twists out of her grip. But she won’t stop, tugging now at his shirt. He pushes her away. He pushes hard. She loses her balance and falls. Her forehead cracks against something; her brain seems to be vibrating.

  “God,” he says. “Sarah? Are you all right?” He cups her shoulders with his hands. “Forgive me,” he whispers.

  “Take me up,” she says.

  *

  Now it’s morning. Her forehead is swollen and discolored, tender to touch, but the aspirin has done away with most of the throbbing. She studies the raised lump in the mirror, the dark purple blots under the skin. She can’t remember ever having had a bruise on her face before. It strikes her that she’s had an easy life.

  Tori’s in the kitchen making breakfast, and Philip’s on the couch, safe, breathing regularly. They gave him a shower, then a bath last night, but his hair is still thick with grease and dust. She pulls the sheet up around his shoulders. He stirs, but doesn’t wake.

  Sarah goes into kitchen. Tori hovers by the stove, attending to her coffeemaker, a double-orbed glass thing that she got in Italy. The water starts clear on the bottom then bubbles up, getting murky and brown as it rises. Sarah remembers being fascinated by it when she was a kid.

  Tori sees her and whistles at her bruise. “You got a beaut there.”

  *

  It is afternoon. Sarah’s in her room, on a stained quilt, an unread book in her lap. Philip opens the door, his face gray and taut. He winces at her bruise.

  “It’s okay,” she says. “Just ugly. It doesn’t hurt anymore.” She stretches out an arm, grabs his pajama sleeve, pulls him onto the bed. He lies beside her, his fingers clasped over his nonexistent belly, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

  “I can’t go back to New York, Sar. My business is over.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “Haupt won’t pay.”

  “He’s got to.”

  “You sue him for breach of contract if you want. I’m done with lawyers.”

  She looks at him reproachfully. He rubs his eyes.

  “I don’t want to. I have no desire to—what do they say, pick up the pieces and put them back together? I’m done with it.”

  They stare up at the ceiling, side by side. Sarah can’t really blame him.

  “We could go somewhere else,” she says, “find a whole new city.”

  It’s a new thought. She had never considered not living in New York, but why not? The possibility floats there between them.

  Outside, the wind blows. He curls toward her and gently touches her cheek. “You couldn’t live without her.”

  She understands that even to speak Maya’s name would puncture this thing, this tiny bubble. “I could,” she says softly.

  He regards her with a quiet gaze that she tries to return, but her insides are quivering. Downstairs Tori sings to herself, and the wind mounts up again. Sarah feels shy, almost afraid to kiss him. The sharp lines of his face have a certain logic, but they were not so sharp before. His normal scent is mingled with the stench of the shaft. She puts her lips on his, and he ki
sses her back. This part works. He is there again, his veined arm, the roughness of his cheek. His skinniness is alarming, and yet he is as strong as he has always been. He grips her, and she is in motion, propelled by him, biting her lips to keep quiet, aware of Tori in the room below, the shooting ache of him inside of her, his weight and fury, his breath in her ear. She squeezes her legs around him with all her might.

  *

  A few days later they are in the car, Philip at the wheel, driving north on Route 118. His skin looks new, smooth, like it’s growing back. Sarah imagines she is getting a glimpse of the man he was twenty years ago, driving these same Western highways. His shoulders slope down at a relaxed angle. His eyes, though red-rimmed and baggy, rest more easily on things. She tamps down the urge to touch him. She’s been touching him too much, grasping onto him, as if to prove he is really there. A brown and gray bird swoops above the road before them.

  “I don’t recognize any of the birds out here,” Sarah says. “Except for hummingbirds and vultures.”

  Philip smiles at her. The car veers into the opposite lane.

  “Philip. Watch the road.”

  “There’s no one coming. I can see for miles.” He slows the car to a crawl.

  “What about that tarantula?” It is a few yards ahead, its body as big as an egg, black and furry. It moves across the bleached pavement with a carefree step, oblivious to danger. Philip swerves, avoiding it. She gazes at the rolls of distant mountains, the layers of purple and mustard, longingly. They are en route to El Paso. He is to drop her off at the airport before driving to Terre Haute, and then Chicago. A friend from graduate school has a firm out there. He might be able to get Philip a job.

  She lights a cigarette. “I could go to Chicago with you.”

  “You’ve got to paint. You can’t shrug off that show.”

  “I can reschedule it.” They both know how unlikely this would be. Eddie Kiebbler could reschedule a show, not Sarah.

  “Don’t worm out of it. We need that money.”

  They arrive at the airport seven hours later, cramped and dry-mouthed from too much time in the car. He walks her to her gate, holding her carry-on.

  “Don’t look so glum.”

  “How can I not?”

  “I’ll be back for your show, even if I haven’t found a job. I’m not going to miss that. I want to strut around, proud of my wife.” Unspoken is the likelihood that Maya will be there too.

  Philip kisses her on the lips, not the kisses of the past couple nights, but a hard kiss, like a strong handshake. Then he turns and walks down the carpeted corridor, a tall, slim man in jeans and a checked shirt, looking not too different from the other men who walk past him and before and behind him. Men with tan faces and cowboy hats and briefcases. Men with suits talking to business partners. Men in sweatshirts with women and children. Men alone. There is a lightness in his step, as if he just took off a heavy backpack.

  *

  LaGuardia Airport, New York. A crowd waits at the end of the terminal, its members jostling for the best position to spot incoming relatives and friends. Sarah drags her suitcase through people embracing, crying, whooping, half expecting Maya to pop out from the crowd, though she hadn’t told her of her arrival. Bored, suited limo drivers hold paper signs over their chests, the names of their passengers-to-be inked in black. She should have called Maya. She would have gotten her a car. But Tori’s house is too small—Philip would have known who she was talking to, and she hadn’t liked the idea of surreptitiously dialing the moment he took a shower. The taxi line snakes down the sidewalk, shuffling, pausing, shuffling. She joins its staggered movements, watching the lucky people at the front, a woman in white fur and her beleaguered husband grandly wheeling matching suitcases. The cabbie lifts the bags and stows them in his trunk. Over and over the scene repeats itself with different bundles and baggages, different dents on the cabs, but the fundamental action remains the same, a moving of things from place to place: Out of the trunk into the closet. Out of the closet and onto the body. Off the body and into the laundry. Out of him and into her. Out of her and into him. On and on, in and out, from pile to pile and place to place, until the last trip, when it finally settles. But it doesn’t. It keeps moving—but now it’s in pieces, echoes for the current, fingernails for the fish.

  Someone taps her shoulder. The line has moved. The cabbie doffs his baseball cap. “Yusef Mustaba. Pleased to meet you.”

  “Manhattan,” Sarah says. “Franklin Street.”

  The cabbie likes Franklin Street because, he says, it is named after Benjamin Franklin, his favorite American. She’s grateful for his talk and listens intently, diligently, trying to forget everything else. They jump over potholes, and he lectures her on the discovery of electricity. Her head bumps the ceiling. “Excuse me,” he says. “My shock absorbers have rubbed off. People say, including my wife, that I should get new ones, but I believe it’s better to feel the road. All this cushioning, it’s not good for you. I love this country, I love this city, and I love Franklin, but I do not love these shock absorbers. They make you soft. Take the bicyclists. The bicycle riders in America—you must have seen them—wear helmets.” They hit another pothole and Sarah ducks. “If Franklin had been soft— Hey, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You look upset. Would you like to see my children? They are beautiful.” He hands her his wallet.

  “You shouldn’t just hand your wallet to people.”

  “Look at them. They’ll cheer you up. A man is not happy unless he has children. It’s the truth. I used to be a mathematician, but that’s in the head—with children you multiply and they are there, in front of you! Do you have children?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. You must, really. And you should do it soon. There is always a way, they have medicines, specialists. My wife, bless her, had our youngest at forty-eight. A wonderful woman, how to explain?” His hand sinks gently. “She flies kites, but not like Franklin. She enters the competitions and slashes her opponents to bits. They are all young men, and at that age they are foolish. They see a respectable lady and they think, Pah, nothing! But she’s got special razors on her tail and yaah, she tears them to shreds, wins every time.”

  They swerve through Queens. The headlights, streetlights, flashing bar lights blur into each other. They twist up a ramp and Manhattan appears. The skyline is beautiful and ungainly, glowing with an awkward hope. Sarah inhales, as if to breathe the city into herself. She leans forward as the cabbie slows for a red. “How long have you and your wife been married?” she asks.

  He looks at her through the rearview mirror. “An eternity.”

  Chapter 19

  Connecticut, October 1997

  Flings were more civilized than matrimony. If she could have kept herself to a fling, then she’d be thinking of Philip fondly, and not like a piece of shrapnel embedded in her heart. But then she wouldn’t have had Max. She scooped him up carefully, sixty pounds breathing trustfully in her arms. The stairs were long and steep but they held steady and she made it down without a hitch. Max opened his eyes as she kicked open the front door. “Shhh,” she said, catching her balance. She rattled the Buick’s handle. “I made you a bed in the backseat.” The Buick looked better this way, the holey upholstery hidden by sleeping bags and a couple of pillows. “Cozy, huh?” Max, still half asleep, crawled in. She fastened her seat belt. She’d countered the Scotch with a dose of coffee and no-drowse flu medicine. She felt fine, and besides, no one would be on the road at this hour. It would be like driving in the desert. People were allowed to drive a little tipsily in the desert; they stored six-packs of beer in the backseat so they wouldn’t get dehydrated.

  She put the key in the ignition. The engine sputtered and died. She tried again. A wheezing chug, a hesitation, a collapse. She squeezed her eyes shut. She’d had the car for three years—an unexpected gift from the father of one of her favorite students, Milo, Milo Pére, Buick-donor. He owned the used par
ts and body shop, and when Milo told him she was the only teacher who had to rely on the public bus system, he drove it to school and tossed her the keys. “It ain’t much to look at, but the engine works fine.” And so far, it had. She got out and checked under the hood. It was dark and she didn’t really know what she was doing, but there seemed to be oil, water. She kicked the tires. They felt full. She got back in and took a breath. If the car didn’t work, she always had Plan B: pack Max off to school, go the train station, suffer the humiliation of Philip not showing. And if he did show? Well, that was a big if, better not to go there, better to just leave it be.

  She breathed on the key. Come on, baby. The engine chugged … chugged … caught. Thank god. She opened her eyes and backed out of the driveway. Goodbye, house. She’d been smart, turned off the lights, checked the oven. I won’t miss you. She had her art supplies in the trunk, a credit card that still worked, the dented beige Buick. Max breathed softly. They’d be okay. They’d be better than before. She should have never moved to Connecticut. She’d morphed into a bitter old hag.

  She hadn’t left in eight years. Correction: there had been the day trips to New York—hurried, nervous afternoons with her collar up and her hat pulled low, trying not to bump into anyone. Eight years. They hadn’t gone on vacation once, impossible on an auxiliary teacher’s salary. Maya had tried in the beginning, practically accused her of child abuse when Sarah sent back the ripped-up tickets. But she couldn’t have Maya mothering Max. That part Sarah had gotten right. She tapped her pockets. Where were her cigarettes? Oh yes, no cigarettes, she’d thrown the pack away. That’s not how she would start over. She whooped, overcome with pleasure at the dark intersection, the yellow light, the welcoming emptiness of the road ahead. She felt unburdened, euphoric. She felt like herself. As if she had been trapped in someone else’s life, and now the cracks had appeared and she’d stepped back into her own. It was simple: a road trip. The steering wheel vibrated against her hands. She gave it a squeeze. Not a Caddy, but not bad, a sweet Buick with half a tank of gas.