| THE IMPOSSIBLE
FOOT, by Diane Hopkins |
"After
all, this fearing of old age is based on the
assumption that one is going to reach it. One never thinks
of the tile that might fall on one's head..."
George Sand, in a letter to Joseph Dessaur, July 5, 1868 |
PROLOGUE
From the kitchen doorway,
I could see the red message light
blinking. I stepped into the darkness, switched the overhead
light on.
Pressed the button, heard the tape rewind.
"Where the hell are
you?” my sister-in-law said, and I had to
close my eyes; she sounded so much like my wife. "You didn't
chicken
out again, did you? Don't you dare go to bed without calling
me!"
A second message. “Mother,
it's Leigh. Could you call me tomorrow,
before you go to work? Thanks, talk to you.”
The third message was one
that even my sister-in-law might be
sorry to have left: "Damn it, Faye, why haven't you called
me? How'm
I supposed to know you're not dead on the road?"
And finally, her again,
Irene: "Where the fuck is
everybody? It's
a quarter of ten.” A silence. "Toby, are you there,
what's happening?
Did she leave or not? She should've been here.” Then, shakily:
"Somebody, call me!"
Not ready for Irene. I tried
to run water into the teakettle, but
my thumb fluttered on the small lever that was supposed to keep
the
lid raised. Water sprayed across the sink, hit me, cold, in
the gut.
Could see the problem, couldn't control the thumb.
The state trooper who took
me to the hospital had to leave me
there. I couldn't think of a soul who could bring me home. They
said,
"There must be someone--a neighbor, a son?" But I
don't know my
neighbors; I only have daughters. I didn't want to make Leigh
or
Helena come out that late. Eleven-twenty now. The trooper came
for
me at seven. Someone got me the cab.
When we were about halfway
home, I realized I wasn't going to
have enough cash. We found an ATM; I couldn't remember my
identifying number. We set out for the store--I'd get a hundred
dollars
from the safe. We got almost to downtown Wellham. Then, just
as we
were driving past the bank where Faye worked, the number came
to
me.
I was afraid they were going
to ask me to identify her body.
They didn't, just showed me her driver's license, pocket book.
The gold
wedding band that matched my own. Engagement ring--reset for
our
twenty-fifth anniversary, reset again last June, diamonds added.
She
said, "Lovely.” Sometimes I could please her. The
driver's license
photo--not a bad picture: pleasant, toothy smile; haircut short
and
smart; the lighting made her hair look gray instead of blond.
The first
license-photo where she'd had to wear glasses. "I look
like my
mother," she said, "don't I?" I waited too long
before saying, "I don't
think so."
The kettle slipped from
my fingers, banged the sink. I picked it
up, poured out some of the water. Already the ride in the police
cruiser
seemed a long time ago. When I saw the trooper in the porchlight,
everything felt final.
I set the kettle on the
stove and sat down at the table, got up
after a while and turned on the burner. A thought too foolish
to think
had come into my head:
At last I've been for a
ride in a police car!
By and by, the wall phone
rang, as I knew it would have to. I
reached for the receiver, then let the answering machine pick
up.
"What've you done to
her? I'm calling the police if you don't
damn well get back to me...."
I lifted the receiver. "Irene..."
She shrieked. The sound
went on and on, and I realized the teakettle
had taken over. I got up and removed the kettle. In the silence,
Irene said, "Let me talk to her."
"She can't....”
"I want to talk to
her."
"Irene...”
I had to tell her. Faye
was on the Mass Pike, going west. She
was getting off at the service area, the one near Exit Fourteen.
There
was a school bus. It had broken down on the entrance road to
the
service area. It was empty. The driver was using the phone inside
the
building, and Faye must not have realized the bus wasn't moving,
because there were no skid marks. The driver claimed he had
left his
hazard lights blinking.
Irene screamed, a real scream.
Then she said, "You cold fish,
you bastard!” I waited while she wept, not even feeling
the usual
dislike. "She did it," she said, eventually, as if
what Faye did had been
planned.
"Did what?" I
asked, but Irene was silent for so long I thought
she must have put the phone down.
Then she said, "Left
you at last, you fuckhead!"
I couldn't take that in;
I was only just understanding that Faye
was on her way to Connecticut. She'd done that before, of course--
gone to visit her sister, but this was the first time I hadn't
known
about it. Now I was remembering what a lot of suitcases were
in the
back of the Rabbit. "I would've been gone," my wife
mutters; she
slams the hatchback. Flings herself into the driver's seat.
Mouths
something at me I can't hear over the muffler's racket. I can't
get the
door open; she has locked it. She backs around my car, across
the
lawn, and out into the street, not even checking traffic. Peels
out.
Then there's just a drift of thick exhaust.
"What do you mean `left'
me?"
In my wallet I had the address
of the garage where the car was
taken, the suitcases to be kept there until I could come for
them. An
insane urge to see what was in those suitcases was coming over
me;
had the garage still been open, I'd have taken off that instant.
"She was almost here,"
Irene whispered.
"She'd just started
out.”
"Stupid son of a bitch!"
I got the address out of
my wallet. It was folded with the receipt
for Faye's "valuables," now back in the hospital's
safe. I needed to go
upstairs and look in Faye's closet and her bureau. I didn't
know how
many suitcases she'd taken. She'd have had to get them down
from
the attic, and she hated the attic. Fiberglass and spider webs.
"She
couldn't have been leaving me," I told Irene. If she'd
wanted the
suitcases, she would've asked me to get them.
I must have said all of
this, because Irene said, "You idiot!"
But if Faye had been leaving
me, she would've left a note.
"She didn't leave a
note," I said.
"You don't leave notes
for people you loathe."
"My wife didn't loathe
me."
"My sister couldn't
stand you."
We went back and forth,
not resurrecting her. Separate comealongs
to a fallen tree.
"She should've left
you years ago," Irene finally yelled, and I
could have hung up now if this new idea hadn't paralyzed me:
Faye
would still be alive if she had left me sooner?
"Why do you say these
things, why should Faye leave me?"
"She's been going to,
for years," Irene cried, triumphantly.
I heard myself howling,
"Liar! Liar! Faye always said you were a
liar," and then Irene was calling me every name in the
book. "I
apologize," I broke in. "I shouldn't have said that.
Listen to me,
please!" Amazingly, she was quiet. "The girls don't
know yet, I'll call
them in the morning.” She was listening. "Please don't
say anything
about Faye leaving me. Not yet--you understand?"
"Of course I do, you
fool!"
"Thank you," the
fool said. "Thank you.”
I was free to go upstairs,
and I didn't want to. Didn't want to
look in Faye's closet; it was going to be empty.
But it wasn't. It didn't
even look as if anything had been taken.
It was still full of clothes, summer clothes, and she'd left
behind all
sorts of shoes. Her bureau wasn't empty either. There were socks
and
pantyhose, lots of underwear. I picked up a pair of pink underpants
that looked small. But then others seemed too large, the elastic
gone.
It wasn't so long ago that I had come into the bedroom to find
her
rummaging for something in the bureau. She was wearing just
a bra
and a half-slip, and I was surprised by how stout she'd gotten;
the fat
pooched up around the elastic of her bra and the slip too, rolls
of fat,
and she'd been so willowy. I was sorry to have come upon her
like
that; she didn't like it either. She said, "Next time,
knock.” I mumbled
something about thinking she was in the bathroom. She said,
"Knock,
anyway.” That must've been before she took to sleeping
in the girls'
rooms. She wouldn't have left all this old underwear for me
to sort
through. I stuffed it back into the drawer. Irene was wrong!
I went back downstairs and
started over again with the kettle
and the instant coffee. When I went to get the milk out of the
refrigerator,
a magnet in the shape of a strawberry fell off the door and
with
it the postcard I'd received a few days ago from the VW Parts
&
Service. It said, "Your part is in," meaning the window
crank for Faye's
car, the driver's window. I didn't know what to do with the
postcard; I
stuck it back up on the refrigerator. Faye shouldn't have been
driving a
car with a muffler like that and a broken window crank. I kept
asking
her if she wouldn't please just take it to Midas or one of those
places,
or trade cars with me so I could take it. But she wouldn't.
She knew I
could fix it, though when was I supposed to do that--some Sunday?
I left the milk carton on
the counter, because there wasn't
enough milk for morning anyway, and I didn't want to look at
what
was in the refrigerator: the leg of lamb on the platter with
the parslied
potatoes, a piece of clear plastic wrapped around it. Salad.
Faye
always saved the salad. My birthday dinner from last night,
the last
meal we ate together. The birthday cake was in there too: little
round
carrot cake, cream cheese icing, "Happy Birthday, Toby,"
written in
pale green. One candle, not fifty-four. I said I thought I was
probably
too ancient now for candles, anyhow. She said, "Thanks
a lot,"
because she was already fifty-six, but then she said, "Make
a wish," so
I did. I said, "I wish we may live happily ever after,"
and I blew out
the flame. She said, "You're not supposed to say what your
wish is,
you know that.” We would've had the birthday dinner Sunday,
but the
girls were too busy, and anyway my birthday was yesterday, Monday.
In thirty-five years, she never once left me. Why would she
have
picked the day after my birthday?
I took the coffee to the
front parlor and sat in my wing chair. I
couldn't turn off my brain, but it wasn't working well; I was
having
trouble going over things logically. "Number one,"
I kept thinking or
else saying, and, "In the first place," but then I
didn't know what came
next, though I knew what the bottom line was: Faye never said
anything about going to Irene's. Not that I gave her the chance,
when
I phoned her. I doubt you could even call it a conversation.
Tuesday is her day off from
the bank. In the morning she has
the cleaning woman; in the afternoon she plays bridge. I forgot
about
the bridge game. You get forgetful when you're tired, and it
had been
a busy morning--quite a few of my regulars as well as some walk-ins,
buying two, three pairs of shoes. Time to hire an assistant
again.
There was a lull about one-thirty; I could eat my sandwich.
I went to
the back room and got a volume of the encyclopedia to browse
through, the 1929 Britannica. Good
reading. Faye always said my head
was full of obsolete information. "And God knows what else,"
I could
remember her adding.
The volume I happened to
select was the last one, "VASW to
ZYGO". I sat down at my desk and started reading an entry
on wool
manufacturing. If my hand had fallen upon a different volume...?
Or if
I'd said, "Just calling to say hello" instead of what
I did say?
"Mungo? Fud… Noils?
MUNGO!”
"You nitwit!"
she cried, and slammed down the receiver. Why
had I thought wool terminology would delight her?
Too late I remembered the
bridge game. Common sense told me
not to call back and apologize; I'd do that when I got home.
Only,
when I got home, she was throwing all those suitcases into the
back of
the Rabbit. If I'd remembered to pick up the quart of milk she
asked
me to buy, I would have missed her altogether.
"I would've been gone.”
She was talking to herself, not me; her
words belonged with what Irene had said, "She was almost
here.” Two
wraiths in the fog.
"Stupid son of a bitch,"
I said out loud.
But I couldn't believe my
fool phone call could have pushed her
over the edge. She used to laugh when I read her something out
of
the encyclopedia. "No, Toby," (I could still hear
her; it was when she
was pregnant with Helena), "I don't want to name the baby
Valsolda
or Corrado Silli.” Her voice had been sweet then, sweet
and loving.
"Talk about silly--you're
silly.” There were other times, true, when she
was less entertained. "Do you want me to stand here and
listen to you
read this craziness, or would you like to let me get the g.d.
roast in
the oven?"
Around two I went up to
bed, lay rigid in the bed that Faye
wasn't in; she hadn't been in it for some time, several weeks.
Months.
I had to admit that, think about it. She'd been sleeping in
the girls'
bedrooms--first Helena's, then Leigh's, then Mary Pat's. Not
Julie's.
Maybe she didn't try Julie's because Julie would be home for
Thanksgiving; Faye wouldn't want to get too settled in. She
wasn't
doing this on account of my snoring; she'd been sleeping through
my
snoring for thirty-five years. It was something else: she didn't
want to
be in the same bed. Maybe in my sleep I reached out and touched
her,
places she didn't want to be touched. I don't know. She never
said our
sex life was over, but I guess it must have been. It was over
now, in
any case. Such as it was.
Why was she entering the
service area so soon after getting on
the turnpike? Not to get gas; she never bought gas on the turnpike.
She was going to phone me, tell me she was coming back. I knew
that
was it. No, I knew it wasn't. She needed the rest room. It was
her
reactive gut, like Mary Pat's.
She didn't even see the
bus.
I lay there, wide awake
in that room until maybe four or so, then
got up and moved to Mary Pat's room, where there were two twin
beds. I got into the bed that had sheets on it; the sheets still
smelled
like Faye's bath powder. She always took a bath at night and
then a
shower in the morning.
But I couldn't stay there.
I got up again and moved to Helena's
room, the one Helena shared with Leigh until Leigh wanted to
be a big
girl and have her own room. It was when Mary Pat was born, and
Leigh had to have something to make her feel she still counted
even if
she wasn't the baby anymore. There were no sheets on Helena's
bed,
just blankets and a spread, and I didn't belong there, either.
Early in the morning--six--I
phoned Helena. "Oh, my God!" she
kept saying, "oh, my God!" She said, "Why didn't
you call me? You
stayed there all by yourself?" I asked her to call Mary
Pat. Maybe the
school could get a substitute if Mary Pat wanted to take a personal
day.
"Well, of course she's
going to want to," Helena said. Mary Pat
had a drive ahead of her; I was worried about her driving when
she
was upset. "She'll be fine," Helena said. It wasn't
that long a drive; the
school was in Nashua, just over the New Hampshire border. I
told
Helena I'd call Leigh and get Julie a plane ticket. Helena said,
"You just
get the plane ticket, and I'll call Mary Pat and Leigh."
So all four of my girls
were going to be here by afternoon. "I'll
be down," Helena said, "as soon as I can get the baby-sitter
for Isis.”
She hung up before I could say, "Bring Isis along.”
My favorite grandchild,
the youngest. Only four. Rick, her father,
an African-American. Was it wrong to have a favorite? Probably.
I
haven't always loved the youngest best.
Julie answered the phone
right away, but it was only five-thirty
in Ohio, and she was still half-asleep. She couldn't believe
what I was
telling her, either. I tried to keep to the practical: the ticket
would be
at the airport. She cried for a long time, then said, "She
and Aunt
Irene made up?"
All I could think was: Faye
and I didn't get the chance.
And then I was thinking
back: We were driving someplace.
Young, not married yet. Nineteen and twenty-one. I was trying
to
make Faye laugh. I said, "You realize a dog could run into
the street
and I could slam on the brakes and run into a telephone pole
and kill
us both?"
She said, "That's why
we have leash laws.”
I had never thought so before,
but she might have been serious. |
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