Back in the kitchen, Grace collapses onto a chair, paralyzed with indecision. Her thoughts swirl like ribbons inside her head. Trying to catch one to examine seems like a game too difficult for her. If only she could think logically.
Claire in her pj’s stands at the threshold to the kitchen. “What. Is. Going. On?” she demands in a loud voice, hands on her hips.
Aping her father.
“Where’s our breakfast?” she scolds. She turns her hands into little fists and pops them back on her hips. Behind her, Tom studies his fingers, trying to make fists, too. Giving up, he slaps the sides of his diaper.
Claire misses nothing.
At lunchtime, Grace finds Gene propped up against the sofa in the sitting room. She sets his meal, pieces of chicken breast, potato chips, and a pickle, on a side table that he can easily reach.
“I could drag you through divorce court,” Gene says, as if he had absorbed her thoughts in his sleep. “It would destroy you.” He nearly laughs. “Can you imagine what your mother would think? Her friends?” he adds, looking smug.
“Please,” she says.
The word might mean “please don’t do that” or it might mean “please divorce me.” She decides to let Gene figure it out for himself.
An early summer day, and it will be hot. Already Grace can feel, at eight o’clock in the morning, as she passes from the shade of one tree to another, the surprise of the heat wafting up from the grass. She blows up a wading pool she recently purchased and then stands with the hose in her hand, filling it. Nearby, Tom and Claire, in their new bathing suits, hop about in anticipation. Grace has made the decision to keep the children with her at all times. She wouldn’t put it past Gene to snatch one of them and use Claire or Tom as a hostage. Merely the idea of it sickens her.
How did Gene make it to the third floor? He can stand and walk, but he can’t sit up straight. He must have two-stepped to the top of the house, keeping his left leg and side straight. Is that how he descended? She remembers it seemed to take forever.
The water up to the edge of the pool, Claire steps in, takes a breath, and then sits. She makes a wide swishing motion to keep Tom out.
“Claire,” Grace says, “remember what you and I talked about? About being nice to Tom and letting him share? The pool is for the two of you. If you can’t do that, I’ll have to take you out.”
Claire pouts but allows Tom to step into the pool. He falls in doing so and splashes Claire with his tumble. “Mom, Tom splashed me!” Claire whines.
“He couldn’t help himself. Just be glad you’re older and have more control.”
The kids will jump in and out of the water all morning. By the time lunch is ready, the pool will be filled with grass and dirt and buckets and toys, and at least half the water will be gone. For a moment, however, Grace is content to sit in a lawn chair and watch the children. She doesn’t have on a bathing suit. She knows that Gene will come to the kitchen window and look out.
When she arrives home late one morning, after having taken the children to the playground, Gene, in black silk pajamas, blocks the door. “Where have you been?” he asks. “I needed you.”
“Claire, take your brother to the backyard,” Grace says. “I’ll call you for lunch.”
Claire needs no instructions.
“Let me in,” Grace demands quietly. Gene steps aside. “We went to the playground,” she says, facing her husband.
“In hose, pumps, and a fancy dress?”
“This isn’t fancy,” she says, looking down at the navy sleeveless dress she has on. “I thought I might need to stop at the store on the way home.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No, I was hungry. I wanted to make some lunch first. Never a good idea to go to a grocery store when you’re hungry.”
His hand rests on the wall. He’s barefoot, but he’s wearing his eye patch. A small concession for the children.
“What did you need?” Grace asks.
“I needed help getting dressed.”
“You’ve learned how to dress yourself.”
“It’s hard. I just wanted some help, is that too much to ask?”
“I can’t help you now,” she says, turning.
He grabs a fistful of dress at the back of her shoulder. She can tell by his weight that he’s using her to balance himself. Deliberately making her help him.
“Gene, I need you to let go of the dress,” she says evenly.
“Why should I?”
“Don’t be silly. I need my dress to make lunch. Please let go.”
With her back to him, Grace relaxes her shoulders. She remembers that the dress has five large white buttons. She undoes them with fast fingers. With a slippery movement, she leaves the dress behind and walks into the kitchen in her slip. She shuts the door behind her.
She sits heavily in a kitchen chair.
After lunch, she’ll find her dress on the floor. Or perhaps he’ll have tossed it into the wastebasket. Or maybe he’ll keep it and lay the dress out next to him on the bed in a ghoulish show of marital harmony.
What if she just walked to the stone wall and shouted for help? Would anyone come?
Gene doesn’t speak to her when she brings the evening meal. His face is expressionless, as if she were a nurse he didn’t particularly like. She asks him if he needs anything.
He pretends for a second not to have heard her. “Oh,” he says. “Need anything? From you? Let me see. No.”
She stands at the sink in her bathrobe eating a piece of toast when she spots, through the window, her husband lying on the waist-high stone wall that today is a backdrop for purple columbine, blue irises, and pink phlox. He has a pillowcase covering the bad side of his face.
She understands that he has every right to want to bathe in the sun. It’s been months since he’s spent any amount of time outside, and were the man not actually Gene, she would go out to him and ask if he would like a glass of water. She might buy him a sturdy chaise longue into which he could maneuver his body. She might, laughing, splash him lightly with water from the pool. But because it’s Gene, Grace understands that he is lying on the stone wall to keep her and the children out of the backyard. He knows that Grace won’t voluntarily enter a place he is in.
The temperature hits ninety degrees, and the breeze is from the southwest, making it a hot wind. The house fills with humidity, which the children experience as boredom. To stop their crankiness, Grace promises them ice cream cones, which activates them enough to settle themselves in the back of the Buick. But when Grace is ready to back down the driveway, she finds that the car won’t start. She tries again. It’s not the starter, because she can hear the whir. It’s the engine that’s failing to turn over. She tries again, reasoning that humidity might be the cause. She tries again, and the engine catches, but then almost immediately dies. Is she out of fuel? She gets out of the car and walks around to remove the gas cap and check. In the high sun, she sees a reflection of liquid. No, plenty of gas. What then? She tries again, but knows that if she keeps the starter going, the battery will die.
“Kids,” she says, “how about we go inside and make Popsicles?”
She anticipates an outcry and gets one. “We want ice cream,” Claire whines, beginning a chant.
“Well, look,” Grace says, swinging around to confront Claire. “The car won’t start. Period. I have to have someone come fix it. You can either sit here in the hot car whining about how you don’t have an ice cream cone, or you can come inside with Tom and me, I can put on the fan, and we can make Popsicles.”
With a pout that could put her in the movies, Claire opens the back door and slides out.
While the children are making Popsicles, Grace watches a man hitch the Buick to a truck and take it slowly down the driveway.