Why had she said that? That she wasn’t leaving leaving. She didn’t know that. She didn’t know anything.
She kept having the same memory of the day she and Malcolm bought the house, how desperate they were to get a down payment together. And then they had it and they felt invincible, twenty-eight and thirty-two, writing a check bigger than either of them ever thought they would be able to. With the deed and keys in hand, they drove to the house immediately after signing, let themselves in, made their way to the living room before Malcolm remembered what he meant to do. He marched Jess back outside so that he could carry her over the threshold. She said she was pretty sure that was a wedding night thing and they’d been married for three years already, but then she was off her feet, laughing, and he was trying not to knock her head against the doorjamb.
Inside the empty house, they opened cabinets and turned on faucets. They went down to the basement and scrutinized the furnace. They walked upstairs and listened to the floorboards creak. They climbed into the attic, where Malcolm poked at the insulation. The inspector had said the house would need a new roof soon, but not yet, it would hold out for a little while.
“What now?” Malcolm asked when they were done with the tour, and were standing in the bare upstairs hallway, smiling at each other.
“We have so much to do,” she said, but half-heartedly.
He smelled like shaving cream. Everything about him—from his brow line, to his hands, to the way his pants rested on his hips, was completely masculine.
“Here?” she said as he took hold of her hip. “The floor is too hard.”
“You can be on top.”
“My knees!”
“We can stand,” he said.
“I need something to hold on to,” she protested, but she was laughing, had given in. “Besides you.”
“Jesus Christ,” he said, pulling her into the bathroom, where there was a long counter for her to grip if she needed something, mirrors on every wall.
* * *
When she thought of her child, the child that would have been born, absolutely, had she lived her life differently, that child was all ages at once. He was four, running to keep up with the other trick-or-treaters, his plastic pumpkin bucket knocking against his knees. She was a ten-month-old, the surprising weight of her sitting on Jess’s arm. He was an adolescent and Jess was the age she was now, walking into his bedroom and telling him to crack a window, my God.
She dreaded telling her mother she was leaving, the questions that would come, and even in her mind, explaining it was like pinning down a cloud. Car packed, she drove away from her house without looking back at Malcolm, at the bewildered expression on his handsome face. She drove straight to her mother’s, said she couldn’t stay, said she had something to tell her that she didn’t want her to hear around town or from Malcolm if she happened to go by the house, but then her mother clapped her hand over her mouth and Jess saw that she thought the news had to do with a baby. So she had to let her bring out the Vienna Fingers, make a pot of tea.
She heard herself say it again, that she wasn’t leaving leaving, they just needed a little time apart, and her mother pointed out that Jess had probably never expected Malcolm to stay a bartender, not deep down anyway, no matter what she might have told herself. Jess could see by the way she sat, the way she raised her eyebrows and fixed her mouth, that she’d been wanting to say that for a long time. Maureen claimed that she saw it all coming ages ago, the very first time Malcolm strolled into their kitchen at eight thirty in the morning, not one shred of shame on his face. “You’d stand up to look at him, my goodness, it was like he filled a room just by walking into it, but—” she said. “Anyway, I tried to tell you.”
All those bright men Jess had been in school with! From all over! What was the point of that student loan debt if not to tie her life to one of them? They were from states you never even hear about! That redheaded guy—what was his name?—smart as a whip, who knew what he was even talking about half the time, and didn’t his mother’s side of the family have a vineyard in Washington State or someplace? Oregon?
“He loved you,” her mother said. “I saw the way he looked at you.” But what did Jess do? Maureen Ryan mused. She dumped him and fell for the local bartender.
“Cobie,” her mother said, when Jess told her where she’d be staying while she thought things out. “She’s still with that woman? She’s still—”
“?‘That woman’? You mean her wife? Are you asking if she’s still gay?”
“Don’t go getting mad at me, but maybe you should have hung around with girls more like you. Maybe that was your mistake. You could have been on the lookout together.”
“Oh my God,” Jess said, looking out the kitchen window. She could see streaks where the sun hit. She had no energy left to argue.
“Anyway,” her mother went on. Wasn’t it at least possible that women shouldn’t be working like men? It was wonderful to earn a living, sure, she guessed so, Maureen had worked her whole life, too, but was it right? Did it not, in fact, do something maybe to a woman’s body? All those hours and that stress? Running for trains? Have women possibly ruined things for themselves?
Jess went to the cabinet where her mother kept her vitamins and prescriptions. She reached past four bottles of super omega-3 capsules, cod-liver oil, women’s dailies, the various antibiotics Maureen never finished because why ever listen to the doctors she demanded to see. She plucked out a bottle of ibuprofen, fished out two, swallowed them dry. She glanced at the expiration date—four years earlier—and took one more.
“You know more than a fleet of medical experts, I guess.”
“Well, tell me what doesn’t add up,” Maureen said. “Two young, healthy people.”
Jess sighed. “It’s more than that. There’s more than that now.”
“Oh,” Maureen said, and for the first time since Jess came in, there was silence. Jess counted the ticks of the old clock. “I don’t know, Jessie. But look. At least there aren’t any kids.”
Jess was angry driving away from Gillam, like she could toss a match behind her and watch the whole place go up and not feel one bit bad about it, but once she got on the Palisades, got as far as the gas station right before the bridge, and then the toll plaza, she could feel something else move in, like weather she was helpless to watch come and go. Malcolm had the Halloween party at the bar that night, and he’d been so worried it would be a flop. He’d put out money for decorations, for prizes. He had a cover band going on at 9:00 p.m. He’d had Roddy put it on Facebook and then take it down because everyone said Facebook was lame, and then put it back up again because someone else said it was still good for community news. Roddy told him the bar should have its own account, but maybe not Facebook, which was for old people, and Malcolm had said he didn’t know places had accounts, he thought it was just people, and Roddy had said, “Oh yeah, brands, buildings, pets, anything.” Roddy was good at the internet, getting info on his phone. Malcolm hoped the kid eventually went back to college.
Malcolm had Roddy post on social media, but he still went over to the office supply store and printed a hundred flyers like it was 1998. He divided the pile among everyone on staff and told them to post them at bagel shops, Laundromats, Dunkin’, bus stops, everywhere they went. Roddy said there’d be a good crowd. He could tell by the metrics. And he turned out to be right.