“What did you tell her then, goddammit?” Henry yelled.
This whole night, this whole twisted episode of their lives, and Henry reserved his real feeling, his true emotion for what his wife felt. “She came up to me and said how beautiful Zeke is. But I’m telling you she knows. I can tell. And you better hear me,” Carrie said, her voice strong though she never in her life felt more like sobbing. “I’m glad she knows.”
“She might not know. Right?” Henry directed his question to Jay.
“You were supposed to be here,” Carrie hissed. “He wanted to see you. He always wants to see YOU. He asks all the time about when you’re coming. I didn’t even tell him this time. I knew you wouldn’t come. I knew it. He is always counting on you and you let him down over and over. Now we don’t have to count on your sorry ass.”
“Sorry, sorry, Carrie,” Jay said as he walked down the steps to his car.
“Don’t try to come here and act like you know anything,” Henry yelled.
“I’m leaving. I shouldn’t have come here,” Jay said and opened his car door.
“You don’t know what you’re doing. That’s all. You don’t know.” Henry kept his eyes on Jay.
“You don’t know me,” Jay said.
“Five more minutes and I’m calling the police.”
Henry opened the door to his own car. “Don’t judge me by this,” Henry said.
Jay got in his car, turned the ignition, and the engine hummed on, the radio pulsed a slow jam from a generation ago. Henry went down the steps to his own car.
“I should get drunk for real,” Henry said.
Jay shook his head, not sure what to say. Listening to Henry, seeing his crumbled face, knowing the mess that spread out around him in sad concentric circles, a lonely child, betrayed and disappointed women, made him so defeated and exhausted, he could barely speak. Maybe that’s why he’d come. He’d wanted to get angry, hate Henry, so when he exploded Henry’s life the way he dreamed of doing, he wouldn’t blink an eye at the carnage. He had not counted on being sad. The thought had not occurred to Jay, at least with such clarity until that moment.
“Get it together, man.”
“What do you think showing up here?” Henry sounded like he was asking a genuine question. “You don’t know. You better believe that. And another thing, Ava is never going to be with you. She can’t do it man. She’s messed up. I love her, but she’s messed up. I’m telling you.”
“Henry, your secrets are out, you better figure out some way to get behind that.”
“Is that what I need to do, JJ? You know everything about my life now? Is that it?” Henry stood up straight and walked to the passenger door of Jay’s car. “You know, huh?
Carrie bolted and chain locked the door. Both Jay and Henry looked up at the sound of the locks connecting.
Jay backed out the driveway just as the light in the trailer went out, but Jay could just make out Henry’s outstretched body on his hood of his own car.
“Get off the car, Henry,” Jay yelled out of his passenger window.
“I’m not a bad man,” Henry said.
“Who thinks he is?” Jay said.
Henry opened the door to his own car, but Jay didn’t wait to hear the engine start.
18
Ava went home early the next morning from the motel. Lana asked her then told her that she was staying the night, and Ava did stay almost. She wanted nothing more than to sink down into Lana’s couch under a blanket and let Lana bring her popcorn as they watched episode after episode of trash television. But a heaviness was settling in her like sand swirling then settling in water that made her feel like moving, keep moving or she might plant to the spot and never move again. She went back to the motel but got up before the sun rose to get back to her own house. She hoped that Henry was home. She dreaded the idea that Henry was at home. She craved seeing Henry at home. Henry wasn’t there, which made Ava alternately sad and angry and relieved and sad again.
Once in her bedroom, her first act was to take a long, hot shower. Henry hadn’t been home. He probably hadn’t come home all night. After the twentieth time he’d called her, texted her, left messages, she’d finally had to turn the phone’s sound off. After the first call or two she silenced her phone, let it vibrate in her pocket. Let him think about her. Let him wonder. Let him ride around town trying to find her. The bed had not been made from the day before and Ava attempted to straighten the covers but it looked a baggy mess like an old man’s neck. She had not decided what she would do if Henry been there but she had worked out three or four scenarios in her head for confronting then hurting Henry: she would catch him in a lie; she would pretend to know nothing and see how he reacted to her seeing his son; she would beat the hell out of him the second she saw him. All of the options had their merits.
Ava had texted Sylvia early in the evening with a lie her mother would not believe, that she was out with friends until late, she might stay over with a friend, she’d said. Ava had plenty of acquaintances she’d go to lunch with from time to time, like Tommy the skinny white teller at the bank who told her that his other coworkers “oppressed his identity.” He really said that. Ava wasn’t sure how she managed to plump his identity back to normal, but whatever made him happy. Ava had a few more casual acquaintances and no friend she would trust with the dirty secrets of her marriage. The only friend Ava was likely to stay over with was her mother. Her mother knew that too.
Ava had called in to work but she had almost decided to get dressed and go in. The sheets felt good though. She folded her thin pillow into a sandwich and propped her head on the top of it. She had not been able to believe her luck when she found the four-poster bed at a yard sale. The couple selling it even brought it to the house, refused the twenty dollars she’d offered as a delivery charge. More than once Ava had thought the couple had passed on a curse of an unhappy, unfruitful bedroom. Sometimes she thought she remembered clearly that there had been no large plastic kids’ toys in the yard, no outgrown baby clothes for sale. Though now she wasn’t sure if that was a true memory or just a sad attempt at an explanation. No matter what happened to her in the rest of her life, she would get rid of that bed.