the Buffalo Soldier (2002) Page 12

  I am, she murmured.

  Alfred, anything special you feel like doing tomorrow? You want to hang out with me? Terry asked. No basement insulation, I promise.

  When there was no noise from the backseat, Laura turned. Perhaps he'd fallen asleep at some point, after all. Instead she saw he'd hardly moved in forty-five minutes. He was still sitting upright, now gazing ahead at the two of them.

  Alfred? she said, wondering if he had heard Terry with his headset on.

  Almost imperceptibly he shrugged his shoulders and said, Sure. Whatever.

  Yup, you and I will do something tomorrow, Terry said. We'll do something interesting.

  She realized she didn't know quite what that shrug had meant, or for whose benefit it was intended. Terry's? Hers? She couldn't tell what he really thought of a day with her husband, and, as she did often, she found herself wishing that the boy would just talk more.

  BY ELEVEN O'CLOCK she was sure that Alfred was asleep, and so she put the book she was reading on her nightstand and said to Terry, Are you awake?

  Without turning toward her or even moving, he answered he was.

  I want to talk to you, she said.

  I expected as much.

  I want to know what Russell was talking about.

  When my brother drinks too much, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

  Are you going to look at me?

  She heard a deep inhalation and then a long sigh, and the quilt on his side rose up like a small boat on a wave. Finally he rolled over and sat up. Yes, he said, I am going to look at you.

  What happened?

  I had a drink with a woman in a bar. I was bored at the camp, and I had a drink with--

  She put her hand on the front of his face and covered his mouth--she felt the stubble on his cheeks--and started to squeeze her fingers and her thumb together. She wasn't sure what she was trying to do; she couldn't tell whether this was like a slap and she was trying to hurt him, or whether she was simply trying to stop him from speaking. From confessing. She felt his teeth through his face, through the thick slabs of flesh that were his cheeks, and she knew her eyes were growing wet, but he didn't stop her or make any effort to remove her hand.

  Finally she took her fingers away. His cheeks had deep red marks where her hand had been.

  Who was this woman?

  Nothing happened, he said. Nothing physical, nothing emotional. Nothing.

  I asked you a question.

  Her name, I believe, is Phoebe. She works at the store near the camp.

  You believe you know her name? I'm supposed to believe you had a drink with some woman you picked up in a bar, and you don't know her name? Come on!

  It wasn't like that, I didn't pick her up.

  Then what was it like? Tell me.

  I went to the store to call you--

  When was this?

  Monday night, I believe.

  A week ago Monday?

  Yes. If you'll recall, we spoke on the phone a little before eight. Remember? Well, the store was closing when we were talking and the woman was leaving, and we waved at each other. Just being polite, because we knew each other a bit since Russell and me and the boys had been shopping there so much over the weekend. Then you and I said good night, and I hung up. I was planning to go straight back to the camp, but I really had next to no desire to play cards till eleven or twelve at night, and listen to Russell's dirty jokes. And so I went to a bar in Newport and sat down at the counter and had a beer. It was--it is--completely innocent.

  Innocent?

  Innocent.

  Except for the fact you picked up some woman. God, Terry, what do you take me for?

  I didn't pick up anyone. That woman--Phoebe--was there, too. I didn't see her at first, I didn't even say hi. But she came over to me after I'd been there awhile, and sat down on the stool next to me. And, yes, we talked.

  That's it?

  Well, no. I did pay for her beer. It seemed like the courteous thing to do.

  Did she try and pick you up?

  Yes, as a matter of fact, she did. Until I told her I was happily married. And then we just talked.

  What did you talk about?

  We talked about Alfred. We talked about you. We talked about the girls.

  With two fingers he wiped away a tear at the edge of her eyes, and then took the cuff of his cotton jersey--he was sleeping tonight in sweatpants and a T-shirt with long sleeves--folded it over his thumb, and gently dabbed at both of her cheeks.

  How long were you there?

  I don't know.

  An hour?

  Maybe a little longer.

  Two?

  Laura, you're treating me like I'm a hostile witness. Usually it's only the public defenders who interrogate me like this.

  How long do you think you were at the bar? Tell me.

  I don't think I like this tone. I told you: Nothing happened.

  You went to a bar with a--

  No, stop that. I went to a bar alone. I can swear under oath that I drove to that bar alone. Under oath. Understand?

  You had a drink with a woman in a bar. How long?

  I'm guessing. Okay? I'm guessing. Ninety minutes, if you have to have a number.

  So you were back at the camp by nine-thirty.

  No.

  Then when?

  Why are you doing this?

  Why am I doing what? Asking where the fuck my husband--

  Why are you getting like this? Why are you using words like--

  Fuck? Why am I using words like fuck? Well, maybe because my husband is taking other women out for drinks when I think he's with the boys at deer camp! Maybe because two days before the anniversary of our daughters'--

  Don't go there, you're--

  I will go anyplace I please!

  Do you want to wake Alfred? Look, I made a mistake. I shouldn't have bought her a beer, and I'm sorry. Really: I'm sorry. But I couldn't face Russell, I couldn't face my cousins, I couldn't face one more hand of hearts. Okay? I couldn't face any of that macho deer camp bullshit. And you know what? It felt good to talk about the girls. It felt good to talk about Alfred. It felt good to talk about you and us and our--

  You told this woman about me? About us? What exactly did you tell her about me? I can't wait to hear this, she heard herself saying. It was odd, but just when she thought she was calming down, just when she thought this was going to be okay, he would say something and set her off again. Was this what he was trying to do, she wondered, was this by design? Or was he trying to defuse the situation, and the task was just proving beyond him?

  We talked about the girls, yes. Maybe it was exactly because Wednesday was coming. And it really did feel good. Let's face it, there are some things we can't talk about anymore. Maybe we never could. My God, look at us. I love you, Laura, I absolutely adore you. You know that. But look at me, look at you. Look--

  Me? Don't you dare try and say it's my fault that you went to some bar with some woman.

  I'm not!

  Then what?

  We're not...we're not the same as we were before the flood. I love you, I love our marriage. But we don't talk about the same things, we don't make love like we used to. We go through these phases. And I'm saying we. I'm not blaming this on you. We. Me, too. And if I was in a court of law, I'd probably have to confess that I enjoyed talking to Phoebe in that bar. But I went there alone, and I left there alone. Okay?

  She had a sense that they were at a stage in the fight where she had complete control to either end it right now and minimize the damage, or allow it to continue and risk serious escalation. If she wanted to believe him, then his worst crime had been withholding from her the fact that he had a beer with this person named Phoebe--which meant he did feel guilty about something, but that something may have been the simple notion that he had been at a bar with another woman. But he hadn't slept with her.

  She thought she could forgive him that. Not right that moment. But with the passage of a little t
ime--especially if they used this revelation (she couldn't call it a confession, because he was only telling her now because of his brother) to shore up their marriage and try to address whatever emptiness had led Terry to open up to another woman in the first place.

  If she doubted him, however, then now was the time to force the issue. Let him know that she hadn't lost what was for her an important--perhaps the most important--thread in their squabble: If he had only been with this Phoebe at the bar for ninety minutes, then why, by his own admission, was he not back at deer camp by nine-thirty? He still hadn't answered that question for her.

  She stared at him for what felt like a long time but she guessed in reality was no more than ten or fifteen seconds. He looked to her a bit like a sleepy little boy, despite his mustache and the small flecks of gray in his sideburns: His hair was already mussed by the pillow, and his eyes were small and tired. She half-expected him to rub them with his hands balled into fists.

  Okay? he asked again.

  She opened her mouth, unsure what was going to come out, and then she heard the word, and if she wasn't completely okay, she thought she would be soon enough. There was much more that they had to discuss--and she resolved that they would--but for now she was...okay.

  Okay, she said one more time, her voice now soft as a whisper, and already he was falling forward and resting his head on her chest.

  "Any white man who believes the colored troops are any good must be living with a dusky companion himself, and expressing her opinion. He must be like a renegade or a colored himself: Doesn't care what color a woman is, as long as she's female."

  ANONYMOUS LETTER SIGNED "11TH INFANTRY,"

  ARMY AND NAVY JOURNAL, MAY 19, 1876

  *

  Alfred

  He'd heard other grown-ups use the word fuck, but never Laura. He wasn't sure he'd ever heard her use any swear word before. Not even damn.

  He climbed back into his blue jeans and left his pajama bottoms on the edge of his bed. There was a New England Patriots sweatshirt on the floor in the corner of his room, and he slipped that on over his pajama top. He considered filling his knapsack with the food in his closet--and maybe adding something more from the kitchen, just in case--but his plan certainly wasn't to leave. He hoped he wasn't going anywhere. He just needed to get out and wander around for a couple of hours. Like he did in Burlington. And so all he took with him was his CD player.

  His boots and his jacket were by the front door, and when there was only silence in Terry and Laura's room, he tiptoed down the stairs to put them on, too. The house was darker than he would have liked, but he didn't dare turn on the hall light.

  Outside, the branches on the cat spruce near the edge of the driveway moved like sleepy fingers in the breeze.

  He had expected a direction would occur to him once he was outdoors, but now he was there and he still didn't have a clue where he might walk. This place wasn't like Burlington: There weren't lights on every corner, and rows of apartment houses filled with college students who were still wide awake. There weren't bars and restaurants open well past midnight some days. He was actually rather scared of the dark, and the only street lamp out here was at the bend in the road near the Cousinos' dairy farm--and that was at least a quarter of a mile away, on the other side of the patch of woods that bordered the street. The other direction led up the hill toward the cemetery, and although he liked the graveyard a good deal during the day, there was no way he was going to go there right now.

  He considered listening to some music, but he decided he should be able to hear the strange noises that seemed to mark the night here in the middle of nowhere, and so he kept the headset draped around his neck like a horseshoe.

  The cement steps before the house were stone cold, but he sat down on them anyway and stared across the street at the old people's place. He saw there were rooms in the house that were lit, despite the fact it was late and most everyone else in Cornish was probably sound asleep. He wondered if they also slept with lights on, or whether one or both of them were awake right now, too.

  He thought of Terry and Laura in their big bed in their room. Once before he had been living in a home when the grown-ups decided to get a divorce. He'd been five and a half, and he hadn't been there all that long. It had been the Ryans, those two people who lived in the apartment by the bus station. The man left, and soon after that he was shuttled to the north end of the city to live with two older foster kids--a boy and a girl--at the Fletchers', where he would sleep for close to three years on the pullout bed in the living room and wear the older boy's clothes when he outgrew them. Mrs. Fletcher was a soap opera fiend. She was also a hard drinker, and she used to whale on Isabel, the oldest child in the house and the only girl. But she never touched the boys, and only rarely did she ever stop any of the kids from roaming around Burlington.

  He feared that if Terry left--if Laura kicked him out--he'd be sent back to the group home until they could find another placement. The group home was the world of the real losers. Bed wetters. Kids who'd do really weird shit, like set things on fire. One girl there had once carried all her foster dad's pants and shirts and underwear into the backyard, soaked them with the gasoline the family had in the garage for the lawn mower, and burned them up. Made a big bonfire out of them. A neighbor called the fire department, but the girl had the blaze under control and knew exactly what she was doing.

  There was a rumor that the man might have touched her, but no one ever said anything for sure.

  Although at first he had figured Cornish was just a temporary placement at best, he was pretty sure now that Louise--his latest caseworker--thought she'd found the promised land with Terry and Laura. Louise had lots of studs and rings in her ears--even more than he'd had the previous summer, when he and Tien convinced Digger to do their ears in the bathroom in the basement of the shopping mall. He had a sense that Louise viewed Terry and Laura as the perfect family for him. Tough cop for a dad, sweet lady for a mom. Home nowhere near the city. Maybe she was right. Maybe it didn't get any better than this. But if it didn't--

  If it didn't, he didn't know what to think. Sure, they didn't scream at each other (though Laura had seemed pretty close to yelling tonight), and they didn't hit him. They gave him clothes and toys and he had his very own bedroom. But they sure as shit weren't happy, and every minute he felt like he was walking on glass. You moved slow in this house, as if everything--and that included the people--was just about ready to break.

  He guessed it hadn't been like that when the girls were alive. When he was supposed to have been watching the Macy's parade and had gone through the family pictures instead, he'd learned that the house had been a different world then. Terry and Laura had looked younger--which, of course, they were. But they had looked a lot younger. More than just a couple of years. And the family had always seemed to be doing things. Several pictures stuck in his mind: Terry and a group of girls, including one of his daughters, playing T-ball at the Little League field. Terry was wearing shorts, and showing the kid how to hold a bat.

  He wouldn't have believed that uptight cop had ever owned shorts. And he was smiling. That was pretty rare for Terry, too.

  Another picture he liked showed the T-ball twin's sister using a spoon to sprinkle glitter on what looked like a foot-tall teepee made of twigs. She was probably six or seven, and her hair was down to her waist. It was taken in the house's front yard, and he thought it was spring because there was the green of some flowers just starting to emerge through the pine bark in the garden.

  The picture he found most intriguing, however, was a shot of the four of them taken at the peak of some little mountain, with little more than blue sky behind them. The girls were in blue jeans and windbreakers, and each one was sitting on top of a parent's shoulders, their legs dangling like they were Halloween straw men. He guessed they were about five. What fascinated him was that everyone was not merely smiling in the photograph, they were laughing--laughing hysterically, it seemed, as if whoev
er was snapping the picture was the funniest person on the planet. They were all so happy, it was like they were stoned.

  He'd considered taking that one, but he was afraid it would be obvious it was missing. And so instead he'd taken a photograph of the two girls dressed up as brides, one of about seven or eight pictures that had been snapped the same day and stored in the photo album. But it wasn't merely the fact that there were many similar shots that had made the picture such a find: It was one of the few images on which someone--Laura, he guessed--had bothered to scrawl the girls' names on the back:

  Hillary and Megan, planning their weddings. Second grade.

  Across the street Alfred saw the front door opening, and he saw the old man emerge on the porch. For a second he thought the man was wearing a dress under his winter coat, and he was about to race back inside Terry and Laura's house. But then he realized that what he thought was a dress was merely the bottom half of the man's flannel bathrobe. The guy had simply put his parka on over his robe.

  With his hands in his pockets, the man shuffled across the street and up the walkway. Alfred watched his breath rise up into the night air like cigarette smoke. When he reached the Sheldons' house, he sat down on the steps beside him.

  Evening, Alfred, he said, without looking his way. He stared straight ahead at his own place.

  Hi.

  I've always suspected that you, too, are a night person. I don't sleep much either these days.

  I've seen your light on at night, Alfred said.

  And I have seen yours. Of course, I have an excuse for not sleeping well: I'm old. You're a growing boy. Your body is supposed to be hungry for sleep. Just crave it.

  Alfred thought for a moment. Not mine, he said finally.

  Well, all bodies are different, the man said. Some people just don't need much sleep. He stretched his legs straight before him, and Alfred realized the man was wearing black rubber galoshes into which he had tucked his pajamas.