“You seem pretty concerned all of a sudden. What kind of papers are they?”
I didn’t answer. I walked past her and got myself another drink.
My mind was starting to get cloudy.
“I want to see…” she said, and turned the box upside down over the bed. All my notebooks spilled out, like a display in some used-book store. I didn’t like that-it made me feel edgy. I took a long swig. Betty grabbed two or three at random and started leafing through them.
“Gee, what are these?” she said. “Who wrote this? You?”
“Okay, look. They’re just some old things that don’t matter anymore. Let’s go on to something else. I’ll put them away…”
“YOU wrote THIS?”
“Yes, I wrote THAT. It was a long time ago.”
She seemed to get off on it. In itself this was pretty good, but I would rather have talked about something else.
“You’re not going to tell me that you filled up every single page of all these notebooks! I don’t believe it!”
“Betty, I think we ought to forget about this for tonight. I think we should just go to bed. I feel totally sapped and…”
“Jesus,” she interrupted me. “But what is this, exactly? I don’t understand.”
“It’s nothing. Just some things I wrote when I had a few minutes with nothing to do.”
She looked at me with eyes big as saucers-an expression of pain and wonder at the same time.
“What’s it about?”
“Nothing. About me-about whatever came into my head…”
“How come you never talked about it?”
“I forgot it even existed, sort of…”
“Come off it! You don’t just forget about something like this.”
She slowly assembled the notebooks, running her fingers between each one like a blind person. There was dead silence in the room. I was starting to wonder if we’d ever get to bed. She took the stack over to the table and pulled up a chair.
“The numbers on the covers… that’s the order?” she asked.
“What are you doing? You’re not going to start reading that now!”
“Why not? You have something more interesting in mind?”
I was going to make a snide remark, but I didn’t. Better to leave well enough alone. I got undressed and lay down on the bed. She opened up the first notebook. I’d never shown those things to anyone-never even mentioned them. Betty was the first person to see them. It meant something. It made me feel funny. I smoked a long cigarette before falling asleep, staring at the ceiling while the calm came back. By the time you’re thirty-five you get the hang of living. You appreciate it when they let you breathe a little.
The next morning when I rolled over in bed, I saw she wasn’t there. She was sitting at the table with her chin in her hands, poring over one of the notebooks. It was already daylight but the lamp was still lit. The room was full of smoke. Jesus, I said-Jesus, she’s been at it all night. I got dressed in a hurry, watching her, my mind going a mile a minute. I couldn’t decide whether I should say something clever to get the day off to a good start or just shut up. She didn’t pay any attention to me. Once in a while she’d turn a page and put her forehead in her hands. It made me nervous. I walked around the room aimlessly, then decided to heat up the coffee. The sun had started climbing the walls.
I ran some water over my face and put the coffee on the table with two cups. I poured one for her. I pushed it toward her. She picked it up without looking at me, without saying thank you, her eyes swollen from lack of sleep and her hair going every which way. She tossed the whole cup down before I had time to put the sugar in, turning her head to drink and read at the same time. I waited to see if something was going to happen-if she was going to pay a little attention to me or fall off her chair from exhaustion. Finally I got up. I slapped my thighs.
“Well, guess I’ll take off now…” I said.
“Uh-huh…”
I knew she didn’t understand what I said.
“How’s it going? You like it?” I asked.
This time she didn’t hear me at all. She groped around the table for her cigarettes. At least, I thought, the thing is entertaining, and maybe it’ll help settle things down a little around here. It shouldn’t be too much to ask. I just wanted to keep her.
I turned the light off as I left. She hadn’t looked at me once.
I walked out into the nice fresh morning. There was a beautiful yellow light with a few lingering shadows. It was early. Nobody was out yet. I found myself alone, with just a slight hangover.
I went to get a can of paint out of the shed. I grabbed one off the top of the pile but it got away from me and I fell over backward into the side mirror of the VW. Right in the kidneys. I saw stars. The guy from the garage had offered to buy the car from her for next to nothing, and we’d turned it down. Now I was sorry. We had a wreck on our hands I didn’t know what to do with. I rubbed my side and swore. One more problem to take care of-the list was starting to get long. I closed the door and headed off with my paint can, squinting in the sun like some sort of imbecile.
I got to work on bungalow number two, thinking of Betty poring over my little notebooks. It gave me strength. I rolled on a first coat, feeling better.
I hadn’t been at it five minutes when I saw the shutters snap open and a guy’s head poke out. He was unshaven, in an undershirt, just out of bed-one of those types who’s a regional representative for something- eyeglasses, in this case.
“Oh, it`s you,” he said. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Can’t you tell?”
He tipped his head back and laughed.
“Nice to see you working for a change. You gonna come in and do the inside too?”
“Right. Start moving the furniture…”
He yawned-a wide one-and handed me a cup of coffee. We talked for a minute about the weather, then I went back to work. The roller made a loud sucking noise with every stroke. I wished I had something quieter.
The time passed easily. Nothing much happened-I went up and down the ladder a few times and it got hotter. I was in no hurry. I felt a little numb; the white was making me half blind. The only thing that bugged me was the little rivulet of paint that kept running up my arm. It’s unpleasant, and no matter what you do you can’t get past it- it tickles you, it drives you nuts. To be honest, painting is not one of my pet projects. Paint gets all over everything. It gets stale in a hurry.
But painting was just what the doctor ordered that morning something mindless. I felt like insulating myself. I made myself breathe slower-closing my eyes halfway. It worked so well that I didn’t hear the truck. I just saw it go by, with Betty behind the wheel.
It was like getting punched in the gut. She’s gone, I said she’s gone and I’m alone. It was a wound. I felt the panic rising but I kept moving the roller across the wall until nothing more came out of it. Then I just let loose- racing off toward the house, praying that she hadn’t left for good-especially with the company car. I tore into the house like a wild animal, out of breath. It took me a few seconds to realize that all her things were still there. I had to sit down. I was weak in the knees. I must have been nuts to react like that. I got up again. I went to touch her clothes-her skirts, her T-shirts. I kicked myself. I noticed that my little notebooks had been carefully put back in the box. I downed a big glass of water and went back to work.
I came back later to eat, but she was still gone. That’s always how it is when women go shopping, I thought-it always takes a while. I made myself some eggs, but I wasn’t really hungry. The place didn’t look right without her. I felt wrong being there. I couldn’t sit still for five minutes. I did a few dishes, then went out to bring back the boxes she’d thrown outside. I reinstilled some semblance of order. Still, I had the feeling that something had changed. Objects seemed less familiar to me, the air had a funny taste to it. It was like I was in a stranger’s house-an uncomfortable sensation. In spite of the heat I decided I’d rather return to my paintbrushes. I backed out the front door.
No matter how many times I told myself that she’d just gone into town for a few things, I couldn’t shake the anxious feeling. I worked with little wild strokes, and the paint spattered all over the place. I looked like I’d caught
