Pru pulled back the covers on her bed, and Patsy lowered Annali carefully, until she was lying on her back. She smoothed Annali’s cap of curls from her forehead and kissed her. Patsy’s shoulders began to shake. Pru reached out and took her arm and said, “Come.”
Patsy followed her out to the other room, and then she began talking.
She’d just come from GW Hospital. She’d found Jacob’s car in the hospital garage and waited there until his shift ended. When he finally came out, she’d confronted him. Where had he been? Why hadn’t he called her back? Didn’t he care that they’d come all this way?
It was like talking to a robot, she said. He told her that he was sorry to have given her the impression that he could ever be a serious part of their lives.
“‘Serious part of your lives,’” Patsy said again, contemptuously. “Was he kidding?”
He apologized if he’d led her to believe that he’d ever leave his wife for her. He hadn’t meant to, but if he had, he was profoundly sorry. “Led me to believe?” Patsy cried. “We only talked about it constantly. How he couldn’t wait for her to come back, so he could start the divorce proceedings . . . How he was hiring a lawyer, to look into adopting Annali . . . How we’d give her some brothers and sisters to grow up with—” At this, Patsy’s voice broke and she buried her face in her hands again, sobbing violently.
Pru was crying now, too. At first she’d been relieved to hear that Patsy hadn’t actually been as deluded as she’d feared—but how reprehensible! To promise such a life, such sweet relief for two souls who had suffered so much—
“Oh!” Patsy’s head snapped up. “You know what he said? ‘I love my life.’”
“Oh, honey,” Pru said.
“Not ‘my wife,’” Patsy fumed, now pacing the apartment. “‘My life.’ ‘I love my life.’ You want to know why he said that? I’ll tell you why—because her father’s in charge of handing out research grants, that’s why. That is the only reason he’s with her, and not me.” She turned around to face Pru. She looked as shocked as she had when Leonard had shown them the little cat bones, in the basement. “How could he say no to us? I mean, how?”
Pru had no idea her sister could be so gullible. She wanted to gather Patsy up in her arms, and she wanted to shake her, too.
“I don’t know, honey. I guess there are other things that he wants more than love.”
Patsy paced back and forth. One minute she thought he might still come back to them; another, she wished him dead. She cried and cried, and she drank most of a bottle of wine Pru had found in the refrigerator. Finally, Pru persuaded her to go to bed. She led her into the bedroom, and got her to lie down next to Annali. Annali rolled over in her sleep and put an arm around her mother’s neck. Patsy closed her eyes and her mouth turned down, then her face relaxed as she fell into sleep.
Pru curled up in the bay window and looked out at the city. People were going to the movies, parents were putting their children to bed. Suddenly, she feared for them all. She remembered, as she did from time to time, that everyone was going to die. Plane crashes, heart attacks, the slow erosion of bones. How did we manage to forget this, she wondered, and get through our daily lives? It was astonishing to her. Everybody was going to die, but still they did the laundry, watered the plants, dug out the scum around the taps in the bathroom. They let themselves love others, who were also going to die. They created little beings, who they also loved, and who will, one day, cease to exist. What did it matter how love ended? So it ended for Patsy with Jacob returning to his wife, instead of with his death. Did it really matter so much? She thought of something her mother used to say, a warning she gave whenever they’d begun to fight over some precious object or another: “It’s going to end in tears, girls! It always ends in tears.”
For a long time, she’d thought the whole problem was about finding love. She’d thought that, once she’d found it, she’d basically be done. Set. Good to go. Funny, how until just now, she hadn’t put it all together: All love ended, somehow. One way, or another.
It was all going to end in tears, wasn’t it?
THE NEXT DAY, PRU DROVE THEM BACK TO THE BEACH house in Patsy’s old hatchback. Patsy had left the puppy alone in the house. She didn’t even know anyone in the neighborhood well enough to call and check on her. The arcade in Rehoboth was closed up, as were most of the tourist shops. It was the week before Thanksgiving, and the beach town felt desolate, abandoned. Low, dark clouds hung over the ocean.
They could hear the puppy, Jenny, howling plaintively as they came up the stairs. She’d been alone for the past day and night. She came bounding outside and back in again, racing around in circles, nipping at their hands.
Unpacked boxes were everywhere. The place reeked of neglected pet.
“Oh God,” moaned Patsy, sinking to the couch. “I can’t face this.”
“Patsy,” said Pru, “why don’t you just come back with me? You don’t have to deal with this right now. Just for a few days, until you’ve got your feet back under you.”
Patsy looked at her, uncertain and relieved. “Are you sure?”
Pru shrugged. As crazy as the night before had been, she didn’t feel ready to let it end yet. There was something comforting about the three of them being in the apartment together. She’d forgotten all about the dog . . . but, well, she’d worry about that later.
“Of course. It’ll be nice to have you
