“Sure. No problem. I’ll see what’s on the tube.”
I made it up to my bedroom and tore off my clothes, all the way to my bra and panties. They were soaked too. I put on the navy lace bra I was saving in case I had to go to the hospital or in case Harrison Ford’s car broke down in front of my house. I put on the matching navy lace panties. Then I slipped on a pair of my old jeans, size ten, thank you very much, and battled the zipper into submission. Seeing my flesh swell, ever so slightly, over the top of the waistband, I decided to put on a big top and was glad that I had ironed my favorite blue chambray shirt yesterday. I unbuttoned it as far down as decorum would permit, hoping he’d stew in his juices over my cleavage.
“Gonna have to be a helluva storm to let him touch this again,” I said with resolve to the bathroom mirror, admiring my svelte and youngish reflection. This was such classic stuff. Husband runs off with young twit, young twit dumps him for young stud, husband crawls back to wife in repentance because all men think they married their mother, or wish they’d married their mother, because Mother always forgives and loves you.
Not this mother. Oh, no. I didn’t have a revolving door on my house. No, sir.
I was formulating an evil plan of revenge. Here was the plot. I’d let him get plastered with wine and beer. I’d let him beg to sleep with me, as I knew he would, and while the storm raged all around, I’d kick him out into the night. Don’t tell me “Revenge is mine, sayeth the Lord!” Livvie Singleton would have said that the Lord’s a little busy and if I took the revenge for Him, it would be okay. Well, maybe not. But in any case, I was going to have at it.
Maybe, maybe, I’d let him sleep on the couch, but only if the storm was really bad. If he didn’t want to sleep with me, he wouldn’t have shown up with a side of beef. I knew this man. Steak was always our “dinner of seduction” menu and some things were pretty darn predictable.
I took my time washing my face and reapplied my makeup with precision and care. Not too much blush, just enough to hollow my cheeks. Not too much mascara, just enough to offset my eyes, which now, a curious side benefit of losing weight, no longer needed to be lifted. I splashed a moderate amount of his favorite perfume on my throat and wrists and glossed my lips. The thin gold chain around my neck rested on my now slightly pronounced collarbones. If the light was right, I might be able to pass for late thirties. Okay, if it was very dark. I brushed my teeth twice and gargled silently. I was prepared to face the enemy.
As naturally as possible, I descended the stairs. I could hear the television in the living room.
“What’s the word?” I said casually as I stood in front of the big gilt-framed mirror that had once hung in my mother’s living room.
“Storm’s coming. Look’s like it’s gonna make landfall just above Pawley’s Island.”
“Do you think they’re right? Shoot, these guys are wrong all the time.”
“Yeah, but now they’ve got that Doppler radar, and they can pinpoint the storm’s eye down to which street corner and what front yard.”
“Big Brother. Weird, isn’t it?”
I crossed my arms and we stood together in front of the old armoire that had been refitted to hold the television and stereo, listening to the report and watching the radar arm revolve around the swelling blue mass that was Hurricane Maybelline.
Suddenly there was a loud banging noise coming from the outside wall. Something was knocking against the house. We ran to the window to look out and through the rain and the bleak light we could see a shutter dangling and slapping the house in the wind.
“I’ll go fix it,” Tom said. “Where’s the hammer?”
“Right where you left it last spring.”
It was a borderline hardball thing to have said, but it just came out. Actually, I was glad at that moment he was there. I couldn’t see myself taking a ladder outside in this weather and fixing a shutter. He just looked at me.
“I’m sorry, Tom. That wasn’t necessary. Listen, thanks a lot. I’ll help you if you need me.”
“I do need you, Susan, but not for this. I’ll be right back.”
His face was as sincere as any face I’d ever seen on that man. All the clever phrases I’d practiced in my mirror in recent months were suctioned from my memory like so much smoke in a honky-tonk bar when you open a window.
I watched him leave the room. He was looking very good from the back. Yes, indeedy, that tight little backside of his was begging for a grab. It seemed like his shoulders were broader. Couldn’t be, but his waist was definitely thinner. I wondered for a moment if he’d feel different in bed than he used to.
I started to rationalize. Maybe I was being too hard on him. Maybe we would just sit on the couch and try to sort things through while we watched the storm. Maybe. I doubted it.
I heard the back door close and knew he was outside in the rain. I saw my neighbor’s garbage cans rolling down the street and I worried about him getting knocked unconscious by some flying object. I grabbed my parka from the front closet and rushed toward the back door.
“Where’re you headed, Mom? I’m making salad. You’re not going outside too, are you?” Beth looked up from the refrigerator, where she was searching for a bag of prewashed lettuce—the only kind I ever buy these days.
“Be right back, just want to grab our garbage cans before they take off for Myrtle Beach.”
The door closed behind me and I stood on the back porch assessing the weather. It was raining like it would never stop. The light of sunset had surrendered to the dark mask of Maybelline. Her wind was howling like a wild beast.
“Build an ark,” I said to myself. “Repent, the end is near.”
An enormous branch fell from an ancient oak tree at the edge of our property, missing my old car by inches, but slamming into the hood of Tom’s new midlife crisis Mustang. There it lay, like a sign from God, waiting for a claims adjuster. Tom would now stay the night.
The storm reminded me of all the legendary hurricanes of my childhood and, of course, the memory of my father and aunt’s front porch rendition of “Singing in the Rain.” As soon as I visualized them, I pushed the image away.
“Hurry yourself,” I said out loud. “This ain’t no time for dragging feet.”
The screen door slammed behind me and I raced toward the garbage cans by the storage house. One of the can’s rubber tops sailed off into the wind like a Frisbee. A branch from my next-door neighbor’s tea olive came crashing down into my rhododendrons. Good thing I quit pruning them years ago or the wind could’ve carried that branch right through a window like a javelin.
I opened the shed and grabbed a handful of bungee cords and a top from another can. It was not easy to fasten them to the cans but I finally did and in haste I began rolling the cart that held them back toward the house. Finally I reached the porch, after struggling over every single hole in the yard, and with great effort I got them up the steps. Beth came out to help.
“Go back inside, honey, you’ll just get soaked!”
“Mom, Dad’s closing the shutters! I could see him through the kitchen window. Why don’t I do this and you go help him?”
“The shutters? Now?”
“Don’t ask me! He’s got the big ladder out!”
“Oh, dear Lord! Okay, I’ll go help him. Just pull this into the laundry room.”
“Okay!”
Although we stood next to each other, we had to shout to be heard. I ran around the side of the house and found Tom climbing up to the second-floor windows. On our old house, it wasn’t much effort to close shutters. But it ought to have been done several hours ago. My aluminum ladder was not the sturdiest so I decided to be his anchor.
“The wind’s pretty fierce so I decided to close up this side of the house. Too many trees next door. Can’t get the third floor though.”
“That’s okay. They’re taped.”
“Right!”
I could see him laughing to himself as he climbed down to move the ladder to the nex
t window. “You’re beginning to drip, Susan. You can go back in if you want to. This won’t take too long.”
“What? And leave you out here to kill yourself in the yard? Honey, I need my alimony checks and I’m staying right here.”
He smiled and jammed the ladder against the ground to secure it. “The irrepressible Susan Hamilton Hayes,” he said.
He was so close I could smell his breath. He had brushed his teeth before making this house call. Brushed his teeth and bought steaks.
“Yeah. Irrepressible. That’s me. Get on up this ladder before we make Beth an orphan.”
He climbed back up and unhooked one shutter from the side of the house. He climbed down, moved the ladder, climbed back up and unlocked the other. Then, as I held my breath, he reached over and, leaning into the wind, grabbed the first shutter and flipped the latch across both of them.
Finally the job was completed; we were drenched to the skin. Tom collapsed the ladder and slid it under the house, which took considerable effort as the ground was puddled everywhere. I waited for him on the back porch. Hearing us, Beth came to the door with an armful of towels and handed them to me.
“Get back inside, honey, I’m just waiting for your father.”
“Oh, my God, it’s awful out here!”
“Go back in!” The door slammed. “And don’t say ‘Oh, my God,’ please,” I said to the door.
I kicked off my squishing Keds, threw Tom a towel and dried my face.
“Tom, thanks a lot. Of course, if the wind changes direction on the back side of the storm, we’ll need to do the other side.”
“No way. Besides, the trees next door aren’t so bad. I checked.”
“Did you see your car?”
“Yeah, bummer.”
My shirt was sticking to me and in the porch light Tom could see the color of my bra through the wet fabric.
“Black?”
“Navy, and let’s go inside, I’m getting chilled.”
“Navy?”
“Get in the house, you old dog.”
Suddenly my kitchen seemed alive. Beth was smiling and rushing all around putting supper together. A huge salad waited in my mother’s hand-carved wooden bowl. Potatoes were baking in the microwave and the broiler was hot. The seasoned steaks waited in a Pyrex dish. Thick-cut filet mignon. He meant business. The table was set with my best everything. Beth’s hopes unnerved me.
“Um, I’m pretty wet,” Tom said. “I didn’t leave any clothes here, did I?”
“Nope, not a stitch. Come on, I’ll give you a bathrobe and put your wet stuff in the dryer.”
“Great. Thanks.”
He unlaced his shoes and put them on a newspaper on top of the washing machine.
“Table looks great, Beth,” I said. “Thanks a lot. We’ll be right back.”
“Oh, that’s all right! Y’all take your time.” She wiggled her eyebrows at us. I cleared my throat.
“We’ll be right back, Beth,” I said in my best parent voice.
Upstairs, he followed me to the bedroom door and just stood there as I searched the closet for two bathrobes, finding one terry cloth and one plaid flannel with ruffles. He chose the pink terry cloth.
“Here you go. Go on in the bathroom and just hand me your things through the door.”
“What? After fifteen years you can’t watch me undress?” He was laughing at me and I knew it.
“Spare me the pain of your gorgeous body, okay? You belong to yourself now, not me, remember?” I opened the bathroom door, switched on the light and stood aside to allow him to enter.
“As you wish, madame. I won’t be a moment.”
“Just give me your clothes, alright?”
In a minute or so, out came his naked arm from around the door with wet khakis, Izod shirt and socks. No underwear? Then his fingers extended slowly from the door as he dangled his orange Calvin Klein jockey shorts in midair. Orange? He never wore anything but white when he lived here!
“Thanks.”
“Oh, no, thank you!” He replied from behind the door.
I took off all my clothes—so much for the temptress in navy lace—wrapped the flannel robe around myself, gathered up all the wet laundry and made a quick trip to the laundry room. Passing through the kitchen, Beth perked up.
“What are you gonna put on now?” she asked as though she was witnessing a soap opera in real life. “Your mascara is running.”
“Great.” I wiped under my eyes and glanced down at the black streaks on my hands. “I dunno. Something dry. Be right back.”
Having set the dryer humming, I hurried back upstairs, towel-drying my hair for the second time in two hours. Tom was still in the bathroom, singing “Stormy Weather” loud enough to wake the dead. My hands were shaking. I needed to calm down, and try to find the humor in this scenario. I realized everyone around me seemed to be the happiest they’d been in months. Including me. O Lord help me.
What was I going to put on? Going through my closet, I realized that almost everything was two sizes too big. I remembered the black T-shirt dress I’d found on a markdown rack at Loehman’s last month. It was a medium, and I’d bought it when I was still a large, intending to lose weight into it. It was loose-fitting, not exactly what you’d wear to make a man drool, but it had a deep V-neck and Tom was a breast man. Pulling it out of the bag, I slipped it over my head and, bingo, it fit! Let’s face it, with a body of depreciating assets, I had to use what I had.
I went to Beth’s bathroom to use her cosmetics rather than share the other bathroom with Tom.
This time I decided to let my hair just fall around my shoulders and dry on its own. I couldn’t help but wonder, as I finger-crimped my hair, what Livvie Singleton would have said about all this. She’d probably have listened to me tell the story and then she would have given me a piece of her mind in Gullah. I could almost see her. She’d tell me, “Men ain’t what but old alley cats looking for to spray they scent.” She’d hold up three fingers to me and say, “Only have three things on they mind. One, they stomach. Gotta fill him up. Two, they talliwacker. Got to let him have he way. Three, they money. Don’t want to give nothing ’less they’s getting something back. That’s all, chile, that’s all. Don’t expect much and you ain’t gone be disappoint.”
But how could I go through the night not expecting much? I wanted him to tell me he was wrong.
“I’m going down to open the wine!” Tom called from the hall.
“Okay! I’ll be down in a minute.”
Dinner had an element of absurdity to it. For openers, Tom dined in my bathrobe, swaddled in pink terry cloth with appliquéd chenille flowers. Just when I had him in the cross hairs, everything conspired to a stay of execution.
We gathered at the table, which my ebullient daughter had set as though Pope John Paul II were coming for dinner. Maybelline was screeching outside like an undulating King Kong of carnal desire, trying to blow down my front door. I was chewing a steak for the first time in months while sucking up a large glass of merlot and the object of all my pain, humiliation and anxiety was sitting across from me looking like a refugee from a transvestite after-hours club.
“So, Beth, how’s school?” Tom asked.
“Awesome,” she replied while passing the salad bowl.
“Translation?” he asked.
“All A’s on every test,” I interpreted.
“Fabulous! So you like high school, I take it?”
“Oh, yeah, it’s like I totally feel like, well, you know, a person? I mean grammar school was so lame and in high school you’re totally on your own. Like even my homeroom teacher, Mr. Bond, tells me I’m extremely mature for my age.”
“How mature are you?” he asked, looking at me, probably wondering if he should give her a lecture on birth control. “Bond?”
“Oh, Dad! Please! Shaken, not stirred in the ninth grade? I don’t think so. No, no. I think he means it’s good that I actually do my assignments, show up for class on time and study for te
sts and stuff.”
“As you should,” he said and added, “and as you always have.”
“Right, Dad.”
“And as you always will.”
“Yes, Daddy, as I always will, unless I want to go to college with America Online and wind up on welfare.”
“That’s my Beth! No member of the Hayes family ever accepted public assistance. Do your homework every day like a good girl.”
Tom breathed a clandestine sigh of relief and the sides of my mouth turned up. This was rich. In a mere six months, Beth had gracefully transformed herself from little girl to young woman. He had missed it all. I had hoped reward would taste sweeter than it did. I felt sorry for Tom for what he had lost.
“It’s like this all the time,” I said to him.
“Like what, Mom? What does that mean?”
Uh-oh. I had mistakenly pressed the wrong button. I had forgotten not to refer to her in a way that required clairvoyance for her full participation.
“Beth, my angel of perfection, each day you surprise me with how truly wonderful you are. Just when I decide I’m failing you as a parent over something or other, you do something to remind me how responsible you are. It’s a surprise to your daddy too. That’s all. Part of us has you fixed in our mind as a little girl and you’re a young lady now.”
The awkward moment passed.
“And that makes you feel really old and decrepit, huh? Anybody want some sour cream? Metamucil, maybe?”
“Old? Decrepit?” Tom was horrified at the thought.
“Not too decrepit to wash your mouth out with soap, young lady!” I said.
“Like Livvie did to you and your brothers?”
“Honey, she scrubbed our mouths until we spit bubbles. God, I’ll never use Ivory soap again. I can still taste it when I think about it.”
“Oh, Mommy! Tell us that story!”
“It was the day I called Aunt Carol a bitch. She had done something, O Lord, I don’t even remember. Probably told me to correct my posture or something. Well, I was hanging clothes on the line with Livvie and I said the evil word under my breath. Livvie grabbed me by the hand and had me up the steps in two seconds and my head in the kitchen sink. She turned on the water, grabbed the soap and with my ponytail in one hand and the soap in the other, I got religion!