Summerlong: A Novel Part 13

"We've been married a long time," she says. "You never know."

She takes his hand and leads him down the rest of the stairs, both of them still naked in the easy way of two people who've been together so long it makes no sense to be modest. Everything has already been seen, every circ.u.mstance has been played out. Hasn't it?

It's done, Claire thinks as they fall asleep, spooning.

I'm done.

In the morning, they shower in the downstairs bathroom, get clean clothes from the dryer in the laundry room, and come up the stairs to find the kids in the kitchen, eating Rice Krispies.

"Why was the door locked?" Bryan says.

"Was it?" Claire says. "I don't know. I must have done it out of habit."

"You sleep in the bas.e.m.e.nt now?" Wendy asks.

"But you never lock doors," Bryan says. "We almost called 911."

"Gotta go, Team Lowry," Don says, looping around the table once to kiss each kid atop the head. "I'm late."

Only Wendy is delighted by this, only Wendy kisses him back, a wet, milky kiss on the cheek. Bryan rolls his eyes.

Don kisses the side of Claire's neck before he leaves.

Already, Claire wonders if it has been a mistake, the erotic abandon of the previous night. It has confused the issue, of course. Don would come home from work and try to get her to stop talking separation, to, as he would probably say, "stop the shenanigans." He was a big shenanigan stopper. It had become one of his favorite phrases as a father.

He would think that everything was better, that separation, that divorce, was off the table.

Now, with her wet hair slicked back, feeling Don still, somehow, on her neck, inside her body, she makes scrambled eggs to supplement the s.h.i.+tty cereal the kids are eating. The kids, groggy, have gotten their own gla.s.ses of orange juice and sit at the table in sleepy silence, having stayed up way too late the night before. Now, as they eat breakfast, they're reading books. Both of them like to read, and Claire does not allow any "screen time" before the sunset during the summer, so they always have books going. They go to the library every week for more books. They can walk there, even, by themselves now, and Claire suddenly, that very morning, is amazed that her domestic life is changing so much, so swiftly. She feels both liberated and adrift.

By the time the kids have devoured the breakfasts she's made for them, the kitchen is a disaster, and the brief infusion of liberation dissipates. She misses Don in a way she hadn't wanted to miss him. How can she even imagine a life without him? She feels guilty for the thoughts she had while falling asleep.

Years ago, when she and Don first started having s.e.x, she would feel the same way after he would slip out of her dorm room in advance of an arriving roommate or an early cla.s.s. She would feel alone in a different kind of way than she had ever felt before and it terrified her.

We can get through this, she thinks.

No, she thinks. We can't.

What's happened to us? she thinks.

Whenever she thinks of them as us, thinks of them as a couple, one image stands out in her mind. It is of them at a wedding, about six months after Wendy was born. They are sleep deprived, both a little out of shape: Claire's still-nursing b.r.e.a.s.t.s swelling from a thin-strapped sundress that is too tight across her stomach, and Don is fleshy faced and beer gutted, unused to the slower metabolism of an ex-athlete. They do not look as good as many of their college friends at that wedding-they lack the suntans and new clothes. Broke, they have not been on a summer vacation, nor have they purchased stylish, better-fitting clothes. But they have left the kids with Don's sister for the night, and they are alone in a hotel reception room in downtown Minneapolis, and they are slow dancing. Claire, barefoot, because her heels were killing her, and Don, covered in sweat from the rowdy shaking he'd done on the dance floor earlier. But now she drapes against him, feeling how strong he is, feeling, as they pressed into each other, all of that history, the bond of all of those years they have spent together, growing up. She leans up to him. She kisses him on the mouth-she is not much for public displays like that, but kisses him long and deep, holding him tight, feeling his heat, his strength, those muscles still present under the new flesh. "Wild Horses" is playing. Don, boozily and off-key, begins to whisper-sing the lyrics in her ear, a bad Mick Jagger singing, "'Couldn't drag me a-wa-a-a-a-ay.'"

She remembers it that morning, remembers even, how he had one hand on her a.s.s and the other on her hip, and how he squeezed her hip as he whispered to her. When she thinks of them, together, if she admits it, if she is not afraid of any sentimentality and the vulnerability that might imply, she will think of that moment and say, That's Don and me. That's totally us.

And then, the answer comes to her, too clear: perhaps we aren't us anymore.

PART III.

And at once I knew, I was not magnificent.

-Bon Iver, "Holocene"

You bring your parents into your marriage. You don't mean to do it, but one day, you amble into what Dante calls the dark wood, midway along the journey of your life, and you find them there, waiting to partic.i.p.ate in your miseries. You might say to them, "No, thank you," but they will lurk in the woods anyway, casting shadows, and all that you do will be haunted by them from that moment forward.

This is what Claire believes and this is why, a week later, she says to Don, "We're not going to do this the way our parents did."

"Do what?" Don says. He's was.h.i.+ng dishes-having made pancakes and bacon for the third morning in a row, as if the festive breakfasts of summer vacation might help his children not notice the serious cliff the family is about to fall over.

Claire is opening a carton of packing tape and tape guns and Sharpie markers that she has ordered online. She is switching into moving mode, the challenge of it helping to mute that sadness of it all, and she understands what she is doing when she makes a checklist a mile long and pins it to the bulletin board by the fridge. She is letting everyone know that she is in charge; she is the general of this expedition. It feels almost good.

"I called your mother and had a talk with her," Claire says. "I told her everything."

"Everything?"

"Yep."

The kids are out in the backyard with neighbors, running through the sprinkler. It's almost ninety degrees out and not yet ten A.M.

"You told her about how you skinny-dipped with a guy you just met?"

Claire a.s.sembles a tape gun.

"Yep. And I told her how you got high with a college girl and slept next to her all night."

Don sets down the dish brush.

"What?" he says.

"And then how we got home from our skinny-dipping party last weekend and f.u.c.ked each other senseless all night in the bas.e.m.e.nt, stoned and drunk, while our kids slept upstairs."

"Claire, come on."

"And how every chance I get I go and see Charlie and it makes me feel good to talk to him, he calms me down, he gets me, he understands where I am at, that I am sick of striving, of staying afloat, and that you get so jealous you leave the house if I have left before you and you go smoke pot with a girl who likes to smoke pot with a middle-aged realtor for G.o.d knows what kind of daddy issues, and I also told your mother that you have gone crazy and you are in love with your own misery more than me and-"

"Claire, Jesus. The kids," Don hisses.

Wendy has just walked into the kitchen.

"So, no, Don, I didn't tell her everything," Claire says, lowering her voice. "What do you want, Wendy?"

"Um, can we have Popsicles now?" Wendy asks.

"No, you just had breakfast!" Claire shouts. "Get out!"

"After lunch," Don says. "After lunch, baby."

"Everyone wants them now. The h.e.l.lengas are over and they didn't have breakfast!" Wendy protests.

"They're not cheap Popsicles," Claire says. "They are the good ones. And we can't afford fruit pops for the whole town anymore."

"Here," Don says, going to the freezer and getting out the fruit pops. He hands Wendy the box. "Wendy, here. Go play."

"Are you guys fighting?" Wendy asks.

"Go play," Claire says.

"No, we're not fighting, Wendy," Don says.

Wendy rushes out the back door, but not before stopping, turning around, and shooting them a burning, accusatory glare.

"This is what we're going to avoid. These moments in front of the kids. I told your mother about the foreclosure. I told her we were separating."

"We can't even afford lawyers."

"I told her that we need a few days alone. That is all I told her."

"The kids hate going there," Don says.

"We need a few days to regroup, make a plan, and then when the kids come back, we'll present them with a cool, calm, and optimistic plan for the family."

"What?"

"For moving. Or something bigger. I don't know. I'm confused."

"They're bluffing," Don says. "We won't lose this house. I know everyone involved. I played football with the sheriff. I was a pallbearer at the bank president's brother's funeral. I have ties here, Claire. People aren't going to throw me under the bus. I'm Don Lowry."

"Us under the bus," she says. "Us. It's not just your battle, it's ours. You're not f.u.c.ked, we're f.u.c.ked."

"Right. Whatever."

"The letters have been quite clear," Claire says. "As of July first, Don, it's no longer our house."

"Let me come up with something."

"You have twelve days, Don! Even if you sell a house, you won't get the money in twelve days. It's over."

"So why do the kids have to leave tonight? Shouldn't they get to enjoy the last two weeks in our house?"

"Don," Claire says. "We need to spend some time talking. I know you f.u.c.king hate talking. I know you'd rather die than talk to me about anything real, Don, but we have to find out what we need to do and do it. We need a place to live, we need to pack, and we need to figure out what each of us is going to do for a job starting next month. I just applied at the dining hall to work summer conferences. It's temporary, but with all the students gone, they need the help."

"You're gonna wash dishes in the dining hall?" Don says. "Claire, you used to teach here. You were a visiting professor! You can't wash dishes."

"Sure I can. Lots of writers and artists take menial jobs when things are slow. I haven't published a book in over a decade, Don. I'd say things are pretty f.u.c.king slow."

"And you want me to take a second job too? Because real estate is slow."

"I think so. I think you have to do that, Don."

"I am, of course, willing. I could probably get a job at the hardware store."

"Good! Now we're talking about real life-doesn't it feel sane?"

"It feels sad."

"Admit it, Don. You like to feel sad. For so long, I thought you were sad at home because your life is hard and you work too hard and your childhood was f.u.c.ked up-but now I see things clearly, after spending time with someone who is actually happy. You like being sad, you sick f.u.c.k, you give the world your jokes and your smiles, and you bring home your sadness! And you make me sad!"

"Who makes you happy? Charlie Gulliver? What the f.u.c.k is going on, Claire?"

Claire leaves the room and Don goes back to the dishes, was.h.i.+ng the electric skillet and drying it with an old kitchen towel, one of the kitchen towels they'd bought at the Ikea outside Chicago after they'd bought their first house. Why Don thinks of this, he doesn't know, but he also remembers walking through the never-ending housewares section at Ikea, following Claire, who was wearing this simple black cotton tank dress and flip-flops, and he remembers wanting to go home, he was so done with the endless shopping and he wanted to head back to Iowa. His mother was watching the kids and she would be getting tired.

He rounded a corner and saw Claire, who looked over her shoulder and then lifted her dress nonchalantly so he could see the thong she was wearing. She did a little curtsy like that, in front of a display of spatulas, and later, they went into the family restroom, and f.u.c.ked leaning against the sink, him behind her, her panties down around her ankles, his pants falling down his thighs. She was so flushed afterward, her whole chest and neck and face stayed bright red until they checked out, and well after that, and Don's thighs burned with exertion and excitement. They ate two soft-serve ice-cream cones on the way out to the parking lot, both buoyed incredibly, spirits held aloft by the important milestone: it was the first kinky thing they'd done since they'd had babies.

"So, I'll take the kids around four, I guess," Claire says. "I'll probably swing by Trader Joe's, since I'll be in West Des Moines anyway, get us some easy frozen food for the week of packing. We won't feel like cooking, but it'll be cheaper than ordering in."

Don nods.

"Are you listening?" Claire says.

"I was thinking of that trip to Ikea," Don says, "when we bought these dish towels."

"Don."

"Are you in love with him?" Don asks.

"Don. I told you. I haven't f.u.c.ked him," Claire whispers. "Please stop."

"I didn't ask if you f.u.c.ked him. I asked if you were in love with him," Don says. "Tell me."

Already, she knows she will soon crush his big, complicated, shadowed heart. She wants out. But he never will want out. He is too Midwestern, too stoic, too hardworking to quit on anything. Wild f.u.c.king horses wouldn't drag him away.

So she says yes. "Yes, Don. I'm in love with him."

She watches a shadow come over his face.