Authors: Katie Crouch
Men and Dogs (19 page)
H
ANNAH WAKES UP to the phone ringing. The air is cold.
She opens her eyes, greeted by suede fabric and fish swimming in the fireplace, and begins a mental list.
Things I Need to Stop Doing
Drinking
Sleeping on sofas
Waking up in drool
Avoiding work
Kissing old boyfriends
Drinking
She covers her eyes. Some people merely get nausea when hungover. Others, crippling headaches. Hannah gets both of those things,
as well as a feeling of deep remorse and anxiety, inevitably resulting in the laughable resolution to never drink again.
Reluctantly, she leaves her horizontal position and takes an investigative walk around. Rumpus is missing, as is Palmer. Her poor brother must be at work. She stumbles to the bathroom to wash her face, smearing on as many of the expensive products as she can: Kiehl’s, Jurlique, Malin + Goetz. She goes to the kitchen and helps herself to some sparkling water. She makes a cappuccino in the shiny machine—one of three caffeine-producing devices—and walks around the house. She looks at the steam shower with the tiny blue sparkling tiles, the plunge pool, the media room. God, she envies Palmer. Such a comfortable,
ordered life!
The coffee is not helping much with the anxiety. Fresh air. She needs it. She staggers out to the Cruiser to start her ride.
The alcohol makes her mind tricky. Things that are not usually amusing to Hannah suddenly become hilarious. Her reflection in the barbershop window, so funny. A man jump-starting his car:
Ha
. And then there are these old, speed-walking ladies, their heads like fluffy Q-tips cased in plastic visors, an entire new plateau of laughably absurd.
Because it is her opinion that she currently looks and feels like a used piece of Kleenex, Hannah takes the back way home,
behind the supermarket, where the train station used to be. Now there are cruise ships back here, huge cities of people waiting to float to the next scenic little town. How much does it cost to ride? Is anyone on there happy? When the economy tanks,
will they be empty? Will they just blow them up, or sink them, or—
A sudden jolt. Hannah is hurtling forward over the handlebars, rushing toward the pavement, and now she is on her hands and knees, her wet, raw palms bitten into by a thousand sharp gravelly nails, her knees one with the pitted, crumbled street.
She has fallen off her bike. She is not eleven; she is not thirty-five; she is ninety years old and dying. She looks back and the Cruiser is there, still upright, mocking her from the groove of an old train track. Somehow, the fat tires have gotten wedged in.
It takes a while to hobble to the house. She hopes no one will be there. The only remedy for the pain is a shower, three Tylenol
PMs, and a day in bed. But opening the door, Hannah is greeted by an unexpected hum of activity. She hears Daisy, she hears
DeWitt, but there’s someone else in there, a presence that at once terrifies her and produces a splitting surge of joy.
It’s not supposed to happen this way. There is meant to be a warning when your husband finally comes to save you, so that you can shower and get a bikini wax and wear something appropriate, perhaps a virginal yet formfitting jersey dress that says,
I’ve been
repenting. I am a serious, loving, interesting wife who is thirty-five
and still manages to look good in jersey
. Instead, she reeks of used vodka and is bleeding in ugly clothes that she slept in.
“Oh, here she is.” Daisy sighs. “Tried to ride home on your tricycle, did you? Well, home has come to you.”
“Hi.” Hannah’s husband stands up from the breakfast table. He, naturally, looks great, in gray dress pants and a pressed blue shirt. “Surprise.”
“Hi.”
“You’re bleeding again.”
“It’s a habit.”
“Oh, Hannah-Fanana-Louisiana,” DeWitt says. “You make the girls at the Wild Wild Joker look clean.”
“Why have you been to the Joker, you dirty man?” her mother asks. “And, Hannah, where have you been?”
“I was at Palmer’s.”
“And he let you get yourself in this condition?”
“He’s not a saint, Mom. He was drinking last night, too.”
Daisy clearly wants to tell Hannah she doesn’t believe this at all, as her son is the most perfect specimen of male ever to grace the Earth. (She has never been reticent about having a favorite.)
“I’m taking a shower,” Hannah says to Jon. “You want to come up and talk?”
She can see that he doesn’t, really, but the alternative—more time with her parents—is even less appealing.
“Sure.”
Daisy waves them away, and they begin the climb together.
“I forgot about this place,” he says. “It’s so
Brideshead Revisited
in here.”
Jon visited with Hannah when they were first married. It was a Gothic, giddy visit. They drank her stepfather’s ancient scotch and had sex in all of the weirdest spots in the house. They even managed to copulate on the roof at dawn one morning. It wasn’t comfortable; Jon had to scrub the bird excrement from her back with a brush.
When they reach her room, they look at each other blankly. “Wait here. I’ll get the blood off.”
Hannah goes into the bathroom, strips off her clothes, and showers, hoping the steam will clear at least some of this hangover away. It helps mildly, but the soap is like acid in the new wounds. She swears lustily as she peroxides and bandages her palms and knees, then reenters her room wrapped in a towel. Jon is sitting on her bed, looking at some of the photos she’s left out. She sits next to him. When he doesn’t move, she puts her wet head on his shoulder.
“I’m really, really glad to see you.”
He emits a small grunt, indicating that this makeup process will not be in any way simple. She tries again.
“Seriously, Jon. I love you.”
“Right.”
“You’re everything to me. My whole life.”
Nothing.
“OK, how far into the cliché bag do I have to go, here?”
“Stop now and save yourself some dignity.”
“I have dignity?”
“Hannah, I got here last night. You just forced me to endure
two
consecutive meals with your parents.”
“I’m
sorry
. I didn’t know you were coming. If you had called me back—”
“I didn’t call because I wasn’t sure coming was a good idea. But I knew talking to you wouldn’t help, so I just got on a plane.
Your messages made you sound like a total strung out psychopath, by the way.”
“I am strung out. I wanted to talk to you. You’re supposed to be my husband. And you wouldn’t call me back.”
He gets up and paces. There is no better pacer than Jon. Before she knew him, she thought pacing was just a stage direction,
something Clark Gable did to compete with Vivien Leigh when she was upstaging him or giving him an especially hard time. But
Jon paces with fierce concentration, as if he is actually trying to wear a groove into the floor.
“Seriously, I’m sorry for everything. You probably think I was off with someone else, but really I was just with Palmer. Tom’s leaving him, probably, and he . . .”
Jon kicks the door shut with his foot. It slams.
“What are you doing? Mom will—”
“Just be quiet,” he says, and rushes her.
Before, Hannah and Jon used to have nice sex. Thoughtful sex. The type you have when your partner is—for lack of better words—a grateful nerd. Today, the sex is different. Jon is angry. He bites and pushes and slams. It’s like sleeping with a completely different man. She loves it, but she also sort of misses her husband.
It takes a while. Afterward they are exhausted. They roll away from each other and lie side by side. She takes his hand and squeezes it. He pushes hers away.
“I need to tell you something,” he says.
“No, you don’t. I don’t need to know anything.”
“Listen to me.”
“No, no. I don’t care. That Denise person? Heroin? Crack to get you through the hard times? Really. It’s OK.”
“Ignoring the problem won’t work this time, Hannah.”
“I’m not as bad as I look. I’ve been doing really, really well here. I swear. Last night was just a slipup. I was helping my brother out. You can ask him.”
“I’m not here for that,” he says. “I’m not here to check up on you.”
“Just sex, then?”
“Hannah.” He presses his lips together. A firm, red line. “I’m filing for a divorce.”
She’s falling off the balcony. She’s hurtling over her handlebars. There are knives downstairs, Jon. Cut me open, why don’t you? Throw some rusty fishhooks in my eyelids, then string me up.
“But you’re naked. You’re telling me you want a”—she can’t even get her mouth around the word—“divorce, and you’re naked in my room. You just had sex with me.”
Jon gets up and pulls his boxers on.
“It’s not fair.”
“Hannah, I have every right to divorce you. Any judge will grant me that. Adultery, mental abuse—”
“Excuse me?”
“But we don’t need to go there, do we?”
Hannah opens her mouth, then snaps it closed.
“It’s just not working, sweetheart.”
“But you’re not even giving me a chance.”
“I gave you four chances. Remember those? The guy from Cisco, the yoga instructor, the—”
“But
this
time.”
“I don’t want to do this anymore, Hannah.”
“Jon.”
“No, listen—I know we
can
. We can squeeze some pathetic years out of this. I just . . . don’t want to.”
She won’t cry, she vows. Tears annoy Jon.
“It’s bad. We’re bad together.”
“We are not.”
She gets up and opens an old drawer to pull on some clothes. She’s not crying, but she still can’t seem to see anything. She ends up in a very small plaid skirt—seventh grade? eighth?—and a Bangles T-shirt.
“You know what? I won’t let you divorce me. You were unfaithful, too. I’ll just hire a fucking awesome lawyer and take everything.”
“That’s another thing, honey.”
“Stop calling me honey. You can’t come in here, screw me, ask for a divorce, and call me honey. Hasn’t anyone ever taught you about mixed messages?”
“We’re broke.”
“We are not. We’re doing fine.”
“We
were
doing fine. That was before the stock market Hiroshima.”
“It’s not a permanent thing, Jon. The election will happen and then—”
“No, Hannah. I don’t know how the hell you haven’t noticed this, since the business side is your damned job. But these last three quarters cleaned us out. We operated at a four-hundred-thousand-dollar loss this year because of that advertising campaign
—”
“Your idea!”
“Well I thought I had the money. You
told
me we had the money, Hannah, and I’m beginning to realize you had no idea what was going on. Wait, what are you doing?”
“This skirt is too small. I’m changing.”
“Anyway, I’ve got no one to borrow from, not four hundred thousand, at least. . . . I can’t talk to you like this. You have no pants on.”
“Just hold on.” She fishes the Madonna pajama bottoms from under a heap.
“Everyone’s out.”
“Shit.” Hannah puts her hands on her hips. “And Mom?”
“There’s no way we can make this work, Hannah. People don’t want to buy six-hundred-dollar vibrators. They can’t even make their rent.”
“You should have let me stay involved. I could have marketed—”
“It wouldn’t have worked. Trust me.”
“What about what we owe?”
“Bankruptcy.”
“What? No. DeWitt will help us.”
“I wouldn’t let him.”
“But we can’t just give up.”
“Bankruptcy isn’t giving up. It’s acknowledging the situation is beyond our control.”
“I won’t just stop like that,” she says. “I won’t let it go. We’ve been at this for years. No.”
“Hannah, there is no money,” he says. “Look, I used to find your dogmatic ways endearing, but come on. Haven’t you been reading anything? Paying attention at all? Bankruptcy is in. It’s like a new Coldplay song.”
“You like that song? The one about Israel?”
“You think it’s about Israel? I thought it was about Mexico.”
“Coldplay?”
“I was making a reference.”
“God, it’s that Denise woman. Is she living with you? What, are you going to Burning Man with her this year?”
“It’s not Denise. Look, none of this is Denise.”
“Do you promise?”
“Of course.”
He’s not lying, she can see that. It’s one of the many reasons Hannah married Jon. He doesn’t lie. He edits, but he doesn’t lie.
She opens the window and puts her feet out. This is not a dangerous move; it’s a dormer window that opens out onto a large, only slightly sloped section of roof. In middle school, she used to sit there for hours, looking for a boat that might have her father on it.
“Divorce?” She wraps her arms around her knees. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s actually sort of a pretty word.”
“I guess.”
“We’ll be divorced people.”
“Us and forty-something percent of adult America.”
“Great.” She throws a pebble off the roof. It bounces off her stepfather’s truck and into the street. “All that work, and we can’t even fail in a special way.”
