“You all set, Mrs. Levine?” asked Rachel.
“Mrs. Levine is as set as she can be at the moment,” Kathleen said.
“Well, that’s honest,” said Terry. Rachel laughed softly behind her over the intercom. The machine hummed its fifteen-second song, and then it was time to go home.
That afternoon, Kathleen got a call from Jack. Hal phoned during dinner and said he’d be home for a visit soon: “Maybe by the beginning of August, if I can get it together.”
Kathleen thought about having her sons at home. Acting as if everything were fine would take a lot of effort.
“When did you call them?” she asked Buddy.
“What do you mean?” he said, turning away.
“Never mind.” She switched on the television.
JOYCE TRIED NOT to take Kathleen’s daily rejections too much to heart. She called an oncology nurse she’d once interviewed, who reassured her that severe fatigue in cancer patients was normal. So Joyce took to sending silly postcards and tried to be funny and entertaining on the phone, turning her thin scraps of news into low-key shtick: the latest offering to the Madonna of Forest Street was a bunch of sorry-looking orange-dyed carnations; the smelly boy who mowed the lawn for Joyce had hidden some Playboys in their garage. Joyce concluded their conversations with a progress report on her painting. “You’ve got to come and see my ethereal bathroom,” she said, hoping to sound intriguing, but Kathleen didn’t rise to the invitation.
“I could come over there,” Joyce offered.
“Let’s talk in the morning,” Kathleen said.
After she finished Nina’s room, Joyce painted the hallway and then her office. She worked slowly, meticulously. She spackled and sanded even the tiniest hairline cracks and primed the fresh plaster before painting it. In the bathroom, she sponge-painted a layer of white over the blue, suggesting clouds on sky. She got so skillful with the smaller brushes she didn’t even bother taping the windows and barely smudged the glass.
She was on a first-name basis with the hardware store clerk who had the starfish on his wrist. Ralph had a girlfriend, Linda, who brought him a peanut butter cookie every afternoon, but Joyce put on mascara and lipstick whenever she went in for joint compound or a new brush.
Frank called every morning and every evening, with a new addition to his litany of work-related excuses. After a week, she stopped asking him whether he was coming up and he never asked her to drive down. She was mad at him, but also back into a comfortable routine. She got up before eight and walked through the house, running her hands over yesterday’s project, studying her brushwork, planning the next task.
Joyce didn’t even bother turning on the computer. She wrote postcards to Kathleen and letters to Nina, who sent back a series of breathless notes. She was having an awesome time. The kids were awesome. She needed socks. Could Joyce please send frosting-in-a-can? She’d been chosen cocaptain of a coed soccer team. Could they send extra money for candy at the canteen?
Joyce’s days became more and more stripped down. Frank called. She called Kathleen. She wrote to Nina. She painted, and by four in the afternoon she could recite the day’s top stories, verbatim, with the announcer on National Public Radio. She bought prepared dinners at the supermarket and ate them while she read the newspapers and drank two glasses of wine. She kept her mind off Frank, the way she kept her tongue off the chipped filling in her right rear molar.
She fell asleep after the eleven-o’clock news and dreamed of painting enormous walls in a palace by the ocean. “I’m like a nun, or something,” she thought, looking at herself in the bathroom mirror.
“Me and my BVM.”
One afternoon, she managed to get herself to Good Harbor but walked only partway across the beach. It felt too lonely without Kathleen.
After five days alone, she drove home to Belmont, feeling a little like a thief as she unlocked the door to her own house. She left the rooms dim behind drawn blinds as she looked through the mail. Only a few things required her attention. Frank paid the bills and threw away the junk. She stuffed the last of her underwear into a plastic bag. She lay down on Nina’s bed and inhaled the lingering scent of strawberry shampoo.
Joyce walked from room to room. Frank kept a clean house without her. There were no dishes in the sink, and the bed was made; only the overflowing hamper testified to his bachelor life. She closed the door behind her without even listening to the messages on the phone machine. Nina’s camp had both numbers, and Frank told her about anything that really nee
ded her attention.
On her second trip to Belmont a few days later, Joyce felt less like a thief and more like a ghost. The outside of the refrigerator had been cleared of last season’s soccer notices. The inside was empty except for a collection of Chinese take-out containers. She started to write Frank a note: “Hi. I was here,” but stopped. What did she want to say?
“Where are you? Don’t you think it’s strange that we haven’t seen each other for two weeks? Should we make a date for a movie — or with a lawyer?”
She crumpled the paper and stuffed it into her pocket. She left the radio off on the drive back to Gloucester and wondered whether they really were heading toward divorce. She wished she could talk this through with Kathleen, but she was too exhausted by her treatment. Joyce needed a walk; this didn’t seem like something she could bring up on the phone, especially since they hadn’t talked about their husbands yet.
Maybe she should stop over there, Joyce thought as she drove over the bridge, or maybe that would be pushing it. Kathleen was battling cancer, after all; how could Joyce whine about her marriage? Joyce went home.
That night, a loud crash startled her awake with a jolt that had her sitting up in bed before she could even open her eyes. Trembling, she saw the digital clock click 4:24. Goddamned raccoons.
She lay down. The darkness was not quite solid anymore, but it would be hours before she could start painting.
A bird trilled outside, too early for the sun. Maybe it was singing in its sleep, she thought, pressing her palms over her eyes. Maybe birds dream of singing and sing in their dreams.
She stood up, remembering Kathleen’s story about Halibut Point at sunrise. She pulled on a sweatshirt, pants, and sneakers, reheated the remains of yesterday’s coffee, and headed out to the car.