Freedom [84]
“Did Walter ever tell you I slashed Blake’s snow tires?” Patty said.
Richard raised his eyebrows, and she told him the story.
“That’s really fucked up,” he said admiringly, when she’d finished.
“I know. Isn’t it?”
“Does Walter know this?”
“Um. Good question.”
“I take it you don’t tell him everything.”
“Oh, God, Richard, I don’t tell him anything.”
“You really could, I think. You might find he knows a lot more than you think he does.”
She took a deep breath and asked what kinds of secret things Walter knew about her.
“He knows you’re not happy,” Richard said.
“I really don’t think that requires great powers of discernment. What else?”
“He knows you blame him for Joey moving out of the house.”
“Oh, that,” she said. “That I have more or less told him. That doesn’t really count.”
“OK. So why don’t you tell me. Besides the fact that you’re a tireslasher, what does he not know about you?”
When Patty considered this question, all she could see was the great emptiness of her life, the emptiness of her nest, the pointlessness of her existence now that the kids had flown. The sherry had made her sad. “Why don’t you sing me a song while I get dinner on the table. Will you do that?”
“I don’t know,” Richard said. “Feels a little weird.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Just feels weird.”
“You’re a singer. That’s what you do. You sing.”
“I guess I’ve never had the sense that you particularly like what I sing.”
“Sing me ‘Dark Side of the Bar.’ I love that song.”
He sighed and bowed his head and crossed his arms and seemed to fall asleep.
“What?” she said.
“I think I’m going to leave tomorrow, if that’s all right with you.”
“OK.”
“There’s not more than two days’ work left. The deck’s already usable as is.”
“OK.” She stood up and put the sherry glass in the sink. “Can I ask why, though? I mean, it’s really nice having you here.”
“It’s just better if I go.”
“OK. Whatever’s best. I think it’s another ten minutes with the chicken, if you want to set the table for us.”
He didn’t stir from the table.
“Molly wrote that song,” he said, after a while. “I really had no business recording it. It was a very schmucky thing of me to do. Deliberate, calculated schmuckiness on my part.”
“It’s really sad and pretty. What were you supposed to do? Not use it?”
“Basically, yeah. Not use it. That would have been the nice thing.”
“I’m sorry about the two of you. You guys were together a long time.”
“We were and we weren’t.”
“Right, I know that, but still.”
He sat brooding while she set the table, tossed the salad, and carved the chicken. She hadn’t thought she would have any appetite, but once she took a bite of chicken she remembered that she hadn’t eaten a thing since the evening before, and that her day had started at five in the morning. Richard also ate, silently. At a certain point, their silence became remarkable and thrilling, and then, a while after that, exhausting and discouraging. She cleared the table, put away the leftovers, washed the dishes, and saw that Richard had removed himself to the little screen porch to smoke cigarettes. The sun was finally gone, but the sky was still bright. Yes, she thought, it was better if he left. Better, better, better.
She went out on the screen porch. “Thinking of going to bed now and doing some reading,” she said.
Richard nodded. “Sounds good. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“The evenings are so long,” she said. “The light just doesn’t want to die.”
“This has been a great place to be. You guys are very generous.”
“Oh, that’s all Walter. It didn’t actually occur to me to offer it to you.”
“He trusts you,” Richard said. “If you trust him, everything will be fine.”
“Oh, well, maybe, maybe not.”
“Do you not want to be with him?”
It was a good question.
“I don’t want to lose him,” she said, “if that’s what you mean. I don’t spend my time thinking about leaving him. I’m kind of counting the days till Joey finally gets sick of the Monaghans. He’s still got a full year of high school.”
“Not sure exactly what the point of that is.”
“Just that I’m still committed to my family.