Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [130]
“Mom!” Joe shouts from the corner. “The plutonium creatures are winning!”
“Fight back,” Janet instructs. “Show ’em what you’ve got.” She reaches out and touches Conor on the thigh. “Honey,” she says, “you can’t impress everybody. You impress me sometimes. You just didn’t impress Merilyn. No one did. Marriage didn’t. What’s wrong with a beautiful woman wanting to live alone? It’s her beauty. She can keep it to herself if she wants to.”
Conor shrugs. He’s not in the mood to argue about this. “It’s funny to think of her in town, that’s all.”
“No, it’s not. It’s only funny,” Janet says, “to think of her in town if you still love her, and I’d say that if you still love her, after fourteen years, then you’re a damn fool, and I don’t want to hear about it. It’s Jeremy, not you, who could use some attention from Merilyn. It’s his to get, being her son and all. She left him more than she left you. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to go on with this conversation one further sentence more.”
Both Annah and Joe have stopped their playing to listen. They are not watching their parents, but their heads are raised, like forest animals who can smell smoke nearby.
“All I ever wanted from her was a reason,” Conor says. “I just got tired of all that enigmatic shit.”
“Hey,” Janet says, “I told you about that one further sentence.” Annah gets out of her father’s lap and snuggles next to Janet. “All right,” Janet says. “Listen. Listen to this. Here’s something I never told you. One night Merilyn and I were working the same station, we were both in pediatrics that night, third floor, it was a quiet night, not many sick kids that week. And, you know, we started talking. Nursing stuff, women stuff. And Merilyn sort of got going.”
“About what?”
“About you, dummy, she got going about you. Herself and you. She said you two had gone bowling. You’d dressed in your rags and gone off to Colonial Lanes, the both of you, and you’d been bowling, and she’d thrown the ball down the lane and turned around and you were looking at her, appreciating her, and of course all the other men in the bowling alley were looking at her, too, and what was bothering her was that you were looking at her the way they did, sort of a leer, I guess, as if you didn’t know her, as if you weren’t married to her. Who could blame you? She looked like a cover girl or something. Perfect this, perfect that, she was perfect all over, it would make anybody sweat. So she said she had a sore thumb and wanted to go home. You were staring at your wife the way a man looks at a woman walking by in the street. Boy, how she hated that, that guy stuff. You went back home, it was cold, a cold blister night, she got you into bed, she made love to you, she threw herself into it, and then in the dark you were your usual gladsome self, and you know what you did?”
“No.”
“You thanked her. You two made hot love and then you thanked her, and then in the dark you went on staring at her, you couldn’t believe how lucky you were. There she was in your arms, the beauteous Merilyn. I bet it never occurred to you at the time that you aren’t supposed to thank women after you make love to them and they make love to you, because you know what, sweetie? They’re not doing you a favor. They’re doing it because they want to. Usually. Anyway, that was the night she got pregnant with Jeremy and it was the same night she decided she would leave you, because you couldn’t stop looking at her, and thanking her, and she hated that. For sure she hated it. She lives in Tulsa, that’s how much.”
Conor is watching Janet say this, focusing on her mouth, watching the lips move. “Son of a bitch,” he says.
“So she told me this,” Janet says, “one night, at our nursing station. And we laughed and sort of cried when we had coffee later, but you know what I was thinking?” She waits. “Do you? You don’t, do you?”
“No.”
“I was thinking,” Janet says, “that I’m going to get my hands on this guy, I am going to get that man come hell or high water. I am going to get him and he is going to be mine. Mine forever. And do you