Love Invents Us - Amy Bloom [33]
Only Believe
Elizabeth was back for the last three months of school, sooty eyes and lank hair, but back. She wouldn’t look at Max, lurching through the halls like a wounded man. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, crusty and egg-shaped behind his glasses, and she drew in her breath when his hands came too close. He was functionally drunk every weekend and putting vodka in his orange juice at breakfast. He got himself to work, he kissed his children without exhaling, he gave a passing grade to any student whose parents would have come in to complain. He didn’t fall down, he didn’t break things, and he refused to drive with the boys for fear of killing them. Greta would not get in a car with him after four o’clock on Friday. The boys rode their bicycles into town, and Greta had begun to give Dan money for groceries. Max couldn’t do other than what he was doing, so he bought Dan a wire basket for his bike and all the comic books he wanted.
“Hey there, Elizabeth, welcome back. How’ve you been? Have you finished that paper on Edith Wharton?” Manic with despair, he sounded nothing like himself; the voice he’d used with her and hundreds of students and their parents and his own children, the sound of compassionate authority, shriveled in his throat. Rachel stood guard three feet away.
Elizabeth shook her head at Rachel, who edged a little farther down the hall and sat at the bottom of the staircase.
“I’m okay. I lost the baby.”
“I know. I’m so sorry, sweetheart. Was it awful?”
He tried to steer them toward his office, but she clung to the wall like a hostage.
“No, I lost the baby. It died. I didn’t have to have it killed.”
Max reached up, pulling handfuls of air.
“You miscarried?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, so am I. I’m sure the baby’s sorry too.”
And Max kept talking just to talk. Trying to turn what they had into a bold, star-crossed romance, love’s honorable defeat, as if the two of them had wept in each other’s lap on the floor of Mrs. Hill’s kitchen. Elizabeth said nothing. She saw his thoughts and closed her eyes. Max kissed her forehead, kissed her right through her unwashed bangs, and leaned back against the wall beside her.
“Where’s the boy?”
She shrugged, and he thought it would be nothing to break her jaw.
“The boy. The boy who got you pregnant. Where is he?”
“He’s gone. His father sent him away.”
“Well, I’m still here, sweetheart. You call me if you need me. Just call me.”
Elizabeth slid along the cinder-block wall, shouting, “I’m coming. Wait up,” and when she was halfway down the hall and safe by Rachel’s side, she called back to him, “Uh-uh. No thanks, Mr. Stone. Thanks anyway.”
And he saw her speak quickly to Rachel, her arm around her friend’s waist, and they glanced back at him and broke into sharp, disbelieving laughter.
Max had thought of affairs, normal men’s affairs, as a kind of Tabasco for the ego and libido, a little zip for the everyday burgers and scrambled eggs. His own affairs now seemed impossibly lighthearted and kind, the motels pink-and-gold operetta sets, all unhappiness and endings hidden by heavy, friendly thighs around his waist, a good-natured soft throat swallowing wine, a slightly slack belly becoming round and tight under his fingers. This, this girl, was poisoned water in a thousand-mile desert, and he must drink and know he’s dying.
That first terrible summer without her, two years ago, he drank Scotch until the back of his head pressed so tightly on the front and his mouth was such a compost heap that he had to stop for three days, and then he switched to dry white wine, buying it by the case. He felt good whenever he saw one of the pretty labels in a restaurant or at someone else’s house, and he told people it was a great wine for the price. (Not that Max and Greta were invited much anymore. Max had always been the charmer, the half of the couple that people wanted to have over. A