The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [85]
Occasionally, around her, she could make out words, bits of conversation. Business was being conducted. Flirtations.
Her headache tightened, moved toward her temples. She asked the bartender for an aspirin. A man with a mustache glanced sideways at her. Over the bar there was a Guinness sign, and she recognized the black drink in glasses on the bar. Jack had sometimes brought it home. That was another thing she didn’t want to think about. The bar was wet with rings of beer, the wood saturated with the smell.
After a time, she needed to use the bathroom, but she didn’t want to give up her stool. She thought she should order a third glass of beer just in case she lost her place and wouldn’t be able to get another. The bartender ignored her raised hand, but the women across the bar noticed. They spoke to each other as they stared at her.
The bartender, acknowledging her finally, seemed slightly less friendly than he had been before. Perhaps there was a rule of pub etiquette she had failed to follow. When he finally asked her if she’d like a third drink, she shook her head and stood up, catching her coat on the stool. She lifted the wool off the vinyl seat. She tried to walk with a steady gait, moving through the crowd of men and women standing with their drinks. It must be just after work, she decided, and she wondered when exactly that would be in London. She felt something sticky on her feet and realized she had left her shoes at the bar. She turned, but could not see her way back. She had to pee urgently now and could not afford to find her trail. She followed a sign for Toilets. It seemed unnecessarily direct.
It was a relief just to be alone inside a stall.
Afterward, she had trouble with her stockings. She was reminded of having to pull on a wet bathing suit as a child. She struggled in the small cubicle. The soles of her stockings were filthy. She thought of taking them off altogether, that they would be easier to peel off than to pull on, but then she thought, sensibly, that she might be cold if she did that. Her stomach threatened momentarily to revolt, but she held her ground, withstood the queasiness.
She washed her hands in a grimy sink and looked in the mirror. The woman reflected there could not be her, she decided. The hair was too dark, too flat against the head. Half-moons of mascara lay beneath the eyes, a ghoulish makeup. The eyes themselves were pink rimmed, the eyeballs veined. The lips were bloodless, though the face was flushed.
A homeless woman, she thought.
She dried her hands on a towel, opened the door. She passed a phone on the wall. She felt a powerful urge to talk to Mattie. The urge was physical; she felt it in the center of her body, at the place where a woman wants to hold a baby.
She tried to follow the instructions printed on a placard next to the telephone, but gave up after several tries. She asked an older man in a waxed jacket who was on his way to the men’s room to help her. She dictated the numbers to him, pleased she could remember them. When he had a connection, he handed her back the phone and looked at her blouse. He walked into the men’s room, and, too late, she remembered that she hadn’t thanked him.
The phone rang six or seven times. A door shut, a glass broke, a woman laughed in a high register, the shrill laugh pealing out above all the others. Kathryn was dying inside for Mattie’s voice. Still the phone rang. She refused to hang up.
“Hello?”
The voice was breathless, as though she had been wrestling or running.
“Mattie!” Kathryn cried, spilling relief across the ocean. “Thank God you’re home.”
“Mom, what’s the matter? Are you OK?”
Kathryn composed herself. She didn