Thirty - Jill Emerson [14]
I took another shower and I changed the sheets and put the dirty ones in the washing machine and made a cup of coffee and poured it out untasted and made a drink, vodka, the housewife’s friend. I drank it while I was washing and powdering and putting away my diaphragm. Then I made another.
I don’t remember exactly what was going through my mind then. A lot of things, I guess.
When the phone rang I knew exactly what it was. I have never had so strong a premonition. I knew just what had happened. I knew, without the slightest room for doubt, that my husband Howie was dead. That he had been killed in some sort of traffic accident in New York and that they were calling to tell me.
It was Howie. “Just called to tell you I’ll be a little late. I’ll probably catch the six-oh-four or the next one after that if they cancel it.”
“You’re alive.”
“What?”
“Howie, I won’t be here when you get back. I can’t be, I have to go away.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m leaving.”
“Jan, what are you—?”
“I can’t talk now. A boy came to the door to shovel the snow. I let him do it, I gave him ten dollars.”
“Seems a little high, but I guess—”
“He said it was the going rate.”
“Well, fine, then. I’m glad you got it done. Honey, I don’t quite understand—”
“I let him fuck me.”
“What?”
“I let him fuck me. Twice. In our bed.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Maybe you ought to stay in the city. In a hotel. I won’t be here when you get back. I suppose I’ll have to take the car, so maybe you should stay in town.”
“Well, if I stay in town you can stay at the house. But I still don’t see—”
“No. No, I cannot. I absolutely cannot stay in this house. I cannot stay in this house for another moment. I can’t. Howie, I don’t know what’s happening to me but I have to let it happen by myself.”
He was saying something else. I didn’t let him finish. I hung up and broke the connection, and then I took the phone off the hook so it wouldn’t ring again.
After that it was amazing how cool I was. I mean that it amazes me now that I think about it. I packed a suitcase. I threw clothes into it. I found the birth control pills that I had stopped taking when we decided I would stop taking them, and I took one right away and put the rest in my purse. I had dressed after making love (I don’t mean making love, we didn’t make love, we screwed) and I was wearing—oh, really who cares? Who cares what I was wearing?
I almost forgot this book, my diary. I haven’t written anything in it in two weeks. (Until now, when I seem intent on filling the whole thing at one sitting.) I had been keeping it on a shelf in my closet, a shelf Howie was unlikely to browse over. I came across it while gathering up clothes, and something made me realize I would want it. So I put it in the suitcase.
I lugged the suitcase out to the car—I wouldn’t have any trouble getting out, he had done a superb job of snow shoveling—and went back for my purse and the bankbook. I stopped in the bathroom and had a long look at the mirror. I had virtually had an affair with that mirror since my jump in the hay with what’s-his-name (my God, I really don’t know his name, we really never did get around to names, isn’t that hysterical!) and I kept running to look at myself in the mirror to see if I looked different. It really was like losing my virginity.