and that this day, this night, was the end of a part of her life as surely as it was the end of the new house, now a tumble of glowing debris framed by the square of her window. Silently Connie turned and left the bedroom, turning the light off as she went, and Maggie lay down on her bed in her clothes. When she woke in the morning she was still in her shorts and shirt, but her sneakers had been placed side by side under her bed, and one of Joseph’s crib quilts had been wrapped around her.
20
WHEN TOMMY CAME HOME ON THURSDAY night it was already dusk. His dinner was in the oven, the plate covered with foil, and his wife was sitting on a collapsible lawn chair on the back patio, smoking a cigarette and giggling with her cousin Celeste. Tom stood in the kitchen, watching the moths flail against the screens, the fluorescent tube above the counter blinding him, so that when he looked out he could see the bugs and nothing more. He picked at the chicken and beans on the plate, licking his fingers and absently shaking salt over everything. He was not hungry.
After work he had played one-on-one for almost an hour with one of the mixer drivers, running up and down the asphalt court until perspiration falling into his eyes turned him blind and clumsy. Then he had gone to the hospital and driven his mother to church, to a novena to St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. Even with the sun down, it was near ninety degrees outside, and Tom felt as if all his energy and hunger and fight had melted into a puddle on the car floor, right between the acceleration pedal and the brake. When he looked at himself in the mirror in the men’s room at the plant, a gray room with a persistent smell of Lysol, he thought of the old trick of holding a buttercup beneath your chin to see if you liked butter. Almost always there would be a pale yellow shadow cast by the flower, pale yellow like the color his skin was now, the whites of his eyes, the wet circles on his shirt beneath the armpits.
Down in the basement, below his feet, he could hear the washer going. It seemed as if the washer was always going in his house. He smelled a faint odor of burning and wondered if the vent on the dryer needed replacing again. Then he remembered the fire the night before, already doused and dead by the time he came home from his mother’s house. He wished someone would burn the whole damn development down. Outside he could hear more laughter, and looking inside the refrigerator saw that four of his Miller High Lifes were missing.
He did not like it when women drank beer. He even thought it was inappropriate for his mother to have Scotch on Sundays. Whenever they went out to dinner he always ordered a whiskey sour for Connie, and one for himself to keep her company, although he could never taste the liquor in those things. Sal said fancy restaurants didn’t use any liquor in drinks like that, only vanilla. He stood inside, drinking his beer, pressing it against his cheek. He did not like it when Celeste spent a lot of time with Connie. The rest of the time he could think of Connie as only his, his wife, nothing more or less. When Celeste came, he felt as though his Connie disappeared, in the way she had taken to doing. He put the bottle down on the counter.
“Tommy?” Connie called, hearing the clink of the glass. Her voice was high and a little giddy.
He walked to the back door, his hands in his pockets, and stood behind the screen like a shadow.
“Come on out,” Connie said.
“Hi, Tom,” said Celeste, holding the beer bottle by the neck.
“Come out,” his wife repeated, and he slid around the screen door, trying to keep the moths from coming in. He knew he looked out of place in his dress shirt, his tie slack around his open collar, his lace-up shoes black and heavy in the heat. Even the lightning bugs were sluggish, blinking on and off in one spot for a long time. Connie’s beer bottle was turned on its side on the ground, either spilt or empty.
“We’re celebrating,” Connie said. “Have a beer.”
“Celebrating what?”
“Celeste got married. Today.”
Tommy stared at Celeste,