On the Loose Read online

  He said, "It's the only way I know."

  They were in Andover, in the bar at Rembrandt's, a restaurant off the square. Their table was tiny, and they sat knee to knee. Trish was drinking a martini and picking at peanuts. "If I had your balls in my hand," she said, "would you trust me not to squeeze?"

  He thought for a moment. "Yes, I think so."

  "Then trust me now. You need help."

  Moments later she rose from the table in her thigh-high dress and, heading toward the ladies' room, drew looks from men at the bar, none of whom interested her, all of the sort who make vague passes but lack confidence to execute direct ones. Alone in the ladies' room, she compressed her lips and viewed herself in the mirror. "Beauty's mortal, my dear," she murmured aloud. "Be careful." Then she dabbed her hot face with a damp tissue and hoped she wasn't going through the change.

  She returned to the table. Harry, nursing his vodka tonic, gave her a half smile. There were moments when they seemed to see into each other. He said, "I'm going to try."

  She glanced at the men at the bar. Most appeared placid and uncomplicated, with skim-milk complexions, no five o'clock shadows. "Try what, Harry?"

  "To get myself together."

  She drove her fingers into the peanuts. "No, Harry. No, you won't."

  Trish Becker lived in the Heights, home to Bens- ington's well-heeled newcomers. Once an expanse of pristine woodland, it was now a meandering avenue of grand houses. Ben Sawhill also lived there, the only townie who did. It was too late for a phone call, but she rang his number anyway.

  "Belle's in bed," he said.

  "I want to talk to you." He was her lawyer, her financial adviser, her confidant, and his wife Belle was her buddy. "I hate my house."

  "What's the matter with it?"

  "Everything," she said. The house was an elegant red-brick Georgian with a wing for guests. Since her divorce it had quietly assumed a personality she didn't care for. Some rooms, no matter how warm the colors, had a chilling effect, as if they held grudges. The kitchen, which should have been friendly with its great bow window, seemed menacing, perhaps because of the many utensils hanging from ceiling racks. The dining room, the windows heavily draped, seemed disengaged from the rest of the house.

  "I told you to sell it four years ago," he said.

  "The market wasn't right. You said so yourself."

  "You heard what you wanted to hear. What's really wrong, Trish? It isn't the house."

  She shifted her cordless phone from one hand to the other and flung her hair back. Her feet were shod in fleece-lined slippers. "I hate November," she said.

  "It's not a pleasant month. So what?" He waited a moment, then added, "This isn't like you."

  "That's because your brother's turning me into a drunk. It's your fault. You introduced us-you and Belle."

  "We thought it was a good idea at the time."

  "He's a dead end. And I'm Dorothy Parker's big blonde, that's what I am."

  "Dorothy Parker's blonde had no money. You do. That's all the difference in the world." His voice was sharp, authoritative. "And you have children."

  She had a son in college and a daughter in boarding school, their holidays spent with their father, who had remarried and was said to wear his new young wife on his arm for fashion, as if she'd come out of his wardrobe. The last she had seen of him was in Newsweek, a picture of him in a designer suit and color-splashed tie, his executive abilities lauded, his software company touted.

  "You don't understand," she said. "I was a good wife."

  Ben was quiet. She imagined dark tones in his face. Her mind's eye saw the prominence of his jaw, a striking feature he shared with Harry, as if they'd been line-bred for it. She wondered whether Belle was waiting for him.

  "Still there?" she asked.

  "You're right, Trish. November's a lousy month."

  "Don't tell Harry I called."

  "I wouldn't dream of it."

  "Don't tell Belle either," she said.

  Bobby Sawhill stared out of his bedroom window at leafless trees that reminded him of empty birdcages. The stillness of the trees and the pallor of the sky affected his thoughts. It was his birthday. He was a November baby.

  He heard footsteps on the stairs and turned from the window. His room was neat, everything in place, nothing on the walls, no posters, no heroes. No stereo. Stereo music hurt his head. A computer given to him by his uncle did not interest him. He kept the television on but seldom watched. Girlie magazines interested him, but the theater in his head interested him more. He preferred the past to the present, skits in which he was barefoot, his toes grass-stained, his mother counting them. This little piggy went to market, this little piggy ...

  His father rapped on the door and opened it. "We leave at six. That all right?"

  He remembered a neighbor woman catching sight of him with his pants down, calling his little thing a bullet, and telling him it'd be awhile before he fired it.

  "Did you hear me, Bobby?"

  He consulted his watch and shrugged. It was four o'clock, which made six o'clock a long time off.

  "We can make it earlier or later," his father said, "whatever you wish."

  It didn't matter.

  When he heard the door close he gathered up schoolbooks and planted himself at his writing table. He did only what he had to in homework, which came easy to him. School did not. Where others sought attention he avoided it. Teachers overlooked his long silences because his grades were adequate and his father was somebody. He had no friends.

  A few minutes before six his father called to him. Descending the stairs, he glimpsed Trish Becker and whispered, "Why does she have to come?"

  On the drive to Andover he sat in the back and Trish Becker sat beside his father, who fought the feral glare of oncoming headlights. Screwing her head around, Trish Becker said, "Wow, you're thirteen now. A teenager."

  "It's no big deal," he said.

  At Rembrandt's they were ushered through the lounge and shown to a choice table on the glassedin porch. The waitress brought aperitifs. He was given a glass of ginger ale topped with crushed ice, through which he punched a straw. Trish Becker smiled at him. She wore eyeliner and showed cleavage. Her hand came forward in the suggestion of a touch and fell back when he said, "I'd like my presents now "

  "After dinner when the cake comes," his father said.

  "I don't want a cake."

  Trish Becker's gift was a Cross pen, which did not impress him, though he mumbled a thank-you. His father's gift pleased him less.

  "I already have a watch."

  "You have a Timex," his father said. "This is a Seiko."

  "You have a Rolex."

  "You'll get one when you graduate from high school."

  Menus were read. When the waitress came for their orders, he said, "I'll have pizza."

  "They don't have pizza," his father said. "Order something real."

  He ordered what they did, poached salmon. He ate only the edges. His father finished first and ordered a vodka tonic; then excused himself and went to the men's room. Left alone with Trish Becker, Bobby read sympathy in her eyes and disliked her for it. She reached under the table and placed a hand on his knee.

  "Do we need to be enemies?"

  His face was passive, his voice cool. "Are you going to marry my father?"

  She spoke slowly. "Would it upset you if I did?"

  "I wouldn't like it."

  "Chances are I won't," she said. "Why are you staring at me like that?"

  "I know what you look like naked. I've seen pictures."

  She was confused, somewhat shocked. "Of me, Bobby?"

  "Other women."

  Something clicked, and she seemed on the point of laughter as if from an image of his face slammed into a double issue of Penthouse. "I'm flattered, Bobby."

  "Why?»

  "Just am."

  His father returned. In time the cake he didn't want came anyway, with candles he was obliged to blow out. Trish
Becker sliced three neat pieces, the biggest for him, more frosting than the others. Her smile was knowing.

  "Happy birthday, Bobby."

  Winter came early with a heavy snowfall of dry furry flakes. In the light of morning, the storm spent, Chief Morgan shoveled his walk and knocked snow from arborvitae, which instantly diffused a fresh green aroma. He cleared enough of the short driveway to get his car out of the garage. The car, public property, unmarked except for the fading town seal, stuttered before it found a voice and stalled only once on the plowed street.

  The police station, situated in a rear corner of the town hall, the entrance on the side, was just large enough to accommodate the ten-member force, which included the chief and three civilian dispatchers. Meg O'Brien, the daytime dispatcher, gave him a penetrating look when he pushed through the door. He stamped snow from thick-soled shoes and shed his gloves but kept on his parka.

  "You have problems," Meg said. "One of the cruisers broke down, and Eugene ran the other into a snowbank."

  "Those aren't problems, they're aggravations." He was anxious to slip over to the Blue Bonnet for breakfast, but Meg's gaze held him. Big eyes and heavy teeth overwhelmed her pony face. A bond of affection existed between them, though occasionally she got on his nerves. "Anything else?"

  "Claudia MacLeod wants you to call her. I thought you two broke up again."

  "Did I tell you that?"

  "You didn't have to. She's a good woman, Jim, not like some of those tootsies you've played around with."

  His past relationships with a couple of highstrung women from the Heights had distressed her, but his association with Claudia MacLeod, a shaky romance at best, on-again, off-again, pleased her. Claudia was a townie.

  "Have I ever told you to mind your own business?"

  "Many times. Think about something, Jim. With her you know what you're getting."

  Claudia Perrault, her name back then, had been his eighth-grade girlfriend. They had walked handin-hand in the woods girding Paget's Pond. Their initials, carved into the juicy skin of a sugar maple, had long ago been sucked into the heartwood.

  Meg gentled her tone. "You've both had your tragedies."

  Claudia had married young and followed her soldier husband to Georgia, where she waited for him after he was sent to Vietnam. He was killed in a final round of fighting. She returned to Bensing ton with his partial remains, buried them in Burnham Road Cemetery, and moved in with her widowed mother, a household that now included her two aunts.

  Meg said, "You could be more understanding."

  'Everybody could be that, Meg. Everybody in the world."

  "But we're talking about you. You're not getting any younger. None of us are."

  He was in his forties, and Meg, who had never married, was past fifty. Her concerns were him, her job, and her cats. She had no living relatives. Her closest brush with romance was in a doctor's office when she was a young woman. A professional hand searching for her pain momentarily turned affectionate, a horror to her then, not altogether a bad memory now.

  Morgan unzipped his parka. "Is she home?"

  "She's at work."

  He entered an office not quite small enough to cramp him and, bulky in his open parka, sat at his desk. A photograph of his wife stood beside his calendar pad and telephone. He rang up Claudia at the regional high school, where she was a guidance counselor. They talked for several minutes, quietly, businesslike, the subject surprising to him. Meg crept in with a mug of coffee for him and tiptoed out. In a low voice, he said, "I don't understand. You could move in with me."

  Claudia's voice was lower. "I need to have my own place. My own life."

  The conversation ended a few moments later. He wrapped his hands around the coffee mug, which had a blue-and-gold pattern and was the sole survivor of a set given him ten years ago when he was appointed chief. Meg looked in on him.

  He said, "She wants to buy the Bullard house."

  During the afternoon the temperature plunged, and by nightfall the cold was bitter. Returning home, Chief Morgan raised the heat and heard the furnace kick in under his feet. He disliked the dark and soon had light pouring through every downstairs room. Wind rattled windows. The house, old and ill-insulated, had belonged to his parents. He and his wife had planned to rejuvenate it, add on a room. In the framework of the future, the house had seemed tiny. Now it echoed.

  Claudia MacLeod arrived at seven with take-out from the Blue Bonnet and an overnight bag. Chicken wings, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, and rolls were in the take-out. Among other things, flannel pajamas jammed the overnight bag.

  "I didn't think you'd come," he said, for she was an infrequent visitor and seldom stayed the night.

  "Are you glad?"

  "I'm grateful," he said nakedly. Women were important to him. Female presence was a weapon against the void in a way that male companionship never could be. "What about your mother?"

  "I'm a big girl, James."

  Setting plates on the kitchen table, he watched her open hot containers and sniff aromas. Her hair, light brown, free of gray, was parted in the middle. Her eyes were wistful and inquiring behind sober spectacles and often ambiguous about what they wanted. Dowdy in clothes, purposely so, she was the opposite otherwise.

  "What if your mother needs you?"

  "Don't push it, James."

  He placed salt and pepper on the table. "Sorry."

  Her mother and her aunts, a sore subject between them, didn't want him taking her away from them. They competed with him and each other for her time and attention. In an airless world of their own making, they depended on her to attend to their wants, referee their squabbles, and run their errands.

  "Milk?"

  "Please," she said.

  They ate quietly, at ease with each other, her company a wave of warmth for him. Chewing, she caught him staring.

  "Like an old married couple, aren't we?" she said.

  "Not exactly."

  She frowned slightly. "Do you understand why I want to buy the Bullard place?"

  He understood that her mother's house, only a little larger than his, had the closeness of a sickroom and the telltale odor of shut-ins. Her aunts, who vied over whose grief from widowhood was greater, never went out unless she packed them in her Dodge Colt and drove them. Her mother lived with the constant fear of chills.

  "I know the obvious reasons," he said. "Maybe there are some I don't know. Or don't want to know"

  "I'm living in the past, James. I can't go on doing that." She buttered a roll and handed it to him. "Sometimes I think I'm regressing. I don't want to take care of my mother. I want her to take care of me."

  "More gravy?"

  "No, you finish it," she said. "Everything OK?"

  "Everything's fine."

  "When I was a child I loved wetting my pants. It was wicked but felt good. And someone was always there to scold me, lovingly of course." Abruptly she laughed, her glasses refracting light. "I can't believe I told you that."

  "But you did."

  She wiped her mouth. "I'm a dunce."

  He had a dishwasher, but it was broken. He did the dishes in the sink, and she dried them. Reaching into a cupboard to put away her milk glass, she glimpsed a June bug reduced to its shell. Telephone numbers were penciled on the inside of the cupboard door, hers among them. Below, near the toaster, the paper toweling was down to its cylinder, which bore shreds of the last sheet.

  "You need someone to look after you, James?"

  "Want the job?"

  "I have a small life, room only for me."

  Later, in another room, magazines and newspapers strewn about, they watched television from separate cushioned chairs. She sat with her legs curled under her, her cardigan pulled tight. Her eyes were more on him than the screen. His had closed.

  "Do you want to share your thoughts," she asked, "or do you prefer to think alone?"

  "I thought you were watching the program."

  "No more than you are." W
hen his eyes opened, she said, "In some ways you remind me of my father. That disturbs me."

  "I remember he was a nice fellow. So it shouldn't disturb you."

  "A week after he died my mother washed his underwear and socks, folded them how she always did, and placed them neatly in his dresser drawer as if he were coming back."

  Morgan gripped the armrests of his chair. "I'm not interested in television, are you?"

  "No," she said.

  They climbed the stairs. In his bedroom he closed the door behind them and partly raised a window which let in the cold and the howl of the wind. He watched her hurry into a pajama top. She had a fine bottom, two perfect bowls. His sleepwear was a gray sweatshirt. Before getting into bed, he threw an extra blanket over the bed. In the growing warmth under the covers they lay close together.

  "My father whistled his own tune," she said, "never anybody else's."

  "I do the same, though off-key."

  "I've noticed."

  Deep under the covers they made love. He loved the business of it. Two humid bodies impacting, his driving home messages and hers wallowing in the words. Vainly he tried to make it last. When he started to withdraw, she rose under him, gripped him with arms and legs, and held him fixed.

  Later, when he thought she was drifting off to sleep, he said, "I know you love me."

  "But if I don't have you, I can't lose you."

  "You'd never lose me, Claudia," he said and in the dark sensed her turning her face away.

  "I don't trust you, James. You might leave me."

  "No."

  "Yes," she said. "You might die."

  Trish Becker, who despised winter, wanted the warmth of the Caribbean. "Let's take a cruise on a gambling ship, Harry. I love the slots. I love blackjack, don't you?"

  Harry Sawhill shook his head. He enjoyed winning of course, he said, but losing was a silly way to part with money.