“You have to leave him,” Eleanor told her.
“You know what kind of a dump I could afford for Kimmie and me?”
“You’d still be better off. You think this is good for Kimmie, seeing her father beat you up?”
“It’s not that bad,” Darla said. “He mostly only gets out of control when the Red Sox lose.”
“So if they make it to the playoffs, your marriage problems are over?” Eleanor asked her.
“If I get hit by a bus, my marriage problems are over,” Darla told her.
59.
A Waterbed
It was March again, and with a warm front coming in, the snow had mostly melted. In the old days, this would have been the weekend for Eleanor and the children to make their boats and their cork people and launch them in the brook, but they were with Cam. After she dropped them off at the farm, she pulled up alongside a pay phone and called up Timmy Pouliot.
Eleanor had not seen Timmy again since that day at the Stop & Shop, their unlikely motorcycle ride.
The truth was, Timmy Pouliot had been on her mind for a while. Sometimes, alone in her bed back in Brookline, she allowed herself to think about him—how it had felt on the back of his motorcycle that day, her arms wrapped tight around him. She imagined other things, too. Timmy kissing her, peeling her clothes off her body. She pictured the tattoo on his arm, with his father’s name on it. Pictured him naked in the bed next to her.
That afternoon, before setting out on the drive to Akersville, Eleanor had written his number on a piece of paper before she left Brookline. Dropping her dime in the slot, she could feel her hand trembling. Maybe he wouldn’t pick up. Most likely he’d be out on a date.
He answered.
“I was remembering how much you always liked my chocolate chip cookies,” she said. “I just made a big batch. I thought I might bring you some.”
He sounded surprised, but not in a bad way. He gave her the address of his apartment.
It was a third-floor walk-up above the video store. The kind of place only a young person would live, or someone with hardly any money. Timmy Pouliot was both.
There was a bumper sticker on the door that said “Save Water, Drink Beer.” From another apartment on the same floor, Eleanor heard an album she thought might be Led Zeppelin, and from somewhere else, the sound of an unhappy baby and a woman yelling at the baby to shut up. Someone had hung up a poster in the hallway of a naked man under a yellow raincoat and the words “Good Boys Always Wear Their Rubbers.”
Eleanor imagined what she must look like standing there—out of breath from the stairs, a thirty-four-year-old woman with a do-it-yourself perm, wearing lipstick for the first time in a couple of years, holding a tin of chocolate chip cookies. She had squirted perfume on herself, and it came out faster than she expected, so the smell of it seemed to fill the hallway. If she hadn’t already knocked on the door, she might have changed her mind and gone home.
She thought about what would happen when he opened the door. She imagined handing him the cookies. She imagined kissing him.
Were women supposed to carry condoms now that there was this terrible virus going around that nobody knew anything about except that it killed you? She had no idea of the rules these days, not that she ever had.
His face, when he opened the door, looked so happy to see her. She had forgotten how blue his eyes were, and more so, the intensity of his gaze. He was in his housepainter pants and a T-shirt, and his hair looked as though he’d just come out of the shower. She held out the cookies.
“I didn’t want to eat these all myself,” she said.
“Not that you have anything to worry about,” he said. “I always thought you had a killer body.”
He invited her in. There was a big-screen TV and a recliner chair and a beanbag, also a bong, and a couple of empty pizza boxes.
“Jeez, I should’ve tidied up,” he said. “I’m not that accustomed to entertaining guests.”
She sat on the beanbag. It was difficult knowing where to put her legs.
She had changed clothes a couple of times before making the drive, Ursula noting with surprise that she had makeup on. She hadalso dug through her underwear drawer in search of a pair of underpants that weren’t stretched out from one or another of her pregnancies. She had also needed to make the cookies.
He offered her a beer. She took it. He already had one going.
“So how are your kids doing?” he asked her. “I mean, I know it’s been difficult with your little boy. But the main thing is, he could’ve died, right? Cam saved his life. I’d hope I could pull it together to do something like that. Keep my wits about me.”
Eleanor just sat there. She couldn’t speak. But Timmy kept going.
