After You've Gone Read online

  “This is so nice. But I feel awful about it in some ways,” I said.

  “I know you do. But you need someone right now. And I’ve wanted you for a long time.”

  “Yes, but I’m married. And you know I love you, but I still love Bill.”

  “It’s all right. I understand.”

  “I barely understand it myself.”

  Jacob was an easy man to love. He was kind, handsome, considerate. With Bill, love felt like an overwhelming force. It was quieter with Jacob, not as scary. Sometimes, I wondered if I was seeing him to get back at Bill. Or to hurt him. I didn’t know, and the more I thought about it the more confused I got.

  There was something else too, that I couldn’t tell Jacob. I was afraid of going from depending on one man to depending on another. And how did I know I could trust him? I’d trusted Bill, and look what happened. Maybe I didn’t know how to tell who was trustworthy and who wasn’t. How do you tell, anyway? Seems like I trusted people, like Bill, like Ma, and they turned on me. Back then I thought maybe nobody was trustworthy.

  “Jake?”

  He was asleep. I watched the snowflakes pile up on the windowsill until eventually I fell asleep, too.

  Fifteen

  Lita

  December 1936

  I WOKE FROM A DREAM IN the black of a night just before Christmas, mouth dry, heart racing. It played through my mind, over and over, as I stood at the sink and got a drink of water. I was alone in Bill’s parents’ house. It was cold and dark and I sat on a couch, nervous and afraid. I coughed hard and when I took my hand away from my mouth, three molars lay bloody in my palm. I ran my tongue over the empty sockets, stared at the teeth in my hand, tasted metallic blood. Then a cold wind screaming through the empty house felt like it would blast right through me.

  For a long time, I’d been troubled by vivid dreams like this one. I didn’t know what they meant, but it didn’t feel like anything good. I mentioned it to Steve once and he said it might be an idea to write the dreams down. As soon as possible after waking, he said, in as much detail as possible, and eventually a pattern might emerge. At first I thought, oh, yeah, Steve and his flaky ideas. He believed that dreams were sent to tell you something you needed to know. I wasn’t so sure about that. But as the dreams became more frequent I decided to try it. I kept a pad of paper beside the bed and when I had a vivid dream, jotted down the details on waking.

  Bill wanted to see what I’d written once. I refused at first. I often wonder why it should have been so, but I always felt so damned inadequate beside him, so embarrassed, so ashamed of myself, never more than when he tried to get into personal things like that. He pestered me, though, promised he wouldn’t tell anyone, and I finally gave in. My ears burned as I watched him read it, but he didn’t laugh like I thought he might. He handed the pad back to me.

  “You really dreamt all this stuff? You didn’t just make it up?”

  “Why would I make it up?”

  “I don’t know. They’re crazy dreams.”

  “Don’t you ever have crazy dreams?”

  “Sure I do, lots. But not like these. They’re so violent and dramatic. You’d never know it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you’ve got that icy exterior. Sometimes you can freeze a guy right out. But then all this stuff goes on inside, like these dreams. And the way you play.”

  I took it as an insult at the time. But now I realize he had insight I didn’t give him credit for. Sometimes I wondered what else I hadn’t given him credit for.

  Soon after my dream of the teeth, I was up late one Saturday night after my shift, reading in bed. It was sometime between Christmas and New Year’s. I was trying not to see Jacob all the time. It was a particularly dismal holiday season. I’d read a lot since Bill left. At this point I wasn’t actually still reading. I knew I’d have to wake up enough to put the book down and turn off the light, but for right then I was content to try a sentence, doze, wake, try the same sentence, in an endless loop.

  I began to dream the kind of vivid, odd dream you have sometimes when you’re dozing off. I was walking along a dock on a warm, sunny day, talking to a man. He was tall, his face indistinct, but the red, gold, and brown hues in his wavy hair glowed, shifted. I longed to touch it, could not take my eyes off him as we walked to the end of the dock and sat beside each other at the end, feet dangling. I don’t know what we were talking about, but I felt happy, calm, safe. Then a voice shattered me out of sleep.

  “Lita?”

  I caught my breath, sat up and stared at Bill, too confused to speak.

  “I let myself in. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  He was drunk. “S’my house, isn’t it?”

  “Our house, you mean. For now.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” He’d already taken off his shoes and socks, started to unbutton his shirt.

  “You tell me. You’re the one who’s run off. Where is Darlene tonight, anyway?”

  “Never mind about her. I didn’t come here to talk about her.” He got under the covers and put his cold feet on mine. In days of old I used to like to warm his big feet up, he knew that. This time I pulled my feet away.

  “Well, I’d like to talk about her, talk about what you’re doing. I mean, are we getting a divorce or what?”

  He ran his hand over my back, under my pajama top. “I told you, I didn’t come here to talk about that.”

  Oh, the way things turn out sometimes. Wasn’t it only the night before that I had fantasized about this exact thing? Well, no, not this exact thing. But something like it. The night before, in my mind’s ear, he’d whispered sweet nothings, thrilled me with his imaginary presence. But when it came to reality, this reality, I was so mad at him I could scream, felt about as receptive as a bucket of nails. Of course, in my fantasy, he wasn’t drunk, either.

  “You’re welcome to sleep here tonight. But please don’t do this.”

  “It’s my goddamn house and you’re my goddamn wife.”

  The next morning, I thought about that passage in Gone With the Wind where Rhett rapes Scarlett. The next morning Scarlett sits up in bed, stretches sensuously, sings, and giggles at memories of the night before, as if a good rape was just what she needed. I thought about that passage and what a load of shit it was. Normally on a Sunday morning I would have slept longer, but I didn’t want to stay in bed and listen to that great oaf sleep it off. I got into the bath to have a nice long soak and maybe forget it. It didn’t do any good; rage consumed me.

  Rage and sadness. What happened to my Bill, I wondered. What had Darlene done with him? The Bill I used to know would never have done this. Sure, he might flirt with other women, he probably even slept with a few. Leaving me was something incomprehensible, and last night he’d been someone I didn’t know.

  But what could I do? Go to the police? Right. Wife raped by her own husband. Yeah, that would stand up in court. I would have really liked to tell his mother. Tell her, and be believed. If she heard something like this about her dear, sweet William, I was sure she’d blame me — I must have been asking for it. Or she’d stick her fingers in her ears and hum, the old dear. Even as I listened to his long, probably still-drunken snores rip the air in the bedroom, I thought how different last night could have been, how nice it could have been. If only he wasn’t such a rotten, cruel, drunken, selfish bastard.

  I dressed, made myself some coffee and toast, sat in the kitchen and listened to the radio. The snores stopped after a while and I heard him stir around, go to the bathroom. I listened and tried to think what to say to him. I’d thought about that on and off since I woke, but really had no idea what to say. So when he came out and stood beside me, I only looked up at him. I didn’t smile, didn’t say a word.

  “Mind if I have some of that coffee?” he asked.

  “Go ahead.”

  He poured a cup, sat down across from me at the little red Formica table, and dran
k it almost in one gulp. Then he lit a cigarette for himself, and one for me, as an afterthought.

  “When I came here last night, I didn’t mean for things to turn out they way did. I wanted to come over here and tell you how I missed you and such. But it took me longer than I thought it would to get up the courage. And by the time I got up the courage, well . . . my original intentions were kind of forgotten by then.”

  I thought I’d let him continue, in case he wanted to apologize or anything like that. He was going in the right direction.

  He finished his cigarette. “I can see now that I’ve just made a huge mess of things,” he said, and got his coat from the tree by the door. “I don’t expect you to ever forgive me. I’m sorry I hurt you, but I don’t expect you to forgive me.”

  “Bill, it’s not too late to talk.”

  He shook his head. “No, you’re wrong. It is too late. You’ll never respect me again. And what kind of a marriage would that be?”

  “You’re wrong. We can still make it work.”

  “I don’t think so. Darlene and me, maybe it’s not the same as it was with us, Lita. But we’ve got a lot in common. We’re two of a kind. No-talent, faithless, selfish bastards. We understand each other.”

  “That’s not true, not about you. You have talent. You’re a great singer. We could start again, get the band back together, get a new band started. And I need you to come back to me. I love you.”

  He smiled. “You don’t need me. You’re the one with all the talent. You and that guitar, I swear, sometimes it’s like there’s nothing else in the world but you and that guitar. I hate to come between you.” He buttoned up his coat and put on his hat.

  He was here, but he was getting ready to go, slipping out of my grasp again. How could I stop him?

  “Don’t do this, Bill. I love you. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  “It counts for a lot. Enough that I’d almost be ready to come back, if I thought it could work. But it’s too late now. Every time I’d look in your eyes and think of what a rotten bastard I’ve been, how could I stand myself? No, I’ve got to go. Goodbye, Lita. I love you.”

  He kissed me, and before I knew what happened, he was gone.

  Sixteen

  Lita

  February 1937

  WHAT I FELT ABOUT DARLENE RIGHT then was something I’ve never felt about another human being before or since. It was a horrible, consuming hatred. I didn’t really know what went on between her and Bill to restart their relationship, whether it was a restart, whether he made the first move or she. Not that it really mattered. I couldn’t help but see Darlene as an evil temptress. Had I been at all rational, I would have known that Bill acted out of his free will. But my anger demanded a sacrifice, and Darlene had to be it. It couldn’t be Bill, because I wanted him back.

  I hated Darlene enough that I wished she was dead. Not that I wanted to kill her, I just wanted her to be dead. I found some twisted consolation in the idea of Darlene being hit by a streetcar, of her crashing down a flight of stairs and breaking her neck. I imagined Bill coming back to me, distraught, in need of solace and apologetic all at once. That part of the fantasy wasn’t all that satisfying. I would have preferred if he’d rushed back to me, horrified with himself, pleading for me to take him back. But as the days went by it seemed like that wouldn’t happen, and the only way he’d come back was if Darlene was dead. So be it. I was that desperate to have him back. In spite of how he treated me, in spite of what had happened that night, I wanted him back. Every day, the second I woke up I thought of him, and it didn’t stop all day.

  I did a novena to St. Jude. Nine days I prayed, nine times a day, nine prayers each time. I checked the ads in the paper every day to see how to word mine, looked forward to the end of the nine days when St. Jude would grant my favour. Should I keep it simple — “Thanks to St. Jude for favours received, L. M.”? Or maybe be a little more flowery, a little more effusive — “For granting my heart’s true desire, dear blessed St. Jude, I offer my everlasting gratitude and deepest devotion, L.M.”? But nothing happened.

  Next I dug out Mami’s Tzigane tarot deck from the old country, and tried to read them the way I saw her do it long ago. I knew I had to formulate my question for the cards carefully. That was easy enough, but the interpretation was tricky. Part way through I remembered that clouds in the pictures on some of the cards changed their apparent meaning, and could change the meaning of the cards around them, too. And then some of them meant one thing if they were close to the inquirer’s card, but something else if they were far away. The Bear, for instance, meant happiness if far away, but signified caution if nearby. What if it was a moderate distance away? Cards like the Coffin had more than one meaning, depending on where they lay. But the Cross was always a bad omen — only the distance from the inquirer’s card affected its degree of badness. And why did the cards seem to have a completely different meaning every time I laid them out? It was like trying to understand my dreams. Steve always insisted I needed to give them more thought after they happened, and then I’d understand what they were trying to tell me. But maybe they weren’t trying to tell me anything. Maybe they didn’t mean anything, just like the pictures printed on these paper cards, no matter how mysterious they looked.

  These things didn’t work but I had to keep trying, had to feel like I was doing something to get Bill back. Not having him made me crazy. I had insane dreams, when I could sleep. I’d lie awake for hours in the middle of the night. I felt restless, light-headed, not myself, and I had to do something about it. It became clear that I’d have to break it off with Jacob. If I really wanted my husband back, I’d have to have him alone in my heart. And really, I knew that had been true all along. Ending things with Jacob was the only fair thing to do.

  Maybe it was fair, but it wasn’t easy. I called Jacob late one bitterly cold night, asked if I could come over and talk. Though he offered to come and get me, I walked over. Small, hard snowflakes stung my face. I wanted to have time to go over in my mind once more what to say to him. Never mind that it would all evaporate the minute I walked in his door.

  He sat me down by the fire, got me a drink.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  I had an impulse to say nothing was wrong, but I knew it was no good. “Jake, I’ve got to stop seeing you.”

  “Go on.”

  Damn him. Why’d he have to be so calm? And so sad-looking? “Oh, I hate to do it. You’ve been good for me, and I don’t know what I would have done without you. But I still love Bill.”

  “I know that. I always knew that. It doesn’t make any difference to me.”

  “Maybe it should. How can you stand to hold me when you know I still love him?”

  “Because I know you’ll get over him.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve tried everything. But I just can’t. And it’s not fair to either of us to keep on like this. Especially not to you. You deserve someone who loves you completely.”

  “I’d hoped one day that someone might be you.”

  “Jake, don’t say that. I think it would be better if I quit my job at the hotel.”

  “Don’t you like your job?”

  “It’s not that. It would just be better that way.”

  “Listen, I don’t think that’s a very good idea. You keep your job, I won’t make anything difficult for you. Things are just bad for you right now. I’m sure they’ll improve soon.”

  Jake insisted on giving me a ride home. I crawled into bed feeling like an awful heel, but somehow better, lighter. More ready for the task of getting my husband back where he belonged.

  When the police came with the news the next morning, I was sure there’d been some mistake. I went to the morgue with them convinced that the man they’d found frozen in the alley wasn’t Bill. Just before they pulled back the sheet, I thought what a big joke it would be when I told him about it.

  I stood and blinked at him a moment, as if this could somehow change wha
t I saw in front of me. His eyes were half-shut, dull, empty. His face was chalk, his lips purple. I touched his arm, somehow hadn’t expected it to be cold, and pulled my hand back.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen, I kept thinking. When we retired, we were going to spend our summers in the Qu’Appelle Valley; we’d talked about moving to Fort Qu’Appelle, the verdant spot where Regina would have been if not for the treachery of the railroad. We’d play music, read, paint, swim, maybe play croquet. It had become a game between us. I knew exactly how Bill would look when he got old — his hair would recede to a certain point, then turn white. That would make his face look pink, like his mum’s. He’d have bifocals, walk a little stooped. Instead, this is how he looked in the end: white, frozen, twenty-three years old. What’ll I do, I wondered, with all those other images now?

  They told me he’d been found in an alley early that morning. He’d been at a bar and got a cab home. The driver’s trip sheet noted the time and the address. Then, they said, “You weren’t there?”

  “No.”

  “His keys were in his pocket.”

  “I wasn’t home.”

  They said he’d started to walk, maybe headed back to the bar. He froze to death at the end of a dark alley.

  I didn’t cry or yell or scream there, nor in the squad car when one of the officers gave me a ride home. He took me into the house, asked if I had anyone I could call, and I said yes, I’d be fine. It was a lie. Who would I call? Darlene? Bill’s mum? Actually, I would have to tell both of them. But not right then. I thought briefly about calling Jacob, but couldn’t.

  Bill had come home. I tried to comprehend it. He came home and couldn’t get in. I’d had the locks changed, of course. After that night, Henry had changed them for me. Had Jake and I driven by him on the street? I wondered.