RAISING THE FALLEN

He was testing a polish on the hood of his car.  He had bought three types of car polish, the liquid kind that one just wipes on and wipes off; the hard paste type that one applies with a soft cloth and wipes off; and the really hard stuff, the kind that comes like a hard wax which one has to rub into the surface of the paint in little circles, let dry, then buff, preferably with a machine if one has one.  He had bought the buffing machine to go with the wax.  He intended to spend all day at the project.  It was Saturday, and he wasn’t going into the house if he could help it.  He was fed up. 

     As he poured some of the wax onto one of the cloths he had also bought that morning, he thought how screwed up his life had become.  How anyone could lose himself in such complicated mazes of troubles as he had done—without even trying!—bewildered him.  “Without even trying!” he repeated under his breath.  “This,” he said to himself, “is the first day of the rest of my life.”  He resolved as he tested the wax to end this marriage, to get his child away from that woman if that was at all possible, and then to work out some kind of legal situation in which he would never have to visit with her again, never have to talk to her again, never have to even look at her again. 

     He knew that his son Wade was going to be a barrier to success in what he wanted.  He could never legally cut that woman out of his son’s life, so that some toleration of her was likely going to be forced on him.  But, he thought, he could live with that if he got custody of Wade.  He never did get custody of Gerald, his son by his first wife, and the boy has suffered so miserably as a consequence that every time he thought of the boy he erupted emotionally. 

     That woman!  What a monster she was!  Is!  Will always be!  And how she twisted the lawyers, the courts, and the social welfare people into believing he was neglectful, unreliable, and literally a physical danger to his own child, and everybody believed her, with no evidence! no testimony from witnesses! and no attempts even to question the boy, who, if he was asked with whom he preferred to live, would have told them his father, but who was never given that chance, to protect him from his father!  So now he has to visit with his son with a social worker present, because he is regarded as a menace to his son’s welfare.  How this stuck in his throat!

     He found himself rubbing the wax in hard, tight circles, and realized he was damaging the finish on his car.  He let up and took another one of the rags he had bought and tried to wipe the polish away.  It came off, but his rubbing had left visible etch marks in the paint, circular patterns of light scratches, very visible if one looked.  “Damn,” he said out loud, looking at the damage he had done.

     How did all this happen to him?  And then he remarried, and now, after Wade was born, his wife, for reasons he could not fathom, began her campaign of alienating him.  It started with her refusing to let him get in bed with her.  He had to sleep on the couch.  When he visited his parents and mentioned to his mother that he was sleeping on the couch, she told him his wife had vows to uphold, and that he could and should tell her he was sleeping in the bed, and that if she had problems with that they needed to visit a councilor.  That’s what his mother said. 

     So he told her exactly those things, and she just laughed.  She took the baby and went to her own mother’s.  He found out only recently, when he had gotten a call from a collection agency, that she hadn’t been paying off the credit card bill, and then, when he began investigating, he found out that she had set up a separate bank account in her and her mother’s names, and that she had been depositing his paychecks into that account, and that their joint account was nearly empty! 

     They had borrowed the money for the house they bought from her parents, and her parents, therefore, held the mortgage.  She never fell behind on the mortgage payments, which were faithfully made, and when he told his own parents that he was now twenty-seven thousand dollars in credit card dept, and that she was depositing his paycheck into a separate account in her and her mother’s names, they were convinced she and her mother, at least, if not her father as well, were maneuvering to take the house and get rid of him, and that she was in the process of milking him for every dime she could squeeze from him before breaking the ties.  He left his parents that day just about as paranoid as he had ever been in his life, even more paranoid than he felt on that first visit with Gerald and the social worker.

     So he went to see a lawyer.  It was a woman, and when he sat down in her office and told her the story of both his wives, and how miserable he now was, and asked what she could do for him, she told him it was imperative that he act first and not cede the initiative to his wife and her lawyer, because if that happened, she would have to spend most of her time responding to them rather than forcing them to respond to her.  She, this lawyer, recommended immediate separation and a filing with the court for custody of the boy. 

     She then began collecting the unpaid credit card bills and examining the items purchased, making note of what was exclusively his wife’s and what could be regarded as either his or as joint property.  He was surprised to find that virtually nothing she spent that twenty-seven thousand dollars on could be found in their house and thus regarded as intended for his use or as joint property.  He had never actually seen any of the purchased stuff—enough to furnish a three-bedroom home.  It was all stored at her parents’ place.  His lawyer also got a court order to seize the bank account in his wife’s name.  There was a considerable sum of money in it. 

     He had begun to think that this lawyer was going to rescue him, but as it was turning out that was not going to be the case, at least, not before a great battle took place, a battle-royale in which a great deal of emotional blood was going to be spilt: his wife’s lawyer brought up the whole matter of his first wife and the court-imposed limitations on his visits with his first son and the court’s finding of him as a menace to his son’s welfare.  His first wife’s lie had taken on a new life and was now providing his second wife with the justifications she needed for her own behaviors.  It was this humiliation that drove him out of doors this fine Saturday morning.  Even though he had their bed to himself now, and had had it for weeks, he slept on the couch.  He had come to hate that woman so much that anything he associated with her actually made him wretch.

     What hurt him so much about what was happening is that his second wife, Elaine, knew all about his first wife, Josh, and in the beginning of their relationship, before they were married, was, herself, outraged at Josh’s lies, at how that woman manipulated and distorted and walked away smelling so sweet and leaving behind her the wreckage she did.  He loved Elaine enormously in those days for her understanding and her sympathies.  Now, her taking a page, as she was doing, from Josh’s book, in full consciousness of how this would affect him, staggered him for its cynicism, its callousness, its shamelessness.  Thinking about it made him stop breathing and drop the can of polish so that after half-a-minute he began to gasp, as though he had just come up for air.

     The morning was sunny and cool, and his dark blue Toyota RAV-4, its back seat empty of his son’s car seat, which he kept trying not to notice, was parked in the shade of the house at the head of the driveway.  The old two-story clapboard house faced north, with the driveway on the west side, so that the house would shade the area he was in, and the garage as well, until mid-afternoon, so that he had expected to spend four or five hours at his task.  The house had an open porch in front on which he and Elaine placed wicker furniture for their use on pleasant summer evenings.  He had put a cooler there filled with ice and bottles of Starbuck’s coffee, iced tea, and even a couple of Sam Adams for later in the day, when he expected to be both sweated up and tired. 

     He had painted the clapboard siding a light green and the eaves and fascias dark green immediately after they moved in, and not long afterward they had to replace the roof, which he did himself with cedar shingles, which turned out to be so hard to find that he had become a research expert on roofing materials.  With all he had done with the kitchen and bedrooms, the attic and basement, he had built up so much sweat equity in the house that his wife’s scheming to rid herself of him and take possession of everything they held in common, even the house, dismayed him.  “How could I have been so blind about her?” he thought as he bent to pick up the can of wax.

     As he thought about her, something began to happen to him.  At first, when her behaviors began to become strange, his love for her always suppressed the feelings that surfaced, so that he felt more bewildered by her than anything else.  The warmth and affection they shared when Wade was born he felt were real and were worth trying to preserve, they were worth making the effort to overcome the growing estrangement between them.  But now, as he was bending down to pick up the can of polish he dropped, he felt nothing for her.  When he tried to picture her or to recall those moments in the hospital when he first held the baby and she beamed with pride and with love for both of them, nothing came to him but contempt, a feeling of betrayal, and a certain fearfulness about his future. 

     He tried to picture her, and nothing came, nothing but a sort of blankness.  He thought about this blankness and what it meant.  Standing at the driver’s side door, the can of polish in his left hand and a crinkled-up cloth in his right, he tried to call her up in his mind, and he couldn’t.  Then he did something that made him go sit on the steps in front of the house: he suddenly, without effort or without even thinking about it or trying, found himself imagining her dead, in a coffin, and himself staring down at her with a feeling of cold, hard hatred.  He sat on the steps and shook his head.  “What the hell?” he said out loud.  “This is not me.”

He twisted off the cap on a Starbuck’s coffee and took a deep sip, then leaned back against the step behind him.  He looked at his wristwatch.  It was only ten.  He hadn’t gotten much done on the car.  But then he really didn’t care about the car.  He half expected Elaine would end up with it anyway.  He didn’t have much confidence in his lawyer, not because she was a woman but because she seemed normal, too sane and rational to be a good lawyer. 

     The first one was no help at all with Josh.  He was so outmaneuvered he was more of a barrier than a help.   That man was a marionette.  This woman lawyer seemed more savvy, but then she was blindsided by the court injunction that forbade him to see his son.  He didn’t understand the legal maneuvers that were then going on, but it seemed to him that this lawyer, like the first one, just never could anticipate the deviltry she found herself facing and thus couldn’t cope with it.  As was the case with Josh, once the so-called fact had been established in the courts that he was a menace to his own child, the legal prejudice against him would lead inevitably to Elaine’s getting everything she wanted.  He thought about what she wanted, the house, probably the car, custody of Wade, and a legal means to keep him out of their lives.  He knew she would get those things.  His lawyer already lost his case for him by not anticipating Elaine’s using Josh as her main weapon.  How could she have been blindsided by that maneuver?  He needed to talk with her.  He needed to tell her how low that woman could go.  Did he himself even know how low Elaine could go?  How could this be happening to him again? 

     He was going to end up losing the house, the car, and his bank account, was going to have to pay off the twenty-seven thousand dollars on the credit cards, and was going to have to pay this woman lawyer her fees as well.  He had his job, Elaine couldn’t take that from him.  She had no motive he could see to want to do that.  He started out after college in a low level management position with Home Depot and was gradually earning more and more responsibility.  He expected in time to recover from this debacle.  But in the end, it’s not money he felt he was losing.  It is not the loss of the house and the car and having to pay the bills that defeated him.  He really didn’t care about those things.  

     She defeated him by being the person she revealed herself to be.  He thought he was a husband and a father.  He went to work every day thinking of the future of his son and the years of growing into life with Elaine.  He was so wrong.  And it’s that that defeated him.  Not understanding the person he married, being so wrong, so wrong a second time.  It took his breath away.  She knew, apparently, who he was.  Did she plan this all along?  Did she marry him with all this already in her mind?  The thought of it made him weak, undid him.  He found himself squeezing the Stabuck bottle.  “God,” he thought, “how could this happen to me, twice?”

     Then his cell phone rang.  He flipped it open and saw that it was Elaine.  For a moment he paused, not sure he should answer it, talk to her, have anything to do with her.  His lawyer should be the one Elaine talks to if she has anything to say.  The ring tone continued its singsong, and he looked at her name in its little monitor, her name, the cell phone whose monthly fees he was still paying.  He answered.

     “Hello, Christopher, what took you so long?”

     She sounded irritated.  He smiled.  A little victory.  He wouldn’t have known of it if he hadn’t answered.  He was glad for that reason he answered.

     “What do you want?  My lawyer told me not to speak with you, that if you have anything to say to me, you need to say it to her, and she will relay it me.  Those are the rules.”

     “Screw the rules,” she said even more irritably.

     “But it’s your game, Elaine, not mine.  Those are the rules.”

     “I don’t have anything to say to you.  That’s not why I’m calling.”

     “Then, goodbye, see you in court.”

     He was just about to close the phone and slip it back into his pocket when he heard her screaming.

     “Don’t hang up, Christopher!  Christopher?  Christopher?  Damn it, Christopher?”

     “What?” he said, smiling.

     “I left all my clothes in the closet in our bedroom.  I’m coming to get them.  That’s what I’m calling to tell you.  I need my clothes.  I’m coming for them and also for Wade’s clothes.  I would appreciate it if you just stayed outside while I was there packing them.  I don’t want to see you.  Just get out of the house.  I’m leaving now,” she said, and without giving him a chance to respond, hung up.  He sat there with his mouth open, the smile that played across his face frozen into a sneer.  For the first time in his life he felt hate.  The emotion stilled him.  It froze him.  He thought he had been feeling hate all morning.  That coldness.  That blankness.  But before this moment he could never have realized what hate was.  It scared him.  “Oh, my God,” he thought, “I really better get out of here.  If I see her, I’ll kill her.”

     He fished in his pocket for the car keys and realized they were already in the ignition.  He finished the Starbuck’s in a gulp, got up, and ran to the car.  He jumped in, started it up, and backed out of the driveway.

     He was long gone from the neighborhood by the time Elaine arrived.  He had nowhere to go and was just driving so as not to be at the house when she was there.  That’s why he was surprised to find himself turning onto his block.  It’s as though he did it unconsciously, as though his mind and his body had suddenly become independent agents.  He could see her car, the same car he drove when he first met her, parked at the curb instead of in the driveway.  He wondered why she would do that.  He slowed down to a crawl as he approached the house.  Their bedroom was in the northwest corner of the second floor, which meant that its window was the upstairs one on the right.  The light was lit in the room, and he stared at the window, both hands on the wheel.  Then he saw her.  It was only a silhouette he saw, but he could recognize it as her.  The hate he felt speaking on the phone with her returned.  He pulled up onto the drive, shut off the engine, and sat, letting his hands fall into his lap.  But the feeling of hatred shook him.  He knew he was not going to be able to suppress it, to stop what was going to happen.  He realized at that moment how foolish she was, really foolish, to come here.  He opened the car door and stepped out.  It was as though he was observing himself rather than actually doing it.  It was someone else getting out of the car.  He walked quickly to the front steps, climbed them, unlocked the door, and opened  it.  Pushing it in, he stepped into the house.  It was as though it was not his house.  He felt like he was entering it for the first time.  He couldn’t hear her upstairs, so he stepped quickly to the staircase and climbed half of it before stopping and listening.  He could hear her now.  She made a sound like clearing her throat, and then he could hear her footsteps in the bedroom.  Then there was silence.  He climbed the remaining stairs and stood silently on the landing, about three paces from their bedroom door.  He couldn’t hear her.  He thought she had become aware of him and had become alerted to the danger, but then he heard the stool flush in the bathroom, and he heard the sound of flushing get louder as she opened the door and came back into the bedroom.  He walked to the bedroom door and looked in.  Her back was to him, and she was unaware he was there, at her back.  His fingers began to open and close into fists.  He was thinking of his next move, of stepping into the room and coming up behind her, wrapping his fingers around her throat, and squeezing, squeezing with all his might, and while he was squeezing, watching her face from the side, watching her eyeballs roll up as she tried to see, as she tried to beat him off.  But he is too strong, and she can’t beat him off.  He squeezed, and she knew she was dying, he squeezed and she knew why she was dying, and there was not a thing she could do about it.  But just then she pivoted and turned directly toward him.  He was standing there looking at her, and she was frozen, looking at him.  He knew if she said anything, anything at all, he would kill her.  He would walk up to her and strike her such a blow across her face that she would die.  But she didn’t say anything.  It was as if she knew.  She just looked at him, frozen still, and waited.  He let out his breath, turned on his heel, and began to retrace his steps.  It was over.  He would not kill her now.  He had survived the temptation.  He knew he was going to be all right.  The blankness in him suddenly filled with light, daylight, and he saw himself in it with Wade.  Somehow, he knew his lawyer was going to prevail.  He stopped, turned, and saw her in the doorway, looking frightened, but standing her ground.

     “You are going to lose,” he said.

     “Lose what?” she replied, “you?”  The contempt in her voice was thick.

     “No, you’ve already lost that, for what it’s worth.  You’re going to lose Wade, you’re going to lose your case, you’re going to end up without me, without him, and without anything.”

     “We’ll see,” she said.

     He noticed she didn’t sound confident when she said it.  Instead of replying to her, he turned and started to descend the stairs.  Then he paused and looked back at her.

     “I’m not a good judge of people, nor do I know myself.  I thought you loved me, I thought I loved you.  Just now, staring at your back, I thought I hated you.  I was wrong about everything.”

     Then he went down the stairs and out of the house, leaving her to gather up her clothes and Wade’s.  Since it was Saturday, both his parents would be home.  He thought it would be nice to have lunch with them.