Then she glanced around as if she had forgotten something, took a half gallon of milk out of the fridge, and left the kitchen.
—We’re running low on Kleenex, I called.
I followed her into the garage with my cup, trying to think of other items we needed.
Jane propped the milk carton on the front seat. I saw a couple of Franny’s old blue suitcases in the back. Jane yanked on the rope attached to the bottom of the garage door and released it upward along its track. Then she got in on the driver’s side.
—Where the hell are you going?
Outside, a thick marine layer. From up in the foothills the kind of condensation that looks like cream sitting in a dish.
—I’ll get money to you, she said.
—I’m not charging a fee. I told you that.
She turned the engine over. I stood by the driver’s side, looking at her face. I thought of those movies set to Philip Glass music: clouds in time lapse, traffic sped up, flowers that open faster than I can sneeze.
—Okay, what if. What if you go crazy and don’t come back? I said, trying to be funny.
She took a long draw of the milk and wedged the carton between her legs. The hibiscus around the garage hadn’t opened yet. The petals were twisted round their stamens like pink tissue paper. Maybe if I stood there long enough they’d uncoil.
—But that’s the point. I could live as free and easy as . . . as you.
—Why are you so pissed at me? Look, my old boss might have a job coming up. I told you that. I need to get back to Chicago.
She drank some more. Her eyes welled.
—Is Mike planning to watch the girls? So I can sort through things . . .
—You don’t get it, she said.
—He doesn’t know?
Jane had me standing out in the alley behind Franny’s house, freezing to death in a shortie nightgown because someone had to be her audience and she wanted to hit the road early. She sat there idling in first, and was, I think, prepared to drive to God-knows-where.
—You tell him.
—Get out of the car and talk.
—You’re getting a good trade. . . . What’s the name of that TV show? she asked.
—What TV show?
—Where the two friends switch places, she said.
—You mean, houses?
—Us. I mean us, everything. Mike, the girls. You know, like a kit-home. Easy to assemble.
—Easy to what?
—You’ll be more efficient than me.
—More efficient at your life? That’s bizarre. . . .
She put the car in reverse and I reached for her door handle. But she suddenly pulled out of the garage and backed straight into a hedge. The engine cut out and she pushed her chopped hair away from her face, leaned her forehead into her palm, on a backwards reel.
—At least turn your lights on.
Jane straightened up and started the car again.
—Go back inside, she said.
—You want me to drive? I just have to run in and get a couple of things.
Her face made me think of an underground nuclear test. The car jerked forward and the rear bumper stripped a thousand tiny leaves from the shrubs. I should have grabbed my lavender sweater the minute I saw the suitcases.
Jane began to navigate the narrow lane. She swerved to avoid the garbage cans. There were liquor bottles by the cans, boxes from new household appliances, and broken Styrofoam beach items. I hoped she’d hit a garbage can. I needed time to stall her. I looked at her outfit again.
—Are you going to meet some guy?
I had shouted it to be heard above the waves. I think her foot slipped off the clutch at that point, which killed the engine again. She turned around, briefly. I noticed her lipstick. She yelled:
—Full Stop!
I watched her accelerate as if she was kicking off from the side of a pool, but she didn’t circle at the other end. She had gotten her impulse thing from her father and it hit in cycles like El Niño. I felt certain she wouldn’t abandon the girls, that she’d quickly send for them, get Mike to drive them to her. She had to. I tried to follow the car but my feet were being eaten up by the gravel in the alley. I’m not sure if she could hear me anymore. I knew the carton of milk was sweating into her dress. I worried that it might tip forward, that the distraction could cause an accident.
Finally Jane switched her lights on, but all I could see were two red circles floating in white air. I imagined the car was lined up with the gate’s sensors. The security gate opened and the taillights moved across the tar road. She turned right, away from the beach.
I pictured a sudden collision, her legs squeezing together spasmodically. Milk like sex, soaking her skirt, the leather bench seat, working its way into crevices, plans.
—Come on, I said, as if Jane were still there, standing next to me, thinking of the girls’ breakfast, wondering if she had enough cereal in the house.
The fog failed to put out my anger. If she wanted to trade, I had very different things to put on the table. She lived in a six-bedroom home outside Boston with a studio above the garage. I lived in a remodeled and largely reduced loft space in Chicago, two bedrooms, one of them only ten by ten, one bath, the porches had been an add-on, making use of the framework of the old elevator shafts. A courtyard in the center of the building. Jane was a set designer for large regional theaters. I appraised fine arts and antiques. She worked part time. I worked chronically. But she had returned to the same guy each night, the same conversations, the habit of sleeping on one side of the bed or the other, listening for their girls in the dark. Forms of possession I didn’t know.
I did have good friends in Chicago. I went to a fitness center and had started a kickboxing class. I liked to shoot pool, joined a team once, which nudged me to get a monogrammed cue and a special pair of gloves for a decent grip, small cubes of blue chalk. I tried a birding group. I was a collector. I had an investment in antique neon signs and the works of small-scale tube-benders. Sometimes old neon came through the auction house. Sometimes I went out on the road to find it. One of my signs read: Watch for Signs. I had them mounted on the walls of the loft and they advertised The Alpine Motel and Texa gas and Night Stop, which probably had something to do with trains or buses or stopping something you were up to in the middle of the night. I never imagined I’d have large holdings. But how can you know?
I believe Lois, my mother, had communicated to me largely through signs when I was a child. She had a beautiful hand and sometimes she doodled a picture of my face and then tacked it on the bathroom mirror along with many reminders, aphorisms, and general warnings. She left one kind of note if she were up drinking in the middle of the night: the scrawl tighter, loopier, many words underlined and capitalized. And another kind of message if she came in fresh from sailing and the boat had placed well in a race. Sometimes she had an expansiveness that brought her into the moment. She bought fresh shelving paper for the kitchen or stopped at the drugstore for cigarettes, found me new dot-to-dot books, and these things she communicated directly, though the shelves went unlined.
But for all that education, I couldn’t decipher Jane’s signs that morning. I left the garage door up, afraid the automatic opener would stir the house.
I imagined she had reached Highway 101 by then and was traveling north. Like Franny, Jane didn’t