Hints of Heloise by Laura Lippman Page A

chairs? A box full of board games that are missing key pieces? In the early going, he thought there might be money to be made, that they would have a yard sale or maybe take things to one of those stores that sells your stuff on eBay, does all the grunt work. But it’s all junk, worthless. It makes him feel even worse, the fact that he’s been living on top of this storehouse of crap, and he doesn’t really seem to be making any progress. Up and down, up and down, up and down. Wasn’t there some story about a guy in hell who has to do this? He has a beer, checks in on the NCAA tournament. Okay, why not another? He looks for some food, but most of it requires at least minimal preparation, and he doesn’t want to go out, so he returns to the job. Really, the stuff seems to be breeding, there’s more of it now than when he started. He comes up with a box full of mysterious hardware, screws and those Ikea wrenches and a broken towel rack. He can barely see over the top of the box, but he does hear the garage door opening. Footsteps in the hall.
    â€œMeghan?” he says, assuming that the person he can’t see on the steps must be her. Maybe she sneaked home to make up, he thinks. God, when was the last time they had sex in the afternoon? He gets hard just thinking about the possibility of some quick, ordinary sex with his wife. It is the most erotic thing he has considered in ages, better than the porn sites he sometimes checks out on his laptop, always remembering to erase his cache. He doesn’t need a stranger or anything extra. He won’t need to imagine he’s with someone else. All he wants is to get on top of his wife and go at it. Maybe make it nice for her, too, if there’s time before she has to go back to the band practice thing.
    â€œHey, Meghan,” he says, “give me a hand with this.”
    She does, in a sense. She presents him with two hands, thumping them hard on the chest, as if beginning CPR, and sends him flying backward down the steps, screws and towel racks and Swedish wrenches racing him to the bottom. He sprawls like a starfish, looking back at her, amazed, his mind trying to catch up with everything that has happened, and all he can think is, So I guess we’re not going to have sex, after all.
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    H ELOISE IS MAKING S COTT LUNCH, glad that his one weekend obligation, soccer, is behind them. She encourages him to do everything he wants—soccer, music lessons, art classes at the Baltimore Museum of Art—but she prefers the quiet afternoons, when there is nothing on his schedule and they simply steep in each other’s company, watching television, running errands. She tries to make Saturday dinner an event—Around the World with the Lewis Family, she calls it—and tackles new recipes from different countries. She’s going to make Thai food tonight, and she won’t have to cut back on the spice for Scott’s sake. His mouth is as inquisitive and open as his porous little mind, keen to try new things. He is such a satisfying companion in every way. She has to remind herself that he won’t be with her very long, that she has only a few years in which he will find it acceptable to spend Saturday night with his mother.
    And then? Then she will be alone. She’s through with men. Not through with love, as the song has it, but that’s because she never really started with love. Oh, she used the word quite a bit when she was young. She loved the boyfriend who encouraged her to leave home, the boy she followed to downtown Baltimore, only to end up dancing in a strip club, then tricking. She said she loved Val because he demanded that; the fealty of the word was almost as important to him as the money she kicked back, and she said it so often that she came to believe it for a while. She looks at the redheaded boy, eyes fixed on a nature show as he waits for his soup and grilled cheese, and wonders again at the capacity