The Pocket Wife by Susan Crawford Page B

the flat of his hand. “Drive safely, son,” he says. “Call us when you get into Boston.” The car slides back toward the street, and Dana looks up at the dark gray of the clouds, sweeping like hair across the sky. “I love you!” she yells as the car bumps off the driveway onto Ashby Lane, and Jamie waves. “I love you,” she says quietly as he takes off down the road and Peter slinks inside like the enigma he’s become, already reaching into his pocket for his cell phone. Dana stares at Jamie’s car until it disappears, wondering how to glue back all the splintered pieces of her marriage, wondering if she even deserves a husband at this point—if she even wants one.
    Has he heard her, this man who was her little boy such a short time ago? Blink and they’re gone, people used to tell her. They grow up so fast. But she never believed it. She thought Jamie would always be little, jumping out from behind a chair to surprise her or creeping into their bed at night when he had a bad dream. “I love you,” she says to the air.
    Peter’s in the bathroom with the door closed. He’s nearly whispering, but lately Dana can hear anything. She can hear everything. She can hear pins dropping. Sometimes the chirping of a bird in the next-door neighbor’s yard or the barking of a dog blocks away keeps her awake, drives her to the bathroom for bits of cotton to stuff inside her ears. It isn’t only sounds; she sees things far more clearly than before. Sometimes she sees the outlines of things, the ghosts of things, not only the bones.
    â€œ. . . need to see you,” Peter’s saying, and Dana stops in the hallway to listen. The bathroom is such a silly place to go for privacy,she thinks. There’s such an echo in the tiled, hard room, so many walls and corners for a voice to ricochet. “It’s important,” he says. “I really need to see— . . . I know. Crazy, huh? Right down the street from— . . . My wife is—Dana is—even putting on a goddamn brunch to try to figure out who. She thought she saw somebody in the trees in our back— . . . Right. Probably. Ghosts. . . . Listen,” he says after a pause. “Call me on my cell. Or no.” He stops, and Dana hears a swishing sound, as if he’s turning toward the bathroom door, as if he senses her there, her new bionic self, picking up every single sound. “I’m turning off my phone, so leave me a message. Let me know when we can get toge— . . . Like I said, I really need to see—” There’s another pause, and then he says, as Dana moves so close her ear is nearly on the door, “Make it soon.” He stops again. “You, too,” he says, and his voice is lower suddenly, soft. Loving. Dana feels as if he’s slapped her across the face.
    She hears the sound of his cell being tossed onto the back of the john. She hears him rearrange his clothes. She hears his hand on the doorknob, but by the time he steps into the hall, she’s already in the kitchen, swiping a dish towel over the counter and staring at the pile of plates and glasses. She watches Peter cross the hall and lower himself onto the sofa in front of the wide-screen TV he purchased last Christmas. “For us,” he’d said, but she rarely watches it. It seems so upsetting, all the noise and colors and laughter. Dana has already decided that when she divorces him, she will gladly give Peter the TV.
    â€œWho was that on the phone?” she calls out from the kitchen. “Who were you talking to?”
    â€œOh,” he says, “Ted Johnston from our office. I was trying to get some inside information on Celia,” he says. “Being a lawyer comes in handy sometimes.”
    â€œSo why were you hiding in the bathroom?”
    â€œI wasn’t hiding.”
    â€œYes,” she says. “You were. Call him back, then. Call him