The Line in the Dust

The Line in the Dust

I put my head down and went at the work. It took two full days to get the house even roughly clean.

I worked from the top down. The two bedrooms first, then the bathroom, then the upstairs hall, then the living room. The upstairs breaker did nothing, so I ran a cord up from the kitchen and worked in a 60-watt circle. The house held at 48 degrees through both days.

Two days took everything I had. I carried the rotted bed linen out to the cans at the gate with the roach shells still in the folds, swept the dust off my father's desk, and knelt in the hallway to tape down the turned-up edge of the runner, the faded dark red one with the same long fold in it that was in the dream every night.

The smell came off in layers. Mouse under the floorboards upstairs, then wet plaster, then the drain in the kitchen, which took three rounds of bleach and stayed sweet anyway. By the end of the first day I had four bags tied off at the gate and a fifth standing open.

By the end of the second day I had six trash bags out at the curb and the water running clear out of the kitchen tap. I left the dining room for last and then didn't do it.

I got to the dining room doorway twice and both times turned around and found something else to do. The second time I stood there long enough to see that the dust on the floor inside stopped in a straight line about two feet past the threshold. I went back to the kitchen.

Around five o'clock on the second afternoon, while I was down on the kitchen floor scrubbing the rust rings around the base of the cabinets, my cell phone went off on the wood table.

The ring cut through the quiet in the house. The screen lit up with a name I knew: Emily.

I sat down on the cold tile, got my back against the wall, held a breath until my chest loosened, then slid my thumb across to answer.

Emily was a landscape architect. She was sharp and independent, and she ran her life on plans worked out to the last sixteenth of an inch. We had been married 11 years, but we had known each other for 20, going back to when we were in the same class at Albany.

In all those 20 years the thing Emily wanted most was never a million-dollar design or an expensive apartment in New York. She wanted a child. A child with both of us in it, and a house that was finished.

The cruelty of it was that the more she wanted it, the more it took out of her. The first years after the wedding we put it off to build our careers. By the time the money was steady, the child didn't come. Then, in January, the test results: my count was too low, and natural conception was close to impossible.

Something ordinary to want turned into a war that wore Emily down, body and mind.

The tile had gone cold through my jeans. I moved the phone to my other ear, looked at the rust I hadn't gotten off the cabinet leg, and put my thumbnail into it. A flake came away the size of a dime.

"Are you done with that house yet?"

Emily's voice came out of the speaker. No question about the long drive, nothing about what the house was like. Her voice was dry and thin and full of months of being tired.

"Roughly." I wiped my forehead with the back of my wrist, my voice down to a rasp from two days of mold dust.

"I'm going to stay up here awhile. See if being back in it gets me writing again."

On the other end she let out a breath long enough and heavy enough to feel through the phone in my hand.

"The bill came in from the fertility clinic. The next IVF round is $12,000. What's left in our joint savings is almost gone, James."

I pressed the heel of my hand against one eye, and both temples started up again.

"We just did the third round in May, Emily. The doctor was clear that your body needs at least six months to come back after that many stimulation cycles—"

"I don't have time to rest!" Her voice went up and stayed up.

"I'm 38, James! Do you have any idea what 38 means for a woman doing fertility treatment? Every month that goes by for nothing is a door that closes for good. My egg quality is going down every single day, do you understand that?"

"I know. I understand that," I said, holding my voice flat.

"But we're in trouble financially. My eighth book is sitting unfinished at page 22, and the publisher has put a hold on the next payment..."

"Then write!" Emily cut across me, and whatever patience she had left went.

"Sit down at the desk and type. You're a bestselling novelist, aren't you? Why haven't you put down one line in six weeks? Are you going to let this family go under with you and whatever it is you're chasing?"

The words landed. Everything I had been holding down for months came up at once. I got off the floor and threw the rag down.

"You think I wanted to end up like this?" My voice was shaking.

"I don't dream anymore. Fifty-some nights now and there's nothing in my head at all. I'm finished, Emily. All you know how to do is ask for a new book and ask for a child... have you ever once stopped and looked at what this marriage has turned into?"

"Are you blaming me?" Her voice went flat.

"I'm telling you the truth!" I walked out into the middle of the living room, talking into the phone fast.

"Since the day we walked out of that clinic, how do you look at me? Like I'm guilty of something, like I'm broken. You take your pillow out to the living room every night. You don't rub my back when I'm up late working, you don't put the oil on my temples anymore, you don't touch me at all. We haven't had sex since April, Emily. No affection, no sex, and you want a child how? Out of a cold needle and a tube at a hospital?"

The line went quiet. Nothing came back through it for a long time.

I stood in the middle of the living room with the phone against my ear. Out the window the light had dropped and the red maple was one flat shape against the sky. My free hand was shaking. I put it down flat on my thigh and held it there.

I could hear her breathing through the speaker, short and hard. When she spoke again, every word came out slow and level:

"If you don't finish the book this time and get the money for the treatment... and if you go on living like a dead man in that house... then the day you come back to New York, we're getting divorced."

I came to a stop in the middle of the room.

"Emily... what are you saying?"

"I'm not threatening you, James. I gave you 20 years of my life. I'm not going to spend the rest of it standing still next to a husband who lives inside the heads of murderers."

The word sat there on the line between us. I didn't have anything to put after it.

Somewhere over my head a floorboard took weight and let it go again. I kept the phone where it was and didn't look up.

I had my mouth open to answer when the screen lit up. A call waiting tone came in over the top of it, beep... beep... beep...

The name on the screen was Michael Hayes.

I had nothing left. I couldn't take one more sentence from Emily about what I had failed to do. I put my teeth together, ended my wife's call, and slid over to answer the new one.

I put the phone to my ear, still breathing hard.

"Go ahead, Michael."