OBSERVING THE SABBATH by Matthew Pitt
That was a lark; this is a dial tone. And those must be sanitation men clicking garbage cans together. Marie is intimate with each sound surrounding her secret. Some are ornamental (the lark’s song); some threatening (the sanitation men – why do they do their job with no regard for the sleeping, or the waking that need the sleeping to stay asleep?). Some sounds serve as signals to the self: her own knuckles rapping at her pack of Virginia Slims, the breath of Mister Coffee as it percolates and pops. Signals reminding her of her subterfuge, and the doubts that dig into it like ivy into brick.
But yesterday was Sunday . . .
Doesn’t matter; this is Monday. Both start and finish of her work week. For the past few months of Mondays, Marie has been buying clutches of a pharmaceutical stock – five shares here, six or seven there – listening to analysts report back its success, speculating on future growth, collecting in last week’s mail her first dividend, $31.84. This Monday is different, though. It is her last. This Monday is the culmination; she has a script. Four hundred fifty shares please, in Advances/Neogen.
To get to this day she has had to keep her script quiet. It was important for Marie to purchase certain things: disposable calling cards, a cordless phone, a West Coast edition of The Wall Street Journal, private copies of The Los Angeles Times. Slippers with soft pads, light footfalls which would not wake Ellen – Ellen liked to help her mom fix breakfast. Children’s Contac for Ed – a much weaker medicine than Ed’s chronic cough warranted. A mix whose taste neatly mirrors the maximum-strength, doctor’s orders stuff Marie administers to her husband six of seven weeknights. But not Sunday nights. By Monday morning the Contac wears off, and Marie can be alerted to Ed’s presence the moment he first stirs.
And it was important to find a trader on the East Coast, with whom Marie could place orders at sunrise. One who wouldn’t flinch at the intricacies of the situation. Trader Brian. Brian has been with Marie through all of this. He has had to go on faith. He has had to respect that when she hangs up in mid-transaction, it’s nothing personal. “It’s me. I’m back. You aren’t rushing me. I heard noises. I thought it was him.”
And Brian has had to screen all correspondence and respect the protocol. Marie and Ed are married, united nearly twenty years ago, in the backdrop of holy vows, in the Catholic Church, with the Pope’s abstract approval mixed in somewhere. And now on Mondays Marie is making deals, getting in on the ground floor with a commercial enterprise which happens to be promoting, as its primary venture, the American distribution and sale of mifepristone, RU-486, the abortion pill. If Brian’s brokerage firm were to send mail bearing the corporation’s logo, Ed would suspect, and then he would confront, and then he would know. And it’s not that Ed would become violent if he knew – but something violent would happen. Ed’s torso and forearms would sag when it sank in, like a marionette marooned by his puppeteer. That Marie could do this thing would name, irrevocably, a separation that has been widening between them, without comment or resistance, for years.
That is the dark wet cough owned by Ed, owning Ed. That is the doorknob turning as Ed takes a walk up Sepulveda to clear his head of its ritual morning lassitude. He walks up smoggy Sepulveda to clear his head, and to loosen from his throat the liquid colored like sycamore bark. His walk to the corner grocer – for the beer he swears he waits till noon to down, and the newspaper he skims before leaving to Marie, not knowing she disposed of her own copy an hour ago – will take twelve minutes, thirty seconds. Enough time to make the trade she’s put off so far. His shower will take ten minutes, and that may not be enough time. Doing it now is crucial.
But yesterday was Sunday...
And there was the doxology. The pipe organ at the cathedral’s rear, circa Korean conflict, whistled dense beacons of On Calvary. The final measure lingered in the rafters, a scar of the original sound. Not the same sound as a receiver off its cradle – though there is some crossover in pitch and tone between the two. Enough to get Marie thinking about the oncoming day. As she sat on the pew she considered what she’d done and was about to do as though it were wrong-way traffic. To buy the first shares, Marie had skimmed from her eldest daughter. Rebecca is a freshman attending a UC in central California. Marie had joint access to Rebecca’s checking account. Ed was forgiving, when his daughter called for more cash earlier than expected. Ed figured it would take her time to learn to budget. Marie was silent on her end, wondering whether her deceit was even necessary. She might be stealing from a kindred spirit. Ideally, Rebecca would support her mother’s decision. But there is no way of knowing. This subject is the type of subject bowdlerized at the dinner table . . . until it seems actually mutinous to examine the roots of faith and the places where divergence occurs. At an early visit to the UC campus, shaking the warty right hand of the campus minister, Marie recalled thinking, Do not set my girl back twenty years from where she is.
In the winter, Marie made a play to speed the plow. She suggested waitressing; Ed refused; he’d been on too many crews whose men, after holding down jackhammers and ratchets all morning, looked forward to one hour in a diner grasping at asses. He’d coveted such women in such ways at such establishments himself. They settled on a job Marie was qualified for, and one that would allow her ass to remain hidden behind a desk: reception clerk at the Y. Half the money went to Marie. The other half she deposited into Rebecca’s account, of which Marie then circuitously funneled a third. By the time Ed had awoken to the smelling salts – his wounded provider’s pride, the taunts of friends – Marie had scrimped up enough to go through with her plan. She’d also purchased new curtains and a dress of mild extravagance, to promote to Ed the notion that she was properly shopping her clutch of cash away.
Speaking of things proper, yesterday was Sunday . . . and Ed’s left temple slid along the pillow as he curled into the contours beside Marie. Just before that there’d been pleasure – violent, stinging, but amorous too, no mistaking that. Ed’s pants had lain flat like a sleeping toddler sprawled on the carpet. He whispered, “Wasn’t sure we’d ever be up to that again,” and that summary had been Sunday’s second bookend. The first bookend was harder to identify. Maybe Ed sipping ginger ale with Sudafed, telling Marie he could feel his strength returning. Maybe the way he wiped dishwater on his pants and rushed from the kitchen, coughing shards, when Ellen cried, “Angel’s walking funny,” as though the family cat were more irreplaceable than he was. Whatever it was that had first stirred Marie, from that point on she and Ed had shared ten hours unlike any shared in ten years. This couldn’t be them, laughing (without wine), springing for a sitter on Sunday night, stepping down a dance hall staircase like tightrope walkers, not caring whom they bumped or what lay below, just so long as their hands remained together. As the evening progressed, she kept checking the clocks in store windows, and strangers’ watches. For a signal that this wasn’t real. She’d heard somewhere it was impossible to dream about increments of time. And surely this was a dream, this wasn’t them.
Once – twenty years ago – the sound of a boy screaming had been her signal. Had been what had woken her. Marie was calling Jack in Massachusetts. She was calling Jack to inform him that Ed had just put the house in Agawam up for sale. Ed was moving to California. But whether or not she went with Ed she would leave to Jack. She wanted to know what Jack would leave for her. Then Marie heard Richie, Jack’s son, yelling gleefully from the den – his basketball team was savaging the opponent. She hung up. She was ridiculous. Heart pounding like a crush victim. Not knowing where she stood, her intent was to make things shaky for others. She hung up before she heard her answer and yanked the line from the jack. The exposed wire was the color of a hamstring.
So. Marie now forms a prayer and dials Trader Brian. Brian whispers, “Morning.” Marie hangs up. But it’s a cordless phone this time, and there’s no line to yank. So she dials again, hears “Morning” again, and then, “We’ll go slow, Marie. Your speed and no faster. Just say when you’re ready to buy.” But she isn’t buying. She’s bargaining. Between the God she entered into covenant with and the one her husband has.
Could she convince Ed what made her do it was only money? History after all is filled with poisoned principles. The janitors at the Tuskegee Institute. The nurses at Chernobyl, their chemical fingers working overtime. Everyone at one time makes his or her bread from the mill of human misery. Even you, Ed. Even the workingmen of Union 4011, who imbibe in the morning coffee grounds, being beans before, plucked by the numb fingers of migrant farmers in Guatemala; coffee grounds which give your local in California the drive to work ten hours beneath surgical masks and corduroy gloves, cordoned off from open air, scraping the sagas of asbestos from tenement halls in Watts. Yes. She could convince Ed it was only about money, but what would she be if she did?
Those are Ed’s keys, ringing briskly as they dismount from the door lock. Those are the keys again, muffled ringing now as he thrusts them into his trousers. And that is his cough. In a moment its sound will fade as Ed enters the bathroom and runs the shower, but its echo will last. Just a minute ago, Brian’s voice had confirmed the latest transaction, and the total number of shares Marie now owned. This, too, will echo.
Oh, to commit one perfect act of charity. One untraceable to the self, whose pure end result is joy, an act which wounds no one in its wake. But even the lynching of Christ, the redemption found in his bloodletting, was imperfect. His love for us separated us from Him. That is the showerhead, the snare drum of first droplets against the curtain, the water gushing out. That is the whooping hiss as hot water makes contact with her beloved’s skin. All at once. She is alone. She has the day to wait and make as many or as few moves as she likes. She will switch on CNN once he’s gone and watch the ticker scroll right to left, waiting patiently on the sofa for her investment to compound.
Matthew Pitt’s fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices 2001, Witness, Confrontation, The Colorado Review, and Crab Orchard Review. He is the Fiction Fellow at the Bronx Writers Center.