Continental Drift

Nevertheless. Bob is obsessed with Marguerite Dill, who is not at all as he imagines and supposes her to be. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to say here who or what she is, exactly, and probably beside the point as well, except to observe that Bob knows very little of what it is to be a woman, nothing at all of what it is to be black. He’s honest and intelligent enough to admit this and behave accordingly, but like most white men, he’s not imaginative enough to believe that being a woman is extremely different from being a man and being black extremely different from being white. If pushed, and he has been pushed now and then, at least by Elaine, he’d go only so far as to concede that the differences are probably no greater than those between child and adult, and because he bears within him the child he once was, and the child he once was carried within him the seed of the man he would someday become, then understanding between the two is an easily arranged affair of one’s attention. To understand your children, you attend to the child in you; and all your children have to do, if they wish to understand you, is project themselves twenty or thirty years into the future. Therefore, to imagine Elaine and Doris and now Marguerite, the three women who in recent years have mattered most to him, all Bob has had to do is pay attention to the woman in himself. It’s harder in the case of Marguerite, but all the more interesting to him for that, because with her he has to pay attention to the black man in himself as well.

When Bob talks to his wife, he is thinking about Marguerite. When he looks at his wife’s reddish hair, pale skin, rounding body, he thinks of Marguerite’s hair, skin, body — but not to the disadvantage of either woman. It’s just that hair, anyone’s, reminds him of Marguerite’s hair; skin, if he happens to notice it, reminds him of Marguerite’s skin; and breasts, belly, thighs and so on, remind him of Marguerite’s. Which aspects, of course, he’s never actually seen and therefore must imagine, relying for components on the occasional Playboy and Penthouse black centerfold he’s seen.

Elaine tells her new friends at the trailer park and her sister-in-law Sarah that Bob is distracted, preoccupied, worried, and she adds that she’s concerned. But in fact she’s more than concerned. She’s frightened. She believes he doesn’t love her anymore. And to make matters worse, she believes that it’s because she is pregnant. The sad truth of the matter, however, is that Bob often forgets she is pregnant, and when he remembers, it’s as if he’s remembering something that was true long ago.

His obsession with Marguerite has become his sole companion. He talks to it, argues with it, admires and respects it, gives it all the attention and time he can steal from his family and job. He’s almost grateful that he has no friends here and that his job, where he’s often alone for hours at a time, blocks him off from the voices and needs of his wife and children. Though he is not aware of it, he has recently taken up humming a tuneless tune, hour after hour, whenever someone else is within hearing range. As soon as that person, George Dill or Elaine or one of the kids, leaves his proximity or closes the door between them, he ceases humming and lets his obsession loose, as if it were a dog wanting exercise, to leap and run about the room, dart out the door and gallop in wild circles in the parking lot and across the marshy fields, until it’s almost lost from sight, where it wheels about and comes racing happily back to him, leaps into his arms and licks his face with joy.

Months pass, and little changes. Elaine’s body has gone on swelling steadily, and Emma, knowing something threatening is going to happen, has become sullen and withdrawn, not exactly a behavior problem, but not pleasant to be around, either, and Ruthie has complained increasingly of school, even feigning sickness to stay home, until it turns out that she has what’s called a learning disability, which, the school nurse tells Elaine, and Elaine reports to Bob, may be merely emotional or she may be slightly dyslexic. Time will tell, but not to worry, many children pass through phases like this, especially when adjusting to a new environment. But if it persists into the second grade, when reading is essential for learning, special instruction will be necessary. Bob barely hears the report, for he’s suffering from a learning disability of his own, a disability fed and encouraged by his Monday, Wednesday and Friday visits from Marguerite, which have become part of her weekly routine too, possibly rationalized as, but nonetheless essential to, her caring for her father, a man who drifts through his days as lost in his private past as Bob is lost in his private future.