He used to be heavy, almost fat. But the man who appears in the terminal is so long and dark and hollow-looking his body is curved like a C. I glance up as he exits the gangway, but my eyes drift over him, looking behind him for someone I know. Seconds later, he is standing silently in front of me, gazing straight down.

"You're still beautiful," he says without touching me.

"You still have distorted perceptions of reality." I lead him through the airport, out into the soft night and my minivan in the parking lot.

"How are the kids?" He waits until I'm merging into traffic to ask. Dazzled by the streetlights that crackle sharp and white, and speeding cars that leave ghost shapes behind, I hesitate.

"OK." I speed up and move into the left lane. "Anxious, I guess. And. They're angry." The tires smack the road, over and over, with the slap of wet washcloths.

He nods. "They should be angry."

How reasonable. The old burn of marriage starts in my gut. "It's so easy for you, isn't it?" I grip the steering wheel, my elbows poking out like chicken wings. "Well, you should know, angry kids are really hard to raise."

"I'm sure you're doing a good job." His voice is dreamy, unfocused.

"Yeah, well, what choice do I have?"

There. He's back now: the husband with hard, hateful eyes. "Jesus. I don't believe you're doing this. It's not fair. You're the one who told me to leave."

"I told you to leave because ..." A truck with a 10-foot-long mermaid painted on it rushes past and milliseconds later there is a gush of air. I lose my hold on the wheel for a minute and we shimmy loosely. "Because you kept leaving," I hiss, easing off the gas, regaining control. "Even when you were there, you weren't really there. I was always lonelier being with you than I am being alone."

"I know." He speaks softly and stares at his hands, at the wedding ring he still wears that is tarnished the dull gold of a dying fire.

Before this week, the last time I'd heard from him was in winter. He called one night around 2 a.m., from somewhere in northwestern Canada. His words came out slow and slurred, as if they were sticky and he was having trouble shaking them loose. He said he lived in a place with spiders the size of his palms and had worked for a few weeks as a dispatcher for the local volunteer fire department.

He told me he still loved me. I could hear wind rushing in the background. I asked him if he was driving. He said yes but he was pulling over right there because suddenly, talking to me, he realized he was drunk and never should have gotten behind the wheel.

Then he disappeared, nothing but emptiness in my ear. I lay in bed for hours, still holding the phone and staring at the blank ceiling where my mind projected an image: his car, whatever he drove now, skidding on the ice, spinning like a ballet dancer on one wheel against the backdrop of skeletal trees and snow.

I'd copied his new phone number on the slip marking my place in the book on my bedside table. Around 4 a.m., I turned on the light and stared at the line of digits. But I didn't call him back.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Six nights after his arrival. Mid-August. We leave my little rental cottage around 8 o'clock, opening the front door and stepping out into a summer night so wet and warm it seems to lick our skin. The moon, fuzzy in the mist, is oversized and orange.

"Make sure your sister brushes her teeth," I call over my shoulder before closing the door. Three pale faces are framed in the window, watching us go. I wave and motion with flapping fingers to go. Go eat, or watch TV.

Two of them back up and disappear into the murk of the house; only our 14-year-old, the one who is in charge for the night, remains. He is tall now, like his father. When we came in from the airport the week before they had stood feet apart, facing one another, eyes blinking rapidly as if they were communicating in a language I didn't understand.

"Do you think they'll be OK?" I ask, looking back. The house is empty but for the television, a portable stereo, three queen-size air mattresses and a set of plastic picnic plates.

"They'll be fine."

We're dressed alike: cut-off jeans, white tank tops, lace-up work boots. Already, my feet are sweating. Together we walk to the enormous truck that sinks into the muddy driveway. Then he's driving and we're rattling over a wooden bridge and across the bay, windows open because there's no air conditioning in the rental truck, entering a wavering dusk where sky and water bleed together in a soft charcoal gray. The waxing moon moves with us, a dented peach bobbing in and out of the dark, rippled waves below.

He lights a cigarette and drives with his right hand on the wheel, smoking hand propped half in, half out; ordinarily I would object, but this seat smells like urine and old onions so fresh smoke actually helps cover the stink. Whenever there is a choice of direction to be made, he turns smoothly, still one-handed.

Ten minutes later he stops in an industrial park just off the highway. Behind an electrified fence is a village of cement buildings, unmarked and windowless.

"This is it? You're sure? How did you find it?"

He reaches under the seat and slides out an ax and a set of bolt cutters that looks like a tweezers magnified to a size the length of my arm. "I made some calls."

"Calls." I unbuckle my seat belt. "To whom?"

He tilts his head to one shoulder and looks puzzled, reminding me of our boys when they were 2 or 3. "Drug dealers mostly. They tend to know Florida. Know the right people."

The memory of this man bent over a crib, singing "Sugar Magnolia" like a lullaby. "And how do you know them?"

He says the name of the high-priced treatment center where he stayed for three months last year, the one that comes right after Betty Ford on the list of best-quality drunk tanks. "Think of it," he says as he stretches one leg out of the truck, half sitting, half standing, "like an international trade show for the underworld."

The ground looks a long way down when I open my door; I have to jump from the cab and the concrete is hard against my feet. Mist curls in ribbons through openings in the fence, meeting and congealing into a cloud that he slices through as he walks.

We pass a dome that churns and shucks and makes conveyor-belt sounds -- the source of all the steam. A few yards past, we find a gate that has been left unlatched and 2 inches ajar. It is 3/4-sized, no more than 5 feet tall, with a metal bar on top. He turns to face me. "Won't be easy," he says, grinning down and looking, for just a fraction of a second, like the reckless, baby-faced 22-year-old I recall marrying.

He never did like it when things were easy.

Recent Stories