An Excerpt from Steven Wingate's "The Leave-Takers"

An excerpt from The Leave-Takers by Steven Wingate by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. © 2021 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska.

On Monday morning Laynie got way too high—she took half a Percocet before remembering she’d already taken a Vicodin—and sat shivering on the blue living room couch staring at the damage her husband had wrought. Holes in the wall that he’d punched. Broken furniture still piled up by the door, with a bunch more no doubt in the bushes outside. Those damn sheets of plywood, cutting off all but a few slivers of light. Laynie had two blankets around her, one for the early April cold and one for the torpor that the drugs caused, and she stared at the spot on the wall where the TV used to be.

On that wall her mind projected a soap opera of a marriage falling apart because of pills: the spectral stares and dull movements of the doomed couple were accompanied by violin music that somehow managed to be sentimental and jagged at once. They stood on either side of a finely lacquered wooden column, both barely touching it as if they questioned its actual existence—and questioned their own, of course. You could hardly call yourself a pill popper if you didn’t question your own existence. The actress playing Laynie was Suzanne Pleshette from The Bob Newhart Show, her hair vaguely Afro-like and with a bright flowered blouse adorning her trim torso. The man playing Jacob was Michael Landon from Little House on the Prairie, with a red-striped shirt and suspenders and his grimy white hat in one hand.

Why on earth would she play this scene out with actors from TV shows from before she was born? Her parents would’ve watched those shows, but she’d only seen internet snippets of them. The Little House on the Prairie reference made sense for Jacob, since he’d grown up on the prairie, sort of. But why was she the wife of a psychologist? Laynie closed her eyes to better imagine the scene at the column, which unfolded like a cross between an avant-garde play and a documentary about two animals about to fuck or fight. Suzanne Pleshette and Michael Landon turned in slow motion around the column, never letting their fingers lift from it and never quite catching each other’s eyes. They looked past each other, merely occupying the same space without actually being together.

Which is really how her marriage had been since Simeon exploded, right? Though now, of course, they weren’t even in the same house or even the same time zone. It would stay that way until they opened their own branch of Pill Poppers Anonymous and got down on the floor, pounding the last of their stash into dust and finally showing a little passion. Well, check that—Jacob had shown plenty of passion in ripping apart the living room. But neither of them had shown any passion whatsoever in confronting their pill problems.

Laynie wanted Suzanne Pleshette and Michael Landon to get down on that floor and pound away at their addiction problem, and that’s exactly what they did. They looked like primordial apes on their knees, the sides of their fists pounding the floor in startling unison against their common enemy. The whole floor turned out to be littered with tablets and capsules, and anywhere their fists hit, they could destroy something. Only then could they look at each other’s eyes, which were so furious and red that they couldn’t be lit up by any other force than self-loathing.

The banging from Laynie’s fantasy segued into knocking in real life, and she called “Hello!” even though she didn’t believe anyone was there. She would’ve heard the tires. The knocking came again, very real, and at the front door Laynie found a tall, mustached, sixtyish man in jeans, mud boots, and an ancient lined denim jacket. A white truck as grimy as Michael Landon’s hat idled behind him.

“Sorry to bother you, miss,” said a watered-down Marlboro Man voice.

“It’s okay, I wasn’t doing anything.” Laynie smiled back at him like Bob Newhart’s wife might. Gentle. Understanding of his troubles and sure she didn’t have any of her own.

“I’m looking for a guy up here who does bodywork. My grandson wrecked up a truck of mine pretty good.”

“Could it be Ed Nassedrine?”

“I don’t know the name. Just heard somebody up this hill did bodywork.”

Laynie studied the man, calculating the many ways their conversation could end. She didn’t feel physically threatened, and in fact the man looked scared of her. If he was used to farm wives, she must have looked like a harlot from another planet in her—

She realized she had two blankets over her shoulders. She didn’t look like a harlot at all, more like a crazy bag lady. Laynie softened her eyes like TV people do when they’re about to give bad news.

“I’m sorry—Ed Nassedrine died a couple years ago. I’m his great-nephew’s wife.”

“Oh. Does your husband do bodywork?”

“I don’t think so.” Laynie watched his eyes furrow in distrust. How could a woman not know if her husband did bodywork? “We’re newlyweds. I’m not from here, and I don’t know his life here very well.”

“Oh, okay then.” The man started backing off the porch just as Laynie noticed how cute his Oh was. That little dovelike coo was the cutest thing about South Dakota. “Where you from?” he asked her.

“Los Angeles.” She wanted him to say Oh again, but he didn’t.

“Well, you made it through winter, looks like.” He gestured toward the blankets. “Mosquito season’s near as hard.”

Then he was gone, and Laynie watched him wave, and when she got back to the couch, Suzanne Pleshette and Michael Landon were both passed out on the floor. They’d changed their minds about destroying the pills and decided to lick them up instead. The dust of crushed tablets whitened their hanging-out tongues.

***

Laynie was out on the widow’s walk, properly clothed and decidedly not on drugs, when a red Ford Explorer came up Chambrell Road just before sundown. It was an appropriate place for her to be, given that Jacob had been (metaphorically) drifting at sea and was potentially (almost certainly) lost. Was another stranger coming to visit, ready to ask if Jacob repaired farm equipment or hypnotized sheep? When the Explorer parked unsettlingly close to the Dodge, she knew it was him. He looked inside her little green Honda as if expecting to find her sleeping inside.

“Yoo-hoo!” she called down, trying and failing to make the same cute Oh sound as her Marlboro Man–lite visitor. Jacob shook his head, slid open the barn door, and closed it with barely a click. She heard him sigh twice as he mounted the spiral staircase. He didn’t have to shoulder the door because Laynie pulled it open for him. She leaned against the railing, and he stood opposite her. Hardly a romantic reunion.

“Hello, husband,” Laynie said.

“Hello, wife.” He showed his ring, and she showed hers.

“I want to ask you a very honest question, and if we have any hope, you’ll give me a very honest answer.”

“Fire away,” Jacob told her.

“Do you have a stash?”

“Yes.” When Jacob looked down at the Explorer, Laynie knew it was in there. That morning he’d bought a grab bag from the kid at Cliff’s who’d given him the Klonopin. “You?”

“Yes.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Not saying,” she said.

“That’s because you found my stash here.” Jacob gave her the fakest smile she’d ever seen on anybody. Which said a lot, considering that she’d grown up in LA.

“Stashes. You’re very creative about that, you know.”

“I pride myself on being creative.” He leaned back against the edge of the widow’s walk, and Laynie flinched at the thought of him falling over. “So, what other rules do you have, wife?”

“I never said I had rules.”

“But you do. You’ve got your planning face on. Do we have to tell each other when we’re popping?”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

“Do we have to tell each other what we’re popping?”

“Yeah,” Laynie said. “Show it in the palm. No cheating and no bullshitting.”

Jacob nodded and held out his hand for her to shake. Laynie shook it extra hard and tried to pull back, but he wouldn’t let go until he kissed her knuckles. Then she kissed his knuckles, and the deal was made.