Taft

by Ann Patchett

  MIDDLE OF THE DAY and Cyndi was flying. She had a stupid grin plastered on her face I'd never seen before. While she was standing at the bar waiting on her drinks she started slapping out a beat on the half-polished guardrail. Four light slaps and two hard, two light, two hard. It could have been the base for any one of about two thousand songs.

  "What did you have for lunch?" I said.

  "Not a thing." Cyndi wasn't a grinner. It was all I could do to keep from staring.

  Quick as I poured the drinks she was buzzing them off to a table. She was walking so fast her skirt was twitching. I knew that walk. I knew those eyes. I was tired of it.

  "Cyndi," I said.

  Back she came, like her feet weren't even touching the floor. She was smiling at me, laughing. I was looking at her and the more I looked the more she laughed until she was just cracking herself up. Her pink eyes started to tear she was laughing so hard. She made me realize just how good Carl was at holding himself together when he was stoned. "What?" she said.

  "I'll fire you," I said. "Just watch me."

  She tried to straighten up. She was still giggling. She was on a roll. She couldn't stop herself, even though she was trying hard. "Don't," she said.

  "No second chance," I said. "Understand that? No more of this shit."

  She breathed in deep, hiccupped and nodded. I turned my back on her, busied myself at the bar. I was goddamned tired of these kids.

  Fay came in looking like a soaked cat from the rain. Everywhere she went she left a little dripping trail of herself. The first thing she said to me was that she had to leave in a couple of hours. "I called Arlene," she said. "She's coming in at six to cover for me. It's my uncle's birthday. They want everybody to be home for the party."

  "As long as you're covered," I said, even though I'd been thinking about calling Arlene myself to see if she couldn't come take Cyndi's place.

  "Believe me," she said, lifting herself onto a barstool. "I'd rather stay here and make some money."

  I handed her a stack of cocktail napkins. "See if you can't dry your hair some."

  She wadded them up and dabbed at her forehead. "It's pouring," she said, as if to tell me she couldn't help it. Outside the water was coming down in sheets, making a wild river next to the sidewalk. The whirlpools over the sewers looked strong enough to suck up a child.

  Fay was still blotting herself when the door opened up and Ruth walked in wearing a raincoat. She shook out her umbrella and hung it on a peg beside the door, then walked up to the bar without a drop of water on her. Ruth had a way of looking good no matter what was going on around her. Her hair was always fixed and I'd never seen her when she wasn't wearing lipstick. "The surest sign a woman doesn't have a child," Marion used to say.

  "You look like somebody held you under," she said to Fay.

  Fay looked up and tried to think of what to say. She didn't come up with anything.

  "What're you doing out in this rain?" I said to Ruth.

  She leaned over the bar and gave me a kiss on the cheek. She smelled like lilies. Ruth was smooth. Everything she did came off looking natural. Fay was staring at her.

  "I just thought I'd come down and see how business was."

  "I ought to get to work," Fay said quietly.

  "Work?" Ruth said. "You're hiring children?"

  "Best waitress I've got." I could say that, now that Cyndi was too stoned to stand up.

  Fay smiled a little, pleased for the compliment but not so happy about anything else. "See you," she said.

  "She's a baby," Ruth said, watching Fay walk into the kitchen. "I mean it. You'd think there'd be some kind of law against that."

  "She's fine."

  "Well," Ruth said, bringing her elbows up on the bar. "I'm glad to hear it."

  "You want a drink?"

  "Give me a beer," she said. "Whatever you like."

  I reached in the cooler and got her a Rolling Rock. "I was surprised to see you last night. I thought that once you went over the state line that would be the last we'd ever hear from you."

  "Yeah, well, things have a funny way of working out."

  "What didn't work?"

  "One thing and another," she said. "The job went bad. The man went bad. You name it. Things were getting a little tight was all. But I'll tell you one thing, being home isn't the answer. Adults aren't meant to live in their parents' house. Sleeping in those little beds again." She shivered. "I wake up in the morning and look at those awful frilly curtains and think any minute somebody's going to be rapping on the door and telling me to get ready for school. Mama's going to make me sit on the floor between her legs and plait my hair so tight it makes my eyes pull back. You laugh, I'm serious. I've seen her looking at my hair."

  "She never wanted to let you move out in the first place."

  "Now that I'm back I've inspired her to bring all the chickens home," she said. "She's trying to get her hands on Marion and Franklin. I guess you figured that one out. The next thing you know she'll be asking the president to ship Buddy back."

  "You think Marion's coming back?"

  She was taking a sip of her beer, but the minute I said that she put the bottle down and looked at me hard. "Jesus Christ, you're not still waiting around on her?"

  "Hell, no."

  "It's just too much, her jerking you around all those years, then Mama and Daddy sitting there at dinner saying you should ask her to come home like everything's forgotten. You asked her so many times I thought you were going to have it tattooed on your chest."

  "Marion doesn't have any interest in me," I said. "We're pretty square on that one."

  "Don't you be so sure." She shook her head. Her dangling coral earrings swung back and forth. "She's been alone for a while now. It's a lot easier to say no when somebody's asking you all the time. Nobody's asked Marion lately."

  "What ax are you grinding with Marion?" I said.

  "She's a fool," Ruth said. "You know how the saying goes, 'I don't suffer them lightly.'"

  "She's had her share of trouble."

  "And she made every bit of it herself."

  "Not all of it," I said. "I helped her out some."

  Ruth waved her hand like she was brushing me off. "People don't have to pay and pay and pay for something that happened a lifetime ago."

  "I'm not paying anything," I said. "That's all done."

  "The hell it is." Ruth pushed her beer aside and leaned towards me. "I'll tell you what I know," she said. "I know something that every other person in my family forgot. I know something your own son never even saw, and that's that you were the best drummer in this town."

  "You're thinking about somebody else," I said, half laughing. I was watching Cyndi. She was walking slower now, pulling herself together.

  "Don't you remember anything?" Ruth said. "I remember when I was fifteen years old and you'd bring me and Marion down to Handy Park when you played in the summer. God, she hated it when you let me come along. She used to tear my hair out when we got home, but it was worth it. You were so good. I'd do anything to get to watch you play. You were the one that everybody came to see. You'd come over at breaks and buy me and Marion Cokes. Every girl there wanted to be me, wanted to be her. They would have done anything just to get you to look at them and it was all because of the way you played."

  "You're crazy."

  "I wasn't the crazy one," she said. She was looking at me hard. "You had something nobody else had. The closest we ever got to being famous was being able to watch you. Marion took that away."

  "Nobody takes that," I said. I didn't like to talk about this. I made a point not to talk about this. "You give it up."

  "You gave it up because she said if you did, you'd get Franklin. Then she took him, too. She made you eat your own heart and you're not even smart enough to blame her. Look around this place and tell me what you've got now."

  Fay came up to the bar. "Bud, Bud Light, Bud Dry," she said.

  When I reached into the cooler my hands were shak
ing. As long as my back was turned, Ruth kept quiet. I crouched down and pretended to have a hard time finding the Light. The cold air felt good. The bottles felt good in my hands.

  "Got it," I said, and I took off the caps.

  "Your hair's all dried," Ruth said to her.

  "It dries pretty fast," Fay said, touching her hair lightly. As soon as I handed her the beers, she was gone.

  "I think she's scared of me," Ruth said. "Wonder why that is."

  "You're fucking scary is why that is." I turned my back to her and made myself busy with some glasses.

  "You don't get it at all," Ruth said. Her voice was tired, like she'd spent her whole life trying to explain it to me. "Remember when I was fifteen? Remember when you were first getting work in bands? Remember how you used to buy me lemon ice in those little paper cups and how you used to say to Marion when I was standing right there, 'She's going to be the heartbreaker.' Middle of the day, we'd all get so bored. You used to say you didn't know what to do with yourself when it was light outside. We'd all go riding over to Arkansas just to be crazy, and I'd sit in the window of the car with my hands up on the roof. Don't you remember anything?"

  "I don't think about that."

  "Furry heard you play," she said. "I remember. He nodded at you and everybody saw it. Everybody was saying, Did you see Furry nod at him?"

  "Stop talking like this," I said, keeping my voice low and even. "You don't go bringing these things up. Why don't you know that?" She looked like Marion. Fifteen and seventeen, the two of them walked down the street with me, one on each side. People called out, 'He's got a pair of them. A big one and a little one.' Marion would shoot them a dirty look and Ruth would just hold her head up and smile.

  "I don't think it's ever too late for a man to come to his senses," she said. "Maybe if you had somebody around to remind you what you are then you'd go back and start playing again."

  "We're through talking about this," I said.

  Ruth picked up her purse and got off the stool.

  "Come on back," I said, shaking my head at her. "I'm not telling you to leave. Listen, Ruth, you're family. Sit down and have another beer. There's got to be something better we can talk about than your sister and what I didn't make of myself."

  "I'm not family," she said. She went to the door and pulled her raincoat on. The weather hadn't slowed for two straight days. "Come over to the house and see me if you have the time." She opened her umbrella while she was still inside and then she was gone.

  There are women who like men better than other women. If that woman is your sister, if that man used to be your sister's lover, it still isn't going to make any difference.

  Ruth did me a favor once, right after Franklin was born. She stayed in my corner. She took pictures when nobody would let me in to see him. She came over to my apartment at night and told me how much he weighed and how long he was and how he was eating. She was the one who said I was the father no matter what and sooner or later they'd have to relent. She went at them again and again until finally on the fourth day I got to hold him and Marion talked to me a little when her parents were out of sight. Ruth did that for me.

  Ruth was three months away from finishing high school when she took off to New Orleans, stayed gone six months, and then turned up again. After a few more years in Memphis she took up with a slide guitarist I knew to be trouble, but there was no making Ruth listen. She went with him to Chicago and then came back. The last time it was Detroit, but it had been Detroit for long enough that I thought she might have settled down.

  "Who was that?" Fay said. She looked around, thinking that wherever she was she might be back in a minute.

  "That was Ruth," I said. "I've known her for a long time, since she was a kid."

  "Hard to imagine her being a kid," Fay said.

  It was raining so hard that by four o'clock it looked dark and by five o'clock it was. The night before, the weather had forced everyone who was caught outside to come into the bar and have a drink, but tonight people had gotten wise to things and just stayed home.

  "I'm sleepy," Cyndi said, sitting on a barstool braiding her hair. I poured her a cup of coffee.

  Fay was standing at the window, watching the flood on Beale. "I hate to have Carl drive all the way out here in weather like this," she said, making conversation with her own reflection in the glass.

  I didn't much like the idea of Carl driving in any circumstance. The bar was quiet, except for the sounds of the rain. There were three old men drinking beers in the back of the room, but there was no noise coming out of them. "I'll take you home," I said.

  Fay and Cyndi both looked up at me.

  "Nothing better to do around here," I said. "I'd just as soon get out. Arlene's going to be coming in any minute."

  "I'll see if I can catch Carl," Fay said. She ran over to the phone behind the bar. She went too fast.

  "Is Carl there?" she said.

  "What the hell is going on?" Cyndi said.

  But I wasn't worried about what Cyndi was going to think, not after the shape she'd been in at lunch. "Go back in your cave," I said to her.

  "He said it wasn't any problem." Fay held the phone with both hands. "It would save you the trip. Go on now, and I'll just meet you at home. Really. No. It's easier." She hung up. "It's fine," she said.

  "That's great," Cyndi said. "The two of you just go on."

  "I'm coming right back," I told her.

  "My uncle owns Martin-Quick Pharmacy. Their last name is Martin," Fay said to me in the car.

  Martin-Quick. Old money. Everybody has an account. You don't even have to say your name. They hand you a bag and it just winds up on your bill. I went in once to buy Franklin a soda. I can't remember what we were doing over there now, but I can promise you they didn't offer us credit. The woman behind the counter kept a close eye on Franklin while he was looking at the candy. "Don't pick that up unless you plan to buy it," she said to him.

  "Carl's been working there after school and on weekends. Me and Carl are used to working. When we came to town my aunt and uncle said no more jobs. They thought we should have the time to get settled in and go to school and be depressed. Whatever. They said they'd give us an allowance. It made us crazy, not working, not making money. When things were going so bad after my dad died we starting thinking that money was the answer to everything. I know it's not, but I'll tell you, it's a lot. Finally I asked my mother. She pretty much says yes to whatever anybody asks her these days, so Calvin and Lily had to let us get jobs. They said the deal was that one of us had to work in the pharmacy. If we were looking for work and Calvin had some, then we should be able to work for him. I was all ready to do it, but then Carl took the job. It was really good of him, Carl hates Calvin, but we figured I'd probably be able to make more money since I'm older."

  "And they don't mind you working in a bar?"

  Fay was squinting, trying to see out the window. "They don't know about that."

  "Where do you say you are?"

  "I told them I waitress at a twenty-four-hour Friendly's. Fast, friendly, family-style. Believe me, they're never going to check."

  I was driving slow because of the rain. There is no rain like the rain in Tennessee. At times the road just disappeared, and then the yellow line would wash back into the headlights. I had the windshield wipers on high. I didn't like windshield wipers. The beat was too regular. It got on my nerves.

  "Wouldn't it be easier to work someplace you wouldn't have to lie about?"

  "I can make better money at Muddy's. Me and Carl figure once we make enough money we can go back to Coalfield. Everything we make, we save."

  I knew for a fact that Carl was spending money, or maybe all his pleasures came from the back of Martin-Quick, Valium and Dexedrine. Maybe he was walking off with Dilaudid and a handful of those individually wrapped, disposable needles they sold to diabetics. Drugstores are where the suffering go to lessen their suffering. Carl put their purchases into bags and wrote down the price
in the account book.

  "Memphis hasn't been so bad for me since I've been working," Fay said. "But it's hard on Carl. There're too many ways for him to get in trouble here."

  "There's a lot to be said for staying with your family."

  Fay shook her head. "Family's more complicated than that. It can be more place than people."

  I thought of Taft, waiting for his daughter to come back and read his tombstone.

  "Used to be I never thought I'd miss this place," she said. "I always thought as soon as I had the money I'd be out of here." We were in her neighborhood. You could tell by the pillars. "But it's different now. It's starting to be different."

  I pulled over at the corner a block from Fay's house and turned off the car. The rain was coming down so hard you could barely hear yourself think. "What do you want to do?" I said, wondering if she wanted me to drive her all the way to her house tonight. It was just a ride. That's all it was. There was no reason for her to walk anywhere in this weather.

  "I want to stay here with you," she said. She moved over next to me on the seat. Her shoulder was pressing against my shoulder and I could feel myself starting to sweat.

  "You've got to be home," I said. "They're waiting on you."

  "Walk over with me."

  "I'll drive you over."

  She put her head on my shoulder. I felt it all the way down my arm. "It wouldn't be so bad if we were together," she said quietly.

  "Stop that," I said. Two words and I could hardly get them out of my mouth. I was wondering if she'd ever been with anybody before. I was wondering what she knew. I was thinking what she would look like in my bed, her flat stomach and little hips twisted up in my sheets. I could feel the blood moving through my body and I thought I would be safer out of the car. I opened the door and stepped out in a rain strong enough to drown you if you put your head back. It was beating through my jacket. Thirty seconds and my shirt was wet. I held out my hand for her and she took it and followed me out into the weather. Then we were up against the car and all I could feel was her, not even the water. She had her arms around my neck and I was pulling her towards me and I kissed her. I was kissing her eyes and the line of her jaw and I felt her mouth on my face. The rain confused everything. It turned a lip into a forehead and a hand into hair. I couldn't tell where I was on her body because the rain melted everything together. Then my mouth would find her mouth and that was something different, because I felt how it was warm inside of her. I pressed her against the car and felt her outline like she was traced into me. I felt her bones, her shoulders and hips. I felt how small they were and I stepped back. She was holding onto both my hands.