Taft

by Ann Patchett

  "Dad," Carl says.

  There he is, wearing a red T-shirt, not the blue one Taft had been thinking of. Taft feels like he's choking. He doesn't feel the pain in his chest, but he remembers it suddenly. His hand goes up towards Carl and then drops back before he's touched him. "You all right?"

  Carl nods.

  "Where the hell have you been so late?"

  "I had an accident."

  Carl is looking down at the floor. Taft looks behind him, through the open front door. No car. "Anybody hurt? You hurt?"

  Carl shakes his head.

  And just as he's about to question him, just as he's about to find out where the car is and why he didn't call, Taft is overwhelmed by the knowledge that this is Carl, here, alive. All fears mean nothing. He was wrong. Here stands his whole son, not a mark on him. He puts his hands on Carl's shoulders. He can feel them shaking. "But you're okay?"

  "I wrecked the car."

  They only have the one car. Taft's wife drives him to work and picks him up later. The children take the bus to school. It's a gold Buick LeSabre. It isn't a new car. It was going to need tires this year. No matter how badly it's wrecked, they'll get it fixed. The money. The deductible is five hundred dollars and that money does not exist anyplace, period. Even if they found five hundred there would be the insurance costs, which would go up and up. Carl wouldn't be allowed to drive anymore. There'd be no way to cover him. There will be a lot to think about tomorrow, a lot to figure out. He'll have to be stern with Carl then. There will have to be punishment. But it's late now and they're there together. Whatever is true tonight will still be true in the morning after they sleep.

  "Go on and get to bed," Taft says. "It's late."

  "Don't you want to hear about it?"

  "Tomorrow. You get some sleep." He smiles at him, just the smallest bit, but it makes everything clear. What matters is you, Taft is telling him. You, alive and well, not the car.

  Carl nods and heads down the hallway to his room. Taft goes back to bed, to his wife. There's a lot to figure out, money, but he's dead tired. He's sure the second his head hits the pillow he'll be asleep, but once he lies down he can't even make his eyes close. The fear, which he knows now is groundless, stays with him. Even with Carl safe in bed, Taft feels like he still isn't home.

  "Dad? You awake?"

  I was just holding the phone, not talking into it. The clock said six-thirty. I hadn't been awake at six-thirty since Franklin left for Florida, which could only mean that it was Franklin on the phone. "I'm awake."

  "Nobody here is up," Franklin said.

  "I'm up," Mrs. Woodmoore called from somewhere behind him.

  "Oh," he said. "Gramma's up."

  "Did you sleep okay?" I said, still sleeping myself.

  "I slept fine. I slept on the sofa. Aunt Ruth is sleeping in the room she used to share with Mom and Mom is in Uncle Buddy's room. Gramma said Mom and Aunt Ruth should share their old room like they used to, but they didn't want to."

  I nodded into my pillow, thankful at least for the fact that I didn't have to picture them sleeping in the same room.

  "Are you coming over?"

  "Not this early."

  "But you're coming over?"

  "Have your mother call me when she wakes up. Then we'll decide what the plan for the day is."

  "Putt-Putt golf," Franklin said.

  "We'll see. Wait till she gets up. And don't wake her up. Do you hear me?"

  "Yessir."

  "I'm glad you're back."

  "I'm glad I'm back," he said to me.

  I knew he was going to wake up Marion. Even if he didn't actually go into her room and shake her, he would stomp back and forth in the hall and pretend to trip and fall into her door. I didn't have much choice but to get up and shower.

  There I was, getting ready to spend the day with my son, thinking about where I was going to take him to eat and when we'd go down to the river, and as happy as I was I couldn't help but feel Carl like a dark shadow in the room. Fay had told me at the start, it was just that he was trying to find a way to deal with his pain. I hadn't thrown him out when I knew he was using drugs. I hadn't gone to his family or talked to him about getting help. I was plenty understanding of his problems then. But when he was dealing in the bar, that was that. I didn't want to reconcile with him, try to bring him back. What I wanted, really, was never to have known him. Looking at Carl was like looking down a well. There was not time or love or money enough in the world to fill that hole, and even knowing that, the need and soreness of him followed me around. Fay would be working that night, and I wondered if for once he'd give her the car to drive herself home, or if he'd just park across the street somewhere when she was due to get off and wait for her.

  I took my shower and set about cleaning up the apartment. I needed to do the laundry. I was thinking about it when the phone rang again.

  "I'm up," Marion said.

  "Sorry to hear that."

  She yawned, such a long yawn that she finally put her hand over the receiver. "You'd think I'd be used to this."

  "I hear once they get a little older they sleep all the time."

  "I'm not counting on it," she said. "Come on over and take us to breakfast. You don't have to be at work for a while."

  "No hurry."

  "Good. I'm hungry. I'm starving."

  "You're always hungry when you wake up," I said. "I used to think I should leave a bowl of food on the bedside table so you could just roll over in the morning and feed yourself."

  Marion laughed. "If you'd done that," she said, "things might have worked out differently for us."

  I took them to the Shoney's. Ruth was still asleep when I picked them up, or she was staying in her room. Carl and Fay and Ruth. I felt like I needed to make myself a schedule so that there'd be time to smooth things out with all of them. Funny that there was comfort in being with Marion, the person who always headed up the list of people to be soothed.

  "You getting waffles?" she asked Franklin.

  "Waffles," he said.

  The waitress showed up and she smiled at Franklin. "You on vacation already?" she said to him. She was a tall black girl with a head full of shiny curls. She looked so cheerful, so completely free of personal problems standing there in her brown and orange striped polyester uniform. I was wondering why I couldn't find myself such a happy waitress.

  "I left early," Franklin said.

  "Now that's smart thinking," the waitress said, pen waiting in the air just above her order pad. "Hang out with your mom and dad. What'll you folks be having this morning?"

  We gave our orders and she brought us our own pot of coffee. She filled our cups and left the rest on the table.

  "Stop staring at that girl," Marion said when she left. She was laughing. "You're getting too old for that."

  "It's not what you're thinking," I said.

  "You don't know what I'm thinking," she said, trying to make herself sound bad and laughing again. She stretched like she was still in bed and then stared out the window at a clear day and a lot full of parked cars. "Memphis looks good. You wouldn't believe how tired you can get of all that sunshine and those pink buildings."

  "Everything's pink," Franklin said.

  "I imagine that would wear on you."

  Marion nodded, smiled again. "I'm going over to the hospital this afternoon, say hello, see if I still have any friends in this town."

  "See if you still have a job?" I asked.

  Marion gave Franklin a light push on the shoulder. "Go wash your hands. The food's going to be here in a minute."

  "My hands are clean."

  "I saw you petting that dog outside. Go on." She shoved him a little so that he slid out of the booth seat. He nodded and headed off.

  She watched him walk towards the cash register and stop at a pile of comic books featuring the Shoney's Big Boy. "Don't talk about this in front of him," she said to me. "I don't want to get his hopes up about anything. I haven't made up my mind. I ju
st got here last night."

  "But you're going to see about a job?"

  "I'm going to say hello to my friends," she said. "Maybe I'll see what's going on." She looked at me like for a minute she was worried. She patted my hand, something she must have picked up in Miami, as I don't remember Marion being much of a hand patter. "Now I'm getting your hopes up."

  "I'd rather see the two of you in Memphis," I said. "I don't make any secret about that. I have to tell you though, for someone who doesn't like Miami, you sure seem happier than I've seen you in a long time."

  Marion spooned a packet of sugar into her coffee. One sugar, no milk. I could have done it for her. "I wanted to get away from Memphis for a long time," she said. "I had to get away. But I did that. Now it doesn't seem like coming back would be such a bad thing."

  I knew this woman. She had once thrown a plate of macaroni and cheese at me. Macaroni and cheese with cut up chunks of stewed tomatoes in it, the way I like it.

  "Clean hands," Franklin said.

  "Let me see." Marion took his hands. She looked at both sides, like she was a nurse checking for something more serious than dog hair, then she kissed them, palms up.

  We ate our breakfast and I paid the check. Once we got outside I told Marion to go on to the hospital, that I'd take Franklin around and bring him back before it was time to go to the bar. "Does he need anything?" I said. "I could take him shopping, clothes or school supplies?"

  "I could think of some things," Franklin said.

  Marion stared at him. "He's spoiled rotten," she said. "His grandmother had a whole year's worth of clothes waiting on him. Don't buy him a thing." She kissed Franklin in the parking lot. "Be good," she said. "I'll catch up with you later on. You be good, too," she said to me, and then she got in her car.

  Boys with their fathers who don't belong to their fathers, I can spot them anywhere. They're taking tours of the pyramid, playing Putt-Putt golf at ten o'clock on a Saturday morning. They're filling up the zoo, carrying cotton candy and a bag of carameled corn, balloons and a thirty-five-dollar stuffed yak from the gift shop. Custody day, I used to think to myself when I passed them. Court-appointed visitation day. And I'd be prideful knowing that wasn't the way it was with my boy. I saw him every day, whether his mother was living with me or not. I bought his shoes and helped him with his math homework. I stood behind him in the bathroom when he brushed his teeth because if I didn't he never brushed the back ones. The dentist told me that. I held his head when he threw up in the toilet after catching the flu. I pulled up socks, fixed belts, took him to church when I didn't have the slightest interest in going myself. Nobody who saw me with my son would think that I was only some weekend father. But that was all before Miami. Now here I was, pulling off the interstate into Big Mountain Golf Land, already thinking about the chili dog stand we could go to for lunch. It wasn't until just that minute that I had feelings for every father who had tried to endear himself in the few hours he had, every father who wanted his kid to go home and tell his mother about how great the day had been. The kid's life is screwed up and I'm the one who did it. That's what us custody fathers think. If I can make it look like Disneyland for a while, then more power to me.

  "It's still early," Franklin said. "I want to go through one more round."

  So we did. Then there were chili dogs, ice cream, a trip to the mall where I bought him a pair of sneakers that were big and puffy as marshmallows. He loosened up the shoelaces and wore them out of the store.

  "Don't you want to tie those?" I said.

  Franklin just looked at me like I was crazy.

  By the time I got him back to the Woodmoores' it was nearly three o'clock and I needed to be getting over to the bar.

  "You'll call me later?" Franklin said.

  "You bet."

  "Do you want to come in and say hi to Mom?"

  I looked at my watch again. I wasn't thinking about Marion so much as I was Ruth. "I better get going," I said. "We'll have a lot of time tomorrow."

  "Okay," he said. He picked up his shoebox which had his old shoes inside and put them under one arm. Then he leaned over and kissed me. Mrs. Woodmoore opened the front door and waved to us. He was all ready to go, but he didn't, he sat there with his hand on the door and watched her, like he was trying to decide which one of us he'd rather stay with.

  "Go on, now," I said. "I'm coming right back."

  WHEN I GOT TO WORK that afternoon, Fay was waiting for me. "What did you say to Carl last night?" she wanted to know. Was it possible that she was getting smaller? I wondered how fast a girl that age could lose weight. She looked like she was wearing somebody else's clothes, the clothes of somebody a whole lot bigger than she was.

  "Nothing."

  "You said something to him." She came around to the other side of the bar so she could keep her voice low. Cyndi wasn't far away, and she was watching. "When he came back to get me last night he was calling you every name in the book. He said you stole from him."

  "What do you think?"

  "Of course I don't think you stole from him, but something happened."

  "If Carl has something he wants to tell you, then he's the one to tell you. I don't want to get into this thing."

  "But Carl's not telling me." Her voice was going up. She stopped herself and put a hand up on the bar. "You think he knows about us?"

  Us. Now there was a question. If Carl knew about us then he was one up on me. "I don't talk about you with your brother."

  "Maybe he figured it out." The color was rising in her face just thinking about it. "Carl wouldn't understand about that. He'd take it the wrong way."

  I leaned over to her. "Nothing happened," I said. "There's nothing to know. I don't think that's what Carl's problem is."

  "Then what's his problem?" she said, hurt.

  "You know his problem. You know all of them. Carl's got to start taking some responsibility for himself."

  "You folks not serving drinks here anymore?"

  I was all set to say something smart, but when I looked up it was Ruth sitting there, perched up on a barstool for God knows how long.

  "Look at this," Ruth said. "It's the girl with the dry hair. You know, you should pin that hair back. Get it out of your eyes. You've got pretty eyes."

  Just like that those eyes filled up and spilled over and Fay covered them with her hand.

  "It was a compliment, girlfriend," Ruth said. "You shouldn't take a compliment so hard."

  Fay went off to the kitchen with her head down.

  All I could think was that Ruth must have taken a lot off of white girls when she was young to make her hate them so much now. Either that or she just had a bigger mean streak than I had given her credit for. "Why in the hell are you picking on her?"

  "You doing her too?" Ruth smiled.

  "Jesus."

  "That's not a no," she said, looking over in the direction of the kitchen doors through which Fay had disappeared.

  "She's got enough troubles. Just leave her alone."

  "That's just like you, going around picking up wounded birds. I bet you used to hold bird funerals when you were kid. Did you? Get little boxes for coffins and call all your friends over. Tie two sticks together for a cross."

  "Ruth."

  "Give me a beer," she said. "No, give me a glass of wine. Give me something nice 'cause I'm not planning on paying for it."

  I looked around under the counter till I found a bottle of burgundy that shouldn't have even been in a bar like that. I opened it up and poured her a glass.

  "You should be a fly on the wall where I live," she said, taking a sip of the wine. "That's good," she said. "It should probably sit here for a minute. Isn't that what wine needs to do? Hang out?" She smiled at me. "I'm losing my point. You're a regular topic of conversation. How good you look. How good you are with Franklin. How lonely you look. Doesn't he look lonely to you, Ruth? It's hard for me to say anything. I don't think you look so lonely. I think you look like a man who has more company t
han he can handle."

  "I know this is hard for you," I said.

  "Hard for me? Why's that? Because you're not crawling up the side of the house to get into my bedroom at night? It's not hard for me. It's hard for you."

  We looked at each other until I looked away. Ruth used to love having staring contests when she was a kid. She always won.

  "Let me see that bottle," she said.

  I handed her the bottle and she read the label. "Look at that. It's from France."

  "What do you want me to do, Ruth?"

  She put the bottle down on the bar. "I sure don't want to see you winding up with my sister again."

  "Is that what you think is going to happen?"

  "That's what Marion thinks is going to happen."

  That was speculation on her part. I knew Marion well enough to know that if she had such thoughts she'd keep them to herself, and I didn't believe she had them to begin with. And I didn't want Marion back. I didn't even think about it. Maybe for a second it crossed my mind in the Shoney's, right after she told me not to look at the waitress. I thought about it and then just that quick I stopped. Don't beat a dead horse. That was my father's favorite expression. I believe it was his only piece of advice to me. When I was young I had this picture of a man standing in a field next to a dead horse and a turned over plow and he was beating it with everything he had, kicking it and beating it with his fists. It was cruelty I thought my father was warning me against. That it was important not to be cruel to something, even if that something was dead.

  "If you're worried about this, then I'll tell you truthfully you don't have anything to worry about. If what you're saying is I can't see Marion, that you'll be able to prevent that, then come on out with it."