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Biloxi

Page 14

by Mary Miller


  He didn’t ask which I wanted to hear first. The good news was my father had left me everything other than $200,000 in cash, a hundred and ten of which had gone to Maxine and ninety to Ellen. The bad news, however, was that there were loans and liens and various other debts.

  He licked his fingers and turned the pages: $8,000 to the funeral home, $165 to the Sun Herald, $150 to Reverend Grover Nail, twenty-two thousand to the lawyers, twenty-four to the nursing home. There were unpaid property taxes, debts to the bank and IRS—it went on and on and on. There were moving fees and cleaning fees and the rent for Ellen’s beachfront condo. He continued turning pages, telling me who had been paid what. I interrupted to ask what was left, what the hell was goddamn left.

  “Fourteen thousand dollars,” he said.

  “Fourteen thousand dollars,” I repeated.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Fourteen thousand,” I said again.

  “That’s right.”

  “And the land?”

  “The bank owns the land,” he said.

  “The bank owns the land,” I repeated. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. My father owned upwards of seven hundred acres and it had all been left to me and somehow, someway, I had no land and fourteen thousand dollars. The inclination to kill myself had been right all along. Had I said this aloud? The idea that I might start a new life and have a second chance had been a dream. It was too late. It had always been too late and finally there was proof.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “This can’t be right.”

  He directed me back to the papers again with all of their numbers. So many numbers. I stood, dazed, grabbed hold of his desk.

  “I know it’s not what you expected.”

  “I don’t know what I expected,” I said. “I guess this is exactly what I expected, which is the disappointing thing—I hoped I’d be surprised, that the bastard would surprise me for once.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, but he didn’t seem sorry. He couldn’t have possibly seemed sorry enough. “The check has already been sent via registered mail—you’ll have to sign for it.”

  “I haven’t signed for anything.”

  “Well,” he said. “Keep an eye out.” He went to do that move where he was going to put a hand on my back but had no intention of actually touching me. When had people stopped touching each other while pretending to touch each other from several inches away? I would have liked to stick a pen in his eye.

  The secretary offered me cookies on the way out. She said she’d made too many for her son’s bake sale and would I care for some? She didn’t want to eat them all by herself and I’d be doing her a big favor.

  “Are there raisins?”

  “No raisins, but there’s walnuts and chocolate chips. It’s my grandmother’s recipe,” she said, “though I’m pretty sure it’s just the recipe you’d find on any ole bag of chocolate chips.” How many chocolate chips would it take to fill in her mole? If I melted it and spread it around, one. If they were solid, two or three. I thanked her and took a cookie.

  “Take more,” she said, “please,” so I did. I piled one on top of another until I had a nice stack, and stumbled outside.

  CHAPTER 13

  IN THE PARKING lot, I ate one and tossed the rest. After that, I couldn’t go home. Once again, my home wasn’t mine. I had brought a woman into it and she’d taken over. I pictured her on the couch, watching TV with the dog, the air conditioner on full blast so she could curl up with all of my pillows and blankets. As much as I liked women, as much as I thought I wanted one, I didn’t. Not when it came right down to it. Women had beaten me and they always would.

  I drove to a bar called The Reef. It was one of those monstrous affairs on stilts overlooking the water, the kind of place where I wouldn’t know anyone. I had been fairly successful in avoiding former friends and business associates since Ellen had left, which had been easy, especially because I’d nearly stopped leaving the house. But even out in the world it wasn’t too hard. There were places that locals went and places that tourists went and they rarely overlapped. This was a tourist place. There was a whole line of them along the beach—Shaggy’s and Snapper’s and The Dock—and they all looked the same and the food was the same.

  The waitress led me through the restaurant—it was bright, so bright—and directed me to the outdoor bar, which somehow seemed less bright. I took a corner seat where I could see both the water and the people and set the Petition to Close Estate and Final Accounting, which was fifty-eight-and-one-quarter pages, down with a smack. The more I read, the angrier I became. There were two charges of $50 for Ellen’s haircuts, gas for her car. Had my father told her he’d look out for her, provide for her? Lying on his deathbed, I saw him utter his last words: I’ll remember you in my will. I always loved you more. I wondered how long they’d all known it would turn out this way, that I’d be left with nothing.

  There was a good breeze and it was messing up my hair. I kept having to smooth the longer pieces that covered the top of my head back into place. I didn’t know how I’d ended up with a combover, when I’d decided to have an old man’s haircut; it hadn’t seemed like something I had decided at all. It was my father’s haircut and I would remedy that situation pronto, would do it myself when I got home: a close crop on the sides, the top smooth and bare as a baby’s bottom. I wouldn’t have to worry about the wind after that.

  I picked up the menu—an enormous, colorful monstrosity—and tried to appear as gruff as possible to ensure that the few people around wouldn’t try to talk to me, though there was no indication they would. Everyone was coupled, going about their coupled business. I flipped and flipped. I knew what I liked to drink and yet all of the choices made me question myself. I asked myself why I drank the same thing year after year when I might like something else better, when I might like a little variety. There was simply no way to know. Finally, I closed the menu and ordered a White Russian. I couldn’t remember ever having had one before.

  When the bartender delivered the drink, I asked for a pen and set the pen on the document, began some mental accounting. The wind kicked up and the papers ruffled. I smoothed my hair again and tried to angle myself so that it blew it in the right direction but then the wind shifted.

  The drink was unexpectedly foamy, sweet and strong.

  I wrote down my monthly expenses, estimating the ones that varied. I would have to apply for my Social Security benefits right away, and tried to remember how much I would receive—something like $1,400 a month if I took the money early. Maybe $1,500. The house was nearly paid off. The car wasn’t. I’d bought a new one because Ellen had wanted to visit some cousins in Kentucky and said we ought to have a more reliable vehicle. The figures were bleak, even with a paid-for house. There would be no trip to the Grand Canyon. I might not even be able to keep myself in beer. The plan to end it and make a great big goddamn mess of things looked like the best option, and then leave the house to Maxine. Someone would have to come in and scrape my brains off the wall and then she’d sell everything for cheap because, so far as I knew, something like a suicide would have to be disclosed to the new owners and only the desperate would buy such a place. Or maybe a nice black family. Or a not-so-nice one. I wasn’t going to make it too easy on her, though, wasn’t going to do it in the yard. She should suffer at least a little bit.

  I finished my drink and ordered another. My penmanship—when had my penmanship gotten so bad? Even the numbers were barely legible. It didn’t matter, the only thing that mattered was there wasn’t enough and I knew that as sure as I knew anything. I also knew I wouldn’t call my boss and ask for my job back. Once you leave a place you’ve been for twenty-seven years, you don’t call them up and ask to come back. You don’t tell the people who bought you a cake and wished you good luck that you wanted to return. No, I would not do that. And a new job was out of the question. My skills were obsolete. I hadn’t kept up with the technology. Every week there had been memos to aler
t me of changes and I was too old to keep up. Let the young men play that game. I was done.

  On my third drink, a woman sat down, leaving one stool between us when there was a whole row of empties and no reason for her to sit so close. I recalled Ellen joining a gym about a year before she left, how she’d complained that all of the treadmills would be available and then someone would get on the one right next to hers. She said they were always runners, too, and their sweat would come flying off them and hit you right in the face. It made me feel sick just thinking about it. And the Asian ladies had worn so much perfume she’d gag. After she’d gone through all of the various horrors, she’d ask if I wanted to join her. Why did people do things like that? They would tell you how awful something was and describe it to you in nauseating detail and then ask if you wanted to share it with them.

  I stared at the papers and sipped my drink, doing my best to go about my business, but I could feel the woman looking at me, at my papers. And then she leaned over so close I could smell her hair.

  “Legal trouble?” she asked.

  Instead of ignoring her or saying something ugly, I surprised myself by telling her that my father had left me hundreds of acres of land. She raised her glass of wine, said the next round was on me.

  “But it’s complicated. There were debts and liens . . .”

  “Oh,” she said, “that’s too bad. But the land is still yours, right? You just have to pay some fees or whatever?”

  I shook my head, trying to look like a good sport about it.

  “How come?”

  “Because the bank owns it now, or the government. I don’t fully understand it. All I know is that it isn’t mine, and never was. It was my father’s but it doesn’t seem like it was his, either. I didn’t know all of that, or any of it, really—my father and I weren’t close. I’m only finding out now, months after his death.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s tough.” She tilted her head and frowned, making all of the lines in her face rearrange themselves. Don’t do that, I thought. Please don’t do that again. The thing I hated most was for people to feel sorry for me, to pity me. It was what I’d struggled all my life to avoid, even if it meant separating myself from them entirely. I could’ve given her a good shove and watched her fall right off her stool, her granny panties on display. But perhaps she was wearing sexy panties and her sexy panties gave her confidence, the kind with the string that went up the butt. An image of Sasha flashed into my mind, her yellow panties and the green grass, how much I’d liked her before I knew her.

  “Well, I suppose it’s hard to miss something you never had.” I’d never talked this way, and certainly not to a stranger. She was leaning toward me—close. She smiled and I could see too much of her at once, too many teeth, too much eyes and nose.

  “That’s very enlightened of you,” she said, “very wise. I’m Diane, by the way.” Once she’d backed up a bit she was attractive, though she had earned every one of her fifty-some-odd years. She was age-appropriate, the kind of woman I should have been dating, but I didn’t think of myself as sixty-three. My body was sixty-three but my mind hadn’t kept up. If I could be blamed for anything in my life, it was that I had stopped developing at some point too early.

  I took her hand and she gave mine a little squeeze before letting go. I felt something—fear or pleasure, some kind of fear-pleasure combination that I wanted more of. I also had a terrible urge to leave, to put twenty dollars on the bar and flee.

  “That’s nice, that little squeeze,” I said, which just slipped right out of my mouth.

  “It’s what we do in prayer group, just before the prayer is over. A little something extra.”

  “It’s very nice.” I was jolted out of the conversation by the ringing of my phone, which was tremendously loud. Maxine was calling. I hit the red telephone button, hit it once more for good measure and asked what a lovely lady such as herself was doing at The Reef at two o’clock on a weekday.

  “Is it two o’clock on a weekday?” she asked, and laughed like she’d said something funny. “I’m on a family vacation—my brother and his kids, my mother, my sister and her irritating lesbian partner and their adopted Chinese child—all of us in one house. It’s not even on the water. I don’t know why I agree to these things but I do, every time.”

  “Because it’s family.”

  “Yes,” she said. “But mostly it’s because I forget how awful these vacations are as soon as they’re over—I bury it completely. A lot like childbirth, from what I hear.”

  “This isn’t much of a vacation spot unless you gamble, in which case you should be staying at the Beau Rivage or the Hard Rock, one of the places with pools and spas, some kind of entertainment. You don’t even swim in the water here unless you don’t know any better.”

  “We should have called you,” she said, and that laugh again. “We all got in the water today.”

  “Well,” I said, “Northerners don’t know any better.”

  “I’m not a Northerner!” she said. “I’m from Little Rock.”

  It had been a long time since a woman had tried to pick me up but I was pretty sure that was what was happening, even though I’d told her I was broke. The bartender set another drink in front of me, nodded and winked.

  “You know what I wonder about?” she asked. “Seashells. Where are all the seashells? How come you find these amazing ones in stores but none on the actual beach? We couldn’t even find any broken ugly ones. Or sand dollars. I really wanted to find a sand dollar, or a starfish.”

  “It’s a good question and I don’t have an answer for you.” I thought about rocks. In some places you find diamonds and in other places there’s only gravel. The ocean is vast. Just because it’s a large body of water you shouldn’t expect to find something beautiful. I was thinking these things but it felt silly to say them, and I wasn’t sure what I meant, anyhow. Only that one beach isn’t every beach, the same as one hill isn’t every hill. People expected some sort of continuity out of their beaches, though, which was unfair.

  “Here you mostly find trash,” I said. “And fish carcasses. Chicken bones, candy wrappers . . .”

  “I didn’t see much trash.”

  “Well, that’s very kind of you,” I said, which was an awkward thing to say, but I felt responsible. When you lived someplace like Mississippi your whole life, you learned to apologize, and I was a little bit drunk. Had I eaten anything? I was starving. I wanted to smell her hair again. We looked out at the water for a while and said nothing and I tried to appreciate the beauty of it all, living on the beach, a place where other people went on vacation.

  I finished my drink and signaled the bartender for the check, making an actual check sign in the air, which Maxine had scolded me about one night at dinner. She said it was enough to get their attention, to raise your finger slightly or nod, that you didn’t have to draw an actual check sign in the air.

  “You’re leaving?” she asked, and that frown again, all of the wrinkles rearranging themselves. She was wearing too much makeup. If she hadn’t been wearing so much makeup her wrinkles might not show so much. And then I noticed her neck and how it was a different color from her face. I wished you could tell people things like that—it would benefit them in the long run—and yet you couldn’t.

  “I have some things I need to take care of this afternoon,” I said, picturing a six-pack of beer and a sack of burgers. I wished her the best of luck with the rest of her vacation, told her to be sure to visit the shop you entered through the shark’s mouth, that the kids would love it. She held out her hand: flat out, palm down, like she was a dignitary. I guessed she wanted me to kiss it so I brought it to my mouth and pressed it to my lips.

  “Give me your phone,” she said, and I handed it over. She commented on how old and small it was, how it didn’t even have internet access, as I watched her type her name and number. “Now you have five numbers in here. I know you won’t call but that’s okay.”

  “Is that
reverse psychology?”

  “No, it’s just a fact.”

  “Well,” I said, and stopped myself from telling her that it was an opinion.

  “Wait,” she said. “Call me now so I’ll have yours.”

  I pressed her name and her phone chirped crickets and then she hugged me awkwardly, shoving her chest into mine.

  On the way home, I thought about Sasha. There was a pretty young woman waiting for me, if she hadn’t already stolen my checkbook, taken my dog, and gotten the hell out of Dodge. Perhaps she’d packed up the suitcases I hadn’t used in years, really loaded them up. I tried to imagine what she might take, what I had of value. I didn’t have much, that was for sure. I hoped she’d take Frank’s pictures off the walls in my study, thinking they were professional. What a day that would be! I wanted it to happen, wanted to see what I might do if my entire world imploded within twenty-four hours, how I would handle it. I relished the opportunity to lose my shit completely.

  I knew I shouldn’t have been driving—that bartender had a generous pour—but I took the beach, anyhow, so I could look at the water. The sun shining on the water, so pretty. I grasped the wheel tightly at ten and two, which I’d read was no longer the correct way to hold a steering wheel—something about the airbags shattering all of the bones in your arms. There was simply too much information available in the world and I missed living in a state of ignorance without having to apologize for it. Now there were people forcing information on you, telling you to educate yourself, that the information was only a few clicks away. I was so tired I closed my eyes. And then I stopped for beer and then, because it was right there, went into the liquor store for a fifth of Wild Turkey.

  I took a quick swig before leaving the lot. And then one more.

  The only thing that could make the day worse was if I got pulled over and then I was so nervous thinking about getting pulled over that I played it all out in my head: the handcuffs and Miranda rights, the cop putting his knee between my legs as I leaned against my car, the cold cell with all of the people in it and chatty wonk-eyed strangers asking me what I’d done. And what if there was no one to bail me out, what would happen then? At what point did they make you strip and give you prison-issue clothing, make you bend over to show them your asshole? I had spent my whole life with no one looking at my asshole and by God I was going to keep it that way.

 

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