This Side of Water

by Maureen Pilkington

  I picked up the teacup to distract her and held it in front of my face. She grabbed it from me and said, “No, honey, put it up to the sunlight.” She held the teacup high in front of the sunny window and put a spoon behind it with the other hand. “Now, look, Carla, if you can see right through china—see?—you’ve got yourself the real thing.”

  It was getting hot now, and my plan to fish off the boat rather than the lousy dock out back was making me desperate. “I better get the buckets and stuff out of the shed, Aunt Hen.” I was sweaty and wanted to be out of there.

  I followed the worn Persian rug through the narrow hallway to the studio on the other side of the house. When I got there I thought I must have been in the wrong room, but it smelled right. The door stood open, and the breeze was blowing the sheer curtains into the room. I could hear calm waves hitting the sides of the dock. A single canvas rested on an easel in the center of the studio. Teddy sat on the floor, abandoned.

  “Teddy? Where is everyone? Where are the nudes—and Uncle Sam?”

  Uncle Sam was nowhere to be found. Only his robe remained, bunched up on the splattered workbench, dirty with oils. I could smell fresh paint and the yellowy linseed oil he always worked with.

  I went to the open window and looked out on the boat. I didn’t see any sign of Uncle Samson. Usually, just before we left for a couple of hours of fishing, he would fool with the motor and check things on board.

  I wondered if my mother had found out about the trip to the Caps and had nixed my fun the way she often did. I stood there too frustrated to even cry. I had prepared sandwiches and brought sodas and beer. I gave Teddy a rub. His eyes looked more crusty than usual.

  A whiff of salt water blew in, reminding me that had I been on the boat with Uncle Sam, my line would be cast and I’d be ready for a good-sized bass to come my way. There was nothing like a nice swift jerk of the line when you knew you had one.

  I stood in the center of the studio, staring at the one canvas left in the room. The oils on it were wet and because of the glare I went up to it as close as I could. At first, all I noticed were the muted colors, unlike the sharp hues and flatness of Uncle Sam’s paintings. This one was amazingly different. A Florentine table was in the middle of the scene with a very large man standing on top of it. I wondered if the table might break. The man was naked, just like the women off to the sides of the picture peeking at him from behind the trees. He had one leg up a little bit--he was dancing. In fact, he was in a spin. His face was a blur, but I could tell he was happy.

  CROWDED POND

  “You spoiled little darlings!” Harley had that hand-on-your-hip kind of attitude when it came to her pets. She gave them everything and then fretted that they were too pampered.

  “If I didn’t love you so much, I’d eat you all up!” She lifted the lid off the sugar bowl and the buggers were already piling on top of one another, crawling toward Harley’s voice. Eight fat black ants. Big ones as far as ants go.

  Harley’s husband, Orson, stood in the kitchen doorway with his wet suit on.

  “There’s bread for toast,” Harley offered with her back to Orson, while Duffy inched up her forefinger.

  Orson flip-flopped through the moss-colored kitchen. He seemed unsure of which direction to turn. “No time. The Turner pond today. Thirty-four koi.” The screen door slammed behind him but didn’t latch. Orson forgot something, as usual, and poked his rubber-coated head through the kitchen window. “My mask?”

  “Check the trunk.” With satisfaction, Harley watched Orson’s clumsy gait disappear as he was vacuumed by the early fog.

  Harley figured the Turner fish were already dead. She learned from hearing Orson’s expertise gnawing at his brain in the middle of the night. Nightmares of fish overload caused him to mumble in his sleep: A crowded pond leads to suffocation. Sometimes Orson would kick off the sheets and make his way to the bathroom. Harley would find her husband on the cold floor clawing the bottoms of his dirty feet, always making the same observation to himself: Sandworms? I’m gonna pick you out, you little fuckers! Harley chalked this up to all that booze he guzzled nightly at the Tank Top Bar.

  Harley stood in the breakfast nook with fists as tight as clams. “I turn away for one second and you’re all over the place!” The slow ants spread out, roaming the humid kitchen. Duffy was on the floor sniffing a piece of silt from Orson’s slimy flipper. Marcus was stuck in grout.

  The phone rang.

  “Yes?” Harley answered the phone this way. Whoever was calling could get right to it.

  “I’m looking for Orson—Orson’s Pond Service. We’re breeding our koi. We heard Orson’s the best at this sort of thing.”

  “Your problem?” Harley looked for a pen, one eye on her clan running in all directions, fading into dots. Her forehead was moist from motherly rage.

  The customer babbled with compassion. “Well, we’ve done everything. You know, for breeding. We throw them chop-meat, flies, bits of hot dogs. I read sound husbandry is the key. You heard that?”

  Harley had had it. The oddball on the phone was worried about her fucking fish while Duffy was disappearing under the refrigerator.

  Harley made a double knot with the green telephone wire and threw the receiver into the vase of old daisies. It sunk to the bottom in the aging water.

  Harley stepped back without looking and heard a crunch. Marcus. She wiped him off her flat heel and smeared him on the counter. Fed up with their antics, Harley ran after Duffy and the others and stomped on all of them. She scraped them up with a butter knife and rubbed them into the mortar.

  The screen door bounced without closing and Orson stood in the doorway. “It’s not there. I might have left it at the shop.” Orson moved toward his wife, giving her a little shove out of the way. As he passed her he yanked her elbow toward him then he let it go as if her limb were a catch not worth keeping.

  Harley detested his uncertainties, his cowardice, his morning smell.

  Orson slowly hoisted himself on top of the green Formica counter next to the sink and placed his open mouth under the faucet for a drink of water.

  Harley returned to her job at the mortar and pestle and ground her darlings to a soft black paste with a splash of water. “Time for toast now? I’ve got some fresh blackberry jam.”

  Orson moved into his favorite chair at the kitchen table and sat there with a know-it-all attitude on his face, like some kind of fish scientist. He tapped his finger and waited for Harley to serve him breakfast.

  MUST BE NEAR THE HUDSON

  Nell was in the shower, a makeshift shower similar to a large plastic container shoved into the corner of the bathroom. She reached for the shampoo and knocked the bottle of “Scent Off” from the shelf. The top popped, and the smell of artificial pine trees filled the stall. She stuck her nose outside the plastic shower curtain for fresh air. She heard the voice of the Scranton news anchor on the TV in the bedroom. It was six a.m., September 10, 2001, the first bead in a string of beautiful fall days. The cream on top of all this blue sky? Troy was leaving, on the sly, to head to the Ruby Range to catch another one of his Bullwinkles.

  A breeze caused the cold shower curtain to stick to her body. Nell figured if she stayed in the shower long enough, Troy might be gone by the time she got out. He was going on the Q.T. from the plant, because he didn’t have any vacation time left. She heard him on the phone, calling in sick with an early flu that would keep him out for several days.

  Nell looked forward to her time alone. She was going to bang away on her upright, make cheesy olives, have her friends over for sangria with chopped up fruit. When she greets the customers at Wal-Mart, no one will be asking her about her unhappy face. With Troy in the pristine and untouched, there will be a salve in her joints as she fetches carts, checks receipts, eyes the shoplifters eyeing the goods, and give them her Nelliest of looks. How often she gave customers an ear, liste
ned to a request that bloomed into a problem sister-in-law, a sick spouse. It was surprising the conversations she found herself in, the advice she offered. Her talent to assist and heal came from experience: she considered herself an expert on suffering.

  Soaping up her leg for a shave, she imagined Troy being dropped by an inexperienced bush pilot—who he would pay cash to, for secrecy—while out in the remote and rugged. An unguided hunt, the way he liked it. She saw him hunched over a fire with a small tin pot of beans, nestled in some God-forsaken mountain range, wolf, wolverine, black bear, and caribou just hundreds of feet away.

  Now, in the strip of space between the shower curtain and plastic wall, Troy searched under the sink, slapping bottles out of the way, reaching for the Imodium. His stomach was as sensitive as a baby’s. He stood up slowly, getting off one knee, then the other and turned around, so much like a grizzly she wondered how she never saw the likeness before. She stuck her head back in and watched the shadow of his mass approach.

  He pushed the curtain aside. “I’m leaving in ten,” he said, his stutter temporarily gone. “For all you know, I have the flu so bad I can’t get my head off the pillow. If any shithead asks.”

  “Will do, but I’m freezing my bahoongas off.” Nell pulled the curtain closed.

  Troy opened it just as fast. He came in, bare chested, his sweats on, the tiniest beads of water in between the hairs of his beard. He pressed his thumb on the top of her arm. “P-P-Powerful,” he said, patting the backs of her arms, her thighs, the parts he loved to pick-on. His hands smelled like the oily solution from his 300 Magnum.

  Nell believed Troy’s lifetime of stuttering had turned him into a bully, low self-esteem and all that. Classic case but she didn’t care enough to read up on it. Kind of too late. He undid his pants and lifted her slightly so he could get himself inside her. The floor buckled and surely the shower would topple over with their overweight selves.

  When he was done, he pulled his feet out of his sopping pants and left them in the stall. He walked over to the sink, wiped all of himself with the face cloth, grabbed the box of Imodium, and started down the hall.

  “Don’t forget, Neller. Don’t forget what I told you to say. Only if asked.”

  “Flu, flu, flu. Can’t get your head up. Stuck to the pilla,” she said, her head sticking out of the curtain the way an actress does in those old movies, with the steam around her heart-shaped face. She studied the trail of water as she pressed the palm of her hand on her breast to cushion the throbbing.

  Years ago, after Nell had her last miscarriage, she and Troy had been driving home from the hospital when she asked him what was so great about traipsing around in the middle of nowhere? Neller, all your s-s-senses get into the act. I can’t do the words right, but it’s all so untouched—a small Outfitter’s Super Club--at l-l-less than one thousand feet—the s-s-sound of it flying is so g-g-god damn obvious. Even a f-f-frog rubbing his fucking legs is obvious. And, the wolves, the sound of them h-h-howling at night slices right through you. It had taken him forever to get it out, just like Nell had planned. She’d needed to zone out after all she had been through, so she had asked him a question about the only subject that was of interest to him, the only thing he would talk about. Nell thought stutterers were just plain old antisocial and that’s why Troy liked being in the middle of nowhere.

  The next morning Nell felt the excitement walking into Wal-Mart, getting ready for her day that would just get better, returning home that night to friends and sangria. Maybe it was the lighting, like a casino, the jingles and noise.

  “Hey Sebastian, party at my house tonight,” she sang over to him.

  She had gotten to know Sebastian through the “mock” shoplifting night for employees. Sebastian made most of the announcements over the speakers with his old DJ voice. That’s what she liked about this greeter job, people like him, people you could talk to, get real deep with. Wal-Mart’s fluorescent lights were turning her on from the inside, right around the valves of her heart.

  She found a little girl watching all the televisions. “Who are you with, you little Gretel?” The girl looked up and raised her hands. She must have been about five. Nell, surprised, picked her up. One of the service skills she had learned in the training seminar was to be proactive rather than reactive, and this kid needed her. The little girl pointed to the TV and soon all the customers were crowding the aisle, watching the special broadcast. Nell looked at the customers’ faces, not being a TV addict herself, and knew something was very wrong.

  Sebastian came to Nell and put his arm around her and the girl as the reports showed the United States under attack in New York City. “Must be the Middle East,” he said, his eyes fixed on the screen.

  The first of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center started to collapse. Nell pressed the child’s face into her shoulder so she wouldn’t see people jumping from the windows.

  Nell was determined to keep her head during the chaos, as customers ran out of the store and into their cars. It was her job, and more importantly, despite the confusion, she had a lost little girl to return to her parents. She found Sebastian and asked him to make an announcement about the lost girl. How could her parents not be frantic? Especially now? With all the sudden noise, would the announcement be heard? The little girl was so darling, so ready to be Nell’s friend. She sat with the girl in the waiting booth for her parents to come and claim her. In Nell’s old imagination, she saw herself as queen and the girl as her princess daughter, overlooking a kingdom in turmoil.

  Nell closed her eyes to block out the horror depicted on every single television in the store. And, with her eyes shut, she saw Troy, alone in the Ruby Range. She couldn’t tell anyone he was there because she was under strict orders. Within an hour of the attacks, the FAA had reported that all airports were shut down and all air traffic was halted nationwide. Would everything go back to normal, or was this the end of the world? If anyone asked, she would just say Troy had abandoned her.

  Sitting in the waiting booth, the girl on the miniature chair next to her, Nell imagined Troy opening his mouth, unable to get a word out. Could he sense that all was too quiet? That he may never be picked up? She thought about the string on his sweatpants that was never tied, his beard that needed to be trimmed, the small box of anti-diarrhea medicine, the three emergency ration bars, two thousand four hundred calories each, the wolverines and Dall’s sheep, moose, and bear. And, how a pack of wolves howling in the mountains can really break the silence of the wilderness.

  TWO PIGS AND A CIRCLE OF PALM TREES

  Mingo was always spoiling Pita with little gifts and brought her two baby pigs, which she immediately grabbed from him without saying thank you. Pita never said thank you because she believed that actions spoke much louder than words, and placed the sucklings in the bidet, handling them like two glass eggs. She turned the faucet on just a touch, and the pigs nuzzled each other, nose to ass, belly to belly. Pita kissed the speck of dried blood on Mingo’s cheek and whispered, “Now I have my own little sausages.”

  Pita wasn’t afraid to take the pigs out in the heat without lathering them in sunscreen, because the house Mingo and Pita shared was shaded by a circle of palm trees. The trees stood like crooked birthday candles on the rim of a cake. Pita sat in a wicker chair she had bought at the Boynton Beach flea market, with Spoon and Mooch in her arms, and watched Mingo on the sunny side of the yard, oiled and hunched over. She couldn’t see her favorite part of his body, his middle-aged belly, one that matched her own. His hands were deep in a large crate. Pita got that afraid feeling again, and pulled the pigs closer to her breasts.

  Spoon and Mooch had become noisy since they arrived and squealed constantly. They squirmed and squealed and wiggled right out of Pita’s arms and ran straight for the pool, as if they were going to do cannon balls off the side, one after the other. Mingo had the small portable TV outside, plugged into the outlet for the elec
tric barbecue they never used. The Palm Beach County News was on. No matter where he was, indoors, outdoors, in the car, on the boat, Mingo had the local news blaring.

  Pita ran past the darting pigs and belly-flopped into the pool so small that by the time she came up for air, she was already on the other side. Spoon and Mooch were behind her in the pool, bobbing up and down, doing the dog paddle, their smooshed-in faces looking desperate to stay above water.

  Pita called for Mingo. His slick back was free of any freckles and he was wearing a bikini bathing suit in neon green. Mingo was still working on whatever he was working on, shaking his head at reports that two drug traffickers from Dixie had been caught while speeding on their boat on the Intracoastal. “Assholes,” Mingo said with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Boxes and boxes of Ziploc bags Pita picked up for him with coupons at Publix were piled on the ground next to his bare feet.

  Pita screamed at Mingo’s narrow ass, which faced her. “My piggies are drowning!” She swam a beautiful breaststroke directly to Spoon and Mooch, scooped them up, and placed them on the broken concrete. The pigs, squeaking, took off after the little lizards and disappeared in the hedges.

  Mingo grabbed a towel with some grass stuck to it and wiped his hands. His black curls were so black she could see moving streaks of blue in them as they fell on his shoulders. The tips of his hair were greasy.

  Mingo’s work area was spread out over the old picnic table left by the family that used to live there. Surveying his packages, he sang back to Pita, as if he didn’t hear her request, in his usual lovey-dovey way, “Hey baby, what can I do to you?” He said it like the bartender, their friend Dag, who worked down at The New Taboo. They were always imitating Dag in the mornings, sashaying around their one bedroom, unkempt house that smelled like an orange grove. Sometimes they imitated Dag so much they forgot their own voices and expressions.