Cavedweller

by Dorothy Allison

  Nolan picked through the basket. “Everything changes.” He looked toward the bathroom. “Everything and everybody. Except me, of course. Dede told me that she wishes I would change, wishes I would show her what I’m made of. But I have, and she don’t seem to know it. This is all I am. Hard work and taking care of the people I love, making a little music and being steady. That’s all I know.” He sighed. “I’ve asked her to marry me three times, and she won’t say no, she won’t say yes. She tells me I’m crazy, and then she fucks my brains out.”

  Cissy wiggled uncomfortably. “She loves you.”

  “Oh yeah, I know she loves me.” Nolan took a drink of his beer. “I just wish I was sure Dede knew what that means, what love is really about. Some days I get the feeling she thinks sex is love, or craziness is love. That love has to be some big strange amazing thing, not the everyday all-my-life-and-then-some it is for me.”

  He picked up a nub of fried batter. “I think love’s like this zucchini. Zucchini is what keeps Goober’s in business, you know. Everybody thinks they know zucchini. Some like it, some hate it. They don’t really know it. It’s completely unrecognizable once they cook it up. Oh, they throw in a mushroom now and then, but you pay more for the mushrooms, so not too many of those go in. Put in a green pepper sometimes, or a carrot, but mostly it’s all zucchini. Perfect cheap bar food, nondescript and usual. Half the people who eat this can’t tell you what they ate. Always think it is something else.”

  “Whatever.” Dede took her seat next to Nolan. “I eat it for the grease anyway. So I can drink more. Grease coats your stomach. You gonna drink beer and whiskey shots, you need lots of grease.” She put her arm around Nolan and nuzzled his ear. “Why don’t we go home?”

  Nolan wiped his mouth and gave Cissy a warning glance, then stood up. “See you,” he called back as they left.

  “Whatever.” Dede waved her hand at Cissy.

  When they were gone, Cissy looked at the debris on the table, the empty pitcher and the greasy scraps. A pile of mushy zucchini lay on the salty wax paper at the bottom of the basket. Dede had picked the batter off her vegetables and eaten only the fried dough. Wherever possible, she stuck to fried bread and meat; her mainstay was hamburgers, pancake sandwiches, and the vitamins she still swallowed in quantity. “She’s skinny now, but you wait,” M.T. always said. “The way Dede eats, that girl is going to blow up like a walrus one of these days.”

  “If she don’t die of a heart attack,” Cissy said out loud.

  “You want anything?” Sheila started clearing the table.

  “Salvation,” Cissy joked. She was thinking about what Nolan had said, that Dede did not know what love was.

  “Well, you won’t get that here,” Sheila told her, and wiped the table clear.

  The next morning Cissy went to Amanda’s house early. She had fried eggs with sliced tomatoes on the table when everybody got up. Michael exclaimed over the plates and spooned soft-cooked eggs into plastic bowls for Gabe and little Michael. Amanda blinked down at her plate as if it held something unknown and strange. Before her illness, Amanda was down to eating only vegetables, fruit, and eggs. She would bake bread when the spirit moved her, using recipes from a cookbook published by a women’s church group from Nashville—egg bread and cheese loaves mostly. Everything had to have some biblical reference or it was off Amanda’s list. As she got sicker, Amanda would eat only eggs and bread, bread torn in half with a prayer and a blessing, and eggs almost runny on the plate. The eggs Cissy had made were soft-cooked but wholesome and sat on the plate next to creamy slices of white bread bare of butter or salt.

  “Isn’t this wonderful?” Michael said, but Amanda only sipped her milk and watched the boys smear egg into their hair.

  There was some way in which the old Amanda associated eggs with Jesus, though Cissy had not quite figured that out. She thought it might have something to do with Easter. She had talked about it with Dede the night before.

  “You can’t figure these things,” Dede said. “She’s not rational like you and me. If it were me and I was thinking on Jesus, I’d be out butchering lambs. Or leading some women’s group in prayer vigils out at the Piggly Wiggly, but with Amanda you can’t predict. What’s she doing now?”

  “She’s not doing anything,” Cissy told her sister. “I mean, nothing. She gets up in the morning and goes out of the house. She comes home late in the afternoon and goes right back to bed. She don’t talk to me even to complain, and it’s making me nervous. I can’t figure what she is doing. Makes me think about those people who go crazy and shoot up post offices or set off bombs in clinics. I can’t figure what the hell is going on.”

  Dede’s face went blank for a moment, and then she gave a bitter laugh. “Maybe she’s finally living in the real world with the rest of us,” she said. “Maybe Amanda’s finally starting to see things clear.”

  Watching Amanda drink milk and ignore the plate of eggs, Cissy found herself remembering Dede’s face in the bar. They were looking more alike, she realized. The night before, Dede’s face had been so tense and strained that she looked more like her older sister than herself, and the blank-faced Amanda drinking milk and staring listlessly at her boys looked younger, like a girl who had fallen into a dream of having a family and did not know quite how to contemplate what to do with it all.

  Before Michael could leave for his Friday home visits, Amanda grabbed her purse and was out the door and gone.

  “Where’s she going?” Michael asked Cissy. He had egg yolk all over the sleeve of the arm he had been using to prop up little Gabe.

  “How should I know?” Cissy tossed Michael a dish towel. “You’re on your own,” she told him. “I got to have a day off or I’m going to drown your sons.”

  Cissy was used to seeing Amanda everywhere—at the sewing shop on Main Street or the day-old bread store on Weed Road or the Quick Stop near the high school. Amanda had always had a set routine. A woman who was both wife to a minister and raising two boys had to have a system. Child care, prayer meetings, vacation Bible school, Sunday school, music lessons—with all that, Amanda was never on time and never where anyone thought she would be. Grocery-store runs were scheduled every weekend, but there was always something that Amanda had to do at the last minute. Casserole dishes had to be delivered to the sick and the bereaved. Clothing drives meant loads of laundry to be picked over and ironed nice and folded. The women’s family committee had to have photocopied re $ports on abortion statistics, and grainy pictures of mangled fetuses in porcelain basins. The girls’ auxiliary had a music group for which Amanda had even penned an original composition. Written in the voice of an aborted fetus, it was titled “I Forgive You but the Lord Does Mind.”

  Amanda’s dirt-brown Honda plowed back and forth from the Christian Academy to the Kmart, from the A&P to the Little People’s Music Emporium. Amanda was always stalking down the sidewalks of Cayro or angling through the doorway of the Bonnet in the afternoon, or even shoving through the midday crush at the junior college. Where does she get the time? Cissy had complained when she tried to keep track of Amanda’s schedule. Where in the world had Amanda ever found the time?

  On this Friday afternoon, Cissy saw Amanda’s car in the one place she would never have expected to see it.

  “M.T., stop!” Cissy yelled.

  “What for?” M.T. was impatient. She didn’t often run Cissy around, and resented doing it at all. Why couldn’t Cissy just get her license and start to drive? “You got one good eye,” M.T. was always saying, “which is more than you can say for some of the people driving around Cayro.”

  “An’t that Amanda’s car?”

  “How would I know? You mean that muddy Honda? That could be anyone’s car. Look, you want me to drive you over to those girls’ place or not? I thought you said you had to get there by one o’clock.” M.T. shifted uncomfortably. It had been a hot spring. She hated driving in the heat, hated it more that she couldn’t afford to run the air-conditioning all the time.
It used so much gas. And besides, people noticed. They’d say she needed the air-conditioning because she was so fat. M.T. was not bothered at all by being fat. She was bothered by people talking about it.

  “If Amanda is going to Goober’s in the afternoon, I need to know that too.”

  “Well, I an’t got time to be checking on Amanda and running you all across town.”

  “Then let me out.”

  “Dede, Dede, Dede.” Nolan nuzzled into the back of Dede’s neck, his hands sliding around her middle to link over her belly. “You’re my heart, girl. You’re all my heart.” He sighed happily, his hips flexing into hers and his toes curling in delight.

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” Dede abruptly flexed her legs and pulled Nolan’s hands open. “Let me go.” She kicked at him. “I said, let me go.” She half fell off the bed and stumbled to her feet. Nolan sat up with a confused expression.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, damn it. Can’t I get up when I want to?” Dede lit a cigarette angrily and kicked at the pile of discarded clothes on the floor. “Christ! Sometimes you just get all over my nerves, you know that?”

  She pushed her hair back off her face and glowered at Nolan. Her body glowed in the sunlight pouring through the gap in the gauzy blue bedroom curtains. Nolan swung his legs over the side of the bed and tried a tentative grin. “Sometimes you like it when I get all over you.”

  “And sometimes I don’t.” Dede fished her underwear out of the pile of clothes. She dressed with rough, impatient movements. “Sometimes, you know, a woman needs a little time to herself. Not always having a man all over her butt.” Dede pulled on her cotton shirt without bothering to put on her bra. It was a snap-front western shirt in yellow plaid with the sleeves cut off. She clicked the buttons together with the cigarette gripped between her lips. The smoke drifted up and made her squint.

  “If you need some time to yourself, you know you can have it,” Nolan said. He watched Dede hunt for her shoes. One sneaker was under the bench by the window, the other by the side of the dresser. When she had them both, she dropped to the bench and put them on, not bothering with socks. “Maybe we could go visit that place in Nag’s Head that you went to that time?” Nolan suggested. “Have ourselves a few days’ vacation.” Nolan climbed off the bed and gathered his clothes. He pulled on his underwear, keeping an eye on Dede, and then stepped into his jeans. “You haven’t any time off this year, have you?”

  Dede blew smoke and hung her head. “I haven’t had any time off in this life,” she told him, and then reached behind her to put out the cigarette on the window ledge. “But I don’t want to go to Nag’s Head.” Her mouth was flat and hard.

  Nolan pulled his T-shirt on over his head. “You still mad at me?”

  “Don’t start.”

  “Dede, I told you. The way I feel about you, of course, I’m going to ask you to marry me. You know you can tell me no, you can tell me to go to hell.”

  Dede put her hands up in front of her face.

  “Now, honey, I told you if you don’t want to get married, I understand. You want things to go on just the way they have, that’s fine with me.” Nolan caught Dede’s hands in his own, “I’ll go on this way forever, I told you. And if you want I’ll try harder not to get so gushy on you.” He grinned ruefully.

  Dede shook her head. “Nolan.”

  Nolan leaned forward and put his face down into her tangled hair. He breathed in deeply. “Oh, you smell so good,” he whispered.

  “Damn.” Dede almost sobbed. She pushed him away.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Nothing.” Dede wiped her eyes.

  “Dede?”

  “Shut up. Just don’t say nothing, all right? Just leave me alone for a bit.” She wiped her face again and ran her fingers through her hair. Her eyes searched Nolan’s blank face. Abruptly Dede bent forward and pushed her mouth on Nolan’s. She kissed him fiercely, her hands gripping his neck. “Damn you,” she whispered to his mouth. She kissed him again.

  “Oh, baby,” he whispered back. “All my heart.” He put his arms around her, kneading the tight knot of her shoulder muscles and massaging down her back to her hips. Dede pushed into him desperately, her mouth bruising his.

  “Oh God!” Nolan moaned. He half lifted Dede, pulling her toward the bed.

  “No.” Dede pushed at Nolan until he stumbled. She swayed as he fell back on the bed.

  “I got to go,” she said.

  “Lord! Dede!” Nolan’s voice was shaky, his hands balled in fists on his knees. “Don’t do me this way. Tell me what’s going on.”

  Dede smoothed her shirt and stuffed her shirttails into her jeans. “I’ll tell you later,” she said. “I’ll talk to you tonight.”

  Nolan sat on the bed and tried to catch his breath. He listened as she went out the kitchen door and pounded down the stairs. “I don’t understand,” he said out loud. “I just do not understand.”

  He heard the car door slam shut and visualized Dede slipping into the turnip-purple Volkswagen’s bucket seat, her bright hair glowing against the dusty upholstery. He remembered her behavior at Goober’s last night. Her mood swings seemed more and more extreme lately, though she said she was doing no drugs. He suspected he knew what was going on, but he dared not speak it. He would wait. He would let her tell him. He wiped his face and sighed. His pants felt too tight and sticky with sweat. Thank God Tacey had taken Nadine out to buy some new nightgowns in the handicapped van that made runs to Beckman’s on Fridays. He had desperately needed to hold Dede closely, to make love to her and feel her wanting him the way he wanted her. It never stopped, that aching need for her, but lately it seemed they were both desperate all the time.

  “She could be,” Nolan whispered to himself. “Could be.” He wiped sweat out of his eyes. He would not think about it. There was nothing he could do until Dede decided to talk to him.

  Nolan scooped up the damp sheets and dirty clothes from the floor. He’d do a load of laundry and pick up a bit. It was still mid-afternoon, and he was not tired. He would get the house cleaned up some before Nadine and Tacey got back. Maybe for dinner he would get them all some fried chicken from that place Nadine liked on Yarnell Road. Tacey had been cooking all the time lately, she needed a night off.

  When Sheila’s pickup pulled into the driveway, Nolan was running hot water over dirty dishes. The washer was going, and all the windows were. standing open.

  “You doing housework?” Sheila asked with a laugh. “You are one major piece of work, Nolan Reitower, you know that?” She pushed open the screen door and gave Nolan her biggest smile. “I brought you that music book you left at Goober’s last night. Thought you might need it.”

  Nolan nodded his thanks. He had soap bubbles all over his arms and hands, and a line of sweat running off his nose. “I appreciate it.”

  Sheila put the book on the table and looked around the kitchen. “You sure are industrious.”

  “Got to do it sometime,” Nolan told her. “Place gets messy.”

  “And you’re the type, aren’t.you? You see a thing needs doing, you just get to it, don’t you?” She wrinkled her nose prettily. “Like I said, you are one piece of work.” She stepped over to Nolan, looked up at him from heavily mascara’d eyes, and pushed up on her toes to kiss his mouth.

  Nolan gasped and froze with his soapy hands in the air.

  “Oh, look at you!” Sheila giggled. “I an’t gonna bite you. And I know you’re taken. Whole world knows that.” She kissed him again, vastly amused at how he blushed and trembled.

  When Sheila turned to go, Dede was standing in the doorway watching them. She had a bag of groceries in her arms, and a face as pale as the moon in the night sky.

  “You son of a bitch,” Dede said, “you goddamned son-a-bitch!”

  Nothing in Cissy’s life had prepared her for the sight of Amanda sitting at the bar at Goober’s, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright and glittering. Was she drunk? Was Aman
da drunk in the middle of the day? She had one of those great big glasses in front of her, half full of one of Goober’s famous fruitoholic drinks. Vodka, Cointreau, coconut milk, ice, pineapple juice, and slices of pineapple filled the tall, sweating glass.

  Cissy sat down next to her. “So, what are you doing?” She was surprised to hear how much her voice sounded like Delia’s. Mama voice, she thought. Here I am, talking Mama talk.

  Amanda swung her head slowly to face Cissy. “Why aren’t you watching the boys?”

  “Michael has them.” Cissy took a deep breath. She could smell the Cointreau.

  Amanda shrugged. “Well, all right then.”

  “What are you doing at Goober’s?”

  “Becoming a regular.” Amanda took a sip of her drink and rolled her eyes at Cissy. “You look shocked,” she said.

  “I am shocked. What’s come over you? You been running out every day, staying away from home, barely looking at your boys when you are there. Is this what you’ve been doing? Sitting in Goober’s every day, getting drunk on your butt?”

  “No.” Amanda shook her head. “This is only my second time. I’ve been to the mall. I’ve been to the peewee golf, and the video-games center down in Marietta. I went and had my nails done, and one day I drove all the way to Chattanooga to look at their bridge before I drove back home.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I never saw it. Started thinking about how many things I had never seen, and just decided to go.” She paused and took another sip. “And on Wednesday I was arrested,” she said, each syllable distinct and precise.

  “Arrested?”

  “And released. The deputy wouldn’t hold me no matter what I said. And I said something about it. I said a lot, but they just drove me around and ignored me. Put me out back at my car. Told me to go home and talk to God a little more.” She leaned forward slightly and sucked at the pink straw that was stuck through one of the pineapple slices.