“I know,” Duane said. “I think there’s a fish in my water bed, too.”
“Then why are you there?” Karla asked.
“When I walked in to my appointment it was the first motel I came to,” he explained. “Then once I started therapy I was too tired to move.”
Karla stepped out the door and looked around. He thought she might be admiring his new bicycle—she had had a bicycle phase herself—but in a moment she came back in and didn’t comment on the bike.
“I’m getting convinced there’s a girlfriend,” she said. “This room looks like a room looks when you fuck all day.”
“I didn’t fuck all day,” Duane said. “I felt like I was vanishing—the only thing that helped was to take a lot of baths.”
Karla shook her head.
“I never would have thought that my own husband would lose his marbles to this extent,” she said. “Is the doctor pretty?”
“She’s pleasant looking,” Duane said. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“It’s just a thing I wanted to know,” Karla said. “Why’d you buy the bike?”
“The therapy makes me real, real tired,” Duane said. “I could barely even walk back to that crappy motel. I was too tired even to buy new clothes. I finally had to call Bobby and ask him to bring me some.”
“I know,” Karla said. “Then the little prick didn’t want to tell me where you were staying. I practically had to beat it out of him.”
“He never should have told you,” Duane said. “I’ve kept plenty of his secrets, over the years.”
“Why does therapy make you tired?” Karla asked. “If it’ll put you to sleep I better try some. I haven’t slept through the night since you left home.”
“I don’t understand it,” Duane said. “Dr. Carmichael says it makes the past kind of fall in on you. I guess I must have had a pretty heavy past. When I come out of that office I can barely pick up my feet.”
Karla suddenly began to cry. Duane patted her on the shoulder a few times, awkwardly, and then sat across from her and drank his coffee while she had her cry, one of hundreds he had witnessed during the years of their marriage.
“I’m sorry I upset you,” he said, when she had finished and was drying her eyes on a napkin. “I wish I understood why I feel this way, but I don’t. That’s why I’m going to the doctor.”
“The school board was real upset that you resigned,” Karla said. “So was the Chamber of Commerce. You’ve got the whole damn town feeling guilty. They all think it must be their fault. Elmer Kunkel had the worst idea yet.”
Elmer Kunkel was president of the Chamber of Commerce.
“Uh-oh,” Duane said.
“Elmer thinks the reason you’re walking around like a crazy man is because you hate your pickup but can’t afford to trade it in for a new one.”
“There’s some truth in that but it’s not Elmer’s problem,” Duane said.
“He thinks it is,” Karla said. “He don’t think a leading citizen ought to be walking around on foot, so he wants to take up a collection from all over the county and buy you a new pickup and then have a big ceremony and give it to you.”
“Oh my lord, that’s terrible,” Duane said. “I’ve got to stop him. I don’t want a new pickup—he’s got to return the money, if he’s collected any.”
“He’s collected a bunch,” Karla said. “Couldn’t you just take the new pickup and let Dickie use it? He needs a new pickup.”
“No, he doesn’t, let him use mine,” Duane said. “I left the keys in that old cracked cup in the cabinet.”
“Oh, I found the keys and let him use your pickup, but he’s already broke an axle,” Karla said. “See how out of touch you get when you don’t come home for a week?”
“He broke an axle?” Duane said. “I know he’s always been hard on cars, but that pickup was nearly brand new. How could he break an axle?”
“By being in too big a hurry,” Karla said. “He tried to drive off the hill over by that west lease.”
“That hill?” Duane said. “But that’s insane!”
“No, staying in a motel where there’s a fish in the water bed is insane,” Karla said. “What Dickie done was just stupid.”
“I guess being a boss hasn’t made him less reckless,” Duane said. The hill in question was strewn with boulders. He couldn’t imagine why his son would have tried to drive down it.
“No, but he’s not on drugs,” Karla said. “Let’s count our blessings.”
“I don’t have a session tomorrow,” Duane said. “I might pedal home and see the grandkids—see if they remember me.”
“Don’t do us any favors,” Karla said.
Then she went to the door.
“I know you’re out there, you little whore!” she screamed into the darkness.
“Karla, there’s no one out there,” Duane said, as she was getting into her car.
“Bye, Duane,” Karla said.
15
THAT NIGHT DUANE COULDN’T SLEEP. He knew Karla was shifting from concern to anger. Rather than believe that he was in a shaky mental state she had chosen to believe that he was up to something with a woman—possibly his psychiatrist. For some time she had been complaining that they never talked, husband-to-wife, anymore. But now he was talking regularly to another woman—his doctor. He knew Karla well enough to know that the fact that Honor was a woman would soon come to outweigh the fact that she was a doctor. In Karla’s mind he was already giving another woman something he was increasingly reluctant to give her: his attention. That was bound to rankle. He didn’t know exactly what Karla might do—but she would do something. Karla wasn’t passive. Sooner or later she would come out fighting. It worried him. After tossing and turning for a while, unable to sleep, he decided to phone her at home—but then remembered that he was in his cabin, and had no phone.
Toward morning he did sleep for an hour or two, long enough to have his old calf-roping dream, or at least a snatch of it. The calf was only briefly in the dream. It left the chute and vanished. Duane raced up the length of the arena, swinging his rope. But he never threw it, he just swung it. Then he dismounted and kept swinging his rope. Suddenly there were calves all over the arena, scores of calves. Then the calves turned into jackrabbits and hundreds of children poured out of the stands, to chase the rabbits. Some of the children had tiny ropes. Then the jackrabbits changed into grasshoppers, and the grass-hoppers into a flock of egrets, which rose over the bleachers in a white cloud and flew away.
This time when Duane awoke he didn’t feel sad. It was a beautiful, crisp day—sunlight beamed into the cabin from every window. He went outside into the sunlight—there was no trace of the vanishing feeling left, but he was hungry and Rag and her gourmet cooking was only six miles away. He got into his biking clothes and sped down the road, stopping only at the bridge where the battery and the car seat had been dumped. The river flowed cleanly this time; the litter consisted only of two beer bottles. He didn’t want to get his biking shoes muddy, so he decided to leave the beer bottles until he was crossing the bridge in his walking shoes.
“Oh lord, it’s Jean-Claude Van Damme, winner of the Tour de France,” Rag said, when Duane came in wearing his biking clothes.
“Jean-Claude Van Damme is an actor,” Duane pointed out. “What makes you think he won the Tour de France?”
“Because he’s got those nice strong thighs, like winners have,” Rag said.
Baby Paul, who was teething and fretful, immediately stopped fretting when Duane lifted him out of his high chair. He began to burble, spewing out carroty baby food.
Little Bascom, wildly excited, started climbing up Duane’s leg.
There was a rapid spillage of grandchildren into the room. Loni, Barbi, and Sami came running in from the yard, all of them yelling “Pa-Pa,” arousing Willy and Bubbles, who stumbled in rubbing sleep out of their eyes. Soon they all clustered around their grandfather, ignoring their breakfast. Several had points they want
ed to make, and make immediately.
“I put a spell on Willy and Bubbles and Loni and Sami, so they’ll all get F’s in school, because I want them to flunk out,” Barbi said.
“You shut up, you ugly witch,” Bubbles said.
“Shut up, or we’ll beat you to a pulp,” Willy added. He had in fact got an F in his math class but had successfully concealed his report card so the news hadn’t spread. Now his cousin was spreading it, and to his grandfather at that. His grandfather was the family member who took the most interest in report cards.
“Now, now, let’s not beat anybody to a pulp,” Duane said. “I was hoping we could enjoy a peaceful breakfast.”
Rag went around the table, ladling a thick glutinous gray mass into the children’s bowls.
“What’s that—it looks like you could pave a road with it,” Duane said.
All of the children burst into fits of giggling, including Baby Paul and Little Bascom, neither of whom knew why they were laughing. The oldest children loved it when their grandfather stood up to Rag, a petty tyrant who caused them much aggravation.
“It’s Scottish porridge, which is a roughage, which is what causes people to have good, regular bowel movements,” Rag said. “Pour some of this maple syrup on it and it will taste just like ambrosia.”
“I never ate ambrosia so I wouldn’t know about that,” Duane said. “If it don’t taste good I guess we can pave the driveway with it.”
“Is this real maple syrup?” Barbi asked. She had developed an acute product pickiness.
“Sure it’s real maple syrup,” Rag said. “It says so right on the bottle. It came right out of a maple tree.”
“Show me the bottle,” Barbi requested. “I want to read about it.”
“Shut up, you talk too much, Barbi—I’m getting a headache,” Willy said. He wanted to sit by his grandfather and enjoy the good feeling he got when his grandfather was around, but he couldn’t concentrate on the good feeling with Barbi chattering away.
Julie drifted in and gave her father a big hug. She had just washed her face and hair, which made her look about fifteen, too young to be the mother of Willy and Bubbles, though she was. Julie still smelled like a teenager, to Duane. Her smell brought a moment of nostalgia.
“I hear you’re working hard at the bank,” Duane said. “I’m proud of you.”
Julie beamed. “Leon says I can be an officer at the bank if I go on and finish up my degree,” she said.
“Then do it,” Duane said. “Who’s Leon?”
“Her regional supervisor,” Karla said, entering from the yard. “He’s the latest nerd to get a crush on Julie, which is why he’s so anxious to promote her. I wonder, if I left home for a few weeks and ignored all my responsibilities, if everyone would adore me when I showed up again.”
“No, Granny, we wouldn’t, because you’re too cranky,” Sami said. The comment floored everybody; Sami rarely spoke.
Karla took the comment gracefully. “Sami’s had it in for me ever since I spanked his little butt for trying to run over the cat with his tricycle,” she said. “Anyway I know I could never be as popular as Grandpa Duane.”
“This oatmeal sucks,” Willy said. “It makes my teeth stick together.”
“What if it made pavement in your mouth?” Bubbles said, giggling.
“What if it plugged you up so you could never do number two again?” Barbi said. “Then you’d swell up and burst.”
“Everybody better shut up about my Scottish porridge,” Rag said. “It’s one of the healthiest foods in the world. The whole Scottish nation has lived off it for centuries.”
All the children ignored the comment, and the Scottish porridge too.
“Tardy bell, tardy bell!” Rag warned. “We need to beat that tardy bell.”
There was the usual mad scramble as the children tried to find book bags, homework, Crayolas, and lunch pails. Bubbles insisted that her mother pin up her hair, although the tardy bell was imminent and all the other children already in the car. Baby Paul began to fret again, biting the tray of his high chair to ease the pain of his emerging teeth.
Duane scraped most of the porridge into the disposal before frying himself three eggs and some bacon.
“If you’re going to eat that many eggs you should eat the whites and leave the yolks,” Karla suggested.
“But the yolks are the good part,” he reminded her. “Besides, didn’t you know there’s a theory that eating egg whites makes you go blind?”
Rag came back in good spirits.
“Just beat the tardy bell,” she said.
“If you’re mad at me why bother warning me about egg yolks?” Duane asked.
Karla lit a cigarette.
“I had quit smoking for almost a month before you pulled this stunt,” she reminded him.
“It’s not a stunt, it’s a new way of life,” Duane said. “I think Rag understands that, don’t you, Rag?”
Both of them looked at Rag. It was never easy to predict which side she’d come down on in a family dispute.
“I don’t officiate, I’m not an umpire, I’m not a referee,” Rag said. “Even if you pay me ten million dollars I don’t officiate.”
“I don’t think either one of us was thinking about paying you ten million dollars to decide if Karla’s mad,” Duane said. “She’s been mad at me before, once or twice.”
“I looked your doctor up in the yearbook, to see if she was pretty,” Karla informed him. “You can tell a lot from looking at pictures in a yearbook.”
“What yearbook?” Duane asked. “She didn’t go to high school here.”
“No, but she went here until she was in the sixth grade,” Karla said. “So she’s in the yearbooks, too. She was real cute when she was in the sixth grade.”
“So were you and a lot of other girls,” Duane said. “I doubt you can really tell much about her from how she looked when she was in the sixth grade.”
“Maybe not, but it’s better than nothing,” Karla said. “All this has stressed me so that I need to be in therapy myself.”
“Then go—it wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Duane said.
“Why go? You’ve already got the best therapist in town. I’d just be spilling out my guts to some dopey man.”
While he was in the den getting a fresh checkbook out of a drawer he noticed a pile of Monty Python videos on the floor. Monty Python had been one of the first shows he and Karla had watched, when they first got cable, years ago. There was quite a stack of videos on the floor—so many that Duane stopped and counted them. There were twenty-three in all.
“What’s with all the Monty Python?” he asked, when he went back to the kitchen.
“What do you mean, what’s with them?” Karla asked. “I watch them, that’s what’s with them.”
“There’s twenty-three videos there. That’s a lot of videos.”
“Yep, and I have a lot of lonely nights to get through, now that my husband’s left me,” Karla said. “When nighttime comes it’s either laugh or cry, and I’d rather laugh.”
“I tried to watch one but it didn’t make a word of sense,” Rag said. “But then, to each his own, I guess.”
“It’s comedy, it’s not supposed to make sense; it’s supposed to make you laugh when otherwise you’d be crying your eyes out,” Karla told her.
“I think you’re overreacting, frankly,” Duane said. “I haven’t done anything except take some walks, sleep in my cabin, and go see my doctor. That’s nothing to make anyone cry their eyes out. You used to vanish for a week at a time, when you were young and wild.”
“I wasn’t vanished, I was just over in a honky-tonk dancing up a storm,” Karla said. “You took it way too personally.”
“Okay, so why are you taking this personally now?” he asked.
“I’d go into therapy if I could find a Chinese doctor,” Rag said. “I guess no one liked my gourmet Scottish porridge.”
“Why would you need a Chinese doctor?” Duane asked.
>
“Because I believe in yoga and meditation,” Rag said. “The cure for everything is right there in your mind—you just need to know how to get to it.”
“Why can’t I be in therapy with you?” Karla asked. “Lots of marriage counselors see the husband and wife together.”
“But what I’m doing isn’t marriage counseling,” Duane said. “I didn’t start all this because I was unhappy in my marriage—I wish you could believe that.”
“You can say that till you’re blue in the face and I won’t believe it,” Karla said. “When a woman’s husband leaves her to live in a cabin, it’s going to cause her to think there’s something wrong with her marriage.”
“What if I told you that our marriage is the best part of my life and it’s all the other parts that I’m upset about?” Duane asked.
Karla shrugged.
“It’s nice to hear but when nighttime comes I still don’t have nothing to fall back on but Monty Python,” she informed him.
“At least the kids seem to be doing better,” he said, trying another tack. “Dickie’s put the fear of God in all the crews, and Julie’s working. I don’t know about Nellie and Jack.”
“Nellie’s getting a tryout on the Weather Channel and nobody’s heard from Jack,” Karla said. “He leads his own life, like his father.
“I just wish I understood,” she added, sadly. “I just wish I understood.”
When she began to cry again Rag vanished into the laundry room. Duane went over and hugged his wife until she stopped crying and blew her nose.
“If I understood it well enough to explain it I wouldn’t need to go to a doctor,” Duane said.
Unable to think of anything more consoling to say, he went outside and checked on the greenhouse—at once he saw that it was in a neglected state. Usually when Karla was depressed she gardened until she felt better, but now the greenhouse was bleak, untended. It was March, time to get the big garden they always planted started too. Normally they grew a great variety of vegetables in the outside garden: corn and peas, green beans, turnips, okra, cabbage, kale, onions, and a fair variety of herbs. They also made sure of an abundance of tomatoes, which they both particularly liked. Sometimes they tried strawberries, and, always, cantaloupe and watermelon.
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