by Annie DeWitt
“You’ve got your rot on, Helene,” I said. Her bed overlooked the south pasture where Father helped Otto bury the old Shetland. The south pasture got the afternoon light. “Wake me up when I’m bronzed,” she said.
“My Helene,” I said. “You’re crispier than burnt bacon.” Really, it was the jaundice. She was nearly glowing with it. “A slow leak,” Otto Houser explained it. “Hole in her stomach.”
“Red hots,” I said as I removed the bedpan and wiped her down, looking for signs of sores or sudden bouts of perspiration.
“Kidneys,” she called them.
“That’s my girl,” Otto Houser said as he spread her legs and arranged her body.
The salve he used was thick and oily. He showed me how to thin it with the friction of his palms.
“Easy does it,” Otto said when the grease was the right consistency.
He lifted His Helen’s legs exposing her bottom. I spread a layer of ointment over the patches of red.
When I had a good coat on her, Otto handed me a small white pellet.
“Let me show you,” he said taking my hand in his and gliding the pellet up into his wife’s crack.
As he withdrew my hand from the warmth of her body, he ran the length of his finger under his nose.
“Smell her,” he said.
9.
Mother wasn’t the only one holding her tail high that summer. What I noted most about her absence was the pheasant farm. The doctor had erected a coop on the corner of his property where it met ours. His birds strut around the fields in back of our house, noiseless, stubborn, brimming with pride. I watched them out the windows Mother had installed which looked out over the deck. Nightwalkers. Daywalkers. His birds were both. They had no respect for the hour of the day or the confines of their dwellings. There was an arrogance to their beauty that I found both attractive and abstinent. The way they hefted their legs and cocked their bright heads towards the sky, they were always stepping over something as though the very ground beneath them were rotten.
We bordered the doctor’s run on the north east corner of a thickly wooded pine forest. Our scrub and shade was stopped short by a stone wall and a tangle of barbwire. On the other side of the wall lay the doctor’s plot, acres of pristinely plowed land on which he housed fields of corn or wheat or alfalfa depending on the season. How these fields were kept up or by whom, no one could fathom. The doctor remained more myth than reality. Every now and again word went around that he’d taken a new vehicle, a signal of distant prosperity. People would’ve blamed such a man if it weren’t for his offspring. His wife housed pregnancies like ritual. No one could turn their nose up at a man with such seed.
The doctor’s fields provided a straightaway where Father galloped headlong into an empty expanse of green and wind. In Mother’s place, Father purchased a seventeen hand Morgan named Rebel who used to pull carriage and wasn’t yet used to the weight of a man. In the barn, Rebel was all pussy, nosing your crotch for scent or your pockets for grain. As long as you were under foot, he let you blow your scent in his nose. Under the saddle, Rebel was all riot. He’d try to throw it the minute you tightened the girth. The way he hung his head reminded me of those big broad shouldered men who’d never harnessed their athleticism and rather stooped around always looking for a woman’s back to glide up on and adhere to.
The Sheik and I were often at Father’s heels as he spurred Rebel across the doctor’s acres, squaring off with what pieces of the world he had left behind. Father rode in an old red and white bicycle helmet. The thin red chinstrap flapped wildly around his face in the breeze.
Evenings after Mother left, Father turned to his creative habits. For Father there was nothing alluring in the newness of progress. An engineer, he felt betrayed by the achievements of his profession. Data General may have been the wave of the future, but for Father, computers merely allowed one to operate in a language outside the banalities of human circumstance.
“I’ve still got my girls,” Father often said to Birdie and me after dinner, pushing aside the furniture in the living room where the three of us could lounge. Our nightly games were played this way, soldiers in the field.
The bald spot on the back of Father’s head glowed in the track lighting as he bent over the piles of Pick Up Stix, contemplating his next move. Father believed that when it came to strategy, one could win if you just understood the physics.
Birdie often grew bored of waiting for Father to take his turn.
“Try that one,” she’d say into his ear, climbing on his back and pointing over his shoulder at the stick buried deepest in the pile.
“Just a minute, kiddo,” Father would say. “We’ve got to consider this problem from all angles.”
Afterward I retired to the Atari while Birdie ran jumping courses over stacks of pillows she’d piled in the doorways of the Bottom Feeder. Birdie’d adopted an old hobbyhorse as her mount that summer, thrusting the wooden handle between her legs and galloping off into the foyer while peering ahead at the jump in earnest. Whenever she knocked a pillow down, a look of discernment came over her face; she’d slap her thighs and cluck her teeth to egg the horse onward.
Father surrendered to his sketchbook or an episode of The Joy of Painting. When forced, he would catch up on work in front of the cathode ray monitor on the desk in the corner of the living room. The monitor weighed a ton, and could only display sixteen colors. The next year, with the birth of the World Wide Web, Internet access would be as slow as boiling water. The modem would beep and hiss until it made a connection. For now, the three of us lost ourselves in a session of King’s Quest unawares of the greater world around us. You were constantly having to save the game, as it often forgot your progress. Even the most useless items encountered on the quest—a dead fish, a rotten tomato, or an old board—could have an unexpected and creative purpose in the right situation. “When a situation looks completely impassable,” Father said. “A good idea is to leave it and come back later.”
Above the computer hung a painting of Father’s. A modernist construction. Four multicolored sticks set on a deep blue background. The canvas itself was long and vertical—taller than Birdie or I—and it took up most of the backdrop to the computer. The four rectangles overlapped one another at various heights, as though magnetically attracted. I often stared at the rectangles wondering which I would remove first.
“What do you make of it, kiddo?” Father would say to me, wrapping his arm around my shoulder in front of his masterwork.
“It’s got symmetry, Pop.”
Before bed we snacked on Cheese Nips and Slice ‘n’ Bake. Birdie ate the cookie dough straight out of the wrapper. Those nights we ordered Chinese food, Father made us virgin Scorpion Bowls out of Kool-Aid and cans of fruit salad.
Dr. Who was the only program on which we could agree. We enjoyed the blue police box which became his space ship and tumbled into the galaxy. There was something about this arrangement that seemed plausible that summer. We watched the show in solidarity.
Father, Birdie, and I sat cross-legged with our backs against the couch, which Birdie had stripped of its cushions. “What’s your name?” Dr. Who says to the girl as they run to evacuate ship. “Cas,” she says. “You’re young to be crewing a gunship, Cas,” Dr. Who says. “I wanted to see the universe. Is it always like this?” she says. The two stand on either side of the door and yell passionately at each other as they part. “I’m not leaving this ship without you,” Dr. Who calls out to her. “Get out of here,” Cas says. “While some of the universe is still standing.”
10.
During the day while Father worked, we were watched by a train of women.
Our first girl was a bleeder. The daughter of a psychologist and one of the women who worked line at the cafeteria. She lived in a small Cape close to the center of town. Those mornings I’d seen her standing at the foot of her drive as the bus rounded
the corner, she looked like the sort of star who’d wasted the fetch of her youth trying to settle down with some country boy who’d loved her and left her. In his wake, she’d taken to hitching her way across America to understand just what it was the rest of us were doing. I expected her to stick out her thumb when she saw the bus round the corner.
Our bleeder was not a regular. The driver kept a look out for her. Those mornings she was running late, just exiting the small door of the house as our chariot pulled into view, the girl moved down the drive at a slither, her leather clad arms full of bags and bangles, not a book or proper paper weighing her down. Once aboard, she disappeared down the aisle of the bus. We left the last seat empty for her next to the Emergency Exit. We figured her for someone who bet on solitude to make her happy until she found her way out of this place and into the big thing for which she was meant.
Her name I never was clear on. Everyone called her something different. It was one of those headliners which had a purr to it—Katerina, Katya, or Katelyn—the derivative of some family name which must’ve belonged to a distant grandmother. Luckily, she was the type of girl who lent herself to nicknames and variations—Katie, Kathy, Kat. I just called her K, as in the letter, because it was easy to remember and it allowed her to be whomever I wanted her to be on that particular day or hour.
The first night K arrived I understood that Father was meeting Mother. I could tell by the closeness of his shave, the way he tucked and bothered. K had driven over, a move Father usually would’ve declined as he always drove our girls. This evening when K arrived, he’d barely looked at her, his usual attempt at conversation replaced with a nervous fidgeting around in the kitchen for his wallet and his keys. “These them?” K said, pulling out the clunky iron ring from under a stack of newspapers on the counter.
She held the ring out in front of her. When it came to keys, Father wasn’t frugal. He had an eye for lock boxes and bike chains, anything that could be secured and then unsecured through a series of numbers that tested logic. Father never threw out an old key because he could never remember what it belonged to. There was probably a key on that chain that unlocked his dorm room in college. I figured it for the small, three-toothed brass.
Once he was gone, K and I were left standing in the kitchen. She eyed herself in Mother’s windows as she crossed into the living room. Though she wasn’t overly thin, she moved with a balletic confidence.
“Do these things open?” she said, nodding at the window. She stood on the back of the couch, undoing the upper lock.
“We usually keep them closed,” I said.
“You get that one,” she said.
Once the windows were cranked, she smoked a cigarette overlooking the deck.
“Some fall,” she said, leaning out for a moment.
The fact that it was her duty to entertain us, seemed to eclipse her. I was taken aback by her pause.
“I’ve tried them,” I eventually said.
“Really,” she said. She exhaled and let the smoke linger. “I never figured you for a smoker.”
“I’ve watched Mother,” I said. That was true. There was something about this statement that seemed to soften K.
“Well,” she said. “It’s never too late to quit.”
She finished the remains of her drag, pinching and flicking the stink out the window. The rest of the butt she carried through the kitchen and flushed.
I retired to my bedroom to scheme. Eventually I came down to check on her under the guise of getting a glass of water from the kitchen. She was sitting in the dark watching television eating slices of ready-made dough. The way the contours of her face lit up in the flicker of the screen, her beauty struck me not only as a presence but a talent.
I lay in bed waiting for Father’s return in a strange incapacitation. I watched the various levels of darkness come into the room, training my eyes to detect the slightest change in gradient, which signaled the approach of a car. When Father pulled into the drive, the pattern of the headlights on the ceiling seemed comic-like in their amplitude. The dim beam of K’s own headlights followed as she backed into the road and pulled away.
I waited for the sound of any movement on the stairs, the slow, deliberate shuffle of Father’s feet signaling that he was once again retiring alone. In the silence, I half anticipated Mother’s bound. Mother functioned in only two speeds. Her body shifted imperceptibly between the loll-and-graze and the dart-and-skid. I’d watched her lithe frame passing Father on the stairs one evening before she’d left. She’d angled herself between his hip and the railing so as not to interrupt his march. Instinctively he’d reached out to trap her, circling one arm around her waist. He’d held her there, taking the back of his free hand and spanking her. She’d struggled in his arms. They’d shared a long kiss at the top of the stairs.
“I’m wiped,” I had heard Mother say in Father’s ear.
“Not yet, you’re not,” Father had said.
That night Mother had on a short nightgown when she came to tuck me in. I’d seen her wear the nightgown when applying her makeup on those rare nights she and Father were going out. I’d admired the neckline and the thinness of the straps on her shoulders in the bathroom mirror from where I sat on the counter the way women admire each other when they’re alone. In the thin light of the hall that evening, as Mother had bent over to kiss me goodnight, I could see the curves of her thighs where they separated between her legs and the patch of hair between them.
That was the first night I’d heard my parents engage in their respective yearnings. Just as I was about to find sleep, I’d heard the clang of the headboard, which I recognized from those mornings Birdie and I jumped on their bed. I would have thought little of the noise had it not been for the rhythm. Its persistence would die out for a moment only to return with a louder, faster gait.
After a time, the rhythm was punctuated by a loud calling out. Mother’s voice erupted into the darkness. Its pitch reminded me of the high notes I’d heard her reach for in church. There was something sad about this noise. I used to imitate it on the walks I took to the marsh after she left. In the woods, it sounded lonely, the sort of call a bird would make to her young to signal her return to the nest with her kill.
The morning after I’d first heard their love making, Father had soft-boiled eggs, which he’d crushed in the bowl and ladled with butter and salt. Mother’d fried slabs of toast, which she’d soaked in milk. The bacon was thick with fat and grease. I’d lined the plate with paper towels to catch the run off. What I remembered most about that meal was the laughter and the sound of the music on the stereo. The low notes were muffled as the speakers were small and old and failed to capture much range producing a tinny carnivalesque sound from what otherwise would’ve been the smooth depths of Southern jazz. A box of Domino sugar had been left open on the table. By the end of the meal, it was nearly empty and we were all giddy with food and high on one another.
That morning, under the cover of my parents’ enthusiasm, Birdie had escaped the task of clearing. As I’d headed from the kitchen to join her, I’d seen Mother glide into Father’s arms, pressing him up against the counter near the sink. She was carrying the sugar bowl and wearing a thin pair of white shorts and a tank top through which I could see the outline of her nipples. As she’d moved into him, he’d parted his legs slightly so as to accompany the wale of her. Before I’d turned the corner, I saw his hands trailing the shape of her body until they reached the curve of her breasts.
“Your mother is a beautiful woman,” he’d said as I’d passed them.
The night Father returned after the first of K’s watch, the only sound trailing him was the whine of the refrigerator and the click of the light in the front hall as he turned down the switch. I awoke in the night to footsteps pacing the hallway and the rattle of ice in a glass.
As I descended the staircase the next morning, Father was sitting in the old
club chair in the living room. The chair had been positioned so as to face the television. From Father’s stillness, I thought he’d drifted off while watching the late nights, until I realized the screen was blank.
“It’s just me, Pop,” I said, not wanting to surprise him.
The way his eyes looked in my direction and then drifted, he seemed hardly to recognize me, any sign of acknowledgment in his face or his posture replaced by slack jaw and glaze. His cheeks and the broad expanse of his forehead had lost their hue. Even his features looked shrunken.
I stood in front of him for several moments hoping he’d adjust to the presence of life in the room.
The light that day was excruciating. The sun blasted through Mother’s windows with the kind of brilliance that bleeds landscapes of their color. The rug lost its grain. The room felt empty and cube-like. Everything in it appeared balded and gray.
Looking at Father with his back to the row of windows, when I shifted my head various parts of his body disappeared in the glare as though through them I could see out the window and beyond. Beyond him I imagined the image of Mother beneath the apple trees in the yard sowing the bed of begonias which lined the stone wall where our property met the road. Her skin was tan and leathery. Her breasts bounced as she bent over where she was not entirely buttoned up. She worked from the waist, pulling up small patches of green where they had raised their heads above ground. An ant climbed the inside of her leg. “Look at all these cues,” she said, straightening up for a moment, surveying the rows of wild flowers that shifted in the breeze. Inside her, I saw the reflection of the window at Father’s back. If I looked into it I saw into her stomach, the small pit where she kept all her food. I could taste the bits of roughage—dried apricots and bites of asparagus—mixed in with acid that had made its way down into her stomach from the hollow of her cleft. When I looked through it and beyond, I saw the old ceramic tub across the street where the Shetland was buried in Otto’s field. When I stood in that spot, a good clean breeze ruffled the back of my hair.