Shannon was laying in bed next to me with all her clothes on recently. She told me her dad made her have an abortion and now the baby that was inside her, now is dead. How about that?
“What are you thinking about?” she said.
I was staring up at the ceiling and I was watching the shadows from outside move around in the wind and it seemed to me that what we need most isn’t to be comforted or assured, or told that everything will be all right. What’s the use of crying and holding on to each other and talking in soft, soothing voices (or even asking each other what we’re thinking about) when what we need is really something different and that is just to be saved.
This was our last night together. I broke up with her not because I didn’t like her, or didn’t love her, and not because I was afraid of her dad or anything. There are certain things that I do well and certain things that I can’t do at all, no matter how much I wish I could. I can clean shit from between a grown man’s legs and I can blow on a girlfriend’s forehead and shush her to sleep. I’m excellent at comforting and trying to understand, and cleaning things up. But I’m no hero, as I said before. I’m too tall and too skinny and there’s no meat to me. I can’t put up a fight and I crumble when someone comes to threaten me; I can’t even run away right. And I looked over at Shannon and at all the soft and smooth places on her face where there had been bruises that now had disappeared and I thought that my main problem is I can’t look after my own. I really can’t.
Afterwards I was alone in my bed and I was bored, so I got up and drove to the pier. No one was around, it was quiet. I looked out at the dark water and the lights on the hill behind me, and I listened to the sound of the water bashing up against the pillars and the creaking boards. There’s another clinical term called catharsis. It’s when everything inside you that you keep all bottled up just explodes right out of you, sort of like my brother screaming down that hallway or Shannon’s dad choking me—except those aren’t real good examples—one was just the standard reaction of a fucked-up brain and the other was just rage, pure and simple. There was no one around and it was quiet and I thought this would be a good time for it, for catharsis, to just let everything out. But you can’t wish these things to happen, you can’t just yell, you’ve got to wait until it bursts right out of you. Some people just stay the same, just like there are certain things about people that you could never know, just like some things you find you need to let go. So I leaned over the railing and I collected all the saliva in my mouth, and I leaned over and let the spit just sort of fall out of my mouth into the black water below, and I thought, “Curtains,” not like it was all over, but like it was just the end of one act in a life that should take you past a whole lot more.
There is one last thing that I should mention about me and Shannon, and then it’s all over and I can put it behind me. It was that first time I ever kissed her (and did I mention that I had never kissed a girl before that night?). In fact, we’d just finished kissing for probably twenty minutes, just kissing each other, then she’d rest her head on my chest and I’d put my chin on her head, then we’d kiss some more. It was on the pier. We’d just finished kissing when I took a step back and I looked at Shannon and there she was, like they say, “caught in the moonlight,” in that blue sweater of hers. She catches her eye on something and she bends down and comes up with two rocks, the kind that fit perfectly in the palm of your hand. She hands one to me and she takes hers and she walks over to the edge of the pier and with a sly grin, she throws it as far as she can, and because it’s so quiet, what you hear is a little, plunk! not too far off. And now I guess it’s my turn, so I walk over and I start my windup, and I get my whole body into it and I swear I throw that rock so far, you never heard it come down. It just disappeared. All you could hear was the sounds of the waves splashing against the pillars and the pier creaking, and Shannon breathing, just breathing.
THOUGH OCCASIONALLY GLARING OR VIOLENT MODERN COLOR IS ON THE WHOLE EMINENTLY SOMBER:
THE BORDER
There were a lot of things that Robert couldn’t remember, isolated things, pieces of the past of the present that were lost to him. It worried him sometimes, because you didn’t always know just what it was you didn’t remember. When he showed up to the site and no one was there, he figured everyone was late. The guys were always coming in late but Mike, his foreman, was always early and even Mike wasn’t there. Robert sat for half an hour in the backhoe, waiting, smoking cigarettes as the sun rose. He was glad to have the extra time to rest; his back and his head were killing him and the arthritis in his hands had been bad lately. He was glad for the extra time, but he was a worker, after all, and before too long he walked across the street to the pay phone and called Mike.
Where is everybody? Robert asked. I’m down at the site.
What are you talking about? Mike said. I gave everyone the day off.
That’s right, Robert said. He laughed. I must have forgotten. My mind’s in bad shape.
He went home. Ruth was in her bathrobe making Amy’s lunch. I got the day off, he said.
Good, Ruth said. We can spend the day together.
Robert walked into the living room. He sat down on the couch, turned the TV on.
Some things he never forgot. He never forgot his anniversary or Amy’s birthday. His ideal fighting weight: 160, though he’d fought (and lost) at 168. Or his record: 146-158. He didn’t remember many of his fights, but he knew his record. What if he forgot that too? Maybe it would be better that way.
He remembered that kid, Pierce.
Pierce wasn’t a good fighter. He was young and inexperienced, hadn’t known what he was doing. Robert had punished Pierce in two different fights, put Pierce out in twenty-seven seconds the first time. Pierce was nineteen or so, and Robert had been in his early thirties then. The second time, a few months later, Pierce lasted almost all three rounds before they called the fight. Robert had hurt the kid the first two and in the third round he kept it up, and Pierce wouldn’t go down and Robert had kept punishing him with rights while Pierce bounced against the ropes, smiling out of his headgear, his arms down at his sides, wouldn’t go down, couldn’t hit back or wouldn’t hit back and Robert, finally, had stopped. He put an outstretched left beneath Pierce’s chin to hold him there, against the ropes, and with his right, Robert waved the ref over to stop the fight.
He remembered the ref that night was an old fat guy, bald head, mustache, flat nose, a nose like the one Robert had now, the bridge beaten down, flat and wide, the point at the bottom sticking out a bit. Pierce had had a hand in that during their third fight, which Robert had come into out of shape; he’d put on weight, he was smoking again, his lungs full of phlegm, and he remembered being tired before that fight, having worked a double shift the day before. Pierce had come running at him and Robert, whose strategy was to attack first and try to knock a guy down, had stumbled backwards, trying to block, but he wasn’t a good blocker, or a good boxer, even; he was a big hitter, a powerful puncher, or once had been. And he lost this one to Pierce. He didn’t remember much about it. He didn’t remember going down or what happened after he went down. But he did remember being surprised by the kid, backing up, caught off-guard by the uncharacteristic offensive attack. And he remembered being back at work the next day with a splitting headache, his nose having been drilled back into his skull.
That had been his last fight, a first round loss. He lost a lot of money on himself, that fight. Amy was just beginning to walk then and he’d promised Ruth that this would be his last. He would quit and having already beaten Pierce twice, he put five hundred dollars on it, all the money they had, a straight-ahead odds-off bet with a man he didn’t know, a friend of a friend. The money mattered then; it didn’t matter anymore. And his record was lousy and even if he would have won that last fight, his record would still be lousy. But if he would have won that fight, he’d have gone out a winner, and that would have been something, at least.
He’d always wanted a
nother shot at the kid. Come out of retirement. Tell Ruth he was going to the bar, fight, explain what needed explaining when he got home. But after that third fight, Pierce had disappeared. Robert would often check the local sports section, looking for news of the kid. Sometimes he’d go down to the Tacoma gym and ask around, but the few that even remembered the kid didn’t know what had happened to him.
In yesterday’s paper Robert had seen that Pierce was dead. Twenty-six years old. No mention of how he died.
He remembered the figure in the photograph. They’d used a boxing photo. The kid had his hands up, leaning forward slightly, knees bent, light on his feet, ready to deliver a combo.
Robert watched the news, smoking, remembering, until he heard Amy talking to her mother in the kitchen and he put his cigarette out. Come give your old man a kiss, he called to her, and she came over and pecked him on the cheek. She was going to be eight on December sixteenth. Have a seat, he said, and she jumped up onto his lap—a twinge in his back. She put her arm around his neck.
What’s the date today? he said.
The nineteenth, she said.
What month is it? he said.
November.
I know what month it is. Your old man’s just messing with you. He faked a right to her stomach and she smiled, making no effort to block it.
Ruth came out with a sack lunch. We’re late, she said. Get your jacket and jump in the car, and Amy jumped down from her father’s lap, ran to the closet by the front door and put her jacket on.
She’s been on that computer all morning, Ruth said. Now she’s gonna be late. She walked to the entryway. What do you want to do today? she asked Robert. She was putting on her coat, over that old worn out green bathrobe.
I don’t know, Robert said.
You haven’t had a day off in a long time.
I know.
I’m supposed to go help out at the church today, but maybe we could go for a drive instead, she said. We haven’t had time together in a long time. I’ll have my mom pick Amy up after school.
OK, Robert said. Amy was struggling putting on her backpack. The thing must have weighed fifty pounds.
Tell that teacher of yours not so much homework, he said. You’re gonna get a hernia.
OK.
You still the smartest kid in class? he asked.
Yes, Amy said.
Of course she is, Ruth said.
Then she put her hand on Amy’s head and guided her out the door. Robert reached for his cigarettes.
Tom and Anna waited for the aisles to clear and then they stood and slowly walked toward the back of the church. Anna blotted at her eyes with a tissue. She always cried in churches, what was it that made her cry every time she was in one? She’d always been like this. Especially when they played music. The music today had been beautiful, so sad, and she had cried, but she would have cried even if the music had been happy, even if the occasion had been a happy occasion, even if she wasn’t there to show her last respects to Tom’s brother, Jim. She wished she hadn’t cried, people must have thought she was faking it—she’d cried harder and louder than anyone, even her mother-in-law. They didn’t know that she always cried in church.
Tom and Anna followed the crowd to the foyer and out and across the courtyard and into the building next door. There were tables set up with little sandwiches and cans of pop. She held on to Tom’s hand.
I always cry in churches, she said.
I should go check on my mom, Tom said, and he let go of Anna’s hand and walked across the room to where his mother was standing, surrounded by a group of women, her friends and sisters. Anna looked around—the room was crowded, and it was a small room—she sat down in a chair against a wall, looked at people in line for food. How could they eat at a time like this? She wasn’t hungry, was never hungry.
She took a deep breath and stretched her back. So uncomfortable. Anna hated funerals. She hadn’t been to many, but she hated them. She loved churches, though. She loved churches but couldn’t go in one without crying. She figured she’d cry if she went to Europe and went on one of those tours of those old cathedrals. She’d follow the tour, past statues and stained glass, past lit candles and altars and she would weep and everyone would think she had problems. What’s her problem? What’s she crying about? The tour guide would say, Ma’am, are you all right? and the nicer ladies in the group would gather around her and rub her back and she would feel so embarrassed and alone, she would try to tell them, I always cry in churches, it’s not anything, it’s just a reaction, I’m fine. Then she would be too embarrassed because she probably wouldn’t be able to stop crying even then and she’d have to leave, someone would try to follow her, she might even have to run from them, run out of the church, run down the steps and into—
But where was Tom? Wouldn’t Tom be there with her? What was she doing in Europe without Tom? What the hell was wrong with her? Of course, Tom would be there with her. He was her husband.
She remembered the time Tom was gone on a fishing trip and she’d gone over to his mom’s house and his mom had cooked a meal and Jim was there and she and Jim had been drinking—when was that? A year ago? Two years? How old was she now? Old. Too old. Concentrate. I’m twenty-nine years old. Twenty-nine years old. Almost thirty. Boo-hoo. She and Jim got drunk together and laughed together and her mother-in-law kept shaking her head at the two of them, not understanding young people, that was how she put it, and Jim wouldn’t let her drive home because she was too drunk and she never got drunk, she always took care of her body, but that night she’d let loose a little bit and Jim took her home, and at home they drank the rest of Tom’s scotch, and she felt so comfortable with Jim on that couch, and she’d always had feelings for him, that was true, she’d always been attracted to him physically, he was young and strong and free, she felt so warm with him then, and Tom was a good husband, she loved Tom, she did, but it felt so wonderful being with Jim, who she had always wanted, and who was warm and who was hard and strong and Tom was getting so heavy and he never touched her anymore, sometimes it was like he couldn’t stand her, shouldn’t it have been the other way around? He was the one who didn’t keep in shape, the one who’d let himself go, and she still looked good, didn’t she? Wasn’t she beautiful? Didn’t people look at her on the street and in the grocery store and in the department stores? Men who wanted to be with her and women who wanted to look like her?—and that night with Jim—and she was drunk—but she felt good—Jim had looked at her like she was beautiful, she had seen him looking at her body and on that couch it had felt right and she leaned into him, feeling warm, and he put his arm around her, and she nuzzled in beneath his cheek, he moved and she moved, they moved against each other, and she began to breathe harder, could hear him breathing harder, could feel him breathing, and she closed her eyes, ran her face up his and across to his lips, all without knowing quite what was happening, and she opened her mouth and he his and it was warm and he moved on top of her, lifted her shirt, kissed her chest, gently slid his hand down her pants, she put her hand down his, never opening her eyes for a second, did that for awhile, before it occurred to her that she needed to put a stop to this, that they were going too far together, but she let it go on just a little longer, let herself go on with it because it felt so wonderful, let it go on until the warmth ran into her face and hands, down to her toes and it felt so good, and then she kissed him one last time before the feeling subsided, ran her tongue over and under his, then pulled away. She sat up, pulled her shirt down, and said coldly, No. You can’t do this, Jim. You went too far, and she looked at him, his lips parted, strong chin, deep blue eyes and soft lips, childlike, she pulled her shirt down, stood up, walked to the door and opened it. He walked through. Then she closed the door behind him, loudly so that he would know she was disappointed in him, but at the same time she hoped he didn’t think she was a tease. She wasn’t a tease. She just had to stop sometime and he had gone too far.
Tom came home the next day. She was
in the exercise room, running on the treadmill. He walked in and she slowed the machine down to a walking pace and asked him how his trip was. Fine, and he left and soon she heard the shower start. She pressed the up arrow until she was running at a good clip again. Twenty more minutes, then she’d go in and ask him about his trip, but when she finished twenty minutes later, he was in bed, asleep.
Why did Jim do it? Maybe she was his tragic love interest, maybe he had loved her. Maybe this meant a part of her was dying too. She wished she had acted differently after that night, wished she hadn’t talked bad about him to Tom, saying things like, I don’t know about your brother. There’s something not quite right with him. I don’t feel comfortable around him. She used to say things like that, and Tom could never have known the real reason she said these things, but she knew he started believing what she said because he’d stopped talking to Jim. A woman can tell about a man, she’d said. A woman knows these things.
And wasn’t there a part of her that was relieved that Jim was dead?
Christ Jesus, what a thing to think! What an awful thing to think!
She looked at the crowd, saw Tom with his arm around his mother. They’d all seen her crying. What they must have thought, none of them knowing that she always cried in churches.
Anna stood up and walked outside, dodging people—how could they eat at a time like this?—many of whom wanted to stop her and talk, but she didn’t want to talk, she brushed them off, needed to get outside. She walked outside, down the steps, through the grounds of the church, and across the street to a coffee shop. She went in and ordered a nonfat double-tall latté from the boy behind the counter.
Jane and Beth drove Mary to the cemetery, following a long line of cars; Mary in the backseat in her black dress, a veil covering her face, Jane and Beth in the front of Beth’s big car. Jane looked back at Mary staring out the window at the houses, children playing, at the trees. Mary began to cry again as they drove through the gates of the cemetery. Oh, sweetheart, Jane said. She reached over the backrest and rubbed her friend’s leg.
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