Facing the Music

by Larry Brown

  I didn’t want to leave. I’d said some of the words I’d been wanting to say but I hadn’t said all of them. My words wouldn’t hurt her as bad as hers hurt me. I held onto Tracey and looked at my watch. There wasn’t much time. Your life goes by and if you spend it unhappy, what’s the point? If staying won’t make you happy, and leaving ruins somebody else’s life, what’s the answer?

  I didn’t know. I still don’t. But I’d told her I’d be there by six. And finally I couldn’t wait in the kitchen any longer.

  I was so nervous I changed clothes three times before he got there. I ended up wearing a dress that was too short. I cleaned the house twice, even though I knew there would be sawdust and tools on the floor. I’d been thinking about him all day, I couldn’t help it. He was so quiet and mysterious and he had such lovely hands. I’d had a few drinks, and I was going to offer him a drink when he got there. Just thinking about him being all alone in the house with me excited me. Maybe if he had a few drinks, he’d loosen up and talk to me. I wanted to talk to somebody so badly. It’s not easy being alone after being married for thirty years. It’s not easy to come home to a house so quiet you can hear a clock ticking.

  I kept waiting and looking at my watch, and I kept drinking. I thought it would calm me down. I was so nervous my hands were just trembling.

  Finally he pulled up and I looked out through the curtain in the living room. He had two doors and two sawhorses in the back of his pickup. I watched him get out and put on a tool belt and lift the doors from the truck.

  I opened the door for him and smiled and told him he was right on time. He said hi or something, and then started bringing everything in. He didn’t have much to say. I just watched him and smiled. He brought in some kind of a crowbar and a power saw and a long orange extension cord. I couldn’t get that idiotic grin off my face. I had a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Harold used to tell me that if I didn’t drink myself to death, I’d smoke myself to death. But he was always so cruel. Always so cruel.

  I asked him if he would like a drink. He said he didn’t like whiskey, and took the crowbar and tore the facing off the wall like he was mad at it. It made this awful screeching sound when the nails pulled loose. He just. . . attacked it. Within five minutes he had the frame and the door lying in the carport and was pulling finishing nails from the studs. The nails screamed when he pulled them. I said something about how he didn’t waste any time. I was smiling. He said he wasn’t making much money on this and had to get through as quick as he could.

  I thought he was probably mad at me for talking him into coming down twenty dollars. But I’m single, I don’t have Harold’s money, I have to get by, too.

  I told him I had some beer if he wanted one. He said let him get this door up and he might take one. He pulled a screwdriver out of his tool belt and stepped outside to the carport and closed the door behind him. Almost like he didn’t have time to talk to me. Or was angry with me. I hadn’t done anything to him. The paneling was rough and splintered where he’d taken the door off. You could see the wires inside the studs. You could see the nails. It all looked so raw.

  I made myself another drink, and checked my makeup in the hall mirror. You would have thought I was having a cocktail party the way I was acting. He was out in the carport and I watched him through the window. He was kneeling beside the door, doing something, I couldn’t tell what. His shirt had come up and I could see the bumps of bone in his back. His back looked so smooth. I wanted to feel it with my hands, run my hands over it, up his ribs, down over his hips, I wanted him to put his mouth on my throat and slide it down to my breasts and take one of my nipples in his lips and say Myra, Myra. . . .

  My goddamn back was killing me. If I bend over for more than five minutes at a time I can’t straighten up. Sometimes in the mornings it hurts so bad I can just barely get out of bed. I have to get up and walk around and bend and stretch to get to where I can go to work. It usually stops hurting midway through the morning and starts hurting twice as bad around three. I’d been laboring for a bricklayer all that day, mixing his mortar and handing him his blocks. They just scab us out to whoever needs help on a big job. If you’re not in the union you don’t have any say. I can’t stand the dues so I pay my own. But I’m afraid I’ll get disabled. I’m afraid I won’t be able to work anymore. I worry about that every day.

  I fell three months ago. We were bricking a bank. A scaffold leg collapsed, one of those cheap ones they rent from the building supply. I was fourteen feet up, not that high, but I landed on a sheet of plywood that was propped up against a water cooler. I thought I’d broken my back. Everybody who saw me fall thought I’d broken my back. When the ambulance came for me, they treated me like a patient with a broken back. They pulled traction on me and immobilized me. I was screaming. I bit my tongue.

  My foreman came to see me in the hospital. He told me the company took care of its employees. He only stayed a few minutes. I could tell he couldn’t wait to get out of there.

  I had to go on workmen’s comp after I got out of the hospital. What I drew was about half my pay. You can’t live on half money. You’ve got to have whole money. I went over to the job a few times, to talk to the guys I worked with, but I was just in the way. They couldn’t work and talk to me, too. I stopped going after a while. I stayed home and drank beer with Betty and read those Little Golden Books to Tracey.

  I’d never felt so useless in my whole life. There wasn’t anything to occupy me. Betty didn’t want to do it. I had to do the grocery shopping to make our money stretch. We fought over the money, over the TV, over anything and everything. I had to put up with these assholes every week in the office where I got my check. Some days I wanted to just go away somewhere and never come back again. I was supposed to stay off for four months, but I went back after two by forging my doctor’s signature on an insurance release. They set me to mixing mortar and carrying twenty-pound blocks.

  I got the knobs and the lock out of the old door and took them back into the house. She was sitting on an ottoman. She had on dark stockings. I told her I’d probably bring another boy with me the next night, to lay the linoleum. She just nodded. It was like she was listening to something in her head. I didn’t know what I’d do if my back got to hurting so bad I couldn’t work. I didn’t know how bad it would have to hurt before it stopped me. I didn’t know how I’d pay Tracey’s doctor bills if that happened.

  I told her I’d take that beer now if she didn’t care. She nodded and smiled and went to get it. I watched her, and I thought about the twenty dollars she had talked me out of. I should have just told her to forget it. I should have just told her to get somebody else and keep her lousy twenty dollars.

  He was certainly a fast worker. I didn’t know if he wanted a glass or not. I figured carpenters usually drank theirs straight out of the can. He wasn’t making it easy for me to talk to him. He acted like he had things on his mind. We couldn’t talk at all with all that ripping and hammering going on.

  I carried the beer out to him and he drank about half of it in one swallow. I sat down again to watch him work and asked him if he wanted a cigarette. He had some of his own. He picked up the lock and the knobs and started putting them into the door.

  I asked her if she was going to be at home the next night. I had to ask her twice. She looked up and I told her that I’d probably get through with the doors that night. I told her that if she didn’t care, I’d go ahead and tear out the old linoleum and lay the new the next night. If she didn’t care.

  She’d pulled her dress up over her legs. Her legs were kind of skinny but they weren’t that bad. I didn’t know if she meant to do it on purpose or not. Maybe she was so drunk she didn’t notice it.

  She didn’t know if she was going to be home the next night or not. She asked me if I wanted to come back the next night. I told her I’d just like to get through. The quicker I got through, the quicker I got paid. She said she’d have to decide.

  I knew he was
n’t going to be interested in me. The only thing he was interested in was the money. He couldn’t wait to get out of my house. And I’d been sitting there thinking such foolish things. I was ashamed of myself. I don’t know anything about dating, I’ve been married so long. Going out to bars alone, hoping for some man to pick me up: I don’t want that kind of life. My drink was almost empty.

  I told him I needed a fresh one and got up to make it. I didn’t know I was in such bad shape. My head started swimming when I got in the kitchen. I dropped my glass.

  I heard a glass break and I stopped what I was doing. I got up and looked around. I didn’t see her anywhere. Then I heard her. I thought maybe she’d fallen and hurt herself. She sounded like she was crying. I went down the hall and found her in the kitchen. She was down on her knees, on a towel she had folded underneath her. She was crying and picking up the broken pieces of glass. I didn’t know what the hell to do.

  I know you’re not supposed to feel sorry for yourself. But I had always had somebody to take care of me and tell me what to do. It’s so frightening to be alone. I was only trying to reach out to somebody. All I wanted was a little conversation. I was just trying to be nice to him.

  I was so ashamed for him to see me crying. I’d just had too much to drink and I’d gotten depressed. He was standing behind me. He asked me if I was okay and I said I was. It was so quiet. The glass had gone everywhere. I wanted to make sure I got it all up so I wouldn’t step on a tiny piece while I was barefoot one morning. I told him that it was okay, that he could go back to work, that I’d get him another beer in a minute. Then he knelt down beside me and started helping me pick up the glass.

  She seemed so helpless and so weak. She wasn’t anything like Betty. She wasn’t hard like Betty. I know it embarrassed her for me to see her like that. And I was afraid she might cut herself, so I got down on the floor to help her. She was trying to stop crying. I didn’t know what was wrong or what to say. I felt bad for her, and I wanted to help her if I could. All her mascara had run down from her eyes in black streaks. She’d smeared some of it wiping at her eyes. She said it was nice of me to help her. Then she said Richard. That was the first time she’d said my name.

  I looked at him. He was just as embarrassed as I was. I thought about how I must have looked to him, half drunk, with my eyes red from crying. I had cried so much because of Harold. Nobody knows what I went through. He wasted so much of my life. All those years that were just thrown away. I wanted to tell him so bad about what had happened to me. I had so much on me that I wanted to unload. I turned to him and I put my hand on his shoulder. I wanted him to kiss me, or to put his hand on my breast. Or to at least hold me. I wanted to tell him what was wrong with me.

  I didn’t know what to say when she touched me. I stopped what I was doing and I looked at her. She was trying to smile. Her eyes were wet. I didn’t know what she wanted. Maybe just somebody to listen to her. Maybe something else. But she was old enough to be my mother.

  She said what if somebody asked you to do something. And it wouldn’t hurt you, if it was just a favor that somebody wanted you to do, would you do it? If it didn’t cost you anything and it would help the other person. She said if I just knew. She said he had other women. That he’d beaten her. That nobody knew what she’d been through.

  She started crying again. She put her head on my shoulder and she took my hand and slipped it around her waist. I didn’t know what else to do but hold her. She started sort of moaning. I didn’t have time to do anything. She said I want you. She put her mouth on mine. She was holding my ears in both her hands. I tried to pull back. I tried to tell her that she was drunk and she didn’t know what she was doing. But she unbuckled my pants. It happened in a second. She pulled it out and started rubbing it with her hands, moaning. She leaned back and pulled up her dress and I ran my hands up underneath her. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know what to do. I knew she was drunk and I was afraid she’d holler rape when she sobered up. We got up somehow and went back against the counter. She opened her dress and pulled my head down to her. I couldn’t get away and didn’t want to.

  I just went crazy for a minute. Once I touched him I couldn’t stop myself. He started running his hands all over me. I knew I should stop but I couldn’t. I didn’t even know him. I knew he was going to think I was a whore.

  I just lost control of myself. I didn’t even care what he thought. I just wanted someone to put his arms around me and hold me tight. I didn’t want to stop. I knew if we kept on it was going to happen. I wasn’t even thinking about how I’d feel the next morning, or how I’d feel after it was over. I was just thinking about how I didn’t ever want him to stop. But finally he did. He stopped and backed away from me. He looked like he was scared to death. I don’t know what I looked like. Half my clothes were off. I think I asked him what was wrong.

  I finally got ahold of myself. I think I said shit or something. We were both breathing hard. I fastened my pants back up. She was staring at me like a wild woman. There was a chair pulled out beside the table and I went over to it and sat down. She didn’t say anything for a minute. I think she was buttoning her dress. I waited until I thought she was done and then I turned around and looked at her. She was wiping her eyes with her fingers. She fixed herself another drink. Then she went to the refrigerator and got me another beer. I started to just get up and leave. But she brought the beer and her drink over and set them down and dropped into the chair beside me. She looked dazed. We almost did it, she said. Yeah, I said. We almost did.

  He started talking about the little girl. At first I wasn’t listening. I was almost in shock. It took a long time for me to calm down. My heart was beating too fast, and I was wet. I wanted to kiss him again but I was scared to try. He said she wasn’t his. It was something about her telling him she was divorced and then later after he’d been living with her for a while, admitting that she had never been married. I think I was just staring at my drink when he started talking. But then what he was saying started sinking in and I started listening to him. I couldn’t believe what we were doing, just sitting there in my kitchen talking and drinking after what we’d done. He said it didn’t matter to him for a while about the lie she had told him because he loved the little girl and felt like she was his. He was the only daddy she’d known. But he didn’t love the woman. I could tell that just from hearing him talk. He said he carried the little girl everywhere he went, even if he was just going to the store for something.

  There was something wrong with her legs. She couldn’t walk right. They had all these tests done on her and had her fitted with braces and then his insurance company wouldn’t pay the bills because he wasn’t married to her mother. I wondered what she looked like. I had this picture of black hair and a frowning face for some reason. He said he was afraid to leave her. He said he didn’t love her, but he couldn’t leave the little girl. He said he didn’t know what would happen to her. I felt better about everything, about losing my head, after we talked for a while. But he was working all these jobs at night to try and pay the doctor bills. I felt like . . . I just don’t know what I felt like. Cheap. Stingy. For getting him to lower his price. And I felt awful for drinking too much and having those daydreams about him, and then kissing him and all. He kept talking. The more he talked, the worse I felt over feeling so sorry for myself about Harold.

  I asked him what he was going to do. He said he didn’t know. He said if he left her there was no telling what would happen to them. He said the woman had never worked a day in her life and didn’t finish high school and had been brought up on welfare. He said she didn’t know what it was like to have to work for a living.

  I shouldn’t have talked so much. I didn’t mean to tell her all my problems. I know everybody’s got problems, and everybody thinks theirs are worse than everybody else’s. I know she had it bad. Married to a son of a bitch that slapped her around. She felt like her whole life had been wasted. She talked some, too. She said she knew what it fel
t like to have to stay with somebody without love. She knew what I felt like. She was as miserable as I was.

  I probably could have taken right back up where we left off. I was tempted to. I don’t think I’ve touched a woman who was that hot ever. I thought when women got older they didn’t care anything about sex. Or maybe she was just trying to reach out to somebody. She didn’t come right out and say it, but just from the things she said, I could tell she hadn’t slept with her ex-husband for years. I felt so goddamn sorry for her. But I didn’t want her to feel sorry for me. I didn’t want to work anymore, though. I just wanted to load my shit up and go somewhere. I thought about asking her if she wanted to go drink a few beers with me, but really I wanted to be by myself. I had to decide what I was going to do. I knew I couldn’t keep going the way I was going.

  I asked him what he was going to do and he said he didn’t know. He said he’d keep on working. He was hoping she’d grow out of it. He said he didn’t mean to dump all his problems on me. But he said the little girl would sit on the floor and hold her arms up to him when he came in from work and beg him to take her. He said he thought she sat on the floor all day because her mother wouldn’t help her try to walk or even pick her up. He said all she did was read magazines and watch TV. I don’t know how he could have gotten mixed up with somebody like that. I don’t know why he couldn’t have gotten somebody who deserved him.

  I told her that if she didn’t care I’d just leave the doors and finish up the next night, or the next. I had to get away. I hated to just leave her wall like that, but there wasn’t any way I could finish hanging the door that night. She said it would be okay, that I could come back and finish it whenever I wanted to. She said she never had any company and nobody would see it anyway.

  I watched him roll up his cord and put away his tools and get ready to leave. I wanted him to stay, but I didn’t ask him to. I could tell he had a lot on his mind. His hands had felt so good to me. I knew I was going to cry after he left. I knew I was going to cry and I knew I was going to drink some more. I wanted him right then more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. I would have given him anything. But all he wanted was to leave. I wasn’t going to try to hold him. I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself again. But right up until the time he left, I would have made a fool of myself. Gladly. When he went out the door I knew I’d never see him again.