“Nine. I should be home by late afternoon.”
“I’ll call.”
“I know,” he replies and then adds, “I love you.” I start to repeat the words back to him, but I wait just a second too long. There’s a click and he’s gone.
It’s not until I’ve put fresh linens on the bed, brushed my teeth, and have my hand on the light switch, that I realize what had been nagging me earlier about this room. My mother’s camera bag is gone. And so is Nick’s guitar strap.
I look around . . . I know they were setting in the corner by the bookshelf, but there’s nothing there now. I lift the bedskirt and look under the bed, then in the closet, then under the desk . . . nothing. I walk through the rest of the house with a critical eye. Everything looks okay, the jewelry box is right where I’d put it, back on my grandmother’s dresser, the television is in the living room, along with the DVD player.
My phone rings again, and again it’s Nick. This time I answer.
“Hi Nick.”
At first he doesn’t respond. Probably he’s so surprised I actually took the call that he’s momentarily forgotten what he wants to say.
“Mattie, it’s me,” he finally says.
“I know.”
“I want my strap back.”
I answer with complete honesty. “I don’t have it, Nick. I swear to God I don’t know where it is.”
There’s background noise on his side of the call, but over that I hear him sigh. “Fuckin’ Rico. If it wasn’t you, it has to be him.”
Rico was Nick’s roommate before I moved in. Last I heard he was in jail, but apparently that’s old news. I shouldn’t be surprised. Nick knows my opinion of Rico and rarely mentions him.
“Well, you can’t trust a junkie,” I say, which is true enough, even if not exactly applicable to this particular theft.
“Yeah, I know.”
We listen to each other breathe for a few seconds, and I realize that I recognize the background noise I’ve been hearing. He’s in a bar.
“You coming home soon?” he asks.
“Maybe,” I say. “I was wondering . . .”
“What?”
“Do you ever want kids?”
He laughs. “Hell, no. And neither do you, remember?”
“I know,” I reply.
The noise behind him swells; I’m guessing that some team scored a home run, or a bar favorite walked in the door. I can’t really hear how Nick ends the call, but I think he says, “I miss you.”
I could be wrong.
The breeze from the window billows the curtains and sways the hanging plant ever so slightly. In fact, the plant looks better than it did this morning. On a hunch I go stick my finger into its pot. The soil is wet, extremely wet. As in, just-watered wet.
I open my mother’s closet, but nothing looks amiss, her dresser, the same . . . or do the contents look a little stirred up? I go through the rest of the dresser and then the desk, opening drawer after drawer. It takes me a minute to realize what’s wrong—all the negatives are gone. The loose ones, the ones in envelopes—all missing. The only photo negatives left are the ones Karleen pulled out from the box springs an hour ago. Quickly, I slide the mattress off the box springs, tuck the Crown Royal bag full of remaining negatives back into its hiding place, and then push the mattress back onto the bed.
Who would steal a shabby camera bag, a guitar strap, and a bunch of thirty-five-year-old negatives, but leave everything else? Not to mention watering the plants and locking back up before leaving.
A gust of wind puffs the curtains and again brings with it the sound of faint music, a piano playing something slow and melancholy. I turn off the light and walk to the window, the moody soundtrack playing as I push aside the curtains and look out at the night. There are no cars on the street, no people, no dogs. I look over at JJ’s backyard. Although I stand and watch for several minutes, I see no ember—only darkness. I’m on my own tonight.
CHAPTER 33
Everything is familiar, but at the same time slightly off, the way dreams often are. For instance I’m back at the Pig Pen wiping down a greasy table with an equally greasy rag, yet there’s classical music coming from the jukebox, and I can promise you that never really happened.
Still, the dimly lit room glows red from the “Exit” light above the door, just like it used to. Robby has turned off the beer signs on either side of the door, but he’s left on the big neon “Bass” sign over the bar. The “B” burned out a couple of weeks ago, and now it’s just a big red triangle with “ass” written across it so he won’t turn it off for anything. I watch him shake glasses dry, giving them a quick smear with a bar towel before stacking them on the shelves, and I wonder if he realizes that having the word ass floating directly over his head every night is, in fact, an excellent example of truth in advertising.
He has a beer waiting for me when I slip onto my usual stool. Slick is here, too; the three of us always used to close on Friday nights, and when we did, we usually stayed an extra hour to complain about our lives and lower the levels on the beer kegs a little. Slick is in the middle of some story about his ex-wife when I sense someone on the bar stool next to me. Surprised, because up until that moment Robbie, Slick, and I were alone, I turn and see my mother sitting there. It’s not the woman my mother was when I was nineteen and working at the Pig Pen, it’s my mother the way she was years later, during the worst of the chemo. She’s bald and wearing a faded snap-front housedress, the kind she wore when her steroid-bloated belly could no longer fit into anything else. Her arms are too thin; drapes of extra skin weave their way from under her sleeve to her elbow that rests on the bar.
She turns to me and says, “A normal heart is the size of a fist.” She holds up her hand, to demonstrate, I suppose, but her expression is angry, and I flinch as she waves her fist between us.
She drops her hand back to the bar. “I don’t feel so good,” she tells me. “Can you help me to the bathroom?”
I stand and put my arm around her waist and feel hers wrap around mine. A few shuffling steps and we’re to the bathrooms, stopping in front of the door labeled “Sows.” I push the door open, and my mother goes inside, but I don’t follow her in. Instead I take a few more steps and open the door marked “Boars.”
The bathroom smells of sour urinal cakes and shit. Nick stands just inside the door, smiling his crooked smile, running his fingers through his hair. Although in reality I didn’t meet Nick until years after I quit my job at the Pig Pen, in the dream it makes sense, somehow, that he would be here. He grabs my wrist and pulls me to him, reaching around behind me to lock the door.
A few sweaty, gasping moments later I’m facing the mirror, my pants at my knees, Nick behind me. The whole time this is happening, part of me knows that I’m dreaming because although I see Nick in the mirror, standing behind me, thrusting, I’m not feeling anything except the cold of the porcelain sink I’m leaning on. There’s a crumpled-up yellow receipt on the floor and a gray plastic film canister, and next to it a small white something . . . a rock? A shell?
The tile is grimy white and the grout cracked and gray, but as I watch, one fat, black fly and then another appears, crawling across the floor. A dark liquid begins to ooze from the wall and run along the grout line. It soaks into the yellow receipt, which I now know is from a bookstore, and if I were to pick it up it would say that The Caine Mutiny was purchased for $17.95. The dark puddle surrounds the film canister, pooling around the small white object that cannot be a rock or a shell, because it’s a tooth. The fluid is black, but I know that it’s blood.
I straighten and push Nick away. He shouts something, but there’s such an echo I can’t understand the words. All I know is that my mother is in the bathroom next door, and the blood is hers and it’s all my fault for letting her go in there alone. I start to cry and tug my pants back up to my waist. I’m having trouble fastening the buttons, and as I’m fumbling, Nick turns me around and pulls me to him, pressing his lips a
gainst mine. I push against his chest and twist my head, my mouth filled with a metallic salty taste.
I get to the door and try to twist the knob but my hand slips on the metal and I realize that there’s blood on the doorknob and on my hand. It’s my fault, I keep thinking. I’m sobbing and my heart is pounding so hard that I almost don’t hear Nick when he quietly calls my name. I turn to him to ask him for help. He’s smiling. There’s blood on his chin and between his teeth.
When I startle awake in bed, I’m still weeping. My heart gallops in my chest and the nauseating metallic taste remains in my mouth. Stumbling in the dark, I find my way to the bathroom and heave my stomach contents into the toilet.
After a few minutes resting my forehead on the side of the cool tub, my heart has slowed to an almost normal pace and I’ve stopped crying. When I stand and switch on the light, I’m relieved to have an explanation for why the taste of blood followed me out of my dream. In my reflection I see a red smear on my upper lip and a fresh rivulet starting down from my left nostril. It’s just a nosebleed.
I go back to the bedroom, strip the bloody pillowcase and pull a clean one over the pillow and its fresh browning stain. Tucked back in bed with the pillow balled up under my neck, my head leaning back, I try to relax. Although there’s only a faint light outside, morning noises are starting up, a few early birds, the occasional car somewhere in the distance. Someone’s unhappy cat is crying. It sounds just like a baby.
I close my eyes and slow my breathing to try to catch another hour or two of sleep. But my mind won’t leave me alone; it pokes and prods at the past like a tongue that has discovered a chipped tooth. All my mistakes—things done, things left undone—they’re here with me tonight. The Winstons, the unwanted child in my belly, Queeg’s biopsy, my mother. A parade of regrets marches past, and I am helpless to do anything other than relive them all as I lie here with my chin pointing at the ceiling, my nose stuffed with toilet paper, my ears filling slowly with tears.
THURSDAY
Time and tide wait for no man.
CHAPTER 34
I must have fallen back asleep after the dream, but when my alarm goes off, I’m still exhausted. The nosebleed has stopped, however, and once I’ve showered and eaten a couple handfuls of dry cereal, I still feel shitty, but that’s as good as it gets these days. Sometimes my entire life has felt like one long exercise in lowering my expectations.
After checking that there’s still water and food in the dog bowls in the kitchen, I go out and put some on the front porch as well, then go to the backyard and make sure the gate is still propped open.
Music is playing in JJ’s backyard this morning—Frank Sinatra, in fact. However, once you get past his music selection, the scene gets a lot less classy. A card table is set up on his back patio and on it is an ancient boom box, its extension cord running into the house through a window. JJ stands next to the table with a paint roller in his hand and a cigarette dangling from his lips. He’s wearing faded, sagging jeans and a white undershirt. Each lift of his arm reveals a thicket of pit hair and a deeply set yellow stain in the tank.
“What a douche,” I whisper to nobody. I miss the dogs.
The grass is dewy and cool on my feet as I approach the fence, carefully avoiding the weeds and the dog turds. I’m walking quietly, with a smile on my face because it’s obvious that my asshole neighbor hasn’t noticed me yet. I wait until he has the paint roller fully loaded and is holding it directly overhead before I speak.
“Good morning!” I say much, much louder than necessary.
JJ startles vigorously enough for a large dollop of paint to drop on his head and, I’m especially gratified to see, on the toe of one of his newish-looking cowboy boots. But without so much as a glance at me, he sets his roller in the tray, wets a rag at the outside faucet and wipes the paint off his head and boot. Sadly, the leather seems to come completely clean.
He sets his cigarette down on the edge of the table and comes to the fence.
“Listen . . .” I hate to have to tell him, but I’m sure he’s already noticed their absence. “The dogs got out last night.”
He glances pointedly at the open gate.
“The latch is messed up,” I say. He looks unconvinced. “But I don’t know that it’s my fault anyway, because someone was in the house last night.”
“Other than you?”
“Yes. Someone who doesn’t belong there.”
“Like I said, other than you?”
God, this man is a jerk. “While I was out, somebody broke in and stole a camera bag and a guitar strap. I think whoever it was took the dogs, too.”
“Guitar strap?”
“You know, so you can play a guitar standing up.”
“You’re a musician.”
“No.”
He says “Hmmm” in a neutral tone of voice but he looks surprised.
“What?”
“Your mother was.”
“Not when I knew her.”
He frowns for a second and then asks, “Is that it?”
“Is what it?”
His eyes narrow. “Is that all they took?”
“Well . . . and some old negatives. And there were two cameras in the bag.”
He’s giving me a you’re-crazy look and I don’t blame him. It sounds crazy to me, too.
“Listen,” I say, “all I know is that the negatives, the strap, the camera bag, and the dogs are gone. The dogs could have run away on their own, but the other shit couldn’t have.”
I study him, looking for a sense of discomfort, some sign that he’s hiding something. It’s probably just because I don’t like him, but if this were a TV crime show, JJ would be my prime suspect. He was her neighbor, he’d kept her dogs—it would make sense for him to have a key. Plus he’s a jerk.
He glances at his half-painted wall and says, “I better get back to work,” but he doesn’t walk away. He just stands there like he’s waiting for one of us to say something. So I do.
“Did you ever hear anybody talk about my grandfather? My mother’s dad?”
“Just that he died.”
I nod. “So weird.”
“Not that weird. Everybody dies.”
“But he died before my mom was even born, and she never told me that.”
He’s giving me another puzzled look, and I can see why. Even I’m not sure why it bothers me that she kept his death and the whole born-out-of-wedlock thing a secret, but it does. And of course the fact that Fritter is so tight-lipped about it all just makes me more curious.
I don’t try to explain. I just shrug and say, “Never mind.”
When I start to walk away JJ’s voice stops me.
“Did your mother really give up her music?”
I turn back around. “She gave up everything.”
He doesn’t respond, but I can see the question on his face.
“She left it all here,” I explain. “Her clothes, her books, her friends, her family, her music. And nobody will tell me why. Do you know why?”
He’s shaking his head.
“Somebody knows,” I say.
“Not me. I don’t know and I don’t care.”
“That’s not surprising,” I say. “As far as I can tell, you’re an asshole who only cares about himself and his yard.”
“Speaking of yards, you ever going to mow yours?”
“Speaking of assholes, are you the one who broke into my house last night?”
He takes a step toward the fence, saying, “You listen to me.” He’s angry, and although I don’t get the feeling that he’s really threatening me, I still catch myself reflexively taking a step back.
“First of all,” he says, “don’t you ever call that your house. You don’t deserve that house. You never once came to visit your grandmother when she was alive. Second of all, Miss Thayer had those dogs for seven or eight years, and they were fine, and I kept them for a month, and they were fine. Two days . . . you had them for two days and now they’re go
ne.”
“Fuck you!” I am embarrassingly close to tears. “I never asked for that responsibility. I was doing my best.”
“And I’ve never broken into anybody’s house, so fuck you right back.”
We stare at each other across a barrier of chain link and a grudge I don’t understand. He picks up the rag and wipes his hands. I know I should walk away before he says something else mean, but instead I just stand there watching him watch me for several uncomfortable seconds.
When JJ finally does speak, all he says is, “Your car is ready. The repairs came in just under eighteen hundred,” he says. “I was fair. I kept the price down the best I could.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
JJ nods and then returns to his porch. Lifting the paint roller he holds it suspended above the tray as the paint drips slow to a stop.
“I’ll keep an eye out for the dogs,” he says without looking back at me.
I sigh, reminded anew of my latest failure. “Thank you.”
“Save your thanks. I’m not doing it for you.”
Sinatra sings the “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning,” and JJ runs the roller up and down the wall, and I stand here in knee-high grass, off balance and unsure of what to do about the dogs, of what the hell is going on with JJ. Unsure about everything. The sensation I had last night—that I’m missing something—is back again, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what it is. I close my eyes and breathe in the smell of paint mixed with the sharp, green scent of the broken weeds beneath my feet. I wish I’d gotten more sleep last night, but sleep can be hard. Frank is right; it is in the wee small hours of the morning that I miss her most of all.
CHAPTER 35
There are nice things about riding a bike to work, like not having to bother to fix my hair. It’s also fun to watch hapless pedestrians on the trail flee before me as I zip past, zing zinging the little thumb bell on my handlebars. Unfortunately there are also not-nice things about riding a bike to work, like sweating and the way that my newly swollen boobs—as tightly wedged as they are into my bra—jiggle painfully with every bump. Needless to say, by the time I arrive at the fount of all knowledge that is the Gandy Public Library, I am damp and cranky.
The Art of Crash Landing Page 19