Champagne arrives in skinny glasses, the bubbles making straight lines. For the toasts, Patty realizes in time.
The other tables are just getting dinner as theirs is being taken away. Patty glances over at Kyra to make sure Casey’s eating. He seems fine, Mama forgotten. Kristi’s behind them, at a table by the bandstand with some of Eileen’s teammates. She thinks it’s a good sign that Trace hasn’t said a word about her—as if they’ve agreed to keep things just between them.
The waiter automatically brings another round. Patty finishes hers for courage during Woody’s speech. The applause fades as he sits down, and it’s her turn.
She stands and crosses behind Woody’s chair, the speech in her hand, holding on to his shoulders like a railing so she doesn’t pitch off the back. She can feel the whole room watching, their faces moving with her. Eileen’s smiling, and Cy, dressed so nice, and she recalls how good they were to her when it first happened, how they took her in. She bends down to hug Eileen and then Cy, and she’s crying. She didn’t mean to, but she is, and she has to borrow a tissue from her mother.
Once she’s recovered, Cy hands her the mike.
“I knew I’d cry.” The room laughs. “I’ll probably do it again, so just bear with me.”
The paper scuffs the head of the mike as she unfolds it, a sudden blast of wind. “Sorry.”
“‘Eileen,’” she reads, the words echoing from the PA, “‘you were always the wild sister of the three of us. I remember growing up, how if one of us broke something we’d blame it on you, like the lamp in the sewing room. Sorry, Mom.’” She nods to her in apology, the way they practiced. “‘You used to jump off the back porch like us even though you were half our size, and whenever there was a bug we needed killed, you picked it up and took it outside in your bare hands. I don’t know why you’re so fearless, you just are. Through the years I think we all worried about you because of that, but now that we’re older I wish I was more like you.’”
Awwww, everyone says.
“‘Cy,’” she says, putting a hand on his shoulder, “‘you’re fearless for marrying her.’” Big laugh. “‘Seriously, I can’t think of a better combination than you two. I remember when Eileen broke her arm, how you dressed her every morning. I won’t mention how you undressed her every night. You guys are always there to help and support each other. You’ve really helped me too, and I’ll never forget it. I love you both so much.’”
She’s left her champagne at her place, so she borrows Woody’s, raising it as cameras flash and chatter, then hugs them both to polite applause.
Back at her chair, Trace is waiting. “You did great.”
“I need a drink,” she says, and drains her champagne. It’s not a line; she concentrated so hard reading her speech that she’s given herself a headache, a trapped air bubble seeping through her brain. She tries her water but the ice just makes it worse, leaving a thin, sour aftertaste.
Woody’s going on a bar run. “You want anything?” he asks Trace.
“That was nice of him,” she says when he’s gone.
“Wood’s a good guy.”
The band’s onstage now, strapping on their guitars, fingering the electric keyboards, thumping the bass drum. Again, she’s aware of how close Trace is, their legs almost touching. Once the dancing starts, she’ll lose him to Kristi. Patty wants to make a date with him, nothing romantic, just a promise that they’ll see each other again.
“You racing next weekend?”
“If it doesn’t rain.”
“What number are you?” she asks, like she doesn’t know.
He tells her, and that’s enough, that’s all she wanted.
The band tunes up, and then the girl singer’s at the microphone, calling Eileen and Cy out for their first dance—“Wild Horses.” After the first chorus, Cy offers her mother his hand and draws her onto the floor. Eileen has to make do with a distant uncle of his.
And, shit, here comes Kristi, just like Patty figured, skirting the sidelines, heading directly for them. With her long hair and heels, she looks too big to Patty, big all over—her height, her smile—like some kind of farmgirl movie star. What chance does Patty have against a Dairy Princess?
“I hope you don’t mind if I steal him,” Kristi asks her and Carol, and Patty feels herself smile out of reflex.
When he’s gone, Carol scoots over one seat to talk. “I always thought this was a breakup song,” she confesses.
They watch them dance, Patty stabbing her dead lime wedge with her plastic sword. Kristi’s taller than he is.
“There’s your date,” Carol says, spotting Woody passing the cake table with his hands full of drinks.
“He’s trying a little too hard,” Patty says.
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“No, you’re right.”
They clam up as he nears.
“I got salt like you like,” he says, reaching Patty’s margarita up to her, and she thanks him. The cold sweetness goes good with her cigarette. The next song’s a fast one, and Woody asks if anyone wants to dance.
“Sure,” Carol says, letting her off the hook. They leave her alone with their beers. Patty feels exposed, the only one left at the table, and when she drains her glass she takes the opportunity to hit the bathroom. In the locked stall, she hangs her head and closes her eyes, listening to the chatter of the girls brushing their hair at the mirror, the door opening and closing, letting in bursts of music. She’s not drunk, she just needs to slow down, have a glass of water, maybe eat a piece of cake or something.
When’s the last time she was completely shit-faced? She can’t even remember.
It’s not going to be tonight. People will talk.
It’s not like they don’t already.
“Fuck’em,” she says softly, floating in the dark, the voices loud around her.
But she’s good. She has a Tab and then a glass of water with her cake, eating it with Casey and her mother and Kyra and Randy. Shannon and Marshall are out on the floor, flaunting their dance lessons. Eileen and Cy are taking off soon, and she corrals Woody and Carol and Trace and Kristi and the rest of the bridal party to decorate Cy’s truck with shaving cream and balloons and empty beer cans, clapping as Carol rolls a glow-in-the-dark rubber over the antenna.
She feels better outside, calmed by the darkness, the music a muffled pumping trapped inside the walls of the Parkview. The night is cool but humid, the moon bright above the telephone wires. From across the park, she can hear the low, constant passing of the river, like far-off traffic. When she was a teenager, her crew used to hang out here after dark, down by the water, drinking beer and talking about how far you could go if you followed it downstream—through Binghamton and into Pennsylvania, past Harrisburg and into Maryland, through the Chesapeake Bay, all the way to the ocean. You could go anywhere. Now here she is, twice as old as that girl and still stuck in the same place. But seriously, where would she go? She doesn’t want to move to Auburn and live with the guards.
“Here you go,” Woody says, handing her a joint. She takes a hit and passes it to Carol. The weed takes hold of her instantly, lifts her above her worries. She’s not here to mope around; she’s here to party for her sister. By the time the truck’s done, they’re all stoned and goofing, Trace chasing Woody down to the next streetlight with a shaken-up beer. “It’s rented!” Woody hollers, and for some reason it’s the funniest thing. All night long they say it to each other, about anything.
Once Eileen and Cy take off, the old people leave and the party starts. Her mother says she’s had enough fun; she’s going to take Casey and Kyra and Randy home. Shannon and Marshall have already split for their motel (“Hubba hubba,” her mother says). Patty says she’ll get a ride with Carol or one of the other girls from the shower. “Don’t be too late,” her mother warns. Patty says she won’t, she has to get up and see Tommy.
She goes back to margaritas until the bar runs out of mix, then switches to Jack and Coke. The bathroom ree
ks of weed, and Carol’s got coke. They do lines in her car—her and Woody and Trace and Kristi all jammed into her Civic, passing the scratched mirror between the seats. The coke is a bitter drip down the back of her throat, and she borrows Woody’s beer. They all go back in and dance up a sweat, come back out after the band stops and pool their money for another half gram. There’s an after-party forming, a convoy that snakes through the north end of town to Carol’s sister’s place, where the guy in charge of the stereo wears a Burger King crown and shades and plays nothing but reggae and the living room table is a huge wooden spool from the power company. Everyone’s dancing, partying in different rooms upstairs with the doors locked. At one point Patty goes outside to cool down and finds a girl passed out on a chaise longue. Later she watches two guys have a fake fight in the hallway and knock a picture off the wall. They just shrug and walk away. It’s late. The fridge is picked clean of beer, all the crisper drawer and door and butter compartment hiding spots empty, the kitchen counter an army of dead soldiers, the sink a nasty ashtray. Trace and Kristi are gone, but Woody’s still hanging in there, tagging after Carol. It’s three and then four and then a quarter to five and Patty needs to go home. Woody finally drives her, turning the heat up when he sees she’s shivering. And he is a good guy, Woody. He walks her to the door to make sure she’s safe, stepping back at the last minute to let her know he’s not fishing for a kiss.
It’s open. She thanks him, then waits till he’s gone to turn out the porch light.
Inside, she tries to be quiet, carrying her shoes in one hand. Casey’s asleep. Her alarm clock says five-thirty, meaning he’ll be up in an hour. In the blinding bathroom she shakes her head at herself in the mirror, the black holes of her pupils nearly eclipsing the green, then concentrates on squeezing a line of Gleem on her toothbrush. The taste makes her spit and rinse again. Thinking ahead, she takes three aspirin, gulps down two fast glasses of water and refills it to have by her bed.
As she lies there in the dark, the night comes back to her in flashes, a crazy waste of time and brain cells (not to mention twenty bucks). She doesn’t understand why she didn’t just come home after the band stopped. She feels cheap and foolish—guilty, even though nothing happened (as if it ever could). That she’s lonely is no excuse, or that it’s been a long time since she really let herself go. Maybe there isn’t a good reason, but she lies there wide awake, her whole head pulsing, trying to forgive herself, knowing, the whole time, that it’s not up to her.
A WHOLE NEW WORLD
SHE LIES TO HIM. EVERY TIME SHE TALKS TO HIM, SHE NOTICES things she says. She tells him she doesn’t mind the drive, that it’s pretty this time of year. She tells him things are going fine at work, that she has enough money, that something might come of the new appeal. She tells him she’s always thinking of him. She tells him Casey’s doing great at daycare.
More often, she lies by not telling him things. She doesn’t tell him how worried she is about the numbness in her mother’s fingers or about Casey pushing the little girl off the bleachers at Eileen’s softball game. She doesn’t tell him that she’s tired, that she dreads working another winter on the truck. She can’t tell him how she almost went to the speedway by herself Friday night. She can’t tell him how the other day when she burned the omelet she was making she dumped the pan in the sink and kept walking, out the back door and into the yard and the rain, where she didn’t even scream, just stood there swearing and clenching her hands.
Meanwhile, she’s lying to everyone else. There’s another new crew at work that has no idea who she’s married to. She hasn’t told Russ, but every Sunday she’s been screening the want ads, looking for a factory job like the one she used to have—indoors, sitting down, making something with women her own age. IBM’s too close, even if she could get in. She’s hoping for something out of town, out on the highway toward Binghamton or Elmira. On the application, she knows she’ll leave the space for her husband’s work number blank—if she puts him on there at all. She’ll do what she has to to start fresh in one part of her life, but right there, that’s a whole new world of lies.
So when they learn that the court of appeals has refused to hear their case—that, for all practical purposes, Tommy will spend the next twenty years in prison—Patty thinks at least that’s one thing she won’t have to deceive herself about anymore.
ACCIDENTS
ALL FALL SHE SEARCHES FOR A NEW JOB, LIKE THAT MIGHT SAVE HER. The economy’s supposed to be in such great shape, but nobody’s hiring, and she’s not qualified for anything that pays more than she’s already making. She goes through the rows of classifieds halfheartedly, crossing off the same ads as the Bills lose week after week. Her birthday’s come and gone; frost’s wilted the garden. They’ve started leaf pickup and hooked the tire chains onto the school buses. It’s just a matter of watching and waiting for the snow.
After every failed appeal, Tommy tells her she’d be better off forgetting him. This time he thinks they should get a divorce.
“Who’s going to send you money for your cigarettes?” she asks. “Who’s going to come visit you? You’ve got a family that loves you very much, sometimes I think you forget that.”
Is it a test? It drives her nuts to have to listen to it again and again. And there’s that small, secret part of her that agrees with him.
Sometimes Patty thinks he doesn’t understand that she has other problems besides missing him. Part of that’s her fault for not wanting him to worry about small stuff. When the washing machine breaks and floods the basement, what’s he supposed to do about it?
Casey’s different. She doesn’t know what to do with him. Twice in the last week he’s had an accident in his pants at daycare. He’s been out of diapers nearly a year, so it doesn’t make sense.
“Maybe he wants to stay home with your mom,” Tommy says.
“Oh, I know that,” she says. “He always gives me a hard time when I drop him off. He says none of the other kids play with him, but when I talk to Florence she says things have gotten a lot better. And he’s fine when I pick him up, he’s running around with everyone else. The whole reason he’s there is to play with other kids his age. He’s not learning anything staying home by himself.”
“What if you have him wear diapers when he’s there?”
“I don’t want to do that—that’s going backwards. He’s supposed to be toilet-trained. That’s one of the requirements for going there. They shouldn’t have to deal with his mess.”
“I bet it happens all the time at a place like that.”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” she says. “It doesn’t happen.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“I tried. He was embarrassed, and I didn’t want to make him feel worse. I told him to tell someone when he needs to go, but he knows that.”
“Do you want me to talk to him?” Tommy says.
“And say what?”
“I don’t know, see if I can find out what the problem is.”
“When are you going to do that—Sunday, with everyone around? I don’t want to do that to him.”
The silence on the other end of the line means he’s run out of answers.
“I’ll take care of it,” Patty says. “I just wanted to let you know what’s going on.”
“Thanks,” he says, and the rest of their conversation goes okay, but when she gets off the phone she feels like a bitch. She’s not, she thinks. She’s just tired of having to do everything herself.
HUNGER
THANKSGIVING ARRIVES, A GRAY ANNIVERSARY. THE SNOW FALLS, the plows roll out. Christmas, Casey breaks one of her mother’s favorite ashtrays, chips of emerald glass skittering across the kitchen floor, a shocked second of surprise, then tears. Dick Clark welcomes another year.
Patty lives weekend to weekend and tries not to notice time passing, the calendar pictures flipping. It’s impossible: at work she cleans up after the seasons. At home she struggles to stay ahead of Casey, who’s outgrown his
summer clothes.
He’s always been big like Tommy; now he’s thickened, turned husky, waistless. They have to watch what he eats. Like any kid, he loves junk food—doughnuts and sugary cereals, cookies and chips. Keeping sweets out of the house is easy; they just don’t buy them. Her mother moves her butterscotch drops and peppermint twists from the junk drawer to the middle shelf of the cupboard, and still he grows.
He’s hungry all the time. It’s the way he attacks his plate that worries her—doglike, as if he’s starving. She’s hardly started hers and he’s ready for seconds. Patty makes new rules to slow him down: finish chewing before taking another bite, only two glasses of milk per meal. If he wants a snack he can have an apple. When they go to Shannon’s for Easter, Patty stands her ground, confiscating his basket, and Casey pouts the whole way home.
It’s a problem at Auburn, all the crap in the machines. Patty has to warn Tommy; she needs them to be on the same page. He doesn’t agree with her. It’s been a ritual of theirs, a special family treat, and he doesn’t want to give it up.
“I was fat till I was thirteen,” he says. “Then I grew six inches and got teased for being a stringbean.”
“Did you like being fat?” Patty asks. “Do you think it’s healthy? I don’t. And you weren’t that fat. You were solid. You used to run around and do things with your friends. All he does is watch TV. Look at him next time and tell me if you think he’s healthy. Then you can buy him whatever you want.”
“Okay, okay,” he says. “I didn’t know it was such a big deal.”
Has he been listening to her at all? He’s always asking her what she’s up to, like he’s keeping tabs on her, but the next time she talks to him he’s forgotten everything she said. Sometimes she thinks he’s not really interested, that he’s just making conversation, passing time with her until he has to go back to that other world he lives in. But this isn’t like her mother having the driveway resealed or Eileen and Cy going to Watkins Glen for the races. This is his son.
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