Backseat Saints

by Joshilyn Jackson

  “It’s important to your daddy,” I said, peeking over my shoulder at him again.

  All at once those two spiky creases were running up the center of Thom’s forehead, and I gave all my attention back to my pie. But his voice came out even as he said, “This won’t be his kid, Ro. I don’t see as how he has a say in where our baby gets his preaching.”

  I had to bite back words then, about how Joe stuck his Roman nose into everything and Thom let him. Instead, I swallowed and said to my pie, “Church is not the only reason, Thom.”

  “I know,” Tom said. “Money.”

  I’d been thinking of Thom’s temper. But more than half of Thom’s rages and all our money came from Joe. I figured money was a back road in to what we both knew was the real subject. When he spoke, his voice had settled into serious tones.

  “I’m going to talk to my father on Monday. We can’t raise kids living in this school district, so there’s a move to consider. You’ll want to be home, and that means we’ll be losing your little checks, too. He has to see that.

  “I’m going to tell him straight up how much I ought to be making. I’ve asked around, and I’ve even been down at the library, doing some research. I have a pretty good idea what I’m worth, and it’s a helluva lot more than my current salary. I have it all on paper. I made a graph to show him what other men doing my kind of job here in Texas get paid.

  “I made an appointment. I put it in his book for next week, like any employee would. When I began, he said he didn’t want to start me out high because I was his kid. He wanted me to earn my way up, and I respect that. I think that was even good for me, because now I don’t take anything for granted and I know what work is, which I sure didn’t learn in college. But I’ve put five good years in, and these days, he’s doing less and less as I do more and more. I’ve grown into doing a pretty big job.”

  “I’m not the one you have to convince,” I said, turning back around to face him.

  He was smiling, and his posture was loose and easy. He said, “Sorry. I’ve been practicing this in my head for days, getting myself ready to say it to him.”

  “What if he says no?” I asked carefully. “If he starts in on that ‘Boy, you’re building your own future, this is sweat equity’ stuff, and all it really means is no, what then?”

  Thom said, “Then it’s time for me to find another job. I’ve been practicing how to say that to him, too.”

  He sounded so sure of himself, so calm and confident. I was close to believing him, and I realized my floury fingers had come up to worry at my bottom lip. I made my hand drop and I said, “You are going to give your father an ultimatum?”

  “I wouldn’t put it like that,” Thom said, but he shrugged with the easy jock confidence that had always before deserted him when confronted with his father. My jaw dropped and my eyes went wide.

  “You are!”

  “About time,” he said, shrugging, so cool. I realized I was staring at him like a middle schooler with a way bad crush. “So what do you think?”

  I blinked. The most important things were still sitting unsaid in between us. I was on the pill because it seemed to me the lesser sin. I’d never let him put a baby in me, on purpose, when I knew with such certainty he would punch it right back out. I couldn’t see a single way that it would be any different from penciling in an abortion and then trying to get pregnant in time to make the appointment.

  But I thought of the sole purple bruise on my shin, lonely in this new marriage we’d been making ever since I had hidden in the woods and taken those shots at him. It reminded me of a line from a story I must have read a thousand times as a girl. “She would of been a good woman,” a character says, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

  The story was by Flannery O’Connor, and she’d been a southern Catholic, too. Like my mother, who had left O’Connor’s stories and a hundred other books behind when she left us. And like me, who’d read each of those books over and over. We were rare things, southern Catholics, swamped in Baptists and hemmed in by Methodism. Maybe O’Connor had been telling me something, one pope’s girl to another.

  Six weeks was such a small time, for Thom and for me, especially when I held it up against the years that had come before. Still, it wasn’t only the time I had to measure. Thom was offering me my religion back, like it was a gift. Presbyterians skipped a step, going straight from group confession to communion, as if absolution was a simple thing that slept at my feet like Gretel, waiting to be called. They didn’t understand penance.

  When Rose Mae brought me back to that crazy place where I called violence to me like it was my lover, if I had my religion back, I could learn to go to the priest instead of Thom. A few hours on bent knee with a rosary might still even Rose Mae Lolley. Hell, worst case, I could go dredge me up a nun. I still remembered the precision of Sister Agnes’s ruler stinging my palm from catechism classes long gone; no one understood crime and punishment better than a savage little nun.

  Meanwhile, here was my husband, telling me he was ready to face his father directly and say a thing Joe wouldn’t like. I didn’t know this man, but I loved him. God help me, how I loved Thom Grandee in this moment.

  I said, “Why don’t we have a baby,” with that same odd emphasis, as if I, too, could not imagine why it hadn’t happened already.

  “Why don’t we,” he asked, and this time it did sound like a suggestion.

  I said, “I can’t stop in the middle. It will mess me up. But when this cycle ends, I won’t start the next month’s pills.”

  He ran right at me, fast, and I was not afraid. He picked me up and spun me. My floury hands left white prints against the dark blue of his shirt, and I clasped them around his neck. He carried me back across the kitchen, and I felt my ballet flats slip off and plop onto the floor.

  He boosted me up onto the very countertop I’d fussed at him for sitting on earlier. Then we stilled, caught up inside a quiet kind of happy. He stood between my knees with my bare feet dangling down the counter on either side of him. We stayed there kissing with our mouths mostly closed for long minutes, innocent, the kind of making out I’d only seen practiced by teenagers on eighties sitcoms. We breathed each other’s air, peaceful together, solemn and pleased inside of our decisions.

  Thom was still Thom, so pretty soon the kissing got serious, and his hands took a wander up under my skirt.

  “When we have kids,” he said, “we won’t be able to do it in the kitchen.”

  The casual way he said it, “when we have kids,” got me flushed. I laughed and said, “We’re not doing it in the kitchen now, buster. The countertop is the wrong height, and if you’re thinking about that cold linoleum floor, I suggest you rethink.”

  He grinned and kept on kissing me. I hopped down and we stood pressed together, me on tiptoe, mouth to mouth by the cabinets. We began to move like slow dancers, swaying our way to the living room, shedding clothes as we went. He had me right there on the oatmeal-colored rug, and I had him.

  While we were busy, my lasagna burned up around the edges. When we were finished, we were so starved that we ate the middle right out of the pan, standing naked in the kitchen, side by side with two forks. I put the pie in to bake while we were showering, and then we ate the middle out of that, too, for no reason other than we wanted to.

  The next morning, once Thom had gone to work, I checked my wheel. I had seven pills left before my cycle ended.

  I took one little white disk and laid it on my tongue, then washed it down with a sip of my morning cran-grape. I looked at the new empty space on the wheel, and it felt like the start of a whole new countdown. A week and change until the start of something lovely.

  I tried not to think about how not so long ago, Rose Mae Lolley had been counting down the days and hours and minutes in an opposite direction, moving toward his death. She was quiet for now. Too quiet. Unriled and still biding. She had no faith in this new Thom that did not seem to carry her ma
tch inside of him. She had no faith at all.

  Five more pills taken, and the day came when Thom had scheduled his meeting with his father. We didn’t make love that morning, though he woke up ready and Lord knows I was willing.

  “Game day,” he said, like he was back in college and this was a morning after one of the first nineteen times we’d made love, all the times before he’d first hit me. Back then we were still busy being pretty for each other. I think even then I knew a day would come, a lost game, a failed test, when I would needle out the Thom I had seen at the diner. The one who had banded with Rose Mae to play a cruel trick on his own date.

  One day he dropped an easy interception at a practice. Later, when he couldn’t get my bra unhooked, I stepped away and turned to face him. I reached for it myself, saying in a sly voice, as thin and sharp as needles, “It must be national fumble day,” and he backhanded me across his small dorm room.

  He stared at me, shocked at himself. Rose Mae, banged loose, opened her bloody lips into something that was half grin and half snarl. “Not the face, baby. What will the neighbors say?”

  This morning, though, that Thom was far away, and I was done calling him. Thom suited up, khakis and a power tie, a navy sport coat pulled on over his starched white shirt. He left with his head set to a cocky angle.

  I was full of ants. I phoned Mrs. Fancy and canceled morning coffee, not fit for even her easy kind of company. At two, right when his meeting started, I pulled my secret stash of votives out from the bottom of my tampon box and lit one on the tub rim. I prayed for a long time, about fathers and justice, calling on Saint Joseph. I felt my prayer was heard, but the air stayed still, unmoved by saint breath. I was glad. Beckoned saints belonged with my mother in California, a place that I would never go, in a future I would not step toward. I put out the votive and prayed the rosary for good measure.

  Only once through. I thought Thom might come home early, right after his meeting. I wanted to greet him at the door, off my knees and smiling. By three-thirty, I’d sprayed Lysol to cover the sulfur smell the match had left and put away my rosary, hoping this might be the last time I had to hide it.

  He didn’t come. I thought sure he’d at least call, but four P.M. came and went with no phone ringing.

  I started to feel a green and mossy sickness slow growing in the pit of me. I ran the vacuum over my already clean carpet and told myself no news was good news. I told myself he wanted to see my face when he came in, smelling like win, carrying sparkling wine and field daisies. At five, I went and got my green bottle of Coke out of habit, though Lord knows I didn’t need the caffeine. I drank it while I prepped scalloped potatoes and put pork chops in marinade and chopped up mushrooms and bell peppers and tomatoes for a salad.

  Dinnertime came, and he still wasn’t home. I quit hoping it had gone well.

  I decided maybe it was good he’d stayed away. He was walking it off. He was making plans. He was getting a leg up on job hunting. In my opinion, leaving Grand Guns altogether would be fifty times better than a raise. I ate a piece of bread and opened another Coke to settle my stomach. I walked from room to room like a restless spirit haunting my own house. Gretel followed me, pressing against my legs every time I paused, her eyebrows so worried that eventually I put her out in the back.

  It was after eight when at last I heard his Bronco pull into our drive. I ran for the door, then stopped and went instead to the sofa. I perched myself on its edge, spine straight like a schoolgirl’s. I held my warm Coke in one hand, its base resting on my knee, and waited for Thom to come in and tell me if it was half-full or half-empty. The drapes were closed over the picture window. I sat myself as still as I could and listened for the sound of his keys jangling against the door.

  He walked in like his whole body was made of springs. His eyes were too bright, as if he had fever. I found I was making myself be small, sinking and curling back into the cushions. I thought, No. We have promised to be different now. It had been a promise, those shy declarations that we would try, exchanged over meat loaf. For the last six weeks, we’d treated those words as solemnly as the vows we’d recited in front of his father’s Presbyterian minister. I tried not to think that those un-Catholic vows had been worthless, too, in God’s eyes.

  He stood still in the center of the parquet island.

  “It’s done,” he said.

  “Good,” I said, neutral. “Good for you. Are you hungry? I can have dinner on the table in half an hour, maybe less.”

  “We compromised,” Thom said, never his favorite word; in his mouth right now it sounded downright filthy.

  “That’s wonderful,” I said, hating the fake of it, the forced chirp I heard. Here I was again treading careful with my husband, and I made myself stop bright-siding before I found myself dancing, as eager to please as an organ-grinder’s monkey. It was fine. He was tense, but a talk with his daddy was always a challenge.

  “You did a hard thing, and I’m proud,” I said, and that was true.

  “Here’s what he decided,” Thom said, and I didn’t like how he pushed down hard on the word he, like Thom himself hadn’t gotten a say. “He says, when you get pregnant, then my salary moves up halfway toward what I want. After the baby, we get the other half,” Thomas said. “That seems fair, right?” he said, not like he was asking really, but as if he was ordering me to shore him up.

  “That seems perfectly fair,” I said, although it didn’t sound so much fair as it sounded like Joe Grandee demanding to stand in our bedroom with a metronome, setting the beat while we made him a grandchild. Thom seemed to know anyway, like he could hear the thoughts under my words. He looked at me with his eyebrows beetling down and his mouth set so firm, it was a lipless slash. I saw his pulse in his temple and the curl of his hands, and for the first time since summer I felt a trickle of scared dribbling down my spine. It passed a bright drop of Rose Mae’s excitement, going the other way on the same path.

  “I’ve got me one bad-ass headache. Can you keep it down in here if I go back to sleep?” Thom said.

  I could see how on the fence he was. We’d been here before, and I could push him either way. I felt Rose unfolding, creamy and pleased and ready for her boy, the one I loved, the one she’d love to shoot. I knew what to say. Sure, sugar, have your nap, but then can you run retrieve your balls from out of your daddy’s pocket? You’ll need at least one if you’re gonna give me that big money baby.

  That would tip him over, surely. I could see how bad he wanted me to say it. It would be permission. More than that. It would be an invitation. Rose Mae wanted it as well, to step out of dreams about Jim in the green woods and be present, wanted me to push him so he’d push back. She wanted me to admit I knew the silent, secret thing she’d planned.

  He waited and I waited.

  I didn’t say it. I didn’t want it. I thought, This is my last chance, if I want to be Ro Grandee. I thought of how sweet Thom could be with his brother’s roly-poly boys, and I wanted the last six weeks to keep going on forever. I kept my mouth shut and nodded.

  Still he didn’t move. He stayed on the parquet square. His hands were at his sides, but his fingers stayed slightly curled, yearning to be fists.

  “I’ll keep it so quiet for you,” I said, and my voice came out sweet, barely above a whisper. My heart had to work, beating hard to make my scant and shallow breath be enough to go around. He didn’t move, and my body released a clammy, instant sweat. Thom stared at me, and I waited, slick and trembling. Finally he nodded.

  “Okay, then,” he said. It came out sounding defeated, but I heard it as permission to exhale. “I just need quiet.”

  I nodded, dead silent, and he turned to go. The moment I saw the back of his blond head, my spine became a noodle. I felt like I’d been through a siege and the last forty seconds had taken a solid hour. My fingers were made of jam and string; I thought I might drop my half-full Coke. I picked it up off my knee and set it on the end table beside me. My hands were shaking, and I misju
dged the distance. I heard the overloud clack of glass bottle on the wood. We both did. It went off like a gunshot in the silent room.

  Thom turned back to me instantly, a fast wolfy wheel-around. He thought I’d meant to bang the table, and I saw the ugly relief spreading across his face. He came at me with total purpose. He came so fast.

  Adrenaline dumped into my blood. I leapt off the sofa and took off, the Coke bottle still clutched in my hand. I hadn’t made it three feet before he reached out and tangled his fingers deep into my long hair. He dug his hand in close to the scalp, then fisted it. He yanked me through the air back toward him, and I felt and heard the rip of a thousand different hairs tearing loose at the roots. I think I screamed.

  My feet lost all purchase with the earth, and my body swung back toward the fist coming to smash into my back beside my spine. My back bowed like my body was trying to fold wrong-ways around the blow. The air pushed out of my lungs, out of my very blood. The world went dark red and I was spinning, dangling by my hair like a punching bag. His other hand came toward me again and again in fast, hard jabs, thumping into my hip, my side, my gut. He hit me so hard that the swing of my body away unbalanced him, and he had to step in closer. I felt my feet touch ground, but he still had half my weight and my scalp felt torn and I could hear my hair still tearing.

  It was close to stopping then. I felt him shift to stopping. But my hand was still curled around cool glass, and I was at Cadillac Ranch, looking for my mother, remembering how it felt to swing. The glass had shivered into something like a weapon. I smashed the green Coke bottle into the middle of his face with all the force I had. His eyes widened and I saw surprise, then disbelief. Blood came out of his nostrils in two shocked jets. Then his eyes were animal eyes, and I couldn’t see my husband at all.

  He shook me by my hair, and I felt more skin and hair ripping from each other. I screamed, and he shook me and shook me, and inside I could hear all my bones jangling together. I lost my grip on the bottle as he hit me and kept hitting me until I lost time and myself and there was only him hitting me.