This Is Not Chick Lit

by Elizabeth Merrick

  “Who knows,” he says finally, “why we all hate ourselves so much.”

  Billy pulls off his baseball cap and sets it on the table with the solemn air of a boy in church, then he plucks Ava up from her chair, her cast swinging, and walks to the back of the house toward the master bedroom. Charlotte follows closely behind, Ralph yipping at her feet. When Billy stops in the doorway of Ava’s bedroom, Charlotte almost runs into his narrow back.

  “You know, in ten years, I ain’t ever been in this room. Not to fix a broken window or a squeaky board or nothing. She always uses a company if something goes wrong in here.”

  “Like I told you,” Charlotte says, “old people are stuck in their ways.”

  Billy turns toward her sharply. “Can you not say something stupid for five minutes, just long enough to get her in the bed?”

  He walks through the doorway, and Charlotte runs to the bed, yanks down the white crocheted comforter, not bothering to pull down the sheets. Billy lowers Ava onto the bed with surprising gentleness, arranges her hands to cover her sagging bosom. Charlotte grabs two pillows from the trunk at the end of the bed to slide under Ava’s injured leg.

  Ava’s eyes flutter open, lock on Billy. “What the hell is he doing here?” she says, quite clearly considering, and then she’s asleep again.

  “Nice law-abiding old lady, right?” Billy thumbs through a stack of envelopes on Ava’s bedside table. “How do you reckon she gets five different Social Security checks? You ever thought about that? About where your money’s coming from?”

  “It’s the same money that pays you,” Charlotte says, and immediately she regrets saying it. Billy frowns, slams the envelopes down on the table. Ralph, who is half-blind, barks at the commotion, then bites at Billy’s boot. Billy kicks him hard in the ribs, says “That goddamn dog has bit me for the last time.” Ralph growls, teeters around dazed for a second, then flops down next to the bed.

  “You know how easy it would be?” Billy says, nodding toward the pillows Charlotte is still clamping against her chest. “A minute at most, and it would all be over. Then you’d have your money.” Charlotte shoves the pillows under Ava’s leg before he can say anything else. He walks up behind her as she fluffs them, cups his hands over her breasts, places his lips against her hair. “I’m just teasing you, girl,” he says. “I like teasing you.” Then, “Was that true, what you said about your daddy?” He doesn’t move his hands.

  “True enough,” Charlotte says.

  “Let’s go somewhere else,” he whispers against her neck. “I never feel right in this house.”

  The neighbor, Zelda, has parked her rusting Lincoln behind Charlotte’s Chevette, which happens often in the ongoing driveway wars.

  Billy works a brick loose from one of the planters lining Ava’s porch, shrugs off his T-shirt, wraps it around his hand, then slams the brick through the Lincoln’s driver’s side window. He pokes his hand carefully through the broken glass, unlocks the door, opens it, then leans into the car, puts it into neutral, and starts pushing it off the gravel strip that runs between their houses and onto Zelda’s lawn. The wiry muscles on his dark back shimmy under his skin.

  “There,” he says, after the Lincoln is soundly on Zelda’s front lawn. “Fucking Nazi bitch.”

  Charlotte thinks that perhaps she shouldn’t go off with this man, that perhaps he is indeed as dangerous as he seems. But she can still feel his breath against her neck, his hands cupping her breasts, and it’s been a year. She’s been real good for a year.

  “I’ll drive,” he says. He shakes the glass out of his shirt, then tugs it back over his head. When he’s dressed, he grins at her, a blinding grin, says, “Got to look good for our date.”

  “This is a date?” Charlotte says.

  “Gimme the keys.” He shoves his hand toward her, palm out. “I got a place I go.”

  They drive out of Twilight Pines, past Check Into Cash, past the Piggly Wiggly, past the Keep It Clean Laundromat, and pull into Charley’s Fine Liquors, where a group of young black men, their pants slung low, mill about slouched-backed in the parking lot.

  “Nervous?” Billy says. He places a finger under a lock of Charlotte’s blond hair, flicks it. “You think they’d hurt you if they could?”

  “Grey Goose,” Charlotte says. “And make sure it’s cold.” She hands him two twenties. This is the first time she’s had any kind of money in months.

  Charlotte watches him enter the store, the way he nods gamely at the young men, slapping a few on the back as he passes. Billy says something to one boy, a squat kid with a goatee. The boy looks toward the Chevette and starts laughing. Charlotte slams the lock down on her door, then unlocks it just as quickly, not wanting to give Billy any ammunition to work with.

  When Billy gets back to the car, he shoves a bottle of cheap wine toward her, tucks two 40s between his thin thighs.

  They drive out of town, toward the suburbs where all the stucco houses come in shades of pink, nice clean-looking houses with a few palm trees growing here and there on carefully manicured lawns. Billy has rolled down the windows. The rush of air when the car’s moving fast makes it possible to talk only at stoplights, not that they do.

  “Here we go,” Billy says finally, turning slowly in to a fancy circle of houses that face a manmade lake strategically lit with dim spotlights. A fake heron perches on the bank. “I used to work out here when they were building this place. The pond is stocked right. I fished in it some mornings before work until some rich fucker complained that he didn’t pay dues for any Tom, Dick, or Harry to steal his bass. They usually don’t bother you if you just want to stare at the water.”

  He takes the bottle of wine from Charlotte, screws off the cap, then hands it back to her. “Cheers,” he says, knocking his bottle of beer against her wine.

  Billy signals that he doesn’t want to talk by turning the radio on low, some soft jazz station Charlotte never listens to. They drink quietly for a while. The wine, mixed with the pain pills she’s been swiping from Ava, hits harder than she expects, and Charlotte’s head’s spinning before half the bottle is gone.

  “You ready?” Billy asks. Charlotte nods. He takes her wine and wedges their bottles behind the backseat, then leans toward her, begins unbuttoning her blouse, his fingers still cool from the beer.

  Charlotte closes her eyes. She’s sixteen and lying in a field with Lucy’s father, right in the middle of the day. They are naked, their bodies glistening from lovemaking. They wave wildly at cars driving by on the county road. Some of the cars honk as they pass, and it feels like everyone is part of their love story.

  “You smell good, girl,” Billy’s saying, and then his lips are hot against her breastbone, his breath musky and sweet. Charlotte thinks, it’s been so long. Charlotte thinks, this feels so good. And his lips are moving, down, down her chest, against the rim of her bra, and her head is spinning. She feels weightless, like air.

  When she opens her eyes again, Billy’s leaning against the driver’s door, smoking.

  “What happened?” she asks. Her shirt is completely unbuttoned. Her skirt is pushed up to her waist. There is a new, fist-sized dent on the glove-compartment door.

  “Sorry about the car,” Billy says, looking at the dent. “You passed out on me.”

  Charlotte reaches between her thighs, feels for moisture.

  “I’m many things,” Billy says, “but a rapist ain’t one of them.” He thumps his cigarette out the window.

  “Why are you always so angry?” Charlotte says without knowing she’s going to say it. For a second, the time it takes to draw a single breath, his face twitches and softens, and Charlotte can see there’s a way in, a way for her to touch all that hurt and want moiling there in the pit of him. And then he’s Billy again. This is her weakness. Charlotte knows. This is the kind of man, all of that barely restrained anger, that makes her feel alive. She didn’t need the fat-assed condescending social worker to tell her that. She’s always known.

 
“Can you take a break from asking stupid questions?” Billy snaps. “You must be worn out thinking them all up by now.” He presses a hand hard against the C-section scar on her belly. “Where’s the kid?”

  Charlotte pushes his hand away, pulls her shirt over her chest. “They took her.”

  Charlotte sees Lucy’s face in the rear window of the cruiser, her huge, wet eyes. The cops didn’t even bother to buckle the girl in, and they’d said she was the one guilty of child endangerment. Charlotte sees herself mouthing I’ll get you soon, baby at the disappearing cruiser, but even then, in that exact moment she mouthed the words, she knew she wouldn’t. That in a way, it would be so much easier not to.

  “Where’s the father?” Billy asks. “He still around?” His voice drops when he says this, and Charlotte thinks that maybe he is jealous. Just a little bit.

  “It’s been a long time,” she says.

  “I got a kid,” Billy says. He points at one of the more modest houses surrounded by a moat of light. “He lives there. He asked me not to come around no more. But sometimes I come here and watch. He’s done good for himself, you know? That means I’ve done good. That’s how I like to think about, it, anyway.”

  “You’ve done better than most,” Charlotte says.

  “How much is Mrs. Bean paying you?”

  Charlotte considers not telling him but figures he probably already knows. He has a way of knowing everything. “A hundred and fifty a week, ten thousand when she passes. The doctor said she’s got six months, tops. With the added trauma of the leg, maybe not that long.”

  “You get it in writing?” He pulls a cigarette from his pack, places it between her lips, curves his hand around the match while he lights it for her.

  She nods yes, blows out a stream of smoke. “Not getting things in writing is how I ended up sleeping in my car in the first place.”

  “It’s funny, death,” he says. “Even when we know it’s coming, it’s never expected, not really. Like that boy in the papers on death row in Texas. I mean, he was wormy in the head, but even an animal knows when it’s on its way out, and I’m betting he was smarter than most animals. They give him his last meal, and he doesn’t finish it. Tells them to wrap it up. That’ll he’ll finish it when he gets back. You see what I’m saying?”

  “Was Ava really in the movies?” Charlotte asks. “Do you think she has the kind of money she promised me?” She has spent weeks staring at the black-and-white framed photos scattered around Ava’s house, women in shiny dresses cut on the bias, costume jewelry dripping from necks and ears. Charlotte can’t tell if they’re real photos or reproductions bought from some souvenir store. She likes to imagine Ava as young and glamorous, drinking cocktails in long white gloves at Hollywood mansions in the hills, not old and drunk and dying. She wants to believe that this kind of glamour happens for someone. And she wants to believe that Ava will really give her the money she offered, that the agreement she requested Ava to write out and sign is worth more than the paper it’s written on.

  Billy snorts. “Stupid, sweet girl,” he says. “If that woman’s got money, you ain’t getting it unless you take it.” He cups her chin, leans toward her like he’s going to kiss her. “It would be so easy,” he says. “A few too many pills. An honest mistake. It could take years for her to be dead and done with it. Doctors never get it right. How about Mexico? We could rent ourselves a little hacienda.”

  His other hand is kneading her belly now, and her blood is warming, her heart quickening.

  Then his finger is inside her, pushing hard, the way she likes it. “You want to try again?” he says.

  When Charlotte knocks on the neighbor’s door, Zelda opens it in mid-rant, the foreign words tumbling out of her mouth, hard as pebbles. She clutches an official-looking document in one hand, and she won’t shut up, no matter how politely Charlotte smiles.

  “This is America,” Charlotte finally interrupts. “I speak English.”

  “Deed,” Zelda says, pointing at the document she’s now waving in Charlotte’s face. “Do you understand this word? My driveway.”

  “I’m just looking for Mrs. Bean’s dog,” Charlotte says. “He’s gone missing.”

  “This is no Germany,” Zelda says. The freckled pouches under her eyes quiver, and Charlotte realizes that the woman is on the verge of tears. “You cannot take my things.”

  “I’m just looking for the dog, ma’am,” Charlotte says.

  “Maybe the criminals that place my car on my yard took it,” Zelda says with a smile. “Maybe they do many bad things around here.” Then she slams the door in Charlotte’s face.

  When Charlotte gets home, she finds Ava sitting at the kitchen table with an empty bottle of wine, her crutches tossed at her feet. A thin line of blood seeps down her forehead, but she doesn’t move to wipe it away.

  “I fell,” she says.

  Charlotte walks to the kitchen sink, opens the cupboard, pulls out the large basin she uses to wash Ava’s hair, and begins filling it with water. She grabs the shampoo from on top of the refrigerator and sets in on the table.

  “It’s been a week,” Ava says. She’s crying now. Makeup clots under her eyes. Her lipstick is smeared across her cheek. “Ralph never leaves my sight. Where could he have gone?”

  “We’ll find him,” Charlotte says, slipping a dish towel around Ava’s neck. “He can’t have gone far. Somebody found him and they’re just holding him safe until we get him. You’ll see.” She knows that this is not true. Either Ralph crawled off to die, or Billy dumped him in the countryside, or Zelda finally found a way to get back at Ava and the rest of the world for the many injustices she’s suffered, but wherever Ralph is, he isn’t coming back. But for now, the lie seems kinder.

  Charlotte massages Ava’s knotted hands until the basin fills. She lugs it to the kitchen table, scoots Ava’s stool around until her lower back is pressed against the edge of the basin, then lowers the woman’s head into the water. Her hair is matted with blood, and Charlotte is relieved when she sees that the cut looks worse than it is.

  “He’s the only one that loves me,” Ava is saying as Charlotte soaps her hair, so thin that the scalp shows through. Pink-tinged suds cover Charlotte’s hands. “My kids don’t give a damn. Not a one of them. Only him. He didn’t mean to hurt me. He doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.”

  “I know,” Charlotte says. She dips Ava’s head into the basin, tries to get out as much shampoo and blood as she can.

  Ava sits up sharply. “What did you do with him?” Water splashes on the tile floor, a mess Charlotte will have to clean up. Ava grips Charlotte’s hand, the long nails breaking the skin. “Where did you put him?”

  “Shhhh,” Charlotte whispers, and Ava relaxes, rests her head back against the basin.

  “There was a woman in the hospital bed next to me, when I broke my leg,” Ava says sleepily. “She’d been in some kind of accident. Her and her husband. Not a scratch on her, but she’d hit her head and couldn’t remember nothing you just told her. Her husband was killed, and her kids would tell her and she’d go crazy, and then she’d take a nap, wake up all confused, but happy, you know—happy to be here, but clueless that her husband was gone And then they’d have to tell her all over that her old man had died and she’d lose it again.” Ava stares up at Charlotte, heavy-lidded, her eyes unfocused. “What do you think is worse—forgetting or knowing?”

  Charlotte is trying not to listen to Ava. She’s trying to remember Lucy’s father, what he whispered to her when he touched her, how young they were, how they believed the things they promised each other. She’s trying to remember Lucy as a baby when she used to bathe her in a basin like this, her chubby baby legs kicking against the water. If Charlotte closes her eyes, she can feel Lucy’s fingers curl around her thumb, she can hear her shriek with laughter.

  When Charlotte opens her eyes, Billy is standing outside the kitchen window, the sky behind him cornflower blue, his eyes black and vacant. But she knows what they’
re saying. It would be so easy. And then he’s gone.

  Until Lucy, Charlotte didn’t understand anything about how the world works, about how one person can shape the course of another’s life as much by absence as anything else, how a stranger’s faith might be the closest thing to salvation you’re ever offered.

  Ava is asleep now, the full weight of her head pressing against Charlotte’s hands. She holds her there, suspended over the water. For one forgiving moment, the weight is not unbearable.

  Roxana Robinson

  ONE

  They’re married, but not to each other.

  Nat unlocks the door and then steps back, to let Ella go in first. The hotel room is high-ceilinged and square, and a double bed takes up most of it. On the bed is a cream-colored quilted spread. Pale heavy curtains frame the window; thinner, translucent ones obscure the view. The carpet is thick and cocoa-colored. There is an ornate bureau, imitation French, and a gilt-framed mirror. The room is close and airless. They have no luggage.

  Ella moves ahead of him, stopping near the bed. She’s in her late twenties, and thin, with long chestnut-colored hair. She turns, so that she won’t see herself in the mirror. She stands facing away from him, looking down. She has never done this before. She hardly knows this man, and this is a terrible mistake. She has made a terrible mistake, coming to this airless room with someone who, it turns out, is a stranger. She stands motionless, awaiting perdition.

  Nat follows her into the room.

  He has never done exactly this before, either, never done anything quite so bold and crude as to rent a hotel room at lunchtime. What he did was always out of town, with women he never intended to see again. It was mostly in Los Angeles, a place full of beautiful, willing girls, happy to be taken out for dinner and then back to his hotel. Those encounters had been brief and distant. But this, now, is in his own city, only blocks from his own apartment, with a woman he does want to see again, and he’s afraid he’s starting something large and irreversible. What it means is the end of his marriage. He won’t be able to go on like this; he’s going too far. This is reckless, indefensible, and he’s doing it in the name of lust, which is, right now, notably absent. He understands that coming here was a mistake, though he believes he loves this woman.