by Charles Rose
Right away she had to talk about Cole. “I see you been fishing without Cole?”
“That’s right. He says he’d rather paint the church steeple.”
“I think it’s better that way,” she said. Charlene put her hands on her hips, her eyes narrowing like she was going to lecture me, like it was my fault Cole was painting the church. The sun blazed on the blue carpeting. I heard the window unit rumbling, thought it’s cool inside but I knew I wouldn’t be going inside. Charlene wiggled her toenails, patted one sandal on the carpeting. Her voice, when it came, was distant.
“Look there’s something I ought to tell you. About how Cole came to find the Lord.”
I slid my feet away, looked at Charlene. “Okay,” I said to her, “tell me how Cole came to find the Lord.”
Through a gap in the legs of the gas grill, a green lizard crawled past Charlene’s toenails, without her seeing it since she was staring at me, crawling inch by inch along the carpeting Cole had tacked down, a cheery sky-blue surface for lizards. I was about to stomp on it, would have if it hadn’t melted into a shimmying blob.
“Cole’s first wife ran off from him. He couldn’t get over losing her. He wanted to throw his life away.” What Charlene was saying, dwelling on, I knew it meant something to her, but it didn’t mean anything to me. “Cole told me he got in his car one day and drove out on County Road 179. He was going to drive his car into the first big truck he came across. It would have happened, but something else happened instead. Cole saw a little girl on a tricycle, and he forgot about ending his life. He stopped the car right away, and got out—she couldn’t have been more than three years old. He asked her where she lived, and she told him. Cole put the tricycle in the back seat and took this little girl home. It was this little girl that saved Cole’s life.”
It took a lot of concentration, but I made those tufts of blue carpeting come back again, Cole’s well-spaced carpet tacks showing forth for me. The lizard had gone its own way. So it was easy for me to say something Charlene would want to hear. “That little girl, who was she?”
“It was the preacher’s little girl, at this country church.”
“The preacher’s little girl. If that isn’t something.”
“You ask me it was a miracle, Wes.”
I thought of Cole up on a ladder, slapping paint on the boards of the squat little steeple that seemed stuck on, not actually nailed down or in some way built, the sun beating down on the back of his neck, Cole painting his way down from the steeple because he thought the Lord wanted him to. I would have said it, where does that leave you and me, Charlene, just to get started again with Charlene, make her feel like having sex with me was okay, but I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t even move. Sunspots flashed on the gas grill. I couldn’t blink the green blob away.
I didn’t have sex with Charlene that afternoon. I spent the afternoon in my trailer with a cold wash rag on my forehead. I watched the Braves lose to the Marlins. In the seventh inning I remembered the date, July twenty-fifth. Today not tomorrow, was my son Tommy’s birthday. I had sent him a present, a Tinkertoy set, and a birthday card in time for both to get there. He was four years old but I had forgotten, not that he would soon be four years old, I had forgotten today was the twenty-fifth, not the twenty-fourth.
I turned off the TV and picked up the telephone and called Katie, but all I got was a busy signal. An hour later I called again. All I got was the answering machine. I told myself I would call later. I told myself I would get in my car and drive down to Valdosta tonight.
Once the sun went down and it cooled off outside, I left my place and walked over to Elinor’s. I knocked but she didn’t come to the door. I heard her tell me to come on in. She was sitting in her favorite chair, by the bookcase in front of the television set. She was listening to the radio. The radio was turned down low, and the music was soft, music for dancing I said to myself, only I didn’t feel like dancing. She had the lights off, her book in her lap. A mug of black coffee sat close at hand, on a low wicker table in front of her. She had positioned a chair beside her, for me.
“There’s a can of beer in the fridge if you want one.”
I didn’t want one, not tonight.
There wasn’t much light in the trailer. A moth lit on Elinor’s novel, then spiraled on up to the ceiling light as if it had been caught in a tornado. Mr. Hardcastle, I got to thinking of him again. Had the same wind that blew him around blown the moth up to the ceiling light? But that couldn’t be, except in my mind. I remembered this old man I used to see when I lived in Birmingham. This old man was vigorous for his age. He turned up all over the city. That’s how this old man spent his life, moving from one public place to another, hospitals, the public library, city parks. He had a bald head and a gray beard, and in warm weather he wore his shirtsleeves rolled up.
The books in the bookcase, the bindings were running together so I had to look back at Elinor. I saw her clearly for a little while, closing her book, marking her place with a bookmark. She picked the mug up with both hands, sipped on the coffee, set the mug back down, her hands jittering from the effort.
“This thing with Charlene, it’s doing things to my eyesight.”
“Your eyesight isn’t your problem.” Elinor turned off the radio. She moved her chair close to mine. “Your shiftless way of life, that’s your problem.”
“Shiftless is how I have to live.”
“You have to do better than that.”
Fork tines, I felt them scratching my eyes. My left eye was burning, specks jittering, zigzagging floaters speeding up. Floaters, that’s all they were, no way I would go blind.
“You can change, Wesley. You can be a new man.”
A new man, like Cole Hoskins on Highway 179, saving that little girl on a tricycle? I’d just as soon stay like I was, but that wasn’t helping any. Sooner or later tonight I’d have to go back to my place. I might go in the other direction first, go past Cole’s trailer and on to the river. I’d take off my clothes and jump in, swim upstream, against the current, let the current carry me back. I felt the floaters settle like sand in a pool; they would go away pretty soon. All I had to do was get out of Elinor’s chair, do something, keep on the move.
Elinor took my hands in hers. This woman half again my age, I didn’t want her to let go of my hands. That’s when I got down on my knees and thanked her for believing I could change. That’s how the wind was blowing for me.
Remission
The sun was out, but it was windy and cold. My wife Dorinda was spraying her plants with water and concentrated dish liquid. She was dressed to go to Atlanta. Her high heels clicked on the screen porch floor as she moved from one plant to the next.
The plants were standing on the screen porch. She had watered the plants this morning, with the garden hose before she got dressed. Diagonal roof beam shadows crossed a translucent sheet of plastic—only last month ineptly staple-gunned to the two-by-fours of the screen porch. What we actually had was a deck that we had converted into a screen porch, after much hard labor and many harsh words. Dorinda moved from this Japanese tree with its jade-green leaves like glossy tongues to (my nemesis now for many months) a plant that would prick and gouge my hands whenever we moved the plants inside, into our dining room, on cold nights. I had a name for this plant, crown of thorns. Leaf-flecked, with clusters of flowers, its tentacles bristled with thorns. I watched Dorinda spraying this plant, standing just a little away from it, her hand an inch or so from the thorns. The leaves, the tiny vermilion flowers, even the steely thorns themselves were soaked in the hissing spray. I watched her moving pots around, sliding them across the floor of the porch. It wasn’t long before she was sweeping up, leaving mounds of refuse for me to scoop up, then inside again, having left the broom, the dish liquid back in its cabinet, its underworld cleanser-choked cave. She sat down across from the breakfast plates, across the kitchen table from me. I as
ked her if she was up to the trip.
“You’re staying right here,” Dorinda said. “Today, I’m on my own.”
She told me she would be okay. She was getting used to the nausea; she had been on chemotherapy for months. I wanted to go with her, but I had to work at the station today. I watched her carry her plate to the sink, douse it thoroughly in hot water. I was expected to do the same whenever I got around to it. She put her plate in the dishwasher, just to be doing something. It wasn’t time yet for her to go.
“You’re sure you’re going to be okay?”
“Of course I’ll be okay,” she said, leaving the racks in the dishwasher out. She scrubbed egg out of the frying pan. She would be in the car for two hours, in the hospital for another three hours. I had been with her before she had surgery. I still thought of her wheeled down corridors, her eyes tilted up from the gurney at blocks of lights, smoke sensors.
Our alley cat, Singalong with Mitch, lowered his whiskered, coal-black face to the leavings of my breakfast—dried egg yolk, bits of sausage, an egg-clotted crust of toast. Singalong had come in from the bedroom, having spent the night with us in our bed. Now Dorinda came back to the table, watching Singalong lick at his egg yolk.
“I notice he hasn’t been fed,” she said.
“I haven’t gotten around to it yet. But I will. As soon as you’re on your way.”
I watched her pick up Singalong and set him carefully on the floor. “I think you’d better feed him now,” she said.
“Singalong can wait,” I said. “I’ll feed him after you go.”
“Promise?”
“Yes, I promise.”
Dorinda kissed me on the mouth. Her slender legs were between my thighs, now over the hill and much slowed down. I held her close, I stroked her hair, but that didn’t keep her from going.
When I got back from the station that night, Dorinda was feeding Singalong filet of sole from a doggie bag. She had news for me. She’d seen Zack again. Zack had met her at the hospital because Dorinda had called him on the road. I moved to my console piano, sat down, put my hands on the keys without moving them, without making a sound. I saw Dorinda laying out change, pumping in nickels and quarters in some Huddle House off of I-85. Zack would answer in his hot tub. He had cordless and cellular telephones and could be reached anytime, anywhere.
“You told me you were on your own today.”
“I was until the traffic got bad.” Dorinda put the doggie bag in the garbage can, clamped the lid on tight, watching Singalong eat. “I mean I wanted you to be with me, but you weren’t so I had to call Zack.”
“You told me you didn’t want me along.”
“Okay, so I wanted to see Zack,” she said. “I wanted him to be waiting. I wanted him to spend money on me. That way, I thought, I’d get through it.” Singalong finished, bowl licked clean. “We can’t afford to go out in Atlanta,” she said. “You know that as well as I do.”
“We can afford to go out in Atlanta,” I said. “What we can’t afford is Zack’s lifestyle.”
Dorinda looked out at the screen porch. Just checking. The plants were all okay. Even the crown of thorns was okay. She sat next to me on the piano bench and put her arms around my waist.
“Zack was trying to be nice to me. He tried to act like we were having fun. I was watching Zack eating his escargot, and I thought—we’re having a real good time.” She arrested my silently chording hand the way she would do when I played for her. Then she lifted her hand and touched my face. “Not the kind of good time I have with you.”
I lifted my hands and clasped hers. “I want you to know I’m glad you’re back. And I’m glad you enjoyed your lunch.”
We embraced, as we had so many times.
So Zack took Dorinda out to lunch on those days I couldn’t go with her. She continued to have chemotherapy. I kept on spraying the crown of thorns, its little red flowers coming back with zest. I knew Zack still cared for Dorinda. He was a fervent lover in Oaxaca. His heart had kept an undying flame, to refer to a line from one of his songs, the song he called “Undying Flame.” None of Zack’s songs were ever recorded, although he badly wanted a record contract. He used to sidle up to me in Oaxaca and ask me to take him to Nashville. He thought I really knew my way around in the music business.
Most days I worked at the station here, and on certain nights, until midnight. I kept on being a D.J. and a sports announcer for high school football games. I played keyboard one night a week in the Carriage House; it brought in some extra money. Even though I was not playing my best, I could forget about how it was at home.
It was a beautiful spring, no denying that. The dogwoods and redwoods were blossoming; the azaleas were blooming all over the block. There was a radio on the bed table, and an ashtray brimming with cigarette butts. Dorinda had laid out a cigarette. Sunlight speared the venetian blinds and liquified on the pillow. Her blue eyes widened in her face, and she laid cold hands on my body. Quick like a bunny, she told me.
I got up and went to the bathroom for the pills that had been prescribed for her. I splashed water into a paper cup and was quickly back at her bedside. Now I was helping her hold the paper cup, my hand on the cup, my steady hand. My elbow bumped into the catheter tube, and she moved it away from her exposed flesh. “Okay,” she said when the nausea went, or started to, “that’s better.”
Dorinda sat up in bed and lit a cigarette. Palm cupping her dorsal elbow, she took a long drag on the cigarette. She studied my face for second thoughts. Pretty soon I would be going to work. The things I had said last night, I was hoping none of that still showed, but the tight lines around Dorinda’s lips showed me she had not changed her mind. She was going to spend the weekend with Zack.
Dorinda put out the cigarette. “So you’re on your way to the station.”
“I’m not rushing off. As long as you’re here I’ll be here.”
Dorinda asked for the ashtray, which I was emptying into the wastepaper basket. Singalong was on top of the bookcase, those plywood boards and concrete blocks housing paperbacks and audiotapes. Wanting his breakfast, he rattled his dish. But I couldn’t really say he rattled the dish, for this cat could eat deftly and quietly. Dorinda was putting the coffee on. It was my job to feed Singalong. I was spooning wet cat food ahead of his tongue. Dorinda had something to say about this.
“I thought we agreed on dry food?”
We had, but I wouldn’t admit it. I told her we had agreed in principle. “We agreed we would go to dry food as soon as we ran out of wet food.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I don’t want to make an issue of this, but this is not what we agreed on.”
“Okay, what did we agree on?”
“We agreed on using up what we had, what we had in the refrigerator.”
She was nit-picking and I thought I knew why. She knew I didn’t go along with her plans this time.
“Okay, so I opened another can. Now what? Any suggestions?”
I was not going to get an answer, for, having finished his hasty breakfast, Singalong wanted to go out. Dorinda followed him out the kitchen door, through the screen porch, to the backyard, pausing on the screen porch to put on the Oaxacan hat. It was a sombrero she’d picked up in Oaxaca. It was getting a little too large for her, now that her hair was almost gone. She had put on her Oaxacan hat to remind me of Oaxaca. The screen door was reverberating. There was another way to say this. She was not talking to me this morning. She’d rather lean on the picket fence and watch our neighbor mowing his lawn. She wore the hat whenever she left the house, regardless of what it reminded me of.
Azaleas rippled in the breeze, white dogwood, yellow forsythia. There was a brown thrasher in the birdbath, across the fence in our neighbor’s backyard. Singalong joined us at the fence. Dorinda was in her nightgown, wearing the Oaxacan hat. W
e rubbed shoulders under her hat’s brim while our neighbor, Mr. Seymour Smith, drove his mower ahead of flying grass. Later he would rake up the grass. He had refused to purchase a grass catcher. Now Singalong was across the fence, stalking the unwary thrasher. I watched him leap for the thrasher, already high in the Georgia pines as again the Oaxacan hat reminded me of days in Mexico when I sat with my tequila and salt looking out at eyes that were hurting me.
At last I got down to it. “Why don’t you wait until Monday? That way you wouldn’t have to drive. I could drive you. How does that sound?”
“I’ve already made arrangements with Zack.”
I knew all about the arrangements. Zack had a friend who did acupuncture and another friend who was adept at Zen. He was also giving a party, and taking Dorinda to a Braves game. Dorinda crossed her arms on the picket fence, looking out at the swatches of grass, at Seymour pushing his power mower. I was thinking of Zack’s latest girl, of Tami with the long black hair, whom I’d only seen in a photograph of the two of them in Zack’s hot tub. Tami was smiling out at me next to Dorinda’s thumb and forefinger. I thought of Zack in a comic book, like a rubber man or a plastic man, stretching and coiling all over the yard.
“Why can’t Zack make arrangements? Why can’t he come to see you?”
Seymour Smith turned off the mower. He hobbled across the patio to his back door, which he firmly closed.
“You’re making too much out of this. It’s been over for years,” Dorinda replied.
“Then why are you spending the weekend with him?” This was the sort of husband I was, racked with longing and possessiveness. “I’m thinking there’s something between you now.”