Yellowcake

by Ann Cummins

  Driving back to the house, her throat constricting, she does not cry and not when she pulls into the driveway and waits for the garage door to open. But when it closes behind her, she sits there in her car, engine off, and cries until her stomach hurts.

  At twilight she decides to go for a long walk, transferring keys from purse to fanny pack, grabbing a bottle of water, but she manages to go only half a block before she wants to flee, to be there in case he comes.

  When Fred calls that evening, he tells her she sounds odd, far away, and she tells him she's just a little tired. It's a comfort to hear his voice, but she doesn't want to talk tonight, so she tells him she's not feeling well and she'll call him tomorrow.

  Though she is exhausted and achy, it's a long time before she falls asleep. She sleeps fitfully. At one-thirty she wakes to something crashing, starts up from her bed, her heart thrumming, listening into the night. It's the bears. They've knocked over somebody's grill or trash again. She listens as the neighborhood dogs sound the alarm. They'll go on like that for an hour. She lies back down. Fred has helped her secure the house, she doesn't keep anything to attract them, but her neighbors insist on grilling on these hot nights. She falls asleep again to dogs barking.

  She wakes late. Her head throbs. She feels waterlogged. She splashes cold water on her face, which is red, bloated, and creased with pillow lines. The lines are still there an hour after she gets up.

  She has a huge list of things to do, but it's hard to muster the energy to leave the house. It's nearly eleven before she finally gets behind the wheel. Hitting the garage door opener, she starts to back up, but jams on the brake inches away from Sam's truck, which is parked in the driveway.

  He is not in it. Her mouth is instantly dry and her heart quakes. She can't breathe. She feels as if she has rubber bands around her chest and forehead. She gets out of the car and creeps toward the garage door. She scans the yard, the street. Sam's windshield is badly pitted. The sun magnifies the pits, distorting the cab. He could be in there. She thinks she sees his head resting against the seat back. He could be sleeping. She creeps toward the driver's side.

  "Lil?"

  She whirls around. He's sitting on her porch.

  "I think you left your keys in the car."

  She notes, then, the ding, ding, ding coming from the garage. Yes. Her keys are in the ignition. The car door is open.

  She retrieves the keys and takes several deep breaths before she goes to the porch, where he sits on the floor, his feet on the top step. He pats the space next to him, and because her legs are shaking, she sits down. "You scared me," she says.

  "Did I? You scared me pretty good yesterday."

  "I'm sorry." She clears her throat. "I'm an idiot. It's just a formality, Sam, filing the papers. No harm done."

  "Well, I don't know. I've been thinking about it. It's not really just a formality, marriage. It's an institution. A sacred institution."

  She laughs. "Never thought I'd hear you say that."

  "Never knew how good I'd be at it."

  "At what?"

  "Staying married. Lil, this gives us thirty-seven years."

  "What? Oh, Sam, we're not married."

  "No, actually, we are."

  She laughs again.

  "We are."

  She looks in his face. He's serious. "As if you'd want to be married to me," she says.

  He leans over, bumping her gently. "I do."

  She stands up, putting several feet between them. "We're not married, Sam."

  He shrugs. "Pretty day. Yeah, I've been walking around the neighborhood. How long have you had this place, Lily?"

  She doesn't answer.

  "I'm glad you bought one of the old houses. I mean, the new ones are nice—big—but..."

  "We—are—not—married."

  "I think we are."

  She crosses her arms, hugging herself tightly, and staring into his eyes, which are bloodshot and grave. He's trying to play her. "What do you want, Sam?"

  "The fact is, Lily, it's been lonely on the boat. A few days ago I took a drive with Ryland's grandkids. Cute kids. Eddy's kids. I'm getting older. Wouldn't be bad to be around people more. Family, you know? Those girls? They reminded me of you and Rosy. I mean, I didn't know you when you were their ages, but I bet you were just like them. Spunky."

  "Oh, Sam," she says. She goes back to sit beside him. He takes her hand, and she lets him. "We've moved on, you and me."

  "So, are you saying you don't want to be married to me?" She smiles and shakes her head. "Because that's the only way I can put it together. Why would Lily not file the papers? Because she doesn't want to be divorced."

  "Well, I can see how you'd think that, but you're wrong. We aren't married. You don't love me. I don't love you."

  "I like you, though. That's pretty good after thirty-seven years. How many married couples can say that? How about it? Let's make a go of it."

  "Oh, for Pete's sake. I saw your son a week or so ago. I heard you've been seeing his mother all these years. You think I'd ever put myself in that position again? No, if I ever marry again, it will be to somebody who's loyal."

  "Mmm." He twists the ring on her right ring finger, a lapis set in silver that she wears for health and good luck. "Well, you've got a point. I guess we'll have to get divorced because I'm an old leopard and these spots probably won't change. So, what terms?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Divorces always have terms. Like ours? I mean, the one we didn't have. The one that gave you seed money for this house. I gave you half of everything as settlement for a divorce."

  She pulls her hand away. "Sam."

  "Lily."

  She stands again, stepping away from him. He's serious. She can see it in his face. "You've got to be kidding."

  He doesn't speak.

  "Oh, for Christ's sake."

  "Don't worry. I don't want half. Just something for the insult. I mean, for seventeen years I thought I was an unmarried man. I could've married somebody else during that time, which would've made me a bigamist." He laughs. "Don't they put you in jail for that? Really, Lily, I'm very mad and very hurt that you deceived me. I deserve something for the insult."

  A line of sugar ants marches across the sidewalk in front of her. She notices that her shirt and bra are wet, sweat seeping through, dripping over her ribs. "What do you want, Sam?" she says, her voice cracking, and when he doesn't answer, she says, "I keep some cash in the house. I'll give you some cash, okay? And then you sign the papers."

  He doesn't answer.

  She climbs the steps, not meeting his eyes but feeling them on her. She has a wall safe in the bedroom closet. She keeps jewelry there, some bonds, and about five thousand in cash, a precaution she learned from her father, who always warned her to take a lesson from the Depression and keep something aside for when the banks fail.

  She fumbles at the combination, finally opens the safe, pulls out the stack of hundred-dollar bills. She's standing in the room, counting—she'll give him a thousand, she decides—when she sees him leaning against the doorway. Her heart hammers painfully again. She walks over, holding out the bills to him. He doesn't take them. He's looking at the larger stack in her other hand. "For the insult, Lil," he says quietly, and she feels as if the floor is sucking her in. Her whole body is shaking. She wants him out of her house. She holds both stacks out to him, her hands trembling violently. He takes them. "Thanks." He turns to leave.

  "Sam! I want your signature on the papers."

  He waves the money and is gone.

  She doubles over, falling to her knees, dry-heaving.

  Years ago a therapist told her that her body was smarter than she, that most animals understand this, even humans, but that abused women operate under a handicap, a disconnect between mind and body. Abused women, the therapist said, learn to short-circuit their instincts and so keep putting themselves in danger. Healthy people and animals tune in to even the subtlest warning signals: the barely noticea
ble pain at the pit of the stomach, the sudden tiredness or chill. Any of these could signal danger. But they come to the abused woman as delayed reaction, not the signal, the remembered signal.

  She had thought she was past all of this, that over the years she had brought mind and body in sync, but now she remembers having stomach butterflies seconds before she told Sam—she should not have told him! About the divorce papers.

  Twenty-four hours later, the warning sign registers.

  It occurs to her that she probably doesn't need his signature. He has been missing for seventeen years. Divorce by default. She probably could have done this quietly, no fuss.

  Well, she'll need the signature now. Now he knows. She told him.

  Little humiliations. Little rapes. Self-rapes. The body knows what is intolerable and sends a thousand signals that the mind ignores. Years ago, did Sam put her in the rodeo stands to watch that woman, the mother of his child? Or did she put herself there? How many years did she live with this degradation when her body constantly screamed at her to leave him? Why didn't she file the papers?

  She is wretched. She doesn't go out of the house that afternoon, and she doesn't answer the phone. She keeps repeating what the therapist, an abuse survivor herself, told her: "We live under a handicap. We pick ourselves up. We move on. We forgive ourselves."

  This good advice will also register somewhere down the line. Now the words are empty. She can't stop thinking about how she's on Sam's schedule again. He'll sign the papers or he won't. Today. Next month. When he feels like it. And what if he comes back for more? Does he have a legal right? Colorado is a joint-property state. How can she keep Fred from finding out about this?

  When the sun finally slips behind the mountain and the sky turns violet, she musters the energy to go out for a walk. She gets her fanny pack and water, and is just pulling the front door shut when she remembers that the keys are still in her purse.

  Typical. Locked out. She reaches up above the door frame, where she always keeps a spare house key. It's not where it usually is. She runs her finger along the length of the frame. The key is not there.

  She tries to think when she last used it—she's always locking herself out—but the sirens are going off now, every instinct screaming, reminding her that she and Sam always kept a spare key above the door when they lived together.

  She rushes from the porch, adrenaline pulsing. The garage door is still open. Did she forget to close it this morning? She must have. She runs through the garage, into the house, to the telephone, and does what she should have done years ago. She calls Rosy.

  29

  DELMAR IS REPLACING burned-out bulbs in the ground lights on Jackrabbit Lane when his pager starts vibrating. It's the guard at the front gate. He heads over there and is surprised to find a truck he recognizes and, behind the wheel, somebody he knows.

  "How you been?" Sam says. He sits at Delmar's kitchen table, a square wooden table painted orange. A flea-market special. The whole cottage, one room, is furnished with flea-market specials. The two kitchen chairs are old chrome items with plastic seats, thin and hard from years of use. There's a single bed against the wall opposite the kitchen nook, a rocking chair, a lamp, and a little shelf that Delmar has started filling with books. He's been riding his bike into town for supplies a couple of evenings a week. He tries to get there before the used bookstore closes. He has The Man Who Melted and Planet of Whispers, and he's been buying astronomy books. Each night he studies the sky, trying to learn heaven's map. He has started making charts and graphs, noting the stages of the moon, the sun's rising and setting. This is his favorite pastime on the lonely, quiet nights.

  "Been good," Delmar says. "Excellent."

  "It's good to see you."

  "Good to be seen." From a distance Delmar thought Sam looked very fine, always his first impression when he sees his handsome father, but up close he sees that Sam's skin stretches tight over his cheekbones and is sort of see-through, the blue of his jawbone visible. His hair is cut very short; Delmar can see his skull under it. He's wearing brand-new stiff-legged jeans and new boots, fancy ones that look like snakeskin. His shirt looks new, too. It's a button-down, the color of old bone. He's wearing a sand-cast silver watch and a matching belt buckle.

  "Thought you were in jail."

  "They let me out. You want some food?"

  Sam smiles. "What do you got?"

  Delmar opens the cupboard. "Potatoes, onions, peanut butter, Hungry Man, vanilla wafers, apples, sardines."

  "Okay," Sam says. "I'll have what you're having."

  Delmar takes a yellow onion from his stash, peels and slices it.

  "Cozy little place," Sam says. "This is just about the same size as my boat."

  "Is that right?"

  "You never been to the boat, have you."

  "Nope." Delmar turns on the gas under a corroded cast-iron frying pan and pours some oil in it. He washes two russet potatoes and starts chopping them up.

  "That wasn't my idea, you know. That was your mother's idea."

  "I know," Delmar says. "She wanted me to do good in school." His mother always went to see Sam in November, when school was in session.

  "Well, that's what she said anyway. You mind if I smoke?"

  "Nope." When the oil smells hot, Delmar tosses the onion in, turning down the heat. He takes a hunk of cheddar cheese from the refrigerator and grates a pile of it.

  "So, you got you a job," Sam says. "How is it?"

  "It's good." Delmar tells him he's been working up here for three weeks, that he's a Landscaper I Specialist and got on-the-job training in prison. They let the minimum-security inmates go out and prune the highway median between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. He says he's thinking that when he has enough money saved, he might take some classes at the community college and try to get his forestry degree further down the line.

  "Well, that's a fine plan," Sam says. "They pay well up here?"

  "Minimum wage."

  "Is that all?"

  "Plus this house. I don't have to pay rent."

  Sam says he ought to come to Florida, live with him, and tie flies. He could make twenty-five dollars an hour. No withholding. Cash on the line.

  "Jeez," Delmar says. "That's about how much I get a day."

  "I'm telling you," Sam says. He gets up and goes to look at Delmar's charts on the wall. Delmar dumps the potatoes in with the onions. Using a metal spatula, he turns everything, coating it all with the oil, turns the heat way down, and puts a lid on it. He goes to stand by Sam.

  "See, the nights are getting longer," he says, showing Sam the sunrise/sunset chart. He also has a pinup of the seasonal skies, a black poster with star clusters. "If you come up here at night and look at the sky, you can still see the Archer. That's Sagittarius. But the Archer's enemy, the Scorpion, is beginning to straddle the horizon. That's me. I'm a Scorpion." From the smell, he can tell the onions are cooking good. Sam smells like wet aluminum, that bad drunkard smell. It makes Delmar a little sad. Sam's legs look skinny under the stiff jeans. His knuckles jut out, the skin thin, shiny, polished. He draws on his cigarette, holding it between thumb and forefinger like a joint. His fingers shake.

  "What're you doing here, Sam?"

  Sam looks at him, eyes half closed. "Can't I come see my kid?"

  Delmar shrugs.

  "You know," Sam says, his voice quiet, "it was never my idea for you not to come with your mom to Florida. She wanted you to herself. I told her you could go to school down there. She knew that. But you see it all the time with women, especially women with boys. They don't want the fathers to have a hand in the raising. I asked her to bring you to the boat."

  Delmar used to wonder about that—about whether it was Sam's idea or his mother's idea to leave him behind. She always said the boat wasn't big enough and she wouldn't be there long enough for him to get used to the schools there. She never said Sam didn't want him, but he wondered.

  He looks at the autumn constellations. There wil
l be more night sky in the months to come. He's been doing some calculations. Over the next sixty days, the time that the sun spends below the horizon will increase by roughly one hundred and sixty minutes. "When's your birthday, Sam?" It's odd that he doesn't know.

  "Third of January."

  "Capricornus. The Goat." He points to it on the winter chart. "It's really the Sea Goat, because it's in the water part of the sky."

  Sam drags on his cigarette, the ash tail growing. "She ever give you any of the money I sent?"

  Delmar gets his tin ashtray from the kitchen counter and hands it to Sam, then returns to the potatoes, taking the lid off, scraping and flipping them. "I don't know," he says. They've got a nice brown crust and are pretty tender. He spreads the grated cheese over them, turns the burner off, and puts the lid back on. He takes two plastic plates from the cupboard and gets the little tub of diced green chili from the refrigerator, scoops the potatoes onto the plates, puts the chili and a spoon on the table.

  "See, now that's what I mean. I sent money regularly. She probably never told you that, did she." His father's words are clipped, like punches, his voice high and tight, as if he's quarreling. Odd. Delmar has always thought of Sam as a cool cat. Once, when Delmar was pretty young, maybe six, Sam and his mom took him camping. He remembers finding a quart bottle of liquor in Sam's toolbox, carrying the bottle past Sam and Alice, who were sitting on logs by a smoky campfire, out in the open so they could see, and climbing up a large rock shaped like a ship, using both feet and one hand. When he got to the top, Sam said, "Don't you do it," but he did: dropped that bottle and listened to it shatter. Sam had said, "You little shit."