I don’t know why it matters—it shouldn’t—but I say, anyway, “Do I?”
“Naw. Uh, uh. I ain’t sayin’. If I say no, I’m callin’ you a liar. If I say yes, well—I ain’t even goin’ to—”
“Never mind. Forget it.”
A mile and a half of silence, and then a long red light. I say, “How’s your wife?”
“What do you mean, how’s my wife? Why’re you askin’ about my wife? You know her?”
Too early. It’s too early for this, and I’m too tired. “I was just being polite. Fuck it.”
He laughs. “‘Fuck it’!” He slaps his thigh and his laughter goes on for a quarter mile. “Girl, you’re all right. ‘Fuck it.’” He lights a cigarette and drops the lighter between his feet, picks it up. “I ain’t havin’ such a good day, m’self.”
“What’s the matter?”
He shrugs and looks out the window.
“Will you please open the—?”
“Sorry,” he says and opens it, blows his smoke outside. “Ever since the anniversary… I don’t know.”
I give it a minute, keep from asking what happened, but soon he sighs and shakes his head, so I ask.
“Don’t know,” he says. “Somethin’s just—She changed, she’s different.” He taps the window. “She’s leavin’, she says. Wants a separation. From me. From Donny. I’ll give it to her, y’know, if she wants it, but she…four years. That’s it?”
“Why?”
“I told you. Don’t like me goin’ out. Wants me home all the time when she’s home, and when I’m not home she thinks I’m cheatin’, that there’s a girl at the bar, or somethin’. But, goddamn, because—see, now, I don’t even think that’s it. Control. It’s got to be. She’s mad if I’m out and she’s mad if I’m home. I come home sometimes—sure, I was out a few hours, okay—and when I walk in, she’s on the couch wrapped in that blanket, from her neck to her toes like she’s in some damn cocoon. Can’t get her out of there. And she won’t talk to me. Just stares at the TV like she can’t hear me, can’t see me. Know what, though…If she stays out ‘til eleven, I’m supposed to be okay with that.”
“Is there a girl at the bar?”
“Hell, tons of girls! Beautiful ones, too.” He looks at me. “But I don’t want ‘em. What, you think I’m cheatin’, too? I don’t cheat. I don’t do that. Why would you ask somethin’ like that?”
“I just—”
“You just drive the car and watch the road. Thinkin’ things like that. You…What kind of a person just thinks that about another person?” He flicks the butt outside and says, “Don’t even know me, and you—now, what’s the matter? Are you cryin’?”
“I’m fine,” I say, but the windshield is a blur of black and white. I wipe my eyes.
“Hell, I didn’t mean to make you cry. I’m sorry. Here.” He fumbles in his pocket for his soft pack and holds it between me and the steering wheel.
“No, thanks.”
He waits, then takes one out and lights it for himself. “Yeah, somethin’s botherin’ you. I can tell. You want to tell me what it is?”
“I’m fine, really,” I say, but now I want a one for later, when I can stop and smoke it alone. “Can I—Well, do you mind if I take that cigarette, after all?”
“Thought you didn’t want it.”
“Never mind.”
He shakes the pack until a filter slides up and then pulls it out and hands it to me. “Want me to light it for you, too?”
“I’m going to save it for later.”
“You’re takin’ my cigarette and you won’t even smoke it?”
“I’ll smoke it, but later, if it’s okay.”
He plucks it from my fingers and wedges it back into the box. “If I ain’t good enough for you to smoke with me, then—”
“All right. Okay? I’ll smoke it.”
“Now, why do you want to talk to me that way when I’m givin’ you a present?” He takes it out again and lights it, a steady flame held just short of the tip and his lips tightening to puff, puff, sending small bursts of smoke into car space. He holds it in the air, just over the center console. I reach for it and he jerks it away. “You goin’ to tell me what’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter.”
“Doctor Donaldson. That’s me. You need help. I can—I can! Come on, now.”
“I don’t need—”
“You’re goin’ through somethin’, and don’t say you ain’t.”
“Everyone goes through something.”
“But here, I’m givin’ you the chance to talk about it. Not everyone gets that. Some people don’t have people to talk to. Look here, I’m gettin’ out of the car in, what, five minutes? Then you’ll be rid of me for good, if you want, but don’t you think you’d feel better if you just said? Please,” he says. “Now, I don’t say please very—I want to help, see?”
“Okay.”
He hands me the cigarette and I tell him about Jake. He listens, no interruptions, and when I finish he says, “That’s right up my—look who you’re talkin’ to. Donny Donaldson, doctor. Airborne! I was in the Army,” he says.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t know. You only know what you think you know, but you don’t. Understan’?”
“Sure.”
“Yeah, you’ll be upset like you are. Nothin’ you can do about it ‘til you agree he’s right. Bad idea to get married ‘cause of a war.”
“So I keep hearing.”
“Least you’re both on the same side! Right? He against us bein’—? Well, he can’t say. Shouldn’t say.”
“We’re on the same side.” A minivan cuts in front of me and I pound the soundless horn. “It’s really nothing. You’re right. I just want him to come home.”
Donny pats my thigh and I tense, but he’s already pulled his hand away. “You think you’re goin’ to get hit today by a truck?”
“What?”
“Drivin’. Think you’ll get hit?”
“Well, no. Unless some minivan—”
“Y’see? He don’t think he’ll get killed, neither. But he might be worried about you. But you, you know you’re a good driver. Sometimes, anyway—last intersection you missed that light, and—”
I ask for another cigarette and he tosses the pack on my lap.
“Yeah, now’s a good time to be smokin’,” he says. “No better time than when your country’s at war. I tell you what, though, and I say this sincerely. I mean it. You payin’ attention?”
I say yes, yes, I’m listening.
“I hope your boyfriend gets a better homecomin’ than what they gave me.” He squeezes flat the filter, separating the paper from the fibers. “You just hope. And you tell him you love him, and when he comes home, you do somethin’ nice for him. Give him a cake.”
“I will.”
“You give him that cake and you tell him you love him and that he did good. You hear me? You give him a goddamn cake.”
“Cake.” I cluck my tongue. “Got it.”
Donny rips the cigarette from my lips and flicks it out the window. “Let me out.”
“We’re a mile from the site.”
“If I want to get out, you let me out.” He digs in his pocket. “Don’t worry. I’m givin’ you the full thirteen. I ain’t a thief.” He pulls out a crumpled ball of bills and weeds out two fives and three ones, says, “Here,” and drops them in my lap. “I shouldn’t even give it to you. Now stop the damn car.”
No tip, today. “I didn’t mean anything—”
“Don’t matter what you meant. Now stop the goddamn car and let me out.”
By the time I pull over, the turnoff to the construction zone is in sight. He gets out and smacks the hood on his way across cross the street. “Go on,” he shouts, and waves me off.
“Shellie.”
“Yes, dear.”
“Thirteen dollars.”
“Does he want you back tonight?”
“He didn’t sa
y.”
“All righty. Head to Grocery World.”
________
Lunchtime, which doesn’t come until things slow down at three, I creep past the coffee shop to check on the painting, but I can’t see through the thick and tinted specials-painted windows. I park the cab and go inside and there it is, still hanging. The one that used to hang beside it is gone. That one, if I remember, had a seven-hundred-dollar price tag. I check Emily’s tag—maybe the price has dropped?—but no, and so I think, think, how to get twelve hundred dollars, but even a straight seven-day work week wouldn’t do it soon enough, and neither would being extra nice to fares. Or being nice, period. No one tips.
I order a sandwich and a coffee and sit on the couch where the sun shines through the window. On the table in front of me, a half-played chess game. Brown is winning.
The girl behind the counter opens a jar of mayonnaise and I hear the knife stabbing around inside. “Excuse me,” I say. “Is there any chance, maybe, that the price on that painting—the one of the hou—the one with the snow—would go down, some?”
She shrugs and brings me my order, sweeping aside the chess game for space. “I’ll ask if he comes in, but I haven’t seen him since he dropped it off.”
I would put it in the living room, over the desk.
Or in the bedroom, where morning light would hit it from the same angle as the painted sunrise.
But mornings are dark when I leave, and I spend so little time in the bedroom, anyway. The kitchen, then, because it gets the best evening light on the wall, an orange slant just above the back of the chair, and when summer comes in full and daylight stays long, I’ll be home in time to catch it.
________
“Mia,” Shellie says.
It’s ten minutes before six and I’m almost there, almost free for the day, and I’d thought maybe I would close my eyes for a minute or two before gassing up. Water splashes between rocks on the riverbank and crickets chirp from their hiding spots in the grass. When Jake took me here, he’d brought along his woobie—a camouflage poncho-liner we used as a blanket—and some gas-station fried chicken packed in a paper-towel-lined shoebox. “You said you’ve never been on a picnic,” he said, shooing off a cricket that had landed close to the box. “Which I don’t believe, anyway. You’re twenty-five and you never had a picnic?” He pulled out two beers in cans, labels hidden by cozies, and handed me a cold, soggy drumstick.
“Mia.”
“Yes?”
“Where you at?”
Tap. Taptap. Rain. Again. “The river.”
“Donny wants you back where you dropped him off.”
The clock says it’s five minutes before six. “He asked for me specifically?”
“He surely did. I hope he’s not scarin’ you, is he?”
“No, everything’s okay.”
“All righty. He’s a little funny sometimes, but that’s just ‘cause of the war, you know. He’s a good man, though. A decent man.”
In the background Paula says, “He didn’t go to no Vietnay-um,” and Lenny says, “Now, you don’t know that. Don’t go questionin’ a man’s serv—”
“Construction site, then gas up.” Shellie releases her button.
Traffic is thick and rain-frantic until I reach the black, lampless two-lane that takes me out of town and into the suburbs. Reflected raccoon eyes pop up, then disappear over the shoulder, waiting in the guardrail ditch. No headlights in my rearview mirror, and after I pass I will the raccoons to go, go now!
The site’s clay lot is muddy. I park and stare through thumping wipers at the trailer window until my eyes burn, until the clock reads five after six and I should be on my way home. My legs are numb and I’m tired. I pound the horn, meaning only to pound something, anything, but someone has fixed it and it blares, hooooonk! The door to the trailer opens and Donny sticks out his head and yells, “It’s my angel, my angel of mercy, comin’ to carry me home. Just a sec—I’ll be right out.”
________
“Come in with me.”
“That’s okay. But thanks.”
“Come on. For a minute.”
“I can’t. I have to get the cab back.”
“Well, then, drop it off and come on back.”
“I have to go home,” I say.
“Why? Your husband ain’t there.”
“He’s not my husband.”
“Husband, boyfriend.” He gestures and spills beer on his thigh. “Goddamn it.” He wipes at it and forgets it. “Nothin’s goin’ to happen. Just a drink.”
“Really, I—”
“Look. I ain’t goin’ to hurt you. Did I ever touch you, or say somethin’ to you that made you think different?”
“No.”
“No,” he says. He slides the beer can on his thigh, back and forth. “And besides, my wife left me.”
“But this morning—”
“This mornin’, what? I didn’t want to tell you this mornin’. I’m tellin’ you now. She left me and now there’s no one. Says she’s only stayin’ gone ‘til I move out. A week is all I get. She’s at a man’s house. What do you think ‘bout that?”
“That’s—I’m sorry. Really.”
“She’s gone, and I’m alone. I got nobody.”
“It’s just—I have to feed my cat.”
He starts to say something, then stops. He pulls at the tab on the top of his can, click, click, click. “You said you got to feed your cat? That’s why you can’t come over?”
“I have to feed him,” I say, and now I wonder if I’m not lying. I don’t remember leaving food or water this morning. Or yesterday. Poor baby, poor Chancey.
________
Shellie calculates my fare sheet and I sit curled in the corner of the couch with her dog tucked in the space between my stomach and thighs.
“Not bad today,” she says.
“It’s ’cause she kept the car all damn night,” Lenny says, pointing at me. “I missed two runs ‘cause of her.”
“It’s only six forty,” I say.
“Forty minutes could be a twenty-dollar fare.”
The dog’s fur is soft, its skin warm in the shed over-cooled by window-tucked air conditioners. I say, “Did you miss a twenty dollar fare?”
“That ain’t the point.”
Paula puts out a cigarette. “Quit givin’ her a hard time, you damn hypocrite. I remember one time you didn’t bring the car back to me ‘til noon.”
“That was six years ago. It don’t even count. I’m sick and tired of everyone givin’ her special treatment. I know you got shit goin’ on, Mia, but you come in here every mornin’ lookin’ all pissed off, you take days off, and you don’t gas up right. Now, maybe this job ain’t for you. Me, I’m done. You can’t take it? Quit.” He twists the cap on his head so that the bill shades the back of his neck. “And Paula, you got to stop jumpin’ in on everyone’s business and take care of your own. Ain’t your kid goin’ to court for child support, now? I hear the daddy ain’t goin’ to pay ‘til he gets another test done. Wouldn’t need it if your kid didn’t bed down with everyone in the projects.”
Shellie’s dog fidgets, restless, and climbs over my legs and jumps off the couch. Shellie says, “C’mere, Puddin’,” and picks him up, sets him on her lap.
“She only slept with the one guy,” Paula says. “He’s lyin’ to get out of payin’, is all. We knew it would happen.” She tiredly brushes her thin, white hair away from her eyes. “You’re one to talk about sleepin’ around. Ain’t you keepin’ all the whores in crack, all by yourself?”
“You best shut your mouth, woman.”
“Why? You goin’ to hit me with that infected dick of yours? Hell, we all need to be careful of that, make sure it stays quarantined.” Charlie, who has been watching TV from the torn leather recliner in front of the window, laughs. Paula lights another cigarette.
“Now, now.” Shellie hands me the sheet, and I give her too much of my money. “What’s the matter, girl?” she says.
I tell her she’s been lovely, which she has, and that I’m quitting.
________
Lights are on inside the house at 48 Maple, and a mud-crusted blue Jeep sits in front of the house on the lawn. Past the sheers, faint gray shadows. I keep the car running with the window open—the rain stopped sometime while I was handing over my money—and smoke the cigarette Paula gave me on my way out. “Good luck,” she said, and Shellie said, “Come back and see us.”
It’s possible there is no wife. I should have asked Shellie. I never saw a wife when I dropped him off, never saw one when I picked him up, and he’s never used her name.
I should go home, should roll down the road toward the river, take a right on River Road and get a coffee at the drive-through. The boy behind the window knows what I like and gives me extra whipped cream topped with a chocolate-coated espresso bean. But if I drive through tonight, it will officially be the end of my day. I’ll have quit, officially, and with no plans—official or otherwise—for the future. For tomorrow.
Jobless, living on Jake’s income the way Denise lives on William’s.
“Is that my angel?”
I barely hear him over the engine. Donny wears shorts and a T-shirt and stands in his open doorway, glass in hand. “Get in here,” he says. “And hurry up. They’re talkin’ about a tornado.”
APRIL 16, WEDNESDAY (EVENING)
His walkway slants and buckles, and lukewarm puddles I can’t see in the dark cover my shoes and soak through to my socks. Somewhere far off—over my apartment, maybe, and Chancey doesn’t do well in storms—thunder murmurs.
“You finally came over.” Donny’s bare toes spread flat on a traffic-stained carpet. I take in what I can with quick looks past his narrow figure in the doorway. A couch, plain gray. An end table and a worn, old chair. Against the wall, a towering hutch with clean-lined wood and glass doors, the bare shelves inside spot-lit under recessed bulbs.
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