Corpus Christi

by Bret Anthony Johnston

  “It’s hard to know your parents. Both of mine had affairs.” She glanced at me. “Can I say that in front of you?”

  I nodded. It crossed my mind to tell her about my father being fired, but I said nothing. I wanted to protect my mother, but it was also easier to keep quiet.

  “I knew my mother’s boyfriend. He was their handyman, but he boxed on the weekends. A pugilist. She loved it, the fighting, and sometimes he showed her different punches or how to breathe through her nose. It was an art to her. My father hated it, though—said boxing was just violence, nothing deeper. Basic brutality.”

  “I didn’t know any of that,” I said.

  “I wonder what you don’t know about me.” My mother smiled. “Who knows what we don’t know? I wish I could remember the things I’ve forgotten.” She stood up from the porch and dropped her cigarette, toed it out. My mother looked pretty with the sun starting to rise behind her and I liked being awake at that early hour. “Benny,” she said, adjusting her dress, “think of all this as just violence. Maybe it’s nothing more and everything will improve.”

  Then she stepped inside and left me alone.

  WHAT I REMEMBER OF THE MORNING WHEN WE drove to take my father from the police station is only the sensation that we were loose from our regular lives, floating and spiraling away from where we had been the day before.

  He just spent the one night in jail. Edwin Butler refused to press assault charges against him, so the police held my father for disturbing the peace and released him the following morning. They let him go without posting bond, just opened the doors and set him free. All of that confused me at the time, though it no longer does.

  My father fixed breakfast for us after we arrived home from the police station, chorizo omelets and pecan pancakes the way he did on holidays. For much of the meal the only sounds were our forks scraping against the plates, or glasses being raised then replaced on the table. Gradually, though, my parents surrendered to conversation and by the time my father took our plates, he was making jokes and saying how he looked forward to bathing and washing the jail off his skin. My mother ran him a bath.

  While she was out of the kitchen, he said, “Last night a man asked me how old I was.” He was staring through the window behind our table. “And do you know what I almost said? Twenty-two. I had to stop myself. It’s not something that has happened to me before.”

  I thought to tell him what my mother had said or to ask him about being arrested, but finally I moved to the sink and started soaping the dishes.

  “The house feels bigger,” he said. In the bathroom, my mother opened a cabinet, then she shut the door. “How was the old girl last night?”

  “Not so bad,” I said.

  “Good,” he said. He put his hands on each side of the window, leaned his weight against the wall. He exhaled. “Oh, Benny, there’s a life ahead. We just make our way by the best light we have.”

  Then my mother called that the tub was full, and my father brushed past me. He thanked her for running the water and I heard them kiss, heard the floor creak as he stepped into the bathroom. I expected my mother to return to the kitchen, to sit at the table and smoke or drink coffee, though when I finished the dishes, she hadn’t emerged from the hall.

  The bathroom door was closed, but through it I heard the murmur of my parents’ voices. My mother said, “That dirty Mexican” in a tight, hushed tone, and after leaning close to the wall, I suspected they were talking about my father having not eaten in jail, despite Barrera’s promise. I pictured my mother sitting on the toilet, her legs crossed, while my father lay submerged to his shoulders in gray, sudsy water. And for a time, they were silent and I listened to cars swooshing by on Longcommon.

  Then my mother said, “Oh, baby, that’s okay. No, no, now. George, baby.” Her words came quickly, but calmly, and although a minute passed before his sobs grew loud enough to carry from the bathroom, I realized my father was crying. I’d never heard that sound before. Maybe he’d told her about losing his job or about Edwin Butler, or both, or maybe he’d kept silent and his face just bloated and crumpled with tears. I imagined my mother leaning over the tub and embracing my father, pressing his wet hair to her breast, trying to still the heavy shudder of his weeping. It made me feel very young, younger than I’d ever felt in my life.

  MEMORY IS MADE OF LOSS, AND SOMETIMES YOUR only hope is to recall that you’ve forgotten something you once knew, or thought you knew. If I ever knew why my father took me to the stables that afternoon, I no longer do. Maybe he thought he’d teach me something, maybe he only intended to talk with Butler and he believed his young son’s future might benefit from watching two grown men negotiate a misunderstanding. Such considerations would have been within his character, but I distrust them. They come twenty years later, from a happily married, college-educated man who’s never known violence. What I think, simply, finally, is that my father made a mistake.

  We moved the horses into neighboring stalls at Oleander Creek the day my father came back from jail. My mother stayed home, napping. Setting up the tack rooms, I worried that my father would bring up Butler or Officer Barrera, but I also worried that he wouldn’t. I wanted him to know what I’d told the police, wanted him to say that I’d done right by him and he was proud; I wanted him to thank me.

  But he was quiet that muggy afternoon, quieter than usual. I asked him if he thought we’d keep the horses here for more than the month he’d paid for and he said, “If it feathers our nest.” He was kneeling in the dirt, cleaning Lady’s hooves, then he stood and started combing out her tail, then her mane. He gave me chores to complete—carry over the salt blocks, find nails whose heads or spikes stuck through the stable fences and knock them in with his hammer—but he said little else. He seemed wrung out to me, as if he’d been laid up in bed for weeks with an injury or illness, and now that he was back in the world, every small task exhausted his strength. Yet when the other owners started to arrive and walk over to introduce themselves, he rallied. His laugh was loud and generous, his handshake looked firm, his posture straight as a post; I’d never felt worse for him.

  These were not the people from Edwin Butler’s ranch. Their shirts were starched and bright, the rims of their hats were not crooked or lined with dust or sweat. They wouldn’t think of digging a pit beside the corral and roasting a hog; they wouldn’t come out to play all-night poker and watch over a colicky foal, and they would never let their horses hit more than a stiff gallop in the pasture. And although the men and women meeting my father seemed unaware of the differences between their lives and his, I think he noticed them acutely. I think their saucer-sized belt buckles were like mirrors for him, and he saw that he’d led his family into a different life, saw that we’d crossed a river and were wandering in an open field where we were as vulnerable as mice. Suddenly he knew he’d surrounded himself with people who could never conceive of doing what he’d done and not one person there would ever spend a night in jail. I tried to imagine myself being fingerprinted or raising my fist to another man, but I couldn’t do it, and neither, I fear, could he.

  But I wanted not to think of the future just then, only to hold tight that afternoon with my father and to stand between him and the life that would soon overtake us like a storm. I wanted to throw the saddles on the horses and ride, to prove to him that I was still there and all was not yet lost.

  “Here you go,” I said once he and I were alone in the stable again. Other owners would show themselves soon, so I wanted to seize the opportunity while I could.

  I extended my hand, his rings warm in my palm. They’d been in my pocket since the day before, and I had slipped them on and off my fingers countless times and I had been bothered by how even the smallest was too big for me, even on my thumb. My father seemed surprised, though not necessarily happily surprised, to see them. He’d given the rings to me when he had known he’d wind up in jail, but I suspected he’d not thought about when they would be returned. Maybe depending on his son
in this way was insulting or humbling or liberating or confusing. Of course he eventually took them back, but he didn’t do it right away. I said, “You forgot about them.” He laughed a little then, which made me feel that I’d betrayed something about myself, my youth or optimism or how little I knew of him. We stood in the hot stable for a long, long moment, my arm growing tired of holding out the rings and him looking at me suspiciously, as if I might be tricking or trapping him, luring him to reach for something that I would only take back at the last second.

  Outside the Toy Store

  WESLEY WILSON FINALLY DECIDED TO APPROACH Anna because she looked weary. Sitting on the bench with her purse in her lap and her eyes closed, Mrs. Anna Eichhardt seemed diminished, no longer alluring or charming or dangerous; she was stripped down in a way he’d never seen her. She appeared heavier, too, and he imagined she would hate him seeing the extra pounds. This was in San Antonio, the weekend before Easter, and the wind cutting through the open-air mall still stung and smelled of the benevolent winter. “Anna,” Wes said in a small voice. Then he stepped closer and cleared his throat. “Anna?”

  She didn’t recognize him immediately. Behind her, a line of parents and children waited to meet the Easter Bunny, and with all of the shoppers passing in front of her, she seemed unable to focus. Then her eyes lit and her hand flew to her mouth. She said, “Well, my God.”

  They embraced, quickly, timidly, like two friends’ spouses. It had been five years since she’d told him she couldn’t compete with his dead wife and sick daughter. He was thirty-nine, wearing a new scarf, a coat, shined shoes, and a wool suit purchased specifically for the managers’ conference that weekend. The suit flattered him, and he saw Anna seeing that.

  He said, “I saw you in the toy store and wanted to say hello.”

  She squinted, her hand lingering near her lips. She said, “Oh, sure, of course. Hello, hello!”

  Anna tucked a lock of hair behind her ear—a nervous habit he recalled and anticipated a second before it happened. He slipped his hands inside his coat pockets and shifted his shoulders. The flow of shoppers had inched him closer to Anna. To someone passing, he thought they might look like parents conspiring about what presents to buy for the holiday.

  He had left the hotel when the meetings adjourned, intending to walk to the strip club he’d found the night before. But the chill had bitten into him, so he’d ducked into the mall for a scarf and coffee. The plush giraffe in the toy store window had caught his eye and he went in to look at it—Rae, his daughter, had always loved giraffes. And inside, Anna was kneeling between two small boys, buttoning one of their parkas. He could almost make out her voice through the rustle of bags, the hurried conversations of shoppers. Though he’d never seen the boys before, he was sure they were her sons, and they kept him away, just as her husband would have. He followed the three of them into the courtyard and watched the boys sprint to join Anna’s sister in the Easter Bunny line. Anna sat on the bench, and Wes assumed her husband was absent that afternoon.

  Over the years, he had considered contacting her, had even dialed her number and hung up after hearing her voice, or her husband’s, but because he never saw her, he convinced himself that she had moved from the city. The thought of her absence comforted him. Now, sitting beside her on the bench, he told her about the promotion that had brought him up from Corpus and to the conference, and his hollow voice irritated him. He said, “I spoke on in-store promotions.”

  “How exciting,” she said, her eyes smiling. Anna wore a long black coat, square-toed boots, and tight gray gloves. Everything looked expensive. She said, “Is the bookstore crazy as ever?”

  “People still steal Bibles. We lose more of those than any other title.”

  “Gosh,” Anna said. “I remembered that the other day. That always made me so angry.” She crossed her hands in her lap, and in the tight gloves they looked like a child’s.

  In line, the boys circled their aunt’s legs, trying to hide from each other. A movie theater loomed behind them, and a teenager wearing a red bellhop suit blew into his hands under the marquee. Anna said, “I teach and freelance now. It keeps weekends clear, which is nice.”

  Probably Anna’s nice weekends entailed her husband, Gordon Eichhardt, driving the family to their lake house, where the boys splashed in the shallow water. Wes pictured the lake house as a cottage with tall windows and wicker furniture, and he had imagined it that way since Anna and Gordon Eichhardt had claimed only to be colleagues at the Chamber of Commerce—“the Chamber” was what they used to call it. It had intimidated him then, and it intimidated him now.

  But he also could tell that she liked sitting in the mall with him, even though she was probably wondering why he was in a toy store. It was that the store’s brightly colored displays and music box noise always moved him in ways the cemetery did not. Occasionally he was tempted to buy a doll or stuffed animal and arrange it on Rae’s shelf, but more often he simply admired the toys, puzzled over those she might have liked. It seemed natural. He worried the day would come when he could no longer return to her in his mind, when he would find even her memory gone.

  But for now the memories still came without his bidding, sometimes in mists, sometimes in storms. As if in premonition, just before he’d seen Anna, here in the mall, he’d remembered Rae finding a frog and calling her outside. It was the day he introduced them to each other, and already they were holding hands. Wes was pulling crabgrass in the sun. Rae stood a few feet from the frog, leaning forward but refusing to step closer. She’d said, “I’ll get Buster.”

  “Honey,” Anna said, “Buster doesn’t like frogs.”

  “They can play together.”

  “Frogs and dogs don’t play. They’re different. But we’ll name him. What’s a good name for a frog?”

  Rae touched her hospital bracelet, one of her first. She’d called it jewelry. “Daddy,” she said. “His name is Daddy.”

  Anna looked at him, then Rae did, too, pointing at the frog. Her mouth made an O; light came into her eyes. “What a perfect, perfect name,” Anna said. “He does look like your daddy.”

  Now on the bench, Anna touched his arm. “Wow, Wes, I can’t believe we’re sitting here. I’m delighted, truly, but doesn’t it seem strange?”

  “Yes, it does,” he said. “It does a little.” Behind Anna, her sister tousled one boy’s hair. They couldn’t be older than three. He asked if they were twins.

  “They are.” Anna leaned closer, and he smelled the warm, earthy scent of her hair, the same scent he used to find on his pillows. He worried she might smell the strip club on him, smell the dancers’ body lotion on his coat.

  “Robert, on the left, is the talker,” she said. “And Franklin—he’s, well—he’s shy.”

  “I’m sure he’ll grow out of it.”

  Then Anna said, “When they’re sleeping, I can’t always tell them apart. If one of them scratches his nose or something, I notice differences. But not when they’re perfectly still.”

  “That’s normal. I’m sure—”

  “Wes, you look fabulous,” she said briskly. In five years, her voice had acquired an East Texas rasp and lightness. It sounded, in a way, seductive. Briefly he imagined stealing away with her into a darkened vestibule or fitting room, though they’d never acted so boldly when they were together. Under Anna’s clothes, he remembered, her skin was a soft shade of amber. Then he wondered whether Gordon Eichhardt might be buying toys while Anna distracted the twins; perhaps he might be watching or approaching right now.

  Anna said, “Did you recognize me at first? Have I changed?”

  “You look a little different—not much, though.”

  “That’s nice to hear. I gained weight, of course, but I still like to swim. I guess I always will.”

  “I remember that,” Wes said. Then he heard himself ask, “Do you ever think about that time in our lives?”

  “Sure I do. Just the other day I remembered the night we danced in your bedro
om. A Tuesday—I’ll always remember that because it seems romantic. Dancing on a Tuesday. Buster kept scratching at the door.”

  His memory opened, and he felt himself plunging helplessly into it. He almost told her about the car hitting Buster, but controlled himself. There seemed some kindness in staying quiet. He said, “It was nice, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, indeed.” She seemed refreshed now, no longer forlorn and fatigued. She said, “But when I recall it, I don’t hear a song. I remember the candles, your chin on my shoulder—you hadn’t shaved—and how slow we moved. Was there any music?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe we played the stereo.”

  Anna smiled, a furtive, oblique smile that made him realize he’d been wrong. She wasn’t heavier at all. This was the same woman from that night in his bedroom, when, among candles, they swayed with the smooth, languorous movements of bodies under water. Rae lay in bed, weak and exhausted, but still under a small umbrella of hope. Dancing with Anna that Tuesday without music, he almost proposed, almost whispered the question in her ear, but he refrained, because holding her, he divined the dark way all of it would end. When he told Anna he loved her, he meant You’ll leave me, too.

  In the mall, neither spoke for what seemed a long time, a time long enough for Wes to see that Anna was still beautiful; Anna would always be beautiful. He made a motion to stand up from the bench, saying, “I should let you go.”

  “What about you, Wes? Do you ever think about us?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Sometimes.”

  “Then tell me something.” Anna’s voice softened. She smiled, and Wes leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees. She said, “Tell me what you’re thinking right now.”

  On the morning after he had left the hospital for the last time, he called Anna because he’d promised to, but also to shock and punish her, and to hear her apologize for leaving him. After the funeral they spoke a few times, always with tears and remorse and words waiting to be pulled from wherever they exist before the voice. But she never agreed to come back, and he began deploring her for it.