Corpus Christi

by Bret Anthony Johnston

  Then, so swiftly that she worried he’d overlooked something, Guerrero closed his folder and ushered them from his office. In the hall, she tried to touch Lee’s cheek—a gesture to say, We’re doing fine, Good job, It’s almost over—but lifting her arm nearly toppled her and he had to grab her waist. Guerrero opened a door past the floral displays and stepped demurely aside. He said, “I’ll check back shortly.”

  The chilled air smelled of oak and lilacs, and it nearly buckled her knees. She felt dizzy, tasted bile in her throat; her stomach dropped. Three coffins—two open, one closed— rested on pedestals in the middle of the room. Sections of others, their hulls and sides, were affixed to the walls and illuminated by individual brass lamps. She had spent an afternoon in the showroom when Richard died but had insisted that Lee stay home. Now, he looked stunned, lost. She turned away to gather herself, feeling as though they’d happened upon a car accident. She imagined sitting beside the pond, heard herself telling Lee, “At least that’s behind us.” If they could only survive this, if she could hold it together, she thought Lee would reward her among the mesquite trees that hemmed the water; she plied herself with ideas of him shedding his layers of silence and talking with her in the sun.

  She got her legs back slowly; the vertigo subsided. She made her way around the displays, fighting off the fearful reverence the room demanded. The poplar and maple and tucked satin seemed such a waste. The champagne-colored velvet and taffeta interiors were expensive and worthless. And the pillows! She’d forgotten coffins came with those. Who needed a pillow? Her heels clicked on the floor, like hammering in a church. When she moved into the steel displays— 20-gauge, 18-gauge, stainless, what did it all mean? What did it matter?—she saw herself reflected in the gleaming surfaces. She winked at Lee in her reflection, but his eyes darted away. She touched the firm, stitched padding; he clasped his hands behind his back.

  “Now it feels like we are at a museum,” she said. “We take a step and stop, then step and stop.”

  “A regular Smithsonian.”

  She laughed, though he gave her a cross look, and she realized he’d not meant to amuse her at all.

  “Did I tell you what the French call guillotines?”

  He nodded, inching back toward the oaks.

  “The guillotines turned wives into widows,” she said. He leaned to study a cherrywood casket. She said, “I like this one. It looks comfortable.”

  Basic steel, the shade of blush. Small gardenias, the same cream color as the satin lining, trimming the lid. A thin chrome bar along its side. She couldn’t have cared less for it.

  Lee said, “It’s the cheapest.”

  “And the prettiest.”

  “What about this one? You love oak.”

  “Oh, it’s beautiful, but you could fit three of me in there.” She wanted him to laugh or at least smile—please, please— but he just paced forward, arms still behind his back. She said, “You look like a security guard.”

  Maybe she’d glimpsed a small grin forming, but if she had he’d squelched it and slid his hands into his pockets. If he’d been a child, she could have aped silly faces or ripped rags to cheer him, but now he was gone.

  “Daddy’s poodle used to bark at waves. At the beach, we’d—”

  “The price doesn’t matter, Mama.”

  “I know, honey. I just love this one, really. The gardenias are precious.”

  “You bought Dad a nice one.”

  She almost blurted, He deserved a nice one, but refrained. She crossed the room and pretended to consider the more expensive caskets. Lee said nothing. He’d turned callous and unreachable. She tried to remember which model she’d bought Richard, but couldn’t. It had brass bars like saloon banisters, but none with bars looked familiar. Maybe the style was discontinued, but she felt certain the failing was hers. If she ruined everything else, shouldn’t a widow at least remember her husband’s casket? So much about her would disappoint him, her fear and depression, the burden she’d become for Lee, and the slow, sorry withering that now defined her life. Perhaps she was getting exactly what she deserved.

  “Hello?” Guerrero stepped inside, hesitantly. “How are we?”

  Minnie looked at Lee, then back at the man.

  “Never better,” she said. “I’ll take this one.”

  LEE WANTED TO REST BEFORE THEIR PICNIC. HER choices had disheartened him, and though Minnie thought it better to eat lunch and get their minds off everything, she conceded. At home he retired to his room and left her to stew. Maybe he wanted to spare her his anger, but his silence was more punishing. And more exhausting. She had meant only to relax briefly, then start doing laundry, but in the recliner, the waking world receded. A patchwork of images—Guerrero’s meaty hands and the painting behind his desk; Lee dropping her at various entrances to save her energy, then parking the car alone; Richard at the beach, holding a conch, saying Hey, would you look at this; a cakewalk from her youth, the music stopping precisely when she stepped onto the winning star— then she slept. In her dream, Richard appeared as a stranger, but she nonetheless recognized him as the man whose absence gripped her heart, and his voice poured like water. When she woke, the windows were black.

  “Someone was tired,” Lee said.

  The raw light in the kitchen burned her eyes. She pulled a chair out from the table, and the legs scraping across the tile rankled her. Her lighter would not fire. She tried for what seemed minutes, then just as she resigned herself to getting a light from the stove, smoke filled her lungs. She exhaled with her eyes closed. Her mouth tasted clammy, sour. Lee was leering at her, she felt him. She hung the cigarette on her lips and went to the refrigerator for a Coke. He smiled as she crossed the kitchen, but she concentrated on not stumbling. Her head was clouded, her body more drained than before, sapped specifically of patience.

  She held the bottle toward him. “I can’t open this.”

  He twisted the cap, and the ease of the action seemed accusatory. In the garage, the washing machine buzzer sounded. She winced.

  “Headache?” he asked.

  “We missed the ducks.”

  “Maybe tomorrow. Maybe you’ll feel better.”

  “I felt fine today,” she said. “Besides, I have things to do tomorrow.”

  She half hoped he would call her bluff and argue (an unfamiliar yet powerful feeling), but he just went to move the laundry. Her legs were restless, small spasms jerking and knotting in her calves. Her stomach ached from not eating. All of her nerves felt exposed, stung by the light and air.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?” she asked when he returned. “I wanted to talk over lunch.”

  “We’ll have a nice supper. We can talk now.”

  She dragged on her cigarette and stabbed the butt in the ashtray. In the window, her reflection appeared more diminished than it had even that morning.

  “You just didn’t want to go,” she said, trying to light another cigarette.

  “You needed rest.” His tone was stoic and confident, meaning he thought he was right. Before, such willfulness had always comforted her; tonight it grated. He said, “How does cream of chicken sound?”

  “What would have been so terrible about a picnic? The money? How much would we have spent? Twenty dollars? Can’t we afford that on a day like today?”

  “I’m not the one so concerned with money.”

  “A bronze grave vault is a bit excessive, Leiland.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose, shut his eyes. “Is this the kind of night we’re going to have?”

  Maybe, she thought. She felt destitute of courtesy and tact, suddenly unconcerned with doing the right thing. Nothing had panned out as she’d wanted—nothing. She’d pinned her hopes on talking beside the pond, believing it would restore them, but now everything was dashed. She wanted to strike out, to be cruel, and nothing was worse than feeling this way toward him. Usually when he wanted to argue, she yielded. Yet before she knew she would say it, when she only knew she felt compelled to
say something, she heard her voice: “I want to be cremated.”

  He put his hands on the window frame and gazed into the backyard. Or maybe his eyes were closed, maybe he was taking deep breaths, counting to ten. He said, “You need a nerve pill.”

  “No, Lee, I don’t. You can’t just dope me up all the time.”

  “Me? Me dope you up?”

  “I can’t talk to you. I can’t even talk to my own son.”

  “What, Mother? What do you want to say?”

  What did she want to say? Suddenly, nothing. Before, there seemed so much, but now everything had vanished. She said, “Sell the house, don’t rent it.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” he said—something she’d never heard him say.

  “Sell the car. Take my jewelry to a jeweler. Not a pawnshop.”

  “Mother.”

  “Donate my wigs and clothes. That’s what I want.”

  “Mother.”

  “I don’t want you to be sappy. I want you to invest the money. If I want to be cremated, that’s my choice. And if I want to have a picnic at the goddamned pond, the least—”

  “Mother!” His voice rattled the windows, filled the room. Then silence filled it. When he spoke again, his tone had softened, as if in apology: “The pond is gone.”

  She shook out another cigarette. Her fingers trembled. “That’s absurd.”

  “It’s been gone for two years, maybe three. It’s a car wash now. You sent me the newspaper clipping.”

  She shrugged. She flicked her lighter, and shook it, but it wouldn’t catch. She tried and tried but got nowhere. She tossed the cigarette and lighter onto the table and held her face in her hands. Lee sulked into the hall. Her throat tightened; wet pressure welled behind her eyes. Hadn’t they gone to the pond during chemo? She understood none of it, neither her son nor herself, their silences nor their arguments. She no longer knew his role or hers, what was required of her and what would handle itself; she didn’t understand how to die. Lee ran water in the bathroom. She wanted to chase after him, to scream for help or ring her bell. She wanted to beg him not to shut himself in his room, wanted to dispense with the lie that today, or any day in the last year, was normal. Before, the charade seemed necessary for him, but now she realized she had depended upon it more than he ever had. He would survive this, rebuild a life that she would never see; a life, simply, without her. And shouldn’t this please rather than terrify and anger her? She wanted to admit she was terrified, terrified to sleep or be awake, and she wished she’d lived a life different in every way except for him and his father; she wished she still had a chance. She wished she could bear to buy a beautiful coffin. She wished Richard were still alive, so Lee wouldn’t have to drive her to the funeral home and watch her come undone. She wished, for all of their sakes, that she had died first.

  He returned to the kitchen and said, “Just wait a minute. I’m going to the store.”

  She was trying the dead lighter again. He patted his pockets for his keys and wallet. She hated him driving to the store, because undoubtedly he thought if she didn’t need lighters and cigarettes, she wouldn’t be dying. He resembled his father, his thin hair and sloped shoulders and even his reticence, and as he checked the cupboards, the likeness was too much. All of it was too, too much. As the tears came, she wondered what else she’d forgotten or would forget, what else he was withholding. She wondered where the ducks had flown after the pond was gone, if he remembered how much he’d enjoyed them as a child. She wondered if he would ever have children, who would be their mother and what they would know of their grandmother. She wondered if they would get any of her features. The only trait that seemed worth passing on was her new lovely hair, which, really, wasn’t hers at all.

  IN A MONTH THE DEN WOULD BECOME A SICKROOM. A hospital bed would be delivered, tubes from the oxygen machine would snake over and behind her furniture; her furniture would be buried under hospice charts, hospital gowns, and packages of diapers. Nurses came and went. She held guarded conversations with them—as she had with Rudy Guerrero—but soon pockets of forgotten information devoured her speech. She would forget Lee’s name. Though never who he was. Through that long, excruciating fade there always remained a silky, durable cord of memory that connected them, a child and his mother.

  SHE WOKE IN THE RECLINER WITH THE TELEVISION on and Lee reading on the couch. Her mouth tasted dry. A new lighter, a pack of cigarettes and a chocolate bar lay beside the bell on the end table. She did not remember Lee settling her down or helping her into the recliner before going to the store. She remembered the fighting, and hoped it was over.

  She said, “Good morning, sunshine.”

  He leaned forward, smiling in the lamplight. “It’s almost midnight. I’ll warm your soup.”

  She smoked as her eyes adjusted. Her body felt less fragmented, her thoughts less scattered. She was satisfied with the funeral arrangements and relieved to have them behind her. A tough customer, Guerrero had called her. After a few minutes, it occurred to her that she felt marvelous.

  Lee returned with juice and soup and her nighttime medication, eight pills she had to swallow two at a time. He kissed her forehead, a gesture she adored but never admitted she adored for fear he would stop. He lay on the couch and hooked his arm over his eyes, crossed his ankles. As she ate—when had he learned to make such delicious soup, soup so good it made her hungrier to eat?—she noticed he wore socks she’d bought from a catalog. Sometimes just seeing him mystified her. Every night, he stayed awake long enough to make sure she wouldn’t get sick. Every night she dreaded the moment he went to bed.

  She relit her cigarette, drank more juice. She said, “Are you awake?”

  “Okay,” he said, startled. He raised his head, then lay back. “Yes, I am.”

  “Do you know what the French call—”

  “The widow.” He lifted his arm from his eyes and winked at her, smirking. Briefly she felt ashamed for repeating it— how many times had she told him?—then she let herself off the hook, because he had.

  She said, “You’re right about the pond.”

  He nodded, his elbow over his eyes again.

  “And I don’t want to be cremated.”

  “I know.”

  Four pills still waited beside the ashtray, though she recognized none of them. Lately, she remembered only the shapes of her muscle relaxers and nerve pills, the tablets she reached for most often. They bathed her in a perfectly warm, perfectly weightless oblivion, and as she melted, she wondered if the cottony nothingness enveloping her was how it would finally feel. She hoped so. In her darkest moods, she’d considered emptying the bottles and chasing the pills with vodka, but that would cancel her insurance. If Lee had to act as her nurse, she could at least pay for his trouble.

  “Let’s see if the ocean’s still there,” he said, suddenly.

  She flinched. She’d thought he’d drifted to sleep. Then she heard the words as if in an echo, and her heart lurched.

  “Dad used to come in my room and say that. I remembered it today.”

  Her skin tingled. How many times had she heard Richard say that, either to her or to Lee? The words lifted her, sent her memory reeling, as if in a second’s time she’d gotten delightfully drunk.

  “You’d still be in bed,” he said. “We rarely went to the water, though. Usually he’d find some road to get lost on.”

  “Sounds familiar,” she said. Maybe it sounded familiar, maybe not.

  “So we were probably lost, but one morning he showed me where he’d buried Peppy.”

  She drew on her cigarette. A wave swelled beneath her. The tingling on her skin was replaced with a trembling in each nerve, an expectant hush.

  “He said he’d convinced the vet to let him do it.”

  “What a thing to remember.”

  He uncrossed his ankles, then crossed them again. “I’d never seen him cry before. I must have been six or seven. I didn’t know what to do.”

  She cleared her throat, quietly. “An
d?”

  “I just waited,” he said. “Eventually he quieted down and started the truck.”

  He was lying, of course, just as he had to explain the splotches in her peripheral vision, her illegible signature. Or he was exaggerating, suddenly committed to calming her. Perhaps now he couldn’t ignore what was imminent, inevitable. Perhaps because she could no longer keep anything from him, he longed to resurrect and recast what he could for her. Probably he’d contrived his father’s tears that afternoon or as she slept, but maybe he’d not imagined them until now. And what was he saying? That he was sorry? Or that he too would weep privately but eventually, begrudgingly, recover? None of it mattered; he was exalting her, filling her every cell with breath. She listened as she would to an opera, hearing not language but just his voice and its lament of time and love and doomed hopefulness. Oh, the surprise and absolute mystery of a child!

  He said, “We’d go all over, those Saturday mornings.”

  It was as if he’d just returned from a long absence, or was a skittish animal finally coaxed into approaching. She turned to him, slowly, careful not to scare him away.

  “Tell me,” she said, putting out her cigarette. “Tell me where you’ve been.”

  Two Liars

  WHAT I WANT TO EXPLAIN IS HOW MY FATHER became scared—desperate, really—and set fire to our house and cheated the insurance company out of its money. All of this happened in 1979. We lived on Whistler Road in Portland, Texas, a small town compared to Corpus Christi, but sizable when you included those living on the Naval Air Station, where my father worked. He left for his job hours before the morning paper came, so when he returned in the afternoons he read it, while chewing a thin cigar. Over the years, my mother has suggested that something he’d read triggered him, but I’ve never learned where all of our money had gone or what convinced my father we were in such poor shape. I was fifteen then and our lives seemed normal to me.