“Why don’t we stop this now?” Jesse said. He took a step forward and sounded more angry than afraid, which surprised me, because it seemed everyone was afraid then, even Phillip Bundick.
“What a beautiful idea,” Fancy said. “Doesn’t that sound just beautiful, Bunny?”
“I wish to God this would’ve never gotten started on me,” he said in a loud, wild voice. Phillip Bundick heaved his shoulder and body against Luis to keep him standing. “I wish I hadn’t learned about this.”
Luis was clutching his stomach and gasping as though there weren’t enough air in the room. Phillip Bundick appeared about to kick him again, but said, “I feel like I’ve already died.”
Luis groaned. Sweat had beaded on his face and forehead, and when he squirmed against the wall, Jesse raised his hands and laced his fingers behind his neck. “Okay. Okay. That’s good now. Why don’t we let him rest a while? He could use some water.”
Phillip Bundick turned to Jesse then, studying him in a slow and measured way. I could hear him breathing through his nose with his mouth shut, but he was regaining his composure. “Your old man takes a good punch. He’ll come out of this fine. That’s what he’s thinking right now. Isn’t it?” His eyes moved from Jesse to Luis. He leaned within an inch of Luis’s face. “You’re thinking this will all end soon and you’ll just find another lady to work your magic on. This is just a regular day for you, right?”
“This isn’t regular for anyone, Bunny,” Fancy said. “Not even us. Let’s get in the car and drive home. Okay? We can talk tonight. I’ll grill your shark for you.” It sounded as though she might continue, maybe add that things between them would work out or that she loved him and didn’t love Luis, but Fancy just closed her mouth. She shook her head and scanned the room without letting her eyes rest on any one thing.
And what Phillip Bundick did then was take a step back, then another and another, and simply walk away. He glanced at Fancy and Luis as if he were lost, but then turned and shouldered past Jesse and me. I expected something to happen, for Luis or even Jesse to tackle Phillip Bundick or hit him from behind. Maybe he wanted to be hurt, so he left himself open, but we watched him go down the porch steps without harm. Before he climbed into the Chevy, Phillip Bundick looked at the sky—it was a hard blue then—then he lowered his eyes to the house. I felt he would make some statement, and was waiting to hear his voice when he lifted his arm and fired the pistol three times into the air. And after that, he was gone.
LONELINESS CAN LEAD PEOPLE THE SAME WAY THAT love can, and sometimes to the same places, so that inside the cheerless situation where you never wanted to find yourself, it can seem impossible to distinguish one from the other. Maybe Luis felt that in Jesse’s room the night before, and maybe Phillip Bundick felt it as his Chevy topped the hill that afternoon and he disappeared from our sight. Such feelings have surfaced in my life since then, but at sixteen being in love and being alone existed as opposites in my mind, though that, of course, is dead wrong.
The officer who came to Jesse’s house that afternoon was short and young, and despite the muscles bulging under his uniform, he seemed jittery talking with Luis in the driveway. Jesse and I had carted the birds and their cages to the storage shed behind the house, because Luis suspected the neighbors would call the police about the gunshots. He had splashed water on his face and hair, and now wore a tank top and boots. Fancy had changed into a yellow sundress, and as she spoke with the officer, Luis tucked in his shirt.
“Son,” Luis called. “Son, let’s talk with the police now.” Jesse jogged across the yard. The afternoon heat was coming on then, but a breeze was blowing and I found some shade on the porch. Fancy eventually shook the officer’s hand and came to sit on the bench beside me. She had brushed her hair and put on makeup, and a thin gold chain with a little cross pendant hung around her neck.
“What is today?” she asked.
“Saturday,” I said. The officer jotted down something Jesse had told him. Luis shot a glance at us on the porch.
“Then I hate Saturdays,” Fancy said. We were on a swing made for two people. I wondered if I stank from riding in the hot truck. “Southport,” she said, as though contemplating the name. “Where you’re either drunk or fishing.”
“We’re moving,” I said. The words sounded strange in my voice. “My aunt lives in California. We’ll stay with her and I’ll go to a private school.”
“I acted in a movie once.” Fancy started peeling flakes of paint from her armrest, watching her hands. Stubble peppered her calves, though that didn’t bother me. “Actually, I was an extra in a crowd scene, but we filmed for three days. At the time I had red hair, like an orange, but on the last day of shooting I overslept, so they had to redo the whole scene without me because the director couldn’t match my hair color. Something like that. He said I’d cost him twenty-eight thousand dollars, so I guess that’s what I’m worth. At least I’m not cheap.”
I recalled Fancy’s pictures and realized she had been wading in the Pacific Ocean, not the Gulf. She seemed mysterious then, like someone who knew things I would never know. I said, “I saw your photo album on the table.”
“Did you?” She smiled at me and seemed flattered. “Picture’s worth a thousand words I’ll never say, right?”
I shrugged, and though it surprised me as much as anyone, I said, “I’d like to be a reporter. I’d like to tell about people doing important things.” I’d hoped Fancy would respond, encourage me or say something else to make me feel good, but a voice crackled through the cruiser’s radio and we stayed quiet while the officer reached for his CB.
“They’ve caught poor Bunny,” she said.
“I didn’t hear that.”
“Neither did I, but that’s what happened. I’m his wife, I know.” Fancy dropped a sliver of paint and ran her thumb over her short fingernails.
“Is that your real name? Fancy?”
She squinted at me, not angrily but as if she were assessing a flaw in my character. I held her eyes for only a second, though it felt like a long time before she turned away. Jesse and Luis stood beside each other, with their backs against the cruiser, while the officer sat inside talking on the radio. A wind blew and I heard branches scratching against the side of the house. I wished I’d kept quiet about Fancy’s name. She said, “He intended to be a priest, Luis did. You wouldn’t know that now, I guess.”
Luis and Jesse chuckled about something, and seeing them that way made me think of Luis sitting on Jesse’s bed the night before. I wondered if he knew about Luis wanting to be a priest.
“He wants to start a legitimate bird business. Birds of Paradise he would call it. And those needlepoints on the walls, the sand dollars and clowns and that woman walking in the garden—he does those when he can’t sleep. He’s proud of them.”
“They’re nice,” I said, though I’d never really examined them or considered Luis being proud of anything.
“The officer is a friend of mine’s son. He doesn’t know me, though. His mother is older and has cancer. He’ll see a lot worse than this in his life.”
And because it seemed right, I said, “We all will.”
“Or have,” Fancy said. Then after a moment, “Do you want to hear the saddest thing I’ve ever seen?”
“Yes,” I said. I liked Fancy’s voice.
“I took a cruise in the Caribbean, off the coast of St. Lucia, and I watched all these rich people throw change to the natives. Maybe a hundred of them floated out on little boats and old surfboards. It’s a tradition there.” Fancy stood and smoothed her dress against the backs of her thighs. “After the money ran out, they started yelling for fruit. ‘Fruit! Give us fruit!’ ” She quieted her voice, but raised her eyes and waved her arms as if she were far below, in the ocean. “And sure enough they started throwing fruit to them. Bananas, oranges, lemons, but away from the boat to watch them fetch it. Some kids climbed to the higher decks and tried to bean them with apples. They hit one man, an old bald
man with skinny, skinny arms, and he went under.” She touched her hair, rolled strands between her thumb and fingers. “I just stayed in my cabin after that, crying.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I raised my eyes toward the cruiser, trying to think of something horrible to confide to Fancy. I remembered only what Jesse had said about my just knowing impossibilities, but right then it sounded less than horrible.
“I dated a doctor before Bunny. We weren’t in love.” Fancy glanced at me, smiled, then pursed her lips. She exhaled. “Being alone isn’t my strong suit.”
Then Jesse was strolling across the yard. Fancy straightened herself on the bench, and when he came close enough to hear, she asked, “What’s the verdict?”
“He doesn’t need to speak with Curtis,” he said. “But you’re going to prison. Forever.” He smirked at Fancy and she touched her cheek, then started fingering her cross, gazing away from him. Jesse raised his eyes to me, urging me to laugh or smile, but I only shook my head. He seemed a stranger to me then, and I wanted him to leave us alone. And maybe Jesse recognized that because he was stepping backward across the yard when he said, “That’s the verdict. That’s how all of this ends. Maybe Curtis will visit you on your birthday.”
He turned and walked toward the Ranger with his father watching. After a moment Luis stole a look at Fancy, but averted his eyes when she noticed. Whatever had existed between them, I knew, was finished, and I saw that Luis wished things were different. I doubted Phillip Bundick had intended to shoot him, but only to scare him and make him feel sorry for things. I did not know how he learned we’d been in his house or that Fancy was with Luis—possibly someone told him, possibly Fancy herself communicated it, though without words or voice—or maybe he just had a feeling that turned out to be true. I thought the possibility of Fancy’s leaving had eaten at him for some time and he had simply lost his sanity trying to stop the inevitable, which will drive anyone crazy. Already, I felt detached from them, as if I’d left Southport and was living in California near the redwood forest, where they would not make a difference in my life’s unfolding. Maybe no one would.
“And yes.” Fancy paused as Jesse tried cranking the ignition. “It is my real name. I also have two sisters, Mary and Arden, but who knows where they are.”
I said, “It’s a pretty name.”
Fancy smiled a weak smile at me, then took my hand and ducked under my arm so that I held her like a little girl. Jesse continued to turn the engine, but it wouldn’t catch, and soon Luis and the officer raised the hood and checked for the trouble. It was only the middle of the day, though it seemed late. Clouds had blown in and canopied that hard blue sky and I thought it might rain. I imagined Jesse enlisting in the Army soon, and maybe flying his plane under bridges. I imagined us as grown men, worlds apart, realizing that we’d forged our friendship out of necessity and availability and the violent knowledge that it wouldn’t last, and realizing too that such alliances are not necessarily tragic. Anything seemed possible to me then, and it gave me the floating feeling you get when you’re in a dark room and although everything is black, you suddenly realize your eyes are open. Fancy pressed her face to my shoulder, then relaxed, and I wondered what was on her mind. Maybe she was thinking of acting in a movie, or about her sisters or splashing in the Pacific Ocean, or about when she would next see Phillip Bundick. Or maybe she thought this: We are not responsible for other people, cannot be responsible for them. It was not a crazy thought, or unique or sad, just one that can occur in life, whether you’re young or old, alone or in love. Her breathing slowed. I thought she might be falling asleep, and I didn’t want to wake her. At that moment I felt content, and I only wanted to let Fancy’s body rest against mine, for her to feel the breeze on her skin, in her blond hair, and for both of us to stay still and, however briefly, close our eyes in the shade.
Buy for Me the Rain
ON THE WARM JANUARY MORNING WHEN LEILAND Marshall buried his mother, he kept shifting in his folding chair, hoping to see Moira Jarrett. Her flight was scheduled to land before the service started, but even as the line of mourners filed by the casket, she hadn’t arrived. This was in Corpus Christi, at a cemetery near the ocean, under a canvas tent that gave everything a green hue. Death had come for his mother’s body in the night, had come with miserable slowness, but when women in the line asked, he said she had passed peacefully in her sleep. As he spoke, he glanced over their shoulders for Moira. He watched for her as the mourners dispersed, then again when they brought sympathy and snack platters to the house. She never showed. Soon his mother’s friends slipped into their dainty coats, collected purses and jangled keys, and Lee found himself under the ashen, thickening sky, waving as the last car pulled away from the curb.
Russell Jarrett, Moira’s older brother, stayed longer than the others. He stepped outside carrying a garbage bag.
Lee said, “Those women had a good time today.”
“And a few beers. It’s worse than a Super Bowl party in there.”
Lee had returned from St. Louis a year before, leaving a job teaching eleventh-grade history to stay with his mother while she underwent treatment, then when that failed, to care for her as she died. On the day of the funeral, all of it seemed part of another person’s life, a story he’d read in the Caller-Times. He was thirty-three and, now, an orphan.
After Russell set the bag on the curb, Lee asked, “Any word from Moira?”
“Flight’s delayed,” he said. “She’ll be here for dinner. She’s sorry about missing everything.”
Lee hoped Russell would say more, but didn’t want to press. Moira, he knew, was flying from London, where she worked with a dance company, but otherwise her current life remained a mystery. He wondered how England suited her, if she intended to relocate permanently. Except for crossing into Mexico, Lee had never been out of the country—a fact that, like his mother’s cancer, he seemed to always be avoiding. He wondered if Moira was traveling alone.
The wind gusted, stripping more leaves from the Chinese tallow. Lee thought to open the windows in the house and start airing out the rooms, then he realized that could be done in an hour or a month; the rushing was over. He said, “I still haven’t gone into the den.”
“Why should you?” Russell said. “If you need something from there, I’ll get it.”
“That room doesn’t even seem part of the house right now. I can hardly picture it.”
Russell untucked his shirt and trained his eyes on a beagle barking down the street. He sold life insurance—he’d written the policy for Lee’s mother years before—and regularly interacted with grieving clients, but he was unaccustomed to consoling Lee. For the last three nights, he’d insisted that Lee sleep at his apartment, and too often in that time he had guaranteed that her insurance papers were in order; he could offer no other relief. Having mentioned the den galled Lee. He’d forgotten his role, had forgotten to chaperone the conversation, because, really, the day seemed too unremarkable, lacking in weight and ballast, to hold his mother’s funeral; the lawn needed raking; a tire on her Oldsmobile was flat; Moira, as usual, was late.
Russell had been talking, but Lee only heard him say, “Or maybe you feel relieved. No fault in that.”
“I feel hungry.” And though he’d meant only to lighten Russell’s mood, Lee realized he was hungry. It was just past two, the hour when he should’ve been warming her soup or pouring her cereal.
“They drank the beer but spared the food,” Russell said. “Eat, then take a nap. Try to relax—that’s what she would want.”
That made sense. Of course he should rest today, yet the idea hadn’t occurred to him. Immediately his body started surrendering to the promise of unconsciousness, as if he’d taken one of his mother’s sedatives; it was a buoyant feeling, the sense that the worst lay behind him.
Russell said, “When you get up, Moira will be here.”
“She’ll regale us with stories.”
A car with a Christmas wreath tied to its g
rill turned onto the street, and the driver, a neighbor who hadn’t attended the funeral, saluted solemnly.
Lee said, “I think she would’ve liked the service.”
“Absolutely. The flowers, the music, all of her beer-grubbing friends. She’d be proud.”
“No,” Lee said, “I meant Moira.”
MEN COULDN’T GET MOIRA OUT OF THEIR SYSTEMS. “Like herpes,” she’d once said. For three months after she’d broken a lawyer’s heart, he left packages on her porch— flowers, chocolate, a white-gold choker, opal earrings; occasionally she’d had to change phone numbers because old flames refused to stop calling. Lee himself could hardly recall a time when he wasn’t pining for her. When he had been nothing more than her brother’s watchful friend, he’d envied and judged her suitors—young men with long hair and older men with money, a woman who sang jazz, and later, briefly, the singer’s husband. His heart thrilled when she dismissed them, though he knew she was beyond him, too. Her wispy clothes smelled of marijuana and incense—pungent teases of her other, more essential and alluring life; she made oblique references to a past pregnancy; someone, an affronted spouse or jilted lover, had twice broken her car windows.
The second time was in front of Lee’s mother’s house. That year, between college and grad school, he’d started finding Moira on his arm, in his bed. He spent nights convincing himself the relationship would last, but Moira left him bewitched and small-feeling, and he always knew she would not grow to need him. The shattered windows evidenced a past and future in which he didn’t figure.
A Saturday morning, they stood barefoot on the sun-blanched lawn. Lee’s mother had left a note saying she’d gone shopping, but he knew she was at the cemetery, grooming his father’s grave.
Moira said, “Everything happens to me twice.”
She liked saying this, had said it before. She was referring to jail and lightning; she’d been arrested twice, once for unpaid tickets, once for petty larceny, for stealing a mink stole from Dillard’s. And twice she’d been struck by lightning, in a sorghum field and beside a pool; she’d been on the early news. Now, the busted windows.
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