Pontoon

by Garrison Keillor

  16. IN RECOVERY

  Wednesday was Barbara’s third day of recovery and it was rough. Monday and Tuesday were easy; she remembered how bad she used to feel, brain-dead, nauseated, guilt-ridden, dizzy. But Wednesday morning she woke up feeling pretty good and thinking about crème de cacao. She skipped coffee because of the liquorish associations and made green tea which is supposed to help counter alcoholic urges, according to something she read online.

  It’s a new life, she told herself. You’re doing great. Keep at it.

  She would be sober. She would exercise every day. She would go on a detoxifying diet she had read about that incorporated nutrients found in honey and locusts. She would sell her house and leave town and start Part Two somewhere else, maybe near an ocean, in a sun-swept town on a hillside, in a house with a walled garden covered with vines, on a red-brick patio under a banyan tree. She had it all clear in her mind. And either Oliver would get with the program and marry her or he would be history.

  He had never set foot in her house. She had been in his house once and he was so embarrassed by the mess, the boxes of sugar wafers, a case of Spam, piles of soda-pop cans, twelve packs, empty burger bags, pizza boxes, chaos in the kitchen, that he turned around and drove her to the Romeo Motel and that had been their meeting place ever since. He’d call or e-mail her and say “What you up to tonight?” She’d play along. “Not much. You?” He wasn’t up to much either. Just sitting and thinking. “About what?” Things. And then he’d say it. “Sure would be nice to see you.” And she’d go, or she wouldn’t go, and it was always the Romeo, room 135, in back. He could pull up in his old Caddy and walk ten steps to the door and be in the room. He’d pay over the phone and have the clerk leave the door unlocked. Oliver liked dim light and anonymity. He was not ready to stand beside her in the light of day and hold hands and be her boyfriend. She was but he wasn’t.

  “Come to my house. I want to fix you dinner,” she said, and he shook his head. “I don’t want you to go to the trouble.” Lie, lie. He didn’t want her watching him eat. Period. She had seen him once coming out of McDonald’s with a box in his hands. It was big enough to hold dinners for six. One could only guess at the contents and shudder.

  *

  She needed some distraction from the urge to fix a drink. She had discovered a miniature bottle of brandy in the cupboard, left over from Christmas. It was there, next to the brown sugar and the cinnamon sticks. Get out a glass, fill it with ice, have a drink. What’s the big problem? Why make such a big deal over it? And then a girl named Sarah called, asking for Kyle. Barbara went into her hostess mode—“I’m expecting him soon,” she said. “How are you doing? He’s told me so much about you.” Lie, lie, lie. She said, “I’m worried about him. I think he has dropped out of school and quit his job and he left me an odd note—” Oh? “I think he’s having a kickback or something.” A kickback? “It’s when you react to one crisis by creating another one.” Oh. Interesting term. Are you in psychology? “No, but I’m in elementary ed. Special ed, actually.” The girl paused for a deep soulful breath. Barbara could sense something coming, like a drop of water forms on the lip of a faucet and balloons—“I don’t know if I should tell you this or not,” the girl said. “I mean—” Tell, girly girl, Barbara thought. Tell everything, open up the hatches, baby-cakes, and drop the whole load of beans on the pavement. We’re big people here. Mother died Friday night. No time to waste. Let’s hear it—“I found a page Kyle wrote for a journal or something, I don’t know—it was in the garbage, he tore it in pieces and stuck it inside a milk carton—but anyway, I read it and he is all confused. Stuff about currents and searching and a lot about journeys. A lot of journey stuff. I think he’s been drinking, and I know for a fact he’s been smoking dope. I just thought you should know. Also I found some e-mails he sent to a gay website about how do you know if you’re gay or not? I think he’s worried about that. But he’s not. I mean, I know he’s not.” Okay. Good to know, I guess. Say no more.

  “But he had sex with this other girl, somebody he met online.” Her voice quavered. “He was trying to prove something to himself. Honestly, I never met anybody with so many problems, and of course he blames it all on me for interrupting him. Why does he hate me? I’ve never been treated this bad by anybody before. I love him. He’s the only boy I ever loved.” She started to cry and hung up.

  Barbara had never spoken to Kyle about sex. There was a unit on sex education in seventh grade, and she remembered him bringing home a pamphlet with diagrams of genitalia and underneath it, it said: If there are questions about sex that trouble you, ask your parents or your minister. The idea of him asking her about sex scared her then and horrified her now. Or, worse, asking Pastor Ingqvist. Mother gave Barbara a book once, Everything A Girl Should Know, that basically said, “When you bleed, stuff this in there. Don’t worry about a thing. Someday you will be very very happy, and meanwhile, don’t think about it.” And that was it. Subject closed. Parents are beautiful ignorant people and a child is a miracle, and they have no idea where it comes from, only that it completes their life in a wonderful way. That’s all parents know about sex. Lloyd was putting his hand down there and getting all breathy and urgent, and before she knew what was happening, she was holding Muffy in her arms and Mother was beaming and Daddy was happy and she felt like she’d been torn apart and stuck back together.

  She worked the crossword puzzle and moved the sprinkler to water the flower beds. She put out fresh seeds for the finches and oriole and the bluebird who had taken up residence nearby. The sun was blazing and the grass hurt her bare feet and the neighbor’s radio irritated her, that awful chuck-wacka music. I have got to go on all day like this and nothing is going to get better. She called Oliver and his cell phone was turned off. Probably a supervisor was hovering so he couldn’t take nonbusiness calls.

  What a prince that fat man was! Her cousin Joanne said, “Barbara, you ought to find yourself a nice guy!” And Barbara wanted to tell her, “I got one and you don’t know it, so ha ha ha! Got a better one than you do, that’s for sure.” Joanne’s husband Allen had a laugh like a dog bark. Imagine putting up with that woofer for twenty-five years. He was completely unselfconscious. You’d be talking to him and he’d reach into his mouth and pick a popcorn husk out of a back molar, or stick a finger in his ear and clean out some wax and examine it and roll it into a ball, and then reach around back and do some proctology. Allen was a college graduate. Big deal. He snored so loud he knocked the alarm clock off the bedside table so she sent him to a sleep clinic and he was sent home because he woke up other patients. Oliver was a high-school dropout and he didn’t run off at the mouth like Allen did about the president and climate change and all, but he had his own wisdom. Still waters run deep. Mrs. Chatterley’s lover was a gardener and he was no intellectual but he sure mowed her lawn. And Oliver made her feel glamorous which she never had been, not for a day in her life.

  She called Oliver again and he picked up this time. “Just wishing you were here,” she said. “Kind of a hard day. I’m okay. Just feeling sad. I miss my mom. Why don’t you come over? I’ll fix supper.”

  She could hear wheels turning in his brain. “I told a friend I’d help him move some stuff,” he said. “I’m sorry about your mom.”

  “I think I may sell my house and move away,” she said. “Start a new life. What do you say?”

  There was a brief vast silence.

  “Sounds like you made up your mind,” he said. “Excuse me,” and he put the phone down and talked to somebody about windshield washer fluid.

  You’ll never find a better lover than me, fat man. I can cook your chicken, baby, just how you like it. I can clean up your mess and never give you a hard time about it. And I can lay you down on that big bed—

  “I gotta go sell somebody some motor oil,” he said.

  *

  She didn’t want to make a big announcement about not drinking. Better to wait until people start to notice. Hey, Barb
ara, I notice you’re off the sauce, huh? How long has that been going on? Six months. Really? Really. So how’s that? Not bad. How come you decided not to drink? I just decided, that’s all. I drank my share. Time to stop.

  Oh, my, how she wanted a drink. A glass full of ice and brandy—that’s what she drank when she and Lloyd were going dancing at roadhouses and making out in the parking lots. And then she graduated to screwdrivers, an occasional Manhattan, and then, during the Ronnie period, she drank beer and boilermakers. She moved on to an affair with a Catholic priest who taught her to appreciate martinis. Met him at a peace rally in St. Cloud. She went with Arlene Bunsen. In front of the courthouse. A couple hundred people waving signs, why more $$$$? and WAR IS POISON, and this very cultivated gentleman struck up a conversation with her about Irish literature and James Joyce and what did she know about James Joyce? Nothing at all. But he was a beautiful talker and made her feel smart and when he asked her to join him for a drink, No did not seem an option. It was wrong, wrong, wrong, and she went and did it. Lied to Arlene. (“I met a friend and she’ll give me a ride.”) And went and had a martini at the St. Cloud Hotel. He said, “Life is a feast and most people are starving.” He said, “James Joyce would have loved looking at you. You would’ve been a majestic presence to him. He would’ve sat over there and stared at you for hours and gone and invented a character who looked like you, and you know? You are more interesting than the one he would have invented.” What a fine compliment! Nobody had ever referred to her as majestic before, or said she could make a man yearn for ruin, which Father had said to her in the elevator. What did that mean? He said she was an angel, she was wholesome and good and good people deserve to have sex too. How did I get here? she wondered afterward, in the shower, listening to him piss three feet away. And what would Mother think? In bed with a Catholic priest, naked, his whiskers against her cheek, murmuring poetry in her ear. “Since feeling is first, who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never holy kiss you,” he said and he kissed her—so that was what martinis held in store. And two months later she was pregnant with Kyle. The father was Father. He was off in New York, the head of something, a monsignor, and there was no reason to bother him about this. And what a lovely gift to get from a martini.

  And then there was single malt Scotch. Donnie Krebsbach. He was standing beside a lovely red hatchback the day she strolled into Krebsbach Chev. Donnie, an old basketball star gone to pot but still a charmer. She almost bought that car from him though she’s Lutheran and Lutherans drive Fords because the Krebsbachs are Catholic and so the money you spend there goes in part to pay for diamonds for the Pope’s shoelaces but she was tempted because the car was red and it was a Caprice. And because Donnie was selling it. She thought maybe it was time she had a Caprice. “It’s a good car,” he told her. “And we could come down on that price a little.” He stood next to her and opened the door. She could smell the leather and also Donnie’s cologne, a dark musky smell. He put his hand on her shoulder. “She’s a real good handler,” he said. “You want to get in?” He jingled the keys. So she did. They drove all the way to St. Cloud and parked the car outside the Best Western and went in. He was married, Catholic, and a lousy lover. No foreplay and he was inside her for sixty seconds and afterward he rolled over and turned on the TV. The Golf Channel. He was fascinated. Evidently he’d never seen golf on television before. He said, “Boy, look at those greens.” The man had been intimate with her minutes before and now he was engrossed by Tiger Woods chipping out of a sand trap, sending a plume of sand in the air. “Wow,” said Donnie. He bought her a single malt Scotch afterward. It tasted like paint remover. She didn’t buy the Caprice.

  Lots of liquors left, rum and bourbon and vodka, so who knew what mysterious gentlemen awaited her?

  But not yet.

  Not now, thank you, Lord.

  A person cannot coast along in old destructive habits year after year and accept whatever comes along. A person must stand up on her own two legs and walk. Get off one bus and go get on another. Climb out of the ditch and cross the road. Find the road that’s going where you want to go.

  Damn, it was hard not to pour that brandy into a glass of ice right now.

  But she owed this to her boy. The only sermon that counts is the one that is formed of our actions. She would quit drinking and thereby show Kyle: life is what you make it. A person can grab hold of her life and change things for the better. This happens all the time. We are not chips of wood drifting down the stream of time. We have oars.

  *

  She remembered Kyle’s graduation. He was No. 3 in his class, wore a gold tassel, won the Shining Star scholarship, got a big round of applause. That was the year the seniors hooked up a tiny plastic hose to the lectern and when Mr. Halvorson stood at the podium to talk about daring to make a difference, he felt the front of his pants getting very wet. A great big dark wet spot. He had to do his Groucho walk back to his seat and sit with his legs crossed and let somebody else hand out the diplomas. So Kyle was out late that night celebrating with his coconspirators, and the next day, Sunday, she put on a big open house, 1 to 3 p.m., with a ham and turkey buffet, potato salad and fruit salad, punch and coffee, and a sheet cake with CONGRATULATIONS KYLE in green icing and a hundred people dropped by and slipped some money in envelopes in the big basket in the living room. Lloyd was there, with terrible back pains, leaning against the kitchen wall, tears in his eyes. She snuck a look at a few envelopes and ten bucks seemed to be the average. It made her furious. Everybody loading up on food she had made and sitting on lawn chairs she had scrounged up and admiring the yard, the opulence of the hydrangeas, the sidewalk washed, and they couldn’t be a little bit generous? Would it kill you? Norwegians! The worst! Kyle strolled by, cutting a wide swathe, working the crowd, and Flo said, “So, what are you going to do next year?” And he said, “I’m thinking I might take a year off to sort of think about it, and I’ll stay with my dad in the city and get a job and earn some money for college or whatever.” It was such a lame reply, she wanted to throw fruit salad in his face—and then she overheard him say something similar to other relatives. A sunny June afternoon in Lake Wobegon with her cheapskate relatives and her martyred ex-husband and lackadaisical son and the whole air of Okay Then Not So Bad Hey and visions of that bright boy adrift and some little trollop latching onto him, a romance like a brain tumor, and in two years he’s working in retail for $8.50 an hour and in debt up to his eyebrows paying for the chintzy rambler and the crummy furniture. She took Kyle aside and said, “You can tell people whatever the hell you want, but you’re not living with your dad next year and you’re not working. You’re going to enroll at the University as you told me you would and you’re going to make a 3.8 grade point average and in return I am going to pay for the whole thing. That’s the plan we agreed on and that’s what you’re going to do. Just so you know.”

  He said, “It’s my life, you know,” which was also lame.

  And she said, “It is and I won’t let you piss it away. Be as angry at me as you like but I’m not going to let you piss away your chances in life and wind up wearing an apron, putting price stickers on cans of creamed corn. And that’s that.”

  He started to say something about needing to find his own way. “Listen,” she said. “The world has enough slackers, and featherbedders and thumbsuckers so don’t become one of them—it’s really very simple—there are the doers who go at the job and get it done and there are the folks who find a comfy spot and surf the Web and download more pictures of themselves onto their website”—this was a dig, she had seen his website. Dreadful. Stupid. Vulgar. “You give me the next four years, and you can do as you like with the rest. And you’ll have more to do as you like with,” she said.

  *

  And after some stomping around and slamming doors and muttering at her, he, by God, went to the University and studied and got good grades. Not a 3.8, but 3.4, sometimes 3.6, acceptable. Once he tried to pledge a fraternity an
d she put her foot down: he wasn’t going to join a gang and live in a house smelling of beer and livestock, dirty clothing strewn, underpants with skid marks in the seat, sink full of empty beer bottles, pizza boxes stacked six feet high. She found him a studio apartment, a little cell, white walls, tile floor, a futon, a door on sawhorses for a desk, no curtains so you wake up with the sun. And she mortgaged her house and paid his way. A pretty straight deal. If necessary she would rob a bank. Why not? Find one in a shopping center and walk in with a nylon stocking over her head and a pistol in her purse and tell them to hand over the hundreds and make it snappy. Most bank robbers got away with it. They don’t tell you that on television but it’s true. You could pick up $50,000 in a lunchbag and walk away and that night on Eyewitness News they’d be talking about the Larceny Lady and here she’d sit in Lake Wobegon cool as a cucumber, the loot in a Tupperware dish tucked away in the box of Christmas decorations. The ladies at church would say, “I can’t imagine who would do a thing like that.”

  Two o’clock. She needed a drink. Really and truly. If a girl in a frilly apron walked in right now and asked, “What’ll you have?” she would order a brandy sour. Slice of lemon. So delicious on a hot day. And what harm would it do? None. We are poisoning the earth, blasting the ozone layer, the Arctic ice cap shrivels, polar bears perish, and why not have a drink, Barbara Peterson?

  *

  Three o’clock, the doorbell rang. Front door. Nobody used that door except Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the UPS man. It was the boy from the crematorium, the one she kissed. With a big heavy box that the moment she took it she knew what was inside. It was Mother. She set it on the desk in the living room and cut the box open and lifted the bowling ball out. It was wrapped in heavy clear plastic which she cut off. The ball felt light, with its core drilled out and Mother’s ashes inside. The hole that held the ashes was covered with a plaster patch. She thought maybe she should have the patch waterproofed to keep it intact. But why? Why preserve the ashes? It didn’t matter. Mother was extinguished, her fire was out, let the water in.