The One-Eyed Man

by Ron Currie

  “I don’t know those numbers,” I said, “so I’ll have to take your word for it.”

  Ted nodded. “That means there are nearly five million people in this country who both own guns and are complete loony birds.”

  “I can see where you’re going with this,” I said.

  “My advice, in all sincerity?” Ted said. “Find yourself a good-quality Kevlar vest.”

  17

  YOU DON’T CHOOSE YOUR FAMILY, EXCEPT WHEN YOU DO

  A few months after the debut of America, You Stoopid, Peggy called out of the clear blue and asked if she could appear on the show.

  We hadn’t spoken since my illfated visit after the Einstein biography.

  “Can I smoke?” Peggy wanted to know.

  “You mean on the show?” I asked.

  “No, I mean on Mars, K.,” Peggy said. “Of course, on the show.”

  “I don’t see why you couldn’t,” I said. “It’s not as though we shoot in a studio or anything. We can do it outside. We can even shoot at your house, if you like.”

  “I’m not talking about that,” Peggy said. “What I’m asking is, will they actually air footage of someone smoking? These days it seems like that would get people’s panties bunched up real quick.”

  “I don’t think it’s a problem,” I told her.

  “I mean, it’s gotten to the point where the only place you can smoke outside your own home is in the middle of the street. And they only allow that because they’re hoping you’ll get hit by a car.”

  “We’ve had a smoker or two on the show,” I said. “Arnulfo’s father, for example. He smoked almost as much as you do.”

  “I missed that episode,” Peggy said.

  “You haven’t been watching all along?” I asked.

  “I don’t really watch a lot of TV,” Peggy said. “I smoke. I crochet. I flip through old Reader’s Digests.”

  “Anyway, Arnulfo’s father died,” I said. “Not on the show, but shortly thereafter.”

  “That’s too bad,” Peggy said. She exhaled, and I could picture her with lips pursed, a funnel of blue-gray carcinogens pouring forth like a genie. “But so the smoking won’t be a problem?”

  “I really doubt it. The biggest determining factor in what airs is whether or not our producer thinks it makes for interesting TV. And there’s some range there. Although the surest bet seems to be assaulting me in one way or another.”

  “It may come to that,” Peggy said.

  We were quiet. I listened to Peggy smoke. Finally I said, “Can I ask you a question?”

  A pause, followed by the faint pop of Peggy’s lips releasing the cigarette filter. “Shoot,” she said.

  “Is there a reason why, after months of silence, you not only contact me but want to appear on my television show?”

  “That’s for me to know,” Peggy said, “and you to find out.”

  There was, of course, no chance of getting Peggy to fly—she hadn’t been on a plane since smoking had been banned on commercial flights in 1990—so Claire and I went to her. This was a greater time commitment than it would have been previously, as Peggy had moved south to Virginia, just picked up and left everything she’d known her whole life, friends and family, the Elks club and her volunteer work at the Humane Society, most notably the house in which she’d raised her children. Claire, having never taken the train through Amtrak’s northeast corridor before, and thus unaware of its being a postindustrial horror show, suggested that instead of flying we ride the rails. Thus we endured a disheartening nine-hour rumble south, through the formerly bustling manufacturing centers of New Jersey, the gutted power plants and foundries outside Philadelphia, the haunted house known as Baltimore. By the end of it, Claire, spurred by alcohol and a perhaps overdeveloped sense of empathy and/or nationalism, was in tears.

  Peggy waited for us at Union Station. We loaded our bags into the cavernous trunk of her 1984 Chevy Impala and drove southwest. The sights on 28 were somewhat less dystopian than the train ride had been, and by the time we reached Peggy’s new home, an old Victorian outside Bealeton with a big backyard and a shingle roof badly in need of repair, she and Claire were in the throes of a high-energy rapport unlike anything I’d ever seen before from my mother-in-law: Peggy waving her cigarette hand around, Claire laughing and swigging from her flask.

  No mention had yet been made of why Peggy wanted to be on the show.

  We went inside. Peggy had the windows open; their lace curtains, yellowed by nicotine, undulated in a mellow summer breeze. I arranged our bags on the entryway floor while the two of them, still gabbing, went through the dining room and into the kitchen. I heard Peggy call out, “Who wants a drink,” and had a distinct sense that the question was largely a rhetorical one, since she knew by now what Claire’s answer would be, and likely had little interest in mine.

  By the time I arrived in the kitchen there were three glasses on the counter, each emblazoned with an image from the original Star Wars movie: Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, and Chewbacca. Claire cracked ice from a tray and dropped cubes into the glasses while Peggy stood by, wielding a liter of Allen’s coffee brandy.

  “You might want to be careful with those glasses,” I told Claire. “They’re probably worth some money.”

  “Used to think the same thing myself,” Peggy said, pouring coffee brandy over the ice. “I got those at Burger King in nineteen-seventy-seven. Nineteen-seventy-seven. Kept them wrapped in newsprint in the basement, then found them again during the move. I thought, shit, these must be worth a penny or two, thirty-five years hence. Come to find out they sell for a whopping ten bucks apiece. So I’m going to need a new retirement plan.”

  “No kidding,” I said. “I would have thought they’d be valuable.”

  “There’s the irony,” Peggy said. “Everyone thinks that, so everyone saves them—which makes them worthless. Honey, grab that milk from the fridge, would you?”

  Claire pulled out a jug of whole milk and, following instructions from Peggy, added just enough to each glass to make the Allen’s look less like molasses and more like a mud puddle.

  “I thought you used two percent,” I said.

  “It’s a special occasion,” Peggy said, claiming the Darth Vader glass as her own. “Too nice to stay inside. Let’s sit out in the yard and scandalize the neighbors. We’ll get good and drunk.”

  “I’m already good and drunk,” Claire told her.

  “That’s the spirit,” Peggy said, pushing open the screen door that led onto the back porch.

  We sat together at a table under an old cottonwood, the innumerable branches of which twisted high overhead like fossilized sea serpents. I hadn’t been drunk since the afternoon I read the Einstein biography, but I had no particular aversion to the idea, so I matched them glass for glass. When the bottle of Allen’s was emptied Peggy produced a fresh liter, and soon, weary of going back and forth to the kitchen, she brought everything out to the table. As the sun went down and the milk jug left an ever-widening stain of condensation on the tabletop, Peggy and Claire talked about me as if I weren’t even there.

  “I met this kid when he was in junior high,” Peggy said. “Whatever you want to know. I’m practically his mother.”

  “Well that’s a decent starting point,” Claire said. “What about family? Parents? Brothers and sisters?”

  Peggy looked at me, then back to Claire, taking a pointed drag on her cigarette. “He didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Honey, when I say I’m practically his mother, it’s because K. didn’t have one. He grew up in foster care.”

  Claire turned to me now, her expression not unlike what it had been earlier on the train, when the relentless spectacle of industrial ruin had broken her down. “Oh my God, K.,” she said.

  “True story,” I said.

  “That must have been awful.”

  “I thought it was, at the time,” I told her. “But kids always think their circumstances are awful,
even when they have it good.”

  “Still,” Claire said.

  “I mean as far as being an orphan goes, it wasn’t bad,” I said. “I feel like when people hear the words ‘foster care’ they assume I was chained to a furnace and forced to sew Old Navy Tshirts for a decade. It wasn’t like that.”

  “Well thank God,” Peggy said. She snuffed out her cigarette, dumped it in a small trash can next to the table, and swabbed out the ashtray with a paper towel.

  “The worst thing I can say for foster care is that it was devoid of what people think of as love,” I said. “Decent foster parents keep children clean and fed and get them to school on time. In exchange, they receive a stipend from the state. It’s a simple transaction, really.”

  “Well I guess that explains some things,” Claire said.

  “It sure does,” Peggy told her. She rose and gathered our glasses to make another round.

  “What was he like, back then?” Claire asked.

  “A lot like he is now,” Peggy told her. “Anal retentive. The kind of kid who’d use a calculator to split a dinner tab. That’s how I would describe young Master K.”

  “Oh, that is perfect,” Claire said, laughing and clapping her hands. “That is really, really good.”

  “That is, in fact, completely untrue,” I said. “I have never in my life used a calculator to split a check.”

  “Only because you can do the math in your head,” Peggy said, distributing fresh drinks. “Be real, K. You were not what anyone would call easygoing. I’ve never met another teenager who starched his shirts. You collected stamps, for Christ’s sake.”

  “How is collecting stamps anal retentive?”

  Peggy stared at me, then turned to Claire. When their eyes met, they burst out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  This inquiry, for some reason, only made them laugh harder, the kind of deep convulsive cackling that becomes its own source of amusement. Peggy bent over with one hand on the table for balance, and Claire gasped for breath with her eyes squeezed shut, shoulders hitching. Each time they started to gather themselves and get their wind, one would catch the other’s gaze and the laughter would start anew.

  It went on for two or three minutes like that. I sat and waited and sipped my drink.

  Finally Peggy pulled herself together, coming around the table to take her seat between us. “So I guess I’ll amend my earlier statement,” she told Claire. “K. used to be like he is now. Only somewhat less so.”

  Claire used the heel of her hand to wipe tears from her face. “Oh, but I do love this guy,” she said, suddenly serious. She looked at me, her eyes bloodshot from laughter and booze. “Despite all his borderline-autistic weirdness. In fact, because of all his borderline-autistic weirdness. It makes him so … decent.”

  “That so?” Peggy said, either unconvinced or unimpressed. She ashed her cigarette in the grass.

  Claire nodded. “The most decent man I’ve ever met, anyway.”

  “Honey, you’re young,” Peggy said. She reached out a smoke-cured hand and patted Claire’s forearm. “Give it time.”

  But Claire wasn’t amused. “Look,” she said. “We can be shitty and irreverent about almost everything. But not about him.”

  Peggy tilted her head slightly. “Okay,” she said, raising her glass from the table, holding Claire’s gaze over the rim.

  “I’ve heard some of what you know about K.,” Claire said. “Now let me tell you what I know about him. He didn’t pin me down when I was a little girl and put his cock on me and say he’d kill me if I told anyone. He didn’t shoot my best friend’s aunt between the eyes in junior high. He didn’t hit my mother with a Louisville Slugger before finally figuring out it was time for a divorce. He didn’t accuse me of leading him on when I was nice, or of being frigid when I wasn’t nice. He didn’t respond to my opinion about abortion with a rape threat.”

  “Well if that’s your standard,” Peggy said, “most men are going to look pretty good.”

  “I could go on,” Claire said.

  “I think your point’s been made.”

  “Seriously though,” Claire said. “People misunderstand him. I did too, at first. Because I thought love was about feelings.”

  “It’s not?” Peggy asked.

  “Hell no,” Claire said. “Feelings have nothing to do with it. Love is an accumulation of acts, plain and simple.”

  “Not very sexy,” Peggy said.

  Claire waived this away. “Who needs sexy?” she said. “I need safe. I need sane. Most people would look at K. and think, ‘How can you love someone devoid of emotion?’ But emotions are the bad stuff. Emotions inspire Nicholas Sparks movies and murder-suicides. Emotions are a fucking bill of goods, if you want to know the truth.”

  Peggy smoked and listened, her expression an unreadable reptilian neutral.

  “K. never gets upset,” Claire said. “At least not with me. He never yells. He never criticizes. He never tells me I should drink less. He lets me be me, while he is, undeniably, indubitably, always him.”

  “That I will grant you,” Peggy said. “He is always him.”

  • • •

  At dusk the mosquitoes emerged, innumerable and hungry, so we repaired to Peggy’s favorite spot for socializing: the kitchen table. By now Claire was thoroughly drunk, and after wrapping Peggy in an embrace for perhaps two beats too long, she pinballed up the creaky stairs to the guest bedroom and went silent. The coffee brandy, the ice, and a fresh jug of milk sat between Peggy and me on the table.

  “I like her,” Peggy said, jabbing her cigarette toward the ceiling, directly above which Claire lay sleeping. “I like her a lot.”

  “She’s a good companion,” I said.

  “Coming from you, that’s a ringing endorsement.”

  I shrugged. “It’s what I’m capable of. Claire seems to accept that.”

  “More than accept it,” Peggy said. “She thinks it’s your best quality.”

  I eyed the pack of Winstons on the table to Peggy’s left. “Would you mind if I had one of those?” I asked.

  Peggy lifted the pack and lighter and handed them to me. “Anyway, I’m glad you found her,” she said. “Can’t be anything but good. Though the age difference is maybe a little … what’s the word?”

  “Unseemly?”

  Peggy pointed at me. “That’s the one I was looking for,” she said.

  “Well, Claire is sort of an old soul,” I said.

  “I wonder how she’ll feel when you’re sixty and she’s still in her thirties.”

  “There’s not that much of a gap,” I said. “When I’m sixty, she’ll be in her late forties.”

  “Still.”

  “Besides, I don’t believe either of us is thinking that far down the road,” I said.

  “Jesus wept,” Peggy said.

  “What?”

  “You’re just so clueless, sometimes.”

  I hadn’t smoked regularly since college. Owing to this complete lack of practice, as well as impaired hand-eye coordination, instead of touching the lighter flame to the tobacco at the end, I lit the thing halfway down the paper tube.

  Peggy reached for the lighter. “Throw that away,” she said.

  I stubbed the ruined cigarette in the ashtray while Peggy lit another with one deft motion and handed it to me. The first drag—experimentally shallow though it was—proved harsh. I leaned forward and hacked several gray puffs while Peggy smirked, smoke flowing from her nostrils in two silky streams.

  “Try again,” she said. “Or don’t, maybe.”

  The second drag I was able to pull and exhale with only a minor hitch in my throat. The third came even easier. It wasn’t long before the nicotine, combined with the liter of coffee brandy I’d ingested, were conspiring to make me a little light-headed. This was not, at first, an entirely unpleasant sensation.

  “So why,” I said to Peggy while considering the cigarette in my fingers, “did you suddenly decide
to live in Virginia?”

  “It wasn’t sudden,” she said.

  “It seemed sudden.”

  “Thirty years in the making, kiddo.”

  “You don’t say.” I took another awkward drag.

  “When the kids were little, Roger and I never really had the money to go on vacation,” Peggy said. “But one summer … this must have been ’82 or ’83. Reagan was president, I remember that. We actually—can you believe this—we took out a loan to bring the kids to Virginia Beach.”

  “Which part is unbelievable?” I asked. “The loan, or traveling to Virginia Beach?”

  “Imagine what people would think today about using a loan to go on vacation,” Peggy said. She leaned back in her chair, smiling ruefully at the memory. “But that was the eighties for you.”

  “So you fell in love with Virginia Beach and decided you wanted to move here someday?”

  “No,” Peggy said. “I hate Virginia Beach. Virginia Beach is like the McOcean. But we drove around in the country some, and that’s what I fell in love with.”

  “What about Roger?” I asked.

  “What about him?”

  “I’m just wondering why you didn’t make the move sooner. It’s not like you had anything holding you back, with the kids grown and out of the house.”

  “He didn’t like it. Too hot.”

  “It is hot,” I said.

  “I like to sweat,” Peggy said. “Roger, he enjoyed the winter. Which was hardly the only thing we disagreed about.”

  “I seem to remember such,” I said.

  Peggy’s gaze inched up to the wall behind me, her eyes soft with reverie. She brought her cigarette to her mouth. “Anyway,” she said, “Roger gone ten years now, Sarah gone. Time was obviously a-wastin’. So here I am.”

  “Time’s not a-wasting,” I said.

  Peggy’s eyes snapped back sharply on me. “Don’t start.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “Well, don’t.”

  We were quiet for a minute, and I noticed that the dizziness in my head had migrated south to my stomach; it felt suddenly like I had one of those elementary school solar system models whirling in my gut. I put my cigarette out in the ashtray, half smoked.