by Andre Dubus
Polly’s father comes down the slope of the lawn toward the wharf and I’m scared even while I look past him at the pickup I heard on the road, then down the driveway, and I look at his jeans and shirt; then I’m not scared anymore. For a second there, I thought Polly or maybe Vinnie had pressed some charges, but it all comes together at once: he’s not in a cruiser and he’s got no New Hampshire cops with him and he’s wearing civvies, if you can call it that when he’s wearing his gun and his nightstick too. I decide to stay in the deck chair. He steps onto the wharf and keeps coming and I decide to take a swallow of beer too. The can’s almost empty and I tilt my head back; the sun is behind me, getting near the treetops across the lake. I’m wearing gym shorts and nothing else. I open the cooler and drop in the empty and take another; I know what my body looks like, with a sweat glisten and muscles moving while I shift in the chair to pull a beer out of the ice, while I open it, while I hold it up to him as he stops spread-legged in front of me.
‘Want a beer, John?’
I don’t know what pisses him off most, the beer or John; his chest starts working with his breath, then he slaps the can and it rolls foaming on the wharf, stops at the space between two boards.
‘You don’t like Miller,’ I say. ‘I think I got a Bud in there.’
He unsnaps his nightstick, moves it from his left hand to his right, then lowers it, holding it down at arm’s length, gripping it hard and resting its end in his left hand. This time I don’t shift: I watch his eyes and pull the cooler to me and reach down through the ice and water. I open the beer and take a long swallow.
‘Asshole,’ he says. ’You want to rape somebody, asshole? You want to set fucking fires?’
I watch his eyes. At the bottom of my vision I see the stick moving up and down, tapping his left hand. I lower the beer to the wharf and his eyes go with it, just a glance, his head twitching left and down; I grab the stick with my left hand and let the beer drop and get my right on it too. He holds on and I pull myself out of the chair, looking up at his eyes and pushing the stick down. My chest is close to his; we stand there holding the stick.
‘What’s the gun for, John?’ I’ve got an overhand grip; I work my wrists up and down, turning the stick, and his face gets red as he holds on. I don’t stop. ‘You want to waste me, John? Huh? Go for it.’
I’m pumping: I can raise and lower the stick and his arms and shoulders till the sun goes down, and now he knows it and he knows I know it; he is sweating and his teeth are clenched and his face is very red with the sun on it. All at once I know I will not hurt him; this comes as fast as laughing, is like laughing.
‘Go for the gun, John. And they’ll cut it out of your ass.’ I walk him backward a few steps, just to watch him keep his balance. ‘They can take Polly’s nose out too.’
‘Fucker,’ he says through his teeth.
‘Yes I did, John. Lots of times. On the first date too. Did she tell you that?’ He tries to shove me back and lift the stick; all he does is strain. ‘It wasn’t a date, even. I came in from fishing, and there she was, drinking at Michael’s. We went to her place and fucked, and know what she said? After? She said, Once you get the clothes off, the rest is easy. Now what the fuck does that mean, John? What does that mean?’
I’m ahead of him again. Before he gets to the gun my left hand is on it; I swing the stick up above my head, his left hand still on it; I unsnap the holster and start lifting the gun up against his hand pressing down; it comes slowly but it never stops, and his elbow bends as his hand goes up his ribs. When the gun clears the holster he shifts his grip, grabs it at the cylinder, but his fingers slip off and claw air as I throw it backward over my shoulder and grab his wrist before the gun splashes. I lift the stick as high as I can. He still has some reach, so I jerk it down and free, and throw it with a backhand sidearm into the lake. He is panting. I am too, but I shut my mouth on it.
‘Go home, John.’
‘You leave her alone.’
He is breathing so hard and is so red that I get a picture of him on his back on the wharf and I’m breathing into his mouth.
‘Go get some dinner, John.’
‘You—’ Then he has to cough; it nearly doubles him over, and he turns to the railing and holds it, leans over it, and hacks up a lunger. I turn away and pick up the beer I dropped. There’s still some in it; I drink that and take one from the ice, then look at him again. He’s standing straight, away from the rail.
‘You leave her alone,’ he says. ‘Fire last night. What are you, crazy? DeLuca.’
‘DeLuca who?’
He lifts a hand, waves it from side to side, shakes his head.
‘I don’t care shit about DeLuca,’ he says. ‘Let it go, Ray. You do anything to her, I’ll bring help.’
‘Good. Bring your buddies. What are friends for, that’s what I say.’
‘I mean it.’
‘I know you do. Now go on home before that club floats in and we have to start all over.’
He looks at me. That’s all he does for a while, then he turns and goes up the wharf, wiping his face on his bare arm. He walks like he’s limping, but he’s not. I get another beer and follow him up the lawn to his pickup. By the time he climbs in and starts it, I’m at his window. I toss the beer past him, onto the seat. He doesn’t look at me. He backs and turns and I wait for gravel to fly, but he goes slowly up the driveway like the truck is tired too. At the road he stops and looks both ways. Then the beer comes out the window onto the lawn, and he’s out on the blacktop, turning right, then he’s gone beyond a corner of woods.
Last night waiting tables she was tired, and the muscles in her back and legs hurt. She blamed that afternoon’s water skiing, and worked the dining room until the kitchen closed, then went upstairs to the bar and worked there, watching the clock, wiping her brow, sometimes shuddering as a chill spread up her back. She took orders at tables, repeated them to the bartender, garnished the drinks, subtracted in her mind, made change, and thanked for tips, but all that was ever in her mind was the bed at Steve’s and herself in it. At one o’clock the Harbor Schooner closed, and when the last drinkers had gone down the stairs, the bartender said: ‘What’ll it be tonight?’ and she went to the bar with the other two waitresses, scanned the bottles, shaking her head, wanting to want a drink because always she had one after work, but the bottles, even vodka, even tequila, could have been cruets of vinegar. She lit a cigarette and asked for a Coke.
‘You feeling all right?’ he said.
‘I think I’m sick,’ and she left the cigarette and carried the Coke, finishing it with long swallows and getting another, as she helped clean the tables, empty the ashtrays, and stack them on the bar.
She wakes at two o’clock in the heat of Labor Day weekend’s Sunday afternoon, remembers waking several times, once or more when the room was not so brightly lit, so hot; and remembers she could not keep her eyes open long enough to escape the depth of her sleep. Her eyes close and she drifts downward again, beneath her pain, into darkness; then she opens her eyes, the lids seeming to snap upward against pressing weight. She grasps the edge of the mattress and pulls while she sits and swings her legs off the bed, and a chill grips her body and shakes it. Her teeth chatter as she walks with hunched shoulders to the bathroom; the toilet seat is cold, her skin is alive, crawling away from its touch, crawling up her back and down her arms, and she lowers her head and mutters: ‘Oh Jesus.’
She does not brush her teeth or hair, or look in the mirror. She goes downstairs. There are no railings, and she slides a palm down the wall. She drinks a glass of orange juice, finds a tin with three aspirins behind the rice in the cupboard, swallows them with juice, and phones the Harbor Schooner. Sarah the head waitress answers.
‘Is Charlie there?’
‘No.’
‘Who’s tending bar?’
‘Sonny.’
‘Let me talk to him.’
She ought to tell Sarah, but she does not like to call in sick to w
omen; they always sound like they don’t believe her.
‘I’m sick,’ she says to Sonny. ‘I think the flu.’
He tells her to go to bed and take care of herself, and asks if she needs anything.
‘No. Maybe I’ll come in tomorrow.’
‘Get well first.’
‘I’ll call.’
She takes the glass and pitcher upstairs, breathing quickly as she climbs. The sun angles through her bedroom windows, onto the lower half of the bed. There are shades, but she does not want to darken the room. She puts the pitcher and glass on the bedside table, lies on the damp sheet, pulls up the top sheet and cotton spread, and curls, shivering, on her side. Her two front windows face the lake; she hears voices from there, and motors, and remembers that she has been hearing them since she woke, and before that too, from the sleep she cannot fight. It is taking her now; she wants juice, but every move chills her and she will not reach for it. She stares at the empty glass and wonders why she did not fill it again, drinking would be so much easier, so wonderfully better, if she did not have to sit up and lift the pitcher and pour, so next time she drinks she will refill the glass because then it won’t be so hard next time, and if she had a hospital straw, one of bent glass. Vinnie was last week with the tube in his arm and the bandages, but in memory he is farther away than a week, a summer; last night is a week away, going from table to table to table to bar to table to table and driving home, hours of tables and driving. Her memory of making love with Vinnie is clear but her body’s aching lethargy rejects it, denies ever making love with anyone, ever wanting to, so that Vinnie last spring, early when the rivers began to swell with melting snow, is in focus as he should be: not loving him then she made love because, it seems to her now, he was something to do, one of a small assortment of choices for a week night; and she remembers him now without tenderness or recalled passion.
When she wakes again she is on her left side, facing the front windows, and the room’s light has faded. The chills are gone, and she is hungry. There is ham downstairs, and eggs and cheese and bread, and leftover spaghetti, but her stomach refuses them all. She imagines soup, and wants that. But it is down the stairs and she would have to stand as she opened and heated it, then poured it into a cup so she could climb again and drink it here; she turns onto her right side and waits, braced against chills, but they don’t come. Evening sunlight beams through the side window, opposite the foot of her bed, which is now in the dark spreading across the floor and dimming the blue walls. As though she can hear it, she senses the darkness in all the downstairs rooms, and more of it flowing in from the woods and lake. There are no motors on the water. Voices rise and waft from lawns touching the beach. She switches on the bedside lamp, pushes herself back and up till she sits against the pillows, and pours a glass of orange juice. She drinks it in three swallows, refills the glass, then lies on her back, closes her hot eyes, thinks of Ray, of danger she cannot feel, and lets the lamp burn so she will not wake in the dark.
For a while she sleeps, but she is aware that she must not, there is something she must do, and finally she wakes, her head tossing on the pillow, legs and arms tense. She reaches for the drawer beside her, takes the gun, holds it above her with both hands; she pulls the slide to the rear and eases it forward, watching the bullet enter the chamber. She lowers the hammer to half-cock and pushes up the safety. She turns on her side, slips the gun under the pillow, and goes to sleep holding the checkered wood of its handle.
She wakes from a dream that is lost when she opens her eyes to light, though she knows it was pleasant and she was not in it, but watched it. The three windows are black. Steve is looking down at her, his smell of beer and cigarettes, his red face and arms making her feel that health, that life even, are chance gifts to the lucky, kept by the strong, and she was not to have them again.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘You want to go back to sleep?’
‘No.’ Her throat is dry, and she hears a plea in her voice. ‘I’m sick.’
‘I figured that. Can I do anything?’
‘I think I want to smoke.’
He takes cigarette papers from his shirt pocket, a cellophane pouch from his jeans.
‘No, a cigarette. In my purse.’
He lights it and hands it to her.
‘Could I have some soup?’
‘Anything else?’
‘Toast?’
‘Coming up.’
He goes downstairs, and she smokes, looking at the windows; she cannot see beyond the screens. Neither can her mind: her life is this room, where her body’s heat and pain have released her from everyone but Steve, who brings her a bowl of soup on a plate with two pieces of toast. He pushes up the pillows behind her, then pulls a chair near the bed.
‘I’m leaving in the morning.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Almost one.’
She shakes her head.
‘That way I beat the traffic.’
‘Good idea.’
‘I can leave Tuesday, though. Or Wednesday.’
‘You’re meeting your friends there.’
‘They’ll keep.’
‘No. Go tomorrow, like you planned.’
‘You sure?’
‘It’s just the flu.’
‘No fun having it alone.’
‘All I do is sleep.’
‘Still. You know.’
‘I’ll be all right.’
‘What’ll you do about the ex?’
‘Maybe he won’t come back.’
‘Don’t bet on it.’
‘My father went to see him.’
‘Yeah? What did he say?’
‘Who, Ray? I don’t know.’
‘No, your dad.’
‘He told him if he harassed me again, he’d take some people out there and break bones.’
‘Thing about Ray is he doesn’t give a shit.’
‘He doesn’t?’
‘Think about it.’
‘He gives a shit about a lot of things.’
‘Not broken bones. That little gun you got: if he comes, fire a couple over his head.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t think you could use it on him, and you might just leave it in the drawer. Then there’s nothing you can do. So think about scaring him off.’
‘I’d use it. You don’t know what it’s like, a man—what’s the matter with him?’
He shrugs and takes the bowl and plate.
‘Think two shots across the bow,’ he says and stands; then, leaning over her, he is huge, blocking the ceiling and walls, his chest and beard lowering, his face and breath close to hers; he kisses her forehead and right cheek and smooths the hair at her brow. She watches him cross the room; at the door he turns and says: ‘I’ll leave this open; mine too. If you need something, give a shout.’
‘You’ve got a nice ass,’ she says, and smiles as his eyes brighten and his beard and cheeks move with his grin. She listens to his steps going down, and the running water as he washes her dishes. When he starts upstairs she turns out the lamp. In his room his boots drop to the floor, there is a rustle of clothes, and he is in bed. He shifts twice, then is quiet. She sits against the pillows in the dark; and wakes there, Steve standing beside her, the room sunlit and cool. The lake is quiet.
‘You’re going?’
‘It’s time.’
‘Have fun.’
‘Sure. You want breakfast?’
‘No.’
She takes his hand, and says: ‘I’ll see you in April, I guess. Good hunting and all. Skiing.’
If you don’t find a place, or you want to stay on in spring, that’s fine.’
‘I know.’
‘Well—’His thumb rubs the back of her hand.
‘Thanks for everything,’ she says.
‘You too.’
‘The room. Good talks. Whatever.’
‘Whatever,’ he says, smiling. Then he kisses her lips and is gone.
In early after
noon she phones the Harbor Schooner and tells Charlie, the manager, that she is still sick and can’t make it that night but will try tomorrow. She eats a sandwich of ham and cheese, makes a pitcher of orange juice, and brings it upstairs. She reaches the bed weak and short of breath. Through the long hot afternoon she lies uncovered on the bed, asleep, awake, asleep, waking always to the sound of motorboats, the voices of many children, and talk and shouts and laughter of men and women. When the sun has moved to the foot of the bed and the room is darkening, she smells charcoal smoke. She turns on the lamp and lies awake listening to the beginning of silence: the boats are out of the water, most of them on trailers by now; she hears cars leaving, and on the stretch of beach below her windows, families gather, their voices rising with the smells of burning charcoal and cooking meat. Tomorrow she will wake to quiet that will last until May.
She closes her eyes and imagines the frozen lake, evergreens, the silent snow. After school and on weekends boys will clean the ice with snow shovels and play hockey; she will hear only burning logs in the fireplace, will watch them from the living room, darting without sound into and around one another. She will have a Christmas tree, will eat dinner at her parents’, but on Christmas Eve she could have them and Margaret here for dinner before midnight Mass. She will live here—she counts by raising thumb and fingers from a closed fist—eight months. Or seven, so she can be out before Steve comes back. Out where? She shuts her eyes tighter, frowning, but no street, no town appears. In the Merrimack Valley she likes Newburyport but not as much since she started working there, and less since Ray moved there. Amesbury and Merrimac are too small, Lawrence is mills and factories, and too many grocery stores and restaurants with Spanish names, and Haverhill: Jesus, Haverhill: some people knew how to live there, her parents did, Haverhill for her father was the police department and their house in the city limits but in the country as well, with the garden her mother and father planted each spring: tomatoes, beans, squash, radishes, beets; and woods beyond the garden, not forest or anything, but enough to walk in for a while before you came to farmland; and her father ice-fished, and fished streams and lakes in spring, the ocean in summer. Everyone joked about living in Haverhill, or almost everyone: the skyline of McDonald’s arch and old factories and the one new building on the corner of Main Street and the river, an old folks’ home and office building that looked like a gigantic cinder block. But it wasn’t that. The Back Bay of Boston was pretty, and the North End was interesting with all those narrow streets and cluttered apartments of Italians, but Jesus, Boston was dirtier than Haverhill and on a grey winter day no city looked good. It was that nothing happened in Haverhill, and she had never lived outside its limits till now, and to go back in spring was going downhill backward. A place would come. She would spend the fall and winter here, and by then she would know where to go.