Marlene says I should go to my house and she’s fine to get herself home from there, but I won’t have it. I drive her back to her house, cut the engine, and apologize again. She tells me to please just forget it, unbuckles her safety belt, opens the passenger door. I give her her keys back and she says we’ll make dinner up—later this week or next, some night there’s no mah-jongg, we’ll figure it out. We say our good-byes and I set out to walk across the development back to my house. I cross a street. I see a crow. It is evening, the sky orange-pink at its rim and blue as winter up above. A few jet trails and a pale scrim of moon. I walk past palms and bougainvillea, decorative grapefruit trees and spiky ferns. Lizards skitter across the sidewalk, its curve tracing the shape of the fake lake as it leads me home.
It’s late when I hear the noise outside. I mute the TV, put my slippers on and pass through the dark house and slide the glass door open and step onto the patio. Through the bug screens the house lights on the far side of the water seem to twinkle like distant stars. I can see a shape among the shadows; something out there is alive.
I hit the perimeter lights. A couple of teenagers appear in my grass. The girl is on top of the boy, her hair in a tight braid past her shoulders, blue veins glowing beneath the pale skin of her chest. Her shirt in the grass beside them; his jeans are open but not pushed down. She jumps to her feet but then stands there, making no attempt to cover herself, squinting her eyes toward the patio as if she can’t quite see me through the suddenly glaring light.
“This was very stupid,” I say, in my most imposing teacher voice, only slightly betrayed now by a quaver as I get louder. “Monumentally stupid. It’s dangerous out here at night—you have no idea!”
“Lady, this is like the most boring place on earth,” the boy says, rising to his feet with the girl’s shirt in his hand, positioning himself behind her as though he were the one half undressed. She reaches back for the shirt and takes it, brings it forward and holds it up in both hands, shakes a few blades of grass from the fabric and only then grudgingly puts it on before walking off without so much as a word. The boy follows close on her heels through the succession of unfenced yards. When I’m sure they’re gone I shut the lights off and go back in.
In the fridge there are two boneless chicken breasts, a pound of lean ground beef I’d meant for meatballs, and a packet of deli-sliced turkey. I gather it all into my arms and carry it out to the patio, out the screen door, into the dark. I kneel in the warm grass and peel back wrappers—the first chicken breast bounces off a tree trunk; the second hits the water with a plop. I toss the slick deli rounds like Frisbees and they land like lily pads but sink after a few seconds. Cold beef squishes between my fingers and mucks up under my nails. I ignore the rising drone of flies that my work has drawn, focusing instead on a welcome wave of exhaustion coming over me, and what a blessing it would be to ride that wave—lie down in the grass by the calm black water, wake up next to my husband on a white beach in Macau.
SAINT WADE
We lived in a sludge-colored building with open-air hallways and stairs. My unit was on the second floor and faced the road. Terese and Mazie had a ground-floor unit that faced the back lot and a shuttered strip mall across the way. (You couldn’t call them apartments, quite, but “rooms” seemed sad, somehow, so I went with units. The building itself I called the Hardluck Arms.) I was in my unit, watching a nature program about sharks. It said that because of how their gills work, sharks can never stop swimming or they drown. Now what would that be like, I wondered, to live your whole life in motion—to never even know what it meant to rest?
This was in Alabama in a small town I think it’s fair to assume you’ve never heard of, halfway between Tuscaloosa and Mobile. The closest decent-size place is actually Meridian, but I was having a disinclination toward Mississippi around that time. My little brother, Benny, was a lawyer in Tallahassee, which was—in the other direction—far but not as far as it felt like; Florida can be that way. And he had a beach house on the panhandle in Carrabelle, which was even closer: six hours, about, and you could do it in less if you took 43 to 10 and didn’t stop to eat. I hadn’t had occasion—that is, invitation—to visit Benny in a while, but when I did go I preferred the smaller roads and the slower pace. If you were of a certain mind-set, say my ex-wife’s, you might read quite a bit into that statement. But then if you were my ex-wife you might do all kinds of things, such as the things you did (or I thought you did) that made me do what I did—no reason to rehash particulars here—the upshot of all of which is her back with her mother in Oxford, and me disinclined toward Mississippi, established here at the Hardluck Arms.
Mazie was Terese’s daughter, age three, blessed gift of a marital—if it was marital—disaster which I understood to have been similar enough to what I’d gone through to sympathize fully and not ask too many questions. Nobody ever gets free of the past, of course, but there’s something to be said for living as though you could or even already have. If not you might just crawl into your own backstory like a cave and sit there on your rented bed, brooding to death in the Hardluck dark.
Anyway I first met the girls in the laundry room. I was walking out with my things and had to squeeze past them because Terese had her heaping basket on her knee, barely keeping it steady with one hand, and meanwhile her kid’s longways under her other arm, wriggling and squirming and shrieking with pain-in-the-ass delight. I put my things down on a dryer.
“Hey, you need a hand,” I said. It wasn’t a question. “Pick one for me to hold while you get the other settled.” Thought I was being cute but then she handed me the kid. I cooed and bounced her while Terese put the wash in. She packed it so tight I wondered if the clothes could even move around in there, and if the machine would handle the weight without straining to break, but I got that she didn’t want to pay for two machines. Every penny, right?
Terese was wearing these jeans shorts that cupped her rear, a damn nice one, I thought, for a mother or otherwise. Blue plastic flip-flops and sunglasses, toenails freshly painted seasick green—I liked it. She got her detergent poured and turned to face me, the machine groaning to life behind her. She had gray eyes and was maybe five years older than I’d took her for when I was looking at her ass.
She was a waitress at the P. F. Chang’s over in Thomasville and worked the dinner shift, so getting her out on a date was tough. We always got a late start and then there was the extra time to pay the babysitter for. She had this high school girl she used. I offered—gallantly, I thought—to cover the sitter from whenever she met up with me until whenever we got back to the Arms. At first that came to just a couple hours, but one night she came back to my unit for a nightcap and things got interesting and then we kind of nodded off and woke up and it was three a.m., her cell ringing—the poor sitter in tears. Had we had an accident? What was her own father going to think when she dragged home at such an hour? She hardly seemed relieved to learn that we were right upstairs.
So we hatched a new plan. I would babysit while Terese was at work, and she would bring back a doggie bag for us to have a late dinner with when she got home, by which time Mazie would hopefully be asleep and we could have our late-night date right there in her unit. We would try it and see. Which gets me back to where I left off when I started telling it: I was watching my shark show.
When it ended I shut off the TV, cranked the window open, and sat in my chair chain-smoking so I’d be good and nic’d up and not want one too bad while I was with the kid. Terese hadn’t ever said that I couldn’t (or that I could) smoke in front of Mazie, but I had noticed that she herself usually tried to hide it, and anyway the general gist these days seems to be that kids aren’t supposed to see.
I stubbed my butt, closed the window, striped some Old Spice on my jeans to cover up any leftover smoke smell, hustled downstairs, and was right on time.
Mazie was on the floor in front of the couch, watching a video. Cartoon sunflowers were singing a song about needing rain and sunshi
ne both to grow up tall. Everything in its right place; there is a season; all good things in all good time. I couldn’t help but wonder, Is it healthy that we sell kids this load of horseshit and then they have to find out how it really is the hard way later on? I for one did not feel any taller for having been rained on. On the other hand, what you would say if you told them the truth wasn’t anything you’d want to put in the mouth of a flower and set to a tune.
“Are you ready to cooperate with Wade?” Terese asked her daughter.
“I coperate!” Mazie said without turning from the TV.
“Good girl,” her mother said. Then, to me, “Christ, I’m late. Okay, well, you two have fun.”
I walked Terese to her own front door and held it open for her. She put her arms round my neck for a hug. I put my arms around her waist, grazing her hips with my hands as I went by, then giving her a good squeeze when I had her wrapped up. She squeezed me back and her face was in my neck hollow and she laid a quick kiss there as tight heat prickled up my spine. I was feeling very focused all of a sudden, or somehow more awake than I had been a moment ago—something important, I understood dimly, was about to change or perhaps already had. We let each other go and I cleared my throat. She went out the door and I shut it behind her. The sound drew Mazie’s attention. “Mommy?” she said and, not seeing her, started to wail.
She let me pick her up and so I rocked her until she fell asleep in my arms; then I put her in her crib, which was right there in a corner of the living room. Terese’s unit was bigger than mine, but that only meant it was two rooms instead of one.
When Mazie woke up again she was more like the happy kid I knew. She didn’t seem to miss her mom at all. I took her out of her crib. We played peekaboo and colored pictures on paper towels, then hung them up on the fridge with magnets like our own little gallery show. I put the radio on and danced with her and even sang, which is not something I do at the drop of a hat. We were blasting the classic rock station. I even did the high parts on “Reelin’ in the Years.” When she was tired again I put her back down in her crib. When Terese unlocked the front door and peeked her head in, the very first thing I said to her was “Shhh.”
I started spending most evenings a week with Mazie—some days, too, Terese now taking all the shifts she could get—and most nights I stayed over in their unit and when Terese had a day off we might all take a walk or go shopping. We knew what we looked like and we didn’t mind. And when I was alone with Mazie it was the same: We ate peanut butter and banana sandwiches. We watched the singing sunflowers till I knew their songs by heart, as good as I ever knew “Reelin’” or “Stairway” or “Help.” I made omelettes for both my girls for breakfast, drove Mazie to the park and chased her around. She got fresh air and exercise and we pet people’s dogs there and I pushed her on the swing. I only ever told her to call me Wade. In fact, I didn’t know whether the word “Daddy” was even in her vocabulary until the day she looked up from her coloring and called me it. She wanted me to hand her the blue crayon and she had to ask me twice before it registered who she was talking to, and a third time before I managed to do it.
Later that night I mentioned to Terese what had happened.
“That’s swell,” she said.
“And yet you don’t seem overjoyed,” I said.
“I’m glad you two get along, Wade.”
“You make it sound like we’re poker buddies.”
“Listen,” she said. “I’m only saying one thing, and the one thing I’m saying is goddamnit, don’t you build up all the heart that little girl has, then go and break it.”
I told her I heard her loud and clear. It was well understood. I knew right where she was coming from.
“You’re saying all the right things,” she said, “and that’s good. But it’s not the talking that counts, and we both know it. You go ahead and remember what I said.”
I helped a guy I knew out with a job he was doing—moving furniture, basically, but I don’t want to get into the boring details—and I dedicated a portion of the proceeds from that venture to a night out for me and Terese, just us: a proper date. When we got home Mazie was sleeping and the sitter was watching the TV. Some movie stars were panting against the side of a brick building. The man held a silver pistol and was bleeding from his forehead. “It looks bad,” the woman said sorrowfully, then instead of trying to stop the bleeding leaned in and kissed the man. When she pulled her face away it was bloody, too. I think the sitter wished we’d stayed out longer, but she took my money and left. Terese was in the bathroom, and I began to think about what I meant to say to her because it felt like the time had come to say something and I wanted it to be the right thing. I liked Terese, we were doing well together, and what we had was very agreeable, comfortable, beneficial to all parties, and a good time besides. So how do you say that to a woman? You don’t, I guess, and sometimes when a woman says she loves you and you are inside of her there is nothing for it but to say so back and wish to Christ to make it true.
I packed my few belongings up and moved them to the unit downstairs.
It was after seven but the sun was still high. Terese was fresh off a day shift. She’d changed out of her uniform into a robe and meant to take a shower, but was so far lying cross the couch, feet up, Mazie on her stomach.
“What’d you and Wade do today, honey?”
“I go swings.”
“Again?” Terese said. I wasn’t sure if she meant that as a question to Mazie or to me.
“She loves the swings,” I said. “And the slide, too. Didn’t we slide today, Mazie?”
There was a box of mac and cheese in the pantry, but we’d made a box the night before, and Mazie’d had the leftovers for lunch.
“Listen,” I said, “how starving are you? We need some things anyhow. I could make a quick Publix run, bring back a rotisserie chicken.”
“Pick it up last thing before you get in line,” Terese said, “and it should still be hot when you get home.”
“Aye, aye, captain,” I said.
“Aye, capan!” Mazie said.
“I can bring her with me if you want,” I said. “Take your shower in peace.”
“I haven’t seen my kid all day,” she said. I felt guilty. Here she had been out working while we had fun. Well, that was the arrangement, but still. Then Terese surprised me. She picked Mazie up off her belly and held her in the air. “You know what,” she said, “a long shower sounds like heaven. So go on—all yours.”
We made our way up and down the aisles, Mazie in the kid seat, goggling at all the colorful boxes and lights, babbling away. Peanut butter, white bread, strawberry ice cream, cans of soup. The cartons of cigarettes are locked up at the front so you ask when you get to the register. Fish sticks, more mac and cheese boxes because you can pretty much never have enough. Bunch of bananas. Can of Maxwell House. There were vitamins in the medicine aisle. I passed them by, but the notion stuck in my mind. I was over in prepared foods, deciding if I wanted to bring home a half pound of potato salad to go with the chicken or if greens of some kind would be better. I stuck a pin in this question and circled back around to the pills. There were the Flintstones ones and the “Compare to” ones. They were exactly the same. Everyone knows that. If I put the boxes side by side and read the fine print I would even know for sure. They were probably made at the same factory. There was probably some website you could go to and read all about it.
Aw hell, I thought, just this once. And bought the good ones.
“You’re a real saint sometimes, Wade,” Terese said when I showed her what I’d got. “Do you know that?” I laughed at this and she laughed with me and kissed me and I imagined myself in my saintly robes and haloed, Saint Wade, patron of wildlife shows and the cigarette tax, bestower of name-brand vitamins, who shall rise up in glory and see that the waitresses of the Lord clock in at the pan-Asian bistro on time.
But some things are out of anybody’s power, even saints’. Terese’s job turned bad over
night, the way these kinds of jobs will. She got passed over for shift manager, was the first thing, and then corporate decided that everyone had to push a new special, which was this lemongrass seafood dish. They put all the girls on a quota for specials sold per night. This went against what you might call Terese’s style. She was not going to push folks toward a nineteen-dollar plate of rice with a few shrimp and squid pieces thrown on top—one, because she thought it was stupid, and two, because when the customers were pissed at the end of their dinner it’d be her tip they took it out on. So her numbers suffered and she’d get bawled out and then come home and start bawling me out about whatever she could think up, and at first I was just taking it, but of course a man can only take so much, and we knew each other well enough by now to be cruel and soon it became a kind of nightly ritual to split a twelve-pack and tear each other apart. I never hit her, for whatever that’s worth, but it was a hell of a place for a kid. Some nights I didn’t sleep at all and ended up sitting on the couch in the dark, concentrating on the sound of Mazie’s breathing, barely audible over the wheeze of the old window unit. Just sitting there, listening and drinking, trying not to think and thinking anyway. Shark, I thought.
The days after those nights always felt like they were over before they started. All I wanted was to get Terese off to work, pop the flower video in for Mazie, and try to catch up on some of the sleep I’d missed. I’d nap on the couch with my face turned away from the TV, barely dozing, still at the ready in case Mazie needed me, and consequently any dreams I managed to have were warped by the singing sunflowers in their endless encore medley of greatest hits.
One day I had had enough. I couldn’t take another round of the same old songs or any of it. After we said good-bye to Terese I got Mazie dressed and put some Goldfish crackers in a baggie for her for later. I set her car seat up in my car and we hit the road.
Flings: Stories Page 13