by Joy Williams
“I have to change the sheets now, Liberty. I have to wash them and dry them and put them on the bed again. Bye-bye.”
Liberty went back to bed. When she heard the phone ringing again, she pulled the pillow over her head. After a few moments, she heard Willie saying to her, “That was Charlie. He wants us to have breakfast with him.”
Willie and Liberty could never refuse Charlie when he wanted to eat. Charlie was an alcoholic who seldom ate. The last time they had the pleasure of Charlie’s company at table was in a Chinese restaurant where Charlie had eaten eight kernels of rice in the course of an hour. Late in the evening, he had taken a bite out of the glass his gin was gone from.
Willie and Liberty got into their truck and drove to a restaurant nearby called The Blue Gate. Clem sat on the seat between them. From the back, he could pass for another person with long, pale hair, sitting there. At the restaurant, they all got out and Clem lay down beneath an orange tree growing in the dirt parking lot. The Blue Gate was a Mennonite restaurant in a community of cottages with living petunia crosses growing on the lawn.
Inside, Charlie was waiting for them at a table by the pie display. He wore a rumpled suit a size too large for him and a clean shirt. His hair was combed wetly back, his face was swollen and his hands shook. Nevertheless, he seemed in excellent spirits.
“Been too long, man,” Charlie said to Willie, shaking his hand. “Hi, doll,” he said to Liberty. “Where you two been lately? I never see you at the Gator.”
“Ahh, the Gator,” Willie said. “Doesn’t that bar depress you? JJ depresses me.”
“JJ’s all right,” Charlie said. “He’s a real good listener since his stroke.”
Willie shrugged. “Brings me down. I should be ashamed, of course.”
“I love the ol’ Gator,” Charlie said. “I had a great night. Saw some movies, went to some parties, met the dawn at the Gator. Man, I love The Thing. You ever see The Thing? ‘Tell the world! Watch the skies! Everywhere! Watch the skies!’ ” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a wad of money. “I’ve been celebrating,” he said. “One sale.” Charlie was a real estate agent, the most successful agent at Ace Realty in a decade. Buyers seemed mesmerized by Charlie. His appearance before them made them desperate to purchase terra firma. “Two acres of land on a golf course to a Canadian couple. They smelled like cooking gas for some reason. They laid their dreams out right in front of me. They wanted an opulent staircase and a sauna. They wanted a special room for the missus’s collection of dolls. They wanted a special room for the mister’s aqua leather sofa. Your Charlie found them just the place. They wept with joy.” He began to tear absent-mindedly at one of the bills in his hand.
“Put that stuff away,” Willie said.
Charlie took a wallet out of his jacket and opened it. He pressed the bills inside.
“Why are you carrying around a picture of a tree?” Willie asked.
“Do you know that each person in the world needs all the oxygen produced in a year by a tree with thirty thousand leaves?” Charlie said. He looked at the snapshot of the tree in his wallet. “Isn’t that a nice tree!” he said.
He ordered eggs, fried mush, orange juice, milk and coffee cake. “I love this place,” he sighed. “These are good people, these are religious people. You know what’s on the bottom of the pie pans? There are messages on the bottom of the pie pans, embossed in the aluminum. I got a pineapple cream cheese pie here last week and it said Wise men shall seek Him. Isn’t that something! The last crumbs expose a Christian message! You should bring a sweet potato pie home, Liberty, get yourself a message.”
“There are too many messages in Liberty’s life already,” Willie said. “Liberty is on some terrible mailing lists.”
Charlie nodded vigorously. “I got a letter from Greenpeace once. They’re the ones who want to stop the slaughter of the harp seals, right? Envelope had a picture of a cuddly little white seal and the words KISS THIS BABY GOOD-BYE. You get that one, Liberty?”
“Yes,” Liberty said. She ordered only coffee and looked at Charlie, at his handsome, ruined face. He was a Cajun. His mother still lived in Lafayette, Louisiana. She was a “treater” whose specialty was curing warts over the phone.
“Well, I’m in love again,” Charlie said. “You ever give any thought as to how many people there are to love! My only fear is that I will awake one morning and be indifferent to love. Bam. It will be like forgetting Shakespeare. I knew a boy once you give him a line of Shakespeare’s tragedies and he could give you the next line. Any line, he knew what came next. And that boy was me!” Charlie spoke in wonder. “It was me who could do that! All those thousands of lines were ordered in the chambers of my mind, like little virgins dressed in white, waiting to be called upon, eager to serve whatever purpose I had. It was a gift, then Bam. Consigned to oblivion.” Charlie laughed his high, cackling laugh. The Mennonites glanced up from their biscuits and thin, pink gravy.
“You’re taking too many vitamins,” Willie said.
“I am taking a lot of vitamins,” Charlie said. “You think that’s why I’m in love all the time? Maybe it’s a side effect. It got so, well I’d have a few drinks and I’d be incited to grief and confusion. You know? I couldn’t even take a shower. The thought of standing alone under a shower, alone under those sheets, those strings of water, would give me the shakes. So I thought the old brain was shutting down, you know? So I got to taking vitamins. I still don’t take showers. I give myself little kitty-baths.” He looked at Liberty. “Oh, you’re such a good-looking woman,” Charlie said.
A waitress arrived and warily placed a pint carton of milk by Charlie’s right hand. The carton of milk had a straw sticking out of it.
“Oh, look at that!” Charlie exclaimed. “I love this place. You gotta get a pie, Liberty. Bring it home to Clem. Dog’d scarf it down. Lemon meringue, say. Lap the words clean. Be zealous and repent. Dog’d go wild!” He picked up Liberty’s hand. “Let’s talk about you for a while. Tell me something you’ve never told me before.”
“She’s going to say ‘David,’ ” Willie said.
“ ‘David’?” Liberty asked. “Who is David?”
“David is the boy you never slept with,” Willie said. “David is your lost opportunity.”
“I think we’re talking too loud,” Charlie yelled. “These are polite, God-fearing people. Their babies come by UPS. Big, brown Turtle-waxed trucks turn into their little lanes. They have to sign for them, the babies. It’s better to get babies by UPS. It’s swift and efficient. The sound of two bodies yattering together to produce a baby the other way is a terrible thing.”
“With David you would be another kind of woman,” Willie said. “At this very moment, you could be with David, cuddling David. After you cuddled, you could arise, dress identically in your scarlet Union suits, chino pants, Ragg socks, Bass boots, British seamen pullovers and down cruiser vests and go out and remodel old churches for use as private residences in fashionable New England coastal towns.”
“But David,” sighed Charlie, “is missing and presumed dead.”
“Change the present,” Willie said. “Through the present, change the future and through the future, the past. Today is the result of some past. If we change today, we change the past.”
Charlie shook his head. “Too much to put on a pie plate, man. Besides, it doesn’t sound Christian.”
“If you were another kind of woman,” Willie said, “you could be married to Clay, the lawyer, dealing in torts. You’d have two little ones, Rocky and Sandy. They’d have freckles and be hyperactive. They’d be the terror of the car pool. Clay would have his nuts tied.”
“Oh, please, man,” Charlie said.
“You and Clay would fly to your vacations in your very own private plane. You’d know French. You’d gain a reputation as a photographer of wildflowers, bringing out the stamens and pistils in a provocative way. Women would flock to the better department stores in order to buy the address books in which your
photos appeared. But then a turnaround would occur. You’d stop taking dirty pictures. You’d divorce Clay.”
“I knew it, I knew it,” shouted Charlie. “There he’d be with his useless nuts.”
“You’d become a believer in past lives. You’d become fascinated with other forms of intelligent life. You’d become involved in the study of whale language.”
“Oh, I love whales too, man,” Charlie said, spilling coffee down the front of his button-down shirt.
“You’d curse the house in Nantucket that Rocky and Sandy had spent so many happy summers in.”
“Ahh, Nantucket built on blood. Let’s abandon this subject.” Charlie looked sadly at his shirt. “Whales are poets who are in tune with every aspect of their world. They sing these songs, man.”
Breakfast was placed before them on the table. Charlie looked at the food in surprise. “Our songs are so messed up. You ever thought of that? Our songs are so garbled.”
Liberty reached across to Willie’s plate and spooned up a small piece of fried mush.
“Who are you in love with?” Willie asked Charlie, pouring syrup on the mush.
“Janiella,” Charlie said.
“Janiella?” Liberty said.
“Janiella the heartless, Janiella the faithless, Janiella the demanding,” Charlie said.
“Janiella,” Liberty said.
“Janiella the indiscreet, Janiella the throbbing, Janiella the—”
“All right,” Liberty said.
“I am crazy in love with Janiella, but she has lots of lousy habits. She never shuts doors for example. I have to tell you what happened. I was there last week, right? I’m beneath the sheets truffling away and her kid comes in. Actually, he’s not really her kid. He’s her boyfriend Duane’s kid. He’s forgotten his spelling book. His spelling book! ‘Ma’am,’ he says, ‘have you seen my spelling book?’ I’m crouched beneath the sheets. My ears are ringing. I try to be very still but I’m gagging, man, and Janiella says sweetly, ‘I saw your spelling book in the wastebasket,’ and the kid says, ‘It must have fallen in there by accident,’ and Janiella says, ‘You are always saying that, Ted. You are always placing things you don’t like in the wastebasket. I found that lovely Dunnsmoor sweater I gave you in the wastebasket. That lovely coloring book on knights and armor that I ordered from the Metropolitan Museum was in the wastebasket also.’ The kid says, ‘I’m too old for coloring books.’ Picture it, they are having a discussion. They are arguing fine points.”
Liberty did not want to picture it.
Charlie sighed and looked at his food.
“Well?” Willie said.
Charlie seemed to be losing his drift. He looked at his food as though he were trying to read it.
“So what happened,” Willie insisted. “Finally.”
“Well, I don’t know man. The future is not altogether scrutable.”
“Janiella and Teddy,” Willie said, glancing at Liberty. “The spelling book.”
“I fell alseep, I guess,” Charlie said. “The last thing I heard was the kid saying, ‘I thought Daddy was in Miami at a car show.’ I passed out from the heat, man.”
“You see Janiella at Duane’s house?” Willie asked. “Who does Teddy think you are?”
“We’ve never met,” Charlie said. “I’ve only laid eyes on him in a photo cube. Cute kid. Spiky hair. Janiella wants to keep him out of the house so she’s got him busy every minute. He has soccer practice, swim team, safe-boating instruction. He’s hardly ever at home. Ask him, I bet he’s ignorant of the floor plan. After school he takes special courses in computer language, sea shell identification, God knows what all. Poor little squirt comes staggering home, his brain on fire. I think of myself as a fantastic impetus to his learning.”
“Liberty’s not happy with this situation at all,” Willie said.
“Liberty’s all right,” Charlie grinned, oblivious, showing his pale gums. “Liberty’s a great girl.”
Liberty spooned up another piece of mush from Willie’s plate.
“That’s extremely irritating,” Willie said. “You never order anything, then you eat what I order.”
Liberty blushed.
“Liberty,” Charlie cried, “eat off my plate, I beseech you! Let’s mix a little yin and yang.” He picked up a piece of coffee cake in his large hand and waved it at her.
“It’s just one of those things that’s been going on too long,” Willie said.
“Really, man, you’re losing energy with these negative emotions. You’re just going dim on us here. Your song is fading.” Charlie cupped the hand that was clutching the coffee cake to his ear. Crumbs fell. “Ubble-gubble,” Charlie said.
Outside, Clem lay beneath the orange tree, his paws crossed, yawning. Two deputies sat nearby in their cruiser, looking at him as though they’d like to write out a ticket. Circumstances had not allowed them to write out a ticket in what seemed to them to be an extraordinarily long time. Look at the size of that dog one of them said you run over him and you’d know it.
“What a great animal,” Charlie said, pointing with the diminished cake at Clem. “How did you get such a great animal, Liberty?”
“He came in on the night air and settled on her head as she slept,” Willie said.
“Gubble-ubble,” Charlie said.
“He was in the envelope with the marriage license,” Willie said. “We sprinkled water on him and he was expanded and made soul.”
“Leave this creep and come away with me,” Charlie said to Liberty.
Willie said, “We got him from the Humane Society. He ate a child. The police impounded him, but what could they do, after all, this isn’t the Middle Ages, we don’t hang animals for crimes. And he was an innocent, a victim himself, belonging to a schizophrenic, anorectic unwed mother who kept leaving her infant son alone with him, unfed, in her fleabag apartment. Clem, unfed, day after day. Although his name wasn’t Clem then, it was Sword and Pentacles. Or sometimes Sword, and sometimes Pentacles.”
Charlie said, “I mean it. I love married women. I treat them right. Your blood will race, I’m telling you. I’m also a cook. I make great meat loaf, no, forget meat loaf, I’ll make gumbo. I’m third in line for two acres of land in St. Landry Parish. Only two people have to die, and it’s all mine. It’s got a chinaberry tree on it. We’ll pole the bayous and eat gumbo. We’ll drink beer and listen to chanky-chank bands.”
“I didn’t know you could cook,” Willie said. “You were the only Cajun I knew who couldn’t cook.”
“I cook,” Charlie said, affronted.
“Actually,” Willie said, “Liberty found Clem lying partially in the road, partially in a ditch of water hyacinths, injured by some vehicle. Blood all over the place. What a mess.”
“Everything’s so relative with you, man. I don’t know how you make it through the day,” Charlie said. He gazed at Liberty, absorbed.
“I found him in a mailbox,” Liberty said. “It was at a house where we were staying for a while, inland, in the country. Somebody had hurt him and then stuffed him inside the big mailbox at the end of the drive. He was just a puppy then.”
“That’s awful!” Charlie exclaimed. “You are on some bad mailing lists.”
“A linear life is a tedious life,” Willie said. “Man wasn’t born to suffer leading his life from moment to moment.”
“I’ve come to the conclusion that Janiella is not for me,” Charlie said. “For one thing, she’s mean, she’s not married and she talks too much. Even in situ she’s gabbing away. And she’s into very experimental stuff. There are not as many ways of making love as people seem to believe.”
“I’m splitting,” Willie announced.
Charlie rubbed his face hard with his hands. Liberty knew that he wanted a drink. He had that look in his dark eyes.
Willie stood up and leaned toward Liberty, his hands on the table. His hands were tanned and strong and clean. His wedding band was slender. Liberty remembered the wedding clearly. It had taken p
lace in a lush green tropical forest in the time of the dinosaurs. “I’ve got to shake myself a little loose,” he said. “Do you want the truck?”
“No,” Liberty said.
“Just a few days,” Willie said. “Later,” he said to Charlie. He left.
“A butterfly vanishes from the world of caterpillars,” Charlie said.
Liberty saw Clem get up and look after the truck as it drove away. He trotted over to the restaurant and peered in, resting his muzzle on a window box of geraniums. Liberty waved to him.
“He can’t see that,” Charlie said. “Animals live in a two-dimensional world. For example, like with roads? To a dog, each road is a separate phenomenon that has nothing in common with another road.”
“That sounds about right,” Liberty said.
“And so it is, the truth specific to each species. To each and all, one’s own dark wood,” Charlie said. He picked up Liberty’s hand and kissed her wrist bone. “I love you,” he said. “There’s only you. I have employed Janiella only for the purposes of obfuscation.”
“You’re a bottle man,” Liberty said.
“Liberty!” Teddy called. He hurried over from the bakery counter, holding a cruller and a bag in one hand, an egg in the other. It was a small brown egg. Liberty hugged him and ran her fingers through his hair. Charlie closed his eyes.
“I’m going to learn how to build furniture,” Teddy said. “I was a little late today because I saw a joke shop on the way, but the man let me hammer a piece of wood.”
Charlie’s eyes were shut.
“Is he all right?” Teddy asked Liberty. “Is he dead?”
“I am dead,” Charlie said. “I was in the Alps, hiking. I started out on a spring day. The air was sweet and warm. As I went higher it grew cold. There was a blizzard. I took refuge in a cave and built a small fire for comfort. The small fire caused an avalanche, which flattened me. Ever since then I have been dead.”
“Who is this,” Teddy demanded.
“My man,” Charlie said, opening his eyes. “Liberty and I were just discussing running away together.”