Breaking and Entering

by Joy Williams

  She pressed the heron’s wing back against its body, gathered its ungainly parts together and carried it to the trees where she dug a hole with her hands and buried it. There comes that time for everything, she said to it, when you have to put the beginning behind you.

  There was a ragged line of brown foam on the harder sand of the beach just before the cut that wound between the two Keys. The water of the Pass rocked swiftly past. Liberty stepped into the water, and it was deep at once. She swam a dozen strokes, then counted in tens but stopped counting and just flailed ahead. The water was warm and heavy, trembling with phosphorescence, which struck her in jellylike clots. The current was sweeping her away from land. She saw it gliding by. Then they were in slack water, further from shore, but it was calm. She stopped to rest and Clem’s leg bumped hard against her own. He circled her. She heard him breathing through shut jaws. She pushed off again, her eyes and throat burning. After a while she dove downward and felt the bottom, a person’s height beneath her, then drifted up and swam hard toward the shore. Minutes later, her hands hit the sloping sand shelf. On the beach, Clem shook himself, the water flying from his coat like little lights, quickly extinguished.

  Inside the house, the phone was ringing.

  “Liberty!” her mother said. “Liberty, I have the most amazing news. Your sister called and came over. Yes! She got in touch with me! She tracked me down, can you imagine!”

  Liberty didn’t know what to say. “Is she there, Mother?” she finally asked.

  “I was wondering, Liberty, do you still have that lazy Susan I sent one year on your birthday, the one with the little dishes?”

  “I can’t remember receiving that.”

  “Well, I’d like it back, dear.”

  “Have you seen Brouilly? Did she really call?”

  “Brouilly?” her mother said. “Oh, I’m afraid I have a little confession to make, dear. I named you both Liberty. I suppose that’s not done much, but I did it. Yes, she was over here. She just left, but she’ll be back. Goodness, she turned out well. A beautiful girl, she makes me very proud. Liberty, I’ve been going through some of your things. Gracious, dear, what a lot of junk! I’ve thrown away big bags of it. Big bags. All those tests you used to take in school. The questions you answered, Liberty, honestly. Listen to this. ‘Mr. Jones and Mrs. Jones both have the ability to roll their tongues. They have a daughter, Marie, who can’t roll her tongue. Mr. Smith has the ability to roll his tongue. Mrs. Smith does not. They have a son, John, who does have the ability to roll his tongue. Mr. Jones and Mrs. Smith die.’ ” She paused. “Really, Liberty, I find this type of thing quite shocking, I find this hard to believe. ‘Mrs. Jones and Mr. Smith get married and have a son who does not have the ability to roll his tongue …’ ”

  Liberty heard the sound of crumpling paper.

  “This is what I’m faced with,” her mother said, “disposing of this kind of thing.”

  “It was probably a question about genotypes, Mother. You were supposed to list them or something.”

  “You did, you did,” her mother said impatiently. “There’s something sick about that question, Liberty. I don’t want to remember you that way.”

  “How do you want to remember me, Mother?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said sulkily. “I suppose as a little tiny baby with all your life before you. You were so helpless as a little tiny baby. You were just the dearest, simplest thing. If I gave you beets, your poopie would come out red, if I gave you string beans, your poopie would come out green … And then one day you weren’t a baby anymore. It happened just like that!”

  More paper was crushed. It sounded like flames crackling, quite close, coming closer still.

  “Do you know how many children your sister has? Four! She has four, two girls and two boys. That’s enough, I told her. More than that, you get mixed-up. And it’s more than likely that one of them will turn out funny. One of them already is a little strange, I think.”

  “Where did sister go, Mother?”

  “Oh, she’ll be right back. She went with Daddy. The children are playing in the pecan grove. I can see them from here.”

  “It’s nighttime.”

  “You’re so literal, Liberty. I’m quite aware it’s nighttime. But we have big lights strung in the trees, dear, to discourage thieves. The lights are there to let them know we know what they’re up to. There have always been lights in the pecan grove. I didn’t think this up yesterday. Honey,” she said, “aren’t you happy for me?”

  “I love you, Mother.”

  “Thank you, dear, but you’re as different from your sister as a rainy day is from a sunny one. It’s astonishing that you both came out of the same womb.”

  “But I guess we did,” Liberty said.

  “Honestly, dear, I’m the one who knows that! You know what Daddy used to say? Daddy used to say he’d just like to crawl up in my womb and live there. Only come out when he felt like it.”

  Liberty was silent. The house was silent. In the moonstruck yard, the banyan directed a new pink-nosed root around its humped and twisting elders into a slender, mold-filled crack.

  “Have I offended you, again?” her mother said. “When did you get to be such a prude! I’m not allowed to make references to my husband of many, many years and your own father?”

  “I’m just a little tired, I guess,” Liberty said. “All this news has tired me.”

  “News is tiring,” her mother agreed. “They executed someone last night at the prison and reading about that really wore me out. This man had done everything heinous there was to do—kidnapped, murdered, raped, dismembered, everything. Then for his last meal, he orders all this food. He orders lobster and chicken-fried steak and dirty rice and french fries and peanut butter cups, and then he doesn’t eat it. Not only doesn’t he eat it, he refuses to eat it. Isn’t that the last straw! Good riddance to that one, I say.”

  “What does sister look like?”

  “You should call her ‘Liberty,’ dear. After all, that’s her name.”

  “That’s difficult for me to do, Mother. Just at this moment.”

  “That’s such a peculiar question, anyway, what does it matter what she looks like? What’s important is the lost has been found. The burden of my indiscretion has been lifted. I’ve felt remorse about this for years, it wasn’t just when I told you about it. You know how sometimes some little thing will just keep nagging at you? Well, that’s the way the abandonment of my child was with me all these years. And it took its toll, let me tell you. Recently, I had taken up spitting. I let all my hobbies go and just went around expectorating all the time. That was my body’s way of censuring me for my past. But now that she’s back, I feel that there’s a tall glass in me filled with clear, cool water.”

  “I’m very glad for you, Mother,” Liberty said.

  “I realize that I’ve encouraged some misconceptions, and we should probably straighten them out slowly. I’ve been lavishing all my attention on you for years, and now I have to spread it out a little more evenly. Did we ever frost a cake together?”

  “I don’t think so,” Liberty said.

  “Well, I was going to use that as an analogy, but I guess I can’t.” Lucille paused. “Darn,” she said. “You know, I get this voice on the telephone at times when I’m dialing you. His name is Mr. Bobby. He doesn’t live with you or anything, does he? Are you taking in roomers? No? Well, you must know him somehow or else why would I be getting him on the phone all the time? Mr. Bobby makes the most wonderful use of metaphors, doesn’t he? I live in such a prosaic world with your father. Life with your father is life in a starved universe, but Mr. Bobby sees everything in terms of something else. I have a feeling he’s blind. The blind are a certain kind of people, just like the deaf and the sick and the dead, and Mr. Bobby has that certain something. Don’t you agree? Are you sure we never frosted a cake together? I don’t know how you can be so sure …”

  Liberty had shut her eyes and was rubbing t
hem gently. Small faces howled soundlessly behind her lids. They loomed out of the darkness, then fell back, into it.

  “What are you going to do now?” her mother asked.

  Liberty’s eyes flew open. All of the windows of the house were raised and the leaves of the banyan, large as men’s hands in the moonlight, were pressed against the screens. For an instant, she felt as if she and her mother had been carrying on some other conversation.

  “Mother,” Liberty said, “what if I came up to see you again, would that be all right?” She wanted her mother to be well, to be free. Tears filled her eyes.

  “Why would you do that! Don’t come up here! Can’t you leave me alone!”

  Liberty heard her father saying, “Oh stop, Lucile. Can’t you stop … please, please, please stop.”

  “When I stop that will be that,” her mother said. “I’ll stop like a clock.”

  “Please, please, please,…” her father said.

  “Are you there?” her mother said.

  “Yes,” Liberty said. “I am. Yes.”

  “A taxi brought her here, a blue taxi. It seemed so natural to me, that blue taxi coming up to the house. And my first instinct when she got out was to get in and be taken back to where she had come from. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” Liberty said. “You could have gotten in. I’m glad you didn’t get in.”

  “I let it leave. It left empty. It was a lovely color, a robin’s egg blue. I pray it won’t come back, but I’ve been expecting it for so long, I’m afraid I’ll imagine it now coming back. I may not be calling you for a while. I have to work some things out with myself and with Liberty, but I must do it in solitude.”

  “She loves you, Mother.”

  “Yes, she loves me. I can feel it. She loves me without even knowing me. Just like Mr. Bobby. Mr. Bobby loves me too, and I’ve never told him word one about myself. You don’t talk to Mr. Bobby, you know. No, you’re quiet as a little bunny in a meadow. You listen. Have you ever heard him on the Seven Sorrows? I think he’s better on the Sorrows than he is on the Sins. The Sins are a little old-fashioned, don’t you think? They’ve been around too long. Mr. Bobby doesn’t pay much attention to them, he says they’re so easily replaced by their opposite, that all it takes is a little dignity and self-reliance and self-control, but the Sorrows! They’re more modern, and Mr. Bobby warms right up to the Sorrows. I’m working on Regret now, trying to turn it into Rejoice. Your father, of course, goes on his merry way, oblivious to my efforts, which he thinks can be maintained twenty-four hours a day without a bit of stratagem. Don’t I sound better to you?”

  “You sound a little better now, Mother.”

  “It’s hard rejoicing all by yourself. You have Willie. You have that big animal, whatever he is. You’re not alone.”

  “Daddy …”

  “Liberty, you have this habit, this most annoying habit of persisting in the belief that life with your father is conducted to the tinkle of spoons on ice cream plates, that our only worries are fire ant mounds on the croquet court.”

  “Could I speak with Daddy for just a moment?”

  “Do you know why your father married me? He married me for my headlights. He couldn’t get enough of them.”

  “Headlights?”

  “My shakers, my knockers. That was the level he was working on.” She did not sound displeased. “You’ve always thought Daddy had sense. The man’s never had a grain of sense.”

  Liberty stretched out on the sofa and pushed a cushion behind her head. Beneath the cushion on a scrap of paper was a doodle. This was the doodle of the determined worm crawling over a razor blade.

  “Now I hope you’ll take care of yourself,” her mother said. “I’m not going to call anymore. I have to sort this all out. I’m afraid you’re the cause of my depression, dear. I probably shouldn’t even think of you for a while. When you think of me, I wish you’d think of me with this look of ineffable joy on my face because that’s the look I’m working on. I’m hoping that that look will percolate down to become the real me. I will become a sorrowless woman, who knows, maybe even the sorrowless woman, and then we’ll talk again.”

  Without hanging up the receiver, Liberty put the phone beneath the cushion. She felt a certain diminishment. She looked at herself—breasts, belly, legs—in amazement. Still there. Although she felt that large portions of her had been carried off like so many mouthfuls. She could have been born in a dish.

  Clem stood in the room with his eyes shut, dozing like a horse. Yes, she felt herself reduced, small, growing smaller. With a little more effort on the part of others and a bit of inattention on her own, she would be the size to climb upon her white dog’s back and ride away, ride madly away, in full career through the rest of life without stopping.

  Everyone has their form of transport. She supposed the point was not to use it, not to use it as long as possible. Keep sending the taxi of robin’s egg blue away.

  The phone emitted a frantic, muffled signal. She pushed the cushion to the floor and replaced the receiver. There was a moment of silence as though the thing were catching an outraged breath, and then it rang.

  “Who is this!” a woman’s voice demanded when Liberty answered. In the background were shrieks, groans and laughter. “I was dialing Mr. Bobby. They haven’t stopped Mr. Bobby have they? Has someone murdered him! Why is it always the good who are cut down, why …”

  It was Sally’s voice that Liberty recognized.

  “Sally,” she said. “What’s the matter, Sally?”

  “Liberty, is that you? I was just about to call you. I was calling Mr. Bobby for a little pick-me-up. They’ve eliminated the human intercessor, and now you don’t even have to ask for anything specific. The tapes just run on, and you’re able to tap in where fate will have you tap.”

  “What’s all that noise?” There were wails followed by loud percussion.

  “This is the night of the party at the Gator. It’s just the ol’ Gator bawling. It’s JJ’s homecoming party, remember I said? You’ve got to come over here right away.”

  “I can’t Sally. I just can’t tonight.”

  “Duane was in here with Teddy. They were looking for you. I think Duane wanted you to keep the little boy for a while or something. Give him to you? I was barbecuing the chicken wings, I couldn’t really follow it.”

  “Give him to me? Duane can’t give me Teddy.”

  “He was giving things away. He gave away his watch. He’s wild because his lady left him, I think.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “I don’t see them here now but the place is jammed. The Gator’s jumping like the old days.” She laughed. “Things will be out of control any minute.”

  “Maybe they went home. I’ve got to call them.”

  “I’ll hang up,” Sally said.

  No one at Duane’s house answered the phone. Liberty let it ring. She paced back and forth, trailing the long cord of it. On the sofa, the paper doodle lay. There was the worm, proceeding zealously over the razor blade, with faith and will, increasingly in pieces. She paced, passing a mirror. She was sunburnt, her hair was tangled. She thought she looked alarming. She left the phone still ringing, tugged off her bathing suit and put on clean clothes. She pulled a brush through her hair. You can’t think straight when your head’s in tangles, Willie’s mother had said, long ago.

  Willie had gone and entered someone’s life now. He had entered someone’s life because he couldn’t find his own anymore. He would have lived in her life, she realized, had she not lost hers as well. He had to live somewhere. They had lost their lives beneath the damaged trees years ago. She could still see the dappled light of that morning. It was the way she had seen everything since, stained and scattered.

  She went outside and stood with Clem beneath the coolness of the banyan, feeling the sweat dry on her throat. In Duane’s house, the phone rang tirelessly. Far away on a connection that had been made, people were speaking, linked through other lines.
>
  I read how he died, someone said. It said, ‘He yawned and then he died.’

  The street was quiet, dark with trees. In the sky, a small plane droned overhead, its lights twinkling merrily, heading inland, away from the blankness of the Gulf. Sally’s old Volvo, one headlight out, turned a corner toward them.

  “I thought I saw the oddest thing, but it was just your dog,” she called. “I came to get you. I figured if they weren’t here, they must be there, and I just missed seeing them. It seems like the whole town’s in the Gator tonight.” She pushed the door open for Liberty. “Look at the T-shirts JJ had made. Aren’t they great!” Sally’s T-shirt said SHIT HAPPENS. “He had a couple hundred made.”

  “JJ has a lot of style,” Liberty said.

  “He does. I could never fall for another guy. I was worrying about being autonomous, but I realize I’m really autonomous because I take care of him. It’s going to be a twenty-five-hour-day job which is great by me. I had too much idle time before. I was on the verge of being bored. Mr. Bobby says it is hip to serve. Mr. Bobby says just about everything on those tapes. You get to pick and choose. I’ve learned I’m the nursey type. See these hands …”—she held up her large hands, rimmed red with barbecue sauce—“… these hands are nurse’s hands.”

  Clem had pushed his way into the backseat. Liberty sat in the front and shut the door.

  “That dog makes me almost remember something,” Sally said. “It’s the funniest feeling. Could I brush his coat sometime?”

  “He’s not shedding,” Liberty said. “He won’t leave hair in your car.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” Sally said. “This old car, who cares. I’d just like to brush out his coat sometime.”

  “All right,” Liberty said.

  “Just brush it and brush it.” Sally sounded puzzled. She put the Volvo in gear and they creaked off.

  7

  The Gator Bar was on the bay. In the near distance were mangrove islands white with cormorant droppings. The bar was small and dark and its parking lot was vast and dark. There were a number of yard boys’ trucks there, parked at carefree angles, battered big Dodges with rainbow decals, heaped with dead branches and yellowing fronds. In the bar, on a long stage at the rear, they were having a bathing suit contest. Scrawny yard boys strutted in tiny trunks. The place reeked of beer, barbecue, Sevin, and yard boy sweat. Two women crowded in behind Liberty and Sally, looked around in a pantomime of horror, and left.