Eddie said, “I’m not ashamed or too proud to admit that I’d like hair transplants and some liposuction, too. Get rid of this beer gut. Hell, Dad got forty thousand dollars.”
“You begrudge your old man?” Mattison’s father said cheerfully. “Look, the boy’s still got his salary, don’t forget that. He’s getting money like a freaking bonus baby.”
The caterers stood against the far wall, each with a bottle of wine. Sibyl’s father signaled them to pour, and they went around the table, asking if people wanted white or red. Sibyl’s father said, “Here’s to wealth.”
“I want a house in the Florida Keys,” Sibyl said, holding up her glass of wine. “And I want servants. A whole staff.” It was as though she were offering this statement as a toast.
“Maybe, in time, we could each have a house,” said her mother.
“The chicken’s good,” Hayfield said, rather timidly.
“It’s not chicken,” said Sibyl. “My God, how could you mistake this for chicken?”
“Did I say chicken?”
Sibyl’s father drank his wine, then finished the last of his beer. “It’s quite a feeling,” he said. “Economic power.”
“Nothing but the best,” Chip said. “For us and the lame and halt.”
Mattison said, “You got all you need, didn’t you?”
“I’d like a house, too,” said Eddie. “Why not? But I’m not begging for it, that’s for damn sure.”
“Who’s begging?” Chip said. He looked down the table. “Do you all know that right now there’s a bunch of old people eating a turkey dinner on us? Right this minute over at the firehouse?”
“That’s immaterial to me,” said Eddie. “I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not asking for any charity.”
“I always liked the skin,” Hayfield put in. “I know it’s not healthy.”
“What the hell is he talking about?” said Sibyl’s father.
“The chicken,” Sibyl said, and smirked.
“I make Thanksgiving better than this,” her mother said. “I must admit.”
“Why do you have to suggest that I’m asking for a handout?” Chip said suddenly to Eddie. “You always put things in a negative light. You’re the most negative son of a bitch I ever saw.”
“I tell the truth,” Eddie said.
“I didn’t see it stop you from taking twenty grand for yourself when the time came.”
“Whoa,” their father said. “Let’s just stow that kind of talk. You got a new boat, Eddie, didn’t you?”
“God,” Mattison said, standing, “listen to us. Look what this has done to us. It’s Thanksgiving, for God’s sake.”
For a moment they all regarded him, the one with the money.
“It’s brought us together,” Sibyl said. “What did you think it would do?”
“A little family discussion,” said her mother. “We’re all thankful as hell.”
Chip said, “Did anybody say anything about not being grateful?”
Mattison’s father said, “Nobody’s being ungrateful. We just thanked the Lord for our luck. Your luck, son. God knows I spent most of my damn life trying to contend with bad luck.”
“But you had happy times, didn’t you? Sweet times.”
His father considered a moment. “Well, no. Not really. I worked my ass off is what it all amounted to.”
Mattison had an abrupt and painful memory of him walking down the long sidewalk in front of the house on Montgomery Street, bags of groceries in his arms—a cheerful man with nothing much in the bank and a family that seemed to make him happy, a house he liked to come home to. It was what Mattison always wanted, too, he thought: a family. He gazed at his father, who was dipping a roll into the hot turkey gravy, and said, “Dad, remember how it was—those Thanksgivings when we were small—those Christmases you took us to see the big houses …”
But his father was arguing with Chip about twenty thousand dollars. “You begrudge twenty thousand dollars to your own father,” he said. “I’m damn glad you didn’t buy the winning ticket. None of us would see diddly-squat.”
They were all arguing now, Sibyl’s mother and father talking over each other about houses and how ridiculous it was to expect to be given one; Sibyl chiding Eddie about being greedy, how unattractive that was. “You should see how ugly it makes you,” she said. “Look at yourself in a mirror.”
Poor Hayfield sat chewing, a man unable to decide which conversation he should attend to, or try mediating. He said to Mattison, “Prosperity can be as hard on good spirits as anything else.” He turned to Sibyl and repeated this, even as she raised her voice to gain Chip’s attention. “Consumers,” she said. “That’s all either of you ever have been.”
“Excuse me,” Mattison murmured, standing. Nobody heard him. He went into the other room, past the caterers, who were smoking, standing at the open kitchen window, talking quietly. He went out and along the side of the house to the street. The caterers watched him, and when he looked back at them, they continued to stare. He got into the car, turned the ignition, and pulled away.
The sun was low now, winter-bright through the bare trees. He drove to the main highway, then headed east, away from the Coke factory, toward Washington. There was almost no traffic. All the families were gathered around festive polished tables in warm light. No one in any of these dwellings was thanking the Lord for sixteen million dollars. He repeated the number several times aloud; it felt unreal, oddly harrowing. Driving on, he passed the road down to Arlene Dakin’s house and then looked for a place to turn around.
She was standing on the stoop in front as he pulled up, her coat held closed at her throat. He got out of the car and walked to her, hurrying, his heart racing. This meeting was somehow his destiny, it seemed: a tremendously meaningful coincidence. Looking beyond her for her husband, he saw the open front door and part of a disheveled living room.
“What do you want here?” she said.
“Amazing—” he began. “Did you see me before—I came by—”
“He took them,” she said. “My babies. He took them. I don’t know where.” She began to cry. “I was trying to find a way—and he just rode away with them.”
“Here,” he said, approaching. He put his hands on her shoulders and gently guided her toward his car.
“Leave me alone,” she said, pulling away. The violence of it astonished him.
“I’m sorry.” He walked dumbly after her. “Let me take you somewhere.”
“No.” She was crying again. She made her way across the street, got into her little red car, and started it. He hurried to his own, watching her. She drove to the end of the street and on, and he kept her in sight. A few blocks down, she stopped in front of a small row of shops flanking a restaurant.
This part of town was already decked out for Christmas. There was a sign in the restaurant window:
OPEN THANKSGIVING; TURKEY FEAST; BOBBY DALE TRIO
She went in. Mattison followed. It was a narrow, high-ceilinged place. At the far end a man was singing with the accompaniment of a bass and piano. Some people sat at tables surrounding the bandstand, eating plates piled high with turkey, dressing, and potatoes. She had taken a table near the entrance to the kitchen. Apparently she knew someone here—a woman who paused to speak with her, then reached down and held her hands.
Mattison walked over to them.
“I said to leave me alone. Jesus Christ,” she burst out at him, crying.
“I—I just wanted to help.”
“I don’t want your help. I told you.”
The friend seemed wary. “Who is this character, anyway?”
“Oh, he’s the big winner,” Arlene Dakin said. “Didn’t you know?” She looked at Mattison. “Can’t you see I don’t want your money now? I don’t want anything to do with you.”
He moved to the other end of the room, where several people were seated, talking loud above the sound of the trio. He saw her get up and enter the kitchen with her friend. It wasn’t
his fault about the money; he had ravaged no forests, taken no wealth by exploiting others, nor plundered anyone or anything to get it. He was not a bad man. If she would only let him, he could show her. He could make her see him for what he was. The idea seemed distant, faraway, as the idea of riches once had seemed. She came back from the kitchen and went on to the doorway and out.
He ordered a drink, finished it, and then ordered another. He would have to go back home soon. They would wonder where he’d gone. Bobby Dale, of the Bobby Dale Trio, was a compact man in a silvery-blue double-breasted suit. He ended a long, incongruously bright version of “House of the Rising Sun” and then, talking about his own heavy drinking and widely adventurous love life, launched into “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” It wasn’t very good singing. As a matter of fact, it was radier annoying—this bright, cheery rendition of a song about being lost and alone. Mattison had still another drink. When the song ended there was scattered applause. He stood and approached Dale, reaching into his pocket. As his hand closed on the first packet of fifties, it struck him that he had never felt more free, more completely himself.
“Yes?” said the singer.
“This is a thousand dollars,” Mattison told him. “I want you to sit down and shut up.”
“Pardon me?” Bobby Dale said, almost laughing.
“I want you to stop singing. I’ll pay you to shut up and sit down.”
“You asking for trouble, Jack?”
“Just quit for the day.” Mattison held the money out to him. “It’s real,” he said. “See? One thousand dollars.”
“Man, what the hell’re you trying to do here?”
“Hey, Bobby,” the bass player said, “Chrissakes take it if it’s real. Fool.”
Dale said, “Man, you think I won’t?” He snatched the packet from Mattison’s hand.
“Thank you,” Mattison said and returned unsteadily to his seat.
“Okay, folks. It takes all kinds, don’t it. I guess the show’s over for a time. The man with the money says we should take a little time off, and we’re very happy to oblige the man with the money.”
“That’s me,” Mattison said, smiling at the others, all of whom quite frankly stared at him. “Hi, everyone,” he said. He felt weirdly elated.
“I recognize you,” said one woman. Her lipstick was the color of blood. “You’re the guy—you won the big jackpot. I saw it on the news.” She turned to her friends. “That’s him. And look at him. Throwing money around in a bar on Thanksgiving Day.”
“Hey,” a man said. “How about letting us have a little of it?”
“I can’t think of a single solitary thing I’d rather do,” Mattison said. “Why not?” He began to laugh, getting to his feet. He stood before them, their frowning faces, the wrong faces, no one he knew or loved. He reached into his pocket for the other thousand.
SELF KNOWLEDGE
That morning Allan Meitzer had an asthma attack and was taken to the hospital. It disrupted the class, and Mrs. Porter, the teacher, edged toward panic. Her husband was in Seattle trying to save things. A once-big man in the airline industry, was Jack—gone a lot these days, even when home: money troubles, drinking through the evenings to calm down. She too. They drank separately, and he’d been violent on occasion. They were going to pieces.
A comforting word—cordials. She’d drink cordials in the nights, bouncing around alone in the house. She felt no bitterness, considered herself a fighter. They were in serious debt, living on cash only, bills piling up. This month’s cash was gone. The house was empty of cordiality. She had no appetite to speak of and nothing to drink. A terrible morning.
But she got herself up and out to work. And Allan had the asthma attack.
Pure terror. No one had ever expressed how physical thirst could get, how deep it went down into the soul.
Some days, Allan Meltzer’s parents had prevailed on her to give the boy a ride home. They lived a hundred yards from her, on the other side of Jefferson Street. Allan was a quiet, shy boy. She had heard his loud father outside, calling him “stupid.” She would think about his big moist dark eyes in class. She’d tried being especially kind—this child with asthma, allergies, a fear of others. The other children were murderously perceptive, and pecked at him.
All this lent urgency—and guilt—to the fact that he was gone to the hospital with asthma. Urgency because she feared for him; guilt because she planned to use his absence. No sense lying to herself.
She had such an awful dread.
When the school day ended, she started for the hospital, planning to check on Allan. The Meltzers would be there. They saw her as a kindly childless woman, Mrs. Porter, who had nurtured a whole generation of schoolchildren. Well, it was true. And they trusted her. She had a key to their house, for those times she took the boy home.
No, she wouldn’t deceive herself. A drink was necessary before she faced the Meltzers. Before she let another hour go by.
She drove to their house and let herself in. Mr. Meltzer kept only whiskey. She ransacked their kitchen looking for it, resolved to fix everything when she got to a level, when she could think straight again, out of this shaking. Quite simple. She was contending with something that had come up on her and surprised her.
She drank most of the bottle, slowly and painfully at first, but then with more ease, gulping it, getting calm. She wasn’t a bad woman. She loved those kids, loved everyone. She’d always carried herself with dignity and never complained—a smile and a kind word for everybody, Mrs. Porter. Once, she and Jack had made love on the roof of a Holiday Inn while fireworks went off in another part of a city they were passing through. On their fifteenth anniversary they’d pretended to be strangers in a hotel bar and raced to their room on the sixth floor, laughing, filled with an illicit-feeling hunger for each other.
Now she did what she could with the kitchen, reeling. Her own crashing-down fall startled her, as if it were someone else. “Jack?” she said. Oh, yes—Jack. Her once friend and lover, a world away. But all would be well. She could believe it now. She went out into the yard, looked at the trees, the late afternoon sun pouring through with breezes, life’s light and breath. The great wide world. She felt good. She felt quite reasonable. Nothing out of order. Life would provide.
She started across the span of grass leading to the trees, confused about where home was. She sat down in the grass, then lay back. When they returned, the Meltzers would see. She would have to explain to them, show them the necessity. “Honesty is what we owe each other.” She’d always told the children that, hadn’t she? She had lived by it. Hadn’t she? “Be true, my darlings,” she had said. “Always, always tell the truth. Even to yourself.” That was what she’d said. She was Mrs. Porter. That was what she was known for.
GLASS MEADOW
For William Kotzwinkle and Charles Baxter
and with thanks to Bill Kimble
Imagine a shady mountain road in early summer. 1954. Dappled sunlight on tall pines, the lovely view of a valley with a bright river rambling through it. And here comes a lone car, its tires squealing a little with each winding of the road. A lime-green ‘51 Ford, with a finish that exactly reproduces the trees in its polished depths. In the front seat of this automobile are the eccentric parents of Patrick and Elvin Johnston, brothers. I’m Patrick, twelve and a half years old. Elvin is a year and a half younger. We’re monitoring how close we keep coming to the big drop-off into the tops of trees. We’re subject to the whims of the people in the front seat, whose names are Myra and Lionel.
To their faces, we call them Mom and Dad.
Myra is thirty-six, stunningly beautiful, with black hair, dark brown eyes, flawless skin, and—as we have heard it expressed so often by our ratty, no-account friends at school—a body like Marilyn Monroe. Lionel is younger, only thirty-four—tall, lean, rugged-looking, with eyes that are the exact light blue of a summer sky, and blond hair just thin enough at the crown of his head to make him look five years older. He’s s
harp, confident, quick, and funny. He makes Myra laugh, and her laugh has notes in it that can alter the way blood flows through your veins.
Elvin and I have come to believe they’re both a bit off, and there’s plenty of evidence to support our thesis.
But we love them, and they, in their way, love us. It is very important that one does not lose sight of this fact.
So.
We’re on this mountain road, wending upward in the squeal of tires and the wail of radio jazz, while back home in Charlottesville lawyers are putting together the necessary papers to have us evicted from our rented house. The rental is our seventh in the last eight years. Our destination today is a hunting cabin owned by a childhood friend of Myra’s. We haven’t packed a scrap of food or very much in the way of clothing or other supplies.
We woke up with Myra standing in the doorway of our room. “You’re not ready yet,” she said, “are you?”
It was still dark out. “What?” I said. “What?”
“Who is it?” Elvin said.
“We’re leaving for our vacation this morning.”
“Vacation?” I said. She might as well have said we were heading out for a life of missionary work in Pakistan.
Myra and Lionel have never been the type of people to take vacations, per se. They’ve always had a way of behaving as though they were already in the middle of some kind of—well, furlough, let’s call it.
One Sunday morning as we were coming out of church, we saw Father Bauer backing out of the rectory door with a big box. Myra hurried over there, we thought to help him, but she stood silent behind him as he slowly backed through the door, groaning with the weight he was carrying in the heat of the summer day. She seemed merely curious, watching him. As he got free of the doorway, she leaned into him and said, “Hey!” loud, as if he were a long way off. Father Bauer dropped the box on his foot. Then he hopped in a small circle, holding the foot, yowling, “Merciful heaven,” at the top of his lungs.
He said this three times, as Myra, smiling, strolled away from him.
The Stories of Richard Bausch Page 6