The Lion is In

by Delia Ephron

  “I’m suspended. The chief says they don’t know anymore if I’m law enforcement material. They’re reviewing me.”

  “Don’t blame me. You were drunk. You were passed out cold. The car was sitting there. You left your keys.”

  Tracee moves slowly and quietly backward, away from the fight.

  “I left my keys in the house,” says Tucker.

  “Same thing.”

  “Not hardly.”

  Tracee gets into Tim’s car, closes the door, and slowly sinks from sight.

  “Who told you?” says Lana.

  “The chief is AA.”

  “That rat. What a person says in AA is supposed to stay in AA. He violated the code.”

  Tucker tries to assemble himself into a sober state, tries to keep his words from tripping over one another. “This job I have, as an officer… being on the force… it has a pension.”

  “You’re worried about a pension? How old are you?”

  “I’m twenty-five, and I can retire at forty-two with a full pension and health insurance until I die. That’s security. That’s job security. I can have a family and know I can take care of them. That’s big.”

  He climbs into his truck. “I’ll get you back. I don’t know how but I will.”

  He floors it. The truck throws up stones as it screeches out of the lot.

  “Jerk,” screams Lana as loud as she can.

  On the way to the Tulip Tree, Tracee starts squeaking with anxiety. At first Tim thinks the noise is coming from the motor. He pulls over. Then he realizes it’s Tracee next to him, in the front passenger seat.

  “Put your head down,” he says.

  Tracee drops forward, her head between her legs.

  “Breathe.” He rubs circles on her back. “Breathe, breathe, breathe. That’s good. That’s real good.”

  The squeaks come less frequently, then faintly. Finally they stop.

  Tracee sits up. “Thank you. I feel much better.”

  “I took CPR.”

  Tracee leans close and brushes a piece of lint off his shirt. “Fluff,” she says. How good he smells. Is it aftershave or is he simply one of those people with a wonderful natural scent? For Tim the light brush of Tracee’s hand across his chest is the most exciting moment of his adult life.

  “Would you mind if Tracee and I talked privately?” says Lana.

  Tim gets out, hurries around, and helps Rita out of the back.

  As soon as the door is closed, Lana starts in. “How would I know he’s a cop? Think about it. How would I know?” She is reasonable, calm, soothing. She leans forward between the seats, speaking softly. “Tracee, I am a victim here. I go to AA to feel safe, it’s my salvation. What would I do without it? And look what happens. Somebody rats me out. I took a hit for you.”

  “Huh?”

  “I forgive you. It’s okay.”

  “What?” Tracee is getting all twisted up. Lana forgives her? Isn’t she mad at Lana?

  “Remember when you were starved and we had no money? I borrowed some from AA to get you and Rita grilled cheese sandwiches, and the other day a woman at the meeting accused me of stealing. Like I wasn’t going to pay it back. It was awful. It was a gigantic public humiliation.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “It’s my blood sugar.”

  “I know. You should always carry around M&M’s. We should get a big box of them at the P ’n S.”

  Tracee wants to mention the car. How could Lana kidnap a police car? But she doesn’t want to point it out, she hates to confront. Besides, she gets so lost when Lana explains.

  Lana flops against the backseat. She flicks the ashtray open and shut. “That whole thing with the cop car has to do with hot stoves.”

  “You were cooking?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “He was cooking?”

  “No one was cooking.”

  Tracee sits and blinks. Blinking is something she did when she was little. It was an activity.

  “It’s a very complicated, sophisticated thing to understand about sobriety.

  “Tracee?” Lana says when she doesn’t get a response. “Tee?”

  “I’m going to end up in jail.” Her voice wobbles.

  “He’s suspended. He’s not even on the force. You’re completely safe. Besides, it’s just a dress.”

  Tracee pulls in: knees against her chest, arms wrapping her legs, head tucked down.

  “Where’s Tracee?” says Lana, as if Tracee is a baby.

  She hears a muffled sniffle.

  “Why are you so worried anyway?” says Lana. “Is there something you’re not telling me? Something I don’t know about?”

  This all feels familiar, even though Tracee can’t identify what feels familiar—some way the conversation goes, the way she gets trapped.

  “Not the handkerchief you copped at Goodwill,” says Lana. “I saw that. I mean something else. Something bigger, besides the wedding dress?”

  “Bigger?” Tracee feigns innocence. She hates Lana’s intuition. Or is it telepathy?—they have known each other so long. “No.” She denies it with insult and outrage, the way people do when the opposite is true.

  Outside Tim is pacing back and forth, glancing in the car window, trying not to snoop but worried about Tracee.

  “I have to apologize, Tim,” says Rita. “I’ve been borrowing your car.”

  “That’s okay, anytime. What for?” He slaps a mosquito on his neck.

  “In the morning I walk Marcel.”

  “You walk Marcel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Outside. Just around.”

  Tim thinks about that, imagining the lion on a leash leading the way, which isn’t how it works at all. Rita is the leader. “I bet Mr. M likes that.”

  “I think he does.”

  “How’d you get my keys?”

  “I go into your room when you’re asleep and take them out of your pants pocket. You never lock your door.”

  Lana sticks her hand out the window and waves them in.

  25

  The next night at The Lion, Rita sits in front of the cage, facing the customers. She sits there for a half hour while Marcel sniffs her hair. The customers gasp when his big head looms up behind hers. The sniffing is fascinating, the sound, the variety, sniffs so dainty you could believe it of a kitty, and snorts so loud you might think Marcel was planning to eat her head. Both she and the lion have rusty-brown hair flecked with gray, and, for customers, there is something vaguely erotic about the fact that Rita and the lion share the same color palette.

  Rita loves sensing Marcel’s presence behind her and feeling his breath, which is hot.

  Clayton is riveted. The Lion is packed, not an empty table, but as hard as Clayton works, he still finds that he can’t take his eyes off Rita.

  Later, when everyone has left, they all celebrate.

  “I’ve been thinking about this,” says Clayton. “From now on, no busing tables. You can waitress.”

  “Thank you,” says Rita.

  “We want three jobs, three salaries,” says Lana.

  “You got it.” He uncorks some wine. “Bordeaux?”

  He pours them cheap wine, making a point to serve Rita first. Lana takes a Pepsi from the fridge and they all toast. “To us,” says Clayton, “and a damn big future.”

  “To Marcel,” says Rita.

  26

  The AA meeting has already begun when Lana slams in, rattling the door so fiercely that the bell over it falls off. “Who is the police chief?”

  No one answers—identities at AA are private—but a few heads inadvertently swivel toward a bald man in his fifties sitting on a couch in the corner. His eyes widen slightly behind thick black-framed glasses, the only indication that it might be him.

  “You used my private confession, things I said in here in total secrecy, to wreck someone’s life. Because of you an innocent man may lose his job and his entire future.
You—” She is about to say “suck” but thinks better of it. “If there is such a thing as expelling a person from AA, you should be, and I sincerely urge everyone here to do that.”

  She whirls around and leaves.

  27

  Rita never thinks about the past. It’s as if she were born the moment Lana and Tracee picked her up on that highway. She is so grateful. Now that they have their own room, she leaves little presents on their pillows, like mints in a fancy hotel.

  “What’s this?” says Lana, spying a mini-corsage of pretzel sticks tied with a bit of ribbon.

  “Nothing, really,” says Rita. “Just something.”

  “This is so cute,” says Tracee, nibbling it.

  Another night Rita cuts quarter-moons out of the Fairville Times (a free four-page weekly devoted to classifieds and local happenings) and leaves them as pillow presents, each moon placed carefully, tilted as if it hangs low and lazy in the sky. Another night she gives them each a mini-galaxy—stars cut from newsprint. Sometimes Lana and Tracee find simply a wildflower or a stick of gum. They love the presents and begin to look forward to them.

  Unlike Rita, Lana can’t stop thinking about the past. Being stuck here in limbo until she can pay for the damn car has trapped her between the past and the future, creating a void that shame and guilt have rushed to fill.

  After a night of drinking last January, Lana awoke in her apartment flat on the floor, fully dressed—boots, miniskirt, sweater, down vest. Everything except her underpants. She stood up and, in spite of a splitting headache, had a dawning suspicion. She placed a hand on her thigh and slowly slid it up for certain confirmation. She had no idea, not a clue, how her underpants had left her body.

  When Tracee came home from J.C.’s later that morning, she found Lana in the kitchen drinking coffee and eating Frosted Flakes from the box, shoveling handfuls in her mouth. “I have to stop drinking. I have to go to AA. Will you come with me? Because I’m worried I won’t go. I’m worried I’ll drive right past it and buy a six-pack instead.”

  On the way over, Tracee asked, “What happened to your nose?”

  Lana twisted the rearview mirror to look. Her nose, swollen at the bridge, was red heading toward purple.

  When she had managed to stay sober for seven days and still recalled nothing, she thought, Give it a month. Maybe a bit more. Recovered memory, something she’d either read about or seen on some TV show or other—the trauma would reveal itself later. But that night remained a blank. She speculated: sex with someone she either knew or picked up—a quickie in a car? outside behind the bar? in a narrow hallway near the restrooms?—all things she’d done before. Or things she hadn’t done, like sex with several men? A gang fest. And what about her nose? Had someone punched her? Had she been raped? She examined herself for other bruises, didn’t find any. She took a pregnancy test, an AIDS test. She got tested for every possible venereal disease, waiting, hysterical with worry about the outcomes, which were negative, and believing that she deserved every ounce of suffering. She didn’t want to go to the many bars she frequented to ask what had happened. Even contemplating such a thing was degrading. She wondered if she’d danced on a bar. Had she stripped? Had she tossed some stranger her panties like a bouquet at a wedding? What vulgar acts might she have performed in public?

  What had happened was this. She’d been with a guy named Duke. He’d picked her up at Dario’s, a dive bar on the seedier side of Baltimore. He was a biker and showed her his shark-nose Harley. She tried on his helmet. It was huge, and when he took off down the road speeding, weaving, with her sitting behind him, the helmet fell forward, smacking her nose. She was riding blind, laughing hysterically. By the time he finally wailed to a stop back at the bar, she was weak from laughing. That was the crazy thing about drinking. Emotions came out backward. She’d been frightened to death, and instead of screaming in terror, she’d laughed deliriously. She was a confusion, especially to herself.

  Afterward they sat at Dario’s bar, matching each other shot for shot, seeing who would fall off his stool first. “Whoever does has to tip the bartender their skivvies,” said Duke. He wasn’t wearing any, although she didn’t know that. In any event, she lost. She peeled them off right then and there (on the floor where she landed) without giving a damn who saw, actually hoping that people would appreciate her brazenness. She left her thong on the bar with Duke’s thirty-six dollars for the tab. She gave Duke a blow job to get rid of him and drove herself home, weaving all over the roads but arriving safely.

  Now, at The Lion, whenever she sees someone toasted, or hears a woman in a stall throwing up, or even merely steps outside for fresh air (something she did the other night) and hears a couple laughing a little too loudly, she remembers that she doesn’t remember. It hits her like a ton of bricks.

  The truth is trashy, nothing worse, but she has no idea. She spends her nights guessing at her humiliation, which is worse than knowing. Guessing about what happened, who it happened with, and how many people know it.

  She hates herself. How could she not?

  Lana

  When Lana became a serious and committed drinker she understood how alcoholics provoke and manipulate, by turns begging, angry, hostile, seductive. Feelings dulled by booze left one free to feign anything. But when she was a child, she understood only that her mother was volatile and unpredictable. Lana, Tracee’s protector, who had scared off many a bullying boy, was scared of her own mother.

  One freezing winter night when Lana was nine years old, her mother slammed her fist against Lana’s bedroom door, which flew open and hit the wall. Lana awoke as if shot with a bolt of electricity.

  “Leave her out of it,” said her dad.

  “I hate you,” her mom screamed.

  He pulled the door closed as her mother kicked him in the shins.

  A few minutes later Lana heard her outside. She scrambled over to the window. Her mother was in a fight with her roller bag, cursing as it twisted on the icy walk. Her mom kicked it and went down on her rump, swearing and falling again when she tried to get up, finally grasping handfuls of the hedge to stand. She rerouted, dragging the bag to the curb over patches of slush and stubby grass. “Fuck.” She couldn’t get the key to work in the trunk. Finally it did. She tossed the bag in and slammed the trunk with both hands, then slammed the car door loudly after she got in. The car skidded on ice as she sped away but then righted itself. The taillights didn’t go on until she was at the end of the block. The car spun again on the turn and disappeared from sight.

  Lana yanked off her pajama bottoms and struggled into her jeans in the dark and then waited under the covers, pretending to be asleep when her dad came in to check on her, which she knew he would. “Lana,” he said softly, and when she didn’t answer he kissed her forehead and left. She waited longer, she didn’t know how long. She heard the TV in his bedroom as she tiptoed down the hall, pulled on her snow boots, and slipped out the back door. The small yards in their neighborhood were separated by chain-link fences, and she ducked under, dragged a garbage can to Tracee’s bedroom window, stood on the can, and climbed in.

  Tracee was asleep. Lana tugged her hair.

  “What?” said Tracee.

  “My mom’s gone.”

  “Where?”

  Lana shrugged and Tracee moved over so Lana could squeeze in bed too.

  The next day she and her dad played hooky. It was his idea. “How about you skip school and I cancel my jobs?” They dressed warmly—they “layered up,” as her dad called it—and drove two hours to Chesapeake Bay. They didn’t talk much in the car or on their long walk along the pebbled beach. It was a blustery gray day, which suited them, the water choppy and forbidding. They brought bag lunches and ate them at a picnic table, the paper, plastic, and napkins all secured with rocks. They ate so quietly that a tern landed on the table, scavenging crumbs.

  “I don’t think she’s coming back,” said her dad. “She’s got problems. We can’t fix them.”

&nb
sp; “I don’t want her,” said Lana. “If she showed up right now, I’d throw a rock in her face.”

  That seemed to make her dad even sadder. He put his hand against his head, holding it as if he’d been hit by a rock, helpless about how to make amends for a cruel mother and longing for that crazy, angry woman in spite of himself.

  Lana’s father was popular in Fosberg. “You have such a nice dad.” Lana grew up hearing those words over and over again. Lester, who owned Baskin-Robbins, told her that every time they went for ice cream—peanut butter fudge for her, chocolate for her dad. She heard it from strangers for whom her dad had done electrical work, from her teachers after open-school night. Bob Byrne was polite, he was curious, asking people about themselves and remembering what they told him, but in spite of his manners, he was essentially shy, never boisterous, and revealed little about himself. He was self-employed, honest, charged reasonable prices—some might say too reasonable, he was a soft touch—and was skilled in the work he did. He wasn’t handsome but he was good-looking—of medium build, about five feet, ten inches tall, with a broad, open face and warm dark eyes. His hair, like Lana’s, was a thick, straight reddish brown. “Your dad is not only a gent but he has the best hair in Fosberg,” the barber told Lana. He was steady too. Before her mother left, they always went to the movies on Saturday afternoons and duckpin bowling on Friday nights. Her mother, who never bowled, drank one scotch after another and chatted up anyone she could. Sometimes she disappeared and, when the evening was over, returned, vague about where she’d been.

  After his wife left, Bob Byrne’s life was his daughter and his work. Sunday afternoons he and Lana took a walk. She would race ahead, double back, circle around, waving her arms, raging about one thing, raving about another, confiding while he listened and advised. Every school night he made dinner. Usually Tracee was there. The girls helped with the dishes. Afterward they all hung out at the kitchen table, she and Tracee doing their homework, her dad engrossed in his hobby, building miniature trains.

  Outwardly Lana was fine. A fierce, bright girl who got good grades and always got her way by arguing people into capitulation. But she stopped sleeping. She could be dead tired, out before her head hit the pillow, but inevitably around two in the morning, she woke up. For hours she would wander the house. Her dad had no idea. One night, when she was eleven, she wandered into the kitchen, where her dad had left a bottle of Pabst with some dregs, about two inches or so. She drank it, more from curiosity than anything. And slept like a baby.