Mary grabbed him under the arms, and he let her. She helped him into the wheelchair. Sweat had beaded on his upper lip, and he wiped it away. He was so mad he tasted metal. He narrowed his eyes at her.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
He continued to narrow his eyes until they were completely shut. He saw darkness and popping flashes of anger. He knew she was looking down at him. He hoped she was feeling guilty for leaving him while she did whatever she did with her new boyfriend. Hardy-har-har. “He’s in a wheelchair. He can’t talk. And here I am, driving around in your convertible.” Hardy-har-har. “I love the way the wind feels whipping against my face. I feel so free. So alive.” Hardy-har-har. He opened his eyes. She wasn’t standing in front of him like he thought she would be, like he secretly hoped she would be. He heard her in the kitchen. She was getting a glass from the cabinet. She turned on the tap.
Chic & Diane Waldbeeser
1970
Chic found the first doll at a Salvation Army in Peoria. It was ratty as hell, with a missing eye and crayon scribbles on its bald head. He called the counter lady over and asked her if women liked to receive dolls as gifts.
“Does it make them want to be mothers?” he asked. “Is that why you give little girls dolls?”
The woman stared at him.
“Well,” he said, “I thought it prepared them to be mothers.”
“You give little girls dolls so they have something to play with.”
“Yeah, well, sure, but it also prepares them to be mothers, right?”
When he arrived home, Chic put the doll in a brown paper bag and left it at the bottom of the stairs. He sat down on the couch to wait for the news to come on, then Johnny Carson. Diane would be down soon for some soda and peanut butter toast, maybe a couple of raw hot dogs. Chic looked at the bag at the bottom of the stairs. The doll was a fantastic idea, a stroke of brilliance, if he didn’t say so himself. This was going to get them headed in the right direction. They’d been spinning their wheels for too long. Heck, they hadn’t had sex in he didn’t know how long.
Sometime after midnight, while half dozing on the couch, Chic heard Diane’s footfalls across the ceiling. She came down the stairs quietly. Seeing the bag, she stopped. Chic pretended to be asleep, but kept his eyes open slightly. He watched as she picked up the bag and tested its weight. Then she peered inside and took out the doll. Chic had done his best to clean it up—scrubbing the crayon markings from the head and gluing a button to replace the missing left eye. She took the doll with her back upstairs.
Many more dolls followed over the next few months. Chic scoured estate sales and trade papers to find them. He hung a notice on the bulletin board at Stafford’s—WANTED: YOUR OLD DOLLS. In order to make room for the dolls, he moved the furniture in Lomax’s room down to the basement, vacuumed the carpet, and reassembled the crib. He carried a rocking chair up from the basement and placed it next to the crib. He hung shelves on the walls and a mobile in the corner.
At night, when the house was quiet and Chic was downstairs watching the Tonight Show, Diane would sneak down the hall to admire the doll collection. They lined up on the shelves, stone-faced, staring out over the nursery. She remembered Lomax waking her up in the middle of the night when he was a baby. He wanted her. He cried for her. She went to the dolls and took one off the shelf, then another, and another, and held them close to her, hugging them. She sat down on the rocking chair. She used to hold Lomax in this chair, daydreaming about what he’d be like when he got older. It had been ten years. A whole decade had blurred by in a snap, and she had wasted it in bed, lying there and listening to the radio. She didn’t want to feel like this anymore. She needed to move on. She needed to get out of this house; she needed to pull herself together.
Chic heard his wife in Lomax’s old room. He set his can of beer down on the coffee table and crept up the stairs. The door was cracked just enough so that he could see her sitting in the rocking chair, holding three dolls tightly against her chest. Her eyes were closed, and she was rocking back and forth. He wanted to put an end to the depressing cloud that hung over the house like a swarm of gnats. He wanted to take her right there in Lomax’s old room. Right there. On the floor in front of the rocking chair. He wanted to take her, like he had taken her in Florida. He ducked his head in and cleared his throat.
“I was thinking that maybe . . . you know . . . maybe it was time to . . . ” he looked at her and winked “ . . . give it another try.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Come on. It’s been . . . Diane . . . let’s . . . it’s why I got you the dolls.”
“I haven’t forgiven you, Chic.”
“Forgiven me. For what? Lijy?”
“I don’t think I’ll ever forgive you. For any of it. ”
He stood there staring at her. “Diane . . . ” he began, but she interrupted him.
“No. Don’t say anything. Don’t say another word. Just, please, get out. Just leave me alone. I want to be alone.”
He shut the door and stood in the dark hall. He didn’t know what to think. He wanted to turn around and throw open the door and yell at her, raise his voice and scream at her. This wasn’t his fault. None of this was his fault. Not one bit of it. Couldn’t she see he was trying here? She had to work with him. She had to try, too. But he didn’t open the door. He didn’t do anything. He simply went down the hall to the bedroom, but he didn’t want to sleep in the bedroom, so he went downstairs to the living room. He finished his beer and went into the kitchen and turned on the faucet to disguise the noise he was about to make. He crushed his beer can as quietly as he could and hid the can at the bottom of the garbage. Then he made himself a bed on the living room couch.
Lijy & Russ & Ellis McMillion
October 8, 1970
Lijy looked up Lexington on a map and saw that it was a tiny town, a mere gas stop on I-55 in the sea of corn between Middleville and Chicago. She left Buddy in charge of the store—telling him she was going to take Russ to the park for the afternoon—and made the hour-and-a-half drive.
The high school was on the edge of town, and the softball diamond was behind the school by the bus lot, which abutted a cornfield. Lijy parked the car on the street. Russ, who was eating raisins in the backseat, wanted to know where they were, and Lijy told him that they were on a secret mission and that he was never, ever to tell his daddy about it. Russ said he liked secret missions and popped a raisin in his mouth.
Lijy and Russ sat in the bleachers behind home plate. Down on the field, Ellis, his hair pulled back in a ponytail under a baseball cap, Ray-Ban sunglasses wrapped around his face, was hitting grounders to the infielders. Last year, his team had won the Class A State finals, and over the past three seasons, their record was fifty-seven wins and only seven losses. This year, they were poised to make another run for the state championship. That would make two state championships and one-third place finish over the past four seasons. Deep down, however, Ellis knew that the team’s success had little to do with his coaching and, more to do with the fact that Illinois’s best female softball player, Colleen Popper, happened to live in Lexington. Colleen Popper was a broad-shouldered, beefy catcher with blonde hair and a .584 career batting average. She’d grown up the only girl in a family of five boy, and by the time she was seven was playing in the boys’ Little League; by twelve, she was the tailback on the town’s traveling peewee football team. In only ten games, she rushed for over a thousand yards.
Ellis noticed Lijy and Russ as soon as they took their seats in the bleachers. Seeing the two of them, he felt something inside of him move. He’d waited for this day for a long time. He’d dropped off the picture hoping to jumpstart things into action, and here it was happening; it was officially in motion. After he was done hitting grounders, he went to the bench, which was enclosed by a chain-link fence, while the girls took batting practice. He continually looked over at Russ and Lijy. Lijy kept a sharp eye on him as well. She thought she had
made it clear that she didn’t want anything to do with him and his phases and plans. If she hadn’t been clear enough that afternoon at her house, she was going to be more than clear this time.
A big, blonde-haired girl went to the bench to put on her batting helmet and select a bat. Lijy noticed that there was something peculiar about the girl’s interaction with Ellis. She kept nuzzling up to him, rubbing against him like a cat. Ellis kept stepping away from her and looking over at Lijy, smiling nervously. At one point, the big girl put her hand on Ellis’s rear end, gave it a squeeze, then slipped her hand into his back pocket. She left it there until it was her turn to bat. She took her place in the batter’s box. The pitcher, a small girl, looked worried. The blonde-haired girl tapped her bat on the plate and took an aggressive stance, rear elbow out, squatting. The pitcher tried to speed an underhanded fastball by her, but the big girl ripped it over the centerfielder’s head, the ball clanging against the chain-link fence. She sent the second pitch deep into the cornfield in right field. She pulled the third pitch foul, the softball skipping down the third base line, but she crushed the next pitch over the scoreboard in center. Then she was done. She went back to the bench, dragging her bat behind her. Ellis clapped and said, “That a girl. Good hittin’.” Passing Ellis, the girl craned her neck upward and tried to give him a kiss on the cheek, but he ducked away. Lijy couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She’d known Ellis was a perverted snake who had seduced her with his quivering tongue, but . . . a high school girl? What was she thinking, coming here to Lexington? She didn’t want to talk to him. She couldn’t talk to him. A high school girl?
Lijy nudged Russ in the shoulder and told him it was time to go. Down on the field, the softball team huddled together on the pitching mound and did some sort of rah-rah cheer before sprinting off across the outfield toward the high school. The only player who didn’t run off was the blonde girl. She put her glove on her head and moped around home plate, kicking dirt while Ellis picked up the batting helmets.
“Go,” Ellis said, waving her on. “I’ll meet you in the parking lot.” Hanging her head, she slowly crossed the outfield.
After she had disappeared into the school, Ellis came over to the fence by the bleachers. Lijy had hung around just so she could tell him what a snake he was.
“Is that him?” Ellis asked.
“Of course it’s him. Who do you think it is?”
“It’s me,” Russ said.
“Do you know who I am?” Ellis poked a finger through the chain-link fence and wiggled it. “Hello. I’m me. You’re you.”
Russ looked at his mother, not sure what was going on. “Who is he, Mom?”
“No one,” Lijy answered. “Russ, can you get my purse—I left it in the bleachers.” Lijy had intentionally left her purse behind, knowing that she would need a minute alone to talk to Ellis.
She waited until Russ was out of earshot.
“I saw you—you and that girl, the big girl,” she said angrily. “She stuck her hand in your back pocket. She tried to kiss you.”
“I’ve been alone for ten years. Ten years! It’s like I’ve been in the desert. I’m Simon of the Desert. Do you know that movie? That’s me. I’m Simon. And you’re the devil. The world is the devil. Everyone is the devil.”
“She’s in high school.”
“She’s gonna be eighteen in three months. And besides—you’ve seen her—she’s a softball goddess.”
“No more disguises. No more visits to the store. I’m not part of your plan. I never have been and I never will be. I thought I made myself clear. I do not want to have anything to do with you ever, ever again.”
“From the moment we were together, you have been a big part of my plan and I have been a big part of your plan. You’re the mother ship. You have radioactive flesh.”
“Look, I don’t want you in my life anymore. Or Russ’s. I don’t want to be your mother ship. And what are you talking about, radioactive flesh?”
“I’m his father. You can’t change that.”
“I’ve changed it. His father is Buddy. He actually has two fathers. He thinks his father is my brother-in-law. But anyway that’s beside the point. Neither of them would let a high school girl grab his behind in public.” She thought that maybe Chic would allow this, but she wasn’t sure.
“I’m blood. I’m the blood father. I’m the sperm. Look at him. He looks just like me.”
It was true. Russ looked like Ellis; he had his beady eyes and lanky long limbs. Later, when he got to college, he’d start pushing his glasses up on his nose when he was nervous and would have no idea it was a genetic tic passed down to him.
“I wanted to hurt Buddy. You were a warm body. You’re right. You were sperm. That’s it. That’s all you were. It was a mistake, and I’m trying to clean that mistake up. That’s my plan. I have a plan, too, you know.”
“I love when you get feisty like this.”
“Good-bye, Ellis.”
“Wait.”
“Leave us alone. Let us live our lives. And go about your life. Just . . . we’re through, Ellis. And if you ever try to get into my life again, I’ll . . . I don’t know what I’ll do, but I promise you won’t like it.” Russ returned with the purse, and Lijy grabbed his hand and pulled him away.
Ellis threw his hat on the ground, jumped on it, then yelled, “You are ruining the plan, Lijy. This isn’t part of the plan.”
“What’s he talking about, Mommy?” Russ asked.
“Just ignore him, honey.”
“Give me your tired, your poor,” Ellis continued, getting dramatic, “your huddled masses yearning to be free. You want to be free, Lijy. I know you do. Come to me. Come back to me. You need me. I’ll set you free.”
She kept walking toward the car with Russ, away from Ellis. “We’re going to get some ice cream,” she told him, “and I’m going to tell you something that you can never, ever tell anyone.” Over ice cream, she’d explain everything. Of course, Russ wouldn’t understand. He was only ten, but in time, he would understand. Maybe he’d never understand. No one really understands, really, why they do what they do. She wasn’t sure she fully understood. Maybe he’d get angry. Maybe he’d cry. Maybe he’d cross his arms and stare at her. She couldn’t take that. Her little boy, glaring at her. She could not take that. How could she tell Russ the truth, especially since she and Buddy had already told him the “truth” about her and Chic when he was four years old? Buddy had demanded she tell him, and even though she didn’t really want to, she did it. The news about Ellis would spin Russ’s world like a top. It would mess him up. He might never recover, and she couldn’t have that. Today wasn’t the right time. Today, they’d just get ice cream, and she’d tell him how much she loved him because she did love him. She was protecting him. That was what she was doing. She was protecting him, and wasn’t that what love was? That’s how much she loved him. Buddy, too. She’d protected him. Both of them. Yes, she had hurt Buddy in the process of protecting him, but she had lessened the hurt with a lie, so that was still protection, still the truth. What was truth, really, if you wanted to get philosophical about it? Buddy was Russ’s father, maybe not the biological one, but he was his father, and that was truth enough.
Twelve
Diane Waldbeeser
1971
Diane stood on the bathroom scale. She waited a moment for the dial to settle. Two hundred and eighty-seven pounds. She’d dropped fifteen pounds. For the past two weeks, inspired by something Dr. Peale had said on his program—“Have great hopes and dare to go all out for them. Have great dreams and dare to live them. Have tremendous expectations and believe in them.”—she had been on a drastic diet, trading in raw hot dogs and soda for black tea and bananas.
Energized by her weight loss, Diane threw herself into getting the house in order. She started in the bedroom, picking up the clothes that were strewn about like a garage sale, the soda bottles on the nightstand, the old plates of food that had been pushed under the bed.
She cleaned the baseboards and wiped the dust from the blades of the box fan. She reorganized the shoes in her closet, lining them up by style. She folded the clothes in her drawers, and in Chic’s drawers, too. Then she moved to the bathroom, scrubbing the tub, sink, and toilet. In the kitchen, she cleaned out the fridge. She swept the front porch and the driveway and the sidewalk in front of the house. She cleaned out the gutters and weeded the barren patch of ugly earth in the backyard where Chic had tried to dig a pool. She cleared out the attic, pulling out the boxes and labeling them with black marker—CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS, OLD PHOTOS, etc. She vacuumed the whole house. The cleaning fit took three days. Once or twice, Chic asked if he could help, but she said she didn’t want his help. The house hadn’t been this spotless since the day they moved in. She demonstrated how clean it was by wiping her finger in random places and showing Chic. “See, no dust here.”
Diane felt rejuvenated—alive, fully conscious. She stopped listening to the radio. She did sit-ups. She took drives in the car. She stood in the backyard and took big, deep breaths of fresh air. She walked around the block, waving at her neighbors and shouting, “Hello there!” She painted her toenails. She sat on the front porch and drank ice tea. She went to Stafford’s and pushed a cart up and down the aisles. Stafford’s had changed. They’d expanded and rearranged the store, putting the frozen food section in the back and bringing the produce to the front. And the produce! There were now exotic items like pineapple and mangos. There was also an entire section devoted entirely to vitamins. (Diane didn’t know this, but this was Stafford’s reaction to Buddy and Lijy’s health food store.) When her alarm clock buzzed at a quarter to six in the morning, she threw back the covers and announced, “World, I am Diane Waldbeeser, and I am getting up now.” And with that, she sprang out of bed. She’d spent over a decade in that bed. She tried to recall the thoughts she’d had while lying there, listening to the radio, but when she closed her eyes to call them up, there was just darkness. But that life was over now—she was moving forward.
Onward Toward What We're Going Toward Page 22