by Janis Owens
“I need to talk to her,” I said quickly, and he answered me just as quickly.
“No,” he said. “No.”
I looked at him. “You don’t have any right to say that. What are you, her daddy?”
“I’m her husband,” he said. “And she’s asleep and you ain’t waking her up.”
I only watched him a moment, lounging there so mildly, his wrists folded quietly on his lap, and closed my eyes, trying for patience. “I need to talk to her, Michael, tell her I’m not after Clayton.”
“No.”
“Yes!” I shouted. ‘Yes, Michael, and you can’t stop me!”
He came to his feet. “No! Hush, you’ll wake the baby—”
“I need to tell her I’m not after anything—”
“No.”
“—that I never meant to hurt her—”
“No, Gabriel. Shut up. The children are asleep—”
“That I love her, Michael. I only told her once. That’s why she ran.” I took a breath, and finished quietly. “She probably doesn’t remember.”
Which was, of course, a lie from the pit of hell, and in retrospect, I can hardly see how such an argument might have convinced Michael of my need to see his wife. But before he could answer, the phone in the kitchen began ringing quietly, so quietly I didn’t hear it, but only followed Michael as he went to answer it. He picked up the receiver, then hung up without a word, returning to our conversation with a little strain beginning to show in the tense lines of his mouth,
“Gabriel. Listen to me. You cain’t see her, it just isn’t possible.”
“Yes it is,” I countered slowly, turning to leave. “Wat—”
Watch, I would have said, had he not hit before I could get the word out, snatching my shirtfront with that catlike quickness and slamming me against the refrigerator, speaking to my face with a quiet, deadly earnestness.
“Gabriel,” he whispered, “how much more of this shit do you think I’ll put up with? Ain’t I held your hand through enough of it? I mean, what do you want me to do here? Tell you to move back in, me take her nights, you have her weekends?”
He let go of me and held his hands up, palms out. “I mean, it’s enough. I got a wife that screams evertime the phone rings, a brother sitting over to my mother’s, plotting to steal her. I got a plant working half-capacity, the Klan breathing down my neck, on my ass twenty-four hours a day—”
“The who?” I asked, and he was still tensed, still prepared to block my way.
“The Klan. The White Knights of the sonofabitch Klan.”
Well, it was clear shit wasn’t the only profanity he was defiling the Southern Baptist Convention with these days, but at the moment I only wondered why in the world the Klan was concerned Myra didn’t know I loved her.
“What the hell does the Klan have to do with this?” I asked.
Michael looked at me with an edge of tormented exasperation. “Well, shit, Gabe, the Klan doesn’t have nothing to with this, but believe it or not, there’s a larger world out there, outside this little fantasy you’ve made yourself, and I’ve had it up to here,” he jabbed his forehead, “with you and them both.”
He lowered his voice. “You know what they did? Last Sunday, I went out to get the paper and there was Missy’s dog, Candace gave him to her, a beagle, she named him Speckles, and he was stretched out on the front steps, a fishing knife in his belly, cut like a pig.”
I was stunned to silence at this, but he didn’t pause. “Like a damn fattening pig, blood all over the steps. I had to bury him in the bushes, quick, had to dig him up to show the sheriff. It hadn’t a been Sunday, it’d a been Myra opening that door.” He looked at me. ‘And you know what would a happened if she’d a found ole Speck laying there with a fillet knife poking out his side? She’d be tied to a bed in Chattahoochee, is what.”
“Why?” I whispered.
His voice was level. Level and tired. “Sam.”
“Sam?” I asked. “Sam McRae?” And at first it didn’t click. I mean I didn’t know Sam very well. I remembered he and Michael used to play ball together on the county bush leagues, and though he was much like us—he’d grown up locally, his grandfather was a preacher, his father a sawyer at the heading mill—there was one difference that had forever barred him from my tight circle of very close, very beloved nine best friends on Lafayette Street: Sam was black. That’s why he didn’t count. That’s why I was so amazed he had the capacity to create such a stir; that’s why Michael’s voice was even drier when he repeated, for my benefit:
“Sam, Sam McRae. I made him general manager when I bought the plant last year. Hell, I had to, he helped me buy it. And first they tried the union. Then we had a walkout and was riding a little low in the water but getting by, getting by. Then this stupid peckerwood klavern—five or six strong—started messing with it, and they been giving us hell. Dogging Sam, dogging me, calling here at night, threatening to firebomb the house—”
If the dog had scared me, this really gave me a chill, and I said, quickly, “Then listen, Michael, change his title. That’s all they care about. Call him the Chief Production Clerk or something, anything. I mean, he’ll have the same job. Hell, give him a raise, but don’t open yourself up to this. You’re right, Myra’s too fragile—”
“No!” he said, slapping the counter with the flat of his hand and turning on me. “No, I won’t. It’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong.” Then, in savage mimic, “Change his title. Call him Chief Production Clerk—shit, Gabriel, I’m ashamed of you, ashamed for Daddy’s sake. You sound like one of my pissant account—but no—” He beat the counter again. “Sam’s been there longer than anybody. His daddy worked it. His grand-daddy helped build it. Hell, he knows more about running it than anybody, including me. Old Man Sanger hired me over his head, made him show me the ropes and it’s wrong. It’s wrong. I won’t do it. I’ll roll it over first. I’ll tear it apart, saw by saw—”
“But Myra, think about Myra—”
“Yeah, Myra,” he said. “Let’s talk about Myra. Myra and Sam, and how he was the only man I trusted when she was acting out, the only one I knew wouldn’t touch her. I mean, it wasn’t the easiest job in the world. I seem to remember you lasting about a week at it—but Sam, he never said a word against her. He understood. He’s just like that. He’s always been there for me, and he’s the manager of Sanger till it closes. I don’t care what any jackass in a robe says. I’ll break their backs over it, Gabe, break their backs, you just watch me. I will—” He paused for a breath, and after a moment of facing me off, seemed embarrassed at his vehemence, turning aside, murmuring, “I know you don’t believe me, but I will.”
“I believe you, Michael,” I said simply, for I did. “I mean, next time I call, they’ll all be joining the ACLU. I don’t doubt it for a minute.”
But he was too harassed to smile, only standing there, his breath still a little hard, and when the phone on the wall began ringing again, just barely, as if the bell had been turned down, he picked up the receiver and handed it to me without a word, letting me hear a fragment of a low, steady stream of venom: “—of a bitch and thet whore wife a yours think you are, moving into thet fine house, thinking you live above us—”
It was so vicious it made the hair on my neck stand up, but Michael’s expression was only one of exasperation as he took back the receiver and hung up.
“See? Every night. Whore wife, whore wife. But you just wait. Production’s up, and when production goes up, profits go up, and when profits go up, I’m bumping the pay to the roof. Show those bastards what kind a bed they’ve made for themselves. They can rot on Magnolia Hill for all I care. They’ll never work for me again.”
There was a quiet ruthlessness about him that made me hesitate to ask, but I knew time was running out and was too desperate to worry with anything as trivial as fear, cornering him at the counter, and speaking to his face:
“Listen, Michael, I won’t say a word to her about love, I swear to God,
I just want to tell her I’m not after Clayton.” He tried to interrupt, but I pressed on. “You can tell her till she dies and she’ll never believe you—”
The phone began it’s faint trilling again, and he reached for it, that harassed look back in his eye. But I didn’t care; I’d rather he kill me than leave the echo of that profane accusation (whore wife, whore wife) unanswered.
“Five minutes,” I begged. “Five minutes, Michael. Can’t you afford that? I won’t say a word about love. If she’s asleep, I won’t wake her, I swear on Daddy’s eyes.”
A childish proclamation, that, swearing on dead men’s eyes—something we’d once done as children, little boys playing in the backyard, fighting over toy trucks—and whether Michael took it at face value or was touched by a tiny shimmer of the memory of sandy dirt and pine-smelling straw, I don’t know, but he picked up the phone and stood there a moment with the receiver cradled against his chest.
“Five minutes,” he said.
Well, I didn’t waste any seconds on the stairs or hall, and when I made the upper story and saw that the bedroom door was open, and the light still on, a surge of hope rose that fell like mercury on ice when I made the corner and saw her, for she was, as Michael had warned, sound asleep. Not as if she’d turned in for the night, but as if sleep had caught her in the act of reading, a book fallen from her hands, her hair still wrapped in a towel from her bath.
The reason for the deep, unexpected sleep was sitting on the bookshelf above her head, a tiny bottle with a long name and a big dosage, dated December twenty-sixth, the day I came to town. She must have gone straight from Mama’s to the pharmacy for the refill, standing in line with the baby in her arms, waiting for her prescription, looking over her shoulder to see if I’d followed.
I sat down on the edge of the bed, hoping I’d waken her, but she was stone-cold unconscious, barely breathing, her face calm and peaceful. After a moment, I sighed and looked around the room. Nothing was changed since the day I’d sat her down and told her about Virginia, but for the first time I noticed the books. Shelves and shelves of them, in the headboard, stacked beside the bed: Tender Is the Night, Brideshead Revisited, The Sound and The Fury. Big books, Michael called them, and I wondered if she still told him stories in bed at night, if she’d come across The Souls of Black Folk, and Sam’s promotion and the ensuing flak could be traced back to her flushed, excited face: (“And listen, Michael, there’s a whole chapter on the black belt, right up there by Albany, and it’s so sad, listen, honey, them people up there, they never had no chance—”)
I sighed again, and looked down at her peaceful face, her small white hands, then lay down beside her, my face near her hair, the smell bringing up so many memories that I blinked. I was careful to keep my hands to myself and not get Sims-like about it, then relaxed and thought how this would be the way we slept at night, she and I, were we married. And I’d take it for granted. It wouldn’t move me at all. She’d just be my wife, the mother of my children, someone I’d argue with over money with and sit with at weddings and face over supper every night, never realizing till she died how much I needed her, how that what had started out as two had indeed become one.
The time passed, five, then ten, then fifteen minutes, but still, I didn’t move, for it was so sweet, and I’d never see her again, after all, never touch her, never smell the apple scent of her hair, not me. I knew I had to leave, go back North or East or West, and stay put, so that after a year or two, she could relax and resume a normal, stingless life of skating rinks and smiling sister-in-laws, with death and insanity so far removed they were appeased with florist flowers and self-deprecating jokes on the porch.
A life much like the one I once enjoyed beneath the massive oak and camphor of Magnolia Hill, the one her father had denied her, and yes, it was bitter I had to reap the sacrifice for his sin, bitter as gall, as Mama would say. But once I’d made up my mind, I was quite peaceful about it, sitting up and kissing her forehead very lightly, then going back downstairs, thinking if Michael would prove his love by staying, then I could prove mine just as well by leaving; prove it more, for Clayton was up when I got back to the kitchen, taking a bottle from Michael, who began apologizing the moment he saw me.
“He always has one at eleven. He’d scream all night.”
“S’all right,” I murmured, watching him clutch the bottle in his fat little hands, and when he’d sucked it dry, I asked Michael if I could hold him. I didn’t think he’d let me, at first. Then I thought he’d hit me for asking. Then he set the empty bottle on the counter and handed him over.
“Careful. He’s a puker.”
But I made no precautions, cradling him clumsily against my chest like an infant, feeling his weight in my hands.
“He’s fat.”
Michael answered in the voice of an experienced father. “He’ll lose it when he starts walking.” He laughed. “If he starts walking. He won’t even sit alone yet.”
At the sound of Michael’s laughter, it seemed to dawn on Clayton that he was in the hands of a stranger, his round little Gerber face beginning to pucker up in what looked like the prelude to a mighty roar. I handed him back to Michael, who took him easily, and changed the frown to a chortle of laughter by lifting him over his head and speaking to his face in a light, baby nonsense. “He’s just an old lazy boy, aren’t you, sweetpea? Daddy’s gone put him to work at Sanger, toughen that old baby up.”
He wasn’t calling himself Daddy to underline any victories here, but the effect on me was pretty devastating, and I blinked and looked around the room one more time, impressing to memory the shining floors, the long arched windows, the piney, Christmasy smell.
“Well,” I said after a moment, “I guess I need to be going.” But still, I didn’t move, but only watched Michael hold my son, thinking how well he did it, in its own way as flawless as his pitches. Then I remembered the kidney and bone-marrow business.
Michael nodded. “Sure, Gabe.”
“And listen, Michael, never let that bitch Mrs. Odom keep him, d’you hear me? She’ll switch him.”
Michael smiled. “You been listening to Mama. Miz Odom’s all right.”
“No,” I said. “Promise.”
He sighed. “All right.”
I stood there a little longer, and when nothing else came to mind, I said I guess I’d better be going and went out the French doors into the cold night that smelled of ice and wet leaves, crossing the deck and getting in my car when something else occurred to me, and I went back and tapped on the French door. This time Michael opened it without the shotgun or the baby, stepping out into the cold in his bare feet.
‘And listen,” I told him, “when he’s grown, him and Sim and Missy, too, you sendem up North to school. I’ll see about them. Get to know them, maybe.”
“Sure, Gabe,” he said. “We’ll talk about it.”
He was coatless in the December chill but walked me to my car, listening impassively as I spoke. “And you don’t have to tell him anything about me, why I’m not married—listen, you can tell him I’m gay or something.”
He smiled. “You’ll marry.”
But I demurred, “No. No, I don’t think so—”
“Come on, Gabe, how old are you? Twenty-seven? Don’t let this thing eat you alive. Go make a life for yourself. Find you a wife of your own—”
‘No,” I said, annoyed at his insistence that I settle for something less than the ideal, when God knows, he never had. “Why would I want to crawl in bed every night with a woman I don’t love? You don’t.”
He rolled his eyes at this, the Michael of old, who used to nag me to play baseball. “Damn, you are stubborn—” he murmured. “You have always been so damn stubborn. I know where Clayton gets it.”
It was an admission I could not understand him making and looked at him curiously. “It doesn’t bother you? That he’s not yours?”
Michael was standing with his arms folded against the cold, his eyes on the stars, when he ans
wered. “Well, I figure he’s either my son or my nephew, so we’re kin one way or another—” He paused and I waited for his confession of uncertainy, his pronouncement of regret, but he only shrugged. ‘Anyway, that sweet little baby in there and whose blood is running in his veins is the least of my worries.”
We’d reached the car, and I was opening the door, but stopped long enough to say, very firmly, “Yeah, well, listen Michael, don’t you worry about that damn Klan. Listen, next time they call, you tell those stupid racist pigs if they ever step foot on this place again, and your brother hears about it, well they’ll be plenty sorry.”
Even as I said it, a small smile began playing around Michael’s mouth, but he held it straight till I caught a glimpse of my white, uncalloused hand on the car roof and felt a smile forming on my face. “God, I know they’ll be, terrified” I said, and we began laughing, both of us.
I mean, it was just so absurd, the Big Man doing his Big Talk, and we laughed and laughed, till suddenly, Michael was crying, hugging me over the car door, not whispering, but saying aloud in my ear, “I love you, Gabe. It’s killing me to see you go like this. Remember us, remember us—”
Now, I have mentioned my ability to cry louder and longer than any woman I’ve ever known, and I was really going strong there for a while, finally having to resort to humor to get things back in line, blowing my nose, trying to smile, saying, “Damn, I hate leaving you moren Myra. Hey, listen, Michael, why don’t you run off with me?”