Heartbreak Town

by Marsha Moyer

  The fat man finished paying and elbowed his way past us, and Isaac moved forward and set his bottles on the counter.

  "We go back, Ash and me," he said. "I figger I owe him to mind my own business and let him mind his. Anyhow, it's good work. Hot and hard, but beats the hell outta moppin' floors at the hospital. Plus, all the Big Red a man can drink. Can't hardly complain about that."

  He gestured that I should go ahead of him to pay for Jude's Milky Way, and I stepped forward and handed the pimple-faced teenage cashier a dollar.

  "So, when you comin' out to see the Taj Mahal?" Isaac asked as I dropped my change and the candy bar into my purse and turned away from the counter.

  "Surely it's not that big."

  "Oh, I reckon not quite. But it's way more space than one man needs all by his lonesome, for sure."

  "I don't imagine Ash will be by his lonesome for long," I said.

  "I hope not. Man like Ash, he craves company."

  "Tell me about it. I'm sure he'll have the place full up in no time." I squeezed Isaac's arm as the clerk began to ring up his sodas. "It's good seeing you, Isaac. Give Rose my best."

  "Yes, ma'am. Don't be a stranger, you hear? Come on out and take at look at our Dumplin'."

  I walked out to the car, my insides echoing hollowly. There was never going to be that kind of easy, back-door friendship between the Kings and me again. Too much had changed, and we all knew it.

  "What took you so long?" Jude demanded as I unlocked the Blazer and climbed behind the wheel. Despite orders to stay buckled into his safety seat and not mess with anything, I saw right away that he'd cranked up both the air conditioner and the volume on the radio, where Travis Tritt was singing that it was a great day to be alive.

  "Didn't I tell you to stay put?" I said, twisting knobs to regulate both the noise level and the temperature. "Didn't I say that right before I got out of the car?"

  "Did you get my candy?" I passed his Milky Way over the seat. He took it and began to peel off the wrapper. "Is this the biggest one they had?"

  What had become of my baby, the boy who a couple of months before I'd been able to tickle into submission, whose crew cut I'd burrowed my nose against during bedtime prayers, who'd been running through my aunt's backyard wearing a rubber dinosaur head? Who was this dark-skinned, long-limbed creature with hair falling over his ears and the eyes that reflected myself back to me the same way I'd begun to see myself, as a stranger?

  I put the Blazer in reverse and swung out of the Miracle Mart parking lot, peeling carelessly onto the two-lane, pressing the pedal down hard. The engine hesitated a second and then surged forward, the tires humming on the blacktop as we sped home in climate-controlled, stereophonic comfort. I found myself missing my old Buick, the one Ash had helped me acquire from Isaac's brother J.D., with its ugly army-green paint job and torn upholstery, its four hundred and twenty-five horses under the hood. It had been, not to put too fine a point on it, a piece of shit, but a kind of magic always seemed to happen when I got behind the wheel; something great always seemed to be emanating from the radio, "Rescue Me" or "Dock of the Bay," and with all the windows down and its big angel-wing fins swooping up from the back, the rush of air through the cab as I sailed down the highway always made me feel like I was on the back straightaway in heaven. It was the first vehicle I'd ever owned on my own outright and, looking back, letting J.D. buy it back for parts when we moved to Nashville seemed symbolic of some other, larger loss, something that had been falling away from me in chinks so small I'd barely noticed until all of a sudden I found that my undercarriage was rusted out, my suspension gone.

  At home, I managed to finagle Jude into the tub—he wouldn't let me undress or bathe him these last few weeks, claiming he needed "privacy"—and went into the kitchen to start slapping hamburgers together for our supper. As I kneaded and shaped the patties, I thought about Isaac in the Miracle

  Mart with his bottles of soda, the nonchalant way he'd said, "Boss man's orders." If Ash had quit drinking, then why hadn't he said so? Why, the last time the subject came up, had he skirted my question, saying, "It's not that simple"? I kept turning and turning it in my head like the meat I was forming with my hands, but no matter how I fashioned it, it wouldn't come out neat and circular, the way I wanted.

  I placed the burgers on a platter and set it in the icebox, washed my hands and dried them on a dish towel, then walked down the hallway to the bathroom. From behind the closed door came sounds of amphibious destruction, objects being dropped into water accompanied by verbal explosions.

  I rapped my knuckles against the door. "Jude?" Instantly the bathroom grew quiet. "Everything okay in there?"

  "I'm playing!"

  "Well, I need to go outside for a minute. Five minutes, and then I want you out and in your PJs and ready for supper, all right?"

  "What are we having?"

  "Hamburgers."

  "We had that already this week!"

  "Not since Sunday. Would you like to fix supper, for a change?" My voice sounded meaner than I'd meant it to, and Jude's, when it came back muffled by the closed door, was small but still defiant.

  "I don't know how to cook."

  "Then I guess we're stuck with burgers. Five minutes, you hear me?" He didn't answer, and I knocked again, louder this time. "Jude?"

  "All right! Jeesh."

  I let myself out the back door and hurried across the yard to Ash's trailer like a thief in broad daylight. I didn't ask myself what I was doing, whether I had a right to know what was going on in his home or whether this might, technically speaking, constitute trespassing. We were still married, after all, which made us legal co-owners of the land and everything that stood on it.

  I didn't know whether or not he locked the trailer when he was gone, but I doubted it. What was there to steal but a ratty mattress, a couple of plastic chairs? I scaled the cinder-block steps and turned the doorknob, feeling it give under my hand.

  Slipping inside, I shut the door swiftly behind me and leaned against it to catch my breath. Even though all the windows were open, the place was sweltering. I looked around, letting my eyes adjust to the dimness. A neat stack of magazines sat on the fold-out breakfast table, a lone coffee cup was inverted in the dish drainer next to the kitchen sink. I walked over and ran my finger across the surface of the countertop. It came away grime-free and smelling slightly of Lysol. How convenient, having a girlfriend who sold dope and kept your house clean!

  I tiptoed down the hall, sticking my head into the bedroom. A sheet and blanket lay tangled at the foot of the mattress, and a lamp stood with a small grouping of objects on the inverted milk crate Ash used as a nightstand.

  I groped for the light switch, and the items on the milk crate sprang into focus: a glass half-filled with clear liquid, a spiral-bound notebook and an uncapped pen, the small framed photo of Jude and me that I'd seen him unpack on the day he moved in.

  I lifted the glass, sniffed and then sipped, tasting the familiar, slightly metallic flavor of well water. Replacing the glass, I glanced down at the notebook. The top page was jammed with Ash's handwriting, small and crabbed, nearly impossible to decipher. I flipped back a page, which was blank but for three words printed in block letters in the middle of the page:

  CROW FLY DREAMING.

  My heart fluttered, remembering the days before we were married and just after, when words and music poured out of

  Ash like breath. He'd always kept a notebook on the bedside table to jot down lyrics that came to him in his dreams; many a night I'd wake and roll over to the sight of his bare back, his breathing soft and quick as he scribbled away in the moonlight. Sometimes the songs came to him fully formed and he had to scramble to capture them whole, like beautiful insects, careful not to tear a wing or a leg. Other times all he got were bits and pieces, a line here, a phrase there.

  CROW FLY DREAMING.

  It meant nothing, of course, and everything.

  "Ma!"

  I jumped, d
ropping the notebook.

  "Ma!" Jude hollered again.

  Hurriedly, I switched off the light. How was I going to explain what I was doing here? There was no back door, no way I could sneak out and pretend to have been wandering in the woods, nothing I could do but walk down the cinder-block steps in plain sight like the underhanded sneak I was.

  I swung open the trailer door, pasting on a big smile.

  "Hi, baby!" I said brightly, putting a nonchalant swing in my stride as I crossed the yard. Jude was wearing electric-blue swim trunks and a Hawaiian shirt printed with hula girls. "Did you need something?"

  "Phone."

  He watched me reproachfully as I walked past him into the house, trailing me down the hall where I picked up the cordless.

  "Hello?" I said into the mouthpiece, trying to act like my heart wasn't about to beat out of my chest.

  "Help." It was Geneva, sounding like somebody was holding a gun to her head, though I'd heard this tone often enough to doubt that was really the situation.

  "What's the matter?" I said. No response. "Is it Lily?"

  "Mm."

  "Want her to sleep over here?"

  "Bless you. You're saving my life."

  "No problem. Should we come get her, or will you run her out?"

  "I'll bring her. Thirty minutes okay?"

  "Fine."

  "How about twenty?"

  "Tell her we're having hamburgers for supper."

  "I owe you big-time," Geneva said, and hung up.

  "Guess what?" I said, turning to Jude. "Lily's coming over to spend the night. You want to come set the table for me?"

  He followed me to the kitchen, where I opened the cupboard and got down three plates and handed them to Jude, then opened the silverware drawer. When I turned back around with a fistful of forks, he was still standing there, regarding me over the stacked plates.

  "I saw you," he said.

  "Saw me what?" I eased past him and took a set of place mats out of the pie safe.

  "In Daddy's trailer."

  "I was looking for something," I said. "Something I thought I left over there." I wondered what had happened to my policy of not lying to kids. I guessed it had gone out the window at about the same time my cuddly little boy was replaced by this miniature storm trooper.

  "Left there when?" Jude said. "You don't even go there."

  "It was a long time ago. Put those plates down. Lily will be here any minute."

  "You were spying1." Jude said. "Like that guy in the movies— James Blond."

  "It was just a little thing," I said. "It doesn't matter. Now, do you want that coleslaw Aunt Dove made, or should I fix corn on the cob?"

  My son gave me a shrewd look, one that said he was on to me but that his silence could be bought, if I played my cards right.

  "Both," he said. "And pie for dessert."

  "We haven't got any pie."

  "Well, make one."

  "It takes a long time to make a pie. Anyway, I haven't got…" The ingredients, I started to say. The patience. But Jude's eyes told the whole story; in color they were his uncle Bailey's, but in the extent to which they could tie knots in my heart, they were all Farrell.

  "How about if we go to town after supper and get some ice cream at the DQ?" I said. "You and Lily and me."

  He cocked his head—another of his daddy's gestures. "Can I have a banana split?"

  I took the plates from him and set them on the table with a sigh.

  "You can have anything you want."

  chapter nineteen

  "What's eating you, anyway?" Geneva asked as we sat across from each other in a booth at the DQ.

  Since she'd started working three-quarters time, we got to have lunch together every so often, something we hadn't been able to do since I'd moved back to Mooney.

  I took my compact out of my purse and frowned at myself in the tiny mirror. "Do I look the same to you?"

  "The same as what?"

  "Like I did back when things were—you know. Normal."

  "You know what your problem is?" she said, reaching for one of my french fries.

  "Why bother figuring it out for myself, when I've got you to tell me?"

  "You haven't got any direction. You need a purpose. A cause."

  "You mean a mission from God?"

  "Think about it. You've got a job, a kid, but nothing that really, well, grabs you by the throat and won't let go."

  "And you do?"

  "No, but I'm not—" She hesitated, pretending to be chewing thoughtfully while she stalled for time.

  "What?"

  "Now, don't go getting all huffy on me. I just hate seeing you so, well…"

  "What? Unhappy? You think I'm unhappy?"

  "You're putting words in my mouth."

  "Tell me what you meant to say instead, then."

  "Maybe aimless would be a better word. Why don't you take some of that money of yours and do something with it? Like finding yourself a little house someplace exotic. Say Greece. Or Italy! Living among the natives. Learning to cook their food, speak their language."

  "Have you been renting Under the Tuscan Sun again?"

  "Start a little business, then. Something interesting, like a gift shop or a tearoom."

  "Oh, right. A tearoom in Mooney, Texas. Number one tourist destination in the state." Geneva had finished her burger and was giving me one of her patented looks, the one that said she knew more about what was good for me than I ever would. "I like flowers," I said. "I'm good with them. In a few years Peggy might retire and let me have the shop for my own."

  "Honey, I've got news for you. Peggy's gonna carry Faye's with her to the grave. I don't care what she says now, about taking off to spend more time with her grandkids or whatever. That was her mama's place and she'll never turn it loose so long as there's breath in her body."

  I polished off my iced tea. Geneva was probably right, as usual. What's more, I didn't mind if Peggy stayed at Faye's forever. There were some things, like weddings, that still scared the bejesus out of me just thinking about trying to manage alone. Besides, Peggy was my friend. I hoped that, like her mama, she'd die behind the counter, making up a spring bouquet—only not for another thirty years or so.

  Meanwhile, my money from the Nashville house was just sitting there, accruing interest but otherwise doing nobody any good. Most of the time I forgot I even had it. I didn't feel like a person with money, or at least the way I thought someone with money was supposed to feel. Every now and then the thought of my bank balance would pop into my head, and I'd get the urge to do something extravagant, like one of those crazy old ladies you'd read about in the paper every now and then who dies and leaves her fortune to her cats or the local poetry society.

  But I didn't have cats, Mooney didn't have a poetry society, and anyway, I wasn't dead yet. On the other hand, I didn't have the kind of big dreams and ambitions that everybody seemed to think I should have. I wanted Jude to be able to go to college if he wanted, but otherwise I got the shakes just thinking about something as simple as buying a new couch.

  "You know, now that I think about it, I really like the tearoom idea," Geneva mused as we gathered our trash and deposited it in a can by the door. "There's that cute little space next to the Sav-Mor, remember, where Movie Magic used to be?" A few years back, we'd had three video rental stores in Mooney, but the advent of satellite dishes and TiVo had forced all but one of them out of business.

  "Catty-corner from the cafe, you mean? Yeah, I'm sure Burton would love having a tearoom within spitting distance of his place. He'd probably sabotage it before it ever got off the ground. Get somebody to hold back the permits or something. Or, knowing Burton, he'd wait till I'd sunk a bunch of money into the place and then screw things up. Poison the chicken salad, or bribe the health inspector to say I had roaches in the deep freeze. Hang me out to dry and stand there laughing over every minute of it."

  "Did anybody ever tell you that you are a very, very negative person?"

/>   We stood on the sticky asphalt, digging in our purses for breath mints and keys. "I don't want a tearoom, Gen. I don't want to build a business from the ground up, or go remodel a villa in Tuscany. I just want my old life back, the way it used to be."

  "Which old life?" she asked.

  "Good question."

  Back at work, I checked the orders for Monday, straightened the shelves, cleaned out the cooler. The phone didn't ring and not one customer came in all afternoon. I gave Audrey her paycheck and sent her home.

  I hadn't been able to get my conversation with Isaac the day before at the Miracle Mart out of my mind. It was about time, I decided, that I saw the Taj Mahal of northeast Texas with my own eyes.

  I rinsed out the coffeemaker, locked up the shop, and drove through town, around the courthouse square, out the FM road toward home. There hadn't been a break from the heat or drought since the brief storm the night Ash and I had sat in my Blazer listening to Hardy's tape, and the fields lay scorched bare as I passed the old brick ranch house, the arch of trees and vines overhead thinner than before as I drove beneath it and into the clearing, easing off on the gas behind a bevy of pickups: Ash's shiny white-and-chrome monstrosity, Isaac's old two-tone GMC, and a couple I didn't recognize, banged up with age and hard use. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Hardy's little blue Corolla parked over by the handyman's cottage, which, despite allegedly being occupied, didn't look any less ramshackle than the first time I'd seen it. But I didn't really take it in, struck dumb as I was by what filled my windshield, where a field of long, waving grass used to be. I craned my neck up and up, following the soaring framework, the trusses of the peaked roof, a stone fireplace rising two stories into the air. Not exactly the Taj Mahal, but for Cade County, Texas, a definite contender.

  A horn tooted—Isaac, backing up, rolling past me and waving, on his way home. I opened the car door, watching a couple of men crawling around on a wooden platform on the second level. "Not there, Ramon, Jesus," I heard Ash call out from down below. "Look, never mind. Bastante, okay? We'll do it tomorrow. Hey, Luce."