by Sands Hall
“You aren’t—”
“—but I was so afraid of this. Sitting around with you. Your heart a kite tugged by a different string.”
“My heart is not— Maud. We don’t know each other well enough for you to presume to interpret my thoughts! Please.”
Looking chastened, even shocked, Maud sat back down.
“I’m not bored.”
“Okay. It’s me. Being weird. I do that.” After a pause she said, “I could tell you about visiting Sam.”
“That’s a good topic.” Jake picked up his guitar, began to noodle. “When did you go?”
“Monday. We took the girls. We drove for over three hours, then sat around his bed trying to think of things to say.”
“Was the radical there?” Jake formed an augmented chord, diminished it, strummed this hard with his pick.
“Was he. Lizzie calls him The Asshole. Capital T, capital A.”
Jake strummed the chord again, adding a sour flat.
Maud shook her head. “He plans to lash Sam’s body to the top of a tree when he dies. The old ways. I mean, I respect it, it’s just so—Even Sara, calm, serene, let-it-be Sara, she’s speechless. Angry. Doesn’t know what to say.”
“And how does The Asshole know Sara?” Sara’s theme was a series of pretty descending notes.
“I told you about Driver hitchhiking when I was on my way here? That night I drove him to his aunt’s trailer, Maggie’s. That’s where they’ve taken Sam. Maggie—” Maud stopped. “Let’s see. Maggie is a major chord: spangling, cheerful, nice and round. I really like her. She makes Sam twinkle, which is as close as you get to a laugh out of him.”
She nodded when Jake found an appropriate chord for Maggie. “Maggie, it turns out, is also Bitter Water clan, related to Sara, so Sara is related to Driver. It’s so weird. I’m driving from L.A.—fleeing L.A.—and I run into Driver. I actually stayed in the trailer where Sam is now sleeping.” She smiled at the series of sounds Jake created to accompany her story. “And now all this.”
“Lizzie says Sam isn’t any better.”
“I wish he were. I actually want him to be, so it’ll be right that they did what they did. No matter how hard it was on Lizzie, you know?” Jake nodded. “They’ve had smokes in the hogan with other Bitter Water clan members. There was a ceremony of some kind planned for the evening after we left. Not that they expected us, or wanted us, to participate.”
“I understand that.”
“I do too! Don’t get me wrong. And if I didn’t, Driver would be sure I did. All the same, Sam doesn’t know any of them.” She pushed her hands through her hair. “What would we do without family.”
Their eyes met, jumped apart. After a pause, he asked, “Want to stay the night?”
Her cheekbones stood out, flaring a dusky red. “Maybe I could have that other beer now.”
Jake took the opportunity to go to the john. Had a hard time pissing. His cock was erect. When he got back with her beer she was looking at the spines of the assorted paperbacks lodged in his shelves. An edge of danger, even darkness, vied with the prosaic furniture, the stucco walls. He cleared his throat. Handed her the beer.
“Thanks.” Maud pulled a paperback from the shelf. Jake thought of the books he’d seen piled beside the chair and on the piano at her house the evening he’d spent there. Seven Arrows. Three Pillars of Zen. Necessary Wisdom. Spiritual Materialism. A large paperback with a lurid red cover, Spiritual Emergency, carefully tucked under a newspaper.
She shelved the book. “Part of me wants to say yes. I’m tired. I’d love not to have to go back to a cold house, I’d love to hold. Be held.” Her voice shook. “But staying would probably mean we would—sleep together. Whatever the word is. That describes what it is we would do.” Maud the crone had reappeared. “I’d like to. It’s simple. But then I have to wonder—by now you know I’m like this—is it simple?”
Jake dropped on the sofa, head in his hands.
“I’ve never been good at living in the moment. I always ask, ‘But what about tomorrow?’ ” The couch sagged as she sat beside him. “Lizzie tells me I complicate everything, and maybe I do, maybe I am. But on the other hand, it seems to me that making love with you might be a pretty complicated act.”
Jake kept his head in his hands. Watched Maud’s slender, arched feet in their opaque black socks. Toes curled. “Lizzie says things are just what they are. I have a hard time believing that. Maybe I’ve been an actor for too long. I’m too used to asking, ‘What’s this scene really about?’ I try not to do it. But I do.”
“It’s exhausting.”
“Yes, it is. In this case I keep asking, ‘Am I attracted to Jake because I’m simply attracted to Jake, or for some other, ulterior reason? Is he attracted to me, or is it—’ ” She didn’t finish this. Jake swallowed before looking at her. She peered at his eyes, as if there was something specific she wished to see there. “I wonder if we shouldn’t stick to a chronicle of the day’s events,” she said.
After a long silence they both started to laugh. “Maybe it is simple,” Jake said. Leaned towards her. She met him halfway. Their lips bumped, adjusted, bumped again. A clinical, lip-to-lip kiss. They drew apart.
Maud took a shaky breath.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked.
“Not so bad.”
He stood. Held out his hand.
The phone blared. Jake jerked awake. Had no problem remembering who was in the bed with him. “I had such a dream,” Maud murmured. “What a dream.”
The phone shrilled again. Jake rolled over. Scrabbled amongst the receipts and coins and pens and song beginnings on his night table. “It’s six o’clock in the goddamn morning,” he said into the phone, ready to berate Randy, the only person he knew who would dare to call him this early. Or this late, depending on what she’d been up to.
A long pause on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry, Jake. Is Maud there? I need to talk to her, real bad.”
“Jeep,” Jake said. “Jeep, you okay?”
“Is Maud there?”
“Hold on.” Jake turned on the bedside lamp. Maud rolled over to look at him. She took the phone gingerly, as if it might bite her. “Hello?”
It took Jake a few minutes to wonder how it was Jeep would know Maud was at his apartment. He had an inkling, however. He put his hands behind his head, settled back against the pillows, and said, “Hoo boy.”
Maud nodded from time to time, murmuring agreement. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
She handed the phone to Jake to hang up and pulled the sheet over her head. “I need to get up, right now, and I can’t bear to face this day. Jeep slept at Lizzie’s last night.”
Jake waited.
“Jeep went to see Sue earlier this week.” The sheet fluttered in front of Maud’s mouth. “At the clinic. She scheduled an appointment. But she thought Lizzie wouldn’t approve, and didn’t tell her until last night. Lizzie’s got a mandatory meeting at school this morning and can’t take her. So Jeep calls me to ask if I’ll drive her down to Farmington. When I don’t answer my phone, Lizzie tells her to try this number. I assume Jeep didn’t know it was yours until you answered.” She pulled the sheet down to check his reaction. In the light from the lamp her skin looked pale blue. Eyes heavy, bruised-looking.
“Was Lizzie there?”
Maud nodded. “I’m sure she was. Fuck!” She rubbed her eyes. “And then there’s this awful dream. May I take a shower?”
“Of course.”
“Jeep asked would you please call Sue, say she’ll be late.” Maud pushed back the sheet. She still wore her shirt and skirt. “Tell Sue that Jeep did what she was supposed to—didn’t eat and all that.”
He dialed the clinic. “Sue Knobbler, please.”
Maud perched on the edge of the bed, adding details she wanted him to include. She kept her voice low, but Sue demanded, “Who’s there?”
“Hmmm hmmm,” Jake said.
<
br /> “Lizzie? No, you’d have said. Is it Maud? Oh good lord.”
“Quite,” Jake said. “Rather.” He spoke with an exaggerated British accent, learned from a childhood tape he and Sue had worn out, on which a character had said these and other words hysterically often. “It is a bit, rather, too too, if you ask me.”
“Talking about me, are we?” Maud whispered. “I’ll just pop off to the shower, then. Cheerio.”
When the bathroom door closed Jake said, “It’s not what you think.”
“Jake,” Sue said. “I can’t believe you sometimes.”
“It isn’t what you think,” Jake repeated. In the bathroom the water ran.
“Well, what on earth could it be? Does Lizzie know?”
His laugh was harsh. “When Jeep didn’t find Maud at home, Lizzie told her to try this number. Did she know?”
“Oh, Jake. I don’t know what you’re up to.”
“I didn’t think I was ‘up’ to anything.” But he was reminded of Maud’s question: What is this scene really about?
“Don’t be grumpy. Listen. Demonstrators are out there this morning. They’ll succeed in driving away most of our appointments. I’m getting hate mail, did I tell you? Phone calls in the dead of night. I’m scared to be at home alone.”
“Hate mail?”
“That’s par for the course. But I refuse to wear the bulletproof vest Willy bought for me. There are limits.”
“Sue!”
“I’ve been telling you, Jake. Anyway, be prepared for some nastiness. Gotta go.”
Jake pulled on boxers, jeans, socks, a sweatshirt, got coffee started. Put slices of bread in the toaster oven. Maud emerged from the bathroom. “I keep remembering bits of this awful dream,” she said. “I think it’s awful. I can’t quite tell. Maybe it’s good. Is that coffee?”
“Good coffee. I’ll loan you a travel mug. I have several, from work.”
Maud passed a comb again and again through the long tail of black hair held in one fist, working out snarls. The sight made him blue. Lizzie’s hair was so different. Lizzie herself was. And he’d ruined any chance to make it good with her.
“You seem sad.” Maud pulled at the strands of hair that had wrapped themselves in the comb. Deposited the wad in the overflowing paper bag beneath the sink. “Disappointed. Sad.”
He noisily washed out a Synercomp travel mug. Didn’t answer. But she said, “Don’t pretend with me. I’d rather you didn’t.”
There was little he could say that would not hurt her. He put an arm around her, kissed her forehead. Which was what he’d done last night before they fell asleep. Which was about all he’d done. But even if he ever had a chance to say so, Liz wouldn’t believe him. And after all, he had intended to sleep with Maud. Couldn’t deny it. Had stroked the long curve of her back. Kissed her. She’d been the one to whisper, “I don’t feel right about this.” Moved a few inches away. “I’m sorry.”
He’d told her she was probably right.
There was no stir of desire, even when they shifted positions, found ways to lie with each other. Familiar yet new, as all lovers’ positions somehow are. Those few times with Randy, he’d felt he was betraying Lizzie—not because he was sleeping with someone else, but because he found himself in arrangements of limbs he’d thought unique to the two of them. “Should I go home?” Maud had whispered, and he spooned around her, saying, “Just sleep.” And they’d slept without moving until the phone had woken them.
The toaster oven pinged. Maud fetched her boots from the hallway, sat at the kitchen table to pull them on. He spread peanut butter on one slice, honey on the other, cut the sandwich in half, wrapped it in a paper towel. Carrying this and a plastic cup of coffee, he followed her into the hallway. She put on her coat. Her face was pale, scoops beneath her eyes like characters in a Doonesbury cartoon.
He handed her the sandwich. “This is a hell of a morning after. Wish we had time for a cup of coffee.”
“Probably best not.”
“Sue says there are protesters. Just walk through them. They don’t know whether you’re there to get a Pap smear or an abortion.” They both blinked at the word. Jake opened the door. The cold hit, a blast of icy air. “And don’t you dare be weird with me now. Please.”
She took the cup of coffee. “You should be with Lizzie,” she said. “Lizzie is being very silly.” She looked at him. “But even so, thank you, more than you can ever know, for the fact I slept all the way through a night.”
“Someday you can tell me about that dream.”
That mirthless smile. “I don’t know if I want to tell anyone about this dream.”
He watched her maneuver her way down the icy path. “Don’t be a stranger!” he called. She turned, nodded, waved. He shut the door, went back to the kitchen. Poured himself coffee. Leafed through a week-old newspaper. “What were you thinking,” he finally said aloud. “What on earth did you think you were doing?”
But that seemed a betrayal of Maud, who had cautioned both of them. And he could hardly blame it on demon drink. Two beers hadn’t damaged his powers of reasoning. What was it Maud had said last night? He scribbled in the margin of the newspaper.
some kind of kite
pulled
tethered
tugged by a different string
by a different wind
A knock sounded on his door. Even as he hoped it would be Lizzie he knew it was Maud, having forgotten something. Nose and cheeks red with cold. Pale forehead tented by hair that fell loosely over her black coat. “I’m not being a stranger,” she said. He appreciated that she was trying to be funny. “My car won’t start.”
Jake turned the defrost knob up to high. Maud fanned her fingers in front of a heating vent. “A few weeks ago it was something to do with the steering column. I was going crazy trying to figure that one out: my steering’s going out. Is something wrong with my choices? I have no control? I need to get control but it’s going to cost me?”
She waited, as if she expected him to make fun of this. He kept his eyes on the road. Yesterday’s melt and last night’s freeze made the pavement slick and driving tricky. And he wanted silence. What would he say to Lizzie?
“But then another mechanic told me I just had to be sure to watch the level of steering fluid carefully and I’d be okay. That made sense to me: Be careful with your driving.”
“Be careful with your steering, in fact.”
“You understand!” Maud cried. “Lizzie just says, ‘It’s a car, things go wrong.’ ”
“It’s probably a dead battery.” Lizzie would be waiting beside Jeep in the driveway as he and Maud drove up. Arms crossed. Smiling but grim. Had he asked Maud to stay to make Lizzie jealous? Was that what the scene had been about? “You left your headlights on,” he said. “You used the interior light to look for something, forgot to turn it off.”
“But what’s that mean? Why would I do that? And then there’s this dream. Letting things go? Letting things die?”
“You’ll drive yourself crazy with that.” Jake sipped at his coffee. “Can I have half of that sandwich?”
Maud unfolded the paper towel, set the sandwich and paper on his thigh. “What’s great—you don’t know how great this is.” She began to laugh. “I think it’s funny.”
“It?”
“The car, the godawful dream, what everything means.” She laughed again. “I’m laughing about it!”
Jake wasn’t sure what the big deal was. Handed her half the sandwich. “Eat. I made it for you.”
“So I walk into this room.” She stared at the honey-soaked toast in her hand. “It’s just a dream.”
Jake checked the rearview mirror. The few cars out drove with their headlights on high beam, dimmed when anyone got close.
“I’m with somebody, but that person’s also me. You know how that is? Like she’s there, witnessing? Anyway, I—we—see this woman sitting there, cross-legged, bent over. I can’t see it, but I know that there’s a blood
y hole in her belly.”
Jake made a noise through the wad of peanut butter in his mouth.
“And I blithely say to this person, who’s also me, ‘Oh, another woman committing hara-kiri.’ I say this as if there’s nothing to it, as if it’s an everyday thing, as if it’s a joke. Although I can see that it’s deadly serious. And then the bent-over woman straightens up. She’s also a version of me. She puts her hands into this hole in her stomach and starts pulling at it, ripping it further open.”
“Jesus.”
Maud had been storing her own coffee cup on the floor, between her feet. She took a swallow. Jake glanced at her. She stared at the invisible screen in front of her eyes.
“She’s, I’m, tugging herself apart. I can see into the hole. There’s this wet, pulsating interior. The kind of thing you see in movies when people get miniaturized and travel through bloodstreams and aortas?” Maud replaced her coffee at her feet. “I have time, in the dream, to be very impressed with the visual detail of the thing, the reality of it. The pearly pink of the walls of the uterus. Then there’s this large tube. At first I think it’s guts, a piece of intestine, but then I realize it’s actually an umbilical cord.”
For the time being Jake stored the sandwich on his thigh.
“So. I’m impressed with the reality of all this, but I’m also hiding, scrunched, horrified, scared, but wanting above all to be cool. That seems to be very important. To not act surprised, even though I’m terrified. And then suddenly it’s like the camera, the point of view of the dream, does a big zoom in, into this umbilical cord, which is flapping in the wind, making this horrible noise. It fills the whole of the screen—of the dream. Then I’m watching the girl, but the girl is me, and now she’s flushing something down the toilet. And then the camera, or whatever you’d call it, moves in for a close-up and there are all these innards going down the toilet, swirling, bloody and circular, swirling and disappearing. We-ird.” This word contained two syllables.
Jake took a large swallow of coffee. “Had Jeep told you her decision?”