He opened and closed the front door loudly. Then he walked careful, quiet steps over to Perry’s door. When he had shut himself in the darkness of her room he realized two things that nearly paralyzed him: he didn’t have a plan for how to leave, and he still had his erection. First things first, he thought, and felt his way in the dark to her empty bed.
JIM CLOCKED OUT, drove home in the yellow morning. Walked through the front door like he was dragging chains. For a moment, even though he knew better, he saw Perry’s shut door and thought she might be just beyond it, lying in bed or fixing to go out her window. Then he remembered: he’d need to check the cereal box on top of the fridge for money, need to call down to the courthouse to see if bail had been set. His body felt pummeled, like he’d been worked over and only now, hours after the beating, could his muscles relax into their ache.
The night before, he’d gotten a call asking him to fill in. One of the newer guards up and quit, said he couldn’t come in no more. Jim hadn’t blamed him. If he ever found something better himself, he might make the very same call. And it had been a relief, having somewhere to go. Not having to watch Myra drink herself silly while Perry slept in a jail cell. Myra was already three beers in by the time he’d left for his shift. He’d put his hand on the top of her head, in the same gentle way he remembered his father doing to him. “We got to do something about her,” he’d said.
“She’ll be fine,” Myra had answered. Cheersed him. It used to be he could see through these spells Myra had, these bouts of harshness, see right through them to the pain she was feeling. Now he didn’t know. Maybe she wasn’t all that worried, and maybe he should quit worrying, too. Or pretending to worry. Doing his duty as a stepfather.
But she was drinking, right there in front of him. That counted for something. He’d kept his hand there on her head, leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. “We’ll figure it out,” he’d told her.
It made him feel better, anyway, saying it out loud. “Okay,” she’d said.
The shift had gone by as they all did, some hours blurring into the next and some hours like listening to the second hand of a clock. Each time he’d looked in on Herman he’d tried to put on a friendly face, but the man never met his eye. Stayed hunched at his desk or curled facing the wall on his cot. It couldn’t be helped, Jim decided. And at least now the prisoner knew just how far he’d be allowed to take it.
He’d eaten a cold sandwich at about three in the morning. Washed it down with inky coffee. The rest of his shift, the mixture burbled in his throat, bloomed into his mouth in hot, wet blasts. The desk guard and the other walker had just shrugged when he asked after Tums. He’d driven home as the sun was rising, thinking how he could breathe fire, wasn’t that something.
Now he just wanted a shower. And there was Myra, flat on her back in the bathroom, a towel rolled up under her head. He’d seen the cluster of empties by the couch, had thought about having to brace himself as he walked through their bedroom door, but he thought he’d be able to shower first, that warm water soaking into his skin and soothing his muscles some before he’d have to tense them back up when he saw Myra.
She opened one eye, lifted her head, the skin on her neck collapsing in an accordion of flesh. “Jim?”
“Yes.”
“I must have fallen asleep in here. I’m sick.”
“I know.”
“Am I ugly?” she asked him, pushing herself up on her elbows. “Is that why you’re looking at me?”
“No, you ain’t ugly.” It was true. She was a beautiful woman when he’d met her, a tall woman with bright eyes and red lips. And she was still beautiful. Like how a prize garden that had gone to weed in a few corners was still beautiful.
“You know I like to keep myself up,” she said. “I hate for you to see me this way. I got a little tipsy last night.”
Jim felt impatient for his shower. He’d had this conversation with her so many times, in so many ways. If he yelled and stomped she’d only do it again, as soon as she could. He couldn’t bring himself to muster the kind of energy he’d need to feel that angry about it anyway. And if he tried to reason with her she’d cry, beg his forgiveness, and he’d have to give it, repeating himself over and over, just to calm her down. Best to just let her talk. Help her off the floor. Ask if she wanted eggs. And then shut the door as soon as she was on the other side.
He held out his hand to her. She took it, pulling on him to stand. She held on to the tiny counter for balance, pushed her other hand through her hair to smooth it. There was a messy imprint of her eyelashes in dried mascara on her cheek, a cluster of black legs.
“I had a friend over,” she said. “He kept getting me fresh ones. I didn’t realize how much I was drinking.”
This was new. Myra didn’t have friends, not these days, and definitely not male ones. “He?” Jim said.
“This young kid from the neighborhood. He’s got a crush. Sometimes I need someone to talk to when you ain’t here at night.”
Jim knew Myra liked to reach out, feel around, see if he still had buttons to push. Would he be jealous? Angry with her? Would he feel guilty that she needed to talk to some kid because he wasn’t there, wasn’t there a lot?
And he did feel angry, just a shade. Not because of how she was spending her time. That was so far down the list of shit he had to tend to with Myra that it nearly dropped off. He felt angry because he never, not once, got to just come home and get in the shower. First he had to make sure Myra was alive, drive Perry to school, and now go out and punch some neighbor kid for getting fresh on his own couch with his own wife, because it was what was expected of him.
She’s lying, anyway. The thought came to him in blinking neon clarity. She was lying to get him to do something about it.
And now it dawned on him that she hadn’t even asked about Perry, hadn’t wondered what the plan was or if she could do anything to help. Had risen as empty as a scarecrow, filled the room with the brackish fumes of her breath. His body was so tight he felt like he could shatter.
“The other night a man asked me did I have a teenaged daughter,” he said. “A prisoner. I popped him in the eye. It bled all over. It bled so much I felt sick. But I didn’t even think twice, I just did it. You got a teenage daughter sitting in jail right now and you haven’t done shit except invite some boy in to watch you get ugly.”
Myra let go of the counter, stood as straight as she could. Put a shaking hand back up to her hair. “She’s there because she wanted to be there,” she said. “She knows right from wrong. It ain’t my fault she acts the way she does.”
It was what Myra always said. Jim could feel his heart pounding, his body hurt even more because of it.
“I’m going to take a shower,” he said, put his hands on her shoulders to steer her out. “And go see about getting Perry out. If you make eggs I’ll eat them. If you don’t, that’s okay too. Long as you get out of this bathroom and let me be.”
“I touched him,” Myra said. Her eyes moved back and forth rapidly across his face, searching for how this had landed. “I touched him where it counted and I would have kept touching him if my sickness hadn’t overcome me.”
Jim’s hands felt like they might crack with how hard he was trying not to shake her. Instead he steered her out the door.
“If that’s true,” he said, “then I feel sorry for you.”
“He liked it,” Myra was saying, but Jim closed the door, pushed the little nub lock. “He liked it,” she said louder, and slapped the door with the palm of her hand.
Jim turned on the shower and undressed. In the mirror he saw a man who looked like all the air got sucked out. The mirror slowly fogged over, and he was just a smear. A blur of a man, could be anyone.
Myra called to him through the door. “I can’t hear you,” he yelled back, but in truth he had heard her. I wanted to be touching you, she’d said.
But that was probably a lie as well. Finally, he stepped into the shower.
HE’D FALLEN ASLEEP in Perr
y’s bed. Had put his mouth on the stiff part of her pillow, the part where she drooled, and drooled into it himself. Before that, had spit into his hand, meaning to touch himself, go for it, his cock still hard from Myra’s touch, but he couldn’t get up the nerve. It felt wrong, it felt like something he should be saving for her, not keeping all to himself. And it’d be all the more sweeter when it did happen, if he held off. He’d fallen asleep envisioning it: he and Perry in her room, in his room, on a bed of leaves in the woods somewhere, pulled off to the side of the road in the backseat of his momma’s car.
Didn’t wake until the morning, still hard as a rock. Jim just on the other side of the door and mad enough by the sound of it to kill a puppy. Perry had once told him that she snuck out her window at night. It was a sliding window, about three feet wide, and he knew it was his only chance. But his back felt glued to her bed, his limbs useless. If he moved they’d hear. Jim would beat on the door until the dresser Jamey had pushed in front of it gave way. He listened as they fought, not two feet away.
He liked it. Jamey heard how desperate she sounded, wanting Jim to get mad, probably wanting Jim to shake her, rip off her robe even, make her see who her man was. He’d read similar shit in his momma’s paperbacks, romances with intense love scenes where the woman always ended up begging, apologizing, offering herself up in one way or another. Jim had handled it all wrong, shutting the door like that. He could’ve had himself a little something.
“I wanted to be touching you,” he heard her say. She was crying now, and soon he heard the clink of bottles as she picked them up. He didn’t believe that shit, not for a minute. She wanted to be touching him, her Pete.
He could smell toast burning, butter heating in a pan. So she was making Jim breakfast after all. Which meant she was at the far end of the trailer, in the kitchen. And the shower was still running, so that’s where Jim was. Jamey pushed himself out of the bed, pulled his pants up. Slid the window open inch by inch, as gently as he could. Had nearly put one leg out before he remembered. He crawled to the door and pushed the dresser back to where it was. If anyone was listening they’d be able to hear it drag across the stiff carpet. Jamey felt his stomach in his throat at the thought. He heard the toaster pop, heard Myra getting a plate down. He went back to the window, got one leg and then the other out, jumped and landed in a crouch. He crawled, again, and didn’t stand until he was two trailers down.
Out front of his momma’s trailer he put his hand in his back pocket. What he found there sent a thrill so sharp he almost peed. There were her panties, right where he’d left them the night before, bunched and warm from his body. Would she miss them? Would she know someone had been there and taken them?
He hoped so.
WHEN BABY GIRL GOT HER PHONE BACK she saw that there were no new text messages from Jamey. She hadn’t responded the day before when he’d texted to ask where she was. It felt like weeks ago, getting that text, driving over to Perry’s, driving to the drugstore, worrying that not texting him back was too big a risk, like she was playing too hard to get. But now everything had changed. Even her car felt different, like someone much larger had been sitting in the driver’s seat, like overnight she’d shrunk down to something else. Her bald scalp burning like a lidless eye. There was no way he’d consider being with her now. Touching her. If he’d ever even been considering it in the first place.
No, he’d just been texting her and chatting online with her so he could find out more about Perry, find out where they went, what they did. For a moment, early in the morning lying sleepless in that cell, she’d felt angry. Enraged and righteous. He’d gotten in, he’d planted a flag over her heart, she’d even helped him stake it in. She could have torched a city over it. Her whole body felt alive. But now, driving home alone in her car, she just felt exhausted. Thinking of her rage the night before, she nearly laughed. How could she think Jamey liking her was possible to begin with? That she even wanted it? Quit acting like a girl. She heard the words, heard Charles’s voice, preaccident Charles. Any time she cried around him, he’d say it. She had been acting like a girl, carrying on with Jamey like some desperate airhead girl.
That morning one of the guards had called her a goon. Hey, Blondie, get your goon, someone’s here to take you home. And it was true. She was a goon. Perry’s goon. The word felt like a second name. If the guard had wanted to insult her, well, the guard had done the opposite. The guard had revealed her, reminded her. Fuck this, Baby Girl thought, though by this she couldn’t tell if she meant everything—the guard, arrest, Perry, Jamey, her own sad vanity—or the nothing she was hoping to drive into.
It was Jim, waiting there for them, watching them come down the short hallway like he was just picking them up after school, hands deep in his pockets. Kept them there when Perry walked up, even as she put her arms around him.
“Y’all are lucky,” he said quietly. “Since Dayna didn’t technically steal anything the drugstore ain’t pressing any charges. And the old woman you assaulted says the Lord told her she shouldn’t press no charges, either.”
Baby Girl watched to see if Perry would laugh at this, but she’d just nodded, her head down. Like she’d learned her lesson. And maybe she had, at some point in the night, maybe she’d also been lying sleepless, but Baby Girl doubted it. It was more likely she was just giving Jim what he wanted, pretending like she’d grown a conscience overnight. It had disgusted her, seeing Perry’s bowed head like that, filled her belly like a fungus.
Now, in her car, she couldn’t understand her disgust. This was the way Perry had always been. It had never bothered Baby Girl before and in fact Baby Girl had treasured this about her, had envied it, even. So then what was different? She worried it was her own pathetic softening. She wanted to be touched. She wanted a friend. She wanted, she wanted, she wanted. She was pathetic. Girly. She had to get her shit together. She couldn’t blame Perry for being what she’d always been.
In the parking lot Jim had pulled Baby Girl aside, his hand firm on her shoulder. “I’d tell you to stay away from each other,” he said, “if I felt like you’d listen, but I know you won’t. You bring out the worst in each other, is what I believe.”
Baby Girl shook off his hand, wanting to say something back, but the words caught in her throat.
“You want to keep going on like that,” he said, “I guess that’s how it’ll go until something stops you. I hope this was the something for you.”
He had put a hand on top of her head, just for a second, like he was checking to see if it was real, what she’d done to herself. “Is this you?” he’d asked. “Is it?” Then he’d gotten in his truck, waited for her and Perry to follow so he could drive Baby Girl to her car.
“Fuck yeah, it’s me,” she answered now. It was ten in the morning, everyone at work or school. There were no cars in the rearview, just her own eyes looking back. It dawned on her that a man must have driven her car to the impound lot, had likely pushed her seat back so he could fit. She hadn’t shrunk in the night after all.
WHEN PERRY SAW JIM’S FACE she knew her momma must have had a doozy of a night. Then when Jim told her about the old lady not pressing charges because the Lord told her not to, Perry could feel a ghost of herself standing nearby, laughing. It was how she would normally have reacted. But Jim’s face and the way he kept his hands in his pockets made her feel sick. Myra was an asshole. She herself was an asshole. They should be doomed to live together in that trailer, each driving the other to drink, or go out and throw shit at old ladies, until the end of time. Jim should be living with some woman who had a garden, could put her lipstick on straight, drank a beer only when it was rude not to. A woman that didn’t have no kids, a woman that didn’t need him so bad.
Sometimes Perry hated the understanding she and her momma had, especially when she remembered how that understanding came to be in the first place, remembered nights when Myra would bring a friend home to play cards in the bedroom, remembered nights when Myra would spit up, quick a
nd deadpan as a baby, scoop it up in her cupped hand, remembered nights when Myra wanted to sleep fitted to Perry like a snail to its shell. Remembered how the trailer felt soggy with Myra—there wasn’t nowhere to go. Tears enough to fill the baths she loved to take, and it was a wonder those tears weren’t carbonated.
Perry had seen Baby Girl at school, she was chubby and freckled, with eyes the color of maple syrup, and she had a big brother that was nice to everyone, only he was dangerous, too. You don’t want him liking you, Baby Girl had said. Perry felt in love with him, felt desperate to play cards in her bedroom with him. Then after his accident Baby Girl started wearing his shirts to school, stopped bringing her books to class, shaved half her head. And Perry felt in love with that, whatever it was Baby Girl was up to, wanted some of it for herself. That armor.
But it had grown from the inside out. She’d wanted to show Myra how she looked, so she’d made herself metal, shiny as a mirror. Learned all about playing cards in the backseat of whoever’s car. Getting warmed through with beer. And going further than Myra ever had: never, ever, asking could she have a hug or a kiss, never asking Baby Girl to spend the night in her room because she felt lonely. Ignoring loneliness, finding other shit to do with her time than be lonely.
Backseats and stealing cars and throwing gum at an old lady was easier than being at home.
She’d always wondered what Jim’s backseat or stealing cars was. Figured he had to have something. Maybe he went to a diner after work some mornings, flirted with a waitress. Maybe he didn’t even go to work some nights, and went to the home of a woman who had a garden.
But seeing his face at the end of the hall that morning confirmed it: he didn’t have shit. She and Myra were what he had. She’d tried to put her arms around him, let him know she felt grateful, but it wasn’t something she usually did, and it had felt like hugging a telephone pole. There had been no give.
They’d dropped Baby Girl near her car. She hadn’t turned to meet Perry’s eye, had just walked down the row. Perry watched her thick back and bald head until she’d ducked into the driver’s seat of her car, out of sight. The triumph Perry had felt the night before, revealing her secret about Jamey, felt shameful now. Worse than the triumph was that she’d needed to show those other women the power she held over Baby Girl. The power she held in the world: men wanted her.
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