Taking Care

by Joy Williams

  Julep, a rock in each hand, took several steps forward and knelt beside him. There were two wounds in the back of his well-shaped head. She raised her hands again, dropping them with a slow, hard force against his skull. They made almost no sound. The eye that was still staring at Judy seemed to shake. His mouth was closed tightly but there was blood coming from between his lips. Judy pushed herself away. His hands remained on her coat, but then dropped off as she crept backward to a tree which she clung to, whimpering.

  Julep had lost her mittens. The backs of her hands were cold from the snow, but her mottled palms were hot from the man’s broken head. She lay down beside him, feeling white and glistening, turned inside out, scrubbed down and aired. She ran her hands over the thin shirt he wore, feeling his collarbone, his ribs, the tight muscles of his stomach. She unbuttoned his shirt and felt his nipples, which were hard, withered, much like her own. She pressed her lips against his chest and tasted salt, then lay her colorless famished head upon his shoulder, which was as warm as though he’d lived all his days in the sun.

  Shorelines

  I want to explain. There are only the two of us, the child and me. I sleep alone. Jace is gone. My hair is wavy, my posture good. I drink a little. Food bores me. It takes so long to eat. Being honest, I must say I drink. I drink, perhaps, more than moderately, but that is why there is so much milk. I have a terrible thirst. Rum and Coke. Grocery wine. Anything that cools. Gin and juices of all sorts. My breasts are always aching, particularly the left, the earnest one, which the baby refuses to favor. First comforts must be learned, I suppose. It’s a matter of exposure.

  I have tried to be clean about my person since the child. I wash frequently, rinse my breasts before feeding, keep my hands away from my eyes and mouth … but it’s hard to keep oneself up. I have tried to think only harmonious thoughts since the child, but the sun on the water here, that extravagant white water, the sun brings such dishevelment and confusion.

  I am tall. I have a mole by my lip. When I speak, the mole vanishes. I address myself to the child quite frequently. He is an infant, only a few months old. I say things like,

  “What would you like for lunch? A marmalade crêpe? A peanut-butter cupcake?”

  Naturally, he does not answer. As for myself, I could seldom comply with his agreement. I keep forgetting to buy the ingredients. There was a time when I had everything on hand. I was quite the cook once. Pompano stuffed with pecans. Quiche Lorraine. And curry! I was wonderful with curries. I had such imaginative accompaniments. The whole thing no bigger than a saucer sometimes, yet perfect!

  We live in the sun here, on the beach, in the South. It is so hot here. I will tell you exactly how hot it is. It is too hot for orange trees. People plant them but they do not bear. I sleep alone now. I will be honest. Sometimes I wake in the night and realize that I have called upon my body. I am repelled but I do not become distraught. I remove my hands firmly. I raise and lower them to either side of the bed. It seems a little self-conscious, a little staged, to bring my hands away like that. But hands, what do they have to do with any of us?

  The heat is the worst at night. I go damp with fever here at night, and I dream. Once I dreamed of baking a bat in the oven. I can’t imagine myself dreaming such a thing. I am a sensitive woman. I might have read about it because there are things I know about bats. I am knowledgeable about their eyes. I know that their retinas have only rods and no vascular system. They can only see moving objects. Unlike us, you know.

  I try to keep the child cool at night. I give him ice to play with. He accepts everything I have to offer. He is always with me. He is in my care.

  I knew when Jace had started the baby. It’s true what you’ve heard. A woman knows.

  It has always been Jace only. We were children together. We lived in the same house. It was a big house on the water. Jace remembers it precisely. I remember it not as well. There were eleven people in that house and a dog beneath it, tied night and day to the pilings. Eleven of us and always a baby. It doesn’t seem reasonable now when I think on it, but there were always eleven of us and always a baby. The diapers and the tiny clothes, hanging out to dry, for years!

  Jace was older than me by a year and a day and I went everywhere with him. My momma tried to bring me around. She said,

  “One day you’re going to be a woman. There are ways you’ll have to behave.”

  But we were just children. It was a place for children and we were using it up. The sharks would come up the inlet in the morning rains and they’d roll so it would seem the water was boiling. Our breath was wonderful. Everything was wonderful. We would box. Underneath the house, with the dog’s rope tangling around our legs, Jace and I would box, stripped to the waist. Red and yellow seaweed would stream from the rope. The beams above us were soft blue with mold. Even now, I can feel exactly what it felt like to be cool and out of the sun.

  Jace’s fists were like flowers.

  Jace is thin and quick. His jeans are white with my washing. I have always done my part. Wherever we went, I planted. If the soil were muck, I would plant vegetables; if dry, herbs; if sandy, strawberries. We always left before they could be harvested. We were always moving on, down the coast. But we always had bread to eat. I made good crusty bread. I had a sourdough starter that was seventy-one years old.

  We have always lived on the water. Jace likes to hear it. We have been on all the kinds of water there are in the South. Once we lived in the swamp. The water there was a creamy pink. Air plants covered the trees like tufts of hair. All the life was in the trees, in the nests swinging from high branches.

  I didn’t care for the swamp, although it’s true the sun was no problem there.

  In Momma’s house, a lemon tree grew outside the window of the baby’s room. The fruit hung there for color mostly. Sometimes Momma made a soup. The tree was quite lovely and it flourished. It had been planted over the grease trap of the sink. I am always honest when I can be. It was swill that made it grow.

  Here there is nothing of interest outside the child’s room. Just the sand and the dunes. The dunes cast no shadow and offer no relief from the sun. A small piece of the Gulf is visible and it flickers like glass. It’s as though the water is signaling some message to my child in his crib.

  We do not wait for Jace to come back. We do not wait for anything. We do not want anything. Jace, on the other hand, wants and wants. There is nothing he would not accept. He has many trades. Once he was a deep-sea diver. He dove for sponges out of Tarpon Springs. He dove every day, all of one spring and all of one summer. There was a red tide that year that drove people almost mad. Your eyes would swell, your throat would burn. Everything was choking. The water was like chewing gum. The birds went inland. All the fish and turtles died. I wouldn’t hear about it. I was always a sensitive woman. Jace would lie in bed, smoking, his brown arms on the white sheets, his pale hair on the pressed pillowcases. Yes, everything was spotless once, and in order.

  He said, “The fastest fish can’t swim out of it. Not even the barracuda.”

  I wouldn’t hear it. I did not like suffering.

  “The bottom was covered with fish,” he said. “I couldn’t see the sponges for the acres of fish.”

  I began to cry.

  “Everything is all right,” he said. He held me. “No one cares,” he said. “Why are you crying?”

  There were other jobs Jace had. He built and drove. He would be gone for a few weeks or a few months and then he would come back. There were some things he didn’t tell me.

  The beach land here belongs to the Navy. It has belonged to them for many years. Their purpose has been forgotten. There are a few trees, near the road, but they have no bark or green branches. I point this out to the child, directing his gaze to the blasted scenery. “The land is unwholesome,” I say. He refuses to agree. I insist, although I am not one for words.

  “Horsetail beefwood can’t be tolerated here,” I tell him, “although horsetail beefwood is all the land n
aturally bears. Now if they had a decorative bent,” I tell him, “they would plant palms, but there are no palms.”

  The baby’s head is a white globe beneath my heart. He exhausts me, even though his weight is little more than that of water on my hands. He is a frail child. So many precautions are necessary. My hands grow white from holding him.

  I am so relieved that Jace is gone. He has a perfect memory. His mouth was so clean, resting on me, and I was so quiet. But then he’d start talking about Momma’s house.

  “Wasn’t life nice then?” he’d say. “And couldn’t we see everything there was to see? And didn’t life just make the finest sense?”

  Even without Jace, I sometimes feel uneasy. There is something I feel I have not done.

  It was the third month I could feel the child best. They move, you know, to face their stars.

  There is a small town not far from here. I loathe the town and its people. They are watchful country people. The town’s economy is dependent upon the Prison. The Prison is a good neighbor, they say. It is unobtrusive, quiet. When an execution is necessary, the executioner arrives in a white Cadillac and he is unobtrusive too for the Cadillac is an old one and there are a great many white cars here. The cars are white because of the terrible heat. The man in the Cadillac is called the “engineer” and no one claims to know his name.

  The townspeople are all very handy. They are all very willing to lend a helping hand. They hire Prison boys to work in their yards. You can always tell the Prison boys. They look so hungry and serene.

  Martha is the only one of the townspeople who talks to me. The rest nod or smile. Martha is a comfy woman with a nice complexion, but her hair is the color of pork. She is always touching my arm, directing my attention to things she believes I might have overlooked, a sale on gin, for example, or frozen whipped puddings.

  “You might could use a sweet or two,” she says. “Fill you out.”

  Her face is big and friendly and her hands seem clean and dry. She is always talking to me. She talks about her daughter who has not lived with her for many years. The daughter lives in a special home in the next state. Martha says, “She had a bad fever and she stopped being good.”

  Martha’s hand on my shoulder feels like a nurse’s hand, intimate and officious. She invites me to her home and I accept, over and over again. She is inviting me in for tea and conversation and I am always opening the door to her home. I am forever entering her rooms, walking endlessly across the shiny wooden floors of her home.

  “I don’t want to be rich,” Martha says. “I want only enough to have a friend over for a piece of pie or a highball. And I would like a frost-free refrigerator. Even in the winter, I have to defrost ours once a week. I have to take everything out and then spread the newspapers and get the bowl and sponge and then I have to put everything back.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  Martha’s hands are moving among the cheap teacups. “It seems a little senseless,” she says.

  There are small table fans in the house, stirring the air. The rooms smell of drain cleaner and mold and mildew preventives. When the fans part the curtains to the west, an empty horse stall and a riding ring are visible. Martha crowns my tea with rum, like a friend.

  “This is a fine town,” Martha says. “Everyone looks out for his neighbor. Even the Prison boys are good boys, most of them up just for stealing copper wire or beating on their women’s fellows.”

  I hold the child tight. You know a mother’s fears. He is fascinated by the chopping blades of the little fans, by the roach tablets behind the sofa cushions. Outside, as well, he puts his hands to everything—the thorns on the grapefruit tree, the poisonous oleander, the mottled dumb cane….

  “I imagine the wicked arrive at that Prison only occasionally,” I say.

  “Hardly ever,” Martha agrees.

  I am trying to explain to you. I am always inside this woman’s house. I am always speaking reasonably with this Martha. I am so tired and so sad and I am lying on a bed drinking tea. It is not Martha’s bed. It is, I suppose, a bed for her guests. I am lying on a bedspread which is covered by a large embroidered peacock. Underneath the bed is a single medium-sized mixing bowl. In the light socket is a night-light in the shape of a rose. I feel wonderful in this room in many ways. I feel like a column of air. I would like to audition for something. I am so clean inside.

  “My husband worries about you,” Martha says. She takes the cup away. “We are all good people here,” she says. “We all lead good lives.”

  “What does your husband do, then?” I say. I smile because I do not want her to think I am confused. Actually, I’ve met the man. He placed his long hands on my stomach, on my thighs.

  “We are not unsubtle here,” Martha says, tapping her chest.

  I met the man and when I met him in this house he was putting in new pine boards over the cement floors. When I arrived, he stopped, but that was what he was doing. He had a gun which shot nails into the concrete. Each nail cost a quarter. The expense distressed Martha and she mentioned it in my hearing. Men resume things, you know. He went back to it. As I lay on the bed, I could hear the gun being fired and I awoke quickly, frightened the noise might awaken the child. You know a mother’s presumptions. There was the smell of sawdust and smoke from the nail gun.

  “I wouldn’t have thought we’d have to worry about you,” Martha says unhappily.

  When I returned from Martha’s house the first time, I passed a farmer traveling on the beach road in his rusty car. Strapped to the roof of the car was a sandhill crane, one wing raised, pumped full of air and sailing in the moonlight. They kill these birds for their meat. The meat, they say, tastes just like chicken. I have found that almost everything tastes like chicken.

  There is a garage not far from town where Jace used to buy gas. I stopped there once. There was a large wire meshed cage outside, by the pumps. A sign on it said BABY FLORIDA RATTLERS. Inside were dozens of blue and pink baby rattles on a dirt floor. It gave me a headache. It was such a large cage.

  At night I take the child and walk over the beach to the water’s edge where it is cool. The child is at peace here, beside the water, and it is here, most likely, where Jace will find us when he comes back. When Jace comes back it will be at night. He always comes in on the heat, at night.

  “Darling,” I can hear him say, “even as a little boy, I was all there ever was for you.”

  I can see it quite clearly. I will be on the shoreline, nursing, and Jace will come back on the heat, all careless and easy and “Darling,” he’ll shout into the wind, into the white roil of water behind us. “Darling, darling,” Jace will shout, “where you been, little girl?”

  Building

  REMODELING their house is Peter’s idea, Katherine likes it the way it is. It is an old sprawling wooden house with small dark rooms. The plantings around it are old too, obvious from their type as well as their size. There are huge travelers’-trees, which aren’t popular any more, lining the driveway. This is on a key on the west coast of Florida, a key upon which the population has quadrupled in the last four years. Katherine has lived on the key for eight years and is forever finding herself telling new acquaintances how much everything has changed. These people all live in condos on the beach and are unapologetic, articulate and drink in moderation. Katherine hasn’t made a friend out of a new acquaintance in a long time.

  Katherine first saw their house, and Peter, with her friend Annie, who was house-hunting. Peter is in real estate. He’s very successful now and has his own business, but then he was just getting started, working for someone else, and he was showing this house for sale on a Sunday afternoon. Peter grinned at Katherine as though he had met her before, which he had not. Annie thought the house was too dark, which it was, but Katherine liked it, although she was not in the position to buy anything. The house was a relic of the recent past in a neighborhood that had grown up around it. Peter told Katherine that he was thinking of buying it himself, it was such a
good investment. Then he asked her to dinner and three months after that, they got married.

  It is Katherine who has prevented Peter from improving their house before this. But the house had dry rot, it needed a new roof, new wiring. Really, remodeling was inevitable. Actually, little of the old house will remain. Now that Peter has convinced Katherine of the need to remodel, he encourages her to debate the decisions he makes.

  “I want to lose an argument with you every so often,” he says, “that way the house will be more the way we both want it.”

  But Katherine doesn’t have arguments with Peter, Peter never argues with anyone. All their friends are amazed, for example, at how well he gets along with the workmen involved in the remodeling. It’s unusual, their friends say, not to get upset with some, if not most, of these people in the long run, but Peter gets along with them all, the carpenter, the electrician, the plumber, the dry-wall and insulation man, the mason, the back-hoe operator, the roofer, whereas Katherine finds it difficult to converse with any of these people. Her jaws ache from projecting the illusion of concern. There is a basic misunderstanding between Katherine and all of them. They think she is interested in what is going to happen and she’s not.

  “This is a house that will tell your story the way you want your story told,” the architect says.

  “Heart-side up, heart-side out. Always,” the carpenter says. He is referring to boards.

  The plumber says, “This is a beautiful tub. You should take good care of this tub.”

  The dry-wall man says, “You were smart not to make square rooms. A square room is an acoustical prison.”