Later in the afternoon, when she saw Mack putting away his tools, she ran out and asked him if he’d do her a favor.
“Name it!” he said. He was in a great mood. He said he was going to buy himself a big steak and find a place to stay. Before Frances had left for the club this morning, she had given him a hundred dollars. She said she was pleased with his work and she figured he could use it.
Martha held out a pen and a sheet of paper. “Would you write and tell Birdy how you saw Getso try to attack me that day?”
“But is that what I saw?” He winced. “Maybe he was trying to help you up, like he said.”
She was shocked. “You don’t believe me either!” she said, grabbing for the paper. Maybe they were in on this together; maybe this was even bigger than she thought.
“I’ll write it!” He leaned over the workbench, writing, and when he finished, he read, “Last week, I witnessed Martha Horgan struggling with a man named Getso, who in my opinion intended to cause her harm. Most sincerely yours, Colin B. Mackey.” He folded the paper, and she put it in the envelope with her own letter and asked him if he would mail it when he got to town.
“You won’t forget, now,” she called as he got into his car.
“First mailbox I see,” he said, waving it out the window as he drove by her.
“Don’t lose it!” she called uneasily.
“Don’t worry!” he called back.
She was lying on the couch, watching television, when Frances buzzed her on the intercom to say she was home. She asked what time Mack had left today.
“Five, I think.”
“His car was in front of Brennan’s,” Frances said disgustedly of Atkinson’s most notorious bar. “I suppose that’s the last we’ll see of Mr. Mackey.”
The post office was near Brennan’s. The letter would be delivered tomorrow. Tomorrow the phone would ring and it would be Birdy, sobbing and begging her to come back to work.
“Martha?”
“What?”
“I asked you if he said anything before he left. Something’s up with him,” Frances said. “It’s been bothering me all day.”
It was midnight. All the lights in the house were off. Frances had gone to bed soon after she got home. Martha was in her nightgown, brushing her teeth while she walked around the apartment and turned off the lights. She had just come out of the bathroom when she saw Mack grinning at her through the door glass. He held up a paper bag and jiggled the doorknob.
“I got you something,” he whispered, handing her the bag when she opened the door.
“Did you mail it?”
“Mail it?” He frowned.
“My letter.”
“Oh. Oh yah, the letter. Don’t worry about it. Open the bag!” He smiled, watching her.
It was a large square plastic container.
“Take the top off.”
When she did, she found a smaller container, and in that, another one; in all there were six, all nested under blue lids.
“Thank you,” she said, stunned that he had remembered.
“You like them?” he asked, flopping onto the couch.
“They’re very nice … but you can’t stay here,” she blurted.
“It’s a whole set,” he said.
“I know. They’re very nice.” She nodded, still standing. “I like that blue. But you can’t …”
“Like your eyes,” he interrupted.
“My eyes are brown.”
“No! No, they’re not.”
“Yes, they are! They’re brown!” she insisted. She laughed. “I should know.”
He dragged himself up. “Poor kid,” he said, coming toward her unsteadily. “All this time you thought they were brown.” He anchored himself on the back of the chair, and she knew by his dull stare that he had been drinking. “They’re blue.… Lemme see here,” he murmured, lifting her crooked glasses.
Opening her eyes wide, she saw his eyes close. His mouth was soft and wet. He pushed back her hair with both hands and kissed her eyes and her ears and her neck. He led her to the couch, hugging her so tightly that his hairy forearm rubbed her chin. He sank down and pulled her next to him.
“I kept thinking about you all night. You been thinking about me?”
She nodded. She had been thinking about him mailing her letter.
He laughed. “No, you haven’t. You’ve been thinking about Birdy and Getso and calling people, that’s all you’ve been thinking about.”
She tensed. He was making fun of her. She tried to get up, but he held her tight.
“Well, instead of thinking about them all the time, I want you to think about … about me! How’s that sound? From now on, we’re gonna practice good mental health, the two of us. You, you think about me instead of Birdy and whatsisname, and me, I think about you instead of my own personal obsession, which is what a flaming shithead I am.” He leaned toward her and sighed. “You’re mad at me. Don’t!” he breathed at her ear. “Don’t be mad at me. I like you. And you like me, don’t you? And neither one of us knows why.” He kept talking like this, muttering, almost arguing, scolding himself and her, as his hands ran up and down her hairy legs and belly and breasts. “You think I’m just some bum, don’t you? You don’t understand. How the hell could you? I don’t even understand. But I’ll tell you this, you feel so good … you feel so warm and so soft.”
He slipped her nightgown from her shoulders to her waist. Her eyes closed at the shameful sight of her nipples shriveling on her heavy breasts, then opened wide as his rough cheek scratched her belly. She moaned and raked her fingers through his hair. She couldn’t think. He had crawled into her brain, swelling her skull with his pounding heat.
“Mack,” she groaned, bending over him. “Mack!” But his only response was a warning growl. He had fallen asleep with his head in her lap.
She woke to the persistent song of a bird even though it was dark outside. She stared up at the ceiling fan over her bed and wondered if he was still on the couch. His snoring had awakened her at different times through the night. But now everything was still.
“Shit!” she heard him suddenly mutter, then curse again in weary, muffled tones. Water ran in the sink. The cupboard doors creaked open, then shut with a heedless bang. It was quiet again for a little while. And then her door opened. He came to the side of her bed, and she grinned so foolishly that she covered her mouth with the back of her hand and bit it. He said her name, then jiggled the bed with his knee.
“I feel sick,” he whispered, exuding the hot breath of the Scotch he had just helped himself to. He said he had looked in the bathroom and kitchen for something for his stomach but hadn’t been able to find anything.
“If you don’t mind. I hate to bother you,” he muttered after her.
When she returned, he was sitting on the side of the bed, with his eyes closed. She shook the bottle, then poured the glutinous pink liquid into a shot glass.
He gulped it down. “I’m a son of a bitch to be imposing on you like this,” he said, fumbling to set the glass on the nightstand. It tipped, and he let it roll near the edge. He buried his face in his hands. “Jesus Christ,” he moaned.
“Are you sick?” she asked, stepping closer.
“I’m dying. Christ almighty. I don’t know what the hell I’m thinking of.” He looked up at her through the fraying darkness.
There was a sudden intensity to the window light, as if it did not come from the rising sun but had been smoldering all along within the night itself. The sun didn’t matter, she thought, looking toward the brightening shade, for it seemed right now utterly within her power to fill the stale little room with whatever degree of light she wished.
“I’m too old for this shit,” he muttered, kneading his eyes with his knuckles. “What the hell am I doing? Christ, twenty years have just gone like that,” he said with a weak snap of his fingers. “The next twenty’ll go even faster, and here I am at the end of the line. I got nothing left. My last friend tells me he’s
sick of my whining.” He laughed bitterly. “HE’S sick of it! Oh Christ, Colin Mackey, what a fucking fucking loser you are!”
He took a deep breath and raised his head sheepishly. “It’s not easy being a professional asshole. I gotta find a new line of work. This is taking its toll.” He reached for her hand. “I’m sorry. I seem to have a real knack for taking advantage of good people.” He started to get up.
She sat beside him quickly, her hands folded in her lap. “If you want, you can stay there. You can go to sleep.” Her hair fluttered in the quiet stir of the fan. He didn’t move or say anything. Biting her lip, she held her eyes tightly closed, her body tensed. Stupid Martha, she thought. He didn’t want to sleep here. He wanted to leave, but he didn’t know how now that she had said that, now that she had plunked herself down, almost on top of him. She tried to clear her throat.
His arms slipped around her. “Don’t cry,” he whispered, his voice breaking. He lay back with her, lifted her nightgown, kissed her. He took her hand and slid it between his legs, his laugh quick and harsh as she pulled back, startled by the thick coldness there. He had to help her, parting her legs, and after a moment’s fumble, the bed creaked and rattled, its headboard banging crazily back and forth against the wall as if propelled by an engine gone mad with the heat and their gasping and the ceiling fan, an enormous gear, spinning round and round, not only turning the earth, but fusing in place every star and planet. It became all she could hear, her head tossing and turning, until suddenly she cried out in a loud unfamiliar voice, “Oh God. Oh my God! Oh … oh … please … please!”
It was over.
“Quiet!” he gasped and clamped his hand over her panting mouth, his face slick with sweat that dripped onto her face. She could see the little gray and black hairs in his nose tremble as he breathed.
“I thought I heard something!” he warned, getting up. He stood by the window.
She covered her mouth with both hands to muffle the one word perched on her tongue, straining and beating its wings.
“If I had a gun right now, I’d blow my fucking brains out,” he said, staring down into the shadows.
Twelve
He had been avoiding her for days. When she came near him, his hammer struck double-time. Unintelligible grunts and curt nods were his replies when she spoke.
“Would you like a sandwich?” she asked, coming into the kitchen and finding him at the refrigerator.
“Frances said to help myself,” he said, wincing.
“I made some tuna.” She grinned, recalling the salty taste of his dark, dusty shoulders.
“Maybe later,” he muttered, and hurried outside.
The next morning, she went into town with Frances to check on the new stone on her father’s grave. They planted red geraniums at the base of the marble marker, then bent their heads as if in prayer. With the sun’s heat on her head and the rough fresh scent of the geraniums on her hands and the smothering drone of bees all she could think of was Mack, her lover, with whom she had made love, by whom she was loved; her beloved. When she opened her eyes, she reeled dizzily to see, in the bright-green sweep of mica-flecked tombstones, a beautiful elm tree, its height and symmetry suddenly so startling that for a moment she couldn’t breathe. The world had become a perfect place.
Frances was calling for her to come.
“I miss Floyd,” Frances said when she caught up to her.
Martha turned her head to rub away a smile. She missed Mack, who by making her body his had made it finally hers, swathed with an unfamiliar grace. She smiled out the blurred side window as Frances drove her to the bus stop. That she was just like everyone else amazed her. All of her, all her parts were real, her limbs and organs finally blessed by love. She watched a young girl ride by on her bike, then stop alongside as the light turned red. In a glance their eyes met, and Martha smiled and did not look away. She had these arms, these legs, and, inside, this violent heart, and she was a woman. A woman who had been loved. The girl lowered her head to the handlebars before she sped past the changing light. Suddenly Martha felt too alive, too bright, as fragile as one of Mr. Beecham’s glass pieces.
“Could you straighten up the downstairs when you get back, and make some ice cubes?” Frances asked before Martha got out of the car at the bus stop. Frances was on her way to the club. She had offered to take Martha grocery shopping, but Martha wasn’t interested now that eating in the house had become a way to be near Mack. At night she hardly slept, listening for his tap at the door, but he hadn’t been back. Yesterday she had worked up her courage to ask him if he had gotten a room in town. “I’m all set,” he had muttered.
“There’ll be some people by later. Just a few,” Frances was saying, and Martha knew by the sigh that Steve Bell wouldn’t be among them. The most he and Frances had managed lately were long late-night telephone conversations. His daughters demanded his complete attention to their mother’s recovery. “Fools,” Frances had scoffed. “They don’t know what they’re doing.” Now Frances’s bitterness included these mousy girls, whose hungry affection she had always solicited and possessed over the years, often to Martha’s great envy. But she couldn’t gloat or feel the least bit smug now at Frances’s unhappiness, not when she felt so good, so full of Mack.
He was confused, she told herself, taking a seat in the back of the bus, where she would be alone to think. She would be patient and pleasant, and then he would snap out of this gloom. Self-control, she whispered to herself, wadding the tissue in her lap to bits that clung to her dark skirt. She had even started to dress up more at home. “Self-control,” she whispered, nodding emphatically at her reflection in the grime of the metal-banded window. “I won’t get mad. I won’t yell. And I won’t tell any more of those stupid stories about myself! No, I won’t!” she vowed, rubbing her arm. “Think before you speak, Martha Horgan! Oh, I will! I will!” She nodded, her smile fading when she saw the two smirking teenage girls peek around their seats at her, at Martha Horgan, Marthorgan, talking to herself, but talking about love, something they knew nothing about.
He was painting the deck when she got home. The long walk up the hot mountain road had drained her. Her feet were sore and she was sweating. He had attached a paint roller to a broom handle, which he worked back and forth in careful swaths of pale-gray paint.
“It looks nice,” she called, coming toward him, shading her eyes. “You’ve done a beautiful job.” She stood there. “Very nice!” she called louder.
He muttered something, then turned and started to paint a new section.
“Does Frances like it?” she asked, moving below the railing so that she walked beside him as he worked. She looked up and repeated her question in a louder voice.
“I guess so,” he said, pausing to reload the roller, working it back and forth in the paint tray.
She watched him paint this corner section, then take the empty tray down the steps to the paint cans that were on a tarpaulin in the shade. She stood behind him while he squatted down and stirred the thick paint with a long screwdriver.
“My father had a special paddle for stirring paint. He made it himself. Want me to get it?” she asked eagerly, bending over him. “I know right where it is.”
“I’m all set,” he said, pouring paint into his tray. He carried it back to the deck.
“He wouldn’t ever use a roller,” she said, on his heels. “He always used brushes. But that looks nice,” she assured him, afraid she had sounded critical. She peered through the balusters at the wet gleaming boards. Her head hurt. Her mouth was dry.
The sky was that perfect blue that is the cobalt of purest air. The small square windowpanes above them gleamed in the sun, and now there appeared, in the pattern of red and blackish and white-washed bricks, a line she had never noticed before, a jagged fissure from the upper left-hand eave down to the granite lintel over the door. She blinked and it was gone, then blinked and saw it jump again, a lightning bolt of split mortar.
“Why won’t you ta
lk to me?” she was demanding in that thick, dull, obdurate voice she would never be free of. “Why are you mad at me? What did I do wrong? I don’t understand why you’re mad. I don’t know what I did. Tell me what I did! Tell me why you’re mad!”
He jumped off the deck. “I’m not mad! Stop it! Just stop it!” he said, scrubbing his hands furiously with a rag.
“Why won’t you talk to me? If you’re not mad, then why won’t you talk to me?” Oh God, there it was, that singsonging ugly rhythm, her head tossing back and forth, her chest sucking up and down. “Why? Tell me why!”
“Martha! Stop that!” he said.
“What’s wrong with me? Why can’t you talk to me?” She jabbed his chest. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing’s wrong with you.” His eyes darted everywhere.
“You can’t even look at me.”
“What if Frances comes? She’ll have me out of here in two seconds!”
“I don’t care about Frances! I just care about us!”
His head jolted back. “Martha, I don’t want to hurt you!”
“You don’t hurt me!” she said, surprised. She smiled. Hurt? How could loving someone as much as she loved him ever hurt?
“I hurt everyone! I’ve hurt everyone I’ve ever laid my hands on!” he shouted over her objections.
“No! No, you don’t!” she cried.
“Yes, I do! Everyone! I’m like her, like that bitch Frances, cold and selfish and harmful! I feed on weakness! I suck up what I need, and it disgusts me! Do you understand? Do you?” he demanded, his marred face at hers. “I don’t want to hurt you. Especially you. I’m sorry for what happened. I took advantage of … Martha? Martha, listen to me. I was drunk!”
“But that’s all right!”
“No! Martha, please!” He grabbed her arm, squeezing it. “As soon as I’m done here, I’m leaving. There’s nothing between us. Do you understand that what happened was so disgusting I feel sick when I think of it?”
A Dangerous Woman Page 16