by Maryl Jo Fox
“My theater. If I ever get one.”
His voice is serious. “Maybe I can build it for you.”
Her face is solemn. “Maybe you can.”
“Just don’t ask me to act in it.”
She grins.
In Rogerson, population about twenty, they pull up to a small bar and restaurant with an unpainted wooden front. Before they go in, he draws her to him with a sigh. Slowly they kiss each other’s face, mouth, eyes, forehead. He inhales her hair, the scent of something fresh and clean. He wants to wake up with her smell on him, on the sheets, everywhere. He never wants her out of his life.
They stop, look at each other. They go inside.
Pie is clearly the main attraction. Chocolate cream, coconut cream, strawberry, apple, boysenberry, cherry, lemon meringue, pumpkin, pecan, banana cream, blueberry, butterscotch. She orders lemon meringue, the meringue four times higher than the lemon filling. He gets pecan. The coffee is amazingly good. The pie is spectacular.
In Twin Falls, he buys his mother a cell phone and a used Saturn. No Civics are available just now. He’ll pick up the Saturn next week. Back at Stella’s, they circle away from each other, delaying. They sit at her table and eat a scant dinner, food they will not remember. He can hardly swallow. She is quaking, still. They watch each other in the lamp light.
They move toward the purple couch, stop midway. “How do you want to live?” she says quietly, as if everything is already settled.
His voice is low. “I want to build houses, buildings, sculptures, your theater. Whatever it takes. I want to build a life with you.”
“If we haven’t lost our minds,” she says. They laugh, grow silent. She says, “I want to make people feel safe enough to have new thoughts. I’d like to teach somewhere, do performance. I’ve always wanted to shake things up.” She takes a step toward him. “I want you, Frank.”
He can stand it no longer. This is so crazy. All he knows is Stella is the woman who holds his body and soul in her arms. With her he feels safe and whole after all these senseless years. He moves toward her, takes her trembling hand, puts it inside his T-shirt to feel his thundering heart.
“Now?”
She nods.
He strokes her hair, kisses the pounding in her neck. She draws up his T-shirt and tastes his light brown nipples. “You taste like cinnamon,” she murmurs. Slowly he lowers the straps on her blue sundress and touches her lovely breasts. Without even knowing how they got there, they are naked on her bed, bobbing like seahorses in the foaming sea, first he on top, then she, one creature with two heads, all the night long, both alight in the magic circle he has waited his whole life to enter.
chapter 10
The next day, Frank hands his mother a new cell phone. “Couldn’t find a Civic. They sell fast, so I got you a used Saturn. Needs some work. I’ll pick it up next week.”
“Thank you, Frank, for doing all this.” She’s delighted to see him, but nonplussed he bought these things without telling her first. She has paid her own way ever since Darrell died and takes great pride in her independence. Careful to disguise her irritation, she writes him a check that covers half the balance, even though he tells her she can wait until the car is ready. She starts charging the phone on the counter, scribbles the number on a 3x5 index card and tapes it by the phone. She’s got to memorize it. “Hungry? I’ve got some cold spaghetti. It’s really good.”
“No, thanks. I’ve eaten.”
Neither mention his angry exit from the wasps a week or so ago. She looks at him and smiles. A weight feels lifted from her. He looks like an aging rocker in his black jeans and black T-shirt. She comments on his freshly barbered hair.
“Stella cut it.” His smile is sheepish. She smiles.
Clara had seen them out walking together. They had their arms around each other’s waists and were deep in conversation about something. She was so pleased to see him looking happy. “I’ve seen her in the casino. She seems like a terrific girl. I’ll have to meet her properly one of these days.”
He wants to change the subject. “Wasps still out?” He’s tired of the stinging game. In response, she picks up the faded yellow Willamette Elementary School Crossing Guard T-shirt. Now it just says Willamette Elementary School.
He is shocked and moved. She would never have cut up that T-shirt before. Samantha died at that school.
“This one had the biggest neck,” she says crisply. “To frame your face. I just trimmed it so they can’t get your neck.” Her hands are shaking. Her voice catches. “I just want you to be safe, Frank. That’s all I ever wanted.” He studies her face, smiles.
The purple wasp spins in delirious circles around the kitchen sink.
Clara pulls the T-shirt over his head so that his neck is well covered. “Good fit,” she says.
With his face peeping out from the T-shirt opening, he can’t help saying, “This is ridiculous and you know it, Mother.” But he’s got no fight in him this afternoon. He’s too crazy in love. He’ll wear it just this once if it will make his mother happy. She’s got that air about her now that he remembers: pursed lips, neck tendons sticking out. He smiles to himself. What is it with all these hell-bent women? She’s like Stella when she gets on a movie rampage, like she did this morning with Thelma and Louise.
Gingerly, he starts in on a Dr. Pepper with his face sticking out of a cut-up T-shirt. If Scotty could see him now.
She smiles. “You look charming.” She’s having her regular lunch of black coffee, cottage cheese, and an apple. They sit quietly chewing, leafing through Scotty’s USA Today and Time magazine.
The wasps are gathering on the counter from hidden places. They buzz and wing-tap each other. Suddenly two wasps fly out from the insect wad and go for Frank’s bare cheeks.
Bingo.
He bolts from the table, tears the T-shirt off. “You’re making it fucking impossible for me, Mother—what’s wrong with you? Are you trying to drive me away?” He heads for the door.
Abruptly she stands, her voice almost a whisper. “For God’s sake, Frank, how can you even think such a thing?” Sternly she goes to the sink. “Come here. Let me put something on those bites.” Quickly she stirs up a thick paste of baking soda and bottled water. “Always they went for your neck, never anywhere else, and only when you teased them. Now it’s your cheeks! And you weren’t even bothering them, just like the other day!”
She pauses, looking thoughtful. “It’s like they’re getting senile. All those years of flying in and out of my life, they never challenged me like this.”
He frowns and pushes the paste away. Making a scornful sound, he opens the kitchen door to leave.
She can’t bear it. Softly she says, “I don’t know what to do about anything anymore.” She looks down at the floor. “I know I let you down all those years, Frank. Can we talk? Can we ever talk? I love you so much.”
Surprised by these words, he’s still too mad to stop moving. He slams the kitchen door, and the door frame quivers. The wasps too are surprised by her honest words. They circle her head in a brief celebratory cloud. Frank roars off in Scotty’s car.
She stands there a minute, wanting desperately to fix the situation. The kitchen is quiet. Slowly she looks around for the wasps. Always buzzing, they are silent. She walks through the house. She doesn’t see them. Or hear them. Where are they?
Then she sees them huddling together in a corner by the stove. They are silent, unmoving. They seem to be looking at her, waiting for something to happen. This is odd. Maybe it’s just her imagination.
Something murderous grows in her. She looks at the silent wasps, then walks slowly to the outside door and opens it wide. “Freedom? You want freedom, there it is.” She points to the open air. The wasps stay huddled. She waits, goes again to the door, and looks back at them.
“Go.” She points to the sky. But the wasps do not move from their sheltered place. She raises her voice. “Just get out,” she says, feeling these strange words on her lips. “All of you. I’m
tired of the trouble you bring.” Still the wasps don’t move. After a while, she closes the kitchen door and plops down tiredly at the kitchen table. She sits there with her head in her hands.
She is shaking. Can’t I do anything right? Now the wasps are flying around in confusion. They seem to sense that the moment of danger has passed. They could not survive in the desert.
Frantic to resolve something in this god-forsaken place, she struggles to collect herself. She will get something out of this day. Yes. She strides over to the casino, looking for Dawson. A new window. Yes. She can’t get along without a new window.
After all, he broke it.
For once she’s lucky and sees Dawson in the bar, alone in a dimly lit booth. In his limp gray T-shirt, he looks like a cobweb. His head sags onto the back of the booth; his pasty skin gleams with grease. She slides in opposite him.
Nursing a double whiskey neat, he stares as if she were an apparition escaped from his head, but he knows exactly who she is. He’s been inside her house, knows its smell. She laces her blue-veined hands together on the table. In his drunken state, he mimics her gesture. “Aim to do some praying over me, lady? Want me to kneel down, say God almighty, I’m sorry for the trouble I caused this woman?” He sounds adenoidal.
She fixes him with a level gaze. “I didn’t come here for any praying, young man. I came to ask for the twenty dollars minimum it’ll take to replace my screen and window.” She is dry and clear. Couldn’t be calmer.
“What screen? What window?” he asks dully, his nose needing to be blown. “I don’t have any twenty dollars, lady. If I did, I’d be outta here. Gimme a break.”
She sees his discomfort, doesn’t take her eyes from his face. “Well, we could talk, couldn’t we, like two human beings?”
“What the fuck,” he mumbles, rubbing his face as if trying to wake up.
“Tough times, Dawson?”
He sets the whiskey down in slow motion, as if trying to contain himself. His voice is quiet. “Lady, you are some nosy bitch. How do you know my name? Why don’t you mind your own business?”
Her voice is equally low. “Someone said your name at the blackjack table, don’t you remember? You could mind your own business too. I don’t even know you, but I’ll tell you my name: Clara Breckenridge. So why did you break my window and trash my house? Do I look like a rich person? Do I?”
His eyes flicker. She isn’t going to take no for an answer. Usually people like her just want to give him a religious pamphlet or make him stop eating red meat. Usually he can make them go away. “Fuck. I don’t have any money for no fucking window. I’m waiting for my girlfriend, OK? We’re clearing out of this shitty two-bit dump.”
She’s undeterred. “You can go all over the world and still be miserable, don’t you know that? A different town isn’t the answer. Trouble starts here.” She accidentally taps one of her unhealed wasp stings and visibly flinches. “I haven’t had an easy life either”—she’s acting on a hunch—“but I haven’t gone around doing the things you have.” She looks at his bony neck, almost thinks of giving him money. But she would never. His Adam’s apple is going up and down; his face is flushed.
It’s not just the alcohol, she thinks. He’s not used to hard motherly talk like this. Her voice is suddenly husky with feeling. “I have allergies too. Chlor-Trimeton is good. You should try it.”
He laughs incredulously. “Now you’re giving me allergy tips?” He rolls his eyes, his voice rising. “I don’t even know you, lady. You’re not my grandmother. And you sure as hell ain’t my mother.” A vein in his forehead throbs. “Stick with the blue hairs, lady. I don’t need any advice from you.” Hands trembling, he picks up his drink with a sour laugh. “So you had a hard life too. Your mom go down by the lake to screw some guy while she left you at the gas station and you heard them wailing away on each other? Foster dad make you sleep in the garage when it was ten below? Foster mom make you clean the whole house before you got your slice of Velveeta and a graham cracker? Make you do the floor twice because you missed some spots because you hadn’t eaten for three days and she kept you locked up in the house?” He gulps more whiskey.
Her eyes flicker at these grim details. Nobody has valued him. But she can. She can get him back in school, find him a job! With him, she starts clean. No failures, a clean slate. She’s almost giddy. She can turn his life around! It’s much harder with Frank: too many mistakes and missed opportunities over too many years.
Dawson sits there massaging his temples, his eyes closed.
She leans forward. “Look, I’m not playing games about who had the worst life. I’m just saying you can stop the path you’re on. You could be headed for real trouble. Think of what can happen. No girlfriends, only boyfriends: prison.”
He laughs, surprised she knows these things, surprised she knows anything at all. “I don’t need any stinking advice. You don’t know anything about me, lady. Don’t you have somebody else to talk to? Like who’s that guy at your house—your son? Why don’t you talk to your son? Give him advice. Why fuck around with me? Christ, no window screen is worth this.”
She knows he really means the opposite—he needs her advice but can’t admit he needs an older woman like her.
For an instant their eyes lock.
He gulps the rest of his whiskey, shoves the glass hard across the table at her, and lunges out of the booth. The glass hits her in the chest, splashing the last drops of liquor onto her Eugene Public Library T-shirt before it bounces to her lap.
She looks up. He’s gone. The whiskey smell goes deep into her lungs. The pungency of the fumes tells her how much he hates her, fears her, needs her.
He crashes out the back exit, urinates in a molten stream beside the dumpster. As he pees, he swallows a sob and knuckles his head hard with his free hand. This Clara-Whoever-The-Fuck-She-Is makes him sweat. Ghost who abandoned him. The words come from a secret spot at the base of his stomach. It’s intolerable to be reminded. Roughly he arranges himself and zips his fly. Back inside, he sags into the same booth. She’s gone. Dully, he stares at where she sat.
Back at her kitchen table, she thinks, Maybe I’m just fooling myself. Maybe he doesn’t need me at all. Maybe I’m just a useless failure.
22 days left.
At the casino, Edie finally glides toward Dawson, her breasts hammocked in a makeshift red bandana tied with string around her neck and back, her black capris in need of a wash, her cropped white-blonde hair stiff with spray net she stole from the mini-mart. She’s got no changes of clothes, thinking she was only on a day trip to Jackpot.
His drunken smile is wide. She’s beautiful. She slides into the booth, is warm in his arms. In a few minutes, they go back to the motel.
chapter 11
Clara sits at the kitchen table drinking cold coffee. She frowns at a lone wasp that lands next to her cup offering companionship. Dawson is sadder, more damaged than she’d imagined. No problem kids in school ever assaulted her or invaded her property. He’s out of her league. She needs to talk to Frank, but he would just say, Mother, get real. You can’t help this guy.
The purple wasp sidles up to her ear. It’s easier to deal with a stranger than with your own blood—right, hon? She looks at the wasp. More than anything, she yearns for her son. Just this one time she’d like the comfort of his arms around her, to celebrate their safe landing here, celebrate that he even puts up with her at all. With this latest sting, she wonders if he’ll ever come back.
She puts away the crossing guard T-shirt he threw on the floor, stands there thinking a minute. Then she carries the three-step kitchen stool into the bedroom and sets it in front of her closet. On the top shelf are several hatboxes from the fifties and sixties. She puts them all on the bed. The hat she’s looking for lies protected in the biggest hatbox, somewhere in the back. The wasps circle above the bed like a giant lacy ceiling fan. She opens a smaller hatbox out of curiosity. “Look at these silly pillbox hats,” she exclaims. The net is too coarse
for her purposes.
It’s no wonder she doesn’t like pillboxes. The sixties for her were gray and flat. After Kennedy’s assassination and her own losses in 1963, the rest of the sixties and early seventies were a time of upheaval: Vietnam, the civil rights struggles, assassinations, riots, the burning cities—all these events hardly registered with her, yet they paralleled her personal ruin. With her young husband and daughter unbelievably dead, she hovered like a statue over Frank, training adult crossing guards, going to school board meetings and city hall to urge higher wages for crossing guards who could well save a child’s life.
People in town whispered about her unending grief, her monomania about the crossing guards (though they admired her cause), her odd jokes. Once at a city hall meeting, she cracked, “Just think. With well trained crossing guards, you don’t have any further responsibility.” There was an awkward silence before a few people laughed. Some thought she’d gone mad with grief. Clara sensed these currents around her and just kept busy.
She lifts the lavender garden party hat out of its box, an extravagant swath of net swirled around the starched organdy crown and wide brim, the lavender net cascading in back all the way to her waist. Looking at herself in the mirror, she dons this fairy tale creation. The hat looks ridiculous with her Eugene Public Library T-shirt, but she doesn’t notice. She wore this hat and matching dress on May 11, 1949, at her sister Lillian’s engagement party, where she met Darrell, the love of her life. And married him on June 15, 1950. Thirteen years of marriage, that’s what she had.
Darrell and their short years together flee the special room in her brain and fill the bedroom. Their honeymoon in Yosemite, where they were so tender and fierce and barely left their cabin, sleeping and eating whenever the mood struck. Moving into this very house he built on weekends, she helping with the sanding, varnishing, and painting (until she got too pregnant), laughing and eating hot dogs late at night, Darrell making most of the furniture himself. Samantha’s birth, then Frank’s: Samantha thin and fussy, Frank fat and robust. And always Fourth of July picnics in the backyard among the lilacs, the wasps circling lazily above—fried chicken, watermelon, corn on the cob, her simple chocolate sheet cake with powdered sugar frosting. Sitting on the porch swing with Darrell for hours after the kids were asleep, the smell of lilacs in the air. Dancing in the living room to big bands, ballads from the forties and fifties on 78s and LPs on their portable RCA record player: Harry James, Glenn Miller, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole.