Belly

by Lisa Selin Davis

  He tried to erase from his memory any image of what had just happened, tried to pluck it right out. Instead he recalled, it must have been in 1980-something, how Eliza had started disappearing for days at a time. Not that Belly noticed. But Myrna told him one morning when he came back from the bar that Eliza was spending nights at a house two blocks south, at the home of her friend Margie. They were vegetarians, Myrna said, with both fascination and contempt. They were hippies. Belly didn’t know why she was telling him: was he supposed to intervene somehow? Was he supposed to go over there and drag her home? Let them feed her, he thought, and house her, too. Less money for us.

  One Sunday morning in their old house on Phila Street the doorbell rang. Usually this was a bad sign: even the Jehovah’s Witnesses knew to come to the back door and knock hard. Myrna was passed out on the couch—nine o’clock on a Saturday morning was not the O’Leary family’s best time—and Belly opened the door in his pajamas to find a woman in a dashiki and a man in a T-shirt that read Thank you for pot smoking.

  Belly said, “What?” and the woman held out a loaf of homemade bread.

  “We’re Henry’s parents,” they said.

  “Who?”

  “Henry. Your daughter’s sweetheart?”

  “Which daughter?” Belly asked. He crossed his arms and wondered if his third daughter had gone and got herself a boy without telling him.

  The woman was still holding the bread.

  The man said, “Your daughter Eliza,” cocking his head to the right.

  “It’s banana bread,” the woman said.

  Myrna mumbled “What the hell’s going on?” from the couch, and then she raised herself and wafted over to the door like a ghost and managed to smooth down her hair and paste a smile on her face. What was it about women that made them instantly able to turn from drooling drunk to gracious hostess?

  Myrna invited them in, and they ate banana bread, and later Myrna fixed apple martinis in the old silver shaker that had belonged to his father and they sat and talked like real couples with real families. The Kessels had driven through Saratoga on their way back from Canada, they said, where they’d hidden from Vietnam, part of the caravan of carpetbaggers who took a detour and were so charmed by the town they never left. There were hordes of them then, twenty-five, thirty years before, kids Belly’s own age but living on a different planet entirely, young parents who let their children run around in nothing but diapers, outside where everyone could see them. Kids who opened up hippie restaurants that served tasteless mush and wouldn’t respect the food chain.

  That whole day faded away: the two couples, the banana bread, the drinks, a game of Twister (Belly just observed while Myrna tangled herself up with the neighbors), the swapping of family histories, some polite comparison of the children’s grades. Belly watched in awe as his wife rotated her whole personality to accommodate these visitors from another world.

  The doorbell rang again, and this time when Myrna stumbled to the door, a chubby girl with a cyclone of brown hair stood there with her arms crossed above her wide stomach. She said, “Tell my parents it’s lunchtime,” and turned around, stepped off the porch, and fell like a truck on the pavement, spraining her ankle.

  He’d watched the Kessels spring into action, rescue their daughter Margie from the sidewalk and help her home, one parent on each side boosting her up, and a horrible sting of guilt circulated through him, so much guilt and so little alcohol left in the house, and when night came and the booze wore off completely he found himself in a rage, on a rampage, swinging his arms around like a machete until every woman but one in his house received a welt.

  The Kessels and the other hippie types were gone, or hardened now into solid citizens, just their children left to cling to scraps of worn convictions like faded tie-dyed T-shirts. Margie was in charge of the town, somehow, and Eliza had married Margie’s boring brother who couldn’t make her happy. This was not how he meant it to be, when he was first married and first running the bar, when, for a few months at least, he envisioned a life with a pretty wife and a couple of kids in the town that he loved.

  Everything that happened happened long ago, twenty pounds ago, two girlfriends ago, a hundred thousand gray hairs ago, and not one thing about that life had stuck. No more wife, no more mistress, no more bar, no more books. Since his third daughter left him, he hadn’t been able to hold on to one thing, not one semiprecious thing could he retain.

  How’d the job search go?” Nora leaned against the doorjamb with the baby on her hip. The boys were playing Grand Theft Auto and Belly had reserved the right to play the winner, but what he really wanted was to nap.

  “You think these boys will ever let me sleep?”

  “You can’t sleep in the middle of the day, Belly, you have to get a job.”

  He shifted himself on the couch. “Did I get any calls?”

  “Are you expecting any?”

  “I don’t know.” Jimi’s guy died on the TV screen, drowning in bad-luck theme song.

  “Well? The job?”

  “Not good,” he said to Nora. “Nothing.”

  “Well, it’s pallets for you, then.” He shook his head. She sat down next to him on the couch and put the baby between them. King flapped his arms like a bird. “I know it’s only the third day, but you can’t sit around here playing video games. You’ve got to do something.”

  He nodded.

  “Well, let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “To Gene’s. He said for you to come in this afternoon.”

  “Fuck,” Belly said.

  “I’ll pick you up in a few hours.”

  Belly planted his feet in the plush, stained carpet.

  “It’s only for a few hours,” she said. “What else are you going to do?”

  He thought of the Piels in the fridge and the Jameson’s and tequila in the cabinet, and those sounded like wonderful friends to spend an afternoon with, but he said, “Let’s go.”

  The pallet company was out by Quad Graphics, in the industrial part of town that had not yet been claimed and subdivided by developers. Just a little low building with big, mean, yellow machines out front moving stacks of wooden planks from one pile to another, and a hand-painted sign that read “JG Pallets.”

  “Who’s the J?” Belly asked.

  “The boss,” said Nora.

  “I thought Gene was the boss.”

  “He is. Sort of.”

  She put the car in park, left the motor running, but Belly just sat there. He sat there sober.

  “Off you go,” said Nora.

  “Give me a minute.”

  “Don’t be late on your first day.”

  “It’s not my first day.”

  “It is. I told Gene you’d come in at one p.m. and it’s already five after.”

  “I’m an old man,” he said. “Give a little respect, would you?”

  “Right.”

  Belly lit a cigarette he’d stolen from Nora, cupping the filter in his hand as if he could keep her from seeing.

  “Get out of the car,” Nora said. “Come on.”

  “Let me finish this.”

  “No,” she said, and she got out, walked around to his side, and opened the door. A group of men milling in front turned to look at them.

  “Nora, don’t make a scene.”

  “Out,” she said.

  “Fine.” He stabbed the cigarette out and saved the unburned part in his pocket. His right hip screamed at him as he climbed out, an ache right above the metal joint. But he didn’t say anything. He tried to let his stoicism kick in.

  He didn’t say good-bye to Nora, just walked toward the front door, looked at the men, and said, “Women, what’re you gonna do?” Then he wondered if they would think she was his girl, his pregnant girlfriend instead of his daughter. Even a big girl like Nora would give him some points, being so much younger than him.

  Men sat at picnic tables, hard hats and safety goggles lying next to their open lunchboxes, a
nd Belly thought he should say something else to them, some old male salute, some regular way of interacting that he must have known before he was surrounded by men, day and night of men, not one of whom you could trust, before he stopped shaking hands or slapping a fellow on the back, all locker-room interaction forbidden in prison because it led to things unspeakable. He said nothing. He walked past them and said nothing.

  Inside, big metallic machines gnashed and gnawed away, sawdust everywhere, churning out these plates of wood, and for what? Pallets. Just slabs of tree so people who actually had something to ship, some real product, could do their jobs. In all his dreams as a boy, he never could have imagined that this is how his life would be, fifty-nine years old and starting a new job smashing pallets together.

  He found Gene in the back office, a dank little room with greenish fluorescents buzzing above. Gene. Fat Gene. Back when Nora was in high school, Belly and his old pal Phillip Sr. used to call the kid Fat Hands when he came by the house or the bar to collect her. He hadn’t really gotten fatter, just more swollen, slower, big bags under his eyes and big pores and a big sad smile. He was the kind of guy you immediately felt sorry for, like you wanted to buy him an ice cream cone or a beer.

  “Belly, good to see you.” Gene looked at the big old school clock above the desk. “You’re a little late.”

  He should say sorry. He should say, Won’t happen again. He should say, Thanks for the job. But he’d been his own boss for thirty years. He said, “So this is it, huh? I thought it was a bigger operation.”

  “It’s what it is,” Gene said. “It’s a job. Here’s some paperwork to fill out.”

  “What is it?”

  “An application and stuff. Background.”

  “What kind of background?”

  “Everybody here has to fill out an application. It’s not a test.” Gene handed him four sheets of paper and a pencil. “You can sit outside with the guys if you want.”

  Belly had nothing in his stomach but the residue of last night’s cheap wine. He made his way to the blinding brightness outside where the men all sat with packed lunches from their wives. Their wedding bands gleamed in the sun.

  He sat down at a table and filled out his name and age and Social Security number, scanned a little notice about health risks and asbestos and sawdust. Then, for some reason, he could not make his hand grasp the pencil anymore. The connection between his brain and hands faded in the sun and he couldn’t write anything, not one word could he elicit from his fingertips.

  “Where’s your lunch?” asked a man with a walrus mustache. All these men were interchangeable, men with big beer guts and bad haircuts and ranch houses and pictures of their kids in their wallets. Men leading the good life, the boring life, the empty life, the life with no adventure and no tall tales. Fucking men. He’d had four years of nothing but men, men’s naked bodies in the shower, men’s naked bodies doing things to each other Belly never, ever wanted to recall. He’d vowed to himself he would never be around men again, only women, women forever, and here he was, surrounded.

  “Must have misplaced my lunchbox,” Belly said.

  “He’s got nothing to eat,” said mustache man, and then the men each took something from their lunchboxes, half a sandwich, a bag of potato chips, three Oreo cookies, trail mix, Fig Newtons, Doritos, a pile growing bigger and bigger.

  “That’s plenty, guys,” Belly said. “Enough.” He looked at the pile. He said, “Thanks.”

  Mustache man was looking at Belly and Belly said, “What?”

  “We’re taking a poll,” he said. “Not to be rude or anything, but are you the guy? The racetrack guy?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Belly O’Leary.”

  “Live and in person.”

  What was the problem? This was great. This was work. Lunch with the guys. Oreos. He could tell his stories, about Loretta, about the parties in the back room on Travers night. A built-in audience. This would be fine.

  “Did you do it?” asked a short guy with a receding hairline.

  “What?”

  “Did you take all that money from the government?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Someone said, “Weren’t you the embezzler?” The guy had cookie crumbs in the corners of his mouth.

  “I didn’t embezzle shit,” said Belly.

  “From the government? That wasn’t you?”

  “There was no embezzling. It was bookmaking.”

  “Yeah, but it was all Mafia, right?” asked the short one. “Wasn’t there a whole Mafia thing, some scam, and you took all that money from the city?”

  “That was our tax money,” said cookie-crumb guy. “That was money for my kids’ school.”

  Belly felt the wind shift, the mood change. He knew how easily a few men having lunch together could turn into a lynching mob. He’d seen it many times in the last four years, though he had escaped unscathed. No one in Schuylkill had anything against him.

  “Listen, I’ll tell you what it was,” Belly said, his hands high in the air. “It’s really very simple. Instead of betting at the track, they bet in my bar, tax-free, and then a few people got more money than they would have, you see what I’m saying?”

  The men were all listening to him, five, six men, alert to his every word.

  “All it was was more money for the people and less money for the track.”

  The men were not convinced.

  “Less money for the city,” said cookie crumb.

  “It’s all right,” said mustache man. “We’d all do it, too, if we could figure out how.”

  That seemed to calm them.

  “How much money you make?” one asked.

  Belly shrugged.

  “Come on, tell us. What are we gonna do, turn you in?”

  “A lot,” said Belly. “I made a lot and I blew it all on a woman.”

  One guy raised his soda and said, “Here’s to that,” and then they all raised their drinks, or their sandwiches if they didn’t have a drink, and they toasted to “blowing it all on women.”

  “What do you guys think of Gene?” he asked the group.

  They exchanged glances.

  “What?”

  “Aren’t you a friend of his?”

  “He’s a friend of my daughter’s.”

  “Right. The daughter.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. Gene’s fine. He’s what they call one of those micromanagers.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The short guy said, “He comes over and, like, looks at every pallet to see if the screws aren’t sticking out. This other plant up in Glens Falls got all these OSHA citations and now he’s obsessed with making sure we don’t do anything wrong.”

  “It’s kind of a pain in the ass, if you want to know the truth,” said mustache. “We keep trying to think of how we can get someone else to be foreman. Get Gene one of those fake promotion things so he can worry about the bills or something and leave us alone.”

  Belly thought, I could be foreman. Bump Gene out of here, out of Nora’s life, boss these boys around. I could get a little money in my pocket, my own money, maybe even today, and I could call Loretta, tonight I will call Loretta, she must not know I’m out, that’s why she hasn’t called. He was sweating now, and dreaming, and not really listening to the lunch chatter of his new companions, some guys to watch the game with, a barbeque, a new apartment, maybe with a deck, a porch, a man must have a porch to watch the dancers waddle by in their little outfits in the summer. Loretta will fix drinks, he thought. I’ll tend the grill. It would all work out fine.

  And then, again, he could not summon up her phone number. He couldn’t remember. All seven digits were erased from his memory, and he panicked, and then he was back, in front of the pallet factory with his blank application.

  “The only time he’s in a good mood is when your daughter’s around,” said cookie crumb, and then they all started to laugh.
/>   “What?”

  “Nothing, nothing, just, you know, she’s always around, they’re always in the office having these powwows with the doors closed.”

  Belly stood up. “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing man, calm down.”

  “No, fuck you, you got something to say about my daughter then get up.”

  He didn’t know how it happened. He didn’t even know why he cared. So Nora was pregnant and humping her fat high school boyfriend, so she was cheating in plain view of this captive audience. What business was it of his? But the same way he couldn’t keep his fingers filling out the application, he couldn’t keep them from flying into the faces of these men, these men who had donated their lunches to him—now they were the enemy, that’s what his hands thought, they fought without his okay, they reached for the mustache and the cookie crumbs and the receding hairlines, and then there was Gene, big bubble of referee, pulling him out, seating him in the corner, the principal’s office, detention, or worse, expulsion, and like that his work day was done.

  Don’t say anything.” Nora had one hand on the wheel and the other on her unlit cigarette.

  “Hand that over,” he said, feeling the other cigarette crushed in his pocket, leaking tobacco in his jeans.

  “Nothing!” She was yelling at him. His own daughter, yelling at him.

  “I can’t do heavy lifting.”

  “Jesus, Dad. Jesus.” She shook her head. He took a cigarette from her pack on the dashboard and smoked it in silence as they drove down Route 29. They passed a liquor store, and the neon lights called to him, curves of bright red beckoning.

  “It was work,” he said again. “Something you wouldn’t know about.”

  “I know about work,” she said.

  “What job have you ever done?”

  “I had my own business once.”

  “For about five minutes,” he said. “It folded.”

  “So did yours,” she said. “And I was a beer back, illegally, in your very own bar, if you recall,” she said, and then he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Why was Nora so stubborn, always trying to fight with him? Why couldn’t she be a good daughter, like Eliza, or like his third daughter, gentle with her father, and supportive, and sort of far away instead of up in his face all the time? He remembered what it was like when Nora worked at the bar, how she would obsessively clean the taps and reorder the top-shelf scotches alphabetically, and how she’d hand him the phone, her whole face encased in scowl, when a client would call. How she would straighten up his stacks of boxes with the receipts, and cover them with benign labels like “Taxes—1987” or “Paystubs” or “Napkins,” doing her best to hide his flagrant misdeeds. With his other kids, he could pretend to be an upstanding citizen, but with Nora, with Nora, he could only be himself, all the loose threads of his flaws hanging out.