Periwinkles and sharp stones cut the soles of her feet but her straight course to the water did not waver. As she waded out into the surf, the cold shocked her. She was glad of it. The cold would soon numb her wounded feet and she thought if she could swim out far enough, she could finally feel clean.
“Tonight I’m going to fulfill a dream I’ve had from when I should have only been sleeping with teddy bears,” she announced to the whitecaps. The chill water was just below her bare breasts now. “Tonight, for the first time, I’m moving toward something instead of always running away from something, always looking back!” she yelled. The sea floor dropped away suddenly and she went under and came up laughing and treading water.
The buzz in her head from all the booze didn’t matter anymore. She was a good swimmer, “a natural,” her father said. She slipped under the waves into the dark and came up gulping crystal air. She pushed out in a crawl, legs and arms working smoothly, her stroke confident and strong.
This would be a binary choice, she told herself. Either she would swim until she drowned or until she felt really clean. Soon the water would be all there was and she would leave everything behind her. Somewhere up ahead and hours away, the sun was reaching around the earth, coming for her and waking up the world to a new day.
Asia Minor escaped to the Atlantic. If she felt new and cleansed, if her mask fell away to the sea bottom, maybe she would have enough left in her for the swim back. The fiery reflections of the house on the hill chased her wake and she pushed harder. The stars were all the illumination she needed.
Soon the cold would lift the burden of conscious thought. Poeticule Bay would be far behind her, along with the weight of memory’s burden. She started to gasp and slowed her pace. She worked her arms and legs in a steady rhythm, pacing herself, going for distance. She felt lighter and lighter. She had the strength to keep going, straight toward the rushing, burning sun.
The unforgiving light was out there somewhere, crawling toward her, across the waves from the east. Soon everyone would wake up and read their newspapers and their web news and they would read her words. They’d see what she was, helpless underneath her mask. Marcus would know why she lied for so long, even to him. Everyone she had ever known—everyone who thought they knew Betty Jane Minor—would read her love letters to Uncle Joe.
Parting Shots
Before he even opened his eyes, he groaned. Burt could feel himself pulled up from unconsciousness toward daylight and damnation. Genie was still dead and Audrey was still alive and now he’d have to deal with that all over again.
The clock radio blared and Marcus, the morning DJ, swam in behind his eyes and started prying his eyelids up. Burt rolled over, hoping Marcus would get to a song soon. However, instead of introducing a song Burt could retreat into, the radio guy was nattering. The radio’s tuning dial was slightly off. Through the static, Burt could tell it was the regular DJ, though Marcus didn’t sound like himself this morning.
A stab of sunlight poked into his brain through the torn curtain and he cursed as he rose from the bed unsteadily and made his way to the bathroom. For a moment, Burt thought he was going to fall but he caught hold of the podium sink, nearly ripping it from the wall. Wouldn’t that have been a terrible tragedy? Old man trapped under own sink! Nine of ten accidents happen in the home, so why not me? It would be lonely, slowly dying under the weight of the sink, unable to get up. But dying would be an immense relief, too, wouldn’t it?
After an unsatisfactory squirt, Burt faced himself in the mirror. His eyelids were rimmed with bright pink and his nose looked like a tomato. He belched loudly and tasted gin. Gin made his stomach bleed. Good.
His bleeding stomach reminded him of Audrey in the hospital. She’d thrown up so much blood, he couldn’t figure how it was possible God had delivered him the tragic miracle. Now Audrey took pictures of elk somewhere in Banff National Park so Japanese tourists could have a never-ending supply of fresh postcards. Audrey. His good daughter. Healthy and whole and a great weight on his heart.
Genie had always been Audrey’s opposite. Audrey slept like an angel through the whole night from six weeks old. Genie had colic and seemed to keep it with her like a curse. Genie stayed cranky right up until her death.
Burt wondered if he should bother with the pretense of making coffee or pick up take-out java and pour in a little morning hooch? Or just take a bottle of 90 proof in each crepuscular hand and get on with it?
His father, Silas, drank himself to death. “Slow suicide is perfectly okay by the laws of man and nature,” his old man had said. “God gave us the grape and the barley and plenty of reasons to use ’em.” Silas always concluded that and similar pronouncements with, “Burt! You’re young and full of blue piss! Fetch me another bottle quick before I sober up.”
His father was a happy drunk and gravely melancholy when sober. Burt decided he must have inherited the same taste for alcohol his father had, but regretted he didn’t seem to enjoy the compulsion nearly as much. Now that Burt was an old man himself, the world had changed the rules on him. Alcoholism was a disease now and that new ugly fact spilled the fun out of each day.
Silas—how come guys weren’t named Silas anymore?—had taken pride in starting each day with a shave so Burt lathered up, too. Maybe that was the trick. Looking better might be the key to feeling better. Then he thought of Genie using his razor to shave her legs and how he had bellowed at her not to do it again. She’d run off for two days that time.
Everything that gives me a moment’s happiness reminds me to be sad.
His wife, Helen, had always been the buffer between him and Genie. Helen was a librarian now. He saw her sometimes, across the parking lot at closing time. He had assumed that, since she had already put up with so much, her capacity to forgive was bottomless. Burt wore her out. After Genie died, his wife didn’t seem to have any energy left to make him feel okay anymore. He had begun to drink more after Genie passed, but he figured he was entitled. If you don’t drink after losing a child, when was a better time?
The DJ was still blathering loudly through the static from the clock radio. “Shut up, Marcus!” Burt said, and kept shaving. The razor was old and cut him several times. “The wages of sin are razor bucks,” Burt said to his reflection. The haggard old face that emerged from behind the whiskers was little better than the hairy mask that had grown over it while he dreamt. He missed half his chin but he had already put three dots of toilet paper on his nicks so he decided he’d drawn enough of his blood for the day.
The day she left, Helen’s last words to him were, “Make God the center.” He’d tried, but Burt was tired of apologizing. How much contrition did one man have to drag up before he could be free of eternal condemnation by a bunch of celestial busybodies? God didn’t understand how hard it is to be a man. And sometimes, if you’re unlucky, He answers your prayers and still gets it wrong in the end.
It was then that he caught a few phrases and realized Marcus was talking to him. He was sure he heard “eternal damnation” and the words “sorry prick.”
Burt stalked to the bedroom and finally tuned the radio. “What mischief are you up to, Mr. Marcus in the Morning?” The static drained away and it was as if Marcus was standing in Burt’s bedroom, yelling at him.
“…if you believe in reincarnation, let me tell you what that is, friends and neighbors,” Marcus said. “Reincarnation is a hamster wheel.”
“Okay,” Burt said. What happened to the usual mix of Johnny Cash, Stompin’ Tom Connors and Elvis?
“If you believe there’s an old man in the sky watching your every move, how can you ever get naked or evacuate your bowels? I’ll tell you what your fascist God makes us. A damned ant farm! And I use the term ‘damned’ not carelessly, but advisedly.”
“Jesus!” said Burt.
As if he had heard Burt, Marcus said, “Jesus won’t help you now. Jesus died to get his Dad in a forgiving mood. Would you let one child, your favorite no less, die just so you c
ould forgive your other children? That we might live, my ass!”
He almost skidded and fell as he headed downstairs for the phone. “Jesus!” Burt cried. It was half an exclamation. The rest was a call for help.
Marcus figured he had less than a minute to go, so he did his best to pour it all out before Donegal, the station manager, came banging through the door to haul him off the mic and out of the booth. He couldn’t help thinking of his hero, Reverend Ted, who had been hauled away from his pulpit one memorable Sunday morning by a bunch of angry congregants. They hadn’t appreciated the nuances of his drunken speech against religion.
Rev. Ted had been dead for years now, but people all the way to Bangor still talked about the Sunday the crazy reverend went off his nut. Marcus felt he owed the old minister something. Though his tirade had been lost on most of the congregation, Marcus counted that as the beginning of his journey away from a guilty conscience. Rev. Ted had woken him from the slavery of his born again sleep. Ted had gotten drunk on communion wine and, with slurred words, convinced Marcus to become an atheist, free to be dead forever.
“I’ll get to our sponsors, Hankerson’s Car Wash and Chigley’s Roofing, in just a moment. By the way, the views of your humble radio host are exactly the same as our noble sponsors ’cause they know I’m only laying the beautiful truth on you!”
For the first time since he spun jazz records for the one to five shift in college, Marcus was having fun at his job. Of course, the check tucked safely into his breast pocket had really kicked him into high gear. He’d use the money to get a tent and some supplies for the summer ahead. No need to touch the principle. A million dollars freed a guy up and knocked the shit off your boots. He’d leave Poeticule Bay and this lousy job in a blaze of glory.
“You know the beauty of these heavies I’m laying on you, brothers and sisters? The beauty is, you too can be godless and free. You don’t have to feel guilty anymore. Say your child is dying. Guess what? It’s a bad genetic bounce in a random universe. There’s no one to plead your case to. If God’s too busy to save your child from a horrible disease without you having to beg, what kind of monster is your god, anyway? I’d save your child in a heartbeat if I was omnipotent and I’m just a simple know-nothing guy about to be unemployed. Think about that! If your God has less compassion than I do, what are you worshipping? You’d be better off praying to me and begging for my help and forgiveness and sending me lots of moolah! How about it folks? I can always use more. Maybe I’ll pull a Pope and use the cash you send me to fill up my basement with fine antique works of art the world will never see! Sure, I could use it to feed the poor, but unlike what religion does, I’m not going to lie to you.”
The board’s red lights blinked at him. “Our lines are jammed. Everyone wants to talk to their new God, the inimitable me, but you can call me Marcus!” He added brightly, “Marcus in the Morning!”
“This is James Chigley of Chigley Roofing,” an angry voice came over his headphones. “I was just having breakfast and heard your show and I think I might just toss my cookies—”
“No need to thank me, James. Enjoy your meal. I bless you for making this show possible.”
“I don’t—”
“—know what you did before I came into your life? In the old days, before me, you could beat your wife and feel terrible about it all the way to church where your priest said it was okay.”
“Hey! I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not even Catholic!”
“Never mind that. Ask your wife’s forgiveness. That, my friend, is the way to heaven right here on earth. Right here, right now.”
Marcus leaned back and looked through the glass door of his booth. His boss’s door was still closed, so he was sure Clarence Donegal was still enjoying his morning nap. His boss made a great show of being the first of the day staff to arrive in the morning and the last to leave at night. Mostly Donegal napped and ate chicken from the restaurant next door. On summer afternoons Donegal went out with advertisers on the golf course. He slept with his door closed and played golf under the guise of “making sales calls.” Donegal told everyone he was the hardest working station manager in the business because his car was in the parking lot the longest of any employee at the radio station.
“Next caller! Gwen, you’re on with your new lord and saviour, Marcus in the Morning on 95.4, almost 95 and a half on your AM dial. What’s on your mind?”
“This is Gwen.”
“Yes, we know. Go ahead.”
“Do you mean me? This is Gwen.”
“Next caller. Bobby, Bobby, lay it on me!”
“I’m a Christian, mister. Are you seriously saying God is a figment of my imagination?”
“Exactly, Bobby, you’ve got it exactly right. He or she is a figment that’s draining away your life energy. Which Christian god do you believe in, by the way? The Old Testament god who’s always angry or the new testament God who took a chill pill who’s all about love except when He’s not?”
“I believe in both the God of the New and Old Testaments.”
“That’s no good. He’s supposed to be eternal and unchangeable so you really have to pick one. Get back to me on that and we’ll chat. Next caller!”
The secretaries from the front desk appeared from the front office: Sheila and the other Sheila. The young one waved her arms while the old one slapped a pad of paper against the glass of his booth. He looked up and flashed them a grin. The paper read, “Thirty-six angry calls!” He gave both women an energetic thumbs-up and shooed them away. As soon as they turned their backs he pumped both his middle fingers at them.
“Next up, Roger’s on Marcus in the Morning!”
“All I got to say is right on, man!”
“Nobody likes a suck up, Roger. I condemn you to the depths of hell for your impious thoughts about the hot check out lady at The Duck ’n Rush. She’s over eighty and deserves your respect, you utter pig!”
Laughter. “Rock on, man. You’re my new god—”
“Blasphemer!” Marcus yelled as he hung up.
“We’ve got to whip through these calls folks, because sometime soon Mr. Donegal is going to wake up from his morning nap and I’ll be off the air, so come on, Poeticule Bay, let’s have a little intellectual rigour before I blow out of this town for a little place I like to call Anytown Better, USA! I can see by the jammed lines that you have the number so let’s go to line two with Betty. Betty, what do you have to contribute to our religious discussion?”
Silence. Then he heard a tell-tale echo and hung up on Betty. “Betty is in love with the idea that she’ll hear herself on the radio someday. If you’re going to talk to me, you’ll have to turn down your radio. Betty, get over yourself. Buy a tape recorder and you’ll be able to hear yourself all day long without bugging the sh—um, bugging me. Whoops. With that breach of on-air etiquette we go to, line three. The queue says this is Burt.”
“This is Burt.”
“You’re off to a slow start, Burt. My divine finger is reaching out, much like in that famous painting of God giving life to Adam. The difference is, my finger’s over the button that will send you to oblivion. What’s your story, Burt?”
“I killed my daughter.”
Marcus spaced out a moment. “Tell me more,” he said finally.
“You’re saying God doesn’t exist, but I made a deal with Him. I prayed like crazy and…”
“Back up there, cowboy. How’d you kill your daughter?”
Marcus wasn’t sure if he should believe his caller and had his hand poised over the dump button, watching the clock hands skim around. “C’mon, Burt. Don’t leave us hanging. Who’d you kill?”
“I liked you better when you just let Johnny Cash sing.”
“Johnny didn’t sing. He talked his way through his songs and somehow nobody seemed to notice. What happened to your daughters, Burt?”
“Genie showed up at Audrey’s hospital bed drunk one night after she’d disappeared for three days. Gen
ie ran away a lot. Anyway, Audrey didn’t mind, but Audrey was like that. Nothing phased her and she was just glad to see her sister. Audrey was always sunny…even acted pretty chipper fighting the Big C. Anyway, I chewed out Genie and Audrey got all upset and I went to the hospital chapel and I made myself a prayer. I asked God to take Genie instead of Audrey.”
“Interesting.”
“Sure. It didn’t happen to you.”
“God doesn’t answer prayers, Burt. Even if such a thing as God exists, and I won’t grant you that, he doesn’t interfere with our messed up world. If God cared about you, Audrey wouldn’t get cancer at all—that’s what mature grown-ups call the disease, by the way. Not ‘The Big C’—and there wouldn’t be so much suffering if God didn’t allow such flaws into his designs in the first place.”
The silence stretched out and, for a moment, Marcus thought the caller had put the receiver down quietly and was stepping back to blow his brains out. That would be awful and shocking. It would also make great radio for his exit from the business.
Burt took a long drink from his bottle of gin. He drank it straight, no ice. He was serious about getting the job done today and all that healthy orange juice was slowing down the process.
“I had two daughters,” he said into the phone, sending a message out to the living and the dead, if Genie and Helen were somehow listening.
“You have my attention, Burt,” Marcus said. “Lay it on me.”
“My eldest, Audrey. She got The Big C. Audrey was daddy’s girl. She couldn’t do wrong and nobody loved a daughter like I loved her.” He was breathing heavily. He could hear it through the phone but the more he tried to control it, the worse it got. Lots of things were like that.
“What happened to…Audrey, was it?”
The Dangerous Kind & Other Stories Page 6