The New Valley

by Josh Weil

  I’ll put some on your back, I told Jackie.

  What a husband, she said.

  Hey, he told her. Look around you, huh?

  You got sand on your hands? she asked me.

  I wiped them off and looked them over. No, I said.

  Let me see them. Once she was sure, she give me the lotion and leaned over her knees so I could put it on. I started.

  You know, she said. I heard what you did.

  What do you mean? I said.

  Gone by that woman’s house. Got in a fight. I heard you sat out there all day watching people go in and out like some kind of creep.

  I was looking for Linda, I said.

  You gonna get yourself beat up again, she said.

  I didn’t know he’d be there. I didn’t even know for sure he was out of jail.

  She turned around and looked at me.

  I still got some on my hands, I said.

  Geoffrey, she said. Who do you think that was?

  Mister Podawalski.

  Which one?

  The man, I said.

  No, which Mister Podawalski?

  Waker.

  No.

  Brian Waker Podawalski.

  Oh boy, Roy said. He sounded like he was getting ready for fun.

  Sharpie, Jackie said. There ain’t no Brian Waker Podawalski. There’s Brian Podawalski. And there’s Waker. They’re brothers.

  It got so quiet the frogs started making their noise.

  They’re two different people, Jackie said. Do you get that?

  Okay, I said. Which one’s Mister Podawalski?

  You mean Waker? she said.

  He what’s married to Linda?

  Was.

  Which one beat me up?

  You mean today or the real bad time?

  The one what put me in New Castle Memorial.

  Waker, she said.

  Okay, I said.

  Roy said, The one who beat you today—

  I didn’t get beat up today, I said.

  That was Brian, he said. He’s a couple years younger.

  Brian never was in jail, Jackie said. It’s Waker’s in jail.

  I know that, I said. You already told me that.

  Don’t get like that.

  I’m not, I told her.

  You are. Which is what you get. Now I told you to stay away from that woman.

  I ain’t seen her, I said.

  And you ain’t going to. You understand? You don’t know what people say. You don’t know. Drag me into it, no, no, no you ain’t. You ain’t gonna call her, you ain’t gonna look for her, you ain’t gonna see her. We clear?

  I got to, I said.

  She don’t want you.

  How do you know? I said. You don’t even know.

  I know what I hear.

  Leave it alone, Roy said.

  Why do you think Brian beat you up today? she said.

  Let him be, Jackie, Roy said.

  You stay out of it, she told him. Then she said to me, Why do you think? Hm?

  Because he likes her, I said.

  Very good, she said. But that’s only half of it. What’s the other half?

  I could feel Roy looking at me in a way what he ain’t looked at me before. He looked sad.

  I don’t know, I said.

  Because she likes him, Jackie said. In fact, what I hear is that she’s living with him, built themselves a home with all that money, gone out somewhere near Pembroke or maybe Harts Run, doesn’t really matter does it? What matters is—

  So her husband’s still in jail? I said.

  See, she said. See now this is what you get. I can see your brain twisting itself in knots in there. You already been hurt bad. You want to keep on getting hurt? Cause that’s what’s gonna happen you start messing around.

  Why can’t you just let him be, Roy said. He said it quiet to the fish in the lagoon but she talked to him just as loud.

  Be what? she said.

  Alive, he said.

  In love? she said. She sounded like she was giving him one of her mean smiles, but there wasn’t nothing on her face at all.

  Go to hell, Roy said.

  Nice, she said. In front of the baby.

  He’s not a kid, Roy said.

  Might as well be, Jackie said. You know that. He knows that. You know that, Geoffrey. What did you think you was doing? There’s girls out there. I’m not saying—what I’m saying is there’s ones out there who’re like you.

  Roy was looking at my face again, but this time I didn’t look back. Remember the hunting, he said. Remember she doesn’t know shit about what matters.

  What matters, Jackie said and turned so she give me her full face and Roy her full back, is that soon as they sell them houses they’re gonna be way on the other side of the valley and outta our lives, including yours, and we can go back to how it was before we was the laughingstock. Don’t look like that, Geoffrey.

  You don’t understand, I said.

  Geoffrey don’t. You remember how it was. Things was good. You got a good job. People like you. Like to watch you wave and wave back. You gonna make some new friends. It’s the way it’s meant to be.

  No, I said.

  Don’t give me no.

  I can’t, I said

  You got plenty, she said. What more do you want?

  I want to talk to her.

  Geoff, Roy said. Jackie and me both looked at him cause he don’t never call me by my name. He said, Why don’t you get out of here, Geoff. Go on and get the hell out of here leave me and Jackie alone. He stood up out of the water. It dripped all around him on the sand. He looked madder than I’d ever seen him. Go on, he said. And take the goddamn baby with you.

  Even before I shut the door, he started yelling at her. He yelled, You have to kill it, don’t you? You just have to kill it in everyone.

  By time I gone through My Hall she was yelling back. I gone into the main house and shut the door on them. Inside, the beagle’s tail thumped at the floor. Soon as I sat down at the kitchen table the baby begun to cry.

  Wednesday of July

  This is what I know. I met Linda Podawalski one night back in the beginning of spring what seems a long time ago now. She was your wife. Now she’s not. You and she is split. You is in jail. She is with your brother, Brian. I guess there could be all kinds of reasons for that. Maybe he give her protection. Maybe she just need a roof. Maybe all along he was the one what she was with at Crigger’s Den.

  I ain’t blind to that. I don’t guess that changes nothing except I want to see her now with even more deep of a need than what was before. About what you is still in jail. I will be truthful. There is some of me what’s glad on that, glad it wasn’t you yesterday at the opening of the homes, glad you is still there where I thought you was from the first, you who I am writing to all this time. You. Waker. I hope you don’t mind I call you that. Waker.

  I am trying here to take each part of you what I know and think on do I know it or is it wrong? Most of them I think is maybe wrong. When it comes down to it, the last true thing I know about you is it was you who come that night and beat me and bust my jaw and done in my eye. I know this cause you is the one in jail. It is what I knowed when I first writ the first word of this to you. Everything after is unsure.

  But the thing is, the thing what’s got me, is this. You ain’t the same Mister Podawalski what I begun to write to. You have stayed right where you was in jail, but I have growed to know you, Waker. Better than I know most anybody else. I have writ to you what no one else has ever seen. You have seen me as this new man what your wife made. The same way I have seen you as the man what your wife made. I know you, Waker Podawalski. Don’t none of this change that, no more than it change the one thing even you can’t deny is the truth between us. You is in jail for what you done that night. And so I will stick to that. I will tell what I know. If there is any two people in this world what deserve to have it straight, it is me and you.

  That night I come to your home
at seven just like Linda told me. And just like I writ you that same morning in the note I put through the door of the home seller’s place. Her car was the only one in the drive. I looked for your truck on the street and I didn’t see it, so I was already standing on the front door steps when there it was, your truck, is what I thought, in the neighbor’s drive. It made me jump. But when the door swinged open it was her alone. In one hand I brung wine in a bottle and in the other the biggest candle I could find at the IGA. It was fat enough I thought it oughta last and it smelled good such as I thought she’d like.

  Just like the movies, I told her.

  I tried to see past her to inside and if you was there, and it seemed she was looking past me at the street for the same. We was both nervous, I guess. I wanted to get inside and outta sight so good thing she wanted me in there, too.

  You had the nicest house I ever been in. I never seen it like that with all the windows having curtains and shades both. They was shut on the street side and shut on all the sides except one what showed the lawn and the neighbor’s house. It wasn’t yet full dark, but it was dark enough there woulda been lights on in the neighbor’s windows if anyone was home. They was all dark as the rest of the house. It eased me a little. She seen me looking out that way and told how it was so much nicer to eat supper with a view and how the street windows was covered cause she didn’t want people who drived by and looked in.

  There was knobs instead of switches what could do the lights midways between off and on. I watched her do them while it got more dark inside than out.

  How’s that? she said.

  Good, I told her.

  She’d already done it up with knives and forks and glasses and everything.

  I ought to do something, I said.

  You just relax, she said.

  She gone in her purse, come out with a lighter.

  If I’d knowed you had that, I said, I woulda skipped the candle, just brung a rubber band.

  She looked like she wanted to laugh, but all she got out was a smile. She’d put the candle on the table and she lit it.

  That’s nice, she said. That smells nice. What scent is that?

  I don’t know, I told her.

  Well it’s nice, she said. She told me about the last stuff she had to do in the kitchen and asked if I wanted to open the wine. Okay, I told her. She gone to that counter between your dining room and kitchen what’s there instead of a wall and I seen she already had wine. Them bottles was laid on their side so I couldn’t see if any was the same make as what I brung, but there was a whole three shelves of them so I figured yuhuh, chance was. She brung over the screw tool.

  Oh that, she said when she seen me looking at all them bottles. That’s all Waker’s. Then she said, I’m sorry, does it make you feel awkward when I mention him?

  No, I said.

  Well it does me, she said. I’m not going to. That was the last mention.

  Okay, I said. I looked at the screw tool she’d put by the bottle. I can tell, I said.

  Hm? she said. She was doing stuff over in the kitchen. You can tell what, Hon?

  It makes you nervous.

  Oh, she said. Oh well no, she said.

  Something in the kitchen took her thoughts to it. I tried to put mine on the bottle but she’d sat me with my back to the front door and I was having trouble. I got the foil peeled off the top but under they’d put a plug what I couldn’t get out with my nails. The tool she’d give me had handles coming out all over it and I tried to turn it around where I could get the point to bite.

  Oh, she said from the kitchen. That thing’s ridiculous. And she come over with a hot pad in her hand.

  It’s just I ain’t seen this exact style, I told her.

  It was a gift, she said. He talked about wanting one every time we’d sit down to—shit, she said. See? Well, that was really the last time, I promise.

  She got the bottle open and give it to us in glasses and I waited like Ma B said till she’d laid out all the food she’d done. She come around the table and kiss me on the side of my head.

  When we was sitting, she said, I’m not nervous. I’m just excited.

  She smiled till I knowed what she meant, how sitting on the hood of her car drinking Pepsis behind the Sunoco we had talked of excited and nervous. You remember pretty good yourself, I said.

  To our memories, she said and we tapped our glasses. It sounded different from with cans. Just one thing different of a whole bunch more to come.

  We talked while we ate, but we wasn’t neither of us thinking with all our brains on what we spoke. I was thinking on when you was gonna show. A vehicle pulled up outside on the street. We both gone quiet. It was just the sounds of us finishing what was in our mouths. When the car door slammed we both of us jerked. Near knocked the plates off the table. She started laughing. She laughed harder than I ever seen her, and didn’t seem like she was gonna stop, laughed herself out till she couldn’t hardly breathe. I tried to listen through it, see if there was anyone coming up to the house door, but I couldn’t help smiling at her going on and on. When she was done, she took her glass of wine and drunk it all down. She put it back on the table and breathed out, Whoooo.

  God, she said. Look at us.

  I guess we’s nervous, I said.

  I guess so, she said. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

  It’s nice, I said. The food is real good.

  Maybe it’s just crazy, she said. She said it like it wasn’t meant for me to say yes or no. On top of what she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking out the windows at the neighbor’s house. It was still all dark. I tried to see in its windows and couldn’t see nothing.

  You think he’s in there? I said.

  Who?

  Your husband.

  No, she said. No, Geoffrey, I told you. It’s okay. Really, I made sure he’d be gone. He won’t be back till after midnight. Okay?

  You is wondering how I coulda sat there and not told her how I’d writ the letter what would make you come after all, how I’d told you behind her back. You is thinking I am a liar for staying quiet just as bad as if I’d told her false. I ain’t proud of it. But I knowed if I told her you was on your way she’d have made me go. And then what? You’d already know about her and me, and I’d have got sent out before I could show anything what I was made of, and then what on from there, is what I sat there thinking.

  She poured herself another glass and give mine a top up and said, How about we finish up and go in the living room where we can just stretch out and be, huh?

  Okay, I told her, but really I just wished you’d hurry up and come and we could get it done.

  We didn’t go to the living room anyhow, least not at first. First I did the dishes. She said she didn’t want me to, but I said I wanted to, and she said, Not while you’re a guest in my house, Mister.

  Okay, I said. Just pretend I’m not. Pretend it’s like I live here.

  We both thought on that in quiet. Then she said, That’d be nice wouldn’t it?

  I didn’t say nothing, just started stacking them in the sink. I like washing dishes and I’m good at it and it was nice with her taking the done ones from me and drying them and it going on like that, a good time together of no talking like we used to out back by the tank. It was nice but for the times when headlights would come through the window screen and go cross the wall and we’d both try hard to show we didn’t even notice. I figured I’d leave it alone. If she was worried what maybe you’d change your plans and be home early or other doubts, I figured that was maybe for the best, just make her more ready for it when you come.

  When we was done, she opened one of them bottles you buyed and poured us more and said, A penny for your thoughts?

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to lie. I just stood there drying my hands.

  She said, You’re supposed to say, It’ll cost me more than that. Anyway, it’s what I like about you. That you didn’t. I’ll tell you mine for free. I had a fantasy just then.
I thought about how it would be for you and me to be married. I just kind of let my imagination go, you know? Did you think about that?

  I never really thought that far, I said. I was just thinking about how good we was at washing dishes.

  Yeah, she said. I guess that’s pretty much what I meant. She took a drink. Hey, I have a idea. How about we go into the living room and pretend it was just our living room like on any night.

  We lay out on the couch you got with its two parts like a L. She was on one part and I was on the other.

  What do you like to watch? she said.

  Anything, I said.

  Come on, she said. You’ve got to help me with this or it won’t be any fun.

  I thought of what Roy watched this time of night. Survivor, I said.

  She put it on. In the glass of the TV, I could see the picture of the light in the hallway entrance. I could see the front door. I watched that.

  I’m just gonna do some chores, she said. I don’t care so much for reality TV.

  Well let’s watch something else, I said.

  She come up behind me and put her hands in my hair. Silly, she said. This is the whole point. You do what you would do and I do what I would do and we can feel what it would be like. Okay?

  I lay there watching the TV’s mirror picture of the front door while she gone around emptying the trash cans into a bag. I heard her doing it all over the house and then I heard her take it outside and then I could see her through the window putting the bag in the can out back. She was looking at the neighbor’s house again and I looked at it too. It was night now and the moon was out and I could see the curtains wasn’t closed on the windows in that house but I couldn’t see enough more to look in. When she come back inside, I said, Where you think your neighbor is?

  My neighbor?

  You keep looking at the house.

  Yeah, she said. I do, don’t I. I don’t know where he is. I just keep worrying he’s gonna come back and see something and—you know. I guess we don’t need the curtains open anymore, anyway. The view’s all gone isn’t it?

  She shut them all along that side of the house. Then she put some more wine in her glass. She stood there behind me for a while. Then she said, Well I guess we know how this is going to be. About what you’d expect, right? How about we try what’s it like in the bathroom.