The New Valley

by Josh Weil

  In the bathroom? I said.

  You know, like brushing our teeth before bed. It’s got to be more intimate than watching the TV. She put her hands on the back of the couch next to my head. I could feel again how they’d been earlier in my hair and I wished them back there. But she just said, It’d be more close, don’t you think? Sharing something like that together?

  On the way down the hall to the bathroom I said, You share your toothbrush with your husband?

  No, she said. You share the time.

  Okay, I said.

  The time before bed, she said. It’s a intimate time. You don’t know cause you’ve never had it. You’ve never done it, have you?

  No, I said.

  In the bathroom she give me your toothbrush.

  I don’t know, I said.

  Oh come on, she said.

  I mean it’s his toothbrush, I said.

  That’s the point, she said. Like you’re my husband. Why are you so resistant, Geoffrey?

  I’m not, I said.

  She looked at me till I took the brush. We scrubbed at our teeth. I wanted to get it done and spit it out fast. I didn’t like the idea of you coming in and me having to talk to you with paste in my mouth. But she brushed long and careful and kept on doing it so I kept on and when she spit I spit.

  Now my husband, she said. I know I said I was done talking about him, but I want to tell you that my husband brushes his teeth like a kid. Real fast and sloppy and hardly does anything. I know it sounds funny but I’m kind of glad, it kind of means something, that you and I both brush the same way, you know? That doesn’t strike you?

  I noticed it, I said.

  Me too, she said. That’s the kind of little thing. That’s why I wanted to do this. Now, I want to do something else, okay? I’ve heard that men like to watch a woman put on her makeup, but I always thought if I was a man I’d much rather watch a woman take her makeup off. You ever seen that?

  No, I told her.

  What do you think? She said. Should I?

  Yuhuh, I said.

  You’d like that?

  Yuhuh.

  Okay, Hon. You just stand there then.

  She took every bit of it off, including undid her hair, and when she was done her face was scrubbed red.

  Come on, she said, and led me out of the bathroom toward the end of the hall. She’d dropped some trash from the bag what I had to step over. I was gonna say something or pick it up, but then I seen one of them things was a sex rubber like what I cleared up mornings when I washed the Men’s Room at the Sunoco. So I let it alone. I just followed her through the door. It was your bedroom. She shut the door behind us. I noticed the window shade in there was still up and I told her, but she said, Oh to hell with it.

  I’m not ashamed to say I was a little nervous standing there in your bedroom with her and not just because you was past due. In fact it was so long after the time I’d told you to come I was starting to think you never got my note after all. I’m not afraid to admit neither what it was a relief. Cause truth is, it was a good kind of nervous to have Linda alone in the room.

  Hey, I told her.

  What? she said.

  I’m excited too.

  She smiled at me and took my hand and put it to her chest right between her things. Can you feel that? She said.

  Yuhuh, I told her. I took her hand and put it on the same place I had on me.

  We stood there like that till she said, All right, but she didn’t move till she said it again, All right. Then she said, I don’t want to move too fast. Okay?

  Okay, I told her. She walked cross the room and I watched to see if she was gonna move real slow, but she just gone at normal speed. When she’d turned on the bedside lamp she walked back, still at normal speed, and turned off the overhead.

  Lets get undressed, she said.

  You mean take off our clothes?

  Just take them off, she said. Not do anything. We have plenty of time to do that.

  You mean to make love? I said.

  We’ll save that, she said. Like a treat to look forward to.

  You would—

  I want to, she said. Just I want to do it right, in time, you know? I’m thinking we could just take off clothes and get in bed and—you must think I’m crazy.

  No, I said. It’s only I don’t—

  You must think I’ve got some serious problems. I understand. I understand perfectly.

  I don’t think you’re crazy, I said.

  It’s just been such a long goddamn time since I’ve felt comfortable with someone, she said. I mean even at home, here, it’s like him and me are sleeping in different beds. Now, don’t, she said. I’m not talking about sex. I’m not. I’m talking about holding. Simple cuddling for God’s sake for a fucking minute before sleep. I’m sorry, she said.

  You want to cuddle? I said.

  Don’t you? she said.

  Yuhuh, I said. I just don’t want to be naked if he comes in.

  He’s not gonna come in, she said.

  I don’t want to have to talk to him naked.

  Geoffrey, he’s not gonna come.

  What if he does?

  Well what if? she said. I mean what if? So he comes in and sees us in the bed.

  He’s gonna think—

  What if he does, Geoffrey? Then he knows, right? Then he really knows this isn’t like the others.

  The others?

  The boys, she said. Behind the tank. So what if he sees us naked in the bed and thinks we’re fucking, hm? That’s right. Thinks we’re fucking. Knows right then that I’m with a man who I’d sleep with and like it. So what if he knows you’re that man? I hope he does.

  I told her, I thought you said if he ever found you sleeping with a growed man he’d beat the stuff out of—

  He’s gonna go crazy no matter how he finds out, she said. That’s the truth, Geoffrey. And it’s something we’re gonna have to deal with. But I’m willing to. Do you understand what I’m saying? If you are too, I’m okay with it. But we don’t have to do it tonight, okay? We’ll do it some other time, but not tonight.

  Okay, I said. She started to take off her shirt. So, I said, do you still want to get in the bed?

  She looked at me with her belly showing. Yes, she said.

  We begun to get naked. Towards the end she said, I’m gonna leave my panties on, so I did too. But when I turned around she’d took hers off and was just in her underwears.

  You sleep in your jeans? she said.

  Sometimes, I said.

  All right, she said. I usually sleep in this, and she put on a pullover dress like what Jackie wears to bed.

  We got under the covers. She turned off the light. In the dark, I could feel all her backside parts push up against me. Put your arms around me, she said. We lay like that for a while and it was so late what I didn’t even worry when a car gone by on the road.

  Your heart’s still going, I said.

  I should hope so, she said.

  I could feel it right through her into me and it was going fast.

  A little while later, I said, When you said you’d like to sleep with me?

  She still didn’t say anything. Her heart was going and going.

  I said, You didn’t mean like a blow job what you do with boys, did you.

  No, she said, I meant the real thing.

  A second later, she said, I forgot something. She turned on the light and real quick picked up the phone and listened to it and moved it nearer to the bed and turned off the light again.

  All right, she said. All right then.

  It wasn’t five minutes later what the front door opened and you come in.

  I sat up. That’s him, I said.

  I heard you in the front of the house say, I don’t see nothing, like you was talking to someone on a phone. Then you said, Fuck. I gotta go.

  It’s okay, she said to me.

  That’s him, I said again.

  It’s gonna be all right, she said.

  You
was cussing in the kitchen. There was bangs and things busting. You was shouting her name.

  I’ll go talk to him, I said.

  No, she said. She was holding on to keep me in the bed.

  I got to get on my shirt, I said.

  No, she said. Stay here. Geoffrey stay here.

  It’s me what did it, I told her.

  Then you was coming loud down the hall.

  Get under the covers, she said.

  No.

  Get under.

  He gonna see me.

  Get under Geoffrey, she said, and then the covers was over me and she was holding me down. Don’t do nothing stupid, she said just as you slammed in the room.

  You fucking bitch, you said. You bitch. You fucking fucking bitch.

  I couldn’t see nothing with my face in the pillow and the covers over me and I started to shove her off to get free when something hit me in the back what shoved my whole middle down on the mattress. Something hit me there again and there was the weight on my back how it was gonna crack and something was banging at the back of my head. She was shouting and screaming and you was shouting and screaming but I couldn’t hear what nobody was saying. My ears was full and I couldn’t think of nothing but get myself turned around so the hurt at my head would stop and when I done it I seen you for one second, you staring down at me in the dark without your beard. Then you hit me in the face.

  You could have stopped then, but you didn’t. I guess I don’t got to tell you what all you done. It’s there in the records anyhow, both in the court and in my papers what’s at New Castle Memorial. And, anyhow, I expect you remember better than me how it gone after that. Even when I shut my eyes, now, and try, I can’t see much of it. There’s the light going on what made everything bright red on top my eyes and there’s Linda screaming at you and saying Brian, Brian come, come Brian, Brian, Brian, Brian over and over and then she’s nearby cause I can feel more parts of bodies than is possible just me and you, and she must be trying to pull you off cause her voice is near and wild when she’s saying, He’s retarded Waker, he’s retarded, God he’s just a poor fucking retarded—and then she’s crying. I guess you got off me. I guess from what was told later you must have gone at her, then. I don’t got no memory of that more than what she’s crying and saying, I already called the cops, I already called them, like she’s talking to someone else in the room. And there is someone else in the room. Even through my blood and what I must be on the ground, I can see there’s three of them. And hear one of them, might be you, might be the other, say Run, run Linda, Linda run.

  Waker, I do not want to hear what you is sorry. That is not why I have writ this out. I know I brung it on myself. I know I brung it on Linda. I brung it on you. Ma B says its only a fool what cuts hisself and is surprised by his own blood. I ain’t surprised. Of all of us, I am the one who come out of it most lucky. I know this. I know it beyond anything anybody can say to tell me elsewise. It is what Jackie don’t understand. It is why I can’t go back to what I was before. This is what I have been trying to get at the whole time. It is what no one seen but Linda and me and maybe you, also. It is why I know when she was shouting to you how I was a retard it was only cause she knowed it was the last thing what might save me. And it’s why she left off trying, and begun to cry. She knowed it wasn’t no longer true. It maybe used to be I was more child than man, but it ain’t no more. I know what Linda was saying when she told me at the first about sleeping with a man. And I know what Ma B was saying when I left that morning how she told me about what more was needed. I thought it through on the bike. When I writ out that note to you I understood what I was doing. I knowed for the first time I was beyond what no kid would do. I had growed into doing what was right. And by doing what was right, I have showed to the Eyes of the Lord what kind of man I have become, and no one can call me elsewise anymore. And so here is my half-healed jaw, and my insides what still don’t work good as they ought, and my seeing in the one eye gone from me and ain’t coming back. It ain’t nothing. It ain’t nothing to give for what I got. I begun here saying I was sorry, but now what I am here near the end I want to say instead what I am grateful. What I want to say here, now what we both know how it come about, what I want to say to you from me, is thank you.

  It is more late than I thought. I have just got up and checked the clock and it is almost two in the morning. A long time ago Roy come downstairs and gone into His Office. For a while he was listening to his numbers, but now it’s stopped. The light is off in there, but I think he is awake. I can hear him breathing near the bottom of the door.

  Geoff.

  I just writ that cause it’s what he just said.

  Yes?

  It’s what I just told him.

  He asked me am I awake and I said yes.

  He’s saying more now but I can’t write it down fast as he talks. He asked me did I want to come in to the office. I don’t really want to come in. I’ll just stay quiet. Maybe he’ll leave it be.

  He has just told me he can hear me writing.

  Come in and talk, he says.

  I’m back. It’s now after three. I ain’t gonna sleep tonight. Roy is in the office still, but he’s asleep now, I can tell. He dropped off right after I gone, like it was due him after all he just now told to me. When I come in there he was lain out on the carpet with the blanket from the TV couch on him and the Yosemite Sam pillow under his head.

  He said, You write pretty much every night, huh?

  I didn’t say nothing. I didn’t want him nor no one but you to know what I was putting down.

  I know you do, he said. This isn’t the first time I slept down here, you know.

  I know, I told him.

  That’s one hell of a sister you got there, he said.

  She ain’t my real sister, I told him.

  I hear you, he said. There’s times I wish she wasn’t my real wife.

  It was a long time of us sitting there till I said, Can I go now?

  He looked at me. I read it, he said.

  He told me don’t get mad. I was already mad. I didn’t hardly pay attention to what he gone on about after that. He talked and talked. It was something about that woman he gone hunting with a long time ago and how he’d knowed her even after he and Jackie was new married and what he wished he’d done and where she was now and how he still thought about her and a lot else what I didn’t truly care to hear. I don’t care to write it all here, neither. I don’t got time. It was at the end when I was thinking he was gonna talk all night what he said, Here, and give me his keys. He took a sticky pad off his desk and writ on it and give it to me. It said #72 Rt. 289.

  It’s off 33 out past Pembroke toward Harts Run, he said. It’ll take about a hour and a half. You can use Jackie’s car. Don’t look at me like that, he said. It’s not like it was hard. I’m the one’s got to forward their mail.

  Before I left the office I asked him how much he’d read.

  Up to the part where you left Waker Podawalski that note, he said. It was all that you’d wrote yet.

  When I’d shut the door, he said to me under the crack, Geoff. She’s the worst kind. In the end she’ll just about kill you. All the good ones do.

  I wish you could have seen them critters’ eyes. They musta been forty of them out there. I brung my flashlight and this pad and this pen and that’s it and walked through them around the house down to Jackie’s car. They didn’t even move, not one of them. They just stared at me. No more scared than if I was one of they own.

  Mellencamp

  Springsteen

  Eagles

  Animals

  Isaak

  Dead

  That’s what’s on the radio just before dawn.

  There ain’t no one up yet, but I can see in the sky what’s over the ridge now it’s about to come. I’m in the car looking at the house. It’s big and made of logs and it’s so new there ain’t no plants around it yet. When I put this on the steering wheel to write I was worried I might pr
ess too hard and set off the horn. Now I don’t care.

  Someone is up.

  I been here a hour and no one come out. I know they see me. I’m parked right down here at the bottom of they drive. Another half hour I’m gonna go up and knock.

  Nobody. I knocked and I rung the bell and I knocked some more. I called to her. I could hear them moving around in there. Whenever I’d make a noise they’d go quiet and then I’d go quiet. It’s sure now they know why I come.

  * * *

  As I write this I am leaning on the horn. It’s hard on the ears after a minute. I been doing it for at least five. I’ll keep doing it, too, till she

  Thursday of August

  This is the last time I will write to you. After I come back from her, I thought I might not, thought I’d just leave it alone where it was just quit trying. But there is something in me wants to put it down right to the end. Sides, it has turned out you, in the end, is the only one I want to tell good-bye.

  When she come out the house I seen him what I once thought was you behind her in the door and her talking to him like she was trying to keep him inside. I didn’t lean off the horn till she shut the door on him and begun down the path to me. I begun to get out.

  Stay in there, she said. Then she was at the passenger side pulling open the door. She got in. Let’s go, she said.

  Linda, I said.

  Just drive, she said.

  Where?

  Just go, Geoffrey. It doesn’t really matter does it?

  I drived on up the road. It was small enough it oughta been dirt but it was hardtop. She didn’t say nothing and I didn’t say nothing. I was scared to look at her. The only homes on that road was trailers or ones what didn’t look lived in no more.

  I didn’t know you could drive, she said.

  I musta never told you, I said.

  Some dogs come to their chains and barked.

  Can I ask you something? I said.

  I figured you would.

  When we done driving, we going back to that house?

  She didn’t answer for so long I looked at her.

  Yes, she said.

  I looked back at the road.