Remember My Beauties

by Lynne Hugo

  “Honey, it was a long time ago. You said he was drunk and high and you fought him off. Do you think maybe things might be different? I mean, it’s not like you have to live there now or anything. Maybe your parents have a right to see him. He is their son, after all, and it has been …”

  The look on my face must be what stops him.

  “What? What are you saying? How can you take their side on this?” My hands are shaking, and I stick them under my thighs to still them. The evening chill is penetrating my jeans, and now I’m cold all over. “I need to warm up. I’m going in.”

  “Wait. It’s nice out here. I’ll grab you a jacket. Want a beer?”

  “Yeah, Eddie, you bring me a jacket and a beer.” I might as well have said, “Sure, bring me a jacket, a beer, and a very sharp knife.” Of course, he misses the danger in my voice.

  While he’s gone I scan the yard. It’s edged with the last spring tulips and hyacinth, red and purple, and I’ve just stuck marigolds in-between, taking a chance that there won’t be another cold snap. In the draining light, the colors look wan, as if they’re struggling to survive. We’ve worked hard to have what we have, more than either of us alone could begin to manage. It was always my dream to live in a real neighborhood like this, where the houses are fresh and even as teeth that just got their braces off, rather than ten miles out of town where I grew up and there was nothing but woods and pasture. Last year we extended the small patio and bought this padded furniture, or, I should say, my check from the County Eldercare bought this padded furniture and the gas grill, too.

  The longer it takes Eddie to fetch the jacket and the beer, the more fight seeps out of me. Possibly he knows that. I’m sure he’s faithful, and I should value that above all.

  When he comes back, he has my green hooded sweatshirt that zips, a rare good choice, further defusing me. He puts down my beer, saying, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just thinking of them and how I’d feel. You know, how we feel about our kids. Like how you are about Carley.”

  “Goddammit, Eddie, Carley’s not the same.” The words sound angry, but my tone just says, you know this.

  “Carley’s done some pretty bad things. She’s stolen from you and from other people. She’s a druggie. For all you know, she’s selling—”

  My fuse relights. “Fuck you! If you think I need a list of bad things about my daughter and that’s—”

  “Jewel, I’m only saying that you still love her.”

  “Whose side are you on? What is it you want?”

  “I’m just sayin’.”

  “What are you saying?”

  My husband sits in near darkness perhaps three feet away from me. I can no longer distinguish his features, and what I pick up in his voice isn’t compassion for my parents, but whining. I listen to the bugs’ and frogs’ songs, which are like a low accompaniment to Eddie’s voice as he wheedles on. I have stopped absorbing his words, though, and focus on the tone. “I just think that you should,” he’s saying, “give it a chance.”

  And then I get it. “It’s the money. It’s the $13.85 an hour, isn’t it? You’re putting the money I make taking care of them above me. You damn well can’t stand the idea that I said I’ll quit if they let Cal come. You just can’t stand to give up the money.”

  “You’re goddamn right we need the money. It’s not like taking care of your parents was my idea. The whole thing was your plan. Ever heard of a mortgage?” As Eddie’s voice rises, Copper rouses and barks.

  “What you’re worried about isn’t the mortgage,” I say, and my voice is steel that his flame forged, the law of unintended consequences. He should have known better than to push me. “It’s keeping Chastity in tube tops and pedicures and cell phones and writing checks for Rocky’s basketball camp and new computer and Nikes and whatever, whatever.”

  I stand abruptly, intending to go inside, but bump the table and knock over my beer. A little river runs across the table and turns into a waterfall onto Eddie’s lap. He pushes his chair back hard saying, “Goddammit.” A metal chair leg hooks on a patio rock with enough force as Eddie is trying to stand up that it knocks him behind the knees, and he and the chair go over backward. Flailing, grabbing to catch himself, he clutches the edge of the table, a mistake. It’s a sturdy table, but he’s a heavy man with more than enough weight to pull it over on top of himself.

  I almost leave him there. He’d get the table off himself eventually, I know that, but he fell hard with a visceral ooh and a gasp of pain. Streams of Eddie’s and my beer spill on us as I squat to lift the table off him. Copper is in a frenzy.

  “Are you all right?” I shout to be heard. “Shh, Copper. Stop.”

  “I don’t know.” Eddie’s trying to extricate himself from the chair, but his legs are scrabbling like a bug trying to right itself, and a little mean part of me wants to laugh. Copper is lapping at the beer and Eddie’s face, and Eddie is floundering and fending off the dog.

  “Can you roll to the side?” I push on one arm of the chair to help. I could more easily lift a sack of cement.

  “Oh God, don’t do that.”

  “Should I call an ambulance?”

  “No, no, give me a minute. Let me get my breath.”

  Finally, he does roll the chair and himself to the side. Using all my weight as leverage, I hoist him to his feet, and we make our way into the house with him gimping along, too heavy on my shoulder.

  Once we’re inside, Eddie eases himself onto the couch. Reclining against a couple of the little red pillows, he mutters, “Shit. Chiropractor’s probably closed tomorrow. Would you get me a beer, honey?”

  Jaw clamped, I get him a beer from the refrigerator. “Thanks,” he says when I hand it to him. Mentally I dare him to ask me for something else.

  I go up the half flight of stairs to the bathroom, wash my face, and do what I can to straighten my hair, which mainly involves brushing my ponytail and using spit to finger comb the fringe that circles my face. I root around in a plastic basket of cosmetics I keep in a drawer: honey bronze lipstick, blush, mascara. Smile at myself. A grimace. Try again. Give up.

  Back in the family room, I pick up my purse and head for the door to the garage.

  “Hey, where you going?” Eddie says.

  “To the store.”

  “Get me some smokes, will you?”

  “I’d think if you were so worried about money, you’d cut that out.”

  Eddie holds his hand up like a stop sign and shakes his head like he’s talking to a twelve year old. “Not now, Jewel, don’t start up again.”

  “How dare you! How dare you talk to me like that?”

  Eddie’s head snaps to attention then. “Whoa. I didn’t mean—”

  “Eddie, you never mean. You just do. Get this through your head. It’s their choice. If they have Cal in that house, they won’t have me. The agency will just have to send someone else.”

  Then Eddie swipes at his eyes with the back of his wrist and bare arm. The hair on his arms is fair and sparse, an anomaly on his thick muscles, and the gesture makes him look like a scared child.

  “Yeah, Jewel, right,” he says.

  I lower myself into the red upholstered chair, keeping the coffee table between us. He’s still on the couch but has worked himself upright enough to drink his beer. A pillow is stuffed behind the small of his back. “Why are you crying, Eddie?” Irritation and puzzlement battle in my mind.

  He gives a palms-up shrug, and this time it’s a gesture of resignation as he shakes his head. Then he breaks down in the sobs that I’ve been stifling since the moment Mama said Cal’s name. “Rocky said he wants to come live here after he turns twelve next month. Can’t do it without this house. Court says boys and girls got to have separate rooms.”

  “So? Then Lana’s got to pay you child support.”

  “And when’s the last time that bitch held a job? The court hasn’t even stopped deducting support for Chassie from my paycheck, those morons. You tryin’ to t
ell me they’ll go after fruitcake Lana and get something?”

  Eddie gives a deep sniff and wipes his face with the back of one hand. He wants me to feel sorry for him. He wants me to see that he needs a tissue and get him one. I don’t.

  I tilt my head back to keep any tears from spilling and stare at the line where the ceiling meets the wall for a moment. There’s a wallpaper border along the top, a red-and-yellow pattern that I used to like, but now I wish I’d never put it up.

  “Who or what would you throw yourself in front of a train for, Eddie?” I say finally.

  “What does that have to do with the price of eggs?”

  “Not a thing, Eddie. Nothing at all to do with the price of eggs. Just everything to do with weird concepts like, say, love, and”—I palm-slap my forehead—“oh my God, what marriage means.”

  Sarcasm, no matter how well done, is wasted on Eddie. As I pick up my purse again and head for the door into the garage, he calls from the couch, bleary-voiced.

  “You’re just going to the store, right?”

  “I don’t have a suitcase with me if that’s what you mean.”

  “Please, Jewel, honey. Please.”

  “I’m going to the store.”

  “Okay. See you in a little while. Don’t forget my smokes,” he says hopefully.

  There’s nothing I need at the store. I just need to get away from Eddie, and the Walmart Supercenter out on the far side of town is open all night. The whole area is changing: developers sniffing around, buying up tracts, and putting in neighborhoods where farms used to be. Walmart is cold as a meat locker, and I can’t find anything. I’d never go there, but the little IGA has already closed down. It gasped along for six months after Walmart opened but finally choked and held a huge going-out-of-business sale. Bob’s Hardware Supply shut down, too, and now Walmart is driving an old local lube place out of business by doing oil changes for $15.95.

  I hug my sweatshirt around me, take a cart, and, on impulse, head for the canned goods. Tuna fish, spaghetti sauce with meat, four kinds of soup, carrots, beans, corn, peaches, applesauce, mandarin oranges, then on to dry cereal, spaghetti, boxed macaroni and cheese. Powdered milk. Everything in a can, jar, or box, nothing that needs refrigeration. Where my Carley is living now—still with Roland—electricity comes and goes like weather on the wind, erratic as their bill-paying. Then I swing down a few aisles and pick up some bars of soap, toilet paper and tampons. I’m her mother; I won’t let her go hungry, even if it means I have to feed the bum she’s with, too. I won’t give her money because it will go up her nose, or his.

  Eddie gets mad when I buy Carley food or put gas in their wreck on wheels so that she can get to a job interview, which is what she always tells me. He says I should practice tough love and cut her off. What he really thinks is that I’m throwing away money that could go to something worthwhile, like another skirt that almost covers Chassie’s butt. While I’m choosing groceries, I stew on Eddie saying worthwhile, and when I check out I don’t ask the cashier for a carton of cigarettes for him.

  It’ll take me forty-five minutes to drive to Carley’s and the same amount of time back. I’ll listen to old Neil Diamond songs like “I Am, I Said,” open the window, and let the night air wash my mind.

  “Jesus. Is that your old lady’s car?” It was Roland who sounded the alarm, which was one giant amazement to Carley. She hadn’t heard a damn thing. Roland claimed that after you’ve been in jail a couple of times, you develop a sixth sense about when a guard is near, and this wasn’t the first time he’d proved that point. Maybe he wasn’t nearly as far gone as she was since he’d been out doing a deal until after dark.

  He knelt on the bare mattress to peer out the corner of the window. “Yep, it’s the Bitch Queen herself, come to save her Princess from the evil frog. Goddamn,” he said, grabbing a small plastic bag off the floor and carefully dumping the lines of nose candy laid out on glass back into it. He grabbed up loose straws, a book of matches, a baggie of weed, which he zipped closed, then picked up a pack of rolling papers. All the supplies went into a tan plastic grocery bag that he hurried to stash in the microwave. “Hey, girl! Get up. Get rid of those cans.” He was talking about the twelve pack of Budweiser, most of which were crushed cans randomly scattered, much as they were in the cluttered alley in which Jewel’s car door was slamming right then. “Does she know what time it is?” He opened a window, then took the two ashtrays and, after looking around, shoved them into the microwave, too. There was just the one room with a kitchen area, and a bathroom. When it came to places to hide things, there weren’t a lot of choices.

  “Huh?” Carley said, trying to wrap her mind around what he was saying and how fast he was moving when seconds ago they’d been in another time zone and zip code.

  Roland got right in her space. He had a narrow face, a thin mustache, and right now his brown eyes were black marbles. There was a waft of beer and weed around him, but it wasn’t bad to her. “Never mind. Just move it,” he said, and it was loud. He climbed into his own jeans then, not bothering with boxers, which were draped over the lampshade to make the light in the room look cool. Jewel had brought the lampshade once when she’d come with food. Bare lightbulbs upset her for some reason. The boxers were green. “Get in the bathroom,” he said, still loud. “Put some water on your face. Brush your teeth. Better yet, get in the shower.” He extended his hand and pulled her to her feet, where she teetered on the mattress and then stepped off the four inches onto the floor. “Go!” Roland said. “It’s her.”

  From behind the bathroom door, which Roland had resolutely closed, set to lock as soon as she was inside, Carley listened. Roland had called it right; within seconds she heard banging. The doorbell hadn’t ever worked although Roland told the landlord he’d fix it for fifty dollars off the rent three months ago. The noise kept up. If Roland thought her mother was going to go away, he was forgetting what little he knew of Jewel. He must be stalling. “Carley, shower!” she heard him hiss through the bathroom door. She sniffed one of her armpits. Was she that bad? To shut him up she started the water, but there wasn’t any hot, which he knew damn well. Another one of Roland’s deals with the landlord. Still, Roland was smart, which was one of the things she loved about him; he knew how to take charge in an emergency like this.

  “I want to see my daughter.” It was her mother’s voice, demanding. Not to be fucked with. Roland must have let her in. Carley thought of going out to face her down, but she wasn’t too steady on her feet, and Roland’s answer stopped her.

  “What the hell happened to you?” he said, his voice, mirth mixed in, conveying that it was definitely not good. She imagined him pointing but couldn’t figure out at what.

  “None of your business. Where is Carley?”

  “No, really, did you, like, get into an argument with a blender or something?” Roland guffawed at himself.

  “This place is disgusting. Carley wasn’t raised like this.” From the bathroom, Carley heard dishes clattering into the sink. The random sounds of things being gathered up, the rustle of plastic, her mother compulsively cleaning up while she ranted, “And you’re on something. It’s completely obvious. I can smell the pot, you know. I’m not stupid.” Footsteps, heading for the bathroom door. It didn’t take very many. “Carley!” Her mother’s voice was right outside the door, and Carley startled, jerked her head back from where it was pressed to the fake wood. She’d needed something to lay it against anyway.

  “If you’re so brilliant at noticing the obvious, then you can hear that she’s in the shower,” Roland said. He was coming up from behind Jewel, the way it sounded. “Ya’know, I’d a fixed your hair for ya … Didn’t know you was into punk.” Taunting. Carley wondered what he was talking about.

  “Get away from me, you … criminal. Carley! Come out here, or I’m coming in …” Jewel was banging on the bathroom door now, like she had on the front door. She tried the knob, but, of course, it was locked.

  “Criminal …
Ohhh, you really know how to hurt a guy. Leave her alone. She’ll be out in a few minutes. Or better yet, come another time. Like try calling first.”

  “Try getting a phone.”

  “Then you’d call.”

  She should go out, but it was kind of a weird high listening to Roland bait her mother because he didn’t feel the least bit of guilt about it. He told Carley she had nothing to feel guilty about; it was her life, after all. Her life. Her body, her life. She had a right to feel good. Feel great, in fact. She was fine just the way she was.

  “Carley!” The bathroom door vibrated against the jamb. Her mother packed a mean punch. She’d slapped Carley once. On the face.

  “Hey! Back off, lady. This ain’t your house.” Roland’s voice rose to shout while a thud—her mother’s body?—sounded against the door. Carley shrank back, stumbled against the toilet, and fell. The toilet seat clattered down.

  “Carley! What’s going on?” Another thud against the door. “Take your hands off me.” Her mother’s words were mixed with Roland yelling something Carley couldn’t make out.

  “You need to get your fat ass outta here.”

  “I’ll call the police and charge you with assault. Get your hands off me.”

  “You get the cops here and let’s see what they charge your daughter with. Be my guest.”

  Using the toilet as a crutch, Carley got to her feet, then, as if she were blind, used the sink and the empty towel bars to keep herself upright until she reached the door handle and opened it, using the doorframe to prop herself up.

  “Hey, Mom,” she said into the fray, trying to sound normal and focus her eyes.

  Then, she thought, Ohmigod. What am I on? Does she really look like that? and for a moment Carley stood confused into silence. Then she remembered Roland taunting her mother and said, “What the hell happened to your hair?”

  Her mother ignored the question. “Carley, I brought you some food and supplies.” Jewel was peering at her face, which made Carley want to back up, but there was nowhere to go, and she knew to hold her ground, however shaky. Her mother was the “give her an inch and she takes a football field” type.