by Lisa Teasley
Jazz put his head back in the tub, and it hit the candle Anna had made, still there from their last candlelit bath.
“When was the last time we did this?” Jazz asked her.
She was rolling her head from side to side as if there was music.
“Do you remember?” Jazz asked.
He moved his leg and put his foot in between hers, moving it up slowly. She kept her eyes closed and sang just a little. He ran his finger down the length of her leg under the water.
“Let’s make love,” Jazz said.
“Go to sleep,” Anna answered, her eyes closed still.
“Let’s make love, Anna.”
“We are making love,” she said. Jazz tried to move his legs as if they were stuck under hers. When he got tired of this, he knocked the candle onto the floor.
Mrs. Gaines picked up the fishbowl. She turned around suddenly, splashing a little water, upsetting the fish more than it was already, because she saw the Bible sitting there on the dresser, all dusty, untouched. She thought, what a bad housekeeper I’ve been; the Bible shouldn’t be so dusty. Maybe she’d dust it when she got back. After all, it was Sunday, a day to clean things.
Sitting there in the tub, Jazz thought a moment about the mess. He looked at her lying in the tub across from him, her eyes closed, her hair back from her soft face, her expression ethereal. All he felt now was pity for her and anger at himself. AH she had wanted was to fuck, and he had gone on telling himself they were in love. Now he didn’t want to hurt her. She was so young and very pregnant, he thought, looking at her belly in the water. Could water really be that distorting? He picked her hand up out of the water, to look at the wrinkles it had made.
Mrs. Gaines was in the car now with the fishbowl in the backseat. She felt a little absurd taking it, but she reassured herself. She decided if she covered the fishbowl with a plastic baggie, with a rubber band tied around it, and a couple small holes for the air to get in, then the fish could swim in the bowl while she drove and it could experience a larger motion in the suspension she had made. It would feel the same bumps and sudden stops that she felt. The fish could finally go somewhere without leaving the safety of its confinement. After all, it was still in the bowl. The bowl was just in the car. And she thought if anything bad was to happen to the fish, it would be an omen. Omens were for warning. There had to be some sacrifice to learn anything, thought Mrs. Gaines. You have to lose something sometimes. And if it was the fish, well, she, Mrs. Gaines, would live without it. Life went on.
*
Anna thought about Jazz’s stories of the sea because this felt like the moment of sailing away. He had crossed the ocean in a forty foot rig; she wondered if she could too. But they could capsize and die. Very young and pregnant, thought Anna; what a heroic way to die. But nothing would ever be completed in her life, if she let the fear grip her. She would die a quitter, worse yet, she would die a loser. She couldn’t tolerate losing anything. But competition had nothing to do with this at all. It was not a race.
She didn’t have to race Jazz, Jazz with his long legs and his long arms. Anna ran her fingers through the tangles of her red hair, the ends were wet and she put a part of it in her mouth. Then she bit down on it. She looked down at her belly, at what they had made and she imagined she felt something inside there. Jazz was getting out of the tub, dripping water everywhere and this made her mad. She got the urge to hurt him, but she looked down at her reflection in the water, and it was beautiful. There was no need to hurt him at all.
When Mrs. Gaines came to the first stoplight, hunger gripped her, or else all the different signs about food told her she was hungry and she had to eat. She decided the food had to be sweet, so she pulled over at Winchell’s, although she and Anna had decided a long time ago that Winchell’s was not the best. Splashing a little water as she entered the driveway upset the fish, she imagined.
As she got out of the car she tore the hem of her dress, since it was caught under the seat. This was irritating to her, but not so irritating that she would let it be the main distraction, although she did leave the car without checking on the fish.
Once she was inside she thought it was odd that she couldn’t smell the donuts. She pulled a little at the tear on the hem of her dress, examined it, then walked up to the counter and asked for a chocolate old-fashioned. There was only one man sitting in the place, which she felt was odd for a Sunday. She wondered why more people didn’t have a sweet tooth, why there weren’t more lonely Sunday people in Winchell’s.
She looked at the man and he looked back with some interest. She looked at the clock because it occurred to her that the day was passing by her without any knowledge of the time. When the person behind the counter handed her the bag with the donut, she opened it, studying the donut to see that it was the best she could get. She found no reason to ask for the bigger, chocolatier one way in front, which would force the person behind the counter to bend down. It wasn’t worth it.
She sat down near the only man and then looked at the person behind the counter. A middle-aged, hard-boned, darker lady, who could be of most any race, Mrs. Gaines decided. She appeared extremely tired, and seemed to be staring at nothing in particular. Mrs. Gaines felt this stare was familiar, and then she realized that this is how Anna looked about the house before she met Jazz.
“I can see you are a respectable lady,” the man said.
She looked at him quickly and nodded a vague acknowledgment, then looked at the tear in her dress.
“Your hair is so nicely kept, a root beer brown, but not so neat that it is stuffy. I like that,” he said smiling. Mrs. Gaines smiled too, but it wasn’t a real smile.
“I mean, I don’t mean to be rude, but I think you look quite nice in your raspberry dress, your nice, sensible patent leather shoes, with your curly root beer brown hair.” He said this leaning slightly toward her. Mrs. Gaines touched the tear in her dress.
“The grunions will be out tonight, did you know that?” he asked.
Mrs. Gaines shook her head, and then decided she wanted coffee. She sat back down at a table farther away from the man, but this didn’t seem to bother him. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye—he wasn’t grungy as she’d expected; his hair was a dull color that could have been blond, grey or brown, she couldn’t decide—and then she worried a little about vision.
I don’t think they allow you to take the grunions out of the ocean anymore,” he said. “Against the law now, I believe.”
“Really,” Mrs. Gaines said, not in the form of a question.
“I mean, you need a permit now over there in Santa Monica.”
She looked at him, flaring her nostrils.
“But I love watching those grunions escape the water,” he said. “Have you seen the picture, ‘Magic Christian’?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“You know the one with Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, if you did you would remember the last scene where Sellers, who is a millionaire taking care of Ringo Starr, I believe, comes to this pond of shit (if you would excuse my French) whereupon he had posted the sign FREE MONEY.”
“Uh-huh,” Mrs. Gaines said, taking a sip of her coffee, and fluttering her lashes as if there was something in her eye.
“And these stuffy English men, you see, come along in their Bowler hats and their canes and their walks, like as if they had a stick up the old ass, (pardon the French) and they come to the pond of shit where Sellers is throwing in big bills and these men scrunch up their noses and stick their canes in like they were fishing to get the bills. But as more of these men came, and the competition gets fierce they get closer and closer, until the greed overcomes them and they’re all jumping into the shit and swimming in it to get the big bucks.” He was a little red now in the face with excitement.
“Yes, Peter Sellers is always funny,” said Mrs. Gaines, trying to think of what she had seen him in.
“Funny
how people would risk drowning for anything they thought was free,” he said.
“Sounds like a good movie,” Mrs. Gaines said.
“People can be the saddest, most misled creatures,” said the man, pulling out a cigarette.
He looked very thin to Mrs. Gaines, as he stared beyond the room for a moment.
“So, what do you do?” he asked.
“Nothing. I’m a housewife.”
“Well, now, you’re not married to your house.”
“Of course not. I’m not married at all.”
“I see,” he said, touching his chin.
“No, you don’t see,” said Mrs. Gaines, gathering her trash.
“Now, what’s the matter, heah? You look like there’s a worried nun living inside your head. My grandmother used to look like that all the time.”
“I have to be going now,” Mrs. Gaines said, standing up now.
“Okay, Raspberry. But, hey, listen, if you ever need a divorce from your house, here’s my card.”
She took it from him, not looking at it until she was outside of the door.
“Bullshit,” she said when she saw ‘Attorney at Law’, and threw the card away with her trash. She felt glad that she had thought of the word “bullshit”; it had been such a very long time.
***
Anna, all alone now in the tub, imagined she was in the boat. She saw the harness and the chain that led to the side of it. She was puzzled at the idea of a harness being in the form of a life jacket. Jazz had explained that it was for any trouble out there in the blue water. Anna had asked why the water was so blue to him, because as she looked down at the water, it was a dull, clear green. Jazz stood there with a towel in his hand, and he explained to her that the blue was what sailors called the deep waters. If you’ve sailed the blue waters, Jazz said, that meant you’ve really sailed. When she closed her eyes they were moving, and she could hear Jazz’s voice telling her what to do. Then the water got rough and Jazz was yelling although he couldn’t have been more than ten inches away. The screaming got unbearable.
“Jazz, let’s go back,” she yelled.
She imagined that he yelled back, “Anna, marry me.”
Anna looked at him squinting so that the elements she imagined, wouldn’t get into her eyes. She let only what she thought was the power of his physical presence get to her there, and then she felt sure he loved her. He was so beautiful at that moment, and she thought surely this was something she must have forgotten, how beautiful he could be, and she stared at him before she yelled her answer. He didn’t seem to have heard because his expression didn’t change. He stared at her with his dark eyes open, not squinting, even though there was all of the water and wind. This was amazing to her. Nothing ever broke him; he didn’t even hear what she had said. This made her angry, and now she couldn’t even remember what she had said, either.
When Mrs. Gaines got in the car, she checked on the fish, who was a little frantic as she slammed the car door. She pulled out of the driveway, and someone honked and flipped her off.
“Everyone has their secret demons,” she said aloud to the fish. The person’s face had been too angry for a stupid thing like that. There hadn’t been any danger there; she didn’t do anything to him.
Mrs. Gaines put her seat belt on when she got to the first stoplight. She remembered one of those don’t-let-your-friends-drive-drunk commercials, and then she pictured the little fish in back swimming around as a skeleton. This made her laugh, and feel better for the moment. But then the moment was over.
Standing in the bathroom, above Anna there in the tub, Jazz thought this is what she wants, for me to worry about her, well then, so be it, I’ll marry her.
He needed her. When he stopped looking at Anna, he thought about how responsible he had become. He wished his mother could see him, she wouldn’t think he looked like his father now. She wouldn’t think he would be just like him. He was going to marry Anna because he loved her, and because that was the least he could do. His mother said that his father always went around making things and then leaving them. So Jazz has to show him the right way. Wherever the fuck he is.
Mrs. Gaines was heading down Santa Monica Blvd. trying to remember the easiest way to Anna’s street. She could never remember the name of the street either, but she knew there was this funny tree on the corner that stuck out to her, but probably to no one else. Because when she had pointed it out to Anna, she only shrugged. And when Mrs. Gaines looked at it again, really hard, there was nothing peculiar about it at all. It just had these branches that seemed to reach out to you, because they looked like two arms out in front. But she supposed a lot of trees might look that way, especially if you were longing for something you weren’t quite sure of.
Although Anna was in the tub, she imagined the boat was almost completely on its side, and that she was doing what Jazz yelled at her to do. But she had no idea what was going on exactly. There was fear, but it wasn’t gripping—it had more to do with what she might not do right to save the boat, and supposedly, their lives together. When this thought about their lives crossed her mind, she whispered fiercely the Lord’s Prayer, the only prayer she knew, and when she got to the line, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” the water got all over her, so she closed her eyes and gasped as if she had gone under water and come back up after holding her breath for too long. Then she said the line that replaced it: “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And it seemed like Jazz was far away, because she couldn’t hear him, and she couldn’t feel him, but they must have been going back because she felt free, like she wasn’t still chained to the boat. Maybe she was going to slip into the ocean now, and die there like she’d dreamed she might. Whatever Jazz was yelling to her now was completely incomprehensible. All she remembered seeing before she closed her eyes, was Jazz’s terrified face as he was slapping hers.
Mrs. Gaines found the tree and turned the corner; as she passed the arms of the tree, she thought it was reaching out for someone else. She imagined the tree was her husband; this is what he did when he was alive. He never wanted anything from her. He always wanted something of someone else. He even called on Anna more. This could be why Anna left her when she did. Because he had left her when he did. But justifications were of a trivial concern to Mrs. Gaines. She found a parking spot close enough to Anna’s apartment, but it took her a while to parallel park. She looked at the fish and was amazed at how far its fins reached. Fins like flames.
When Mrs. Gaines got out of the car, she thought a moment and then went back to get the fishbowl. It would make a nice gift for her daughter. Mrs. Gaines smiled at her generous thought, and as she picked up the fishbowl, she whipped the rubber band and plastic baggie off of the top, and blew into the bowl. She watched the ripples and the reaction of the fish.
“I won’t decide what you’re feeling right now,” Mrs. Gaines whispered to the fish. Then she laughed at herself, for talking to it.
Anna wasn’t responding, so Jazz was panicking, and slapping her too many times, he realized, for it to do any good. She was out, and they shouldn’t play these games, he thought.
“Anna, wake up!” Jazz yelled in her ear. He splashed water on her face. She didn’t move and he saw that he was doing the wrong thing. As he propped her up, lifted her out and laid her down, he imagined that what he was supposed to do was hold her nose and breathe into her mouth.
“We shouldn’t play these games anymore, Anna,” he said in between breaths. She started to cough a little, and then some of the water came up and out of her mouth. Jazz held her and swayed her in his arms. She cried a little, and after a long while, she started humming to herself. He took her body up closer to his and started kissing her bruised skin. And as he went on kissing her, he felt his own bruises. She had opened her eyes and was looking above as if she saw something. Something that couldn’t really have been there. This was endearing to Jazz and his kiss became passionate, and she sighed.
> Mrs. Gaines knocked on the door with her right fist, her left arm encircling the fishbowl. She waited there, no answer. She knocked louder and when still there was no answer she tried the door which wasn’t locked at the bottom, but bolted at the top. And then she remembered she had a key from the time Jazz left his at her place one afternoon. He had come over to say he was worried about Anna and she had told him the best thing to do was to leave her. Well, he didn’t leave her, although he had left his key, and Mrs. Gaines was able to make a copy and return it to him the next day. When she got there he was carving a little figure out of wood. He wouldn’t tell her what the figure was; he told her she’d have to wait until it was finished before she could find out. Then Mrs. Gaines told herself she didn’t really care what it was. She gave him the key and left, and the following three days she called at different hours, waiting for them not to answer. Every time she called, Jazz answered and she would hang up each time, except for once when it was Anna. Mrs. Gaines hesitated. Her daughter had a sweet voice. But then Mrs. Gaines hung up on her too, and it hurt just a little. He was always there, and she never got to see what that figure was. She didn’t care though. All these things Mrs. Gaines thought about as she looked for the key.
Anna’s arms were stretched out above her head and every time Jazz thrusted as hard as he could, she felt it reached way inside of her belly, like he was trying to break her, like he was trying to free something there. She felt all of her spine being mashed into the floor, the floor burning her bone, his body wet with sweat and bathwater, heavy on top of her, and she grabbed his back and sunk her nails in. She opened her eyes, looked at Jazz, something in him she didn’t recognize, but she felt it was sincere. And she looked up at the ceiling, something up there was free that he couldn’t have, and it was flying above them. And it made her feel at once old and ageless to know she could call it down from there any time she wanted. Any moment now, she would.
Once Mrs. Gaines was inside she heard the water running, and still carrying the fishbowl she rushed to the bathroom splashing everywhere as she went. She got to the bedroom door. She heard noises, noises she hadn’t heard since her husband died. Her stomach tightened, her tongue numbed, she couldn’t swallow, her throat was dry. The knot was lowering now and she was choking, but she kept going to take what it was she must see. The water was running in the tub and spilling out on the floor, flooding the room; her daughter was making those noises, and she was heaving, lying under that man. Mrs. Gaines dropped the fishbowl, glass, water flying, splattering, splintering everywhere, Mrs. Gaines running faster, out of the room, out of that house, faster than she’d ever run before. And Anna just lay there, her thighs squeezing Jazz’s hips, while the fish flipped around on the floor, free, its fins flaming, its gills pumping.