by M. O. Walsh
“Hey, young lady,” Pete called. “I’m looking for an old broad named Phyllis Vernon. Have you seen her around here?”
Phyllis turned her head to look over but did not smile and did not, Pete was surprised to see, stop her pedaling. Her face was nebula red, brighter than the hottest sun, riper than the ripest beet, and he was suddenly afraid that she might have a heart attack right there on the street. Yet still she kept going. He thought to get out and walk beside her, such was her top speed, but instead he kept cruising.
“My God,” Trina whispered, looking over. “Is she going to die? And, if so, can I have her outfit? I’ve been wanting to build a hot-air balloon.”
Pete cut Trina a look and said, “Be nice.”
He noticed that the reason Phyllis Vernon had not spoken to him was that she had a tube running from her mouth to what looked like a pouch attached to the back of her onesie. She was drinking water, he figured, which was good, because she looked very thirsty. “You all right, Ms. Phyllis?” he asked her again, and now that she seemed to see him more clearly, she gave him a thumbs-up. Luckily, the glove she was wearing opened up at the thumbs and fingers and allowed her to do this. She then let the tube fall from her mouth and began panting enthusiastically. She tapped the side of her helmet, where Pete saw, underneath one of the nylon straps that went across it, a folded slip of blue paper.
“Doing great, Father,” Phyllis panted. “Can’t talk now. Lot of work to do.”
She then looked back at the road before her and continued her labored pace upon it. Pete glanced over at Trina, who was no longer watching any of this but instead typing something on her phone. Phyllis’s breathing was loud enough to sound like she was in the car with them and so Pete said, “All right, then. See you Sunday,” and lightly pressed the accelerator to move back over into his own lane.
“What do you think it said?” Trina asked him.
“What’s that?” Pete asked.
“Her readout. That thing she pointed to. What do you think it said?”
Pete knew about these readouts but wasn’t sure what to make of them. Two different confessions last week hinted to the blue pieces of paper, a kind of new way of looking at the world, but he’d not had much time to think on it.
“I’m betting it said O-Blimpian,” Trina said. “Or, maybe, Steamroller.”
“That’s that new game, is it?” he said. “Some sort of fortune-teller?”
“According to some,” she said. “According to others, it’s just simple science. Much more reliable than things like, I don’t know, prayers, for instance.”
As they approached her house, Trina started moving around in the cab. She reached down and unzipped her backpack and took out a pack of cigarettes. She rolled down her window and lit one without even asking, which Pete found wildly inappropriate for many reasons. Yet he was so struck by the swiftness of her movements, the sudden change from her looking relaxed to looking nervous, that he didn’t say a thing to stop her. He just put on his blinker and eased off the highway onto her gravel drive.
“What about you, Joe Camel?” he said. “Have you gotten one of those readouts?”
“No,” she said. “But I know what mine would say.” She put the backpack on her lap and blew smoke out of the truck window. “I’m thinking, Potential Life Station: Scalpel.”
As soon as Pete pulled into the driveway, Trina hopped out of the truck.
“It would probably be best if I didn’t invite you in,” Trina said. “My father has been known to, you know, despise you.”
“I understand,” Pete said. “I don’t want to get him riled up. I’m just glad you made it home safe.”
She closed the truck door and turned around to face him. “Is that what I look like to you?” she said. “Safe?”
She turned and took a few steps toward the house before he called her back.
“Katrina,” he said. “I meant to ask. You heard anything from your mom lately? Any word at all?”
She took a last big drag of her skinny cigarette and stomped it out on the gravel. “No, Uncle Pete, I haven’t. What about you?” she asked. “You heard any word from God?”
“I believe I did,” he said. “The moment I saw you standing on the side of that road.”
Trina stared back at him without any emotion at all. Her eyes were so blank and gray in response to his compliment that it scared Pete a bit. What was going on with that girl?
He watched her walk up to the porch and into the house without so much as a good-bye and Pete thought about the house she lived in. It wasn’t a bad place, structurally. It was brick with aluminum siding. It sat on a solid slab. Back when it was built, Pete figured, probably in the 1940s or so, it was likely the pride of the whole Todd family. No mansion, no big stucco Acadiana-style thing that people keep throwing up around Louisiana, but a big broad house with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Enough land to have some chickens if you wanted them or to plant some shade trees. You could easily put a flower garden right there in front of the porch. That would brighten things up a bit. You could take the rusty tractor that hasn’t been used in thirty years out of the yard, as well. That would free up some space. It probably wouldn’t hurt to remove the discarded camper top that served as a doghouse for Lanny’s strange sort of Laplander–pit bull mix that he kept chained up under there, too, but, in all, it was a good house. It just needed some attention and maybe, Pete thought, a little prayer. He sat there thinking about these things for so long that he eventually heard the squeaking of Ms. Phyllis Vernon’s mountain bike behind him. And this must have been too long to sit in another man’s driveway praying about another man’s house because, after he watched Phyllis inch by in his rearview mirror, he looked up to see Lanny Todd walking toward him. He was predictably shirtless but, unexpectedly, toting a shotgun.
Whatever this was about, Pete prayed, he hoped it would be over by five.
8
Oh My Stars
Oof. That was a record.
Well, in the last twenty years or so. There had been that time in high school when Cherilyn’s mother left her alone in the house for a weekend, sure, but she had really just discovered it then. What was she, fifteen? Sixteen? Regardless, it was totally normal. Plus, she’d watched that movie with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore in it about ten times (who knew a pottery wheel could be so exciting?) and probably hit the double digits in her own fun. But since then? Maybe once every two weeks or so, quickly in the bathroom, more languidly in the shower if Douglas was off at work. But three times in a day? Three times since noon, really, now that she thought about it? And the one last night when Douglas was sleeping?
What had gotten into her?
She’d thought of other men before, of course, but always in the sort of generalized way that Cherilyn imagined most adults with working parts thought about other adults with working parts. There were various skin colors and muscle tones, multiple attitudes, a different jawline or set of hands than she was used to. There was the muscled V of a younger man’s back, maybe, a body without a face, or maybe a face without a body and, depending on her mood, perhaps even some long and luxurious hair instead of (yes, it was true in some of these fantasies, although she hated to admit it) a balding head with those freckles on the top like she was used to. Maybe even a tattoo, something colorful across the broad chest and shoulders but of what design or message she did not know nor care because these were not real people she was thinking of. They were just little imaginary cruise ships floating by. Little Love Boats, if you will. And they existed in so many different scenarios and locales that the whole process became a blur and caused her no guilt at all because it was not as if she was thinking specifically of one particular man, one other man besides her husband, was she, and it was not as if she were cataloging these things for display for someone else anyway. So, what did it matter? Nope, these thoughts were hers alone. And to her credit, she
thought, these thoughts nearly always circled back around to nice memories with Douglas.
For these fantasies to feel as if they could actually happen, after all, for them to take her to the places she wanted to go, Cherilyn eventually had to imagine herself in them. Not a fantasy self, but her real body, both her physical being and her emotional being, and whenever she imagined this person feeling comfortable enough to share real pleasure with anyone, that person was always Douglas.
She had done this today, as well, the first time. It was a scene she often remembered, back when they were first married, in their mid-twenties, when they went tubing with some of their college friends on the Tickfaw River. They were both so young and happy and new and all the men on the river were shirtless and laughing and diving and splashing and she was in a bikini, of all things. Yes, there had been that version of her. She’d worn bikinis without a second thought until her thirty-fifth birthday, when she saw that picture Douglas had taken out in the backyard when they were sunbathing. Nope. No more two-pieces after that. There just comes a time, you know? She was sort of okay with that. But in this memory of the Tickfaw there was a moment when they found themselves alone in a bend of the river and they had locked their legs together beneath the water, her and Douglas, floating outside of their tubes but still holding on to them and how did it even happen? What were the physics of it? She remembers the kissing and how it was her who had first pulled his swimsuit down beneath the water, how she was just being playful, testing him, and how at first she didn’t think it would go any further but then how pleased she was to feel his hand pulling her bikini bottom to the side. And how impetuous and fun to be doing this invisibly beneath the water, continuing even as they heard their friends around the bend, as if they couldn’t stop once they had begun and the way they drifted joined together like that, the strange rush of water, the mix of heat and friction and the blazing sun above them, the memory of it toasting their cheeks and collarbones as they looked at each other, eye-to-eye that entire time, grinning and enjoying themselves and her biting her bottom lip for the first time in a way that Douglas still loves, she knows, that he still mentions to her on occasion, while nobody knew their secret. Yes, yes. She thought of this often.
But, full disclosure, she sometimes recalled her other times and other men. Three others, to be exact, before she began dating Douglas, and three was a perfectly fine number, she thought, and remembering is a natural thing. And there had been that incident with Deuce that she thought about once in a blue moon, but that was nothing, really. Still, she thought of it sometimes. It was harmless, not even an indiscretion in the biblical sense, but something a person thinks about. But not today. No, today there were new things to wonder.
Her conversation with that man on the computer, for example. The curiosity of this would be hard to deny. They’d chatted for only a few minutes, and what had they even talked about? He had spoken of her beauty. He complimented her robe. Then he told her how warm it was in his room, that he had been playing soccer and was sweating, and asked if it would be okay if he took his shirt off.
And she had typed, You may.
Okay, so, if a person were to really study the situation then they might find it a pretty strange coincidence that she had broken her record on a day that she’d talked to this other man, but it isn’t like she actually knew him. He was no more real than her thought boats. But something had happened. Yes, okay. Something had started her up. Had she been unfaithful? Was that what she had been? No, of course not.
Yet the way he stood before her, there was something in that. She watched him scoot back in his chair and rise and hook his thumbs into the neck of his shirt and pull it over his head and the cartography of his body was something to see. Flat lines of muscle beneath his collarbone, his strong pecs and shoulders. The dark hair on his chest, the musculature of his stomach and the way this definition seemed to make two rivers that led into his shorts where there were undoubtedly other things to explore. He was no supermodel, no artificially tanned and waxed gym rat, and that was good. He was merely a man standing before her and he did not, at first, sit back down. He allowed her to look, to appraise him, and she did.
Studying his body, Cherilyn was struck by the image of men running. Not just this man but all men, grown men, perhaps running around a soccer field like the high school boys in town. Did she know any men who played soccer? Of course not. Had she ever seen a grown man run in real life? She thought about this. Not on the television, not in a football uniform, but right there in front of her? Had she seen this? Had a man ever run past her? Had she felt the air move in his wake? Smelled him go by? Not that she could remember.
The men of Deerfield sat in boats and shot guns. They hunted and drank and yanked at the cords of lawnmowers and were manly enough, sure, but they did not run. They did not play soccer. And so she imagined this man, fit and sweaty and fast, just as she imagined all running men must be and, truth told, she may have also imagined all of these imaginary men taking off their shirts for her and her alone and, so, when he sat back down at the desk and smiled at her, when he was obviously willing to do anything she might ask of him, when she felt her heart begin beating in an unfamiliar way, Cherilyn leaned forward, touched the mouse, and clicked “Next.”
She then quickly shut down the page and turned off the monitor as if to make sure nobody saw it and was left looking at her own reflection in the dark screen. Again, not a bad tableau. She put her hand to her face, traced her finger down to her collarbone. She looked down at her robe. This was the most comfortable thing she owned. It was blue and thin, with felt at the collar, some discoloration where the hem hit the floor, and had a mismatched flannel tie around the waist. It was the literal opposite of sexy. She had worn it a thousand times, as if it were her morning uniform. But today it appeared transformed to her and she looked at herself again in the monitor. Hello, there, she thought, and hooked a finger into the edge of the robe, tickled her own skin with the back of a fingernail, and pulled the robe gently to the side. Half of her there. Hello. Yes, half of her there to see.
After this she’d had her first bit of fun right on the office chair. Then the phone rang again in the kitchen and, expecting it to be her mother, who would probably be confused as to why she hadn’t answered her cell phone or who had perhaps forgotten to turn off the stove and set her house on fire, Cherilyn got up and answered it, not even bothering to check the caller ID. Instead of her mother or even Douglas, though, it was Geoffrey Mallow, who was looking for Douglas to confirm their afternoon lesson. And after they had chatted for a few minutes and she’d thanked him for being so kind to Douglas, who was very excited about this trombone business, she went back to the bedroom and unexpectedly had her fun again on top of the sheets and then again one last time in the shower and, throughout all of this, she did not feel bad. Not guilty. Not sick. Not worried. Not at all.
But now she was leaving her house.
It was already three-thirty and she was usually at her mom’s house by noon. She’d been sure to close out her Internet session by clicking all the little X’s she could find until the screen was back to their home page. Then she’d thought to open up a game of solitaire and leave it on the screen, as if that is what she’d been playing all day, and went out their front door, not bothering to lock it, and headed down the sidewalk toward her mother’s house. She carried a plastic grocery bag with a Tupperware bowl in it, containing the leftover burger and mac and cheese from the previous night and figured her mom could eat it as a late lunch or for supper tonight if she wasn’t in a cooking frame of mind.
When she got to the end of their street, she saw Stacy Pitre in front of her house pulling weeds. She waved Cherilyn over to complain that her azaleas weren’t blooming, although she’d seen the ones over on Maycomb Street starting to bud, and said she was worried that her husband had cut them back too late in the year because, you know Dan, he’s never done anything on time
in his life, but what were they going to do, she worried, if they had to go through spring without their azalea blossoms? Could you imagine?
Cherilyn was not quite sure if she replied to Stacy that yes she could imagine or no she could not imagine, which both would have meant the same thing in this scenario, because she’d again begun to feel the day’s heat in the distracting and bothersome manner that was still new to her.
Far from the young woman tubing down the river in her memory, letting the sun bake her skin and face, the Louisiana heat had recently become an enemy of hers. It affected her head lately, always in negative ways, making her almost dizzy, feeling totally exhausted and out of it. It may have been the case, in this particular instance, that part of her was still busy rearranging what had happened with that man on the computer. So, maybe she was only distracted? After all, had she done something wrong? That would be unlike her. But why, then, had she put the solitaire game up as if she’d been playing it? Was that a lie she had told, in the way that lies can so often be silent? Had she just lied to her husband without even saying a thing? She did not like that idea at all.
Regardless, she decided that she would most certainly not be going to that Omegle place again, now that she’d had some time to think on it, because it was not appropriate for a stranger to look into her home, nor was it appropriate for her to look into his. So, she would just wash her hands of that. It was in the past, and everyone has a past. Time to move on.
But the way Cherilyn was having a hard time literally understanding what Stacy Pitre was saying—something about the flowering cells in azaleas having to travel from the root of the plant to the tips, how they have to regenerate every year—the way the words themselves didn’t make sense to her, felt undeniably physical in nature. She was suddenly gripped by the fear that she might be acting very strangely in front of her neighbor, staring blankly at her mouth as she spoke, although Stacy didn’t seem to notice. And when Cherilyn finally left and began again down the sidewalk, knowing she only had to go another mile or so to get to her mom’s place, maybe a ten-minute walk, her legs felt so heavy beneath her, as if she were wearing gravity boots, that she honestly didn’t know if she could make it.