by Larry Watson
RED-EYED AND SMELLING faintly like skunk, Jesse and Billy set down their bags right inside the door, an assortment of nylon duffels and packs in various sizes and colors. A new-looking royal blue rolling bag is the only piece that could rightly be called luggage.
“Where should we put these, ma’am?” asks Billy.
Jesse has brought in a black guitar case as well.
Edie turns to her granddaughter and says, “You and Billy can take my room. Jesse, you can have the guest room down the hall.”
“No, Grandma,” Lauren says. “We can’t put you out of your room. We can sleep on the floor. It won’t bother us.”
Edie reaches over and rests her hand on her granddaughter’s arm. “This will work just fine. I’ll sleep right here on the couch. I’ve fallen asleep here on lots of nights when I’ve been too tired to get up and go to bed. It’s perfectly comfortable. Besides, I believe I’m the only one who’ll fit.”
Lauren gets up to help the brothers. She grabs the handle of the rolling bag. “What do you think of this, Grandma? Mom gave it to me for graduation. Think she was trying to tell me something?”
LAUREN HAS CHANGED into a sleeveless white nightgown that is so free of adornment it looks like little more than a square of gauzy fabric with a hole cut for her head. It comes to midthigh and is so sheer it does little to conceal the young woman’s slender, narrow-hipped, small-breasted body.
“Are you sure you don’t want to borrow a robe? I know it can be chilly in here.”
“I’m fine, Grandma.”
After a shower Billy has put back on the T-shirt and the baggy cargo shorts he wore earlier. Jesse is also wearing shorts, but he is shirtless, his torso rib-skinny but tight with ropy muscle. Both are barefoot.
For a long time Jesse has been tuning his guitar, bending his ear close to the strings until he gets the notes exactly right.
Finally he asks, and he asks it only of Edie, “What’s your favorite song?”
“My favorite? I’m not sure.” She laughs. “Something old. Of course.”
“A Beatles song maybe?”
“Maybe.”
“Which one?” Jesse smiles his wide wolfish smile. “Because Beatles songs are practically my specialty.”
“Oh, now I can’t think of any titles.”
“‘Yesterday’?”
Edie shrugs.
“‘Michelle’?”
Edie shakes her head no.
Jesse picks out the opening to “Norwegian Wood,” though there’s no indication that anyone in the room recognizes the song.
Edie asks, “Where did you learn to play?”
“High school. Me and a few guys started a band. Had a set list and everything. Classic rock. That was going to be our thing because we could play that anywhere. Bars. Schools. County fairs. Then just before our first gig, Mom and Dad packed us up and we moved again.”
“Was that in Miles City?” Billy asks.
“Great Falls.”
“Then it was just Dad.”
“If you say so.”
“What was the name of your band?” Lauren asks.
After a long moment Jesse says, “Javelin.”
“How about this one?” Jesse asks and once again his question is directed to Edie alone.
Then he begins to play in earnest, and the opening chords of “Layla” ring out and fill the room. Yet when Jesse starts to sing he lowers the volume again, and his voice is little more than a whisper. “‘What’ll you do when you get lonely.’”
He’s not looking at Edie now but is bent over the guitar again.
Edie nods. “That was a good song.”
BILLY IS ALREADY in bed and under the sheet. Lauren is looking through her grandmother’s closet, and when she finds an empty hanger she hangs up the dress she’s worn that day on the back of the bedroom door.
She walks to the edge of the bed but she doesn’t get in, not yet. “What the fuck was that all about?” she asks. “Jesse singing to my grandmother.”
“Jealous?”
“Don’t. It was weird. Didn’t you think it was weird?”
“Hey, I told you. Fucking Jesse, man. You thought that was strange? Stay tuned.”
Lauren turns out the lamp and climbs into bed, her back to Billy.
“Do you smell cinnamon?” Billy asks. “I smell cinnamon.”
“That’s like potpourri or something. On top of the dresser.”
“Can you put it somewhere? It’s kind of making me sick. Or hungry.”
Lauren sighs and gets out of bed. While she crosses the room Billy scrambles and arches his body under the covers. She puts the small crystal dish in the dresser’s top drawer.
Bars of light from the parking lot seep through the blinds, enough light for Lauren’s body to be outlined under her nightgown as she walks back toward the bed.
As soon as she gets back into bed, Billy presses his body to hers.
“Ew. Put your underwear back on.”
“Come on,” he says, putting his hands under her nightgown. While one hand gropes for the waistband of her underpants, the other hand slides up toward her breast.
“Don’t,” Lauren says.
She tries to wriggle away from him, but she’s right at the edge of the bed. When she squirms away from one of his hands, that allows his other hand to go where it will. “Billy!” she says. “My grandma is right in the other room!”
“We can be quiet.”
“No.”
“The hell. It wasn’t that long ago we did it on the toilet seat in your mom’s house, and she was just down the hall in the goddamn kitchen. And how about when Jesse was right over there in the other bed?”
His hand has reached her breast and he squeezes hard.
“Ouch! God damn it, Billy!”
“Okay, okay.” He rolls away from her, throws back the sheet, and gets out of bed.
He stalks around to Lauren’s side of the bed and positions himself right by her head. He takes hold of his semi-erect penis and waggles it up and down near her face.
“You want to be quiet?” he says. “Here. Put this in your mouth. That’ll be nice and quiet.”
He places his other hand on her head, wrapping coils of her hair in his fist like lengths of rope. He moves closer, his legs spread and pressing against the mattress.
“If you don’t get that out of my face,” Lauren says, “I’ll fucking bite it off.”
He relaxes his hold on her hair.
“I mean it, Billy.”
She leans out from the bed, bares her teeth, and snaps twice in the direction of his penis. Her teeth make a clacking sound in the air.
He laughs. But he steps away from the bed.
EDIE IS SITTING on the couch in her nightgown and robe looking at the photographs.
One in particular holds her attention.
It’s a photograph of three generations of females, taken on the occasion of Lauren’s christening, almost eighteen years ago to the day. Lauren, an unusually chubby baby, sits on a green brocade couch in a flowing baptismal gown, and she’s propped between Jennifer and Edie, who once looked more like sisters than mother and daughter. But the years have done something to Jennifer that passed her mother by. Perhaps it was all that time Jennifer spent under the sun’s rays; perhaps it was some long-suppressed bitterness that finally revealed itself in her features. Whatever the cause, her looks have grown coarser over time. Jennifer has a hand in front of her daughter to keep her from toppling over, yet she still manages to look at the camera. Edie however is looking away, as though someone outside the frame has just called her name.
And that is exactly what happens. While Edie is staring at the photograph her granddaughter enters the room.
“Hey, Grandma,” Lauren says softly.
To hear herself called that while that picture is in her hand surprises Edie, but she recovers quickly. “Hi, honey. Is everything okay?”
“I can’t sleep,” Lauren says. “It happens to me a lot.”
Edie puts the photograph back and tucks the envelope between the sofa cushions.
“Billy never has any trouble falling asleep. Anyplace, anytime, he closes his eyes and he’s out.”
“Lucky man.”
“For sure. I saw the light on. But if you’re getting ready for bed—”
“No, no. Come. Sit.” Edie pats the cushion next to her. “You must have inherited your condition from me. I’ve always had trouble sleeping too.”
“It’s the worst when I know I have to like get up early the next day.”
“Well, you can sleep as late as you like tomorrow. I’ll try to be quiet when I get up. I’m sorry I can’t take the day off, but another woman in the office is on vacation this week.”
“Don’t worry about it, Grandma. We’ll be fine. I think we saw a mall when we were driving into town.”
Edie nods. “Prairie View Shopping Center. It doesn’t have as many stores as they hoped for. Plenty of folks still drive to Billings to do their shopping.”
“We’ll probably hang out there.”
“Our downtown isn’t completely dead. There are a few little shops you might like. And we have the Pioneer Museum. It’s small but some of the displays are interesting.”
Lauren laughs. “You don’t have to keep apologizing for Gladstone, Grandma.”
“I don’t want to mislead you, honey. We don’t have a lot here.”
“But enough for you, huh?”
“It’s my hometown. I was born here. And I’ve lived here longer than anywhere. Which is only two places. Gladstone and Granite Valley.”
“Mom said you hid out here after you and Grandpa split up.”
“Hiding? Is that what I was doing?” Edie thrusts her arms in the air. “Here I am! You found me, didn’t you? But Granite Valley was your grandfather’s place. I couldn’t stay there.”
Lauren nods knowingly, a motion that sets her dreadlocks bobbing. “Mom said if Dad hadn’t left, she would have.”
“And then she left anyway.”
“Because of Kyle.”
“And what’s the status there?”
After a long pause Lauren says, “They’re back together.”
“You’re not happy about it?”
“I can’t stand him. He’s like this superconfident macho prick. But hey. If that’s Mom’s type . . . She’s the one who has to live with him.”
“Relationships don’t always make sense to those of us who are looking at them from the outside.”
“He’s younger than Mom, you know. Kyle. Like ten years.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I think it’s kind of a big deal to Mom,” Lauren says, falling back against the sofa cushions. “Whatever. I’m not going back to Spokane.”
In this new position Lauren’s long legs are exposed, and Edie can’t take her eyes off the tattoos high on her granddaughter’s left leg. Three small dark blue hearts trail down her inner thigh as if they were dripping from her vagina. Lauren must sense where her grandmother’s gaze is focused, and she tugs at the hem of her nightgown, but that doesn’t do much. Lauren closes her legs and crosses them.
Oh, the irony! The woman Lauren can’t live with was once the girl that Edie couldn’t abandon. And Edie is back in the town she left so many years ago.
“Does your mother know?” Edie asks. “That you’re not returning?”
“I mean, I didn’t come right out and tell her. But she can figure it out. She knows I want to be with Billy. And I pretty much packed up everything before we left. It’s either in the car or in a box in Gina’s basement. She’s like my best friend. My best friend besides Billy, I mean. We worked at Subway for a while. Me and Gina. Before I got a job at Express.”
“Is Express a food place too?”
“Grandma!” Lauren laughs. “Don’t you have an Express here? It’s a clothing store.”
“But not a job you’d go back to.”
She shrugs. “I could pretty much get a job at any Express. And Billy could walk into any Hardee’s, and they’d for sure hire him because he worked at one before. I mean, he doesn’t want go back. But if he absolutely, absolutely had to, he could.”
“How did you and Billy meet, if you don’t mind my asking? Were you in school together?”
Lauren shakes her head no. “He went to Southwest. Plus he’s a few years older than me. No, Billy kind of like saved me one night at a party. We were at this girl’s house and her parents were out of town, and she was going to have a little party. A little party. But people started showing up from all over. And a bunch of Southwest guys were there. Really drunk. And trying to start fights. Brittany—that’s whose house we were at—tried to get them to leave, but they wouldn’t go. They were trashing the house and driving all over the lawn and tearing up the grass and the shrubs and shit. Finally they said they’d leave if we’d go with them.”
“We?”
“Gina and me and this other friend of Brittany’s. So we said yes and we were about to leave with them, and Billy came running over and said, ‘Don’t do it.’ At first he scared me because he grabbed my arm and he was all serious like. But he just kept saying, ‘Don’t do it. Don’t get in the car with them.’ And I don’t know why, but I believed him. And then the rest of the night I kind of hung out with him, and all we did was talk. He didn’t try anything or try to get me to drink or anything. We’ve kind of been together ever since.”
“What about your friend? Gina?”
Lauren exhaled. “Yeah. Sure enough. Something bad happened. I’m not going to tell you what, Grandma. But it was not good. Not good.”
“So Billy saved you from Gina’s fate. And what do you and Billy have planned now?”
“Billy and Jesse think maybe we should stay in North Dakota. Either Bismarck because, like I say, they have family there. And somebody, maybe a cousin or an uncle, I forget which, has a big house. We can stay as long we like, he said.”
“The cousin?”
Lauren nods eagerly. “Or the uncle. Or maybe we’ll go up to Williston. Billy and Jesse could both get jobs in the oil fields no problem. Oil workers make so much it’s crazy. Billy thinks maybe we could work half the year and then take off and travel the other half. Just drive around the country and, when we come to some place we like, check into a hotel or motel and stay as long as we like. A place with an indoor pool in the winter and an outdoor one in the summer. Then if the money gets low, back to Williston. Why do you look like that, Grandma? Did I get the town wrong? Isn’t it Williston?”
Edie looks down at her hands, folded in her lap. “It’s Williston.”
“I mean, we’re young, right? Well, I am anyway. Billy and Jesse, kind of. What did you do when you got out of high school?”
“I had a job in a bank,” Edie says. “And I was about to get married.”
“Oh wow! You and Grandpa got married way back then?”
“Not your grandfather. My first husband.”
Lauren strikes herself lightly on the forehead with the heel of her hand. “Duh! My bad. I keep forgetting. He’s the one who died, right?”
“The one who died. Yes. That’s right.”
“So you were like a widow when you were pretty young?”
Edie shakes her head no. “Dean died years later. When your grandfather and I were still married. And your mother was about your age.”
Lauren waves her hands and slumps in confusion. “God, I can never keep all this family shit straight. And I just gave up with Billy’s relatives. I don’t know who’s who.”
“Except Jesse.”
“Except Jesse. Yeah. Jesse I know.”
Edie smiles kindly at her granddaughter. “I understand,” she says. “Families can get pretty tangled.”
Lauren sits up again. “So you got married when you were my age? What did your folks say about that?”
“Not folks. Just my mother. My father had died a few years earlier. My mother said she knew Dean and I would get married eventually, so why no
t get to it. And people married younger then.”
“Yeah,” Lauren says thoughtfully. “I don’t think Mom much gives a shit either.”
“Hey, Laure.” A voice startles both of them, and they look up to see Billy standing in the entrance to the living room. In a voice husky with sleep he asks, “Are you coming back to bed or what?”
His eyes are bleary and his hair is matted on one side. His boxers barely cling to his narrow hips. In addition to the tattoo on his upper arm, Edie sees another on his shirtless torso. On the surprisingly deep concavity of his sternum is a yellow lightning bolt outlined in blue, an electric shock right over his heart.
Lauren jumps up from the sofa. “Yep, I’m coming.”
She turns to Edie and says, “Good night, Grandma.” Then she adds in a voice pitched only to Edie’s ears, “It scares him sometimes when he wakes up and I’m not there.”
EDIE HAS TUCKED a fitted sheet around the sofa cushions and on top she’s spread another sheet and a blanket. She’s brought her own pillow from the bedroom. She has also brought the clock radio and placed it on the end table where its red numbers now burn through the darkness. The alarm is set for the usual hour. She takes off her robe and lays it on the coffee table. She lies awake for a long time, and like every woman who lives alone, she watches the entrance to the room where someone could step in from the darkness. Even as she slides into sleep she is turned in that direction, and in that position she remains throughout the night.
EVERY MORNING AT work Edie’s first task is to print out a copy of the day’s appointments. She carries this sheet into the dentist’s office. Dr. Hackett is thick and solidly built, her hair cropped close, which emphasizes her big head and outsize features. Both her manner and physical bearing convey that she has the physical and emotional strength to carry out any painful procedure that her profession might require.
“Shit,” the doctor says when she looks over the patient list. “Joan Busch. I was afraid she’d be back. Was it just last week?”
“I can call back and cancel. Tell her you had an emergency.”
Dr. Hackett shakes her head. “She’s one of those women who has nothing better to do than sit around all the goddamn day and wonder if her teeth feel okay.” The doctor sets down the appointment sheet. “What the hell. We’ll get it over with.”
