The Sweet Spot

by Joan Livingston

  “Bob? My Bob died? That’s too bad. I’ll miss that old mutt.” She reached for a tissue in a box on the end table. “Don’t mind me.”

  “It’s okay. Amber and I feel awful about it,” Edie said.

  Amber sat beside Leona. Her small hand patted her great-aunt’s shoulder. Leona smiled at the girl, and then she eyed Edie.

  “Be straight with me. Tell me exactly what happened to my Bob,” she said. “Was it Alban?”

  “No, no, it wasn’t Pop. The road boss hit him. It was an accident. Bob died right away. At least, he didn’t suffer.”

  “Thank goodness for that at least. I guess it’s the way to go,” Leona said. “I hope I don’t see it coming either.”

  “Stop talking like that, you and Pop.”

  Leona waved her away.

  “Maybe it’s a blessing. It was only a matter of time when I would’ve had to put him down. His back legs were going.” She smiled at Amber. “Bob had a fine life with us. Right, honey?”

  “Yes, Auntie.”

  Leona squinted at Edie.

  “You can tell that fathead road boss, I want an apology from him. And I’d better see the highway department grader and a truckload of gravel here first thing Monday.”

  Edie took the seat beside Amber. Her daughter’s cheeks were flushed. She touched her tongue to her forehead.

  “Feel her. She’s burning up,” she told Leona.

  Her aunt placed her bony hand on the girl’s face.

  “Definitely a fever. Let me see your tongue,” she ordered Amber. “You’re sick all right. Edie take this girl home right now and put her to bed.”

  Certain

  The bartender gave Walker another beer and a shot as he sat at the end of the bar at the Do-Si-Do. It was ten-thirty and Edie still wasn’t here. He’d been looking forward to tonight. He thought about it while he watched his boys play ball and when he went about his Saturday chores, which included a trip to the dump, where Benny Sweet took some windows he was throwing out. He half-listened to the useless, old man. The only worthwhile thing he ever did was father Edie.

  Although the Do-Si-Do was close to home, it was crowded and casual enough he and Edie could talk. They might even dance a fast one. Nobody cared. She was his widowed sister-in-law. Afterward, they left separately and met back at her place if her little girl wasn’t there. No one knew about them, except Dean, his best buddy and foreman, who sometimes covered for him, and maybe Edie’s busybody aunt. If Benny Sweet suspected, he didn’t let on, but the man was pretty sharp-eyed.

  Sharon wanted him to go to a cookout at her younger sister’s house tonight. He lasted a couple of hours, nursing some rotgut whiskey his brother-in-law bought before leaving, but not without some angry words with his wife. Even if he wanted to be with Sharon, he didn’t have any use for his brother-in-law, a man who kept hinting he wanted a job. The man couldn’t even cut a board straight for Christ’s sake. His sister-in-law wasn’t any better, as fat as his wife and their other sister, Vera, and just as bossy. The three of them could run the town. His in-laws had four kids, and the only one he liked was the youngest, a girl with a purple birthmark that spread over half her face.

  “I wish you paid as much attention to me and your family as you do that damn bar,” Sharon said tonight as they argued inside his in-laws’ carport.

  He was certain their argument became a topic of conversation after he left, which suited him just fine. Good thing he thought ahead of time to go in separate vehicles.

  The band was on a break, so people milled about the Do, holding lit cigarettes and longnecks. He searched the crowd, but still no Edie. He finished his shot and asked for another. Walker nodded when Dean took the stool beside his. He glanced over his shoulder again.

  “You see Edie here?” Walker asked.

  “No, you have plans?”

  Walker’s head moved as if he were shaking off a thought.

  “She’s always here Saturday. I tried talking with her last night, but she kept putting me off.”

  “Something up between you two?”

  “We kind of had fight at my camp, but things are okay now between us,” Walker said.

  “You two had a fight? What about?” Dean asked.

  “Gil.”

  Dean shook his head.

  “You should know better than to bring him up.” Dean leaned forward and spoke to the man sitting on the other side of Walker. “You see Edie here tonight?”

  “Edie? I think she was in here earlier, but she left with somebody,” the man said.

  Walker held his jaw tightly.

  “Who’d she leave with?”

  “Does it matter? Edie’ll go home with anybody.”

  The man chuckled as he enjoyed his joke. But he stopped when Walker gripped the neck of his t-shirt and dragged his face close to his. The man let out a high-pitched fart.

  “You watch what you’re saying about Edie. She was married to my brother. You know the one killed in Vietnam saving your stinkin’ ass. I was the fuckin’ best man at their wedding.”

  Dean placed his hand on Walker’s shoulder.

  “Relax, Walker. He didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” he said.

  Walker glared at them both. He shoved the man to the floor.

  “You’re wrong by the way,” Walker said, standing over the man. “She’d never go home with you, asshole.”

  Dean touched Walker’s shoulder.

  “Take it easy, buddy,” he said.

  “Shut up, Dean.”

  Walker settled his tab and was out the door. He sat in his truck and reached beneath the seat for a bottle of Jack Daniels. He took a swallow while he watched people come and go. Men had arms around their women. Everybody wanted a good time.

  He took another swallow. His head felt as if someone was cracking it open with a tool. He started the truck’s engine.

  He drove slowly by Edie’s house, half of it lit, her end. Only her car was in the driveway. He watched the windows and listened for noise. He saw and heard nothing. He took another swig before he parked behind her car.

  Edie answered the door in a white nightgown, the fabric so thin he saw skin and hair.

  “Walker. It’s after eleven. I was going to bed.”

  She eyed the bottle in his hand.

  “Where the hell were you?” He made his way past her. “I’ve been waiting for you at the Do. You had somebody here?”

  “No, nobody. Just Amber. She’s sick, and I couldn’t send her like that to Aunt Leona’s,” Edie said slowly. “It’s been a lousy day, Walker.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Walker paced around the room. His head stabbed this way and that, hunting for clues. The bottle of Jack hit the edge of the table, but it didn’t break, so he set it on top.

  Edie’s blue eyes blinked fast as if they were signaling him.

  “Walker, what’s wrong?”

  “You know what’s wrong. Who was he?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He glared at Edie.

  “It wasn’t that shit, Lonny, again, was it?”

  Walker grabbed Edie’s arm and dragged her into the bedroom. She cried, but he didn’t stop until he threw her onto the bed, its covers pulled tightly to the pillows. She got to her feet, and he shoved her down again.

  Edie moved around, fighting him off, but Walker straddled her, so she couldn’t get away. He slapped her arms and legs, and the rest of her. She pushed back. She begged him to stop. Then he let her have it hard across the face. Her head whipped to the side as his palm shot against her cheek. She shrieked when he did it again.

  Then she went still.

  Walker followed Edie’s gaze to the doorway where Amber stood. The girl glanced from him to her mother. Her lips trembled when she said, “Ma.”

  He moved off
Edie.

  “Shit,” he said.

  Edie rushed toward Amber, shielding her daughter from him. She wiped tears and blood with the back of her hand.

  “I have to take care of her, Walker. I want you to go. Now.” He opened his mouth, but she gestured toward the door. It was a tone he had never heard her use. “Walker, get out. I don’t want to see you ever again.”

  Edie took Amber to the girl’s bedroom. Walker followed them to the hall, and behind the door, he heard Edie’s voice rise and fall, her mother’s voice.

  “Ma, you’re hurt. There’s blood on your face, on your nose and lips. Oh, no, Ma.”

  “Shh, shh, I’m okay.”

  “No, you’re not. I heard you scream.”

  “Uncle Walker was just upset, and I couldn’t calm him down. I’m sorry if he scared you. Uncle Walker’s a good man.”

  “Not if he hits you, Ma.”

  “Shh. Give me that towel over there. Thanks. Let’s lie down on your bed.”

  Walker knew Edie wouldn’t leave the room as long as he was here. So he went.

  Little Comfort

  When Walker slipped into bed, his wife moaned softly and shifted onto her back. If he’d been in love, he would’ve touched her, getting her warm for him, making her feel she was his. But he wasn’t, so he let her be, snoring lightly through her open mouth. Beads of sweat clung to the hairs above her upper lip.

  The scene at Edie’s kept pouring into his head. He wanted to drive to her house, but she wouldn’t welcome him back so soon. He punched at his pillows. He’d have to find a way to fix things with her. He’d make her forgive him for going crazy like that.

  Enough moonlight shined in the room that he saw his wife’s face, so white and motionless she could have been dead. He imagined her body turning blue, then black, and rotting away. He saw flies and maggots feeding off her, and he found a little comfort there.

  Distant and Small

  Edie woke up in Amber’s bed. Her arms cradled her daughter. Walker left hours ago, but she didn’t feel like sleeping in her own. She only left to wash the blood off her face and get ice. The dishtowel she used was wet on her pillow.

  Amber talked in her sleep. Edie couldn’t make out what she said, except for “Ma.” Her words were distant and small as if she spoke through fog.

  “Was Uncle Walker the man you went to see?” Amber asked before she fell asleep. “Did he come here, too?”

  “Your uncle and I are very close,” she told Amber. “He and Aunt Sharon don’t get along.”

  Edie touched where Walker struck her face. She should get more ice. Her body ached in spots when she shifted her position. She placed her tongue on Amber’s forehead to test her temperature. She felt cooler.

  Her daughter was growing fast, and Edie hoped it wasn’t too late to give her a family, a mother and a father. She knew people who grew up fine without either, including herself, but this is what she wanted for her daughter. Amber was lucky to have people who cared for her, but the men in her life, her grandfathers, were old. Amber often asked about her father, begging for stories, wondering what it would be like if he was alive. Edie read from the letters Gil sent on thin, blue paper from Vietnam. Gil wrote about his hopes for them, the love he had for his wife and unborn child.

  “Daddy loved you even though he didn’t meet you,” Edie told her.

  Typically, Amber smiled although one day she asked, “How could Daddy love me? He never saw me.”

  “A mother and father’s love can be that strong,” Edie told her.

  Walker was right about one thing. She and Gil would have had more children.

  She thought about the time Harlan’s grandmother, Elmira Doyle came to see her after Gil died. Amber was a few months old, and Edie rocked her, trying to get her to sleep when she heard the sound of someone climb the stairs to her apartment. She didn’t recognize the footsteps. In those days, it was mostly Walker, Pop, or Aunt Leona, sometimes her in-laws, who came to see her.

  Edie carried her baby to the door and watched Elmira, who was in her late eighties, make her way in halting steps. She brought a baby blanket she crocheted in three shades of pink. Edie, who got teary over the gift, let Elmira have the rocker. She wrapped Amber in the blanket and set her on the woman’s lap. Elmira kept the rocker moving, declining an offer of tea or anything else. Amber slept.

  She remembered Elmira saying, “This is a hard time for you, Edie. Gil was a special man. He’ll be a hard one to replace. But you have to get through it. Do it for his child. Do it for him.”

  Harlan said he hardly knew his grandmother. It was too bad. She was a woman worth knowing. Edie would have to tell him the story some day.

  “Do it for his child. Do it for him.” She held onto Elmira Doyle’s advice when things were hard.

  Gil was so excited when she told him she was pregnant although he worried because the baby would be born before he returned. He was going to miss things. They were coming back from telling his parents about the baby when Gil said, “Listen to me, Edie. If I don’t make it back, count on my parents to help. My brother, Walker, too. You won’t even have to ask.”

  Edie put her hand over Gil’s mouth.

  “Don’t talk like that,” she told him.

  A truck pulled into the driveway. Pop cursed loudly when he worked at his door. He was home briefly in the evening to announce, as Edie predicted, he and the road boss worked things out, first at the highway garage, and then at the Do. The highway crew would be grading the road Monday. Leona would get her apology.

  “Leona must be the most powerful woman in Conwell,” he said. “The guy’s scared shitless what she’ll do when she finds out about the mutt. I don’t blame him. I’d be, too.”

  Amber’s eyes fluttered open. Her fingers plucked at her mother.

  “It’s only Poppy come home. Wait till he sees the cake you won him,” Edie told her, and she smiled when Amber settled back to sleep.

  Tripped

  Pop knocked once.

  “Thanks for the cake,” he shouted as he came through the kitchen door, but he stopped when he saw Edie. “What the hell happened to you?”

  Her mouth hurt when she tried to smile.

  “Nothing, Pop. I tripped over something in the middle of the night.”

  Her father came nearer. He scowled.

  “That’s not from a fall. Someone smacked you hard across the face, someone with a big hand.” Pop pointed to the bruises that wound around her upper arm like a tattoo. His lips twitched. “Who in the hell did this? I’m gonna kill the son of a bitch.”

  “Take it easy, Pop. It was nobody. Like I told you, I tripped,” she said, but her father kept staring. “I know I look like hell, but I don’t wanna talk about it, Pop.”

  She tried to get past him. He stepped in her way.

  “It was Walker, right? Don’t give me that. I ain’t blind.”

  “Oh, Pop,” she said when her father hugged her.

  “Did Amber see you like this?”

  “Yeah.” She raised her face. “She’s with Marie and Fred at church. I asked her not to tell them. I’ll do it myself tomorrow.”

  “What the fuck, I’m calling the cops.”

  Pop went for the wall phone. Edie touched his arm.

  “Pop, don’t, please. Walker didn’t mean to. I bet he’s really sorry.”

  “That’s what they all say.” His breath whistled through his teeth. “He smacked you hard, honey. You gotta tell me what happened.”

  Edie raised the towel holding ice to her face. The phone rang. She jumped.

  “Don’t answer it, Pop,” she said. “Somebody called twice already this morning. I bet it’s him.”

  “Edie, I don’t like the sound of this.”

  “Listen to me, Pop. Last night, Walker was at the door, acting like a maniac. He came ove
r drunk thinking I had some guy here. I didn’t. Only Amber. But he didn’t believe me.”

  “Amber?”

  “She came in at the end. She didn’t see him hit me, thank God. She’s confused, and I didn’t know how much to say without scaring her.”

  “Honey, your Ma and I had some terrible fights, but I never touched her. Any man who puts a hand on you this way doesn’t really love you. Never mind who he is. Never mind he’s married and has kids.” He lowered his voice. “You can do a lot better than him.”

  “Pop.”

  “Gil, he was special. I was so happy when you and him got married. I couldn’t ask for a better husband for you.” His chest rose and fell. “Your life would’ve been golden if it wasn’t for that lousy war.”

  “Pop, stop.” Edie started to cry again. “I don’t wanna hear it.”

  “Maybe it’ll make you think.”

  Pop went to the phone. He dialed the numbers fast.

  “Leona, you gotta come over here,” he said. “That fuck Walker beat the crap outta Edie last night. You should see her face.” He paused. “Yeah, yeah, you need to talk some sense into her.”

  In Trouble

  The woods gave off a creeping kind of heat as Harlan walked the path to the river’s edge late in the afternoon. He stopped for a peek back at his house, glad he chose a slate color for the shingles. He’d ask Walker to recommend a painter when he showed up tomorrow. He wanted it done by fall. He had in mind a warm gray.

  Harlan was nearly to the river when he heard female voices bounce between the ledge and water, and when he got closer he saw they belonged to Edie and her daughter. They sang that silly Hank Williams song about a man who lived in a doghouse after he got in trouble with his wife. Their voices were loud with fun.

  Harlan glanced down at his bare legs, hesitant to join them, but Edie noticed him before he could retreat.

  “Amber, look. We’ve got company,” she said. “Now over half the neighborhood is here.”

  Harlan grinned and sat on a boulder to remove his black canvas sneakers. He took his time, pondering his slow, awkward traverse into the water. He watched the girl jump off a boulder into the darkest part of the river. She called to her mother before she scrambled back onto the rock.