And so he stayed. He rented a bungalow on the beach, no a/c, no running water, just a floor and a roof and four walls, and he took a job as a bartender serving overpriced rum punches to lawyers on vacation, their foreheads blistered from wearing too little sunscreen. He grew a beard and wore a straw hat so people wouldn’t recognize him. He went swimming most days, paddling as far as he could, until his shoulders gave out and his legs cramped up, and he’d turn on his back and let the surf push him back to shore. If he made it, great—he just collected his things and went home and stared at the wall of his hut—but, if one day he didn’t, that would be okay, too, he supposed.
Every week Harry hiked to the adoption agency to see Gloria grow up. And she did, quickly. From crawling to walking to talking to wearing bright orange glasses the color of road-construction signs. She played outside in the mornings, oftentimes without direct adult supervision. They would be inside someplace, watching the babies chew ancient action figures, while Harry meanwhile plotted their routines. The younger of the two attendants was named Kary and she waddled and ate York Peppermint Patties and used British slang such as bollocks, and the older was named Beatrice and she snorted every time Kary said something.
“I need to go to the loo,” Kary’d say, and Beatrice would snort, then return to reading a magazine.
Sometimes, when Kary was away for a while, Beatrice would sneak around the corner to smoke a cigarette. It was against the law to smoke on government property, and so she’d hide behind some bushes, and Harry knew this would be his chance. It would be these few minutes he could grab Gloria and make a run for it. And so he planned, and he saved. He bought a beat-down Toyota for $800 and two plane tickets to Croatia, which, Harry considered, fit nicely in that sweet spot between too poor to be safe and too expensive to live. It was 1.2 miles from the adoption agency to the airport, which didn’t seem too far, but in island traffic that 1.2 miles could take half an hour to traverse. He’d have to pick a day when a cruise ship wasn’t scheduled to dock, and he could avoid the dozens of taxis that herded sunburnt tourists up to Mountaintop or Magen’s Bay. He got his chance one Thursday morning when the sun wasn’t shining and it rained in a way that reminded him of playing under a sprinkler as a child.
He lay across the road in the underbrush, wearing a tool belt equipped with wire cutters, and watched Kary and Beatrice supervise the children. About a dozen or so kids played under the awning, fatherless and motherless kids, kids who had been orphaned long before they knew what the word meant, sucking on their fingers and eating insects and just happy because they knew no different. It wasn’t a bad life, Harry supposed. It wasn’t great, but it could be worse.
Gloria was near the fence closest to Harry, and she played with another little girl. They each had a toy plastic truck and smashed them into each other, mimicking a car crash. Harry could see their mouths move, forming into wide O’s, cheeks ballooned out to make exploding noises, but Harry couldn’t hear them over the rain. It was almost deafening, splashing against elephant-ear leaves and pavement, and, for a moment there, Harry found himself daydreaming, imagining it might be best if he gave up this stupid endeavor. He could slink back to the mainland, go about his business as quietly as possible, take a job as a janitor somewhere, as a mail courier, or a barista, someone who just blended into the background, a man without a face or a name, just a product or service. He’d be the coffee guy or the mail guy or the cleaning guy, not the guy who had become a symbol of white privilege and systemic, twenty-first-century entitlement, of the ongoing disease of institutionalized racism, and he might find a semblance of contentment in anonymity. But this thought soon passed when both Beatrice and Kary disappeared.
Harry pulled the hood over his head and hurried. He walked with purpose across the highway and stopped by the fence. Gloria and the other little girl peered up at him, and he put a finger against his lips. They didn’t make a sound. They just held onto their toy cars and peered up at him with eyes like marbles.
“Hi,” Harry said, and stuck his fingers through the chain-link fence. Gloria looked at him as if in deep concentration, wondering just what to make of these fingers reaching out toward her. “Step back, okay? This will only take a second.”
Harry clipped the fence with his wire cutters. He’d thought it would be difficult to shear through the metal, but his cutters were sharp and it only took him about a minute to cut a hole large enough for Gloria to scurry through, and as he worked, the two little girls kept staring at him, completely unafraid, not crying, not fleeing this stranger who was coming through the fence that had kept them safe and secure and inside for the entirety of their lives, and Harry couldn’t help but be a little worried about this. Their fight-or-flight instinct conditioned out of them, millions of years of evolution gone as if it was the inevitable result of a life orphaned.
“Would you like to come with me?” Harry asked Gloria, and again she simply blinked at him.
But then he heard rustling; it was Beatrice. She must’ve been done with her smoke, so Harry grabbed Gloria. He picked her up and held her so close he could feel her heartbeat quicken right before she burst into a torrential, ear-piercing cry. It was so loud and so sudden it startled Harry. She’d been calm just a second ago, but now she wailed. For a second there, Harry thought he should put her down. Maybe hold her. Do something just to let her know that everything, if she gave it a try, would be okay.
But he didn’t have time. Beatrice barreled out from behind the tree and spotted him. And so he did the only thing that occurred to him—he ran. He ran back across the street and into the jungle. He ran past trees and lizards, and branches scratched at his face, or maybe it was Gloria, he couldn’t tell. But he ran and ran and ran until a side-splitting pain threatened to tear him apart and he burst into a clearing where his little Toyota waited for him, idling.
In the distance, he heard police sirens getting louder, and Gloria continued to wail, now with tiny red scratches covering her cheeks and foliage stuck in her hair. But she was okay. She’d live, and so he placed Gloria in the car seat, careful to buckle her in properly, the latch up near her armpits, the straps secure and tight. He then put the car into gear and drove off as inconspicuously as possible, five miles below the speed limit, always, always using his turn signal. He only got around one turn, however, when he noticed the police cruisers. There were six of them, and they blocked the road. They faced east and Harry west, toward the airport where his plane was waiting for him, flying to Miami to New York to Croatia, and in the back sat Gloria, crying.
He put the car in park and placed his hands on the wheel so they could be seen through the windshield. Several cops exited their cruisers, took shelter behind their open doors, and aimed their firearms. They wouldn’t shoot, though. Not with Gloria in the backseat. Harry was certain of that. And so he stayed in the car. Gloria cried. The cops pointed their weapons at him. And Harry put the car into first gear and started to inch forward. The speedometer needle crawled upward. Three miles per hour. Five. Ten. And he coasted toward them, slowly picking up speed. The police warned him to stop. Over a megaphone, a voice ordered him to stop the car, to exit with his hands raised, and to lie face down on the ground. But Harry knew he wouldn’t. He let off the gas pedal, took his hands off the wheel, and the car careened down the mountain now, the foliage speeding past in a green blur as he gave in to his own intrinsic inertia. It was freeing in a sense—he was a frictionless ball of mass, no longer at the whim of forces beyond his control—and, for a moment there, he felt at peace. He knew, no matter what, he’d never be able to stop.
The Deep Down Bone of Desire
IT WAS A TYPICAL THURSDAY MORNING WHEN SARA PASSED IT: THE VON MAUR’S DISPLAY WINDOW, REPLETE with mannequins enjoying a holiday scene, and at first she simply disregarded it—a retail store advertisement, nothing else—but when Huxley pointed up at the window and said, “Daddy,” she had to look. The mannequin itself, of course, looked nothing like Daddy. The plastic was lifeless and
its hue chalky. Its rigid joints bent at awkward angles. But there was, if Sara squinted her eyes and let them get all blurry, something about it that reminded her of her husband of twelve years. Perhaps it was the snowflake-covered sweater it sported, one her husband would wear ironically to a winter company party, or perhaps it was the sly upturned grin of its lifeless lips, but it just seemed so oddly familiar. And this feeling, uncanny as it was, unnerved Sara—there was something inexplicably off about the whole damn thing.
For instance, the child in the scene—young, gleeful, rosy-cheeked—did also resemble, in the slightest way, of course, if Sara looked in just the right angle out her periphery, Hux. There were differences, obviously. Sara had recently chopped short Hux’s long bangs despite her embarrassing temper tantrum thrown right in the middle of the salon, and the mannequin in the display still had hers, lining her eyes in that off-putting, grown-up sort of way that had irked Sara to no end. But, beyond that, Sara could’ve sworn Hux had that same exact pair of pajamas: pink with puppy dog prints. Hux had outgrown them a few months prior, and they remained pushed up in a ball in the back of her dresser drawer, a constant and nagging reminder that Sara needed to organize and de-clutter her life, just one more thing that needed to be done.
And then there was the mother in the scene, nursing a white coffee mug. She was off to the side, leaning against a white, nondescript sofa. She wore white leggings and a white T-shirt. She was the only thing in the scene that wasn’t splashed with color so that she stood out as this bright, glaring eyesore. And, if she was absolutely honest with herself, and more and more lately Sara had been, this was how she often felt in her own life: she stood out as someone who did not fit. She was like the child’s game played in preschool, melodically taught to toddlers to discard the thing that was different, and despite willing herself not to let it, the little tune got stuck in her head: “One of these things is not like the others / One of these things just doesn’t belong.”
“Can we go in, Mommy?” Hux pulled on Sara’s pant leg. “Please please please!”
Later, Sara would like to think it was Hux’s insistence that took her into the store, that she had nagged and begged and Sara had relented just to keep her from throwing her umpteenth tantrum of the day, but that was a lie. She was drawn to the store, too, the display acting as some sort of tractor beam, pulling her inside. The store itself was bright and huge and filled with holiday cheer, the soft hum of Jingle Bell jazz, the thrum of shoppers’ laughter. As soon as Sara walked through the doors, it was like she was a child again, enthralled by the rapture of the holiday season. She wandered down the aisles in awe, mentally checking off her wish list: a pair of heels here, some diamond earrings there. The necklaces caught her attention, so sparkly and enticing, and so did the hats, the floppier the better. She knew, however, that Daryl would not buy her anything like that for Christmas. Since having Hux, their gift giving had turned practical instead of romantic, a set of radial tires or air filters, cutlery or new smoke detectors. Things that were needed, not necessarily wanted. And Sara had been fine with that. She didn’t expect life to be some sort of never-ending rom-com, but she did hope that every once in a while, not even that often, just like once or twice a year, really, Daryl would surprise her with something, a nice little clutch or even just a Starbucks gift card. Just a small little knickknack that said he still gave a damn. He didn’t, and that was okay, she supposed, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t—rarely of course—spoil herself. That was when she saw it: a purse. It was a Kate Spade, this cute little thing with the strap and the leather and that feeling only a new bag could bring, and she decided she shouldn’t feel bad if she bought something just this once. It was, after all, just one little thing.
SARA CARRIED HER PURSE EVERYWHERE she went after that: to the DMV to renew her driver’s license; to Aldi to grab a bag of avocados and pre-made, individually wrapped peanut butter and jelly sandwiches; to Hux’s dance recitals. Everywhere she went, other mothers would stop her and ask, “Where did you get that bag? Where? Where can I get one of my own?” And the entire time, Sara couldn’t help but feel like she was floating. It was enchanting in a way, like how she’d felt the first time boys had noticed her, when she had been sixteen and her older cousin’s friend had handed her a room-temperature Coors Light and said, “Here, cutie. Take a load off.” She felt empowered. She felt, and she was embarrassed to admit this, unstoppable.
She scolded herself for this feeling. It was so, well, superficial. She hated it. She had, in her younger days, even chided her mother and sisters and other girls at school for overvaluing material things, their socioeconomic status, but here she stood, right in the middle of T-ball signups, hoping beyond hope someone would stop her and tell her again just how beautiful her bag was.
But nobody did.
They didn’t say a word.
And so Sara wondered why. She stood there in line, dozens of other mothers standing around, carrying on about Betsy and how everyone thought she was perhaps letting herself go and how jealous they were of Ann for finding herself on that mission trip to Haiti, and wondered why no one even gave her bag a second glance. It still looked good. The leather still had that new sheen and that just-brought-home-from-the-department-store smell. It was still in fashion, this year’s design in fact, and it went perfectly well with her teal-green flats and her pants. Well, not so much with the pants. They were a little worn and faded, having been bought…well, she couldn’t exactly remember when she’d bought them. And they did have a string curling away from the pocket, so Sara tried to grab it without the other mothers noticing and rip it off, the whole time nodding, yes, yes, of course Ann looks ten years younger, more in fact, and tried not to rip a hole down the seam. And she was able to. It was easy enough. But then she had to hold on to the string, keep it in her hand, rubbing it between her coarse fingertips, and she knew, deep down in her bones she knew, she had to replace her pants before the day’s end.
By the time she and Hux got back to Von Maur, the display window had changed. It was still a family scene, still a mother and husband and daughter, but instead of the parents watching the little girl opening Christmas presents, they huddled together around a dining room table. The father and the daughter sat there, the husband’s hands clasped together as if in prayer, and the daughter spooning an invisible dinner into her open, waiting mouth, and Sara couldn’t help but think that this was them, this was Daryl and Hux and she at last year’s Christmas dinner. Maybe she was going crazy—she certainly felt a little crazy—but it was like she remembered this exact moment. Sara had been standing over the turkey, trying to carve it, while Daryl criticized her technique, telling her how to hold the knife and the double-tined prongs, explaining that her angle was all wrong and that she would tear the meat and hit bone and dull the knife, and she’d argued with him. She told him to keep his mouth shut, that she’d been feeding this family for years, thank you very much, without much input from him, and no, game-day burgers on the grill did not count, and that she didn’t need his advice now, the whole time Hux staring down at her plate as if she wished she could disappear. Sara felt bad about this later, and still did, in fact, and it didn’t help that Daryl had been right—she had hit bone, and the meat was shredded into jagged little cuts—but when Sara entered the store, all this regret and shame and anger she had felt for so long about that day, for fighting in front of Hux and the way she resented Daryl’s smugness, all of it seemed to just melt away. She felt whole again. She felt—and this time she wasn’t embarrassed to admit it—at home.
THE PURSE TURNED INTO PANTS, and the pants turned into some heels, the heels into a dress. Soon, she’d bought a necklace, and then a day or two later, matching earrings. She bought a blazer and sunglasses and rings and a watch, sneakers and leggings and three or four blouses. When her wardrobe was finished, she decided she needed to redo the house. She bought a new sectional, a couple chaise lounges, even a few bookcases to display her brand new, ceramic knickknacks: lit
tle Hindu elephants and dream catchers and Congolese tribal masks, worldly things, things that made her feel more sophisticated, more interesting somehow, as if by just owning them, she could experience a thousand experiences all at once. She knew this to be crazy, of course. She hadn’t experienced these things, and she didn’t go around telling everyone she had travelled the world or had joined the Peace Corps out of college or had gone on safari with Daryl for their eighth wedding anniversary. She did, however, often daydream about what that would be like, to be a world traveller, to be a woman of the world, and this, these little fantasies, didn’t harm anyone. They made her happy, in fact.
Beyond her happiness, Sara had noticed other changes, too. When she stood in line to buy stamps or pick up her dry cleaning or just about anywhere, in fact, people started doing stuff for her. It wasn’t all that noticeable at first—she would drop her purse by accident, spilling a tube of ruby red lipstick or a hair clip, and some teenage girl would pop out of nowhere to help her out. She’d be a few cents short while getting her morning Frappuccino, and a middle-aged, rotund man would slide up next to her with a dollar bill. Everywhere she went, people smiled at her and opened doors for her and complimented her on her boots or her nails or her smile, and Sara couldn’t help but bask in the attention. She felt like a movie star, if maybe just a B-reel character actress, but still, the people were so nice, just so, so nice, and, even though she felt a little silly about all this, she half expected the paparazzi to be waiting for her out in the parking lot, snapping photographs of little old her, to be published the next morning in US Weekly, or, dare she hope, even People.
Of course, Daryl started to notice all the new stuff. Each time she came through the front door carrying a couple shopping bags, he would pucker his lips and shake his head disapprovingly, like a father berating a misbehaving child. Well, Sara thought, she wasn’t his child. She was his wife, and she was, both by vow and by law, entitled to these things. What was his was hers and vice versa, and it had been twelve good goddamn years, so why shouldn’t she spoil herself? She deserved it. When the credit card bill came, however, and Daryl clucked that stupid, little, annoying cluck that he did with his tongue, Sara did, for an instant, feel bad—there were one or two more zeros than she’d anticipated—but the moment soon passed when he opened his idiotic, mushy little mouth.
Five Hundred Poor Page 11
