Me and My Baby View the Eclipse

by Lee Smith

  Cheryl opened the kitchen door and Bob bounded in, wagging his tail so hard that it crashed him into the refrigerator, then into the kitchen table, where her sewing machine was set up. “Now you just come right along here,” she said firmly, grasping his collar, dragging him through the kitchen away from the mauve sailcloth all over the kitchen floor, toward the TV room. Bob reared back on his haunches and allowed himself to be scooted along. Cheryl gritted her teeth, dragging Bob. She would fix that pen right now, right this minute, by herself. And he’d stay in it. She shut Bob in the TV room and turned on The Love Boat to keep him quiet.

  Cheryl put on a dark flannel shirt and a woolen cap. She felt like a burglar herself. She took off her loafers and put on some of Angela’s boots. She got the flashlight out of the laundry room and went out the back door. Lord, it was cold! A chilly, gusty wind came whipping along, kicking up all the leaves. You could smell wood smoke in the air, and something else. Cheryl couldn’t quite place what it was. Something cold, something sharp, it reminded her of winter. Winter was on the way. The almost-bare limbs of the hickory tree showed black against the full yellow moon and then disappeared when the moon popped in and out of the puffy dark clouds that ran across it. Cheryl’s own backyard seemed unfamiliar, a scary but enchanted place—full of moving light and darkness, wind—and she remembered M. Herron saying a lady can’t be too careful. But that was ridiculous. She could do it. Of course if she had let Jerry Jarvis send a man over here, this pen would have been foolproof months ago. But Cheryl could do it herself, and she would.

  With the flashlight, she walked the fence until she found the spot where Bob had tunneled under. Then she walked back to the garage and got the last cinder block and carried it balanced against her stomach and placed it carefully in the hole. There now. And that ought to do it too, she thought, flashing the light around the bottom of the fence. There, now.

  Cheryl went into the house and got Bob and dragged him across the kitchen and pulled him across the yard to his pen and pushed him inside, latching the ornamental gate securely. She felt flushed, and strong, and ready for anything, the cold night air so pleasant on her cheeks that she couldn’t bear the idea of going back in and working on the Benches’ slipcover. Instead, Cheryl went to the kitchen and got three California Coolers out of the refrigerator and opened one of them and turned off the kitchen light and went back out and sat down in a lawn chair.

  The wind and the shadows moved all around her, she felt like she glowed in the dark. The dry leaves rustled at her feet, red and brown and gold, but she couldn’t see their colors, only feel them in the dark. It was true she was artistic, she did have a sense of color, maybe she’d open up a business after all. Bob barked, then rattled the leaves, then made a snuffling, scuffling noise. Cheryl opened another California Cooler, she knew he was digging out. It’s only a matter of time, she thought, he’s digging out. She imagined David and Margaret Fine-Manning entertaining M. Herron right now at a gourmet dinner in their apartment at the Swiss Chalets, she saw the candlelight gleaming in David’s eyes, and the gleam of M. Herron’s gold neck-chain. The moon went in and out, in and out of the tumbling clouds. Cheryl imagined Jerry Jarvis unhappily at home with his fat wife, Darlene. She imagined Marie and Lenny embracing in a motel in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where they went this weekend to look at the leaves. Cheryl leaned back in her chair and opened the third California Cooler and laughed out loud finally as Bob scraped out and shook himself off and lurched over to stand for a minute there by her chair before he took off running free across the darkened yards, beneath the yellow moon.

  Mom

  Right before the police came looking for Buddy the first time, Gloria knew something was up. Or she sort of knew it, or she didn’t know she knew it, or something. Today she feels that way again. Ms. Ferebee-Bunch says Gloria was in denial then. Maybe so. Or maybe she’s just psychic. But Ms. Ferebee-Bunch says it is a family illness, and Gloria is sick too. Gloria doesn’t buy this for one minute! There’s nothing wrong with her. Buddy started running with the wrong crowd, that’s all. But what can you expect? It’s a jungle out there. Gloria moves over to the window and looks out at the Nu-Tread Tire Co. which is just letting out, it’s six o’clock. Dinnertime. This whole neighborhood is going down. Trash on the streets, abandoned houses, you name it. It didn’t used to be this way. Gloria remembers when Buddy was real little and she’d take him to the park for the whole day, and nobody ever bothered them at all. The park was full of kids and old people then. She remembers how Buddy used to organize the other kids into teams for his own complicated games, games he made up. He was a natural leader, his teachers always said so. Gloria stares out the window. She clutches her pocketbook, nice white patent leather. She’s got to go to the Safeway. On the other hand she feels so funny, like something’s up, like something’s going to happen. She’s always been real tuned in to things, she really could’ve been a psychic if she’d had the training. Then she wouldn’t have to work so damn hard. She could just hang out a sign and let people come to her, like Ms. Ferebee-Bunch. Gloria fiddles with her pocketbook, looking out the window.

  And then, sure enough, the phone rings.

  “Mrs. Anderson?” The man has no accent, like a newsman on TV.

  “Yes?” Gloria says. One of the guys leaving Nu-Tread waves at her, and Gloria waves back.

  “Mrs. Anderson, this is Leonard Sauls,” he says. “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”

  Gloria sits down on the couch. She knew it!

  “Your son Buddy left the group this morning during an outing,” the man continues. “We took them out to the park. They were going to learn something about rock climbing, before the trip we wrote to you about. Anyway, on the hike back to the van, Buddy just vanished.”

  “What do you mean, ‘vanished’?”

  “Disappeared into the trees. It was the damnedest thing. He was just gone.”

  “Did he say anything?” Gloria manages to ask. “To any of the other kids, I mean.”

  “If he did, they’re not talking. We have notified the police, of course. They’ll be checking the bus stations and the highway between here and Raleigh. If you hear from him, call the police immediately. If you get him, call us. And in the meantime, we’ll let you know, the minute we hear anything.” For the first time, his voice softens a little.

  Gloria says good-bye. Thanks. She had a feeling in her bones, as Mamaw would have said. Buddy’s been saying all along that people are mean to him in the group home. He’s had a tone in his voice. She’d better not go to the Safeway. She’d better sit right here by the phone awhile and see if Buddy calls her. Buddy’s been saying the food at the group home is awful too. He never was a good eater, as a child. He just liked certain things, such as Hawaiian Punch and bacon. He’s real sensitive too. Gloria’s heart swells—she’s close to tears. She gets a Dixie cup full of champagne, which she buys at the Safeway, which is one reason she was going over there. Gloria used to actually drink, back when her and Richard first split up and she’d just started dating again after being married ever since she was a teenager. But now she doesn’t really drink anymore. All she ever has is a little Dixie cup of champagne, for nerves.

  Gloria looks in the phone book. Then she writes the police emergency number, 911, down on a recipe card. She lays down on the couch and puts the phone on her stomach, the recipe card under the phone, and the bottle of André beside her on the floor. When Buddy calls her, she’s supposed to call the cops. They’ve gone over all that with her. But she might as well relax awhile now. Isn’t this what the social worker said, that you need to work on yourself? You can’t control other people, you have to let them go. Ms. Ferebee-Bunch said that too. You must let other people face the consequences of their actions. What a laugh, since most people get off scot-free. Look at Richard for instance. Ms. Ferebee-Bunch is a bitch. Also, she has not got any figure at all, she looks like an ironing board. Very carefully, Gloria re
fills the Dixie cup and lays back down to relax and think about things. But so much stuff has happened that now she can’t remember exactly what happened when. It all runs together in her head.

  Certain times do stick out in her memory, though, like those dolls at the fair that keep popping up and you’re supposed to whack them back down with a sledgehammer. Buddy used to love that game. Gloria took him to the state fair every single year, she liked it as much as he did. One time they both got sick on the pirate ship after eating some kind of weird food cooked by people from a foreign land. The state fair is full of culture, you’d be surprised. Gloria can close her eyes right now and see herself and Buddy, running up the midway, holding hands so they won’t get lost from each other. Buddy had real blond hair then. Now it’s turned dark, though. The fair is expensive but Gloria made sure he got to go every year, the same way she made sure he got a Big Wheel when he was little, or a BMX bike, or whatever. Later, stone-washed jeans and Reeboks. Gloria didn’t mind going without, to get him whatever he wanted. She really didn’t. She was glad to do it, that’s the way she is. She’s always been too big-hearted for her own good, she’ll tell you that herself.

  But she kind of wishes these moments would quit popping up like they do. You have to live in the present tense, everybody knows that. Gloria looks at the phone and remembers answering it all those times in the past, and voices—often a deep man’s voice, not a boy’s—would say, “Is Buddy there?” or, “Can I speak to Buddy?” and if she said he wasn’t home right then, the line went dead. Nobody ever left a message. And Gloria’d stand holding the phone, with her stomach feeling funny and her hand sweating on the receiver. Of course Buddy was always real popular. He had lots of friends. She couldn’t expect to know them all. Lots of girlfriends too—boys will be boys, after all! You’ve got to give a boy some growing room.

  And the fact is, Gloria works nights anyway—hostess at the Texas Grill, a fancier place than you’d think from the sound of it, Tex-Mex is big now, even in Raleigh—so she never knew if he kept his curfew or not. Another moment that keeps popping up, though, is the first time she went in Buddy’s room and found him gone, and his bed not even slept in! He hadn’t even bothered to pull the sheet down. Gloria always tried not to go in his room too much, or look around too much when she was in there. Before he quit school, though, she had to wake him up every morning or he’d never make it, and he’d talk so hateful then—yet he was just an angel as a child. “Angel child,” Gloria used to call him.

  Now Buddy’s language is awful, he gets it from the culture, though. Just look at Madonna on TV! It’s a wonder anybody ever grows up alive, in Gloria’s opinion. Plus the divorce, of course. Lord knows, Gloria tried to make up for not having a daddy in place, so to speak, but it was hard. You can give till you’re blue in the face, but there’s nobody home to play catch with, that’s a fact. Of course she did try real hard to work it out with her boyfriend John—now that would have been great because he was so manly and everything—but Gloria can still remember Buddy’s little face with his bottom lip all stuck out whenever John would tell him to do something. John was just too bossy! John had a personality problem. He thought he could move in here and just take over, of course he was career Army so you can see why he felt that way. Now John owns two Mister Boston Pizzas, he could have given Buddy a good job too. Maybe Gloria could have been a hostess at Mister Boston. She can just see herself now, in a little red dress with an apron, and John in a red dinner jacket, and Buddy in a white shirt with a bow tie, waiting on tables at Mister Boston. Too bad it didn’t work out!

  Too bad his father moved all the way up to Asheville too, you can’t be any kind of a male model from a distance of four hours away. Anyway, Richard was just too strict, he had a poker up his ass, as Mamaw always said. Remember how mad he got when Mamaw wouldn’t take care of herself anymore and Gloria had to move her in with them, that was in the duplex over in Bellaire Gardens when Gloria was pregnant, maybe it wasn’t a great way to start a marriage but there was nobody else to take care of Mamaw so Gloria had to do it, didn’t she? Somebody had to do it!

  And Gloria’s been taking care of people since she was born. Or she feels like it, anyway. Mamaw just couldn’t get it together after Pop died, so Gloria had to do everything for herself and her little sister, Tonette. Now Tonette is an interior decorator in Atlanta, with an answer phone. A designer, she calls herself. She won’t hardly speak to her sister, even though she wouldn’t’ve had a thing if it wasn’t for Gloria and how Gloria took such good care of her, all those years of their childhood. Why, Gloria spent her own money on Tonette’s dancing lessons. What was it Ann Landers said? If you act like a rug, somebody’s going to walk on you. This is the story of Gloria’s life.

  So Richard got mad about Mamaw living with them. But Richard is the kind of man that if it isn’t one thing, it’s another. For instance, he used to keep a little notebook in the car where he’d write down mileage and when he filled the car up and where, so he’d know how many miles to the gallon he was getting. Gloria couldn’t ever see why he wanted to know this information—she couldn’t see why it was important. Richard is an insurance executive, which figures. He used to love to plan for the future, he’d write down his plans in the order of their priority: 1, 2, 3, 4. In fact, Richard used to drive Gloria just crazy in general, but the funny thing is, she’s missed him ever since they split up. In a kind of weird way, but still . . . she can’t explain it. One time about five years ago, right after John left her and before Richard remarried, Gloria sort of mentioned this to Richard on the phone.

  She will never forget what he said: “Gloria, life as we knew it is a thing of the past.”

  Richard actually said this! He used to call her his little sunshine. Now he lives in a white brick house overlooking a golf course with his new wife, Barbara (a bitch), and her two little boys, who wear white shorts and knit shirts and take tennis lessons all the time according to Buddy. For the past two years, Buddy has refused to see his father at all. So Richard is not any kind of a male model for him now. And still he has the nerve to say she’s spoiled Buddy—spoiled him, when all Richard ever did was criticize her and then leave them both! It’s just a damn good thing she was willing to take on all that responsibility, she ought to get some thanks for it too.

  The only thing Richard does now is pay that child support for Buddy on the first of every month, and that will stop next year, when he turns eighteen. Richard won’t pay a penny then, he’s already said so. “If he can get himself straightened out and he wants to go to college,” Richard said over the phone, “he can let me know. Tell him to call my secretary and make an appointment.” He slammed down the phone. Gloria can’t see how he can be so hardhearted to his own flesh and blood. Since he moved up to Asheville, he acts more and more like a Yankee.

  Another moment that keeps popping up in Gloria’s mind took place just before the judge sent Buddy off to the group home. She woke Buddy up one Saturday morning and said, “Okay, surprise, we’re going to drive down to Morehead City and eat some seafood at Captain Bill’s, spend the night, have a good time on the beach.” She was nervous about waking him up—she didn’t want him to yell at her. But Buddy sat up and looked out at her calmly from under all his hair. He was getting so thin. “Mom, you’ve got to be kidding,” he said.

  “No, Woodrow, I’m not,” Gloria said, using his real name for some reason, surprised to find herself so close to tears, and maybe Buddy picked up on this because he got right up without too much grumbling. They went in her old Dodge Dart, a car like a tank, but dependable, at least it had air-condition. Gloria threaded her way through south Raleigh and finally got on the Beltline, then onto 70. “Thank goodness, no more traffic!” she said brightly into the rearview mirror, but by then Buddy was sound asleep.

  It was one in the afternoon. Gloria twisted around so she could see him better. Buddy looked a little bit like Jeff Bridges, Gloria can remember his father, Ll
oyd Bridges, in Sea Hunt! Or was that the name of it? It was all about underwater. Buddy slept with his mouth slightly open, his head turned to the side. Occasionally he made a funny little snuffly noise. When he was little, he used to have bad dreams, he’d toss and turn and cry out in his sleep, then sometimes he’d get up and run into Gloria’s room and snuggle up in bed with her. Gloria always loved the way he smelled, like a puppy. She loved his little milk-breath.

  As she drove down 70 toward the beach with Buddy sleeping in the back, all arms and legs and angles, Gloria was happier than she had been in months. For once she knew where he was! He was here, with her, just like he used to be, the two of them closed in against the world which flew past hot and wild, neon signs and barbecue joints, ninety degrees in the shade. She remembered earlier trips they’d made to the beach, ages before, riding with Richard when Buddy was little and Richard wouldn’t stop for the bathroom, he made Buddy pee in a mason jar. Gloria drove sixty-five mph down Route 70 with Buddy sleeping so soundly that she found herself talking out loud to him, it didn’t matter since he couldn’t hear her anyway, he was asleep. She told him about those earlier trips with his daddy, and about funny things he used to say when he was little. She loved how his face looked in sleep, slack-jawed and wholly open, innocent and defenseless, young. He is still her little boy. He will always be her little boy, no matter how old he gets, no matter what he does. Gloria remembers the valentine that Buddy made for her in fifth grade, and the way he turned the money from his paper route over to her for groceries. She wouldn’t take it, of course. She wanted him to spend it on himself. And now as Gloria thinks about that day of driving out Route 70 to the beach, it seems to stretch out, to last forever, Gloria and Buddy in the old Dodge Dart, with the windows up, the air-condition on. It didn’t last forever, of course, and what happened at the beach is something she’d rather forget, frankly.