by Richard Ford
My mother put the wine glass back on the table and started to dance all by herself then, her arms in the air and a look on her face that seemed like a determined look. ‘Cha-cha-cha-cha,’ is what she said, because it was that type of music, music you could get on the radio from Denver late at night and that I knew she listened to, music with drums and a trumpet and a whole band in the background.
‘Do you like this?’ Warren Miller said over the music. He was standing there smiling while my mother danced by herself.
‘I certainly do,’ she said, and she was snapping her fingers and saying ‘cha-cha-cha’, in time to the music. She grabbed my hands where I was sitting. ‘Come on, Joe, and dance with your mother,’ she said, and she tried to pull me out of the chair and up onto my feet. I remember her hands were very cold and felt small and thin. I stood up, though I certainly did not want to and couldn’t dance at all. My mother pulled me and pushed me back away, and said ‘cha-cha-cha’, and looked down at my feet, which were moving in confused ways, stepping up and back. Her arms were stiff, and mine were stiff too. It was a terrible thing to do–and to have to do–with your mother, in a strange house, in front of a man I didn’t know and didn’t like.
When I had stepped forward and back at least ten times I just quit altogether, and let my arms go rubber and stood still, so that my mother just stopped herself and looked at me with disgust.
‘You’re a terrible dancer, Joe,’ she said to me over the music. ‘You have anvils for feet. I’m ashamed of you.’ She let go of my hands and just stared up at the low ceiling, right into the light globe as if she hoped something or somebody would appear in my place when she looked back.
‘You have to dance with me, Warren,’ she said. ‘My son won’t dance with me, and there’s nobody else here.’ She turned around to Warren Miller and held out her bare arms toward him. ‘Come on, Warren,’ she said, ‘Joe wants me to dance with you. You’re the host. You have to do what the guests want. No matter how silly it is.’
‘I’ll try. All right,’ Warren Miller said. He came toward my mother, across the room. His big limp made him look like a man who could never dance and would never want to. He walked, in fact, as if he had a wooden leg.
My mother started dancing by herself again before he even started to try. She was saying ‘cha-cha-cha’, and when Warren Miller got in her arms’ reach, she took his big hands and started to push him backward and then pull him forward the way she’d done with me. And Warren Miller kept up. Every time he moved backward, he went down into his limp, and it looked like he was going to fall, but then my mother would pull his arms hard and he looked ready to stumble forward into her. My mother kept saying, ‘cha-cha, cha-cha-cha’, with the music, and going forward and back on her toes, and telling Warren not to watch his feet but just to move the way she did, and Warren was limping and ducking his head, but staying up, and after a few times, he was on his toes, too, and seemed light on his feet somehow, the way a big animal can move. He had a smile on his face, and he began to say ‘cha-cha-cha’ with my mother, and to look at her face and not at his feet, which were scuffing the floor in his boots. My mother let go of his hands after a minute and put hers on his shoulders, and he put his hands on her waist, and they danced like that, then, together–my mother on her toes and Warren with his limp.
‘Look at this, Joe,’ my mother said. ‘Isn’t this wonderful? My God, Warren’s a man who can dance. He’s one in a million.’ She threw her head back and let hair hang off her shoulders while she kept on dancing, letting her head sway from side to side with the drumbeats. And it seemed to me she probably did not want me to watch her. I felt, in fact, like I was doing something I shouldn’t be doing, so I got up and walked into the bedroom where my mother had gone, and closed the door.
Through the wall the music made a sound as if something was hitting the floor. I could hear their feet shuffling, and both of them laughing as if they were having a wonderful time.
I had nothing to do in the bedroom. All the lights were on. The windowpanes were shiny and through them I could see into the house next door. An old man and an older woman–older than Warren–were sitting side by side in chairs watching a television in the dark. I couldn’t see the screen, but both the man and the woman were laughing. I knew they could see me if they looked around, and maybe they could even feel me watching them, and would think I was a burglar and be afraid if they saw me, so that I stepped away from the window.
It was Warren Miller’s bedroom. The walls were pale blue and there was a large bed with a white cover and a curved headboard, and a matching bureau with a TV set on top. A lamp with a yellow globe, like the one in the front window, was on the bed table. A fat wallet and some change were on top of the bureau, beside a folded piece of paper that had my mother’s name and telephone number written on it. My father’s name was underlined below that, and below it was my own name–Joe–with a check beside it. There was nothing wrong with that, I thought. My mother worked for Warren Miller now. He wanted to give my father a job in the future and put me in the DeMolay club.
I walked into the bathroom, where the light was off. I knew my mother had turned it off, and I turned it on again. Over the music in the living room I heard my mother say out loud, ‘It’s passionate music, isn’t it?’ And then their feet scuffed on the floor some more.
The bathroom was all white with white towels and a white tub. I could see where my mother had dried her hands on a towel. I could see hairs that were hers on the white sink top, could smell her perfume in the warm air. Warren’s possessions were laid out in a straight row: a safety razor, a tube of shaving cream, a bottle of red hair tonic, a leather bottle of shaving lotion, a pair of silver tweezers, a long black comb and a brush with yellow bristles that had a strap across the top of it and the initials WBM on the leather. I was not looking for anything. I only wanted to be out of the living room where the music was going and Warren Miller and my mother were dancing. I opened the drawer under the sink and only a white washrag was there, folded and clean with a new bar of soap on top.
I closed the drawer and walked back into the bedroom and opened the closet. Warren’s suits were hanging in a row there and several large pairs of shoes–one a pair of brown golf shoes–were lined up under them. An Army uniform was hung at the end, and on the floor inside the door was a pair of women’s silver high heels.
Behind the suits on the closet wall were pictures and other things hung in frames. I pulled the light string and pushed the suits apart to see. It smelled like mothballs, and it was cool. Warren Miller’s discharge certificate from the Army and his graduation diploma from Dartmouth College were hanging side by side. There was a picture of two men in uniforms standing beside an old airplane at the edge of what looked like a jungle. There was also a framed picture of Warren Miller standing beside the woman whose picture was in the living room. They were both dressed in nice clothes, and the woman was smiling and holding some white flowers. They were squinting in the sun. The picture had been taken years before, but Warren looked familiar, big and heavy and tall, only with thicker, shorter hair. To the side of the pictures was a metal leg brace hung from a nail, a shiny steel device with pink straps and movable buckles and hinges that must’ve been what Warren wore on his leg, and that made him limp but also able to walk at all.
I closed the closet and walked back into the bedroom, which seemed warmer. A book was face-down on the lighted bed table. The cover had a painting of a cowboy riding a galloping white horse, holding a woman whose blouse was torn, and shooting at men who were chasing them on horses. Texas Trouble was the title.
I opened the bed table drawer and inside were some golf tees and a small worn Bible with a green bookmark in it. The drawer smelled like talcum powder. Two silver knives like the one he had given me, with BURMA-1943 engraved on them, were also in the drawer. And there was a gun, a small automatic with a short barrel and a black plastic handle. I had picked up guns before. My father kept one in the same place Warren Mil
ler did. This one was a small calibre–a .32 or even less than that, something to scare people with or wound them but not necessarily kill them. I picked it up and it was heavier than I thought it would be, and seemed more dangerous than I’d thought at first. I took a good grip, put my finger around the trigger, pointed the gun at the closet door, and made a soft little popping sound with my lips. I thought about shooting someone, following them, aiming, holding my arm and hand steady, then pulling the trigger. I had no one in mind to shoot. Shooting someone was a thing I was sure I’d never do. There were those things, after all. And it was all right to know about them long before you had the opportunity or the desire.
I turned to put the gun back in the drawer, but I saw that there was a white handkerchief that had been lying underneath it. The handkerchief had the same initials that were on the brush–WBM–stitched on the corner in blue letters. And for some reason I pressed my hand on the handkerchief, which was folded into a square. And I felt something inside or underneath it. I turned the handkerchief back so I could see what I’d felt, and there was one prophylactic rubber in a red and gold tinfoil envelope. I had seen one before. In fact, I’d seen them plenty of times, though I had never used one. Boys at the school I’d gone to in Lewiston had them and showed them off. No one I knew in school in Great Falls had shown me one, though the boys talked about fucking girls there, and I believed they had them and knew about them. I had never known my father to have any, although I had thought about his having them, and had even looked for them in his drawers. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I’d found them, because what I thought about the subject was that it was his business, his and my mother’s. I wasn’t innocent about life, about what people did with each other when they were alone. I knew they did what they pleased.
It did not surprise me that Warren Miller had a rubber, though I could not think about him using it. When I tried I could only picture him sitting on the side of the bed where I was, wearing his underwear, holding the edge of the mattress, wearing socks and staring at nothing but the floor. A woman was not involved. But I thought it was his right to have a rubber if he wanted it. I picked it up off the white handkerchief. Murphy was the name of the company that made it, in Akron, Ohio. I squeezed the envelope between my fingers, felt the outline of it inside. I smelled it, and it smelled starchy from the handkerchief. I thought about the possibility of opening it. But I had nothing whatsoever that I could do with it.
I laid it back between the folds of the handkerchief and put the gun back on top. Though as I did that I thought about Warren’s wife, Marie LaRose or whatever her name was, and that she had gone out of this house, this very room, and didn’t intend to come back. And that Warren was alone here, with that to remember and think about. I closed the drawer, then walked back out to where Warren Miller and my mother were, where the music had stopped.
My mother was sitting on the piano bench, her legs pushed out in front of her. Her green shoes weren’t off, but her green dress was up above her knees and she was fanning herself with a sheet of music off the piano. She smiled at me as if she’d expected to see me come out of the room at that very moment. Warren Miller was sitting at the dinner table, where all the dishes and plates were. He was smoking his cigar again.
‘Did you look into all of Warren’s drawers in there?’ my mother said, smiling and fanning herself. Her voice was still deep. ‘You’ll find out his secrets. I’m sure he has a lot of them.’
‘None that I wouldn’t share with him,’ Warren said. He had unbuttoned his top shirt button and was sweating under his arms.
‘When Joe’s father and I first married,’ my mother said, ‘I rented a sailor costume and did a little cute tap dance when he got home from teaching golf. It was an anniversary present. He loved it. Something made me think of that just now.’
‘I bet he did. I bet that was nice.’ Warren took his glasses off and wiped them with his napkin, then dabbed his eyes with it. His face looked larger without his glasses and whiter. ‘Your mother’s a very passionate dancer, you know that, Joe?’
‘He means I’ll go till I drop,’ my mother said. ‘It’s hot as fire in this house, of course. Anybody’d drop dead.’ My mother looked at me as if she’d just noticed me for the first time since I came back into the room. ‘What would you like to do now, sweetheart?’ she said. ‘I’m sure we’re just boring you to death. At least I’m sure I am.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘You’re not. I’m not bored.’
‘Do you know how Warren injured his leg,’ my mother asked. She pulled a strand of damp hair away from her forehead and fanned her face some more.
‘No,’ I said, and I sat down where I’d been sitting at the dinner table, beside Warren Miller.
‘Well, would you care to?’ she said.
‘I guess so,’ I said.
‘Well. He was hit from behind by a big roll of barbed wire when he was wading across the Smith River up to his rear end. Isn’t that right, Warren? It was underwater, and you didn’t see it coming. Is that what you said?’
‘That’s right,’ Warren Miller said. He looked a little uncomfortable at my mother’s telling this.
‘And the lesson is what?’ My mother smiled. ‘Warren seems to think we need to learn a lesson from everything. The world should keep it in mind.’
‘Something’s always up there that can take you away,’ Warren Miller said, seated at the dinner table, his big legs crossed in front of him.
‘Or not,’ my mother said.
‘Or not–that’s right, too,’ Warren said, and smiled at my mother. He liked her. I could tell that was true.
‘Joe and I have to go home now, Warren,’ my mother said, and she stood up. ‘I’m irritable all of a sudden and Joe’s bored.’
‘I had hopes you’d stay all night,’ Warren Miller said, his hands on his knees, smiling. ‘It’s gotten colder. And you’re drunk.’
‘I am drunk,’ my mother said. She looked at the old piano behind her, and set the music down on the little stand. ‘That’s not a crime yet, is it?’ She looked at me. ‘Did you know Warren could play the piano, sweetheart? He’s very talented. You should be like him.’
‘There’s another bedroom,’ Warren Miller said, and pointed to the other room, where the light was on and the foot of another bed was visible.
‘I never intended to stay here all night,’ my mother said. She looked around the little living room as if she was looking for a coat to wear outside. ‘Joe’s a very good driver. His father taught him.’
‘You have to put something on,’ Warren Miller said. He stood up and went limping off into the other bedroom, the one I hadn’t been in.
‘Warren’s going to give me one of his wife’s wraps, I believe,’ my mother said, and looked annoyed. ‘You don’t mind driving, do you? I’m sorry. I am drunk.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind.’
‘Combat experience,’ my mother said. ‘That’s what my mother used to call it when my father would get drunk and roar in and start making demands. You’ll get a big promotion someday. Which is to say, you’ll be grown up and can leave.’
Warren Miller limped back into the room, holding a man’s brown coat. ‘This’ll do a good job,’ he said. He came and held the coat while my mother put it on. She buttoned all three buttons, and when she did she looked like someone else–not a man, but like somebody I didn’t know.
‘Don’t you have one of your mother’s coats?’ my mother said.
‘I gave them away to the poor,’ Warren said.
‘Did you give your wife’s away, too?’ She smiled at him.
‘Maybe I’ll just throw them away,’ he said.
‘Don’t do that,’ my mother said. ‘She might be waiting upstream. You never know.’
‘I hope not,’ Warren said. And suddenly he took my mother’s shoulders, pulled her to him and kissed her on the mouth right in front of me. And I did not like that. My mother pulled away as if she hadn’t liked it either.
She started toward the front door.
‘Come on, the fun’s over here, Joe,’ she said.
I followed her, though I glanced at Warren Miller, and he had a look on his face I didn’t like. He was angry, and I could see him breathing under his white shirt. He looked like somebody who could hurt you and who would if he lost his temper or had a reason. I didn’t like him, and in fact I never liked him again. What I wanted to do was get away from him, get out into the night with my mother, and go home.
It was cold in the car when we got inside. I sat behind the wheel and put my hands on it, waiting for my mother to find the keys, which were on the seat. The wheel was cold and hard to move. Down the street the blue light at the Italian place was still shining like a haze.
‘My heart’s just pounding away,’ my mother said. ‘Switch on the light in here.’ I turned on the inside light and she bent over looking for the keys and finally found them in the crack of the seat. ‘I drank too much,’ she said. ‘That makes your heart race.’ She handed me the keys. Then she said, ‘Stay here, Joe. I don’t want to wear this coat home.’
She opened the door, got out, and went back across the street and up the concrete steps to where the lights were still on in the window. I watched while she rang the bell, then waited. Warren Miller came to the door and she stepped inside already taking the coat off. I saw them walk past the window. He had hold of her arm, and they were talking. Then I couldn’t see them anymore.
I sat there in the cold car with the lights turned off and waited, watching down the street. I watched as a group of men came outside the Italian restaurant and walked into the empty street. They stood and talked to each other with their hands in their pockets, then one of the men hit another one in the arm as a joke, and then they all left in different directions. Car lights went on at the curb farther down the street, then the cars drove away. I sat still as one passed by me. In a minute a man and a woman came out together, dressed in heavy winter coats. They walked out into the street the way the others had, and stood talking. Then the man walked with the woman to a car and opened the door. He kissed her, then she got inside and started the engine and drove away. The man found his car farther down the street and drove away, too, in the opposite direction.
