Facing the Music

by Larry Brown

  I slide over to the door—I don’t have to slide far—and open it. I step out onto the parking lot and look back in at her. She doesn’t look up. She has some secret hurt in her heart that matters to her and doesn’t matter to me. I think about this for a moment. I weigh various possibilities and things in my head. For a moment I’m tempted to get back in and talk to her. But then I shut the door and walk away.

  They call me in from the car bay the next day and tell me I’ve got a phone call. I figure it’s probably my mother wanting me to bring home something from the store, eggs or milk. I have grease all over my hands, under my fingernails, too, where it’s always hard to get out, so I tear off a paper towel and pick up the extension with that.

  “Hello,” I say.

  “Hey!”

  I answer slowly. “Oh. Yeah.” I recognize the voice.

  “This is Connie. What you doing?”

  “Well,” I say, “right now I’m trying to fix a Buick. What can I do for you?” I look around and eye the shop foreman watching me. They don’t pay me to talk on the phone unless I’m ordering parts.

  “I just wanted to see what you’s doing tonight. I wanted to talk to you about last night. Can you talk?”

  I slip the receiver down between my head and my shoulder and wipe my hands with the paper towel. “Yeah,” I say. “I guess I can for a minute. What’s on your mind?”

  “Well, I just wanted to tell you I was sorry about last night. About the way I acted. I’d been drinking before I ever got over there and we—Sheila and Bonita and me—we’d been talking about Roland and me before we ever come over there.”

  “Roland,” I say. “Your husband.”

  “Right,” she says, seems happy to say it. “We been married eight years. We got two kids. You know the kids is the ones always suffers in something like this.”

  “Yeah,” I say. Well, sure. Sure they do. “I guess so,” I say.

  “I’m at home and I was thinking about last night. I mean, when we was out in the car and all. I was just upset. I didn’t mean to act like that.”

  She’s talking like she did something wrong. But all she did was refuse to take her pants off. In a public parking lot. Where anybody could have walked up to the car and looked in, seen her in all her naked glory for free. I’m uneasy remembering this, my half-drunk horny stupidity. I could have gone too far. I’m not supposed to be in bars anyway.

  “Well,” I say. “Hell. You don’t owe me any apology or anything. I mean. We just met. You know. Out in the car and all. . . . you don’t have to explain anything to me.”

  “I feel like I ought to, though,” she says. “I was just wondering what you were gonna do tonight. I thought I’d see if you wanted to get a drink somewhere. If you’re not busy.” She lowers her voice. “I mean I liked it. In the car.”

  I know now that I shouldn’t have tried that anyway. She just had me so turned on. . . .

  I say, “You did, huh?” I’m seeing it again now, how the light played over her breasts, how they looked when I pushed her bra up.

  “Well,” I say, “I don’t have anything planned.”

  “Okay,” she says. She sounds glad she called. “You want to meet me somewhere?”

  “Sure,” I say. “I guess so. Hell, we can drink a beer or something.”

  “I’d really like to tell you why I acted the way I did last night, Jerry.”

  “It’s Gary.”

  “Right. Gary. I knew it was Gary. You want to go back out there? Where we were last night?”

  I start to say no, let’s go someplace else, but she says, quickly, “It’s close to my house and all. I’ll have to get somebody to keep my kids and they know the number there if anything happens.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Listen. I’ve got a lot of work to do, so it may be late when I get off. Maybe around six or seven. I get all the overtime I can. Why don’t we try to get out there about nine? That’ll give me time to get home and get cleaned up and all. I’ve got to catch a ride.”

  “That’s fine,” she says. “I’ll get us a table.”

  “Okay,” I say. I think for a moment. I might as well go ahead and ask her. “Listen. You want me to get us a room?”

  She waits three seconds before she answers. “Well. You can get one if you want to, Gary. I’m not promising anything. But you can get us a room if you want to.”

  She’s already happy and high when I slide into a chair beside her. It looks like the only seat left in the place is the one she’s been saving for me.

  “Hey,” I say, and I set a fifth on the table. She leans over and kisses me. Her eyes are bright even in the darkness; they seem to belong to a woman different somehow from the one I wrestled with in the car the night before. The table is no bigger than a car tire. “How long you been here?” I say.

  On the floor to the music she moves with drunken feet, pressing herself against me, her washed hair in my face sweet and soft. We dance a few times and then she tells me she wants to talk.

  “What it is, see, he’s wanting to catch me. Messing around.”

  “I don’t get it,” I say. “How come?”

  “He wants me to give him a divorce. But I ain’t gonna do it. I ain’t gonna do one thing that’ll make him happy.”

  I don’t care about any of this. I don’t want to know her problems. She acts like she’s the only one who has any.

  “Let’s talk about something besides you and your husband,” I say. “Why don’t you quit thinking about him? You’d probably have a better time. You know it?”

  She seems to realize with sadness that what I’m saying is true. “I know it,” she says. “I’ll hush about him.”

  But she doesn’t. She keeps bringing his name up and looking all around in the bar, trying to spot him at large. I know there is nothing to do but be patient. I have a motel key in my pocket.

  We pull into a parking space next to the wall of a Day’s Inn and she turns off the lights and ignition. The aluminum numerals on the red metal door read 214.

  “Let’s go in,” I say. I open my door.

  She turns her face away from me and stares at something across the parking lot. She’s very quiet. Unhappy. Almost angry.

  “What are you looking at?” I say. I see the back of her dark head move.

  “Nothing.” She pulls the keys out and opens the door. “Let’s go on in. Now that you’ve got me out here we might as well.”

  I haven’t twisted her arm to get her out here. She’s driven us over here willingly. Now I don’t know what’s wrong with her. She gets out and comes around to the front of the car looking down, not looking at me. I slip the key in and unlock the door. I turn on the light. A motel room like any other. I set what’s left of the fifth on the plastic woodgrain table and go back and lean against the door. She is standing below the sidewalk, hugging herself with her arms, facing away. She seems to be looking at a blue Chevy pickup parked across the lot.

  “You coming in?” I say.

  Without answering she turns and comes by me and goes to sit on the bed. I shut the door and bolt it. I’m a little drunk. She’d better be careful. I take the bottle out of the sack and open it, tilt a burning drink down my throat. I hold it out to her.

  “You want a drink?”

  She shakes her head violently and stares at the floor.

  “Well,” I say. I look around and see the TV. “You want to watch some TV?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “Nothing matters.”

  “Boy ain’t we having just loads of fun,” I say.

  I turn on the TV and kick off my shoes and stretch out on the bed beside her, turning one of the pillows around so I can prop my head against it. I find an ashtray and move it over beside me. I sip from the bottle and wish I had some Coke. CNN news is on. After a while she turns around and lies down beside me. She doesn’t say anything.

  “You didn’t have to come over here, you know,” I say.

  “I know,” she says.

  I don’t
know why I always have to pick some crazy woman. I used to be under the impression that after a man has put up with one of them, that that will do it for the rest of his life, that the others will all be halfway normal.

  “You want to go back?” I ask her.

  I turn just my head and watch her. She’s lying on her side with her legs drawn up. She’s wearing light blue slacks and a black top with red flowers.

  “No,” she says. “I want to stay here with you.”

  “Oh yeah?” I say. “Damn if you act like it.”

  For answer she reaches out and takes my hand and puts it on her breast. She rubs the hand over it for a moment and then slips it inside her blouse. I lean over and kiss her and push my fingers down into the cup of her bra. She slides a hand up my leg and I break away long enough to set the whiskey on the table, then roll on top of her.

  “Cut the light out,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Cut the light out.”

  I get up and pull off my shirt and flick off the light and we are left in the blue glow from the TV. Some massacre in a foreign country is being documented on the television screen: swollen bodies, murdered livestock in the streets. Black bloodstains on shattered brick walls. I push her shirt up and reach behind her and unsnap her bra, the heavy round meat easing into my hands. I kiss at her with an urgency she doesn’t seem to share. I rub at the waistband of her pants and run my hands all over her. But there is no feeling in her kisses. She’s tense. I twist her thick nipples between my fingers and after five minutes I quit. She has worked her way upright in the bed and she sits now with her nice knockers poking out from underneath the twisted entanglements of her shirt and bra, looking not at me or the TV or her clothes but the wall.

  I sit up and swing my legs to the floor and find my cigarettes. I light one and get my shirt off the floor.

  “You ready to run me back to the club?” I say. “There’s no need in us staying over here.” Something is wrong with her. She doesn’t even get excited. It’s no wonder her husband has left her. She’s cold as a fish.

  “That’s his pickup,” she says.

  “What?”

  “That’s Roland’s pickup outside. He’s got some woman over here. In one of these rooms.” She looks at me. “Maybe right next to us.”

  I hate myself for being this way. For being so desperate. I already knew how it was going to turn out. I knew it would be exactly like this.

  “Well, so what?” I say. “If he’s screwing around on you, what are you so worried about?”

  “I’m not worried,” she says.

  “The hell you ain’t.” I stand up and pull on my shirt. I know I need to get myself out of this room and away from her. It’s not too late to go back to the bar and try to meet somebody else. Anybody will be better than her. Even the fat ones will be better than her. At least I can have a good time with them. They don’t have problems. They don’t waste the nights. “You’re afraid he’ll see you with me,” I say.

  “Would you just listen for one minute?” she says. “I been married to him since I was sixteen. We got some rental property we own together. He’s a contractor. He didn’t leave me. I left him! You don’t understand.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I understand. I understand all of it. You’re wanting somebody to listen to all your problems and I ain’t no fucking head doctor. Just take me back to the club or let me out somewhere and I’ll catch a ride home. Hell, it’s Saturday night. I got to go back to work Monday. You know what I’m saying?”

  She fastens her bra back together and pulls her shirt down. By the time I get out the door to the running car, I’m surprised she hasn’t left me. The truck we saw earlier is gone, but she doesn’t mention it. I get in with her and sit close to the door all the way back. I look at her breasts. They are magnificent. I want to suggest another scenario, but I don’t.

  I’m living with my mother again and Sunday is a chicken dinner, just the two of us. Mashed potatoes and English peas, gravy. I sleep late on Sunday, then go down to the road and pick up the papers, the Commercial Appeal from Memphis and the Clarion-Ledger from Jackson. The rest of my morning is taken up with reading these papers, especially the movie and book pages, and drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes until my mother comes in from church and calls me to dinner. I don’t have a car now; a lawyer has the money it brought, so now I read the pages with the car ads, too. I want to buy a new one, have been toying with the idea, and try to save my money for that.

  Sunday afternoon, I’m asleep in the bed that held me as a child when the phone rings. I wake and turn and hear my mother moving toward me in the empty house, her feet and weight ponderous on the old boards, hesitant. She’s coming to see if I’m asleep and she probably hopes I am. She opens the door and sees me. She says there is some woman who wants to talk to me. I know somehow, freshly awake from dreams of erotica and hanging breasts, deliciously rested, ready for the last night of the weekend. I get up and go to the kitchen and shut the door. It’s her.

  “Gary?” she says.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s Connie.”

  “Yeah. I know.” What does she want and why has she picked me? Why can’t she see that I’m bad for her? That I can’t take much more?

  “Did I wake you up?”

  “Yeah, matter of fact you did.”

  “Aw, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up. I guess I shoulda called later. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  “Listen,” I say. “What do you want?” There’s no need to be nice to her anymore. I’m through with her, I don’t want her to start calling over here and bothering my mother when I’m not home. I don’t even want her calling over here. My mother asks too many questions as it is. Any man twenty-eight years old ought to be able to come and go without his mother asking him where he’s going every time.

  “I just wanted to talk,” she says, and she says that in a pleading voice. “Can you talk?” Suddenly she sounds cheerful and sober.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I mean, I don’t see much point in it. I don’t even know what you want. I don’t think you know what you want.” I can’t see my cigarettes. “Hold on,” I say. “I’ve got to find a cigarette.”

  I don’t wait for her to answer. I go into the living room and get my pack and my lighter. I light one and look out the window at the passing cars, the uncut grass. My mother watches from behind her eyeglasses where she sits with the Bible of God cupped in her lap. She says nothing, but I see the fear she has. After a while I go back and pick up the telephone again. “All right,” I say, making the weariness in my voice plain.

  It’s kind of hard, not having a car. I have to be careful to get with somebody who has wheels. I have to make sure of that early on. I don’t mind paying for a room if the woman doesn’t mind us going in her car. It complicates things, makes them more difficult. But I can’t take them home, not while I’m living with my mother. She wouldn’t allow it. I know what would happen if I tried it. I’ve imagined it before, and it isn’t nice. It’s awful. Doors jerked open and covers grabbed.

  “Listen,” she says. “I know I acted terrible last night. It was just his truck over there that did it. You got to understand, Gary, we been married ten years. You just don’t throw ten years away without thinking about it.”

  “Right,” I say. First eight years, now ten years. I must deal with her, get rid of her. “But it ain’t none of my business. Let me explain something to you. When I go out on the weekend, all I’m looking for is to have a good time. All right? I mean I don’t think I have to go to bed with every girl I meet. I’ve been married. Not as long as you, but I’ve been married. I know what it’s like.” I’m not saying what I mean to say. “You just act too damn strange for me, okay? You get depressed, and I don’t need to be around somebody that’s depressed all the time. It gets me depressed, too. Now that’s all it is. If you still love your husband, fine. You need to try to work everything out with him. That’s between you and him. I don’t ha
ve anything to do with it. I just don’t want you to call me anymore.”

  That should do it. That should make her mad enough to where she’ll say something, then hang up on me. She doesn’t.

  “Oh, Gary. Don’t be mad. I’ve been thinking over everything today. Listen. I called my husband and you know what I told him?”

  “What?” I don’t want to hear this shit.

  “I told him I wanted a divorce. I told him I was going to try to get eight hundred dollars a month out of him. He started talking sweet then. He wants us to get back together now. What you think about that?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t care,” I say. I open the icebox and find a beer. Then I look a little longer and find the schnapps.

  “I told him I saw him last night. At that motel. But anyway, that ain’t what I called you about. I called you about something else.”

  “What?”

  “I got us a room tonight. Just you and me. At the Holiday Inn. I already got it. I got the key right here.”

  I don’t really believe that. “I don’t really believe that,” I say.

  “Listen, Gary. I know I ain’t acted right. I don’t blame you for being disgusted with me. But it was just all that stuff with my ex. He’s been going out on me for the longest. Friday night was the first time I’d ever been out without him. In ten years. Honest.”

  “Is that right?” I say. She’s probably lying. She’s probably just telling me all this so she can get me off again and drive me some more nuts telling me some more about it.

  “I swear. Gary, I swear to God. May God strike me dead if I ain’t telling the truth.”

  “Well,” I say. I take a drink of my beer. Maybe she is telling the truth. Maybe they’ve had what she thought was a good marriage. It’s happened before. You can go along fine for years and it can fall apart in a second. You can do things to each other that can never be forgiven. One word can lead to another word. You can lose control and a whole lot more. They can make you pay for one second of anger. They can make you pay with your house, and your car, and your money and self-respect. She doesn’t have to tell me about marriage. I know already. Marriage is having to live with a woman. That’s what marriage is.