by Lee Smith
“Why, what in the world!” she exclaimed.
Roger let go. Paula, winded, bent to switch off the record player and then stood trying to catch her breath.
Behind Corinne, Dad’s gray crew-cut head appeared. “Everybody’s home, huh?” he called jovially down the stairs. “I didn’t think you’d have had time to cook, honey, so I brought some supper home from the restaurant. Now don’t worry, son, ha-ha, no barbecue this time, I’ve got some broiled chicken, an item that’s getting very popular these days.…”
Paula looked up the stairs at her parents. She could hear Roger breathing hard behind her. “We already ate,” she said.
AFTER THAT WEEKEND, PAULA WENT BACK TO SCHOOL, and Johnny went back to the hospital. “Just put it out of your mind, honey,” her mother urged her on the telephone. “You can’t do a thing about it, nobody can. Johnny is right where he needs to be. They’re taking real good care of him. So you just forget about it, and study real hard, and try to have some fun, too, okay? These are the happiest years of your life,” Corinne said.
“Okay,” Paula said. Sure. But she was so tired. In the mornings, she couldn’t drag herself out of bed in time to get to biology. In the afternoon, she’d nod off during lectures. Her notes were indecipherable. Her grades were falling in every class. Alerted by Paula’s roommate, a cheerful perfect girl from Charlotte who was worried to death about her, the dorm counselor paid a visit to their room. Nothing is wrong, Paula told Mrs. Abbott. Nothing. No, nothing has happened. No, I am not pregnant. No. No. I’m just tired, that’s all. They put her in the infirmary and everyone assumed she had mononucleosis, an in thing to have. But the test came back negative. It was not mono. By then it was time for exams, but she was much too tired to study. When they sent her home, her father had one of his famous fits the minute she walked in the door.
“Eight thousand dollars down the drain!” he shouted. “You think I’m made of money? Is that what you think? You and your brother, you’ll bleed me to death, between the two of you. I’ve never seen such kids! Too tired to study, huh? I wish I had had a father to send me to college. I wish I had had these opportunities that you piss away—”
It was clear that he would have gone on forever if Corinne hadn’t come in and taken his arm and led him away. Paula climbed upstairs and went to bed. Later, Corinne came to her room and told her not to pay any attention, that Dad was just upset, plus he was a northerner and you know how they are. They just say everything that’s on their mind, they always yell but it doesn’t mean anything. Plus there was all the stress of Johnny’s illness and running the restaurants. Corinne sat on the edge of the bed and stroked Paula’s hair. She had the longest, reddest fingernails Paula had ever seen.
Later that summer, Elise married a young surgeon in a big wedding, which set Dad back plenty, as he told everybody. He said he didn’t mind, though. “Nothing but the best for my baby,” he said. Paula managed to get out of bed long enough to be a bridesmaid, feeling pallid and insignificant among Elise’s perky, cool friends. Most of them had been Tri Delts, like Elise. Before the wedding, Paula and Elise had had a fight about whether or not to invite Johnny, who was out of the hospital again—Elise was determined not to, and it was her wedding, after all—but Paula had started crying, and so they did, but when he didn’t show up, everybody was relieved, including Paula.
Paula drank too much champagne at the wedding and ended up sleeping with an oncologist. She dated him for a while after that, but she was finally too weird for him. Though he didn’t say so, Paula could tell. She went back to bed when they stopped dating and stayed there until her dad told her to get up, get a job, and that’s what she’s done ever since—she’s had a succession of jobs, a succession of men. She never went back to college.
One of her boyfriends, a graduate student in psychology, suggested that she wouldn’t go back because of Johnny. “You can’t take the guilt,” he said. “You can’t afford to be successful.” Paula and this boyfriend were having a picnic at the time. Paula put her beer down and stared at him. “You know, that’s probably true,” she said. Before the picnic, she had thought this graduate student was kind of cute, so earnest; but after that, she didn’t think so. She stopped seeing him.
She developed a protective shield around herself, a carapace; this was a word Paula remembered from the days when she used to be an English major, when she used to be smart. When her parents split up, it didn’t even bother her that much. She wasn’t often home, anyway.
It was Corinne who left Dad. She fell in love with the man who ran the video rental store in the mall where Nails ’N Notions was located. This man’s name was Mike Papadopoulos. He was ten years younger than Corinne, and when she was with him, Corinne looked ten years younger herself. They watched movies together on the VCR, and went out to eat a lot.
“Oh, we do everything together,” Corinne told Paula. “He talks to me all the time.”
“PAPADOPOULOS,” DAD SAID GLUMLY. “WHAT KIND OF a name is that?” He sat chain-smoking at a table in his original barbecue restaurant during an off hour, two-thirty, between meals. Waitresses were replenishing the silverware and hot sauce on the checkered tablecloths. Paula sat watching him, a piece of coconut pie before her.
“I loved her so much,” Dad said. “I still do, Goddamnit. She could still give it up, all this foolishness, she could come on home. I’d take her back. I told her that on the phone. I said, I’ll forget it, forget the whole damn thing. You know what she said? Nothing doing, that’s what she said. She says there’s nothing here for her anymore, it’s an empty house as far as she’s concerned. An empty house! Can you believe that? That house is full of her crap, that’s the God’s truth. Everywhere you look, something she bought, something she made. It breaks my heart. I tell you, Paula, it just breaks my heart.”
Then he started to cry, Paula’s tough old dad, right there in the barbecue restaurant. He cried openly, out loud and with no shame, into a paper napkin. Paula sat watching. She didn’t know what to do. Two of the waitresses came running over to hug him and pat his heaving shoulders. Paula could tell they’d done this before. “He’s been all tore up,” one of them, a big redhead, said confidentially to Paula. After Paula’s dad cried for a while, he quit and blew his nose. The waitresses went away. He leaned across the table toward her and asked her point-blank: “So. Paula. Why’d she do it? Whaddaya think?”
“She said he talks to her all the time.” Paula couldn’t believe she was saying this to her dad.
“Talks to her! What’s she got to say, all of a sudden?” He shook his head. He lit another cigarette.
“Eat the pie,” he said. “You’ll like it.”
“I’m not very hungry,” Paula said.
“It’s good pie,” her dad said. “We’ve got this new woman, she comes in to make them. A very popular item.”
Paula got up and walked around the table and hugged him, the way the waitresses had.
“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”
Paula hugged him again and left. About a year after that, the big redheaded waitress, Lena, moved into the house with him.
“He makes me keep everything just like it was,” Lena told Paula, who stopped by the restaurant frequently for a sandwich. “He won’t let me touch a thing. It’s like living in a goddamn museum, I swear.” But Lena didn’t mind this as much as you’d think, she added. Interior decoration was not her thing. “Besides,” she said, “it sure beats the hell out of my former situation.” Out of tact, Paula didn’t ask Lena what her former situation was. Lena seemed to appreciate her dad, that was the main thing. Lena had a knack for seeing the best in people, the way Drew did.
PAULA GETS OUT OF THE CAR AND SHADES HER EYES, looking toward the screen door. It opens and a man steps out. “Johnny?” Paula says. The sun is still in her eyes. This man is short and wiry, with a brown ponytail and a baseball cap. Not Johnny. The man grins and says, “Hey now.” He raises two fingers in
a peace sign. Paula is getting confused. Then the door opens again, and this time it’s really Johnny, bigger than she remembers, long blond hair bouncing and shining in the sun as he strides through chickens, scattering them across the yard. He picks her up and swings her around and around. “Johnny!” Paula squeals. His mustache tickles her neck. He smells like tobacco and sweat, a workingman’s smell. She’s dizzy when he lets her go, which is not until Drew says, “Hold it.”
“Huh?” Johnny says.
“Hold it right there,” Drew says. He stands in front of them with his camera held up to his face. “Got it,” he says. Then he steps forward to shake hands.
That picture, when it is printed, will show Paula and Johnny slightly blurred in the foreground, with the aquapainted cinder-block house and the chickens and the green grass bright and solid behind them, Pete still in the doorway with his hand raised in some strange kind of greeting. Paula and Johnny don’t look like brother and sister. Paula looks younger than she is, as if anything could still happen to her. She is pretty in a conventional way, her dark curly hair falling to her shoulders, her face friendly and open. Johnny looks like a lot of things have already happened to him. He looks like he’s seen things and been places. Though he grins straight into the camera, his pale blue eyes are serious, ancient, burned clean. Johnny’s eyes are the still, dead center of this photograph, despite his strong, healthy-looking body. Muscles bulge under his T-shirt. He has a cocky cowboy stance. He grabs Drew’s outstretched hand and shakes it energetically. “Man!” he says. “I’m so glad to see Paula. So who are you, buddy? The boyfriend, am I right?”
Paula can’t believe it. Though Johnny has had nothing much to do with their dad for years and years, he still says “Am I right?” just like the old man. The apple never falls far from the tree, as Corinne would say. Johnny hugs Paula with one arm, Drew with the other.
“Actually, your sister and I are engaged to be married,” Drew says rather formally, extricating himself.
“No kidding!” Johnny says. “Hey, that’s great news!” Now he’s clapping Drew hard on the back. “Well then, this here can be your engagement party, how’s that? Merry engagement to the happy couple!” He squeezes Paula. “So come on! Come on into my humble abode, honey, I’ve got somebody I want you to meet.”
At Paula’s quizzical look, he grins and says, “Hey, don’t think you’re the only one that can get engaged, babycakes. Come on.” Paula and Drew stop at the door to be introduced to Pete, the guy in the baseball cap. “Hey now,” Pete says. He drains a beer and crushes the can in one hand. Then they’re inside, where it’s so hot it’s stifling and Paula is surprised to see more people. “María!” Johnny yells over the music. But first they have to meet Johnny’s partner, Bo, a massive fellow with a blank face and a head too small for his body. Bo wears clean faded jeans and a clean faded work shirt the same color as the jeans. He has a soft sweet look about the eyes. “Paula,” Bo says, focusing in on her.
“Low affect, minimal retardation,” Drew whispers in Paula’s ear. Paula pulls away from him.
“Hello,” she says to the man beside Bo, apparently the next person she is supposed to meet, a skinny dangerous-looking guy in a muscle shirt, with tattoos and slicked-back dark hair. He’s staring at her. Paula grabs his hand and shakes it. “Hi, I’m Paula,” she says, “Johnny’s sister.”
“Oh yeah?” he says. He’s standing too close. He doesn’t let go of her hand. For a second, Paula feels like he expects something from her, like she owes him something. Then Johnny is there again, saying, “Uh-oh, you have to watch out for this one, sister, this one’s a snake,” and the mood is broken. The man smiles and lets go of her hand. The man’s name is Dallas.
“Paula, I want you to meet María,” Johnny says. He has his arm around a beautiful, giggling Mexican girl, who does a sort of half-bob, half-curtsy to Paula. Paula is embarrassed. The girl’s long black hair falls forward over her face. Her jewelry jingles. Her small brown feet are bare.
“Buenos días,” María says. Johnny whispers something in her ear and she giggles some more, putting her hand up to cover her mouth. Her teeth are terrible, Paula sees when she takes her hand down.
“Say, ‘I love Johnny,’” Johnny says to María.
María giggles.
“Come on, say it,” Johnny says. “Say, ‘I love Johnny.’ I’m teaching her English,” Johnny tells Paula.
“I love Johnny,” María finally says, putting her hand up again.
Then Johnny kisses María, right then and there, in a way that embarrasses Paula even more and makes her feel funny in the pit of her stomach, empty, as if she’s lost something. She goes in search of Drew. “Excuse me,” she says to Dallas, who’s blocking the way. Dallas stares at her as he backs up. He raises his beer in a mock salute. The music is very loud, it’s old rock, the Eagles.
Paula finds Drew in the kitchen talking to a blond woman who has the biggest breasts Paula has ever seen. Of course she’s fat, too, so it doesn’t count, or does it? Is Drew attracted to women like this? Is he turned on? The blond woman puffs on a cigarette, leaving a trail of smoke in the air. Paula is surprised. Normally Drew won’t accept passive smoke.
He smiles at Paula, looking relieved. “Where’ve you been?” he asks.
The blond woman turns to Paula. “Honey, I’m Lulu. Pleased to meet you,” she says. She has a friendly, worn-looking face with a scar just above her mouth. “How about a drink? I’m having some vodka and tonic myself.” There’s beer, bourbon, vodka, Cokes, and Hawaiian Punch on the counter, a bag of ice in the sink. The birthday cake on the counter says “Happy Birthday Ann” in neon-pink icing.
“Who’s Ann?” Paula asks. “I’m confused. Whose birthday is it?”
Lulu starts laughing. “Honey, it ain’t nobody’s birthday. It’s just a cake.”
Drew seems to be sending Paula a signal through the smoke, but she can’t figure out what it is.
“I believe I will have some of that vodka,” she says, and Lulu pours it over ice in a paper cup.
Now Drew is raising his eyebrows, cocking his head toward the door. Finally he says, “Well, I’d better go out and see how Muddy Waters is doing,” but then he hesitates. Maybe he wants Paula to come out with him, too, so they can talk privately. Paula takes a sip of her drink instead. Wow.
“I can tell you how he’s doing.” Lulu laughs and points out the kitchen window. “He’s doing just fine, thank you.” They all look out the window at Muddy Waters, who is humping a skinny mixed-breed bitch with some Irish setter in her.
“Honey, where’s the stake-out chain?” Drew is halfway out the door already. He’s real particular about who Muddy Waters hangs out with.
“In the floor of the backseat!” Paula yells after him. She takes a cold swallow of vodka and smiles at Lulu. There’s a lot to be said for vodka. “It’s really okay,” Paula says, indicating the dogs. “Muddy Waters has been fixed.”
“Fixed,” Lulu repeats. She grins. “Honey, you can’t fix none of them for good. They don’t never get over the idea of it, that’s the problem.”
Lulu and Paula watch Drew chasing Muddy Waters around and around in circles in the yard, raising dust, scattering chickens. “Come, Muddy Waters, come!” Drew is shouting. But every time Drew gets close enough to grab him, Muddy Waters breaks away. Drew’s face grows redder and redder. Then Muddy Waters makes a real break for it, toward the woods, and Drew takes off after him like a man in a cartoon.
“He ought to just leave them be,” Lulu says.
Paula sighs. “You don’t know Drew.”
DREW WAS THE ONE WHO INSISTED ON THE OBEDIENCE classes, not Paula, though Paula was the one who saw Muddy Waters first in a litter at her friend’s house. She brought him home in a cardboard box. Drew was reading the paper. Paula put the box on the carpet in front of him, with the top closed. Thump! Thump! Thump! All you could hear was Muddy Waters wagging his tail, banging it against the sides of the cardboard box. Drew folded his paper. �
�Okay,” he said. “I’m game,” and then, when she opened the box and Muddy Waters came wagging out, peeing with joy, he was just as smitten as Paula.
“But do you realize what a responsibility a dog is?” Drew asked her later, when it had become clear they could never take him back to his litter. Muddy Waters was noisily asleep in Paula’s lap.
“I guess so,” Paula said.
Drew shook his head. “I doubt it,” he said, “but I love your enthusiasm.”
Paula had had several dogs before, including a notoriously screwed-up mutt named Elvis, but Drew had never had one. He went out immediately and bought several dog books, intending to raise Muddy Waters right. He had a chain-link fence built around the backyard, got a doghouse at Lowe’s, and ordered a special cedar-chip bed from L. L. Bean. He got a high-tech leash that worked like a tape measure; you could make it any length you wanted to. Muddy Waters had his shots at the vet’s, and now he has big heartworm pills to take each month. Drew has put heart-shaped stickers on the calendar so they won’t forget. Muddy Waters eats only Science Diet, no scraps. Paula had no idea there was so much to it, having a dog, but she’s just as crazy about Muddy Waters as Drew is. Muddy Waters is totally adorable, the way he comes over and puts his head in your lap to be patted, the way he jumps up and down when they get home from work. He’s so glad to see them!
Actually, Paula has enjoyed the obedience classes, too, although she hates the teacher’s voice, which is very shrill, like Julia Child’s. Maybe dogs respond well to it, though, it’s like those high-pitched dog whistles. In any case, the teacher’s own dog, a border collie named Burt, is amazing: at an inspiring demonstration during the first class, Burt came, sat, lay down, rolled over, barked, heeled, played dead, and fetched. Then the teacher shrieked, “Kennel!” and Burt trotted over and went into a big wire cage, which he appeared to like just fine. All the dog owners in the class applauded Burt’s performance, but the puppies were not impressed, lunging back and forth, barking at each other, entangling their owners in their leashes. It seemed obvious to Paula that many of these dogs would never be trained, especially a mixed-breed hound named Rocky II, owned by a very thin older couple who couldn’t control him at all. They looked hopeless and sad.
