by Ann Cummins
"And Rose, keep an eye on his medications." He says that Ryland must have been sleeping heavily for the water to have gotten so cold.
Like a kid fibbing to his mother, Ryland tells Rosy he doesn't know where the bottle of Xanax is and then feels so ridiculous he immediately fishes it out from under his shirts in the dresser drawer and gives it to her, which makes him feel like a kid owning up. She watches him ceaselessly. Eyes dim with fatigue—it's a fear-tinged fatigue, like he used to see in the eyes of sleepless soldiers—she examines him, looking for evidence of what, stroke? Has he had a stroke? Will he? It is odd to think that if he does, she'll know before he does. That's the nature of strokes. The body and the mind separate; an open-eyed witness gives evidence. What is his wife if not open-eyed?
Suddenly the house is empty. Tuesday evening he listens to her hushed conversations on the telephone as she relocates Wedding Headquarters Central to Eddy and Sue's house. He's just getting into bed when she comes in and sits on the mattress next to him, searching his face. He wants to tell her to stop looking at him like the grand inquisitor, but he knows that'll just make her self-conscious—or mad. He is so tired. Is tiredness evidence of stroke?
"I think maybe we ought to have Eddy walk Maggie down the aisle," she says. "It's enough that you're at the wedding."
"I'm walking Maggie down the aisle," he says.
She blinks, swallows; eyes unfocused, she stares at the oxygen tank in the corner.
"You scared me, Ryland."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"I don't know what I'd do if..."
He takes her hand, squeezing it. "I'm okay, Rosy."
She stands up, threads of pink bleeding into her wan cheeks. "Thursday will be such a long day, Ryland. You could skip it. Skip the rehearsal. The rehearsal dinner. Just rest up for Saturday."
"I'll be fine."
And yet when has he been so tired? He doesn't remember sleeping, but it's almost noon when he wakes on Wednesday to Rosy's fretful face inches from his, telling him he's been asleep for over fifteen hours and asking him if his shoulders ache or if he has a headache.
Everything does ache, though no more, he thinks, than yesterday, or any other day of his life, for that matter.
He had been dreaming about the mill. Woody was in the dream, his leg splashed with sulfuric acid. But that never happened. It happened to Ryland once in Durango. Ryland has a brown burn patch on his right calf and has had it for thirty years now.
Eddy is at the table having lunch when Ryland goes into the kitchen. "You off today?"
"Until Sunday. I'm taking a few vacation days."
"Where's your mom?"
"She had some errands."
By midafternoon, when Eddy, who has stationed himself in front of the television to watch soap operas, shows no sign of leaving, Ryland realizes that his son is on duty. Eddy must have a million things he should be doing. He most certainly should not be spending his vacation days before the wedding watching soap operas. Except he's not really watching them, not closely, because every time a car passes he looks out the window. When Rosy comes back, Eddy goes into the kitchen and Ryland strains to hear their conversation. It becomes clear that Eddy has been watching for Sam. If he can, Eddy will intercept Sam without Ryland knowing. In that way they will save Ryland whatever stress Sam might cause. And probably have Sam arrested.
Ryland sets up a vigil of his own, though he is so tired—when has he been so tired? Every time he feels himself drifting, he struggles out of it, keeping his eyes on the front window, his ears tuned to the traffic on the street. He sleeps badly Wednesday night, waking every half hour. At breakfast Thursday morning, Rosy tells him he looks like death warmed over. She invites him again to skip the rehearsal, and he considers that, because then he could be alone, and maybe Sam would come. But when she says that if he skips, she'll skip, too, he rallies. He may never be alone again.
The rehearsal is chaotic. No one told the church cleaners about it, and four Mexican women are scouring the altar area when they arrive, one pushing an industrial vacuum with an engine that sounds like a B-52. Father Liam and Rosy both holler directions over the clatter, and Mrs. Gruber, the organist, plays the Wedding March over the noise of the vacuum.
All of the young people—George and Maggie, Sue and Eddy, the best man, who is George's brother—wear jeans and T-shirts. This bothers Ryland. Why it should bother him, he doesn't know, except it's a church. Their costumes seem a study in disrespect. The little girls are wearing summer shorts, halter tops, and thongs, and they're chewing gum. Which bothers him.
His job isn't hard. The hard part is waiting in the noise while Sue and Rosy argue about letting Teri walk alone down the aisle. Sue thinks she ought to walk with Teri and help her keep pace, but Rosy says Sue's place is in the procession ahead of Ryland and Maggie, that it has to be that way, that's where the matron of honor always is, and it doesn't matter if Teri runs down the aisle because she's so cute and little. They argue about this for fifteen minutes, Rosy finally winning.
It has been decided that Ryland will leave his oxygen cart at the back of the church. Unencumbered by the tank, he'll walk Maggie up the aisle, and his other, smaller tank will be with Rosy in the head pew, where he'll hook himself back up.
Finally they start. He doesn't remember the aisle in the church being so long. He leaves Maggie at the altar, handing her to George, steps into the pew next to his frowning inspector-general wife.
Then they have to rehearse it again. Why again? Nobody else seems to wonder.
It's on the third long walk that his knees buckle. It's the noise, he thinks, that caused it. He was leaning toward Maggie, trying to hear what she is saying about her petticoats, which will make her twice as wide on Saturday, but the organ music was so loud he couldn't quite hear her. Everybody was chattering. His knees buckled, and he fell into Maggie, who fell into a pew.
They all swarmed, Rosy grabbing his wrist, checking for a pulse, and wanting to look in his eyes. "Enough," he yelled.
Now he sits in the pew, the church utterly silent, everybody watching him. Maggie squats next to him. "Daddy," she says, "maybe Eddy should walk me down the aisle. You could just wait in the pew with Mom and give me away when the time comes. Or Eddy could do that. Really, all that matters is that you're there. If you want, you can sit in the back of the church. Quick escape, you know. If you want to."
He looks at his daughter and thinks about explaining that he's really okay, it was just the noise that got to him. But why did it get to him? Why did it seem so loud?
He simply says, "I'll be fine."
It's late by the time they get out of the church and head up to Whitaker Mesa for the rehearsal dinner at Edna Friedan's house. Edna, an old friend from Durango, was a mill wife who came with them to Shiprock with her first husband. She has been married four times since, widowed each time. The last one, Friedan, a real estate mogul from Los Angeles, left Edna very well off.
The sun is just slipping behind the horizon when the wedding party tops the mesa. It's 7:45. They're driving in a caravan, Eddy and Sue in the lead, Ryland and Rosy behind them. Approaching the security gate, squinting against the setting sun, Ryland sees something that makes no sense: Sam's truck, with Sam and somebody else—Alice?—inside.
He and Eddy are out of their cars simultaneously. "Ed!" Ryland calls. "I'll handle this." Eddy looks back at Rosy. Ryland unhooks himself from his oxygen and covers ground.
Not Alice but an old Navajo woman sits on the passenger's side of the truck.
"Ry. You know Ariana Atcitty? This is Alice's mother/' The strong smell of liquor-soaked sweat wafts through Sam's open window. Sam is badly sunburned, his nose peeling. Red dirt cakes his neck and throat above his T-shirt.
"Can I talk to you?" Ryland says, motioning for Sam to step out of the truck. "Where the hell you been?" he says as soon as they're out of earshot, though where Sam has been is clear. He's found Alice.
"Been camping out at Ariana's place, helpin
g her rig an irrigation system."
Sam looks at the line of cars idling at the gate. "What's with the parade?"
"So I guess you found Alice."
"Sort of. She's due back—"
"What, are you just sitting out there roosting?"
Chin raised, eyes half closed, Sam looks at him and doesn't answer.
"Lily called."
"Oh?"
"What do you think you're doing, buddy?"
Sam purses his lips, nodding, taking his time to answer, finally saying, "What does she think she's doing? Did she tell you the story?"
"Yeah, we heard the story. Sam, if you needed money, I told you..."
"It's not about that."
"What's it about?"
"For the insult, Ry. I mean, what the fuck. Seventeen years I think I'm divorced and then find out I'm not. Anyway, she can afford it. You've seen how she lives? Christ, she's got more than you and me put together."
"It's not your money, Sam. You're not entitled."
"What do you care?" Sam says. "Why are you so pissed?"
Ryland swallows. A young man whom he recognizes as Sam's son—he's run into the kid now and again over the years—has just driven out of the gate in a little white go-cart. He parks near the adobe wall that encircles the estates, starts toward Sam's truck, but detours when Rosy gets out and calls him over to her.
Something that feels like a vise steadily tightens around Ryland's chest.
"Wouldn't think you'd give a damn," Sam is saying.
"I don't. Rosy does."
"Ah." Sam smiles. He takes his flask from his back pocket and sips. "Rosy." He recaps the flask. "So you're her messenger?"
"What do you mean by that?"
Sam shakes his head, smiling. The boy walks over to the pickup and gets in on the passenger's side, as Alice's mother moves over.
"I want Lily's money."
"Or?"
"Or I'll have you arrested."
Sam laughs. He starts walking toward the truck.
"Sam. I mean it."
"Have me arrested."
"Don't think I won't," Ryland says through clenched teeth.
Sam stops, turns, and they look at each other. "You do what you've got to do, Ryland."
His head aches. It's the lack of oxygen. He needs to get to it. Sam turns back toward the truck.
"Sam."
"What."
"We don't want you at the wedding."
Sam stops again but doesn't turn around. His head bows toward the ground. "You know why I'm up here, Ry? Woody died. I came to get my boy. I don't think I'd be making the wedding anyway. I figure we'll be burying Woody that day."
Edna's large living room seems to undulate. Furniture blooms from its center—bold, thin-skinned chairs and chaises without arms or edges but with rolling lips top and bottom. The couches and chairs are organized around a low black table that seems to Ryland to be miles from the walls, which are decorated with metal wall hangings. Everywhere, pillows seem to crawl with color, bright tropical flowers, tropical birds. The floor is red clay.
"Mister, you look good," Edna says.
"No I don't," he says.
"You look good to me," she says, leading him to a chair, handing him champagne. She looks pieced together, hair a patchy metallic red, little mangled coils with bits of bald shining through, two rouge dots on cheeks that have lost their roundness, streaking into creased folds of skin. "I have always told your wife she married a good-looking man."
The vise squeezing his chest hasn't loosened. It's distracting. He finds he has to concentrate to understand what people are saying.
Rosy sits in the middle of a purple chaise opposite him. Her clothes seem to have shrunk. The fabric of her green pantsuit stretches over her middle, and the shoulders pull up toward her chin.
A young Mexican woman wearing a black and white server's outfit comes through a door that must lead to the kitchen. She begins to tour the room with cocktail napkins and a platter full of little pigs in blankets and tiny pies with what looks like spinach in them. When Ryland gets a whiff, his stomach turns.
Father Liam's voice booms, telling everybody how happy he is to be here. "Doesn't Maggie look good? Here's to the bride."
The grandkids scream, running up and down the halls. Five halls branch off the main room, three to the west side of the house, two to the east. In some other room—the kitchen?—somebody is saying Sam's name. Ryland leans back in his chair, looking at a thin metal structure mounted on the western wall. Something that looks like a boxy man faces a smaller version of himself; the miniature doesn't have the edges of a face or body, just the hint of them.
"So you sold Edna this house," Father Liam is saying to Sue.
"Got two more pending," she says.
"Sue, your daughters are taking over Mrs. Friedan's house," Eddy says.
"They're your daughters tonight, Ed."
People—first the Mexican girl, then Maggie—keep sticking the pigs in blankets in front of Ryland. Rosy's face looks like it's made of ice and if she stops smiling her lips will melt.
"I miss having children around," Edna is saying. "Now I remember, was it Maggie? Twirling the baton. Do you remember, Rosy, the little girls and their batons in Camp, running from house to house, putting on shows for us? We had a nice life, didn't we? A nice little neighborhood."
"You ought to see it now, Edna. The houses are falling down. We've got pictures."
"Don't show me any pictures. I don't want to see any pictures of falling-down houses. It was a lucky life for me. Me, I was lucky in bingo and lucky in love."
"Edna, how can you say that? How many husbands have you buried?"
"Five. Each one the love of my life. Here's to you, Miss Maggie and Mr. George. May you find your luck."
"And long life."
Ryland holds the handle of his oxygen tank to push himself up, watches the black dots shoot from the center of his eyes out into the room, where they dive into color that is blurry now. He steers around the furniture. George's mother's voice floats up to him, "And I fell right through the ice," the priest booming, "A miracle." "We have lots of baby pictures," Eddy is saying, "Mags crying in every one." From the back of the house, a child's piercing laughing scream—"You kids! Stop it." Ryland winds around people he doesn't know, George's people, and he nods at their chins when they try to speak to him.
The room has no corners, Ryland notices. All of the corners are rounded, and the walls have many alcoves. He puts one foot in front of the other, moving to an alcove with a display of knives, where he stands swaying, touching the alcove's edge, the adobe cool and soothing. Old relics. Knives and swords. Fancy knives, some with jeweled handles. They put him in mind of another time, another world. He saw a man knifed in the throat when he was in the military. Early on in their campaign against the Japanese. He was one foxhole over, and in the dead of night, somebody crawled through the dark and slipped a knife from point to hilt through a man's throat. Left the thing there. It was Ryland who pulled the knife out. He can remember the feel of the handle, solid and smooth like a good kitchen knife.
Behind him, he hears the whispered names: Woody, Sam. They think he can't hear. They're exchanging news.
Edna is next to him now, saying, "Ryland, would you like to wash up? Let me show you." She takes his arm and leads him away. He can hear the scraping of his shoes as he walks. Pick your feet up, soldier. In a barely audible voice, Rosy is telling George's people who Woody was.
They go down a narrow hall. To their right is a wall, to their left glass, and on the other side of the glass a tiled patio opens to the sky. Holes have been cut into the tile, where various types of cactus have been planted. In the center a huge prickly pear has dropped its fruit, and the fruit, he sees, has pruned up and rotted. The plant shouldn't grow at this altitude. Should it? The patio must have a humidifier and temperature control.
"Too bad about Woody," Edna says.
"One of the best men I know. Knew."
&n
bsp; She opens a door, and he goes into a bathroom.
The back side of the door is mirror. The skin under his eyes is thick and puffy, the whites pinkish, his cheeks blue.
He reaches into his shirt pocket for the pill he put there.
But there is no pill. He wanted to put one there, but he couldn't because he doesn't know where they are.
He steps away from the mirror, turning his back on it.
This room is full of reflections. The entire wall above and below the counter with two sinks is mirror. The floor is the same red clay as the rest of the house. There are levels to this room, three steps leading up to a tiled platform and a tub as big as a small wading pool. The wall behind the tub: mirror.
The commode is tucked into a little nook, away from the rest of the room and surrounded by thick, sweet-smelling green plants.
The nook walls are sea green, no mirrors. The tucked-in place looks out onto an enclosed cactus garden, a miniature of the larger, more public one.
A pleasant and private place for a commode, pretty view.
Ryland crosses to it and sits on the closed lid, looking into the garden, where a gray lizard is quickly disappearing as darkness deepens. Do lizards see color? Is he himself disappearing here in the middle of the sweet-smelling plants?
"Grandpa," one of the kids yells. "Time to eat. Grandpa, Grandpa, Grandpa."
He doesn't want to eat. But he has to eat. But he doesn't want to get up. But he has to. His kidneys have been tugging for half an hour. The lizard has slunk away, gone off to look for a warm place to spend the night.
He stands, lifting the toilet lid and seat, unzipping, propping himself up by anchoring one hand against the wall, listening to the pitiful sound of his water kerplunking, and without warning, he is coughing, convulsing with it, dropping his cock, which continues to fire wild and spray the sea green wall with piss. He spews spit all around, covers his mouth with the back of his arm. "Grandpa!" one of the kids yells, and knocks on the door. He stands gasping, trying to blink the haze out of his eyes.
