Creatures of Habit

by Jill McCorkle

  By one o’clock the sun is beating full down, pressing the cracked ceilings closer and closer to her face. The old oscillating fan lifts the pages of the catalogs at her feet and she can’t keep her eyes open at all. She struggles to stay awake; the next radio show is a gardening show and they have lots of tips that she will need in another week or so when she is feeling better. She has bought herself some half barrels and several big bags of good rich potting soil and a couple of bags of moo doo and great big red geraniums. The porch will be beautiful then and when the heat breaks, she’ll put on that frock she ordered from Bloomingdale’s, a frock that nobody would ever expect her to wear—bright green jungle print with loud-colored animals turned every which way—and she’ll set there in the swing with some iced tea in that pretty crystal goblet from the Ross-Simons set and she will open all her Harry and David goodies, maybe break out the Godiva chocolates she ordered several weeks ago and that caviar she was aching to try out even though she suspected that it was probably going to be a lot like when she got herself lox and bagels. Orange fish on a piece of tough bread. What was the Jews thinking, she wondered. “You can have it. Buy yourself some mouthwash, too,” she told that old man in the fish market. She said, “What has happened to you, man? This ain’t no fish market. Smoked fish and orange fish and ole slimy mess. Where’s the catfish? Where’s the flounder? Where’s the cornbread crumbs to roll it in before you fry it?” He laughed. He wanted to say that’s a black thing, a colored thing, a Negro thing, an African American, Afro-American, Kwanzaa-celebrating thing. Kwanzaa is what the white folks latch onto in a town such as this so they can act like they’re teaching their children something. Teach them collards. Teach them don’t cross the street and hold tight to your purse when you see a black man.

  THAT BIRD WITH the sad sound is high in the oak and now Mary knows she has to go and see it for real. She makes her way, naked and dark, heavy bare feet wedged into satin slippers, the perfect end of the busy day for the woman of the nineties. She stares one step ahead, the brown painted floor. Who painted it last? Her daddy? That man that tried to take up with her that time? Don’t trip. Don’t fall. Dark floorboards she used to walk as a child, arms held to the sides and balanced. She was on a plank high above the Pee Dee River. Below her were alligators and above her were snakes swinging from the limbs. And watching her was everybody in the whole town—man and woman and black and white. All the children in her school held their breath as she crossed, her own breath held. You can do it, Mary, they say, You can do it. In her mind she is always being a hero.

  HER DADDY SAID, “Mary, what are you doing?” and he yanked her through the kitchen doorway, her white cotton socks stained brown from the paint. “Didn’t I tell you not to walk on that floor? Didn’t I tell you?” And his grip on her arm hurt and she shut her eyes and waited for a slap to sting her bare leg. Fly swatter, switch—ligustrum limb stripped of its leaves, a whistle through the air, a slap, a sting, pulling the skin up into a thin welt. She never got a whipping in her life that made her want to be a better person. It was the opposite. It made her want to be a bad person. It made her want to beat them right back. Bennie hisself thought that children who were beaten on would grow up to do the same to theirs unless they got hold of a book or two or talked to a person who might teach them different.

  “Bennie, you act like a white man,” she told him. “Like one of these teachers packed with brains.”

  “I act like a man is all,” he said and she was thinking, I wish you did, honey. I wish you did ’cause if you acted like most men, like the men I know, then I’d’ve had you by now. I’d’ve had you at least once.

  SHE WANTED HIM. He was the one she wanted. But he was too good for her. The floorboards are straight and narrow and it’s hard not to tip to the side. She made herself a promise never to strike a child. Never to hit a loved one. But beyond that any fool is fair game. She ain’t one to go hunting but you muscle your way into her life with some bad intentions and she will kill you. She says, “I can kill you. I will. I will kill you if I have to.”

  She’d done just that before when an old bloodthirsty bulldog belonging to some no-good down the street come into her yard like something from the wild and went after a little puppy belonging to those students next door. That dog walked right up and grabbed that puppy by the throat, broke its little neck, shook it like a dust rag, and that young boy was off on the steps wringing his hands and sobbing. And without thinking Mary got herself an axe and went after it. By then the animal had tore open the little one’s belly and was lapping right into it like it might be a bowl of milk and she brought that axe down before the mongrel could think. And yes, it looked at her. And its eyes looked frightened. Its eyes seemed to say I can’t help that I was raised this way. Raised to be angry and mean, but that didn’t stop Mary. And when a full day and night passed and nobody came looking for it, she wrapped its body in some old bath towels and called up the department of sanitation. The boy from next door came back later to say that there was nothing the doctor could do for his puppy. He stood outside her locked screen door, hands in his pockets as he shifted from side to side. “Thank you,” he said. “I hope I can help you some time.”

  OH THAT SAD SAD BIRD. Her daddy should hear it. He should have to hear it. And her mother. The boy from next door, his little bloody puppy wrapped in his nice leather jacket. He should hear it. She could let him help with the air conditioner. He is a grateful boy. He means well. And Bennie, God rest him. She opens the shade but now the bird has moved. It’s flown to the rooftop, then up past the hot glint of tin, rising and circling, higher and higher. She cups her hands up to the glass and watches, waits, holding her breath. She holds her breath, the pulse in her temple keeping beat with the kitchen clock that has hung there over the doorway since she was just a child watching the hands turn closer and closer to when her mother would get home. A mother should tend to her own home first. She stretches out on the cool floorboards to wait, pulling deep breaths in and out, in and out. She closes her eyes to the bright glint of the tin roof as she pictures the bird there, circling and swooping. When she can get up, when she is not feeling so tired, she will set up that air conditioner and she will unpack all of her beautiful things. And who would ever believe she had grown up to own such beautiful things? But for now she just needs to rest and wait, to tune her ear to that bird far far away, its wings spread as it lifts and circles the hot tin roof of her porch, circling and calling until others swarm in, filling the sky with darkness.

  Fish

  WHEN YOU LEARN that you are dying, you take off your glasses and never wear them again. I think that you don’t want to see the looks on our faces as we sit here by your bed. I think you want only the blurry outlines of our warm bodies bending and whispering, stroking your face here at the end when they say the senses of touch and hearing are what remain.

  The woman who had nursed you when you were a two year old with pneumonia sixty-odd years ago has come to be with you, hold your hand, speak softly about what a fine boy you have always been. We know your story about her and how you’ve always been sure she was the reason you had survived.

  I picture that long-ago scene, you on a little cot in the upstairs hallway, your siblings in the rooms on either side. Two older brothers in one room. Two older sisters in the other. There had been another child, a stillbirth the year before you were born, and there were stories of deformities and how it was a life that was never meant to be. You said that as a child you thought often how your partner had died and worried that you would share his fate, that your life also was never meant to be. When I picture your childhood bed, your little boy face from old photos, the corner of a house I remember well though it was torn down a long time ago, I see you, sweaty and shivering, and a young version of this very old woman by your side whispering words of love and kindness.

  “Oh honey,” she says and then turns away from your bed. We all know that she can’t save you this time.

  WHEN THE DOCTOR told
you that you were dying, you paused and then said, “I am sixty-four years old and I have had a good life.” You have not mentioned death since, except to say that you will be sorry to miss all the events in the lives of your grandchildren: recitals, ball games, graduations, weddings. Jeannie’s son, the oldest at eleven, cannot leave your side; he sits and repeats back to you all the stories you began making up for him when he was barely two. We are surprised that he remembers with such detail, but he doesn’t want us to listen. It is a secret he shares with you. You have given each of the grandchildren a secret story or joke at some time or another. They all take turns leaning in to kiss you, to whisper, to make you smile. Now you ask that I hold up the baby. “Hold him way up high,” you tell me. “I want to see his whole body.”

  YOU WERE TERRIFIED of the water, but you loved to step into it, chest deep, pool edge within reach. This was your metaphor for life. Nearby I dove, an extension of your limbs. I spiraled and flipped and you held your breath and cheered silently, one hand raised in victory, as I paddled my way back to you.

  And we fished, hip deep, waves lapping, surf pulling. You warned me about the undertow, the whirlpools, the sting-rays and jellyfish that appeared so benign. And when I caught what we called the toadfish—sharp serrated teeth and spiny jagged gills—you gave up and simply cut the line from the bloody hook wedged too deep within his mouth to reclaim. “Poor old guy,” you said as he twisted and flopped against the current. “His girlfriend is going to be so disappointed tonight.” You laughed, but I knew from the sadness in your eyes that you understood disappointment better than most.

  I asked if he was going to live and you said, “Oh, sure.”

  “He’ll have to stay home from school,” you said, nudging me with the pun. “But just think of the fishtales he’ll have for his chidren and grandchildren. He will always be the one that got away.”

  ON YOUR LAST DAY, Mom, Jeannie, and I sit by your bed and sing all of your favorite songs: “When You’re Smiling,” “I Can’t Get Started,” “Blue Moon.” You stare vacantly upward, your eyes dry and frozen. “Blink,” we say. “If you can hear us, just blink.”

  WHEN I WENT off to college you offered advice.

  1) If you get a flat, do not stop until you can pull into a well-lit, public place. Drive it on the rim if you have to.

  2) When you go to a party (if you have to go to a party), fix your own drink (if you have to have a drink). Guard and protect it the whole while just as you do yourself. An unopened beer is always a good choice.

  3) You are never too old to come home and it is never too late to call your parents to come and get you.

  AND WHEN I needed to come home, you came to get me. Terrified of flying, you flew, white-knuckled, sweaty. And you worried the whole time we loaded everything I owned—not much—and drove out to the interstate in our rental car. We both smoked then and that’s what we did all the way home. We played the radio, gave each other an occasional high five or victory sign, and revved our bodies with enough nicotine to go the whole long distance without stopping for the night. The trunk was crammed with things I had owned most of my life—quilts and books, stuffed animals and a rusty three-speed bike that had not worked right since it had gotten stolen and then returned in college. The backseat was filled with forgotten items, some of the wedding gifts still in their original packing—crystal and china and tiny fancy dishes I had never known what to do with. “We all make mistakes,” you said every hour or so. “And you’re young,” you added. “Your whole life is ahead of you.”

  And now I’m over forty and soon will give your advice to my own children. I have cans of Fix-A-Flat. I have a jack and a spare, flares, thermal blankets, change for a phone call. I always lock my doors. I don’t get in a car without glancing into the backseat. I do not go shopping at night by myself, even during the holidays when the parking lots are crowded. I only drink beer in the bottle and I know that I am still not too old to call, just that it’s not so easy these days.

  I’LL TELL YOU something you might not remember. It was during a summer vacation at Ocean Drive. Remember the little white cottage where we stayed on the bottom floor several years in a row? Young boys sold Krispy Kreme doughnuts door-to-door. Our upstairs neighbor greased his old (you weren’t even forty then) body in olive oil and whistled “Red Red Robin” so loud and so often that we all began to exist in that rhythm. There were raft rentals and sno-cones, sand and salt. Jeannie said we should write a note and bury it; she was nine and I was five. She said she had to do the writing. The note said: “It is 1963. We are the Miller sisters. We are two kids from Fulton, who are visiting South Carolina and some day when we are very old, we will return to dig this up and remember the day.” She said that when we returned we would drive Cadillac convertibles and live in mansions with handsome husbands. I added that we would have lots of fluffy puppies and kittens and she said she wrote that part down, too, though I couldn’t be sure because it was in cursive.

  But what I remember most is a can of red Play-Doh and how we had barely arrived and unpacked when I rolled and pressed the clay into the braided rug of the rental cottage. It got stuck there, a sticky mess, and I got in trouble. I rubbed ice cubes over the spot, rubbing and pulling every little speck. And isn’t it odd? I knew even as I sat there, rubbing and picking, that I would never forget, that I would think of it often. That I would grow up to believe that rectifying a mistake is sometimes reason enough to exist.

  YOUR FATHER MADE his living carving up dead barnyard bodies—cows, lambs, pigs. Your child’s eye made no connection between those bloody slabs hanging on hooks and the pet goat you kept in your backyard. You may not have connected the red of your father’s eyes to repossessed furniture and your mother’s sad anger. You only said nice things and we grew up to love him, so much so that I fell in love with a boy who smelled like him only to later realize that the treasured memory I carried of your father was one of straight bourbon and cigarette gone to ash.

  When you were late for school, you told the teacher the goat got loose, that you chased him for blocks on end. This was a teacher you adored, the same teacher who over thirty years later would also teach us, regularly confusing us with Mom, asking with a teasing grin if we were still sweet on you. The goat was your pet. That part was true. But what you really did on those days you hooked school was wander downtown and shoot pool in a dark ancient room where you stood and stared out. Your eyes were always drawn to the light. How frightened you must have been the first time you could not find any light at all. The times your heart was so heavy you could not rise up from the bed. Now if you told your story, others would step forward with their own. Now there are articles and books, more than you could ever read, miraculous medicines that take emotionally paralyzed people and bring them back to life. But not then. Then it seemed you were all alone with your fears and worries. And there were many people willing to let you believe that, to believe that your overwhelming sense of loss and sadness made you less of a man. It changed the way that I looked at a lot of people. Though told to respect my elders, I often did not. It was hard to respect ignorance and harder still to respect those who knew better but still offered nothing.

  YOU MUST HAVE seen us standing there those times, children who were afraid to move too far from where you were, even though it was summer beyond the windows of your bedroom and kids from the neighborhood called our names to come out and play tag or hide and go seek, to mount our bikes and take out after the mosquito truck. How shocking it must have been to look down from your hospital window that time and see us there in our Easter dresses waiting for you to come home. We were too young to visit inside, so you came out into the sunlight still wearing a light blue robe and navy terry cloth slippers. You stayed long enough for us to hug and hold onto you while you repeated how sorry you were, sorry that you had to be there. And after you went back inside the tall brick building, one of the adults told me to count up the windows until I got to the fifth floor, that you said you would be there t
o watch us drive away. I couldn’t see you—the windows were caged and dark—but we waved anyway.

  You had bought a card for us in the hospital gift shop and we opened it in the car. It was a happy card with ducks and bunnies and chickens, a card about love and joy and the birth of spring. It made us sad. The only resurrection I cared about was yours.

  Animals were my closest friends then: cats, dogs—ours, the neighbors’, wild skinny strays that I would offer bits of food in hopes of taming. You loved to talk about animals. Your childhood cat, Smoky Mac, once stuck his head in a jar, ears held back in curiosity as his whiskered nose bumped glass. Then he was alert, ears pricked and raised. And he found he could not get loose. He could not get his breath. He ran like wild, heavy jar tight like a helmet, and you, a boy no older than nine or ten, chased after him. You caught his wild body and pinned him down. You cracked the jar with a rock so he could breathe, and though he hissed and scratched, and though he did not come home until the next day, he knew to be grateful. He sat near you whenever he could. He never scratched you or stuck his head in a jar again.

  WHEN YOU COME home from the hospital this time, we know that it is the beginning of the end. We know that you will no longer sleep in your own bed, but in one that is equipped with bars and an IV line, an oxygen tube. We will come to rely on the hospice workers who come and go throughout the day.

  When you came home that other time, it felt like life was starting again. You were young and had many years ahead of you. There was hope. Your dad arrived in a taxi and sat quietly with his hat on his lap; he wanted to say things but he didn’t know how. In less than a year, he would not be able to say anything at all, a stroke and throat cancer having left him to stare out at the end of his life. On one of those afternoons, I went with you to visit him in the hospital, but again, I was not allowed inside. The adults took turns going in so that someone stayed with me under the huge trees where I fed the squirrels, so fat and friendly that they came and sat right in front of me and begged. I asked you to read to me, and you said that you would, but could we please read something other than The Little Match Girl. But that was the one I wanted; I wanted to cry. I liked to cry. It had become a kind of hobby, this need to imagine myself or someone I loved taken away. I had to prepare myself. Even now, I feel that’s what I’m doing—every word, every image is a match struck in an attempt to hold on.