Patchwork

by Bobbie Ann Mason

  “I love you,” Jazz said.

  When I woke up at daylight, Jazz was still holding me, curled around me like a mother protecting her baby. The music was still playing, on infinite repeat.

  Charger

  FROM Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail (2001)

  As he drove to the shopping center, Charger rehearsed how he was going to persuade his girlfriend, Tiffany Marie Sanderson, to get him some of her aunt Paula’s Prozac. He just wanted to try it, to see if it was right for him. Tiffany hadn’t taken him seriously when he had mentioned it before. “Don’t you like to try new things?” he asked her. He would try anything, except unconventional food. But she seemed more interested in redecorating her room than in revamping her mind.

  He cruised past the fast-food strip, veered into the left-turn lane, and stopped at the light. He stared at the red arrow like a cat waiting to pounce. He made the turn and scooted into a good spot in the shopping-center parking lot. At the drink machines in front of the home-fashions store where Tiffany worked after school, he reached into his work pants for a couple of quarters. He needed to wash himself out. He felt contaminated from the chemicals at work. He fed the quarters into a machine, randomly selecting the drink he would have chosen anyway—the Classic. He wondered if there was any freedom of choice about anything.

  Tiffany wanted to get married in June, right after her graduation. He had not proposed, exactly, but the idea had grown. He was uneasy about it. His mother said he was too young to marry—nineteen, a baby. She pointed out that he could barely make his truck payments and said Tiffany would expect new furniture and a washer and dryer. And Charger knew that Tiffany’s fat-assed father disapproved of him. He said Charger was the type of person who would fall through the cracks when he found out he couldn’t rely on his goofy charm to keep him out of trouble. Tiffany’s father called it “riding on your face.” Charger was inclined to take that as a compliment. He believed you had to use your natural skills to straddle the cracks of life if you were going to get anywhere at all. Apparently he gave the impression that he wasn’t ready for anything—like a person half-dressed who suddenly finds himself crossing the street. Yet he was not a fuck-up, he insisted to himself.

  Tiffany appeared in front of the store, a bright smile spreading across her face. She wore tight little layers of slinky black. She had her hair wadded up high on her head like a squirrel’s nest, with spangles hanging all over it. She had on streaks of pink makeup and heavy black eyebrows applied like pressure-sensitive stickers. She was gorgeous.

  “Hi, babe,” she said, squinching her lips in an air kiss.

  “Hi, beautiful,” Charger said. “Want something to drink?” Then she raised her hand and he saw the bandage on her thumb. “Hey, what happened?” he asked, touching her hand.

  “I mashed my thumb in the drill press in shop.”

  “Holy shit! You drilled a hole in your thumb?”

  “No. It’s just a bruise. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  “How did it happen?” He held her hand, but she pulled it away from him.

  “I was holding a piece of wood for Tammy Watkins? And we were yakking away, and I had my thumb in too far, and she brought the drill press right down on my thumb. But not the drill, just the press part.”

  “I bet that hurt. Does it still hurt?”

  “It’s O.K. I’m just lucky I didn’t lose my dumb thumb.”

  As they walked down the sidewalk, she repeated the details of her accident. He gulped some Coke. His stomach burned. He could hardly bear to listen as he imagined the drill press crunching her thumb. He whistled in that ridiculous way one does on learning something astounding. Then he whistled again, just to hear the sound. It blotted out the image of the drill going through her thumb.

  “I might lose my thumbnail, but it’ll grow in again,” Tiffany said.

  “I wish I could kiss it and make it all better,” he said. His throat ached, and he itched.

  “No problem,” she said. “Didn’t you ever mash a finger with a hammer?”

  “Yeah. One time when I was cracking hickory nuts.”

  A young couple carrying a baby in a plastic cradle emerged from the pizza place. The woman was mumbling something about rights. The man said, “I don’t give a damn what you do. Go to Paducah for all I care.”

  Charger guided Tiffany by the elbow through the traffic into the parking lot. She said, “I asked Aunt Paula about her pills, and she said I didn’t need one.” Tiffany swung her bandaged hand awkwardly in his direction, as if she were practicing a karate move. She laughed. “And I can’t open her pill bottle and sneak one out with this thing on my thumb.”

  “It looks like a little Kotex,” he said.

  She giggled. “Not exactly. How would you know?”

  “Did you tell Paula the pill was for me?”

  “No.” Her voice shifted into exasperation. “If you want one, go ask her yourself.”

  “Man, I gotta get me one of those pills.” He struck a theatrical pose, flinging the back of his hand against his forehead. “I’m so depressed, I’m liable to just set down right here in the parking lot and melt into that spot of gop over there. I get depressed easy.” He snapped his fingers. “I go down just like that.”

  They reached his truck, and he slammed his hands on the hot hood. Then he realized that Tiffany was holding up her thumb like a hitchhiker, waiting for him to open the door for her. She said, “Charger, you’re not depressed. I don’t believe that. It’s just something you’ve heard on TV.”

  “When do I hear TV? I don’t even watch it.” They were talking across the hood.

  “I don’t get depressed,” said Tiffany. Her hair seemed to lift like wings, along with her spirit. “I always say, if I’ve got my lipstick on, nothing else matters.”

  “I know, Miss Sunshine.”

  “Why would you get depressed anyway? You’ve got a decent job at the bomb plant. You’ve got a truck with floating blue lights. You’ve got a fiancée—me. You’ve got nothing to complain about.”

  Charger didn’t answer. Stepping around to her side, he opened her door and boosted her in. The fun of having a high-rider was helping girls in, cupping their rear pears in his eager paws. Yet he had not tried out this automotive technique on many girls, because he started going with Tiffany soon after he bought the truck. She always squealed with pleasure when he heaved her in. Charger had fallen for Tiffany when she stole the YARD OF THE MONTH sign from someone’s yard and ran naked with it down the street at midnight. He had dared her to do it, while he waited in his truck at the end of the street. It was a street where big dudes lived, people who spent piles of money on yard decorators and had swimming pools behind fences. Now he loved her, probably, and he wanted to have sex with her every day, but he had trouble telling her his deepest thoughts. He didn’t want her to laugh at him. He wasn’t sure he was depressed, but he was curious about Prozac. It was all the rage. He had heard it was supposed to rewire the brain. That idea intrigued him. He liked the sound of it too—Prozac, like some professional athlete named Zack. “Hi, I’m Zack. And I’m a pro. I’m a pro at everything I do. Just call me Pro Zack.”

  Tiffany had told him that her aunt Paula took Prozac because she was worried about her eyelids bagging. Her insurance wouldn’t cover a facelift or an eye tuck, but it would pay for anti-depressants if she was depressed about her face—or about her health coverage. Prozac seemed to give her a charge of self-esteem, so that she could live with her baggy eyes. “I feel good about myself,” Paula was fond of announcing now.

  That was what Charger was interested in, a shift of attitude. Bad moods scared him. He didn’t know where they came from. Sometimes he just spit at the world and roared around like a demon in his truck, full of meanness. He had actually kicked at his father’s dog, and the other day he deliberately dropped his mother’s Christmas cactus, still wrapped in its florist’s foil. His father had disappeared in December, and now it was May. Months passed before they heard from him. Hi
s mother pretended indifference. She didn’t even call the police or report him missing. “He’ll come back with his tail between his legs,” she said. Charger believed that she knew where his father was and just didn’t want him to know.

  Charger answered the telephone when his father finally called, in April, from Texas. He had left the day before Christmas and just kept driving; once he got out of Kentucky, he couldn’t turn back, he said. Might as well see what there is to see, he said. He hadn’t had a chance to call, and he knew Charger’s mother wouldn’t worry about him.

  “Are you coming back?” Charger wanted to know.

  “Depends on what the future holds,” his father said vaguely.

  “What do you mean by that?” Charger said, thinking that his father wouldn’t be happy even if he did come back. He realized how sad-faced and thin his dad had been. He was probably having a better time where he was, out looking at skies. “I never knew about skies before,” his dad had said in a mysteriously melancholy voice. He started singing a song, as if the telephone were a microphone and he had grabbed a stage opportunity. “Ole buttermilk sky, can’t you see my little donkey and me, we’re as happy as a Christmas tree.” In a hundred years, Charger would not have imagined his dad bursting into song.

  Charger sometimes looked at his life as if he were a spy peering through a telescope. The next afternoon he could see himself and Tiffany as though he were watching from the other side of town. He saw a carefree young couple frolicking at Wal-Mart together. At least, that was how he tried to picture himself with Tiffany—as beautiful people in a commercial, scooting around having fun. They played hide-and-go-seek in the maze of tall aisles, piled to the ceiling with goods. He whistled “Buttermilk Sky,” and she followed the sound from aisle to aisle. She caught him in lingerie, where the canyons of housewares gave way to prairies of delicate flowers.

  “I win!” she cried, taunting him with a pair of pink panties on a hanger.

  A country-western star was at the store that day, signing pictures to promote his new album. He was a young heartthrob named Andy or Randy something. He was sitting at a table next to a shopping cart full of his CDs. Charger didn’t trust the guy. His shirt was too fancy.

  “Bet he didn’t buy them duds here,” Charger said to Tiffany.

  “He doesn’t have to,” Tiffany said, her breath trailing like gauze. “Oh, I’ve got to get his autograph.”

  Charger stood waiting in line with Tiffany, feeling ridiculous. Tiffany had on snake pants. Her legs looked like two sensational boa constrictors. They were attracting comments. A woman and a little girl were standing in line behind Charger and Tiffany. The woman—overdressed in beads and floral fabric—was eyeing Tiffany.

  “She’s going on his tour,” Charger told the woman impulsively. “She’s a singer.”

  “Oh,” the woman gasped. “Do you know him?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” Charger told the woman. He felt his orneriness kicking in. He couldn’t help himself when opportunities like this arose. “We’re in his entourage. What do you need to know about country’s newest sensation, Randy what’s-his-name?”

  “Andy,” Tiffany said, elbowing him.

  The woman said, “I’m a lounge pianist and former gospel artist? I’ve been trying for months to get my tapes to Andy.” She had the tapes in her hand. “I know he’d love them. Our hearts are on the same wavelength. His songs tell my life story.” She jerked her head to the left. “Get back here, Reba,” she yelled to the little girl, who had spun off down the cosmetics aisle. She reeled the child in and continued at some length. She said her life was a Barbara Mandrell kind of story, involving a car wreck and a comeback. The woman wore a country-music hairdo—a mountain of frizz and fluff that looked to Charger as though it had sprung out of a jack-in-the-box.

  A number of young girls in the line—pre-babe material, Charger thought—had long frizzed and fluffed hair too.

  “Your story is an inspiration,” Charger said to the woman.

  Tiffany whispered to Charger, “You’re embarrassing me.”

  The gospel-lounge singer heard and frowned at Tiffany. Charger imagined the woman sticking out her tongue.

  Charger said, “If you give me your name and number, I’ll have you on television inside a month.”

  “Here’s my card,” the woman said. “You’ll put in a word to him about my tapes, won’t you?” She took her child’s hand. “Come on, Reba. Stay in this line or I’m going to skin your butt.”

  The little girl clutched one of Andy’s CDs and a box of hamster food.

  “I like hamsters. I had hamster for supper last night,” Charger said, making a face at the child.

  Tiffany made the same face at Charger. “Why do you do things like that?” she said. “It irks me.”

  “Irk? I irk? Well, pardon me all over the place.” He flapped his arms like a bird. “Irk. Irk.” Teasingly, he nudged Tiffany with his knee, and then he pinched her on the rear end. “I’m a hawk. Irk.”

  “Cool.”

  Afterward, as they drove out of the crowded parking lot, Tiffany was engrossed in her autographed picture of the cowboy warbler. As she traced her finger along the signature, her bandaged thumb seemed to erase his face. She had grown quiet when it was her turn to meet the star. She had said to him, “All I can say is, ‘Wow.’”

  “He probably never heard anything so stupid,” she said now, as Charger turned onto the main drag. “I was so excited I couldn’t think of what to say!”

  “I’m sure what you said is exactly what he wanted to hear,” Charger said. “He eats it up. Isn’t he from Atlanta? He probably thinks we’re just dumb hicks here.”

  Tiffany said excitedly, “Oh, let’s go to Atlanta this weekend.”

  “And blow my paycheck?”

  “We can manage.”

  Charger braked at the red light. He stared at Tiffany as if he had just picked up a hitchhiker. Sometimes he felt he didn’t know her at all. Her snake legs squirmed—impatient to shed their skins, he thought.

  On Friday after work Charger decided to go straight to the source. He thought that Tiffany’s aunt might give him some of her Prozac if he caught her in the right mood. Paula was O.K. She covered for them when Tiffany spent the night with him. Paula said that her sister, Tiffany’s mother, would die if she knew about the little overnight trips in Charger’s truck.

  Paula hadn’t expected him, but she seemed pleased to see him at the door. She brought him through the living room into the kitchen. “Don’t look at this garbage,” she said.

  She had school projects—flags and Uncle Sam dolls and Paul Revere hats—scattered around. She taught fourth grade.

  Charger noticed that her eyelids drooped down onto her eyelashes, but her face had few wrinkles. He wondered how long Tiffany’s eyelids would hold up. She resembled her aunt—the same smidgen nose and whirlpool curls.

  Paula handed him a glass of ice and a two-liter Coke. He poured, and the Coke foamed over onto the kitchen counter. He sat numbly on a stool, embarrassed. While she wiped up the spill, she said, “This morning I dressed in the dark and put on one blue sock and one green sock?” She laughed. “At school I got a citation for a fashion violation. At school we get citations for bad hair, static cling, leopard-skin underwear beneath white pants, color clash, sock displacement. The fashion police sentenced me to work in the beehive section of the fashion salon.”

  “You’ve still got on a blue sock and a green sock,” Charger said. He wondered how her fourth-graders dealt with her high-pitched babbling.

  “Do you want a mayonnaise sandwich?” she asked.

  “No. Do you eat kid food, being’s you’re a teacher?”

  “I have to have at least a teaspoon of Miracle Whip a day or I’ll blow my brains out,” she said. “Bill won’t eat anything at lunch but crackers. I get mad at him because he won’t eat the food I leave for him. He won’t eat fruits and vegetables. I said, ‘There are some grapes on the counter.’ He said, ‘Are
they washed?’ I said no. He said, ‘I don’t have to wash crackers.’ But he’s sure slim and trim on the cracker diet. I’ll give him that.”

  “Give that man a Twinkie!” Charger said, jumping off the stool in what he thought was a dramatic gesture. “You don’t have to wash Twinkies.”

  “I don’t know if he ought to eat Twinkies.”

  “Well, if that don’t work, give him a Ding Dong.” He grinned.

  “He’s already got a ding-dong.”

  “Then give him a Little Debbie.”

  “But I don’t want him to have a little Debbie.”

  Charger laughed. “Little Debbies are my favorite.”

  “Charger, you’re such a great kidder.” She laughed with him, shaking her head. “And you’re such a baby.”

  When Charger finally got around to mentioning Paula’s Prozac, she didn’t seem surprised that he wanted to try the drug.

  “I need to reprogram my head,” he said.

  “Why not go to church? Or take piano lessons?”

  “Why don’t you?”

  Paula opened a cabinet above the toaster and chose a vial of pills. “You don’t really need these pills, Charger. You just need to believe in yourself more.”

  “My self doesn’t have that much to do with it.”

  “Maybe you just haven’t found it yet. You’ve got a deep soul, Charger. Tiffany doesn’t see it yet, but she will, in time.”

  She shook the pill bottle in his face like a baby rattle. She said, “One of the side effects of these little numbers is that they can make you nonorgasmic. But I’ve tested that thoroughly, and it’s not true for me. I don’t have that side effect!” She laughed loudly. “I don’t think you want one of these, Charger.”

  “It might be just what I need to relax my sex machine. It’s running away with me.” He winked.

  She turned serious. She put the pills back in the cabinet and said, “Charger, I believe you’re scared. You don’t act like you’re ready to settle down and have a family. Have you given any thought to what you would do if you and Tiffany had a baby?”