by David Gates
“Okay, if you’ll wash those, I’ll start the piecrust,” she said, opening the cabinet and handing Karen the colander.
“What happened to the boys?” Karen said, looking out the window. “I don’t see the truck.”
“Probably went someplace to measure cocks with the locals. Saturday in Vermont. You go buy a case of beer, then go over to somebody’s house and watch him work on his car. Paul is nothing if not assimilated.”
“Allen must be in seventh heaven,” Karen said. “He’ll have some real Americana to lay on everybody back at Time Warner. So is Paul serious about all this? Or is he just collecting material?”
“Material for a beer belly, maybe. Which he’s already getting. I don’t know, you’d have to understand Paul. Question is, does anybody want to understand Paul.”
“Well—you, presumably.”
“Right,” Faye said. “There’s always me. Listen, let’s get these pies in the oven, and maybe we can go for a swim.”
“That would be great.” Karen poured blueberries from the coffee cans into the colander, began running water, then turned the faucet off. “Wait. Why am I doing this?”
“Don’t go philosophical on me.”
“I mean, what are we washing off? They don’t use insecticide up there in the woods, do they?”
Faye looked out the window. “How would anybody know? If it’s not insecticide, it’s acid rain or God knows what. The deer come through and piss on them, I don’t know. Actually I think New York’s the only place a nature lover should really live. Put up your Ansel Adams calendar, and you’re in business.” She dug the measuring cup into the bag of flour, held her palm against the outside of the bag to level it off and dumped the flour into the mixing bowl. “Could you get down the Wesson oil? Up in that cupboard?”
Karen stood on tiptoes and craned her neck, tilting bottles to look behind them. “Canola oil?”
“Sorry, that’s what I meant. See, this isn’t the boonies. A mere twenty miles to the nearest supermarket.” Faye measured oil into the cup and dumped it over the flour. Then she held the cup under the faucet and measured water.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Karen said. “I thought you were supposed to mix the oil and water first and then keep adding flour to it.”
“It all ends up together anyhow,” said Faye. “I can’t put it together—it is together.” She measured out salt and baking powder. “Okay, we need room on that counter to roll this stuff out. Have you picked over those berries?”
Karen started moving junk off the counter. “You’ve got amazing counter space,” she said. “Even on the West Side the kitchens really aren’t big enough.”
“Counter space,” Faye said. “Sounds like what’s inside a black hole.” She fluttered her fingers and intoned the word in Twilight Zone baritone: “Coun-ter-space.”
Karen laughed.
“There’s a rolling pin in that drawer,” Faye said. “By the fridge? God, I actually own a rolling pin. If I had a bathrobe and curlers, I could give the boys a real American welcome.”
“This really is America, isn’t it?” said Karen. “The womenfolk in the kitchen and the boys out God knows where. Is this really what it’s like here?”
“Honey,” Faye said in her hillbilly voice, “this rot year is jes’ the tip of the osberg of what it’s lock year. It’s th’unstable sufface thoo which th’unwayry”—now she’d slipped into her black radio preacher voice and was rolling her eyes—“is lahble to fawel, at enna instant. Now, sistah—” Karen was laughing again. Faye stopped and looked out the window. “I don’t know,” she said in her own voice. “It’s a good question. I really have no idea what it’s like here.”
Faye sat on the bed and dug her right heel into her left heel to work her shoe off without having to untie it, pried the other shoe off with the bare toes of her left foot and stretched out on top of the quilt. She’d told Karen she was still feeling iffy, given her a towel and explained how to get down to the brook; she was going to lie down for half an hour, take the pies out, and maybe afterward she’d come join her. But the hangover was only part of it. She hadn’t seen Karen in, what, four years? Shouldn’t she be able to endure two days? It was quarter after one. She could nap until quarter of two, take the pies out, pick up around the house a little. That still left a lot of hours. She made a fist and started sticking out fingers: quarter to three, four, five, six … God, nine or ten more hours today, and at least another, what, five or six tomorrow. A minimum of fourteen more hours, and you’ve only gotten through—let’s see—maybe four hours last night and three or four today. Like a third of the way through.
She closed her eyes and started watching for the crazy thought, the one that meant she was asleep. Although examining each thought to see if it was crazy made it harder for the crazy one to come. She realized she was clenching her eyelids, relaxed them and felt her face get longer, all the way down to her chin: her jaw dropped, her teeth parted. This was the way your face needed to feel if you were to receive the crazy thought. She went down through her body, checking for tension; she found it, then relaxed it, in the neck, in the shoulders, in the stomach, in the buttocks, in the thighs, in the knees, in the feet. What was the term for them, those head-to-toe descriptions of women in medieval literature, in which lovers itemized their ladies’ attractions?
English 242, Beowulf to Chaucer. A seminar room with cinder-block walls, and windows you pulled down to open; like an oven door, except they stopped at an acute angle. Outside, blue sky, trees starting to turn. Fall semester, her junior year, first day of class. She waited to learn what name he would answer to, the one with the violin case and the wrinkled oxford shirt and the full lower lip, unsmiling. Then three unforgivable weeks of catching his eye and simpering. In those days, Ben practiced six hours at a stretch, and he dropped the class before midterms. But by that time—well, not what you want to be thinking about. This much was clear: she had been married to him, but he had never been married to her. It had all been an invasion of his privacy. And it had meant nothing the time he’d come with her to the vet’s to have poor, sick, old Bootsy put down; on a plastic sofa, in a waiting room that stank of disinfectant, he’d turned to her and said, “There’s always me.” So when he left and she learned that he was still growing inside her, she’d had him uprooted. She was still uprooting him, every day.
She checked for tension again, found clenched fists. So puzzling that after being in this body for thirty-odd years you still don’t know how to shut it down. Yet somehow it happens: the crazy thought comes, and that’s the last you know.
Faye set the pies on the counter and turned off the oven. She felt worse for having slept: the inside of her mouth tasted foul, and a pinpoint of headache was coming and going high on the left side of her forehead. She washed the mixing bowls and the rolling pin, ran water through the colander, wiped off the countertop. She took Paul’s book off the dining room table and reshelved it in the living room, between The Golden Bowl and The Penal Colony.
Down at the brook, Karen was sitting against the big beech tree, her hair wet, her shorts and T-shirt dry.
“Hi,” said Faye, seating herself on the big rock. “Looks like you found it okay. How’s the water?”
“Muddy. But nice. You going in?”
“No. I was being polite. What are you reading?”
Karen held up Jung’s Answer to Job.
“Yikes. How is it?”
“Muddy. Entertaining, in a weird way. He’s trying to psychoanalyze God. I think.” She picked up a beech leaf to mark her place, and set the book on the ground. “You are being polite.”
“Okay,” Faye said, “I’ll stop. If you want Paul, you can have him.”
“What?”
“Oh, shit. Forget I said it. Please? Sometimes I just get the impulse to say something completely insane just to see what happens next.”
“Faye. What is this? Why would you think—”
Faye shook her head. “You don’t
get it. I mean, I don’t blame you.” She stood up and brushed off the seat of her jeans. “I’m sorry, Karen. Really. Look, it would be a mistake to take me seriously. Really. I just say things all the time now.”
Karen got up and put an arm around Faye’s shoulders. “You’re really not doing so hot, are you?”
Faye shook her head. Karen moved in front of her to put both arms around her.
Faye twisted away. “Really. Don’t. Karen, just please don’t.” She walked to the edge of the brook and squatted to put a hand in the water. “Too cold,” she said. “You about ready for a drink? It must be almost happy hour.”
“Look. Would it be better if Allen and I left tonight? If we can’t change our plane tickets, there must be a bus or something.”
“Karen, no, really. Absolutely not. Could you just forget it? Just”—she cut through the air with her hand at chest level—“canceled. Really. Okay?”
“Do you want to tell me what this is about? It’s not about Paul.”
“No,” Faye said. “I guess it’s not about Paul. Poor Paul. Then again, poor Paul can take care of himself.”
Karen looked at the water. “I was going to ask you before if you still heard anything from Ben.”
“Card on my birthday. With a note. There was a shitty day.”
“Where is he?”
“Leavenworth, Washington. I looked it up on the map. The nearest big place is Wenatchee. It’s on Route Two. Which happens to be the same Route Two that goes through Burlington. What you came here on. He said he’s living in a cabin and building violins. I assume he’s there with somebody. He said he still thinks about me.”
“Bastard,” Karen said.
“I don’t know,” Faye said. “Yeah, sure. On the other hand, why not say what you feel like saying? It’s just that it’s so fucking unfair. I mean, I have to take Route Two to get to the fucking supermarket.”
“Listen,” said Karen. “Just one piece of sisterly advice and I’ll shut up, okay?”
Faye shrugged. “Shoot.”
“Wouldn’t it be better all around if you just let go of him? And tried to repair what you’ve got with Paul?”
“Right. Absolutely right. Now shall we go get that drink? Time’s a-wasting.” Faye stood up and motioned with her thumb. Karen sighed and followed her up the path.
They’d gotten all the way up to the road when Karen said, “Crap. My book. You don’t have to wait for me.” She started back down the path, and Faye watched the sunlight and shadow make zebra stripes on her long legs until she disappeared into the trees. Faye ducked through the fence between the strands of barbed wire, pushing the top one up, away from her hair and her back, and keeping her calves clear of the bottom one. Then she straightened up, looked across the road at the house and saw Paul’s truck parked in the dooryard, alongside Thurston Martin’s. She decided to pick wildflowers and wait for Karen.
She’d gathered a few Indian paintbrushes and black-eyed Susans and was looking for ferns to set them off when Karen came squirming through the fence.
“Lucky you,” Faye said. “You get to see the Thurston Martin show.”
Karen fanned herself with her book. “Will I like it?”
“De gustibus non est disputandum. As Thurston might say.”
She could smell cigarette smoke through the screen door. The three men were sitting at the kitchen table. Faye said, “Hello, Thurston,” and breezed past to get a Mason jar for the flowers. Then, remembering her manners, she turned to introduce her sister and saw Karen staring. A shotgun lay across the table, on top of its zippered case, among the beer cans. One, unopened, had the plastic thing still attached: five empty circles. No opera today.
“Oh, for a camera,” Faye said. “Wouldn’t I give Diane Arbus a run for her money.”
Paul’s face was red, maybe from the sun, maybe from drinking. “Thurston’s going to sell me his shotgun,” he said. His accent got thicker when Thurston was around.
Faye shot him a quick fake smile. “Oh. And what will Thurston do for a shotgun?”
“Hell, I got two, three over to the house,” Thurston said. “This one here, this used to belong to my father.” He took a last drag of his cigarette and stuck it into a beer can. Hiss.
“What do you intend to do with a shotgun, Paul? Shoot hippies?”
Thurston laughed.
“It’s hunting season coming up,” Paul said. “And I been thinking it might not be a bad idea to have something around anyway. Just in general.”
“In general?” Faye said.
“Plus that woodchuck’s been at your garden.”
“Christ,” said Thurston, who pronounced it to rhyme with floor joist, “you don’t want to go after him with a shotgun. Tear up the friggin’ plants. You want a twenty-two if you’re looking for a varmint gun.”
“Oh, do get a varmint gun,” Faye said. “You could get rid of all the undesirables.”
“Hey, Allen?” Karen said. “Come here a second, I have to show you what Faye’s been doing in the garden.” Allen looked puzzled, but he stood up and Faye watched them walk out the screen door hand in hand, Karen in her little shorts. She turned back to the table and saw Thurston looking.
“That your sister?” he said, wrenching the plastic off the last beer.
“That’s right,” Faye said. “And if we were all as diplomatic as my sister, I could be talking with Paul right now.”
Thurston popped the beer open, stood up and looked at Paul. “You want me to—” He pointed his thumb at the shotgun.
“Just leave it,” said Paul.
“Be outside,” Thurston said.
When the screen door slapped behind him, Faye said, “I won’t have that in the house. You can tell your friend the sale’s off.”
“The hell’s this?” Paul said. “It’s not your money. You sit in the goddamn house feeling sorry for yourself while I’m on the goddamn truck all day. So you don’t tell me.”
“What is this, the ‘Working Man’s Blues’? Give me a break, Paul. I mean, this is a game: we live in this house because you closed out an IRA and plunked down fifty thousand dollars. So don’t hand me this Merle Haggard bullshit.”
“You think it’s a game? We come here on the strength of God knows what, you get laid off and you decide to have a breakdown. Where, exactly, do you think the mortgage payments come from every month? Not from you.”
“You love to think you’re a helpless victim,” she said. “Because it absolves you of any and all responsibility.”
“I love to think I’m a victim?”
“And then you get to say, ‘She’s a castrating bitch, she humiliated me in front of my friends,’ and everybody is so sympathetic. Why don’t you go out and talk to Karen? I’m sure she’s just dying, just itching, to listen to all your little marital problems.”
Paul stared at her. “You’re psychotic,” he said.
“Oh, he’s talking better all of a sudden. Are we dropping the mask? What happened to the working-class hero?” She stuck out her lips and put on a deep voice. “You got it, bitch?”
“Okay,” he said. “End of discussion. I am buying, this gun, from Thurston. Clear?”
“Paul,” Faye said. “In view of everything, do you really think it’s a good idea to have a gun in this house?”
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll keep it in the truck, how’s that? I’ll go the whole route, the gun rack and everything. And that way you can have the pleasure of complaining to your sister that I’ve gone native.”
She gave him the finger, then said, “It smells in here.”
Out in the garden, she found Karen and Allen, her arm around his waist, talking with Thurston Martin, who was squatting by one of the zucchini plants. The three heads turned, and Thurston got to his feet, dangling his beer can between fingertips and opposable thumb. “Just saying you ought to pick some of these big ones,” he said.
“Thanks for your concern, Thurston,” Faye said. “You can go back in now. The little woma
n has been put in her place.”
Thurston looked at her, then started for the house.
“Faye?” said Karen. “Allen and I think we should head back tonight. Allen’s got a bunch of work to do before Monday.”
“Oh,” Faye said. “Should I be gracious? That’s clearly what’s called for here.”
Allen looked at the ground. Karen said, “He really does have work. And it doesn’t seem as if our being here is helping things any. I mean, we obviously didn’t pick a very good time.”
“Aren’t you diplomatic,” Faye said.
“Not really,” Karen said, “But I just want you to know, if you ever feel like coming down, either by yourself or—”
“Yeah. Well. Thanks. Look, you’re both handling this very smoothly, and old Faye intends to hold up her end. I’ll tell Paul what’s going on so you don’t have to go through all that again, he can drive you over to Burlington, we’ll find a shopping bag so you can carry that pie, and we’ll just have this whole thing together in no time.”
“Faye, I’m really sorry.”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “Come on, come on, you’re taking this way too seriously. This will all blow over. You guys can come back in December and we’ll have an old-fashioned Christmas, what do you say? Paul can kill us a goose with his shotgun, and we’ll all sit around and drink smoking bishop.”
Faye sat on the doorstep looking across the road. She had listened and listened, following the sound of the truck into silence; by now it had been silent for God knows how long. Here and there the scream of a jay, and that was all. She tried to wish that if the truck were going to crash it would wait to crash on the way back, so only Paul would die. It wasn’t actually a heavy thing, wishing people dead; she had learned this during her analysis. Everybody did it. Obvious example: children wishing their parents dead. Of course they feel guilty if that wish should appear to come true—the child is angry with the parents, the parents coincidentally die in a car crash—and then they need to enter analysis to straighten out the misunderstanding. But what about when parents wish their children dead? “These are not children,” her shrink had said, when she told him about her abortion. He’d said it angrily, unless she’d misperceived. The quality of the life, that was his concern. “We are physicians,” he had said, full of indignation at human suffering. In his work with teenage mothers, he’d seen what damage could be done. Yet damage was the foundation stone of his practice. So it all went around and around and around.
