Joy

by Erin McGraw

  In the days that follow I keep my distance, and at night she runs her fingernails through my hair, along my scalp, until I shiver. We go to dinner at Hannah’s; she nods as she watches Liz and me, and rubs my knee under the table. I volunteer to wash the dishes while Hannah and Liz are watching a murder on ID: Discovery. Hannah’s a messy cook and her saucepans are horrifying, but it’s soothing to scrub away for a few minutes, until Hannah comes in.

  “Who killed the guy?”

  “Commercial. You can just let that soak.”

  “I don’t mind scrubbing. It’s stress relief.”

  “Are you stressed?”

  Well, I am now, feeling her breath on my neck. “Things are going better between Liz and me.”

  “I could tell. You two are laughing now. I love it when you laugh.”

  There’s a baked-on bit of something on the saucepan, big as a freckle. I put my whole weight into getting it off, and Hannah runs her finger down my arm. “I should sic you on all of my pots.”

  When I turn around, Hannah’s so close that I’m already in her arms, already crying. “What kind of marriage is this? She only likes me when I’m far away.”

  “Shh,” Hannah says, kissing my neck. She doesn’t seem to mind how I stiffen. “She loves you. She just doesn’t like to be bored.”

  I’m doing the awful kind of crying, snot everywhere. Stretching to keep my mouth away from hers, I say, “Is marriage boring?” From the living room, gunfire.

  Hannah reaches to push a curl out of my eye. Liz’s voice from the doorway is exasperated. “Christ, Mom, what do you think you’re doing?”

  “Saving your marriage.”

  “Doesn’t look like it.”

  “Do you want to grab her and go home?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  The laugh that flares between them is explosive, and far away from my sudden, soggy anger. Still laughing, Liz takes one of my hands. “Come into the living room. They’re about to arraign the guy who stole the gun.” In that moment, her eyes flashing, she looks exactly like her mother. This is what she will look like in twenty-five years.

  Hannah looks at me triumphantly. “Let the pot soak. It will clean itself.”

  She’s wrong. I leave them and scrub it for another ten minutes after the show is over. The sound of their laughter in the living room is familiar and steady and I don’t want to hear it anymore, like a song I’ve played all the pleasure out of.

  Phantom

  I can hear the music from the driveway—the awful see-saw of the voice, the gluey strings, the whole melodramatic marshmallow mess of it. Phantom of the Opera. My wife, Sarah, must be going out of her mind.

  This has to be Carmina’s doing, which means it’s well intended, though I don’t know how much intentions matter right now. Sarah’s got maybe seventy-two hours left, and she doesn’t want to spend any of them listening to Andrew Lloyd Webber.

  Disarmingly cute, Carmina greets me at the front door to take the grocery bags. Like so many hospice workers, she’s Filipina, five feet tall with hair disciplined into a bun, and dimples punctuating her round cheeks. When she says she loves her work, I believe her. She puts her ear right to Sarah’s silently moving mouth, then translates for us. “She wants juice,” or “She’s cold. I’m going to give her another blanket.” Now Sarah gets whatever she wants. Why hasn’t that been true all her life? I don’t have an answer.

  When Sarah is sleeping, Carmina asks us about her. Did she go to church? Does she have a favorite movie? No, no. After a while I start to feel embarrassed, as if Sarah should have more going for her. “She played the French horn,” I offer, and Carmina nods.

  “She played in the symphony,” Sarah’s sister Margaret says, irritated with me for not giving Sarah her proper respect. This is the siblings’ take on me—that I condescend to Sarah, that I always condescended to her. They’re not about to listen to me tell them they don’t know their own sister, how she’d stroll around the kitchen with her thumbs looped into invisible suspenders, informing the universe that she was a professional musician, back when she could still walk.

  “That’s right,” I say. “Symphony.”

  Carmina nods again, and says, “Classical?”

  “Wagner,” Margaret says. Margaret is a massive snob and Sarah can’t stand her, but we don’t get to pick who stands next to our deathbed. Someone needs to fix that.

  “Wagner,” Carmina says carefully.

  Maybe “Wagner” sounds like “Webber” to her. Maybe she just remembers a two-syllable name. Or maybe she likes Phantom of the Opera, thinks it sounds like classical music, and that’s why “Music of the Night” is pouring out of the living room where we’ve set up Sarah’s hospital bed, too big to fit in the bedroom. I used to tease her by humming this song until she said that she wanted to pull her ears off.

  “Maybe we should turn this down?” I say to Carmina.

  “Maybe we should turn it off,” Margaret says when I get to the kitchen.

  “You don’t have to stay.”

  “I’m on my way out. Promise you’ll turn this off the second you can.”

  “Scout’s honor.” If Margaret thought for one moment, she’d know I was never a Scout, but one of the things I can count on about Margaret is that she won’t think.

  Carmina leaves at six, relieved by one of a rotating staff of night nurses. When the first one appeared with her knitting and doctor’s bag, I asked if I couldn’t take care of the night duties, mostly watching over Sarah’s sleep. It seemed a good task for a husband. Carmina rested her gentle hand on mine. “She needs medicine.” Later the siblings told me she meant morphine, and I felt stupid. I don’t know why they all knew.

  I lunge for the volume as soon as Carmina’s car is gone. Sarah doesn’t register any change, barely making a ripple under the sheet, 105 pounds of compromised breathing and faltering heart. She’s fifty-two, and her cancer is everywhere—liver, colon, most recently lungs. I imagine little blobs of cancer racing around her body and giggling as they create new outposts, another inelegant thought Margaret would chide me for. The night nurse looks at me curiously but doesn’t ask anything. I’m not sure she speaks English. Now the room is all but silent, and I can hear Sarah’s torn breathing. She hasn’t been able to play her French horn for nearly a year. I miss the full sound, the pretty hey, tally-ho! of it, and go to the stereo to change out Phantom for Strauss’s horn concerto, as pretty as it gets.

  Immediately Sarah stirs, her forehead lightly creased. Carmina told us to expect to see changes as Sarah reached the end—her mouth might move, or she might pluck at the sheet. “These are autonomic responses. Her body is shutting down,” Carmina said, and I’ve been waiting ever since for a shutting-down sound I imagine like a car door closing.

  I sit close to her and take her hand, but she pulls away, something else Carmina told us to expect. “Her arms and legs will contract. She may not know you are here. The medicine shuts her off to the world.” Because I am a monster, I wish I could take away her medicine. I want her to know that I’m here.

  With a snap, the night nurse turns off the music, and Sarah relaxes into her pillow as if the nurse had turned her off, too. So no Strauss. The oxygen tank that Sarah hates hisses from the corner. We only use it when her breathing gets especially tortured, a distinction no one should have to make. Otherwise the room is still. The night nurse has gone back to the bedroom where she’s watching TV. She keeps the sound off.

  Everything in a death room makes noise. When I shift on the bed, the metal frame softly clicks. The palm of my hand stroking Sarah’s hair makes a shushing sound, as if I’m reproving myself. Powered by capable lungs and heart, I’m as ungainly and rude as a Shakespeare bumpkin. “Zounds, m’lady,” I say softly, a joke she would have laughed at to humor me. When the mere sound of my breath starts to feel like a jackhammer, I reach for the book on the side table, cluttered with washcloths and empty plastic cups. Margaret must have left this book: O
n Death and Dying.

  Sarah smiles when she hears my snicker, an expression that is not, not, an autonomic response. I gaze at her sunken eyes, the shadows around them bruise colored, and her lovely mouth, now chapped and flaking. Out of my mouth, unintentionally at first, comes “Music of the Night,” my gooiest version yet. I don’t let myself think that it might be our last joke, but the knowledge is in the room like another presence, more real than I am.

  Sarah’s face twists. She might be getting a leg cramp, or fearing it—phantom pain. Either way, her lips are moving, and like Carmina, I put my ear to her mouth where I can feel her mouth brushing the skin of my ear. I can’t make out any words, and so choose what she might be saying.

  I hum all night, and in the morning let Carmina discover for herself that she’s gone.

  Cloth

  1961

  It is nothing short of a miracle that the zipper closes. Patsy’s wearing one girdle on top of another one, so she won’t be able to sit down or breathe all night, but she’ll look stacked in this number that’s tight up at the boobs and then spangles all down below. “Gown,” she calls it. It’s a dress, and it’s too tight, and she looked better five years ago in fringe and cowboy boots.

  Five years ago she didn’t need a dresser, though, so I should count my blessings. She’s saying she wants a driver, too, which is a good idea. The way she takes corners, that wagon isn’t going to last to the end of the year. “I ride my cars like I ride Charlie!” she half yells. Nobody ever has to ask if Patsy’s in the house.

  We hurry to get her onstage on time. She didn’t arrive with a second to spare, and then had to talk to every single fan on her way in. She’s famous for talking to folks, even when I tell her she didn’t work since she was twelve to hear Norma, visiting from Oklahoma City, tell her how much powdered sugar she puts in her sand tarts. “These people give me a job,” she says, and that’s right of course.

  She doesn’t show good sense, is the thing. She can’t tell what’s good from trash. When she first heard “Walkin’ After Midnight,” she hated it. Had to be dragged to record it. Same with “I Fall to Pieces.” Same with “Crazy.” What did she want to record? Yodeling. Like the Winchester, Virginia, hayseed she still is. “I’m country, is what I am, and they keep trying to make me sing these little pop songs.” Listen to yourself, Patsy Cline. If you’re country, what are you doing squeezing yourself into a $300 gown? Nashville is full of people who are fooling themselves, and Patsy’s at the front of the parade.

  A roar of happy laughter. She’s just said something mildly risqué, the kind of joke that will please the audience, who think she’s letting them in on something special. Patsy would never dare tell them the kinds of jokes she tells me every day. The mouth on that gal. She is rough as a cob, and everybody backstage knows it. Once every couple of months she comes in with pancake makeup not covering what Charlie did to her the night before. Maybe that’s why she takes those long road trips with Bill, her manager. Men can’t stay away from Patsy, and Patsy can’t stay away from men. “Hoss”—she calls everybody “Hoss,” male, female, and God—“the good Lord gave me eyes to appreciate a fine-looking man, and the snatch to give him a ride. He wouldn’t want me to ignore His blessings, would he?” And then the laugh. It’s hard not to have a good time around Patsy. I just worry about her.

  This town’s so full of sponges, I’m surprised the sidewalks don’t make a sucking noise when you walk. People come here with empty pockets and bellies, and every one of them finds Patsy. Once I saw her promise to give her bed—her bed—to some hobo she’d met ten minutes before. She caught my look and said, “Hoss, I can buy a bed before tonight. He can’t.” It’s as close as she comes to an apology.

  She doesn’t always have my salary on hand. When she hired me, I made sure we had a written contract between us that set out my paydays. Even still, some months it comes the first and she says, “Hoss, let me take you out to dinner. You’ll have to wait a little for your pay, but I can make sure you eat.” She looks pained, and it’s all I can do not to say, “Patsy, honey, it is a pleasure and a privilege to stuff you into your tight gowns. Don’t you worry about that ol’ salary.” My landlady has told me that the next time my rent is late, I’ll find somebody else staying in my room.

  I’m not special. Lots of people here are living on fumes, waiting for success to stop for them. Nothing shameful in that. But it’s when Patsy slings her arm around me and says, “Hoss, we understand, don’t we? We’re cut out of the same cloth,” that I start to feel my dander come up. Does she think that I stand before my closet every morning and ponder which pretty, full-skirted dress I’m going to wear? Which bright red lipstick? Does she think I wait till everybody leaves on the first of the month and then hold out my hand to her because it’s fun? And what does she see, looking at my life with no car and no house, that she thinks she wants?

  Once she called me to come over to her house and keep her company. Charlie was out someplace and she hated to be alone. I drank coffee, she drank coffee with whiskey, and we talked men and music and men. “I don’t trust Charlie,” she said, her breath velveted with Jim Beam. “I love him, but I don’t trust him.” Unfolding her legs, she went over to the fireplace, wiggled loose a brick, and pulled out an envelope. “Look here. This is one thousand dollars. Charlie don’t know it’s here. I keep it because you never know.”

  “Don’t tell me this, Patsy.”

  “I have to tell somebody.”

  I stood up. “Not me.”

  Her eyes filled. People who hear her talk underestimate how tender she is. That’s how she makes us cry when she sings. “Okay, Hoss, you never saw it.”

  “Good.” We weren’t friends. She was my boss.

  She pays me $200 a month. Often she finds a reason to give me more—because I hemmed a dress or cleaned her makeup mirror or swept the perpetually gritty cement floor of the dressing room. I look for those tasks, and don’t let myself think about the last time Patsy swept her own floor. Humming “Walkin’ After Midnight” helps. You can tap your toe to it and her voice is smooth as honey.

  Once she told me she wanted to do some grocery shopping, and would I come with her? Patsy did her own shopping, but she didn’t usually ask for company. Still, I met her at the Bi-Lo. Pretty yellow dress and enough lipstick to kiss her way through the Seventh Battalion. The second people saw her, there was a commotion, and she pulled me to her and grinned. A pop of a flashbulb. I was a rube not to see this coming.

  The store manager came out, all smiles. “Miss Patsy Cline! I guess even Nashville stars need to buy groceries.” Pop. Pop.

  “You bet they do, Hoss.”

  “You don’t have servants to buy your groceries for you?”

  “No sir, just my friend here. I need”—she fished up a piece of paper from her handbag—“two cans of tomatoes and a good chuck roast. I’ll make dinner tonight and Charlie won’t know what hit him!” Everybody laughed and Patsy winked, linked arms with me, and toured the store. Then she left, and the manager lifted his eyebrows. It was up to me to put away the cans she’d gotten out of order.

  When I got home that afternoon there was a big stain on my blouse, where it would show in the photos. Soaked right into the fibers. Not ever coming out. That night at the Ryman, the audience wouldn’t stop yelling until Patsy sang “I Fall to Pieces” a second time, when you could hear the cry in her voice.

  Right then, I figured, Patsy was at home with Charlie, wearing the peignoir that drives him wild. I don’t have a peignoir; I have a nightgown. It’s cotton that’s perfectly fine until a person finds out about satin. That’s what talent does to you—it teaches you what other people don’t even think about. And then you’re never like other people again. Even if you want to be, even if you try. Even Little Jimmy Dickens, with all his Tater talk, will cut you short and walk away like he’s never seen you if it’s getting on to show time. Because he can. Because he has to. Patsy will be doing it soon. She’ll give me $1,000 like it�
��s nothing, because to her it won’t be, and I’ll look her in the eye and ask for more.

  Friendship

  —Was Nick the one with red hair?

  —That was Garth the Goth. Total poseur. He had pentagram tattoos on his leg and baseball posters on his bedroom walls.

  —He brought you to his house?

  —Even poseur Goth boys have to live somewhere. And he was an okay kisser.

  —As good as Hot Hank?

  —I wish you didn’t have such a good memory.

  —He was the only one you bragged about.

  —Not true. I distinctly remember bragging about Antoine.

  —I will not listen to anything related to your year abroad.

  —My French wasn’t good enough to keep up with him, so God only knows what he was saying in bed. Maybe the periodic table—he was a chemistry major. Seemed to excite him, at least.

  —The men we know do not prize imagination. Knew.

  —Know. You’re married, not dead.

  —It changes things. If I want to remember Republican Jeff, I have to go off for dinner with you and a bottle of wine so we can relive our old bad choices.

  —You must have had worse choices than Republican Jeff.

  —There was Jens. He owned a lot of T-shirts.

  —You never told me about him. What did he have, leprosy?

  —Three kids and a wife.

  —I wouldn’t have judged you.

  —I judged myself. All that time you and I spent in the Women’s Studies lobby, saying we weren’t responsible for somebody else’s vows? Turns out we are.

  —So you broke things off?

  —His wife did. She was waiting at my bus stop when I got off work and told me that once every few months she cleaned up after Jens, getting rid of his trash.

  —So much for sisterhood.

  —What was she supposed to do, hug me? I need more wine.