by Joy Williams
“Yes indeed, you’ve got all those things you keep thinking about. All in the past. And you keep chewing on them. You’re choking on them.”
“You’re right,” I say. “I had a bird once. He was a toucan and extraordinary looking but everything about him was forgettable.”
“We are speaking of your problem,” Cords says, putting her little finger in the corner of her mouth. She immediately jerks it away. There is a look that is almost pain on her face. “These goddamn hands of mine. I’ve abused them too long and now they’re just blood waiting to spill.”
“Icchhh,” Doreen says.
“Tender as hell,” Cords complains. “Like some of those poor mammals born without skin.”
“Icchhh,” Doreen cries.
Vivid Cords. Today she wears a black suit, a mauve linen shirt with huge soft cuffs. She is striking. The heat has made tight ringlets of her hair. She is the leader of our sisterhood. As in most things, the real leader is not the acknowledged head. Our head is a girl with a slight mustache whose mother sends a torte from Cleveland monthly. When motorists scream dimyerlights at her while she is driving she thinks that they are from Ohio too and acknowledges them with a cheery thump on her horn. She is seldom heeded, even on her own terms, and has a continual expression of candid disappointment. No, it is Cords who’s in the saddle, as it were. It is she who plays big brother to all the little sisters. They run around her thither and there, cooing in their Italian underwear. One size fits all. They do not discuss her with each other. They want her to themselves. She is fashionable. She is smart. The sources and supply of her insults and praise are inexhaustible. The girls clamor for her attention and authority. When she leaves them they feel lovelier and luckier than they had before. They feel relieved and knowledgeable without being wise, like bunnies escaping from a snare.
She exhibits her profile to me. It is as cold and inarguable as a knife. She has never been touched by a man and makes no attempt to conceal her success. Each year she chooses a girl for herself. The choice is never questioned by the chosen. They are without exception beautiful girls. They are usually rich. It was apparent that the moment Doreen walked on campus, Cords would want her. And she got her. Which was not to say that Doreen didn’t enjoy the boys. Cords urged her to, for Cords was out to make her the Golden Rain Tree Queen, queen of the town, of the state, of the country.
Doreen is looking up into the branches of the banyan, alternately tossing her hair and twisting her fingers around her necklace. It is a mustard seed in heavy-duty plastic, crouched in the dimple of her throat. It really is.
“I have a notion that we are akin in many ways,” Cords says to me.
“Don’t be forward.” I try to rise in one long and confident motion to my feet, but fail.
“Where have you been?” Cords muses softly. “Canceling issue?”
“Ahh,” breathes Doreen.
Cords shakes her head. Her skin is eerily matte flat, lacking blemish or shadow or curve. “No, I don’t think so. You’re the one with one foot in religion. Think all the little babies are stars in heaven waiting to be plucked out to bless earth.”
“That’s not me. I’m partial to the thinking that they’re glowing wee embers in hell.”
“My poppa always used to tell me that I was the brightest whitest star in the Milky Way,” Doreen exclaimed sweetly.
“It hasn’t ever been the same since and that’s a fact,” Cords says, but doesn’t take her eyes off me.
“I thought it was a real pretty thing for Poppa to say, him being such a busy man and all,” Doreen says. “I think …”
“Don’t try to think now, sugar,” Cords says smoothly. “It causes a hardening ‘round the mouth. Besides it’s not the time. I’m just talking to our lost Kate here.” She raises one of her gloved hands and pats Doreen’s mouth with it. “I’ll hear your thinking later, sugar.” Doreen’s mouth is generous and a little slack. She smiles again at me, faintly and dismissively, in the way that Cords has taught her.
“I don’t know why you’re troubling yourself with me,” I say, looking over at the forestry building for Grady.
“I take an interest in you,” Cords says. “Seeing you is useful to me. It musters out my most helpful and endearing qualities. I have seen you riding about in a discontinued but very impressive car with a blond young man. I gather that you are looking for peace and safety in his company but he looks a bit frail to me. You have a clumsy way about you, Kate. I’d be careful that I didn’t press too hard. My single memory as a child was of my own clumsiness. It all seemed collected in my hands. They continually broke or worried things. They were very strong and big as well and should have belonged to one of my brothers. But they didn’t, they belonged to me. They were my protective mantling, I believe. A tool of survival, you might say. I was the last of thirteen children. My family insisted that I was the fourteenth. There was no thirteenth. They wouldn’t think of having had a thirteenth. I have heard that they’ve done that with the floors of hotels, the knowledge of which was not a consolation to me at the time.”
“You do go on,” I say.
“I apologize,” Cords says airily. “I meant only to make myself conducive to your distress. And, of course, I want to welcome you back.”
“I don’t live here any more,” I say. “I come back to classes only occasionally. We probably will never bump into each other again.”
Cords looks amused. “But that’s just not the way the world works,” she says cheerfully. “The same people are forever cropping up in our lives. Besides, we can be of assistance to each other. I’m sure we could have some nice talks that would make you feel better. As for myself, I can be easily obliged. I’ve heard that you know that black boy that does something or other in the menagerie on the bay. We need one of their animals, a cat of some sort, for Doreen’s Queen Serenade. It will be spectacular. I have it all planned. They have a leopard there, I’m told. I would like that. That would be best.”
“I wouldn’t be able to help you there,” I say worriedly. Trouble. Daddy had said, The snare and the pit will follow all the days of man. It always will. I see the darkness of Bryant’s Beasts. Dim. Brackish moist. The surface of the fish tanks breaks and glints and moves in silver circles across the animals. Their shadows are swollen on the walls. The leopard does not pace. He waits.
“We’ll see,” Cords says. “But it troubles me the way you drift off. You were looking back then again, weren’t you? A terrible weakness, memory. Memory’s just a hole that fills a lack.”
“I wasn’t remembering anything,” I say,
“I can see your problem, Kate. Really, I’m very sympathetic to it. You were born nicely, weren’t you, and were christened like Doreen here and you wore a little frock and you had white sturdy shoes. Your daddy told your mama to raise you so that you would love that which was good and hate that which was evil and you grew up hating and loving all the right things in all the right places and that’s dandy but it doesn’t seem to work out in the long run. Now it’s easier for me because my mama was nothing but a tumblebug. Rolled up a little ball of dung and laid her egg. And I hatched right there—surrounded by shit.”
“Icchhh!,” Doreen is insistent this time. “You’re gonna make me sick, Cords. You’re gonna make it impossible for me to eat any lunch.”
“At the very least,” I say. “I’m going now,” I say. My simple statement sounds much too aggressive as though I didn’t know I didn’t mean it.
“I think you unsettled her even more than me,” Doreen whispers as I stride away.
“Don’t be stupid,” Cords says.
14
“I think I changed my mind about the beach,” I tell Grady. We are in an eddy of boys with slide rules slapping from their belts in holsters. Part of the wall in the first hall of this building supports a piece of redwood the size of our trailer. It is dirty and stained, with a tragic and breathless presence. THIS SLAB IS OLDER THAN CHRIST, a sign says. In part.
“Do
you want to go anywhere?” Grady asks.
“No, nowhere.” Our legs seem trembling in a pool of pink from the redwood.
A POISONED HOST PREVENTED HER FROM DYING. I shake my head to try and clear it. Grady, leave me. I cling to him, forcing a smile. We walk back to the Jaguar.
Had Cords always appeared to be wearing a nylon stocking on most of her face? There is no assurance. Had Father ever bought me a sugar cone? And was it sherbet or a cream? Daddy never did. Had Daddy bought my napkins? Who else would I have asked? I was shy but he proceeded. Shameful tactics not of my invention. All grown up, he said. Before, Mother had always told us, Carry two safety pins and a dime for a telephone call at all times and in case.
The baby turns his big remora head and fastens on my heart. Grady has one hand on the wheel. He clutches his chest with his other. I cannot tear my eyes away. He gathers up the cloth of his shirt embarrassedly over the hole in his chest. I can see his quiet lungs …
“Look here,” he says, taking out a piece of paper from his pocket and handing it to me. “Would you like to go out Friday night for dinner?” There is a name on the paper and a number and an address. I can see the letters. “You remember them,” he says. “You’ve met them before.”
“Dinner? Of course,” I say ambitiously. “I’ll make a salad!” I am so grateful that Grady’s chest is not open, that he is speaking.
“They are a pleasant couple although he sometimes becomes tedious on the subject of ferns.”
“The Fern Fellow,” I exclaim, remembering. “Very agreeable.”
Right,! he would say to anything and then pursue his own dichotomous course. Right! We haggled all night. Small silky hairs grew from the palms of his hands.
We are on the road now, heading home. There is a truck ahead of us, moving slow. The road is narrow and winding. It is a small truck, hauling mirrors. They hang from all sides in glinting sheafs. “Oh, pass him!” I cry. Grady noses around his bumper, but pulls back in. Seconds later, a logging rig hurtles by from the other direction.
“I can’t for a minute,” he says. “We have to wait until the road straightens out.”
THAT WHICH HAS BEEN IS NOW AND THAT WHICH IS TO BE HATH ALREADY BEEN AND GOD REQUIRETH THAT WHICH IS PAST. The eye’s our totem but mine’s snapping and popping like a jacked deer’s eye. There is nothing in the glass but ourselves. We are pinned like butterflies to the worn seats. Even the trees have been banished.
“Then stop,” I beg. “Pull over and let him go on, past our road.” My voice is weak. All my strength is in my feet, pushed against the floor boards. The Jaguar struggles to a halt. The truck sways skittishly around a curve and is gone. Before us is the world again, sounds settling in the void of the engine’s silence. Grady’s parked in a burnt-out pocket of woods. And it’s then we can heard the sound of singing, very frail but determined, and see the sign of a penciled arrow on a butter box nailed to a tree.
“Revival,” Grady grins. “See the tent?”
The black tree trunks seem to sparkle. The tent is brown like the dead forest we remain in and is strung up somehow between the trees like a poor umbrella. There are no sides. We sit in the car. Grady cocks his head.
“There were ninety and nine that safely lay
In the shelter of the fold,
But one was out on the hills away,
Far off from the gates of gold—
Away on the mountains wild and bare,
Away from the tender Shepherd’s care …”
“It’s always that hymn,” Grady says. “They have always been singing that hymn and if you came back here in twenty years, they’ll be singing it still. When I was little and living with my cousins we would go to church on Sunday morning in a drive-in theatre and they would be shouting out that hymn. It was never my maiden cousins’ favorite as it seemed too generous. They preferred texts that put the fear in a boy because they were certain I was going to turn out troublesome. But every Sunday we would sit in that ugly little pasture with the billboard advertising the week’s movie, which was always something like The Day Gongola Ate the World or the like, and we would be forever singing that hymn.”
He stops, thinking about his orphaned days, his cousins whom he has never discussed with me. They gave him nothing but the care they could and he’s obliged.
He backs the Jaguar onto the road. The singing follows us. It slides over us and gets behind us and it stops us dead. Then Grady shoots down the road. There’s only the snick of the gears. We do not see the truck again. We come to the trailer. Something crashes through the brush as we get out. In those mirrors I had seen my Grady tumbling headlong toward the light beyond their frames. Don’t be afraid it will work this car can still go ninety-five miles an hour it can work sometimes at ten miles an hour there won’t be anything left of us there’s hardly anything left now just enough to bury. He was missing, then he was gone. I cannot stop myself. I tell him my story at last. The hounds are yammering in the woods. The hounds are tracking. No one’s fired. We have a drink or two. I cannot stop. At last I say, “I must tell you about Father.”
15
The class is already in progress. I come in late and must sit in the very first row. I find that I am wringing my hands softly, softly, as though I am washing a pair of socks. Grady is in the room. He does not look at me. There are thirty or so students here in French class. It is held in what was once the kitchen of the mansion. Of course now all the stoves and sinks have been removed and the room is equipped with the furniture of learning. All that remains of its former use are the big black and white floor tiles and the white pressed tin ceiling, dimped in a flower design, creamy and faint and deranged, like a wedding cake had blown up on it.
I watch Grady but he does not look at me. He ignores me without rancor. He is just not looking at anything. I am called upon to recite. A tick is crawling across my neck and up into my hair. I can feel it moving, even when I feel it stop.
I read—
And then I read,
“Cet aveu que je te viens de faire
Cet aveu si honteux, le crois-tu volontaire?”
The instructor shakes his head despairingly. “This is a terrible moment in Racine,” he says. “Should there be a court order protecting him from sophomores?” There is a respectful titter. He sighs. “Go on,” he tells me.
I say,
“You think that this vile confession that
I have made is what I meant to say?”
16
I have waited for Grady for nights. He is here but he does not come to me. I wait naked in the midnights. I know I am not attractive. My stomach has taken on crooked dimensions. My breasts have become all flat nipple. Nevertheless, one night he comes to me. He has made our decision. My phantom lover. I can see his outlines clearly. He sits beside me for a long time and then I feel the first touch of his hand. He wraps his legs around mine and enters quickly. His hands hold my hips without ambition, his mouth rests on my own without words. He takes me again and again with him into his new darkness. He is trying to wrest something from me. We understand this. I tremble like a branch. It does not stop. He probes deeper and deeper, cool like metal, like an instrument. We are drenched. We continue. Soon it will be the last time. The morning comes down.
17
I try to explain to the sheriff’s deputy, but I don’t understand it too well myself. I am walking along the shoulder of the road and he travels beside me in his striped Ford. I feel that it is up to him to speak first. At last, the car shoots forward and stops ahead of me. He opens the door and gets out. There is an enormous white light on the roof of his car, twisting hysterically. He’s reluctant to turn it off. He’s young and heavy-chested, his hair is cut so short you can see the white skull skin. His shirt strains and gapes across his stomach. Underneath, he wears a T-shirt. I sit in the front seat and we drive very slowly. Along the road, the eyes of dogs are blue in the dark and the houses are careless and painted in garish colors. We have not reached the town. Every time I
touch my head, sand falls out of it, and there are a few pine needles caught in the weave of my sweater, where, I suppose, I might have been lying on the ground. He talks quickly and slyly as though there were a secret between us. His jaw is long and his face is thin. The stomach sprawling heavily above his belt is merely a part of his law-enforcement equipment.
I am trying to think. Mistrust all evidence. We were going to someone’s house for dinner. I am still holding a bottle of wine in a paper bag. Grady is very conscientious—always the perfect guest. He remembers the name of everyone he meets and always brings a little gift, wherever he is invited. If he was about to be hung, he would bring the nooseman a stick of gum. It was he who insisted we continue on to our friends’. He said that they would consider us rude, that they would think something had happened to us. It wasn’t far, a few miles, so we set out, leaving the beautiful Jaguar on the curve, all smashed and broken like a flower.
I am sure that this is how it was happening. I was following him in another car—I can’t recall the make, such a tiring car, round and slow with great patched tires that someone had painted white—an enormous wallowing car with bad suspension and a compass bolted to the dashboard. He crashed right before my eyes. The car turned slowly in the air like something at the movies. He was thrown clear, landed on his feet and running. The lights were still on, the radio was playing a very popular country and Western song about love and subterfuge. In this song, the lovers have an arrangement by which the woman will raise the flag on the mailbox when the husband is out of the house. I stop talking to the deputy and swallow a few times. My head seems full of penny candy, garnished with a Melba peach. I realize that my problem is lack of discrimination. My head fills achingly, like a poisoned lung. I cannot stop thinking about the song.
The radio is playing and the engine is running still, in perfect tune.
