“You know, you’re running yourself into the ground, worrying over every little detail all the time,” Wyatt said one night when he came in the door from work. “Have you had a look at yourself in the mirror? You’re as white as”—I watched him mentally juggling clichés before he gave up—“I don’t know, just white. Pale, you know.”
What I hadn’t told him, what I hadn’t told anybody, was that I’d begun spotting again. And this wasn’t just a faint discoloration, but blood, actual blood, crusted and dried till it was brown as dirt. I’d spent a long afternoon at our little one-room library (open Tuesday and Thursday, ten to four), masking the computer screen while I searched the Internet for information and that only scared and depressed me the more. I read about endometrial polyps, cancer of the uterus and fallopian tubes, anemia, hysterectomy, sonar and radiation treatments, the sickness that lingers and kills. I didn’t want to go to the mainland, didn’t want to pick doctors out of the phone book, didn’t want them probing and cutting and laying me up in some hospital in the city while strangers haunted the corridors and shot by obliviously in their shiny little Japanese cars. I went to the drugstore and stocked up on iron pills, multipurpose vitamins, a calcium supplement, and I hid my underthings at the bottom of the hamper as if that would solve anything.
One afternoon—it was just after Christmas, which I’d tried to make as cheerful for Wyatt as I could, though I didn’t feel up to caroling, not this time around—I was sitting at the front window, sipping tea and looking out into the fog that had begun to drift in. It was a typical winter fog, dense and shifting, so that the far side of the street just seemed to evaporate one minute only to reappear the next. At some point a stray shaft of sunlight cut through it all and lit up the front of the Trumbull House like a movie set and I could see something hanging on the door there, a sheet of white cardboard, it looked like. I plucked my binoculars from the table and focused in. It was a note of some sort, big and boxy, outsized like everything about Dr. Murdbritter, even his mess, but I couldn’t make out what it said. I knew in my heart that I needed to see him, confide in him, have him examine me even if I had to drag Wyatt into the room along with me, but I was afraid—not only of the tests he’d insist on and what they might show, but of letting him touch me there, and of the dirt, the dirt above all else.
I put on my coat, looked both ways on the porch to be sure no one was watching, and crossed the street to the doctor’s house. His car—he’d had Joe Gilvey replace the tire for him after Mervis drafted an official letter of complaint—was gone, and that was strange. After those first few weeks when he’d traced each of our six blacktop roads to where they petered out in a salt marsh or bay, he’d given up exploring, and then he’d had the flat and the car had just sat there like a natural feature of the environment for I don’t know how long. When I got to his porch, the mystery cleared itself up: the note said that he was taking the ferry to the mainland on personal business and would be back the following afternoon, directing all emergencies that might arise in his absence to the sheriff’s office. I don’t know what I felt at that moment. One part of me had been ready to ring the bell, slink into his office and confess what was happening to me and how scared I was, while the other part held back.
I can’t explain what I did next, not in any rational way, but I somehow had the duplicate key in my hand, the one that had hung on its little hook above the calendar on the bulletin board in my kitchen, and why I’d thought to put it in my pocket I’ll never know. In the next moment, I was inside, the house cold and dank and smelling of things I wouldn’t want to name, let alone the cat box, which must have been changed sporadically, if at all. I found the coffeepot in the kitchen set atop a stove so stained and blackened you couldn’t tell what color it was—he had been cooking after all, I thought, but it was a small consolation. I brewed the strongest coffee I could stand and began looking through the closets for the cleaning supplies, the mop and broom and vacuum cleaner Dr. Braun had left behind in his haste to vacate the place.
Can I tell you that all the lethargy that had come over me in the past months vanished the moment I went to work? I keep the tidiest house on the island, take my word for it, though some of the other wives and homemakers might make the same claim for themselves. Cleanliness, the desire for order where there is none, the struggle to fight down the decay all around us, is what separates us from the animals, at least in my opinion. I’m alert to everything, every tarnish and scuff and speck of mold, and I can’t sit still till it’s gone. It’s just me, it’s just the way I am. My father told me that when the Nazis were retreating across France ahead of the Allies, they’d vacate a farmhouse one morning and the Allies would occupy it that evening, and the most common booby trap the Nazis left behind was this: they’d leave a picture just slightly askew on the wall and when a soldier went to straighten it, goodbye. They’d have got you, Missy, the very first day, my father used to say, and he’d say it with pride.
Anyway, I went at that mess as if I were possessed, working past dinnertime so that Wyatt and I had to go out to the Kettle to eat and I ordered the fried scallops and polished them off with a vengeance, not caring a hoot if they hardened my arteries or not. I couldn’t sleep that night thinking of the shambles of the doctor’s bedroom and his filthy sheets—how could anybody sleep like that?—and of all that remained to be done not only in the house itself but in the office, especially the office. The ferry would be back at two, I knew that, but I wouldn’t rest till I had that desk cleared, the floors gleaming, the examining room and all the stainless-steel cabinets and instruments shining as if they gave off a light of their own. This place was a shrine, didn’t he realize that? A place of shriving and forgiveness and healing as sacred as any church. By God, I thought, by God.
I got lost in the rhythm of the work and when two o’clock rolled round I was still at it, which is why I really couldn’t say when he came in. I was down on my knees scrubbing the floor under the examining table till I thought I was going to take the finish right off it, my hand moving automatically from brush to pail and back again, and for a moment I didn’t realize he was there in the room with me. Somewhere in the distance I could hear the washer going and the dryer tossing his clothes with a rattle and clack. He might have cleared his throat, I don’t know, but I looked up then and saw him whole, from his clunky shoes and ill-fitting pants right on up to the look of shock and astonishment on his big whiskered face. He didn’t say a word. I got slowly to my feet, wiping my hands on the apron I’d run through the washer before dawn, the dial set to hot and a quarter cup of bleach poured in on top of it. “Doctor,” I said, and then I used his given name for the first time in my life, “Austin. I’m sorry, but I just had to—talk to you. About me. About my problem, that is.”
He might have said something then, a faint murmur of reassurance escaping his lips, but his face was so comical, so caught between what he’d been yesterday and what he was now, I wouldn’t have noticed it anyway. Was he angry? A little, I suppose. Or maybe he was just relieved, because finally the ice had been broken, finally we were getting down to the bottom of things. For the longest moment we simply stood there, ten feet apart, and let me tell you, everything in that room and the room beyond it shone as if we were seeing it for the first time, both of us, and when the sun broke free and poured through those spotless windows to pool on the shining floor, the glare was almost too much for us.
(2010)
Good Home
He always took Joey with him to answer the ads because Joey was likable, the kind of kid anybody could relate to, with his open face and wide eager eyes and the white-blond hair of whoever his father might have been. Or mother. Or both. Royce knew something about breeding and to get hair like that there must have been blonds on both sides, but then there were a lot of blonds in Russia, weren’t there? He’d never been there, but from what his sister Shana had told him about the orphanage they must have been as common as brunettes were here,
or Asians and Mexicans anyway, with their shining black hair that always looked freshly greased, and what would you call them, blackettes? His own hair was a sort of dirty blond, nowhere near as extreme as Joey’s, but in the same ballpark, so that people often mistook Joey for his son, which was just fine with him. Better than fine: perfect.
The first place they went to, in Canoga Park, was giving away rabbits, and there was a kid there of Joey’s age—ten or so—who managed to look both guilty and relieved at the same time. A FOR SALE sign stood out front, the place probably on the verge of foreclosure (his realtor’s brain made a quick calculation: double lot, maybe 3,500 square feet, two-car garage, air, the usual faux-granite countertops and built-ins, probably sold for close to five before the bust, now worth maybe three and a half, three and a quarter), and here was the kid’s father sauntering out the kitchen door with his beer gut swaying in the grip of his wife-beater, Lakers cap reversed on his head, goatee, mirror shades, a real primo loser. “Hey,” the man said. He was wearing huaraches, his toes as blackened as a corpse’s.
Royce nodded. “What’s happening?”
So there were rabbits. The kid’s hobby. First there’d been two, now there were thirty. They kept them in one of those pre-fab sheds you get at Home Depot and when the kid pulled back the door the stink hit you in the face like a sucker punch. Joey was saying, “Oh, wow, wow, look at them all!” but all Royce was thinking was Get me out of here, because this was the kind of rank, urine-soaked stench you found in some of the street fighters’ kennels, if they even bothered with kennels. “Can we take two?” Joey said, and everybody—the father, the kid and Joey—looked to him.
He gave an elaborate shrug, and how many times had they been through this charade before? “Sure,” he said, “why not?” A glance for the father. “They’re free, right? To a good home?”
The father—he wasn’t much older than Royce, maybe thirty-four, thirty-five—just nodded, but on the way out Royce bent to the kid and pressed a five into his palm, feeling magnanimous. The next stop yielded a black Lab, skinny, with a bad eye, but still it would have to have its jaws duct-taped to keep it from slashing one of the dogs, and that was fine except that they had to sit there for half an hour with a cadaverous old couple who made them drink lukewarm iced tea and nibble stale anise cookies while they went on about Slipper and how she was a good dog, except that she peed on the rug—you had to watch out for that—and how sad they were to have to part with her, but she was just too much for them to handle anymore. They struck out at the next two places, both houses shuttered and locked, but all in all it wasn’t a bad haul, considering these were just bait animals anyway and there was no need to get greedy.
Back at home, the minute they pulled up under the oaks in front, Joey was out the door and dashing for the house and his stash of Hansen’s soda and barbecue chips, never giving a thought to the rabbits or the black Lab confined in their cages in the back of the Suburban. That was all right. There was no hurry. It wasn’t that hot—eighty-five maybe—and the shade was dense under the trees. Plus, he felt like a beer himself. Just driving around the Valley in all that traffic was work, what with the fumes radiating up off the road and Joey chattering away about anything and everything that entered his head till you couldn’t concentrate on the music easing out of the radio or the way the girls waved their butts as they sauntered down the boulevard in their shorts and blue jeans and invisible little skirts.
He left the windows down and kicked his way across the dirt expanse of the lot, the hand-tooled boots he wore on weekends picking up a fine film of dust, thinking he’d crack a beer, see what Steve was up to—and the dogs, the dogs, of course—and then maybe grill up some burgers for an early dinner before he went out. He’d have to lift the Lab down himself, but Joey could handle the rabbits, and no, they weren’t going to bait the dogs tonight no matter how much Joey pleaded, because tonight was Saturday and he and Steve were going out, remember? But what Joey could do, before he settled down with his video games, was maybe give the bait animals a dish of water, or would that be asking too much?
—
The house was in Calabasas, pushed up against a hillside where the oaks gave way to chaparral as soon as you climbed up out of the yard on the path cut through the scrub there, the last place on a dirt road that threw up dust all summer and turned into a mudfest when the rains came in December. It was quiet, private, nights pulled down like a shade, and it had belonged to Steve’s parents before they were killed in a head-on collision with a drunk three years back. Now it was Steve’s. And his. Steve paid the property taxes and they split the mortgage each month, which for Royce was a whole lot cheaper than what he’d be paying elsewhere—plus, there was the barn, formerly for horses, now for the dogs. They had parties every couple of weeks, various women circulating in and out of their lives, but neither of them had ever been married, and as far as Royce was concerned, he liked it that way. Tonight, though, they were going out—cruising, as Steve liked to call it, as if they were in some seventies disco movie—and Joey would be on his own. Fine. No problem. Joey knew the score: stay out of the barn, don’t let anybody in, bed at ten, call him on the cell if there were any problems.
Steve drove. He’d never had a DUI, but Royce had, and Royce needed his license up and running in order to ferry people around to his various listings, as if that would make a difference since nobody in his office had sold anything in recent memory. Or at least he hadn’t anyway. They took the 101 into town, wound their way down Laurel Canyon and valeted the car in a lot off Sunset. It was just getting dark. A continuous line of cars, fading to invisibility behind their headlights, pulsed up and down the boulevard. This was the moment he liked best, slamming the car door and stepping out into the muted light, the street humming with the vibe of the clubs, the air so compacted and sweet with exhaust it was like breathing through your skin, the night young, anything possible.
Their first stop was a Middle Eastern restaurant that hardly served any food, or not that he could see anyway. People came here to sit at the tables out front and smoke Starbuzz or herbal shisha through the hookahs the management provided for a fee. Every once in a while you’d see a couple inside the restaurant picking over a lamb kebab or pita platter, but the real action was outside, where just about everybody surreptitiously spiked the tobacco with something a little stronger. The waitress was slim and young, dark half-moons of makeup worked into the flesh under her eyes and a tiny red stone glittering in one nostril, and maybe she recognized them from the week before, maybe she didn’t. They ordered two iced teas and a hookah setup and let the smoke, cool and sweet, massage their lungs, their feet propped up on the wrought-iron rail that separated them from the sidewalk, eyes roaming the street. After a moment, just to hear his own voice over the shush of tires and the rattling tribal music that made you feel as if you were running on a treadmill, Royce said, “So what nationality you think these people are—the owners, I mean? Iranian? Armenian?”
Steve—he was a rock, absolutely, six-two, one-eighty, with a razor-to-the-bone military haircut though he’d never been in the military—glanced up lazily, exhaling. “What, the waitress, you mean?”
“I guess.”
“Why, you want a date with her?”
“No, I just—”
“I can get you a date with her. You want a date with her?”
He shrugged. “Just curious, that’s all. No biggie. I just figured, you’re the expert, right?” This was a reference to the fact that Steve had dated an Iranian girl all last winter—or Persian, as she liked to classify herself, and who could blame her? She was fleshy in all the right places, with big bounteous eyes and a wide-lipped smile that really lit her face up, but she’d wanted things, too many things, things Steve couldn’t give her.
“Yeah, that’s me, a real expert, all right. I don’t know why you didn’t just hit me in the face with a two-by-four the minute Nasreen walked through the doo
r”—he held it a beat, grinning his tight grin—“Bro.” He was about to bring the hose to his lips, but stopped himself, his eyes fixed on a point over Royce’s shoulder. “Shit,” he breathed, “isn’t that your brother-in-law?”
Feeling caught out all of a sudden, feeling exposed, Royce swung round in his seat to shoot a glance up the boulevard. Joe—Big Joe, as Shana insisted on calling him after she came back from Russia with Joey, who was just a baby in diapers then—was nobody he wanted to see. He’d left Shana with a fractured elbow and a car with a bad transmission and payments overdue and she’d been working double shifts on weekends ever since to catch up. Which was why Royce took Joey Friday through Sunday—Joey needed a man’s influence, that’s what Shana claimed, and besides, she couldn’t afford a babysitter. “Ex-brother-in-law,” he said.
But there he was, Big Joe, easing his way in and out of the clusters of people making for the clubs and restaurants, his arm flung over the shoulder of some woman and a big self-satisfied grin on his face, just as if he was a regular human being. Even worse, the woman—girl—was so pretty the sight of her made Royce’s heart clench with envy. If he was about to ask himself how a jerk like Joe had managed to wind up with a girl like that, he never got the chance because Steve was on his feet now, up out of his seat and leaning over the rail, calling out, “Joe, hey, Joe, what’s happening?” in a voice deep-fried in sarcasm.
T.C. Boyle Stories II: The Collected Stories of T. Coraghessan Boyle, Volume II Page 110
