The Visiting Privilege

by Joy Williams

  “What a lot of people,” Constance said.

  “There’s a sphere of radio transmissions about thirty light-years thick expanding outward at the speed of light, informing every star it touches that the world is full of people,” Ben said.

  Constance stared at him. “I’ll be glad when the summer’s over,” she said.

  “I can’t remember very many Augusts,” Ben said. “I’m really going to remember my Augusts from now on.”

  Constance started to cry.

  “I can’t talk to you,” Ben said. They were walking back home. A group of girls wearing monogrammed knapsacks pedaled past on bicycles.

  “That’s not talking,” Constance said. “That’s shorthand, just a miserable shorthand.”

  In the kitchen, Yvette was making the girls popcorn as she waited for Steven. She chattered away. The girls gazed at her raptly. Yvette said, “I love talking to strangers. As you grow older, you’ll find that you enjoy talking to strangers far more than to your friends.”

  Late that night, Constance woke to hear music from Steven’s tape deck in the next room. The night was very hot. Beyond the thin curtains was a fat bluish moon.

  “That’s the saddest piece of music I’ve ever heard,” Constance said. “What is that music?”

  Ben said, “It’s pretty sad all right.”

  The children came into the room and shook Constance’s shoulder. “Mummy,” Jill said, “we can’t sleep. Yvette told us that last year she tried to kill herself with a pair of scissors.”

  “Oh!” cried Constance, disgusted. She took the girls back to their room. They all sat on a bed and looked out the window at the moon.

  “Yvette said that if the astronaut Gus Grissom hadn’t died on the ground in the Apollo fire, he would probably have died on the moon of a heart attack,” Charlotte told Constance. “Yvette said that Gus Grissom’s arteries were clogged with fatty deposits, and that he carried within himself all the prerequisites for tragedy. Yvette said that if Gus Grissom had had a heart attack on the moon, nobody in the whole world would be able to look up into the sky with the same awe and wonder as before.”

  Jill said, “Yvette said all things happen because they must happen.”

  “I’d like to sock Yvette in the teeth,” Constance said.

  —

  Constance had not seen Steven for days. She had only heard the sound of his typewriter, and sometimes there was a glass in the sink that might have been his. Constance had an image in her mind of the Coke bottle caught in the venetian-blind cord tapping out incoherent messages at the end of On the Beach. She finally went up to his room and knocked on the door.

  “Yo!” Steven yelled.

  Constance was embarrassed about disturbing him, and slipped away without saying anything. She went upstairs to the girls’ room and looked out the window. A man stood by the mailbox, scrutinizing the pickup hours posted on the front and shaking his head.

  —

  Aster came with her child, Nora. Nora was precocious. She was eight, wore a bra, had red hair down to her kneecaps and knew the genuine and incomprehensible lyrics to most of the New Wave tunes. She sang in a rasping, wasted voice and shook her little body back and forth like a mop. Aster looked at Nora as she danced. It was an irritated look, such as a wife might give a husband. Constance thought of Paul. She had been so bored with Paul, but now she wondered what it had been, exactly, that was so boring. It was difficult to remember boring things. Paul had hated mayonnaise. The first thing he had told Constance’s mother when they met was that he had owned twenty cars in his life, which was true.

  “Do you ever think about Susan,” Constance asked Ben.

  “She’s on television now,” Ben said. “It’s a Pepsi-Cola commercial but Susan is waving a piece of fried chicken.”

  “I’ve never seen that commercial,” Constance said sincerely, wishing she had never asked about Susan.

  Aster was an older woman. She seemed more impatient than the others for Steven to knock off and get on with it.

  “He’s making a miraculous synthesis up there, is he?” she said wryly. “Passion, time? Inside, outside?”

  “Are you in love with Steven,” Constance asked.

  Aster shrugged.

  Constance thought about this. Perhaps love was neither the goal nor the answer. Constance loved Ben and what good did that do him? He had just almost died from her absorption in him. Perhaps understanding was more important than Love, and perhaps the highest form of understanding was the understanding of oneself, one’s motives and desires and capabilities. Constance thought about this but the idea didn’t appeal to her much. She dismissed it.

  Aster and Nora were highly skilled at a little parlor game in which vowels, numbers and first letters of names would be used by one person, in a dizzying polygamous travelogue, to clue the other as to whispered identities.

  “I went,” Aster would say, “to Switzerland with Tim for four days and then I went to Nome with Ernest.”

  “Mick Jagger!” Nora would yell.

  Jill, glaring at Nora, whispered in Aster’s ear.

  “I went,” Aster said, “to India with Ralph for a day before I met Ned.”

  “The Ayatollah Khomeini!” Nora screamed.

  Charlotte and Jill looked at her, offended.

  That evening, everyone went out except Constance, who stayed home with Nora.

  “You know,” Nora told her, “you shouldn’t drink quinine. They won’t let airline pilots drink quinine in their gin. It affects their judgment.”

  That afternoon, downtown with Aster, Nora had bought a lot of small candles. Now she placed them all around the house in little saucers and lit them. She and Constance turned off all the lights and walked from room to room enjoying the candles.

  “Aren’t they pretty!” Nora said. She had large white feet and wore a man’s shirt as a nightie. “I think they’re so pretty. I don’t like electrical lighting. Electrical lighting just lights the whole place up at once. Everything looks so dead, do you know what I mean?”

  Constance peered at Nora without answering. Nora said, “It’s as though nothing can happen when it’s all lit up like that. It’s as though everything is.”

  Constance looked at the wavering pools of light cast by the little candles. She had never known a mystic before.

  “I enjoy things best that I don’t have to think about,” Nora said. “I mean, I get awfully sick of using my brain, don’t you? When you think of the world or of God, you don’t think of this gigantic brain, do you?”

  “Certainly not,” Constance replied.

  “Of course you don’t,” Nora said nicely.

  The candles had different aromas. Finally, more or less in order, one after another, they went out. On Sunday, after Nora left with her mother, Constance missed her.

  —

  Constance was having difficulty sleeping. She would go to bed far earlier than anyone else, sometimes right after supper, and lie there and not sleep. Once she slept for a little while and had a dream in which the cart she was wheeling through the aisles of the A & P was a crash cart, a complete mobile cardiopulmonary resuscitation unit, of the kind she had seen in the corridors of the intensive-care wing at the hospital. In the dream, she bit her nails as she pushed the cart down the endless aisles, agonizing over her selections. She reached for a box of Triscuits and placed it in the cart between a box of automatic rotating cuffs and a defibrillator. Constance woke up, her own heart pounding. She listened to Ben’s quiet breathing for a moment; then she rolled out of bed, dressed and walked downtown. It was just before dawn and the streets were cool and quiet and empty, but someone, during the night, had pulled all the flowers out of the window boxes in front of the shops. Clumps of earth and broken petals made a ragged trail before her. The wreckage rounded a corner. Constance wished Ben were with her. They could just walk along, they wouldn’t have to say anything.

  —

  The weekend that Bronwyn arrived was extremely foggy. Bronwyn
was from the South. She was unsmiling and honest, a Baptist who had just left her husband for good. She had been in love with Steven since she was thirteen years old.

  “My parents are Baptists,” Constance told her.

  Fog slid through the screens. A voice from the street said, “I can’t believe she served bluefish again!”

  Bronwyn had little calling cards that showed Jesus knocking on the door of your heart. Jesus wore white robes and he had a neatly trimmed beard. He was rapping thoughtfully at the heavy wooden doors of a snug little vine-covered bungalow.

  “I remember that picture!” Constance said. “When I was little, that picture just seemed to be everywhere.”

  “Have one,” Bronwyn said.

  The heart did not appear mean, it simply seemed closed. Constance wondered how long the artist had intended Jesus to have been standing there.

  Bronwyn took Charlotte and Jill out to collect money to save marine mammals. They stood on the street and collected over thirty dollars in a Brim coffee can.

  “Our salvation lies in learning to communicate with alien intelligences,” Bronwyn said.

  Constance wrote a check.

  “Whales and dolphins are highly articulate,” Bronwyn told Constance. “They know fidelity, play and sorrow.”

  Constance wrote another check, made herself a gin and tonic and went upstairs. That night, from Steven’s room, she heard murmurs and moans in repetitive sequence.

  The following day, Bronwyn asked, “Have you enjoyed sharing a house with Steven?”

  “I haven’t seen much of him,” Constance said, “actually, at all.”

  “Summer can be a difficult time,” Bronwyn said.

  —

  On the last day of August, Ben rented a bright red Jeep with neither top nor sides. Ben and Constance and Charlotte and Jill bounced around in it all morning, and at noon they drove on the beach to the very tip of the island, where the lighthouse was. Approaching the lighthouse, Constance was filled with an odd excitement. She wanted to climb to the top. The steel door had been chained shut, but about four feet up from the base was a large hole knocked through the cement, and inside, beer cans, a considerable amount of broken glass and a lacy black wrought-iron staircase winding upward could be seen. Charlotte and Jill did not go in because they hadn’t brought their shoes, but Constance climbed through the hole and went up the staircase. There was a wonderful expectancy to the tight climb upward through the whitewashed gyre. She was a little breathless when she reached the top. Powering the light, in a maze of cables and connectors, were eighteen black, heavy-duty truck batteries. For a moment, Constance’s disappointment concealed her surprise. She saw the Atlantic fanning out without a speck on it, and her little family on the beach below, sitting on a striped blanket. Constance inched out onto the catwalk encircling the light. “I love you!” she shouted. Ben looked up and waved. She went back inside and began her descent. She did not know, exactly, what it was she had expected, but it had certainly not been eighteen black, heavy-duty truck batteries.

  —

  In bed that night, Constance dreamed of people laughing. She opened her eyes. “Ben,” she whispered.

  “Hi.” He was wide awake.

  “I dreamed of laughing,” Constance said. “I want to laugh.”

  “We’ll laugh tomorrow,” Ben said. He turned her away from him and held her. She felt his mouth smiling against her ear.

  Preparation for a Collie

  There is Jane and there is Jackson and there is David. There is the dog.

  David is burying a bird. He has a box that once held tea and he is digging a hole beneath the kitchen window. He mutters and cries a little. He is spending Sunday morning doing this. He is five.

  Jackson comes outside and says, “That hole is far too big.”

  Jackson is going to be an architect. He goes to school all day and he works as a bartender at night. He sees Jane and David on weekends. He is too tired in the morning to have breakfast with them. Jane leaves before nine. She sells ornaments in a Christmas shop, and Jackson is gone by the time she returns in the afternoon. David is in kindergarten all day. Jackson tends bar until long after midnight. Sometimes he steals a bottle of blended whiskey and brings it home with him. He wears saddle shoes and a wedding ring. His clothes are poor but he has well-shaped hands and nails. Jane is usually asleep when Jackson gets in bed beside her. He goes at her without turning on the light.

  “I don’t want to wake you up,” he says.

  Jackson is from Virginia. Once, a photograph of him in period dress appeared in The New Yorker for a VISIT WILLIAMSBURG advertisement. They have saved the magazine. It is in their bookcase with their books.

  Jackson packs his hair down hard with water when he leaves the house. The house is always a mess. It is not swept. There are crumbs and broken toys beneath all the furniture. There are cereal bowls everywhere, crusty with soured milk. There is hair everywhere. The dog sheds. It is a collie, three years older than David. It is Jane’s dog. She brought him with her into this marriage, along with her Mexican bowls and something blue.

  Jane could be pretty but she doesn’t know how to arrange her hair. She has violet eyes. And she prefers that color. She has three pots of violets in the living room on Jackson’s old chess table. They flourish. This is sometimes mentioned by Jackson. Nothing else flourishes as well here.

  Whenever Jackson becomes really angry with Jane, he takes off his glasses and breaks them in front of her. They seem always to be the most valuable thing at hand. And they are replaceable, although the act causes considerable inconvenience.

  Jane and David eat supper together every night. Jane eats like a child. Jane is closest to David in this. They are children together, eating junk. Jane has never prepared a meal in this house. She is as though in a seasonal hotel. This is not her life; she does not have to be this. She refuses to become familiar with this house, with this town. She is a guest here. She has no memories. She is waiting. She does not have to make anything of these moments. She is a stranger here.

  She is waiting for Jackson to become an architect. His theories of building are realistic but his quest is oneiric, he tells her. He sometimes talks about “sites.”

  They are getting rid of the dog. Jackson has been putting ads in the paper. He is enjoying this. He has been advertising for weeks. The dog is free and many people call. Jackson refuses all callers. For three weekends now, he and Jane have talked about nothing except the dog. They will simplify their life and they cannot stop thinking about it, this dog, this act, this choice that lies before them.

  The dog has crammed itself behind the pipes beneath the kitchen sink. David squats before him, blowing gently on his nose. The dog thumps his tail on the linoleum.

  “We’re getting rid of you, you know,” David says.

  It is Saturday evening and someone has stopped at the house to see the dog.

  “Is he a full-blooded collie,” the person asks. “Does he have papers?”

  “He doesn’t say.” Jackson smiles.

  After all these years, six, Jane is a little confused by Jackson. She sees this as her love for him. What would her love for him be if it were not this? In turn, she worries about her love for David. Jane does not think David is nice-looking. He has many worries, it seems. He weeps, he has rashes, he throws up. He has pale hair, pale skin. She does not know how she can go through all these days, each day, embarrassed for her son.

  Jane and Jackson lie in bed.

  “I love Sundays,” Jane says.

  Jackson wears a T-shirt. Jane slips her hand beneath it and strokes his chest. She is waiting. She sometimes fears that she is waiting for the waiting to end, fears that she seeks and requires only that recognition and none other. Jackson holds her without opening his eyes.

  It is Sunday. Jane pours milk into a pancake mix.

  Jackson says, “David, I want you to stop crying so much and I want you to stop pretending to bake in Mommy’s cupcake tins.” Jackson is an
gry, but then he laughs. After a moment, David laughs too.

  That afternoon, a woman and a little girl come to the house about the dog.

  “I told you on the phone, I’d give you some fresh eggs for him,” the woman says, thrusting a child’s sand bucket at Jane. “Even if you decide not to give the dog to us, the eggs are still yours.” She pauses at Jane’s hesitation. “Adams,” the woman says. “We’re here for the ad.”

  Jackson waves her to a chair and says, “Mrs. Adams, we seek no personal aggrandizement from our pet. Our only desire is that he be given a good home. A great many people have contacted us and now we must make a difficult decision. Where will he inspire the most contentment and where will he find canine fulfillment?”

  Jane brings the dog into the room.

  “There he is, Dorothy!” Mrs. Adams exclaims to the little girl. “Go over and pet him or something.”

  “It’s a nice dog,” Dorothy says. “I like him fine.”

  “She needs a dog,” Mrs. Adams says. “Coming over here, she said, ‘Mother, we could bring him home today in the back of the car. I could play with him tonight.’ Oh, she sure would like to have this dog. She lost her dog last week. Kicked to death by one of the horses. Must have broken every bone in his fluffy little body.”

  “What a pity!” Jackson exclaims.

  “And then there was the accident,” Mrs. Adams goes on. “Show them your arm, Dorothy. Why, I tell you, it almost came right off. Didn’t it, darling?”

  The girl rolls up the sleeve of her shirt. Her arm is a mess, complexly rearranged, a yellow matted wrinkle of scar tissue.

  “Actually,” Jackson says, “I’m afraid my wife has promised the dog to someone else.”

  After they leave, Jackson says, “These farm people crack me up.”

  The dog walks slowly back to the kitchen, swinging his high foolish hips. David wanders back to the breakfast table and picks up something, some piece of food. He chews it for a moment and then spits it out. He kneels down and spits it into the hot-air register.