The Visiting Privilege

by Joy Williams

  “What?” Mrs. Muirhead said.

  “I was just telling the girls some of the differences between men and women. Men are more adventurous and aggressive with greater spatial and mechanical abilities. Women are more consistent, nurturant and aesthetic. Men can see better than women, but women have better hearing,” Mr. Muirhead said.

  “Very funny,” Mrs. Muirhead said.

  The girls retired from the melancholy regard Mr. and Mrs. Muirhead had fixed upon each other, and wandered through the cars of the train, occasionally returning to their seats to fuss in the cluttered nests they had created there. Around midnight, they decided to revisit the game car, where, earlier, people had been playing backgammon, Diplomacy, anagrams, crazy eights and Clue. They were still at it, variously throwing down queens of diamonds, moving troops through Asia Minor and accusing Colonel Mustard of doing it in the conservatory with a wrench. Whenever there was a lull in the playing, they talked about the accident.

  “What accident?” Jane demanded.

  “Train hit a Buick,” a man said. “Middle of the night.” The man had big ears and a tattoo on his forearm.

  “There aren’t any good new games,” a woman complained. “Haven’t been for years and years.”

  “Did you fall asleep?” Jane said accusingly to Dan.

  “When could that have happened?” Dan said.

  “We didn’t see it,” Jane said, disgusted.

  “Two teenagers escaped without a scratch,” the man said. “Lived to laugh about it. They are young and silly but it’s no joke to the engineer. The engineer has a lot of paperwork to do after he hits something. The engineer will be filling out forms for a week.” The man’s tattoo said MOM AND DAD.

  “Rats,” Jane said.

  The children returned to the darkened dining room, where Superman was being shown on a small television set. Jane instantly fell asleep. Dan watched Superman spin the earth backward so he could prevent Lois Lane from being smothered in a rockslide. The train shot past a group of old lighted buildings, SEWER KING, a sign said. When the movie ended, Jane woke up.

  “When we lived in New York,” she said muzzily, “I was sitting in the kitchen one afternoon doing my homework and this girl came in and sat down at the table. Did I ever tell you this? It was the middle of the winter and it was snowing. This person just came in with snow on her coat and sat right down at the table.”

  “Who was she,” Dan asked.

  “It was me, but I was old. I mean I was about thirty years old or something.”

  “It was a dream,” Dan said.

  “It was the middle of the afternoon, I tell you! I was doing my homework. She said, ‘You’ve never lifted a finger to help me.’ Then she asked me for an aspirin.”

  After a moment, Dan said, “It was probably the cleaning lady.”

  “Cleaning lady! Cleaning lady, for god’s sake. What do you know about cleaning ladies!”

  Dan felt her hair bristle as though someone were running a comb through it back to front, and realized she was mad, madder than she’d been all summer, for all summer she’d only felt humiliated when Jane was nasty to her.

  “Listen up,” Dan said, “don’t talk to me like that anymore.”

  “Like what,” Jane said coolly.

  Dan stood up and walked away while Jane was saying, “The thing I don’t understand is how she ever got into that apartment. My father had about a dozen locks on the door.”

  Dan sat in her seat in the quiet, dark coach and looked out at the night. She tried to recollect how it seemed dawn happened. Things just sort of rose out, she guessed she knew. There was nothing you could do about it. She thought of Jane’s dream in which the men in white bathing caps were pushing all her grandma’s things out of the house and into the street. The inside became empty and the outside became full. Dan was beginning to feel sorry for herself. She was alone, with no friends and no parents, sitting on a train between one place and another, scaring herself with someone else’s dream in the middle of the night. She got up and walked through the rocking cars to the Starlight Lounge for a glass of water. After 4:00 a.m. it was no longer referred to as the Starlight Lounge. They stopped serving drinks and turned off the electric stars. It became just another place to sit. Mr. Muirhead was sitting there, alone. He must have been on excellent terms with the stewards because he was drinking a Bloody Mary.

  “Hi, Dan!” he said.

  Dan sat opposite him. After a moment she said, “I had a very nice summer. Thank you for inviting me.”

  “Well, I hope you enjoyed your summer, sweetie,” Mr. Muirhead said.

  “Do you think Jane and I will be friends forever?” Dan asked.

  Mr. Muirhead looked surprised. “Definitely not. Jane will not have friends. Jane will have husbands, enemies and lawyers.” He cracked ice noisily with his white teeth. “I’m glad you enjoyed your summer, Dan, and I hope you’re enjoying your childhood. When you grow up, a shadow falls. Everything’s sunny and then this big goddamn wing or something passes overhead.”

  “Oh,” Dan said.

  “Well, I’ve only heard that’s the case, actually,” Mr. Muirhead said. “Do you know what I want to be when I grow up?” He waited for her to smile. “When I grow up I want to become an Indian so I can use my Indian name.”

  “What is your Indian name?” Dan asked, smiling.

  “My Indian name is He Rides a Slow Enduring Heavy Horse.”

  “That’s a nice one,” Dan said.

  “It is, isn’t it?” Mr. Muirhead said, gnawing ice.

  Outside, the sky was lightening. Daylight was just beginning to flourish on the city of Jacksonville. It fell without prejudice on the slaughterhouses, Dairy Queens and courthouses, on the car lots, Sabal palms and a billboard advertisement for pies.

  The train went slowly around a long curve, and looking backward, past Mr. Muirhead, Dan could see the entire length of it moving ahead. The bubble-topped cars were dark and sinister in the first flat and hopeful light of the morning.

  Dan took the three postcards she had left out of her bookbag and looked at them. One showed Thomas Edison beneath a banyan tree. One showed a little tar-paper shack out in the middle of the desert in New Mexico where men were supposed to have invented the atomic bomb. One was a “quickie” card showing a porpoise balancing a grapefruit on the top of his head.

  “Oh, I remember those,” Mr. Muirhead said, picking up the “quickie” card. “You just check off what you want.” He read aloud, “How are you? I am fine ( ) lonesome ( ) happy ( ) sad ( ) broke ( ) flying high ( ).” Mr. Muirhead chuckled. He read, “I have been good ( ) no good ( ). I saw the Gulf of Mexico ( ) the Atlantic Ocean ( ) the Orange Groves ( ) Interesting Attractions ( ) You in My Dreams ( ).”

  “I like this one,” Mr. Muirhead said, chuckling.

  “You can have it,” Dan said. “I’d like you to have it.”

  “You’re a nice little girl,” Mr. Muirhead said. He looked at his glass and then out the window. “What do you think was on that note Mrs. Muirhead had you give me,” he asked. “Do you think there’s something I’ve missed?”

  The Excursion

  Jenny lies a little. She is just a little girl, a child with fears. She fears that birds will fly out of the toilet bowl. Starlings with slick black wings. She fears trees and fishes and the bones in meat. She lies a little but it is not considered serious. Sometimes it seems she forgets where she is. She is lost in a place that is not her childhood. Sometimes she will say to someone, Mrs. Coogan at the Capt’n Davy Nursery School, for example, that her mother is dead, her father is dead, even her dog, Tonto, is dead. She will say that she has no toys, that she lives with machinery she cannot run, that she lives in a house with no windows, no view of the street, that she lives with strangers. She has to understand everything herself.

  Poor Mrs. Coogan! She pats Jenny’s shoulder. Jenny wears pretty and expensive dresses with blue sneakers. The effect is charming. She has blond hair falling over a rather low brow a
nd an interesting, mobile face. She does everything too fast. She rushes to bathtimes and mealtimes and even to sleep. She sleeps rapidly with deep, heartbreaking sighs. Such hurry is unnecessary. It is as though she rushes forward to meet even her memories.

  Jenny does not know how to play games very well. When the others play, she is still. She stands with her stomach thrust out, watching the others with a cool, inward gaze. Sometimes, something interrupts her, some urgent voice, perhaps, or shout, and she makes a startled, curious skip. Her brown eyes brim with confusion. She turns pale or very red. Yes, sometimes Jenny has bad days. The crayons are dead, the swings are dead, even little Johnny Lewis, who sits so patiently on his mat at snack time, will be dead. He is thirsty and when Mrs. Coogan gives him a cup of juice, Jenny is glad for his sake.

  “I am so happy Johnny Lewis got his juice!” she cries.

  Poor Mrs. Coogan. The child is such a puzzle.

  “I don’t care for the swimming,” Jenny tells her, even though Mrs. Coogan doesn’t take her little group swimming. She takes them for a walk. Down to the corner, where the school bus carrying the older children goes by.

  “Perhaps you’ll like it when you get a little older, when you get a little better at it,” Mrs. Coogan says.

  Jenny shakes her head. She thinks of all the nakedness, milling and bobbing and bumping against her in the flat, warm, dark water. She says this aloud.

  “Oh, my dear,” Mrs. Coogan says.

  “I don’t understand about the swimming,” Jenny says.

  Jenny’s father picks her up at four. He always has a present for her, and today it is a watch. It’s only a toy watch, but it has moving parts and the manufacturer states that if it is not abused it will keep fairly reasonable time.

  Mrs. Coogan says to Jenny’s father, “All children fib a little. It’s their nature. Their lives are incompatible with the limits imposed upon their experience.”

  Jenny feels no real insecurity while Mrs. Coogan speaks, but she is a little anxious. She is with a man. She doesn’t smell very good. Outside other men are striking the locked door with sticks.

  “Leña,” they call. “Leña.”

  Jenny’s father frowns at Mrs. Coogan. He does not wish to be aware that Jenny lies. To him, it is a terrible risk of oneself to lie. It risks control, peace, self-knowledge, even, perhaps, the proper acceptance of love. He is a thoughtful, reasonable man. He loves his only child. He wills her safe passage through the world. He does not wish to acknowledge that lying gives a beat and structure to Jenny’s life that the truth has not yet justified. Jenny’s imagination depresses him. He senses an ultimatum in it.

  Jenny runs to the car. Her father is not with her. He is behind her. Suddenly the child realizes this and whips around to catch him with her eyes. Once again, she succeeds.

  Jenny’s mother is in the front seat, checking over her grocery list. Jenny kisses her and shows her the big, colorful watch. A tiny girl sits on a swing within the watch’s face. When Jenny winds it, the girl starts swinging, the clock starts to run.

  Jenny sits in the back. The car moves out into the street. She hears a mother somewhere crying. Some mother, calling, “Oh, come back and let me rock you on your little swing!”

  Jenny says nothing. She is propelled by sidereal energies. Loving, for her, will not be a free choosing of her destiny. It will be the discovery of the most fateful part of herself. She is with a man. When he kisses her, he covers her throat with his hand. He rubs his fingers lightly down the tendons of her neck. He holds her neck in his big hand as he kisses her over and over again.

  “Raisin bran or Cheerios,” Jenny’s mother asks. “Cheddar or Swiss?”

  Jenny is just a little girl. She worries that there will not be enough jam, not enough cookies. When she walks with her mother through the supermarket, she nervously pats her mother’s arm.

  Now, at home, Jenny reads. She is precocious in this. When she first discovered that she could read, she did not tell anyone about it. The words took on the depths of patient, dangerous animals, and Jenny cautiously lived alone with them for a while. Now, however, everyone realizes that she can read, and they are very proud of her. Jenny reads in the newspaper that in San Luis Obispo, California, a seventeen-year-old girl came out of a clothing store, looked around horrified, screamed and died. The newspaper said that several years previous to this, the girl’s sister had woken early, given a piercing scream and died. The newspaper said that the parents now fear for the welfare of their other two daughters.

  Women suffer from the loss of a secret once known. Jenny will realize this someday. Now, however, she merely thinks, What is the dread that women have?

  Jenny gets up and goes to her room. A stuffed bear is propped on her bureau. She takes it to the kitchen and gives it some orange juice. Then she takes it to the bathroom and puts it on the toilet seat for a moment. Then she puts it to bed.

  Jenny wakes crying in the night and rushes into her parents’ room. She is not sure of the time; she is not sure if they will be there. Of course they are there. Jenny is just a child. On a bedside table are her mother’s reading glasses and a little vase of marigolds. Deeply hued, yellow, red and orange. Her parents are very patient. She is a normal little girl with fears, with nightmares. The nightmares do no real harm, that is, they will not alter her life. She is afraid that she is growing, that she will grow too much. She returns to her room after being comforted, holding one of the little flowers.

  The man likes flowers, although he dislikes Jenny’s childishness. He removes Jenny’s skimpy cotton dress. He puts the flowers between her breasts, between her legs. The house is full of flowers. It is Mexico on the Day of the Dead. Millions of marigolds have been woven into carpets and placed on the graves. Jenny’s mouth hurts, her stomach hurts. Yes, the man dislikes her childishness. He kneels beside her, his hands on her hips, and forces her to look at his blank, warm face. It is a youthful face, although he is certainly no longer a young man. Jenny had seen him when he was younger, drunk, blue-eyed. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t age. He has had other loves and he has behaved similarly with them all. How could it be otherwise? Even so, Jenny knows that she has originated with him, that anything before him was nostalgia for this. Even so, there are letters, variously addressed, interchangeably addressed, it would seem. These letters won’t be kept. It isn’t the time, but they are here now, in a jumble, littered with the toys. Jenny reads them as though in a dream. This is Jenny! As in a dream too, she is less reasonable but capable of better judgment.

  I won’t stay here. It is a tomb, this town, and the streets are full of whores, women with live mice or snakes or fish in the clear plastic heels of their shoes. Death and the whores are everywhere, walking in these bright, horrible shoes.

  How unhappy Jenny’s mother would be if she were to see this letter! She comes into the child’s room in the morning and helps her tie her shoes.

  “You do it like this,” she says, crossing the laces, “and then you do this, you make a bunny ear here, see.”

  Her mother holds her on her lap while she teaches her to tie her shoes. Jenny is so impatient. She wants to cry as she sees her mother’s eager fingers. Jenny’s nightie is damp and sweaty. Her mother takes it off and goes to the sink, where she washes it with sweet-smelling soap. Then she makes Jenny’s breakfast. Jenny is not hungry. She takes the food outside and scatters it on the ground. The grass covers it up. Jenny goes back to her room. Everything is neatly put away. Her mother has made the bed. Jenny takes everything out again, her toy stove and typewriter and phone, her puppets and cars, the costly and minute dollhouse furnishings. Everything is there: a tiny papier-mâché pot roast dinner, lamps, rugs, andirons, fans, everything. The cupboards are full of play bread, the play pool is full of water.

  Jenny’s face is tense and intimate. She knows everything, but how aimless and arbitrary her knowledge is! For she has only desire; she has always had only the desire for this, her sleek, quiescent lover. He is so cold and so sa
tisfying for there is no discovery in him. She goes to the bed and curls up beside him. He is dark and she is light. There are no shadings in Jenny’s world. He is a tall, dark tree rooted in the stubborn night, and she is a flame seeking him—unstable, transparent. They are in Oaxaca. If they opened the shutters they would see the stone town. The town is made of a soft, pale green stone that makes it look as though it has been rained upon for centuries. Shadows in the shapes of men fall from the buildings. Everything is cool, almost rotten. In the markets, the fruit beads with water; the fragile feathered skulls of the birds are moist to the touch.

  The man sleeks her hair back behind her ears. She is not so pretty now. Her face is uneven, her eyes are closed.

  “You’re asleep,” he says. “You’re making love to me in your sleep.” She is nothing, nowhere. There is something exquisite in this, in the way, now, that he holds her throat. The pressure is so familiar. She yearns for this.

  But he turns from her. He leaves.

  Jenny pretends sleep. She plays that she is sleeping. She is fascinated with her sleep, where everything takes place as though it were not so. Nothing is concealed. On stationery from the Hotel Principal there is written:

  Nobody to blame. Call 228

  She sits at a small desk, drinking beer and reading. She is reading about the Aztecs. She notes the goddess Tlazolteotl, the goddess of filth and fecundity, of human moods, sexual love and confession. Jenny sits very straight in the chair. Her neck is long, full, graceful. But she feels out of breath. The high, clear air here makes her pant. The man pants too while he climbs the steep, stone steps of the town. He smokes too much. At night, when they return from drinking, he coughs flecks of blood onto the bathroom mirror. The blood is on the tiles, in the basin. Jenny closes her own mouth tightly as she hears him gag. Breath is outside her, expelled, not doing her any good. She stands beside the man as he coughs. There is not much blood but it seems to be everywhere, late at night, after they have been drinking, everywhere except on the man’s clothes. He is impeccable about his clothes. He always wears a gray lightweight suit and a white shirt. He has two suits and they are both gray, and he has several shirts and they are all white. He is always the same. Even in his nakedness, his force, he is smooth, furled, closed. He is simple to her. There is no other path offered. He offers her the death of his sterility. His sexuality is the source of life, and his curse is death. He offers her nothing except his dying.