by Joy Williams
She wets her hands and wipes off the mirror. She cannot really imagine him dead. She is just a child embracing the crisis of a woman. The death she sees is that of herself in his emptiness. And he fills her with it. He floods her with emptiness. She grasps his thick, longish hair. She feels as if she is floating through his hair, falling miraculously away from danger into death. Safe at last.
“Jenny, Jenny, Jenny,” her mother calls.
“I want a baby,” Jenny says. “Can I have a baby?”
“Of course,” her mother says, “when you get to be a big girl and fall in love.”
Jenny will write on the stationery of the Hotel Principal:
The claims of love and self-preservation are opposed.
The man looks over her shoulder. He is restless, impatient to get going. They are going to the baths outside of town, in the mountains. A waterfall thuds into a long stone basin that has been artificially heated. It is a private club, crowded with Americans and wealthy Mexicans. When Jenny and the man arrive at the baths, they first go to a tiny stone cubicle, where the man strips. He hangs his clothes carefully from the wooden pegs fixed in the stone. Jenny looks outside, where a red horse grazes from a long, woven tether. There is water trickling over the face of the hillside. There is very little grass. The water sparkles around the horse’s hooves. The man turns Jenny from the window and begins to undress her. She is like a little child with artless limbs. He rolls her pants down slowly. He slips her sweater off. He does everything slowly. Her clothes fall to the floor, which is wet with something that smells sweet. With one hand, the man holds her arms firmly behind her back. He doesn’t do anything to her. She cannot smell him or even feel his breath. She can see his face, which is a little stern but not frightening. It holds no disappointment for her. She tries to move closer to him, but his grip on her arms prevents her. She begins to tremble. Her body feels his stroking, his touch, even though he does nothing. Her body starts to beat, to move in the style of their lovemaking. She becomes confused, the absence of him in her is so strong.
Later, the man goes out to the pool. Jenny hates the baths, but they come here several times a week on the man’s insistence. She dresses and goes out to the side of the pool and watches the man swim back and forth. There are many people here, naked or nearly so, tossing miniature footballs back and forth. She sees the man grasp the ankles of a woman and begin to tow her playfully through the water. The woman wears silver earrings. Her hair is silver, her pubic hair is silver. Her mouth is a thickly frosted white. The water foams on her skin in tiny translucent bubbles. The woman laughs and moves her legs up in a scissors grip around the man’s waist. Jenny sees him kiss her.
Another man, a Mexican, comes up to Jenny. He is bare-chested and wears white trousers and tall, yellow boots. He absently plucks at his left nipple while he looks at her.
“Ford Galaxie,” he says at last. He takes a ring of car keys from his pocket and jerks his head toward the mountains.
“No,” Jenny says.
“Galaxie,” the Mexican says. “Galaxie. Rojo.”
Jenny sees the car, its red shell cold in the black mountains, drawn through the landscape of rock and mutilated maguey. Drawn through, with her inside, quietly transported.
“No,” she says. She hates the baths. The tile in the bottom of the pool is arranged in the shape of a bird, a heron with thin legs and a huge, flat head. Her lover stands still in the water now, looking at her, amused.
“Jenny,” her mother laughs. “You’re such a dreamer. Would you like to go out for supper? You and Daddy and I can go to the restaurant that you like.”
For it is just the summer. That is all it is, and Jenny is only five. In the house they are renting on Martha’s Vineyard, there is a dinghy stored in the rafters of the living room. The landlord is supposed to come for it and take it down, but he does not. Jenny positions herself beneath the dinghy and scatters her shell collection over her legs and chest. She pretends that she has been cast out of it and floated to the bottom of the sea.
“Jenny-cake, get up now,” her mother says. The child rises heavily from the floor. The same sorrow undergone for nothing is concluded. Again and again, nothing.
“Oh, Jenny-cake,” her mother says sadly, for Jenny is so quiet, so pale. They have come to the island for the sunshine, for play, to offer Jenny her childhood. Her childhood eludes them all. What guide does Jenny follow?
“Let’s play hairdresser,” her mother says. “I’ll be the hairdresser and you be the little girl.”
Jenny lets her comb and arrange her hair.
“You’re so pretty,” her mother says.
But she is so melancholy, so careless with herself. She is bruised everywhere. Her mother parts her hair carefully. She brings out a dish of soapy water and brushes and trims Jenny’s nails. She is put in order. She is a tidy little girl in a clean dress going out to supper on a summer night.
“Come on, Jenny,” her mother urges her. “We want to be back home while it’s still light.” Jenny moves slowly to the door that her father is holding open for them.
“I have an idea,” her mother says. “I’ll be a parade and you be the little girl following the parade.”
Jenny is so far away. She smiles to keep her mother from prattling on. She is what she will be. She has no energy, no talent, not even for love. She lies facedown, her face buried in a filthy sheet. The man lies beside her. She can feel his heart beating on her arm. Pounding like something left out of life. A great machine, a desolate engine, taking over for her, moving her. The machine moves her out the door, into the streets of the town.
There is a dance floor in the restaurant. Sometimes Jenny dances with her father. She dances by standing on top of his shoes while he moves around the floor. The restaurant is quite expensive. The menu is written in chalk on a blackboard that is then rolled from table to table. They go to this restaurant mostly because Jenny likes the blackboard. She can pretend that this is school.
There is a candle on each table, and Jenny blows it out at the beginning of each meal. This plunges their table into deep twilight. Sometimes the waitress relights the candle, and Jenny blows it out again. She can pretend that this is her birthday over and over again. Her parents allow her to do this. They allow her to do anything that does not bring distress to others. This usually works out well.
Halfway through their dinner, they become aware of a quarrel at the next table. A man is shouting at the woman who sits beside him. He does not appear angry, but he is saying outrageous things. The woman puts her hand gently on the side of his head. He does not shrug it off nor does it appear that he allows the caress. The woman’s hand falls back in her lap.
“We’re spoiling the others’ dinner,” the woman says.
“I don’t care about the others,” the man says. “I care about you.”
The woman’s laugh is high and uneasy. Her face is serene, but her hands tremble. The bones glow beneath her taut skin. There is a sense of blood, decay, the smell of love.
“Nothing matters except you,” the man says again. He reaches across the table toward her and knocks over the flowers, the wine. “What do you care what others think?” he says.
“I don’t know why people go out if they’re not intending to have a nice time,” Jenny’s mother whispers. Jenny doesn’t speak. The man’s curses tease her ears. The reality of the couple, now gone, cheats her eyes. She gazes fixedly at the abandoned table, at the wreckage there. Everywhere there is disorder. Even in her parents’ eyes.
“Tomorrow we’re going sailing,” her father says. “It’s going to be a beautiful day.”
“I would say that woman had a problem there,” Jenny’s mother says.
Outside, the sunset has dispersed the afternoon’s fog. The sun makes long paddle strokes through the clouds. At day’s end, the day creaks back to brightness like a swinging boom. Jenny walks down the street between her parents. At the curb, as children do, she takes a little leap into space, supported, f
or the moment, by their hands.
And now gone for good, this moment. It is night again.
“It’s been night for a long time,” the man says. He is shaving at the basin. His face, to about an inch below his eyes, is a white mask of lather. His mouth is a dark hole in the mask.
Jenny’s dizzy from drinking. The sheets are white, the walls are white. One section of the room has a raised ceiling. It rises handsomely to nothing but a single lightbulb, shaded by strips of wood. The frame around the light is very substantial. It is as though the light were caged. The light is like a wild thing up there, pressed against the ceiling, a furious bright creature with slanty wings.
In the room there is a chair, a table, a bureau and a bed. There is a milk shake in a glass on a tin tray. On the surface of the milk, green petals of mold reach out from the sides toward the center.
“Clean yourself up and we’ll go out,” the man says.
Jenny moves obediently to the basin. She hangs her head over the round black drain. She splashes her hands and face with water. The drain seems very complex. Grids, mazes, avenues of descent, lacings and webs of matter. At the very bottom of the drain she sees a pinpoint of light. She’s sure of it. Children lie there in that light, sleeping. She sees them so clearly, their small, sweet mouths open in the light.
“We know too much,” Jenny says. “We all know too much almost right away.”
“Clean yourself up better than that,” the man says.
“You go ahead. I’ll meet you there,” Jenny says. For she has plans for the future. Jenny has lived in nothing if not the future all her life. Time had moved between herself and the man, but only for years. What does time matter to the inevitability of relations? It is inevitability that matters to lives, not love. For had she not always remembered him? And seen him rising from a kiss? Always.
When she is alone, she unties the rope that ties her luggage together. The bag is empty. She has come to this last place with nothing, really. She has been with this man for a long time. There had always been less of her each time she followed him. She wants to do this right, but her fingers fumble with the rope. It is as though her fingers were cold, the rope knotted and soaked with seawater. It is so difficult to arrange. She stops for a moment and then remembers in a panic that she has to go to the bathroom. That was the most important thing to remember. She feels close to tears because she almost forgot.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she cries.
Her mother leads her there.
“This is not a nice bathroom,” her mother says. Water runs here only at certain times of the day. It is not running now. There are rags on the floor. The light falling through the window is dirty.
“Help me, Mother,” Jenny says.
Her stomach is so upset. She is afraid she will soil herself. She wants to get out in the air for a moment and clear her head. Her head is full of lies. Outside the toilet, out there, she remembers, is the deck of the motor sailer. The green sails that have faded to a style of blue are luffing, pounding like boards in the wind. She closes the door to the toilet. Out here is the Atlantic, rough and blue and cold. Of course there is no danger. The engines are on; they are bringing the people back to the dock. The sails have the weight of wood. There is no danger. She is all right. She is just a little girl. She is with her mother and father. They are on vacation. They are cruising around the island with other tourists. Her father has planned an excursion for each day of their vacation. Now they are almost home. No one is behaving recklessly. People sit quietly on the boat or move about measuredly, collecting tackle or coiling lines or helping children into their sweaters.
Jenny sees the man waiting on the dock. The boat’s engines whine higher as the boat is backed up, as it bumps softly against the canvas-wrapped pilings. The horrid machine whines higher and higher. She steps off into his arms.
He kisses her as he might another. She finds him rough, hurtful at first, but then his handling of her becomes more gentle, more sure in the knowledge that she is willing.
His tongue moves deeply, achingly in her mouth. His loving becomes autonomous now. It becomes, at last, complete.
Winter Chemistry
It was the middle of January and there was nothing to look forward to. The radio station went off at dusk and dusk came early in the afternoon and then came the dark and nothing to watch but a bleached-out moon lying over fields slick as a frosted cake, and nothing to hear at all.
There was nothing left of Christmas but the cold that slouched and pressed against the people. Their blood was full of it. And their eyes and the food that they ate. The people walked the streets wearing woolen masks as though they were gangsters, or deformed. Old ladies died of breaks and foolish wounds in houses where no one came, and fish froze in the quiet of their rivers.
The cold didn’t invent anything like the summer has a habit of doing and it didn’t disclose anything like the spring. It lay powerfully encamped—waiting, altering one’s ambitions, encouraging ends. The cold made for an ache, a restlessness and an irritation, and thinking that fell in odd and unemployable directions.
Judy Cushman and Julep Lee were the best of friends. Each knew things that the other did not, and each had a different manner of going after the things that she wanted. Each loved the handsome chemistry teacher of the high school. Love had different beginnings but always the same end. Someone was going to get hurt. Julep was too discreet to admit this for she tried not to think of shabby things.
They were fourteen and the only thing that was familiar to them was the town and the way they spent their lives there, which they hated.
They slept a great deal and always talked about the same things and made brownies and popcorn and drank Coca-Cola. Julep always made a great show of drinking Coca-Cola because she claimed that her father had given her three shares of stock in it the day she was born. Judy would laugh about this whenever she thought to. “On the day I was born,” she’d say, “I received the gifts of beauty and luck.”
Their schoolbooks lay open and unread, littered with crumbs and nail trimmings. Every night that didn’t bring a blizzard, they would spy on the chemistry teacher, for they were fourteen and could only infrequently distinguish what they did from what they merely dreamed about.
The chemistry teacher had enormous trembling eyes like a deer and a name in your mouth sweet as a candy bar. DEBEVOISE. He was tall and languid and unmarried and handsome. He lived alone in a single rented room on the second floor of a large house on the coast. The house was the last one on a street that abruptly became a field of pines and stones. Every night the girls would come to the field and, crouching in a hollow, watch him through a pair of cheap binoculars. For a month they had been watching him move woodenly around the small room and still they did not know what it was they wanted to happen. The walls of the room were painted white and he sat at a white desk with his shirtsleeves rolled down to his wrists. The only thing that was on the desk was a tiny television set with a screen the size of a book. He watched it and drank from a glass. Sometimes he would run his own hands through his own dark hair.
Judy Cushman and Julep Lee felt that loving him was a success in itself.
But still they had no idea what they waited for in the snow. The rocks dug into their skinny shanks. Their ears went deaf with the cold. At times, Judy thought that she wanted him to bring a woman up there. Or perhaps do something embarrassing or dirty all by himself. But she was not sure about this.
As for Julep, she seldom said things that she had not already said once long before, so there was no way of knowing what she thought.
—
Julep was the thinnest human being in town, all angles and bruises and fierce joinings. Even her lips were hard and spare and bloodless as bone. Her hair was such a pale, parched blond that it looked white and her brows and lashes were the same color, although her eyes, under heavy round lids that worked slowly as a doll’s, were brown.
Her parents had moved from the South to the N
orth when she was four years old, and she had lived on the same bitter and benumbed coast ever since. She steered her way through each new day incredulously, as though she had been kidnapped and sent to some grim prison yard in another world. She couldn’t employ the cold to any advantage so she dreamed of heat, of a sun fierce enough to melt the monstrous town and set her free. She talked about the sun as though it were a personal friend of hers, waiting in the next room for her to get ready and go out with it.
Julep was a Baptist, a clarinetist in the band, a forward on the six-girl basketball team that was famous throughout the state, undefeated, unthreatened, unsmiling. She had scabs on her knees, a blue silk uniform in her locker, fingernails split and ragged from the gritty leather ball. Julep was an innocent.
—
Judy Cushman too was an innocent, but had a tendency to see things in a greedy, rutting way. Judy was tiny and tough and wore a garter belt. Almost every one of her eyebrow hairs was plucked from her head and her hair was stacked over a foot high, for her older sister was a hairdresser who taught her half of everything she knew.
Judy was full and sleek and a favorite with the boys and she would tell Julep things that Julep almost died hearing. She would say, “Last night Tommy Saloma exposed himself to my eyes only in the rumpus room of his house,” and Julep would almost faint. She would say, “Billy Colter touched my breast in the library,” and Julep would gasp and hold her head at an unnaturally high angle for she felt that if she didn’t, everything inside her would stream terribly from her mouth, everything she was made of, falling out of her onto the floor in front of them.
