The Visiting Privilege

by Joy Williams

“You do?” Shirley says in mock amazement. “Just kidding,” she says. “I’m going to show you the hockey rink anyway. It’s new. It’s a big deal.”

  Molly sees Tom and Annie standing some distance away beneath a large tree draped with many strings of extinguished lights. Her mother’s back is to her, but Tom sees her and waves.

  Molly follows Shirley into the still, odd air of the hockey rink. No one is on the ice. The air seems distant, used up. On one wall is a big painting of a boy in a hockey uniform. He is in a graceful, easy posture, skating alone on bluish ice toward the viewer, smiling. He isn’t wearing a helmet. He has brown hair and wide golden eyes. Molly reads the plaque beneath the painting. His name is Jimmy Watkins and he had died six years before at the age of seventeen. His parents had built the rink and dedicated it to him.

  Molly takes a deep breath. “My sister, Martha, knew him,” she says.

  “Oh yeah?” Shirley says with interest. “Did your sister go here?”

  “Yes,” Molly says. She frowns a little as she lies. Martha and Jimmy Watkins of course know each other. They know everything but they have secrets too.

  The air is not like real air in here. Neither does the cold seem real. She looks at Jimmy Watkins, bigger than life, skating toward them on his black skates. It is not a very good painting. Molly thinks that those who love Jimmy Watkins must be disappointed in it.

  “They were very good friends,” Molly says.

  “How come you didn’t tell me before that your sister went here?”

  Molly shrugs. She feels happy, happier than she has in a long time. She has brought Martha back from the dead and put her in school. She has given her a room, friends, things she must do. It can go on and on. She has given her a kind of life, a place in death. She has freed her.

  “Did she date him or what,” Shirley asks.

  “It wasn’t like that,” Molly says. “It was better than that.”

  She doesn’t want to go much further, not with this girl whom she dislikes, but she goes a little further.

  “Martha knew Jimmy better than anybody,” Molly says.

  She thinks of Martha and Jimmy Watkins being together, telling each other secrets. They will like each other. They are seventeen and fourteen, living in the single moment that they have been gone.

  —

  Molly is with her parents in the car again on a winding road, going through the mountains. Tonight they will stay in an inn that Annie has read about and tomorrow they will visit the last school. Several large rocks, crusted with dirty ice, have slid onto the road. They are ringed with red cones and traffic moves slowly around them. The late low sun fiercely strikes the windshield.

  “Bear could handle those rocks,” Molly says. “Bear would go right over them.”

  “Oh, that truck,” Annie says.

  “That truck is an ecological criminal,” Tom says.

  “Big Bad Bear,” Molly says.

  Annie shakes her head and sighs. Bear is innocent. Bear is only a machine, gleaming in a dark garage.

  Molly can’t see her parents’ faces. She can’t remember how they looked when she was little. She wants to ask them about Martha. She wants to ask them if they are sending her so far away so they can imagine that Martha is just far away too. But she knows she will never ask such a question. There are secrets now. The dead have their secrets and the living have their secrets with the dead. This is the way it must be.

  —

  Molly has her things. and she sets them up each night in the room she’s in. She lays a little scarf across the bureau first, and then her things on top of it. Painted combs for her hair, a little dish for her rings. They are the only guests at the inn, an old rambling structure on a lake. In a few days, the owner will be closing it down for the winter. It’s too cold for such an old place in the winter, the owner says. He had planned to keep it open for skating on the lake when he first bought it and had even remodeled part of the cellar as a skate room. There is a bar down there, a wooden floor and shelves of old skates in all sizes. Window glass runs the length of one wall just above ground level and there are spotlights that illuminate a portion of the lake. But winter isn’t the season here. The pipes are too old and there aren’t enough guests.

  “Is this the deepest lake in the state,” Annie asks. “I read that somewhere, didn’t I?” She has her guidebooks, which she examines each night. Everywhere she goes, she buys books.

  “No,” the inn’s owner says. “It’s not the deepest, but it’s deep. You should take a look at that ice. It’s beautiful ice.”

  He is a young man, balding, hopelessly proud of his ice. He lingers with them, having given them thick towels and new bars of soap. He offers them soup for supper, fresh baked bread and pie. He offers them his smooth, frozen lake.

  “Do you want to skate,” Tom asks his wife and daughter. Molly shakes her head.

  “No,” Annie says. She takes a bottle of Scotch from her suitcase. “Are there any glasses,” she asks the man.

  “I’m sorry,” the man says, startled. “They’re all down in the skate room, on the bar.” He gives a slight nod and walks away.

  Tom goes down into the cellar for the glasses. The skates, their runners bright, are jumbled on the shelves. The frozen lake glitters in the window. He pushes open the door and there it is, the ice. He steps out onto it. Annie, in their room, waits without taking off her coat. Tom takes a few quick steps and then slides. He is wearing a suit and tie, his good shoes. It is a windy night and the trees clatter with the wind and the old inn’s sign creaks on its chains. Tom slides across the ice, his hands pushed out, then he holds his hands behind his back, going back and forth in the space where the light is cast. There is no skill without the skates, he knows, and probably no grace without them either, but it is enough to be here under the black sky, cold and light and moving. He wants to be out here. He wants to be out here with Annie.

  From a window, Molly sees her father on the ice. After a moment, she sees her mother moving toward him, not skating but slipping forward, making her way. She sees their heavy awkward shapes embrace.

  Molly sees them, already remembering it.

  Lu-Lu

  Heather was sitting with the Dunes, Don and Debbie, beside their swimming pool. The Dunes were old. Heather, who lived next door in a little rented house, was young and desperate. They were all suntanned and drinking gin and grapefruit juice, trying to do their best by the prolifically fruiting tree in the Dunes’ backyard. The grapefruits were organic, and pink inside. They shone prettily by the hundreds between leaves curled and bumpy and spotted from spider mite and aphid infestation.

  Before Heather and the Dunes on a glass-topped table was the bottle of gin, two-thirds gone, three grapefruits and a hand juicer. The label on the bottle had a picture of a little old lady who gazed out at them sternly. Beneath the table, their knees were visible, Heather’s young dimpled ones and the Dunes’ knobby ones. The knees looked troubled, even baffled, beneath the glass.

  “We could take her to Mexico,” Don said. “Lu-Lu would love Mexico, I bet.” He was wearing a dirty blue billed cap with a fish leaping on it.

  “Not Baja, though,” Debbie said. Her left arm was bandaged from where she’d burned it on the stove. “Too many RVs there. All those old geezers with nothing better to do in their twilight years than to drive up and down Baja. They’d flatten Lu-Lu in a minute.”

  “I’ve heard those volcanic islands off Bahia Los Angeles are full of snakes,” Heather said.

  The Dunes looked at her, shocked.

  After a moment, Debbie said, “Lu-Lu wouldn’t like that at all.”

  “She don’t know any other snakes,” Don added.

  He poured more gin in all the glasses.

  “Do you remember tequila, my dear?” he said to Debbie. He turned his old wrinkled face toward her.

  “The beverage of Mexico,” Debbie said solemnly.

  “On the back of each label is a big black crow,” Don said. “You can see it
real good when the liquor’s gone.”

  “The Mexicans are a morbid people,” Debbie said.

  “What I like best about snakes,” Heather said, “is how they move without seeming to. They move, but they seem to be moving in place. Then suddenly they’re gone.” She snapped her fingers wetly.

  “That’s the thing you like best about ’em?” Don said morosely. “Better things than that to like.”

  Heather looked at her fingers. How did they get so damp, she wondered.

  “We got inquiries as far away as San Diego, did we tell you?” Don said. “San Diego wants her real bad.”

  Debbie raised her chin high and shook her head back and forth. The stringy tendons in her neck trembled. “Never!” she said. “People would stare and make comments.” She shuddered. “I can hear them!”

  “She’s got second sight, Debbie has,” Don confided to Heather. “It don’t use her as a vehicle much, though.”

  Debbie had shut her eyes and was wobbling back and forth in her chair. “San Diego!” She groaned. “A cement floor. A room with nothing in it but Lu-Lu. Nothing! No pictures, no plants…and people staring at her through the glass. There’s a little sign telling about her happy life here in Tampa and a little about her personality, but not much, and her dimensions and all…And I can see one big fat guy holding an ice-cream sandwich in one hand and a little girl by the other and he’s saying, ‘Why that thing weighs fifteen pounds more than Daddy!’ ” Debbie gave a little yelp and dug in her ears with her fingers.

  “Second sight’s no gift,” Don said.

  “We’re so old,” Debbie wailed.

  Don tapped the elbow of her good arm solicitously and nodded at her drink.

  “We’re so old,” Debbie said, taking a sip. “Can’t take care of ourselves nor the ones we love.”

  “And Heather here is young,” Don said. “Don’t make no difference.”

  “We live in the wrong time, just like Lu-Lu,” Debbie said.

  “Lu-Lu should have lived in the Age of Reptiles,” Heather said slowly. Speaking seemed to present certain problems. She looked at the stern old lady on the gin bottle.

  “She would have loved it,” Don said.

  “Those were the days,” Debbie said. “Days of doomed grandeur.”

  “You know what I was reading about the other day?” Don said. “I was reading about the Neanderthals.”

  Debbie looked at Don proudly. Heather scratched her shoulder. The sun beat down on the crooked part in her hair. Why has love eluded me, she wondered.

  “They weren’t us, I read. They were a whole different species. But we’re the only species that are supposed to have souls, am I right? But the Neanderthals, it turned out, buried their dead Neanderthals with bits of food and flint chips and such, and even flowers. They found the graves.”

  “Now how could they know there were flowers?” Debbie said.

  “I forget,” Don said impatiently. “I’m seventy-six, I can’t remember everything.” He thought for a moment. “They got ways,” he said.

  Debbie Dune was silent. She smoothed the little skirt of her bathing suit.

  “My point is that those things might not have had souls but they thought they had souls.”

  “That’s a very pretty story,” Heather said slowly.

  The Dunes looked at her.

  “The flowers and all,” Heather said.

  “I don’t know what you’re saying, Don,” Debbie said politely.

  “What I’m saying,” Don said, “is who’s to say what’s got a soul and what hasn’t.”

  “Another thing I like about snakes,” Heather said, “is how they can occupy themselves for long stretches of time doing nothing.”

  “I think,” Debbie said, “that what it boils down to soul-wise is simple. If things cry, they got souls. If they don’t, they don’t.”

  “Lu-Lu don’t cry,” Don said.

  “That’s right,” Debbie said pluckily.

  “May I get some more ice,” Heather asked.

  “Oh, that’s a good idea, honey. Do get some more ice,” Debbie said.

  Heather stood up, carefully passed the swimming pool and went into the kitchen. Lu-Lu was there, drinking from a pan of milk.

  “Hello, Lu-Lu,” Heather said. Deaf as a post, she thought.

  She opened the freezer and took out a tray of ice. She looked inside the refrigerator and saw a dozen eggs and a box of shredded wheat. I should do something for these poor old people, Heather thought. Make them a quiche or something. She nibbled on a biscuit of shredded wheat and watched Lu-Lu drink her milk. Lu-Lu stared at her as she watched.

  Heather walked outside. It was hot. The geraniums growing from Crisco cans looked peaked.

  “Whoops,” Debbie said. “I guess we need more gin now with all this ice.”

  “This is a difficult day for us,” Don said. “It is a day of decision.”

  “The gin’s right on the counter there beneath the emergency phone numbers,” Debbie said.

  Heather went back into the kitchen. Lu-Lu was still working away at the milk.

  “Lu-Lu’s eating,” Heather said, outside again.

  “She don’t eat much,” Don said.

  “No, she don’t,” Debbie said. “But she does like her rats. You know when she swallows a rat, she keeps it in her gullet for a while and that rat is fine. That rat’s snug as if it were in its own little hole.”

  “That rat’s oblivious,” Don said. “That rat thinks it might even have escaped.”

  “Her gullet’s like a comfy little waiting room to the chamber of horrors beyond it,” Debbie said.

  “You know in Mexico, in that big zoo in Mexico City, once a month they feed the boas and everybody turns out to watch. They feed ’em live chickens.”

  “Such a morbid people,” Debbie said.

  Heather looked across the Dunes’ yard into the one behind her little rented house. Her diaphanous nightie hung on the clothesline, barely moving. Time to go, Heather thought. She sat in her chair, chewing on her sun-blistered lip.

  Lu-Lu slithered toward them. She placed her spade-like head on Debbie’s knee.

  “Poor dear doesn’t know what’s going to happen next,” Debbie said.

  “We know neither the time nor the hour,” Don said. “None of us.” He peered through the glass-topped table at Lu-Lu. “Is she clouding up again?”

  “She molted less than four months ago,” Debbie said. “It’s your eyes that are clouding up.”

  “She looks kind of milky to me,” Don said.

  “Don’t you wish!” exclaimed Debbie. She winked at Heather. “Don gets the biggest kick out of Lu-Lu shedding her skin.”

  Don grinned shyly. He took off his billed cap and put it back on again.

  “We got her skins hanging up in the lanai,” Debbie said to Heather. “Have you seen them?”

  Heather shook her head. They all three got up and lurched toward the lanai, a small screened room looking out over where they had been. Lu-Lu followed behind. There, thumbtacked to the mildewed ceiling, were half a dozen chevron-patterned gray and papery skins rustling and clicking in the breeze.

  “In order to do this really right, you’d need a taller room,” Debbie said. “I’ve always wanted a nice tall room and I’ve never gotten one. With a nice tall room they could hang in all their glory.”

  “There’s nothing prettier than Lu-Lu right after she molts,” Don said. “She’s so shiny and new!”

  Heather went over to Lu-Lu’s old skins. There were Lu-Lu’s big empty mouth and eyes. Heather pushed her face closer and sniffed. The skins smelled salty, she thought. Then she thought they couldn’t possibly smell like anything she could describe.

  “They got a prettier sound than those tinny wind chimes,” Don said. “Anybody can buy themselves one of those. What’s the sense of it? They don’t last forever, though.”

  “I almost called Lu-Lu Draco, but I’m glad I didn’t,” Debbie said.

  “Draco would h
ave been a big mistake all right,” Don agreed.

  “You’ll never guess what Don used to be,” Debbie said.

  Heather felt sleepy and anxious at the same time. She took several tiny, restless steps.

  “He was a pastry chef,” Debbie said.

  Heather looked at the Dunes. Never would she have imagined Don Dune to be a pastry chef.

  The disclosure seemed to exhaust Debbie. Her good arm paddled through the air toward Don. “I have to go to bed now,” she said.

  “My dear,” Don said, crooking his elbow gallantly in her direction.

  Heather followed them into their small, brown bedroom. Everything was brown. It seemed cool and peaceful. Lu-Lu remained on the lanai, wrapped around a hassock.

  Heather turned back the sheets and the Dunes crawled in, wearing their bathing suits.

  “When I was a little girl,” Debbie said, “nothing was more horrible to me than having to go to bed while it was still light.”

  Don took off his cap and patted his head. “Even my hair feels drunk,” he said.

  “I would like to take Lu-Lu and make a new life for myself,” Heather announced.

  The Dunes lay in bed, the dark sheets pulled up to their chins.

  “If you go off with Lu-Lu,” Debbie said, “you’ve got to love her good, because Lu-Lu can’t show she loves you back.”

  “Snakes ain’t demonstrative as a rule,” Don added. “They’ve got no obvious way of showing attachment.”

  “She’ll be able to recognize your footsteps after a while,” Debbie said.

  Heather was delighted.

  “Will she get into my car, do you think?” Heather asked.

  “Lu-Lu’s a good rider,” Debbie said. “A real good rider. I always wanted to drive her into a big uncharted desert, but I never did.”

  “We’ll find a desert,” Heather said with enthusiasm.

  “Debbie don’t think she’s ever wanted much, but she has,” Don said. He sighed.

  “We’d better get started,” Heather said. She smoothed the sheet and tucked it in under the mattress.

  “Bless you, honey,” Debbie said drowsily.

  “Spoon a little jelly in Lu-Lu’s milk sometimes,” Don said. “She enjoys that.”