Finding a Girl in America

by Andre Dubus

  They rode past beach cottages and up a one-block street to the long dune that hid the sea, chained their bicycles to a telephone pole, and sprinted over loose sand and up the dune; then walking, looking at the empty beach and sea and breakers, stopping to take off sneakers and shirts, Jimmy stuffing his three bills into a sneaker, then running onto wet hard sand, into the surf cold on his feet and ankles, Chris beside him, and they both shouted at once, at the cold but to the sea as well, and ran until the water pushed at their hips and they walked out toward the sea and low sun, his feet hurting in the cold. A wave came and they turned their backs to it and he watched over his shoulder as it rose; when it broke they dived and he was riding it fast, swallowing water, and in that instant of old sea-panic he saw his father crying; he opened his eyes to the sting, his arms stretched before him, hands joined, then he was lying on the sand and the wave was gone and he stood shouting: ‘All right.’ They ran back into the sea and body-surfed until they were too cold, then walked stiffly up to higher sand. He lay on his back beside his clothes, looked at the sky; soon people would come with blankets and ice chests. Chris lay beside him. He shut his eyes.

  ‘I was listening to the ball game when they came home. With the ear plug. They won, three to two. Lee went all the way. Rice drove in two with a double—’ Bright field and uniforms under the lights in Oakland, him there too while he lay on his bunk, watching Lee working fast, Remy going to his left and diving to knock it down, on his knees for the throw in time when they came in talking past the door and down the hall to the kitchen—‘They talked low for a long time; that’s when they were drinking whiskey and mostly I just heard Pop getting ice, then I don’t know why but after a while I knew it was trouble, all that ice and quiet talk and when they popped cans I figured they’d finished the whiskey and they were still talking that way so I started listening. She had already told him. That’s what they were talking about. Maybe she told him at the Chiefs Club. She was talking nice to him—’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said—shit—’ He opened his eyes to the blue sky, closed them again, pressed his legs into the warm sand, listened to the surf. ‘She said I’ve tried to stop seeing him. She said Don’t you believe I’ve tried? You think I want to hurt you? You know what it’s like. I can’t stop. I’ve tried and I can’t. I wish I’d never met him. But I can’t keep lying and sneaking around. And Pop said Bullshit: you mean you can’t keep living here when you want to be fucking him. They didn’t say anything for a minute and they popped two more cans, then she said You’re right. But maybe I don’t have to leave. Maybe if you’d just let me go to him when I wanted to. That’s when he started yelling at her. They went at it for a long time, and I thought you’d wake up. I turned the game up loud as I could take it but it was already the ninth, then it was over, and I couldn’t stop hearing them anyway. She said Jason would never say those things to her, that’s all I know about that son of a bitch, his name is Jason and he’s a civilian somewhere and she started yelling about all the times Pop was aboard ship he must have had a lot of women and who did he think he was anyway and she’d miss you and me and it broke her heart how much she’d miss you and me but she had to get out from under his shit, and he was yelling about she was probably fucking every day he was at sea for the whole twenty years and she said You’ll never know you bastard you can just think about it for another twenty. That’s when he slapped her.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Then she cried a little, not much, then they drank some more beer and talked quiet again. He was trying to make up to her, saying he was sorry he hit her and she said it was her fault, she shouldn’t have said that, and she hadn’t fucked anybody till Jason—‘

  ‘She said that?’

  ‘What.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Yes. She was talking nice to him again, like he was a little kid, then she went to their room and packed a suitcase and he went to the front door with her, and I couldn’t hear what they said. She went outside and he did too and after she drove off he came back to the kitchen and drank beer.’ He raised his head and looked past his feet at a sea gull bobbing on the water beyond the breakers. ‘Then he cried for a while. Then he went to bed.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve never heard him cry.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me up?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wish you had.’

  ‘I did. This morning.’

  ‘What’s going to happen?’

  ‘I guess she’ll visit us or something.’

  ‘What if they send Pop to sea again and we have to go live with her and that guy?’

  ‘Don’t be an asshole. He’s retiring and he’s going to buy that boat and we’ll fish like bastards. I’m going to catch a big fucking tuna and sell it to the Japanese and buy you some weights.’

  He squeezed Chris’s bicep and rose, pulling him up. Chris turned his face, looking up the beach. Jimmy stepped in front of him, still holding his arm.

  ‘Look: I heard Pop cry last night. For a long time. Loud. That’s all the fucking crying I want to hear. Now let’s take another wave and get some doughnuts.’

  They ran into the surf, wading coldly to the wave that rose until there was no horizon, no sea, only the sky beyond it.

  Dottie from tenth grade was working the counter, small and summer-brown.

  ‘Wakefield boys are here,’ Jimmy said. ‘Six honey dip to go.’

  He only knew her from math and talking in the halls, but the way she smiled at him, if it were any other morning, he would stay and talk, and any other day he would ask her to meet him in town tonight and go on some of the rides, squeeze her on the roller coaster, eat pizza and egg rolls at the stands, get somebody to buy them a six-pack, take it to the beach. He told her she was foxy, and got a Kool from her. Cars were on the roads now, but so many that they were slow and safe, and he and Chris rode side by side on the shoulder; Chris held the doughnut bag against the handlebar and ate while Jimmy smoked, then he reached over for the bag and ate his three. When they got near the house it looked quiet. They chained their bicycles in the garage and crept into the kitchen and past the closed door, to the bathroom. In the shower he pinched Chris’s gut and said: ‘No shit, we got to work on that.’

  They put on gym shorts and sneakers and took their gloves and ball to the backyard.

  ‘When we get warmed up I’m going to throw at your face, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You’re still scared of it there and you’re ducking and you’ll get hurt that way.’

  The new baseball smooth in his hand and bright in the sun, smacking in Chris’s glove, coming back at him, squeezed high in the pocket and webbing; then he heard the back door and held the ball and watched his father walking out of the shade into the light. He squinted at his father’s stocky body and sunburned face and arms, his rumpled hair, and motioned to Chris and heard him trotting on the grass. He was nearly as tall as his father, barely had to tilt his head to look into his eyes. He breathed the smell of last night’s booze, this morning’s sleep.

  ‘I heard you guys last night,’ he said. ‘I already told him.’

  His father’s eyes shifted to Chris, then back.

  ‘She’ll come by tomorrow, take you boys to lunch.’ He scratched his rump, looked over his shoulder at the house, then at Jimmy. ‘Maybe later we’ll go eat some lobsters. Have a talk.’

  ‘We could cook them here,’ Chris said.

  ‘Sure. Steamers too. Okay: I’ll be out in a minute.’

  They watched him walk back to the house, then Jimmy touched Chris, gently pushed him, and he trotted across the lawn. They threw fly balls and grounders and one-hop throws from the outfield and straight ones to their bare chests, calling to each other, Jimmy listening to the quiet house too, seeing it darker in there, cooler, his father’s closet where in a corner behind blue and khaki uniforms the
shotgun leaned. He said, ‘Here we go,’ and threw at Chris’s throat, then face, and heard the back door; his breath quickened, and he threw hard: the ball grazed the top of Chris’s glove and struck his forehead and he bent over, his bare hand rubbing above his eye, then he was crying deeply and Jimmy turned to his running father, wearing his old glove, hair wet and combed, smelling of after-shave lotion, and said: ‘He’s all right, Pop. He’s all right.’

  The Winter Father

  for Pat

  THE JACKMAN’S marriage had been adulterous and violent, but in its last days, they became a couple again, as they might have if one of them were slowly dying. They wept together, looked into each other’s eyes without guile, distrust, or hatred, and they planned Peter’s time with the children. On his last night at home, he and Norma, tenderly, without a word, made love. Next evening, when he got home from Boston, they called David and Kathi in from the snow and brought them to the kitchen.

  David was eight, slender, with light brown hair nearly to his shoulders, a face that was still pretty; he seemed always hungry, and Peter liked watching him eat. Kathi was six, had long red hair and a face that Peter had fallen in love with, a face that had once been pierced by glass the shape of a long dagger blade. In early spring a year ago: he still had not taken the storm windows off the screen doors; he was bringing his lunch to the patio, he did not know Kathi was following him, and holding his plate and mug he had pushed the door open with his shoulder, stepped outside, heard the crash and her scream, and turned to see her gripping then pulling the long shard from her cheek. She got it out before he reached her. He picked her up and pressed his handkerchief to the wound, midway between her eye and throat, and held her as he phoned his doctor who said he would meet them at the hospital and do the stitching himself because it was cosmetic and that beautiful face should not be touched by residents. Norma was not at home. Kathi lay on the car seat beside him and he held his handkerchief on her cheek, and in the hospital he held her hands while she lay on the table. The doctor said it would only take about four stitches and it would be better without anesthetic, because sometimes that puffed the skin, and he wanted to fit the cut together perfectly, for the scar; he told this very gently to Kathi, and he said as she grew, the scar would move down her face and finally would be under her jaw. Then she and Peter squeezed each other’s hands as the doctor stitched and she gritted her teeth and stared at pain.

  She was like that when he and Norma told them. It was David who suddenly cried, begged them not to get a divorce, and then fled to his room and would not come out, would not help Peter load his car, and only emerged from the house as Peter was driving away: a small running shape in the dark, charging the car, picking up something and throwing it, missing, crying You bum You bum You bum …

  Drunk that night in his apartment whose rent he had paid and keys received yesterday morning before last night’s grave lovemaking with Norma, he gained through the blur of bourbon an intense focus on his children’s faces as he and Norma spoke: We fight too much, we’ve tried to live together but can’t; you’ll see, you’ll be better off too, you’ll be with Daddy for dinner on Wednesday nights, and on Saturdays and Sundays you’ll do things with him. In his kitchen he watched their faces.

  Next day he went to the radio station. After the news at noon he was on; often, as the records played, he imagined his children last night, while he and Norma were talking, and after he was gone. Perhaps she took them out to dinner, let them stay up late, flanking her on the couch in front of the television. When he talked he listened to his voice: it sounded as it did every weekday afternoon. At four he was finished. In the parking lot he felt as though, with stooped shoulders, he were limping. He started the forty-minute drive northward, for the first time in twelve years going home to empty rooms. When he reached the town where he lived he stopped at a small store and bought two lamb chops and a package of frozen peas. I will take one thing at a time, he told himself. Crossing the sidewalk to his car, in that short space, he felt the limp again, the stooped shoulders. He wondered if he looked like a man who had survived an accident which had killed others.

  That was on a Thursday. When he woke Saturday morning, his first thought was a wish: that Norma would phone and tell him they were sick, and he should wait to see them Wednesday. He amended his wish, lay waiting for his own body to let him know it was sick, out for the weekend. In late morning he drove to their coastal town; he had moved fifteen miles inland. Already the snow-ploughed streets and country roads leading to their house felt like parts of his body: intestines, lung, heart-fiber lying from his door to theirs. When they were born he had smoked in the waiting room with the others. Now he was giving birth: stirruped, on his back, waves of pain. There would be no release, no cutting of the cord. Nor did he want it. He wanted to grow a cord.

  Walking up their shovelled walk and ringing the doorbell, he felt at the same time like an inept salesman and a con man. He heard their voices, watched the door as though watching the sounds he heard, looking at the point where their faces would appear, but when the door opened he was looking at Norma’s waist; then up to her face, lipsticked, her short brown hair soft from that morning’s washing. For years she had not looked this way on a Saturday morning. Her eyes held him: the nest of pain was there, the shyness, the coiled anger; but there was another shimmer: she was taking a new marriage vow: This is the way we shall love our children now; watch how well I can do it. She smiled and said: ‘Come in out of the cold and have a cup of coffee.’

  In the living room he crouched to embrace the hesitant children. Only their faces were hesitant. In his arms they squeezed, pressed, kissed. David’s hard arms absolved them both of Wednesday night. Through their hair Peter said pleasantly to Norma that he’d skip the coffee this time. Grabbing caps and unfurling coats, they left the house, holding hands to the car.

  He showed them his apartment: they had never showered behind glass; they slid the doors back and forth. Sand washing down the drain, their flesh sunburned, a watermelon waiting in the refrigerator …

  ‘This summer—’

  They turned from the glass, looked up at him.

  ‘When we go to the beach. We can come back here and shower.’

  Their faces reflected his bright promise, and they followed him to the kitchen; on the counter were two cans of kidney beans, Jalapeño peppers, seasonings. Norma kept her seasonings in small jars, and two years ago when David was six and came home bullied and afraid of next day at school, Peter asked him if the boy was bigger than he was, and when David said ‘A lot,’ and showed him the boy’s height with one hand, his breadth with two, Peter took the glass stopper from the cinnamon jar, tied it in a handkerchief corner, and struck his palm with it, so David would know how hard it was, would believe in it. Next morning David took it with him. On the schoolground, when the bully shoved him, he swung it up from his back pocket and down on the boy’s forehead. The boy cried and went away. After school David found him on the sidewalk and hit his jaw with the weapon he had sat on all day, chased him two blocks swinging at his head, and came home with delighted eyes, no damp traces of yesterday’s shame and fright, and Peter’s own pain and rage turned to pride, then caution, and he spoke gently, told David to carry it for a week or so more, but not to use it unless the bully attacked; told him we must control our pleasure in giving pain.

  Now reaching into the refrigerator he felt the children behind him; then he knew it was not them he felt, for in the bathroom when he spoke to their faces he had also felt a presence to his rear, watching, listening. It was the walls, it was fatherhood, it was himself. He was not an early drinker but he wanted an ale now; looked at the brown bottles long enough to fear and dislike his reason for wanting one, then he poured two glasses of apple cider and, for himself, cider and club soda. He sat at the table and watched David slice a Jalapeño over the beans, and said: ‘Don’t ever touch one of those and take a leak without washing your hands first.’

  ‘Why?’

>   ‘I did it once. Think about it.’

  ‘Wow.’

  They talked of flavors as Kathi, with her eyes just above rim-level of the pot, her wrists in the steam, poured honey, and shook paprika, basil, parsley, Worcestershire, wine vinegar. In a bowl they mixed ground meat with a raw egg: jammed their hands into it, fingers touching; scooped and squeezed meat and onion and celery between their fingers; the kitchen smelled of bay leaf in the simmering beans, and then of broiling meat. They talked about the food as they ate, pressing thick hamburgers to fit their mouths, and only then Peter heard the white silence coming at them like afternoon snow. They cleaned the counter and table and what they had used; and they spoke briefly, quietly, they smoothly passed things; and when Peter turned off the faucet, all sound stopped, the kitchen was multiplied by silence, the apartment’s walls grew longer, the floors wider, the ceilings higher. Peter walked the distance to his bedroom, looked at his watch, then quickly turned to the morning paper’s television listing, and called: ‘Hey! The Magnificent Seven’s coming on.’

  ‘All right,’ David said, and they hurried down the short hall, light footsteps whose sounds he could name: Kathi’s, David’s, Kathi’s. He lay between them, bellies down, on the bed.

  ‘Is this our third time or fourth?’ Kathi said.

  ‘I think our fourth. We saw it in a theater once.’

  ‘I could see it every week,’ David said.

  ‘Except when Charles Bronson dies,’ Kathi said. ‘But I like when the little kids put flowers on his grave. And when he spanks them.’

  The winter sunlight beamed through the bedroom window, the afternoon moving past him and his children. Driving them home he imitated Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Charles Bronson; the children praised his voices, laughed, and in front of their house they kissed him and asked what they were going to do tomorrow. He said he didn’t know yet; he would call in the morning, and he watched them go up the walk between snow as high as Kathi’s waist. At the door they turned and waved; he tapped the horn twice, and drove away.