Big Bend

by Bill Roorbach

  Jimmy and Connie linger politely. Connie tries for a conversation: “How’s New York? I miss New York.”

  “Is that where you live?” says little Bean.

  “Yes,” Lily says, patting Ted’s shoulder. “He lives in New York City, where we’ve never been.”

  Just before the big meal Ted gets Lily and Beaner to help him with the forgotten mural. The little girls close the dining room doors and giggle and whisper, loving a conspiracy. Ted stands on the furniture and Dad’s spattered stepladder, carefully taping the paint-stiffened paper around three walls and close up under the high ceiling. The mural just clears the tops of the doors and the hutch and the grandfather clock, which tocks. Bean, who is normally as skeptical as Ernest, is thrilled. She holds her belly and stares at the likeness of her little self in the Pilgrim outfit, amazed.

  Lily crosses her arms in front of her and gets formal, proffers a review: “I think Grandpa looks perfect except his hair. His hair is white, Uncle Teddy, it’s not gray like that.”

  Ted suppresses the impulse to argue with her. She’s nine, for heaven’s sake. Also, she’s right.

  She purses her lips, turns slowly, taking in the mural, one end to the other. She says, “The food looks so real. And Grandma looks perfect, and Uncle Jimmy.”

  Teddy can’t help it, he stands there beaming. Praise is praise, and he hasn’t gotten much for months.

  “Daddy looks mean,” Bean cries, pointing, suddenly having seen the god Ernest in the clouds.

  “Why is Aunt Kelly under the table?” says Lily.

  “She’s holding it up,” says Ted.

  “And look at me,” Lily says. They do, for a full minute, Ted and two children, necks bent back, arms folded. Lily says, “I look stupid.”

  “You are stupid,” Beaner says.

  Lily says, “And Erin and April, Uncle Teddy, 1 don’t know. Erin and April are the worst!”

  “Babies are hard,” Ted says.

  “They look like little animals,” says the Bean.

  “And why is my mom in a bathing suit?” Lily points.

  Eek. Ted needs Lily’s eyes to show him that Mary’s Native American costume is tiny, a great show of legs and cleavage and burning dark eyes, that old movie poster of Raquel Welch. It’s obvious, awful, pure aggression, but the likeness is terrific. Ted has spent a lot more time on her than on the other portraits, and spent it later in the night of painting, bombed on that whiskey when he should have bought monthly meds. He has her face perfect down to the expression of pain and caring, has her long hair shining blue and dark as midnight, has the dent of her lip, the tilt of her head, the knuckles of her hand. But where did the cleavage come from? The oiled thighs? He wishes for paints to fix her costume, then in a fit of real grandiosity decides she’ll like it.

  To Lily he says, “I need help.”

  Lily looks at him seriously.

  “Come carry things, girls,” says Ted’s mother.

  “April and Lily, come help,” calls Mary, as if they are miles away.

  Ted takes advantage of the empty dining room to raid the liquor cabinet. He pours several fingers of Wild Turkey into a large ornamental cup from the top shelf of the hutch. He drinks fast, pours again, stows the bottle back in its cabinet, drinks up, steps cheerfully into the kitchen fray, pats Miss Bean on her head.

  Dad, torn away from his machines, sits at the head of the enormous old table as always, with Bean at his right hand. Mom sits at the foot. Elrod the mutt, having roused himself, stations himself underneath, stiffly, seventeen years old, waiting for scraps.

  Ted’s mural hovers above, surrounding the family on three sides. Everyone but Kelly thinks it’s in bad taste to have painted Kelly under the table like that, holding things up—but she’s proud of her strength, her size, kindly says she doesn’t mind. Ernest seems to like his position in the clouds, gazes up at himself approvingly. No one says a word about Mary’s costume, though Mary gives Ted a hard look. His parents barely look up.

  Not another word about the mural. Big-hearted Connie, all manners, leaps into the void, takes it upon herself to offer praise, something the Lyonses just aren’t good at. She praises the likenesses, praises Ted’s generosity, praises his palette, praises his ingenuity, praises the perspective, the difficult trick of getting everyone in there, praises and praises him in the silent room.

  And in the silence that remains when she’s through, Dad says grace. Mom and Kelly start passing food around. Ernest’s in the same seat he’s always been in, exact center of the fire side of the table, equidistant between Mom and Dad. Mary sits beside him. Jimmy and Connie, as always, sit across, neatly dressed. Ted’s next to Mary, Lily beside him. Kelly’s across from Ted on the piano bench next to Bean, rocking baby Erin, chatting earnestly with April, who is failing to sit quietly. The plates fill up. Forks clatter. The meal commences.

  Mom grows sad, sighs and pokes her food. Unasked, unannounced, Dad gives a technology quiz straight from childhood: “At what temperature does all movement stop?” and instantly the siblings are shouting out answers, childlike in competition. Mary and Connie laugh, watching the familiar regression. “Absolute zero,” shouts Ernest for the eighth time.

  Dad pretends not to hear, won’t give Ernest credit, moves on. He says, “By what process is plastic derived from oil?” Jimmy and Ernest and Ted all start talking, none giving ground, none exactly knowing the answer, so, soon and also at once, they shout out jokes to cover themselves, they shout with laughter.

  “I paid for how much college?” Dad says.

  “Teddy smells like booze,” cries Lily.

  “Lily smells like baby powder,” says Ted. He feels inordinately and absurdly proud that she has chosen to sit beside him, that he is her relative. He tickles her between bites, steals food from her plate.

  “You are crazy,” she says, patting his shoulder.

  “Crazy,” Ted says back.

  Kelly says, “Oil is turned into plastic by fouling beaches and destroying indigenous populations and by widening the gap between rich and poor and otherwise assuring the hasty end of human culture as we know it and shortly thereafter the death of the earth. Ha ha.”

  Gentle Connie sees the gauntlet hitting the parched earth, says, “At my office there’s this gal who has this dream to fly in a balloon. Of course we just laughed and laughed at her …” And keeps trying, though only Mary even pretends to listen.

  “Bhopal,” Ernest says, cryptically.

  “… signs up for this balloon tour.”

  “For or against?” says Kelly. Ha ha ha.

  “Human error,” says Dad. “Those Continental Indians are ineducable.”

  “No more quizzes,” Mom says.

  Connie never gives up, tells the entire story of an eleven-balloon pilgrimage to Cumberland Island, even as Ernest and Dad and Kelly face off three ways about the responsibility of multinational corporations to world culture, not the slightest agreement between them in any direction.

  “You want to stop driving your car?” Dad shouts finally, his grin a rictus. “You want Ted to stop using his paint?”

  Ted raises his eyebrows.

  “Teddy needs help,” Lily cries.

  “So I guess the lesson is: pursue your dreams,” Connie says, and goes silent.

  “Maybe we should take the billboard down,” says Ernest. He means Ted’s mural and says it like it’s Ted’s mural that has caused the ruckus.

  “Oh, Ernest,” says Mary.

  Ted feels himself stiffen.

  “Pinkos,” says Dad. It’s supposed to be a joke but it isn’t funny and not even Connie laughs.

  “You hurt Ted’s feelings,” says Lily, soulfully, aggrievedly to her father. She pats Ted’s shoulder, says, “You say sorry.”

  No one is going to say sorry. Everyone turns to eating. The food is gorgeous, delectable, but only Connie says so, a grand “Yum” in the silence: turkey and creamed onions and mashed turnips and sweet potatoes, peas and cranberry chutney and green be
ans, salad and rolls, lots of rolls.

  Ted eats. He wants to tell Lily he is not hurt by Ernest. He wants to tell Lily he’s impervious, always was. He wants to tell Lily how he loves her and how funny he thinks she is. He wants to say, Lily, don’t worry about me, but he can’t because Lily’s right, he can’t because Lily’s seen through him and she’s just a kid and she knows about Ted and his pain before Ted even knows. The mural prowls above them. Ted eats with total absorption and the pleasure of it is the most pleasure of any kind he’s felt in many weeks, many months, more pleasure than in two years, certainly. One must ask for help, as Dr. Teach, his psychiatrist, often says.

  The little girls start a song about bluebirds, and everyone just continues to eat in blind concentration, passing bowls around, filling plates, clanking, slurping, sighing.

  Mary sits between Ernest and Ted, eating politely, as if she’s alone at some diner. Her new red dress is open at the neck, her bra shows ruffles, her cleavage is pale, almost blue. Among the hundred-thousand glossy black hairs on her head there are a hundred strands of gray, which Ted finds stirring, poignant, perfect. He takes a bite of his food, gazes at Mary, gazes away, bites his food, gets lost in his plate. Help, he thinks.

  Dad is first to finish, throws his hands up—Touchdown!—smiles broadly, proud of his speed. Ted almost hears him say what Ted wants to hear him say—how good the food is, or how full the fatherly stomach is, or how there’s still a little room for pie—but Dad says, “I’d say round up these environmental weenies and pop ’em in a gas chamber somewhere.”

  Connie laughs absently. Jimmy looks at her, aghast: Connie is Jewish, as Dad well knows. Kelly sighs dramatically, but keeps eating big gulps, has hardly dented the enormous mound of food on her plate.

  “Everybody?” says Ted in a rush.

  “Don’t even say it,” says Ernest.

  Mary closes her eyes.

  Long pause. “I was just going to say that we need to think what the world will be like for these little girls.” He smiles benignly, looks at serious Lily, flips a calm open palm toward April, but his heart pounds as if he’s being chased, or as if he’s been in a crash.

  “Can we take the billboard down?” says Ernest, smiling hard. He’s still talking about Ted’s mural, trying to make it a joke, trying to break the tension, but there’s not a jot of humor in his face.

  “What I want to know,” says Mary evenly, “is the source of all this emotion today.”

  “Pinkos,” says Dad, smiling hard like Ernest, as red in the face.

  “Why is everyone fighting?” says April.

  “No one’s fighting, dear,” says Dad.

  “Nazis,” Kelly says.

  Jimmy says: “What’s the biggest flounder ever caught?”

  Ah, Jimmy. Dad leaps up and rushes to the living room to get the record book and an encyclopedia, and soon he’s reading loudly about flatfish, fluke, and flounder.

  Suddenly Kelly looks up, fixes Ted in her thoughtful gaze. “If you ask me,” she says, “I think it’s remarkable how these good upright men can do the work they do for Dow and Union Carbide and still want to have children. Jail’s too good for them.”

  “Three hundred forty pounds!” Dad cries.

  “No flounder’s that big,” Ernest says.

  “Men and their stupidity.” This is Mom, just a whisper, barely even a sound, but everyone has heard her. Ted looks at her a minute. She is looking at her plate.

  “Have the bulbs gone in?” Kelly says. “Mom Lyons? Have you got the tulips in yet?”

  “I’ve given up on flowers,” Mom says.

  “Criminey,” says Dad.

  That’s good for more silence.

  Ted realizes he’s panting, has run a race, is still sprinting. He can’t imagine how much whiskey it would take to calm him. He looks to Mary, Mary dressed more formally than the rest of the family, Mary detached in her pleasant way from all the hubbub, an only child who’s found herself in the center ring of a circus. Ernest’s beautiful Mary. Ted bumps her knee with his own. He looks up at his image of her in the mural. It’s sexy, it’s good, it’s dangerous. He leans to her, whispers, “I love you.”

  She turns to him, incredulous, and though she’s heard him she whispers back, “What?”

  And Ted rises, as if to make a toast. He grips the table edge and begins to shake it. Kelly laughs, Ha ha ha, and Lily pats his back. Dad frowns at the rattling of the glassware. Mom says, “Theodore, stop.” Ernest shakes his head, rolls his eyes. Jimmy puts his hands up, a calming gesture, looks as though he’s seeing a dangerous stranger. Connie laughs at the joke of it, generous as always, keeps laughing even as her face registers that there’s no joke.

  Ted says, “Everybody?” and shakes the table harder.

  “Teddy?” Mary says gently.

  “Now, Ted. Ted E. Boy,” Dad says soothingly.

  Ernest stands too, puts a hand on the table to steady it.

  Ted looks up at his mural, the images of each of his siblings, his parents, his nieces, his sisters-in-law. He feels calm, composed, sure of himself for the first time maybe ever. He gives a croak and heaves his side of the table into the air. Ernest’s hand upon it is as nothing to Ted’s strange strength. The plates across the way slide into Connie’s lap, into Jimmy’s. Jimmy leaps up, catches the lighted candles as they head for the floor. Bean hops and perches out of the way on her chair, delighted. Big Kelly saves baby Erin, stands and spins, but Connie’s too late, stays in her armless chair, catches the table in her lap, shrieks.

  Ted heaves again, and the half-carved turkey shoots full speed onto Jimmy’s feet before he can put the candles down, before he can do anything. The creamed onions go to Connie, who’s squawking, trapped, legs bruised for certain. The yams go to Beaner who—thrilled—knocks her chair over making the catch. The silverware clangs hitting the plates and glasses, which smash in quick series as they hit the hardwood floor. Beaner saves the salad, heavy wooden bowl, holds it a moment, then takes the opportunity to fling lettuce and tomato and round slices of carrot gaily in the air. The centerpiece, a bowl of ceramic fruit, slides quickly and crashes. The tablecloth slides away Baby Erin laughs, Kelly pants, April wails. Only Mary has managed to save her plate, and holds it stoically as Connie in her struggles tilts her own chair till it falls, bringing the huge table all the way down on top of her. Jimmy cries out, gives the table another heave to free his wife. Dad stands with his eyebrows raised, still holding the encyclopedia. Mom moans. Thanksgiving dinner is on the floor. Everyone turns to stare at Ted, stands frozen, mouths open, hands upraised, frozen like that forever.

  “Everybody?” Ted says finally. He looks mystified.

  “Gonna deck you,” says Ernest.

  Connie has started to cry.

  Lily, she just pats her Uncle Teddy’s back.

  “We’ll get this picked up in no time,” Dad says, as if the whole thing were a common Thanksgiving mishap. “No time at all!”

  Blues Machine

  Rockin’ Joe Heath stumbled into the stairwell in nothing but a black Zildjian T-shirt, shushing himself, trying to see right, pounding head. He recalled the old lily pattern of the wallpaper and something about the tattered edges of the carpet over the stairs, but he couldn’t remember any act of climbing those stairs or what must have ensued. Connie was dead asleep, a good damn thing. Joe gently closed her door, crept down the hall, tried the next door, sure he’d see tile and toilet, but no, it was stuffed animals and a rumpled single bed.

  Oh, Christ, her kids, and Joe with no pants.

  Quick. End of the hall, creaking floor, top of the stairs, two more doors, the first a closet (empty shelves except for unmatched washcloths, neatly folded), the next, yes, good, the bath. Mermaid shower curtain. Smell of soap and kid piss. He tripped in, shut the door, addressed the toilet gratefully, yanked a handful of pink toilet paper when he was done, wiped the seat, perfect gentleman. But the toilet would not flush. Rockin’ Joe wriggled the handle and rattled it, but the w
ater wasn’t going to come.

  Medicine cabinet. Squeal of hinges. Plenty prescriptions. One box hair color, “Confident Blonde.” Midol. Ointments, pads, puffs, lipsticks, toothbrushes, Q-tips, every stinking thing but aspirin. So Midol, and close the small door quick as the other shit fell out, long mess of his own blackened hair in the mirror, and his new-trimmed beard, salt and pepper and rocks and mud, Joe tall, mirror low, so nothing of himself above the nose, good thing—didn’t want to look in those eyes. He smiled through his mustache to see his pretty teeth (Connie said).

  Four Midol in the mouth, down the hatch, but the sink was out, no water. He gagged on the pills, pushed past the door, bounded down the stairs, Midol stuck. Big foyer, old farmhouse, huge living room (bare), dining room (long, elegant, heirloom table), kitchen.

  Sink. No stinking water. Joe coughed, the bitter taste of the pills filling his throat and his mouth and his nose. He hopped to the round old refrigerator, whipped the door open slam into the rustic sideboard, rattle of jars, plastic pitcher full of pink stuff, Kool-Aid, drank deeply, sickly sweet.

  Clock over the sink: 4:30. Saturday afternoon. Nice going, Rockin’Joe.

  “Hi,” someone said brightly.

  Joe spun around and saw this teenager seated at the raw kitchen table in front of the ornate cookstove.

  “Ah, shit, scared me, boy!” He pulled his T-shirt down, snagged the kitchen towel hung sinkside. He covered himself, red and white checks, wished he hadn’t cursed.

  John Wayne voice: “There’s a real towel in the bathroom there, pardner.” The boy pointed, grinning. He was maybe fifteen, a small man, sitting stiffly upright, facing Joe squarely with his hands on the table on either side of a fat paperback book. His hair was short and dark, stiffly parted, damp with styling gel. His big dark eyes were steady and ironic, nose large, faintest ghost of a mustache, front teeth big and white in sidelong grin. He looked like his father. He looked like Tony, all right.

  Joe sidled to the big bathroom, old tub in there, found a flowered beach towel and wrapped himself, long skirt. He stood tall to find some dignity, stepped back into the kitchen, said as conversationally as possible, “No water?”