Mack said she had a point and he’d certainly mention it to Frances. To this, the girl gave a bitter snort. Mack touched the baby’s flat nose with his finger, his face close to the bobbing pink head as he cooed to it.
When his second beer was gone, Anardelia gave him another. Velma had gone upstairs to change the baby’s diaper. Mack looked tired, his eyes slipping into an unfocusing brightness. Anardelia rambled on with a story of her sister’s breast surgery in Pensacola, Florida. Now she was telling a story about her brother Lyle, who delivered spring water. Velma returned without the baby and sat down. When Anardelia paused for breath, Martha told Mack she wanted to go.
“Just a few more minutes,” he said, setting his empty beer can on the coffee table.
“Stay. You gotta meet Lyle,” Anardelia said. Her brother Lyle stopped in every afternoon. “For a crap and a nap, he says.” Anardelia laughed.
“I want to go,” Martha said, standing up. Anardelia was disgusting. No wonder Frances and her father had never come back here.
“Now, we gotta meet Lyle,” Mack said, grinning.
“Sit down, honey,” the woman said. “You gotta meet Lyle.”
“I’m going,” she told Mack, who kept grinning.
Velma giggled.
Martha sidestepped past the coffee table to get outside. Not only were they making her nervous, but she was afraid the beer would turn Mack’s meanness on her.
“I heard all the stories, but now I seen for myself,” Anardelia sighed.
“What do they call it, what she’s got?” Velma asked. “Binky said mental.”
“Shh,” the grandmother said. “She’s family.”
The sky darkened, and suddenly it was raining. Even with the wipers sweeping back and forth, the windshield blurred with the downpour. She couldn’t stop smiling at him. Being alone together was wonderful. Mack glanced at her and said there was more to the surprise. She said that, after meeting Anardelia, she wasn’t sure if she wanted any more surprises.
“She’s a very nice woman,” Mack called as he drove.
“That Velma kept staring at me. I hate that. I hate being stared at.”
“Velma’s a burn-out. It was Anardelia I wanted you to talk to. I wanted you to see you’ve got family, that there’s more to life than just Frances and that house. You should be living your own life, with your own job, and your own apartment. You’ve got a whole history you don’t know anything about.”
She kept looking at him, so anxious in his speech that his hands flew over the wheel. She couldn’t imagine belonging to that family.
“It’s becoming more and more apparent to me how important that is.” He glanced at her. “It’s this stream of time, this constant pull towards something, into something. It’s what you don’t have.”
She turned. Was this her blankness? Had he identified it?
“It can’t ever be a Birdy or a Billy Chelsea or a bum like me. It’s a whole world you don’t know about. It’s all the big things. It’s God. It’s a whole history Frances and your father thought they could just turn their backs on and wipe out. But where does that leave you? What does it leave you? With all their fears that they never took the time to explain to you, because they had to be somebody else. Your father didn’t dare step out of Horace Beecham’s world, and neither did Frances. And in the process, you got lost, Martha.”
He turned onto Merchants Row. The rain stopped as abruptly as it had come, and in the sunshine a bright vapor rose from the streets, where rivers of rainwater coursed alongside the curbs.
“So what’s the rest of the surprise?” she asked, her heart pounding. She hadn’t been here in weeks. She kept looking for Birdy coming along the sidewalk.
He smiled. “I’m going to help you find a job. And we don’t leave here until you’ve got one. We’ll start at the first place we come to.” He slowed the car.
“No! I don’t want a job.”
“Of course you do! You have to be independent. A paycheck! A place of your own!” He grinned, and his teeth flashed in the sunlight. “Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about? About putting a life together?” he said, his voice rising.
“You’ve been doing all the talking. Not me.”
“What’s wrong, Martha?”
“I don’t want to leave you!”
For a moment his eyes ranged from side to side. “I’d come and see you. I would! I’d pick you up and we’d go for rides.”
“You would?” Could that be what he meant? Putting a life together. His life with hers.
“Yes!” He laughed. “In fact, we’d probably see more of each other here in town than we do now.”
She held her glasses in place and she didn’t know what to say.
He peered over the wheel, then pointed. “Let’s start up there! The drugstore, Miller’s!”
She glanced back at him. “They hate me in there.”
“They don’t hate you! Why would they hate you?” he laughed, shaking his head.
“They do. They just do. I know they do.”
“Martha, people just don’t go around hating other people for no reason. It’s not in the nature of things. Believe me!”
She looked at him. “You ever see a three-legged cow?” she asked.
“No. But I’ve seen a three-legged dog before.”
“The other dogs treat it bad?” she asked, and he said he didn’t think so. “Well, then, it probably wasn’t born that way. But that three-legged cow was. My father was talking about it one day to Frances, and I could tell the conversation was really about me, so I went down the mountain and I saw the cows coming back to the barn. They were kind of coming along, swishing their tails, you know, like cows do, and then I saw this cow, the three-legged one, kind of limping along off to the side, and when she came to the barn door, one by one all the other cows would bump her. And she just stood there while they did it. Finally they were all in and she just stood there until Mr. Patterson came and swatted her in.”
“So what’re you saying?”
She shrugged. “There’s something about me people hate.”
“What?” He looked at her. “Your three legs? Your four arms? Your two heads?”
“I don’t know what.”
He squinted, as if appraising her through a lens. “I’ll tell you what it is. But it’s not hate. They’re afraid. They’re afraid of what they don’t understand. What they don’t know how to deal with. It’s a power you possess, and people fear it.” His voice rose excitedly. “You don’t even understand it, because, when you look at people, you SEE them. Something in your eyes goes right through people, and it’s unnerving, and so they react negatively.”
“Like Getso. When I look at him, I feel sick inside.” She hit her palm with her fist, and he winced.
“No!” he groaned. “No, forget about him.”
“I can’t! I’ll never get a job, and he’s the reason why! I can’t even say I worked at the Cleaners because of him and his lies.”
“Will you try? Will you just try?” Mack coaxed. Suddenly he looked tired.
“Well, not Miller’s. It’s all teenagers that work in there. They’re the worst. I hate teenagers.”
He drove farther down the street, passing the yard-goods store, the card store, the candy store. “There.” Mack pulled in front of the shoe-repair shop, a narrow storefront with a high-heeled black boot painted on the window. She told Mack what a cranky old man Rufus Hannaby was, but he pointed out how similar the cleaning business was to shoe repairs. No selling. It was service. “And that’s exactly what you’re good at. Service!” He had almost convinced her. It probably never got very busy in there, and right around the corner, three minutes away, was the Cleaners, and Birdy, dear, dearest Birdy.
When she opened the door, Mr. Hannaby looked up from his grimy bench in a U-shaped island of shoe forms, a heavy-duty sewing machine, and shoe boxes filled with heels, soles, tools, and large spools of greasy-looking black thread. The one light in the store shone on his w
ork.
“What’s the last name?” he called, bending close to the oxblood strip of leather he was stitching to the flap of a handbag.
“Horgan. I’m Martha Horgan.”
“Check the shelves. See if your name’s on a bag. Don’t remember Horgan, though.”
The wall on the left was covered ceiling to floor with gray metal shelves, lined with brown grocery bags. Each bag bore a crayoned name.
“I’d like a job, Mr. Hannaby. I’m a good worker and …”
“A job? A job doing what?”
“The counter,” she said, gesturing with the dismal realization that there was no counter. “When people bring things in and pick them up. I used to …”
“Do all that myself, girlie. Sorry.”
She left the store, smiling, pleased that her name had been meaningless to Mr. Hannaby. Mack’s car was gone. She looked up and down the street, but couldn’t see it.
“Hey! Hey, Martha!” someone called.
Ahead, sitting against the low brick windowsill of Heartsound Records, were four skinny boys in dark T-shirts and a girl with thick frizzy hair, all about fifteen, all watchful with her approach.
She could just tell. Oh, she could tell from the angle of their heads who they had been waiting for. They had probably been out there for days, weeks, just waiting for this moment. She stared straight ahead, up the bright wet street.
“Martha! How’re you doin’, Martha?”
“Wise brats. Bunch of hoods, hanging out on the streets all day, oughta get a job and do something useful.”
“What’d ya say, Martha?”
“Can’t hear ya!”
“C’mere, Martha!”
From behind came the whir of spinning tires along the wet pavement. She jerked around to see a bike at her side, braking to a tight turn in the puddle, its wheels flaring up a wave of rainwater that splashed her.
Dirty water dripped down her arms and legs. “Get out of here!” she yelled.
The boy pedaled away furiously. Holding their sides, the boys and the girl bent forward laughing. “Hey, Martha,” the girl warned, pointing. “Watch it! Here he comes!”
Looking up, she half-turned and tried to shield her face just as the bike hit the puddle again and sprayed her with another sheet of water. This time, the boy drove off only a few feet before he stopped. Smiling at her with the bike’s front wheel in the air, he reared back like a warrior on his stallion.
She charged after him and he drove off, then turned quickly and came flying toward her again. This time, she lunged forward through the wet shimmer of her dripping glasses, trying to grab him, only to misjudge his distance as he again braked his bike and splashed her. Turning blindly, she took off her glasses and rubbed them on her shirt.
“Bastard! You little bastard!” Mack yelled.
Still cringing with the fear of another drenching wave, she put on her glasses and saw Mack walking toward her.
“Son of a bitch. It’s a good thing I didn’t catch him. I would’ve killed the little son of a bitch.” His voice broke.
She couldn’t go anywhere now, looking like this. Not only were her clothes wet and plastered to her body, but her arms and legs were streaked with dirt.
“I was in traffic,” Mack said as he drove. He kept looking at her. “I saw it coming. I saw that kid and I knew exactly what was going to happen. It was like watching two magnets being drawn together, and I couldn’t do anything. I had to keep going. I couldn’t stop it. You shouldn’t have gone after him. You should’ve kept going. You should’ve ignored him, damn it!”
“He splashed me! How could I ignore him?” She couldn’t believe he was blaming her.
“You did just what he wanted. You went after him.”
“I tried to stop him!”
“I could tell by watching. They know just how to get you started.”
“Started? Started! He started it. What did I do? I didn’t do anything!” she cried, slapping her thigh.
“Don’t you see? It’s a game with them! And you just go right along with it! You encourage it! Jesus!” he cried, hitting the wheel.
She looked at him. His face twisted with the same frustration she had seen in her father, in teachers who had all thought she should have some control over the fiasco that was her life. Of course she should. She wanted to, but did not, never had, and probably never would. And because there seemed to be no reasons for this, no mark they could see, no disfigurement or missing limb, one by one they would abandon her. That was the reason she always reacted so suddenly, loving so fiercely those who would be kind, so that in order to part they would have to tear themselves away from the ancient battlefield that was her heart, gouged and still, and survivorless.
“I’m sorry.” She wept, wiping her runny nose on the back of her hand. Sorry for everything, for the brilliant sun in the unblinking sky, for loving him.
“It’s not your fault,” he said.
They drove in silence down Main Street, past the boarded-up buildings of the fairgrounds, when a truck started to pass, then cut so sharply in front of them that Mack jerked the wheel with a startled cry. The car swerved and he swore. It was the laundry truck, with Getso at the wheel. Martha stiffened, not saying a word, relieved now to see him barrel on ahead of them. “Yah? Oh yah?” Mack said, stepping on the gas, racing after the truck. Ahead, both lanes of traffic were stopping at the red light. Mack pulled alongside the truck. “Hey, asshole,” he called. Getso glanced down, and then a wet clot of chewed tobacco hit Mack’s windshield with a sickening brown splatter. In a roar of acceleration the truck sped forward, and Mack cursed and jammed his foot down on the gas pedal and pulled behind, staying with it.
“Son of a bitch,” Mack bellowed, easing close enough to tap the back of the truck.
“Mack!” Martha cried, horrified. “That’s John’s new truck!”
Getso swerved into the next lane and took the right turn onto the Creek Road. Now Mack was hemmed in by traffic. Sweat poured down his face. He swore as the truck disappeared from view.
“We should call the police and have him arrested. That’s what we should do. Stop up there at the gas station so I can call. I’ll call! I’ll tell Sheriff Stoner I saw the whole thing!” she kept insisting.
Mack drove past the gas station and turned onto Post Road, then, with screeching tires, took a sharp right onto a shade-dappled road, and then a quick left. After a few minutes, they came to a narrow intersection, its four corners fenced by spring wire. Tiger lilies filled the low culverts along the road. Mack hunched over the wheel, watching the road from the north. The laundry truck raced toward them, and he nodded with a mirthless laugh.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, tensing back.
“Teach that bastard a lesson,” he said, pulling forward, angling his car across the intersection. The laundry truck kept coming and coming, then screeched to a stop. Mack sat in the idling car and watched Getso staring down at them.
She looked away. “Please let’s just call the sheriff,” she begged as Getso blew the horn.
He leaned forward and smiled up at Getso, whose bony face darkened with the steadily blaring horn.
She felt panicky. Mack ground his teeth and stared up at Getso. Getso gestured at them, and again came Mack’s strange laugh. What was he doing? The best revenge, the most apt justice, would be Getso’s arrest, but now, as the truck door opened, she saw the futility of it all. It would still be her word against his, and what had changed that would make anyone believe her? Nothing. Nothing had changed. He still had them all in his spell. As she watched him jump out of the truck and approach the car slowly, warily, she realized just how badly everyone must have wanted to get rid of her to have taken his word over hers.
“Move the fuckin’ car!”
Mack laughed. “Wipe that shit off and then I’ll move.” He pointed to the clotted brown strings leaking down the glass.
“Hey! You wanna clean off shit, go to a fuckin’ car wash, you and your … your
girlfriend here.”
Girlfriend. She grinned at Mack.
“You son of a bitch,” Mack growled, starting to open the door, pushing against it with both hands. Just as he got one foot out of the car, Getso banged the door shut on Mack’s ankle. Groaning, Mack leaned against the wheel while Getso swaggered back to his truck.
“No, don’t!” she cried as Mack got out of the car in such pain he almost fell. He hobbled after Getso and grabbed his shoulder just as he was about to climb up into the truck. Getso turned and Mack crouched, swinging futilely two or three times at Getso, whose lean body and long neck swayed away from each punch. “Don’t. C’mon, don’t,” Getso grunted, his open hands deflecting blows. “Don’t be a shithead, now, don’t! Just don’t!” Almost dancing, he weaved back and forth on the balls of his feet, crouching again as Mack’s limping attack dissipated into a frenzy of punches too erratic to merit deflection.
Suddenly Mack lunged forward and, with a groan of pain, harnessed his right arm around the startled younger man’s neck. In a smear of blunt jabs, he drove his fist repeatedly into Getso’s face. Blood spurted from Getso’s nose, and with a powerful spring of his body he threw back both arms, catapulting himself free. He hit Mack in the chin, and his head snapped back. His second blow met Mack’s cheek. Mack’s eyes rolled, and he sank to his knees, then doubled over, leaning on his forearms.
Stunned, she ran to Mack and squatted next to him.
“He shouldn’t’ve done that!” Getso cried, his voice cracking. “That was stupid. That was really stupid.” Getso got into the truck and seesawed it until he was headed back the way he had come.
She had to help Mack into the car. His lip was split, and his cheek and right eye had started to swell. By the time they reached the house, the eye was almost closed. He refused her help getting out of the car. He had just limped to the garage stairs when Frances ran across the driveway.
“What happened? Was there an accident?” Frances demanded.
Mack turned, and Frances gasped at his misshapen face and bloody teeth. When he tried to talk, it sounded as if there were stones on his tongue.
“Look at you! Look at you!” she cried.
A Dangerous Woman Page 27
