by Jane Bradley
“My what?” she asked. The girl was referring to those two creases in the middle of her forehead that ran straight down between her eyebrows. Everyone was getting them Botoxed now. Livy leaned toward the mirror, pressed her fingertips at her temples, lifted the skin back. She did look a little younger that way. But Lawrence would have a fit at the waste of such money, and Katy, she’d just shake her head and laugh and say, “Whatever makes you happy, Mom.”
How long ago was it those boys had thought they were sisters at that Mexican restaurant? Livy had laughed, thanked them for the compliment, but she’d figured they where just throwing out flattery to get near Katy. She played along, bought a round of beers for the boys, and they all laughed and talked, the boys’ eyes on Katy, but polite, as if they knew that to keep Katy’s attention, they’d have to be nice to her mom. Those were the good years, years between being married, years when she had Katy in a life where they could be more like friends than mother and daughter. Livy had gotten a job at an insurance firm, and Katy had gone to college. On a good track, it seemed. Then Katy met Frank, who was nothing but bad, and Livy got to where she couldn’t drive for the anxiety attacks. She looked in the mirror, figured it was around then that the “eleven” started digging into her face. Frank was a coke dealer. Even though Katy swore he had inherited his money, Livy knew the truth. She’d stayed with Joe all those years to keep Katy in private school, to get her ready for college. And there she was, dropping out of college and living on a boat with a coke dealer. Those times put the years on her face.
Then she met Lawrence at her shrink’s office, of all things. She was signing in at the reception desk when he strolled into the waiting room as if he owned the place, the kind of walk she liked in a man. He stopped, stood still in the middle of the room, and gave her a nod that was more than a nod, something more like a bow and a smile that said, How can a woman like you have any kind of problem that would bring her to this place? She couldn’t remember what she said to him, just remembered the warmth, the twinkling in his eyes. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had looked at her like that. It turned out he was dating the shrink then, and now he was married to Livy. It was one of those see-it-got-to-have-it things. All roses and dinners and diamonds. Then marriage. Now, just outside the bathroom door, Lawrence Baines was no doubt snoring in bed already with the Wall Street Journal on his chest.
Oh, Katy, she thought. Maybe you shouldn’t get married yet.
Years later, when she told Lawrence about the night those boys had taken her and Katy for sisters at that Mexican restaurant, he threw down his paper and said, “You might still look like a glamour girl, but you’re too old for that kind of thing.” He was furious, she knew, because his hair was thinning, his broad chest collapsing to a soft bunch of flesh at his waist, while she, well, she did have a little bit of elegance that didn’t age. She just smiled at his fury. “But those boys in the Mexican restaurant, it happened years ago,” she said. He stood up then, said with the kind of meanness as if she’d cheated on him, “And you’re still thinking about it!” Then he walked out of the room with such fury and force, it occurred to her that that was what people meant when they said a person stormed out of the room. Joe had always been a quiet man, but Lawrence came and went like weather, so when he stormed out the door, she let him go and wondered what she’d been thinking to get married again so fast. She knew it was safety. That was why Katy was marrying Billy. And safety always meant some kind of sacrifice, so Livy let Lawrence stomp away and decided she’d make those popovers he loved to go with the roast beef for dinner. He always softened with a good meal.
Now she looked at her face in the mirror. Far from a glamour girl, but she had good bone structure, high, defined cheeks. Livy hardly wore makeup, didn’t have to work to catch a glance. When she was young, it was hard to keep the Suck Creek boys from grabbing at her. Being tall and filled out seemed more a curse than a gift. Then in college, after that one ballet class, she figured it out. It was all in the way you carried yourself. Livy had discovered the power to make men suck in their bellies and straighten their shoulders at the sight of her entering a room. That was what had gotten her out of Suck Creek and gotten her Joe Connor, who’d bought her a nice home halfway up Lookout Mountain. And that was what had gotten her Lawrence Baines and the five-bedroom, three-bath house on top of that mountain that was like being on top of the world in that town. Posture was everything. She used to tell Katy this. She’d touch that space between Katy’s shoulder blades when she’d see her slump. Straighten up, Livy would say. You don’t want to look like an old woman before your time. And Katy learned. She stood straighter, and finally walked away from Frank. At least she was marrying Billy, who lived a brick house and not some floating bar of a boat on the water.
Positive thinking and good posture. Those two things could take the years off, just maintaining a strong stance and a sweet smile. Livy had learned this from one of those self-help books she’d read. She glanced at herself in the mirror, closed her eyes, and thought, I’m beautiful, I’m strong, I’m blessed, I’m beautiful, I’m strong, I’m blessed. But when she opened her eyes in the harsh light of the bathroom, she saw that she was teetering on the threshold of becoming the kind of woman who disappeared in a crowd, a gray smudge who brought attention only when she was about to purchase something, the kind of face that brought attentive smiles only when she was ready to pay. Was that what Lawrence wanted?
Joe had been proud of his catch, said he’d married the best-looking woman in Hamilton County, seemed to forget she was from Suck Creek. Joe liked to forget where she came from. He was Catholic, so she had to forget she was a Suck Creek Baptist girl, had to take classes with a priest before she got married, but that was okay then because Livy believed life was a process of continuously reinventing ourselves. She’d read that in a self-help book she’d found at the library. She was willing to reinvent, and even though it made her momma cry, she was rebaptized with a saint’s name: Olivia Katherine, a little cup of holy water dribbled over her forehead at the font with no one but the priest and Joe and God and maybe the saint she was named for watching.
If it hadn’t been for Katy, she might have left. Maybe. But back then she was a good Christian girl who tried to believe, so she went to her momma for help. “Life gives us crosses to bear,” her momma had said. “We prove ourselves in times of trouble, not times of ease.” Livy was happy that at least her momma didn’t blame her bad marriage on the Catholics. When things got worse, her momma told her to go talk to her priest. He told her that love was a gift, but marriage was a sacrament, a covenant. She would have to honor that. “A sacrament is a sacrament,” he said. But where was the proof of sacramental things? “It’s self-evident,” the priest said. “A sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inner and spiritual grace.” Yes, she knew that. But with that definition anything could be a sacrament—helping a stranger, baking a perfect cake. “It’s a mystery,” the priest said. “You don’t walk away from God’s mysteries. You embrace them. You struggle to understand, and what you don’t understand, you accept.” He left her there in his office, staring up at the crucifix, and she thought of Jesus, tortured on the cross like that. Jesus was a tortured man. Not a God. Just a man. That was all. She came to the conclusion that sometimes God left you to your own salvation. You had to save yourself. Now she looked in the mirror and told herself she would have to tell Katy that. She’d tell Katy to beware of believing sacramental things.
“Are you coming to bed?” Lawrence called from the bedroom. She peeked through the door, saw him sitting up. He had that look in his eyes. At least with Lawrence, the sex was good.
“I thought you were sleeping,” she said.
“Oh, no,” he said with a smile. “Just dreaming.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” she said. “You know me and my routines.”
She went back to the mirror, rubbed cream in swift, light strokes up her neck and in gentle circles in her cleavage, what he
r aesthetician called her décolletage—there was a special cream for that. She closed that jar and reached for another for her hands.
She sat on the lid of the toilet and rubbed the cream into her skin. She liked her long fingers, good nails. And that diamond, Lord, a diamond so big it embarrassed her sometimes. Her mother would have declared it prideful. But she liked the fact that she had her mother’s hands, a few scattered freckles, the Irish blood. She would have to tell Katy to be careful of the sun with her dark hair, blue eyes. Statistics suggested that Katy was a prime candidate for skin cancer. She would have to tell Katy all kinds of things before she married. Take care, she would say, the words whispered in her head, take care. Your body is a temple, the Bible said. Your body’s the only one you’ve got, so maintenance is crucial—that’s what her personal trainer said, and her aesthetician, and her doctor, and just about every self-help magazine on the stands.
She gave one last look in the mirror. Yes, she did look good, and if she didn’t look good, she wouldn’t have Lawrence, and she wouldn’t have this house on top of Lookout Mountain instead of some prefab place in Suck Creek. But she was fading; she knew it. In the long run life wasn’t about beauty at all but learning to make do when it was gone. She was glad she had taught Katy that. She had told her, “Yes, you are beautiful, but beauty passes, so be kind, Katy. That will sustain you. The world will love you long past your prime if you remember to be thoughtful and kind.”
Livy turned toward her bedroom, looked in and saw Lawrence propped up on pillows, dozing with his paper scattered across the bed. Livy looked at the man she planned to spend the rest of her life with. You used to take me dancing, she thought. He used to smile and stand when she entered a room, as if he couldn’t bear another second away from her. He used to bend a little toward her whenever she spoke, as if to catch the very breath of her words. Did all passion fade like this? She stood there, watching him, wondering if he’d wake and want her or just keep sinking deeper into the sheets. Either way it didn’t matter.
Livy stood in the doorway, just feeling the room, listening to the soft whir of the central air, the soughing sigh of Lawrence’s soft snores. She studied her life, the furniture solid on blue carpet in a white room with a wall of windows, drapes open to the night. A long way from Suck Creek. She thought this every night and gave thanks. She had her doubts sometimes about God and his ways in the world. But she believed in giving thanks for every day.
She crossed the room, went to the window that looked out onto a lot of nothing but trees. She’d convinced Lawrence to buy that lot so she’d always be able to stand at the window and watch the birds flitting in the branches, the squirrels digging, chattering, always a little nervous and hungry, it seemed. Other people’s children played there now. She liked to watch them, hear the high, happy sounds of children playing, digging, inventing who knew what in fantasy worlds hidden in those trees. Livy loved their innocence, so rowdy and loud, pure as pups until something in the world taught them to be afraid.
She would have to warn Katy about marriage. Maybe in the end kindness is overrated. Don’t give yourself away. She felt a surge of sorrow. Tears rushed into her eyes, a queasy feeling that made her sit. It was too late to teach Katy to be selfish. Livy had seen enough bankers, lawyers, contractors to know that even though Jesus said the meek inherit the earth, the world belonged to bankers, lawyers, and investors like Lawrence. She knew that in the world of living, it is not the meek who win.
“Livy,” Lawrence called from the bed, his voice soft, curious. Livy looked up.
He squinted, leaned for a closer look at her face. “Are you all right?”
She smiled, shook her head. He was worried. This was a man who after ten years of marriage would still sometimes show up with flowers for no reason. She would have to remember that.
Livy wondered why she was feeling so selfish, so pitiful and mean. Self-pity was a sin. She’d learned that in church.
He sat up, pulled the sheets up around his waist. “Sorry I fell asleep.”
She went to him, rubbed his chest, thick and hairy. She just wanted to touch him a minute. She felt the warmth of his skin, stepped back, and said, “I think I’ll get some water. Want anything?”
He studied her. “Did something happen?” he asked. “I can see it in your face.” Lawrence was a gambler—that was what stock traders really were. It was his business to know how to read every line and shadow, expression, even on a stranger.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “I just had this bad feeling. You’d think I’d be happy Katy’s finally getting married. But it’s just that she’s so far away.”
Lawrence leaned back, gave a quick glance at a headline before tossing the section of paper aside, smoothing another across his lap. “Isn’t she coming up this weekend?”
“Yeah, but I’ve just got this bad feeling.”
“Call her,” he said, his attention now locked on something in the paper.
“She’s working.”
“She doesn’t work on Mondays.” Lawrence looked back to his paper and sighed. “My wife’s thirty-year-old daughter works in a bar. She went to college, for God’s sake.”
Livy didn’t want to start the old defense of the choices of her girl. “I’m calling her,” she said. But Lawrence had already dropped out of the conversation by the time she turned away.
She went down the hallway to the kitchen. She settled with her glass of water at the counter, and just as she reached for the phone, it rang.
Billy’s voice. She had trouble letting the meaning of his words sink in. Katy wasn’t home. Katy had left a note saying, “Be back when I can,” and she’d been gone all day. He said that note was a bad sign, a sign that she was still mad over a fight they’d had.
“A fight?” Livy said.
“Just an argument. Nothing real big.” Billy sighed. There was a weakness in his voice. He was guilty or lying over something.
“Billy,” she said, “anything you’re not telling me?”
He didn’t hear or pretended not to hear the question. “When things are good between us, she writes, ‘Be back soon.’ She only writes, ‘Be back when I can’ to let me know she can keep me waiting or come home. To remind me it’s her choice. It’s always gotta be her choice.”
Livy looked at the clock on the stove: 12:14.
“She wouldn’t run off?” He said it like a question. “Katy wouldn’t run off. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“No, Billy,” she said. “Katy would never just run off.”
“She’s coming to see you this weekend. I just thought maybe . . .”
The kitchen shook, righted, shook again. An earthquake? The house held, but the world was slipping. Katy had said something about coming home for a visit, but nothing had seemed wrong. Livy thought it could be something with Frank, but she wouldn’t mention Frank, not to Billy. “Have you tried calling her?”
“Her phone is here. You know how she tends to forget her phone.”
Livy could feel panic rising in her chest. Stay rational, she thought. No need for fear, not fear. But the word and the feeling hummed in her head. “So check who she’s been calling.”
“She keeps her phone locked, and I don’t have the code. Funny how she forgets her phone but never forgets to put the lock on.”
“Have you called the police?”
His voice, she understood that weakness in it. He was high. Of course. “They say it’s too early to declare her a missing person yet.”
A wave of nausea rolled up. “Don’t say that. She is not a missing person, Billy. She’ll come home.” Katy had never run off. She threatened to sometimes. The only time she’d ever done anything like run off, she’d moved to Frank’s houseboat. But she’d called Livy that same day just so she wouldn’t worry. Livy checked her cell phone charging on the counter. No missed calls. “This isn’t like Katy. Tell her to call me as soon as she comes in,” Livy said. She hung up the phone, gripped the counter for balance, then walked softly
down the hallway, one hand touching the wall as if she were a blind woman feeling her way down the long corridor of an unfamiliar home.
What This World Needs Is a Little More Awareness
Jesse stared into the open refrigerator at Mike’s granny’s house. “What a waste, man. What a fucking waste of a day.” He was looking for something to eat but kept seeing the pawnshop metal door going down, the “Closed” sign, and the owner, Larry, walking away. They were five minutes too late because they’d had to dump the truck on a back road out by the lake. They couldn’t risk driving it back to town. He hadn’t seen that the truck was on empty. He should’ve noticed. But no, he’d fucked up, too busy worrying about Mike up there driving stoned. He turned, saw Mike sitting at the table eating a chicken leg. Without a word, he smacked the back of his head.
“Ow!” Mike grabbed his head. “What you do that for?”
“It was the weed. I’m back there worrying about you driving stoned, and I don’t think to look at her fuel gauge. Boost a truck that’s out of gas. Zeke would really like that.”
“Keep your voice down, man. You don’t want my granny hearing this.”
“I thought she was deaf.”
“Half deaf,” Mike said and went back to his chicken.
“We fucked up because I had to keep my eye on you, making sure you drive straight, and there you go driving in circles and I’m trying to watch her, make sure she doesn’t flip and run.” Jesse turned back to the refrigerator, pushed past the foil-covered bowls. “I could use a beer. Don’t y’all keep any beer in this house?”
“She’s a Christian,” Mike said. “There’s some sweet tea there in the jar on the counter.” Mike took a sip of milk. He was glad his granny was half deaf back there in her bedroom, falling asleep, staring at people on TV. She’d never liked Jesse, said he was like that Eddie Haskell kid on TV, always smiling and nodding and up to no good. He was glad she was too weak to come to the kitchen without her walker. He’d had the sense to sneak in, grab her walker, and put it right in the kitchen by the stove. He’d make sure he put the walker back once he got Jesse settled down and sleeping on the sofa.
