Hello to the Cannibals

by Richard Bausch

“Which facts?” she said.

  His tone was a commingling of rage and frustration, barely controlled. “The—the facts of the situation. The situation. The situation. I should’ve goddamnit said something to you about the fact that I was sterile. Okay? At the very beginning, when I was asking you if you wanted a baby and you said you didn’t want to have children. You said you didn’t want to have children and I decided not to mention the situation. Okay? It’s a thing I’ve always been sensitive about. I should’ve said something and I didn’t, and I’m sorry for that. Now. You didn’t tell me something that was going on, and I think it’s fair if I have a little curiosity as to whose kid I’m gonna be paying for and supporting.”

  “But don’t you see? I didn’t know it wasn’t—I thought it was—” She stopped.

  “I know what you thought!”

  “Take me home,” she said.

  He shouted, “To Virginia?”

  She gave no answer to this. She sat there not looking at him, and waited.

  “Was it that—” He stopped, a low, burning ire in his voice now; it didn’t even sound like him. He sighed. “Was it Dominic, for Christ’s sake?”

  She turned to him, and turned away again. It hadn’t quite struck home yet that if all he’d said was true, indeed she must be carrying Dominic’s child. The thought arrived in a strange, sourceless nonrecognition, a mute something wafting over the surface of a wall that was herself, and then was gone in the low, wrathful sound of Tyler’s voice. “Was it my mother’s house you wanted me to take you to? The one who screwed around on her husband?”

  “You were not my husband when this happened,” she said. He was so close now that she could smell the sour afternoon sweat of him, and the staleness of his breath. She believed that he might even harm her. She felt the ill will emanating toward her.

  “Do you realize that you could be fucking HIV positive?”

  “That’s ridiculous. I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer.”

  “Is it so ridiculous? How do you know?”

  “He was just finding out he was gay. It didn’t—it didn’t go well with me and I was his first. He’s not HIV positive. Christ.”

  “‘It didn’t go well’? It didn’t—you say it didn’t go well? Goddamn, that’s stretching things a little, isn’t it? ‘It didn’t go well.’”

  “I’m not going to talk to you about it. You’re raving. You’re so far out of line.”

  “What did you think of me, anyway?” he said.

  “Please take me to the house, Tyler.”

  “Tell me what you thought of me.”

  “Oh,” she began, then screamed, “Can’t you leave it alone! Can’t you please stop this!” And she was crying again, against the effort of her whole body not to.

  He started the car and pulled out onto the road and went along at the speed limit. He closed the windows and put the air-conditioning on. Neither of them said anything for a period of slow, agonizing minutes. She cried in the cold air from the fan, and the sick feeling increased. He drove into Oxford, and turned into and out of neighborhood streets; it was as if he were giving her a tour of the town. He drove slowly past the dealership and on, out into the country again.

  “So,” he said. “What do we do?”

  “I’ll do whatever you want,” she said. “Do you want to separate?”

  “Oh, no. Oh, Jesus Christ. Believe it or not, I’m in love with you. Isn’t that amazing? I think that is absolutely fucking amazing.”

  She said nothing.

  “And you’re in love with me,” he said. “Right?”

  The word came before she could call it back, and then she was struck by the fact that in that instant she had wanted to call it back. She said, “Yes.” It was offered as if out of some fugitive wish for unattainable peace, and order—a desire that would seek some safety even in lies. But it was not a lie. It was truth that ached more deeply than she believed such pangs could go. “Yes,” she told him, sobbing. Surprised at the mingling passions of sorrow and revulsion in her. “Yes.”

  8

  THEY AGREED, with what seemed to Lily to be a dismal emotionless rationality, to do nothing about the situation until after the baby was born. Tyler looked at her with sad, disappointed boy’s eyes and said that he loved her and that there were larger things to think about—there was this marriage, which he wanted very badly to make work, and there was the child, the family they would be. She thought of what it would take now simply to pack up and return to Virginia, to live with Doris until the baby came, and then after…

  The prospect of the next months opened before her, and as they pulled past the broken gate and into the long drive leading to the Galatierres’, and she saw the yellow house in the distance with its double porch and its columns, she had a kind of gelid resolve. They would find some way to weather this trouble. She glanced at him once more, saw the expression on his face, of a man steeling himself for something hard, and experienced an abrupt wave of panic that she could have ended up in this confusion, this intractable distress.

  Sheri was on the porch with Millicent, Nick, and Roger, the contractor. The weight of their secrets, added to her own, nearly made her collapse. She would not be up to it, not in her exhausted state. They were all sitting there with a pitcher of something with ice in it between them. Nick was drinking a can of beer. “You met Roger yet?” he said, smiling.

  Lily hesitated, and saw the quick motion Millicent made, sitting forward. “Actually, she did meet him, Nick. A few weeks ago.”

  “Hello again,” Roger said. His eyes were not visible behind the dark glasses he wore. He extended his hand and Lily, feeling the effort, hardly able to lift her arm, took it.

  “Good to see you,” she managed.

  “That friend of yours—Dominic—called,” Nick said. “Where you guys been?”

  “I’ve gotta talk to Buddy,” Tyler said. “I got a ticket. Speeding and reckless driving.”

  Nick sipped the beer, then threw his head back and emptied the can. He crushed it and held it in his fist, nodding slowly. “That’s trouble, pal. Buddy won’t like that a bit.” He stood.

  “I’ll talk to him alone,” Tyler said.

  “I’m gonna get another beer.” Nick smiled, and staggered, and it was difficult to tell if he had done so accidentally or on purpose.

  The two of them went in through the living room, and Lily started to move along the front of the porch, toward the side of the house, wanting to enter her room through the pool entrance.

  “Have an iced tea,” Sheri said.

  “Yes, dear—sit with us,” said Millicent.

  Sensing that it might be interpreted in some worrisome way if she refused, Lily took one of the wicker chairs and sat down.

  Sheri poured the tea and handed it to her. “So how’d Lamaze go?”

  “I don’t think it’s for us.”

  “You’re kidding. Everybody loves the hell out of it,” Sheri said. “Everybody I talk to loves the absolute hell out of it.”

  “We didn’t,” said Lily.

  “Not everyone takes to it,” Millicent said.

  Roger leaned back in his chair and rested one leg at the ankle, across the other. “We did that—Lamaze. That’s the breathing thing, right?”

  “Well, partly,” Millicent said. She looked at Lily, and then looked away.

  Roger drank from his glass of tea, concentrating on it.

  “What the hell is the matter with everybody?” Sheri said.

  “Sheri,” said Millicent. “Please.”

  “You could cut the tension with a damn knife.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. Perhaps you ought to have something to relax this—this tension you feel.”

  “It’s not me,” said Sheri.

  For a long moment, no one spoke.

  “The Lamaze lady was nice,” Lily put in.

  Sheri regarded her with a curiosity that felt nearly prying. “You and Tyler have a fight or somethi
ng? Your face is red. You okay, honey?”

  “It’s hot,” Lily said. “We got a ticket.” She drank the tea, which was too sweet and left a film on her teeth. She excused herself and went around to the pool.

  Here was Buddy, floating on a big black inner tube, half in, half out of the shade of the house, holding a drink in one hand and a small plastic-tipped cigar in the other. “Hey,” he said, with a sheepish grin. The line of shadow bisected his face and momentarily gave him the look of a clown. Gazing into the light where she stood, it was necessary to squint, and the network of wrinkles in the skin around his eyes gave her a moment of realizing how essentially good-humored he was. A man who was wholly gentle—a man who looked through you when you were suffering and knew what to say.

  “You look a little beat up in this damn humidity, sweetheart, and even so, you’re still one of the loveliest, fragrant women I’ve ever seen.”

  “You’re prejudiced.” She forced a smile, appreciating him.

  “Everything okay, darlin’?” he said.

  “Tyler and Nick went in to look for you,” she got out. “You won’t be happy with what Tyler has to tell you.”

  His face changed to concern. “Seriously, you all right?”

  “Tyler got a speeding ticket.”

  He chuckled ruefully, shaking his head. When he spoke, there was a note of relief in his voice. “I’ll chastise him severely.”

  She tried a joke. “I think he needs it.”

  “Well.” He lifted the drink, smiling broadly, a happy man. “I guess he’ll find me soon enough.”

  She started to enter the sliding door to her room.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  She stopped. He was all in the shade now. For a second, she was close to making some sort of declaration to him. Oh, Buddy, talk to my husband. Instead, she mustered a smile, and nodded.

  “Why don’t you fix yourself a drink of that oversweet lemonade Rosa made and join me. Best thing to do on a badly humid day is go ahead and get wet and stay that way.”

  “Maybe later, thanks.”

  He held the drink up.

  FIFTEEN

  1

  DOMINIC AND MANNY arrived, like complications in a bad soap opera, a little more than an hour later. Lily heard the hubbub of the car and its horn and Sheri calling her. Tyler’s voice was in it, too, full of counterfeit cheer. She got out of the bed where she had been half sleeping and quickly brushed her fingers through her hair, then went into the bathroom and ran water over her face. As she came out, Buddy was standing at the sliding door, his tall, wide shadow on the drapes. He tapped twice with the knuckle of one finger.

  “You awake?”

  She slid the door open and stepped out.

  “You look great,” he said. “It’s amazing what a little rest and cool shade’ll do.”

  “Thanks, Buddy.” He stepped to one side and offered her his arm.

  “You think they’ll stay with us awhile?”

  “I hope so,” she said. She had an almost irresistible urge to tell him that the baby she was carrying was Dominic’s. The strangeness of this knowledge went through her like a blast of cold air. She shivered, and he took hold of her arm above the elbow.

  “Hey, really. Are you okay?”

  She gazed into his questioning eyes, and the truth rose in her heart that of all the people her parents’ age that she knew, she only felt completely at ease with him. She lifted her hand to his face. “Oh, Buddy,” she said. “I’m so glad I got to know you.”

  “I think that’s the best thing anybody’s said to me in a long time.”

  She locked her arm in his, and leaned into him. “How many emotions do you think can mix in the same moment in a human heart?”

  He smiled. “Probably all of them, don’t you think?”

  She almost began crying. It took a great effort to speak. “Well,” she got out, “I must be feeling all of them now.”

  On the front porch of the house, Dominic stood, with one hand on the lower back of a small, dark, round-faced man, to whom he was introducing Tyler. Tyler shook the man’s hand, then shook Dominic’s. He introduced Sheri and his mother, and Roger Gault, and then he saw Buddy and Lily.

  “This is my stepfather,” he said. “And Lily.” He nodded at her, his eyes just missing her.

  Dominic shook hands with Buddy, then stepped back and folded his arms, regarding Lily. “You seem to have gained a little weight around the middle.”

  She longed to put her arms around his neck. She accepted his small, dry, chaste kiss on the side of her face, and couldn’t, for the moment, find her voice.

  “I won’t break you if I give you a hug, will I?”

  She could only shake her head. He stepped forward and very gingerly put his arms around her, barely touching. Lily closed her fingers on his bony shoulders and squeezed, feeling the tears come, and turning from them.

  “Here,” Buddy said, handing her a glass of iced tea. She saw Millicent and Roger gazing at her.

  They got through the other introductions, everyone smiling and being kind and Manny extending his hand to each of them, saying, “Hello,” in an oddly recited-sounding way. Nick carried the bags in. Buddy asked what they wanted to drink. Dominic turned to Manny and said, “Coke?”

  “Yes. Thanks,” Manny said, still smiling brightly. Nick called Rosa out, and she took drink orders from everyone, writing them down like a waitress. When she had gone, Buddy suggested that while the drinks were being prepared, Dominic and Manny should go to their room and change into bathing suits. “Let’s have an old-fashioned pool party,” he said, clapping his hands together.

  Roger Gault said, “I’ve got to get going, Mr. Galatierre.”

  Buddy smiled at him. “How many times do I have to tell you to call me Buddy?”

  “I’m sorry,” Roger said. “Force of habit.”

  Buddy turned to Lily. “Roger designed and rebuilt our kitchen.” He patted the other man on the back. “You sure you won’t stay and swim?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Well, next time,” said Buddy.

  They all watched Roger get into his car and drive off. Buddy stood with his hands in his pockets, his weight shifting back and forth slightly. Then he turned to Manny and said, “How about you there? You feel like a pool party?”

  “Yes—good,” said Manny, as if he were hungry for something happy. His dark, prominent eyes shone. There was a faint Spanish lilt in his voice. He had gentle eyes, Lily thought; they seemed to emanate trust. His smile was bright—Lily had seldom seen teeth so white. And when he laughed, as he did now while Buddy made comments about the trappings of a Republican household—the swimming pool, the bottles of gin and vermouth, the owner with the avoirdupois and the opinions but no ideas—there was an almost frantic note in it.

  Everyone went to their respective rooms to change into bathing suits. Lily had a maternity suit with a lacy panel across the front. She got into it, and then changed back into light jeans and a blouse. Tyler hadn’t come back to the room, so she waited for him, sitting on the bed in the jeans, holding the ball of her belly. He came in and, opening his top drawer, brought out a pair of bathing trunks and unfolded them. He seemed not to have noticed her. After a pause, without looking her way, he said, “It’s his baby, isn’t it. Just to be definite. It’s Dom’s baby. The fag’s—” He stopped, and shook his head. “Christ.”

  She said nothing.

  He stopped, half out of his slacks, and stared at her. “Well?”

  “What do you want me to say, Tyler?”

  He shrugged. “The truth?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  She stood, and moved to the door. “You know how there are people—you see them in the street, what they’re wearing and how they seem, how their hair is cut and the music they’re listening to and maybe the bumper sticker on their car, you know how they’ll vote. You know who they voted for.”

  He simply returned her
gaze.

  “I just had one of those moments with you.”

  “You mean like the one you had with Mr. Johnson,” he said quickly. “You could figure who he voted for, right?”

  She opened the sliding door, but said nothing.

  “And so you look at these people and make up your mind about them. Right? You know everything about them.”

  “I can’t believe you still want to argue about the fucking Lamaze class,” Lily told him.

  “Hey, I’m defending myself,” he said.

  She went out to the pool area. Sheri and Millicent had already taken their places in the sun on the other side. She walked around to them and sat in a lawn chair.

  “No bathing suit?” Sheri said.

  “I think I’ll spare everyone,” said Lily. The sourness of her exchange with Tyler was still in her voice. She offered a smile, and Sheri smiled back.

  “I think you look pretty as a picture.”

  “Rosa’s making cocktails, I’m sure,” Millicent said.

  “This is the warmest November I can remember,” Sheri went on. “I swear it could be July.”

  “It’s supposed to be cold tomorrow,” said her mother. “I think our Indian summer is about to end.”

  They were all quiet for a few moments.

  “The boys’re very nice,” Sheri said warmly. “I like them both. Manny’s so quiet, you almost get the feeling he’s out of it or something. But he has such a sweet laugh. I think I remember Dominic in one of the plays at school.”

  “He played Bottom, the weaver, last spring in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Lily told her. “You’d left school by then.”

  “He didn’t play Puck?” Tyler had come out, wearing black bathing trunks. He had a towel draped over one shoulder. “Puck, the fairy?”

  “Tyler,” said his mother.

  He laughed low. “I bet Dom wouldn’t mind the joke.” He moved to the edge of the pool and put his legs in the water. “Cold.”

  Buddy came from the kitchen, pushing a tray with drinks on it. Rosa accompanied him. She was in a bathing suit as well. Light blue, and she looked stunning in it. She walked to the diving board, out to the end of it, and dropped, with almost no splash, into the water, moving like a dark shadow through it, coming up at the shallow end, then turning and lying back.