“Well,” said Doris, kissing her forehead. “Good night.” She moved to the door.
“I love you,” Lily said.
“Oh, I love you, too, darling.”
Perhaps an hour later, when Tyler came in, she was awake. One of the problems of having Doris in the next room was that they could never really let go in a quarrel. Their very conversations, if intended to be private, had to be carried on in a whisper. Lily felt the difficulty of bringing up his plans, fearing that she might begin screaming at him. Something about his very consideration of her fed her anger. She lay still in the dimness while he moved the baby to the bassinet, and put his sport coat and pants on the chair under the window. He went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. She heard the water run. She knew that it would be better not to say anything to him until Doris flew away. But rage battered at her chest from the inside, her heart thrashing, pounding under her breastbone. He came out of the bathroom, got into the bed, leaned over, and, lightly, so as not to wake her, kissed her cheek, then lay with his back to her.
She was going to be awake all night. It was impossible to remain quiet. “Tyler,” she murmured.
He was already asleep.
Turning over in the bed, she stared at him for a few seconds. Then she struck the blade of his shoulder, a dull thud with the heel of her palm. He jerked awake, emitting a whimpering sound, like a wordless question, and then sat upright, looking around him. “Lily, what the hell?”
“You can’t sleep, yet. Not yet, damn you.”
She reached past him and turned the light on, realizing with a little inward throb that he had winced at the motion.
“What the hell is this?” he said, low. “Are you crazy?”
She sat back with her arms folded. “When were you going to tell me?”
“Tell you what? And keep your voice down.”
“Are you joining the army?”
He didn’t answer right away. He ran his hands through his hair and looked at the door, then rubbed his eyes. “Jesus, this isn’t the time for it, Lily.”
“So you are.”
He let his hands fall to his lap. “I’ve thought about it. Yes, maybe.”
“When were you going to tell me?”
“I don’t know—maybe never. What the hell does it matter? You don’t want me here anyway, right?”
“What made you decide that?”
“Oh, come on.”
“Explain,” Lily said.
They were both whispering, and now they heard a sound. Doris had gotten up. She went into the bathroom out in the hallway, and coughed. That door closed.
“Jesus Christ,” Tyler said. “I love you, and I even love the baby. I do. But you keep putting things on me.”
“Oh, like your plan to go into the army without telling me?” She said this in a normal speaking voice that, because of the circumstances, sounded louder. They both listened for her mother, and heard nothing.
He whispered, “That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Why do you want to go into the army?” she demanded.
He paused, and seemed to consider the question. “I can’t stand it here anymore.”
“Here? With me?”
“Not you. The town. Come on, Lily. Look what happened to me in this place.”
She felt abruptly sorry. Yet she kept her expression blank, simply looking back at him. “You said it was because of the way I made you feel.”
“Some of it is, yeah,” he said. “That’s some of it, sure.”
The baby stirred, and began to cry. They heard Doris come out of the hall bathroom. She knocked on their door. “Lily, do you need me to do anything?”
“No,” Lily called.
Tyler took the baby from the bassinet and gave her to Lily, gingerly placing her in Lily’s arms, even as he muttered: “I just can’t seem to see any reason to go on.”
“Do you mean us?” she asked, abruptly frightened.
The expression on his face was so broken that she almost reached up to touch his cheek. “I mean the whole thing,” he said. “The whole nine yards. My fucking life.”
She put Mary to her breast and waited for him to say more.
“I’m making a pot of money at the dealership. Business is good. Nick tallies it all and writes out the checks, and I put it in the bank, and there’s nothing I want to do with it. We could move out of here tomorrow and have a really nice house and the idea of it makes me sick to my stomach.”
“It’s depression,” she said. “I know—I have it, too.”
“There’s another stop past that, Lily.”
“And you’re claiming that for yourself.”
“Okay, if that’s the way you want to put it.”
The quiet in which they passed the next few minutes was not as tense as it might have been were it not for the baby. Lily washed and changed her, and nursed her a little more, lying on one side. He dispensed with the dirty diaper, and brought a fresh nightgown for her. When it was all finished, they lay still, hearing the little sounds Mary made, sucking and breathing and swallowing.
“I keep thinking we can get past this,” Tyler said. “I keep hoping for it.”
2
March 5, 1990
Hello,
I know it’s been a while. To be honest, I didn’t know what I’d say, or how to begin after time went on a little. I said what we felt in the first letter, and then it seemed (still does, a bit) like it was wrong to presume you had reached the point of being interested in what I’m doing down here, in this very exotically beautiful city. It’s Mardi Gras, now. I have never seen anything like it. New Orleans has never built up much of a theater scene, local or otherwise, and Mardi Gras is the reason. It’s the social event of the year, and with all the resources going into something that’s basically interactive theater, there isn’t much left for other kinds.
The best time to come down here during Mardi Gras is what is called Fat Tuesday—the day before Ash Wednesday, and it’s the final debauch before repentance. There are social groups, or clubs—really high society, some of them—called krewes (it’s just a glorified way to spell “crews”) who stage parades throughout the festival. On the weekend before Fat Tuesday, some of the biggest krewes parade; they have names like Bacchus, Orpheus, Endymion. On Fat Tuesday itself, Zulu and Rex are the two big ones to catch. Zulu is mostly black. They throw coconuts and spears into the crowd along with the traditional beads, doubloons, stuffed animals, etc. If you get a gold coconut, you’re really cool. The chief of Rex becomes the king of Mardi Gras. The Zulu chief and Rex meet at the river, and that is the symbolic meeting of white and black in New Orleans. Incidentally, because there has been a lot of pressure this year for all the krewes (most of them are comprised of white Christians) to admit minorities, some of the bigger ones are refusing to march. But Ms. Beaumont says the feeling down here at this time of year is always so festive, it’s hard to imagine this will have much of an effect. Certainly the thousands of people who come to see Mardi Gras won’t miss anything, what with all the high school marching bands that turn up. There are a LOT of high schools in New Orleans, and most of them are Catholic. They turn out with majorettes, dancing teams, cheerleaders. The most popular band is from St. Augustine Catholic High, which everyone calls Saint Aug. Ms. Beaumont taught there for years before she retired.
Maybe you could get a job teaching here if you ever decide to move down this way. I know you and Tyler liked it here.
I also know that this letter is not really giving you much news about us. That’s because we’re not really doing a lot in the way of newsworthy things. I’m working in the bookstore. Manny’s looking for work (again), and Ms. Beaumont is, well, mothering us both. Manny’s been very patient with my adjustment to the environs. I think I’m suffering from a kind of sensory overload. But I like it, I do like it. We are right in the Quarter, you know, and the noise is sometimes hard to believe. But there are some amazing clubs down the street, people playing jazz the way it wa
s meant to be played. Blues, too.
Speaking of blues, I don’t get blue except when I think I might not see you two for a long time. And I wonder how things are going with the baby—Tyler, you were so vague and exhausted-sounding when you called about it. Understandably, of course. A typical father, and all. I had hung up before I realized that you hadn’t said how much the baby weighed, or what you had named her. And I would’ve called, but was afraid to disturb you. Wake you both up in exactly the minute that you’re getting your first real sleep in weeks. You’re parents now, and that seems weird, thinking about it. Something I’ll never be, I know now. But I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time. Manny and I are suited to each other in ways I could never have predicted. I’m presently teaching him how to cuss in English, and he’s returning the favor in Spanish. It’s a way of laughing and relaxing a little before dinner in the evenings. Spanish is full of wonderful curses and insults. And English, as you know, is probably the richest language on earth for those things. So the interchange makes us laugh pretty hard. It makes Ms. Beaumont laugh, too. She supplied an insult the other night when a pizza-delivery guy got short with her. He was really quite rude. So Ms. Beaumont handed him a twenty-dollar tip, then smiled, and when he thanked her, with this surprised and, well, slightly contrite look on his face, she said, “Yeah, well, now why don’t you just go fall through your asshole and hang yourself, cher” (she calls everybody that; it’s Cajun, though she’s not Cajun; she’s just lived here so long—and she wants me to call her Aunt Violet and I’m trying)—anyway, Aunt Violet Beaumont said that to him, and then he said “What?” and she smiled real sweet and said, “I shit in your mother’s organs of increase,” and closed the door. It took us a second to realize what had happened, and I don’t know if the pizza guy ever figured it out. He stood there a long time, I guess trying to figure if this little old lady said what he thought she said and if she was really a witch. She said it so sweetly. I laughed until I thought my heart might stop.
I would so love for you two (well, now you three) to get to know Ms. Beaumont. She’s the most wonderful amazing shrewd dear lady. I hope somehow it works out that you and Tyler decide to come this way. I miss you both and it would be nice to see the baby.
Well, Manny’s home from his job search. Ms. Beaumont’s making fish sticks and fries for dinner (nothing gourmet about it either—the fish sticks are Mrs. Paul’s; the French fries came in a big bag in the freezer section of Food Lion), so I’ll close. Please write when you can, or call if you can’t write. We’d love to have news of you.
Love,
Dom
March 10, 1990
Dear Dom,
I’m sorry it’s been so long, and this will have to be short. It was nice to hear from you. Doris is here, helping with the baby, and Tyler is working until nine every night. I’m still sore, and tired, and a little down, which they tell me is to be expected (I feel so helpless). The baby’s name is Mary, and she’s very healthy and normal. She came in at seven pounds, nine ounces, twenty inches long. Pretty blue eyes and dark hair, like mine. Everyone says she looks like me (ha). We would love to come see you but don’t know when, as Tyler is working six days a week at the dealership. And of course there’s the baby, who so far has been good, with a little trouble sleeping at night. Ms. Beaumont (or Aunt Violet) sounds wonderful and we would love to meet her
She could not bring herself to finish the letter, since it felt so much like lying, was lying, so she filled out a card, one of those announcements people send upon the birth of a child, and wrote, in her own hand across the bottom, “We miss you, more later,” and sent that. She dropped it into the mailbox with a feeling of deceit and wrongdoing that made her chest hurt. Doris watched her from the picture window, framed there in the sun, squinting into the light. Lily went back along the walk to the front door and in, and started through to the kitchen.
“What was that, sweetie?”
“I was mailing a card.”
“But the look on your face.”
“Doris, please.”
“No, you looked—it looked like you were flipping the switch on the electric chair or something. I never saw such a look of distaste and—well, guilt. You looked guilty.”
“Dominic wrote me such a nice newsy letter, that’s all. And I sent him that card. I ought to write him a letter, and I’m too tired.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“I’ll try not to,” Lily said.
Doris took a step toward her. “It’s been my experience that people tend to get fixated on small things when something much bigger is bothering them.”
It struck Lily that she had been fixated on the one big thing. It seemed to her now that her mother had often had a way of stumbling onto the truth by wayward means. She shook her head, and then kept shaking it, not from exasperation now, but with simple denial. “I don’t understand.”
“There’s something not right in this house. And I think it’s me. I’m afraid I’ve overstayed my welcome.”
“No,” Lily said. “Now, stop that. I’d like to quit worrying about what everybody’s going through. We have the baby to think about. I’m tired, that’s all.”
3
THEY DROVE DORIS to the airport in Memphis at the end of that week. The sky clouded over, threatening rain, and Doris joked about her irrational fear of flying in clouds and amid storms, her face betraying how serious the fear was. Lily changed the subject, talking about a visit to Virginia. As they said their good-byes, Doris extracted a promise that they would come north as soon as the baby could safely make the trip. Tyler liked the idea of going back to Virginia, and started agitating for it on the way home from the airport. They could afford to take the time, he said. There wasn’t anything in particular keeping them in Mississippi. Lily didn’t want to go until she had gotten into some routine with Mary, who still did not sleep through the night, and was often colicky and difficult. They had been to the pediatrician twice because she wasn’t keeping her milk down and had developed a low-grade fever. These things ebbed, and then came back, and then ebbed again. The doctor assured them that there was nothing to worry about. But Lily worried anyway. She did not want to go north anytime soon.
They hadn’t said anymore about Tyler’s plans to quit the dealership and join the army, and she went through the days hoping the thing would go away. But it was always at the back of her mind.
She did not want him to leave and she was ambivalent and filled with anxiety about what might happen if he stayed, what life was going to be like now, with the baby, and Doris gone away. Matters kept growing more complicated. Occasionally she would stop and think about her marriage objectively, the way a sociologist looks at the makeup of a town. It seemed a strange, rudderless thing, drifting from minute to confusing minute: they were a couple with a new child; he went off to work every morning and came home every night; she prepared breakfast, usually, and on the rare nights when he was home from the dealership, he cooked dinner; they used endearments for each other, like other couples; they talked about his day at work, her day at home; they kissed good night, and good morning; he helped with changing diapers and doing the grocery shopping. To anyone else, they looked fine. And yet she kept waking in the dark, trembling with fright, not able to recall what she had dreamed, and with a feeling so essentially wrong in her bones that she had to resist the urge to wake him and begin to say it all out: the thing that she was resisting, now, because there was this baby to think of, and she was in this marriage, and she still loved her husband. This was the element that heightened her anxiety most: she did not want to lose her husband, and on a visceral level, under the stream of thought and doubt and the little irritations, she felt everything slipping. So she found herself trying not to think at all. For weeks she was all reaction, getting through the time of healing, and adjusting to the new baby.
She did make several more attempts to form some kind of answer to Dominic’s letter but it had been impossible to think what to
say. Dear Dominic, things are fine here. We’re getting used to having a baby
One afternoon she came very close to calling him. She dialed information for New Orleans, got Violet Beaumont’s number, and wrote it down. She stood at the phone table for a long time, gazing at the number. But then Mary, crying from her bassinet, supplied her with a distraction that precluded making the call. And later, when she came to thinking about it again, it seemed rather pointless: she would only put herself in the position of having to do more lying.
Tyler never mentioned Dominic. Once, when she talked about him, and about New Orleans, he said, “Like to go down there again someday.”
Tonight, he came home and sat on the couch, holding the baby up and cooing at her. Lily opened a beer for him.
“Thanks,” he said.
“I almost called Violet Beaumont today.”
“Violet who?”
“Dom’s—the lady Dom and Manny are staying with.”
He stood and put Mary down, and kissed her, and put his hand down in the middle of her stomach and moved her back and forth softly. “Little pitcher,” he murmured.
Then he went past Lily, into the kitchen, to the refrigerator. She followed.
“Do you think we could go down there?”
“One day. Sure.” He had the refrigerator door open, and stood gazing into it. “What should we do for dinner?” he said. “Did you eat?”
“Tyler, I was asking you something.”
“I said ‘One day. Sure.’ Did you eat already?”
“Yes.”
He took a brick of cheese from the refrigerator and closed the door. “Right now I think we should be talking about going to Virginia for a visit. Your father and Peggy have never seen the baby.”
“The baby’s not up to a road trip.”
He had brought a knife out of the utensil drawer and was slicing the cheese. She had the feeling he was purposely not looking at her. “You were just talking about driving to New Orleans,” he said, in a forced casual tone.
Hello to the Cannibals Page 53
