Desire Provoked

by Tracy Daugherty

  “The fathers have not been home all night. Their coats are creased, faces rough with stubble. Before the sky is light they’ve ordered bacon, eggs, toast and jelly, waffles, bagels with cream cheese. In the alley, doors X-ed with boards echo the children’s hisses, shadows dart across the bricks. When the fathers leave the diner, they discover that their cars have been pushed down the street and rest, engines smoking, in a pile.

  “It matters, our life with women, how we hurt them if we see them, but the little girls have clearly had enough.”

  A picnic with the kids in the car beneath an overpass.

  “This is great,” Deidre says, pulling thick waxed paper away from a fat pimiento sandwich.

  He had simply pulled off the road because he knew it would surprise them, and they are pleased whenever you surprise them.

  “Put the Coke on the dash,” he says. “You’ll spill it.”

  Deidre spills it trying to put it on the dash. Apologies. Kleenex. Toby turns the radio on as high as it will go. Elvis Costello singing “Watching the Detectives.”

  “We can do without that,” Adams says, turning the radio down. “I wanted to ask you—Toby, be careful.” Pulling over was not a good idea. “Okay, leave it, I’ll get it later. I wanted to ask you how you’re getting along now. It’s been a while since you moved into the new house. Do you like it all right? Is everything okay?”

  A Jeno’s Pizza truck roars by, shaking the car. The kids eat in silence. They’ve learned the game. Keep quiet. Don’t rat on Mom. When the adults are acting funny, stay out of their way.

  “I just want to know if you’re happy,” Adams says, brushing crumbs from the seat. He misses being able to surprise them. When they were very young, a stray cat came into the backyard. Pamela fed it every evening and they loved to watch it. Deidre was wild with new expressions—a dozen every day, it seemed—and “cat” was one of her favorite discoveries. Just for fun Adams started referring to the stray as a “catezoidal object.” The kids laughed uproariously, impressed that you could call a thing more than one name, or twist words around to make them sound funny. Now that he sees Toby and Deidre only on weekends he has to schedule their time wisely. Surprise has gone out of their Saturdays. “Things haven’t been the same, I know,” Adams says.

  Toby replies, “You can say that again.”

  “Well, tell me about it. How does it make you feel? What can I do for you?”

  “Buy me a sheep,” Deidre says.

  “Shut up,” Toby says.

  “You shut up.”

  “Would you like to stay with me more? Not just on weekends, but maybe during the week sometimes?”

  “I don’t know,” Toby says. He’s been seeing a psychologist once a week. The man, he says, “sucks.”

  “Could we stay up late and watch TV?”

  “Not on school nights.”

  “Please, Dad.”

  “No. Not on school nights. You know better than that.”

  “It’s no fun,” Toby says, “when you have to plan things.”

  “I know. Do you have fun with Mom? Does she spend enough time with you?”

  Silence. Well, it was a loaded question. “I know she’s busy a lot.” “She’s all right,” Toby says.

  Adams thinks she’s frightening. Lately, to give her “Dangerous Words” more depth, she’s been reading Wittgenstein. When he picked up the children, she read him the opening paragraph of The Brown Book: “Augustine, in describing his learning of language, says that he was taught to speak by learning the names of things. It is clear that whoever says this has in mind the way a child learns such words as ‘man,’ ‘sugar,’ ‘table,’ etc. He does not primarily think of such words as ‘today,’ ‘not,’ ‘perhaps.’”

  She also showed him a David Hockney photograph, a woman in a thin lace blouse, tousled hair, one arm thrown languorously over her head, hand brushing her cheek. The photograph was pieced together from several Polaroids so that the woman had two noses, three eyes, two mouths. A hand in four parts. The overall effect was of movement, of seeing a two-dimensional image from several angles at once. “Cubist photography,” Pamela said. “That one,” pointing to the woman, “resembles Picasso’s Marie-Thérèse series. The Red Armchair. Remember, I showed you?”

  Adams does not remember.

  Her house must be full of surprises: face parts, altered bodies, words hung like wet towels from the shower rod, drying in the sink, smuggled under pillows. Adams fears boring his children.

  “I know what,” he says. “Would you like to come to the club some night and hear me play the drums?”

  “Yeah!” Deidre says. Toby shrugs.

  “You haven’t heard me play in a long time.”

  A Ryder rental truck swooshes by on the highway.

  “Didn’t you have fun,” Adams asks.

  “Yes,” they answer at once, the practiced response.

  “I don’t think Toby likes me,” says Jill, delightfully naked, closing the bedroom door. The furniture seems to change temperature whenever she spends the night.

  “He doesn’t like anybody,” Adams answers. “I’m hoping he’ll outgrow it.”

  He is on his back on top of the sheet. She leans over him, touches the top of his ear with her lips. “You’re a good man,” she says.

  “I don’t want to be a good man.”

  “Show me.”

  He catches the small of her back with his arm and rolls her over on top of him so that she is facing the ceiling, her shoulders resting against his chest. With his hands he warms her stomach. She bends her knees, locks her legs on either side of his hips, and lifting her arms over her head, sends her fingers through his hair.

  Pamela phones. “I hear you have a new friend.” “Yes.”

  “Listen, Toby took the ledgers and financial records from your closet. I found them in his room yesterday. He had your canceled checks spread out on the bed. He said he’s auditing you for a political science project. Claims you owe five hundred dollars in back taxes.”

  The figure’s a little high, Adams thinks. “I’ll come by tomorrow,” he says.

  “All right. One more thing, Sam. I’ve hired a divorce lawyer.”

  “Oh?”

  “Can we not be messy about this?”

  “No problem,” Adams says.

  City code (written): One parking space/four theater seats. Theaters best located in suburbs. Commuters generally do not return to the downtown area at night for pleasure after leaving the downtown area after work. Four- to six-screen theater complexes, cor-porately managed (AMC, Loews, etc.) to be encouraged for zoning purposes (i.e., limit entertainment space as much as possible).

  Adams recalls the wide, balconied theaters of his youth, stone pillars on either side of the screen.

  City code (unwritten): Fast-food franchises generally discouraged for the present. Reasons cited: (1) glut (2) cash flow out of the community. Records indicate that seventy-four percent of expenditures at a single McDonald’s restaurant flow out of the community (food and paper from the corporation, rent paid to the corporation, advertising, accountants, lawyers).

  City code (revised, S. Adams): Freeway overpasses with more than forty percent curvature to be dislodged by giant cranes and placed, unanchored, on the ground in reversed position, to serve as bases for rocking horses roughly the size of three-story buildings. Ancient cannon (howitzers, etc.) to be removed from military museums and welded together as superstructure for legs, tails, heavily maned necks. Clouds snagged by oversized cloth nets stretched between helicopters to be used for padding in Astroturf-and-leather saddles. Redbud trees bundled together and tied are to be placed on the horses’ noses: blazing nostrils. In addition, cypress trees to be imported from states with large rivers, sculpted to resemble butterflies, birds, painted white, gold, blue, and suspended mobile-like from cranes around the horses.

  Deidre dressed for dance rehearsal. In her grass skirt and cap she looks like a little hut. “Why don’t you tell me what happen
ed?” Adams says.

  “Well, we were in David’s yard—”

  “David is the little boy…?”

  “Next door. His daddy took down his swing set.” She stops, as though she’s made her point.

  “And?”

  “He’s really mean. He doesn’t want David to have any fun.”

  “Okay, so then what happened?”

  “So then … we were in David’s yard, okay? And his daddy took down his swing set. And there was this metal bar, you know, that used to be part of the swing set, and I picked it up and started throwing it in the air like a baton, okay? And I wasn’t throwing it high, like he said I did, and it came down on David’s head.”

  “How badly was he cut?”

  “I didn’t see him bleeding or anything, but five minutes later David’s dad comes over here yelling at me like I’m some kind of wookie or something.”

  “They had to take him to the emergency room,” Pamela says.

  “Has this sort of thing happened before, Deidre?”

  “No. What do you mean?”

  “Well, apparently David’s father says the other kids are afraid of you.”

  “That’s ‘cause they’re really really dumb. I liked it better where we lived before.”

  “What have you been doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Tell your father about the Crisco,” Pamela says.

  “Oh, that’s stupid.”

  Adams says, “What about the Crisco?”

  “I was with Stephanie in her kitchen—” “Stephanie is eighteen months old,” Pamela adds.

  “And I thought it would be funny to put Crisco on her face to make her look like a clown.”

  “Stephanie was covered with Crisco head to toe,” Pamela says.

  Adams laughs.

  “It’s not funny, Sam.”

  “You had me thinking she was terrorizing everybody.”

  “I never said that. That was Mr. Doyle, David’s father.”

  “He’s really mean,” Deidre says.

  “He had no right to yell at her. I’ll punish my own kids the way I see fit,” Pamela says.

  “Ma-ma.”

  “All right,” Adams says. “I’ll take you to dance class. And tomorrow I want you to apologize to David and his father.”

  “It was an accident!”

  “You’re sorry it happened, aren’t you? And if you haven’t apologized to Stephanie’s mother, I think you should do that too.”

  “And to Stephanie?”

  “Yes, and to Stephanie.”

  “She won’t understand, Dad.”

  “Well, you’ll teach her. Now get your stuff.” He slaps her bottom.

  Pamela offers him a drink. “I’m not home enough, Sam. I know that’s part of the problem.” In addition to her work, she’s now involved on a volunteer basis with a social group called Women Against Poverty. On Tuesday nights she counsels battered wives, distributes food to women whose food stamps have been rescinded by federal cuts, and helps uneducated single mothers put together résumés and fill out job applications.

  “You should see these women when they realize how easy it is to fill out a job application. They think their problems are over. Of course they’re just beginning. I don’t know how much good we do. Sometimes I think we’re getting their hopes up for nothing. But I’m teaching them art. I’ve put these cutouts on the wall, like Matisse dancers, and we talk about color and proportion. Most of them don’t care, but it takes their minds off their children and their boyfriends and their bad checks.”

  “Don’t worry about the kids. We’ll work things out.”

  Deidre is ready to go. Adams drops her off at class, circles back, and has a talk with Mr. Doyle, a nervous man who turns out to be friendly and reasonable.

  “I’m sorry if I upset your wife,” he says.

  “Understandable. And you probably did Deidre some good. David’s all right?”

  “He’s going to be fine.”

  Fathers being fatherly.

  Adams offers to pay David’s medical costs; Mr. Doyle politely declines.

  Adams drives to the women’s shelter with a bottle of champagne. “To celebrate your work. And the end of the hostilities with Mr. Doyle,” he says.

  The shelter is temporarily located in a vast ware house, no private alcoves, and he feels embarrassed standing nicely dressed among crying women and children, holding a chilled bottle of Moët et Chandon.

  “That’s really sweet of you, Sam. Can you leave it in my car?” She hands him her keys and leads a mixed group of children—black, Chicano, Asian—toward a corner of the room. One of the boys repeats to himself in a deep, affected voice, “I worked late last night, worked late tonight, and I’m fed up, do you hear me, I’ve had it up to here.” Loudly buzzing yellow lights glare from the rafters of the building, the gray metal walls are covered with cardboard figures holding hands and dancing in circles. Folding chairs and cots fill the space in the center of the room; on the sides, seven or eight portable freezers.

  Adams follows Pamela, jangling her car keys. “Why don’t you just come over when you get through tonight?” For some reason—perhaps because Mr. Doyle was so nice—he feels gracious and forgiving this evening.

  “I’m going to be here awhile.”

  “How long?” He bumps into a pregnant woman with very thin legs and arms.

  “I don’t know, Sam. I’m just not up for it, okay? It was very sweet of you, but …”

  “Okay, okay.” He is jealous of the crowded shelter, of her purpose here.

  She squats beside a woman with long curly hair. The woman is seated on the concrete floor.

  “How you doing, Angela,” Pamela asks.

  Angela’s left wrist is in a cast. “I haven’t changed my mind,” she says. Her tongue is cut.

  “Please, Angela.”

  “Where did they park my car?”

  “Stay with us, at least for tonight.”

  “I’ve got to see him again!” Angela starts to cry.

  Pamela looks up at Adams: condemnation, fear, affection? He’d like to squeeze her shoulder reassuringly but knows she might consider it, at this moment, a hostile gesture.

  City of Women Alone, Street of the Listener, Avenue of Lost Children. Come back. Return. So this is where we are.

  Part Four

  IN dream Pamela mails him a plate. The Dutch are always giving plates. Ceramic plates, wooden plates, clay plates. Generally a hand-painted scene appears in the center of the plate, and around the rim an aphorism: “Happy the Soul Who Trusts in God” or “Coal Remains in the Hills.” A distinct feature of the plates is that they often are addressed to brothers and sisters. Husbands and wives sometimes paint affectionate names on one another’s plates, such as “Gimp” or “Woodchip.” In Adams’ dream the plate arrives wrapped in paper. He cuts the tape. When he removes the last shred of wrapping, he is astonished. In the middle of the plate a hag, like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, leans on a cane. Written in German script on the rim: “Good Morning, Cousin Snitch, You Kissed the Mouth for Nothing, didn’t You?”

  At the dance hall he drinks beer and eats sausage. Jill does the polka with a barrel-chested man in long pants and suspenders while Adams taps out a beat on a wooden table to the fiddle. He’s thinking of all the dances in all the halls he ever attended with Pamela, but the people at the table with him raise their mugs and laugh heartily, and he can’t help but feel good. Jill takes his hand and drags him onto the dance floor. It is covered with sawdust, and when she swirls, tiny wooden slivers lift into the air like snow and settle in her hair.

  Watching her, Adams feels happy.

  “Let’s get our fortunes told,” Jill urges him.

  “I’m enjoying myself here.”

  “Come on, it’ll be fun.”

  Rosa’s in the middle of a seance when they arrive. “Come in, come in,” an old woman whispers through the screen door. They sit on the floor behind a row of women, all of whom are holdin
g hands.

  Adams watches Rosa. She might have been attractive once, but years of tension have tightened the skin around her mouth. In the dim light her age shows—she must be in her sixties. The way she rotates her jaw as she slips into a trance is repulsive, and he looks away. Through the front screen he sees boys banging cans behind the cemetery. One of them pulls a frayed head of lettuce from a pile of garbage and they begin to toss it like a football. Outside it’s getting dark and a cool breeze moves through the room.

  The spirit that is speaking through Rosa, fluttering candles she has placed in small dishes on the floor, runs out of things to say and begins recommending her spaghetti. She comes out of her trance.

  “Let’s take a break,” she says. “There’s strawberries and cream in the kitchen.”

  She’s delighted to see Adams and asks about the children. He introduces her to Jill, who’s wholly taken with the scene. “How did you get into this?”

  “I started out with a crystal ball, but if you get someone with a clouded past the ball will literally cloud up. You can’t hide it from the client. It’s very embarrassing. I prefer to let people experience their own pasts directly, and that’s what we’re going to do next. Grab some strawberries and join us.”

  Adams is uneasy but Jill wants to stay. He sits on the floor next to her. “Nadine.” Rosa gestures to a woman with swollen ankles. “You’ve regressed with me several times. What have you been?”

  “I grew cabbages in Italy during the Dark Ages. I sank with Atlantis.”

  She lies on the floor in front of Rosa and folds her arms over her abdomen. Her ankles are extraordinärily thick; her heels just touch the ground. Rosa leans over her. “Close your eyes,” she says. “Breathe slowly.”

  Nadine’s ankles pulse as if something were trying to hatch from them.