Desire Provoked

by Tracy Daugherty

Rosa says softly, “There’s a warmth like water in your stomach, calming every muscle. It fills your chest like foam, washes into your neck and shoulders.”

  Nadine appears to be asleep.

  “Now then, I want you to take a little journey with me. Imagine yourself in a forest by a creek. Tell me what you see.”

  “I see a lizard on a rock. I see the sun.” “Good, good. What else?”

  “Arrowheads in the dirt, sunflowers in tall grass, butterflies …”

  “You’re high in the air over a forest. When I count to three, you’ll float slowly down until your feet touch the ground. And when they do, you’ll find yourself in the past. One, two, three. Where are you, Nadine?”

  The woman writhes on the floor. “It’s hot,” she says.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “No … no, I don’t know where I am.”

  “What are you wearing?”

  “Black and white stripes.”

  “Is it a dress?”

  “Skin. Animal skin.”

  Rosa nods. “Describe what you see.”

  She lived in an African village by an antelope herd and a pond, until one day she ran from her tribe. She’d been promised to a warrior whom she didn’t want to marry. The tribal elders found her hiding behind a date palm, bound her to a stake, and tortured her with hot sticks until she agreed to accept the warrior. The wedding night passed pleasantly enough, despite the burns on her back.

  Rosa counts Nadine out of her relaxed state. She smiles like a coed who’s just passed an anthropology exam.

  Jill is a Mexican peasant with callused feet and a swollen belly. For a few pesos each night she sweeps the streets of the city, smiling up at the candles in the rich folks’ homes. Rosa advances her in years to her marriage, middle age, and death. Her husband dies young, her son becomes a farmer. She lives her late years in a convalescent home, attended by nuns.

  Now it’s Adams’ turn. Because he’s so self-conscious, Rosa takes a long time to relax him.

  “Where are you,” he hears her ask.

  “I don’t know.” His hands feel weightless. “I’m moving.” His mind supplies no image. “It’s like I’m underwater.”

  “You’re underwater, then?”

  “Yes, I’m in a river.” The image still isn’t clear and Rosa’s questions only bother him. Hard balls of mud slap his crotch. He feels this rather than sees it: his nerves move ahead of his mind. He bounces off a barge and tumbles to the bottom of the river. Muddy dregs sweep into his mouth.

  “Where are you?”

  “I don’t know,” he says.

  The sky turns bright as cellophane. On a pine bridge above him two white deer chase each other. Dirt from their hooves sifts through a space between the boards and peppers his face.

  Angry female voices mingle in the air above a wooden house. In a room full of rifles a white-haired man reads a map.

  “I can’t read,” he tells Rosa.

  “Move yourself forward in time,” she suggests. “Where are you?”

  “In town.” He’s carried the mud with him. His clothes are spattered. The streets are little more than damp ruts, and dirty geese straggle across them.

  “What do you see?”

  Rain barrels, wagon wheels, a tobacconist. “I’m standing in a hotel lobby,” he says. “Are you waiting for someone?” “No. I don’t know anyone.”

  A diamond-blue horsefly orbits a kerosene lamp.

  “What’s your name?”

  “I don’t know. The hotel looks full.”

  “Are you the clerk?”

  “I can’t read the register.”

  He turns on the television, hoping to run across Pavarotti again. Instead, PBS is airing a layman’s guide to the universe hosted by Peter Ustinov, who looks a great deal like Pavarotti but without the mole. Ustinov holds up two billiard balls and rolls them across a curved table with a grid painted on it—a demonstration of what happens to matter when it encounters a black hole. The balls are sucked down a pipe in one corner of the table.

  The weekend: Superman III with the kids. Superman, under the influence of not-quite-Kryptonite, has gone on a whiskey binge. The hero in him struggles to regain control of his mind, and in an urban scrapyard the two halves of his personality fight it out. Clark Kent, representing all that is pure within him, falls onto a conveyor belt, knocked silly by the unkempt superhero.

  Deidre asks, “Why are they both on the screen at the same time?”

  Adams explains split personality.

  “That’s stupid,” Deidre says.

  At home, she helps him peel shrimp. Toby, with exaggerated kindness, offers to mix him a Scotch-and-soda.

  “Where’d you learn to mix drinks?” Adams asks.

  “Mom had a party a couple of weeks ago. She taught me.”

  “Oh? Who was at the party?”

  “Painters, mostly. They talked real loud and dressed funny.” Toby twists his face, trying to be sullen, but obviously he’s in a talkative mood tonight. “I liked being bartender. The women said I was cute and made a big fuss, which was gross, but two of them asked me to fix the zippers on their dresses.”

  “Yeah, Toby wanted to take their dresses off,” Deidre says, tossing shrimp into a pot of boiling water.

  “I did not.” Toby walks off to make the drink.

  Deidre asks, “Why don’t you have a party, Daddy?”

  “I might, someday.”

  “Can we come?”

  “Sure.” He can’t imagine whom he’d invite.

  “I want to be the bartender next time,” Deidre says. “I’ll help the men fix their ties.”

  Adams adds lemon and celery to the shrimp and covers the pot. He walks into the den, where Toby is standing, staring disconsolately at the drink he has mixed.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know if I added enough soda.”

  Adams takes the drink. “Toby, what is it?”

  Toby jounces on the couch. “You’re not going to like it.”

  “Try me.”

  “All right.” He assumes an innocent expression. “I want to know why you and Mom stopped fucking.” “Toby …”

  “I want to know why. Did you get tired of her?”

  “Toby, we were getting along so well. Don’t spoil it, please.”

  “I was watching these guys at Mom’s party. They bragged about their work and acted stupid in front of these stupid women, and I know what was going on, they all wanted to fuck each other, the men and the women too, moving around each other like Muhammad Ali or something, waiting for the best shot. Mom was doing it too. Acting stupid every time she talked to a stupid guy.”

  Adams shrugs. “Men and women are attracted to one another for very good reasons,” he says.

  “Like what?”

  “Like what, well, haven’t you ever noticed a pretty girl at school and she smells good and she’s very nice, but for some reason you don’t get along with her? You don’t know why, but you’re just not interested in getting to know her? On the other hand, you meet a girl who’s not so pretty but you kind of like her—”

  “I don’t like anybody in my class,” Deidre says. “None of them know how to draw except me, and Mrs. Collins says we’re the most obnoxious kids she’s ever had.”

  “Or like your friends,” Adams continues. “There are certain guys you like to hang around with—”

  “I’m talking about fucking,” Toby says.

  “It’s no different.”

  “What’s fucking?” Deidre asks.

  “Honey, please.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s when a man and a woman get naked with each other,” Toby shouts. Deidre’s eyes grow big and she glances, frightened, at Adams, wondering if Toby’s in trouble, or if she’s in trouble, or if maybe Adams himself is in trouble.

  “Women’ll fuck anybody,” Toby says.

  “That’s not true. It’s especially not true of your mother.”

 
; “She was acting so stupid.”

  “That’s called flirting. People do it because it’s fun. It doesn’t always lead to making love. It’s like a game. Most of the time it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Sometimes it does.”

  “Sometimes. But people make choices. And people like your mother and me … well, we make responsible choices.” He sips his drink. “Most of the time. Anyway, it’s natural for you to be confused about all this, but believe me, it’s not as crazy as you think. There were reasons your mother married me and not someone else.” He pauses. “Just as there were reasons the marriage ended when it did.” He hopes Toby won’t ask him for the reasons. “What do you know about making love?” he says.

  “I know how it’s done.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “Let me know when you do, all right?” Toby nods.

  Deidre is still at sea. Adams scratches her head. “Put the sauce on the shrimp, all right?”

  “Sam, I’d like you to meet the Honorable Frederick Palmer, congressman from the tenth district.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Adams says.

  Palmer is wearing a red string tie.

  Carter takes them to an Italian restaurant, where he and Palmer discuss a water control project. Adams does not follow the conversation closely; it’s clear he’s not meant to.

  “I’m being purposely vague,” the congressman tells him, “because I don’t want to confuse the issue.”

  Back in the office, Carter pulls Adams aside. “Palmer’s going to help us with our next project. What I’d like from you is a detailed map of the following region.” He hands Adams a set of coordinates. “Thursday, hmm? Oh, and Sam, Vox has the W-2 forms in his office. When you pick yours up, sign for it, all right? There’s been some hanky-panky with the records and we’re trying to be more accurate.”

  “What kind of hanky-panky?” Adams asks.

  Carter looks around. “Some cash is missing from the political action fund.”

  “Mallow?”

  Carter shakes his head. “There’s some other stuff, too. Just sign your name so we know you got your forms.”

  The women’s shelter has moved to a permanent location, a gray two-story house wedged cozily among three giant cedars in one of the oldest neighborhoods in town. The grass is neatly mowed. Kids play tag between bashed-in-looking cars parked in the drive. A woman in a long skirt is sitting on the wooden porch in a rocker reading “The Cow Jumped Over the Moon” to a little girl nearly asleep on her lap.

  “Hi. I’m Valerie.”

  “Valerie. Pam nearly through?”

  “I don’t know. I think they’re reading poems.”

  Cicadas throb in the cedars. Lamplight falls through the lace curtains onto Valerie, who, Adams sees, is wearing a splint on her right arm.

  He pokes his head in the door. A television, black-and-white, sound off, sits on a crumpled shower curtain in a corner of the living room. A circle of wooden chairs spotted with green paint. A chipped and dusty glass chandelier. On the walls (the same pale green as the spots on the chairs) Pamela’s Matisse-figures playfully chase one another all the way up to the ceiling. In the stairwell one of the cardboard figures has come partially untaped and appears to have placed its feet on the carpeted stairs.

  A woman clears dirty dishes and coffee cups from a poorly varnished table. Pamela motions for him to come in and shut the door. Most of the women are young—some in their early teens—and with children. A few are cut and bruised, made up heavily to hide the marks, but the rest seem healthy, in good spirits. A little tired perhaps. Cynical jokes.

  A thickset lady next to Pamela picks up a paperback book and reads Wallace Stevens’ “Anecdote of the Jar.”

  Only three or four women are listening, and all agree they don’t understand that one.

  “You’re right, let’s try another,” the lady says, and chooses Emily Dickinson:

  I saw no way—the Heavens were stitched—

  I felt the Columns close—

  The Earth reversed the Hemispheres—

  I touched the Universe—

  And back it slid—and I alone—

  A Speck upon a Ball—

  Went out upon Circumference—

  Beyond the Dip of Bell—

  “That’s pretty,” one woman says faintly, gazing out the window. Another turns up the sound on the television.

  Pamela touches Adams’ arm. “They don’t need me anymore tonight. I’ll just be a minute.” She hugs several of the women (one flinches; “I’m sorry,” Pamela says, gingerly rubbing the woman’s ribs), straightens their hair, and accompanies Adams out the door. The little girl who was resting on Valerie’s lap now stands in the front yard while Valerie pulls off her shorts and lays them in the grass.

  “Diarrhea,” Valerie says.

  The little girl stares imperturbably at the cars passing on the street, as if this were just one more thing that has happened in her life.

  “If you throw any more wild parties for your artist friends, I’m going to fight for custody,” he announces with some degree of pleasure.

  Pamela, stunned, lifts her glass of Riesling. “I don’t think we should use the children to spy on each other.”

  “Who’s spying. Toby felt bad and he let it out, that’s all.”

  “So what are you telling me, Sam? I can’t have people over?”

  “I’m not in a position to tell you—”

  “You’re certainly not.”

  “But I won’t have the children exposed to anything before they’re ready.”

  “Unfit mother, is that it?”

  “It’s the crowd you’re in with. Painters with their flies open—”

  “Don’t say another word, Sam. If you’ve got some horrible stereotyped image of artists, that’s your problem, not mine. You don’t know my friends. It’s pretty damned impertinent of you to pass judgment.”

  “I know what Toby told me.”

  “He’s a child. He doesn’t understand—”

  “That’s my point.” He gets up, leaving money for the bill.

  “Don’t walk out on me, Sam. This is not some goddamn movie where you can pull a stunt like that.”

  “Don’t raise your voice to me.”

  “Here, take your money,” she says, “I can pay for my own.”

  Elgin Creek is at its deepest in the area that Carter wants mapped. No one knows who owns the land. The county’s contesting the claims of three families.

  Adams puts his work aside for the afternoon, drives out to Deerbridge Road. He parks the car on a flat grassy spot next to a dirt path, gets out, slides down a brambly slope to the creek. Mimosa fuzz circles slowly in the air. He can hear the water but cannot see it through the bushy weeds. Finally he clears a path to the bank. The creek is green. Low. Swirling wild-flowers and pebbles. Adams slaps mosquitoes from his neck, dabs his face with a handkerchief.

  Absurd to worry about water control here.

  A broken bottle of ink on the floor beneath his drafting table.

  Deidre stands in the kitchen doorway.

  “What happened?” he asks.

  “It broke.”

  “I can see that. How?”

  “I don’t know.”

  For the first time in years he feels like spanking his child. “Did you break it?” he says.

  “No.”

  Her first direct answer.

  “Did Toby break it?”

  She withdraws into the kitchen. Toby is sitting at the table, reading the morning paper. “There’s an article on Mom’s show.”

  “Did you break my bottle of ink?”

  Toby looks at Deidre.

  “I want you to stop using Deidre as a shield.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I don’t care who broke the ink. But if you’ve got your sister covering for you, I’m going to be very upset. Now, what’s it going to be?”

  Toby stares at the pa
per.

  “Grown-ups admit their mistakes.”

  “Oh, yeah? Toby stands behind his chair. “Do you admit you made a mistake when you let Mom leave?”

  “I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” Adams says. He turns to Deidre. “Did he tell you to lie for him?”

  She glances at Toby.

  “It’s all right, honey. You can tell me.”

  She lifts her fingers to her lips. “He told me never get him in trouble.”

  “Do you know how to make toast and eggs,” he asks. She nods. “All right, start the toast and eggs while I have a talk with your brother. I’ll be in to help you in a minute.” He leads Toby to the back porch. A cool spring morning. A wisp of fog in the air.

  “I’m disappointed in you, Toby.”

  “I don’t want to hear this shit.”

  “Well, you’re going to. What bothers me is the way you treat your sister. If you want to hate your mother and me, that’s fine. We’re big people, we can take it. But you’re bigger and stronger than Deidre, you know? I love you both, but so help me, Toby, if you frighten her or intimidate her in any way, you’re going to wish you had a different father. Do you understand?”

  Toby nods, his face bright red.

  “Now let’s eat some breakfast.”

  Adams tells Pamela he’s going to stop paying for Toby’s visits to the doctor. “But he’s getting better.”

  “He’s getting subtler. He’ll outgrow this phase or he won’t, but the doctor’s not going to make a bit of difference.”

  “Sam, I don’t know how to handle him.”

  “Neither do I. It’s time we learned.”

  Rosa’s sitting in the cemetery beneath a cotton-wood tree. As Adams walks by on his way home from the library, she offers him an egg salad sandwich.

  “Do you often picnic in the graveyard,” he asks.

  “Why not? It’s pleasant, quiet. I’ve also got some Ruffles and a can of Tab.”

  He takes some potato chips.

  “What’d you think about the other night?”

  “It was interesting. I don’t believe in past lives, though.”

  “The experience is what’s important. Do you know Greek plays? Remember the Oracle at Delphi? The Greeks really believed she had divine power. Then some scholar comes along and says, ‘Nah, it was a crazy old woman inhaling sulfur fumes from a crack in the earth.’ The fumes changed her voice, see, so it sounded like some other being had taken hold of her. And she was eating hallucinogens from the plants, which made her sound mystical. I say, what the hell’s the difference? The experience is the same.”