She tells Dale that when she was nineteen she ran out of gas on a Sunday afternoon in Sweetwater on Highway 70, coming from San Angelo. Dale doesn’t ask her why she was in San Angelo, whom she might have known there. She walked, saw a house sitting alone about a hundred yards off the highway. She was invited into the house by a young woman and given coffee and sweet potato pie. The woman’s name was Maryprice Hodge. Her husband, Meachum, came in from the field and joined them. He said he’d be happy to run into town to Donnie Jenck’s Citgo station and fetch some gasoline.
Suddenly, the whole kitchen shook, dishes rattled, a platter fell off the shelf and landed on the counter. Earthquake, must be. Maryprice rolled her eyes. And then another shock. Maryprice said, Meachum, please tell the boy to cease and desist while we have company. She told Theresa that her son Val had mounted a basketball hoop right to the side of the house. He’s out there now shooting free throws.
When Meachum left, Maryprice told Theresa that she worked in town at the Sack ’n’ Save. Said the oddest thing happened. About a month back she started finding these mysterious and romantic love notes. In her lunch sack, in the mail, stuffed inside her cigarette pack, on the car windshield. Just all over. They were sweet, not fresh, if you know what I mean. Things a woman wants to hear. She assumed they were from the new fellow in the meat department, Gene Killeen. Thought it was him from his eyes, the way he watched me, from what he said on breaks, how he sat near me, lit my cigarettes like a gentleman. I felt like he was reading my thoughts. And I don’t mind telling you he was a sharp-looking man and single. Turns out, though, the notes were from her adoring husband, Meachum. Meachum doesn’t talk much, Maryprice said. Yes, she was disappointed when she learned the truth; all the romance just leaked out of her. She did have a new appreciation for Meachum, though.
Dale is disconcerted. Theresa’s been places he hasn’t. He considers telling her a story about that time in Shamrock when he got caught in a blizzard. But that would be a story about himself and not about other people, as hers was. And where is the mystery in a snowstorm? He asks Theresa if she wants to drive into town and find the house, visit the Hodges. She says she doesn’t. Says that wouldn’t be right.
When we were in seventh grade, Dale tells Theresa, Spivey Wilhite, who had stayed back twice, and was fourteen, murdered his parents because they wouldn’t allow him to listen to Little Richard records. One day he stayed home from school, dyed his red hair black, waited till his mom headed to County Market before he’d come out of the bathroom. He loaded his dad’s deer rifle with cartridges, and when his mom came in through the back door, he fired. The first bullet blew the sack of groceries out of her hands and drove a carton of milk against the wall, leaving Randa Wilhite with a very confused look on her face. The second bullet wiped that away. When Spivey, Sr., got home from work, he yelled for Spivey to shut off that nigger music once and for all. His boy stood up behind the sofa, where he’d been hiding, lifted the rifle. Who are you? were the last words his father spoke.
Spivey got sent to reform school. And then overnight, it seemed, he was back on the street, and he seemed much older than we were and he had tattoos and his hair was thinning, and he took a job at Phalco Plastics, and people kind of left him alone. Sometimes you’d see him at Bevis Drugs drinking a chocolate Coke or a coffee. He tried to join the army to go to Nam, but they wouldn’t take him because he’d killed people. I’d see him walking along Broadway with a book in his back pocket, a cigarette, unfiltered, in his mouth.
Theresa said, Jesus, does this Spivey guy still live in Hobbs? Dale told her he washed dishes at the Cattle Baron. She’d no doubt seen him around. He’s kind of fat now. When they turned off I-20 in Big Spring and drove past the asylum on the way to Lamesa, Dale told Theresa the truth. Spivey killed his parents because they wouldn’t let him listen to Charlie Pride records. Sorry, but that didn’t seem important enough to kill over. What am I saying? And the war was over before he got out of the reform school. I don’t know why I said that about the army. Theresa said, Your way made more sense.
That evening Dale sat on his couch with his lap desk and wrote Theresa a letter:
Dearest T.
I have held my love and my kindness in reserve all my life. Right now, at 3 A.M., I don’t understand my caution, what I thought I was saving affection for. I’m writing to you because I could not say what I have to say. I’m embarrassed by this admission, but I know I’m right about it. I thought I would be giving something up if I were to commit myself to you and the children. But now I can’t recall what that was. Time? Could that be it? As if I could hold on to time. Freedom? Independence? But why? So I could sit with Keynes and read? I know that I have quiet and contentment (a little) in my life, and order, routine, tranquillity, and I know that I will have to give these up to be with you, and that seems a small price to pay for your love. So, if you are willing, I am eager, at long last, to saying let’s go and get married and make it all official. So what do you think, Theresa? I’ll be a wreck until I hear from you. I don’t want to get morose, and so I’ll close.
Love, Dale
Dale put on his slippers, got Keynes’s leash, and they walked to the mailbox at the Allsup’s. He knew that if he didn’t post the letter tonight, he likely would not in the morning. Not that he would feel differently about Theresa, he just might not be able to handle the truth in the clear light of day. Dale in his parlor at four A.M. had this insight: Every act of loving affirms the goodness of the lover just because he is capable of loving and of being loved. And if you’re not convinced of your goodness, well . . . Dale thought how this rationalization seemed pretty self-serving. I put down my pen, wondered if I had enough energy to take Spot for a walk.
67.
Your Molecular Structure
JUDI YELLED FROM THE BEDROOM. SHE’D BE READY IN FIVE. WE HAD PLANS. I schlepped the typewriter to the mud room, stashed my papers on the shelf over the coat hooks. We were going to a flea market up in Hollis, New Hampshire. Judi thought there might still be bargains left in New Hampshire. Fiesta ware dishes for fifty cents a piece, metal lunch boxes for a buck, that sort of thing. Judi wore her denim jacket, blue jeans, her black Harley-Davidson boots with the zippers, and a black White Sox baseball cap that she had on backward. She looked like a fourteen-year-old headbanger. She kissed me on the nose. She took the cookie jar down off the fridge and took out an envelope with cash. I wondered, Do I need my gloves? I looked out the window at the sunny yard, the bare trees, their swollen buds, at the brown grass. It could be seventy out there or twenty. I watched Spot watching a squirrel cross a telephone wire. I couldn’t see Spot’s breath. Better take the gloves anyway.
Judi drove. I watched the miles glide by. I switched stations on the radio. I could listen to oldies so long as the Supremes weren’t on. Judi’s rule. We listened to a call-in show about restaurants for a while. Some station was playing Mose Allison, but it faded out halfway into “Your Molecular Structure.” Car Talk I hate cars, but I love those guys. I told Judi, take a left, any left. We’ll drive to Oregon. I was joking, but I meant it.
I said, “Why don’t we do it? Take a long trip.”
“Where to?”
“Across the country.”
I could see that Judi was considering the idea. “This summer,” I said.
“Two problems, time and money.”
“Yes, they’ll stop you if you let them.” I told her we could take the trailer, camp everywhere. Rest areas are free. Judi said she doubted the trailer would make it. It hadn’t moved from its spot in thirty years or more. I said we could try it. She said, honestly, she wasn’t the camping kind of gal. She said the Miata wouldn’t be big enough to tow the trailer, anyway. I was momentarily discouraged, but I wasn’t planning to drop the idea. I said, Let’s think about it. She said, Okay. I said, We’ll take a month off, see the U.S.A. I already saw us cruising through the steppes of eastern Montana, so I was surprised by what Judi said next. She said we needed to talk about her d
ying. She turned off the radio.
I said, “What do you mean? You’re feeling better, aren’t you? You said these healing sessions were working. You look great. What are you talking about?”
“I’m feeling better, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to survive.”
“None of us is going to survive.”
“You know what I mean.”
I stared out the window. We were near Townsend. I could see a familiar restaurant up a long hill. Yes, the Olde Mill. I’d been to a wedding reception there with Martha. Rob and Donna. Good friends who moved away to Kansas or somewhere. Haven’t seen them in, Jesus, twelve years. Maybe on our trip, we could stop in on them. Or would that be awkward? Martha and I had words, I think, at the reception, took one of our famous long walks. I threw stones in the mill pond. Martha cried. We always seemed to fight at public occasions.
Judi said, “Death is your life affirming itself by consenting to die.”
“Is this some of Dorie’s New Age wisdom?”
“No. Dorie said, ‘Death is the opposite of love.’ ”
“Horseshit.”
“I want to take this seriously. Death, I mean.”
“What kind of goal is death?”
“Inevitable.”
“But not necessarily imminent.”
“For you.”
I wanted to say, almost said, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” but I thought, Why shouldn’t she?
“Where does all this anger come from?”
I looked at her. “What?” I don’t think of myself as angry. I said so. I said, “I’m impatient sometimes. I get frustrated.”
Judi laughed. “You use your impatience to keep you from the anger.
You’re afraid of it. You’re afraid it’s so huge and powerful that it will hurt someone. Well, it’s not.”
“Do I have to pay for this session?”
“Angry?”
“I’m being attacked.”
“Are you?”
This wasn’t pleasant, but it beat talking about death by a mile. “Have I ever yelled at you?”
“You think if you don’t yell, if you don’t smash the furniture, then you’re not expressing anger; you’re controlling it.”
That made sense.
“But it’s controlling you.”
The sign said six miles to Hollis, and in those six miles Judi said I had stored up more anger and resentment than I knew what to do with and maybe it had something to do with feeling powerless, inadequate—a perception, she said, that was inaccurate (thank God)—which feeling probably goes back to my childhood. She said I probably thought life was spontaneous, but it isn’t. We develop patterns of behavior, habits that are habits because they’ve worked for us in the past. My guess, she said, is one time when you felt hurt, you didn’t cry or scream; you shut up about it, and you found out that Mom and Dad got off your back. Maybe they admired your stoicism. Maybe even you did. That’s how they trained you, shaped you into a quiet, resentful boy.
So, I thought, does she want me to get pissed now? to yell at her? Is that it? Well, I wasn’t pissed, so there. I’m doing what she said, aren’t I?
Judi said this habit was appropriate for childhood, but, then, I wasn’t a child anymore, was I? Even if I was irresponsible and childish at times—my cavalier attitude toward security, employment, success, I guess she meant. She said if I could stop this habit, then the reasons for it would surface—the impulses, the emotions, the perceptions. And then I could deal with them.
I gave Judi a dollar and she gave it to the parking attendant. I said, Well, if it’s a problem, I should deal with it.
Judi said I should say the first word that pops into my head. Okay?
I said, “Shoot.”
“Is that a joke?”
“What?”
“Never mind. Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Rage.”
“Dylan Thomas.”
“Dog.”
“Food.”
“Dark.”
“Space.”
“Death.”
“Defying.”
Judi laughed, pulled into a space.
“Am I sane?”
“No.”
“Thank God.”
We browsed the tables and stalls. A lot of flea market vendors are horrendously overweight, and a lot of them smoke. You see plenty of dandruff and skin rashes, too. This could be the most dangerous job in America. And was there really this big a demand for Nazi paraphernalia? I bought a coffee, ate some fried dough. Judi tried to make a deal on a Fada Bakelite radio, butterscotch-and-cherry-colored and shaped like a bullet. I love all this old stuff, but in order to save things, you have to have a place to put them; you have to settle into a domicile. Nomads don’t buy floor lamps with beaded silk shades, lacquered with powdered glass, or silver streamlined turnover toasters or official Gang-busters “Crusade Against Crime” toy machine guns. Bowling shirts and postcards, maybe, and the occasional Bokar coffee tin. In fact, I bought old “Greetings from . . . ” hand-painted postcards where they spell out the name of the featured place in pictures. Cooke City, Montana: “On the Red Lodge-Cooke City Highway”; Denver; Fort Worth; North Platte, Nebraska; Prescott, Arizona. I even got one of Hobbs, New Mexico. Oil wells, parked cars, and the Bevis Drugstore. I showed them to Judi, said these were the places we’d go on the trip. It was fate. She said, Why don’t you write a story about the trip. Like what we did and how much fun we had. I said, Judi, you got this whole time and space thing screwed up.
Judi bought a wood and glass tray with a design of parrots on it. The parrots were made out of blue and orange butterfly wings. She talked the lady down to twenty-five dollars. Did I think we needed a 1935 calendar with Joan Crawford’s photo on it? Any year but ’35, I said. I bought an ashtray stolen from the Green Derby restaurant in Jackson, Mississippi. I was going to use it for paper clips.
Judi told me she was tired. She wanted to leave.
“Are you okay?”
She shrugged. Then she began to cry.
I touched her shoulder. “What is it?”
“What you said about time.”
“Before?”
We walked back to the car. Judi told me to drive. “What you said about the space and time thing. Well, in the last session with Dorie . . . ”
“I’m listening.” I backed out of our spot, drove across the rutted field. “Go ahead.”
“Well, I had this experience.” She looked at me. “Do you want to hear it?”
I said I did, and she told me the whole story.
68.
Time Held Me Green and Dying
“I BRUSH MY HAIR IN THE SULFURED LIGHT OF THE OIL LAMP. I SET THE BRUSH AND the mirror just so on the bureau. I arrange the basin and jug, smooth out the doily. I wait for you. I hear Madame Lussier in the yard, breaking the ice on the pump, scolding her dog, Genghis. Madame has told me that you have secrets. All the other young priests that she knows, she told me, are like sisters to her. But you’re not one she can fuss over and giggle with. She has advised me to stay away from you. I sit in my chair. I smooth my dress over my belly. I fold my hands on my lap. I stare at the orange flames through the grate in the wood stove. That was the trigger, that’s what carried me back—the pinescented disinfectant at Dorie’s. Isn’t that funny? It brought me back a century to that morning, to my room, my resinous fire, my waiting for you.
“When I walk to the door to answer your knock, the floorboards creak. You stand in the doorway, steam rising off your bald head, and I recognize you immediately even though you are older and have grown thick in the waist and the neck. I ask you why you’ve done this, come back to me from the future on this day of all days. You ask if you might come in. You take off your cape and drop it on the bed. You touch the crucifix on the wall, the sprigs of pussy willow in the garden basket—I’d forgotten all about that basket. You pick up the seed box where I keep my needles, thread, and buttons. You lower yourself into the chair, win
ce. You’re old, and time is all mixed up.
“That’s when I realized—there in my room and there in Dorie’s—that time is not out there but here in us, and we measure it with dreams and memories, that time is not a river we drift in, but a sea that we swim in, and we can swim in any direction. I understood then that history is an empty notion. History is what happened. Memory is what happens. There is no now, no then. There is only the everlastingness. Eternity. An absolute. It’s hard to explain this. We need a language without tense.
“I ask you what you have in that sack on your lap. You tell me that you never got your own parish, never made monsignor. You say that in time you came to feel like this place—lonely, desperate, leaden. You know that I’m close to death—both on that day and now—and you tell me how the last thing I’ll feel is a pressure on the chest like it’s caught in a wine press and how the pressure builds until the heart is pulped.
“You tell me you want to confess, and suddenly you’re young again. ‘I chose God,’you say, ‘and I chose wrong. God,’ you say, ‘is cold comfort to a bitter heart.’
“I think how when you leave, I’ll put a log in the stove and stoke the fire with your several letters, your little gifts: the heron’s feather, the hat brush, the floral band box, the hair ribbon. I’ll sweep the floor, smooth the bed where you sat. I’ll leave the door unlocked. I’ll tell Madame Lussier I’m off to Monsieur Plouffe’s for lye. I won’t let on. I’ll walk to the river.
“You tell me that freedom means doing what we ought to do, which is to choose the spiritual over the material. Freedom, you say, is inescapable. You say you had always believed that you could rectify your life until you got it right. That notion, you say, died the moment they dragged my body out of the river, my body with its lacy mantle of moss and algae, bloated, you tell me, and bluish. You look at me and say, ‘If you had only told me.’ I tell you the child was not the point. Love was the point.
“You open your sack on the bed. You show me the bony unborn with his bulbous head, translucent as a cave fish, and his pearly monkey’s face. You say, ‘The atonement is mine; I am not reconciled.’ You cry and kneel at my feet. You say, ‘Willful love I have; natural love I have none.’ You do not ask for my forgiveness. You say you have an instinct for death, have altered but not grown; you have merely become. By now I am looking out the cloudy window. You say, ‘I go down to death with indifference and ignorance; I am one to whom nothing can be added.’ ”
Love Warps the Mind a Little Page 29
