Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories

by Tobias Wolff

  “Hey, Pete,” Donald said. “Lighten up.”

  “Douse it!”

  Webster sighed, then slipped the cigar out the window.

  “I’m a wreck,” Pete said to Donald. “You want to drive for a while?”

  “Too much! I was just about to offer! I mean, the words were right on the tip of my tongue.”

  Pete pulled over and they changed places.

  Webster kept his own counsel in the backseat. Donald hummed while he drove, until Pete told him to stop. Then everything was quiet.

  Donald was humming again when Pete woke up. He stared sullenly at the road, at the white lines sliding past the car. After a few moments of this he turned and said, “How long have I been out?”

  Donald glanced at him. “Twenty, twenty-five minutes.”

  Pete looked behind him and saw that Webster was gone. “Where’s our friend?”

  “You just missed him. He got out in Soledad. He told me to say thanks and good-bye.”

  “Soledad? What about his sick daughter? How did he explain her away?”

  “He has a brother living there. He’s going to borrow a car from him and drive the rest of the way in the morning.”

  “I’ll bet his brother’s living there,” Pete said. “Doing fifty concurrent life sentences. His brother and his sister and his mom and his dad.”

  “I kind of liked him,” Donald said.

  “I’m sure you did,” Pete said.

  “He was interesting. He’d been places.”

  “His cigars had been places, I’ll give you that.”

  “Come on, Pete.”

  “Come on yourself. What a phony.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Sure I do.”

  “How? How do you know?”

  Pete stretched. “Brother, there are some things you’re just born knowing. What’s the gas situation?”

  “We’re a little low.”

  “Then why didn’t you get some more?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t snap at me like that,” Donald said.

  “Then why don’t you use your head? What if we run out?”

  “We’ll make it,” Donald said. “I’m pretty sure we’ve got enough to make it. You didn’t have to be so rude to him.”

  “I don’t feel like running out of gas tonight, okay?”

  Donald pulled in at the next station they came to and filled the tank while Pete went to the men’s room. When Pete came back, Donald was sitting in the passenger’s seat. As Pete got in behind the wheel the attendant came up to his window, bent down, and said, “Twenty-one fifty-five.”

  “You heard the man,” Pete said to Donald.

  Donald looked straight ahead. He didn’t move.

  “Cough up,” Pete said. “This trip’s on you.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Sure you can. Break out that wad.”

  “Please,” he said. “Pete, I don’t have it anymore.”

  Pete took this in. He nodded, and paid the attendant.

  Donald began to speak when they pulled out but Pete cut him off. He said, “I don’t want to hear from you right now. You just keep quiet or I swear to God I won’t be responsible.”

  They left the fields and entered a forest of tall pines. The trees went on and on. “Let me get this straight,” Pete said at last. “You don’t have the money I gave you.”

  “You treated him like a bug or something,” Donald said.

  “You don’t have the money,” Pete said again.

  Donald shook his head.

  “Since I bought dinner, and since we didn’t stop anywhere in between, I assume you gave it to Webster. Is that right? Is that what you did with it?”

  “Yes.”

  Pete looked at Donald. His face was dark under the hood but he still managed to convey a sense of remove, as if none of this had anything to do with him.

  “Why?” Pete asked. “Why did you give it to him?” When Donald didn’t answer, Pete said, “A hundred dollars, gone. Just like that. I worked for that money, Donald.”

  “I know, I know,” Donald said.

  “You don’t know! How could you? You get money by holding out your hand.”

  “I work too,” Donald said.

  “You work too? Don’t kid yourself, brother.” Donald leaned toward him, about to say something, but Pete cut him off again. “You’re not the only person on the payroll, Donald. I don’t think you understand that. I have a family.”

  “Pete, I’ll pay you back.”

  “Like hell you will. A hundred dollars!” Pete hit the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “Just because you think I hurt some goofball’s feelings. Jesus, Donald.”

  “That’s not the reason,” Donald said. “And I didn’t just give him the money.”

  “What do you call it, then? What do you call what you did?”

  “I invested it. I wanted a share, Pete.” When Pete looked over at him Donald nodded and said again, “I wanted a share.”

  Pete said, “I take it you’re referring to the gold mine in Peru.”

  “Yes,” Donald said.

  “You believe that such a gold mine exists?”

  Donald looked at him, and Pete could see he was just beginning to catch on. “You’ll believe anything, won’t you?” Pete said. “You really will believe anything at all.”

  “I’m sorry,” Donald said, and turned away.

  Pete drove on between the trees and considered the truth of what he’d just said—that Donald would believe anything at all. And it came to him that it would be just like this unfair life for Donald to come out ahead in the end, by believing in some outrageous promise that turned out to be true and that he, Pete, rejected out of hand because he was too wised up to listen to anybody’s pitch anymore, except for laughs. What a joke. What a joke if there really was a blessing to be had, and the blessing didn’t come to the one who deserved it, the one who did all the work, but to the other.

  And as if this had already happened Pete felt a shadow move upon him, darkening his thoughts. After a time he said, “I can see where all this is going, Donald.”

  “I’ll pay you back,” Donald said.

  “No,” Pete said. “You won’t pay me back. You can’t. You don’t know how. All you’ve ever done is take. All your life.”

  Donald shook his head.

  “I see exactly where this is going,” Pete went on. “You can’t work, you can’t take care of yourself, you believe anything anyone tells you. I’m stuck with you, aren’t I?” He looked over at Donald. “I’ve got you on my hands for good.”

  Donald pressed his fingers against the dashboard as if to brace himself. “I’ll get out,” he said.

  Pete kept driving.

  “Let me out,” Donald said. “I mean it, Pete.”

  “Do you?”

  Donald hesitated. “Yes,” he said.

  “Be sure,” Pete told him. “This is it. This is for keeps.”

  “I mean it.”

  “All right. You made the choice.” Pete braked the car sharply and swung onto the shoulder. He turned off the engine and got out. Trees loomed on both sides of the road, shutting out the sky. The air was cold and musty. Pete took Donald’s duffel bag from the backseat and set it down behind the car. He stood there, facing Donald in the red glow of the taillights. “It’s better this way,” Pete said.

  Donald just looked at him.

  “Better for you,” Pete said.

  Donald hugged himself. He was shaking. “You don’t have to say all that,” he told Pete. “I don’t blame you.”

  “Blame me? What the hell are you talking about? Blame me for what?”

  “For anything,” Donald said.

  “I want to know what you mean about blaming me.”

  “Nothing. Nothing, Pete. You’d better get going. God bless you.”

  “That’s it,” Pete said, and took a step toward Donald.

  Donald touched Pete’s shoulder. “You’d better go,” he said.


  Somewhere in the trees overhead a branch snapped. Pete looked up, and felt the fists he’d made of his hands. He turned his back on Donald and walked to the car and drove away. He drove fast, hunched over the wheel, conscious of how he was hunched and the shallowness of his breathing, refusing to look at the mirror above his head until there was nothing behind him but darkness.

  Then he said, “A hundred dollars,” as if there were someone to hear.

  The trees gave way to fields. Pete drove on between metal fences plastered with windblown scraps of paper. Tule fog hung above the ditches, spilling into the road, dimming the ghostly halogen lights that burned in the yards of the farms he passed. The fog left beads of water rolling up the windshield.

  Pete rummaged among his cassettes. He found Pachelbel’s Canon and pushed it into the tape deck. When the violins began to play he leaned back and assumed an attentive expression, as if he really were listening to them. He smiled to himself like a man at liberty to enjoy music, a man who has finished his work and settled his debts, done all things meet and due.

  And in this way, smiling, nodding to the music, he went another mile or two and pretended that he was not already slowing down, that he wouldn’t turn back, that he would be able to drive on like this, alone, and have the right answer when his wife stood before him in the doorway of his home and asked, Where is he? Where is your brother?

  Leviathan

  On her thirtieth birthday Ted threw a surprise party for Helen. A small party—Mitch and Bliss were the only guests. They’d chipped in with Ted and bought Helen three grams of white-out blizzard that lasted the whole night and on into the next morning. When it got light enough everyone went for a swim in the courtyard pool. Then Ted took Mitch up to the sauna on the fifth floor while Helen and Bliss put together a monster omelette.

  “So how does it feel,” Bliss said, “being thirty?” The ash fell off her cigarette into the eggs. She stared at the ash for a moment, then stirred it in. “Mitch had his fortieth last month and totally freaked. He did so much Maalox he started to taste like chalk. I thought he was going to start freebasing it or something.”

  “Mitch is forty?” Helen said.

  Bliss looked over at her. “That’s classified information, okay?”

  “Incredible. He looks about twenty-five, maybe twenty-seven at the absolute most.” Helen watched Bliss crumble bacon into the bowl. “Oh, God,” she said, “I don’t believe it. He had a face-lift.”

  Bliss closed her eyes and leaned against the counter. “I shouldn’t have told you. Please don’t say anything,” she murmured hopelessly.

  When Mitch and Ted came back from the sauna they all had another toot, and Ted gave Helen the mirror to lick. He said he’d never seen three grams disappear so fast. Afterward Helen served up the omelette while Ted tried to find something on TV. He kept flipping the dial until it drove everyone crazy, looking for Road Runner cartoons, then he gave up and tuned in on the last part of a movie about the Bataan Death March. They didn’t watch it for very long, though, because Bliss started to cry and hyperventilate. “Come on, everyone,” said Mitch. “Love circle.” Ted and Mitch went over to Bliss and put their arms around her while Helen watched them from the sofa, sipping espresso from a cup as blue and dainty as a robin’s egg—the last of a set her grandmother had brought from the old country. Helen would have hugged Bliss too but there wasn’t really any point; Bliss pulled this stunt almost every time she got herself a noseful, and it just had to run its course.

  When Helen finished her espresso she gathered the plates and carried them out to the kitchen. She scattered leftover toast into the courtyard below and watched the squirrels carry it away as she scoured the dishes and listened to the proceedings in the next room. This time it was Ted who talked Bliss down. “You’re beautiful,” he kept telling her. It was the same thing he always said to Helen when she felt depressed, and she was beginning to feel depressed right now.

  She needed more fuel, she decided. She ducked into the bedroom and did a couple of lines from Ted’s private stash, which she’d discovered while searching for matches in the closet. Afterward she looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were bright. They seemed lit from within and that was how Helen felt, as if there were a column of cool white light pouring from her head to her feet. She put on a pair of sunglasses so nobody would notice and went back to the kitchen.

  Mitch was standing at the counter, rolling a bone. “How’s the birthday girl?” he asked without looking up.

  “Ready for the next one,” Helen said. “How about you?”

  “Hey, bring it on,” Mitch answered.

  At that moment Helen came close to letting him know she knew, but she held back. Mitch was good people and so was Bliss. Helen didn’t want to make trouble between them. All the same, Helen knew that someday she wasn’t going to be able to stop herself from giving Mitch the business. It just had to happen. And Helen knew that Bliss knew. Still, she hadn’t done it this morning and felt good about that.

  Mitch held up the joint. “Taste?”

  Helen shook her head. She glanced over her shoulder toward the living room. “What’s the story on Bliss?” she asked. “All bummed out over World War Two? Ted should’ve known that movie would set her off.”

  Mitch picked a sliver of weed from his lower lip. “Her ex is threatening to move back to Boston. Which means she won’t get to see her kids except during the summer, and that’s only if we can put together the scratch to fly them here and back. It’s tough. Really tough.”

  “I guess,” Helen said. She dried her hands and hung the towel on the refrigerator door. “Still, Bliss should’ve thought about that before she took a walk on them, right?”

  Mitch turned and started out of the kitchen.

  “Sorry,” Helen called after him. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Yes you were,” Mitch said, and left her there.

  Oh, hell, she thought. She decided she needed another line but made no move to get it. Helen stood where she was, looking down at the pool through the window above the sink. The manager’s Afghan dog was lapping water from the shallow end, legs braced in the trough that ran around the pool. The two British Airways stewardesses from down the hall were bathing their white bodies in the morning sunshine, both wearing blue swimsuits. The redheaded girl from upstairs was floating on an air mattress. Helen could see its long shadow gliding along the bottom of the pool like something stalking her.

  Helen heard Ted say, “Jesus, Bliss, I can understand that. Everyone has those feelings. You can’t always beat them down.” Bliss answered him in a voice so soft that Helen gave up trying to hear; it was hardly more than a sigh. She poured herself a glass of Chablis and joined the others in the living room. They were all sitting cross-legged on the floor. Helen caught Mitch’s eye and mouthed the word Sorry. He stared at her, then nodded.

  “I’ve done worse things than that,” Ted was saying. “I’ll bet Mitch has too.”

  “Plenty worse,” Mitch said.

  “Worse than what?” Helen asked.

  “It’s awful.” Bliss looked down at her hands. “I’d be embarrassed to tell you.” She was all cried out now, Helen could see that. Her eyes were heavy-lidded and serene, her cheeks flushed, and a little smile played over her swollen lips.

  “It couldn’t be that bad,” Helen said.

  Ted leaned forward. He still had on the bathrobe he’d worn to the sauna and it fell open almost to his waist, as Helen knew he intended it to. His chest was hard-looking from the Nautilus machine in the basement, and dark from their trip to Mazatlán. Helen had to admit it, he looked great. She didn’t understand why he had to be so obvious and crass, but he got what he wanted: she stared at him and so did Bliss.

  “Bliss, it isn’t that bad,” Ted went on. “It’s just one of those things.” He turned to Helen. “Bliss’s little girl came down with tonsillitis last month and Bliss never got it together to go see her in the hospital.”

  “I can’t deal
with hospitals,” Bliss said. “The minute I set foot inside of one my stomach starts doing flips. But still. When I think of her all alone in there.”

  Mitch took Bliss’s hands in his and looked right at her until she met his gaze. “It’s over,” he said. “The operation’s over and Lisa’s out of the hospital and she’s all right. Say it, Bliss. She’s all right.”

  “She’s all right,” Bliss said.

  “Again.”

  “She’s all right,” Bliss repeated.

  “Okay. Now believe it.” Mitch put her hands together and rubbed them gently between his palms. “We’ve built up this big myth about kids being helpless and vulnerable and so on because it makes us feel important. We think we’re playing some heavy role just because we’re parents. We don’t give kids any credit at all. Kids are tough little monkeys. Kids are survivors.”

  Bliss smiled.

  “But I don’t know,” Mitch said. He let go of Bliss’s hands and leaned back. “What I said just then is probably complete bullshit. Everything I say these days sounds like bullshit.”

  “We’ve all done worse things,” Ted told Bliss. He looked over at Helen. When Helen saw that he was waiting for her to agree with him she tried to think of something to say. Ted kept looking at her. “What have you got those things on for?” he asked.

  “The light hurts my eyes.”

  “Then close the curtains.” He reached across to Helen and lifted the sunglasses away from her face. “There,” he said. He cupped her chin in one hand and with the other brushed her hair back from her forehead. “Isn’t she something?”

  “She’ll do,” Mitch said.

  Ted stroked Helen’s cheek with the back of his hand. “I’d kill for that face.”

  Bliss was studying Helen. “So lovely,” she said in a solemn, wistful voice.

  Helen laughed. She got up and drew the curtains shut. Spangles of light glittered in the fabric. She moved across the dim room to the dining nook and brought back a candle from the table there. Ted lit the candle and for a few moments they silently watched the flame. Then, in a thoughtful tone that seemed part of the silence, Mitch began to speak.