Black Maps (13 page)

She stopped abruptly and looked down at her lap. Mr. Kahlstrom reached across Jimmy and patted her hand. “It's all right, dear,” he said. “Don't cry.”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Sometimes I just remember and…”

“I know, dear. I do, too.”

Jimmy looked at their faces. He wasn't sure what they were talking about. He hadn't understood the poem either, but he'd liked the way it made him feel warm and cold all at once, as if he had just come out of a blizzard to stand by a fire. He liked the way she'd said it, too, pronouncing each word as if it were almost too beautiful to say. And she'd had such a strange look on her face while she said it, kind of sad but in a way happy, too. He didn't know how you could be happy and sad at the same time. But now she only looked sad.

Just then the wind rose sharply and the television went black. The only light left was the firelight. It cast long shadows up the walls around them, making Jimmy feel as if they were in a cave.

“I knew I should have gotten the candles out,” Mrs. Kahlstrom said, and wiped her eyes.

“Don't worry, dear. I'm sure the electricity will be back on in no time. Let's just sit here and enjoy the fire.”

He got up and threw two more logs on, adjusted them with the poker until the flames caught, then sat back on the sofa. “There,” he said. “Isn't this cozy?”

They sat together a long time, watching the fire and talking. At first, Jimmy talked too, but after a while he started to grow tired and only listened to their quiet voices and the crackling fire and the wind. The way the wind battered the windows made the fire seem even warmer, and before long, Jimmy felt so drowsy and peaceful that he couldn't help but lean his head against Mrs. Kahlstrom's shoulder. She brushed his hair from his forehead while he listened to them talk and watched the fire through half-open eyes. Finally he couldn't keep his eyes open anymore, and he laid his head down in her lap and fell asleep.

When Jimmy woke the next morning, he was confused. It seemed as if only a moment before he'd been lying in front of the fire, and now he was upstairs in his room. How had it happened? Mr. Kahlstrom must have carried him up the steps and put him in his bed, but Jimmy didn't remember it. He felt as if a magician had made him disappear from one place, then reappear somewhere else. For a moment, he wasn't even sure he was the same person. He wondered if his mother had ever felt like that, waking up in the hospital, or if his father had the same thoughts when he sat down for breakfast with his new family. He didn't know, but he lay there awhile, thinking about it, before he got up and parted the curtains to look out the window. As far as he could see, everything was white—rooftops, the evergreens and yards, the street. The snow had drifted halfway up frosted picture windows and buried bushes and hedges and even the car parked in the neighbor's driveway. Here and there thin swirls of snow blew into the air like risen ghosts, and sunlight sparked on the drifts, the snow glinting like splintered glass. He'd never seen so much snow, not ever, and he wanted to run to Mr. and Mrs. Kahlstrom's room and tell them they were all snowbound, just like in the poem. But he stood there awhile longer, and imagined the huge fire they'd build, the yellow and orange flames rising up the chimney, and the three of them sitting beside it, unsure of what to say or even when to speak, but somehow strangely happy, their faces lit by a beautiful light.

It had been a bad day. Dana and I had a terrible fight that afternoon, our worst one ever, and I got so angry that I raised my fist as if to hit her. I didn't, but to her it was the same as if I had. She called me a wife-beater and told me to get out. I'd had more than enough by then, so I turned and stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind me. Then I saw Amy sitting on her Big Wheels in the carport, crying, and I realized she'd heard us fighting. “Don't cry, sweetheart,” I said. “There's nothing to cry about.” But she kept on, her little chin quivering, so I told her I was going to the store and would bring her back some cherry popsicles, her favorite treat. Normally she would have smiled, maybe even clapped her hands, but that day she just kept on crying. “I'll be right back,” I said then, and left.

But I didn't come back right away. I drove around for a couple of hours, not going anywhere particular, just driving and thinking things out. When I'd finally cooled off, I picked up a box of popsicles and some other groceries at Safeway and started back home. But when I turned onto our block, I don't know, suddenly I felt as if I couldn't even look at our house. I just wanted to drive on by, as if I'd never lived there and didn't know anybody who did. I wanted to drive and drive until I was in another life. I saw myself somewhere far away, in Canada maybe, pulling into a motel late at night, the groceries still on the seat beside me. And I
did
drive by. I passed Amy on her Big Wheels and didn't even wave, and I felt then the sudden pleasure of conclusion, of closing accounts, the clean pure thrill of zero. By the time that feeling faded and I turned back toward home again, the popsicles were a red puddle on the car seat.

When I got home, Dana and I fought again, and by that night, when I had to go to work, my mind was a whirl of anger and confusion. As the
Courier
‘s late man, I was responsible for proofing each page before sending it on to camera, but I was too upset to concentrate and I held up the production schedule so much that it was an hour after deadline before we turned the state edition. Even if a big story hadn't come in over the wire just before deadline—a plane had crashed in Detroit, killing everyone on board except a four-year-old girl—we would have turned late. Still, I hoped I could use that story to convince the managing editor to give me another chance. I knew he'd call me in his office the next day, and when he asked me what my excuse was this time, I'd tell him we'd had to re-do page one to get the story on, and how that meant we had to move our lead story down below the fold, move another story inside, and revise the jump pages. I hoped that would convince him not to fire me, but I doubted it would.

We'd turned the state edition so late I had to run three red lights to get to the Burger Palace before they closed at ten. The Burger Palace was the only restaurant downtown that stayed open Sunday nights, mostly for those of us at the
Courier
and the
Herald
, the rival paper, and by the time I pulled into its lot, the sign had already been turned off. But two employees were still behind the counter and there was a customer sitting in one of the booths, so I knew I'd made it in time. I sat there in the car for a second, my heart still speeding, then got out and started toward the door.

I was in a bad enough mood, but as soon as I stepped into the restaurant and heard steel guitars and a cowboy's nasal twang, I felt worse. The waitresses had the radio turned to KABX, the country station. I'd lost a dozen accounts to that station when I worked for KEZN, and I still couldn't listen to it without anger. The way I saw it, KEZN was responsible for the problems Dana and I were having. After they fired me, she had to go on overtime at the beauty shop, and we didn't see much of each other anymore. And when we did, we were in such miserable moods—me, because I wasn't working; her, because she was working so much—that we fought more than usual. And now things had gotten so bad that I'd almost left her and Amy.

I stepped up to the cash register, trying to ignore the music, and one of the waitresses came over to help me. She was around my age, but she looked younger, partly because she was tiny and partly because she wore her blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. The nametag pinned to her red, white, and blue striped shirt said “Monica.” She smiled when she said hello, and I decided she was pretty.

“You just made it,” she said. “Carol Sue's locking up now.”

I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the other waitress, a sullen-looking teenager with greasy brown hair and acne, had come around the counter and was turning the key in the lock.

“Guess this is my lucky night,” I said. Then I ordered King Burgers with fries for myself and the copy editors. They were back in the newsroom, scrolling the wire and subbing out state stories for the city edition, and when I brought them their food, they'd have to keep working at the terminals while they ate. I knew they blamed me for making them work through their dinner break, and I was sure they were complaining about me that very minute.

As Monica rang up the order, I heard a curse from behind me and turned to look. The customer I'd seen earlier had spilled some French fries on her lap. She slid out of her booth, mumbling, a cigarette in one hand, and brushed the fries and salt from her loose Hawaiian print dress with her free hand. She was a short, heavy-breasted black woman, maybe thirty-five or forty years old, and she was so drunk she could hardly stand. Her eyes were half-closed, and she tilted her head back as if to help her see through the slits. She looked toward me. “What you looking at?” she said. I'd heard drunks say that before, but she said it differently, as if she wasn't so much angry as curious. Before I could say anything, she waved her hand, as if to erase her question, and said, “Just a minute.” Then she leaned over her table, bracing herself with one hand so she wouldn't fall, and picked up a large green vinyl purse. Turning, she staggered toward the counter. I smelled the liquor on her breath before she reached me.

“Hi,” she slurred, almost giving the word a second syllable. Then she stumbled and fell against me, her shoulder against my arm, her hip against my thigh. “Esscuse me,” she said, but she didn't move away. She just closed her eyes and rested her head on my shoulder. For a moment I wondered whether she was a prostitute. But she was so ugly she would have had a hard time making a living on her back. Her leathery skin, broad, flat nose, and large mouth all made me think of some kind of lizard or salamander. I cleared my throat. It was a kind of speech, and evidently she understood because she shifted away from me and leaned against the counter for balance. I glanced at Monica. She rolled her eyes, then gave me my change and went back into the kitchen.

The black woman took a drag on her cigarette and blew tusks of smoke out her nostrils. Then she closed her eyes for a long moment. When she finally opened them, she handed the cigarette to me.

“Here,” she said woozily. “Hold this for me.”

I didn't want to be bothered with her, but I didn't know what to do, so I took it.

She started to fumble with the worn gilt clasp on her purse. “Come on, purse,” she mumbled. “Open up.”

I was feeling foolish holding the cigarette, so I set it on the counter, letting the long ash hang over the edge. It wouldn't have taken much to hold her cigarette for a moment or two, but I didn't.

Then she got her purse open and stood there swaying and looking into it as if it were so deep she couldn't see to the bottom. “There it be,” she finally said, and pulled out an almost empty pint of George Dickel. She held the bottle out toward me, closed her eyes, and said, “Want a drink?”

“No thank you,” I said. Then I cleared my throat again and said I had to go. I wanted to sit down at one of the booths and relax, smoke a cigarette or two. But as soon as I started toward the booths, she took hold of my arm and said, slowly, as if each word were a heavy weight, “Ain't you my friend?”

I didn't know what to say, so I just stood there. She let go of my arm and put the bottle to her lips. When she finished, there was only a swallow left. “What's your name?” she said.

“Paul,” I said. I don't know why I didn't tell her my real name. It wouldn't have cost me anything.

She moved her face toward me then, as if to see me better, and I saw her red, swollen eyes. That's when it struck me that maybe she wasn't just a drunk. Her eyes looked like Dana's had that afternoon, when I came home after our argument. “My name's Lucy,” she said, her eyes closing. She seemed to have to force them open again. Then she said, “My boy is dead.”

I wasn't sure I'd heard her right. “Pardon me?”

“My boy…” Then she saw the cigarette on the counter and carefully, as if her fingers were somehow separate from her, picked it up and put it in her mouth, though she did not take a puff. “He died today. My boy. My Freddie.”

I heard a voice from the kitchen then. “Here she goes again,” it said.

I looked toward the booths. “I'm sorry,” I said. But I'm not sure it was true. Mostly, I felt uncomfortable. I wanted to get my burgers and go.

“That's nice,” she said, and leaned against me again. “You're nice.” Then she straightened up and smiled at me. When she did, her cigarette dropped to the floor. She stared at it a moment, then looked back at me. “What did you say?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

“I thought you said something,” she said. Then she tilted her head back and swallowed the last of her bourbon. She held the bottle to her thick lips for a long time, tapping the bottom with her finger. When she finally set the bottle on the counter, she looked at me and said, “Empty.”

I nodded and glanced over at the booths. Then she grabbed my arm again. “Please,” she said urgently. “Don't leave me alone. I been alone all day and I can't take it no more.”

Her fingers were pressing into my skin, but I didn't pull my arm away.

“I'm sorry,” I said again.

She shook her head slowly. “He was only thirteen. His voice was still changing.” Her lips started to tremble. “One minute it was high, then the next…” She stopped and tears began running out of the slits of her eyes.

I looked around for the waitresses, but they were still in the kitchen. I heard the sizzle of the grill through the nasal whine of a country singer complaining about his woman running around. I wished they would hurry up.