He smiles now, a sheepish grin. “Just being honest.”
And this silver-tongued devil before her, this Jeff Cody from God knows where and God knows who, she would leave him. She would get up and walk out. She would throw her drink in his face. She would slap him.
And maybe that would be something she would tell Shauna.
“I told you he was bad. Just a fucker.” She and Shauna would
laugh and giggle. She and Shauna would share a snicker at his expense. They would tear him apart!
Except, Beth sitting there, across from Jeff Cody, who had just said that don't-say-it thing, had just happened to, yes maybe, just happened to fall in love.
T
he first snow of 1977! Look at it! Little soapsuds fall fall fall from the blind white sky. She wanted to share it. Oh, why wasn't anyone here to see? Mrs. Krause had said Beth was out and Jeff never answered his phone these days, never came round unannounced like he used to. But the first snow of winter, well he'd come out for that, surely.
The trees were made of crystal now. Winter wonderland trees. Ice and white and fluff fluff snow. A fairy tale. Maybe Beth could come out and they could be stupid. Build a snowman, make snow angels. It wasn't that far, she could walk it bundled up.
Huddled and running through the picture-book trees, she thought for the first time in years of her mother, who had left her. Why had she left? This snow maybe. This cold, spare, shutout life. This non-success. Watching the day die down, day after day, why would she stay? Why would anyone stay? And it's true. Nobody did.
Or if they did, they were cursed somehow . . . cast under a spell that makes you stare in a glass all day, hunch over, look into it, watch the ice cubes
clink clink clink
. You are getting sleepy. You are getting older. You are getting sunk. Read your future in the ice cubes. Nothing there.
Ice on the tree branches! Ice on the trunks! A magic glass world. Everyone inside, the streets a set with no players. A scene waiting to be played.
That too-American ranch house with a flag, always a flagâexcept at night. You have to take the flag down at sundown, out of respect. And Lt. Colonel Krause did so, of course, like clockwork. Shauna hit in the stomach each time she thought of the vast ocean of difference between the Lt. Colonel and her own shit-sack of a dad. Why had she been so unlucky? And Beth gets Mr. and Mrs. Perfect over here in their perfect American ranch-style house with their perfect flag and perfect lawn. You'd never see the Lt. Colonel hunched over a glass at noon.
Sneaking into the back, she'd done it a million timesâtaught Beth how to sneak out, too. Just shimmy out the window, grab the sill, and plop down. Make sure they think you're in bed now, fast asleep. The back of the house, the linoleum floor, the staging area for proper things up front. The great room, they called it. No, there certainly wasn't a great room in Shauna's house. Not even a mediocre room.
She had seen the blueprints, once, going through the attic with Beth. Here's the kitchen, the dining, the nook for breakfast, and the great room, with a fireplace, won't that be nice in winter?
But the fireplace wasn't lit and the house was empty. Shauna stepped back to look at the molding, the wallpaper, the china cabinet . . . everything in its place. Everything just so. How different her life would've been had she been given such propriety, such concord, such grace. Who knows what kind of elegant form she might've cut. A lady.
In the other room, a sound suddenly. Muffled, a strange sort of shock of a sound. A gasp. An inhale. Maybe something in pain. Tiptoeing through the hallway, past the black-and-white pictures, parlor-style, it grew louder, a hiccup, almost a whisper. The empty-house secret in another room. Peering through the almost-shut door, there a strange figure. A wild figure. Something in trouble. A confusion of arms and legs spread wide.
A girl, yes, a girl lying flat on her backânext to her, on his side . . . a boy. Yes, that is a boy. They are staring at each other, staring into each other's eyes, a magic-spell stare from another dimension. Unearthly. Divine. But not just any boy and any girl. A girl named Beth and a boy named Jeff Cody.
Flying out of the hall, backward, grabbing this way and that, grabbing something blue and white, a cameo, not-thinking never-thinking, bat-wings and stumbling, knocking the pictures off the walls. And then over the linoleum. Get me out! And back into the snow. Running running out through the fuck-you picture-book landscape, the crystal trees, the magic glass forest not hers anymore.
This is not for you.
This is for them.
This is for the people in love. Not low-rent hookers with daddy-boyfriends and doughnut thighs. This happy white winter world is a stage, but you are not a player. You are maybe an extra, really a stagehand. No, no, this is for them. The lovers. The two in love. Deeply in loveâdid you see his face? Did you see how he looked at her?
Was that the bang-bang, look-away, sweat-and-go way he
fucked you? That dog-sweat, use-you-up fucking you'd so longed for, dreamt about, missed?
Those dark villain eyes of his staring in that magic-spell at her? These trees made of glass their paradise. Not yours. Not yours.
How could you have been so stupid to think anyone could love a fat whore like you.
C
oming out of the snow, like two branch hands, these two trees, buried up to the wrists. One open, reaching up toward the sky, the other clenched, sinking into itself, closed. Between them a bench, empty, staring out on the lake. Waiting for its victim. A white-gray day, snow on the ground, making a glove on the trees, gray sky, gray air, gray lake.
It was Thanksgiving Day and he knew he wasn't invited. Didn't even ask. No, they would never let him in. Not him, Jeff Cody, the son of a salesman, a traveling man, and now he traveled, too.
Those build-up years from Topeka to St. Charles to Ames, rambling down the road next to his dad in his suit, selling vitamins, selling Bibles, selling vacuum cleaners, you name it. The movies getting color and Marilyn Monroe. How simple and grand, expanding it was. America! Progress! Coca-Cola! And all the building, an embarrassment of appliances, a toaster oven, an automatic shoe shiner, look at this knife sharpener for your wife. It had seemed the whole decade had been sponsored by GE.
Going to see
Some Like It Hot
in the theater in Tulsa, a fairy tale he'd begged his dad for for weeks. And when Pop said he was going for some popcorn, maybe a soda, he didn't even take
his eyes off the screen. Thirty-foot Marilyn Monroe in that white shimmer dress, coochi-coo, that baby voice, that platinum hair, those lips, that mole, taking it in as a boy, hypnotized. So transfixed, so feverish it was impossible to remember what his dad had said exactly, something about popcorn and when he'd be back. So spellbound that even as the theater spilled out and still no sign of Dad, he'd sauntered out in a trance, giddy with Marilyn, mad with too-young lust, where to put it? And even as the lights get turned off, the projectionist scurries by, the box office closes, and the teenager behind the concession stand closes up shopâlooking his way. Hey, kid, you alright? Even then it didn't hit him, couldn't hit him, that Pop wasn't getting popcorn and wasn't in the theater and wasn't coming back.
Tulsa it is! For a boy not yet seven with no folks and no money, a foster life of cots and oatmeal and midnight stealing. A bout at Cedars, then Sacred Cross, then a family from Plano down in Texas took him in. Almost. They met with him. They met with him four times, actually. They showed him pictures of his new home. A split-level house. In the back, a swimming pool with a diving board and all. He picked out a new bedspread. A surprise he would spring on them, to show how easily he would fit in. He would fit in and be part of it. He would contribute. They could count on him.
But, in the end, they'd decided to go with someone younger. A new kid with blond scruff hair, just turned four. Couldn't blame them really. How could they know he'd picked out a bedspread? A crazy thing to do, he told himself. It was his fault. Maybe he'd been too desperate.
He vowed never to be desperate again.
Then, at eighteen, catapulted gloriously, savingly, into the '60s. He'd been a hippie, mostly for the pussy. The drugs suited him. Going from place to place, flying from drug to drug, “hanging out,” fucking this girl and then that girl. His long hair a trap. A signifier. I am one of you. I belong.
The first time of his life, belonging, taking part. How heartbreakingly easy, California in summer. How spellbinding the eucalyptus, the ice plants, the bougainvillea, the sun bursting through it like hope itself and acid and mushrooms, what else you got? That seven-year marathon of pot and tripping and “waking up,” “tuning in,” and “burning out.” He wanted it never to end. How rewarded he was for the years on the cot. How vindicated!
And then, stumbling into the '70s, the late '70s a come-down. A slowdown of gears and, finally, the necessity of a job. This union gig was something he fell into, a passing thing. All this organizing, these meetings, it was a natural progression from his wide pant legs and collars. It wasn't political. He wasn't political, never had been. The '60s radicalism was all well and good, but he was in it for the sex and drugs, who wouldn't be.
And the traveling, always traveling, organizing, manufacturing plants in Detroit, and Cleveland, up north to Milwaukee. These were teamster jobs, sturdy business. A jackleg operation. And let's face it, these guys were lowlifes.
Billy and Terrance and Russ, all of 'em. Thugs. But he wasn't a thug. Not him. Of course not. No, no, he was different. He was in love.
Staring out from the bench, under the two trees, out at the gray glass lake. What the fuck could he do to get her to love him back? How to impress her? How to make her look at him like Shauna looked at him, desperate, longing, scared? Poor Shauna. Poor girl. He hadn't meant to throw her under the bus. He really hadn't. It just happened.
“It just happened, Shauna. I fell in love.”
He told her quietly, in earnest. Trying to be the man he sees in movies. A sensitive man, rugged but caring. A progressive man, not a dick. He wouldn't like to think of that terror in her eyes, that abandoned frenzy. Why had she put so much on him? Why had she staked her soul on himâa dirtbag, a drifter, what had he to offer her? Can't you see I am broken?! Can't you see I'll tear you apart?!
Why the fuck couldn't Beth look at him like that? With those pulling eyes and pleading neck and lips desperate to kiss, to quench, to suck, parched with loneliness. Why was she always, instead, just out of reach?
Thanksgiving on his own then, facing out toward the
lap lap lap
of the charcoal water on the milk sand shore. He would find a way to make her love him. He would grab her and not let go.
P
eas. Pot roast. Potatoes. For dessert blueberry pie. Everything laid out, kind and crisp. The Lt. Colonel, his wife, Dotsy, and their daughter cut into their plates while the storm howls outside the window. Slate-blue-and-cream wallpaper. Ivory tablecloth with a white lace runner. Each of it, all of it, just so.
“This wind ought to build up the shelf ice.”
It was often this way with dinner. A few statements of fact from the head of the table. A few nods of assent, maybe a smile. Yes, dear. Bite. Slice. Spear. Nibble. Nod. Bite again. An easy dinner, not much to say, no need to say it.
“Looks like the Packers aren't gonna make the play-offs.”
In the adjoining room, the slate-blue sofa, the slate-blue La-Z-Boy aimed at the TV, wood-paneled. The very TV they'd watched the Ice Bowl on ten years earlier. The Ice Bowl. What a game! Ten-year-old Beth and her dad crowded around the television, watching Bart Starr drive down the field in the punishing cold. No whistles. The refs' lips would freeze to the goddamn thing! Yelling out the calls in the forty-below windchill, snow coming down, ice on the field. Figure skating. Down 17â14 with only four minutes left. Goddamn those Cowboys. And not even the
band had played. How can you play when the brass section can't even put their lips to their instruments, the woodwinds contract in the cold, useless. Six of them treated for hypothermia after the pregame show. No, please, they can't lose to Dallas, not now. Not here in the freezing cold at Lambeau Field.
But there is Bart Starr calling the Packers' final time-out with sixteen seconds left. One yard to go. Just one yard! The Lt. Colonel and his daughter glued to the TV, unable to breathe, unable to nibble at any of the numerous treats set out by Dorothy from the red-and-white checked Betty Crocker recipe book, Appetizers and Drinks section. All of it green and yellow. Go, Pack, Go!
Sixteen seconds left. Third and goal.
Bart Starr runs off the field, consults with Vince Lombardi. Runs back. What'll he do? Throw it and hope to the good Lord he makes it. Or what about a field goal and we go into overtime? Overtime! In this cold, forty-three below and only getting colder. Snow falling, how can you see?
Sixteen seconds left and father and daughter clutch each other's hands. Oh Lord, please make it!
Sixteen seconds left as Bart Starr runs it into the end zone and the Packers win! The Packers win! He ran it! Can you believe it, he ran the ball!