Fitting Ends (6 page)

When Joan showed up a while later, I was walking the baby, trying to quiet her. Susan and Joan sat down at the kitchen table, and I could hear Susan going on in the same vein. “I've told Kent what my opinion is,” she was saying. I didn't concentrate on the rest. The baby kept wailing, her cries shuddering in my ears. The radio was turned up, playing static in hopes that the white noise might calm her, as it sometimes did. But it was having the opposite effect on me: the radio and the crying baby and the bitter voices of the women in the next room layered over me, like heavy, stale air. I looked into the kitchen. I was surprised by the shudder of disgust that passed through me. I stared at them from the threshold, and I couldn't help but think how primitive they seemed, like pictures of Russian peasant women I'd seen in books, with their hard, judgmental mouths and their drab clothes. At that moment, they seemed to represent everything that was small and compromised and unlovely about my life. I thought about the time I'd gotten into Joan's car and found the radio tuned to a Muzak station; I thought about the scuffed terry-cloth houseslippers my wife had taken to wearing, even in the middle of the day. They should want to run off with dangerous men, I thought, they should want to do crazy drugs and wander through strange cities after midnight. I rocked Molly insistently, shushing her without much gentleness in my voice.

“Has your mother heard about it?” Joan was saying. Susan was at the refrigerator, and I watched as she took out a single beer and poured it into two glasses. I thought sadly of those nights before we were married, walking her home after we'd been out drinking, Susan leaning against me, her lips pressed close to my ear. All that stuff, I thought, was behind us; now she couldn't even manage to drink a whole beer by herself.

“I pray to God she doesn't,” Susan said. She offered Joan the glass of beer, and I watched them both take little sips. “She's on twenty-four-hour watch as it is.”

“I'm sure,” Joan said. She smiled—grotesquely, I thought—enjoying herself. “But don't you think Rhonda's going to eventually want to see the baby?”

“Not if Mom can help it.”

“That's ridiculous,” I said, and they both looked up. Molly had quieted a bit, and maybe they hadn't noticed me listening. “They can't keep her from seeing her own child,” I said, and the pulse of annoyance I felt toward them crept into my voice. “I mean, legally, doesn't she have visitation rights or something?”

They both eyed me. Susan made a wry face, and the way she tilted her head made me realize she needed a haircut. Her hair constantly looked like it needed to be combed, and the word
unbecoming
came suddenly into my mind. “She'd need a damn good lawyer,” Susan said. “And if you think she's going to get past Mom without a fight, you don't know my mother.” She let her gaze linger over me for a moment, and I frowned. “He's been Rhonda's biggest fan lately,” she told Joan.

“Oh, I know,” Joan said. “You should have seen them making goo-goo eyes at each other at the motel.” It was supposed to be a joke, but I felt my face getting warm. I wasn't in the mood for Joan's humor. “Little do we know,” Joan said. “He's actually Rhonda's secret sex slave.”

“Shut up, Joan,” I said. “That's all you think about, isn't it? Why don't you just sleep with Trencher and get it over with.” I hesitated, a little taken aback by my own meanness, but before Joan could say anything, Molly started to shriek again, and the sound made my shoulders go rigid, made my whole body hum with irritation. “Jesus Christ!” I snapped at Susan. “Can you please take this thing off my hands—it wants to nurse.” I thrust the baby toward her, and the cries stopped abruptly; Molly's tiny eyes widened in terror or accusation. Then her mouth contorted, and she screamed again.

“What's wrong with you? Are you crazy?” Glaring, she took the baby and cradled her gently, sheltering her from me.

“How do you expect me to get her to sleep with you two in here harping away like a couple of old biddies?” I said. Susan lifted her blouse roughly, and the baby affixed herself desperately to the breast, as if she'd been held against her will and starved by some torturer. “Oh, it makes me sick,” I said. “My whole life is nothing but work and screaming kids and listening to you two gossip and complain. I'm so bored and tired of this same old thing that I could just jump out a window.”

“Why don't you, then?” Susan said. “You're the one that complains all the time! All you do is sit around like a lump and brood. And now you can't even stand to take a few minutes to comfort your own sick baby. If you're so bored, why don't you leave? Maybe you could hook up with your precious Rhonda. I'm sure she'd show you a great time.”

“Maybe I will,” I said.

“Good,” Susan said. She narrowed her eyes at me, then lifted her glass and drained the beer defiantly. “There's the door.”

I hesitated for a moment, opening my mouth with no words—no quick retorts or parting shots. I just stared at them, shaking my head. “I'm leaving,” I said. Then I turned and walked out, slamming the door.

It was a cool night, full of those heavy, earthy-smelling spring shadows, and by the time I was in the car my heart was shriveling. It wasn't an anger I'd be able to hang on to for very long, and I knew that in a few hours I'd be turning various apologies over in my mind. At least, I thought, I'd go out to a bar; then I'd walk down to the motel and spend the night there.

I drove slowly down our street, through the tunnel of newly budding trees, the rows of my neighbors' houses with their basketball hoops above the garage doors or their toy-scattered lawns, curling down into the valley, toward Euclid. It was about nine o'clock; the movie had let out, and the high-school kids were cruising, just as I had done at their age, idling restlessly at the three stoplights, roaring from one end of town to the other and back, honking as they passed their friends. I thought of the worn path a zoo animal makes around the circumference of its cage. They'd get out of St. Bonaventure soon; they'd graduate and never come back. That's what they were thinking.

I pulled onto Euclid, maybe the only grown-up on the street, merging with them, pacing the twelve blocks or so between eastern and western city limits. A car full of heavily made-up teenage girls slowed, and they stretched to peer at me. I could see their mouths laughing and chattering as they passed. We had been trying to stop the kids from using the motel lot as a place to make U-turns, but I watched them come to the end of the street and spin through the cul-de-sac at the Motor Lodge, riding the big speed bumps we'd put in as if they were some carnival ride. I could see from a distance the NO VACANCY light was on. But when I drove through, making my own U-turn, I counted only six cars in the lot. The office was dark, and the thought of Kent in there, fast asleep, brought back a wave of that old irritation.

As I parked the car, I clenched my fists, imagining Kent huddled up in the back, eyes closed tight, breathing through his nose. I thought of the money he'd lost me; not much, probably, but it added up, it meshed with all the other worries on my mind. I was never going to get anywhere, I thought.

It was silent when I opened the door. My keys chimed against one another, dangling in the lock. “Kent?” I said sternly. I flipped on the lights, and the fluorescent bulbs slowly flickered to life. Kent's dirty ashtray was on the desk, and papers were scattered everywhere. I glanced outside, thinking maybe some emergency had taken him away, but my mother-in-law's pickup, the one she let Kent drive, was still out there in the space marked MANAGER.

“Kent,” I called again, less certainly, and I stepped cautiously toward the dark, bare rooms. For a moment I thought I could hear music coming from back there—vague, distant sounds, like marimba tones, bamboo wind chimes brushing one another. I used to check out this book at the library from time to time,
Omens and Superstitions of the World,
and I remember reading that if you imagine you hear music, then you are in the presence of benevolent spirits. It's an American Indian belief. But the music didn't sound benevolent: it seemed sad; something has been lost, I thought, and it made me shiver. The sound seemed to drift off into the distance, just barely at the edge of my hearing. Then it was gone.

“Kent,” I whispered. I stood there, not really wanting to move into the shadows, imagining terrible things: Kent lying on the floor back there with a gun still gripped in his fist, or his body swinging slowly over a tipped chair. “Hello? Is someone there?” I called. And then I noticed, lying there on the desk, the cash box—just sitting out, for all to see. I picked it up quickly and opened it. Of course it was empty, except for a few credit card vouchers and a page of motel stationery, with Kent's handwriting on it. “Dear Robert,” I read, beneath the motel letterhead.

I know what I am doing is wrong. But part of it can count toward this week's wages I guess. I hope you will consider the rest a loan. I will pay you back as soon as I can. I am going to get back with Rhon. We will get Brittany after Mom is asleep. And go somewhere, I'm not sure. Please tell Mom that I will send for our stuff when we are settled. And tell her and Susan I am sorry and love to them. But this is the only way it seems because nothing can work under so much pressure and everyone's mind made up, etc. I swear I'll pay back every cent to you.

It was signed “Kent Barnhart.”

I didn't know how much they'd taken; there might have been almost five hundred dollars there. I'd planned to go to the bank and deposit it in the morning. But I knew this much: I couldn't really afford to lose it. I stood there at the window, the sound of my pulse beating in my ears. I stared out at the parking lot—six lousy cars. But someone would have to be there to check them out in the morning. Then, as I gazed out at the line of doorways, the familiar shape of the building and the walk, I recognized the car at the end of the row. It was Rhonda's old white Buick.

I knew they must have been in there at that very moment, in the room just in front of her car—B19, the one with the king-size bed. My muscles tightened, and for a moment, I pressed my hands to the window, as if I were locked inside. I wasn't, of course; I could march down there myself and open the door with my master key, throw it wide open and demand my money back. That's what Susan would do, I thought. And if it were Joan, she'd have already been on the phone with the cops. But I was just sitting there, listening to the ticks and hums of the empty office, waiting. Coward, I thought.

I pulled my keys out of the lock and went out, moving like a burglar across my own property, hanging close to the wall. I tried to goad myself, picturing them making love on a nest of my money, picturing them mocking me. My insides felt wavery, like something seen through thick, imperfect glass, and I pinched the key tightly between my fingers. By the time I got to the door, that wavering feeling seemed to be spreading, extending beyond my body like an aura. I saw myself fit the key into the lock, sliding the metal teeth silently into the slot, and I felt my hand turning the knob. But I didn't push the door open. I hesitated there, the knob cool and smooth against my skin, and I drew my face closer to the door. I could hear voices. I inched the door open, just a crack. They were whispering, and though I held my breath, I couldn't make out the words—only gentle, sad voices, and when I pushed the door open a bit further I could see them, reflected in the dresser mirror, sitting there on the bed, their heads almost touching, holding hands. I don't know how long I stood there, staring at their reflection, but they didn't look up. I felt as if something large and dark were hovering over me, opening its wings. After a time I edged back. I let the door pull quietly closed. Then I went back to my car and drove away.

For a long time afterwards, I felt ashamed of myself; there was something unmanly, there was some weakness, I guess, in letting someone rob you and just letting them go. I never told Susan about it. When my mother-in-law called early the next morning, I acted as shocked as the rest of them.

By the time I got back to the motel that night, they'd left. I'd just driven out a little beyond the edge of town and parked there by the side of the road, like Susan and I used to do. Euclid turned into Highway 30 just outside of town, and Highway 30 fed into the interstate, which stretched either way across the country, toward both coasts. Even as I drove past the city limits, the big chamber-of-commerce welcome sign, and the glow of the all-night gas station, I knew that I was not the type of person who could ever run off, except to a life of loneliness and sorrow. My fate was already mapped out—smooth straight lines of married and familial love—and I could see everything clearly: in a few days or weeks Susan and I would make love again, the first time in a long while, and everything would fall back in place; all would be well. Joan and Mr. Trencher would continue that slow strange dance they'd been engaged in, and I'd keep going to work, and the children would grow, and in a hundred years there wouldn't be a trace of any of us. Maybe Rhonda and Kent would end up back in town, too, eventually, but I couldn't be certain about them. What did I know about that kind of love, that kind of life?

CHINCHILLA

A
rlinda had known for a long time that her mother was not like a real mother. She had seen mothers on TV, read about them in books. She had been at other children's houses and had viewed the mothers on display there—fat mothers who made pies and cookies and cakes; beautiful mothers who wore long coats and jewels, who went dancing with fathers and would not come home till late; cross mothers who spanked and whose children had many chores and rules. But Arlinda's mother was nothing like such women.

Years later, Arlinda would come to hate her mother. She would eagerly and deliberately seek ways to hurt her, and there would be a time when she would slap her mother and watch those thick glasses fly to the floor and shatter. And it would be even more years later before she would pause to find herself using her mother's phrases and gestures, words, movements that had lain hidden inside her.

But all this was still a long time away. Now, Arlinda merely believed that her mother had a secret. Many secrets. This was how Arlinda became a spy and a thief.

It all started with her mother's illness. Her mother had been sick almost as long as Arlinda could remember, but Arlinda knew very little about the actual sickness, only the symptoms, which were always changing: there were dull, angry pains that seemed to travel around her mother's body, wherever Arlinda touched her—the legs, the back, the face. Her mother would wince when she was hugged. Her illness was as mysterious as the medicine that was meant to cure it—wrapped in tissue, hidden at the bottom of her mother's purse like little colored beads, or hoarded in unlabeled vials. Once, Arlinda had found a nest of them in the crack of the couch, like little orange-and-yellow eggs. She had heard her mother saying their names in a whisper over the phone—Thorazine, codeine. They sounded like the names of cowgirls, or princesses. She had taken some of them, held them tightly in her dry hand, sure that no one had seen. Then, late at night, she'd studied them, found that the orange half separated from the yellow, and that there was a fine, bitter powder inside, which blew away as she drew near and breathed.

Her mother had come into her room later, demanding, “Were you digging around in that couch? Did you take some medicine?”

Arlinda denied everything, and not knowing what better to say, told her mother, “I saw Daddy! He was looking there.”

Her mother's eyes narrowed. “When?” her mother demanded. “When?”

“I don't know!” Arlinda had cried, and her mother asked her more and more questions, until Arlinda began to believe her own lie, to defend it with tears and outrage, until it was hard to remember that she had taken them and buried them deep in the dirt of the jade plant in the kitchen.

But none of this was really a secret. Her mother had taken the pills and hidden them for as long as Arlinda could remember, it was a game played routinely, and the only secret was that she had stolen them that once. The real mysteries were shadowy, frightening—things she knew about her mother that could not be reconciled with what she saw.

When her mother was gone, in town shopping or visiting someone, Arlinda went exploring. She would creep around the house, sometimes crawling on all fours under beds, discovering hatboxes filled with unfinished embroidery napkins, stunning high heels of aquamarine and black lace, beautiful skirts patterned with scenes of forests and sunsets and palm trees. Hidden. These things were her mother's, but she could never have imagined her wearing them. Her mother wore jeans, turtlenecks, plain colors, flat shoes. It was nearly impossible to imagine her as a lovely woman, bright lips, long hair, in these shimmering clothes, laughing or dancing, gliding through crowded ballrooms.

She would go into her parents' bedroom and carefully open the dresser, gently lifting things out, one by one, discovering, underneath old clothes or check stubs, her mother's most secret things.

At first it was her mother's jewelry boxes that were fascinating. Arlinda would sort through necklaces and glittering earrings with just her finger and thumb. She knew when she touched something that she would take it for her own; she crouched, still as a rabbit, listening for the sound of her mother's car approaching the driveway. And then she spirited the jewelry away.

She was not afraid of being discovered. Her mother never wore the jewelry, she would never miss it. What really frightened her was that her mother had some secret that should never be revealed, something as terrible as Bluebeard's locked room, waiting. She had no specific evil in mind, just a tingling aura of dread.

Perhaps this was why she hadn't taken anything since she'd found the photographs. She came across them in a white envelope, nestled at the very back of a drawer, so tucked away she hadn't noticed it before.

There were five Polaroid pictures of her mother and father in their younger days. They were dirty pictures—in them, her mother and father were naked.

In one photo, her mother faced forward; there was a mirror behind her, and the light of a lamp was reflected in it, big and wavering, like the sun at dusk. Her mother's hair was long, like wisps of dark smoke around her shoulders, and she had a vague, dreamy smile, her eyes half closed. Her mother was holding her breasts in her hands. In another photo, her father was stretched out on the bed with a knowing look on his face, the kind of look that he would give Arlinda when he was teasing her.

Seeing them like this, she felt a warm, liquid rush of fear run through her. They looked like ghosts or mystics, witches in some eerie ritual. Not her real mother or father.

So her mother's secrets became only cloudier, more frightening, the more she thought about them—the opening of a drawer, the fitting of a hidden key into a lock, the quick glimpse of a hand behind a shutting door, the ciphers of muffled telephone calls. I am missing something important, Arlinda thought. But the truth was, no one seemed to know what Arlinda's mother was supposed to be. She had heard her grandma, her father's mother, whisper to a friend, “Pauline is a hillbilly, you know.”

Her father's two sisters, Aunt Sharon and Aunt Beth, speculated on the subject often enough, when they came for a visit. Arlinda would hide and listen as they smoked their cigarettes and sipped coffee.

Aunt Sharon, the pretty one, with her big blond hair and her black lashes and fingernails that hurt when they broke, said that Arlinda's mother was just a “loon. It's all that inbreeding in that family.”

“I guess Harvey really must be a saint,” Aunt Beth said. “To put up with that. He's so good to her. How did she ever get him?”

“Oh, I know how she got him,” Aunt Sharon said, and snorted. “It's how she keeps him that I wonder.”

And Arlinda had seen strangers on the street turn to look at her mother—maybe it was the quickness with which she walked, almost stumbling fast, or the angry hardness of her face. Maybe they thought, from the way she held Arlinda by the arm, that her mother was a kidnapper. She's not my real mother, Arlinda wanted to tell them, not really, she doesn't belong to me.

But despite what Arlinda would have liked, she was bound to her mother by so many webs that she could never break free. Not only did she have her mother's face, hair, eyes, but she also had the name, the awful name her mother had branded on her. She heard her grandmother once, laughing: “For the longest time I thought Pauline was saying ‘Our Linda,' and I thought, ‘Well you don't have to keep telling me, I know she's your Linda,' and then I found out that this was actually the child's name. Where Pauline came up with it, I'll never know.” I have the name of a crazy woman's daughter, Arlinda had realized then. The memory still made her ashamed.

But worst of all, Arlinda was her mother's accomplice. She was the one who knew all about the secret trips. During the summer, or when she was on vacation from school, Arlinda would go on her mother's drives; and she knew that when she was in school, her mother went alone. Sometimes, Arlinda would be sitting in class, and the teacher's voice would just fade away, and she would picture her mother driving, all the windows rolled down, her scarf flapping in the wind. She could picture the yellow dotted lines of the highway flickering through her mother's sunglasses, her mother's lips tightened.

They would always leave after her father had gone to work in the morning. They went many places—distant restaurants, doctor's offices in faraway towns, no place sometimes, just down the highway for hours, then back. Most of the time, though, they went to the other grandmother's place in the country.

It was the second day of summer vacation when Arlinda's father told them he would be going out of town overnight, on business. And although her mother said nothing, Arlinda was not surprised to be awakened as soon as her father was gone.

“Get up,” her mother whispered. “We're going to Grandma's house today.”

The grandmother's house was several hours away from Arlinda's home, and Arlinda had hoped to spend her day sleeping and watching cartoons. But there was a stiffness in the way her mother spoke, and Arlinda knew better than to protest.

“Hurry up,” her mother kept saying, sharply, knocking on the door as Arlinda showered, standing, hands on her hips, as Arlinda pulled up her socks.

“Are you mad at me?” Arlinda kept asking, following after her.

“Of course not,” her mother said. But when Arlinda grabbed her around the waist and hugged her, her mother felt like a cat might when clutched against its will, and she closed her eyes as if to hold back a cry.

“God damn it, will you please quit yanking on me, Arlinda? I don't feel good.” And then Arlinda backed away, shrugging.

“You're always sick,” she said, looking at the floor.

“That's because your father doesn't believe in medicine.”

Arlinda slept in the car almost the whole way. Her face was pressed against the vinyl seat so that, when she awoke briefly, she could feel the indentation of the seat's vertical design on her cheek, like a scar. She looked up sleepily, and she could see her mother's head framed in the car window, and the gently sloping horizon, the telephone poles, the gray sky spinning behind her, dizzying, a fog of motion. For a moment there was something terrifying about the stillness of her mother's face, the way she seemed to be hurtling through the rush of the world, the way she ignored the sky and hills and trees grasping for her, falling at her like stones or bullets and then spinning away.

Occasionally, her mother would become lost, and these were the most harrowing times. Her mother would begin to tremble, she would find it hard to hold the steering wheel, and the car would sway between the median and the shoulder, as if seeking escape. When they were lost, her mother would trace and retrace the same miles of highway, or drive around and around the same blocks, as if suddenly a fresh path would appear to lead them home. Then, desperate, she would stop the car and get out. In towns, she would ramble down the sidewalk with Arlinda following, stopping people—old women; leering, dirty men; even small children. She would beg directions from them, cringing as if she were asking for money. Once, they had been lost on the interstate, and Arlinda's mother had tried to flag down cars, big semis rushing toward her with their foghorn howls, little bug cars swerving to go around her. Arlinda had screamed, crying, “Mommy, don't . . . Watch out, watch out, watch out!”

But there had never been any problem finding the grandmother's house, and Arlinda felt safe enough to sleep, safe until she woke to see her mother's frozen face against the blur of the passing world, her fingers tight on the steering wheel. Then she sat upright.

“Momma?” she said. “Are we lost?”

Her mother glanced toward the backseat and then glared. “Don't be ridiculous,” she snapped. “What, do you think I'm crazy?” Arlinda looked down, and when she raised her head again, her mother's eyes were still staring back at her in the rearview mirror. Finally, she lay down and put her arm across her face. When she sat back up, they were pulling down the long driveway that led to her grandmother's house.

Arlinda's grandmother's place was miles outside any town, and it always looked abandoned. The grass around it was thick and long, and the high weeds grew into it on the edge of the yard. At night, the dark trees around the house hunched down, the shadows of their branches scuttling along its walls, along the dusty windows with their coverings of blurry plastic insulation. The only sign of inhabitants was her grandmother's car: a big blue Pontiac, parked in the front yard.

For as long as Arlinda could remember, her grandmother had raised things; not normal animals like chickens or hogs but rather exotic creatures—hives of bees, peacocks, guinea hens, horned white goats, which she kept so she could sell their thin, sour-tasting milk. Arlinda had heard her Aunt Sharon talking in low tones about her mother's parents: “From what I hear, they were like gypsies, they just moved from one odd job to the next, one con game after the other.” After that, Arlinda asked her father what Grandpa Bickers had done for a living. Her father had given her that teasing, secretive smile. “Oh, anything,” he said. “Like what,” she'd wanted to know, but he just shook his head. “That woman reminds me of a witch,” Aunt Sharon once whispered to a group of her cousins and their husbands, as the grandmother drifted past them at a Christmas gathering.

There weren't any exotic animals around the house this time, though, as they stepped up the walk to the front door. And when the grandmother opened the door, there didn't appear to be any animals in the house, either.

“Hi, Mommy,” Arlinda's mother said, and they embraced.

Arlinda did not hug her grandmother, and she was glad that she wasn't expected to. Her grandmother had a dull, sweaty smell, like old clothes, and her arms were wiry and muscled, like an old man's, with blue veins that stood out above the skin, tracing across it like the branches of a gnarled tree. Arlinda merely took her grandmother's hand.