More Than Enough (25 page)

When we arrived home late that afternoon, I opened the white garbage bag, the smell of shit wafting into the air before I could throw my clothes into the washer and close the lid. “What's that?” my father asked. But he saw in my face that I could not answer him, and he let it go. The next day, when I took my clothes out of the washer, I would see that my blue jeans were a ghostly shade of blue because I had used bleach instead of soap. I wasn't yet very good at the sort of household duties that would soon be mine. But I was good enough. At the very least, the smell of shit was gone.

In the cupboards, we had four boxes of mac and cheese, a loaf of white bread, a packet of Kool-Aid, a can of cranberry sauce, a can of mixed vegetables, and sixteen cans of oil-packed tuna. “I'm not hungry,” my father said, playing with his food and taking a bite now and then. The macaroni that I had prepared was underdone and crunched a little as we chewed it. Slowly I came to realize that I was hungry, starved—I hadn't eaten since the day before in the restaurant—and my father slowly gained his appetite, as well. Soon we bent over our plates and ate ravenously. The grape Kool-Aid made our mouths look bruised and swollen. I let Noir stay inside that night, and he lay under the table, shamelessly begging until I lowered a spoonful of mac and cheese, then another and another, and he licked greedily at the food, instantly forgiving me, instantly trusting me again.

“You smell a little,” my father said, looking at me funny. I lowered my head and smelled myself, realizing then that the dead man was at the table with us—the smell of him, anyway. My father didn't ask me to leave the table or wash. He was too exhausted to do anything more than make the comment, and I was too exhausted to let the smell bother me much. I had to think of Oak Groves, though, of Mrs. Smith and her crazy endless dinner that seemed to make her so insanely happy. I was sorry for ever having hurt her. She had just been living out a dream in a place where, without dreams, you would have died in a few minutes. That's all she'd done. And I wished then that my father and I had all those strange dishes, half of which I'd never eaten or even seen before—pumpkin soup, butternut squash, collard greens, grits and cheese, chutney, goose, partridge and pheasant, wild rice, and giblet gravy. I wished we'd had them if only as an excuse to talk to one another, to be polite, to say please pass this and that, to say thank you and you're welcome, and to say how delicious everything was in a genuine tone of voice that we hadn't even used a month before while eating so many foods for which we had no taste and ended up throwing out. But I couldn't imagine how expensive a dinner like that would be, and I remembered the large, empty round table at which old Mrs. Smith, gone in the head, sat asking for things that weren't there. At least the things we had on our table—the saucepan of mac and cheese, the Kool-Aid and mixed vegetables, the loaf of Wonder bread, the butter on a plate—were all real. I looked up at those things and said to my father, “Please pass the bread and butter, if you wouldn't mind.”

He looked at me, a little confused. “It's right in front of you,” he said. Our table was very small.

“Please pass the bread and butter,” I said again. He hesitated; then he did as I asked. “Thank you,” I said. When he said nothing, I insisted, saying it a little louder, “Thank you.”

“You're welcome, for God's sake,” he said. You could hear the anger in his voice. It wasn't anger at me. It was anger at everything. I knew it was that kind of anger because I felt it, too, anger and something like fear, and every word I said was alive with it. Nonetheless, I asked for the mixed vegetables, the mac and cheese, and the pitcher of Kool-Aid in the same polite way, and without looking at me he slowly reached for these things and put them down in front of me.

After a while, he looked up at me, his eyes dark, and said, “Please pass the Kool-Aid,” and I did. “Please pass the vegetables and the bread,” he said. And I did that, too. I did it, and then I looked at him and waited for what would come next.

Acknowledgments

MANY THANKS TO NICHOLAS DELBANCO
and the New York Writers Institute's Master Writer Fellowship for providing money and mentorship during this novel's final stages. I would also like to thank friends who read this book and gave valuable advice: Eric Gudas, Joshua Henkin, Chris Shainin, Porter Shreve, and Ian Reed Twiss. For their dedication and hard work, I am grateful to my agent, Ali
ka Pistek, and my editor, Joshua Kendall. I am also grateful to Ian Fulcher for sharing his expertise about all things Mormon; to my brother, Ben Fulton, for correcting my Salt Lake City geography; and to Dr. Paul Sorum for helping with medical details. I owe my family a debt of gratitude for their encouragement and faith. And finally, for her advice, generosity, and tireless support, Eve.

ALSO BY JOHN FULTON

Retribution

MORE THAN ENOUGH
. Copyright © 2002 by John Fulton. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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