I laughed. “Well. Where to begin?” I said. “School's okay, I guess.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Too many theorists in the department. Nobody reads anymore. I just want to examine the structures ofâ”
“I don't know how you do it,” she said. “I couldn't stand it. I mean, there's only a finite number of stories, right? The same ones, over and over. Coming-of-age. Love stories, death stories. Anyway, I can't wait for you to meet Dan's little girls. Stephanie and Amanda. Six and four.” I tried not to reveal my irritation at her dismissal of my interests. Of course, she'd heard me say this stuff before. Years ago. I sipped my soda. As she spoke I looked for signs of her affection for me. Did any survive? A trace of naughtiness? Or was that a ruse to get me here so she could show herself off, prove to me how well she'd managed, post-Billy, post-me?
She leaned close. The smell of her hair-strawberries, peachesâdizzied me. Yes, yes: whatever else had been true of Suzi and me, the proximity of our bodies â¦
“âa former priest,” she was saying. “I have a meeting with him tonight. After dinner. Shouldn't take long. I'm sorry, I didn't think to reschedule it during your visit. Maybe Dan'll let you watch TV with him and the girls, and I'll be back before you know it. Anyway, this guy, Wayne Peters is his name, he's working as a private therapist now, counseling people like me with powerful spiritual yearnings who want something more than traditional churches can offer.”
“Mass doesn't do it for you anymore?”
“I'm way beyond those rituals. They were just a starting point-for which I'm grateful, don't get me wrong. Wayne and I are exploring out-of-body travel now,
direct
communion with God without the clothing of the world, so to speak. It's so exciting, Tim.”
I worked to keep my smile.
The front door swung open and two ghosts flew through the house followed by a bloated version of Billy. He looked to be ten years older than Suzi and me, sunburned, paunchy. He wore a big blond beard.
“How do,” he said, and squeezed
my
hand. His back was stiff, or his legs, a subtle hesitation in his movements. A work-related accident or a childhood illness: a hidden story. The girls dropped their Casper masks and the wrinkled sheets, smeared with dried red paint, which they'd wrapped around their bodies. “Oh my gosh! You guys! These are the
perfect
costumes!” Suzi said to them. She kissed the tops of their heads. “You're going to be so
scary!
Stephanie, Amanda. Say hello to my old friend, Tim.” They were too excited to pay me any mind. They chased each other through the living room, bumping end tables, scattering magazines. “Stephanie has stinky underpants!” the little one shouted at her sister.
Dan grabbed a Bud from the fridge and busied himself at the stove. “Tacos for supper,” he told me. He heated vegetable oil in a pan. Suzi said he worked for a natural gas outfit. “To the bone,” she cooed, “all for the girls and me.” She hugged him from behind.
“Suzi!” he said. “Damn it, be careful. This oil is hot. Hand me those tortillas.”
He acknowledged me only once more, to ask if I wanted a beer. I hadn't finished my Dr Pepper, but I said, “Sure.” Suzi set the table. I stood in a back corner, underneath a hanging fern. The sun was setting. No one moved to turn on any lights. I heard the TV, the girls laughing. Dan switched off the burners, said, “Bathroom, then we're good.” He sauntered down the hall.
“Isn't he great?” Suzi whispered to me.
“Yes. Great.”
“Solid as cement. And so passionate!”
I smiled. The resemblance to Billy? Solidity, safety (did he remind her of her dad)? The need for kids (when had
that
happened)? Rude desire
and
the Holy Ghost-how did they fit? I understood I'd never tease out the answers. Suzi remained, for me, a series of distortions.
A burnt tomato smell hung in the kitchen. Cicada-tunes rose through an open window. No screen: small green bugs rushed in. A breeze (so warm it cooled my skin) gave me goose bumps. What was I doing here? My vanity. My lascivious hopes.
Suzi lit a long green candle on the table. The girls looked at me and giggled. Dan reached for the salt and knocked over the plastic container, spilling grains on the floor. I realized he was tipsy. I tried to watch, without staring, as he sugared tea for the girls with slow, painful stirrings. Were men like him Suzi's sin? Did she chain herself to them for the exhilaration of later breaking free of the world?
And what about men like me?
Suzi told Amanda and Stephanie, “I have a meeting after dinner, so you'll have to be good girls, be sure to brush your teeth, get your pj's on, and get to bed on time, okay?”
As she spoke, Dan drifted into a deeper silence, if that was possible. A silence
within
his silence. The girls felt it too. They looked carefully at Suzi, then Dan. About ten minutes later, Stephanie said, “May we be excused?”
“Go,” Dan said.
I helped him clear the table. He moved more stiffly now. “Back soon!” Suzi called from the front porch. “You girls, you be sweet little angels, okay? Tim, there's a fresh towel for you in the back bedroom. I'm glad you're here.” The door closed. For a few seconds, her absence left me breathless.
Dan stoppered the sink and squeezed soap from a pink plastic bottle into the water. I hovered nearby. “Give you a hand?” I asked.
“It's a fucking waste of time to wait up for her,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“Amanda, Stephanie! Pajama time!” he yelled. Thumping and laughter, down the hall.
Dan concentrated on bubbles rising from the sink. “I'm telling you, she won't be back till well after midnight. It's the same every week.”
“Oh.”
“She's falling in love with him. This ex-preacher.”
“Oh.”
“Way she talks about him. Wayne this, Wayne that. He goes into his God routine and it turns her ass on.”
“I see.”
“You don't see dick. Otherwise, why are you here?”
Right. Right. You've got me there, I thought.
“She's like a tourist of the emotions. Try it all. Find the highest possible thrill.”
He was angry, exhausted, drunkâand not too smart, I thought uncharitably. But he'd nailed
this
mess about as well as anyone could.
“She'll leave me soon,” Dan said. He dried his hands on a stiff yellow towel. “But youâshe'll probably keep you on the hook forever, calling you up, wherever you are, to come witness her newest triumph, her latest âgrowth.' And you'll jump, won't you, you son of a bitch?” I thought he was going to smash me in the face, but he staggered out of the kitchen and disappeared somewhere in the back of the house.
None of what he'd said had anything to do with me. But his barely checked impulse to hit me came from the simple fact that I was here: the solid matter confronting him.
I helped myself to another beer, thinking as I popped the cap,
Don't do this, rouse yourself and get the hell out of here
. Three hours back to Austin? Three and a half? I could sleep in my own bed tonight, not much worse for wear.
Stephanie and Amanda lay on their stomachs in front of the blaring TV. They wore ankle-length cotton gowns covered with candy cane patterns. Their hair was wet. “Hi,” I said. “Do you know where your dad went?”
They shook their heads. “Will you read us a story?” Amanda said.
“Well, sure. Sure.” I turned the set's volume down. I placed my beer on the orange rug and flopped into the beanbag. “Can you find me a towel?” I said. “We should dry you guys' hair, okay?”
I did that. Then they squeezed into my lap, with a copy of
Will You Be My Mother?
“We like stories,” Amanda said.
“I like them too.”
Stephanie smelled of toothpaste and milk, Amanda of coconut lotion. The TV said, “If you don't have an oil well, get one!”
Before I'd made it a quarter of the way through the story the girls had fallen asleep. I reached over under the stallions and turned off the lamp. The beanbag sighed beneath my weight. On the television, two motorboats chased a third one up a river.
Amanda kicked in her sleep. How long had I dozed? Light from the television hurt my eyes. On the screen, an evangelist on a stage in front of a huge American flag smacked a woman on the forehead. She fell to the ground shouting, “Thank you, Jesus!” “Rise!” the preacher said.
My skin was warm where Stephanie's open mouth touched my arm. Needles pierced my legs. A stale ground beef odor tinged the air.
Gently, I lifted my wrist. My watch said 2:46. The house was quiet. I figured I'd have heard Suzi if she'd come in. Could I stand up and get the girls to bed without disturbing them too much? Did I have the starch to make it back to Austin?
“Daddy?” Amanda said.
I glanced up. Dan stood in the doorway, his hair a sweaty tangle. Bleary. Clearing his throat. He wore no shirt. Stephanie stirred. I tightened my grip on the girls. They stared at their father. His belly heaved. He straightened his back and winced. “Praise Jesus!” said a TV pilgrim. “Son of a bitch,” Dan said, and took a step forward. He reached for his side, just above his belt. I realized he was cursing his pain. “Daddy?” Amanda said. We waited, the girls and I, to see where his ardor would lead him.
He rubbed his face. I stood and slid the girls from my lap. Dan didn't speak. He picked up Stephanie, I grabbed Amanda, and we carried them to their bedroom. Adhesive stars on the walls glowed palely in the room. Right away, the girls conked out again. Dan kissed them and straightened with a groan. I backed through the doorway. “Well,” I said. “Thanks for the tacos.”
He ran a hand through his hair as if trying to make himself presentableâa gesture as absurd as my words.
“Say good-bye to Suzi for me,” I said.
Dan nodded.
On the road I looked for a late-night coffee shop. I pinched my arms to keep myself alert. I could have used a radio. Hooters, Denny's, House of Pancakesâall closed.
I'd gotten away clean. Unmarked. “Congratulations,” I said to myself Then an image came to me of Suzi's quiet house: the girls asleep beneath their phony stars, Dan drunk and snoring, sprawled half-dressed across his bed. Suzi coming home to find me gone. It was her own damn fault, I thought. Sacrificing others for the sake of her salvation. Yet she said she'd needed to see me. She'd written me for a reason. Maybe she was in trouble. Confused over Wayne and Dan. Maybe we would have spent all day talking about it. Who could stay in a house like that?
I remembered the night she'd banged her head against the tree. As she'd doubled over, bleeding, I'd looked up-looked away-to see my neighbor on the balcony.
Why think of this now?
I stopped at a flashing red traffic signal. Houston was empty. Pink and blue light poured from a shop window, illuminating a curb cluttered with paper cups and old hamburger wrappers. The light came from Portinari's Fish Emporium. White scaly skin, open staring eyes, tentacles, shells lay among plastic price tags on mounds of salted ice in the window. The light seemed bright because of the night. In fact, the hue was ruddy, the faintness of sunset and sunrise-just after, just before. A swollen silver fish, with gills like little caves, dominated the display, the “Special of the Week.” I squinted to see what kind of fish it was. I couldn't make it out. The light flickered. A suggestive wink. Keep looking, keep looking, it said. You've missed it.
M
el had bought a bad car from a man who'd claimed to be his father. The man had arrived at Mel's place of business, a fake Indian trading post just outside of Clovis, New Mexico, on a Friday afternoon that threatened rain. The guy drove a 1986 Honda Accord hatchback, silver with rust spots on the hood and doors, two missing hubcaps, and a hole in the dash where the radio had long since disappeared. A foreign jobbie, laughably small next to all the Hummers and 4x4s on the highways hereabouts: the perversity of the vehicle appealed to Mel's sense of the West as a radically untethered place-a hit he'd gotten from the Sam Shepard books he'd read in college and three or four films that had once made waves at Sundance. After two years or so, these movies came and languished for a week at the cutrate theater east of town whose owner hoped to cater to the don't-tread-on-me art house types, the Becketts of the desert who'd gone to school, read history and literature, and come out skeptical of the so-called American Dream (they always said “the so-called American Dream,” never just “American Dream”). Their skepticism took the exact form of the thing it repudiated-so, postmodernism
hadn't
died on 9/11, some young Lyotard from Santa Cruz or Colorado State always argued downtown in Buck's Java Stop. You had your ranchers with urban sensibilities, most of whose limited ranching skills led to foreclosures and auctions of their malnourished animals within six or seven months, your avant-garde cowboys whose pose said, “Out here, a man's a man, but he's in touch with his inner Annie Oakley.” Trouble was, not as many of these dropping-in drop-outs managed to make a go of it as the census forecasts had predicted ten years ago: you either dropped in or you
didn't-thats
your American Dream, jack; don't tell me you're a post-Freudian Marxist while you're down at the credit union taking out a loan on your mortgage. So the Redford mystique just wasn't cutting it here, and the theater was a flop. Still, Mel held the indie film/
Motel Chronicles
West close to his heart. He took twisted delight in being a “local” with a quietly ironic “global” view. Right away, he warmed to the Honda. It was beat to shit, which was right for this place, but its sensibly restrained thirst for petroleum products marked it as an anomaly in the oil-fattened, Po Mo West. The Land(s) of (Dis-)Enchantment.