Our Town (10 page)

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The phone rang. It wasn’t day anymore. Dorothy woke up on the floor of the bathroom. It stopped ringing. Her head ached. It was ringing again. She let it ring as she got up and pushed open the sink mirror to get to the medicine cabinet. There were four pill bottles on the top shelf, but three of them weren’t what she wanted—they were only for bedtime. She removed the farthest to the right. Still ringing. She took six without water. She put the bottle in the back pocket of her jeans. She closed the cabinet door. Then she walked to the kitchen window and looked out. Seth’s car was gone. She reached and got the phone. It felt good on her ear. Cool. She’d forgotten she’d switched into jeans. She was awake again.

“Yeah?”

“Jo? Jo? Hey, it’s me. It’s Pony.”

“Ponytail” Jones was her last manager. Since the divorce, she thought she’d try and get her career back. She’d fired him, though, the month before. And that wasn’t the first time. She often fired him. He once even discharged her. But she hadn’t begun to look for new representation, yet. She hoped that’d be the last of him. But now.

“Don’t call me Jo. My name’s Dorothy, Pony. I don’t know how many times I’ve gotta tell ya.”

“Fine. Jo, then, Dorothy. I’m sorry you’re still Jo to me.”

“That’s because you changed it for me, Pony. It was your dumb idea.”

Ponytail insisted on having her billed as Joanna Cook—her given name—in an attempt to distance her from her reputation. To show that she’d tried to change. It never much worked, though. And, anyway, she found it too revealing.

“Fair enough. I just thought it had a nice ring to it. How you been, gorgeous? How’s things?”

“I don’t know. You know. The same, I guess.”

“Nothing new at all?”

“No. Not really.”

“Well, we need to get you working again, then, beautiful. You’re the best. Always my favorite and always the best. My first. I found ya. I found ya before nobody else. I let you shine. The way you’re supposed to shine,” he exclaimed proudly.

“No you didn’t. It was over before I found you,” she sniffed. “Boy are you dumb.”

“Well, I tried to get it back for ya.”

“Yeah, but it was already over.”

“Come on, gorgeous. I just—”

She interrupted.

“I just don’t wanna right now, Pony. You know that I don’t wanna. In fact, I don’t want to ever, I don’t think, and you know that. I’ve told you that a million times.” She closed her eyes and pressed the phone between her ear and her shoulder and pushed back up her wig. “I’m not interested in anything you have to say.”

“Yeah, but I’m not gonna stop askin’ ’til you say yes. I need ya.” He waited.

“Oh brother,” she replied.

“Even if you never do. Anyway, I’ve got somethin’ for you. Somethin’ real came in.
A Christmas Carol
. A lead. The ghost of Christmas future. It’s dinner theater.”

“What? Dinner theater. Are you crazy? Jesus, Pony, quit janglin’ so hard. It’s unbecoming. In fact it’s just pathetic.”

“I know what it sounds like, Jo, but it’s good. It’s a good production. And they’ll make you look beautiful, again. They’re known for that. They’ll bring you back. They’ll bring out your gold and silver.”

“Oh, enough, Pony.”

“I’m just working, Jo. I’m always just working for you.”

“No.”

“Listen, Joanna.”

“Dorothy.”

“Well listen then, Dorothy,” he paused. “It’s five thousand dollars. And you don’t have to audition.”

“It’s what?”

“Five thousand dollars.”

“Five thousand dollars,” she repeated, eyes open, now wide. This was a lot in 1970, you know? Wide wide.

“Yeah. No audition, too.”

“How no audition?”

“I don’t know. Some sort of nostalgia production, I think.”

“Oh.”

“Well?” loudly.

“I don’t know,” she waited. “I guess I’ll get back to you.”

“Oh, Jesus,” he sighed. “Fine. Are you okay, Jo?”

“Yeah, I’m okay, Pony. I promise.”

“All right, beautiful. Okay. Just know that I’m gonna keep tryin’. As long as you keep gettin’ offers I’ll continue to try.”

“Good-bye, Pony.”

“Good-bye, beautiful. We’ll talk soon, yeah? You’re gonna get back to me?”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “I promise.”

She hung up. She put the phone back on the wall and walked toward the kids’ room. She stood in the doorway for a moment before going in. Clover kept the lights off. Clover didn’t like the heat. Clover had, the past few hours, been drawing pictures of cats with a red pen
in her right hand while holding a Maglite in her left. She just outlined them. Didn’t fill them in. Drew their silhouettes. She’d always wanted a cat, but never asked for one, because Mama was allergic. And when Butchie got sick, Mama was just so sad. And then Butchie got better, but Mama got worse. And she knew that if she got one, and it wanted to leave, Mama wouldn’t let it, and so it would be trapped. Trapped on a ranch with dumb Seth—who Mama insisted she call “Daddy”—and a brother who watched her in the shower.

Dorothy got up and walked to the light switch and flicked it and then walked back to Clover and placed a hand on her shoulder. Clover squinted and stopped drawing. Then she looked up at Mama shy.

“There’s something wrong with your head,” Clover said, her eyes half-closed.

“What? What do you mean, baby? What do you mean?”

“Your head. Your hair’s all sideways.”

Dorothy got up and went to the mirror. She looked at herself. The mirror was supposed to be slimming. It wasn’t. Not for her. Not today. She was fat today. Her wig clung to her head like a flower of broccoli. Or a cauliflowered ear. She’d probably slept on it the wrong way. Or she didn’t pin it tight enough. It was hard to be sure. And she looked squat. She hated her real hair. Her thin hair.
Her
hair. As she got older her wigs grew larger. The uglier she felt, the more she covered. More makeup. Bigger, faker teeth. Chiclety. Skin more taut. Fewer wrinkles. No more furrowing her brow. The wigs, too, had grown exponentially recently. And they’d continue to. Essentially for forever. She never quite got her confidence back. One thing always led to another. Her perfume got stronger, too.

“Mama? Mama, are we gonna go to town and get our nails done? Last Wednesday you said we were gonna go Sunday.”

“Ugh, is that today? Is today Sunday?”

Dorothy wiggled her head sideways looking into the mirror as she spoke. Then she pounded on her left ear like she had water in her right.

“Yeah, Mama,” Clover looked back down with her head shaking. “Today’s Sunday.”

Clover started drawing again. The cats were suddenly filled in. And they all grew very long whiskers.

“Come on, baby. Don’t act bluey.”

“I’m not, Mama.”

“It’s just too late now.”

“I know, Mama.”

“We’ll go tomorrow.”

“Okay, Mama.”

“I promise.”

“Whatever you say, Mama.”

“Please, talk to me, beautiful girl. Look at me.” She turned back to her daughter—hair fixed—and sat back down. “Don’t be mad at me. Do you want me to fix you something for dinner? I think we have eggs. In this heat I could probably fry ’em on the counter. You want two eggs? Maybe two fried eggs? Maybe three? You look hungry. You’ve been eating all that horseshit recently. All that sugary cereal. That jar of rotten olives. I should fix you something. Yeah, I should fix you something. How about some chicken? I can go to the store and buy a chicken. Oh, but the car’s beat. So eggs. I know we have eggs. Unless. That’ll do, huh, baby? That’ll do.”

She pet her daughter’s hair down flat to the back of her neck. She then stopped supplicating, suddenly, when, without warning, a foul smell entered the room. It hit them both hard, freezing them frozen. Like amateur boxers getting hit—really hit, like a hook not a jab—for the first time. They’d had their bell rung. Dylan walked by them to the bathroom and closed the door without a word. The bathroom off the kitchen didn’t have a sink—just a toilet—and Dylan needed a sink. And no one was allowed to use Mama’s. Unless you wanna get your ass spanked. Do and Clo finally looked simultaneously toward the door. Starting at the doorknob, a crack crawled up—sprawling like a tree branch—to the door top. Slammed too many times. They wondered what he’d gotten into. It smelled like ethanol, but he never showered. Dorothy had given up on asking him for that. And antiseptic. Gamey, too, and familiar, like the after-hours at a bus depot.

“Dylan,” Dorothy yelled. “What are you doing in there?”

“Nothing,” he replied through the closed door. Dorothy and Clover heard him turn the faucet on.

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah,” he yelled back. “Really.”

Dylan’s voice was like that of a lifelong smoker who’d never been through puberty. When he didn’t get his way he screamed. For attention. He sometimes liked attention. Once, at an airport security check-in—Dorothy sometimes flew to Manhattan for sale season; she used to bring the kids—he lay down on his back and pounded the ground with his fists and the balls of his feet. He pounded and pounded until his pinkies started bleeding. A flight attendant brought them peroxide, but once he got cleaned up they’d missed the plane. In the car, on their way to the airport, Dorothy’d lost the plume for the sugar-sack hat of his toy knight. That plume meant the world to him. His knight was nothing without it. So he cried until Dorothy missed her flight. To punish her. Dorothy went back to Manhattan the next year. She spent two weeks that trip to make up for the one she’d lost. Dylan wasn’t invited. He stayed at Dale’s. But Dale didn’t really like him, either.

“Baby, what are you doin’ in there? What’s happening in there? And what in the world is that smell?” Dorothy walked to the door and knocked and asked, angry.

There was no reply. Dylan turned off the faucet. Dorothy knocked again, this time more violently. Even angrier, still.

“Dylan, baby? Dyl? Let me see what you got in there. Let me see what you’re doin’.”

She knocked again and the mirror rattled. Her nose burned and her arms itched. Perhaps a side effect from her lengthy, and plentiful, use of pain medication. Like her cottonmouth. Or she was just itchy. And the house was just hot.

“Dyl?”

“Yes, Mom?”

“I need you to come out now.” She put her ear to the door and tried to hear him. But she couldn’t hear him. “I need to see what’s
wrong with you, baby. I need to see what you’re doing. So come on, baby. Come on.”

Dylan opened the door. He had another straw from a water bottle sheathed in his blue-lined tighty whities and wore once-white holey socks. He spent most of his time, when he could, in the sun. It made him warmer. His face was, thus, so covered in freckles that it was hard to see between them. Especially this late in the summer. When he tried to run past his mother—he faked right then spun left—and almost made it!—she grabbed him by his neck and he stumbled back and fell on his tail bone. Bruised. She stood over him, but he refused to meet his mother’s eyes. He lay there with his juice-belly stomach heaving up and down like a fireplace bellows. He’d drunk too fast. Distended. He was always thirsty. Again, it was always so hot. Dorothy stepped on his chest in her house shoes and he wiggled like a turned-up centipede. But then she understood. He smelled like champagne and musk and rainwater. Like he hadn’t showered in a while but wanted to fool somebody into thinking otherwise. He smelled like perfume and disobedience. He smelled like her.

“Dylan, did you take my perfume? Did you take your mother’s perfume? The one I got from Bergdorf’s?”

He didn’t look at her or reply. He shook some more, then stopped. He moved his hair out of his face, then sneezed in his hand and rubbed it on the rug.

“Dylan? Dylan? Do you hear me? Do you? Jesus, you better not have. You know I can only get that in New York. When I go away—not when
you
go away! I can’t get that here, goddamn it. Answer me now, Dylan. And don’t answer me snarky. Dylan!” she yelled. “For fuck’s sake, Dylan, answer me now.”

And he finally looked at her and met her eyes. His nose, gray-crusted from years of untreated sunburn, pointed up. And his ears, as though he controlled them, stuck out as though he might lift off from the ground and fly. His eyes were fixed on her hair. It was teetering, again. And half her scalp and head cap showed. He thought it might fall on him. This made him nervous. He didn’t like her wigs.

“I had to kill them, Mama. They were in my fort in the yard, and they were crawling on everything.”

“No, Dylan,” she moaned and pressed her thumbs on her eyes. “No, no, no.”

“I had to, Mama,” he said and leaned up now. “I was making sand-castles outside in the dirt and they were ruining everything. I swear they were. I was playing with my knights and they were crawling all over. The critters were hiding in the moat. The bugs. So I had to fill the mote up. Fill it up with poison so they’d die. I had to kill them, Mama. They were gonna ruin everything, Mama. I swear.”

“You two are so fucking annoying!” she yelled. “Such spoiled brats. Ingrates!”

Dylan’s eyes glazed over and he began to tear up. But he wasn’t crying. His mother lit a cigarette and was blowing the smoke in his face as she held him under her foot. She’d found a pack. Earlier. In the fridge, beneath the cream cheese. She stood over him angry, spitting smoke in his face. But she perked up when she heard Seth pull up in the truck. She stepped off her son and went to the window and watched as he backed it in under the fir. He slammed the door and ducked under a branch as he walked toward the house. Dorothy left to meet him in the kitchen. But first.