Sunday's on the Phone to Monday (11 page)

I'm sorry.

We have a lot of cleaning to do, now, don't we?
It was scary the way Otis said
we
when he really meant
you,
or
you
when he really meant
I.

Jane started crying as she talked
. Are you upset with me?

Put that away,
said Otis. Jane looked down and realized for the first time all day she was bottomless.

Sorry.
Jane was always apologizing. She placed a pot holder over her front. She had nothing to cover the back but her hand.

What the hell kind of medicine are you strung out on?
That was another thing Otis said when he meant another thing.

Jane was good at crying in the way that got Otis to hug her and say he was sorry for knocking her about or for kicking her out. All she had to do was say
I love you I love you
over and over until they believed it could be true. -
I do love Otis. I do.
- She loved him even during the nights he brought other women home with him, with Jane in the next room.

It was just because she was sick. If she were normal Otis wouldn't do that. She knew he wouldn't! He was a good man, taking care of her the way a good man should.
Find a good man,
her mother had told her when she was fifteen. That was what you got for listening to a mother who gave such blurry advice.

Jane's body raised slightly above the couch, embossed.
Would you take him for a walk?
Otis was always telling her to do things but phrasing them in the form of questions. The dog had curly blond fur and red eyes with milky saltimbocca rims.
Cookies.

Cookies?

What I call him, Cunt.
(What he called her.)

Whose is he?
Jane walked to the sink to rinse out a mucky glass of Ovaltine. Last night Otis had woken Jane up in the middle of
the night and told her he'd kill himself if she left him. That he hadn't meant anything he'd said in the past. Then he clarified,
anything bad,
twisting their fingers together like vines.

Mona's.
Otis referred to his other girlfriends as if Jane knew who they were. Even though the only thing she knew about them was the way they told Otis exactly what they wanted from him while Jane watched game shows on TV.

Sometimes animals spoke to Jane. On her strong days she'd remind herself that this happened only in her world and nobody else's. She had a little sign in every room of Otis's home to remind her.
ONLY HUMANS SPEAK
, she'd scrawled in block letters.
ONLY HUMANS SPEAK
over the sink in the kitchen and bathrooms and next to her bed in the bedroom. On her weak days, she'd force herself to look above the sink.
Only humans speak,
she'd repeat. Always a game of touch and go.

Jane had never walked a dog before. A leash lassoed around Cookies's neck. Otis bent down, held the dog so he was about an inch above the ground, then dropped him. The dog made a scuttling sound on the floor, his paws splayed out for a clumsy second. Cookies had crusty eyes, pupils as black as squid ink spaghetti. The oily smell of saliva filled the room.

I've never walked a dog before,
said Jane. She felt half okay and about a third safe.

It's not rocket science, chickpea,
said Otis. The last time Otis had brought an animal home, it had been a cat, and something had happened so it wasn't alive anymore.
You didn't see anything,
Otis had told Jane.

Jane could walk on her own two feet; certainly she could walk a dog. Why did they call it walking a dog anyway? You didn't walk for it. People really should call it walking
with
the dog. She'd do it for Otis. She'd do it because she loved Otis, which was the same thing as doing it because she didn't love herself.

Jane took Cookies outside, which wasn't hard. The first thing
Cookies did was stop. She yanked the leash. Cookies pushed down on the concrete with his front paws, sliding his hind legs in an almost-split.
Look at us,
she commiserated,
going nowhere.

The next thing Cookies did was run. He ran, and Jane followed. From a distance, it appeared as though Cookies was the one guiding Jane by the leash as they ran from tree to tree, stopping in front of one. Jane gaped at the yellow piss pushing out of him. He didn't even bother to raise a leg, he just stood there. -
He's a living being, -
Jane thought. -
He pisses and shits wherever he wants, whenever. -

She felt a searing pleasure, regretting not keeping him inside of the house. She could have locked him in there. Maybe he would've shat on the bed and in the bathtub, and if she lifted him, maybe he would've shat in the sink, right underneath the
ONLY HUMANS SPEAK
sign. Jane thought about how she was watching Cookies live his life, binded to her through poverty, and how she could change it. She yanked him in the opposite direction. This felt mysteriously, devastatingly good.

Back at home, Otis would have drunk himself into sightlessness. He'd want the same things he always did. What didn't he want? He'd talk dirty; make troublesome observations like
your cunt is in my hand.
He'd unwind her; she'd let some blood. But then he'd go to sleep. Jane trilled with anticipation, thinking of all of the things she could do to Cookies.
You little shit,
she said out loud.
I have you now.

O
tis heard Jane and Cookies come in through the broken back door. Taking care of another animal wasn't so hard now, was it? He heard that bitch yap meaninglessly. Then nothing.

What do you want for Christmas?
he called out. Christmas was in ten days. Yesterday, when he went for cocktails in the airport bar with Jenny or Marlene, he picked up a copy of the
Sky Mall
catalog somebody had left behind in a booth. It advertised things Jane would have liked. Like a carbonation machine. Christmas was the time when people thought they needed things they didn't.

I want to leave,
said Jane.

Leave?
he asked.

Leave,
whispered Jane.

You can't leave,
said Otis.
I've tied our Hearts together.
He reached under the sofa for his needle and eyelash-size Baggie. In a minute, everything would turn to cloudscapes. And Jane leaving would be even funnier than it was now. She would never leave. And if she did, she would always come back.

H
ow'd you get here?
asked Jane.

Drove,
said Claudio. The limo was outside.
You didn't take the flight I sent tickets for.

I was going to,
said Jane, and she really was, because the tickets were free and Jane couldn't resist what was given to her, but Otis had torn up the tickets before she could use them. This was a felony, but Jane didn't know for sure, as she'd had only a quick look at the envelope. And while it said her name, it said Otis's address. And all Jane had was a name, not an address.

Is anybody home?

Not for a few hours.

Can you pack a bag in a few minutes?
he asked her, with a sense of urgency he normally reserved for less delicate emergencies.

Where are we going?

Home.
He sounded like he knew where it was. Like it was more than just a place deep inside them, a place neither could bear to go.

Okay,
she said, wandering into her bedroom, opening a few drawers. She didn't know what she needed or if there was anything. Her things were Otis's, and they called it sharing. She came back with Cookies.

Who's this?

He's mine,
she said, kissing his head.
I take care of him.

Make sure he goes to the bathroom before we leave,
said Claudio.
I don't have the patience to stop when we're in a hurry.

And why are we in a hurry? Are we flying?

Nope,
said Claudio.
Driving. All the way back to New York.

What's in New York?

Well,
said Claudio,
like we said. You're going to get married, and then we'll be happy.

Do you promise, Claudio?

You have my word.

And what will happen to Otis?
asked Jane.

He's nobody,
Claudio said. Claudio came to New Orleans to save his sister, not to make sure Otis got his, because he had integrity, and more important, he had priorities.

Well,
said Jane,
good-bye then,
talking to the house. They had to keep moving.

- It had been so easy
, - thought Claudio, -
for her to leave. -
Was this what you called justice? The simplest kind of justice? A more hopeful man than he would say that somebody was on his side that day.

Are you sure you're not forgetting anything?
asked Claudio, the promise of destination in his face, plugging his keys into the ignition. The Beatles played.
Didn't anybody tell her? Didn't anybody see?
He sang along.

Sure I'm sure,
said Jane. She was. She had everything she needed.

B
ack in New York, Sawyer met Claudio and Jane at City Hall, holding a bouquet of slouched sunflowers. Claudio was the witness and the best man. There was no maid of honor.

Where's your wife?
asked Jane.

Uh, sick,
said Claudio.

Jane's eyes broadened, like she'd never considered that other people in the world besides her might ever be sick.

If you want, you can change into this.
Claudio lifted a white gown out of a bag, a tawdry nebula of fabric sprouting from its hips.
It's your size, I think. It's pretty,
he said, in a hesitant way an unstylish heterosexual man would speak of the women's garments he thinks are necessary to have an opinion about.

Bernice, who smelled like vanilla Dunkaroos dip and who managed the secondhand store next door to his record shop, had given it to him a week ago. Bernice sometimes came in to hang out, and Claudio found her good, harmless company. She even looked like her name would be Bernice, with her obesity and filbert-shaped eyes and Kmart wardrobe. Claudio sometimes confided in her but protected his psychological discharges in cloaks of false conditions. For instance, he'd told her last week that his second cousin from Pensacola, Florida, was getting married but needed a wedding dress because she was basically penniless.

This one belonged to a woman who just died,
Bernice had said.
Her mother brought it in,
flaunting the hanger like she was one of Bob Barker's beauties on
The Price Is Right
.

Isn't it pretty? Somebody could use this again after it's cleaned.
Claudio had smirked at the plumage. Had it been a happy marriage? Had death parted them or something before?

You're doing the right thing,
Claudio had said to Sawyer three minutes before the ceremony. Sawyer's eyes shimmered with mitochondrial-size bits of moisture. As if he didn't already know that!

Where the government fails, family steps in,
Sawyer said to his (soon to be doubled) brother-in-law.

I'll repay you for this. I owe you. I owe Noah too, despite his having no idea.

You don't owe someone if you'd do the same thing in their place.
Sawyer would do this, and then Sawyer would return to his home with Noah like it was just another regular day, like one of them had not signed on for a lifetime of supplying housing rights and employment rights and life-and-death rights to a stranger. He'd never lied to Noah before, not even about anything little.

Jane wore jeans and a windbreaker. She carried perfumes of the street, reedy and itinerant. Claudio walked his sister down the aisle. The aisle was just a space between rows of City Hall seats. They could fit only when they walked single file.

I do,
said Jane. She started to feel a little bit married.

I do,
said Sawyer. He thought to himself, -
I'm saving her life.
-

Oaths were taken. Sawyer kissed Jane with duty, a nonsense kiss, continuing thinking, -
I'm rescuing a family
-
(
in an urgent, dissociated way—the way a mother would call 9-1-1 and say
a boy is choking
instead of
my boy is choking).
Jane tasted like a cigarette.

-
What a family I have, -
thought Claudio.

M
arriage is supposed to be the happiest day of a bride's life. When Jane was the bride, it was the worst day of her life. The minute she saw Sawyer, she felt like lying down. She felt like she was at a bar where the bartender kept refilling her drink, more and more, even after she told him she was done, until her sleeves and hair stank of rum. Jane's old roommate at Pine Rest, a girl with a catalog of personalities named Lisa, Stacy, and Maisy, had once asked her,
would you rather be the only one sober or the only one drunk?
Jane hadn't known. She'd just known she didn't like being alone.

Sawyer was perfect. He was too handsome for her, too kind. A scholar. She wondered if Claudio had told Sawyer what he was in for. If he'd told him that she was crazy. Sawyer had sunflowers for her. She didn't know where he'd gotten them from or how big they'd grow or if they'd still grow despite being uprooted. She wanted to rip them apart because he deserved a woman who knew about botany and astronomy and perfumeries and other beautiful things.