The Girl from Charnelle (26 page)

Although past midnight, it was still hot and humid. The beach was deserted, the sky clear. If you knew how, you could navigate by the stars. They walked along the shore and then sat on the dune above the tide and studied the waves rolling in, and when the waves broke into white phosphorescence, she began to imagine the Gulf of Mexico as a woman dancing in an elaborate black dress, trimmed in white lace, spinning in the dark to a music that emanated from a churning core beneath the water.

“Yeah, I guess I can see that,” said John when she tried to explain it. “That's a nice thought. Let's dance with her.”

They dropped their clothes and waded into the surf, out past where she felt comfortable moving in the dark tides. The water here swirled and sucked and pulled you out, away, but John was here with her, and they didn't go too deep, the water never rising, except once, above her neck. They saw the white crests coming in toward them and would hop through the waves. He pulled her to him in the troughs of the waves and kissed her as they bobbed.

Inside, after they toweled off, they didn't make love again but slept naked on top of the sheets. That, too, seemed new and right and welcomed, and they did not wake, despite the light in the windows, until well past dawn, when the sun shone unapologetically on them both.

 

For the next two days, the mornings and afternoons were lazy and hot and wet. They lay on towels under beach umbrellas or directly under the sun, or
waded in the water, or built sand castles, or walked, for miles it seemed, along the crowded beach, and they talked long and easily. She told him more about her friends, described Marlene and Debbie, how tall and gangly Debbie would start wheezing with asthma at the sight of a boy she liked, or how cupid-faced Marlene loved to tell jokes and could do dead-on impressions of their teachers. She told him about Manny and her younger brothers, how hard it sometimes was to take care of them all, how Manny with his preening and obscene taunting and general jack-assedness sometimes irritated the hell out of her, and she told him more about Gloria and her children, and how she didn't much like Jerome. But she didn't tell him that Gloria knew their secret, and disapproved, though Laura felt guilty for keeping this from him.

He talked, too, and it was really the first time, she realized, that she learned much about him. Their time together in Charnelle had been restricted to a hectic hour now and again, and their conversation had been focused more on logistics, which had its own kind of allure—getting from one place to another without being detected, the delight in being with each other again and their plans for their next meeting, the concentrated pleasures of sex. Here, though, with what seemed like an expanse of time yawning before them, they were more relaxed. He told her about growing up in Pampa and Amarillo, about his father, who was always gone on railroad runs, and the effect of his death on their family, especially John's mother, whom he loved but didn't talk to much anymore, and his two older brothers, who had moved to Phoenix to open a steak-and-barbecue restaurant.

He told her that he'd been welding for over a decade, and he believed he should be promoted at Charnelle Steel, that he didn't think they valued his skills as they should, but that was the case with a lot of the workers there, including her father.

“Sometimes in the summer, with the thick suit and helmet, you feel like you're going to suffocate,” he said, rubbing more suntan lotion on her back. “I hate that feeling, and I've sworn a thousand times that I was going to quit.”

“Why don't you?”

“I don't know,” he said. “Maybe I will. But really it's just bitching. I like it when they let me get out for whole days at a time, taking care of the fix-it runs. I'm on my own then, and people are usually grateful. That's good. And I still love the way the torch feels in my hand, the way I can turn
metal into this thick liquid and move it around, make it do whatever I want. That still just flat-out amazes me. I love knowing I can do that, that I'm good at it.”

“How were you able to get off work?” she asked, her eyes closed, enjoying the heat and sound of the waves, the feel of his hand on her back and legs. She had meant to ask him earlier, during the trip, but in the excitement she'd forgotten.

“I had days coming because of some weekend work I'm doing on the new bank.”

“How are you going to explain it to Anne?” she asked, and then wished she could take back her words. Even saying his wife's first name made her feel uneasy.

“I'll tell her I went fishing,” he said. “Don't worry about it.”

About his wife and the boys, he didn't say much. But Laura had grown more and more curious about their relationship, had wondered about the tension between them at the picnic in July—and about that kiss. And she had been surprised, too, when they visited while she was sick and Mrs. Letig had said that he hadn't done any artwork since before Jack was born. Whenever the topic of his wife came up, there was a whiff of dissatisfaction in his voice, and she had to admit that she clung to that whiff, took a private scornful delight in it, but she was afraid to investigate those feelings too deeply.

She relished the fact that he appeared genuinely interested in and entertained by her stories and urged her to keep talking, and the two days seemed like a long, unbroken river of words from her, punctuated by body-surfing and naps in the sand, by meals and showers and sex.

The next morning they drove into downtown Galveston. They were looking for a restaurant when Laura spotted an art-supply store.

“Hey,” she asked, “did you bring your watercolors?”

“I threw them away. They dried out.”

“Let's go in there,” she said.

“No.”

“Yeah,” she said, “come on.” She found a medium-size sketch pad, the same brand he'd had at Lake Meredith. “Let me buy this for you.”

“No, don't spend your money.”

“I want to,” she said. She'd brought ten dollars with her—his wife's money!—and this didn't cost much. “Really, let me get you this. You should paint the ocean!”

She convinced him to buy some charcoal pencils and watercolors, and though he was reluctant, she saw a flicker of excitement. Encouraging him to use his talent made her feel closer to him. His wife probably didn't do that, didn't understand that part of him.

 

He drew pictures of her on the sand, in the water, in bed. At first she was nervous about it, but he didn't make her pose, just kept encouraging her to talk, and then he'd show her a picture—a few strokes, the lines of her face and body, the colors soft and blended, romantic. She felt proud of the pictures, as if she'd inspired him.

“Do you ever think about your mother?” he asked later that day.

It was near dusk, and they were on the beach, he on a towel, she at the shifting boundary where the water lapped against the sand. She was dropping large, liquidy dollops of mud on top of her legs. She didn't answer at first, though she felt that in some way her own words had been moving in this direction, circling around it until she and John had struck through to a different, deeper ring of intimacy. She had rarely mentioned her mother, but the way he asked made her think that he'd given it quite a bit of thought.

“You don't have to talk about her if you don't want to,” he said.

But she did want to, and she told him about the day that her mother left, how odd and unsettling it was, and then she started telling him about all the other things, the things she had turned over and over in her mind, that appeared to lead up to that moment. The strange silences, the cryptic conversation about the ease of drowning, Gloria's elopement, and how Laura had found her mother crying by herself in the barn at Aunt Velma's, the same place where Uncle Unser had hanged himself, how she was bleeding, her yellow dress torn. How Greta's craziness upset some delicate balance in the family, set everyone on edge, made her mother more wary and distant, got her talking about “nature's way.” And then the lightning struck, and her mother waded through the branches of the fallen tree as if hypnotized, touching the warm, charred bark and repeating, like a chant, the word “hot.” Somehow all this led to that next day, when she walked to the bus station with that tattered brown suitcase in her hand. Gone.

Laura had not thought so much or so vividly about these things in a long time, not even when Gloria was back home, nor had she ever put these
incidents together for herself in precisely this way, with this string of connections. It was as if this particular context—being away from Charnelle, the openness of the water, the easy rhythm of the beach, the way her passion for John had bloomed inside her—had somehow allowed her to finally say it all out loud, and saying it was a form of remembering but also a way of creating sense. The meanings seemed to appear before her as they never had before. In fact, these words spilling out changed her memories, brought them to the surface, unlike before, when her mother's disappearance had been something inside her that she touched silently and delicately, like a sore tooth, but she couldn't quite reach the actual source of the pain.

Then John asked her if she recalled any good times, last memories of her mother that were pleasant, that she could hold on to. Laura closed her eyes, listening to the comforting sound of the waves, and thought for a minute, and then she pictured their final Easter down at Aunt Velma's. It was the last time she could remember her family happy together, all of them leaning over the balcony at the Paladian Theater, waving and watching little Rich jumping up and down like a Munchkin on the stage. And then she thought of the night before that, when she had fallen asleep on the floor listening to the New York City Boys' Choir, and how it was suddenly dark when she awoke and her mother was there, crouching down by her side, covering her gently with a blanket, leaning over to kiss her, her hair falling around them both. That was the last time her mother told her that she loved her.

“Why do you think she left?” John asked.

For that, though, she had no answer. She merely started to cry, as if even the question were still too much to bear.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“It's okay. Let's get something to eat.”

She rose from the beach and dashed into the water to clean the muddy sand from her hands and legs and bathing suit. When she came back, he showed her a quick drawing of her in the water, slapping her butt. It was comical, and she laughed, but then the drawing blew out of his hand and into the water, so that when she retrieved it, her body was smeared into an indecipherable blur.

They ate dinner again at Rotten Red's and sipped margaritas; she liked them better than the champagne from New Year's and much better than the beer she'd tasted. The margaritas made her head spin lightly at first but then warmed her and even made her feel more aware, more intense, and she felt
a new empathy for drunkards, could see how you might get hooked on this feeling, like poor Donna Somersby, the woman who reportedly never left her home except to buy bottles of gin from the Armory.

 

The next morning they woke early and swam, ate a quick breakfast, and then he said, “Let's go to Houston.”

She put on a loose-fitting sundress, and he put on his jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, and they headed out past mile after mile of oil refinery that stank of methane and chemicals and hot grease, on into downtown Houston, where they ate lunch at a barbecue joint.

“Know of a company that needs a welder?” John asked the bartender, a short, bald dumpling of a man with buckteeth and wire-rimmed glasses that magnified his eyes.

“Ha. Who doesn't need a welder? If you're any good, you could work all the hours you wanted, buddy.”

“Like where?”

“Jason's Steel, for starters. They have the best welders and pay damn good, including overtime. You looking for a job?”

“I don't know. Maybe.”

“You from around here?”

“No, the Panhandle.”

She sipped her cherry soda and listened carefully. For the first time since they had been on this trip, she felt a wave of fear wash over her. Was this why he'd come down here? Were he and his family going to move? He hadn't said anything to her about this.

“Of course, you could get yourself a job with any oil-rigging crew you wanted. They always need good welders.”

“I've done that kind of work. It ain't fun.”

“Pays well, though.”

“Depends on what you call ‘well.'”

“The offshore rigs pay about three times as much as a regular welding job. A man could stash away a little nest egg in a few years if he could put up with it.”

“How much?”

“My brother's best friend is a welder. He made a bundle last year with Texaco.”

“No shit? As a welder?”

The man looked at the wedding ring on John's hand and then at Laura. She could tell he was guessing her age. “What about your wife there? She looking for work?”

“Nope,” John said. “Just me.”

 

In the afternoon they needed to get out of the humid city heat, which was not rescued by ocean breezes. They held hands and walked inside the stores with ceiling fans whirring like helicopter blades. As they crossed the plaza, beneath a grove of tall poplar trees, she asked tentatively, “Are you going to move?”

“What do you mean?”

“You were talking to the man back there like you were looking for a job.”

“Just curious.” And then he said, pointing to a small boutique sandwiched between larger stores, “Look at that.” The sign proclaimed
MADELINE'S LINGERIE
. In the shop window was a female mannequin dressed in a pink silk nightgown. “Come on,” he said.

“No, we can't go in there.”

“Why not?”

“We just can't.”

“Who's going to care? They don't give a damn who we are. Come on.”