The Promised World (50 page)

Remembering this is too hard; I can’t sit in this restaurant anymore. I tell him good-bye, and then I’m running between the booths and outside, across the street, back to the place Willie and I call home for now.

“Patty,” he says, touching my elbow. He has caught up with me outside of my room door, and he’s so close I can feel his breath on my hair.

“Go away,” I stammer.

“You don’t want that.” He turns me around to face him; his hands are on my shoulders. “You don’t want that,” he says again, looking in my eyes as though he’s willing it to be true.

I don’t pull away when he gathers me in his arms and whispers, “I love you.” I know he means it. For so many years, his love was the one thing I could count on, the one thing I knew would never change. And he let me get closer to him than anybody ever had; he let me see him be weak. Only I knew that he sobbed for fifteen minutes when his best friend got his throat cut in a bar fight. Only I knew that he fell on his knees and screamed to God for help when I was standing on the rail of the Lewisville River Bridge, about to jump, because I couldn’t live without him and I couldn’t stand our life.

After a while a businessman drives up in a dusty Plymouth. He’s fiddling with his bags, trying not to stare at us. Rick lowers his voice and says, “Let’s go in your room. Just for a few minutes,” and I put in the key as an answer. But before I open the door, I look at him, remind him this is just for a few minutes, and he nods.

The hotel room is small and cramped with ugly, square furniture, but the mess of Willie’s toys and clothes make it seem softer, more colorful. His little blanket is lying in a heap on the floor between the bed and the dresser. Rick picks it up, quickly passes it over his face, inhales, before setting it on the dresser. Mama bought the blanket and Willie’s favorite stuffed animal, the green beagle with the blue-and-white cap he sleeps with while I’m at work—even though she didn’t want me to have Willie. She was holding the presents when she showed up at the hospital when Willie was two days old. She’d joined AA; she said she was there to take us home.

“He’s beautiful,” Rick says, as he fingers a picture of Willie and me that sits by the bolted-down television. “He looks like you.”

I know that isn’t true but I don’t say it. I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him. He’s moving towards me and I know he will touch me if I don’t stop him.

Mama used to say that Rick and I were nothing but a physical attraction—this was whenever she was sober enough to remember who he was. She was wrong, but the physical attraction was undeniable. Even after three years of living together, we still fell on each other pretty much every time we were alone.

He’s kneeling in front of me; his hands are resting on my hair. He’s mumbling, “You look so good,” and he’s leaning forward, but I’m telling myself I’ll stop him before it goes much further. But I don’t stop him as he puts his lips on my neck and down to my shoulders and then down lower, giving soft kisses through my shirt to my breasts. After a while his hands are moving on my thighs; he whispers, “This is my dream,” and I realize I’m losing the will to stop him. Then I hear Willie’s laughter and I go rigid. He and Irene are at the door.

“Shit,” I mutter, and jump up. My hands are straightening out my shirt and shorts; Rick is standing too.

“Well, hey, it took you long enough,” Irene says, when I throw open the door. “It sure is gloomy in here,” she adds, walking to the blinds and pulling them open with a screech. She spins around and sees him but he doesn’t look at her. He’s too busy watching Willie, who has run over and is hanging on my leg.

I pick him up and he feels heavy, sleepy. I ask Irene if he had a nap and she shakes her head. “I drove him all over town, but he never conked.”

“Mama,” he says, and buries his face in my shoulder as he points his little finger at Rick. They have the same eyes, eyes so big and brown and soft they seem to absorb you when you look at them.

After a minute, I snap on the TV and set him in front of it. When I introduce Rick to Irene, she walks over and sticks out her hand. “So you’re Willie’s father,” she blurts out, and I want to kick her, but Willie doesn’t notice.

Rick nods and shakes her hand but he doesn’t say anything. He stands with his arms crossed while Irene smiles and talks and tries to figure him out.

“Well, I guess I better go wake up Harry,” Irene finally says. Harry is her boyfriend, our bass player. It’s three o’clock in the afternoon; as usual, the guys in the band stayed up all night jamming. Irene calls herself a day person and she likes me because I am too—now that I have Willie.

When we get to the door, I thank her for taking care of Willie, but she grabs my arm and pulls me outside. “Wow, Patty,” she says. “He’s really something.”

While she’s telling me how cute Rick is, I’m looking through the door, trying to see what he’s doing with Willie. I don’t feel annoyed with Irene though. She’s a good friend; six nights a week, she sits in my room and watches Willie while the band plays. She tells me she doesn’t want to come to the club anyway, she’s sick of music. She also says she’s tired of being on the road with Harry, that she’s going back to Kansas City soon and get herself a nice place, settle down, find a real job rather than making jewelry for peanuts like she does now. I listen but I know she isn’t serious. Irene adores Harry. She says he’s the only man who can make her laugh even when she’s furious.

“I guess this is a lot for you to deal with, honey.” She’s squinting now, worried. She knows Rick was in jail but she doesn’t know why. At some point, she thinks to ask if I need her to send Harry over to throw him out. Harry is six-three and weighs at least 250 pounds. Irene calls him her gangster boy because he’s black and he’s from New York.

“You know Harry won’t really hit him,” she whispers, “but he can look the part.”

I tell her no, I don’t need that, and she pats my arm. She says to give a yell if I need anything at all.

Before she walks across the parking lot, she turns back and gives me another worried look. I shrug like this is no big deal. I can handle it. I can handle anything.

When I get back into the room, Willie is lying flat on his back, sound asleep. The TV is off and the air conditioner has shut down; it’s so quiet I can hear Willie breathing. Rick is sitting next to him, lightly stroking Willie’s fine blond hair. Blond hair is the only thing Willie got from me, and Mama says it’s bound to darken before he’s much older. Willie’s eyebrows are dark already, like Rick’s.

“He’s so little,” Rick whispers, and smiles. “It’s hard to believe he’s two.”

I tell Rick his birthday was back in February, but I don’t talk about what it was like that day: miserable and raining and nothing like what I’d hoped for him. We had to make five hundred miles by six o’clock in order to have time to set up for the gig; Willie had to eat his birthday cake in the van. I told Willie we’d go to McDonald’s for dinner as soon as we got into town but then there wasn’t a McDonald’s, at least not on the main drag. Harry tried to cheer him up, told him Burger King was better.

“This is no ordinary hamburger shack, Willie,” Harry said. “It’s a palace. We’re in the presence of the Supreme Lord. The Burger Duke? No. The Burger Prince? No. The Burger Master himself. The Burger Emperor. The most holy, Burger King.”

Willie looked confused but he laughed because Harry was grinning and wearing a cardboard Burger King crown. When he opened his toy though, he started crying again. It wasn’t a Hot Wheels like they had at McDonald’s, it wasn’t even a toy to his way of thinking, it was just a coloring book.

Poor guy, I thought, as I pulled him on my lap. The only things he wanted for his birthday were a Happy Meal from McDonald’s and a tricycle. He got the tricycle, but he hadn’t been able to ride it yet; it was packed in the back of the van between Dennis’s drums.

Later that night after the gig, I sat in our hotel room, drinking a beer, making a list of my accomplishments on the back of a napkin. I was desperate to convince myself that I was doing all right. That I was making a life for Willie and me, even if it wasn’t perfect. Even if it wasn’t close to perfect.

One: I hadn’t touched any drugs, not even weed, since the day I found out I was pregnant. Two: I’d worked hard and completed my GED before Willie was born, so he’d never have to feel like his mother wasn’t good enough. Three: I’d been there for him day in, day out for two years. Four: I’d supported the two of us.

I wrote down the number five but I was stuck; no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t think of anything else. I was near tears; I’d planned on a list of at least ten accomplishments. As I drank another beer, I stared at number four—supporting the two of us—wondering if it was the reason I was drawing a blank, if it was messing up my list the same way it had messed up Willie’s birthday.

Rick is still running his fingers through Willie’s hair. “You like all this traveling?” he says, looking around the room and then at me. “You always said you wanted to stay in one place. A home.”

I did say that, Rick is right. I didn’t even want to leave our first apartment, run-down though it was. He made me move to the new complex outside of Lewisville, so we could have a dishwasher and air-conditioning. I cried when his friends came to load up the furniture.

Of course he remembers that, but now I tell him the traveling isn’t that bad. Then I shrug. “I don’t have a choice.”

It feels true. No question, it was worse the first year of Willie’s life. Even though Mama had stayed sober and turned into a surprisingly good granny, it was still hard. I worked nights as a dishwasher while Mama stayed with Willie. My feet ached all the time, my breasts leaked milk, and my take-home pay wasn’t even a hundred and twenty a week. But then I saw Fred’s ad in the
Kansas City Star,
and I got up my nerve and went to the audition. By the time I told him about Willie, we’d been rehearsing for two months and were ready to hit the road. He frowned and shook his head but he didn’t complain. I decided not to tell him that I wouldn’t turn twenty-one for another month. According to the press release he sends out to the clubs, I’ve been singing professionally for five years, I studied vocals at the University of Missouri, and I won a singing contest in Kansas City while I was still a teenager.

Only the last thing is true. I did win that contest. Rick drove me to the auditorium and he sat in the front row. I’d been nervous all morning, but as soon as the piano started, I forgot everything but the music they’d given me to sing. It was a wonderful Gershwin song, “I Loves You Porgy”; I just wanted to do it justice, get it right. And I did get it right, I knew that when I hit the last note perfectly and the applause started, loud and furious, like a thunderstorm waking me from a dream. I was smiling, bowing. I felt alive.

All the contestants were supposed to wait in the hall while the committee decided the winner. I was standing down a little bit from everybody else when Rick came up. He hugged me and said how proud he was, but then he took my hand and pulled me around the corner and down another hall.

“I have to go back.” There was no one around but still I whispered. “Rick—”

“Watching you… I can’t wait.” He pushed my hand on the crotch of his jeans. “Feel that?”

Before I could object, he pulled me inside a janitor’s closet and shut the door. I was still sweating but I shivered when I felt the cold steel bucket with the dirty mop against my leg.

I could hear the loud laughter of one of the other contestants, an older girl named Elizabeth. They all seemed to know each other—most of them were friends, taking music classes at the college. When one of the guys had asked where I studied, I told him the name of my old high school. Then he asked me the name of the music teacher, and I found myself stammering like an idiot. I’d dropped out in the middle of freshman year, before I could try out for chorus.

“I don’t belong here anyway,” I said softly, more to myself than to Rick. He was kissing my neck. His response was a groan.

By the time I heard them announce my name over the loudspeaker, I’d forgotten that I cared. Rick heard it too and put his hand over my mouth. “Keep it down,” he said, and laughed. “What will they think if they hear their little contest winner doing this?”

Afterwards, Rick went with me to pick up the certificate and the five hundred dollars I won. I was leaning against him when one of the judges asked what I was going to do with the money, if I would use it to further my singing career.

“She’ll probably buy crap for the apartment,” Rick said. He was smiling. “That’s what she does with the money I give her.”

I didn’t say anything. I felt ridiculous, but it was true. Whenever I got any money, I ended up spending it on our place. It seemed like there was always something else we needed: spaghetti strainer, soap dish, laundry basket, welcome mat. Always one more thing and then our place would be a regular home.

It was less than a week after the concert when Rick and his friends were arrested during a heroin deal. And then, at the end of the month, my period didn’t come. For a long time, I winced whenever I thought about the possibility that Willie had been conceived in a janitor’s closet. Later I felt like maybe that Gershwin tune had something to do with it. Like one of my eggs came down, ready and happy, because it heard that gorgeous music.

“I can’t believe he’s real,” Rick is saying, touching Willie’s pink, dimpled knee. “Our kid.”

Rick leans down and lightly kisses his forehead. After a minute, he sits up straighter, reaches for my hand, brings it to his lips. Whispers that he loves me. That he has to have me with him again. Me and Willie too.

I stand up and motion for him to follow me into the bathroom. When I shut the door behind us, I tell him it’s time to leave now. He starts to reach for me but I back up against the wall. As he comes closer, I tell him I can’t be with him anymore. I’ve changed. And when he grabs me anyway, pressing his body against mine, licking my ear, I pull away and tell him a lie. I say there’s somebody else now, I’m sorry. Then I whisper that if he doesn’t leave, I’ll have to call the cops.