The Sleeping and the Dead (14 page)

“My mom dated a crop duster pilot once.” I didn't know why I was bringing this up. Maybe it was the dentist coming out in me again. “He was in an accident.”

“Fatal?”

“Eventually.”

“It happens.”

“Even if you're careful?”

“You're flying along and you flush a covey of quail. Or you get a freak gust of wind. Or just about anything you don't expect. When your number's up…”

“I don't believe in fate,” I said.

“You know the Red Baron?”

“Sure. He makes frozen pizzas.”

“Manfred von Richthofen. Greatest fighter pilot of the First World War. You know how he died?”

“Downed by Snoopy in his Sopwith Camel?”

“A bullet through the heart. A one-in-a-million shot by a soldier on the ground. His number was up.”

“Well, I guess that's settled,” I said. “No point arguing about it.”

James shrugged and ate a mouthful of potatoes. I shredded a biscuit on my plate. He said, “It all depends on what you want out of life. I take comfort in the idea that some things are just meant to be. Nothing you can do or say will change what is supposed to happen.”

Our waitress stopped by with the check. “Y'all want dessert?”

“Not me.” James didn't want anything, either. The waitress seemed relieved to drop the check on the table and disappear.

“I don't know about you,” I said, “but I love Snoopy.”

He balled up his napkin and laughed.

 

16

W
HY DID WE COME HERE
, anyway? This wasn't Thanksgiving dinner. Not a real one. We might as well have popped a bag of popcorn, made toast, and watched a movie. My mother was right—who goes on a date on Thanksgiving?

On our way out, I stopped in front of the giant fireplace to feel its heat. James stood beside me, staring into the fire. What was he thinking now? I used to be a good judge of these things. I could watch a guy for a little while and tell what he was thinking, like Holmes or Dupin, deducing his thoughts in a way that almost seemed like mind reading. I wasn't so good at it anymore. His face was a blank to me. I was having a hard time penetrating this man of such stark contrasts. Did the smell of a winter fire make him sentimental, or just mental? Was he having second thoughts about this whole thing?

Finally, he looked at me and asked, “Ready to go?”

I followed him out to the country store area of the restaurant. While he stood in line to the pay the bill, I examined a shelf of retro Cracker Jacks and tins of Charles Chips. We met by the John Deere merchandise display and James excused himself to visit the men's room. I browsed the retro Coca-Cola merchandise. While examining a Howdy Doody cap gun, I almost tripped over my husband Reed squatting behind a bin of plastic toys. He acted like he was tying his shoe, but he was wearing loafers.

“Jesus, Reed, what are you doing here?” I hissed, gooselike, at him. He stood up. He still looked like a Republican governor with presidential aspirations—tall, broad-shouldered, dark hair graying at the temples. Mr. Fantastic himself, able to bend in impossible contortions to make that million-dollar sale. I saw his face wherever I went in town—on billboards, For Sale signs in people's yards, even advertisements on grocery carts. It was impossible to escape him. But I never expected to find him hiding in a Cracker Barrel.

He assumed an air of injured dignity. “What am I doing here? What are you doing here?”

“Having Thanksgiving dinner. At least I have an excuse. Are you following me?” His whole shitty family lived in town. They were old Germantown money. All two hundred of them. They didn't need to visit a tourist trap on Thanksgiving.

“As a matter of fact, I'm buying a pumpkin pie,” he said. “I saw you coming out. I was just trying to avoid a confrontation.”

“You never could bullshit me, Reed.” If he was following me, it stood to reason that the person watching me pee at Bosco's might be working for him, too. What didn't stand was why he'd follow me at all. We'd been separated for four years.

“You always were a paranoid bitch.” He tried to laugh and move past me, but I shoved him into the corner. He was easy to push around, even though he was a good eighteen inches taller than me.

“I'm not paranoid,” I said. “I just want to know if you're following me. Did you send one of your sisters over to my apartment last night?”

“Don't be ridiculous, Jacqueline!”

“Excuse me,” said an old lady who had come up behind me. She was about five feet tall and looked like the woman who used to babysit me and my brother. She was the official Cracker Barrel house detective, there to keep an eye on the kitsch so the rednecks wouldn't walk off with a refrigerator pig. “Is there a problem?”

“No problem.” I stepped back from Reed. “Except this jackass is following me.”

“I'm not following her. She's my wife.” Reed smiled, turning on the salesman charm. The old woman almost flushed. She had probably seen his commercials on television.

“We're separated, asshole!” I shouted at him.

“Ma'am, this is a family restaurant. If you don't lower your voice, I'm going to have to ask you to leave,” the old biddy warned in a pleasant voice.

“I'm just waiting for the pumpkin pie I ordered,” Reed told her.

“I was leaving anyway. If he follows me, call the cops,” I said to the old woman. She looked soft and grandmotherly, but she had the eyes of somebody who'd seen it all. She wasn't about to take any shit off me.

James exited the bathroom and spotted us in the corner. He sidled up beside me and took my hand. “Are you OK?” he asked in a low voice.

“This is my estranged husband, Reed Lyons.”

“I know who he is.” He didn't sound especially friendly, either.

Reed turned up his thin, supercilious nose. “Is this your
date
?” he asked me.

“Him? Not exactly. He's my john. He bought me dinner. I'm going to blow him for dessert.”

Reed rolled his eyes, and the old lady shouted “Ma'am!” in a schoolteacher voice that brought everybody up short. She grabbed my elbow with her marshmallow fingers.

“I'm leaving.” I tried not to look at James. I didn't want to see the mortification on his face. “If I catch you following me again, Reed, I'll have you busted. I still have friends in the department.”

“One friend, from what I hear, Jacqueline. Just one.”

“One is enough to pop your buttons. Come, James.” I pulled my arm out of Grandma's death grip and headed for the door.

 

17

W
E WALKED TO
J
AMES'S CAR
, dodging the traffic still circling the parking lot, and climbed in without either of us saying a word. He backed out of the parking space, though they barely gave him room to back up, and we drove away to the sound of angry honking as some interloper dove into our empty spot.

We were on the interstate before I was cool enough to speak. I tried to apologize.“'S OK.” He shrugged.

“No really. I'm sorry, Reed just…”
Slow down. Slow down.
Not too much. This guy was still damaged merchandise. He didn't need me adding to his troubles. “He gets to me,” I finally said.

“I could see that.” He drove awhile. There wasn't much traffic, but it was slow going because of the rain. “You want to talk about what happened?”

“What's there to talk about?”

“I just thought…”

“I left him about four years ago. Maybe five. I don't remember. He won't let me go.”

“What happened? Did you catch him cheating?”

“He caught me cheating.”

“You left him because he caught you cheating?”

“No, I left him because he wouldn't let it go. He didn't want a divorce, but he wouldn't let me forget what I did, either. Every time I'd complain that he forgot to set out the hamburger for dinner, or he hadn't paid the lawn service, or whatever, he'd say,
Well, at least I wasn't fucking your best friend behind your back.
”

“I can see how that would get old,” James said.

“No shit.” We pulled into the parking lot behind my apartment. He turned off the engine and twisted in his seat to face me. I couldn't look at him. Sometimes this black rage would well up, from where I don't know. It was tooth-bared, nostrils-flared, lurking along the jungle trail down to the water hole. I wanted to get back at Reed. I wanted to see him wither.

I tried to put on a nice face and make a joke. “I've had a wonderful evening,” I said. “But this wasn't it.”

“Groucho Marx?” he asked. I shrugged. It wasn't very funny and he was being way too nice about it.

“If you don't mind my asking, how old are you?” I asked.

“Twenty-nine.”

Christ.
“So I could have been your babysitter.”

“I'd have liked that.”

“You wouldn't have liked me then. I was fat. You want to come upstairs?”

“For dessert?”

“You're hilarious.” I put my hand on the door handle, but he didn't move. He just sat there, looking at me. “I'm sorry if I embarrassed you.”

“You didn't. Honestly, I thought it was pretty funny.”

“What was funny?”

“You're like some kind of little fice or something.”

“What's a fice?”

“It's a type of a little dog that isn't afraid of anything.”

“So I'm a bitch,” I said.

“That's not what I said.”

“I know I'm a bitch. I'm a Cunt with a capital C. If you were me, you'd be one, too.” I tried to open the door but it was locked. I couldn't find the button to unlock it. I pressed one and the window went down.

“That's not what I said,” he repeated. He unlocked the doors from his side. “I thought I was going to have to pull you off his face.”

“Or maybe you thought it was cute. Do you think it's cute when I'm confronting my stalker?” What was I trying to do, run this guy off? That's what the police department counselor would have said. I opened the door and got out. It was pouring now, the hardest I'd seen it rain in a long time. I was soaked through in about three seconds. He sat in the car and looked at me through the windshield, his face distorted by the rain sheeting down the glass, like a portrait by Salvador Dalí, melted by time.

“Are you coming up or what?” I shouted.

He followed me inside. We stood soaked and dripping in the entryway under the yellow bug light, looking like drowned tourists. The entry was no bigger than a closet. I stood on the bottom step and my eyes were even with his. He shook the water out of his hair. I wanted to grab him and kiss him, rip off his wet clothes, but it smelled like an alley in there, so I started up.

At the top of the stairs I heard music playing. It wasn't the usual Tejano music from the mercado. It took me a minute to recognize it. I stopped at my door, because the sound was coming from my apartment—a grinding heavy-metal beat, and someone crying “
No! No!”
in a high-pitched voice. James's face was utterly inscrutable. I wondered if I was the only one hearing it.

But as I opened the door, Rob Halford loosed a primordial glass-shattering castrato scream in our faces. After an echoing pause, my stereo launched into the first metal-up-your-ass riff of the next track.

I hurried inside and grabbed the remote off the kitchen table. On the third push of the power button, the music shut off midscream. “What was that?” James asked as he closed the door.

“Old CD.” I tossed the remote on the table.

“Do you always go off and leave your music playing?”

I hadn't turned on my stereo in nearly two years. I didn't even know it was plugged in. It was a nice Pioneer system, not too big, with a five-disk changer, purchased during one of my flush periods when I was trying to get my shit together. For some reason, I had never pawned it.

“It must have turned itself on,” James said. “My garage door does that sometimes. I'll come home and it's standing wide open.”

As he looked around my little apartment, I began to see it with his eyes, how shabby it must look to somebody who drives a Lexus, even if it is five years old. The ratty old couch and the kitchen table with its chipped Formica and rusting legs, and the way the bathroom door wouldn't close all the way. I suddenly remembered I had left my clothes in the shower that morning and hoped he wouldn't ask to use the bathroom before I had a chance to bag them.

But what did I care? This is my life. It sucks, but it's all I have. If he doesn't like it, too bad. Like he never crawled into the shower to wash the vomit from his hair. Well, maybe not, but we all have our moments.

“Is it always this cold in here?” he asked.

“Only when it's this cold outside. You want to get out of those wet clothes?”

“Do you have something I can wear?”

“Not really.” I went in the bathroom and stripped and threw my wet clothes in the shower with the others. I toweled off as best I could with a cold damp towel I found on the floor. When I came out, he didn't look surprised by my nakedness.

I went in the bedroom to get the Leica. When I came out again, he was still standing there in his wet polo and dockers shivering. “Here.” I gave him the camera he'd sold me, or almost sold me.

“I thought you said you had the money.” There was a crack of panic in his voice.

I walked over to the couch and bent over with my elbows resting on the back, then looked at him over my shoulder. “Take a picture of me.”

“I'm not a photographer.” He set the Leica on the kitchen table, gently, almost reverently.

“You don't have to be a photographer. Just push the button on top.” I moved up close to him and started unbuckling his pants. “I want you to take my picture so I can send it to that husband of mine.”