Breaking and Entering (13 page)

Liberty dropped the tattered bamboo shade.

Teddy’s room was low-ceilinged and narrow. The walls were stained a muddy color, and there was a red rug on the floor. Half the ceiling was covered with the silver bears from Klondike Bar ice cream wrappers. Liberty took two wrappers from her pocket, found a paste pot in the desk and pressed two more bears upon the ceiling.

Teddy had begun collecting the wrappers after his mother had gone away. When she disappeared, he had first become deeply interested in cartography. He made elaborate maps and memorized airplane routes and bus schedules. He learned wilderness techniques and how to read a compass, determined to track his mother down. Then Duane had taken him aside for a little talk. He told Teddy that his mom had become a freak, that she had grown whiskers, and that he should hope that she never came back. If she came back, he should fight against her as though he were fighting against the forces of evil for his very life. Duane had told him (and he told him, he said, reluctantly) that if his mom came back it would likely be for no other purpose than to cut his little pecker off, put it on a key chain and present it to her girlfriend.

“Remember at the county fair last year, son, do you remember that tent we went into?”

“The Ambassadors from Mars were in that tent, Daddy.”

“Well, yeah, they was, but remember what was in there too was that individual who bit off hens’ heads.”

“I couldn’t see that too well, Daddy.”

“Well, that individual hates chickens like the way your momma hates us men now,” Duane said. “So forget momma,
son. Be on your guard, but put her right out of your mind.”

Not long after Duane’s metaphorical chat, Teddy began breathing oddly and wetting the bed and waking in the night with terrible dreams of something gaunt and bearded, like the person he had almost seen in the tent, chuckling and tearing at him, snipping off his fingertips with its teeth and pulling his toes out with its teeth in the same way he had been taught by Liberty to get the meat out of an artichoke leaf. In the night he imagined his mother calling to him … Teddeee … Teddeee … a pale stretched-out skinny sound … calling and laughing and groaning to him.

He decided he needed a little magical protection, something he could devise for himself, so he began collecting the silvery paper bears. The phalanx of bears would protect him when he slept, when he could not be on guard. Their thick cold coats would muffle the sounds of chuckling and tearing and calling. They had already caused the dreams to change their nature, and he felt that when he had gathered enough of the bears, when the ceiling was complete, the terrible dreams would stop.

The bears marched glittering across the ceiling. Teddy was getting there, Liberty thought. He was almost there.

Teddy rushed into the room. “Liberty!” he said. “Do you know that during the Second World War, the Americans were going to use bat bombs against Japan? They were going to tie little cylinders filled with napalm to the bats’ chests and drop thousands of them from airplanes. They would be in hibernation, but as they fell from the planes they’d wake out of hibernation and then they’d go into buildings and houses and after a few hours they’d blow up.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“I’m taking a course at the junior college called Oddities of War.” He took the egg out of his pocket and examined it. “Still with us,” he said. “You know, it’s hard to take care of an egg. A baby’s easier to watch than an egg, isn’t it, Liberty? It’s so much bigger. It would be hard to lose a baby. Some of the girls in my class have lost their eggs already. They think it’s a stupid assignment. Liberty, do you know that at that party Daddy and Janiella had, our pool got broken? Daddy broke it. He was just fooling around, Janiella said.”

“Let’s get out of here right away,” Liberty suggested.

“Yes!” Teddy said.

They waited at the end of the street for the bus. When the bus came, Clem leapt nimbly up the steps and settled himself on a seat beneath an advertisement for roach poison. Roaches were entering a Roach Motel, carrying little suitcases, little tennis racquets. They were wearing sunglasses and smiling.

The bus driver wore mirrored sunglasses, and there were comb marks in his hair. The big wheel moved smoothly through his hands. The bus driver loved his wheel. He would have taken it home at night with him if he could.

The only other passengers on the bus were three elderly women comparing the scenic designs on their bank checks. One had kittens, one had seashells, one had an old man and a small boy raking leaves together.

“The leaves are nice, but they don’t represent very well life in the South, what do you think?” the woman in the middle of the group said.

“Well, I’m from Cleveland,” the woman with the autumnal checks said. “I think it captures the nostalgia of a simpler time very nicely.”

“Oh, look at that
dog
,” the woman holding the seashell checks said.

One of her friends looked at Clem and frowned. “White dogs are so difficult to keep clean,” she said. “They show every speck of dirt. I had a white poodle once.” She placed her hand against her heart and rolled her eyes.

“I think Ethel has made the best choice,” the woman in the middle said, looking moodily at her own yellow kitten checks. “These shells are so refreshing. I can almost feel the ocean spray just looking at them.”

The three women stared at Clem. They began talking about their dead husbands.

“When Ernest passed away I was there by his side in the hospital and there was a napkin under his juice glass and I went out of the hospital with it,” Ethel said. “I left the room immediately with the napkin in my purse. It had sleigh bells printed on it because it was the holiday season.”

“Do you still have it?” the woman with the kitten checks said. She was a little embarrassed. She looked at her wrist-watch.

“I do,” Ethel whispered.

The woman from Cleveland gave a little grunt. “After my Harold died,” she said, “I found the most disturbing items at the bottom of his sock drawer.”

Her companions stirred in their seats.

“We always exchanged greeting cards on special occasions and there were cards there for the next five years, all signed by Harold and marked with the year. There were Christmas cards and Easter cards and Valentine’s Day cards and anniversary cards and birthday cards. And there was a get-well card for me in case, with no date on it …”—her eyes were
fixed on Clem’s blank, benign ones—“… and Harold had written on it, ‘Hope you get your pep back soon.’ ”

Liberty and Clem and Teddy got off at the children and dogs’ beach. There was the nude homosexual beach, the nude heterosexual beach, the surfing beach and the shelling beach, as well as the beaches that belonged to the condos and the beaches that belonged to the rich. It was all the same thin, sparkling ribbon, but mind and predilection had divided the areas as effectively as shark-infested inlets. Liberty and Teddy sat on lumpy sand. There had been a sandcastle contest there the day before and the beach was humpy with failures. The sand structure contest had become a highly competitive annual event. Nonprofessionals and children were being edged out. Often there were fights. Grown men in madras bathing trunks could be observed circling one another, dying to throw a paralyzing punch. Slim, freckled ladies would be kicking. Plumper ladies, screaming. There were categories and prizes. Participants weren’t satisfied with making space platforms and cattle herds anymore. They busied themselves with cathedrals and Rolls-Royces. The winner yesterday had been The Last Supper. Judas had even had red hair.

The day was sunny, the water calm. Tiny, endless waves died upon the shore. Liberty suppressed visions of cruising barracudas, undertows, cramps, heart attacks, kidnappers bearing down in shining cigarette boats.

“Look, Clem,” Teddy said, “there’s Hermann.”

A Doberman acquaintance of Clem’s trotted by. He was a gorgeous-looking animal, but overbred. He had narcolepsy. In the midst of high-spirited play, sometimes even while eating,
he would collapse as though hit on the head with a brick. He would have fallen asleep, deeply asleep. Who knows what he felt before he dropped? An indeterminate anxiety, a vague malaise, a sense of detachment, a revival of memories, a sense of harmony with the universe? He would wake up in a minute, several minutes perhaps. He had to take a tricyclic antidepressant daily so he wouldn’t get excited about things, perhaps triggering an attack. The Doberman ambled along and past them, his destination all about him.

“Poor Hermann,” Teddy said. He found some sticks and made a little awning with his T-shirt for the egg.

A woman in a large hat ran toward them down the beach, waving.

“There is someone who knows us,” Teddy said.

“Hi!” Sally Farrell said, falling down beside Liberty in a spray of sand. “Hi, everybody!” She kissed Liberty on the cheek. “I came down here to see the babies. I love the baby beach.”

Teddy looked at her with wide eyes.

“Don’t look at me too hard or you’ll wear me out,” Sally said, laughing.

He scrambled up and ran to the water.

“That didn’t scare him, did it?” Sally said, dismayed. “You’ve heard that before, haven’t you, you look at something too hard and you’ll wear it out? Maybe I don’t have a way with children. I brought my lunch. Do you want some of this sandwich? I’m making my own bread now, but I’m also trying to lose some weight. You know, I want to do different things these days.”

Sally exhibited her sandwich. Shredded carrots and a few raisins lay between two large pieces of underdone bread. The
bread was damp and pale, as though it had seen something terrible.

“Sally,” Liberty said. “How are you, Sally? How’s JJ?” She felt guilty that she had not kept up with the troubles of Sally and JJ.

JJ was a retired movie stuntman who owned the Gator Bar. During his career he had broken his right leg three times, his left leg half a dozen times and his back and his jaw bone twice each. He had been a highly respected stuntman. He was a tumbler and a horseman and did cars and motorcycles and helicopters, but he liked fire gags the best. He had a muscular, battered body and a big, well-formed head. He loved his bar, which was cool, dim and loud. The walls were covered with framed stills of incredible stunts. To garrulous regular patrons like Charlie, JJ would speak about skill and pride and bravery. The two of them would yell and shout about meeting Death man to man,
cojónes
to
cojónes
, about triumphant exits. JJ Farrell had grand plans for Death. Then he had a stroke. The light went out only to flicker back on again. JJ’s grand plans for Death went right down the pipe … Sally had been running the bar for the last month ever since JJ’s stroke. They’d been married for three months now.

“Well, I had all my moles taken off, notice?” Sally pushed her pleasant square face forward and waggled it. “Remember how I used to worry all the time about those moles? I didn’t have a worry in the world back then except those silly moles and they turned out to be nothing. Six big nothings. JJ’s back from Haiti. He went over there for the herbs and the voodoo, but the herbs and the voodoo didn’t work. Still, he’s better. He’s a lot better than he was when you saw him in the hospital.
Remember that! The guy on the other side of the curtain had cancer of the corneas. Cancer of the corneas, can you imagine! That hospital is so overcrowded. They send tourists someplace else now, they won’t even let them in. But JJ’s got his looks back. He doesn’t say much and he can’t use one leg and one arm, but the amazing thing is he’s got this permanent erection. He is just engorged all the time … I mean even when I help him out of the bathtub … especially when I help him out of the bathtub.…” Sally patted Liberty’s hand.

“I’m sorry I disappeared on you, Sally. I didn’t know how to help.”

“We haven’t seen you and Willie for a long time,” she said without offense. “But what could you have done? There was nothing you could have done. You know what I did all those weeks I was waiting on JJ in the hospital? I colored. I bought all these coloring books and I really went to town. I’d like to show them to you sometime. I’m not saying they’re art but they’re awfully good … It’s a pretty day to be on the beach, isn’t it? Do you know what JJ told me they do in Haiti? People offer to drown for a dollar or two. They pretend to drown.”