Broken for You (25 page)

Stupid,
she thought mid-flight, the pain already excruciating and knowing that something even worse was on its way.
What a stupid, girly thing to do.

Spinning through space, she thought of Margaret's porcelain plates. Maybe they'd wondered too if they could maneuver their bodies, take hold of some lucky thing at the last minute, ride an unseen current of migrating molecules to a safe, soft landing. And there he was: her luck, her partner, Detective Bridges backing her up, his beautiful face horribly transformed, running toward her, arms outstretched, desperate to catch her as she had been to catch—and save!—the pure porcelain offerings to a marriage that didn't hold, and maybe for her it wasn't too late, she could still be won where found and sail gracefully effortlessly straight into his arms without falling into the fires of hell but no, no, no, oh . . .

Trying to escape her body, landed now and imprinting the macadam of the street in a way that no human body was ever meant to, she briefly imagined herself from above, and then sank to the street again and into the reality of searing pain. She struggled with her cat's eyes—where were her glasses?—dimly aware that one of them wouldn't open and the other had something dripping into it. Suddenly there were perplexing, ominous swirls of black and white closing in on her.
It's the nuns,
the nuns!
she thought, terrified.
Oh God, oh please please save me from the nuns!
But then she recognized a small gaudy puff of color moving among the evil nuns and their black and white habits, protecting her, dispersing them, and she was quieted.
Than
k
you,
she wanted to say,
than
k
you than
k
you,
and closed her eyes.

Easter colors,
she thought dully as she began to go, remembering the poor doomed chicks and bunnies of her childhood, dyed in unnaturally vibrant shades of bubble gum pink and lime green and put on display in pet store windows. How sad it was, how heartbreakingly sad.

"Dyed, then they died," she tried to whisper; but to the paramedic, leaning close to this ruined girl who might be uttering her last words, it sounded like "Da. Da."

Seventeen

Margaret's Dream, Part Two

T
his time, it is Margaret and Wanda,
riding in a train, sitting inside a private coach.
But it's not a real coach, is
it?
Margaret realizes gradually.
Not a real train. It's more li
k
e a theatre set
for a children
’
s
play. That's it! We're in a play! Why, it's
The Little Engine
That Could!

There are theatre flats arranged like walls on three sides of them, painted in the clear yellows, reds, and blues of the 1931 illustrations by Watty Piper. When Margaret looks toward where the door of their coach and a fourth wall should be, there is nothing there; it is completely black.
Maybe that's where the audience sits,
Margaret reassures herself.

Margaret and Wanda sit opposite one another on large, comfortable armchairs upholstered in floral-patterned chintz. Between them is a child's wooden school desk; it is laid out with a Ludwigsburg tete-a-tete and an unopened box of animal crackers.

Wanda is busy writing in her little red and black book. She is wearing her high heels and lovely black dress, which shows up especially nicely against the colors on the wall behind her.
Oh my!
Margaret thinks when she looks down, pleasantly surprised to see that she, too, is fashionably dressed in black.
Mother will be so pleased.

"I can't figure this out," Wanda mutters intensely. "The laws of probability do not apply. There is evidence of a midline shift. There is mass
e
ffect upon the cerebellopontine angle. How on earth did a star get in my head?"

The engine whistle toots happily. Margaret hears the clackety-clack of wheels on track. She reaches up to touch the painted curtains on the wall to her left. Instantly, they are three-dimensional, coming apart to reveal a real train window with a real scene outside.

It's the French countryside!
Margaret thinks, happily. The fields are a vivid green. The sun is shining. There are quaint cottages along the way. Farmers and their wives and children stand along the railroad track. They wear old-fashioned peasant costumes. They wave gaily, as if to royalty.

"Bonjour!"
Margaret calls as they pass by.
"Bonjour, mes amies! Qa va? Est-ce que vous savez ou nous allons? Regardez, Wanda! C'est si parfait!"

Margaret turns to look at Wanda. She is now a little girl of eight or nine. She is drinking coffee, looking at Margaret over the rim of the tete-a-tete cup with her enormous, dark eyes. Her black dress is much too big for her—it looks like a shroud—and Margaret sees that she has kicked off her high-heeled shoes.

There is the sound of a heavy knock. It reverberates unnaturally, as if electronically amplified. It seems to come from nowhere, and at the same time, everywhere. A loud booming voice says, "Conductor."

"Come in," Wanda answers in her adult voice.

Margaret looks toward the invisible fourth wall. Stephen emerges from the blackness, dressed in a dark blue uniform. He is young.
Goodness me,
Margaret thinks.
He does loo
k
fetching.

"Tickets please."

Wanda hands Stephen the box of animal crackers.

"Where are we going, Stephen?" Margaret asks.

"We're going to the factory, Mom," Wanda answers. "Don't you remember? The cookie factory."

Margaret is puzzled. "But if you're here," she says to Stephen, "who's driving?"

"Next stop, Hungary," Stephen says, then leaves.

Margaret looks out the window. The peasants are gone. The French countryside is gone. It is getting dark outside, and they are moving through a flat, eerily featureless landscape.

"I'm hungry," Wanda says. "Is Dad going to stop soon?"

"What?" Margaret asks. "Who's Dad? Whose dad? Where's Dad?"

"Dad!" Wanda gets up, pulling her black dress up to her ears so as not to trip over it. She pads toward the fourth wall. "Dad!" Margaret hears her call as she disappears into the darkness. "Where are you taking us? I thought we were going to the cookie factory. . . ."

"Wait, honey!" Margaret calls. "Don't go that way!" She jumps out of her seat, toppling the desk and sending the tete-a-tete crashing to the floor.

As she stumbles toward the edge of the darkness, a bright light is suddenly switched on. Margaret finds herself in front of a large audience of schoolchildren. Daniel and Wanda are sitting next to one another in the front row, smiling.

The children wear school uniforms. Pinned to their shirts are little yellow construction paper name tags. Margaret isn't sure—her eyes can't seem to adjust to the bright light—but it looks as though all of their names begin with the letter D. "This is different," Margaret says, puzzled. The children laugh and clap riotously, as if this were the funniest thing in the world.

Margaret looks around. The setting now is much more realistic. The coach is elegant, with polished brass fixtures, wood that's been buffed to a high gloss, velvet curtains, plush leather seats, and maroon-colored carpets. The tete-a-tete still lies in pieces on the floor. Margaret turns back to the children. Their faces are happy. Trusting. Expectant.

"Break a leg!" she says.

The children laugh.

"I think I can. I think I can. I think I can."

The children laugh harder. Tears start streaming down their faces.

Margaret sings, in a loud, tuneful, Wagnerian voice, "I'm a little teapot, short and stout. Here is my handle, here is my spout. . . ."

The children open their mouths wide, laughing harder than sver, but suddenly Margaret can no longer hear them. She realizes that she is looking at the children from a distance. The fourth wall of her :oach has materialized. She is in a real train now, completely enclosed, md she is looking at the children through a long rectangular window. rhe children are in another train which is parked on an adjacent siding.

Margaret sees Stephen. He is holding on to the outside of the coach door with one hand, smoking a cigarette with the other.
That's much
too reckless,
Margaret thinks.
He's setting a bad example for the children.
Stephen still wears his uniform, but there is something different about it now. Before Margaret can figure out what it is, the train starts to move, very slowly.

The children's expressions change from delight to mild surprise, from surprise to alarm, from alarm to terror. They press against the glass, beating on it, calling to Margaret, trying to get out. The train starts picking up speed.

"I'm coming, honey!" Margaret yells. She turns around to look for a way out, but finds that her coach has filled up with crates and boxes. She can barely move. She makes her way around the coach. There is no door. She goes back to the window, pounding on it frantically, trying to break the glass. "What is it?" she screams. "What is it, honey?"

"We're going to the factory!" Wanda screams.

"We're going to the factory!" Daniel echoes.

The train hurtles out of sight. There is the sound of an explosion. Margaret collapses, sobbing, on one of the leather coach seats, and then screams. It is made of human skin.

"Margaret. Margaret, dear."

Margaret woke up to see Gus standing over her. He was wearing his bathrobe.

"What is it?" she said, rubbing tears out of her eyes.

"There was a phone call just now. From a police officer."

"What—?"

He took her hands and spoke calmly.

"We need to get dressed and go to the hospital. Something's happened to Wanda."

Part 2

Eighteen

Bowling Alone

A few months before Margaret sits down in Desserts, Etc. and composes the ad that brings Wanda Schultz to her doorstep, you get out of a dusty Greyhound bus in the middle of downtown.

Everything about your appearance is designed. You dress plainly, in black, a costume suggesting membership in an order of secular ascetics. You keep your long graying hair pulled into a neat ponytail. Your body is lean and rangy, as if you've forsworn sustenance that hasn't been hunted and gathered with your own hands and out of the wild. There's a thrifty animalism about the way you move, too, and your eyes take in everything. Your worldly possessions, the things you need to survive, have been culled to a minimum and crammed into a large bulky knapsack; its superior end towers several inches above your head and gives you the appearance of a giant, dour, bipedal mollusk.

This is how you look. Except nobody's looking.

That's fine. That's your intention.

People have good instincts when it comes to certain things. In their hearts they're afraid that loneliness, like tuberculosis, can be contracted, and you look contagious. You look like what you are, what you deserve to be—somebody who's lived a long time without a tribe, without tenderness—so strangers avoid you like the plague. You scare the hell out of them. They worry they might be looking at future versions of themselves.

Let 'em worry,
you think, noticing how their eyes run away from you. Maybe they'll go home and kiss their wives like they mean it, hold their kids like there's no tomorrow, write a letter to someone they haven't seen in a hundred years. That's fine too.

You get busy, following the same procedural steps you take every time you arrive in a city: First, you find the nearest public telephone and start examining the directory. You look in the personal pages under L. No luck there. You look in the Yellow Pages under B. You write lists. You buy a city map. You make a plan. You don't expect your plan to succeed—you've been doing this for years without success and you're not an optimistic sort of person to begin with, but it's a force of habit.

This time, though, you do something you haven't done for a long time: At the bus station newsstand, you buy a postcard. You address the postcard to an address in Chicago, stamp it, and shove it into a mailbox before you can change your mind. You don't know why. You played an impulse. It was stupid. You regret it already.

You need some privacy for what comes next, so you go to the men's room and lock yourself inside one of the stalls. You open up your knapsack and start digging. Your hands close around a bubble-wrapped framed photo; the glass is still intact. You'll unwrap it later, after you get settled. You pull out a book—your book of faith, the only book you carry: a 1962 copy of the collected works of William Butler Yeats, edited by the esteemed Professor M. L. Rosenthal. Laying the book against your chest, you close your eyes, ask your heart a question, open the book at random, and point. This is where your finger lands:

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, and loved the sorrows of your changing face.

The words are scripture. They guide you, uphold you, help you persevere. Wherever you've gone, whatever variables you've encountered, the book's wisdom—and your interpretation of it—has always led you to the same course of action. Today is no different. You wish to hell you hadn't mailed that postcard. Why the fuck did you do it?

The book goes back in your knapsack. You take care of business, splash cold water on your face, washing away the dirt of the last thousand miles and the memories of whatever city you just came from. You're here now. There is no past. No immediate past, anyway.

You check your wallet. You'll get something to eat, find a place to stay maybe you can get a room at the downtown YMCA until you find work and then you'll set about the business of looking for your wife.

Have you been to Seattle before? Maybe. You can't be sure. You should keep better records, probably.

Nineteen

Bowling Together, 1959-1969

M
ichael Francis Joseph O'Casey was crazy about bowling alleys. He loved them for many, varied reasons. There was the easy mixture of society and rowdy athleticism; the smell of cigarettes, hamburgers, and paste wax; the ice-cold bottles of beer; the sharpened pencils.

There were the neat rows of oiled and spray-disinfected two-toned shoes. They reminded Michael of his car: a 1957 candy-cane red and white Ford Fairlane in which he'd spent many blessed hours making out with an assortment of willing sinners. Michael O'Casey didn't credit the church with much, but he had to admit that his sex life owed a great deal to the Vatican for its part in shaping the psychology of those pure, darling, infinitely repressed and inexhaustibly libidinous Catholic girls.

Michael loved the sounds of bowling alleys. Bowling alley noise was like a big huzzah of the world not going gentle into that good night. He loved the resonant thud of the balls, the staccato brattle of colliding pins. The sounds of a bowling alley made you know that—beyond any doubt, and in this little corner of the universe at least—earthly objects were making real, true, happy, honest, and uninhibited contact with one another. There were the sporadic, papery sounds of applause. Bursts of laughter. He loved the seeming randomness of it, when in fact the whole thing was underlaid with an inexorable, ordered ebb and flow. Over the course of several hours, the sounds of a bowling alley induced meditative calm that nothing, with the exception of reading William Butler Yeats—or engaging in prolonged, athletic sex—could duplicate.

Then, of course, there was the game itself, about which he could wax poetic for hours.

He was a good player. He had a lot of bravado, a rough-edged style, and amazing power for someone so lean. Nobody knew more about drilling a ball than Michael O'Casey. His nickname was "The Oilman."

Last but not least, bowling alleys were a grand place to meet members of the opposite sex. There was nothing like eyeing female fannies as they sashayed down the throw line.

"I hate to see you go, darlin's, but I love to watch you leave!" Michael called to a departing group of sorority coeds. They giggled and cantered toward the door. Michael and Jerry O'Connell—his roommate, bowling compatriot, fellow student, and countryman—gazed wistfully after them.