Picturing Will (20 page)

“Maybe we ought to get him some of those arm-float things you strap on,” Zeke said. “Maybe that would be better.”

“He’s not a doll we’re dressing up,” Wayne said. “Bring the tube. If the kid’s not interested, we can use it.”

“You know, in Texas Susan used to go down some river in a tube. One of those places you enter one place and end up another, and they shuttle you back to where you started. She says she really misses Texas, but, you know, her grandmother she was living with had to go into a rest home, God rest her soul, and she figured makin’ the move to live near her sister was the best thing to do, since she wouldn’t be livin’ with family no more.”

“Her grandmother died?” Wayne said. Every girl Zeke dated had a history as long as
War and Peace
. How he ever managed to get any action except talk was a mystery to Wayne.

“No, she didn’t die,” Zeke said. “I told you: She went to a rest home.”

“Didn’t you just say, ‘God rest her soul’?” Wayne asked.

“Hey, it’s just an expression.”

“It’s not just an expression. It’s what you say when somebody’s dead. Like ‘Happy Birthday’ isn’t an expression. It’s what you say on somebody’s birthday.”

“God better look out for those folks in the rest homes,” Zeke said, hating to be corrected.

Wayne sighed. A bee buzzed his hat. The job was almost done. Soon he could have a final shot of lemonade, and then he would head home to wait for Will’s arrival. Corky would be there, frosting cupcakes. He should think about what his first line would be when the doorbell rang. How he should act. Every time he saw Will it was awkward. He always hugged when Will wanted to shake hands, or bumped his forehead, leaning down for a kiss. The holier-than-thou bodyguard would be with Will, too: Mel, with a proprietary hand on Will’s shoulder.

“You remember the stuff I told you about Susan’s parents, right? About how they had this foster kid that they used like a servant, and somebody got wind of it and before you knew it, zip, that kid was out of there, and Susan went to her grandmother, and if the father hadn’t drowned, he might be in the slammer today, because—”

“You told me,” Wayne said.

“Which really makes it mysterious, since now we know he’s no great lover of kids, and Susan’s mom’s so sloshed you don’t know on any given day whether she’s gonna make it out of bed, whether that brother of Susan’s really died in his crib, or—”

“This is like a fucking soap opera,” Wayne said.

“It’s her life, Wayne. She showed real get-up-and-go to relocate herself to Florida. Susan’s a devoted family person. When things took a turn for the worse with her grandmother, naturally she got in touch with her sister, and—”

“God rest Susan’s soul,” Wayne said.

Zeke looked at him, puzzled.

“It’s just an expression. God rest her soul
if
she dies,” Wayne said.

“I don’t think that’s funny,” Zeke said. “Saying something like that, you might bring bad luck to Susan.”

“What’s the grandmother’s story?” Wayne said, knowing that he could derail Zeke.

“Her father was an immigrant from Italy,” Zeke said. “They had five children, and two that died at birth, and the mother …”

Zeke was off and running. Wayne adjusted his hat and smiled to himself. If only dealing with Will could be as easy as dealing with Zeke. Zeke was just like a baby: When you dangled something in front of him, the hysteria would end; fascination would make his eyes widen and bring a big smile to his face. Just dangle the possibility of another story waiting to be told, and Zeke would reach up and touch it—it was all so real to him, it was as though he could touch it—and then, for as long as you could stand to be involved, there would be peace and tranquillity. A reward and a respite.

“The way you feel about Susan,” Wayne said, shaking his head as if a great revelation had dawned on him. “The way you feel, you can probably envision spending the rest of your life with her. Am I right?”

Zeke narrowed his eyes. He cleared his throat. He looked at the bushes they had planted as if Susan might be hiding behind one.

“Well, I don’t know about marriage,” Zeke said. “You know yourself, Wayne, that marriage ain’t so easy.”

“What makes you say that?” Wayne said.

Zeke’s eyes narrowed again, this time to slits. How long had Wayne been putting him on?

SEVENTEEN

T
hough Corky knew the story all too well, Corinne was telling her, again, about Eddie’s deception: On the day Corinne went to the hairdresser a friend recommended, that same friend lured Eddie to her apartment and jumped into bed with him. Hearing about the situation made Corky uncomfortable enough, but Corinne’s bleak view of women had really begun to depress her. Corinne had almost every woman they knew categorized as a vile, untrustworthy witch. Corinne did not say “bitch” because she had made it a household rule, once the baby was born, that there would be no more swearing. “Witch” seemed an appropriate-enough term, however, because Corinne suspected even the nicest women of manipulating others by putting spells on them. She did not think they literally did this, but she did believe they had terrible powers.

Corinne had just finished discussing her new hairdresser. She grudgingly admitted the woman was a good hair-cutter, but being there earlier in the day had reminded her of women she called bogus big sisters, who would fawn over you by twirling one of your curls into a perfect ringlet when they actually hated your good looks and wished you’d disappear. Women who slipped out of their own high-heeled shoes and begged to slide their foot into your flats weren’t complimenting you on your good taste but expressing symbolically their wish to crush you as they crushed the backs of your shoes. Women were treacherous. They would think nothing of doing anything they pleased behind your back with whatever man you were with.

Corky assumed she was exempt from Corinne’s scenario but wasn’t sure how she had been spared. Perhaps it was because her horror had been so genuine when Corinne first confided in her about Eddie’s dalliance. She had also been horrified that Corinne would use her anger as an excuse to throw out her birth-control pills, though she knew better than to criticize Corinne—especially when she was upset.

Right now Eddie was in Pittsburgh, where he had flown the night before, to act as a pallbearer at his father’s funeral. It pleased Corinne that the Sunday before his father’s sudden death the minister had preached about how transgression could lead to a series of terrible things. She hoped that somehow Eddie connected his father’s death with his afternoon at the witch’s apartment. The minister had been trying to subtly assure the parish that he was a finer person than Jimmy Swaggart, but Corinne hoped Eddie registered the minister’s point about sin and understood that it was his fault their child had been born with jaundice. What did Eddie think, now that the dog had been hit by a car? What about his father’s unexpected death? And was it clear to him why she was no longer interested in sex?

Corinne fanned out a match and dropped it on her saucer. She took a puff of her cigarette and exhaled high above the baby’s head. The baby was in a plastic car seat that was usually in the back of Corinne’s car, but Eddie had taken the car to the airport, and she was always afraid that anything left in a car for any amount of time might be stolen. Ganglia of straps and buckles trailed on the Formica table.

“I want to raise her to trust other women, but the thing is, I don’t trust other women myself,” Corinne said.

“I think it’s harder to raise a girl than a boy,” Corky said. “Harder, but for me it would be much more fun.”

“Well, the thing is, you’ve got to figure out what to tell them and what not to tell them about other women,” Corinne said.

“Just like what husbands have to figure out: what to tell us, and what not to tell us,” Corky said. She instantly regretted joining in with Corinne’s cynicism; she got up and opened a cabinet door. “There’s a real good drink I can make that’s like a sombrero, only with club soda added,” she said.

“Mmm,” Corinne said. “I might as well, because I’ll be up by my lonesome all night anyway, doing the night shift.”

“Have you heard from Eddie?” Corky asked. She was pouring batter into rainbow-striped paper cups. She had bought another muffin tin so she could bake the whole recipe for cupcakes at once. An extra muffin tin could always be useful. For your jewelry, for one thing.

“He told me his mother was all upset because she found his dad’s Christmas stocking, which had been missing for years, in a drawer of his tool chest, stuffed with girlie magazines. She hunted high and low for the stocking, and he always said she had thrown it out by mistake with the Christmas wrapping.”

Corky giggled. She shook her head.

“So I don’t know,” Corinne said. “Things are better between us now that that witch is out of the picture, but I hate to not trust somebody. I talked to the minister and what he says is to trust him: no reason
why
I should trust him, just that it would be a nice thing to do.”

Corky filled the rest of the paper cups with batter. A few drops landed on the center of the muffin tin; she wiped them off, then ate them. Corinne opened the oven door, and Corky placed the muffin tin beside the other one.

“Christian charity, right?” Corky said.

“Probably. The truth is, I don’t half listen to what he says anymore. I think he doesn’t half listen to what’s said to him, either; he just starts kicking his legs and waving his arms like one of those wooden pull-toys. He’s a very physically active man for a minister. I find it a little distracting. When Eddie and I had our appointment with him, we went downstairs and he was there pushing his fingertips into the wall—some kind of exercise, he said. Not that there’s anything wrong with exercising,” Corinne said. “But it’s a little strange that he’s always out of breath from riding his bike to the church on Sundays, and you always see him jogging around town with his face as bright as the sun, or collapsed on some bench. I saw him purple in the face, panting on a park bench. I really did.” Corinne stubbed out her cigarette. “That’s a funny way to find your minister is all I’m saying.”

“Well, I guess so many of them are alcoholics, we should be glad he’s not one of those,” Corky said. She stopped, hearing her own words: making everything all right in her mind again.

“Speaking of alcoholics, how about one of those drinks?” Corinne said.

“Oh, sure,” Corky said. “Should I put on some music, or would that disturb the baby?”

“This baby won’t be disturbed until it’s time to go to sleep.” Corinne put her hand over the baby’s cotton bootie. Small meteors streaked across the baby’s instep in an arched trajectory toward the side stitching. The booties were a present from Marian, who had sold her a maternity bathing suit. Corky turned on the radio. She always kept it tuned to an easy-listening station. For a few seconds, she mistook “Yesterday” for “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” She looked at the kitchen clock—the grinning black-faced cat with a swishing tail that had been a present from her sister—and saw that Wayne should be getting back from work any minute. Then Will would arrive. She felt bad about not being able to ask Mel if he wanted to stay the night, but Wayne had said that he drew the line at entertaining his ex-wife’s live-in lover. There were times when Wayne was judgmental in ways that surprised Corky. She wondered what he thought of Eddie and Corinne’s marital problems—whether Eddie had even told Wayne. She didn’t want to say anything herself because she feared Wayne might think that women used babies as retribution, or as a way of shaming men into staying. She had probably already hinted at too much to Wayne by saying that Corinne tricked Eddie. She only wanted to point out her own maturity, but it might have backfired.

There was a nice aroma in the kitchen as they had their drinks. Corky hoped it would linger, and that Will would come into the house knowing there was something good for him to eat—something special. She thought about getting out the icing tube but decided that frosting the cupcakes with a spatula would be good enough.

“And do you know what Eddie thinks?” Corinne said. “He thinks I’m sweet on the minister. He honestly seems to think that.”

“Well, at least he agreed to quit the softball team,” Corky said.

“That’s true,” Corinne said, taking a sip of her drink. “Umm,” she said. “An adult milkshake.”

One song fed into another. The song now was “Cherish.”

“Have you had any luck talking Wayne into a baby?” Corinne said.

“I think that he really wants one. He’s just scared,” Corky said. “But if he and Will can start to have a better relationship, maybe that’ll pave the way for another baby.”

“Will’s not a bad boy, is he?” Corinne said.

“He’s always been a nice child. I know that as boys get older they get more troublesome, but I think a lot of it has to do with how you treat them. I have to say that his mother seems to have done a good job.”

“It’s none of my business, but why did they get divorced?”

“He says they just married too young. And that she was always intent on having a career. You know, he was married to another woman before her, and she died in a car accident. When something like that happens it can make you very afraid of the future.”

“A car accident?” Corinne said. She put her hand on the baby’s bootie.

“She and Wayne were having a trial separation. She was in the car alone, somewhere in the South, where her parents lived, and they think she missed a turn—ended up at the bottom of a ravine. I think it was raining.”

Telling the story, Corky realized she did not know the details at all. If it hadn’t been raining, why would such an accident have happened?

“And then he married—what is her name?” Corinne said.

“Jody. He was still grieving when he met Jody, and they were too young to be married, because apparently she was very independent, and she didn’t understand how important carpentry was to him. She just wanted him to be an intellectual.”

Her own voice stunned her. She was making up stories. And it was easy to do! No malice was intended. She just filled in the blanks with whatever seemed appropriate. Her heart went out to him: His heart had been broken when his first wife plunged into the ravine. In trying to disentangle himself from his sad fate, he had acted too quickly, married impulsively, let himself be drawn into a relationship in which a woman expected too many concessions, too soon. That he had emerged as little scathed as he had was testament to his solidity. His fine values.