Suicide's Girlfriend (12 page)

“Nice to see you, Martina,” says Polly. She can scarcely hear her own voice over the duel of manners and self-preservation in her head; and by the time she offers Martina a seat, Martina has her feet tucked up under her skirt, and owns over one half of the couch. Susan dances in front of Martina, and laughs and says, “Honey, did I ever tell you about the first time Pol's parents came for a visit, and Pol's mom went
into what Pol and her daddy called a ‘spell'?” Susan winks at Polly, as if Polly herself arranged the details of that nightmare for best entertainment value. “A spell! Honey, the woman put one entire box of Cream of Wheat cereal into the pressure cooker while the rest of us sat watching a little girl ice skater on the television set! Cream of Wheat! On high! Cream of Wheat all over the ceiling! We came a-running at the noise—boom, and then plop, plop, plop!” Susan splays her fingers on her cheeks and opens her eyes in comic horror. She drops her head back as far as it will go and draws extravagant breaths through her nose. “
She
—the perpetrator—we found lying beneath the bedroom drapes, which for reasons unknown she had yanked from their rods!”

“Oh, stop!” says Martina. A pretty laugher.

Susan collapses beside her on the couch. “Uproar is the woman's
game
,” Susan declares. “She made poor Pol here into a wreck, then said things like: ‘Why, Polly, I was just whipping us up a snack!' and ‘If somebody'd hung those drapes right in the first place, dear, they wouldn't have come down so easy!'”

Martina emits another lovely whoop of laughter. Any moment now, the phone will ring, offer Polly some relief. Susan catches Polly looking at her watch, and she cries, “Is it a liftoff, Polly? Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven! Six—”

The phone rings.

In the kitchen, Polly listens to her father's cheerful recital of supper. Now and then, she peeks out at Nicko, cruising happily around the coffee table to whose four sharp corners Polly has affixed sturdy foam bumpers. Martina and Susan eat pizza, fangs of mozzarella and tomato sauce stretched perilously over the carpet and couch.

Polly's parents consider Polly a good Christian soul to live with an unmarried mother. “How's that little Nicholas?” Polly's father asks.

For the moment, safe, examining an unbreakable ashtray.

But Martina's arm lies across the back of the couch, almost touching
Susan's shoulder. Polly tries not to fret. With this Martina, it must just be vanity, curiosity. Martina merely wants to see herself reflected on some little lake in Susan and Polly's particular landscape. So Polly forces herself to look away. In order to make good use of her time on the phone, she soaks paper towels with white vinegar and lays them on the lime deposits ringing the spigot and the faucet handles.

Polly's mother has been having a hard time lately. When she comes on the line, she makes a high, yawning sound, like ice heaving on the creeks of Polly's childhood. Polly's father takes the phone back quickly. “Mom's still under the weather, aren't you, honey?” he says, and then, to Polly, “How's that article coming?”

Polly tries to remember: Coin-operated laundries? Tanning beds in beauty salons? Polly's parents believe Polly supports herself these days by writing freelance articles for trade magazines:
Food Service News. World of Spas
. “Not anything you'd ever see on the newsstand,” she told them. “Heck, I never see 'em myself! They just disappear into the corporate maw!” Susan had made Polly a gift of “the corporate maw.” “The corporate maw?” her parents said, so far always inclined to laugh in proud delight when they did not understand what their dear Polly meant.

The apartment feels all wrong when Polly gets off the phone, and no wonder: the living room, the bedroom, the bath—all stand empty.

She opens the sliding door. In the swimming pool—unattended—the two children she saw earlier take turns diving off the steps into the shallow end, and Polly shouts to them, “Where are your parents? Get out of that water this instant!” Frightened, the children scramble from the water and run away, crying, “Mom! Dad!”

Polly does not know what sort of car Martina drives but it is certain that Polly and Susan's car no longer sits in the parking lot.

“I bet she didn't even take the safety seat!” Polly exclaims aloud,
and rushes back to the apartment to check. Sure enough, there is the seat!

In the kitchen, she dials the telephone number of Sam and Katherine, fellow teachers from her days at Catalina High. Sam and Katherine will help her. They will make her feel deserving of sympathy. It was Sam and Katherine who helped Polly explain things to Susan the time that—feeling neglected by Susan—Polly mailed herself a series of obscene and very scary unsigned letters. They are nice people, Sam and Katherine. Normal. Married.

After a time of listening to the telephone ring at Sam and Katherine's house, Polly remembers something awful: Sam and Katherine are in San Diego, herding their children through Sea World. They will not return for two days, an amount of time that strikes Polly as unbearable.

She lays her cheek on the kitchen counter. She imagines Nicko rolling about in the back of the Datsun.

At Chez Mes Amis, there is a recording. To Polly's surprise, on the recording, her own sturdy Midwestern voice has been supplanted by Martina's borderless purr: “You'll find us open from ten
A
.
M
. to four
P
.
M
. Monday through Saturday, serving a limited but visionary menu.”

“I know you're there, Susan,” says Polly, “and I want you to bring Nicko home. This is serious. You've been drinking.”

Polly feels as if she speaks into outer space. Do you read me? Come in.

“Hey, Polly,” says Susan.

Polly takes a breath. “What are you doing, Susan?”

“We came down for some more wine, child.”

More wine. Nicko's college education running down their throats and out their bladders and into the restaurant's stylish black toilet. Yet Susan is having fun! Listen! Nicko is in the background, laughing at a song sung by the terrible Martina.

“When are you coming home, Susan?”

“Home?”

“Susan,” says Polly, the air around her suddenly polar, glossy with panic. “Bring Nicko home, please.”

“After a while,” says Susan. She sounds as if she stands by a window in a cabin, as if she discusses the condition of the lake before her.

“What's Nicky doing, Susan?”

“Oh, he's having a grand time, Pol, drinking a Shirley Temple and being entertained by Martina.”

“Susan,” says Polly, “if you don't bring him home right now, I'm not kidding, I'm going to kill myself.”

Susan does not respond for a moment; then she laughs. “I'm sure I didn't hear you correct,” she says. “I'm sure you wouldn't dream of threatening me.”

“The gas is on,” says Polly. How odd. How awful. And for what? All four burners hiss, plus the oven, the odor like something rancid. Does this mean she is nuts, or just an idiot? They will never give her Nicko now. Not that they would have anyway.

Susan sighs like a troubled employer. “I'm calling Kath and Sam,” she says. “I'll let them in on your little scene. How do you like them apples?”

Polly explains about Sea World, San Diego.

“Damn it, Polly!”

“Are you coming home?”

“Turn off that gas!”

“Are you coming home?”

“I'm calling the police is what
I'm
doing,” says Susan.

Polly draws the curtains. Turns off the lights. Sits in a rocker that once belonged to her grandmother. Outside, cars turn in and out of the parking lot. Someone dives into the pool with a splash and a laugh. Polly pretends not to care about the age of the swimmer, the condition. She rocks. In her heart of hearts, she suspects she will never be able to move into that world—exquisite, if terrible—that her mother
can sometimes hole up in for weeks at a time. All Polly has is this pale imitation of something outward: the curtains drawn, the rocking.

She used to find her mother that way, after walking home from grade school. Her mother seemed like a mythical creature then, the queen frog in her green forest; she might smile at Polly, but she did not wish to be disturbed.

A siren sings in the distance, comes closer. Polly's heart beats hard. Doors open and close. Feet pound in the hallway, and there is knocking. “Open up, Miss Threlkeld, or we'll break down the door!”

The door will be expensive to repair, Polly supposes, but how stirring to hear them batter at it. Blam, blam, she feels the percussion in her chest. For a while, it seems the thing will never give way, but then it swings—crack—against the wall, and there in the lighted hallway stand two police officers and a few neighbors. These neighbors never have become friends of Polly's, and after the officers step inside—one heading for Polly, one for the kitchen—the neighbors stay by the doorway. So wary. Actually frightened, it seems. As if they already know Polly as a creature made unreliable by long years in captivity, and so she does her best to smile their way, to show them all she really means no harm.

I
LIVE ON
R
ADIAL
Highway so the place I usually go is up Blondo to Fifty-sixth. I'm only telling you since there's room for more. I go up Blondo, then left on Fifty-sixth so I end up looking down on Happy Hollow Boulevard. That's Mondays and Saturdays. There, I got the advantage of being up on a rise, plus the corner lots. A buddy told me the big bushes people in that neighborhood put in can run a thousand bucks apiece. On my corner, though, the old lady keeps her yard slick as a mole's back, and the yard across the way's not half bad, either. If anything comes down the boulevard, I see it early, I hop right on it. Also, somebody's always working on the grass and trees up there. Chemlawn—you've probably seen their trucks—but lots use guys out of pickups, which means nobody never notices me.

Say, it's nice there! All the fancy brick. Hardly nobody comes out or goes in, which makes it almost like being in the country, except cleaner and with sidewalks. Once, just after Halloween, I seen a squirrel sitting on the old lady's lawn, eating a miniature Milky Way bar! Right in its hands! That was the cutest darned thing! If I'd had a camera on me, I could have won a prize in the Sunday supplement, what do you bet?

The old lady has a humpback. I seen her when she put on a garage sale last fall. There were some real lookers poking around in the stuff there, so I got out of my truck and went up, too. One I got next to, I asked what did she think about some Christmas lights they had there. Did she think they'd work right? That sort of thing. If you stood just so, she had on a big shirt, and you could see between the buttons.
She
didn't know! She went on talking to me, fishing around in a box of kitchen things. “So,” I says, “you live around here or what? You live in one of these houses?”
That
spooked her. Off she sneaked, over to the card table where the humpback and her friends were taking the money. All them looked at me real quick, then pretended they hadn't. That was the day I picked up my power drill. Black & Decker. Runs like new. I was set to pay for it—it even has the bits that come with it—but when I got near the pay table, the ladies just looked away, like they wanted me to pass on by. What the hell, I figured, and I took the drill out to the truck. Five bucks was all the old lady wanted for the drill. That's not much.

The garage sale would have been back when I got off Saturdays. Everybody at work who didn't have Saturdays
wanted
Saturdays, they
had
to have Saturdays so they could haul their boats to the lake. All them boo-hooed, Saturday, Saturday. I never could see anything so hot about Saturday. I couldn't sleep in Saturdays with the cartoons playing, and if I got up to watch, a pack of kids sat on me, a lot of peed pants ruining the start of a day their mother was going to turn to pure hell, anyway, with talk of chores and so on. Finally, over break one day, I says—casual, since I mostly keep clear of them at work—“If there's trouble for the other fellows, you know, I could take Mondays instead.”

Let me tell you, they about spilled their thermoses. Then, real quick, all them settled back like they hardly heard what I said. “That's real decent of you, Eule,” they said. “Maybe one of us can make the switch.” Shit for brains is what they got, while I got
me
a quiet house Mondays, and Saturdays I sneak out while the rest sleep, and I look around a little before work.

Women in my neighborhood don't run, which is just as well considering
the rear ends on most. If all them started to run, they'd bust up the concrete. Also true for the wife. She got the idea I should be in with her when the last one was born. Blood and gore.
That
put me off sex, believe me. That's birth control number one.

But what I started to tell: Last Saturday, I went out to look around before work, and something happened a little different. I went down the hill for the first gal okay. I had things timed so I got to the corner just about the time she did. I stopped a little into the crosswalk so she'd have to go around me. This one was hefty, and when she come around the front of the truck, I said, real slow, “Hip-po.” She got all red in the face, which gave me a laugh. Then I drove on past her, down Happy Hollow. I waved to her, like I'd just happened to be passing through. I always do that.

Then I drove back to Blondo and around again. When I got to my lookout, though, the old lady's yardman had parked his truck wrong and screwed up my view! I
almost
missed what came down the street next, which is what I was going to tell you about. This one was a college girl. University T-shirt and shorts, fancy running shoes. Pony tail, Just in time I rolled down to the stop, and I called to her:

“Say there!”

She acted a little spooked, but not so bad as the first. This one knew she was cute. I tooted at her when I drove past. She kept looking straight ahead, real snotty.

After I got parked again, some kids come by carrying fishing poles. Where do you suppose they catch fish around Happy Hollow? I get bullheads out by Boystown, but I think those boys were dreaming if they meant to catch fish in the creek there. I drank a cup of coffee from my thermos and smoked a cigarette. I guess I fell asleep for a while. I don't remember doing that on a Saturday since I took Mondays. I don't have to start work 'til eight, but still, I was pushing my luck that time.

Anyway, I looked up, and here come the college girl again, this time going the opposite direction, only now all pink and sweaty and tuckered out. To give her a start, I didn't turn my engine on, I just
rolled down toward the stop. That truck can whisper when I want it to. The girl didn't even see me 'til I was in the crosswalk, and then instead of stopping or going behind me, like a fool she darted out into Happy Hollow.

Kaboom!

Up she went on the hood of this car going by, off she bounced. Blood and gore.

I set my parking brake and got out.

It was a guy in a yellow Trans Am that hit her—one of those cars that was a real beauty maybe ten years ago but now it's all rusted to hell. You know what I mean. Nobody had taken care of that car at all. People who won't take care of a car like that don't even deserve to own it. A car like that—during winter, when they salt—you got to clean off the undercarriage every time. You don't clean the undercarriage every time, there's your investment, poof.

Anyway, this guy from the Trans Am kneeled down by the mess he'd made of that girl. Her eyes were open but she wasn't going to be seeing nothing no more, if you know what I mean. Still, the guy goes, “Somebody call an ambulance!” He grabs at his shirt like he means to get in a fight with himself. “Somebody call an ambulance!”

Of course, except for the yardmen, people in that kind of neighborhood were mostly still to bed. An older guy was out walking his dogs, and these dogs—they were big dogs, a Doberman and a shepherd—they could smell that meat in the road. It was really something, believe me. It was all that old guy could do to keep the dogs back, and he was shouting at them, and kicking, and then the old lady with the hump come hobbling out.

“Oh, my lord!” she goes. “I'll call! I'll call!” You should have seen her run! She wore this fancy pink bathrobe, all hiked up funny because of the hump!

The guy from the Trans Am sat there in the road, patting at the girl's head. Well. Jesus. I mean, part of it's over on the curb, if you catch my drift, and he's saying, “You ran right out in front of me! Didn't you see me?”

I went up a little closer. I don't like to get involved but I tapped the guy on the shoulder. “Hey,' I said, “don't sweat, buddy. You got a witness, okay? I'm here. I seen it, okay?”

I was in the paper because of that. Not my name, but they talked about the witness, and that was me. The guy in the Trans Am didn't get charged with nothing and I was the one that saved his neck. Just by being in the right place at the right time, I was the one that could step forward and set things to right, just by saying “I was there and this is what happened.”