Taft (16 page)

"That's great," Cyndi said. "The two of you just go on."

"I'm coming right back," I told her.

"My uncle owns Martin-Quick Pharmacy. Their last name is Martin," Fay said to me in the car.

Martin-Quick. Old money. Everybody has an account. You don't even have to say your name. They hand you a bag and it just winds up on your bill. I went in once to buy Franklin a soda. I can't remember what we were doing over there now, but I can promise you they didn't offer us credit. The woman behind the counter kept a close eye on Franklin while he was looking at the candy. "Don't pick that up unless you plan to buy it," she said to him.

"Carl's been working there after school and on weekends. Me and Carl are used to working. When we came to town my aunt and uncle said no more jobs. They thought we should have the time to get settled in and go to school and be depressed. Whatever. They said they'd give us an allowance. It made us crazy, not working, not making money. When things were going so bad after my dad died we starting thinking that money was the answer to everything. I know it's not, but I'll tell you, it's a lot. Finally I asked my mother. She pretty much says yes to whatever anybody asks her these days, so Calvin and Lily had to let us get jobs. They said the deal was that one of us had to work in the pharmacy. If we were looking for work and Calvin had some, then we should be able to work for him. I was all ready to do it, but then Carl took the job. It was really good of him, Carl hates Calvin, but we figured I'd probably be able to make more money since I'm older."

"And they don't mind you working in a bar?"

Fay was squinting, trying to see out the window. "They don't know about that."

"Where do you say you are?"

"I told them I waitress at a twenty-four-hour Friendly's. Fast, friendly, family-style. Believe me, they're never going to check."

I was driving slow because of the rain. There is no rain like the rain in Tennessee. At times the road just disappeared, and then the yellow line would wash back into the headlights. I had the windshield wipers on high. I didn't like windshield wipers. The beat was too regular. It got on my nerves.

"Wouldn't it be easier to work someplace you wouldn't have to lie about?"

"I can make better money at Muddy's. Me and Carl figure once we make enough money we can go back to Coalfield. Everything we make, we save."

I knew for a fact that Carl was spending money, or maybe all his pleasures came from the back of Martin-Quick, Valium and Dexedrine. Maybe he was walking off with Dilaudid and a handful of those individually wrapped, disposable needles they sold to diabetics. Drugstores are where the suffering go to lessen their suffering. Carl put their purchases into bags and wrote down the price in the account book.

"Memphis hasn't been so bad for me since I've been working," Fay said. "But it's hard on Carl. There're too many ways for him to get in trouble here."

"There's a lot to be said for staying with your family."

Fay shook her head. "Family's more complicated than that. It can be more place than people."

I thought of Taft, waiting for his daughter to come back and read his tombstone.

"Used to be I never thought I'd miss this place," she said. "I always thought as soon as I had the money I'd be out of here." We were in her neighborhood. You could tell by the pillars. "But it's different now. It's starting to be different."

I pulled over at the corner a block from Fay's house and turned off the car. The rain was coming down so hard you could barely hear yourself think. "What do you want to do?" I said, wondering if she wanted me to drive her all the way to her house tonight. It was just a ride. That's all it was. There was no reason for her to walk anywhere in this weather.

"I want to stay here with you," she said. She moved over next to me on the seat. Her shoulder was pressing against my shoulder and I could feel myself starting to sweat.

"You've got to be home," I said. "They're waiting on you."

"Walk over with me."

"I'll drive you over."

She put her head on my shoulder. I felt it all the way down my arm. "It wouldn't be so bad if we were together," she said quietly.

"Stop that," I said. Two words and I could hardly get them out of my mouth. I was wondering if she'd ever been with anybody before. I was wondering what she knew. I was thinking what she would look like in my bed, her flat stomach and little hips twisted up in my sheets. I could feel the blood moving through my body and I thought I would be safer out of the car. I opened the door and stepped out in a rain strong enough to drown you if you put your head back. It was beating through my jacket. Thirty seconds and my shirt was wet. I held out my hand for her and she took it and followed me out into the weather. Then we were up against the car and all I could feel was her, not even the water. She had her arms around my neck and I was pulling her towards me and I kissed her. I was kissing her eyes and the line of her jaw and I felt her mouth on my face. The rain confused everything. It turned a lip into a forehead and a hand into hair. I couldn't tell where I was on her body because the rain melted everything together. Then my mouth would find her mouth and that was something different, because I felt how it was warm inside of her. I pressed her against the car and felt her outline like she was traced into me. I felt her bones, her shoulders and hips. I felt how small they were and I stepped back. She was holding onto both my hands.

"You need to get home," I said, though there was no telling if she could hear me for the noise of the rain. I pulled her away from the car and up the street towards the house where she lived.

It was dark in every direction. The only light came blurred out of windows from houses that were set back far from the street. No cars passed us. The rain kept everybody tight indoors. There was so much rain it was hard to get a good breath. It didn't seem like I was pulling Fay anymore. She had started pulling me, and I was walking behind her up the driveway. My shoes were heavy with water and they squished and pulled against my feet.

"Go on in," I said.

"You're here," Fay said, holding onto my hand tighter in case I decided to make a run for it. "You've got to see something."

We went off the driveway and into the mud. Mud was the least of our problems. I stayed with her. I thought of the night I was inside that house and thought that this wasn't so different. Inside or just a little outside was all the same. It made me nervous. Men didn't walk girls between houses in the rain in the dark. We came around to the side. We were walking through bushes and the loose branches of some trees. We were practically at the window when she stopped me. It was like watching a movie, the screen divided up by windowpanes. It was so bright inside that they never could have seen us, even if they had been looking. The water on the glass was steady enough that it was almost clear. I remembered a sugar Easter egg my grandmother brought me when I was a child and when you looked inside you saw the world was full of rabbits and chickens made out of a hard, bright frosting. They were in the dining room. I saw Carl. He looked sullen, standing near the table in his T-shirt and jeans, his toothpick arms crossed in front of his chest. There were two women, one was blond with her hair piled up on top of her head, the other had hair that was short and no color in particular. A man walked into the room and the blond woman started to make over him. You could see their mouths move but the rain kept them quiet.

"You know Carl," Fay said, pointing. "The woman next to him, that's Virginia, that's my mother. The one with the lipstick is Lily, she's my mother's sister, and the man is my uncle, Calvin. They're all wondering where the hell I am right about now. They're ready to start dinner. They don't like it when things run late. Hey," she whispered. "Idiots. Right here." She started to wave, but I took her hand and held it down.

It was like I was hungry to look at them, because I couldn't make myself stop. The wallpaper was striped blue and white and there was some sort of pattern I couldn't make out in the blue. There was a brass chandelier with the lights shaped to look like candles in glass globes. The aunt was putting silverware on the table and the light caught on her rings like she was a mirrored ball in a dance hall. The uncle was talking to Carl, who wasn't listening. I could tell that from the bushes, but the uncle didn't seem to know. Virginia just sat quietly at the table, less in the room than me or Fay. She hadn't dressed up like her sister. She had forgotten it was a birthday party.

"I don't look a thing like my mother, do I?" Fay said, her mouth close up to my ear. "Carl and me look like Daddy. Carl looks so much like him it's spooky. First thing everybody used to say when they met him, Do you know how much you look like your father?"

I broke myself away from the movie and turned to Fay. She looked like Taft. She was so wet it was like she was underwater. She started kissing me. Little kisses, ten, twenty, thirty, on my lips. I knelt down beside the house, in the deep mud of what would be a flower bed a few weeks from now. The little green tips of the jonquils were up already and I crushed them with my knees. I felt too sick to stand. I didn't even have to think about what it would be like to make love to her there. I could see it like it was happening in front of me. "Go inside," I said.

"No."

"They're waiting on you."

She put her hands inside the collar of my shirt. It was so wet she had to work them down, as if she was separating skin from skin. My face pressed into the front of her shirt and I felt the shape of her breast with my cheek. It was all the water that was drowning me. She kissed me.

"Fay," I said. I was trying to pull up through the water. I took her shoulders in my hands. I was six inches from the brick of her house. "Tell me how old you are. Tell me the truth."

"Eighteen," she said. "Eighteen next week."

I knew it was something like that. I'd always known, but I asked because hearing it would stop me. Seventeen meant high school, never coming to work before three in the afternoon, reading from textbooks on breaks. I stood up. My legs were stiff and clumsy as we walked away from the house. I rubbed her bare knees until the mud came off in my hands. Other than that, there was no way to fix her up. "I'm going now," I said, and this time it was true. The people in the dining room were eating little snacks on crackers, trying not to spoil their supper while they waited.

"You can't," she said. Was she crying? There was no way in the world to know.

"You go on and get yourself something to eat." I took a step away from her and she stuck herself to me. She was so light, lighter than Carl even.

"I'm lonely," she said in my ear. She said it like she might have said I'm tired or I'm hungry. It made me crazy. It made me want to promise her things, to cover her up. It took a lot to get her off, but when I finally did she just stood there, watching me. Even when I was at the end of the driveway she was still standing there.

I walked back to my car in the rain.

I knew the way to her house and back from her house in my sleep. Any street in town could get you there or take you farther away. It wasn't like driving. I was just going along. What I was doing I could do nothing about. There was a Jim Dandy just before the Fowler Expressway. From a distance I could see they had one of those pay phones you could drive up to. I knew Marion's number by heart.

"Hey Mrs. Woodmoore," I said. "It's John."

"What a treat to talk to you two days in a row," she said.

"Well, I wanted to thank you for supper." The rain was beating on the piece of metal that hung over the phone, making such a racket I could barely hear her.

"Are you outside?"

"It's just noisy in here," I said. "I'm calling from work."

"I don't know how you stand it."

"It's not so bad, really." The rain was blowing in through the open car window, making a lake in the front seat. What the hell difference did it make? "Hey Mrs. Woodmoore, I was calling to see if Ruth wanted to come down. There's a band playing tonight, some old friends of hers. I thought she might like to get out."

"You've always been thoughtful of Ruth," she said. "I think it's hard on her being home. Would you like to ask her yourself? She's right here."

"That would be good."

Fay had left her purse in the car. I picked it up and kneaded the leather in my free hand.

"Hello?" It was Ruth.

"I'm about ten minutes from home right now. I'm calling from a pay phone. If we both leave now we can get to my apartment at the same time."

There was a pause, but I never thought she wouldn't do it. "All right."

"You have to leave right now," I said. "Do you understand me? Don't put on lipstick, don't brush your hair." I pulled the purse into my lap. "Just put down the phone, get your car keys, and walk out the door. I've already told your mother where you're going."

"That sounds like fun," she said. Mrs. Woodmoore would be standing there, smiling, as close as I was to the windshield. "I'll see you then." She hung up the phone.

When I was driving I tried not to think about anything. I didn't think about the people inside the window or Taft or Ruth. I kept my eyes on the road. It took a lot of concentration, driving in weather like that. I didn't even want to think about Fay. At first I saw her pulling her wet sweater over her head but then I stopped it. I didn't want things to go further yet. I didn't want anything to change. That moment, the car and the night and the rain, the way I could almost feel her, I wanted to hold everything exactly like that for as long as I could. Cars drove by spraying walls of water into each other. All of the sudden you were blind. Two times the wheels lost contact with the road and for a split second I felt myself slipping, but I got it back. I tried going slower.

I pulled into the parking lot behind my apartment building and made a run for it. Marion was standing inside the alcove in front of the door. She was leaning against the wall like she'd been there all night, like she had nothing but time.

"I thought you said come right away." Ruth. I could tell the difference in their voices. It was Ruth.