White People (19 page)

I pictured Huey and Dewey in high pines, blinking. I worried what dull local sparrows would do to such bright birds, hotshots from the Mall pet store. Still, I decided that being free sure beat my finches’ chances of hanging around here, starving.

Talk about relief. I started coughing from it, I don’t know why. Then I sat down on the couch and cried. I felt something slippery underneath me. I wore my khaki shorts, nothing else, it was late August. I stood and studied what’d been written on couch cushions in lipstick, all caked. Words were hard to read on nappy brown cloth. You could barely make out ‘I will do what Robby wants. What Sandy needs worst. So help me Dog.’

I thought of her. I wanted to fight for her but I knew that, strong as the lady was, she did pretty much what she liked. She wouldn’t be needing me. I sat again. I pulled my shorts down. Then I felt cool stripes get printed over my brown legs and white butt. Lipstick, parts of red words stuck onto my skin—’wi’ from ’will,’ the whole word ‘help.’ I stretched out full length. My birds didn’t hop from perch to perch or nibble at their birdie toy. Just me now. My place felt still as any church. Something had changed. I touched myself, and—for the first time, with my bottom all sweetened by lipstick—I got real results.

Was right after this, I traded in my model cars, swapped every
single comic for one magazine. It showed two sailors and twin sisters in a hotel, doing stuff. During the five last pictures, a dark bellboy joined in. Was then that my collection really started. The End, I guess. The rest is just being an adult.”

B
ARKER SAT QUIET
. I finally asked what’d happened to his grandfather. How about Robby and the den mother?

“In jail. My granddad died. Of a broken heart, Mom said. Robby moved. He never was one to stay any place too long. One day he didn’t show up at Sunoco and that was it. Mrs…. the lady, she’s still right here in Falls, still a real leader. Not two days back, I ran into her at the Mall, collecting canned goods to end World Hunger. We had a nice chat. Her son’s a lawyer in Marietta, Georgia now. She looks about the same, really—I love the way she looks, always have. Now when we talk, I can tell she’s partly being nice to me because I never left town or went to college and she secretly thinks I’m not too swift. But since I kept
her
secret, I feel like we’re even. I just smile back. I figure, whatever makes people kind to you is fine. She can see there’s something extra going on but she can’t name it. It just makes her grin and want to give me little things. It’s one of ten trillion ways you can love somebody. We do, love each other. I’m sure.—Nobody ever knew about Robby. She got away with it. More power to her. Still leads the Youth Choir. Last year they won the Southeast Chorus prize, young people’s division. They give concerts all over. Her husband loves her. She said winning the prize was the most fulfilling moment of her life. I wondered. I guess everybody does some one wild thing now and then. They should. It’s what you’ll have to coast on when you’re old. You know?” I nodded. He sat here, still.

“Probably not much of a story.” Barker shrugged. “But, back then it was sure something, to see all that right off the bat, your first time out. I remember being so shocked to know that—men want to.
And
women. I’d figured that only one person at a time would need it, and they’d have to knock down the other person and force them to, every time. But when I saw that, no, everybody wants to do it, and
how there are no rules in it—I couldn’t look straight at a grown-up for days. I’d see that my mom’s slacks had zippers in them, I’d nearabout die. I walked around town, hands stuffed deep in my pockets. My head was hanging and I acted like I was in mourning for something. But, hey, I was really just waking up.—What got me onto all
that?
You about ready for a movie, Dave? Boy, I haven’t talked so much in months. It’s what you get for asking, I guess.” He laughed.

I thanked Barker for his story. I told him it made sense to me.

“Well, thanks for saying so anyhow.”

H
E STARTED
fidgeting with the projector. I watched. I knew him better now. I felt so much for him. I wanted to save him. I couldn’t breathe correctly.

“Here goes.” He toasted his newest film then snapped on the large and somehow sinister antique machine.

The movie showed a girl at home reading an illustrated manual, hand in dress, getting herself animated. She made a phone call; you saw the actor answering and, even in a silent film, even given this flimsy premise, you had to find his acting absolutely awful. Barker informed me it was a Swedish movie; they usually started with the girl phoning. “Sometimes it’s one guy she calls, sometimes about six. But always the telephones. I don’t know why. It’s like they just got phones over there and are still proud of them or something.” I laughed. What a nice funny thing to say. By now, even the gin and iced tea (with lemon and sugar) tasted like a great idea.

He sat upright beside me. The projector made its placid motorboat racket. Our couch seemed a kind of quilted raft. Movie light was mostly pink; ivy filtered sun to a thin green. Across Barker’s neutral white shirt, these tints carried on a silent contest. One room away, the crockpot leaked a bit, hissing. Hallway smelled of stew meat, the need for maid service, back issues, laundry in arrears, one young man’s agreeable curried musk. From a corner of my vision, I felt somewhat observed. Cats’ eyes. To heck with caution. Let them look!

Barker kept elbows propped on knees, tensed, staring up at the screen, jaw gone slack. In profile against windows’ leaf-spotted light,
he appeared honest, boyish, wide open. He unbuttoned his top collar button.

I
HEARD
cars pass, my fellow Rotarians, algebra teachers from my school system. Nobody would understand us being here, beginning to maybe do a thing like this. Even if I went public, dedicated an entire Board of Education meeting to the topic, after three hours of intelligent confession, with charts and flannel boards and slide projections, I knew that when lights snapped back on I’d look around from face to face, I’d see they still sat wondering your most basic question:

Why, Dave, why?

I no longer noticed what was happening on screen. Barker’s face, lit by rosy movie light, kept changing. It moved me so. One minute: drowsy courtesy, next a sharp manly smile. I set my glass down on a Florida-shaped coaster. Now, slow, I reached toward the back of his neck—extra-nervous, sure—but that’s part of it, you know? My arm wobbled, fear of being really belted, blackmailed, worse. I chose to touch his dark hair, cool as metal.

“Come
on,”
he huffed forward, clear of my hand. He kept gazing at the film, not me. Barker grumbled, “The guy she phoned, he hasn’t even got to her
house
yet, man.”

I saw he had a system. I figured I could wait to understand it.

I
FELT
he was my decent kid brother. Our folks had died; I would help him even more now. We’d rent industrial-strength vacuum cleaners. We’d purge this mansion of dinge, yank down tattered maroon draperies, let daylight in. I pictured us, stripped to the waists, painting every upstairs room off-white, our shoulders flecked with droplets, the hair on our chests flecked with droplets.

I’d drive Barker and his Wedgwood to a place where I’m known, Old Mall Antiques. I bet we’d get fifteen to nineteen hundred bucks. Barker would act amazed. In front of the dealer, he’d say, “For
that
junk?” and, laughing, I’d have to shush him. With my encouragement,
he’d spend some of the bonus on clothes. We’d donate three generations of
National Geographics
to a nearby orphanage, if there are any orphanages anymore and nearby. I’d scour Barker’s kitchen, defrost the fridge. Slowly, he would find new shape and meaning in his days. He’d commence reading again—nonporn, recent worthy hardbacks. We’d discuss these.

He’d turn up at Little League games, sitting off to one side. Sensing my gratitude at having him high in the bleachers, he’d understand we couldn’t speak. But whenever one of my sons did something at bat or out in center field (a pop-up, a body block of a line drive), I would feel Barker nodding approval as he perched there alone; I’d turn just long enough to see a young bachelor mumbling to himself, shaking his head Yes, glad for my boys.

After office hours, once a week, I’d drive over, knock, then walk right in, calling, “Barker? Me.”

No answer. Maybe he’s napping in a big simple upstairs room, one startling with fresh paint. Six cats stand guard around his bed, two old Persians and their offspring, less Persian, thinner, spottier. Four of them pad over and rub against my pant cuffs; by now they know me.

I settle on the edge of a single bed, I look down at him. Barker’s dark hair has fallen against the pillow like an open wing. Bare-chested, the texture of his poreless skin looks finer than the sheets. Under a blue blanket, he sleeps, exhausted from all the cleaning, from renewing his library card, from the fatigue of clothes shopping. I look hard at him; I hear rush-hour traffic crest then pass its peak. Light in here gets ruddier.

A vein in his neck beats like a clock, only liquid.

—I’m balanced at the pillow end of someone’s bed. I’m watching somebody decent sleep.—If the law considers this so wicked—then why does it feel like my only innocent activity? Barker wakes. The sun is setting. His face does five things at once: sees somebody here, gets scared, recognizes me, grins a good blurry grin, says just, “You.”

(T
HEY DON’T WANT
a person to be tender. They could lock me up for everything I love about myself, for everything I love.)

H
ERE ON THE COUCH
, Barker shifted, “Look
now
, Dave. Uh oh, she hears him knocking. See her hop right up? Okay, walking to the door. It’s him, all right. He’s dressed for winter. That’s because they’re in Sweden, right, Dave?”

I agreed, with feeling. Then I noted Barker taking the pen caddy from his pocket, placing it on the table before him. Next, with an ancient kind of patience, Barker’s torso twisted inches toward me; he lifted my hand, pulled my whole arm up and around and held it by the wrist, hovering in air before his front side as if waiting for some cue. Then Barker, clutching the tender back part of my hand, sighed, “Um-kay.
Now
they’re really starting to.” And he lowered my whole willing palm—down, down onto it.

I touched something fully familiar to me, yet wholly new.

H
E BUCKED
with that first famous jolt of human contact after too long, too long alone without. His spine slackened but the head shivered to one side, righted itself, eager to keep the film in sight. I heard six cats go racing down long hallways, then come thumping back, relaxed enough to play with me, a stranger, in their house. Praise.

Barker’s voice, all gulpy: “I think … this movie’s going to be a real good one, Dave. Right up there on my Ten Favorites list. And, you know? …”He
almost
ceased looking at the screen, he
nearly
turned his eyes my way instead. And the compliment stirred me. “You know? You’re a regular fellow, Dave. I feel like I can trust you. You seem like … one real nice guy.”

Through my breathing, I could hear him, breathing, losing breath, breathing, losing breath.

“Thank you, Barker. Coming from you, that means a lot.”

E
VERY TRUE PLEASURE
is a secret.

1986

F
IND A LITTLE
yellow side street house. Put an older woman in it. Dress her in that tatty favorite robe, pull her slippers up before the sink, have her doing dishes, gazing nowhere—at her own backyard. Gazing everywhere. Something falls outside, loud. One damp thwunk into new grass. A meteor? She herself (retired from selling formal clothes at Wanamaker’s, she herself—a widow and the mother of three scattered sons, she herself alone at home a lot these days) goes onto tiptoe, leans across a sinkful of suds, sees—out near her picnic table, something nude, white, overly-long. It keeps shivering. Both wings seem damaged.

“No way,” she says. It appears human. Yes, it is a male one. It’s face up and, you can tell, it is extremely male (uncircumcised). This old woman, pushing eighty, a history of aches, uses, fun—now presses one damp hand across her eyes. Blaming strain, the luster of new cataracts, she looks again. Still, it rests there on a bright air mattress of its own wings. Outer feathers are tough quills, broad at bottom as rowboat oars. The whole left wing bends far under. It looks hurt.

The widow, sighing, takes up her blue willow mug of heated milk. Shaking her head, muttering, she carries it out back. She moves so slow because: arthritis. It criticizes every step. It asks about the mug she holds, Do you really need this?

S
HE STOOPS
, creaky, beside what can only be a young angel, unconscious. Quick, she checks overhead, ready for what?—some TV news crew in a helicopter? She sees only a sky of the usual size, a Tuesday sky stretched between weekends. She allows herself to touch this thing’s white forehead. She gets a mild electric shock. Then, odd, her tickled finger joints stop aching. They’ve hurt so long. A practical person, she quickly cures her other hand. The angel grunts but sounds pleased. His temperature’s a hundred and fifty, easy—but for him, this seems somehow normal. “Poor thing,” she says, and—careful—pulls his heavy curly head into her lap. The head hums like a phone knocked off its cradle. She scans for neighbors, hoping they’ll come out, wishing they wouldn’t, both.

“Look, will warm milk help?” She pours some down him. Her wrist brushes angel skin. Which pulls the way an ice tray begs whatever touches it. A thirty-year pain leaves her, enters him. Even her liver spots are lightening. He grunts with pleasure, soaking up all of it. Bold, she presses her worst hip deep into crackling feathers. The hip has been half numb since a silly fall last February. All stiffness leaves her. He goes, “Unhh.” Her griefs seem to fatten him like vitamins. Bolder, she whispers private woes: the Medicare cuts, the sons too casual by half, the daughters-in-law not bad but not so great. These woes seem ended. “Nobody’ll believe. Still, tell me some of it.” She tilts nearer. Both his eyes stay shut but his voice, like clicks from a million crickets pooled, goes, “We’re just another army. We all look alike—we didn’t, before. It’s not what you expect. We miss this other. Don’t count on the next. Notice things here. We are just another army.”