Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakthrough (6 page)

  "Who are you?" Vivian tossed off her second whiskey.

  "I'm Joe." He introduced himself to her chest and held out a huge hand, which she ignored.

  "Well, Joe." She thudded her glass onto the scarred bar. "I'm Vivian, and those tits you're staring at belong to me."

  Joe flushed, then tried to recover with a leer while the men of Harris's Tavern laughed raucously.

  She pointed to her glass and sent a pleading glance to Mike. He held it up to the bartender, who came grudgingly over with the bottle and poured.

  "She's too much woman for you, Joe." One of the men whistled and laughed. "You better go home to Erin."

  "They haven't made a woman yet that's too much for me."

  "Oh, I think this one is."

  Vivian downed her third whiskey, waiting for the familiar glow to allow the pain and mania to leak away. Men were such children.

"You better not take a bath around her."

  Laughter, guffaws. Vivian's stomach roiled; her warm glow iced over. Ed in the tub, skin pruned, eyes staring. Sober, she could keep the picture at bay. Stinking drunk worked, too. In between, she was easy pickings.

  Big mistake coming out tonight. At her best she could take on the entire bar, have them running for the exit, tails between their legs, and enjoy the hell out of it. But she wasn't remotely at her best. She needed Ed to have told her not to come. Why hadn't he been there to tell her?

  This was his fault, the prick. How many times had she told him it was stupid to bathe with his CD player close to the edge? What kind of idiot thought he was immune to that danger? He'd called her a worrywart, and when she'd tried to unplug the player and take it away, he slapped her. So she stopped bringing it up. Fine. Let him fry, it would serve him right.

  She just never dreamed he actually would.

  "So . . . you ever get lonely in that big house there, Vivian?" Joe posed the question to her cleavage. His words slurred, his glass was empty. He reached behind Mike and poked her in the shoulder.

  "Back off, Joe." Mike turned to him. "Just back off."

  "Oh, like she's not asking for it. Women like that need only one thing."

  "Oh pleez." Vivian rolled her eyes. "What bad movie did you get cut from?"

  Mike slid off his stool, threw bills on the bar, and grabbed his jacket. "Come on, Vivian. I'll follow you home."

  "No, no. Let her stay." Joe's voice lowered to a deep—and

in any other man, seductive—murmur. On him, it was just creepy multiplied. "Her and her tits are welcome anytime."

  "You'd like a glimpse of those, eh, Joe?" This from anonymous jerk number four.

  "Let's go." Mike was already at the door.

  "Damn right I would."

  "We
all
would." The men guffawed, leering adolescents.

  That was it. Vivian sauntered after Mike. At the door, she turned, dipped her hands into her bra, and brought out two handfuls of naked breast. "You want to see? Here they are."

  Silence dropped over the bar as if someone had pressed a mute button. The men glanced, then looked away, even Joe.

  "Jesus." Mike dropped his jacket over her front.

  Vivian burst out laughing. Jackasses. Spouting all that macho testosterone, then whimpering at the real thing.

  "Come on." Mike grabbed her arm and pulled her after him out of the bar and onto nearly deserted Main Street. She followed, unresisting, still laughing.

  "That was priceless. Ha!" She shouted the syllable, tucking her breasts back into her top, absurdly giddy. "Did you see their faces?"

  "Yes, I saw."

  "You did?" She pouted playfully, finished tucking, and handed him his jacket. "You mean you weren't too busy checking out the merchandise?"

  He shook his head, but she could have sworn she saw him hide a grin. Why was he so damn scared of smiling? "You are a piece of work. Get in your car, I'll see you home."

  "You don't want to come home with me?" She danced around in front of him, walked backward while he kept coming.

"No, I don't."

  "Aw, c'mon, Mike." She stopped his stride with her hands on his nicely muscled forearms and dragged them around her waist, knowing he'd never agree and having too much fun to care. "We could have a most excellent evening."

  "Sorry." He pulled his nicely muscled arms away and kept walking, saying a calm good evening to a blond man staring.

  "Oh, right." She followed him and winked at the man, who frowned and turned away. "You've got hot tuna waiting."

  An incredulous glance. "Come again?"

  "A virgin miss came by to drop a covered dish at your house." Vivian unlocked her door and yanked it open. "She's probably still there, waiting hopefully on your front steps. Little sweater thrown over her shoulders to ward off the chill. Shiver, shiver, Mike, warm me up?"

  He tightened his lips and looked away. "The ladies of this town seem to think I need regular feeding."

  "The ladies of this town are trying to score a big fat Mike wedding."

  He rolled his eyes and pushed her into her seat, closed the door. She opened the window, fumbled in her purse, and handed him money for her whiskey. "I didn't mean you to get stuck with my tab."

  "No problem." He took the bills and pushed them into his jeans pocket.

  "No, come here." She beckoned him closer. "I want to say something."

  He leaned forward reluctantly. "I doubt I want to hear this."

  "You do." She looked into his eyes, darkened by twilight, then changed her mind and stared out her windshield. "Thanks for tonight."

  "What did I do?"

  "You helped me out."

  Mike gave a snort of laughter. "I think you did fine on your own."

  "Yeah, but I was . . ." She put her hand to her forehead. What? Fucked with grief? Out of her mind? Why would he care?

  She put the hand down. Gave him a sultry sideways look and straightened her shoulders so her chest stuck out. "It's like I always say, Mike. Tits are power."

  He shook his head and took a step away from the car. "I hate to break it to you, Vivian, but tits are just tits. Even yours. Good night."

  She laughed, not sure why that was funny, or if it was funny, and watched him walk to his car, start the engine, and wait for her to pull out ahead. She drove slowly back to her weird old -lady house in the weird, silent, beautiful neighborhood, liking the sight of his lights in her rearview mirror, liking the idea someone was there for her even for a few minutes—someone she didn't have to pay to be on her side.

Six

Excerpt from Erin's journal

Eleventh grade

November 6—Something weird happened today after school. Jennifer was teasing me about what I was wearing. Like my dad would pay for cool clothes? Right. So I was walking home, feeling sick and angry like usual. And then this kid, Joe, pulls up next to me on his bicycle and keeps riding while I'm walking, even though he almost falls off trying to go so slowly. I fi gure he's going to make fun of me, too. But he just starts talking. He says Jennifer is a bitch (tell me something I don't know), and then he says he noticed me this year.

  
At first I'm even more angry. I mean I've been at that school since kindergarten and everyone knows I'm the weird one who has fits. All I'll say about that
is they don't know what it's like being me. So they should shut up and leave me alone.

  
But then Joe keeps talking to me and then he says again he noticed me this year. This time he gets off his bike and tries to touch me. I do not like this. I try to get away. Then he says he isn't going to hurt me. He just wants to touch my hair. So he slides his hand down my hair and says he knew it would be that soft. And then he rides away like he's embarrassed.

  
I don't remember the last time someone touched me nicely. My mom did, but she left so long ago it seems like a dream.

  
I want him to touch me again.

Joe was late.

  Erin glanced out the front window at Maple Avenue. No sign of a car. Most cars that came down this far were either Joe's or turning around. She and Joe didn't have too many visitors. Sometimes his friends would come by to play cards or watch movies. But not often.

  She and Joe lived at the dead end of the street; their house was set off some from the others. Another house could fi t on either side of theirs. Behind them lay woods and farmland and a stream she used to imagine joined the Mississippi. She loved the idea of being connected to something as vast and powerful as the Mississippi, though she'd never bothered to find out if the stream fed into the mighty river or not. She didn't want to deal with the disappointment if it just went into Lake Chippewa.

  Her stomach growled; she put a protective hand to it. Funny how gas felt like a moving baby. She was hungry, but Joe hated eating dinner alone; he always said eating alone made him feel as if he were a bachelor. The fact that he hadn't ever been a bachelor, just a child and then a teenager and then a husband didn't seem to matter. He felt like a bachelor when he ate alone. So Erin waited, allowing herself a few crackers to tide her over.

  She'd made progress on a painting this afternoon. Towering layer cakes frosted brown and pink and white, yellow tulips, and a plate of blue -silver trout. But once she realized Joe wasn't coming home on time, she couldn't paint. The uneasiness got in the way.

  If Joe was late, he was out at Harris's Tavern. Slightly late, say six -thirty, meant he'd stopped for a drink; he'd be mellow, cheerful, and affectionate. He'd tell her how the country should be run, how the town should be run, how the butcher shop he worked at should be run. She'd listen and laugh at his jokes, make him feel interesting and funny, and the evening would be pleasant.

  Seven o'clock, he'd have two drinks in him. He'd be harder to cajole into a good mood, tired, more withdrawn, early to bed.

  Seven-thirty, he'd find some fault with dinner, with the house, with her attitude, with her appearance, and turn it into a chance to make sure she realized he'd been forced to marry her. Sooner or later he'd mention the lost babies. The first baby was the only reason he married her; where was that baby now? Where were the rest of them? Dead, that's where. And why hadn't there been any since Joy; what was wrong with her? If he knew then that she wasn't normal, he would have used protection. Lots of guys were having sex in high school; he could have gotten condoms without the Stottlers, who owned the drugstore, fi nding out.

  Eight o'clock, he'd come home mean and want sex the way she hated it most.

  It was nearly eight -thirty.

  She wandered into their bedroom, past her studio, which had been set up as a nursery until Joe went nuts one night, brought in an ax, and destroyed everything. He was tired of her keeping the room that way with the baby dead and no more coming. The crib, the wallpaper she'd put in herself, the changing table, the tiny chair, the rocking airplane for when Joy was older, he'd chopped it all up. Erin hadn't been able to stand it. She'd wanted to take the ax and chop Joe up, but she couldn't get it away from him. She'd ended up with bruises and a cut near her mouth that left a small scar. Another one.

  When Joe came back to normal, he'd insisted they make the room over into a studio for her. It had seemed horrible to replace Joy's room with a room just for Erin, as if Joy had to die twice. But Joe's self -loathing and his need to make it right had touched Erin, so she'd accepted his offer. And she did enjoy having her own space to paint in. The one room in the house that was hers. Except Joan really owned the whole place, and never let them forget it.

  Erin moved to the window in their bedroom, checked again for Joe's car, then sat in front of the computer. She didn't want to face what was ahead, couldn't stand to sit here waiting. Her legs felt like dancing, fl ailing, or sprinting. Times like these, she wished she still ran, like she did in high school. She probably could have been a marathoner, Coach Auburn said. Running set her free the way nothing did, except her trances.

  Trances she'd discovered when her father was in his mean moods. She could retreat so far inside herself that she stopped existing. When Joy was born, the nurse said she'd never seen anyone stay so quiet and calm through labor. She'd caught her breath, too, when she saw the scars on Erin's body, but of course said nothing. People in Kettle didn't want to know.

  Erin opened her e -mail program and waited hopefully for the system to check the server. She'd sent out an e -mail yesterday, to her aunts who lived near Milwaukee; her cousin; her history teacher who moved back to Chicago; Fran, her freshman tutor in Spanish, now at college in Maine. They were on a list called "Joy."

  She hoped one of her e -mails would catch on enough, touch enough people, and be forwarded so many times, that someone would forward it back to her, not knowing she actually wrote it.

  Yesterday's e -mail was about a woman who didn't make time to have lunch with her sister. Then her sister was killed in an automobile accident. And now the woman would never get to have lunch with her sister ever again. At the bottom, Erin wrote:

Pass this along to your friends; help their lives be richer in the only way that counts. If it comes back to you, you are richer than Bill Gates, in friendship and in love.

  She supposed that was pretty gag -worthy, but those types of e -mails seemed popular. At least judging by the number she got sent, mostly from her grandmother, in an assisted living facility in Hayward. Maybe you got to like sappy stuff when you reached the end of your life.

  After receiving so many of these e -mails, Erin had decided to write her own. She liked the idea of sending part of herself out there. She always made it look as if she'd forwarded the note from someone else. Maybe someday her grandmother would forward one Erin had written back to her.

  The rumble of their garage door opening preceded the sound of a car engine in the driveway by a few seconds. Erin's hands fumbled to close her program, turn off the computer. If Joe saw her, he'd want to know who she'd been writing to, what she'd said. He could make her feel guilty asking what she'd eaten for lunch, and he could smell guilt a mile away. Once he smelled guilt, things got unpleasant. Her breath came faster; fear cut sharply into her stomach. She should have had more to eat.

  A loud noise from the garage, a metallic clank, like something had been knocked over, a shovel or something. Joe could hold nearly half a bottle and walk okay. If he was stumbling and knocking things over, he was beyond drunk.

  She peeked in the mirror, made sure she looked pleasantly neutral. Anything to avoid comment, confrontation, though by now it was inevitable.

  "
Er'n."
His slurred shout increased her adrenaline. Not the nice, excited kind of adrenaline, a dark burn that sapped her, made her tremble. Fight or fl ight—she could do neither. Just stand and watch it coming, take what he wanted to give her, and tomorrow pretend it hadn't happened. Over and over, year after year.

"
Yes, Joe
.
I'm coming
."

  She ran the length of the house to the garage door, opened it, smiled welcome she didn't feel. He was trashed. Eyes swollen into slits, lip curled the way it did when he was feeling cruel and horny. Oh God.

  "Upstairs. Run my bath."

  No.
No
.

  "What about dinner? You must be hungry." She drew him into the house, speaking gently, wanting to hold her nose at the way he smelled. Alcohol, cigarettes, and the smell of meat that clung to his hair and skin. Wanting to run out of the house, into the woods, far away until she died of exhaustion and freedom.

  "Did I say I's hungry?" He grabbed her arm, yanked her up against him, peered down at her. "
Did
I?"

  "No." She shook her head. "You didn't."

  "What'd I say?"

  "You said to—"

  "Run my bath. I wan' be clean." His words slid out, oozy, misshapen, as if the syllables were melting together. "That Vivian woman was at th' bar. She's dirty, Erin. She made me feel dirty. I have to be clean b'fore I can touch you."

  Her empty stomach filled with acid and the dark, burning fear of this man she'd once thought she loved. Sometimes she still thought she did. Or could.

  But the nights he wanted a bath were always the worst.

Letter home from Sarah
Cornell College
October, freshman year

Dear Mom and Daddy,

I barely have time to write, I've got three ten - page papers due Monday, can you believe it? It's Friday now, I won't sleep until Monday night.

  
Everything is great, my classes are tough but totally fun, esp. Western Dance History—the prof is completely cool. Everyone claps after each lecture, it's like a performance!

  
And (drumroll) I met a guy in my Art and Ideology class. His name is Ben Gilchrist. I can't say more right now in case I jinx it, but you know how you said you looked into Dad's eyes and knew, Mom? I think this is it for me. Shhh. Not another word!

  
Debby just got home, we're going to the library to study, gotta go, sorry this is so short! I'll write again soon.

Love you! Miss you! Sarah

Sarah glanced up from her copy of
Architectural Digest,
and over at the clock next to her and Ben's bed. Ten -thirty, the news was over, Ben would be coming up soon.

  What a day. After that dreadful visit with Vivian this morning, Sarah had scarcely known what to do with herself. She'd gone to the Pick 'n Save out on Highway J, and bought way too many groceries. Filling the house with food felt important, as if she would soon be under siege. She'd bought things she didn't usually buy, too, like sausages, though she bought the lower-fat variety made with turkey. Maybe with cold weather coming, some ancient human instinct was telling her to put on extra pounds for the rough winter ahead.

  On some strange impulse, she'd even bought Ben that beer Sarah had this morning, with the red label, Leinen . . . something. Ben had been drinking Budweiser forever because that's what he liked and that's what she bought him. But today she thought maybe he'd like to try a new variety. Of course Ben claimed he'd tried it already, that either she bought it for him before, which she was sure she hadn't, or he'd had one at someone's house, or maybe at Harris's Tavern.

  Ben had just nodded at the six -pack she took into his study, where he was immersed in writing some scene of his novel about a monstrous killer who tore children up and drank their blood, and who would want to read that? But Ben said it was a deeply symbolic work, about plundering the planet at the expense of future generations. Even Sarah knew it was all the rage to dwell on violence and misery for entertainment, as if there wasn't enough of the real thing cluttering up the newspapers.

  She supposed it was silly of her to want Ben to be excited or grateful that she bought beer she thought he'd like. It was just beer, after all. And Sarah knew she got more excited and grateful about things than most people did.

In any case, it didn't matter.

  After she'd put the groceries away, she had her lunch— lower-fat braunschweiger on whole wheat bread, with cucumber and onion. Oh, she'd forgotten how good that sandwich was; she generally had turkey or sliced chicken since they were healthier.

  She'd spent the afternoon tending her pumpkins. She loved spending time with them. Down close to the soil she could nurture them, urge them to grow and thrive. No accident plant stores were called nurseries; tending plants was very much like tending babies. Sarah even spent sleepless nights the years disease or vermin struck, though that didn't seem to be happening this year. On the contrary, each globe was growing steadily, gaining strength and majesty.