Women & Other Animals (23 page)

"Please, Barb," laughed Martha, "or I might panic and start yelling."

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Damn her. Barb would get the key so that this man would leave, and eventually Martha would leave, and nobody would wake Rebecca. Barb knelt beside the man, who lay on his back in the dark, his head curled against the dresser. His breath was woody like bourbon, and his body smelled faintly skunky. The muscles of his arms and chest pressed against the Harley Davidson Tshirt, and his jeans were shiny with grease. A bulge of keys showed at his right front hip. Barb looked up at Martha before pushing her hand into the pocket. His skin emanated heat through the thin cotton. When the man groaned and shifted, a shiver passed across Barb's back. She grasped the keys, but hesitated before withdrawing her hand. The man's eyes fluttered once, and Barb closed her own eyes. In fifteen years she hadn't touched another man as intimately as this. When she opened her eyes, Martha was staring at her from the bed, halfsmiling, one eye squinted. Barb slid the keys from the man's pocket, controlling her breathing.

"It's a small key," said Martha. "He showed it to me."

Barb flipped through the keys, her hands shaking. She held Martha's wrists, which were warm against the cold metal of the handcuffs. The skin on Martha's wrists seemed impossibly thin and delicate. The older sister Suzanne had made threeinch lengthwise slits in wrists like these. The key clicked, and Barb reluctantly let go.

The veins of her own wrists were obscured by a layer of fat and muscle from housework. Martha rubbed her wrists where the cuffs had imprinted red rings around them.

Martha worked the handcuff key off the key chain before tossing the rest at the man's limp body. When the man didn't stir, she tossed a footstool at him, one leg of which stabbed him in the crotch. Barb flinched. The man groaned and sat up.

"What's the matter with you, asshole?" said Martha.

"What the hell's . . . ?" he moaned. "You crazy bitch."

"Why don't you leave, now," said Barb.

"Sure," he said. "Get me the hell out of here."

"I'll walk you to the door," said Martha, picking his keys off the floor and pressing them into his hand. She buttoned his shirt, adjusted her cutoffs, tucked her hair behind her ears—despite her drunkenness, she was as cool as a newscaster. Barb noticed that a Page 155

leather jacket hung over the back of a chair in Martha's room, and the handcuffs and key lay on the bedside table.

Martha supported the man as they stepped out into the hall and down the stairs. Barb followed, fearing that Rebecca would appear and ask what was happening.

Barb couldn't help but notice how pretty Martha's legs were, as long and tan as a teenager's. No hint of cellulite or varicosities. Martha released the man to stumble out into the night.

"Does my face look O.K.?" asked Martha.

Barb felt a breathless panic. But this was Martha, not Rebecca. And she reeked of beer.

"He hurt you. You're bleeding a little."

"I fell off his motorcycle. Am I bad?" She reached up as if to touch the wound, but instead stuck her finger in her eye.

"It's not that bad. I'll clean you up in the kitchen."

Martha sat at the table while Barb boiled water, made chamomile tea, gathered firstaid supplies and then placed two mugs between them. The steam from their cups and the smoke from Martha's cigarette mingled on the way to the ceiling.

"Where'd that guy come from?" asked Barb.

"The Eastside Tavern."

"You just picked up a guy and brought him here?"

"I think I used to know him." She wrinkled her forehead as if actively thinking.

"So you just brought him here?" asked Barb. "To this house?"

"Hey, don't pull that shit on me," she slurred. "This is my house too." Barb felt her own anger seep like greenish chlorine gas out from under kitchen cabinets and doors. Had Martha paid any taxes on this house? Had she ever caulked a window? Nailed sheathing? Instead, Barb said, "You don't have a daughter to worry about."

"You're right, Barb. I'm sorry. But you shouldn't try to protect Becky so much. Or else one day, boom! she'll figure it all out, and . . . " Martha trailed off, as though she had forgotten what she was going to say.

Barb sponged the blood from around Martha's temple. The skin at her eyebrow was abraded; there was one cut above her eyebrow which Barb thought might leave a tiny scar.

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''You know, you're the best thing that ever happened to this family," said Martha, clanging her tea mug on the table. "All the rest of us are crazy. You're a fool of sanity, I mean a pool." Barb waited to hear more, but Martha changed the subject as quickly as she'd started it. "You should've met my husband. Fucking worthless sonofabitch."

Before long Martha's eyelids drooped, and she said good night and stumbled up to bed for some of that undisturbed O'Leary sleep. Barb didn't follow but sat motionless at the table for more than an hour, until golden patches of light formed along the length of the countertops. As the sun grew brighter, the fibers of the house began to rustle and sparkle as though awakening, and Barb's own body came alive with it, her skin first, then the muscles and bones of her arms. She ran a bucket of water and knelt on the floor in a broad patch of light. She meant to scrub with the stiffbristled brush, but instead just sat in the warmth. Last week when she had washed those windows she had cursed them for being too big, for letting in too much weather. She looked into the dining room where three bright rectangles shone on the wood floor. She closed her eyes and faced the sun.

A little after six, Barb made coffee, and Rebecca's noisy arrival in the kitchen at seven jarred her nerves. Rebecca plopped into a chair. "Hi, Mom. Somebody was in my room."

"What?" Barb's heart pounded out of rhythm.

"Somebody put my dirty clothes in the hamper. I figured it was you."

What if Martha's guest had accidentally gone into Rebecca's room? Would the man have noticed that this girl was not Martha but only a baby?

Martin appeared, poured himself a cup of coffee, and sat at the kitchen table. Barb couldn't shake an image of Rebecca handcuffed to her twin headboard, and though she had turned on the water only to rinse her cup, she let it run over her hands. When she pulled them out of the stream, they were ice cold.

Rebecca finished her cereal, then climbed onto her father's lap. Martin wrapped both arms around her. The way Martin touched Page 157

Rebecca suddenly bothered Barb. When Barb had been on top of him in bed last night, hadn't he pulled her to him the same way? With those same hands, those fingers that had been inside of her. Rebecca squealed as Martin began to tickle her. Dear God, had he even washed his hands? Barb stared at the worst of the gray bucket rings on the kitchen floor. Would they never go away?

She hustled Rebecca to school and kissed Martin off to work, but still got a late start to the office herself, and then halfway out the driveway she saw something dead.

Barb rested her forehead on the steering wheel before getting out to go look, and when she finally approached it, three tiny rabbits scampered away. They didn't go far, but stopped in the nearest patch of weed cover, their tiny hearts beating, bright eyes wet, bodies small enough to fold into her hand. She picked up the mother rabbit by one foot and tossed her toward the woods. She didn't have time to bury her. The three babies stood perfectly still. Barb felt their terror and confusion move across the brush in little waves.

At 5:12 that evening, according to the kitchen clock, Barb dropped her potato peeler in the sink. The dog. Where was the dog?

She yelled upstairs for Rebecca, but there was no answer. Martin would be home any second. Barb ran down the flagstone path into the middle of the driveway.

Martin's truck approached her, going too fast. She put her hand to her mouth, but the rest of her muscles froze. Martin screeched to a halt and jumped out of the pickup. "What's wrong, Barb?"

"Where's Muffin?" she asked, panicked.

"I don't know," he said.

"You didn't hit him, did you?"

"Why do you think I would kill our dog?" demanded Martin. "Tell me. Do you think I'm some kind of monster?"

"You're just so damned careless!" said Barb. She didn't want to fight, but she needed to be heard. "You and your whole family! You don't see what's happening around you! You live like drunken cavalry."

"You want me to live like you, Barb? Scared of everything?" Color flowed into his cheeks.

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"The buckets, Martin! The buckets!" Barb's hands formed fists, as though she were clutching bucket handles. "You let your poor mother keep all those buckets of water! Those rotting, stinking, moldy buckets of potato water!"

Martin stared at her, eyebrows screwed up. His flush of color had disappeared.

Then into the curve of the driveway, from a path through the trees, stepped Rebecca, as fresh as a wood sprite, leading Muffin on a leash. "What's the matter?"

Rebecca asked.

"See, Barb, Muffin's fine. Everything's fine." Martin's expression showed concern. It occurred to Barb that Martin thought she was going insane. An O'Leary worried that
she
was crazy. Barb looked down at the driveway gravel and shook her head, feeling the distance growing huge between herself and her husband and daughter Martin walked with Rebecca up the stone path toward the house, one arm draped over the girl's shoulder Barb followed. "Let's build a bonfire tonight," said Martin.

"We've got to burn that rotten wood your ma and I took off the roof."

"Cool, Dad."

"Where's your aunt?"

"In her room," said Rebecca. "She won't come out."

"Oh, I'll get her out," said Martin. "Hung over still, is she?"

"Please don't bother her," said Barb. "She had a rough night."

"Oh, I'll bother her, all right." Martin let go of Rebecca and rubbed his hands together. "Martha's a girl who needs to be bothered."

Martin had already freed himself from his anger, dropped it like a bundle of shingles, but Barb's stuck in her esophagus and her bronchial tubes. She didn't want to yell anymore. She wanted to arrange her thoughts, phrase them intelligently, so sanely that Martin would have to agree with her

"What should I do for the fire, Dad?" asked Rebecca.

"Collect all the sticks you can find, and logs, kitchen chairs, whatever. Pull stuff out of the woods. I'll pour kerosene over it, and we'll eat supper while it soaks in, then light it. Boom!"

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"Boom!" repeated Rebecca and threw her arms out in an explosion, inadvertently yanking the dog up short. Muffin yelped.

After supper, Barb said she had to go to the store but instead drove to town and parked beside the mortuary, across the street from her old house. It was a family house, with welldefined rooms, one for eating, one for cooking, two for sleeping. No crazy, disintegrating rooms where love letters reeking of infidelity fell like paint chips and plaster dust, where rain could pour down on people in their beds, where dirty, muscular strangers entered without warning.

A car pulled into the driveway of the brick house, and a tall man in a white shirt and gray pants stepped out of it, jacket over his arm. She'd met him at the closing, but she'd felt no connection to him then. He glanced in Barb's direction as he made his way up the front steps, then took out his key and unlocked the door. Before entering, he turned and looked again through wireframed glasses. His jaw was dark with the day's growth of beard. He slept in the room where she used to sleep. He hung his pants over the back of a chair beside the bed. She remembered the feel of her naked feet on the padded bedroom carpet.

Barb let herself fall back against the headrest. She thought of one afternoon two weeks ago when she and Martin had been working on the roof, driving nails into opposite sides of a fourbyeight piece of plywood. Barb had stopped and watched him pound. She feared he would miss and smash his thumb. More than that, though, she feared she wouldn't stop herself from reaching for him, climbing on top of him on the sloping roof. Rebecca was twentyfive feet below them with the dogs and rabbits and opossums. Barb imagined herself and Martin rolling and sliding toward the edge of the roof, plywood splinters driving into their skin. She had awakened from this thought when she noticed Martin had stopped nailing and was watching her. "You look worried," he'd said. "What's the matter?" Barb had answered, "Nothing."

Barb unclenched the steering wheel, and when she looked back at the house, she saw it differently. The kitchen, she remembered, had almost no counter space, and the windows didn't let in much light,

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especially since the southern exposure was entirely blocked by the house next door. The roof hung so close to the ground. Rebecca's bedroom had been tiny, perfect for her as a baby, but maybe she couldn't have grown up if they'd stayed there. Barb had a strange feeling that even her own body had grown larger since they'd moved out, that this house couldn't fit her any more, that she'd have to duck as she passed through doorways. But if she didn't belong in the big O'Leary house, and she couldn't return to this place, then she was on her own. Barb put the car in gear and headed along the secondary highway and then slowly up their dirt drive, watching out for innocent creatures. She couldn't change the O'Learys, but tomorrow, when it was light, she would find and bury that poor mother rabbit. And when she got her paycheck this Friday, she would not buy shingles as she ought to. Instead she'd buy chicken wire, and she'd nail it to trees and string it along the driveway herself, even if it took all night. As she approached the house, she saw a great blaze.

Barb got out of the car and walked in darkness along the path toward the bonfire where the three O'Learys moved in strange relief against the flames. Martha held Rebecca's hand, and Rebecca held her father's as they traveled around the fire in a line. Rebecca hesitated once and stumbled over her feet, and Barb couldn't help but think of her flying into the fire. Barb imagined she saw not only the three, but the rest of the family as well, moving among the flames: Martin's mother, sluggish and thick, doped up on Thorazine; Martin's sister Suzanne waving her long thin limbs, her wrists transparent and scarred; the lost brother, forever seventeen, with pretty gray eyes and wild curls like a woman's. The rest of the family swayed and grasped, ancients with round faces, small noses, and wideset eyes. She imagined the howls of O'Leary men tied to medieval racks or chained to dungeon walls, their arms and legs stretched obscenely. Pearshaped women wore their makeup skewed, lips blurred into noses and chins. The flames were hot blankets beneath which the figures clinched and writhed. The fizzing and popping and creosotestink were messages from one generation to the next.