You guys need another pitcher?
What I need is a Bloody Mary.
We don’t have those. Who else needs what?
Bring another pitcher, Tammy.
What about you guys over here?
Two more pitchers. And watch the foam.
Make her coach of the Hawks, I say. Or give her some more magic mushrooms, maybe. Or hey—burn her at the stake.
Tammy went back to the sanctuary of the crones and began to fill orders at the tap. She was halfway to being a crone herself but nevertheless stuffed her thighs every evening into a pair of wide jeans. There were two guys in the place tonight she’d slept with out of drunken stupidity, but neither had been good to know, fun or interesting. One of them was Vaughn Maynard, who since then had lost an eyeball to a two-by-four launched out of a table saw, and the other was Tom Cross. As long as they don’t get violent, she said, to nobody in particular. Just keep them in suds and they’re all right.
What did you mean by saying it’s the devil?
I mean people seeing things in the woods it could maybe be Satan just as easy as anything. I mean it could be a bad thing.
Tammy carried three pitchers in one hand, a full glass in the other. The satellite dish on the roof was acting up. Sometimes in the rain the signal broke apart, something the satellite company called rain shadow. The whole idea of a TV signal was mind-boggling in the first place. How did it happen? Did anyone know? If the image of a football game could travel through the air from Texas, couldn’t there be a Satan? Anyway, the game looked odd. She hoped the picture would improve.
Tom Cross was drinking in a self-possessed way, but finally his glass was empty. You doing all right here? Tammy asked.
Another.
Why is it you always give me just a little old one-word answer?
Could you please bring me another beer, Tammy?
A whole sentence.
Yes.
She moved out of his range. Tom gave her a case of ill nerves. Partly she wanted to sleep with him again, now that he was beaten by tragedy. Maybe he would be more tender from it. Not so aloof and cold, not so terse and uncaring. After they did it, when that part was done, maybe they could talk about things that mattered, something she felt she needed to do, talk to a man about her life. She imagined them in bed with cigarettes, speaking of what was inside them both, his private world and hers as well—she had her own sore subjects, after all, though nothing close to Tom’s. His were enough to ruin somebody and that made her want to pursue him again, to find out if Tom was someone she could talk to, a person she could peel open, reveal, because of all his wounds.
But more likely, she guessed, he was worse now. It seemed that way to her, watching. Getting tangled up with Tom in the hope of finding a moment’s tenderness was plainly asking for trouble. That was one thing Tammy knew about—thinking that sleeping with a man was one thing, finding out it was another. No, she told herself, I don’t need Tom. Curiosity killed the cat and I’ve already used nine lives.
When she brought him his fresh beer and took away the old one she said, That ought to hold you for a while and Tom answered, Maybe. Then she lost her will about him and put her hand on his table. Your son, she said. How is he?
Paralyzed.
I know that. But how is he?
How would you be if you were paralyzed?
Not too good. Terrible. But maybe he’ll get back on his feet.
Tom drank, wiped his lips on his coat sleeve, and looked at the football game. Okay, said Tammy, fair enough. I can see you don’t want to talk about it.
Tammy?
What is it?
That guy over there is calling for a beer.
Tell him he can get it himself.
It doesn’t do me any good to jabber. I’m not game for beating it to death, talking it over all the time.
If you say so, Tom.
This girl that’s seen the Virgin Mary. What’s that about?
She’s a mushroomer. That’s all I know.
He’s pissed because you won’t look at him.
Tell him I’m busy looking at you.
Go on, Tammy. See to business.
I’m not going to speak for you, but me, I had a lot of fun. That’s all, Tom. Otherwise, it’s raining. Just a little fun.
It never works that way. You know that. There’s no such thing as a roll in the hay and everyone goes away fine.
You turning me down?
Probably. I guess.
That’s a mistake, said Tammy.
By closing time, she’d gotten to him; he’d also been drinking a little. But as it turned out Tom was still bad to sleep with. He did it quickly with his pants at his ankles, his boots still laced, his shirt still buttoned, and his big moment arrived without fanfare. Oh God, she heard him say, and when he opened his eyes, they were misty. He pulled out with no inkling of affection and zipped himself up right away. Then he sat in a chair and smoked, looking out the window. Immediately it was as if the sex hadn’t happened; it barely had, in her case. Yet she held out hope for an emotional exchange, some kind of intimate dialogue. Tammy remembered her disappointment from the last time, how Tom had been so quick about it then; now he was even more of a mistake, didn’t kiss her, didn’t look, just did what he had to, took care of his business in the perfunctory manner somebody might piss in the woods. But where before he’d mainly been cold and impersonal, now there was mostly this layer of sadness slowing his every move. Now he was empty and a cause for distress, his unhappiness a transferable stain, so that as much as she’d wanted to probe into him she found herself wanting a quick exit. At least there hadn’t been any trouble; he’d been in and out in no time. There hadn’t been logistical fumbling or the awkwardness of coaxing an erection. What had possessed her to give Tom a whirl? What new low had she sunk to? Tammy sat up and started gathering her clothes. How’d you get here? she asked.
I’m motel maintenance. Plus cash every week. It’s what I’m able to afford.
You get kicked out?
I walked out, Tammy.
Over what exactly?
Over everything.
She knew the story. Everyone did. The Cross family tragedy was a public meal, all-you-can-eat night at the Elks Club. Still, there were multiple versions of it—a kind of smorgasbord. Some said Eleanor gave him the boot, some said Tom left breaking things, some said they parted amicably, some said the two of them still slept together but were nevertheless full of hatred. Everyone knew, obviously, that their differences were over the boy and his troubles, but what sort of differences were they? Everything, said Tammy. That’s a lot.
Tom got up and tossed her jeans on the bed. A car went by on the highway, wet tires, and she watched while its headlights swept through the curtains and swam across his face. A fleeting underwater glow, like glimpsing Tom’s face through a porthole. His lone rider’s profile pockmarked by shadows. A momentary illumination; from one shade to another. Let’s not go there, Tom said. I just couldn’t take it, that’s all.
Take what?
Get dressed.
If you had any tenderness in you at all you’d snap this bra for me.
Snap it in front and work it around.
That’s not my point.
I know it isn’t.
Don’t you talk to anybody?
I go to confession once a week.
You tell your priest about nights like this?
If I don’t I can’t take Communion, so yes.
What’s he say about the mushroom girl?
I haven’t heard him say anything.
Seeing the Virgin Mary, Jesus. How can something like that be true? Tammy wrestled into her shirt. Toss me a cig, she said.
She got into her jeans, lit up, and smoked, pulling even harder than he did. For a long time she’d accepted the risk that she could die from lung cancer or emphysema; in the meantime there were cigarettes. She’d also promised herself that one day, when she ended up breathing through a hole in her throat, she
wasn’t going to whine about it but instead quell the urge to whine by remembering the joy of smoking. You know what it is about you? said Tom. It’s the way you smoke a cigarette.
I smoke with a death wish.
Yeah. That’s it. And your cheeks get kind of hollow.
Like a blow-job queen.
I didn’t say it.
Well what if you did?
I didn’t, said Tom.
Why are you such an uptight Catholic?
I’m not uptight. But I believe in Jesus.
What if that’s just a life preserver? Here you are thinking it makes things all right but you know what about a life preserver? You fall in the sea with one of them on you’re still dead in an hour, Tom. From cold water or sharks.
No you’re not. You’re saved.
Saved. I’ve never understood that. Saved from what exactly? I don’t see how you yourself are saved. And you’re a church-going guy.
This is the problem with balling somebody. You feel obligated to talk.
Balling somebody, Tammy said. Your kind of balling, you owe half a sentence. Half a sentence or a word. A cough.
I never promised anything, Tammy.
The promise is—what do you call it? Implied, Tom. It’s implied.
She tied her shoes and got her jacket on. This place is depressing, she said. It smells like mold in here.
I didn’t make any promises.
Okay, you didn’t make promises.
He was sitting by the window, low, with the cigarette hand against his forehead, and with the light from the bathroom across his face she could see his chin stubble flecked with gray; the light was at just the right angle. Tammy, he said.
I have to go. I’m out of here.
I can guess what people say about me.
That doesn’t do you a lot of good, Tom.
You believe what you want to believe.
To tell you the truth I don’t think about it. Except to feel sorry for your son.
Tom got up and threw his butt in the toilet. You offered, he said. I didn’t lead you on. I even tried to talk you out of it.
Right, said Tammy. My mistake.
She stood in the doorway and tossed her cigarette at the rain. You’re pathetic, she said. Go to hell.
Tammy left and he lay on the bed, waiting for her residue to dissipate enough for him to consider other matters. It took a while and some effort. The room smelled of their encounter. He imagined telling the priest about it: I slept with the bartender, Tammy, from the Big Bottom. Those nouns in combination sounded so sordid. Was there an act of contrition that would make it less so? He was married only in the technical sense, so the sin in it really was somewhere else, he didn’t know how to name it. He’d been impersonal, he knew that. He hadn’t reckoned with Tammy’s soul. That was one of the problems with problems: they didn’t leave room for other people. Reserves of understanding dwindled under duress, were pared down by despondency or depression. Whichever you called it, Tom woke with his and it inhabited even his snatches of sleep, his dreams and drunken interludes. He was trimmed for descent even while he fornicated and he thought he knew how craziness felt—it was just growing tired of being unhappy, it was what came after unhappy. Then you either had a heart attack or a switch flipped in your head. Things went dark and you weren’t there. What held him back was the prospect of embarrassment; it kept him in the realm of the unadmitted, except that who would blame him if he lost it? Didn’t he have the perfect excuse for checking out of this world?
In the morning Tom raked fallen cedar needles and cleaned them from the culverts. There were new rivulets in the parking lot: water finding its way. With a wheelbarrow of gravel he filled the potholes. He raked in grades to make the water run. The couple with the secret dog emerged. The man was pulling a suitcase on wheels, the woman had the little animal wrapped in a red checkered blanket. Good morning, said Tom. Did you sleep all right? Tom knew how to fly on automatic pilot. There was a certain degree of theater in his everyday behavior.
Fine, said the man.
The heater ticked, said the woman.
We’re thinking of taking them out, said Tom. Installing fan-driven heaters.
Well you can listen to the fan, said the woman.
You can’t win, said the man, and winced.
On request Tom showed them the campground on a road map. Then they spoke about the Virgin sighting. The couple had been to apparition sites in Conyers, Georgia, and Cold Spring, Kentucky, but this was the first in their own backyard. They were excited, they said, to be there at the beginning. Miracles might be accomplished, said the woman. Who knew what could happen?
A lot of people seem excited, said Tom. But how did everyone find out about it? How does everyone know so fast? That’s the surprising part.
The Web, said the man. Boom.
On the way to church Tom drove by his house—it really wasn’t his house anymore—a mildewed rambler with a carport, a toolshed, and a square of moss-throttled lawn. He stopped to spy on his former life from the cab of his idling pick-up. The gutters were choked with black needles, he saw, and the front gutter was no longer attached to the drainpipe, so half the roof was pouring its water right against the foundation. Probably the basement smelled like a sewer. And the toolshed door wasn’t shut all the way. Then he noticed what he would have expected, that Eleanor didn’t keep the firewood covered, the plastic tarp sat bunched up against it; she was no doubt spending a fortune on electricity instead of using the woodstove. She’d never had any appreciation of money and didn’t have any now. What did he expect—change? She’d always bought expensive produce—kiwi fruit and avocados—and had let the kids’ dentist swindle her, but did any of that matter anymore? They were both spending money they didn’t have, so what difference did any of it make? He tried to let go of caring about it, her shopping out of mail-order catalogs, things going bad in the refrigerator. The bags of expensive fertilizer—shit for sale—and the rototiller she saw on television. Or that his wife was a sucker for infomercials and straight-faced sales pitches. The sort to buy the slicer-and-dicer after seeing the demo at the county fair, the electric back massager, the nonstick pans, the juicer and the set of steak knives. There was never any arguing about it: these were necessary purchases. I’m not extravagant, you know that, she’d say, so why do you accuse me of being a spendthrift? I shop the sales, I cook from scratch, I darn socks, I clip coupons, so I don’t want to hear any more of this, it isn’t fair to me.
I won’t say anything then.
Well why do you all the time?
I’m all done now. Believe me.
But all of that was petty wrangling from a long time ago. It was just one area of picayune dissension that went with being married. He was pretty well worn out with Eleanor way before the current business, but in a minor key, like anyone else—it wasn’t any big thing. He probably could have lived with it, made it to the end of his marriage when a heart attack or stroke would get him, but then along came Junior’s “accident” and that was the beginning of the end of their arrangement, which until then had worked well enough: to live without any expectation that love would satisfy. In the long bitter run of bad blood that ensued he’d said more than once It’s exactly what they say, something like this really tests a marriage. I’m tired of that, answered Eleanor finally. Pointing that out doesn’t solve anything or take us anywhere, does it? Tom snapped then: What are we trying to solve? he asked. If you don’t know that then I can’t help you. I wasn’t asking for help from you, though. There you go twisting things again, you asked for help ten minutes ago, you definitely asked for help, Tom, your memory is incredibly selective, I mean I remember exactly what you said but you can’t even remember from yesterday when you told me this was all my fault and you didn’t want to talk about it. Damn, said Tom, yesterday, here you go back to yesterday. Well this is a continuation of yesterday, I don’t think we ever finished that, I know I wasn’t done with it but you just swore and stomped out of the kitche
n and what was I supposed to do, be nice to you and sweet? Sweet, said Tom. Don’t give me that. When was the last time you were sweet to me? I know, you have a perfect memory, it was the day before yesterday or something like that, something I don’t remember right because I’m a god damn idiot. Listen, said Eleanor, who has time for this? It’s just endless circling, over and over. Talking to you doesn’t go anywhere. I’m going in to help Tommy now. I can’t waste any more time on you. That’s fine, said Tom, go help Tommy. I’m sick of talking anyway. It’s fine with me if we don’t talk at all. Talk doesn’t do me any good. See? said Eleanor. That’s the problem. Your attitude is you don’t want to talk so how are we going to get anywhere? You were the one done talking, said Tom. I thought you were going off to help Tommy. Why is it you don’t answer me? asked Eleanor. We went all over this yesterday, answered Tom. Maybe you just don’t remember.
Tom draped his arms across the steering wheel and pondered the gloomy facade of his house, its rain-beaten, slatternly profile. He knew that Eleanor had Junior in the living room where he could see outside and watch the street, so it was a bad idea to linger. Maybe the boy, with nothing better to do, was staring out the window. Tom didn’t know because he couldn’t go inside; there was a restraining order against him. There was a legal writ imposing exile concocted by Eleanor’s attorney. After Tom’s separation from his wife he’d showed up at the house persistently unannounced until, apparently, this had vexed her sufficiently that she’d retained legal counsel. So Tom had this… adversary. Some kind of junior partner Jew. Ostensibly because he’d made it a habit to amble into his own house and peruse the contents of his own refrigerator, select a can of pop or an apple bought with money he had earned, and sit at his own table with his feet up. After too many visits of this sort Eleanor had forced him to arrange a schedule, the attorney wrote him a letter about it, surprise visits were not acceptable, the letterhead named a firm in Tacoma, three Jews plus Garr and McMillan. They agreed on the hour before Tom went to work—this was when he was still on day shift—since that would enforce a reasonable time limit, at a certain point he would have to leave, it wouldn’t be strained or ambiguous, a natural end-point was implied by this plan, if he started work at 9 a.m. he could visit from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. and still have time to drive to the prison, either that or be late for work, the attorney considered himself a creative genius for coming up with this timetable, Solomon, his smugness about it made Tom want to break every bone in his arrogant face. Sometimes while this attorney blathered Tom focused on the space between his nose and moving mouth or on the crescent under his right or left eye, selecting a place to hit him, shut him up, coldcock him, deck him, no warning. So extreme restraint was required. The attorney had civilization on his side. Tom regained the upper hand by switching shifts with another guard, getting himself transferred on a Sunday to swing shift, then arriving at the house at 4 p.m., waltzing into the kitchen humming, grabbing a can of pop from the refrigerator while Eleanor was chopping celery. Do I have to call my attorney? she asked. Wait, said Tom. Oh, yeah. Our agreement. Don’t play games with me, answered Eleanor. Games, said Tom, and popped open the can. Word games or mind games—I’m up for either. We have, said Eleanor, a specific agreement. Read me the language carefully, said Tom. You’re not supposed to be here, Tom. I am supposed to be here, darling. You know I don’t have the physical strength to simply boot you out the door, said Eleanor, so why do you play these games with me, if the tide was turned you’d use your muscles to get your way you know you would, you’d just shove me out into the yard, so this is typical of your behavior, this is what makes me so sick of you. You’re off the subject, Tom replied. The subject here is our agreement not your version of what I’m like which you always make up to serve your purpose. So call your attorney if you want darling let’s get it on him and me.