Belly (6 page)

He could not sleep here. The rain when it came would seep in through the cracking rafters, and he could not stand that feeling
of water on his skin. His mother used to joke he must have had a traumatic baptism.

He crept back down all forty-eight steps, grabbed a blanket from the living room, and laid himself down on the TV room couch,
waiting for morning to save him.

H
E WAS
dreaming of his wife and his truck, the beloved Bronco. He was dreaming of the brilliance of chrome rims and the fillings
glinting from the back of Myrna’s mouth, of choosing between them, and he loved the truck, he had always loved the truck,
and he never knew if he loved his wife or not. He opened his eyes.

Every time Belly woke, the thought, the fact, that he had four daughters appeared to him like a preview before the real movie
of his life recommenced. Nora, his eldest, and Ann, the lesbian, and Eliza, the baby, with the look of a newborn panda, some
skeevy little mammal whose skull you could crush in the palm of one hand. Those three, plus the other one. The third one.
Before he could call up her name, those little sleep bugs would wander off his stubble and dried saliva, and he would remember
all over again that the third one was gone, there were still four, but one was a hole and the other three were just hills
to be traversed.

He sat up and saw morning just beginning to creep into the room. He was hollowed out; someone, something, had just reached
in and scooped out his organs, and hot air blew through him. Once he’d lost the crown off his right incisor, and each time
he ate or drank, each time he breathed, a sharp, angry ache ripped into his gums. He had that same feeling, only now it focused
in his heart, it beat against him.

Maybe I’m having a heart attack, he thought. But he knew what it was and how to cure it.

He did not turn the light on in the kitchen, just felt his way to the counter, rubbed his fingers along the liquor cabinet
until he found the handle, and fumbled through the bottles. It didn’t matter which one. He pulled one down and unscrewed the
cap and tilted his head back and poured. Cheap tequila burned the back of his throat and melted the ache away.

He shuffled back to the couch and laid himself down, dizzy now as light filled the room, and he closed his eyes for a few
more moments of sleep. He vowed that today he would be kind and keep sober, not lose his temper or his mind. He would start
anew and do better this time.

W
hen he opened his eyes again, his youngest daughter peered down at him. His first night’s sleep as a free man in four years,
and he’d spent it on the old plaid couch that once hugged the dirty walls above War Bar. For just a moment, he felt he was
back there, in the old place, Eliza waking him before school to get a permission slip signed or tell him she’d be sleeping
at Margie’s that night. But now his new hips pressed into the nubby fabric and he knew how much time had passed.

“Hi, Daddy.”

The word softened him, his bones. He thought all the flesh would just melt off his body. Nobody called him Daddy anymore.

Eliza sat down on the couch and he sat up. She wrapped her arms around him, her pale, freckled forearms clasping one another
around his neck. She was still so skinny. He didn’t want to hug her for fear of cracking her.

“Are you okay? Are you adjusting okay? I brought you a hemp bar.” She handed him a hard block of what looked like wood coated
in Saran Wrap.

“Are you still doing that health-food thing? Jesus, kid, you need to eat a steak.”

He saw her mouth twist a little, her nose twitch.

“What?”

She withdrew from him. “Your breath.”

“I just woke up.”

She stroked his hand and stared so hard into his eyes that he felt her pupils pressing against him, some unanswered question
in the black circles.

“What?” he asked again.

“You smell like alcohol.”

“Oh, well. That.”

“How much did you drink?”

“I had one drink. Last night.” This was true if “night” meant after eleven and before six.

“You smell like a bar.”

He could still feel the numbing power of this morning’s tequila and last night’s beer, that floating sensation he’d missed
so much while he was away. He wanted it again, wanted to lie down and let the alcohol carry him off, carry him back to Before.

“I thought they’d cured you of that. I thought you couldn’t drink there.”

He thought, She can’t even say the word. His sweet little girl, his youngest, she always danced around an issue and never
landed inside it. He put his arm around her and whispered “prison” in her ear.

“I know,” she said. “I thought they fixed you.” His little puritan princess, this one was. For one of those hippie types,
she was the most uptight, the one who used to sniff his breath at night if he needed to drive, who checked his room for unexpected
guests, for anything with the appearance of impropriety. Poor kid. He gave her so much to fret about.

“It’s not illegal or anything. I’m not doing anything illegal.” He put his right hand over his heart. “I will not do anything
illegal.”

She continued to stare at him, to squint her eyes and try to cull some information from him, some promise he couldn’t make.

“What?”

“Just be sober on Sunday, okay? For Stevie’s confirmation. And don’t forget to show up.”

“You, too? What’s with you girls? Why wouldn’t I be there?”

Eliza looked at her hands, and he felt nervous again, and sick, and too sober.

“Why couldn’t God give me just one boy?”

“You’ve got sons-in-law. It’s the next best thing.”

“Oh, right. Your chubby little health-food Jew is just what I wanted.”

Eliza pulled her lank blond hair into a ponytail, and she pasted a smile on her face. “I missed you, Belly.”

“Oh, sure you did.”

“I did.”

Eliza stood up. She traced a line in the dust on the TV set. Belly spread himself out on the couch, lifted his right leg till
his titanium hip screamed for him to stop. He wanted nothing more than to sleep, to sleep all day, to erase the four years
of dawn wake-up calls, four years of strange sideways sleep-deprivation, of rising just when he felt it was time for bed.

“You want me to help you?” she asked. “I could take the day off.”

“Help me with what?”

“Whatever you have to do.”

“What do I have to do?”

“I don’t know. Nora knows. You have to see your parole officer, you have to get a job, stuff like that.”

“There’s plenty of time for that.”

“No, there isn’t,” she said.

He sat up on the couch, and she stood silhouetted in the window.

“If I need help, I’ll tell you,” he said, but that did not seem to satisfy her. “How’s the art world? Still piddling with
the paints?”

She smiled into her lap.

“What?” he asked her. “What?”

“Yes. Still piddling. With the paints. Sort of.” She reached into her purse and took out a small notebook wrapped in tinted
aluminum foil and handed it to him. The front cover was made of wobbly cardboard, and inside, blank pages of thick, uneven
paper crinkled.

“I made it myself,” she said.

“Thanks,” he said, fingering the foil. “Is it candy or something?”

“It’s an artist’s book. It’s my art.”

“Can you make money at this?”

She blinked big and slow, like a baby doll. “I’m not the one who has to worry about making money,” she said quietly.

“What? Can you say that a little louder, please?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“What?” he yelled.

“Not everybody wants to make lots of money.” She said, in a too-soothing voice, an imitation-maple-syrup voice, “Some of us
would rather have less money and more integrity,” softly, with too much sincerity, and he felt the weight of his empty pockets
and empty wallet, and he felt last night’s alcohol rise, he heard his own words come out with a wisp of slur, he watched her
slump and make herself small like a feeble little animal, watched her seal her mouth in a tiny, fake smile.

“You’re still just a little mouse. Look at you, skinny little mouse. You were supposed to be the strong one.”

Eliza wobbled a little as she stood. She worked her lips into a wavering smile. She was still frail, and she looked afraid,
but he hadn’t noticed how tall she was, how she towered over him as he sank into the couch.

“Welcome home,” she said, and she turned and went into the kitchen. He heard Eliza and Nora mumble in conspiracy, heard Nora
laugh and Eliza make those murine, sad sounds of hers.

Belly rose, rubbed his eyes, stretched his arms, massaged the scars on his hips. He wound his way upstairs and to the bathroom.
He turned on the water and tested with his hand until the temperature was just right. He slipped out of his boxers and tried
to climb over the rim of the clawfoot tub, but his hips would not allow it, so he sat on the porcelain ledge and carefully
swung one leg over and then the other, trying to ignore the fact that he was old. He lifted his arms and turned like a ballerina
once under the spray, then turned the water off and stepped out and shook himself like a dog. He estimated the whole operation
took under fifteen seconds.

Money or time, his grandfather always told him, a man can have money or time. He had no assets now, bank accounts depleted,
pockets empty, and the days stretched out before him endlessly, punctuated here and there with a few minor appointments. He
had three or four days in which to find a job, to find an answer to the inevitable question that would be posed to him Sunday
at Stevie Ray’s confirmation: What now?

He knew Loretta had his money, and he knew she was still somewhere in his town. He could feel it.

He walked up one more flight to the stifling attic, took out a clean pair of jeans and another white button-down shirt. One
of the things you long for in prison is to wear your own clothes, and now he saw his wardrobe contained replicas of the same
outfit, day after day in a kind of no-man’s uniform.

His wife, Myrna, used to read the same book to the girls every night, a big red hardcover they’d taken out of the library
and never returned. It was called something like
When I Grow Up,
and the one night a week he was there at bedtime, he always read it to them. It showed a Mexican fireman, a white lady-doctor,
a black policeman, and a black lady-teacher. He knew it was supposed to show the girls that they could have any kind of job
they wanted—black or white, man or woman, it didn’t matter—but somehow the book had shut off his imagination: now, when he
tried to summon up some vision of his future employment, the only choices before him were those four.

He made his way downstairs and to the kitchen, where Nora was waiting for him, and he told her, “I’ve decided to be a Mexican
fireman.”

She said, “Great. Let’s go. Your appointment’s in fifteen minutes.”

“Where’s Eliza?”

“Work,” she said, lifting up the baby in her arms. “Work. Heard of it?”

“What about the boys?”

“Swimming at the Radcliffes. Let’s go.”

He watched the strip malls flicker like a TV screen along the highway as they drove to Ballston Spa. The town’s Main Street
was sleepy and slow, and he remembered that this was the original Saratoga Springs, but the water had dried up and they lost
their resort privileges to the big brother next door. There wasn’t one apartment available in all of Saratoga in August, but
here “For Rent” signs peered from windows all over town. He could probably find a little studio for two hundred bucks a month,
a carpeted hideaway where his daughters couldn’t find him and he could work just a few hours a week to make the rent, spend
the rest of his time drinking alone in leisure.

There was nothing spa-like about Ballston Spa: it was a northeastern ghost town. But it was beautiful, it was much more beautiful,
really, than Saratoga, with its unassuming buildings no one bothered to renovate, all sitting patiently on Main Street not
even waiting for change. All the cruddy storefronts had put in lace trimmings and changed their signs from “Junk” to “Antiques.”
Nobody believed it.

Nora dropped him off in front of the drab county office building, a big box of beige stucco.

“How about you get your license renewed sometime this week?” she asked.

“Oh, like you’re too busy to drive an old man around.”

“I am busy,” said Nora, putting the car in reverse.

“Pick me up in half an hour,” he called after her.

Inside it was just as beige and so air-conditioned he perspired even more, big jewels of sweat under his pits. A male receptionist—he
looked mildly retarded with his jowly jaw, eyes too close together, and a pinstriped oxford shirt buttoned all the way to
the top—sat at the front desk.

“Did you used to live at the Furness House?” Belly asked him.

The man looked up. “Can I help you?”

Belly saluted him. “I’m reporting to my parole officer within forty-eight hours.”

“Name?”

“William O’Leary.”

“Have a seat.”

“I’d rather stand if it’s all right with you.” He patted his hips. “It’s hard on the old joints getting up and down.”

The man didn’t look retarded anymore. He looked mean. “Sit,” he said.

The only magazines in the waiting area were the self-help kind—lists of job agencies and healthy-living stuff. There was even
a whole magazine for walking. If Belly opened up a place for people who’d just gotten out of jail, there would be
Playboy
s all around.
Walking.
He shook his head at the strange ways of the working world.

“Mr. O’Leary?”

It was just his luck his parole officer had to be a good-looking redhead. Good-enough-looking, anyway.

“Belly,” he said.

“Come on back, Belly.” She looked at him over her shoulder. “You can call me Ms. Monroe.”

He followed her down a long line of beige cubicles, watching her butt sway in her tight jeans. The face, the face was take
it or leave it, but the ass was nonnegotiable.