Borderlands (26 page)

One night she and some guy she knew was married but whose name she wasn’t sure of—a guy who’d told her he’d been best friends with Buddy when they were teenagers and worked on the rigs in Luling—were stumbling around drunk in her bedroom and struggling to get out of their clothes and the fool lurched hard against the dresser and her little glass ballerina tumbled off and shattered on the floor. She knelt in the broken glass and fingered the pieces and began to cry. The fella said he was sorry and put his arm around her to try to comfort her and she started slapping at him and cursing him and throwing things at him—a lamp, the bedside clock, her shoes. The man quick grabbed up his boots and shirt and hustled out of there, looking back at her like she was some kind of crazywoman.

The next day she loaded the truck with as much of her belongings as she could fit into it and moved with the kids to Beaumont.

She rented a little house near the park close to Willow Marsh Bayou and got herself a job as receptionist at the Ford dealer’s. She didn’t have any experience at that kind of work but the interviewing manager told her he just knew she’d get the hang of it right quick. It was all he could do to look away from her legs in the minidress.

She made it a point to be at work on time every morning and by the end of her third day she knew everything there was to know about being a receptionist. After two weeks the manager gave her a three-dollar-a-week raise and said she was the best receptionist they’d ever had. Every day after work she picked the kids up at the home of a neighbor woman who took care of children for a dollar a day while their mommas were at work. She cooked a good supper every evening and watched TV with the kids and tried to make conversation with them during the commercials. She tried to find things to do with them on weekends. She kept away from the booze. She was trying with all her might to be the good person she kept telling herself she truly was.

But she couldn’t keep from remembering something she’d heard her momma say—that there’s no changing what you are and only a damn fool thinks there is. Dolores lay awake nights wondering how big a fool she was. Talking about daddy one time, momma had said that a leopard can try all day and night to make itself a zebra, but won’t none of its spots ever turn to stripes, not ever.

The job bored her damn near to tears. The fake smile she wore the day long felt like some awful mask. The salesmen all came on to her—every one of them married but acting like he was hot stuff and she ought to be thrilled he was asking her to sneak off to a motel at lunchtime. She told them she was engaged, that her fiancé was in the army and stationed in Germany but would be coming home in about three months. And still some of those peckerwoods persisted.

And she’d now begun to face the truth that she really didn’t like her kids. She’d had them for Buddy’s sake and no other reason. Now Buddy was gone but they were still with her and every day it was harder to go on pretending she cared about them like a mother should. She could see in their eyes that the kids sensed the truth. Was it any wonder the girl was such a pain in the ass, the boy a mute little freak? What could be worse for a kid than knowing his momma didn’t love him? She tried not to think what
her
momma would say if she was alive and knew how she felt. Guilt fed on her heart like a mangy dog. She started allowing herself a couple of drinks before bed to help her get to sleep. Before long she was having more than a couple.

After three months she gave up all pretense. She quit the Ford place and went to work in a bar called The Lucky Star and shortly thereafter began bringing home men. Most were a one-time thing, some she got together with for several nights in a row. She didn’t stick with any of them for as long as a week.

It was like Baytown all over again, only now she was drinking much harder.

It went on like that until three months ago, until the morning she woke up while it was still dark outside and the radio was blaring “Hello Walls” and one of the dresser lamps was on and there was a naked man sleeping on either side of her and she had no idea who they were. The big one on her right had a crude tattoo of a coiled snake on his back. The bedroom was an unholy mess. Empty beer cans littered the floor, a few gleaming whiskey bottles. Clothes strewn everywhere. Spilled ashtrays. The room was miasmal with the thick tangled smells of whiskey and ashes, sex and sweat. She vaguely recalled meeting these two in some bar, riding with them in their truck, that they were from Vidor, just up the road. Her lack of clear memory added to her fear. She eased out of bed and went to the closet and slipped on a robe and got the .38 out of the toolbox, then went to the blasting radio and turned it off. The sudden silence seemed to plug her ears. She kicked the mattress hard and the big one groaned and pulled the sheet up over his head. The other one snorted and mumbled and cracked one eye open and finally saw her standing at the foot of the bed in a shooter’s stance with the cocked pistol in both hands and pointed at his head. His eyes widened and he raised up on one elbow and said, “What?
What?
”

“Get him up,” she said. “And you get your asses out of here. I mean
now
.”

He shook the big man until he came up from under the sheet snarling, “
Quit
, goddammit!” Then he saw her with the gun and got big-eyed too—but only for a second. He sat up and laced his muscular arms around his raised knees and grinned at her. His arms and chest also carried tattoos, all of them poorly rendered. Jailhouse art. She’d come to know it when she saw it.

Lookit here, she thinks, at the fine company you’re keeping. You really come a long way in this world, ain’t you, girl?

“The fuck you doing, sweetpea?” the big man said. “Put that thing down before I ram it up your ass.”

He scared her so bad she couldn’t stand it.

“Ram
this
.”

The gunshot rocked the room as the bullet passed over their heads and through the bedroom wall and ricocheted off the block wall in the bathroom and whanged against a pipe.

They threw up their hands and gaped at her with eyes big as boiled eggs.

O lord, she thought, it’ll be cops all over the place in a minute.

She pointed the piece at the big one’s chest and drew back the hammer.

“You shitheads got ten seconds to get out of my life.” Her voice sounded far away through the ringing in her ears.

They scrambled out of bed and snatched up about half their clothes and nearly ran through the walls in their haste to depart the premises.

She followed them to the door and kept the gun on them till they’d got into their pickup and roared off down the street and their taillights disappeared around the corner.

She’d expected to see the neighborhood porchlights blazing, to see people at their doors and gawking toward her house. Expected to hear sirens closing in. But all along the block the houses remained dark under a sky just now dawning gray. Not a soul in sight.

What made her think anybody’d give a damn?

She went inside and locked the door behind her and then went to the bedroom, trying hard not to let a single thought into her head because whatever the thought might be she knew it wouldn’t be a good one.

She was cleaning up the mess when she caught sight of the kids at the door, watching her. The boy was sucking his thumb and holding to his sister’s T-shirt and looked like he’d been crying. Mary Marlene looked pale and scared and like she was trying hard not to show it. Dolores felt her heart turn over in her chest. It’s your doing, girl, she told herself—
your
doing they have to go through this. The girl would never again appear to Dolores as vulnerable as she did at this moment, nor would her voice ever again quaver as it did now when she asked, “Momma? The party over?”

8

She’s heard it said that life is not one damn thing after another—it’s the same damn thing over and over.

Got
that
right. And whoever said what goes round comes round. For damn sure right on that one too.

The question is, what are you supposed to do when that same damn thing that keeps coming round gets so awful you just can’t stand it anymore? What then?
That’s
the question. Been the question for a while now, and she ponders it under the steaming shower until the water turns cold.

She dries her hair as thoroughly as she can with a towel, then goes to the kitchen, where a small breeze is coming through the window, to let it finish drying and to do her nails. She sits at the table and puts each foot in turn up on a chair and very carefully applies a coat of Crimson Kiss to the nail of each toe. Then she does her fingernails. While she waits for them to dry she listens to the radio. Oldie-goldies. “Summertime Blues” and “Be My Baby” and “Hit the Road, Jack” and “All Shook Up.”

She now goes to the bedroom and stands at the dresser mirror and stares at her face and decides not to apply makeup.
That’s
your face right there, girl, Smiling Jack’s keepsake and all. You can paint it all you want but it won’t change a thing. For the next ten minutes she brushes her copper hair till it hangs softly, brightly on her shoulders. Then she picks through the dresses in the closet and she finds the one she’s looking for and slips it on.

She checks herself in the mirror again and thinks, Well, now, ain’t I something? The beauty in the mirror gives her a saucy wink. She’s changed stations on the radio and Ray Charles is singing about the girl with the red dress on who do the boogie-woogie all night long, yeah, yeah. Her hair jounces in time to her nifty little dance steps, the little dress rising high on her thighs as she executes a side-scissor-step across the floor and follows it with a spin and a wicked left-right-left combination of hip thrusts. Yeah, yeah!

Her breasts swell above the low neckline of the little cocktail dress, her nipples jut against the fabric. Buddy bought her the dress for their first anniversary but didn’t see it on her until they got home—and when he did, he said he’d made a mistake, that he hadn’t realized it was going to look quite like
that
, and he sure didn’t want her wearing it in public because he’d be in one fight after another with all the guys who were bound to look at her in ways he wouldn’t be able to let them get away with. He said he was sorry, he knew he sounded like a jerk, but that was how he felt and there was no way he could lie about it. She kissed him for his sweetness and promised she would wear it only at home, only for him, and they had enjoyed the hell out of this dress many a time, yes they had. This is the first time she has worn it in, what, nearly two years.

Two years. Is that all it’s been? Not quite. A hair shy of two years, actually.

Which means that
exactly
two years ago he was still alive and she’d been married going on five years and if she was to think real hard about it she might be able to remember exactly what they were doing two years ago, her and Buddy, but all she knows for absolute sure is what they
weren’t
doing. What they
weren’t
doing was expecting him to be so goddamn dead so goddamn soon and leaving her all by herself for the world to make whore soup out of all over again—that’s what they absolutely for goddamn sure were
not
doing … and if you start to cry now, you little cooze …

Okay, all right, I’m fine. See? No crying. No tears here. All smiles am I.

Two years … Might as well be two hundred.

Quit it! That was then, this is now. And anyhow, just look at you. Damn dress never looked so good. You ain’t getting older, honey, you’re getting better.

Yeah, right. I ain’t rightly sure I can stand any more of this kind of better.

How about some pukey self-pity? You stand some more of that?

Believe I had my fill of that too, thank you.

She also believes a drink would help plenty right about now but then remembers there’s not a drop left in the house. No help there.

Oh Lordy, where’s some help?

Roger Miller is singing dang him, dang him, they oughta take a rope and hang him.

She knows exactly what would help right now. More than a drink. More than anything has ever helped except for Buddy.

To shoot something.

That would do the trick, she knows it would.

She can feel it in her bones.

9

The day after she ran the two Vidor dickheads out of her house at gunpoint, she packed up the truck and took off with the kids again, heading east for the Sabine River and Louisiana just on the other side of it, not thirty miles away. Like she’d heard some old boy say in the bar one time, the only thing worth getting out of Texas is your ass—and she was dead set on both changing her luck and getting as far out of Texas as her meager grubstake would take her.

But she’d gone only a dozen miles when the truck overheated and the motor started clattering and black smoke came pouring out the tailpipe. By the time she pulled into a garage in Orange she’d burned up a bearing. The mechanic said he could have it fixed in ten days or so but the bill was going to be a whopper.

She’d felt like sitting down and crying right there on the floor of the garage. Fixing the truck would cost all the money she’d been counting on to get settled in New Orleans, maybe, or in Florida, better yet. But there she still was in Texas, with the Sabine within spitting distance, practically. She asked the mechanic if he knew of any jobs in town and he said no ma’am he sure didn’t. A young woman waiting to get tires put on her car overheard her and asked if she’d ever worked as a cocktail waitress. Dolores sighed and asked if there was any other kind of work in the world, and the girl laughed and said she knew what she meant. She said there was an opening where she worked, at The Barnacle, in Port Arthur, just on down the road. Two hours later she had the job. An hour after that she used the last of her money to rent the little frame house off Proctor Street.

Over the next two weeks she felt like she could never quite get her breath, felt as if she had something small but as ashy and compact as a chunk of coal lodged in her chest. Her pulse raced constantly. She knew it was fear but she told herself she didn’t know why she should be so afraid, and the lie only made the fear worse, because what she was afraid of was that she would have to go on being herself, and she didn’t believe she could stand much more of that.