Calling Out (22 page)
Authors: Rae Meadows
And so I guide him to me.
After a few minutes of flailing about, Ephraim looks
down in exasperation at his only semi-erect penis. Even in
the stingy light of the room, I see shame in his eyes. He
flips me around beneath him so that I am face-down on
the bed, and I'm flooded with the sour bodily smell of
dirty sheets. I squelch a gag and he thrusts himself against
me with singular intent. When he shifts on top of me, I
can manage only shallow breaths, each tinged with the
smell of his ripe sweat. I resign myself to the disaster that
barrels toward me.
He is rough. It hurts. But I don't resist. I feel like it's
easier just to get it over with, get to the other side. I tune
out his grunts and his slick, heaving body. I close my eyes
and remove myself. I teeter on the verge of emotional vertigo but concentrate on the promise of release. I wait for
the aftermath of calm.
I focus on a Christmas twenty-three years ago when
my sister and I got a new sled. It was orange plastic with a
yellow rope and grooved runners for speed. Behind our
house, the gently sloping yard was our designated hill. It
was a nice easy ride, fun the first few times, but soon dull.
The boys next door were racing down their cleared ravine
and shooting across the iced-over pond at its base. We
were prohibited from joining them, which was fine for my
sister, but the boys' exhilarating whoops proved too
tempting for me. I don't remember much of my ride but
I can't forget holding on for life, with the icy air making
my eyes water, and then sliding to shore and looking up,
and seeing my father appear at the top of the hill.
With an angry grip on my upper arm, he led me
back to the house, where I received a stinging succession
of spankings, and then I cried and criedânot for the
pain, but for the injustice. He punished me for the
danger. For an accident that never happened. I
remember his woodsy smell of Scotch and the patchy
antiseptic overlay of Listerine.
When I open my eyes, I'm met with the sight of
Ephraim's unruly hair and postcoital blush. He shyly
covers his lower half with the sheet, minding our separation on the bed.
“So. I suppose I got to pay some extra for that,” he says. “There isn't exactly
a pay scale,” I say, sitting up. “Can I get you anything?” he asks.
“No thanks,” I say. I don't want to be here another minute.
He bites the tip of his finger, camouflaging a smile,
which I take to mean he enjoyed it enough for the both
of us.
“I don't suppose you'd like to do this again sometimes. I mean, not for money.”
“Thanksâ¦but I don't think so.”
“I guess Nephi is kind of far from Salt Lake.”
From the small digital clock by the bed, I can see that
our two hours have almost elapsed. I search around the
sheets for my underwear.
“Well. I best be on my way,” I say pulling them on.
He turns his crestfallen face away, sits up, and grabs
his jeans from the floor.
“Put your hand out,” he says.
I lose count of the bills.
“Don't spend it all in one place,” he says, his shell of
bravado again intact.
His semen pools in my underwear.
“Say, how come you do this, anyway? You seem like a
nice girl,” he says.
I put on my skirt and wrinkled blouse.
“Does one preclude the other?” I ask.
“What?”
“Nothing. I'm just doing it for now.”
“Well, drive safe.”
“Okay. Merry Christmas.”
“Yeah, it is, isn't it?” He sighs. “Oh wait a second. I
have something for you.”
He jogs down the hall toward his workshop. I hear the
sounds of a door and drawers and indecision. I'd almost
forgotten about the fox pelt. But when he returns, he's
holding a majestic silver fox mounted on a block of
shined walnut.
“I want you to have this,” he says.
And with that, I take the gift, hugging it to my chest,
and greet the freezing darkness of Christmas morning. I
heave the fox out the window somewhere near Spring Lake.
I nod off twice on the drive back from Nephi, the
second time narrowly missing the guardrail and an indeterminate drop-off outside of American Fork. I cross into
Salt Lake City and I'm too exhausted to go home and
think about my choices and the money in my pocket, so I
go straight to the office instead. The sound of my
slammed car door punctuates the still, predawn alley and
my heels clack against the frozen sidewalk. I let myself in
and lock the door behind me.
Someone has left the Christmas tree lights on,
blinking with false gaiety. The cold air is stale with smoke
and perfume, and I pull the heat lever all the way to the
right. I unplug the lights, leaving total darkness, and I sit
there motionless. My underwear is crusty and I am sore.
The only sound is the tired heater churning out the dry
hot air.
The phone wakes me at ten a.m. My face is stuck to the
leather cushion and my legs are hanging over the armrest.
Sweat has gathered between my breasts and my mouth is
cottony, my lips cracked. It's so hot I'm disoriented and I
throw my coat off and stagger to the heater. Ninety-five
degrees. I drink rust-tinged water straight from the bathroom tap. I hear the phone ringing again as I begin to
regain my equilibrium.
I half expect McCallister or Ford, or Ephraim even,
but it's a man calling from Miami, his voice rushed and
sheepish, stained with something I pinpoint as guilt,
wanting to pay for an escort to keep his great-uncle company for an hour or two on Christmas. Emigration
Canyon. Will pay in advance with a credit card, including
a hundred-dollar tip.
“But you can't tell him you're being paid,” he says.
I feel dirty and confused. Last night I had sex for
money for no good reason.
“I'm sorry,” I say. “I don't understand.”
“Make something up. I don't know. Say you're
Doreen's daughter's friend.”
“Butâ”
“Say it's some type of outreach. Church group. He won't ask.”
Although I'm curious about the reason behind this
man's request, in the end, it doesn't really matter. I agree
to the date. I have a job to do, and a growing list of things
I don't want to think about.
Unable to stay disassociated from my life any longer, I
reluctantly go home, shed my well-worn clothes onto the
floor, and use all the hot water in a long, scalding shower.
My skin smarts and reddens, and I scrub until it's tender.
I'm glad I can't see myself in the steamed mirror. After I
dry, I pull on jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers and tie my
hair tightly in a ponytail. No lace underwear. No makeup.
No perfume. I down three glasses of water and slide the
mound of twenties from Ephraim under my pillow.
I could really use breakfastâthe meal of hope and
things still to be doneâbut Ruth's is dark when I pass by
and I drive on toward my assignment, my stomach bitter
and empty.
The house is simple, rough-hewn and neat, like a
prairie pioneer home might have looked. Instead of a
doorbell there is a cowbell hanging from the porch eave,
which I ring, awakening the whole quiet canyon. Silence
returns. After a couple minutes, there is a shuffling sound
and the door opens.
The right side of the man's face sags and his right
hand curls like a hook. In his left hand he holds a pad of
paper and pencil. He writes, “May I help you?” holding
the pad up to face me.
“Hi,” I say. “Merry Christmas. I'm Jane.” I don't notice
the slip until I see him write my real name.
“Hello, Jane,” he writes. “I'm Virgil Samuelson.”
I shake his proffered healthy hand and smile.
“So. Um. I'm a friend of Doreen's daughter from
church? I thought I'd drop by and say hello. I don't have
any family in the area either.”
Virgil squints and tilts his head, doubting my story
yet pleased enough to have the company. He motions me
inside with his good hand.
A pronounced limp makes his movements slow and
jerky, but there is something elegant in his manner too. He
is kind and a shadow of subtle stateliness surrounds him.
The home is spare with Shaker furniture and arts-andcrafts-style details in the woodwork and molding. There is
a fire going in the living room and Beethoven on the
record player. Virgil points to his teacup and then to me.
“Yes. Thank you. That would be nice,” I say.
After he returns with my tea, we sit in matching wingback chairs angled in toward the fire.
“Are you from here?” I ask.
He shakes his head “no.” I try to envision how his face
must have looked before it fell.
He writes, “Chicago. Came here after stroke.”
“Why here?”
My tone causes him to grunt a laugh.
“Brother was here,” he scrawls.
“I'm originally from a suburb of Cleveland. Before
here, New York,” I say.
He rolls his hand at me to elicit more.
I talk and he listens, smiling now and then with one
side of his mouth. I tell him this is the first Christmas I
haven't gone home, how Utah has been an adjustment,
that I like his house. It is soothing to talk and he seems
content to listen. I tell him about my parents, my sister,
my childhood, my college years. Every time I pause to let
him interject, he motions me onward, long ago having put
down his pad. At a certain point I'm not even sure he's listening as he stares at the flames, finishing his tea. By the
time I get to why I moved to Utah, Virgil is fast asleep in
his chair. I sit for a time as the fire dies down. My tea is
cold. I watch him as he sleeps, his head lolling to the side,
drool glistening on his downcast lip. I'm exhausted and
hungry. It occurs to me that I could be close to being
untethered. I'm living a life I barely recognize as my own.
I make my way quietly to the kitchen, hoping to find
something to appease my gnawing stomach. I prepare a
small plateful of pepper crackers and aged cheddar, add a
couple of gingerbread men on the side, and eat standing
at the sink surveying the backyard. There is a curious
small building on the property, a cross between a shed
and a cottage. After a quick check on my still-sleeping
host I slip out the back.
The door to the structure is unlocked. When I finally
find the light switch, a deep ruby bulb turns on revealing
what appears to be a darkroom. Pinned to a drying line is
photograph upon photograph in black-and-white of an
old enameled colander, with varying degrees of contrast
and shadow, at slightly different angles, with light
shooting though its holes like water from a showerhead.
They are striking images, stark and dramatic. On the
counter are boxes containing more pictures: an old work
boot, a knife, an egg, a lamp, a dead bird, a rock, a plate, a
window. Still life after still life. No people. Mesmerizing
and lonely. I can't stop staring. I consume them. I pull out
boxes from all over the room for more. A tire, a doorknob,
a tree stump, an artichoke, and then at the bottom of the
last box, three photographs of the curled hand, clawlike
and withered, with the slightest hint of blurred movement
in the fingers.
I wonder if these are his secret, if he has anyone in his
life, what he did before the stroke, if there is any way that
he is happy. I leave the mess I've made as it is.
Inside, Virgil is still asleep.
“Dear Virgil,” I write on his pad. “You take beautiful
photographs. Merry Christmas. Jane.”
For days all I do is sleep. When I wake up, I take Tylenol
PMs until I sleep again. I tell Mohammed I have a fever
of 103. I wait for Ember to come back but she doesn't.
Even though I try not to, my thoughts return to my
night with Ephraim again and again. I don't know what
to make of it. I don't know what to make of me. I am
eroding. When I finally crawl back into Premier to work
the phones on New Year's Eve, I say I've had some kind
of terrible virus.
Ford calls and tells me that Ember left him and Moab
the day after Christmas. She said she felt too confined, too
tied down. She said she needed to find her life on her own
before she could latch onto someone else. Ford recognized her ill-tempered manner and fierce headaches as
the beginnings of withdrawal, so when he woke up to find
Ember foraging around in the dark for her car keys, it was
not altogether unexpected. On the phone he sounds composed, almost fatalistic, but beneath it is a hollowness that
comes from being left. I picture him as he calls from the
gas station payphone, looking around at the purple sky
and the dusty asphalt, feeling like he doesn't understand
the world at all.
I'm pretty sure Ember is here in Salt Lake, it being the
closest city she knows where to score. She's been a noshow at Premier and Mohammed just shakes his head at
yet another one to let him down.
I check the parks first, Liberty and Pioneer, then drive
by the coffee place at Ninth and Ninth, the eerie downtown mall, Temple Squareâall the places I know she
likes, looking for her beat-up Saab and those heat-emitting eyes. I fear that she is in trouble, but I also fear that
she has discharged me along with Ford and it was that
easy for her to let me go too. I catch what looks to be a
familiar walk and the right kind of hair but as I drive
nearer, the girl turns out to be a teenager with a baby
strapped to her front.
It's only four o'clock but I follow a hunch to the
Zephyr, figuring the bar is as good a place to find her as
any and maybe I'll have a beer to settle myself in the
process. When my eyes adjust to the low lights, I see
Ember perched on a stool at the end of the bar, her slight
frame even slighter, her hands making frenetic gestures as
she relays something to the bartender. At first I'm angry,
then I check myself and remember how glad I am that she
is not hurt or worse.
