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“You finally came over.” Donny’s
bare toes spread flat on a traffic-stained carpet. I take in what I
can with quick looks past his narrow figure in the doorway. A
couch, plain gray. An end table and a worn, old chair. Against the
wall, a towering hutch with clean-lined wood and glass doors, the
bare shelves inside spot-lit under recessed bulbs.

Normal, but I’m not sure what I
expected.

“Just a few minutes,” I say, “and
then I should get home.”

“Yeah, I know. You got to feed the
cat.” He steps aside for me. “Take your shoes off. It ain’t me—I
think carpet’s there to be walked on—but the wife…”

I take off my shoes and tuck them
under a heating register by the door, but, of course, it’s not on.
My socks squish on the floor.

“Drink?”

“Oh—no. No, thanks.”

“I wanted to say—listen, now—that
I’m sorry for before. In the car. I want to say what I should’ve at
the time. Now, there’s reason to worry, don’t get me wrong. No one
ought to tell you not to. But, he’ll make it back, is what I
should’ve said to you.”

“Thanks.”

“All right. Good. Well. Well! Have a
drink with me. You came all the way out.”

“It’s on my way.”

“One drink. One! You’re in my house.
Let Donny be hospitable.”

“A small one.”

He finishes what’s in his glass on
his way to the kitchen and tells me to make myself
comfortable.

I notice, now that I’m inside, that
there is no dining room table in what would be the dining room, but
instead a tripod easel standing on a paint-stained drop cloth and
propping a stretched, bare canvas.

“Does your wife paint?” The bare
walls bounce my voice.

“Nope. Me.” He comes out of the
kitchen and hands me something gold-brown with a single, rounded
ice cube. “I’m an artist. Ar-
teest
.” He laughs. Deep crow’s feet
branch to his temples. “Surprised? Didn’t think I had a creative
thought in me, huh? How do you think I knew you had somethin’
troublin’ you? I knew before you said a word. What you got here is
a lethal combination. Doctor? Artist? I got it covered! Both sides
of the brain, and most people can’t make ‘em work together. I see
the world—naw, I look inside, is what. I look inside you, and I
can’t even help it. It’s a gift. Now, don’t get all scared. All I’m
sayin’ is, I read things, read people. Because I watch, and I
sense.
Sense
things.”

“Mm. Do you have Coke, or something,
to mix with this?”

“Sure, I got Coke.” He takes my
glass. “This is bourbon, though. Good bourbon.”

“Yeah, it’s—it’s good, but I’d like
Coke in there, too, if you don’t mind.”

He takes it away.

The only thing in the hutch, aside
from circles in dust hinting at the recent presence—and removal—of
dishes, probably china, is a picture lying flat on the top shelf,
its brass frame spotted green. An adolescent Donny, seventeen or
maybe eighteen, sits cross-legged in tall grass, elbows resting on
his knees and hair hanging past bare, bony shoulders. A new
cigarette burns between his fingers. Twisted into the ground in the
shadow of his knee is a beer bottle, and his mouth is half-open in
a laugh or a smile.

“You want more ice, or was it good?”
he says from the kitchen.

“Yes, please. More.”

I move in deeper, past the hutch and
into the living space where he and his wife—maybe—watched
television or fought or drank. A magazine lies open on the coffee
table, warped and puckered, the pages a coaster. The old chair is
canvas and wood, a hand-crafted piece of a different time I’ve only
read about, when flowers were symbols painted on Volkswagen
Beetles. The canvas-back is rubbed and faded from wear, the arms
scuffed to pulp at the edges.

Throw pillows with perfect center
dents sit at straight diagonals in couch corners, and the end-table
lamp shade, nicotine-beige, drops a dim circle of light on a
half-full coffee mug. Ghosts of pictures, maybe his paintings, hang
on the walls, smoke and time marking their edges.

“For you, my angel.”

I take the glass. Close up, he looks
older. And shorter. I can see over his head, but just barely.
Coarse hairs grow from deep pores in his cheeks and chin and his
skin is oily and loose. That this is what came to be of the boy in
the picture, that hiding under the hanging skin and somewhat
conventional hair and age-inspired glasses is the life-squelched
and smothered spirit of the boy in the grass… Maybe it was the war,
maybe the drinking, maybe the wife. Maybe all of it, everything. I
wonder what he was like back then, when his hair was long and he
smiled, and I have a feeling I might have found Donny-the-boy
irresistible, would have chased him and played with his hair,
sipped from his beer bottle and rolled with him in the grass. The
missing shirt would be missing because I’d taken it, wrestled it
from him until our knees and elbows were grass-stained, and pulled
it on over my own.

“Drink,” he says, then disappears
into a back room. I sit in the old chair, set the glass on the
wide, wood arm and wait.

All the lights are on: living room
overhead, end table lamp, kitchen light, dining room chandelier.
Light falling on everything, getting in my eyes, and I’m so very
visible, awkward in the room like streaks on just-cleaned glass. I
look around for signs of the wife, something stronger than the dust
evidence in the hutch, but there’s not a plastic or dried flower, a
collectible cow, a doily, a doll. No left-behind high-heeled shoes
on the vent under the window, no frilled umbrella drying
upside-down on batwing arms. No blanket for her cocoon. That was
probably the first thing she packed.

Donny returns in a sweater and jeans
and socks stained gray at the edges. “Like it?” He points at my
glass on his way to the couch and sits down, sets his drink on the
magazine.

“It’s good,” I say.

“You ain’t even…Aw,
c’mon.”

“I had a little.”

“You said you’d have a drink with
me.”

I take a short sip, tasting it in my
throat before it even touches my lips. “Mm,” I say, and hold back a
cough.

He nods and drinks from his own
glass, makes half of it disappear, pauses for a breath, then
finishes the rest and stands. “Another?”

“No, thanks.”

“Didn’t know you was goin’ to be
such a little girl,” he says on his way to the kitchen, and from
around the corner, “You afraid of me? Think I’m tryin’ to get you
drunk and take advantage, or somethin’?”

“Of course not. No.”

“Well, drink up, then.”

He comes out refreshed and turns off
all the lights but the end table lamp. “All that light—gives me a
damn headache.” He falls into his spot on the couch and smiles.
“You’re really here!”

“I am.” I make a show of swallowing
a heavy sip and then ask for a cigarette. I’d like to take off my
socks.

He pulls one from his pocket and
tosses it to me, then a lighter. “You can have as many as you want,
can have anythin’ you ask for. My cigarettes, your cigarettes; my
liquor, your liquor. You can even stay over. Now, don’t look at me
like that. You know I don’t mean nothin’ by it. I mean on the
couch, if you can’t drive. It pulls out and it’s comfortable. Slept
a lot of nights out here, let me tell you.” He laughs. “Naw, I’m
just kiddin’. But it is comfortable. Em and me, we got it for a
weddin’ present. Her daddy’s rich. Owns the car dealership on the
corner, down there by Kelly’s Burger. Know the place?”

I do. I nod. “Em? You call her
Em?”

“Em, Emily, Emmy. Depends on her
mood. When she’s bein’ a bitch I don’t call her nothin’.” He shakes
his hair out of his eyes, says, “Naw. I’m lyin’. That’s when I kiss
her ass, call her my darlin’ Emiline,” smiles. “You know. Like
Clementine?”

“You have a painting at
the—downtown, in the coffee shop?”

He holds up his glass. “Good
girl.”

“
Emily’s at
Dawn
. Yours?”

“Course it’s mine.”

“I only ask because of the initials
on the—on that thing, the tag. The label.”

“For ‘God damn, I love that woman.’”
He looks at me. “That’s right. God
damn
. That’s what it stands for.” He
leans back into the couch, puts his feet on the table and stares at
the wall. “Yep. That was one of my better ones.”

For minutes, I don’t know how many,
we both sit and stare, saying nothing, until he says, “It’s Gary.
First name’s Gary. Donald’s the middle.”

His phone rings, then, and he gets
up fast and jog-walks to the kitchen with his drink held steady. I
fantasize that Jake has somehow found out I’m here and is calling
because he simply has to talk to me. I fantasize—for the twentieth,
hundredth, millionth time—that two days ago didn’t happen, that he
did not call his mother before calling me.

The receiver slams down hard enough
to ring the base. Donny comes back out with a refilled glass and
sits on the couch and lights a cigarette.

“Are you—”

“None of your goddamn
business.”

I pull my feet under me, used to the
dampness, now, and hold my drink and wait for him to finish his
cigarette before asking about the painting. “To sell it after such
a long time is…I don’t know. Why are you?”

“It ain’t old. Painted it…I think it
was about two years ago. You talkin’ about the date? That’s part of
the title, not the year I painted it. That’s her house back in
eighty-one. She sold it, I don’t know, ten years ago, maybe more.
It was her first, her fixer-upper, you know. Did a good job on it.
Made some money. But, she didn’t like it. Didn’t want to mess with
the contractors and didn’t like dust and paint, so the next house
she bought, she kept. This one.”

“It’s nice,” I say, but it’s a
standard ranch.

“Yeah, it’s all right. I’m goin’ to
miss it while I’m gone, but I’ll be back.”

“You aren’t getting a
divorce?”

“Divorce? Hell, no. She ain’t goin’
to leave me. Not for good. She needs me. Can’t get through a month
without the doctor. That’s me.” He points his thumb at his chest.
“She could die. She’s sick. Understan’? I help her make it through
the days, medicate. She don’t know how to self-medicate like I do.
Always goes too far, won’t practice
moderation.
” He finishes another
glass. “More?”

“I’m fine.”

“You ain’t had more than three sips.
What’s the matter? You don’t want to drink with me? Donny ain’t
good enough for you? I thought…y’know, friends.”

“I drink slow.”

“No one drinks that slow. Come on.
Drink up. Do it for me. For Donny. My wife left me.”

“I’ll have to be able to drive home,
and everything, and there are police all over the
place.”

“One little drink ain’t goin’ to get
you drunk. You think I want you drunk? What would I want that for?
You’re havin’ tough times and I just want you to relax, that’s all.
Nothin’ more. What, you think—? What could be in your head? Ain’t
you learned nothin’ about me, yet?”

When he’s angry, his lips spread
thin and his cheeks tighten to narrow his eyes. When he is angry,
I’ve finally learned, there is nothing good to say; there is only
waiting for it to pass.

“You think I’d take advantage of you
when your man is off at war? There ain’t
nothin’—
nothin
’—worse than that. I have respect! Respect, that’s what, and
you want to know how I can respect a man I don’t know, but you
wouldn’t—he’s my brother.” He punches his chest. “You hear?
Brothers. Donny Donaldson. Sergeant Donaldson. Airborne Infantry.
Eighty-second. Airborne!” He slams his drink on the magazine and it
splashes out onto the table, his hand. He wipes the back of his
hand on his jeans and says, “What’s his name?”

“Jake.”

“Jake. Jake what.”

“Just Jake.”

“Tell me his last name.”

“Why?”

He shakes his head. “All right.
Whatever. What’s he do?”

“I told you already.”

“When?”

“In the car.”

“Well, I don’t remember. Tell me
again.”

“He flies Apaches.”

“That’s right. I remember. I
remember, now.” He tosses his hands in the air. “Y’see!” he says.
“Airborne. Brothers! But, I know, I know. You don’t see because you
can’t. Never will. You’re a woman—Naw, now, I know there’s women in
the war, so don’t get all…What I meant to say is you’re a civilian,
don’t know shit. It’s in here.” He holds his hand over his heart.
“I’d be the worst kind of man to come after the girl of a brother
at war. You—You’re like my sister. If I ever—now, you listen—if I
ever come after you, you kill me. You hear? I have a gun. You use
it on me. Hell, I’ll kill myself.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” I say.
“And I’m sorry. I didn’t really think that, but you never
know.”