Practical Jean (10 page)

It happened so quickly—the back of Roy's left hand flying up to Dorothy's face with a wet, splatty sound, Dorothy's head snapping back with the blow as she emitted a small, high-pitched “Oh!”—that for half a second it seemed no one was quite sure whether they had seen what they had seen. Then blood started to bloom from Dorothy's lower lip, which began instantly to swell, and tears came to her eyes. And Jean shot to her feet.

“You brute!” she shouted with all the air in her lungs. “How dare you hit my friend.”

She rushed around the table to Dorothy, who tried to push her away, insisting she was all right. But Jean could see that her face was pale, and that she needed air or water or just a sense of safety. So she told Milt, who was sitting in his chair like someone at a magic show, paralyzed with amazement, to “watch that animal,” pointing to Roy, who was quietly feeding batter into his mouth. And she helped Dorothy to her feet and led her outside, around the tables and past the waitresses and waiters, who seemed to be at the same magic show as Milt.

Out on the street, Jean set Dorothy against the front of the building, brushed the hair off her forehead, and used the cuff of her blouse to wipe some of the blood from Dorothy's mouth. It was still light outside and she could see the age in her friend's face better now, the lines around her eyes, the fragility of her skin, the soft, pouchy places that once had been flat and firm. Dorothy's mascara had begun to run in black tributaries over her cheeks, and Jean whispered, “Stay here and I'll be right back.” She went into the restaurant, where Milt was now gamely sitting next to Roy and talking to him in a calm voice like an older, much smaller brother (she was so proud of him in that moment), and got a clean, damp cloth from the manager. When she returned through the door, she found Dorothy trying to light a cigarette with her trembling hands.

“Here, let me,” said Jean. She gave Dorothy the cloth and, as her friend pressed it against her face, Jean put the cigarette to her lips, flicked the lighter, and inhaled. She hadn't smoked since she was sixteen and now, with her heart already racing, the act of lighting a cigarette, and feeling the rush and the urge to cough when the smoke hit her lungs, seemed daring and illicit.

The sun hung fat and buttery over the roof of The Granary bulk store on the far side of the street, and the light was beginning to take on that summer evening glow. Jean handed back the cigarette, and Dorothy straightened.

“I should go inside.”

“Oh, no.”

“He'll be worried about me.”

“After what he did? Let him be worried.” Jean took the damp cloth, wrapped the edge of it around her finger, and cleaned a smudge of makeup from the corner of Dorothy's eye. “Here's what we're going to do,” she said. “I'm going to get Milt to take Roy home in your car. And you and I will have our girls' night out.”

“Jean—”

“Don't worry about Roy.” She kept her voice quiet, but Jean felt within herself a rising tide of purpose. Her will was inexorable, like the flight of a magnificent bird, or the march of a whole field of kudzu. She had never felt more sure of herself, of her plan, of what she could do for her friend. For all her friends. “You have every right to think of yourself and your needs right now. Tonight is about Dorothy Perks. Roy will be just fine with Milt.”

“Are you sure?”

“I couldn't be more sure. Now, what I need to know is, can Roy show Milt the way back to your place?”

“Of course he can.” Dorothy frowned. “It's not like he has Alzheimer's.”

“That's terrific,” said Jean, patting her arm. “I just wanted to check.”

She went back inside, where Roy was now sitting quietly watching sports people on the TV screen hanging from the ceiling in the far corner of the dining room, with Milt in the chair beside him looking backward toward the door. Life in the restaurant seemed to have returned to normal, with the usual motion and chatter; people so easily moved on from dismay. When Milt saw Jean he seemed deeply relieved. And because he had been so quietly helpful, so reliable, she felt bad when she had to tell him he would be driving Roy home.

“No, I am not doing that,” he said, thereby completely erasing in Jean's books all of the goodwill he had built up. “He's a total wild card. What if he clocks me while I'm driving?”

“That's absurd. He won't clock you.”

“How do you know?”

“I'll have a word with him. You pay the check.”

“The whole—?”

Jean fixed him a look, and Milt sighed and slumped off to the waitress area. Then she went to the chair where Roy was sitting and tapped on his shoulder. His huge head turned and, seeing Jean, he started to cry.

“Dotty?” He reached for Jean's hand and swallowed it in a mitt of soft, blood-warm flesh. “Is Dotty okay? She be mad at me?”

“I should hope so,” Jean said. “That was a terrible thing you did.”

Roy's face crumpled even more than before and he nodded fiercely, sending plops of tears onto his knee and the floor below. Then he let go of Jean's hand, wiped at his eyes with a fist, and began to push himself up out of his chair.

“No, no,” said Jean.

“I go to my Dotty.”

“No, you sit down,” she commanded. It was like ordering a giant cooked ham to sit. But there was enough force of will in her, she thought, to make even that happen if need called for it. And Roy sat. “Now listen,” she said. “Milt is going to drive you home. You know Milt?” She pointed at Milt, who was slowly handing his credit card to the waitress. When Roy nodded she continued. “You be nice to him, you hear me? When you get home, you can watch TV together.”

“With Dotty?”

“Don't worry about Dotty.” She patted his hand. “Everything is going to be fine.”

Outside, Jean tucked her arm into Dorothy's and led her up the street for half a block, past the print shop and the vintage clothing store, and under the ornamental street lamp with the wrought-iron curlicue that marked the start of Calendar, and Jean turned them down this street to get them out of view of the restaurant before Milt and Roy emerged. They walked for a while without talking. Calendar was lined mostly with modest two-story houses, built before the war, but people cared for them as well as any mansion. Some of the gardens were lovely, and several times Jean had to resist the urge to stop and study the leaves she saw: clumps of lemon thyme with leaves like green grains of rice rimmed with gold, purple Persian shield, pretty catbells the size of dollar coins. At a house on the corner, someone had set out a pot of Angel Wing, which was as beautiful as any caladium plant she had ever seen. Jean made a mental note to come back for a closer look, when all this was over.

“I think it's going down a bit,” said Dorothy, touching her lip.

“Oh, let's hope it stays for a while,” said Jean. “You look like one of those bee-stung Hollywood starlets.”

“I want you to know, Jean, he's never hit me before. Sometimes I thought he might, but he never has.”

“It doesn't matter,” said Jean.

“He's getting worse, though. His mind seems to work best when he's feeling paranoid. Maybe that's the fighter in him. Otherwise he's just a little boy.”

“Don't think about it anymore.” As they walked, Jean put a light hand on Dorothy's back and rubbed her gently. “Don't think about it anymore,” she repeated.

Eventually, led by Jean, the two women circled around, across on Mott Avenue and down Primrose, as the sun dropped behind the buildings and the light turned bluish-gray, then darker still, until they were back at Main and it was feeling very much like evening. For now, Dorothy seemed content to go wherever she was taken, but Jean was aware that at any moment she might stop in her tracks and insist that it was time to go home. They came to the corner, where the light was red. Jean slipped a foot out of her shoe and rubbed it—she wasn't used to walking so far in pumps—and began looking around for another restaurant, or just a place for them to sit and talk. Then she heard a familiar sound.

The deep, clotted, throat-phlegmy noise of Jeff Birdy's Barracuda came toward them along Main and the car pulled to a stop just over the white line of the crosswalk, its juddering engine heating and vibrating the air around them, its headlights carving out bright swaths of the intersection and making everything else shrink into darkness. Across the street the walk sign flashed and Jean tried to nudge Dorothy forward off the curb, into the spray of light, toward the other side. But for some reason it was harder to get Dorothy moving than she'd expected. Her hand against Dorothy's back met the resistance of someone holding her ground.

“Who's that?” she said. She was squinting from the lights, and at the corner of her mouth—hard to tell, it might have been the squinting effect—seemed to be a tiny, puffy smile.

“Nobody to worry about,” said Jean. “Just Jeff Birdy.” She tried to make the nudge at Dorothy's back a touch more insistent, without turning it into a shove.

“Ash's boy?” said Dorothy, actually batting Jean's arm away. “I haven't had a good look at him since he was ten.” She bent down and shielded her eyes, trying to see past the glare into the Barracuda's interior. Above them the traffic lights changed and Jean waited for Jeff Birdy to drive on. But he didn't drive on. He just sat there with the green light, throbbing.

“Why doesn't he go?” Jean said.

“I think I see him,” said Dorothy, peering into the depths. “Oh, I think he's handsome.”

Behind Birdy the driver of a Toyota honked his horn, and out of the side window of the Barracuda came a hand that twirled lazily in the air to wave the car past. The ground under Jean's feet shook with the Plymouth's pistons, she smelled its raw exhaust, and she clutched Dorothy's arm as if they were two virgins standing at the lip of a volcano. Then, like a dentist's drill lifted off a tooth, the noise and shuddering just stopped, the headlights of the wide, orange barge went dark, and in the shimmer of silence Jeff Birdy swung open the driver's door and stepped out. Dorothy straightened and drew a hand down the edge of her hair.

“Hey,” said Birdy, grinning.

“Hey,” said Dorothy. She flicked a hand at the car. “Seventy-three?”

“Close. Seventy-two.” He lifted off his ball cap by the brim, rubbed his hair with the heel of his hand, and set the cap back down securely.

“I like the paint job.”

Birdy nodded, as if he judged the comment reasonable. “Looks better in the daylight.”

“Morning light,” said Dorothy. “About five or six.”

“Maybe.” Birdy grinned. “I wouldn't know.”

Jean cleared her throat and adjusted the purse strap on her shoulder.

“This is my friend, Jean,” said Dorothy. “I'm—”

“Nah, let me guess,” said Birdy. “I'm good with names.”

Dorothy let out a high, girlish laugh and Birdy leaned against the roof of his car, studying her. After a few seconds he said, “Roxanne.”

A smile spread wide over Dorothy's face. “You're a mile off.”

Birdy shook his head. “No, I'm not.” He opened his driver's side door and his body began to disappear into his car, legs first. Before he was fully gone, he paused. “Get in,” he said.

“Oh,” said Jean. “Well, no. We were just—”

Dorothy turned to face her. “Tonight is about Dorothy Perks,” she whispered. “You said.”

She was standing close enough that she could smell the cigarette smoke on Dorothy's breath and see the glimmer of excitement in her eyes. Jean looked over her shoulder at Jeff Birdy. She wasn't sure what faith she could have in that young man to make Dorothy happy, but she knew that she probably couldn't do it by herself.

“Why not?” she shrugged.

The inside of Jeff Birdy's car smelled of stale beer and burnt motor oil, and there was a chance, Jean thought, that if she had to stay in the back seat long enough with the windows closed she would wind up with a terrible headache. Birdy had rolled up the windows because he wanted to show off his stereo but thankfully, after about twelve ear-splitting seconds of Toby Keith, Dorothy had managed to get him to turn it down. Or maybe she had turned it down herself. Jean couldn't really hear at the time, and she couldn't see much from the back because the springs in the ripped vinyl seat seemed to be mostly broken and she was sitting lower than she was used to sitting. She could see, however, that Jeff Birdy was steering the wheel of his car with only the heel of his left hand, and that Dorothy was leaning over toward him, half out of her own seat. Jean thought that somebody probably had a hand on somebody else's leg.

“So what are you girls up for?” said Birdy.

“I dunno,” said Dorothy. “Anything, I guess.” She looked back at Jean. “What are you up for, Jean?”

“Anything sounds good to me,” said Jean, in a way that she hoped sounded joyful and adventuresome and not middle-agey. She had decided she was going to say yes to whatever Dorothy wanted. This was her night. And the truth was, Jean was a little excited herself, although it was funny to her how familiar it all seemed, sitting in a loud old smelly car driven by a cute Birdy boy who seemed to think he could have whatever he wanted. It wasn't a very pleasant feeling, really. More wistful, all things considered. But anyway, that didn't matter. It was just important that Dorothy have a good—no, not a good—a
wonderful
time.

“You want a beer? I got some beers in the back.”

“Sure!”

Birdy reached a smooth, muscled arm into the back and pointed to a battered plastic cooler on the floor, shoved into the crevice between Dorothy's seat and the bench of the seat into which Jean was sinking. “You wanna pull the lid off that and grab a coupla cans for Roxanne and me?” He said this without looking around at Jean. “Help yourself while you're at it.”