Reprisal (20 page)

"My fault," Joanna said it to herself aloud, for the relief of saying it.

She took a deep breath. The smell was dreadful. Bobby's smell, and the vomit.

She bent over him, unfastened his belt, and unbuttoned his trousers. They'd been good trousers once, dress slacks. Now they were stiff, dark with dirt and caked in the seams. There was vomit only down the left leg ... but all the way down to the cuff. Some of it was pooled in the trouser cuff there.

Trying to hold her breath, Joanna knelt astride Bobby and tugged and worked at the trousers to get them off. They wrinkled and folded down. He wore no underwear, and displayed a grimy belly, a sad sagging penis the same congested color as his face.

Joanna gathered the trouser material and pulled the pants down his legs--then had to stop to untie laces, get his sneakers off. He wore no socks, but the smell was very bad.

When he was naked, Bobby lay still, sprawled in smears of vomit and breathing noisily. His body, streaked and cloudy with dirt, was mottled the color of bruises.

Joanna, calmer now, didn't think he was going to die--didn't think she had to call an ambulance. ... She supposed Bobby had done this many times, drunk himself sick. This once more wasn't going to kill him, just because she was responsible. ...

She stood, and rinsed the kitchen towel in the sink. Rinsed it, soaked it in hot water, then wrung some out and knelt to wash Bobby's face, scrub it clean.

She used a corner of the cloth to get clots of vomit out of his mouth so he could breathe more easily. She was afraid he'd breathe it in and strangle. ...

She did that, then got up to rinse the towel again, rub Ivory soap into the cloth.

Joanna cleaned Bobby's face, his neck and ears, and behind his ears. She saw herself frantic as a frightened cat with a sick kitten. ... It seemed essential to clean him, necessary for forgiveness. She wanted to wash his hair--it was filthy--but there seemed no good way with him lying on the floor.

And having started to clean this collapsed man, found she had to continue doing it ... getting up again and again to rinse dirt from the towel, soak it in more hot water, wring it out, soap it, and kneel to Bobby again to rub and scrub ...

... After a long time, having bathed his torso, his groin, his sex, his legs and feet ... having heaved him over to clean his back and flaccid buttocks, Joanna found she couldn't leave Bobby's hair unwashed. She stood up once more, her knees aching, filled a pan at the sink, swished the diminished bar of soap in the hot water, and went to sit on the wet linoleum beside him. He was breathing long slow breaths, eyes tight shut as if light would hurt them if he woke. ... She soaked his hair, soaped and scrubbed it, rinsed the towel in the pan water and soaped his hair again, getting more water on the floor.

... When Joanna finished, she was stiff and sore from so long kneeling and scrubbing. She stooped, took Bobby's wrists, and dragged him slowly out of the kitchen and into the dining room. Then she stood, stretched to ease her back, and went upstairs for towels and blankets.

She took them from the hall closet--the blankets were Mrs. Evanson's--and went downstairs. She dried Bobby as thoroughly as she could--he was mumbling--then laid one of the blankets, folded lengthwise, on the floor, rolled him over and onto it, and covered him with the other. Then she went down the hall for a cushion from the living-room rocker, came back and put it under his head. ...

Naked, and clean--or fairly clean--Bobby lay swaddled in his pallet, breathing heavily, but breathing.

Joanna, very tired, gin buzzing in her ears, stood watching him--her accomplishment. A sick man deliberately made sicker, then cared for and cleaned. She supposed other women had done things similar. ...

She stood for a while, watching Bobby breathe, listening to him. Then she went upstairs to the bedroom and selected a pair of Frank's jeans, one of his blue work shirts, an old tan windbreaker, a pair of Jockey shorts, and white athletic socks. She brought the clothes down, folded them into a little stack with the socks and underwear on top, and put them on the floor next to Bobby.

... Everything should fit him, if not very well, except the jeans; they'd be a little short in the leg, but not much.--If there were ghosts, if Frank was a ghost and watching her, he certainly wouldn't regret the jeans and shirt. He would regret her giving gin to Bobby Moffit.

There were freedoms, advantages after all, to having your loved ones dead, and no longer watching. ...

Joanna wandered through the house, walking in failing light to Bobby's sleeping music, hoarse and harsh, and the distant rhythm of the sea easing through open windows.

Drinking. ... Neither she nor Frank had been big drinkers. White River's faculty --with exceptions--wasn't the alcoholic faculty of a few decades earlier. People, most of them, sipped wine. Less vomit on carpets, and fewer of alcohol's harsh revelatory truths.--And what truth had alcohol now offered her? That Beverly Wainwright ... that poor Bobby Moffit knew of something spoiled, something wrong on the island? Something for which she had no evidence, no proof of any kind, so she could only play the bereft woman still acting her sorrow out, to the fatigue and boredom of official men.

Bobby moaned on his pallet, shifted under his blanket in search of comfort.

"You ask him," he'd said. "Ask that Mannin' what he's holdin' down there. ..."

Joanna stood by the dining-room window, looking out into darkening night. The sea sounded clearly up the hill, salt breeze bringing its voice to her. The moon was rising, stretching the cottage's faint shadow over the yard. ...

There was the sleepiest, most smothering pressure to do nothing. To do nothing odd, foolish, and possibly--even probably--mistaken. She had gone to the authorities, spoken to a lawyer, made a continual fuss. ...

Would Frank, would her father mind if she did nothing more? Did nothing foolish? Would they mind if she just let it go? ... They were dead; there'd be no bringing them back, whatever or whoever had caused their deaths.--And they might have done it themselves; might have had accidents after all. In a few years, there would only be sadness when she thought of it. Only sadness and dark poetry when she thought of Frank, thought of her father ... and their accidents.

Bobby Moffit was almost snoring, breathing in slow huffs and puffs, so he sounded like a worn train working uphill ... weary, unhappy machinery.

Joanna went to him, saw he'd turned onto his side, the top blanket slid off his shoulder. She bent, tugged the blanket up to cover him, then walked into the kitchen, took the slender-bladed fillet knife from the sink drawer, and went out the back door and down the steps.

Moonlight lay like platinum webbing, rippling, moving as the breeze moved the sea grapes edging the yard.

Joanna opened the garage's side door, went in, and turned on the light to select what she needed.

Charis sat studying on her side of the room's table. Art of Poetry, a course that all the jocks--as jocky as students got at White River--attended and depended on for summer credit. Chris Engletree taught it, and it was an easy course to pass, a hard course to get good grades in.

Engletree, very gay, had little good to say about most traditional poetry, and thought less of Joanna Reed, colleague or not. "--Reed's work tends to be painfully old-fashioned and form-cramped. Personal interactions, moral homilies, concentration on structure and beautiful language, including little narratives and events, and often rhymed.--Read poetry that is truly of today, and you'll see exactly what Reed's work isn't. It isn't of the moment; it isn't structure-free; it isn't culturally inclusive; it isn't all-race-referenced."

Engletree loved Japanese poetry. "Perfectly minimal, accurate, and cruel ...

in haiku, seventeen precise syllables. I forgive structure that is ethnically determined."

Charis, second row center, had raised her hand. "But how does it sound when you speak it?"

"Ugly, and so what, Ms. Langenberg? Japanese is an ugly language--and so is German and so what?" Chris Engletree, tender with handsome soccer or track men, was tough on women.

"So, there's no music to it at all," Charis said. "It's limited to evocative observations-"Mount Fuji is very small, seen in my mirror, as I shave my forehead, on the first day of winter"--observations the reader is intended to internalize in response. That's a pretty restricted art."

"Bullshit," Engletree said. "Is that your rule or something? Are you making up rules about art?"

"I'm commenting on yours," Charis said. "Japanese paper-making is more intricate than their poetry."

"That's so cute," Engletree said. "Aren't you clever? But Japanese culture and poetry may be a little too sophisticated for some American coeds."

He really disliked her. ... Charis had imagined cutting her hair very short for his class, then using no makeup and wearing breast-hiding sweatshirts, wearing shorts, hiking boots, and thick socks just to watch his attitude slowly alter as she became more boyish to look at, more brusque, her voice lowering until she was a strutting casual lithe young man, the finest blond down decorating long unshaven legs. Tough and beautiful, with only a cock necessary to complete him.

It would have been amusing ... but too much trouble. Engletree wasn't worth the trouble. He didn't like her, but he wouldn't grade her down because she cared for poetry, because it was important to her. ...

"Charis?" Rebecca, across the table. She was supposed to be doing her Spanish.

"Charis ...?"

Charis hadn't spoken to Rebecca all day. Hadn't said a word to her, hadn't answered anything she'd asked.

"--Charis, if you're angry, I really don't know what I did. I know I've been upset about Daddy and now my grandfather dying. I guess I've been a pain."

Charis looked up. "I do have two words to say to you, Rebecca. The words are: Greg Ribideau. Okay?"

"What do you mean?"

"Don't give me that shit--roommate, friend."

"Charis, really, I don't know what you mean." Round little face gone pale.

"--I haven't even talked to Greg except once!"

"Just ... Rebecca, just study and don't try to talk to me, all right? I'm not interested in hearing a lot of lies."

"What are you-- Charis, really I haven't done anything!" Sitting confused in pajamas and her pink terry-cloth bathrobe.

"You are just a little bitch, and that's all you are. Greg says it's you, you, you he likes and finds interesting--and he just realized it and so forth, all that crap! You're both a pair of goddamn liars."

"What are you talking about? Greg doesn't like me. He never said anything to me!"

"Oh, right, Rebecca. Sure. He thinks you're "really interesting," a "special person," and he feels as if he "knows" you--and you two haven't even talked?

Please don't waste my time with this shit, Rebecca. Greg likes you; you like him--and that's great. ... Just leave me alone and stop treating me like some goddamn fool. I'd really appreciate that. Just cut out the "I'm a little mouse and I wouldn't fuck anybody else's boyfriend" bit.--And I will move the hell out of this room just as fast as I can arrange it."

Charis closed her book, got up, and walked out, leaving Rebecca startled, upset, and pleased. --Charis went down the stairs to the dorm entrance and put three quarters in the snack machine. A small bag of barbecue Doritos rattled down.

She went out the dorm door, down the steps, and strolled away into a summer night lit by starlight and occasional lamps along the paths. Charis ate the Doritos as she walked; they were deliciously salty.

Mr. Langenberg had eaten only healthy food--fed her healthy food. Turkey breast and steamed carrots, steamed new potatoes, steamed green beans. He'd hated Doritos, chips, dips, anything like that. ... Mom--Mrs. Langenberg--had been a good cook, and made peach pies. Charis could still remember the pale gold of a peach pie cooling on the kitchen table in the house on Edgar Avenue, in Cincinnati. She remembered having to stand on tiptoe to see along the tabletop. And she remembered the taste.

After Mrs. Langenberg had a kidney infection, then had more kidney trouble a year later and died--died swollen and itching--after that, there were no more peach pies.

Mr. Langenberg became very concerned about diet and health, being healthy in mind and body. "Is this a perfect little body, or what?" he asked that whenever certain men came over. "--Is this a perfect little body or what? And not a feather on her." The visitor always agreed that she was perfect. "Bend over and show him," Royce Langenberg would say.

And the man would make the sound "Mmmm ..." If there were two of them, they'd both make that sound, "Mmmm ...," and take her picture.

When Charis grew older, and had feathers, Mr. Langenberg would go with her into the upstairs bathroom, and shave her after she took her shower. But she could tell he didn't like having to do it. ...

Charis came to the Fork, and turned up the high walk, wishing she'd gotten two packages of Doritos.--What the college cafeteria served as dinner was pretty grim, even for institutional food. Supposedly, things improved in the fall, when they had a full staff cooking.

... It was difficult for her to remember much in the way of conversation with Royce Langenberg--though they were together until she was sixteen, and it was time for him to have his accident. ... She did remember driving with him back and forth across Ohio. The first few years, she'd sat on a pillow so she could see out the passenger-side window. But it was difficult to remember the individual days, individual conversations. The days and conversations seemed to have fallen out of shuffle, like a dropped deck of cards.

"A district sales manager is either God almighty--or the goat." He had said that to her once, while they were driving. Mr. Langenberg had four salesmen under him, getting market orders for frozen-food products, prepared meals, and instant mixes. "--Give me a biscuit, give me any baked or prepared food, and I'll tell you the producing corporation." And he could; did it often in restaurants.

Otherwise, especially when he was driving, he didn't like a lot of conversation. He did say, "Daughter-mine, you just don't know how much I care for you. I care for you just as if you'd been born our own little baby." Said that to her more than once.--But when Charis disobeyed, or brought bad grades home from school, or was rude to a man who'd come to see her, then Royce Langenberg would put her in the cedar chest to think about it.