Republic of Dirt (27 page)

“Tell me about it,” I said. I didn’t mean for that to sound dismissive or ironic, but I
was
familiar with her passion. She had seduced me when I was in high school, with the result that I didn’t graduate and I mentally and socially imploded. The only reason she didn’t get fired then was because I told the principal and the cops who interviewed me that I had an unrequited love crush on her. I swore that she hadn’t led me on or been inappropriate. Except those fifteen times in her car, parked out by the industrial grounds near Jack Point and a variety of other out-of-the-way locales. She’d been a
little
inappropriate on those occasions.

“You really should go in the other room while I spray,” I told her, and then gave a silent prayer that I wouldn’t have to do the whole house. It would take hours and I wasn’t sure my nerves could stand it.

She didn’t reply, and I looked up and found myself eye level with the crotch of the drama teacher’s homemade steampunk panties. There were laces up the sides and some little metal doohickeys hanging off the edges, which swayed hypnotically from side to side. I stared and it occurred to me that I don’t really get steampunk. I know it’s supposed to be like early industrial machinery and Victorian style and time travel. What I don’t understand is why anyone thinks those things are appealing or sexy. The fucking Victorians never time-traveled. Their machines were a menace, always tearing up peasants who moved to the cities to work in factories. Victorian fashion looked heavy and uncomfortable, and as a society, they spent way too much time worrying about whether table legs were provocative or not.

I was self-aware enough to know I was mentally trashing steampunk because I was scared of the drama teacher and all her uncontrolled passion. During our affair, we never went beyond, well, certain things. It is hard to write about this without sounding disrespectful of what was not a respectful or healthy thing. Our affair was the most intense thing that ever happened to me up until the time I sobered up. The thought that a mature woman, a creative person, could want to be with me was the fulfillment of every dream I ever had. Van Halen was hot for teacher and so was I.

Having our thing be unacceptable on every possible front just turned me on more. But there was a high price to pay when it fell apart, as I’ve noted several hundred times now. Judging by our current situation, it seemed like the drama teacher’s life hadn’t been on a rocket-like trajectory to fame and fortune, culminating in a hit Broadway show and a national teacher of the year award.

In spite of all that, on some level I always felt lucky that she’d chosen me.

But as she thrust her steampunked business in my face, something shifted. There was something so vulnerable about her in that moment, I knew there was no way I was going to try for sex. She was blind drunk and just … unwell. As the recovery types like to say, she was making poor decisions and she was trying to make them with me. I didn’t pity her, exactly. I guess I felt empathy, having made a few catastrophically unexcellent decisions in my time.

She didn’t pick up on the change in my attitude. Instead, she was trying to do some sort of burlesque-style shimmy and it wasn’t happening.

“Maybe before you bag that mattress, you should bag me,” she said.

I took a deep breath.

“Oh, I think I should just, you know, get your room sorted out. So you can go to sleep,” I said.

A hurt look passed over her face. Just because a person is in full-scale alcoholic meltdown mode doesn’t mean they can’t be hurt.

“I got dressed up for you,” she said, tears creeping along the edges of her voice.

Suddenly, I found myself talking to her like I was the grown-up, which I patently am not. This was a situation for which I was singularly unqualified.

She’d sunk onto her knees on the mattress on the floor. Her dark hair was a complete mess. It was arranged into what I assume was some sort of special steampunk hairdo, reminiscent of a top hat, that had begun to slide down the side of her head like a haystack after a hungry horse had gotten into it.

Her face, which when she wasn’t hammered was so wry and smart, was puffy and a little yellow. I wondered how often she got loaded like this. I had a feeling this was not an isolated incident.

She didn’t speak. Instead, she made a noise somewhere between a retch and a sob and collapsed onto the mattress.

“You’re okay,” I said, as gently as I could. “You’re okay.”

“No,” she moaned, “I’m not.”

In that, she was correct. I’d never seen a woman less okay than the drama teacher right then.

I worked my arms under her and propped her up. Then, with tremendous will and greater effort, I got her to her feet. She was soft and that gave me a feeling or two, which I shut down right away.

Once she was up, I wedged myself under her arm and carry-dragged her into the living room. She mumbled unintelligible nonsense and I muttered back what I hoped were comforting words, along the lines of “Almost there,” “Doing good!” and “Oh, shit, my back.”

When we reached the couch, she crashed headlong onto it.

“You want to?” she asked, lifting her face off the seat cushion. I guessed she was talking about sex, but I could tell from the way she rolled over and closed her eyes she didn’t mean it.

All I wanted to do was leave, but I’d promised the drama teacher to deal with her problem and I would. I am an immature asshole in a lot of ways but I’m not mean.

I pulled a blanket off one of her chairs and put it over her. I felt sort of bad leaving her in the outfit, which was probably going to leave permanent marks due to a poor fit, but I wasn’t about to take it off her.

While I was taking a minute to collect myself and make sure she wasn’t going to come at me again, she groaned and flung one arm over her eyes. She used the other arm to reach down to the floor and pull up a flat cushion shaped like a bone. It was covered in brown dog hair. She slid it under her lower back.

I thought for a minute about the placement of her bedbug bites. They were concentrated in the same place she’d just shoved the bone pillow.

“Oh, Jesus,” I muttered. I thought of the hundreds of dollars I’d spent buying steamers and traps and bug dope. All because the drama teacher had a habit of getting hammered and using a dog pillow to support her lower back when she passed out on the sofa.

But still I finished steaming and spraying her bed. I found no bedbugs on the frame, none in or near the nightstand. I vacuumed, sprayed and dusted everything, even though I was ninety-eight percent sure it was pointless. When I was just about done, I texted Eustace and asked if he’d come get me.

I waited for him in the driveway. As I stood in the afternoon light, I felt something strange come over me. It was a fullness that had a quality of lightness to it, for lack of a better description. What the fuck was happening to me? Pesticide poisoning? My spine was straighter and my head was clear. I actually felt like I might be taller. Jesus. I wasn’t poisoned. I was feeling self-esteem. Unbelievable. Prudence is always yammering on about how every good decision makes it easier to make the next good decision, and how self-esteem is built one good decision at a time. I mostly tune her out, but I think she might be right.

I had tackled bedbugs, resisted sex with a woman dressed in a fishing net and put some serious sober time together. Result: tallness!
Possibly even not-terrible-lookingness. And a sense of being at ease in my own skin. It felt nothing short of revolutionary.

The air in my lungs was sweet, even with the faint top note of pulp mill.

It occurred to me that the next excellent deed I could do would be to help Prudence find her way to making a good decision for herself and for all of us. Earl and I had been doing our best for the farm and for Sara. We’d done everything Prudence asked, and sat with Sara at night and smuggled her proper food. But we needed Prudence’s bionic powers of getting things done and we needed them right now. We’d been keeping things from her and that wasn’t helping. It was time for her to learn what was going on with Sara and to see a regular doctor.

A
few days—I’m not sure how many—after the Halloween party, I was woken by the ringing phone. I looked at my alarm clock and saw that it was nearly eleven in the morning.

Once again, I’d missed half the day. As much as I would not give anyone the satisfaction of saying so, I had to admit that I wasn’t completely pleased with the results of Dr. Bachmeier’s remedies for my thyroid condition. The phone continued to ring.

“Why doesn’t someone pick that up?” I muttered. Probably because no one else was slothful enough to stay in bed until nearly noon. It was disgusting.

With my head aching as though I’d been doing Jell-O shots off a bouncer’s bicep the night before, and my body stiff with worrisome aches and obscure pains, I got myself downstairs. When I reached the kitchen, the phone had gone quiet.

I was about to sit down at the table when it started up again. I lunged for the receiver.

“Yes,” I said, feeling nails being driven into my skull by an unskilled handyman.

“Prudence. It’s Jeanine!”

“Oh, hello,” I said, trying to force a bit of verve into my voice.

Jeanine is a friend from college and the author of several wildly successful young adult novels, one of which is being turned into a television series. Her first novel for adults just came out. It’s a romantic crime caper about a teacup Chihuahua who helps solve crimes with the help of his nail technician owner. Jeanine is the person who encouraged me to write a young adult novel. I don’t know that she completely understood how unsuccessful it is possible for an author to be, since she’s experienced nothing but devoted readers and large royalty checks, hard on the heels of massive advances and enormous film and TV options.

“That book you sent me is amazing. God. What a voice! Pyrotechnical use of language. The author must be so interesting. I can’t think of another novel half so profound about a woman overcoming a stiflingly provincial life. And I don’t know when I’ve read such a developed voice in a first novel.”

I thought of Mrs. Spratt.
Interesting
was not the word that came to mind.
Oblivious
, yes. But not
interesting
. Still, Jeanine’s opinion could be trusted. We received excellent educations at our small private college. And she followed up her undergraduate degree in creative writing with a master’s degree in literature from Stanford. Her cotton candy writing is perfectly formed and she knows what serious work looks like.

“She’s a bit older,” I said.

“Sixties? Seventies? That will affect the size of the advance if they
think she’s only got one book in her. But who the hell cares? This book is going to make her reputation.”

“I don’t know how old she is exactly,” I said. “Much younger than that.”

“Wonderful. The advance just went up by a hundred grand easy.”

Besides knowing how to make money and how to sell books, Jeanine knows everyone who is anyone in the New York publishing scene. A source of serious revenue for publishing types, she lunches with the most influential writers and editors. The highbrows admire her intellect and taste, and the businesspeople admire her bottom line.

“I’m going to send it to Rich Dalton at Apex. He’ll have every prestige-hungry editor in town slavering over it. I don’t even think the book needs much editing. She must have been working on it for years.”

From our discussions, I’d gotten the sense that Sally Spratt had been working on her novel for something closer to weeks. Sally said the story had been in her mind for some time. All she had to do was write it down. She said she’d been in a creative fugue for the past few weeks. Working all night and all day.

I didn’t tell Jeanine any of that. Let Rich Dalton decide how to package the story of how a depressed, divorced mother from Cedar turned out a genius novel.

“Must have,” I said.

“Well, thanks, Pru. It’s going to do nothing but good things for me to pass this on to the right people. Writers like this come along once a generation. She makes Alice Munro look ham-fisted! She makes Junot Díaz look unvivid! You can’t see, but I’m rubbing my hands together in glee right now.”

“That’s good. I’m glad.”

“And the farm? It’s thriving? How about those characters you’re living with? They sound so fabulous! When are you coming to visit us?”

The way I felt at that moment, I would never leave the kitchen, never mind the farm, again. New York City might as well have been an outer ring of Saturn. I didn’t tell her that we’d lost one of our “characters” and that I had no real idea how the others were doing.

“Not sure,” I said.

“Don’t make us come to you. Ruth and Kimi have been talking about it. We miss you, Pru. We’re unsustainable without you!” She lowered her voice. “Are you okay? You sound odd. Flat. Are you being held against your will by overall-clad hillbillies?”

“No. I’m fine. Just getting over a … health thing.”

“Please tell me you aren’t trying to treat it using one of your extra-alternative health approaches. It’s bad enough that you insist on cooking your own cosmetics and gathering wild yeast for your sourdough by leaving rotten potatoes around in bowls of water. Remember when you got strep throat and you tried to cure it using that Australian honey?”

“It was from New Zealand and it’s a miracle product,” I told her. “Some of the best doctors in the world recommend manuka honey.”

“Yes, but it won’t cure strep. You ended up in hospital.”

“One time. For two days. It was not a big deal.”

“Promise me you’ll go to a proper doctor if you need to.”

I ignored the request but I did promise to tell Mrs. Spratt to call Jeanine so they could discuss her book.

I was too tired to head down to the gas bar to tell Mrs. Spratt about the call, and I didn’t have her phone number. The thought of looking into that glass case full of crimes against nutrition was too
much. Instead, I went back to bed. Telling Mrs. Spratt she might be headed for literary stardom would have to wait until the next day.

My eyes had just closed when Seth came barreling into my room, by which I mean he slouched in faster than usual.

“You need to get out of bed,” he said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Don’t be sorry. Go to another doctor and get some new medication. We need your help around here.”

Then he told me what he and Earl had been doing at night. He told me where Sara had been spending her evenings. I thought her mother was probably writing and hadn’t gone far when she left Sara. But I was equally sure she was so involved in her writing she hadn’t told her daughter what she was doing.

“I don’t know what I can do,” I said.

“Get yourself right, even if it’s some big point of pride that you don’t like conventional medicine or whatever the fuck you call it. I know that you’ll know what we should do when your brain is working again.”

He was absolutely right. I wasn’t thinking clearly to begin with and being stubborn only made my decision-making abilities worse. I’d dug in because I didn’t want Eustace to be right. In that way, I was no better than Sara’s parents.

I got up and slipped on my runners over my three pairs of socks.

“Fine. Let’s go to a walk-in clinic. See what some conventional doctor has to say.”

“Truck’s not working,” he said.

“Fine. We’ll call Hugh.”

And so we did.