The Last Worthless Evening (22 page)

Its emptiness felt larger than the room itself. She wanted her mother there. She had not realized how often she thought of her mother as the cheerful and pretty woman in the kitchen. Suddenly the emptiness within the walls shifted, spread out laterally, and extended itself beyond the house and lawn, out into the world, and it drew her with it as powerfully as an undertow. She dropped the book and her cigarettes and lighter on the table and gripped the edge of it. She could feel California beside her, and her father out there, living his morning. With her first tears the room became itself again, walls that contained her and sunlight, and air to breathe. When she stopped crying she said: “Fuck him.”

But her words and her voice in the empty kitchen pierced her, and she sat at the table and her face dropped to her folded arms and she cried on her flesh: for having no memory of Norman, for Norman not loving her and not giving her even a memory, and never a visit or a phone call or even a letter; cried on her brown forearm for herself at three kissing her daddy goodbye. Her father. She had no memory of that, but her mother told her she had kissed him, he had held her in his arms and hugged her and she had hugged him around his neck with her little arms and kissed his mouth and said
Bye-bye, Daddy
, and her mother told her she had looked puzzled and frightened but not sad.
And how did he look? Very sad. Did he cry? No; but he never did
. But later she was sad, as days passed and each morning she asked
Where's Daddy?
and her mother told her again he was gone and her mother cried, not for herself, she said, but for Molly. Then it was weeks and she was not eating well and sometimes she was quiet for too long and other times she was ill-tempered and yelled at her mother and struck her. Her father. Norman. How could he leave that little girl and break her heart so soon? And not be here now. To see her. Not to know about last night, not even to know her as her mother did, but to be here with his man's voice and smells and touch, to look at her with love. She felt the loneliness of one who is not even hated, but worse: ignored; and she grieved too much for Molly at three to be angry, to hate him for giving her life, then only three years later turning away from her and leaving so he could be alone and, having that, still not giving her himself again, even for a Christmas or summer visit, not even a voice on the phone to love, an image of him to keep alive in school and with her friends and here in this house with her mother. No wonder her mother had never married again. He had done the same to her. The—. But she could not curse him again, could not bear the sorrow of it, the knowledge that he deserved her curse.

She rubbed her eyes on her forearm, then with her palms rubbed them again, and her cheeks, and left the table. In the refrigerator she found slices of ham and a small wheel of Vermont cheddar and made a sandwich. She took it to the sundeck with a Coke instead of the diet cola she had reached for, had even touched before realizing the comedy of drinking so many Dos Equis and then a Tab. She nearly smiled, even felt the beginning of laughter, the first breath of it in her breast. And it was not just the paradox of debauchery at night and vanity at noon. Something deeper that she could not define, could only know: after last night, in today's sun, the weight of her body, and whether her flesh was taut or flabby, had no importance at all. She read while she ate and she finished the sandwich and Coke and wanted a cigarette but they were in the kitchen and she did not move to get them. Not until she finished the first chapter, then she put her plate in the dishwasher and her bottle in the carton in the broomcloset and went out again, into the sun; but it was in Spain, and she was too, settled in the hammock, smoking, the sun glaring on the page that became in moments not white paper with black words but the smells of pine and garlic and tobacco smoke and wine, and cool dry air high in the hills, and a cave, and a magnificent ugly woman named Pilar, and a man with a strong and gentle heart, and a young woman only a few years older than Molly, a woman whose soul had been wounded too, and near mortally, through her body too; and the sun and the sky, and wood smoke from the fire in the cave where Molly lived too as her own sun moved in her sky; and between Maria and Robert the sudden and certain feeling that was falling in love. Pausing once, closing the book on her finger, she looked at the sky and saw their embrace in Spain, and death always so near that only the heft and length of the book assured her that it would not come; not yet. She closed her eyes and saw Maria and Robert making love, with death a very part of the air and trees around them, and not even birth control, as though indeed, for the first time in Molly's life, the old saying was true, was as solid and lasting as the large stone among the stand of poplars behind her house, was in fact the absolute and only truth: There's no tomorrow.

Then her own tomorrow, this day after last night's drugged and drunken filth on the couch, moved like this morning's nausea from her loins to her throat. She opened the book. At once, in the sag and scant sway of the hammock, she was in another country with people she loved. Her mother's car climbing the gravel driveway seemed not an intrusion but a sound from within the book, as though it came from a road beneath the hill and the cave. Then it was her mother's car, and the door of it opening and closing, and her mother's steps on the gravel, then silent on grass, and the screen door of the kitchen opening and closing, and steps again on the floor, then her name called into the rooms, the two floors of the house. She left the hammock, looked once more at the book as barefooted she crossed the warm floor of the sundeck, committed to memory the number of the page, and entered the kitchen: the cool of it, the diminished light. Her mother smiled and kissed her.

“
For Whom the Bell Tolls?
Well. Do you like it?”

“I love it.”

“Sweetie? Are you all right?”

“No.”

“What is it?”

“It's long. Maybe you'd better get your drink.”

Her mother studied her face, then reached out, placed her palm on Molly's cheek.

“Okay. I'll get one.”

She watched her mother make a gimlet, and she wanted one too, or wanted to want one. She did not want to drink. Leaving Maria and Robert and the hammock had aroused her hangover: the lethargy of her body and the anxiety of her mind, and her stomach's promise that if she swallowed alcohol it would spurt it back up her throat. But she liked the green-tinged color of the gimlet, and the cool and soothing look of the moist glass and ice and wedge of lime, and she wanted its effect: wanted the words for her mother to flow from her, without the fetters of shame. And she did not want to cry. She filled a tall glass with ice, took a Coke from the refrigerator, followed her mother to the couch, and as soon as she could free her hands of glass and bottle, lowering them to the coffee table, she lit a cigarette, and held the lighter for her mother, and felt that this small flame between them was a pact. She looked across the room, out the window at the crest of the wooded hill beyond the road. She heard her mother sip the drink; then her mother leaned forward and put the glass on the table and sat back again, and laid a hand on Molly's thigh.

“Tell me.”

“I did coke last night. I've never done it before. I'll never do it again.”

Her mother's hand gently patted. Molly saw the trees and hill through mist now; the afternoon was gone, Spain and Maria and Robert and danger were only a book she had been reading; the living room seemed to move in on her, a trick of distance and time, its walls and ceiling and floor shutting her in, severing her from the afternoon in the sun, distorting her memory so all she had felt for and with the people in the book was as distant as an aimless afternoon with friends a year ago. So were this morning's headache, and her humiliation on the toilet, her lust, and sleep again, and the shower. And Bruce was not a grateful boy murmuring
You're beautiful, you're wonderful
, and then in his gratitude and passion giving to her until she cried out in the dark that surrounded the couch.

He was only it, in her mouth.

“I—”

Her mother's hand left her thigh, moved to her right shoulder, and the arm pressed her to her mother's body: the side of a breast, and soft flesh over ribs. She smiled against the mist that became droplets on the rims of her eyes.

“I turned into Ella Fitzgerald.”

“You sang?”

“Your songs. A lot of them. I didn't even know I knew them.” She sighed, and swallowed. The tears did not drip down her cheeks. She blinked, flicked once at each eye with a finger, and there was only mist again. She breathed deeply once and knew that at least she would not cry. She looked into her mother's brown eyes, waiting like calm water for her to float on, or immerse herself in.

“I did fellatio.”

The eyes received her; then her mother's flesh did, turning to her, holding her now with both arms, breasts pressing and yielding with hers; then gently the body drew back, the arms slid from her, and she was looking again into her mother's eyes.

“The first time?”

Molly nodded.

“Have you been with a boy before? Made love?”

“No. I would have told you.”

“Do you love him?”

“It's Bruce.”

Her mother nodded. They turned from each other, smoked, and together their hands descended to the ashtray, flicked ashes, and Molly watched their fingers, her mother's longer, more slender; then she looked at her mother's mouth, her eyes. Her mother's face was so near her own that Molly felt they shared the same air, their lungs synchronized so one exhaled as the other breathed in.

“Do you love him?”

“I don't know.”

“It was just cocaine?”

“And beer.”

“I mean why you did it.”

“The cocaine. Yes. But maybe him too.”

“What are you going to do? About him, I mean.”

“We're going out tonight. To the beach. For the sunset.”

“How is he? With you?”

“I don't know. I guess he's nice. There's just one thing I know. If doing that isn't wrong, then I don't know what is.”

“It's my fault.”

“Nothing's your fault.”

“I'll tell you why it's my fault. If I'm wrong, stop me. Oral sex is—oh shit: I'm sorry I'm embarrassed. It's not you, do you understand? I don't feel
any
differently about you. You're my Molly. Just like yesterday. Always. I'm embarrassed because of what we're talking about, not what you did. You see the difference?”

“I think so.”

“Because when I talk to you like this, I'm sharing with you. My own experiences with men. It's all I know. And it makes me blush, that's all. Am I blushing?”

“You were.”

“Oral sex. Fellatio, cunnilingus—” Molly felt now the warmth rising to her own cheeks, and saw the recognition in her mother's eyes before they quickly lowered to her cigarette and she drew from it and looked again at Molly. “They're more advanced. God, what a word. They're for lovers. Who are in love with each other. Who need to explore each other. Each other's bodies. Give each other different pleasures. Receive them. There's nothing dirty about it. In the right context. And that's always the people. Just intercourse is dirty—I'm not talking about you, I've done it too, long ago, years ago—it can be dirty when you hardly know each other and you're drunk or—whatever: cocaine, other drugs—anything that makes you silent.”

“Silent?”

“The deepest part of you. That wants to complete itself with another human being. When we silence that part we just become— we
can
just become—our sex organs. Not even our bodies. Just a meaningless desire between our legs. No heart; no brain.”

“That's how it was. I think.”

“No wonder you feel terrible. And it's my fault, because I should have known it would happen. You
are
a woman, in a lot of ways. Certainly you look like one. So I should have faced it. Faced
you
. I should have gotten you a diaphragm. Because—stop me if I'm wrong—I think you got carried away, you weren't sober, and Bruce is a good-looking boy, and he seems nice—you said he was nice to you?”

“Yes. He was nice.”

“Okay. And you went too far, and you couldn't stop, and you were afraid of getting pregnant. So instead of— Instead of
making
love, in the usual way, for a girl and boy, so young, you did the other. And—Molly, it's all good, when the two people are. But it takes a while, sometimes a very long while, for
that
to be good. Because it has to be your idea. Sometime when you know it's time, when you want to do it. Until then, it can be—I guess as awful as it was for you.”

“He did it to me too.”

“I thought so. And?”

She felt the blush again, and lowered her eyes.

“He was nice.”

“Are you going to be his lover?”

“I don't know yet.”

“Think about it. If it was just beer and cocaine, make yourself forget it. Like doing something silly you wouldn't do sober. I'm saying forgive yourself.”

“I just don't know.”

“Are you sure you should see him tonight?”

“I want to. I want to know things.”

“What things?””

“About Bruce. Without beer or drugs.”

“I think you should wait.”

“For what?”

“I want to call Harry and get you fitted for a diaphragm.”

“I'm not going to do anything tonight.”

“That's easy to say in daylight. At night we change.”

“I won't.”

“I'll call Harry in the morning.”

Molly looked out the window at the trees on the crest of the hill.

“He'll make time for you tomorrow.”

“All right.”

She was watching a crow perched on a branch near the top of a pine. Something in the book this afternoon: a bird flying.