Tumbledown (55 page)

The sound of the ocean covers their silence, and they douse themselves anew in coconut-smelling lotion. Violet had looked for Barnstone when she visited Jimmy’s office. That was three days past, the same day that her brother moved out of the house in the Corners. She has not seen him since the office visit, and they haven’t spoken. There was no mistaking the painting. Her big brother stared out at her, his body merely an outline, those scraps of paper behind him, as they had hung in his room—except in the painting they had days of the week scrawled on them, abbreviated and misspelled. Why would he add the days of the week? She wondered but she could not guess. For Pook, as far as she had ever been able to tell, every day was the same as the next. There is no way to explain any of this to Patricia Barnstone. Violet doesn’t even understand it herself. She closes her eyes and listens to the waves.

After a lengthy silence, Barnstone says, “What do you think of your brother withdrawing?”

Her eyes open. “What do you mean?”

“Taking his name out of the hat. He had the job sewn up. That’s what it looked like to the rest of us.”

“To become director?” Violet asks. “He withdrew?”

“I’m sorry. I’m speaking out of turn.”

“I can’t believe it.” She sits up abruptly. “My god.” When Jimmy left the house, he told Lolly and Violet to stay. He needed to do some thinking, he explained. Lolly—and Violet, too—assumed that he was getting cold feet. Violet can’t say that she has missed him, exactly. The house is so much quieter without him, and Lolly is almost bearable if there is no man around.

Barnstone’s revelation provides a new slant on her brother’s departure. Perhaps he is ashamed. Violet knows enough about his finances to understand that he cannot continue his manner of living without the promotion. He may be humiliated, as well he should be. It’s a national disease, living beyond one’s means.

“He hasn’t been to work the past few days,” Barnstone says. “I assumed you knew.”

Violet says, “He hasn’t told Lolly.”

“Maybe he wanted to wait until after this outing,” Barnstone says. “Spare her or something like that. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Arthur tried to keep his illness from me. I suppose he did for a while. I’d give anything to go back to then, back to not knowing.”

“He leave you a pretty bundle?”

“Some. Enough. It’s not the same as a life,” Violet says. “The truth is, I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“What do you like?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t like people.” She is so surprised by the statement that she has to pause. “I don’t mean that. I just mean I don’t like—don’t want a job dealing with people.”

“Your brother’s got a bunch of tests you could take,” Barnstone says. “They examine your personal preferences, your talents, let you know what you might enjoy doing. I could get photocopies for you. Not supposed to, but that’s just not the sort of rule I respect.”

“That might be a smart thing to do.”

“You want to hear a song?” She grabs the guitar by the neck. “No,” Violet says. “I’d rather not.”

“You’re a frank one.”

“I don’t like rock music. It made me something of an outcast when I was young—and now, too, for that matter.”

Barnstone laughs. “It’s childish, I guess, but it has a lot of vitality. Maybe that’s why you don’t like it.”

“I’m sorry if I offended you.”

“I’m not offended.”

“You seem to think Jimmy despises you. He doesn’t despise you.”

“Oh? He’s fond of
the Barnstone?
I’m not saying your brother is a bad man, but I’m a woman approaching sixty, not in the least attractive or useful to him. I don’t mother him, and I don’t kowtow. He just doesn’t see the point of me.”

“That’s severe, don’t you think?”

“Maybe. But he’s a young man, driven by all the things that make young men go—young women, for starters, and their own sense of themselves. Mercy, I grew up in rock and roll. Give a young man an audience, and he’ll tell you every thought that ever entered his head. Give him a typewriter, and he’ll crank out several hundred pages. He’ll provide you every thought that’s dawdled in his head, and revise everything he ever did wrong. And here’s the most confusing part of it all—I love the company of young men. That kid Mick is a doll, Bellamy Rhine at his core is a sweet boy, and Billy Atlas, a wonderful kid.”

“Billy’s hardly a kid. He’s thirty-three, same as Jimmy. They went to school together. Friends since elementary school.”

“That surprises me.”

“It surprises me and I’ve known them both forever. It’s a piece of my brother’s life that makes no sense to me.”

“My, you’re a hard case.”

“You’re one to talk.”

Barnstone laughs again. “Can’t argue with that.”

It’s good that Jimmy has stepped away from the directorship, Violet decides. Otherwise he’d eventually have to fire someone like Barnstone, who considers making trouble a matter of honor. And, of course, there’s Billy, who will certainly have to be dismissed one day soon. Before going out into the water, he revealed that a newly designed spider box arrived at the sheltered workshop, and the packets of hose did not fit in them. Instead of calling the factory for direction, he had the crew cram the packets into the boxes. Billy told the story as if it were funny. “Had to cover the losses coming and going,” he said. “I guess I didn’t
have
to, but I figured I oughta.” He paid the factory for the ruined product and reimbursed his crew for their lost wages. He found it all terribly funny. He and Karly are out there now, together, waist deep in the water. God knows what their relationship is, but it can’t be appropriate. Someone will have to terminate him, and thank god it isn’t going to be Jimmy.

Alonso makes a happy bellow. Vex is in the waves now, too, in his pants and shirt, up to his belt with Billy Atlas—Karly on one side of Billy and Vex on the other. Both have their arms over Billy’s shoulders.

“Jimmy’s not going to marry her,” Violet says, as if Lolly is among the splashing group. She takes a moment to look for Lolly and Mick out in the deep water, which makes her picture Lolly’s bathing suit. The ridiculous string bikini didn’t surprise Violet, but she was astonished at the faded tattoo on Lolly’s abdomen—a Medusa with snakes for hair and aimed downward, pointing (or gaping) at Lolly’s privates. The tattoo doesn’t fit with Violet’s conception of Lolly, but her attitude about the woman has too much momentum to be easily altered. “I can see this breakup coming like trains approaching on the same track.”

“If you ask me,” Barnstone replies, “she shouldn’t marry
him.
”

“What is it with you and Jimmy?”

“He’s reckless. He plows ahead without worrying about the people in his wake. I’m not talking about me, necessarily.”

“Then why this animosity toward him?”

“He’s such a poster boy for the other side, an opportunist. And the way he’s going about it, there’ll be bodies on the side of the road.”

“But if he has withdrawn from the job . . .”

Barnstone sighs. “That changes things, sure. I suppose. Unless it’s a ploy.”

Violet doesn’t like these accusations against her brother, but she can’t pretend she hasn’t had similar thoughts. “He asked Lolly to marry him after they’d spent two weeks together,” she says, “so I suppose I can guess what you mean.”

“And if you’re right, now he’s going to toss her aside.”

“Did you notice that tattoo she has? What does it look like to you?”

“Like a poor erasure.”

“But what was it originally?”

“A spider, obviously.”

“It’s not obviously anything.”

“A black widow with the red hourglass and everything. Your Jimmy boy can tell you after they’re married.”

“You think he’ll go through with it?”

“Why are you so obsessed with your brother’s wedding plans?”

“I introduced them—not in any romantic way, just . . . I thought the tattoo was a mythological creature.”

“I have a tattoo on my ass,” Barnstone admits. “Got it back in the days when only bikers and hard rockers had them.”

“What is it?”

“A lawn chair.”

Violet bursts out laughing.

“I had a band called the Lawn Chairs. I was dead certain we were going to be superstars.” She reaches again for the guitar. “Don’t scream. I’ll keep it short. It’s one of my old songs.”

“I don’t like rock and roll.”

“I know. You’ll hate this.” She plays a few very low chords and then begins strumming fiercely. The lyrics are about the war, the machine, the
man,
and pollution. Her voice is an expressive, deep-throated grumble. The song ends before it becomes completely unbearable.

“Well,” says Violet.

“I was a headbanger for a long while. And good at it. Good at a crappy thing, but still good, you know?”

“Yes,” Violet says, “that was splendidly awful.”

“Thank you. Any crappy things you’re good at?”

“I cared for my husband while he was dying. That’s a pretty crappy thing, but I don’t know that I was all that good at it.”

“I bet you were just fine.”

“There were a few times near the end . . . this particular day that we were in the van, going to get him a new chair—a new electric wheelchair, quite the apparatus. The old one kept breaking down and we were in a van with a lift in the back.”
I still think he’s handsome,
Lolly had said one day near the end. The memory strikes her so suddenly that Violet cannot continue speaking. She and Lolly were searching a medical supply store for a head immobilizer that would not restrict Arthur’s vision, and Lolly said,
I still think he’s handsome.
Violet turned on her fiercely.
No, god, stop it!
The muscles in Arthur’s face could not keep the corners of his mouth from drooping. His eyes had retreated into the sockets like a lizard’s.
Don’t patronize me. I’ll leave you here, goddamn you.

“Go ahead,” Barnstone said, “you were in the van, going to get a new chair.”

“Sorry,” Violet said. “There was this Irish nurse, a man named Denny.” Arthur’s favorite nurse because he brought him beer and poured it down his belly tube. He would hold Arthur on the bed so that he could make love to Violet. “Denny was driving the van, which left me to watch Arthur, riding with him in the back. At some point his breathing tube rattled loose, and I didn’t notice. Arthur turned his eyes up to me and moved his eyebrows. His head was strapped to a brace. By that time, he could not speak or lift a hand. And he was suffocating while I held his hand, that awful flaccid hand.” No, she realizes, there had been no strap on his head. Lolly had found a head immobilizer. She had gone out on her own and purchased it for him.

“Violet?” Barnstone says.

“Honestly, I don’t know how anyone put up with me while that was going on.”

“Tell me the rest of the story.”

“I sort of screamed when I realized the tube was loose. I cried out and I was on my knees trying to get it back in. Denny pulled over, and while I was fumbling, he came charging into the back and got it in place, got him breathing again. Arthur never quite lost consciousness, but I almost killed him.” She takes a moment to control her own breathing. “Denny reconnected him to his laptop. A wire attached to his eyebrow—he could still move his brows. He typed a message.” It was so arduous to type anything, but he wrote to her. “Four words:
like going to moon.
”

“I don’t understand.”

“It was thrilling. That’s what he was telling me. To almost die.” For a moment, she can see that face sinking in on itself, the mischievous eyes, those articulate brows. She had not wanted him to die. She so desperately had not wanted him to die. No matter how ruined his body, she had not wanted to lose him. Why is it so impossibly difficult to admit this to herself? Whatever scrap of him remained, she had not wanted to lose.

Barnstone offers her a spare towel. “You miss him.”

“I used to. All the time, I used to.” She misses him, she understands, with all her heart. She cannot engage other people for missing him. She cannot stand being with people who are not him. She opens her mouth to say the next thing, but Lolly and Mick are approaching the tent, weaving in the sand, and Lolly tells them over and over how Mick rescued her.

Your type is always being rescued,
Violet thinks to say but keeps to herself.
Let’s not pretend it’s news.

While the others listen to Lolly’s tale, she finds herself thinking about Tucson—not, at long last, about either of her brothers or her parents or her late husband, but about the desert. Perhaps what she missed about the U.S. has more to do with landscape than with family or personal history. She couldn’t see that until now. Her grief and other people’s business have camouflaged her desires. What is that word? There’s a specific word for when it storms in the desert and the dry arroyos will temporarily reclaim their purpose, rushing to fill the scorched banks, emptying into a desert basin. A
bolson.
The temporary lake is called a bolson, and it may hold a slice of rainwater a mile wide but only an inch deep, a watery mask that will vanish the first hot day.

“I thought I’d pegged out,” Lolly is saying.

Violet supposes that
pegged out
means
passed out
or
drowned
or
died
—some idiotic Briticism the woman has appropriated. For a moment, she can see the computer screen of Arthur’s computer:
You re tooo hardon her.
Perhaps what he meant was that she should learn to overlook the woman’s (many many many) faults. For better and for worse, Lolly is the person who helped her get through Arthur’s demise.

Violet closes her eyes and what she sees is the painting in Jimmy’s office, Pook’s painting, and as she drifts toward sleep she understands that it is not a self-portrait but a painting of Jimmy, Pook’s vision of his brother. She cannot explain this insight but she believes it. There’s something about the way the figure stands, and the way the mouth . . . how the slightest bit of sly pleasure . . . and something more: Jimmy is Pook plus the intervention of time, time visible within him, those days of the week encapsulated by his transparent body. Perhaps that is what was wrong with Pook, that he could not embrace time. Can that be a disability?