Twenty Grand (11 page)

She smiles slowly and claps her white hands. The small applause goes away, down the sidewalk, in the wind. “It was very, very close,” she says.

8. THE MALAISE

He is reading the paper. He is especially enjoying an intelligent article by a Japanese writer entitled “The Malaise.”

“I see you're enjoying the paper,” she says. She is holding Truman, rocking Truman back and forth in her arms. Truman is not a newborn. They could have had a newborn Puerto Rican. But she wanted Truman.

“Twenty-two!” he says. “This one got twenty-two before they got him.”

She burps Truman against her shoulder. “It was nice of William and Carrie to renew the subscription for us,” she says.

“I guess so,” he says. He stares at Truman.

Truman drools.

“Where's Doctor?”

She shrugs. “Probably asleep in his chair. You know his hip gives him pain.”

“Doctor!” There is no response. “Doctor!” he yells. He misses the dog. The dog is not gone but he misses it. He does not like Truman.

Truman fists her hair and yanks. A viscous pool runs down her day gown. “Please don't yell,” she says. “Not with Truman in the room. It's a bad atmosphere.”

“Doctor!” he yells.

“What's upsetting you?” he sits down, pushing Truman's face into her robe. “Is it because you're losing the Marlowe case?”

It is money. She has told him it's not efficient to have a one-man firm. If he had other lawyers, sub-ones, he could take more cases, which the sub-lawyers would solve, producing more money, and he could pay the sub-lawyers less than he pays himself. She does not know what she is talking about. She is not a lawyer. She does not understand the complications of taking on more attorneys in the—his, a, any—firm. The training, the advertising to get more clients, the work involved in getting more clients, enough to keep the sub-lawyers busy. She does not earn zilch. When he tells her this, she points out that she does not lose money, as he is doing with the Marlowe case.

“The Marlowe case is going great,” he says. “I'm going to win. Tell William and Carrie not to pluck their turkeys. Tell Carrie and William their horse is necking other horses. Tell those good-fence-neighbors it's just going to be a few weeks now till their cock is kicking the other cocks and I want them to get at least twenty percent.”

“You know they don't want that.” She shakes her head delicately, watching him attempt to struggle out of his chair, and lays Truman face-down on the table, so that she can give him his cane. “But they would like it sooner rather than later,” she says, “if you could settle…I've a feeling the other side might settle, if you asked.” She hands him his briefcase, along with a snackpack of PowerBars.

He thumps to the door.

“And please pick up my cardigan at the cleaners,” she says.

He is halfway down the driveway.

“Honey?” she says.

He turns around. She is also in the driveway, in her day gown. She gestures lightly at the three-pronged leaf, lifts the new bridal revolver, and shoots. The three-pronged red floats slowly down, turning over and over in the light fall breeze.

9. DOCTOR, DOCTOR

“Fatty.” Truman smacks the tray. “Fatty.”

He is eating his cereal. “Truman,” he says, “please give Fatty the paper.”

Truman moves toward the bedroom with the paper.

“Truman,” he calls, “bring Fatty the paper.”

“Truman,” Truman yells. “Truman!”

“Honey,” she walks in, dressed for the position she has taken at William and Carrie's firm, “I wish you wouldn't be so insistent with Truman. It's emotionally restrictive. Or,” she adds, “if you must be restrictive, I wish you'd be better at it.”

“Doctor,” he calls. His ass lifts awkwardly in his chair. “Doctor!”

“Honey.” She frowns. “Doctor's dead.”

He moves his head up and down. It seems ridiculous. But he misses the dog. He wishes he didn't. He misses it. He misses the dog. He misses the dog, dog, dog, dog. Her mother's antique Colonial creaks underneath him. It is too small. His knees hurt. He looks out the window to see if his car has come.

“It's almost here,” she says.

“Honey?”

“What?” She does not turn around. She remains, in her apple-colored suit, one hand poised upon the glass.

“Do you think of me when I'm gone?”

She continues to look out the window. She can hear Truman playing in the other room and this brings a smile to her lips. “It may be time to get you a new pair of chinos,” she says.

“Yes,” he nods, “it probably is. But do you think of me when I'm gone?”

She turns around. “If you were me,” she says, “then you would know what I thought.”

10. THE LOSING OF THE MARLOWE CASE

The morning after losing the Marlowe case, he wakes feeling strangely well. She is lying asleep, one arm flung up over her head, pulling taut the skin across her ribcage. Her breasts loll neatly toward the left. He knows she has been up all night, secretly and futilely researching appeal possibilities, and he feels satisfaction. He climbs onto her body without waking her. When she feels his front teeth on her nipple she opens one eye and slowly closes it. A blue vein moves in one lid. He pulls her legs apart and kneels on top of her, on his knees, without pain for the first time in years, and licking two fingers for moisture, firmly rubs her outer fold, then her center. Her long white hands, laid down, clench and unclench. He continues. He sees Truman, in his some-bunny suit, standing in the doorway, and he continues, and Truman goes away.

11. HAPPINESS

She is eating her cereal.

“Do you like it?” he says. He has made the coffee, six scoops, and creamed and sugared her cup.

“Oh yes,” she says, admiringly. “It's very good.” She has read the paper, the Sports section, because she likes to learn new things. The bridal briefcase that they have bought her, quadrangular and black with a little gold handle, sits ready on the table, with several blank papers inside, for note-taking. On the front of the Sports section is a photograph of a man, poised, in the middle of playing a sport. She sips her coffee and studies this. “Sometimes,” she says, “I look at other men.”

He nods.

“And I realize,” she continues, “that those men are not you.”

“I know,” he says. He refills her coffee and stirs it with a tiny silver spoon. “I know they're not me.”

“Well,” she says, “shall I see you at five? Shall we see the new movie, the one with the girl?”

“It's not a movie for Truman,” he says. “Why don't we see the other movie, the one with dogs. Truman likes dogs.” This thought makes him happy—Truman liking dogs!

When she is halfway down the drive she stops.

“Yes?” he asks.

“I'll think of you today,” she says. “I'm planning on thinking of you.”

“That's fine,” he says. “I'll think of you too.”

She frowns. “But how will you manage that, with Truman?”

“I don't think as intensely as you do,” he says.

“Oh,” she says. She considers this. And although she has not often felt this way, she is pleased, and as she makes her way to work, she is almost thrilled.

O
N
D
ECEMBER
13, 1979,
when my mother was thirty years old, she lost an old Armenian coin. That winter was cold, and she had been sleeping with my sister and me on a foldout couch in the living room to save on heat. We lived on a cleared ledge, a natural shelf on a mountain high above a lake. The wind on the shelf was amazing. At night it leaped up to the blinking red light at the tip of the peak behind our house, then skidded back down across the pines and whistled past our windows, somehow inserting, through tiny cracks between the window and the frame, snow that piled, sloped and sparkling, on the sills.

Our driveway was a dirt road that wound through a field. It was often lined by eight-foot banks—which I climbed on my way home from school—with teetering, sand-specked bucket-lumps at their tops. Sporadically, a kid came with a tractor. When he left, the lane was clear. But overnight the wind swept snow across the shelf, up over the banks, and into the road. By morning the drifts were as deep as if the driveway hadn't been plowed at all. Every day, my mother called the kid, who was slow and did the easy jobs in town first, to try to get him to come. Then she shoveled a path to the woodpile and one to the car.

She barely ever looked at the coin. It was silver and heavy. On one side was a man with a craggy profile, a square crown, and one sleepy, thick-lidded eye, and on the other was a woman. The woman was voluptuous, wore a gown, and held something in her outstretched hand—maybe wheat. The coin wasn't a perfect circle, and its surface was pocked. But it had been my mother's mother's, and she kept it in her purse.

On that day she was in a foul mood. My sister was one and a half, and I was six. For weeks, the sky had been a chalky gray that darkened to charcoal in the afternoon. Snowflakes were wafting onto the car. We were going to visit my father. Before we left, my mother glanced in the kitchen mirror, tucked her hair behind her ears, and said, “We're out of groceries. If we don't get some cash from your father, I don't know what we'll eat tonight.”

We often drove to visit him. He was a Guard bum for the Air National Guard, and lived sixty miles south, at the base in Portsmouth, where he was on alert. Occasionally, he flew to England to pilot refuelers for the looking-glass planes that swung along the Russian coast, but mostly he was on alert. This was temporary. He and my mother had married young, hastily, out of excitement, and spent five years moving around the country, to wherever my father was posted. But when my mother got pregnant they'd decided they needed a house. He'd switched from active duty to the Guard, and was stationed in New Hampshire. My mother liked Portsmouth. The sea kept the air mild, the streets in the downtown were cobblestoned and lined by brass lanterns, and the university, where she could get a job or take classes, was close by. But the houses there were expensive, and my father's mother, who lived an hour north, offered my parents an acre of land for free. They drove up to the mountain. They walked across the shelf. It was summer. The hay was high, gold and flecked with Queen Anne's lace. My father asked what she thought. He said, “It's just for now;” and she said, “All right.” They moved all their things into his mother's house. A week later, my father began to build a bungalow with a steep roof, gingerbread trim, and a small wooden deck, like the ones he'd seen built into hills nearby.

While on alert, my father lived with several hundred other men and wore a pea-green jumpsuit that, aside from the gold-zippered pockets on his calves and hips and the blue patch on his left shoulder, looked not unlike the pajamas that my sister and I wore to bed. The other men also wore the jumpsuits—except for the ones who wore navy polyester suits with stars—and they bunked alongside my father, in a vast facility that, much like a high-tech rabbit warren, existed largely under the earth. The complex was surrounded by two barbed-wire fences. To get inside, we had to stop at an electric gate and be “checked” by friendly black men wearing rifles. Then we walked—I always looked over my shoulder—down a long, dark, sloping concrete tunnel.

In the bunker, we were allowed to go to the library. The room was small, gingery, and hot, with shelves of leather-bound books. On the scratchy red chairs in the narrow aisles lay magazines, their articles about naked women or cars. Brown stuffing sprang out from the seats of the chairs, and cigarettes burned in tins on their arms.

The other place we could go was the rec center, which contained a Foosball table, a pool table (one ball missing, two cues with broken tips), a Parcheesi board, and a soda machine. The cafeteria down the hall smelled foreign and delicious—at its far end were vats of spaghetti and of soupy brown sauce, inside which, I guessed, was steak. Best of all, the food was free. But my mother and my sister and I were not allowed to eat it. We were not supposed to be in the warren, in fact, for more than an hour at a time. But my father sometimes sneaked us into the theater, a room with a few benches and a slide screen, to watch a movie; and when I got hungry, as I always did, he'd carry me into the cafeteria, just far enough so that I could see the vats, then take me back out and ask me what I wanted, so that he could order it himself and slip it to me in the library. Usually I wanted lime Jell-O and garlic bread.

My father was on base five or six days at a stretch, four times a month. He was often on duty at Christmas, and was never sick. He was short and pale. But he had excellent posture. He admired Elvis's style, and Henry Ford's business sense. When my mother burned toast, he told her not to throw it out. He ate it himself and washed it down with burnt coffee from the bottom of the pot. He was cheerful, deeply in love with my mother, and quick to get mad.

However much money he left for us while he was on alert, we were careful with it, spending it until it was gone. Then, on the third or fourth day of his absence, we'd drive to visit him and ask for more.

He'd tried to get a job in town. He'd taken a position at a cement plant, but it had gone bankrupt. Next, he'd signed on with a stationery company. But he didn't love his boss or selling pencils, and soon he rejoined the Guard. The work, he said, was steady. We were all healthy, so could do without benefits. He missed us. But it was neat when he got to fly the jets. The economy would swing up soon. And when it did we'd look at our options.

 

M
Y MOTHER ZIPPED US
into our snowsuits and dragged us to her Rabbit hatchback. We waited while she started it, swept the snow off, and scraped the ice from the windows. Then we wobbled down our long driveway, the engine ululating through drifts. Once we reached the bottom of the mountain, we drove on sharply twisting two-lane roads, under fifty-foot pines. In the distance were striped mountains, dots of skiers, lifts. After coming down from the Belknap Range, we wound along the last miles of Winnipesaukee. Passing the lake took time, and it was entertaining to imagine the elegant houses that sprawled upon its white edge as our own, and to count the trucks and the bright-colored ice shacks on its surface and predict how soon they'd fall in. After the lake was a long highway bordered by forest, and then the tolls, and beyond them our father.

Each trip was thrilling, because in winter we never left the house, except to go to Tillman's Discount World. We bought nothing, unless my mother saw something we needed. She'd study the item, then touch it and say, “It's all cotton, no polyester. We could use a new comforter. The old one's worn.” She'd turn it, see the price, and put it back. Later she'd say, “It's a good deal. It's seventy percent off. It might not be here tomorrow.” I'd nod. She'd add, “We don't need it. Your father would be upset.” We'd walk the aisles. An hour would pass. She'd buy me a pair of jeans for school. Just as we were about to leave the store, the cart would swerve, go back to home furnishings, and she'd lift the heavy package and say firmly, “The old one has holes.”

At home we had great days. She was good at cooking, sewing, and folding laundry. She could wash my sister's diapers then bleach the tub and wash my sister in an hour flat. She did our taxes without a calculator. Sometimes she seemed quiet and marked off days on the calendar. But she also said that our life would be perfect if my father's mother didn't live next door.

My grandmother lived in the only other house on the shelf, a tall white Colonial, and she called often, to tell my mother that once again wind or raccoons had knocked our trash cans over, or to ask when my father would be home. She'd given us land and loved my father, so she also gave advice. If his car was gone for a week, she'd tell my mother that he should work less hard or he'd get sick. If his car was in our driveway for more than two days, she'd call to say that he'd better go back to the base, lest his superiors realize that he wasn't necessary and fire him. In his absence, she sometimes appeared at our door with a gift: raspberry jam she'd canned herself. And, while she drank the coffee my mother had brewed, her eyes would light on whatever was new in our house—a set of dishtowels, a plastic tablecloth—and she would praise the object's beauty and ask how much the object had cost.

That morning, she'd installed a snow fence in our field. My mother thought snow fences were ugly. Also, she had a theory that they caused more drift than they prevented. But three men and two trucks had been in our road at six a.m. By the time my mother heard the drills and ran outside to ask the men what they were doing, her black hair flying in the wind, the fence was already installed. When my mother called my grandmother to say, politely, that she didn't want a snow fence, my grandmother said, “I know you don't, Annah. It's for him.” And hung up.

My mother looked at the phone. Put it back on the hook. Looked in the fridge and saw that, except for some leftover meat loaf, we were out of food. She turned to me and said, “She should have asked.” I nodded. “Your grandmother,” she said, “does not respect our privacy.” I nodded again.

But secretly I admired my grandmother, because she read me the books I liked five times in a row upon demand and kept crystal bowls of foil-wrapped chocolates all around her den. She also hugged me a lot, and at times she sat me down for serious talks:

“Your mother spends all your father's money.”

“I know.”

“I myself waited twenty years to buy a dishwasher.”

“I know.”

“People should only spend what they have.”

“I agree.”

“I didn't even think about a washer or a dryer.”

“We don't have a dryer.”

“Your mother has ruined your father's life.”

“I know.”

“Want to play Rack-O?”

“Okay.”

And later:

“Take this coffee cake to your mother.”

“She won't want it.”

“Do you want it?”

“Yes.”

“Then say it's for you.”

“Okay.”

 

W
E DROVE
the long stretch before the tolls. At the first tollbooth, my mother used the last token in the roll between the seats. She hummed; my sister fell asleep. The snow was falling straight down so that the air seemed both white and light purple and the firs peeked through it from along the side of the road. When the second tollbooth appeared in the distance, my mother's hand moved through her purse. But she kept looking ahead. Then she passed the purse back to me. “Look in here,” she said. “See if you can find some quarters.”

I looked. I found safety pins, a tissue, and a dinner mint. “No quarters,” I said.

She slowed and peered at the tollbooth. “Do me a favor,” she said. “Check and see if you find any under the seats.”

I climbed past my sister. Her head was on her shoulder, and she had thrush-blobs at the edges of her mouth. I pushed my belly to the hump, and reached into the dark space above each mat. Eventually, I touched a cracker with a soft mauled edge.

“It's okay,” my mother said. “It's all right. Come up.”

We'd pulled into the toll. My mother looked through the purse herself. Then she told the woman in the booth that she was out of money. That she was sorry, but she could pay the woman on her way back.

“I'm sorry, too,” the woman said. “But you can't do that.”

The woman was older—sixty, perhaps—her hair gray and short. Above the trim of her parka, her large face was grim, or maybe just red from the cold.

My mother took a picture from her wallet and handed it up. “I'm going to see my husband,” she said. “This is him. He's at the base down the road. I can get cash from him as soon as I get there, and I'll come right back.” She hesitated. “You can keep the I.D. if you need something to hold,” she said.

The woman pointed toward the empty lot to the right of the tolls.

My mother pleaded with the woman, to the extent that she was capable of it, saying we were an hour from home, the roads were bad, she couldn't turn around now, had two kids in tow—but her pleading, more insistent than humble, just made the woman mad. The woman said that if my mother did not pull over she would sound an alarm.

My mother looked down at her lap. Her lips pressed together; she seemed nonplussed. She reached into her purse, unzipped a small pocket, and removed the old coin.

“Here,” she said. “It's the same as a dollar.”

The woman stuck out her arm, took it, and grunted.

For the rest of the ride, my mother did not speak, and when we arrived at the bunker we did not go in. Instead, we stood outside the fence. I was cold, and I could see Derek, the chief guard inside the gate, waiting to check me. I mentioned this.

“You don't need to be checked,” my mother said.

“Yes, I do,” I said. “I need to be checked.”

Derek smiled at me. His smile said, We have serious business to do. I know we might not be able to do it now. But later, I will check you.