William Landay - Mission Flats

Then the unthinkable happened. Its name was Claude Truman.

He was a thick-wristed policeman — a policeman! — from some godawful backwater in Maine. They were wildly mismatched. What Mum saw in him, nobody could understand. My guess is it was precisely his muscular rudeness that made Claude Truman appealing. He was cocksure and strong, a bull moose in springtime. He was different. Not dumb, far from it. But at the same time this was a man who thought John Cheever was a hockey player and Ionesco a corporation. It must have been a relief to Annie not to have to work so hard. Who knows? Maybe there was even an exotic appeal to Versailles, Maine. Of course, she’d never seen it, but the idea of Acadia County must have been romantic — the forest primeval and all that — especially to a young woman who had been literated to a fare-thee-well, educated beyond all reason. Her father forbade Annie to see Claude Truman, but she defied him, and the couple married three months after they met. He was thirty-seven, she was twenty-nine.

The price was high. Mum and her father had a ferocious argument, and the rift between them never healed. She called him every now and then; after she hung up the phone, she usually went to her bedroom to cry. When he died, Joe left his daughter enough to pay for my education and a little extra for herself, but not the lode she might have received if she’d stuck to the plan.

Mum did continue one Wilmot family tradition. When I was a kid, she’d pay me for various demonstrations of self-improvement. A dollar for learning the ‘we happy few’ speech from Henry V, and another buck for reciting it before dinner. Fifty cents for reading a novel (if it was not ‘crap’), a dollar for reading a biography. Five dollars for sitting with her through all of I, Claudius on PBS.

The day Mum kicked Dad out for getting doughnut powder in his hair, she cleared aside the kitchen furniture and asked me if I wanted to dance for a one-time payment of one dollar. She put on a Frank Sinatra record in the TV room and left the door open so we could hear it, then she instructed me on the proper placement of the man’s hands and the proper execution of the box step.

I laid my left hand on her hip and held my right hand up so she could rest hers in my palm.

‘Now what?’

‘Step with your outside foot.’

‘Which one?’

‘Any one, Ben. I’ll follow you.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s how it works. The man leads. Just keep stepping with your outside foot. Make the box.’

We danced for a while, to ‘Summer Wind,’ then ‘Luck Be a Lady’

She asked, ‘Do you want to talk about what happened this morning?’

‘No.’

‘Do you have anything you want to ask me?’

I was preoccupied with the complexities of the box step — look up at your partner, never down at your feet; stand straight, as if there were a string coming out the top of your head pulling you up, up — and all the while I was con-cen-tra-ting-on-the-beat. So I said no, it was okay.

She clinched my head a little too tight to her tummy and said, ‘My Ben,’ which meant she was sad but didn’t want me to know it.

‘You can’t bet that. It’s your badge.’

‘Of course I can. It’s worth something, isn’t it? It’s gold.’

‘It’s not gold. Besides, what am I gonna do with it? Melt it down?’

‘No, you could wear it, Diane. It’s jewelry’

‘Ben, I’m not going to walk around wearing your damn badge.’

‘Why not? You can be the new chief.’

She rolled her eyes, unamused. ‘Come on, bet money or fold. That’s how it works. U.S. currency’

Bobby Burke added, ‘Legal tender for all debts public and private.’

The pot was somewhere just south of fifty bucks, which is about as high as it gets in this game. I was sitting on three queens, with just Diane to beat. It was no time to drop out. I appealed to Dick: ‘Is this badge worth fifteen bucks or not? Tell her, Dick. These things cost twenty-five, thirty bucks. I can show you the catalog.’

‘That’s if you buy it new,’ he demurred.

‘Dick, it’s not a Buick. It doesn’t matter how many miles are on it.’

‘It’s up to Diane. If she wants to take it, she can take it.’

‘Jesus, Dick, you have no backbone. You’re like a… a squid. What, are you afraid of Diane?’

‘Yup.’

‘Diane-’

‘No.’

‘Diane, just listen.’

‘No.’

‘Look, if you take it, you can wear it around town and make me look like an idiot. Now, how’s that?’

She shook her head no. ‘Throw in your pants. I’ll take those.’

‘I’m not betting my pants.’

‘Must not be a very good hand.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with that.’

‘Then throw ’em in.’

‘Diane, I’m not betting my pants.’

‘What else do you have?’

‘That’s it. It’s all I got.’

She picked up the badge and turned it over in her palm, frowning. I expected her to bite it to see if it was counterfeit. ‘I’ll take it. Maybe I’ll make an earring out of it or something. I’ll wear it around town so everyone will know what a loser you are.’ She tossed it in the pot.

‘Ben,’ Dick asked, ‘does this make Diane the new chief?’

‘She hasn’t won yet, Dick.’

‘Well, after. Will she be the new chief?’

‘I guess so.’

His mouth squeezed into a frown of deep concern.

Diane laid her cards on the table. Two pairs, kings and sevens.

The thought crossed my mind that all I had to do here was fold. Just put my cards down, let Diane have the pot and the badge with it. An ignominious end to my career in law enforcement, but what the hell, an end is an end. Then again, I don’t get the chance to beat Diane very often. I put down my three queens and swept the pot toward me, forty-five dollars or so plus a gold-colored badge.

‘You wouldn’t have let me keep it anyway,’ she grumbled.

I shrugged. Hey, you never know.

Later, I watched Diane get out of bed to stand by the window. She was a big, haunchy girl with an athletic way of moving. I liked to watch her. The soles of her feet scuffed along the floor. At the window she lit a cigarette and puffed it distractedly, arms folded across her belly. She seemed lost in thought, her nudity forgotten, irrelevant. Outside, the hills were silhouettes against the moonlit sky.

‘What’s wrong, Diane?’ I propped myself on an elbow.

She moved her head vaguely but did not answer. The tip of the cigarette glowed orange in the dark room. ‘Did you ever think that maybe this is all we’re going to have?’

‘What? You mean’ — I wiggled my finger between us — ’this?’

‘No! Don’t worry, Ben, I know what this is.’

‘I only meant-’

‘I know what you meant.’ She shook her head. ‘I mean, what if this whole thing is all there is for me? Shitty little apartment, shitty little town. This whole shitty life. So-called life.’

My neck began to stiffen and I sat up. ‘Well, you can change it. If this place isn’t for you, you can go anywhere you want.’

‘No, you can go anywhere you want. It’s different for you, Ben. Always has been. You could always go anywhere you want. I can’t.’

‘Of course you can.’

‘Ben, don’t. Just don’t. I’m not asking to be cheered up.’

‘Oh.’

I sneaked a glance at the clock. 2:17 A.M.

‘We’re not all like you, Ben. You’ve got choices. You’re smart, you went to a fancy college, fancy graduate school. You’ll be okay wherever you go. You’re not even as butthole-ugly as I say you are. You’re actually-’ She looked back at me, then returned her attention to the window. ‘You’re not that bad.’

‘You’re not bad either.’