Amanda Ward - Love Stories in This Town

“Lou is not doing well,” said my mother. “He’s obsessed with where Howie was on the plane.”

I finished my glass of wine and poured another. “Where was he?” I said. I tried to think reverentially of Howie Kensington, but the only vision I could summon was one of Howie in his football helmet, his face sweaty.

“Lou thinks he was bumped to first class, next to one of the terrorists. Howie called his girlfriend and told her he was going to order a free St. Pauli Girl, even though it was morning.”

“I hope he did,” I said.

“So do I,” said my mother. After a minute, she said, “Howie was the captain of the hockey team at Yale.”

“I know,” I said.

“You wanted to go to Yale,” said my mother, “but you didn’t get in.”

“I know,” I said.

· · ·

My husband had still not returned from the lab by the time I finished the wine and went to sleep. I wrote a note, and placed it on the kitchen table, next to the bag: “I hope you will understand that this is for us.”

I do not remember my husband coming home: his long back, his thin eyelids, his mind full of numbers, his bottom, warm against my stomach. By the time I woke, he was out of bed again, and I was alone.

I found him, freshly showered, in the kitchen. The morning paper was still rolled up, bound by a rubber band. I went to the coffeepot and filled a china cup. My head pounded, and I was still in the dress I had worn to work the previous day.

On the table, my note was gone, and in its place was a box of condoms.

We sat opposite each other, the bag of pills and the box of condoms between us. The smell of coffee filled the kitchen. The sun cast a buttery light, and the hairs on my husband’s forearm looked like gold.

It’s a crappy coincidence that on the day James asks for my hand in marriage, there is a masturbator loose in the library. On Monday morning, for example, everything’s the same. Pearl gets picked for the Copper Lunchbox, so we have to listen to Steve Winwood all afternoon. Rosie goes, “Did you have to pick all Steve Winwood?” and Pearl goes, “Look. It’s my Copper Lunchbox.”

“Fair enough,” I say, and then I say, “Can you all be quiet so I can alphabetize in peace?”

Pearl and Rosie snort and turn up the radio. When you see a chance, take it. Find romance, make it make it.

We fight about the radio, primarily. We’ve each been picked for Copper Lunchbox at least once, and then all the library patrons put down their newspapers (which they’re not reading anyway) and think it’s their job to comment on your musical tastes. They don’t have real jobs in Butte anymore, so people take what they can get. In July, and it was hot, Old Ralph announced that Madonna’s music heralded the final tear in America’s moral fabric. I was like, “You know what, Old Ralph? Relax. ‘Crazy for You’ is a dance song, not a code of ethics.” Old Ralph’s like, “Touch me once and you know it’s true. I never wanted anyone like this!” making the words sound lewd and disgusting. I almost took the new Mary Higgins Clark and beaned him, but Ralph likes to pontificate, and in a public library, that’s his right.

So, we live in Butte, Montana. The richest hill on earth, ha, ha. They dug a pit the size of the city next to the city and now it’s filling with toxic water. It’ll overflow in the year 2000 they say, so I say, well, a year is a year. Now they’re talking about mining the water.

My dad was a miner. He’s dying now of cancer—it’s in his bones—and all his friends are dying of cancer too. They come over to the house and drink Guinness and smoke like fiends and what’s Mom going to say? It’s bad for your health? When I get home, there’s some kind of meat or some Beefaroni, and when I get in bed, my sheets smell like Downy. In between my dad’s coughing, I can hear my mother’s soft laughter.

They hired me at the library out of Butte High. I was the class valedictorian. At the graduation ceremony, I said, “Go forth and find your dreams.” I could have gone to Missoula and played for the Lady Griz, but my coach was like, “Annie, that knee’s going to give in less than a season.” I had to tape it for the last game as it was, but the Lady Griz still wanted me. They are the best women’s basketball team in Montana. They went to State and then to Florida to play in the championships this year. I watch them on TV. They’re all as tall as me, with their hair in little ponytails, and they were on the beach with suntan lotion all over their noses because hey, they’re from Montana and their skin isn’t used to Florida sun. One of them married the quarterback of the Grizzly football team. She wore a cowboy hat with a veil, which I think is tacky.

So, people used to send their daughters to Butte because their skin would get pale here, and that was fashionable. The arsenic in the air will bleach your skin. Our Lady of the Rockies is white as snow.

Our Lady of the Rockies is a hundred-foot marble statue of the Virgin Mary. Butte bought her and helicoptered her up to the Continental Divide to give the town something to be proud of, when all the copper was gone. At night, with the moon over her shoulder, she is something out of a dream. No matter what goes wrong or crazy, staring at Our Lady of the Rockies makes me calm. She’s right where she should be, and it’s a good thing, because she weighs eighty tons.

After work, James picks me up and we go driving. Sometimes we drive over to Pork Chop John’s for sandwiches, sometimes to the flats for a beer, and sometimes we go all the way out to Deer Lodge where the prison is or to Anaconda where the smokestack of the old smelter rises up like an arm. James! He smells like hard work—a cinnamon, cigarette smell. When James started calling me, he had just dropped out of tenth grade. Butte is small; I knew who he was, of course, and that he lived with his deadbeat father in a drafty double-wide. Nobody thought it would last, the studious girl and the grocery guy with a tattoo of his dead mother on his back.

After work, James plays saxophone for the Toxic Horns. His hair always looks messy and sticks up like a little chickadee. His tongue is the softest thing in the world.

Back to Monday. By the afternoon it’s raining, and that’s the best time to shelve. It’s quiet and warm in the library, and the books are all organized and beautiful. I’m humming and checking out the Romance section when there’s a shriek from the second floor. It’s Pearl and she goes, “OH NOOOOO! AAAH!” and the upstairs exit slams shut and Pearl comes running down the stairs like a puppy. Her mascara is smudged and her wiglet is askew.

“What? What?” goes Rosie, and Pearl can’t say it. She breathes in and out and finally she says, “There was a man upstairs.”

A man? (All the librarians are spinsters or divorcées and hate men.) I was like, “Pearl, men are allowed to go wherever they—”

And Pearl goes, “NO! You don’t UNDERSTAND!” And she starts crying. Rosie leads her by her little liver-spotted hand into the bookbinding room and Pearl’s shoes make this shuffling sound. You can hear the two of them talking quietly and then Pearl’s crying, Rosie’s soothing sounds. A few minutes later, Rosie comes out. Her mouth is drawn together tight as a prune.

“There is a masturbator loose in the Periodical area,” says Rosie.

By now all the regulars have dropped their newspapers. Nobody’s even pretending to browse. Old Ralph (of course) leads the way. He runs up the stairs with determination on his face for the first time since I have known him. Abe follows him and the little biddies stand at the foot of the stairs chirping encouragement.

Nothing.