Wally Lamb - We Are Water

“Like a GPS system?” the Mad Hatter asks.

“Uh-huh. Pretty much. If we get lucky and the tags stay embedded, we should be able to track the animals’ migratory behavior. Which would be fantastic! In other parts of the world, great whites have been tracked successfully, so there’s a good deal known about their migration patterns. But that’s not the case here in the northern Atlantic. Great whites in these waters have always been a bit of a mystery.”

“Well, Dr. Tracy Skelly, thanks for a fascinating discussion. And good luck tracking those great whites. Time once again to check on news, weather, and traffic. But stay tuned, fellas, because when we … two of the self-described ‘guidettes’ who will … in MTV’s latest … Jersey Shore , debuting next …” Mercifully, the Mad Hatter is finally fading away.

I’m goin’ to the market now, Miz Anna. Anything else you need?”

“What?”

“At the market. Anything else that ain’t on your list?”

“No, I guess not. Maybe a pack of cigarettes.”

“Marlboro Lights?”

“Yes, please. Do you have enough money? Here, let me get my purse and give you another twenty just in case. You can keep the change.”

Last month, Viveca reprimanded me for giving Minnie an extra hundred dollars. “Sweetheart, once you start that, they start expecting it,” she said, as if I were a child who didn’t know better. As if Minnie were a dog I got caught feeding scraps to under the table. I kept my mouth shut, but I was pissed. I’m pissed so often lately. It’s nerves, I guess. It’s not that I’m not committed to Viveca. I am. But I’ve already been a bride. And I’m just not comfortable about being married back in Three Rivers … But okay, I’ll get through it. It’s one weekend, that’s all, and I’ll have some time with my daughters in the house where they grew up; I’m looking forward to that. And once we return from Greece, I’ll go back to my studio and Viveca will go back to her gallery and her various charity fund-raising initiatives and things will return to normal.

I’ve slipped Minnie more money since Viveca’s reprimand—hundreds by now probably, although I haven’t kept track. “Our little secret,” I say whenever I press the tens and twenties into her calloused hand and squeeze.

Minnie’s more guarded about her personal life than Hector is, but she’s been opening up little by little, more so since Viveca’s been away and I’ve been staying home instead of going to the studio. We’ve started eating our lunch together, Minnie and me, in Viveca’s study because there’s a little TV in there and Minnie likes to watch The Jerry Springer Show . I’m not sure why, because day after day, it reinforces the worst stereotypes. All the black men on Jerry Springer are dim-witted dogs who cheat on their women. And when Jerry brings out the brazen women these men have been cheating with, the betrayed wives rush them, slapping and punching, yanking off their wigs while the mostly white audience cheers them on. Minnie shakes her head and chuckles and thinks these fights are funny. Doesn’t she realize how racist it is? That it’s staged? I’m at a loss to understand what it is about Springer that appeals to her so much. But hey, I sit there, eating my yogurt and watching it with her.

Minnie smokes at our apartment, which Viveca would be furious about if she knew. But she’s discreet. When she goes into the spare bedroom for a cigarette break, she sits in front of the open window and blows the smoke through the screen. When I walked in and caught her that time, her eyes narrowed—looked more defiant than apologetic—and she said, “You gon’ tell Missuz I been rippin’ smokes?” I told her I wouldn’t and smiled. Asked her to please call me Annie. I thought she’d be pleased by my overture, but she just nodded, not smiling back. She hasn’t called me Annie yet. To Minnie, I’m still Miz Anna, the woman who’s going to marry Missuz.

Since Viveca’s been gone, I’ve been smoking, too. The first couple of times, I bummed cigarettes from Minnie. Then I went down to the market on the corner, the one with the ATM, and bought myself a pack from that effeminate Korean cashier with the bad attitude and the Velveeta-dyed hair. He wears women’s tops and pants some days—size zero, I’m guessing, because he has the narrowest waist I’ve ever seen. He’s over-the-top hostile—resentful when you go up to the counter and dare to interrupt his magazine reading because you want to buy something. He sighs long-sufferingly, slaps his magazine down on the counter, and rings you up with a roll of his eyes. The other day, I got so fed up with his bad attitude that, when he went to give me my change, I grabbed his wrist, looked him in the eye, and told him that whoever or whatever he was so angry about, he didn’t have to take it out on his customers. I watched his expression change from defiance to fear. He was suddenly a scared and miserable little boy, and I knew that, somewhere, in some way, somebody had abused him. I felt bad and looked away—looked down at the counter, at Oprah’s beaming face on the cover of O magazine. He’d dropped my change when I grabbed his wrist and there were dimes on Oprah’s boobs. They looked like pasties. When I looked back up at him, his mask was back on and he looked as ornery as ever. But it was too late. I’d already seen his fear. I can use it if I need to. It’s part of what makes me powerful: I can sometimes figure out what other people’s vulnerabilities are without revealing any of my own. It’s something I learned from my family, I guess; we O’Days were talented secret keepers.

For the last week or so, I’ve been buying two packs at a time: Marlboro Lights for me and Newports for Minnie. On the Today show, that Dr. Nancy person keeps harping on the dangers of smoking. Her and her cushy doctor’s life, her little brown bangs. She reminds me of those beautifully dressed girls from high school—the ones whose mothers let them borrow their credit cards and buy whatever they wanted at the Westwick Mall where I worked. That was my first real job, not counting babysitting; I’d scoop, weigh, and bag people’s mixed nuts, dried fruits, jelly candies, and deluxe jumbo cashews at a kiosk called Jo-Jo’s Nut Shack. My customers were fat people, mostly, who watched the scale to make sure I wasn’t shortchanging them. I’d keep one eye on what I was shoveling onto the scale and the other on those girls from my school who strolled by with their bags and packages. I recognized them , but they didn’t recognize me or even look my way. I hadn’t had a mother in eight years, let alone a borrowed credit card to buy things with. What did any of those girls know about having to wear used clothes from Love Me Two Times or the Salvation Army store? And what does Dr. Nancy know about what someone like Minnie is up against? That day I caught her smoking? I sat on the bed next to her, lifted the window I was facing, took a cigarette out of her pack, and lit up. And the two of us sat there, inhaling and blowing smoke through our respective screens, tapping ash into the plastic cap of the Febreze can that Minnie uses for an ashtray. Neither of us spoke until we’d each started second cigarettes. That was when she told me about her ten-year-old son, Africa. She’s a single mother. It’s been three years since Africa’s father left, she says, and he’s never paid her one single dime for child support.

Minnie drinks on the job, too. She doesn’t know I know. The other night, I dropped an egg on the kitchen floor, and when I went into the cleaning closet to get something to wipe it up, I found a gallon jug of Carlo Rossi Paisano wine hidden at the bottom of a box of rags, mop heads, and vacuum cleaner attachments. It was half full. And when I checked it the following night after she left to go home, it was only a quarter full. The night after that, there was a new jug—Carlo Rossi burgundy this time. She had finished the other bottle and drunk three or four inches’ worth from the new one. Well, as long as she gets her work done and Viveca doesn’t find out, let her drink. Maybe I have Carlo Rossi to thank for the fact that she’s been more open lately. Maybe it’s not so much that she’s begun to trust me as it is because she’s buzzed.