Charles Baxter - Saul and Patsy

“What happened to her? To Gordy’s mother?” Patsy asked.

“Lois? Oh, she died in a house fire.” Harold shrugged again, but there was something behind the shrug, some anger or resentment, and a shake of the head. “They smoke cigarettes twenty-four hours a day, preferably in bed, they drink like fish, they pass out with their cigarettes burning, and bingo, you’ve got yourself a house ablaze, people screaming and what have you.”

“How do you know all this?” Saul asked.

“Saul, I wasn’t always as you see me now,” Harold said. “And I was in school here with those people.” He bent down to stretch, touching his toes. “I’m a townie. I dated some of those women, when we were small.” He waited. “I knew her. I knew the first wife. I knew the one who died in the fire. I dated her.” Harold’s face took on a quick passing melancholy.

“You dated her?” Mary Esther grabbed at Saul’s fingers, making intricate tiny fists.

“Yeah, I dated her before Rufus appeared on the scene. Rufus overcame Lois with his charm. He’s got two other brothers, one named Cash, and the other Kerry. Cash and Kerry — both of them are in prison. The kid, Gordy, wasn’t killed in the fire because he was being baby-sat with the aunt at the time, this Brenda you had your encounter with today. Where Rufus was during that fire, that’s never been completely established, and I don’t like to talk about this, so can we play basketball now?” He glanced down at Saul’s feet. “Want to put on some shoes?”

“It’s too hot to play basketball,” Patsy said. “Are you two guys nuts?”

“Could be,” Harold informed her. “Get some shoes on.” Once Saul was out of the room, Harold turned conspiratorially toward Patsy and, after twisting his head from side to side to loosen the muscles, said in a smilingly hopeful, daydreaming tone, “I’m going to school his ass. Saul can’t play in the heat.”

Patsy watched them go. Men were such bluffers. It was all a bluff. With relief, after the baby’s brief outburst, Patsy opened her blouse and her nursing bra. As she nursed, Mary Esther lifted her tiny, perfect hands so that the palms faced outward onto Patsy’s breast, and it occurred to Patsy that in adults, this same gesture was one of adoration and astonished happiness.

Her nipples were still sore, but the soreness was occasionally pleasing to her. She felt as if her entire body was being used in the way for which it was designed. She had kept this thought to herself. The apocalyptic sun flung itself through the window onto the linoleum floor as Mary Esther shifted in her arms, and Patsy leaned back, hot and tired but happy, though she could feel a spell of weeping coming on, more or less out of nowhere. Mary Esther had been eating well and was past her first siege of colic. She was growing a fine five-month-old baby. What was there to weep about? But there was no logic to crying sometimes; it was simply a visitation. When Patsy turned around, she performed a small inventory of the kitchen: the toaster, the polished white blender, the array of cooking utensils hanging to the side of the stove — spatula, serving spoon, potato masher. She loved to stake her claims by listing humble domestic objects to herself, and doing an inventory calmed her down whenever the tears appeared. Here was the dish drainer, there was the phone, and next to it the small yellow pad of paper for messages, with the blue plastic mechanical pencil nearby. The kitchen utensils liked her and accepted her. She gazed at her daughter, who had fallen asleep, though her lips were still moving, small contractions like kisses.

African violets, refrigerator magnets, photo of Mary Esther, jar for sugar, jar for rice, cookbook, unwashed eggbeater left out on the counter.

But she was tired of renting. She thought they should own a home of their own. Single people and couples came through her office, arranging home loans, and lately they had made her sick with envy.

She wanted another child. Somehow her tears were mixed up with this particular desire. There was a boy out there who wanted to be born. His name was already Theo. Patsy had noticed Saul gazing at her with desire a few minutes ago, and that look had pleased her.

With the softest of all possible motions, she hoisted Mary Esther onto her shoulder, carried her upstairs, and put her into her crib, kissing her on the forehead lightly, because it was so hot. Mary Esther called forth kisses. You kissed her without thinking, the way you breathed in air. Patsy touched her own forehead, gauging the depth of her sweat. Though she liked to sweat, the heat was beginning to get to her. Clothes were an irritation wherever they touched her in this heat, and so, automatically, she took her shoes off in the bedroom and left her blouse unbuttoned. Her wedding ring was an irritant against her skin, but it was who she was, as intimate as her own thoughts. As a dancer, Patsy practiced objectivity about bodies. Before the era of Mary Esther, whenever the warm weather arrived, she and Saul had walked around the house naked whenever they could, creating opportunistic situations for lovemaking, but that had ended. You couldn’t do that in front of a toddler: trauma and bitterness for decades, years of therapy, would result. Still, she would miss it. She would miss her animal-self, the beating of her heart, the feeling of her body, wholly body, fluttering its sleeves, walking through space, through the rooms, all the air on her skin, small eddies and bouquets of air. The pride of it, the power and certainty.

She made the bed and straightened up the baby’s things in the nursery. She collected some of the dirty laundry from the floor, first in her closet and then in Saul’s. Lifting one of his undershirts, she smelled him on it, that scent of vinegar and intelligent anxiety and friendliness. She carried the laundry down to the basement and dropped all the underwear into the washing machine. She could have done her tasks in pitch darkness— she knew where everything was — but on second thought, she flipped the light switch. Then she reached down to the dehumidifier.

She hardly felt anything, really nothing more than a solid blow of electrical current through her body, like a punch after anesthetic, but, as impersonal as it was, it held her for a moment before it threw her to the floor. Her first thought was, “ My baby. Mary Esther. Don’t let me be dead.” Lying on the basement floor on her back, she saw the branching water pipes, and she heard the water gurgling through them. She saw the floorboards above her, the beams, the inconsequential slats.

She had been hit, she thought, by a small panel truck. A rusty urban truck, the size of a dog kennel, doing its hardscrabble tasks. But what was a truck doing in their basement? Near the laundry tubs? She would have to tell someone about the panel truck in the basement. But that was delirium, that thought — the afterburn of electricity scattering from her bare feet through her arm and then up into her brain. She put her hand to her eyes. The coldness of the basement floor against her back was, second by second, more than she could endure. Why hadn’t Saul ever fixed the damn humidifier? He simply hadn’t. She pushed herself upright and placed her feet, one after the other, on the waiting dirty stairs. They creaked. Wanting to get her blouse buttoned before she passed out or Saul and Harold returned, she made her way through the hallway into the kitchen and then up to the second floor, and she leaned down to pick up the remaining laundry in the bedroom, and when a second fit of dizziness took her, she dropped slowly, in extended slow motion, like a special effect, to a sitting position on the rug. Outside, a bird was singing, roaring hallucinating chirps, a terrible noise, music through saturated cotton.