Russell Banks - Continental Drift

Marguerite asks him what his wife is like. She’s genuinely curious; his answer will help her understand what she herself is like. Her father is in the stockroom, cutting cartons and stacking them into neat bundles. He knows she’s here and it’s past quitting time, but he’s grown accustomed to her chats with his boss, which leave him standing in the background, pulling at his earlobe and waiting, like a bored child, for her to finish whatever obscure adult business she’s up to.

“Well, first off, Elaine’s a lovely lady,” Bob says. “Very much the mother,” he adds, leaning forward with both hands on the top of the cash register, as if it were a lecturn.

“And you, are you very much the father?”

Bob looks intently into her eyes, drops his gaze for a second and says in a low voice, “No. No, not really. And I got no excuses, either. It’s just … it’s just that I’m all the time too worried about myself. She’s not like that. Elaine. She doesn’t worry about herself all the time, like I do, so she’s free to think about other people, the kids, mainly, and me. It’s not selfishness, I don’t think. It’s different. I’m not really selfish. I’m just all the time worried about myself….”

“Why don’t you stop worrying about yourself so much, then?”

“It’s not like that. You can’t just decide and do it, or else you end up worrying about that too, and you’re right back where you started from. It just has to happen. You just have to be born a better person that I happen to be, that’s all.”

“Oh, come on, you’re not a bad person. You’re really not.”

“Not bad , maybe. But not good , either. See, you, you’re good. You think about your father and worry about him more than you worry about yourself. Like Elaine does. Me, I worry so much about whether I’m any good or not, or what I ought to do or shouldn’t ought to do, or whether I’m smart enough or work hard enough, all those things, that there’s never much room in my head for anyone else’s problems. Even somebody like my brother Eddie, for instance, who, even though he’s selfish, really selfish, and I’m not like that … still, he’s a good man, because in the end he doesn’t worry about himself too much. I don’t know, it’s a kind of vanity, you know? What I’ve got. I mean, Eddie’s free to be good. I’m not, almost. He’s more the father than I am, and more the husband too. More the brother, even. He sees somebody’s got a problem, and he tries to solve it, even though he’s selfish, which only means that he won’t solve it if the solution is going to hurt him somehow, and most solutions won’t do that, you know. Especially if you’ve got some money, like Eddie does. But me, I don’t even notice it that somebody’s got a problem, not even when it’s staring me in the face. I don’t know what makes me this way, but it’s the way I am, and I can’t stop being the way I am just by wanting to. Any more than Eddie can, or Elaine, or even you, can stop being the way you are just because you want to. If you want to.”

“I suppose,” Marguerite says, stretching wearily. “It’s hot out there. Nice in here.”

“You got air in that car, though.”

“Yeah. But it’s getting from here to there that bothers me.” She laughs. “That’s the trouble with air-conditioning. Nobody missed it till after they got it. Anyhow, when that thing in my car starts up, all it blows out at first is more hot air. It’s worse’n a heater.”

Bob watches the woman carefully, as if she were prey. “Are you … are you going straight home from here?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I got to fix supper for Daddy.”

“Then? Then what?”

“Then … nothing, I guess. No big date. No nothing.” She smiles with slight embarrassment, as if coming up empty-handed.

“Don’t you have any boyfriends?”

“Nope.” With a sudden movement, she stabs at her hair with stiffened fingers. “No boyfriends. You never heard me mention none, did you?”

“Well, I wondered. You know, since you’re so good-looking and all, and single. But I never asked before, because I figured you’d just say yes.”

She smiles. Her teeth are large and gapped. To Bob, they’re sexy, forthright, passionate teeth. “And you didn’t want to hear me say so?”

“Right.” He smiles back.

“What about you, mister?”

“Well. I’m married, you know,” he says, suddenly serious.

“Yeah. But that don’t stop people.”

“I’ll tell you the truth.”

“Uh-huh. You tell me the truth.”

“I have … I did have a girlfriend. In New Hampshire. A nice woman, though. I used to see her once in a while. No big thing, though. We weren’t in love or anything. You know. Just friends.”

“Uh-huh. Just friends. What about your wife? Did she know about this friend of yours?”

“Jesus, no! No. It was just a once-in-a-while thing, me and Doris. That was her name, Doris.”

“Uh-huh. Doris. Well,” she says, “I’ve got to get Daddy and go home.”

“Is your house air-conditioned?”

“I got me one unit in the living room, and it cools the rest of the house down pretty good, except when I’m cooking or there’s a whole lot of people in the house. But it’s fine for me and Daddy.” She looks toward the back of the store, as if in search of her father, who sits in the stockroom on a crate, waiting for her call.

“Ah, listen, Marguerite, I’d like to go out for a drink with you sometime. Would that be okay with you?” He exhales slowly.

Screwing up her face, as if trying to remember his name, she studies his eyes for a few seconds. “You sure? I mean, there’s places we could go. Over in Winter Haven or up in Lakeland. You’re married, you know. In case you’ve forgotten.” She pauses. “And we’d stick out.”

Bob takes shallow breaths quickly and his voice comes out higher than he’d like. “Of course I’m sure. Just go out for a few drinks, you know, some night after I close the store.”

“You know what you’re doing,” she informs him.

“Oh, yeah. No problem. I could pick you up at your house, if you wanted, or we could meet someplace.”

She is silent for a second, then smiles and pats his hand. “Tell you what. I’ll pick you up here at the store some night. My car’s got air, remember? That ol’ thing of yours, that’s a Yankee car.” She smiles warmly and calls her father.

Folding his arms across his chest, Bob steps back from the register, as if he’s just completed a big sale. He leans against the shelf behind him and watches the woman and her father head for the door. Just as she reaches to open it, Bob calls to her, “How about tonight? I close at nine.”

Without looking back, she says, “I don’t know,” opens the door and steps into the heat.

At seven, she calls him, and sounding slightly frightened, speaking more rapidly than usual, she says that she’ll meet him at nine, then hurriedly, as if late for another appointment, gets off the phone.

Bob immediately calls Elaine at home and tells her he’s made a new friend, a Budweiser salesman from Lakeland, who’s asked him out for a drink after work, so he’ll be home a little later than usual tonight.

This relieves Elaine. A new friend is what Bob needs. Someone to brag to, someone he can talk fishing and sports with, someone he can complain freely to, especially about Eddie, because she knows he won’t complain about Eddie to her, no matter how much Eddie, that bastard Eddie, bothers him.

Three times in the next three weeks Bob and Marguerite drive out in her car for drinks at the Barnacle in Winter Haven. That first night, when they returned to the store, Bob leaned over from the passenger’s side and kissed her on the cheek, nicely, then got out and waved good night. The second time she drove him back from the Barnacle, they sat in her car for a few minutes talking about the stupidity of one of the doctors she worked for at the clinic, and Bob reached over and kissed Marguerite full on the mouth in midsentence, passionately ground his mouth against hers, and she let him slip his tongue between her big teeth and on into her mouth. The third time, they sat in the car making out like teenagers for nearly an hour, before Bob finally pulled himself free, zipped his pants and stumbled from her car to his. They didn’t go to the Barnacle after that; they drove straight to the Hundred Lakes Motel out on Highway 17 north of Winter Haven.