T. Boyle - T. C. Boyle Stories

When he shuffled back into the kitchen, running late now, the fortified nut loaf tucked like a football under his arm, he had a shock: Muriel was up. There were telltale traces of her on the counter, at the door of the refrigerator and on the base of the coffeemaker. He saw where yesterday’s grounds had been flung at the trash can and dribbled down the wall behind it, saw where she’d set her cup down on the stove and where she’d torn through the cabinet in search of her pills and artificial sweetener; in the same moment the muted rumble of the TV came to him from the next room. He was fumbling with the espresso machine, hurrying, the framers due at seven-thirty and the plumber at eight, when she appeared in the doorway.

Muriel’s face composed itself around the point of her Scotch-Irish nose and the tight little pout of her stingy lips. She was short and busty, and the tips of her toes peeked out from beneath the hem of her nightgown. “Where the hell have you been?” she demanded.

He turned to the stove. A jolt of pain shot through his hips — there was weather coming, he could feel it. “We were out of bread, sweetie,” he said, presenting the side of his face to her as he spooned the eggs from their shells. “I had to go down to the Quick-Stop.”

This seemed to placate her, and she subsided into the living room and huddled over her coffee mug in front of the TV screen. Willis could see the TV from the kitchen, where he popped the toast, brewed the espresso and squeezed the oranges. A chirpy woman with a broad blond face and hair that might have been spun sugar was chirping something about weight loss and a new brand of cracker made from seaweed. Willis arranged Muriel’s things on a tray and brought them in to her.

She gave him a hard look as he set the tray down on the coffee table, but then she smiled and grabbed his arm to pull his face down, peck him a kiss and tell him how much he spoiled her. “Got to go, sweetie,” he murmured, already backing away, already thinking of the car, the road, the house by the ocean that was rising before his eyes like a dream made concrete.

“You’ll be home for lunch?”

“Yes, sweetie,” he murmured, and then he made a fatal miscalculation: he lingered there before the glowing ball of the TV. The weatherman, in a silly suit and bow tie and mugging like a shill, had replaced the chirping confection of a woman, and Willis lingered — he’d smelled the weather on the air and felt it in his hips, and he was briefly curious. After all, he was going to be out in it all day long.

It was at that moment that Muriel’s cry rose up out of the depths of the couch as from the ringside seats at a boxing match — harsh, querulous, the voice of disbelief and betrayal. “And what do you call this?” she boomed, nullifying the weatherman, his maps and pointers and satellite photos, the TV itself.

“What, sweetie?” Willis managed, his voice a small scuttling thing receding into its hole. The windows were gray. The weatherman blathered about wind velocity and temperature readings.

“This, this toast. “

“They didn’t have your bread, sweetie, and Waldbaum’s won’t be open for another hour yet—”

“You son of a bitch.” Suddenly she was on her feet, red-faced and panting for breath. “Didn’t I tell you I wanted to go shopping last night? Didn’t I tell you I needed things?”

They’d been together for two years now, and Willis knew there was no reasoning with her, not at this hour, not before she’d had her eggs and toast, not before she’d been sedated by the parade of game shows and soap operas that marched relentlessly through her mornings. All he could do was slump his shoulders penitently and edge toward the door.

But she anticipated him, darting furiously at him and crying, “That’s right, leave me, go on off to work and leave me here, you son of a bitch!” She was in a mood, she could do anything, he knew it, and he shrank away from her as she changed course suddenly, jerked back from him and snatched up the breakfast tray in an explosion of crockery, cutlery and searing black liquid. “Toast!” she shrieked. “You call this toast!?” And then, as he watched in horror, the tray itself sailed across the room like a heat-seeking missile, sure and swift, dodging the lamp and coasting over the crest of the couch to discover its inevitable target in the grinning, winking, pointer-wielding image of the weatherman.

Later, after Willis had gone off to work and Muriel had had a chance to calm herself and reflect on the annihilation of the TV and the espresso stains on the rug, she felt ashamed and repentant. She’d let her nerves get the better of her and she was wrong, she’d be the first to admit it. And not only that, but who had she hurt but herself — it was like murdering her only friend, cutting herself off from the world like a nun in a convent — worse: at least a nun had her prayers. The repairman — in her grief and confusion she very nearly dialed 911, and she was so distraught when she finally got through to him that he was there before a paramedic would even have got his jacket on — the repairman told her it was hopeless. The picture tube was shot and the best thing to do was just go out to Caldor and buy herself a new set, and then he named half-a-dozen Japanese brands and she lost control all over again. She’d be goddamned and roasted three times over in hell before she’d ever buy anything from a Jap after what they did to her brother in the war and what was he, the repairman, an American or what? Didn’t he know how they laughed at us, the Japs? He hit his van on the run and didn’t look back.

It was 10:00 A.M. Willis was at work, the weather was rotten and she was missing “Hollywood Squares” and couldn’t even salve her hurt with the consolation of shopping — not till Willis came home, anyway. God, he was such a baby, she thought as she sat there at the kitchen table over a black and bitter cup of espresso. He’d been a real mess when she’d met him — the last wife had squeezed him like a dishrag and hung him out to dry. His clothes were filthy, he was drunk from morning till night, he’d been fired from his last three jobs and the car he was driving was like a coffin on wheels. She’d made a project of him. She’d rescued him, given him a home and clean underwear and hankies, and if he thanked her a hundred times a day it wouldn’t be enough. If she kept the reins tight, it was because she had to. Let him go — even for an hour — and he’d come home three days later stinking of gin and vomit.

The house was silent as a tomb. She gazed out the window; the clouds hung low and roiled over the roof, strung out like sausage, like entrails, black with blood and bile. There was a storm watch on, she’d heard that much on the “Morning” show, and again she felt a tug of regret over the TV. She wanted to get up that minute and turn on the news channel, but the news channel was no more — not for her, at any rate. There was the radio — and she experienced a sudden sharp stab of nostalgia for her girlhood and the nights when the whole family would crowd around the big Emerson console and listen to one program after another — but these days she never listened; it just gave her a headache. And with Willis around, who needed another headache?

She thought of the newspaper then and pushed herself up from the table to poke through the living room for it — if there was anything serious, a hurricane or something, they’d have a story on the front page. She was thinking about that, fixating on the newspaper, and she forgot all about the TV, so that when she stepped through the door, the sight of it gave her a shock. She’d swept up the broken glass, feeling chastened and heartbroken, but now the shattered screen accused her all over again. Guiltily, she shuffled through the heap of papers and magazines stuffed under the coffee table, then poked through the bedroom and finally went outside to comb the front lawn. No newspaper. Of all days, Willis must have taken it to work with him. And suddenly, standing there on the hushed and gray lawn in her housecoat and slippers, she was furious again. The son of a bitch. He never thought of her, never. Now she had the whole drizzling black miserable day ahead of her — TV-less, friendless, joyless — and she didn’t even have the consolation of the newspaper.