Joy Williams - Taking Care

“Horsetail beefwood can’t be tolerated here,” I tell him, “although horsetail beefwood is all the land naturally bears. Now if they had a decorative bent,” I tell him, “they would plant palms, but there are no palms.”

The baby’s head is a white globe beneath my heart. He exhausts me, even though his weight is little more than that of water on my hands. He is a frail child. So many precautions are necessary. My hands grow white from holding him.

I am so relieved that Jace is gone. He has a perfect memory. His mouth was so clean, resting on me, and I was so quiet. But then he’d start talking about Momma’s house.

“Wasn’t life nice then?” he’d say. “And couldn’t we see everything there was to see? And didn’t life just make the finest sense?”

Even without Jace, I sometimes feel uneasy. There is something I feel I have not done.

It was the third month I could feel the child best. They move, you know, to face their stars.

There is a small town not far from here. I loathe the town and its people. They are watchful country people. The town’s economy is dependent upon the Prison. The Prison is a good neighbor, they say. It is unobtrusive, quiet. When an execution is necessary, the executioner arrives in a white Cadillac and he is unobtrusive too for the Cadillac is an old one and there are a great many white cars here. The cars are white because of the terrible heat. The man in the Cadillac is called the “engineer” and no one claims to know his name.

The townspeople are all very handy. They are all very willing to lend a helping hand. They hire Prison boys to work in their yards. You can always tell the Prison boys. They look so hungry and serene.

Martha is the only one of the townspeople who talks to me. The rest nod or smile. Martha is a comfy woman with a nice complexion, but her hair is the color of pork. She is always touching my arm, directing my attention to things she believes I might have overlooked, a sale on gin, for example, or frozen whipped puddings.

“You might could use a sweet or two,” she says. “Fill you out.”

Her face is big and friendly and her hands seem clean and dry. She is always talking to me. She talks about her daughter who has not lived with her for many years. The daughter lives in a special home in the next state. Martha says, “She had a bad fever and she stopped being good.”

Martha’s hand on my shoulder feels like a nurse’s hand, intimate and officious. She invites me to her home and I accept, over and over again. She is inviting me in for tea and conversation and I am always opening the door to her home. I am forever entering her rooms, walking endlessly across the shiny wooden floors of her home.

“I don’t want to be rich,” Martha says. “I want only enough to have a friend over for a piece of pie or a highball. And I would like a frost-free refrigerator. Even in the winter, I have to defrost ours once a week. I have to take everything out and then spread the newspapers and get the bowl and sponge and then I have to put everything back.”

“Yes,” I say.

Martha’s hands are moving among the cheap teacups. “It seems a little senseless,” she says.

There are small table fans in the house, stirring the air. The rooms smell of drain cleaner and mold and mildew preventives. When the fans part the curtains to the west, an empty horse stall and a riding ring are visible. Martha crowns my tea with rum, like a friend.

“This is a fine town,” Martha says. “Everyone looks out for his neighbor. Even the Prison boys are good boys, most of them up just for stealing copper wire or beating on their women’s fellows.”

I hold the child tight. You know a mother’s fears. He is fascinated by the chopping blades of the little fans, by the roach tablets behind the sofa cushions. Outside, as well, he puts his hands to everything — the thorns on the grapefruit tree, the poisonous oleander, the mottled dumb cane….

“I imagine the wicked arrive at that Prison only occasionally,” I say.

“Hardly ever,” Martha agrees.

I am trying to explain to you. I am always inside this woman’s house. I am always speaking reasonably with this Martha. I am so tired and so sad and I am lying on a bed drinking tea. It is not Martha’s bed. It is, I suppose, a bed for her guests. I am lying on a bedspread which is covered by a large embroidered peacock. Underneath the bed is a single medium-sized mixing bowl. In the light socket is a night-light in the shape of a rose. I feel wonderful in this room in many ways. I feel like a column of air. I would like to audition for something. I am so clean inside.

“My husband worries about you,” Martha says. She takes the cup away. “We are all good people here,” she says. “We all lead good lives.”

“What does your husband do, then?” I say. I smile because I do not want her to think I am confused. Actually, I’ve met the man. He placed his long hands on my stomach, on my thighs.

“We are not unsubtle here,” Martha says, tapping her chest.

I met the man and when I met him in this house he was putting in new pine boards over the cement floors. When I arrived, he stopped, but that was what he was doing. He had a gun which shot nails into the concrete. Each nail cost a quarter. The expense distressed Martha and she mentioned it in my hearing. Men resume things, you know. He went back to it. As I lay on the bed, I could hear the gun being fired and I awoke quickly, frightened the noise might awaken the child. You know a mother’s presumptions. There was the smell of sawdust and smoke from the nail gun.

“I wouldn’t have thought we’d have to worry about you,” Martha says unhappily.

When I returned from Martha’s house the first time, I passed a farmer traveling on the beach road in his rusty car. Strapped to the roof of the car was a sandhill crane, one wing raised, pumped full of air and sailing in the moonlight. They kill these birds for their meat. The meat, they say, tastes just like chicken. I have found that almost everything tastes like chicken.

There is a garage not far from town where Jace used to buy gas. I stopped there once. There was a large wire meshed cage outside, by the pumps. A sign on it said BABY FLORIDA RATTLERS. Inside were dozens of blue and pink baby rattles on a dirt floor. It gave me a headache. It was such a large cage.

At night I take the child and walk over the beach to the water’s edge where it is cool. The child is at peace here, beside the water, and it is here, most likely, where Jace will find us when he comes back. When Jace comes back it will be at night. He always comes in on the heat, at night.

“Darling,” I can hear him say, “even as a little boy, I was all there ever was for you.”

I can see it quite clearly. I will be on the shoreline, nursing, and Jace will come back on the heat, all careless and easy and “Darling,” he’ll shout into the wind, into the white roil of water behind us. “Darling, darling,” Jace will shout, “where you been, little girl?”

R EMODELING their house is Peter’s idea, Katherine likes it the way it is. It is an old sprawling wooden house with small dark rooms. The plantings around it are old too, obvious from their type as well as their size. There are huge travelers’-trees, which aren’t popular any more, lining the driveway. This is on a key on the west coast of Florida, a key upon which the population has quadrupled in the last four years. Katherine has lived on the key for eight years and is forever finding herself telling new acquaintances how much everything has changed. These people all live in condos on the beach and are unapologetic, articulate and drink in moderation. Katherine hasn’t made a friend out of a new acquaintance in a long time.