Joy Williams - Taking Care

“Is that tree still outside your house?” Teddy whispered. “Because I’m sure it was here last night. It was waving its arms outside my window, then it flopped away on its white roots. It goes anywhere it feels like going, that tree.”

“Trees aren’t like people,” Liberty said. “They can’t move around.” She felt her logic was somewhat insincere. “Dreams sometimes make you feel you can understand everything,” she said. Liberty herself never dreamed at night, an indication, she believed, of her spiritual torpor.

“Can I come over today, Liberty? Our pool is broken. It has a leak.”

“Certainly, baby, a little later, OK? Bring your snorkel and mask and we’ll go to the beach.”

“Oh, that’s fine, Liberty,” Teddy said.

Liberty can see him sitting in his small square room, a room in which everything is put neatly away. He jiggles a loose tooth and watches his speckled goldfish swimming in a bowl, swimming over green pebbles through a small plastic arch. Once, he had two goldfish and the bowl was in the living room, but his mother gave a party and one of her friends swallowed one. It was just a joke, his mother said.

Willie and Liberty got into their truck and drove to a little restaurant nearby called The Blue Gate. Clem sat on the seat between them and from the back he could pass for another person, with long pale hair, sitting there. At the restaurant, they all got out and Clem lay down beneath a cabbage palm growing in the dirt parking lot. The Blue Gate was a Mennonite restaurant in a little community of frame houses with tin roofs. Little living petunia crosses grew on some of the lawns. The Blue Gate was popular because the food was delicious and cheap and served in large quantities. Sometimes Liberty and Teddy would go there and eat crullers.

Inside, Charlie was waiting for them at a table by the pie display. He wore a rumpled suit a size too large for him and a clean shirt. His hair was combed wetly back, his face was swollen and his hands shook, nevertheless he seemed in excellent spirits. The last time Liberty had had the pleasure of Charlie’s company at table, he had eaten three peas separately in the course of an hour. He had told her fortune in a glass of water and then taken a bite out of the glass.

“Been too long, man,” Charlie said to Willie, shaking his hand. “Hi, doll,” he said to Liberty.

Charlie ordered eggs, ham, fried mush, orange juice, milk and coffee cake. “I love this place, man,” he said. “These are good people, these are religious people. You know what’s on the bottom of the pie pans? There are messages on the bottoms of the pie pans, embossed in the aluminum. Janiella got a pineapple cream cheese pie here last week and it said Wise men shall seek Him, man. Isn’t that something? The last crumbs expose a Christian message! You should bring a sweet potato pie home, Liberty, get yourself a message.”

“There are too many messages in Liberty’s life already,” Willie said. “Liberty is on some terrible mailing lists.”

“Yeah,” Charlie nodded. “Yesterday, I got a letter from Greenpeace. They’re the ones who want to stop the slaughter of the harp seals, right? Envelope had a picture of a cuddly little white seal and the words Kiss This Baby Good-Bye. You get that one, Liberty?”

“Yes,” Liberty said.

“You know what those Greenpeace guys did one year? They sprayed green dye all over the seals. Fashion fuckers don’t want any green baby seal coats, right!” Charlie laughed his high cackling laugh. The Mennonites glanced up from their biscuits and thin pink gravy.

Liberty ordered only coffee and looked at Charlie, at his handsome ruined face. He was a Cajun. His mother still lived in Lafayette, Louisiana. She was a “treater” whose specialty was curing warts over the phone.

“Janiella has a fur coat,” Charlie said. “She has lots of lousy habits. She never shuts doors for example. I have to tell you what happened. I was there yesterday, right? I’m beneath the sheets truffling away and her kid comes in. He’s forgotten his spelling book. His spelling book! ‘Mommy,’ he says, ‘have you seen my spelling book?’ I’m crouched beneath the rosy sheets. My ears are ringing! I try to be very still, but I’m gagging, man, and Janiella says sweetly, ‘I saw your spelling book in the wastebasket,’ and the kid says, ‘It must have fallen in there by accident,’ and Janiella says, ‘You are always saying that, Ted. You are always placing things you don’t like in the wastebasket. I found that lovely Dunnsmoor sweater I gave you in the wastebasket. That lovely coloring book on knights and armor from the Metropolitan Museum was in the wastebasket also.’ ‘I’m too old for coloring books,’ the kid says. Picture it, man, they are having a discussion. They are arguing fine points.”

Liberty did not want to picture it. Breakfast had been placed before them on the table. Charlie looked at the food in surprise.

“Well?” Willie said.

Charlie seemed to be losing his drift. He kept looking at his food as though he were trying to read it.

“So what happened?” Willie insisted. “Finally.”

“Well, I don’t know, man. The future is not altogether scrutable.”

“Janiella and Teddy,” Willie said, glancing at Liberty. “The spelling book.”

Charlie giggled. “I fell asleep. The last thing I heard was the kid saying, ‘I thought Daddy was playing in Kansas City.’ I passed out from the heat, man.”

“Playing in Kansas City?” Willie asked. He poured syrup on his fried mush. Liberty reached over and scooped up a bit for herself with her coffee spoon.

“He’s a baseball player. He catches fly balls and wears a handlebar mustache and spits a lot. I think he suspects something. They’ve got this immense swimming pool wherein Janiella and I often fool around and there was this little rubber frog that drifted around in it, trailing chlorine from his bottom. Cute little frog with a happy smile, his rubber legs crossed and his rubber eyes happy? Well Mr. Mean came home last weekend and took his twelve-gauge and blasted that poor little froggy to smithereens.”

Liberty grimaced. Willie asked Charlie, “Who does Teddy think you are, a visiting uncle?”

“We’ve never met. I’ve only laid eyes on him in a photo cube. Janiella wants to keep him out of the house and she’s got him busy every minute. He has soccer practice, swim team, safe boating instruction. He’s hardly ever at home. After school, he takes special courses in computer language, calligraphy, backgammon. Poor little squirt comes staggering home, his brain on fire. I think of myself as a fantastic impetus to his learning.”

“Liberty’s not happy with this situation at all,” Willie said.

“Liberty’s all right,” Charlie grinned, showing his pale gums. “Liberty’s a great girl.” The waitress arrived and warily placed a pint carton of milk by Charlie’s right hand. The carton of milk had a straw sticking out of it. “Oh look at that!” Charlie exclaimed. “I love this place. You gotta get a pie, Liberty. Bring it home to Clem. He’d scarf it down and get some words. Be zealous and repent. Dog’d go wild!”

Liberty reached across to Willie’s plate and spooned up another small piece of mush.

“That’s extremely irritating,” Willie said. “You never order anything and then you eat what I order.”

Liberty blushed.

“Liberty!” Charlie cried, “eat off my plate, I beseech you! Let’s mix a little yin and yang!” He speared a piece of coffee cake with his fork and fed it to her.

“it’s just one of those things,” Willie said, “that has been going on for years.” He looked unhappily at his plate.