Joy Williams - State of Grace

“It’s going to warm up,” Grady replies instead “Move up twenty more degrees by noon.”

Noon. The threat of another pretty day with my Grady. He speaks with joy of little things. He tosses his head and laughs.

“Cold’s what makes the orange orange,” I say positively. I can learn anything.

Grady’s hands are warm from the fire. He turns. He unzips the jeans I am wearing and rubs his hands across my stomach. “Little fish,” he says.

I smile. For a moment there are just the two of us. For a moment, this is the way it is going to be. Daddy dies with our happiness. The baby dies. Poor baby. Rather he curls up like a flower, he goes back into his impossible night.

We are smiling. This was before the accident. Before he was corrupted and our life together lost. He did not want to touch upon my past. He did not want to know if my favors had been freely given. He was not interested in the life I had before him. Instead, he tried to take me with him, through each day. He used time masterfully. It minded his whims. He spent it conscientiously, for both of us. We never returned to the movies after we met. I dislike movies, he told me that very night. Everything takes so long, he told me. He wasted nothing. Nothing was spent on him without ample reimbursement. I see him as a little boy watching fireworks. Oh, they are stunning, grand. He approves of each one. He gives all his blessing. He does not allow a single one to bloom and fire without his breath of praise. He never allows his attention to wander. He sees through to the finish. I see him as a little boy, very grave, tireless in his respect.

No, nothing escapes his notice and he studies, in great detail, everything but me. He is in love with me. I am beyond his code.

Look at the deer, he’d say. We would be soaring in the Jaguar under a cathedral of trees. It would be night. The lights would find everything, but not for me, never for me. Look, he’d say and slow, but they’d be gone. They love cigarettes, he’d say. They’re after the stubs that travelers throw out.

Look, he’d say. Look. He squeezes my shoulders. His tongue darts lightly down my neck. His eyes burned with happiness. He is proud of his wide smooth sex. It is fragrant with soap. He is assured of the sweetness of life. It sings to him.

Look, he’d turn my head gently. An old man drifts down the river in a white wooden boat. He wears a big flat straw hat and three sweaters, buttoned to different levels. He has a deep canvas bag for the fish hanging from his shoulder. He moves regally by. The line flicks lightly through the water flowers, into the deep pockets of the ancient river.

Everything is pleasing. There is a Ferrari. There is a mule. There is a tiny Mennonite girl at a Whopper-Burger. She has been picking fruit. She wears a bonnet and a long brown dress and she smells of citrus. She eats her hamburger with a knife and fork. It takes forever. There is a woman wetting the stones that ring her flower garden. That is the most satisfactory chore, watering the stones. There is a drumfish, pounding on the water each night. We go out in the boat. The fish rises beside us. It sounds like a gigantic frog. He follows the boat, he nudges it. It is a magical fish, an enchanted fish that will grant your wish. Grady wishes for nothing. I always wish that he had taken me that night after the movie house and never looked for me again. We were silent. More so than I’d ever been with the strangers. I thought that I would never see him again. We drove, we drank, we stopped. We drove again. He lay me down gently in the darkness beneath some sweet smelling pines. His hands trembled. We drove by water, I could smell it. We heard the chuck-will’s-widow. We went back through the town. Tomorrow, he said. I was startled. Tomorrow, he said. Tomorrow, next week. But I was so weary, so lost. I did nothing to prevent him from saying … it’s true I wasn’t paying attention. My mind was going home with Daddy …

Just hours before, Daddy had boarded the train. Behind the coach he’d entered was a snow-white refrigerator car bearing orange juice for the rickety North. He was the only one departing. I was the only one left behind. Now, once this station had been one of the busiest in the state. There were huge crowds coming to see the circus. And an elephant was killed right here on these tracks though there is no plaque, for it was not Jumbo who was killed in Ontario but another elephant.

But there are no crowds at the station any more. It was early but the heat was rising. You could smell the fertilizer they’d packed around the sidewalk lily plantings. The town was dirty and had a milky cast. The street was trashy from the parade of the day before and as we waited, Daddy and me, the work crews were making their way toward us slowly, cleaning up, the prisoners of the county in their gray trousers and shirts with the wide blue stripe down the side. Daddy was holding my hand in his. My hand was empty. Or rather, I was not holding his hand in mine. He brought it to his lips but did not kiss it. I could see our image in the locked windows of the station. I was in a position to notice this. Come with me, he’d said. There’s nothing here for you to leave behind, he’d said. Come with me while it’s still that way … the image of my hand moved back. The train wound through buildings and appeared abruptly and then wound through buildings and departed abruptly as well. The train didn’t even come to a full stop. Daddy glided on. The train sank dreamily away. The crews came sweeping and bagging up the street, nice boys, fresh faces, up for stealing copper wire or beating on their women’s fellows.

“Yo,” the captain said to me. He smacked his shotgun against his thigh. The boys phalanged by, leaving everything pretty behind them. I could hear birds beginning their day. The street lights went off simultaneously and the morning became a healthier color. Opposite me, the proprietor of a U-Rent-It-All put out his wares on the sidewalk. Mowers and beds and automatic nailers and hoists. And then he brought out an aluminum ladder that he would rent you too and he climped up on it and put a new combination of letters in place on his glass marquee, a new message on his fresh new day. RENT YOUR CONVALESCENT NEEDS. His little boy came out and voiced some easily accomplished desire in a piping screech and the man descended, folded up the ladder and leaned it against the storefront.

And the letters there you know, the portable letters there so ominous and … took me home again. Yes, I was home, waiting for Daddy. It would take him two days and three nights to return but I was there already. Years ago. I am a darling toddler assisting him with the slate letters on the church bulletin board. I choose from a sturdy box that still smells faintly of apples. A remarkable box. It can make any word that anyone can think of. It is limited only by me. I slide the letters along the rusting runners, following Daddy’s directions. He is my only consideration. It is summer, it is spring. Daddy and I seduce the mornings. I weigh forty-one pounds. Fifty-seven. The earth shimmers with the yearnings of God. Daddy guides my hand. I LAID ME DOWN AND SLEPT I AWAKED. My thoughts were his thoughts. Psalms, I would say. Yes, darling. It is raining. It is a day of high cool sun fading my hair. Song of Solomons, I say, Genesis. Yes, sweet, he would say. Life’s simple as it seems for we love but once, darling. The rest is dissolution.

I walk across the street and into the rental place. Something clicks as I cross the threshold. Something’s counting me. The little boy sits on a rental hide-a-bed. What time is it? I ask. His mouth is full of jelly. Ten till, he says eventually. That’s wonderful, I exclaim. And what’s your name? Rutt, he says peacefully after a long pause. The proprietor emerges. Ambrose, he says, what does this lady want. The time, I intercede. He jerks his head in the direction of a big wall clock. Feast your eyes, he says. I go out onto the street again. I walk a little. I buy some coffee. For lunch I buy some wine. I know the time. I spent the day in darkness. And at the end of it, I met my Grady. But as I say, I wasn’t paying attention.