Joy Williams - State of Grace

“That’s right,” Ruttkin says, “don’t cry no more.” I am looking at him wonderingly. He is going to take me back to the sorority house. It is incredible. I am going backward, the returning has begun. “C’mon,” he says. And I stand up and step again on the paper bag that I thought held our bottle of wine. I pat my eyes and press my hair against the sides of my head like any girl and follow Ruttkin to the elevator. The picture of the Governor hangs inside. He looks the same as he did before. He has half-mad eyes and a space between his teeth.

We are back in the Ford, traveling across town toward the college campus. Ruttkin turns off the sheriff’s radio. He is off duty. After he drops me off, he is going home. He says, “You know when I was called to the phone back there, after we corrected that problem with the nigger?” I am shivering. The night has turned cold and I can’t find the handle on the door to roll up the window. “You know the time? Well that was the hospital and I’m a new daddy.” He slurs the word hospital. I don’t care. How can words hurt me now? There are too many goddamn words in this world. As for the hospital, I have never even been inside one.

“It ain’t the first time,” he says, “but it’s like the first time. It’s a boy.” He sets his hand between us on the seat. “I got three boys.” He counts them off on his fingers.

I nod. I would like to ask him if his wife has a problem with caked breasts. I read a cure for it. The cure had something to do with warm pancakes. I think that was what it was, but I may be mistaken so I don’t mention it. I am very hungry. I haven’t eaten in more than twelve hours.

Ruttkin is so proud of himself. Smiling, he shakes his head slowly and chews on his lip. I am bored. I do not even wonder what his wife looks like or how sow-bellied Ruttkin makes love to her, I am so bored. We pass a drive-in movie. An enormous plastic sign on the roadway says

TONIGHT! BLOOD-O-RAMA!!

Four Fiendish Features

Blood Fiend

Blood Creatures

Brides of Blood

Blood Drinkers

Both of us bend forward to peer at the screen which is momentarily visible. Two women in evening gowns are sitting on a floor throwing letters into a fireplace.

“My wife wanted a little girl,” Ruttkin says, “but I wanted a boy.”

“That’s good,” I say.

“Name of Ronald,” he says. “Already his name is Ronald and he ain’t but half an hour old.”

“Did your wife eat a lot of iodine before she had Ronald?” Ruttkin turns his face toward me and drops his jaw. “Iodine,” he says.

“If she didn’t get enough iodine, Ronald will be a cretin.”

“Oh? Yeah, well,” Ruttkin asks, “where would she be getting this iodine?”

“Fish.” I don’t know why I’ve begun this. If I had the strength, I would punch Ruttkin in the mouth, push him out the door and run over him with his sheriff’s deputy’s car. First and reverse, first and reverse, back and forward. Ironing him.

“Ugh,” he says. “Fish.”

I don’t know why I’ve begun this and try to pretend that I haven’t.

“She may have been eating fish, I don’t know. I work nights and take my meals in town. She should know the right things to do.”

It must be very late. Everything is quiet and there’s very little traffic. The moon is small and high in the sky. On one side of the road is a long deep park and on the other, all-night convenience stores and empty shopping centers. We have almost come to the college. Near here, I remember, is a place that has one million baskets for sale. Another store sells towels and another, sixty-nine different kinds of sandwiches. It does not seem possible that I am being returned to the sorority house, but I realize that it’s my own fault. I want to go back to the trailer and smell the good smell of Grady’s clothes. I would fix the place up for him right away. He’d be pleased. I’d burn the brush that blocks the door, empty the wastebaskets, tidy and clean. I’d let the air come through. I’d wash the blankets and make him a nice breakfast.

Ruttkin is saying, “Iodine is a crazy thing to have to eat.”

I close my eyes and fold my hands across my stomach. I would like to ask him to turn the car around and take me to the trailer, but I can no more ask him this than I can anyone anything. Change is beyond my range. I am in my black and steel diving bell anchored to the bottom of the sea. With my eyes closed, I can smell the oil heaters burning in distant orange groves. It must be close to freezing. The temperature has fallen by half since Grady and I began tonight. The wind blows coldly in my ear. My throat is sore.

The car slows and turns and stops. I feel that I have to remember all this. I am being kidnapped. I must be able to give instructions to those who will want to come after me. The car moves forward, turns and stops for good. He cuts the engine and opens his door. I do not open my eyes and he does not open my door. I sit in the dark for a moment and then my eyes flap open of their own accord. We are not outside the sorority house but in front of a little store. Everything is bright and clean. Ruttkin walks out with a paper bag.

“This here is milk,” he says, and puts the paper bag in my lap. “When you get to your place, you heat it up and drink some. I seen people in shock before and you don’t want any part of that. You drink this and go to sleep and tomorrow you’ll be all right.” We get back on the highway and almost immediately, off of it again, turning through fancy gates onto a gravel road. It is a small, smug and elegant college.

“He ain’t dead,” Ruttkin snarls, “and you ain’t dead.” He seems to be getting angry again. He accelerates. Gravel spins up from beneath the tires and across the hood.

“You don’t understand,” I say. “I don’t appreciate this.”

“They took the wreck to Glick’s yard. You know where that is? North of town?”

“O.K.,” I say. “Yes.” The milk is cold in my lap. My thighs are cold.

“You’ll probably have to pay the towing fee,” Ruttkin says. “Ten bucks it is.”

He pulls in front of a large stucco house, three stories high. It’s faded pink and heavy with turrets and balconies. A rich man’s nightmare, reeling in space. Once it was a mansion, then a bank, museum, church, rest home and dancing studio. Descending like Dante’s circles. All gone, all failed. Now, at this moment, it is the sorority house.

Ruttkin watches it with great distaste, watching it as though it might start to move toward him and he will have to shoot it. He is puzzled, he is exasperated. The house seems to float, to sway before us, breathing with the bodies of all the sleeping girls.

I am so tired. I concentrate on pulling up the door handle, pushing my feet over the ledge and onto the ground.

“Take the milk,” Ruttkin insists. Childishly, I treat the carton roughly, knocking it against the door. He doesn’t drive away until I am inside the house.

The main hallway is lined with mirrors. A clock ticks and the old house creaks and pings like a cooling engine. The clock is on a mantel in another room, a white and fading face set between the flailing hoofs of two bronze horses. Poor Durousseau. The horses are rendered in perfect detail, pricks, eyelashes, teeth, and the clock, they say, keeps perfect time. I don’t see this but am remembering it. It is as though I have never left that tocking clock which really I have not been familiar with for very long. Grady had a watch with a black face and numbers and hands that shone in the dark. It might be comforting to some … so many nights I watched the watch on Grady’s wrist. When he moved, it wound itself; while he reached for me in sleep, curling his hand between my legs, it fed off Grady. Yes, a succubus. Even when he removed the watch, the mark was there, a broad band of white that the sun hadn’t touched.