Joy Williams: State of Grace

All those men. Bloodless little charmer aren’t you, they’d say. Yes, I’m deep as the Styx. Think you’re for special occasions don’t you, they’d go on. By any means deliver me from special occasions. I must say they never took me to a place like Fred’s. The bedposts did not have the taste of Pine-Sol. Nonetheless, how did it go? they’d ask. They’d kiss with all embellishments. I thought for a moment you’d chipped my tooth, I said, but I was mistaken. It was fortifying, thank you. It was peachy. Never did they offer compensation as far as I could see. Now once a boy had given me a silk tassel of his hair. It was blue. I counted the strands. Thirty-one. I wanted no mistake. The next time there were twenty-nine. I showed the curl to Daddy. He lost it though he wasn’t angry. He simply lost it. The wind swept it onto the rocks. You mustn’t mention this to anyone, the blue-haired boy had said. I’ll send you a can of syrup from the store, he had said. You can make all the Coca-Cola you want. We didn’t do anything but play but you mustn’t mention any of it …

The men were never so poetic. Never a hank of hair. Just a piece of their bone. Oh, later they offered food, it’s true. They were always starving afterward. Steak! they’d cry. Oh, steak and beer and hash-brown potatoes! One mentioned blintzes but he didn’t mean it. You’d think a man who mentioned blintzes would be an honorable person but he was simply idealistic. Besides his ideas of a gracious life, he had in his pocket the broken part to a piece of his wife’s washing machine. Bolts Breach Blintzes. One of Life’s Drab Laws. If I treated you supper, he was reduced to say, I’d have to break a fifty-dollar bill to buy the speed nut for the washer. And when a bill is broken it’s shot as far as I’m concerned. Same time tomorrow?? At the sign of the sleepy bear with his nightshirt and candle?? I’m so afraid not, I’d said. Tomorrow it’s my turn to close the windows and take in the flag in case of possible showers.

But this was the exception. Oh meat! my night companions would shout. Onions and gravy! A man must satisfy stomach and sex and for the time being the last is a happy fellow. So gracious. The time being what, I’d said. You’re peculiar, they’d tell me gravely, but you’re not as bad as some. My wife irons my underwear, for instance, but she’d be the last to know what’s in there. What about the soul, I’d say then. I want satisfaction for my soul. The what? they’d say. What a live one. Come off of it, you’re peculiar, but I’ll try to be of assistance, you just tell me where it is. We have to get into a state of grace, I’d speak not quite hysterically but with a nervous edge, I’d speak honestly for I was not selfish. I wanted to arrive there. What matter did it make who the driver was or what the vehicle. Why sure, they’d say, having their little joke, it’s just west of Corpus Christi, but you’re confused, you’re a mixed-up girl not knowing her geography, it’s right here inside you and we’ve been through there before. They’d push their hands inside my panties. They’d put their own scrubbed knuckles on top. And what’s a funny girl like you doing asking for more.…

Father, I am far from home.

“Your mother …,” Daddy is saying.

My voice rattles. I begin again. “We haven’t spoken of Mother for eleven years.”

“But, darling, she’s beside us. She ages with us. Can’t you bring her to mind?”

My clothes will never dry. How can we leave this place? If we should open the door, we would simply find this room again. A bed and a man in black brushing a young girl’s hair. And in that room there’d be no door. Just a bed and a man in black brushing his broken lover’s hair. I put my hand behind me. Trompe l’oeil . Daddy’s face. Never had I seen him take her in his arms.

“She’s passed the years with us. No, death never saves us, darling. It would be unnatural for it to save us.” His voice is halting, the voice of a fortuneteller, groping.

I reach for a pear. I swallow my gum. The clothes are still dripping mercilessly. Water enough to irrigate a steer. Why did I ever shower after the night? Once my hands were stained with blueberries. Once my hands were brown and wound round with the long pattern of reins. Mother had always bathed me, locking the door. She scoured me, so small and unrepentant. You are a sick and dangerous little animal, she had said. The tub kept filling. The water ran onto the floor, over her slippers. I joggled beneath the washcloth, the clear water turning brown. You should be treated like an animal, put in a stall, in a barn like your filthy horses … Strange impassive child. My skin pink with her rubbing. My riding clothes lying in a sour heap. I was so innocent with my pure and perfect love but Mother was weeping. The water dimpled with her tears. You know what you’re doing, she had said. It’s hideous, unspeakable. She plucked me from the water. She wept and wept, smelling of linen. Then she scoured the tub, down on her hands and knees. Again and again, after sister died, the door was locked, the water drawn. Mother had washed me so many times, so long ago, why would I shower here? I woke up here. Daddy was watching me sleep. And I remember. It was the first evening of the day that Daddy came to get me. We were celebrants. Daddy had found his little girl again and he’s begun to bring me home. The champagne was opened. The cork flew into the ceiling. It flew into the rotting roof of the sad motel, and the soft roof split, just enough for an eye to see it, to hold the ball of an eye, and my protection from the starless night sifted down around us.

“And yet still her eyes would be flooded with darkness,” Daddy says. “Her knowledge would still be empty knowledge because it was corrupt. She continues beside us, still in the error of her ways.” He puts down the brush.

“Live without a suspect, sweet. There are no criminals. Only God’s largesse and plan.” His voice stirs, rises. “When you were a child, I would hold your hand while you were sleeping. You never had bad dreams when I watched over you. Your tiny curved hand. A baby rabbit. Such a blessing. You were my child.”

Mother had dried me with a thin striped towel. Her hands were brief upon me. The water went down the drain sluggishly, as though there were truly substance to it, as though she had actually washed off some of my sin.

HOW LONG WILT THOU FORGET ME O LORD? FOREVER?

I do not interrupt. Daddy is addressing me.

“Such a sweet deep sleep with never any dreams at all when I was beside you, but I couldn’t stay there forever. Each night I had to leave and then there was no way of knowing, there was no way I could tell, what rose up to trouble you, what words you heard, what wicked lies came to seem real in the dark.”

Yes, Mother had spoken then. I would creep through the house. I would watch them together under the modest glow of a single lamp. They would be in bed side by side. I am ransomed to that vision of comfort, of safety. Mother faced the door behind which I was concealed. I have forgiven her that which I accused her of, she had said. I have no courage left. I have nothing. Once I wanted to save her, to take her away from you, but it doesn’t matter any more. I don’t even want to save myself any more. I want to suffer. There’s nothing else I can do. I want to suffer terribly. I have forgiven her that which I accused her of, she had said, the words hardly words at all but some endless redeemless anguish falling, saying, Why is my child so far away? how did I go into such a different land … but he did not reply. And never had I seen him take her in his arms.

“I’m going to buy you some new clothes. Nice clothes to travel in. We’ll stay today and go back tomorrow morning.” His voice is bored, uxorial. He goes into the wretched bathroom, takes my things from the rod and stuffs them into the wastebasket. He opens the door and puts the wastebasket outside. I am surprised to see the daylight, the street, folding chairs set up in a rigid row in the distance. In the distance also is a singular fellow standing beneath a light pole. He looks like the gentleman on the Beefeater’s bottle. Flowered red jerkin, hammerhead shoes and a kindly self-conscious beard. He carries a staff. It is all totally reasonable. He is a float marshal, waiting for his float. I have always wanted to go off with the fellow on that bottle but this was not my chance. Daddy shuts the door.