Joy Williams - Breaking and Entering

The woman chuckled. This little group depressed her. She wanted to tell them everything. The truth was, she was worried. She could still bleach her hair and meet a man in a bar, maybe even manage a little water-skiing, but before her lay increasingly untrustworthy memories, hangovers, and pain during intercourse. A tooth had cracked the last time she ate barbecue. Innuendoes were being made. Diagnoses were being written.

“That actually wasn’t the worst thing,” she said. She really was high as a kite. “That happened to a little kid. The worst thing that happened to the lady you see before you was that she was robbed. She was robbed, but they didn’t take anything. Broke into her house and didn’t take a goddamn thing.” She folded her beer can in half with a pop. “I’m going to turn the light off on you now,” she said. Turning out the light on them, standing there, shutting the door on them, their worst things unsaid, unknown, unaccounted for, made her feel a little better.

The night was still young. They returned to Willie and Liberty’s house and got into the truck. Willie drove to the newest and most elaborate hotel in town, an establishment that had six bars and a waterfall that fell three stories. On one of the patio bars, a party was taking place around an open coffin, surrounded by calla lilies. In the coffin were tiny hamburgers, barbequed shrimp on sticks, all kinds of food. Liberty and Clem and the two children sat in a corner of the lobby on the edge of the patio. Little Dot held Clem’s head in her hand, moving her mouth at him without making any sounds. She had once told Liberty that Clem was a dog because he was not good enough yet to be a child. Chains and boots and feathers seemed popular among the adult revelers this year. They were throwing small sacks of talcum powder at one another. Willie had taken the duck mask off and was standing by the reception desk. A pear-shaped man in a brown business suit approached the desk and stood next to Willie.

“Where are the cookies in this town, pal?” the man asked. “This place sucks.” He threw his room key down on the shelf behind the counter. “I’ve got to get home tomorrow. I want to be sitting on the plane in the morning, sniffing my fingers, knowing I had a good time.”

“No cookies here,” Willie said. “Give me a piece of paper, I’ll give you some addresses.” He wrote some names and numbers down. “Thanks, pal,” the man said. As he turned, Willie scooped up the room key an instant before the desk clerk appeared.

“Who can I help here?” the clerk said.

It was a suite, high up, overlooking the bay. There was little sign of the pear-shaped man’s occupancy. His bag had not been unpacked and was still locked.

“I like hotels,” Teddy said.

“They belong to everybody,” Willie said.

“This is nice, I like it,” Teddy said, hugging Liberty. “How did you know that we could come here?”

“Now has the feeling of certainty about it,” Willie said. “Yet now is not the present moment. Now is incommensurable with the present moment.”

“Incommensurable,” Teddy said. “Is that a word? I learned ‘perspiration’ yesterday. I always used to say ‘sweat.’ ”

“The deal is,” Willie said, “that things change every moment, making everything happen either later or sooner. Let’s order food over the phone.”

“I’ve never ordered food over the phone!” Teddy said.

They ordered raspberries, burritos, black-and-white sodas. On television, everything concerned mayhem or thwarted love. Liberty checked the children’s Halloween bags to make sure there were no razor blades, tacks, pills, or hallucinogenic tattoos.

“Gorden gave me an envelope,” Little Dot said. “I’m the only who got an envelope.”

Inside the envelope was a fifty-dollar bill. The bill was crisp and thin without a bit of history to it.

“You can buy something you’d like with this,” Liberty said. “Lots of things.”

Little Dot didn’t see the connection. She held the bill in her fingers, then folded it into a square. She dropped it on the carpet, hid it with her foot, disclosed it again. She kissed it. She kissed Teddy, then Willie, then Clem, all gravely.

Liberty put the bill back into the envelope. “Don’t lose this,” she said. “This is yours, you hold onto it.”

“This is very relaxing here,” Teddy said. “When I think of all the things I have to do tomorrow!” He slapped his forehead dramatically with his hand. “But I’m not going to think.”

Little Dot took hotel stationery from a drawer and drew their picture. Each picture was a line as straight as she could make it. Liberty thought of circles, degrees, levels, dimensions, perspectives, all harassing things. The line soothed her, though she was quite aware that life was not a line.

“We should leave in about an hour,” Willie said. He doodled on another piece of paper. He made the doodle of the butterfly jumping rope and the doodle of the ship arriving too late to save the drowning witch. He drew the doodle of four elephants inspecting a grapefruit.

Little Dot told them her dream. It was always the same dream she told. She had a favorite bowl, no bowl that her parents had made but a little chipped china bowl, at the bottom of which was a rabbit in a garden. The rabbit wore a little dress. When Little Dot finished the soup or cereal in the bowl, she would find the little rabbit with its little dress and shoes. Little Dot loved the bowl. She thought it beautiful, its cracks and lines, the rabbit’s musing face worn pale by the scraping spoon. Each night she dreams she breaks it, it mends itself and becomes more beautiful still …

“Sometimes I don’t think I can find my way back from these places,” Liberty said to Willie.

“Isn’t that the point?” he said.

They were just a family traveling, on their way somewhere, but for the moment, at rest. It was just a moment without the future or the past. It was the moments that took practice.

“We lie too much,” Liberty said.

They were standing by the window, eleven stories up.

“Someone’s having a little trouble out there in the bay,” Willie said. There were two helicopters. Floodlights on a slight chop.

“Well, you’re too far away to do anything about it,” Liberty said.

“That’s got the real look of yesterday to it for somebody,” he said.

When they returned to the pottery shop, Rosie was standing in the doorway watching Roger sweep the floor. Roger’s shadow drifted thinly across the rear wall of the shop, past all the shelves that held the obscure work of their hands.

“I just love watching Roger sweep,” Rosie said. “Because you know when he sweeps he’s the sweeper and the sweeping and the broom and what the broom gathers up. All at the same time!”

Ribbons of dust unfurled in the air.

“Gee, I’m really grateful to you for taking Little Dot trick or treating,” Rosie said to Liberty. “How many hours have you watched Little Dot? Why, I bet you’ve watched Little Dot hundreds of hours!” She lowered her voice in dismay. “How much do we owe you?”

“Nothing,” Liberty said. “It’s …”

“Oh that’s great ,” Rosie exclaimed. “I’m really grateful to you. Little Dot gets wary around me, you know. Just a little kid and so wary … ”

Roger had been advancing toward them, steadily sweeping. Now he stopped. His broom nature receded.

“See those little boxes on that shelf?” Roger asked. “They’re modeled after the boxes the Peruvian Indians use to save their teeth and hair and nail clippings in. They put them all in one place so everything can be brought together conveniently later, after they die, so they can begin their new life.”