Joy Williams - Breaking and Entering

“Put that stuff away,” Willie said.

Charlie took a wallet out of his jacket and opened it. He pressed the bills inside.

“Why are you carrying around a picture of a tree?” Willie asked.

“Do you know that each person in the world needs all the oxygen produced in a year by a tree with thirty thousand leaves?” Charlie said. He looked at the snapshot of the tree in his wallet. “Isn’t that a nice tree!” he said.

He ordered eggs, fried mush, orange juice, milk and coffee cake. “I love this place,” he sighed. “These are good people, these are religious people. You know what’s on the bottom of the pie pans? There are messages on the bottom of the pie pans, embossed in the aluminum. I got a pineapple cream cheese pie here last week and it said Wise men shall seek Him . 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.”

Charlie nodded vigorously. “I got a letter from Greenpeace once. 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. She 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.

“Well, I’m in love again,” Charlie said. “You ever give any thought as to how many people there are to love! My only fear is that I will awake one morning and be indifferent to love. Bam. It will be like forgetting Shakespeare. I knew a boy once you give him a line of Shakespeare’s tragedies and he could give you the next line. Any line, he knew what came next. And that boy was me!” Charlie spoke in wonder. “It was me who could do that! All those thousands of lines were ordered in the chambers of my mind, like little virgins dressed in white, waiting to be called upon, eager to serve whatever purpose I had. It was a gift, then Bam . Consigned to oblivion.” Charlie laughed his high, cackling laugh. The Mennonites glanced up from their biscuits and thin, pink gravy.

“You’re taking too many vitamins,” Willie said.

“I am taking a lot of vitamins,” Charlie said. “You think that’s why I’m in love all the time? Maybe it’s a side effect. It got so, well I’d have a few drinks and I’d be incited to grief and confusion. You know? I couldn’t even take a shower. The thought of standing alone under a shower, alone under those sheets, those strings of water, would give me the shakes. So I thought the old brain was shutting down, you know? So I got to taking vitamins. I still don’t take showers. I give myself little kitty-baths.” He looked at Liberty. “Oh, you’re such a good-looking woman,” Charlie said.

A 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. Dog’d scarf it down. Lemon meringue, say. Lap the words clean. Be zealous and repent . Dog’d go wild!” He picked up Liberty’s hand. “Let’s talk about you for a while. Tell me something you’ve never told me before.”

“She’s going to say ‘David,’ ” Willie said.

“ ‘David’?” Liberty asked. “Who is David?”

“David is the boy you never slept with,” Willie said. “David is your lost opportunity.”

“I think we’re talking too loud,” Charlie yelled. “These are polite, God-fearing people. Their babies come by UPS. Big, brown Turtle-waxed trucks turn into their little lanes. They have to sign for them, the babies. It’s better to get babies by UPS. It’s swift and efficient. The sound of two bodies yattering together to produce a baby the other way is a terrible thing.”

“With David you would be another kind of woman,” Willie said. “At this very moment, you could be with David, cuddling David. After you cuddled, you could arise, dress identically in your scarlet Union suits, chino pants, Ragg socks, Bass boots, British seamen pullovers and down cruiser vests and go out and remodel old churches for use as private residences in fashionable New England coastal towns.”

“But David,” sighed Charlie, “is missing and presumed dead.”

“Change the present,” Willie said. “Through the present, change the future and through the future, the past. Today is the result of some past. If we change today, we change the past.”

Charlie shook his head. “Too much to put on a pie plate, man. Besides, it doesn’t sound Christian.”

“If you were another kind of woman,” Willie said, “you could be married to Clay, the lawyer, dealing in torts. You’d have two little ones, Rocky and Sandy. They’d have freckles and be hyperactive. They’d be the terror of the car pool. Clay would have his nuts tied.”

“Oh, please, man,” Charlie said.

“You and Clay would fly to your vacations in your very own private plane. You’d know French. You’d gain a reputation as a photographer of wildflowers, bringing out the stamens and pistils in a provocative way. Women would flock to the better department stores in order to buy the address books in which your photos appeared. But then a turnaround would occur. You’d stop taking dirty pictures. You’d divorce Clay.”

“I knew it, I knew it,” shouted Charlie. “There he’d be with his useless nuts.”

“You’d become a believer in past lives. You’d become fascinated with other forms of intelligent life. You’d become involved in the study of whale language.”

“Oh, I love whales too, man,” Charlie said, spilling coffee down the front of his button-down shirt.

“You’d curse the house in Nantucket that Rocky and Sandy had spent so many happy summers in.”

“Ahh, Nantucket built on blood. Let’s abandon this subject.” Charlie looked sadly at his shirt. “Whales are poets who are in tune with every aspect of their world. They sing these songs, man.”

Breakfast was placed before them on the table. Charlie looked at the food in surprise. “Our songs are so messed up. You ever thought of that? Our songs are so garbled.”

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

“Who are you in love with?” Willie asked Charlie, pouring syrup on the mush.

“Janiella,” Charlie said.

“Janiella?” Liberty said.

“Janiella the heartless, Janiella the faithless, Janiella the demanding,” Charlie said.

“Janiella,” Liberty said.

“Janiella the indiscreet, Janiella the throbbing, Janiella the—”

“All right,” Liberty said.

“I am crazy in love with Janiella, but she has lots of lousy habits. She never shuts doors for example. I have to tell you what happened. I was there last week, right? I’m beneath the sheets truffling away and her kid comes in. Actually, he’s not really her kid. He’s her boyfriend Duane’s kid. He’s forgotten his spelling book. His spelling book! ‘Ma’am,’ he says, ‘have you seen my spelling book?’ I’m crouched beneath the 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 that I ordered from the Metropolitan Museum was in the wastebasket also.’ The kid says, ‘I’m too old for coloring books.’ Picture it, they are having a discussion. They are arguing fine points.”