Joy Williams - Breaking and Entering

Her companions stirred in their seats.

“We always exchanged greeting cards on special occasions and there were cards there for the next five years, all signed by Harold and marked with the year. There were Christmas cards and Easter cards and Valentine’s Day cards and anniversary cards and birthday cards. And there was a get-well card for me in case, with no date on it …”—her eyes were fixed on Clem’s blank, benign ones—“… and Harold had written on it, ‘Hope you get your pep back soon.’ ”

Liberty and Clem and Teddy got off at the children and dogs’ beach. There was the nude homosexual beach, the nude heterosexual beach, the surfing beach and the shelling beach, as well as the beaches that belonged to the condos and the beaches that belonged to the rich. It was all the same thin, sparkling ribbon, but mind and predilection had divided the areas as effectively as shark-infested inlets. Liberty and Teddy sat on lumpy sand. There had been a sandcastle contest there the day before and the beach was humpy with failures. The sand structure contest had become a highly competitive annual event. Nonprofessionals and children were being edged out. Often there were fights. Grown men in madras bathing trunks could be observed circling one another, dying to throw a paralyzing punch. Slim, freckled ladies would be kicking. Plumper ladies, screaming. There were categories and prizes. Participants weren’t satisfied with making space platforms and cattle herds anymore. They busied themselves with cathedrals and Rolls-Royces. The winner yesterday had been The Last Supper. Judas had even had red hair.

The day was sunny, the water calm. Tiny, endless waves died upon the shore. Liberty suppressed visions of cruising barracudas, undertows, cramps, heart attacks, kidnappers bearing down in shining cigarette boats.

“Look, Clem,” Teddy said, “there’s Hermann.”

A Doberman acquaintance of Clem’s trotted by. He was a gorgeous-looking animal, but overbred. He had narcolepsy. In the midst of high-spirited play, sometimes even while eating, he would collapse as though hit on the head with a brick. He would have fallen asleep, deeply asleep. Who knows what he felt before he dropped? An indeterminate anxiety, a vague malaise, a sense of detachment, a revival of memories, a sense of harmony with the universe? He would wake up in a minute, several minutes perhaps. He had to take a tricyclic antidepressant daily so he wouldn’t get excited about things, perhaps triggering an attack. The Doberman ambled along and past them, his destination all about him.

“Poor Hermann,” Teddy said. He found some sticks and made a little awning with his T-shirt for the egg.

A woman in a large hat ran toward them down the beach, waving.

“There is someone who knows us,” Teddy said.

“Hi!” Sally Farrell said, falling down beside Liberty in a spray of sand. “Hi, everybody!” She kissed Liberty on the cheek. “I came down here to see the babies. I love the baby beach.”

Teddy looked at her with wide eyes.

“Don’t look at me too hard or you’ll wear me out,” Sally said, laughing.

He scrambled up and ran to the water.

“That didn’t scare him, did it?” Sally said, dismayed. “You’ve heard that before, haven’t you, you look at something too hard and you’ll wear it out? Maybe I don’t have a way with children. I brought my lunch. Do you want some of this sandwich? I’m making my own bread now, but I’m also trying to lose some weight. You know, I want to do different things these days.”

Sally exhibited her sandwich. Shredded carrots and a few raisins lay between two large pieces of underdone bread. The bread was damp and pale, as though it had seen something terrible.

“Sally,” Liberty said. “How are you, Sally? How’s JJ?” She felt guilty that she had not kept up with the troubles of Sally and JJ.

JJ was a retired movie stuntman who owned the Gator Bar. During his career he had broken his right leg three times, his left leg half a dozen times and his back and his jaw bone twice each. He had been a highly respected stuntman. He was a tumbler and a horseman and did cars and motorcycles and helicopters, but he liked fire gags the best. He had a muscular, battered body and a big, well-formed head. He loved his bar, which was cool, dim and loud. The walls were covered with framed stills of incredible stunts. To garrulous regular patrons like Charlie, JJ would speak about skill and pride and bravery. The two of them would yell and shout about meeting Death man to man, cojónes to cojónes , about triumphant exits. JJ Farrell had grand plans for Death. Then he had a stroke. The light went out only to flicker back on again. JJ’s grand plans for Death went right down the pipe … Sally had been running the bar for the last month ever since JJ’s stroke. They’d been married for three months now.

“Well, I had all my moles taken off, notice?” Sally pushed her pleasant square face forward and waggled it. “Remember how I used to worry all the time about those moles? I didn’t have a worry in the world back then except those silly moles and they turned out to be nothing. Six big nothings. JJ’s back from Haiti. He went over there for the herbs and the voodoo, but the herbs and the voodoo didn’t work. Still, he’s better. He’s a lot better than he was when you saw him in the hospital. Remember that! The guy on the other side of the curtain had cancer of the corneas. Cancer of the corneas, can you imagine! That hospital is so overcrowded. They send tourists someplace else now, they won’t even let them in. But JJ’s got his looks back. He doesn’t say much and he can’t use one leg and one arm, but the amazing thing is he’s got this permanent erection. He is just engorged all the time … I mean even when I help him out of the bathtub … especially when I help him out of the bathtub.…” Sally patted Liberty’s hand.

“I’m sorry I disappeared on you, Sally. I didn’t know how to help.”

“We haven’t seen you and Willie for a long time,” she said without offense. “But what could you have done? There was nothing you could have done. You know what I did all those weeks I was waiting on JJ in the hospital? I colored. I bought all these coloring books and I really went to town. I’d like to show them to you sometime. I’m not saying they’re art but they’re awfully good … It’s a pretty day to be on the beach, isn’t it? Do you know what JJ told me they do in Haiti? People offer to drown for a dollar or two. They pretend to drown.”

Liberty raised herself up on her elbows so she could better see Teddy in the water.

“They thrash around and then sink and then come up and float on their faces,” Sally said. “I mean I imagine that’s what happens. And people give them money.”

“Stay close in, honey,” Liberty called to Teddy.

Sally looked around them at all the children playing on the shore. “I’ve got to have some babies,” Sally said. “I love babies. I still want to get my babies from JJ, but who knows, I might have to get them from a man I don’t even know yet.” She made a fist and punched her thigh, annoyed. “JJ hasn’t lost his touch, but I must admit not much has happened lately. He gets confused. He says that sometimes when he feels my breast he doesn’t know what it is. Sometimes his brain says honeydew melon , you know, sometimes it says gearshift knob . But he’s better. Maybe he’ll get even better. When he got the stroke he was at the bar making somebody a piña colada. God, I hate piña coladas. I was at home and I remember the exact moment it happened. This big picture fell off the wall. There was something else too, this feeling. I knew something was happening. There was no reason for that picture to fall off the wall. Then the phone rang. Have I told you this before?”