Joy Williams - Breaking and Entering

“He’s left before,” Liberty said. “What I did was wait, I guess.”

“So the waiting made sense because it finally stopped, but what if it didn’t make sense?”

“Waiting never makes sense,” Liberty said.

“We’re all asleep, aren’t we,” Sally said. “Like we’re under a spell and something keeps saying, ‘No need to think about it, nothing’s going to happen, if anything were to happen it’s not going to happen now, anyway, not this minute …’ Who says that anyway?”

“The Magician in us,” Liberty said. “The Kindly Master.”

“Ugh,” Sally said. She frowned. After a moment, she said, “You’ve still got that dog. I suppose pets give your life a certain continuity. Maybe I should get a pet. I want to lose some weight too. Fifteen pounds would be about right, I think. JJ liked for me to be an armful. ‘My squeeze’ he’d call me. Can you imagine? He called me his squeeze. What a dear man.” Sally began to cry quietly. “He isn’t able to squeeze me any more.”

Liberty reached for Sally’s hand and held it. The sky was once again cloudless and very blue. And the Gulf was blue too, but with a greenish cast. Pale schools of mullet moved through it. There were terns and plovers working the shore now, and later in the day the herons would arrive, and later than the herons, close after sunset, the skimmers would appear, flying swiftly and close to the water, shearing the water with their bills …

“That sky is aloof, isn’t it,” Sally said. “It’s hard to plan on fulfilling yourself under a sky like that.” She patted her eyes dry with the back of Liberty’s hand and stood up. “I’ve got to get back to the Gator. I wish you’d come on by. We’re having a welcome home party for JJ tomorrow night. I wish you weren’t such a stranger. You know what they say about ’gators? They say they’ve got seven emotions and they make a sound for each one of them, but it’s all the same sound.” A peculiar expression slid across Sally’s face. “Just like JJ,” she said. “Oh, god,” she said, “I didn’t say that. Don’t tell me I said that.”

“Sally,” Liberty said.

Sally closed her eyes and shook her head, giggling. “I just didn’t say that,” she said. “But you know what, you know that big Cajun? Charlie, right? He’s got such a crush on you. He talks about you all the time.”

“A crush?”

“A big crush.”

“A gin crush,” Liberty said.

“Don’t be that stranger now, you come on by,” Sally said. She kissed Liberty briskly on the cheek. “Good-bye baby beach!” she said to the beach.

Teddy ran up from the water, holding a shell in his hand. “I found a murex!” he said. “It doesn’t live around here. Somebody must have bought it in a store and then come here and dropped it. It lives in the Mediterranean. And look what I’ve got too, I got these from the trash. Will they count?”

She looked at the ice-cream wrappers. Five wrinkled bears.

“They’ll count.” She smoothed them out on her knee. “What do you think the word crush means, honey?”

“Conquer and destroy.”

“Conquer and destroy,” Liberty said. “Maybe you should drop that war course.”

Outside Teddy’s house, Duane was gazing under the hood of a matte black ’69 Shelby Cobra Mach 1. There was reverence in his eyes as he contemplated the gleaming air cleaner with its crinkle finish and polished aluminum hi-lite fins. Teddy touched a brilliantly twinkling radiator cap with his fingers. His father nudged him back a bit.

“You’re sandy, son,” he said. “Take a shower and then you can look.” He took a clean rag from his pocket and flicked it across the grille.

“You shining up the engine again, Daddy?”

“Boy, son, you sure are sandy,” Duane said. He glanced quickly at Teddy. He wished his boy were sturdy — even, perhaps, a little wild and nasty, with a face of his own.

“We’ve been to the beach.”

“Nah,” he said. “Nah you haven’t. Impossible.” Duane’s eyes were focused a little above Teddy and beyond. He cuffed the child’s shoulder playfully.

“Yes we have, we have!” Teddy said excitedly. “See, Liberty’s sandy too. And Clem! We’re all sandy!”

“Nah, you haven’t been to the beach,” Duane said, feinting a jab at Teddy’s chest.

“We have, we have!” Teddy shrieked.

“Okay, son, enough play for now.” Duane slammed the hood shut and crouched beside one of the Shelby’s mag wheels. He had just mounted four new tires — Pro Trac 60’s. He had longed for those big meats for a long time and now he possessed them. The big meats thrilled him, but he knew he was not as happy as he should have been. Duane sighed. His little boy with his narrow mouth and black wild hair looked exactly like his bitch-lezzie wife, Jean-Ann, and it made his heart sink anymore just to look at him. Duane loved his son, but whenever he showed him any affection, he now felt weird, even wicked. He had gone to a drive-in movie with Janiella a few nights ago to neck and eat fried chicken and they had seen a horror film about giant, soulless pods taking over the living, except that in this one instance the transformation was incomplete and a dog ended up having the head, the face , of a man on it. It was a grotesque sight and it had planted itself firmly in Duane’s mind. On the surface of things he was a fortunate man. Jean-Ann didn’t want a nickel from him, only a divorce and the freedom to live her own, ghastly life. He had four cherry cars and an intelligent, worldly-wise girlfriend who really liked to get it on. But all was not well beneath the surface of things. His little boy depressed him. Teddy was like a knocking in his Dad’s life’s engine.

Janiella came up behind him and blew on his neck. She was wearing high-heeled sandals, short shorts and two handkerchiefs tied around her breasts.

“I was thinking,” Duane mused, “maybe we could dye Teddy’s hair.”

“What?” Liberty said.

“That’s some idea,” Janiella said.

Duane turned around and nodded. “Dye his hair. Bleach it from one of those little packages women use.”

Janiella giggled.

“That stuff could turn his black hair white,” Duane said.

“It will come out orangey, believe me,” Janiella said.

“I don’t mean white like that dog of yours,” Duane said to Liberty. “I mean a light blond like. He wouldn’t be so partial to Jean-Ann in his looks that way.”

Teddy and the two women stared at him. Duane’s cars, sleek as rats, crouched around them.

Duane raised the thumb and index fingers of his hands and boxed Teddy’s head in the square they made. He squinted, shrinking the square.

“Getting rid of the hair would help,” Duane said. He dropped his hands and regarded Teddy thoughtfully. “If his jaws were a little fuller that would help too.”

“You’re crazy, Duane,” Janiella said appreciatively.

“How tall you believe my boy’s going to get? Jean-Ann was one tall drink of water.” Duane looked at Teddy reproachfully.

“Jean-Ann,” Janiella said. She nibbled on Duane’s neck.

“Jean-Ann, Jean-Ann. You’ve seen better heads on mule dicks, right!” Duane laughed and pinched her buttocks.

Teddy was blushing. His narrow chest was mottled with red. “That’s the way they are,” he said to Liberty. “I’m going to go inside now.”

In a slash pine, a crow perched on a branch. Smaller, frantic, brighter birds darted and swooped at it, calling. There was a nest somewhere. Everywhere, in the day’s last, lingering light, liaisons and arrangements were being made. It’s the dry season and somewhere, in the middle of the state, a pine tree blows up. Farther north, an elderly man with Alzheimer’s lives contentedly with his dead wife for three days while to the south a couple wearing scuba gear get married underwater. A teenage boy kills himself so he can donate his heart to his sick girlfriend while a homosexual whose lover has just left him goes into Woolworth’s and buys two gerbils. Love comes and goes, pitching its mansion. And on the circular track of days, it appears that Dread is gaining on Devotion every second.