Joy Williams - Breaking and Entering

“Why does everyone want to change Teddy’s name,” Liberty said. “Reverdy, the Phantom, Odd …”

“We give many names to the things that matter most,” Charlie said. “Like, as you know, the Eskimos and snow.”

“Duane wants to dye Teddy’s hair a different color so he won’t remind him of his wife.”

“Watch out! He’ll do it. He’s a very sincere man. I met him just the other night at a party they gave. I had to keep my distance from Janiella but I chatted up the other ladies. Turquoise, teal and aqua are the big colors for the upcoming season, I told them. Mauve is out. Peach is still holding its own. White and bleached woods are very big. Country French is still in style, but Scandinavian never caught on. Beds are being emphasized, Euro-modernist is in. Then I chatted up Duane for a while. We drank. We spoke fornication, weaponry, engines, you know, boy talk. I know my business, I told him. If you want to sell a house, you’ve got to have a house that’s happening. Anecdotes, I told him. The buyer loves anecdotes. If a house has character, you can add another five grand to the sale price. We drank. Well, something clicked. He went into the bedroom, took his twelve gauge from the closet, strode over to the pool, wherein there were people, I might add, and took a bead on this little rubber frog that was drifting around in it. The little frog trails chlorine from its bottom, you know. Nice little frog with a happy smile, his rubber legs crossed and his rubber eyes happy? Well, Duane blasted that poor little froggy to smithereens.”

“That’s how it happened?” Liberty said faintly. “The crack in the pool?”

“He had misinterpreted my remarks a little. He thinks in terms of ballads. Everyone thought it was fairly amusing once they realized they hadn’t been maimed. After that event, we were all given a hamburger, another drink and a tour of the garage. Included in the garage tour was the freezer tour. There’s a big white humming mother out there filled with neatly wrapped packages that Duane made out of various Bambis he’s bagged. Chillness, obscurity, disarray, extremis . The mind stirs with no thought of future life when it contemplates that thing, let me tell you. Did I ever tell you what my mother keeps in her freezer? It’s not her underwear. She keeps her underwear in the refrigerator, in the crisper bin. What she keeps in the freezer is the fruitcake my grandmother was bringing over to the house on Christmas Day when she was run over by a motorcycle. That fruitcake has been in the freezer for five years. It’s wrapped in green paper and has a red string around it.”

“You’ve never told me that before,” Liberty said. “I’ve never repeated myself to you, have I?” Charlie said, shocked.

“You told me that your grandmother died from plucking a wild hair.”

“That was my other granny,” Charlie said. “Everybody has two grannies. You think you know my limits, don’t you. You believe you sense my deficiencies. You think I’m the sort of fellow who would lie about his grannies. You think I’m the kind of fellow content to maintain intimacies with a beautiful woman by the fluctuation of a magnetic field, that is, the telephone. You think language is just the human medium after all, and I’m employing it because basically I’m shallow. This human business has gotten a little out of hand you think. Drinkers can’t be lovers, you think. Oh the bleak, gnawing, crushing painful things you think! Your silence is a little black garden. You know everything there by heart.”

Liberty said nothing. She listened to his voice, which seemed to be blowing to her from across some blank expanse of water.

“Silence is Liberty’s little hidey-hole,” Charlie said.

She heard more liquid being poured into a glass.

“C’mon, talk to me,” Charlie said. “With practice our language will grow to accommodate the event of you and me and Reverdy.”

“Charlie,” Liberty said. “Where are you calling from?”

“Where am I calling from? I am calling from home, specifically from Room 303 of the Paradise Hotel on the corner of Coconut and Main. Every time I wake up in this room, I think I’m a case of mistaken identity. Do you see Room 303? The linoleum floor painted red, the single window scraped by palm fronds, the hostile eye of the TV, the ant cakes in the corner, the bureau, the bed, the bottle, me?”

“I see it.”

“Room 303 is where I don’t want to be, and I have been in Room 303 for years.”

“You have plenty of money,” Liberty said. “You could move out tomorrow.”

“That palm is suffering from palm leaf skeletonizer. Have you heard of that disease? I’m sure this palm has got it. Everything’s got something these days. A guy told me his car has arthritis … I do have money. After I saw you at breakfast I made another three grand in commissions. A young couple buying their dream house, deciding in my hearing where to put the Bokharas, the highboy, their marital bed, the baby’s nine-foot toy giraffe. They stood beside the caged pool and I could see their heads practically glowing with visions of pool sex, fulfillment, happiness, dreams of God knows what. It was so depressing. Stop! I wanted to scream at them. Your destiny is one of chaos. You will find only disappointment behind these walls, beneath this roof. Your desires are petty, irrational, unattainable. Your infant will grow to detest you. Your husband will be unfaithful. Your wife will scream at you with her bathrobe open. Intimacies will only occur between you when incited by parties, alcohol or aberrant fantasies. You must change your life! Become wanderers. Possess nothing. Confront your solitude. Go forth into the world .”

Liberty held her breath, then slowly exhaled.

“This wouldn’t be us, of course,” Charlie said.

“Charlie.”

“You love me!” Charlie cried.

“I love Willie.”

“Love takes time, I’m willing to admit. Certain kinds of love. But I know you’ll be able to find a place for me in your love, and when you do, we’ll just move right into it … the hound, Reverdy, you and me. You’ve got to get the kid out of his daddy’s house, Liberty. Duane’s nuts. When I was speaking with him the other night, he said, ‘Charlie, buddy, if I ever found out that a man was messing with my Janiella, I’d tear out both their hearts. I’d tear off their hands and roast them and eat them, the palms of the hands being the only thing worth having off a human being.’ ”

“You’re the one who’d best get out of Teddy’s daddy’s house,” Liberty said lightly. But she was frightened. She heard Charlie crunching ice with his teeth.

“Everything’s cyclic,” Charlie said. “The desire to live is cyclic. Why don’t you tell me I give good phone? Come on, talk to me. Silence indicates a considerable nada. You’ve been associating with that dog of yours too much. Heavy nada there. Not that I don’t think he’s great. But the eye with which one sees nada is the eye with which one sees one. You know?”

“I’m a silent married woman,” Liberty said.

“I have the television set on here in my room,” Charlie said. “It’s a game show. Husbands can apparently win fabulous prizes by scaling a gigantic greased washboard. The husbands’ wives are at the top of the washboard urging them on. Whoops. None of the husbands seem to be making it.”

“I have to go, Charlie.”

“No, wait, I’ll change the channel. Uh-oh. Wow, that’s disgusting … heart just popped right out. When is all this supposed to be taking place? In the long, long ago. In the days of sorcerers and the bicameral mind … what’s this!..”

“Charlie—”

“No, wait, I’ll turn it off. There, it’s off. Do you want me to read to you? I used to like to read these tawdry doomsday books, the kind with virulent bacilli and climatic melt where millions die, there is sex and savagery and man’s inherent dignity never comes up?… But I’ve changed my habits. It’s all part of my alteration process. I’m working my way through seventeenth-century verse and prose now. Andrew Marvell, Sir Thomas Browne, Sir John Suckling.”