Joy Williams - Breaking and Entering

Well, if she is, she is, Liberty thought.

She followed her mother outside and the three of them sat down at the picnic table. Lucile pressed her gloved fingers together and gave a long, rambling, conversational grace that was equal parts prayer, complaint and nostalgia. She complimented God on certain things, expressing her appreciation of night-blooming flowers, the color violet and the vision of the world offered through snorkeling. She recalled Liberty’s birth and her craving, after its accomplishment, for a coffee malted. She remembered a vacation she and Lamon had taken to Mexico in the days when they had money.

“I thought I would have adventures,” her mother said. “I thought I would have experiences and make memories. But all I met there was Mr. Hepatitis. Your father took me all the way to Mexico to meet Mr. Hepatitis.”

This recollection seemed to stop her. She said “Amen,” nodded, opened her eyes, adjusted her mink, and began to eat her hot dogs. She ate ravenously. Ketchup dotted her gloves. The light dimmed and they finished their meal. A child in a house nearby began practicing the trumpet.

“I think we need a change,” Lucile said. She stood up. There were moth holes on the sleeve of her jacket and bun crumbs on her lap.

“Please, darling,” Lamon said. “I’m drunk and unhappy and I’m sure I won’t be able to react as swiftly as I would like.”

Her mother walked in her mink through the warm grass into the garage from which she emerged a moment later with a red six-gallon gas can.

“Oh please, Lucile, please, please, please.” Daddy lay his head on the picnic table.

“Do you have any matches, Lamon?” Lucile asked smiling.

“No, darling, I don’t.” His head was pressed against the picnic table as though glued. “I used them all up lighting the charcoal. There are no matches here or anywhere in the world.”

“Things come to an end,” Lucile said. “You have made us pariahs in this town. There is nothing in this town anymore for us but pity.”

“I bet you haven’t taken your pill,” Lamon said.

“Liberty’s teachers give her A’s out of pity,” Lucile mused.

“Please take your pill, darling, and you’ll go to those nice movies. You know that you enjoy that, darling. It will be like going to a pleasant movie.” Lamon sat up and tipped the ice from his empty glass into his mouth. Lucile turned abruptly and tottered toward the house, tipped toward the weight of the gas can in her right hand.

“Just remember that I love you, Lamon,” she yelled without looking back. “I love you, I love you, I love you!” The sounds of the trumpet ceased. Dogs began to bark. She went into the house.

Liberty hurried in after her. The gas can sat on a wicker love seat at one end of the living room and her mother sat in a chair at the other, smoking a cigarette.

“Mommy,” Liberty said. “What’s the matter? What are you going to do?”

“Do you know about the Buddhists, Liberty?”

“They meditate.”

“What else?”

Liberty chewed strenuously on her thumbnail. “They believe that there’s something other than existence.”

Her mother sighed. “What do they do to themselves sometimes, Liberty?”

“I don’t know,” Liberty said.

“You’ve never understood me,” her mother said.

Liberty, nine years old, bowed her head.

Lucile stubbed out her cigarette and twisted the little scowling minks from her shoulders with a strangling motion that, Liberty thought, must have terminated any illusion of life they might have had left.

“What the Buddhists do upon occasion is immolate themselves, Liberty.” She looked at Liberty expectantly, then sighed. “You’re too young to understand love,” she said.

Things seemed better the following day. The gas can was back in the garage where it belonged, beside the lawnmower. When Liberty returned from school, her father was standing in the backyard at an easel facing a blooming poinciana tree. Liberty approached the canvas, expecting to see a likeness.

“Daddy,” she said after a moment. “That’s a lot of teeth.”

“Fred Huxley’s mouth from memory,” her father said with satisfaction. “I’ve never seen such a mess before or since. He was playing catch with his son and the ball hit him smack in the mouth.”

Liberty wandered into the house and into the kitchen where she went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of 7-Up. Her mother stood washing dishes in the sink. She wore a pair of dazzling white shorts and a clean, blue shirt. Her hair was washed and neatly braided. She seemed happy and relaxed.

“Honeybunch,” Lucile said, “did Daddy tell you? We’re moving. Daddy’s going to get a job teaching in a little college up in the north of the state.”

“What’s he going to teach?” Liberty said. She looked at the girl in the bathing suit and cap on the dark green bottle, preparing to dive. YOU LIKE IT IT LIKES YOU the bottle said.

“Art, I think.” Her mother sniffed loudly. “It’s not much of a college.”

Liberty looked through the window at her father painting landscapes of teeth and gums from memory. “I don’t want to move,” Liberty said. “I’d miss school. I’d miss my teachers.”

“Now, honeybunch,” her mother said.

“I’d miss my friends.” Liberty clutched her knapsack and her bottle of 7-Up and widened her eyes to keep from crying. The thought of going off into some strange place with her parents terrified her.

“Well, actually, we thought you’d feel that way,” her mother said. “So Daddy spoke with Calvin Stone who apparently is very grateful for all the root canal work that Daddy did for him. Very grateful. And Mr. Stone said that you could live with his family.”

“Live with them,” Liberty said. “Live with Willie Stone?”

“Isn’t that nice?” Lucile said, cheerfully scrubbing the sink. “They have a little boy who’s in your class and you can be their little girl for a while.”

“Live with Willie Stone?” Liberty repeated faintly. Willie’s head and hands looked too big for his skinny body. He was so pale he looked as though he dusted himself in flour each morning, and his hair was dark and lanky. He wore boots and cuffed jeans like a redneck, although his father was a banker and his house had a swimming pool. Willie chewed on gum and a toothpick at the same time and always gave replies to the teacher’s questions that were wildly inappropriate without being exactly incorrect. At recess in the schoolyard when the girls combed one another’s hair and talked about the boys, no one ever talked about Willie Stone. No one wanted him in their heads at all.

“I think that a person thinks differently at night, Liberty,” Lucile said, “and last night I had a good think, and Daddy and I came up with this plan. Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan. That’s my feeling.”

Liberty pressed the bottle of 7-Up against her cheek.

Lucile looked radiant. She moved about the kitchen as though it were a ballroom. “Now, Mr. Stone is well off, I gather, and Mrs. Stone is quite religious. I don’t mean crackpot religious, the type who claims that Jesus enters them through the vessels of their ears and tells them what color to paint the kitchen cabinets, I mean Sunday morning services, Wednesday luncheon prayer, Friday evening faith healing type religious. So we may have to go to the expense of getting you a pair of black patent leather shoes or something. A realtor is coming over this afternoon so the house will be listed tomorrow. We’re selling it furnished, so if you want anything from your room, you should get it out. It will be a breath of fresh air for all of us, I’m sure. Daddy will teach and I hope to get a position with the Forestry Service. I believe that one can outwit Time if one pretends to be what one is not. That’s my feeling.”