Joy Williams - Breaking and Entering

“It is a great loss,” the woman said, trying to comfort Liberty, “but a romance like yours requires obstacles, dangers, fantasies. Always. Again and again.”

Then the locket was found. Willie found it. It was by the dollhouse on the lip of one of the staggeringly intricate rooms. After holding it in her hands for a moment, Liberty put it in her mouth and swallowed it.

“What a metaphor!” exclaimed the Frenchwoman. “What lovers they will be!”

“She is just a little girl,” Doris protested.

Afterward, they made Liberty eat a piece of bread.

But this was long ago. Liberty is not a little girl now, she is a woman, wedded to the boy who shared her childhood. She still has a beautiful hand and the power to render blood, wax, oil and grass stains invisible, but the mornings once spent in Doris and Calvin Stone’s house have darkened and become the afternoon. Years pass as moments do. And the moments of the past are stones behind her, over which she stumbles forward.

I t was not yet light. The heavy, fish-scented air felt like a curtain falling, instead of rising, on the day. On the road to Buttonwood Beach, just before the macadam gave out, was a twenty-four-hour grocery and tackle store. There was a gas pump and phone booth in front of the store and a set of swings and some animal cages to the rear. By the pump was a large camper with a sedan in tow. Inside were a man, a woman, and a little thing in a terry-cloth playsuit eating a Ring Ding.

There were lots of things for sale inside — rods and lures, dirty greeting cards, food and wine, and souvenirs of all kinds including stuffed and varnished possums wired to pieces of driftwood. The possum creations were made by the owner, who had one arm. Whenever people asked him how he had lost the other one, he said he had lost it as a prank.

When Liberty went into the store the man who owned the camper was reading loudly from a printed tag tied by a rubber band to the varnished possum’s tail.

“ ’Because possums have spurred the imagination of man over a period of four centuries, a great deal of folklore exists concerning this common little animal. The forked penis of the possum is doubtless responsible for the long-held belief that copulation took place through the female’s nostrils, these openings being the only obvious dual orifice!”

“Argghh,” his wife said.

“I’ve got to buy one of these things for Woody,” the man said. He read on. “Since the mother was frequently seen pushing her snout into the pouch shortly before delivery, country people believed she was blowing the babies out of her nose into it!” The man looked up, baring his teeth. “Is this for Woody or is this for Woody!” he yelled.

The owner leered at them.

Liberty bought a container of coffee and two cheese sandwiches. Behind the counter, the schedule for the high school football team was posted. On the left side of the poster it said HERE, on the right, THERE. Beside the playing schedule was a flyer advertising the services of something called CounselLine, a tape service for the distraught. LET MR. BOBBY HELP YOU the flyer said. The tapes were categorized and numbered, and there were dozens of them available. There were commentaries on fear — fear of women, men, foreigners, heights, disease, success — and on loneliness, rage, alcoholism, depression and unwanted things. New topics would be added all the time, CounselLine stated. The number to call was the same as Liberty’s except for the final digit, which was a three instead of a four.

“How long have these things been up?” Liberty asked.

“ ’Bout a week,” the owner said. “I tell you, I use it all the time. That Mr. Bobby’s been so helpful I’d give him my other arm if he asked for it.” He flailed his good arm around to show it off.

“Can you think of anybody other than Woody?” the man was asking his wife. “How about Diane? Diane’s got a sense of humor.”

“Diane’s got a big nose,” the woman said. She leaned over and nibbled soft Ring Ding off her child’s fingers.

“I’d like to give my dog some water,” Liberty said to the store’s owner. “Do you have a bowl I could use?”

“Sure I do,” he said. He gestured with the shoulder his missing arm hung from. “There’s a faucet and a couple pans out back where the deer is at.”

Clem was lying beneath one of the swings in a furrow caused by children kicking the earth away. The morning was brightening and Liberty could see the cluster of cages, which seemed to be emerging step by step from the dark. Clem ate his cheese sandwiches. The family walked out of the store and headed toward their camper, the man swinging his possum basket.

“This is such a sick idea,” he said happily. “I love this sort of crud. It’s what this state is all about.”

The cages were empty except for one that held a single deer. The deer was a delicate pecan color and shared its home with a great many flies and a hubcap full of chopped-up watermelon. The pans by the water spigot were pie pans from The Blue Gate. Liberty filled one with water. BE THOU PREPARED, it said. Clem drank, and then they walked toward the road, but Liberty hesitated by the phone booth, which had another CounselLine flyer glued to it. The phone booth was like one anywhere with its books of names dangling on a chain, an obscure stain defacing its curved plastic. She dropped in a coin and began dialing her own number. It was like calling a grave, she thought, thinking of those people who buried a phone with their loved one in case an error was perceived by the dead. She shortened the last digit by one. The phone rang once, then twice.

“Yes,” a woman’s voice said. “Which number please.”

“What?” Liberty said.

“Yes,” the woman said.

“I’m sorry,” Liberty said.

“Did you call CounselLine by error?”

“No,” Liberty said.

“I could give you our most popular number if you don’t have a specific one in mind,” the woman said.

“Thank you.”

“We’re glad you called CounselLine,” the woman said.

A moth fluttered against Clem’s head. He snapped at it. The moth flew into his open mouth.

“Grief,” a man’s voice said into Liberty’s ear. “Dealing with grief.” There was a pause. “One can experience grief not only over the loss of a loved one, but over the loss of an opportunity. Even the loss of one’s youth, or a pet. We should not be ashamed of our grief. We have survived much before arriving at grief. We have survived fear, for grief is beyond fear. It is even probably difficult for you to remember what it was like to be fearful or apprehensive. All that was but a state of mind, and it is behind you now, as is the long night of sorrow with its twin moons of sadness and regret. Fear, sadness, regret, even anguish, which so terrify the spirit, are all behind you. You have lived through that long night that you thought impossible to live through, and have entered the dawn of a new day where you have been embraced by grief.”

There was another long pause suggesting that this was not a recording at all, but an intimate personal dialogue depending upon response, query and agreement. There were timed silences, like those on tapes giving instruction in a foreign language, giving one the moment to assimilate and repeat, but what was one supposed to do in the silent interstices of this running monologue on grief — accede? protest? scream?

“So we can consider grief to be almost our friend, but a friend, like all friends, who will not be with us forever.” The voice was a black man’s voice. “Grief will provide for you. You should be grateful to grief.” It was a river voice, laden with promise. “How best can I describe grief to you? I want to describe it in a picture sort of way.” There was another beat of silence. “What I want you to do is think for a moment of those quilted rugs that moving companies wrap around furniture for long trips in their vans. And I would like you to imagine a particularly fine piece of furniture. And a soiled, heavy, ugly cover draped around it. Now imagine that this piece of fine furniture being transported from one place to another is your …”—the voice hesitated—“… your heart, and that the cover is grief. The grief protects you in a way for the journey that must be made. For the time before grief is far away and in a different place than the time after grief, and the journey seems long. Indeed, sometimes the journey seems endless, and it is a frightful, difficult journey as we know, yet we know too in our heart that this must be so, that the journey cannot be easy or comfortable lest its significance be lost. The journey will end when it is time for the journey to end. And grief will be cast off.”