Joy Williams - Breaking and Entering

Willie came back at noon, hazed with tar and grime. In a bakery sack, he had more pills. “Interaction,” he said. “Our hearts will burst upon command.” She reached in and making spittle with her tongue, she swallowed one. “Not yet,” Willie said. “We’ll lie down together in the shade. I have champagne.”

“We need ice,” she said, “and cups.”

He laughed and kissed her on the mouth and laughed again. His lips were hot and dry. She walked past the swimming pool, which lay still, grasshopper green on the lawn, and toward a patch of shifting shade cast by fig and pepper trees. She was wearing a skirt she had last worn to a dance and a yellow blouse. She folded her hands on her stomach. It was so still she could hear a phone ringing, the choked rattle of its call, and somewhere, a door slamming shut. Willie brought ice in a silver bowl, a bowl Doris used to float flowers in, two dark and sweating bottles of champagne and glasses from a set that Calvin had received with fill-ups from the gas station.

“I brought your favorite glass,” he said.

“The Invisible Girl,” she said. “Sister to the Human Torch and wife of Mr. Fantastic.” I had a favorite glass, she thought, and here it is. The Invisible Girl could be seen. She wore a silver jumpsuit and her lip was curled.

They drank champagne. He scattered the pills in the lap of her skirt where they gleamed like candies. There were so many there — she put one in her mouth and it had a greasy, purpling taste. Another had a flavor of metal, as though she’d pressed her tongue against a chain. She thought of the coat that had many pockets, but it was an imaginary coat.

“You’re a natural thief,” she said.

“We’re both thieves,” Willie said, “stealing God’s day.”

Soon all the pills were gone. She saw him swallowing and she swallowed, but there was nothing left. Her head was pounding. She said, “Sssshh, I’m trying to remember everything.” Snow, she thought, I want to remember snow. But she had never seen snow. Beaches, she thought. Water falling upon water. She thought of the little glittering pool in the garden, then thought of a well, filled with the bones of luckless creatures. But beneath everything, deep down, the freshness, she felt it, the freshness, the sweetness there. She stretched out in the shade. Willie held her, but she didn’t want him to for the first time. The Invisible Girl, she thought, wife to Mr. Fantastic. They were dying, she thought. She smiled and said to Willie, “I know better than this.” Her eyes were burning and through them she saw the raked driveway winding to the blacktop road. It was just the road that wound past other houses into town, but it seemed strange. The trees seemed taller alongside the ditches, their green and gold leaves trembling from the heat of her burning eyes. She started to walk down the road but there was a dog guarding it.

She was all alone, and she stopped.

Mercury found them. She had come back to talk to Liberty about her Chester, for she liked to talk to Liberty, she liked the way Liberty listened. She saw them there, sleeping hard, leaves lying on their faces. Mercury giggled and touched Willie’s hair, the long, soft hair of a white boy. But when she turned to Liberty, she saw green foam around her mouth like you’d see on a horse, and when she touched her she felt cold. She managed to slap and shake Willie awake. He vomited with his eyes open, becoming unarresting forever more in Mercury’s mind.

The sheriff’s men were called and Liberty would think later that she could remember them, the colors of green and gold weaving in the heat, the leaves’ sick colors blending into the deputies’ shirts. And she thought later she could remember them asking her questions. People always asked the dying questions, Liberty thought, and the dying probably lied and didn’t even know it. Having the same words available as they’d had all their lives and no new ones probably made lying pretty much inevitable. The click of the heat had become their questions, which had then become a clatter, like utensils being stirred about, being rattled in a pan. Her throat was opened, like a window, she thought, being flung open wide, although they said she could not remember such a thing. But she did remember. She was alone with them in a white room, the men in green and gold, and the days passed. Once, she heard one musing …

I surely wish I could catch that boy that keeps robbing them banks. That boy just seems to float through them drive-in windows, waves a paper bag he’s got wrapped around his hand and the ladies just start heaving the money out. Four banks in a week and a half. That boy could steal the stink off shit and not smell .

The other said Shut your mouth, Hicks. There’s a sick girl in here .

Hicks said She’s in a coma. She won’t take no offense .

She was brought back, then almost lost to septicemia, but her poisoned blood was taken from her drop by drop and she was brought back again. Mistakes were made, but in the end, infection simplified her. It unadorned her. There would be no more babies for Liberty. Liberty’s babies all went to live in that world where mistakes aren’t made.

There was one floor on a wing of the hospital where certain people went for a while and Liberty went there. It was called Five North. Willie was not allowed to visit her, but he sent her things. No one else came. Willie sent her perfume once and once he sent her a game where there were numbered black and white plastic pieces sliding in a frame. There was one empty space. Each piece had a number, but the numbers were all mixed up. The person who was playing the game was supposed to use that empty space to make order.

On Five North there was a lady who came once a day to talk to Liberty. Her name was Miss Tweedie. Miss Tweedie enjoyed working with people on this wing because they were so polite. Being back in the world seemed to hypnotize them.

You look upon your nondeath as a threatening danger to you , Miss Tweedie said. She had bitten nails, which must have been a drawback professionally, but she had a birthmark on her jaw that could be interpreted by the ill at their leisure. Liberty almost expected her to point to it and say What does this represent to you? , but she never did. Liberty did not look at Miss Tweedie’s face much. Instead, she watched the gnawed, scrubbed nails lying in the woman’s lap, sometimes on the coverlet, sometimes daubing in the air. Love can sometimes be a curse , Miss Tweedie said, even a sickness .

There was a common room on Five North where people could gather for coffee in the morning. On Sundays, there were cookies with the coffee and a Bible was placed out. On the day Liberty was going to be released, a woman in the common room screamed out His children are far from safety and they are crushed in the gate! She poured scalding coffee over her arms with joy. A man shouted Amen, Amen, we’re Job’s children we’re all of us Job’s children! The people stirred and flung themselves back and forth like fish in the waters of a shrinking pond. Some shouted and wept. Liberty pressed herself against the wall and played the plastic game, hearing the others but not watching them. Her fingers quickly moved the plastic pieces back and forth, up and down. Her fingers flew across the moving pieces. The woman who had burnt herself with such happiness was led away, and the room grew calm again, and stilled. There was no outside to the room, that is, the outside could not be seen. The room was wallpapered to appear like a long, wide view of trees — a young forest of slender trees with the glint of a river winding deep within the dimensions of it. It was a glade , Liberty thought, or a copse . She could look at it for a long time. The colors were green and gold like the deputies’ uniforms. She thought she could remember the deputy who was a philosopher, or was that the other one? The one who was writing something down, his big hand cupped as though he were writing on the palm. She is a felon , he was writing, who attempted to break into the house of death …