Joy Williams - Breaking and Entering

“They do something like that weekly. There was the feeling of cozy ritual.”

“But that man’s dead. She shot him.”

“Maybe,” Willie said.

“He’s dead.” She wanted this to be something that Willie realized, that was the truth.

“She’ll get a good night’s sleep for a change. When she wakes up in the morning, she’ll feel she did the right thing.”

Fog hung in gauzy patches along the road. The truck whipped through it. Willie had bewitched those people, Liberty thought absently. She couldn’t quite picture Howard anymore, or the house, the woman alone in it.

“You kill things,” she said quietly.

For an instant he looked stricken. “I’ll make up for it,” he said. “Never the other, but this. I’ll make up for this.”

“How can you?”

“I will.”

Liberty pushed her knuckles against her mouth. “Stop,” she said.

He pulled the truck off the road and she stumbled out, Clem leaping after her. The darkness rustled. She knelt on the gravel, clutching weeds, opening her mouth, wanting to throw up, but nothing happened. She crouched there until it came to seem a little artificial to her, this posture, this waiting. It couldn’t have happened, she thought. It was a game the other couple had played, with music and mirrors and words. If they went back there now, those frightful people would open the door, they would be standing there. But she knew that this was not what would happen. Howard would not be standing there. Howard would be dead. Willie had attained something there, somehow.

She was losing her mind, she thought. Going back to the truck she saw with dismay the loaf of bread lying on the floor and she began talking to Willie about the bread and how they must not leave it for the birds to find for that was the important thing now, that the waters should be crossed, that they should not become too frightful to be crossed. She was losing her mind, her mind that didn’t want to be tied down to her confusions, her terrors and mistakes. But Willie understood. He knew her, he assured her, he understood. But she couldn’t remember what they had done with the bread. The bread, after all, hadn’t been the point. He put his arm around her. The night had passed for Willie. He was looking down the road, his arm around her, his Liberty.

This had not been so long ago, after almost everything else but before the saving. Saving people had been relatively recent. Opportunities that were parts of a promise Willie couldn’t keep. Neither of them were very good about keeping promises. She had promised the baby that it would not be alone. Beneath the bird’s wing, she was cold. She ran her fingers across the feathers, the thready insubstantial body. The bewitcher Willie had been bewitched. He had never had a penchant for the saving. It was the details of final things to which he’d always been drawn. And in the end it was all the same to Willie — a matter of details. He was impersonal about it. He had put their new beginnings behind him now.

She pressed the heron’s wing back against its body, gathered its ungainly parts together and carried it to the trees where she dug a hole with her hands and buried it. There comes that time for everything, she said to it, when you have to put the beginning behind you.

There was a ragged line of brown foam on the harder sand of the beach just before the cut that wound between the two Keys. The water of the Pass rocked swiftly past. Liberty stepped into the water, and it was deep at once. She swam a dozen strokes, then counted in tens but stopped counting and just flailed ahead. The water was warm and heavy, trembling with phosphorescence, which struck her in jellylike clots. The current was sweeping her away from land. She saw it gliding by. Then they were in slack water, further from shore, but it was calm. She stopped to rest and Clem’s leg bumped hard against her own. He circled her. She heard him breathing through shut jaws. She pushed off again, her eyes and throat burning. After a while she dove downward and felt the bottom, a person’s height beneath her, then drifted up and swam hard toward the shore. Minutes later, her hands hit the sloping sand shelf. On the beach, Clem shook himself, the water flying from his coat like little lights, quickly extinguished.

Inside the house, the phone was ringing.

“Liberty!” her mother said. “Liberty, I have the most amazing news. Your sister called and came over. Yes! She got in touch with me! She tracked me down, can you imagine!”

Liberty didn’t know what to say. “Is she there, Mother?” she finally asked.

“I was wondering, Liberty, do you still have that lazy Susan I sent one year on your birthday, the one with the little dishes?”

“I can’t remember receiving that.”

“Well, I’d like it back, dear.”

“Have you seen Brouilly? Did she really call?”

“Brouilly?” her mother said. “Oh, I’m afraid I have a little confession to make, dear. I named you both Liberty. I suppose that’s not done much, but I did it. Yes, she was over here. She just left, but she’ll be back. Goodness, she turned out well. A beautiful girl, she makes me very proud. Liberty, I’ve been going through some of your things. Gracious, dear, what a lot of junk! I’ve thrown away big bags of it. Big bags. All those tests you used to take in school. The questions you answered, Liberty, honestly. Listen to this. ‘Mr. Jones and Mrs. Jones both have the ability to roll their tongues. They have a daughter, Marie, who can’t roll her tongue. Mr. Smith has the ability to roll his tongue. Mrs. Smith does not. They have a son, John, who does have the ability to roll his tongue. Mr. Jones and Mrs. Smith die.’ ” She paused. “Really, Liberty, I find this type of thing quite shocking, I find this hard to believe. ‘Mrs. Jones and Mr. Smith get married and have a son who does not have the ability to roll his tongue …’ ”

Liberty heard the sound of crumpling paper.

“This is what I’m faced with,” her mother said, “disposing of this kind of thing.”

“It was probably a question about genotypes, Mother. You were supposed to list them or something.”

“You did, you did,” her mother said impatiently. “There’s something sick about that question, Liberty. I don’t want to remember you that way.”

“How do you want to remember me, Mother?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said sulkily. “I suppose as a little tiny baby with all your life before you. You were so helpless as a little tiny baby. You were just the dearest, simplest thing. If I gave you beets, your poopie would come out red, if I gave you string beans, your poopie would come out green … And then one day you weren’t a baby anymore. It happened just like that!”

More paper was crushed. It sounded like flames crackling, quite close, coming closer still.

“Do you know how many children your sister has? Four! She has four, two girls and two boys. That’s enough, I told her. More than that, you get mixed-up. And it’s more than likely that one of them will turn out funny. One of them already is a little strange, I think.”

“Where did sister go, Mother?”

“Oh, she’ll be right back. She went with Daddy. The children are playing in the pecan grove. I can see them from here.”

“It’s nighttime.”

“You’re so literal, Liberty. I’m quite aware it’s nighttime. But we have big lights strung in the trees, dear, to discourage thieves. The lights are there to let them know we know what they’re up to. There have always been lights in the pecan grove. I didn’t think this up yesterday. Honey,” she said, “aren’t you happy for me?”