Richard Ford - A Piece of My Heart

Her eyes got big and her pupils flattened and welled up, and she started to tremble and moaned. “I don’t know you,” she said, losing her breath, tears pearling off her face, disappearing between her breasts.

“Yes you do,” he said. “You know me, sugar.”

She gulped. “I thought we was going, and we ain’t,” she said, and covered her face with her hands. “We’re just going in that room.”

He pushed his thumb up through his eyebrows and stared at the floor. “Everything didn’t work out just right.”

“Why can’t we?” she moaned.

“I can’t be running off now to no Memphis,” he said.

“ I can,” she bawled, another gout of tears breaking loose, flooding her cheeks.

“I want to, sugar, but it’s just some things can’t be.”

“You little bastard,” she said. “You ruin everything for me, tearing up my hopes.”

“Come inside,” he said softly, looking back up at Brashears’ office, turning the door catch behind him.

He led her in where it was cool and green shadows. The bed was jumbled and his sack of clothes was dumped on the chair. The light in the bathroom was on and Beuna went in and shut the door.

He took off his boots and listened to her rattling things in the sink and running the toilet. He looked for a radio but there wasn’t one. He wished he had some coffee and a sandwich, and decided that after a little while they could drive out to Marvell and get groceries and bring them back. He peeked out the curtain and saw his truck alone in the cool rain breeze. The sky was smoky, and the sun had inched higher into the clouds. A black Cadillac passed toward town and disappeared beyond the two ducks.

Beuna emerged, her lips swollen from crying and her dress flapping in the back. She had left the light burning and stopped so it was behind her and he could make out the silhouettes.

“I ain’t mad at you,” she said, and sniffed. “It don’t make no difference about no Peabody. I wanted to look like a young girl to you, to take to Memphis with you. But it don’t matter.”

He watched her legs shift and twitch behind the gauze dress, and felt everything floating.

“Come here,” she said. She pulled one hand from behind her, holding a little bag in her fingers.

He came to where she was and she clenched her hands behind his head and kissed him on the mouth and forced his lips back against his teeth so that his ears whirred. He got a hand at the bottom of her spine and moved her legs and she held his head and squeezed.

“You come in,” she said, breathing in big gulps. She led him into the fluorescent bathroom light and turned on the shower and held her hand in until it was warm and steam started spreading.

“What is it?” he said, looking around at the moist plaster.

“Skin off,” she said, and let her dress slide forward off her breasts.

He unbuckled his pants and let them down while she unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it off his shoulders.

The room was full of warm steam crowding out of the tub around his chin, though the floor tiles were cold and hard. It made him feel faint. He wiped the mirror and saw sweat sprouting on his forehead, his eyes pale and unfocused, and he wished he could get outside.

Beuna stood in the tub kneeling on the porcelain, water bouncing off her head, soaking her hair and beading up around her knees.

“C’mere,” she said in a voice that reverberated on the tiles.

He took a step up to where she was holding the plastic sandwich bag and reaching out. “What is all this?” he said, trying to smile.

“. . this in my mouth,” she said, waggling the bag in the circulating water. “And I want you to go.”

“To what?” he said, straining to see her in the steam and not comprehending what it was she was getting set to do.

“You know,” she said, letting the softened bag empty of water.

He took a step back and got hold of the round of the sink to keep from falling on his back. “What’s the matter with you?” he said.

“I want to, Robard!” she shouted.

“Want to, shit!” He backed another step until his bare behind got out into the cool air circulating off the sleeping room, and almost made him turn around.

“Yes, yes, yes!” she screamed. “You have to!” She shook her hair and closed her eyes.

He got around and out the door while she began doing something he couldn’t think to watch.

He lay staring at the amber fruit bowl on the ceiling, thinking about getting out.

Beuna stood fitting herself back into her white dress. “I used to sit sometimes, conjure I married you instead of him,” she said, her voice straining from drawing on the zipper. “He’s so goddamned dull, you know. I thought, if I just hadn’t married him, me and Robard mighta lived no telling where. Up in Memphis maybe. Oklahoma City, someplace besides a goddamn mobile home.” She shook out her hair. “I had that wrong. I’da ended up out in some goddamn tacky desert living in some tacky little house that ain’t fit for nothin. That’s cause you ain’t nothin, Robard.” She looked at him contemptuously, got a fresh hold of the zipper, and ran it up.

He lay staring at the globe, trying to keep her out.

“I told him you was here.” She pulled the strap of her shoe over her heel.

He raised off the pillow. “What was it?”

“I told him you was at E-laine,” she said absently. “I said you worked at E-laine, and I seen you, and you said hi.”

He stood up and went to the window and took a look out where he could see the truck, the first fat splots of rain just hitting the hood. He gazed at her in the low shadows. “What the shit did you do that for?”

She kept working her shoe strap up and down. “So he’d hate it,” she said, “worry I had me something he couldn’t do nothin about. I thought we was going to Memphis anyway.”

He peered out the window again, expecting to see W.W. standing in the rain. “What’d he do about it?” he said.

She walked to the edge of the fluorescent light. “Nothin,” she said, “except make me go out to that beer bar with him and get drunk and act mean. I don’t like it.”

“Get your goddamn clothes on,” he said.

“They are on.” She picked up her purse and stood beside the bathroom.

“Then come on.” He grabbed up the sack of clothes, opened the door, and stuck his head out in the rain.

Inside the truck, big gray drops were smacking the roof. He took a look up the road and around the lot on either side. He looked suspiciously in at Brashears’ office. “Is he playing ball?” he said.

She looked at her nails and brushed the crystals of water out of her hair. “Less they got rained on,” she said.

He backed the truck around and started out on the highway.

It didn’t seem right that this ought to happen, that he ought to be still worried about getting caught so close to going. It should have been a nice couple of hours and been over with. He wished there had been time to eat.

“You know what the bastard done to me last night?” Beuna said, forgetting everything.

He kept his eyes on the road, which was slick and black in the rain. The row of pink cinder-blocks shot by and he watched at the corner of the last cabin, but no one was there, and he pushed the truck a little, as the first of the dumpy buildings came closer.

Beuna pulled her skirt over her knees and crossed her legs sideways. “He made me go with him to that damned Blue Goose out there where he works, made me sit out there and drink Falstaff beer while he loused around with his nitwit friends till twelve o’clock. And you know what else?”

He couldn’t talk to her. The man on the movie marquee had given up in the rain and had left the west side blank, except for the OPEN SAT MAT in the right corner out over the street.