Richard Ford - Wildlife

I walked into the bathroom, where the light was off. I knew my mother had turned it off, and I turned it on again. Over the music in the living room I heard my mother say out loud, ‘It’s passionate music, isn’t it?’ And then their feet scuffed on the floor some more.

The bathroom was all white with white towels and a white tub. I could see where my mother had dried her hands on a towel. I could see hairs that were hers on the white sink top, could smell her perfume in the warm air. Warren’s possessions were laid out in a straight row: a safety razor, a tube of shaving cream, a bottle of red hair tonic, a leather bottle of shaving lotion, a pair of silver tweezers, a long black comb and a brush with yellow bristles that had a strap across the top of it and the initials WBM on the leather. I was not looking for anything. I only wanted to be out of the living room where the music was going and Warren Miller and my mother were dancing. I opened the drawer under the sink and only a white washrag was there, folded and clean with a new bar of soap on top.

I closed the drawer and walked back into the bedroom and opened the closet. Warren’s suits were hanging in a row there and several large pairs of shoes — one a pair of brown golf shoes — were lined up under them. An Army uniform was hung at the end, and on the floor inside the door was a pair of women’s silver high heels.

Behind the suits on the closet wall were pictures and other things hung in frames. I pulled the light string and pushed the suits apart to see. It smelled like mothballs, and it was cool. Warren Miller’s discharge certificate from the Army and his graduation diploma from Dartmouth College were hanging side by side. There was a picture of two men in uniforms standing beside an old airplane at the edge of what looked like a jungle. There was also a framed picture of Warren Miller standing beside the woman whose picture was in the living room. They were both dressed in nice clothes, and the woman was smiling and holding some white flowers. They were squinting in the sun. The picture had been taken years before, but Warren looked familiar, big and heavy and tall, only with thicker, shorter hair. To the side of the pictures was a metal leg brace hung from a nail, a shiny steel device with pink straps and movable buckles and hinges that must’ve been what Warren wore on his leg, and that made him limp but also able to walk at all.

I closed the closet and walked back into the bedroom, which seemed warmer. A book was face-down on the lighted bed table. The cover had a painting of a cowboy riding a galloping white horse, holding a woman whose blouse was torn, and shooting at men who were chasing them on horses. Texas Trouble was the title.

I opened the bed table drawer and inside were some golf tees and a small worn Bible with a green bookmark in it. The drawer smelled like talcum powder. Two silver knives like the one he had given me, with BURMA-1943 engraved on them, were also in the drawer. And there was a gun, a small automatic with a short barrel and a black plastic handle. I had picked up guns before. My father kept one in the same place Warren Miller did. This one was a small calibre — a.32 or even less than that, something to scare people with or wound them but not necessarily kill them. I picked it up and it was heavier than I thought it would be, and seemed more dangerous than I’d thought at first. I took a good grip, put my finger around the trigger, pointed the gun at the closet door, and made a soft little popping sound with my lips. I thought about shooting someone, following them, aiming, holding my arm and hand steady, then pulling the trigger. I had no one in mind to shoot. Shooting someone was a thing I was sure I’d never do. There were those things, after all. And it was all right to know about them long before you had the opportunity or the desire.

I turned to put the gun back in the drawer, but I saw that there was a white handkerchief that had been lying underneath it. The handkerchief had the same initials that were on the brush — WBM — stitched on the corner in blue letters. And for some reason I pressed my hand on the handkerchief, which was folded into a square. And I felt something inside or underneath it. I turned the handkerchief back so I could see what I’d felt, and there was one prophylactic rubber in a red and gold tinfoil envelope. I had seen one before. In fact, I’d seen them plenty of times, though I had never used one. Boys at the school I’d gone to in Lewiston had them and showed them off. No one I knew in school in Great Falls had shown me one, though the boys talked about fucking girls there, and I believed they had them and knew about them. I had never known my father to have any, although I had thought about his having them, and had even looked for them in his drawers. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I’d found them, because what I thought about the subject was that it was his business, his and my mother’s. I wasn’t innocent about life, about what people did with each other when they were alone. I knew they did what they pleased.

It did not surprise me that Warren Miller had a rubber, though I could not think about him using it. When I tried I could only picture him sitting on the side of the bed where I was, wearing his underwear, holding the edge of the mattress, wearing socks and staring at nothing but the floor. A woman was not involved. But I thought it was his right to have a rubber if he wanted it. I picked it up off the white handkerchief. Murphy was the name of the company that made it, in Akron, Ohio. I squeezed the envelope between my fingers, felt the outline of it inside. I smelled it, and it smelled starchy from the handkerchief. I thought about the possibility of opening it. But I had nothing whatsoever that I could do with it.

I laid it back between the folds of the handkerchief and put the gun back on top. Though as I did that I thought about Warren’s wife, Marie LaRose or whatever her name was, and that she had gone out of this house, this very room, and didn’t intend to come back. And that Warren was alone here, with that to remember and think about. I closed the drawer, then walked back out to where Warren Miller and my mother were, where the music had stopped.

My mother was sitting on the piano bench, her legs pushed out in front of her. Her green shoes weren’t off, but her green dress was up above her knees and she was fanning herself with a sheet of music off the piano. She smiled at me as if she’d expected to see me come out of the room at that very moment. Warren Miller was sitting at the dinner table, where all the dishes and plates were. He was smoking his cigar again.

‘Did you look into all of Warren’s drawers in there?’ my mother said, smiling and fanning herself. Her voice was still deep. ‘You’ll find out his secrets. I’m sure he has a lot of them.’

‘None that I wouldn’t share with him,’ Warren said. He had unbuttoned his top shirt button and was sweating under his arms.

‘When Joe’s father and I first married,’ my mother said, ‘I rented a sailor costume and did a little cute tap dance when he got home from teaching golf. It was an anniversary present. He loved it. Something made me think of that just now.’

‘I bet he did. I bet that was nice.’ Warren took his glasses off and wiped them with his napkin, then dabbed his eyes with it. His face looked larger without his glasses and whiter. ‘Your mother’s a very passionate dancer, you know that, Joe?’

‘He means I’ll go till I drop,’ my mother said. ‘It’s hot as fire in this house, of course. Anybody’d drop dead.’ My mother looked at me as if she’d just noticed me for the first time since I came back into the room. ‘What would you like to do now, sweetheart?’ she said. ‘I’m sure we’re just boring you to death. At least I’m sure I am.’