Theodore Wheeler - Bad Faith

Jacq once went into detail about their sex life, after I dared her to. We were on a hotel balcony in Los Angeles, the night after she met design students at Otis. It was late and we’d drunk enough to say stupid things. “He’s hard all the time, you know. It never goes away. He fucked me till I bled. He came on my tits. I’d be soaked all over, in both his and mine. We fucked in half the public washrooms of New York, I’m sure.” How could I forget these things? “He had me go down on him in theaters, in changing rooms; I took his fingers in cabs, on the subway. In restaurant washrooms he entered from behind and came inside me. Old Ampiere. There’s a man with guts.”

She would deny these things were true, later, like such denials could mean something. They meant nothing. We’d never live down that monologue, I didn’t think. Even if the marriage ended, the declaration she made that night, that anthem she sang bitterly and clear, would live on.

Anna wanted to take a cab to Auburn Avenue, but I convinced her to ride the train with me. We went to Underground Atlanta first to shop for souvenirs. Anna bought a Braves hat for her husband. “I’m sure he won’t wear it,” she said. “He only wears Cards hats and Pujols jerseys. It’s politics.” She bought a tube of M&Ms for no real reason. They were there. After that we bought Coke floats from a vendor and sat on a rubbery green bench to fish globs of soft serve from cups. Anna took the toy radio from her purse and set it between us on the bench. “Just so we don’t get bored,” she said.

I told a story from my childhood about how I picked up walnuts from the lawn before my dad mowed. (I don’t know what brought this up. This was peanut country. Why should I think of Connecticut walnuts?) The shells dulled the blades if they were mowed over, so it was my job to collect them in a grocery sack and throw them away. We had a few walnut trees, all mature and thriving. Every summer we’d end up with hundreds of pounds of nuts. They were thick with green rind when they fell, nearly as big as baseballs sometimes, and they leaked a disgusting-smelling black juice that stained my skin. The juice would kill the grass if left to its purpose.

“I hated it so much,” I told Anna. A voice cackled some grievance from the radio, suddenly loud. “But that was my job, every Saturday. Dad supervised from the patio. He’d notice if I missed any, then have me crisscross the lawn with a point of his finger.”

Anna was very affected by the story. She grimaced. Her face glowed with sweat. “I did that for my dad too,” she said, remembering. “And I still won’t eat a walnut unless somebody makes me.”

I was comfortable with women like Anna. I knew what to say to them and how I was expected to behave. I could listen without interrupting. These were things I learned in my old career, when I was a travel agent. I knew what kinds of courtesy pleased bourgeois women.

We visited Ebenezer Baptist after another train ride. At the back of the pews we stood close and stared ahead, watching tourists photograph each other. I felt guilty being there. The church didn’t mean much to me. It was famous. I’d seen it in movies, on the History Channel. There wasn’t any reason for me to be there, except to be there with Anna. It was different for other people. There were big families alive with sweat and laughter, some in tears. This was a pilgrimage to them. They dressed in colorful, stiff dresses, in purple silk shirts and black slacks. There was an old man with a white mustache who wore a suit and hat. He leaned on a three-pronged aluminum cane. These people hugged and took photos, ones they would show off to folks back home, I imagined.

At the Martin Luther King tomb, Anna and I sat by each other on the edge of the fountain that surrounds it, sharing a bottle of soda in the sun. Anna sat with her legs crossed, a pleated skirt floating on her thighs. We stared into the mirrored glass across from us and listened to the rippling water. I recognized a few people from Ebenezer who were doing the same self-guided we were, the old man with the cane. Anna talked about her husband again. She was supposed to call him during the day, after lunch, and in the evening after dinner. But she didn’t that day. She wondered if he missed her call, or if he was too busy to notice.

Anna talked about her husband a lot. What food he ate, what clothes he wore, what movies he didn’t care for. She talked about his parents and friends, his sleeping habits. I felt oddly close to Anna when she talked about Jon — and to him too. I didn’t know this man, I’d never met or heard of him, but I was privy to his private details. She told me his shirt size, where he went to high school, the names of his siblings, what he smelled like after wearing a suit all day in the hot summer sun. I wondered if Anna had a pet name for his penis, and if she did, what that pet name was. Did she call it Napoleon, his dick? Mama’s little helper? The long, lazy weekend? The fund-raiser? I don’t know why, but every detail she told about him seemed to offer some clue as to what she might have called his prick. I fed all the information she shared into the game, hand on my chin, deep in thought, as if this was a code I could eventually crack.

I didn’t actually like hearing about him, the game aside. At the tomb I couldn’t help myself. I said, “You talk about him too much.”

“Who? Jon?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. It’s fine for a woman to talk about her husband.” I put a hand on her back and apologized for saying anything. I’d merely wanted to interrupt her, I think. “I don’t care to hear about men I’ve never met. That’s all.”

She fumbled to adjust her sunglasses, turned the toy radio off. She was shaking.

“What will we do tonight?” I asked. “I’d like to drive somewhere, if we had a car.”

Anna let her eyes flicker behind her sunglasses. She didn’t have anything else to say. I looked at her eyes through the dark lenses, and, holding her arms at her sides, I kissed her. Her mouth opened, although she didn’t press back. I tasted the sugar on her lips, from the Coke, and breathed in the chlorine mist of the fountain.

We looked around as if we expected to be caught when the kiss was over. We looked for anyone who might have seen. It was just the old black man with the mustache who looked, hat tilted back on his skull, leaning on that three-pronged cane.

Jacq returned from Savannah the next afternoon. She wanted to tell me about her time with the collector, but I wouldn’t listen. I told her I’d be staying in Atlanta. She would not be. I told her there was a return ticket booked in her name. She’d fly back to Alliance without me. Jacq didn’t care for the idea. She threw a fit in the cab, and I had to check her bag for her. It wasn’t until she was in line at security that she finally relented. Jacq couldn’t resist a parting shot, not in an airport. She said she was happy to be rid of me for a few days. “Even if the plane crashes and I die,” she said, “I’ll be glad to do it alone.”

I knew Anna would be waiting on the terrace the next morning. She knew I’d come sit with her. We lounged in the patio chairs and killed time and ate hungrily from a plate of melon and avocado slices. The air was heavy with smog and vapor, the sun already high. Plants had shot up all over the place, broad-leafed and waxy. Trees of heaven at the edges of parking lots, along the roadside, on the tops of hills. You couldn’t stop them, it seemed. They grew too fast to get rid of. They sprouted everywhere.

Anna played her radio that morning. We talked some, but didn’t have all that much to say. We’d seen each other again the night before for a movie at a mall theater near the hotel. There were drinks after that. We stayed up late talking. I didn’t mention that Jacq went home. Anna didn’t ask about my wife anymore, she didn’t question where Jacq was. Anna was uncomfortable thinking about it. It was easier to talk about her husband, to talk about Jon, since she couldn’t stop. I didn’t mind talking about him then, not at breakfast anyway, since there were open spaces to stare off into, a busy thoroughfare nearby to watch cars. I’d listen enough to respond now and then, although it wasn’t necessary. Anna just wanted to work her mouth.