Dana Spiotta - Lightning Field

“You have no faith in me. I am strong, I can handle anything. I can take it.”

He smiled, and then he looked away from the wall and looked at her directly. He shook his head.

“You’re always looking for the grand sacrifice, the salvation, the thing to give yourself over to. But I’m not built for these things. It’s me. I’ve lost faith in the world as a place I can reliably inhabit. It takes so much energy — so many possible interpretations. No way to distinguish one from the other. A paralysis, an ambivalence ensues. You’re perfect. You have such overwhelming certainty and confidence. But me? I just can’t.”

“Can I stay a bit longer?”

“I like small, orderly things I can contain. That I can hold completely in my head, with an order and an end.”

He was driving with one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding his coffee. She offered to hold his cup for him, but he waved her off. The kids lay low in the narrow backseat of the truck. Lisa hated it, it wasn’t safe for kids their age, but they had no choice. Mark kept spilling coffee on his thick fingers, and then when he took a sip of the hot liquid, some of it spilled on his shirt.

“Goddamn too much to expect a peaceful cup of coffee on a Sunday morning.” He rolled down his window and tossed outthe rest of the coffee. Then he tossed the cup in the foot well on Lisa’s side, where she watched it roll out of sight and clink next to two other cups already under the seat.

Lisa went over her shopping list.

“You know I only got thirty hours last week.”

She nodded and looked at him. He still had one hand on the steering wheel. The other hand put a cigarette in his mouth and snapped his lighter open, lighting it. He squinted at the dash, half from the noon-bright sun they now faced, and half from the smoke that curled out of his mouth. Lisa opened her window. Glanced at the cigarette and then in the backseat at the kids. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. She found most things Mark did were bad for the kids to see or hear or have any proximity to. He had learned this by now. She went back to her list, whittling it down to its bare minimum.

“We can’t get much. We are already late on rent and the phone and the electric bill will come Monday,” he said.

“I’ve got nine hours’ cleaning money coming.” He didn’t look at her.

“Oh, well, that’s a relief. Let’s see, that’s what? A hundred and ten bucks? And then you gotta give Brenshaw some money to baby-sit, and that leaves about fifty bucks. No, Lisa.”

“Mrs. Brenshaw doesn’t care if I pay her anything. I just do some shopping for her and go to the post office. I help her cook. That’s all.”

Mark looked at her and then tossed his cigarette. He put a hand on her plump knee. She had gotten very heavy since the twins, and she’d taken to baggy sweatshirts and jeans. Her hair was pulled back, and she seldom wore lipstick or even earrings. Still, she was smooth-cheeked and young. He held her knee for a moment.

“You need to ask your mother for some help.”

Lisa stared out the window.

“No. I can’t do that, Mark.”

He pulled his hand off her knee and turned the steering wheel leftward, moving the truck into a parking space.

“Don’t be this way. We don’t have enough money. We are falling way behind.”

“Look, I’m not asking her for money. We already owe her money. I’ll pick up more cleaning hours. We’ll manage.”

“No, Lisa, you already can’t even manage to keep our apartment clean. There are piles of laundry and there is never any food in the fridge. I’m sick of it. Just ask her for five hundred. It means nothing to her.” But it was no use. She was being a stubborn bitch. She was in a foul mood. When she was trying to get him up this morning, he grabbed her arm and told her to give him a break. He just pulled her a tiny bit too hard. He honestly hadn’t meant to, and now she would be quiet and angry all day. The kids were quiet in the back, somehow taking Lisa’s mood and multiplying it.

Alex gripped his mother’s hand as they walked across the parking lot following Mark and Alisa. Alisa did not want to hold her father’s hand. She kept pulling back to her mother. He moved too fast across the parking lot. Alisa went limp, a passive resister, her little body made dead weight. When he pulled at her she became a rag doll on the ground. He cursed, shot Lisa a look, then picked Alisa up. She continued to play dead, her head lolling around and her arms limp. She would do this to him. In the living room at bedtime, he’d grab her fast and she’d fall backward, like she’d been dealt a blow. It was kind of disturbing, her dead falls, even from the tiny height of a five-year-old body. She was fearless in her resistance of him. He wouldcontinue to pull her, and she would drag on the ground, her legs catching on table legs and doorjambs, until he gave up and picked her up. Then she became suddenly animated, her whole body a writhing, squirming thing, wriggling against his grip. He would nearly drop her, she became so difficult to hold, and he gave up, the five-year-old body outsmarting his huge person.

In the parking lot she did not squirm but continued to play dead. He thought people walking by would think she’d passed out, but at least she wasn’t squirming.

Lisa watched the back of Mark and her tiny daughter’s head bobbing. Her little face was blank. She wished Alisa wouldn’t behave like this toward Mark, but kids were not diplomatic in that way. They were Richter scales of disturbances, tiny, finely calibrated indicators of subarticulated resentments. At the entrance to the Safeway, Mark turned to Lisa and handed her the body of Alisa. Alisa immediately revived and hugged her mother with arms and legs, an exaggerated affection. Alex clung tighter to not just Lisa’s hand but her whole forearm. Mark regarded them for a moment, the three of them like refugees in some news footage, huddled under the shellfire of the enemy. He, of course, was the enemy, or the whole world was. Things had become stuck this way. He wanted to appeal to Alex, at least, but instead he turned away from them and strode through the automatic doors, the AC feeling good and momentarily relieving his frustration. He waited by a shopping cart as Lisa walked in, child-upholstered, staggering a bit. She peeled Alisa from her neck and pushed her into the kiddie seat of the shopping cart. Alisa still tried to cling to her from her seat, but Lisa firmly placed her daughter’s hands on the cart handle. Mark had his arms folded, watching. Lisa lifted thetight-gripped Alex and placed him standing in the cart next to where his sister sat.

“Are we ready or what?” Mark said, scowling at his watch. Lisa pushed the cart after him, pulling her list out. He led them, although he had nothing specific in mind. She had the list. She stopped behind him, filling the cart with paper towels and jars of peanut butter and tubes of toothpaste. She read labels intently. She studied them. She examined produce. Smelled it. Looked at expiration dates and asked the produce clerk the origins of things. She picked expensive organic chicken. Mark didn’t say anything. Time and money were no object to Lisa.

Alex reached for a package of cookies, and Mark grabbed it out of his hands.

“No extras today. We can’t afford it.” Alex looked at his mother.

“Don’t look at her. I’m the walking wallet. Daddy pays, not Mommy.”

Lisa pushed the cart forward. Mark shook his head. How did he get to be the one who always said no? She was the one who had too much pride to ask for help.

After the checkout girl took Mark’s money, he let Lisa push the cart of packages to the truck. He leaned against the car smoking as she unloaded the bags into the back.