Mark Dunn - We Five

“Your last name, Jerry,” said Clara steadily. “Has it always been Castle?”

Jerry shook his head. “It used to be Caster. But I hated it. I changed it.”

Clara grabbed the edge of the table. “I have to ask the two of you something,” Clara went on, now anything but emotionally steady. “You have to be very honest with me. Are you having sex?”

Maggie shrieked. “ Mama !”

“I have to know.”

“You don’t have to know. And you certainly don’t have to know right in front of Jerry and Ms. Mobr—”

“She does have to know,” interrupted Lucille. “It’s very important. Tell us if the two of you are sleeping together.”

As Maggie hedged, Jerry stepped in. “Yes, we had sex. One time. An hour ago. Out in the tool shed.”

Clara and Lucille exchanged bug-eyed looks of almost comic-book horror. Picking up on this, Jerry made his case: “I’m sure you’ve heard about the game by now, but the game’s over. You have my word. Mags and I — we did it because we wanted to. I wanted to. She wanted to. She’s white and over twenty-one as they say, and she can do whatever she wants to with her own body, so maybe we can all just drop it, okay?”

Maggie gave her mother a cold stare. “What is wrong with you — I mean, what is wrong with you today ?”

“Maggie — Oh God. Maggie, Maggie — Oh my dear God.”

Lucille grabbed Clara’s hand for strength. Then she looked up into the quizzical faces of Maggie and Jerry. To Maggie she said, “Honey-girl. Forgive the language, sweetie, but you just screwed your brother.”

Jerry left without speaking a word.

Lucille volunteered to drive a trembling Maggie to the doctor to get her an ECP. As she and Lucille were walking out the door, Maggie said to her mother, “Please be here when I come back.”

“I will, baby. I will.”

By now the rain had let up and the skies had partially cleared. There was more bad weather headed this way the forecasters said, but not until tomorrow. Jerry got in the car and drove toward Lucky Aces to clean out his locker and pick up his last check. He took a wrong turn and had to double back.

He nearly ran over a dog.

Ruth had made up her mind. Earlier that afternoon, she’d discussed the whole matter with Maggie on the patio. Under a thick canopy of gathering rainclouds, the two drank Frescas and ate Bugles and bean dip, and Ruth had decided this was a good time — given all that had happened — for her to make a major change in her life. She told Maggie about the very last conversation she’d had with Cain. It was over coffee at Harvey Joe’s on the square. Cain had announced to Ruth that he’d decided to make a big change with his own life: he was going to Los Angeles to see if he could get a job working in movies or television or something. All his life he’d loved old movies and wanted to be a movie director.

“But you have to pay your dues,” he’d told Ruth. “You have to start at the bottom and work your way up. I’m young. I’ve got time.”

“What about Pat?” asked Ruth.

Cain had laughed, his eyes registering warm thoughts about the man he loved. “I have this fantasy that I become a big Hollywood director and then I bring Pat out to the coast and ‘discover’ him and he becomes the next Chris O’Donnell.”

“That shouldn’t be your only motivator.”

“Of course not. It’s just one of ’em. So instead of being a casino cocktail waitress, you should do what everybody else in Hollywood does who’s waiting for their big break — you should wait tables on Rodeo Drive. You can slip your screenplays into the briefcases of Hollywood executives when they aren’t looking.”

“How do you know I’d ever want to write movies?”

“You like to write — to write stories, right ? Writing film scripts is a way to write stories and get paid obscene amounts of money for them.”

“So what are you saying?”

“What do you think I’m saying? I want you to come out to Hollywood with me.”

Ruth paused to let a little Fresca fizz escape through her nose. Maggie offered her a napkin. “Anyway, I told him I would. Right then and there. That’s why it blew my mind when I found out what he did right after Pat died. I didn’t know he was that obsessed over him. I know we’re all a little crazy — everybody in their own twisted way — but he was smart and he had so much promise, and Mags, you should have heard how he’d go on about things he was passionate about — politics and gay rights and things you’d never think might live inside that brilliant brain of his. And then he does something like this — something so, so, so stupid. Deadly stupid. What the fuck is wrong with people? Why are human beings so fucked up?”

“Don’t ask me, Ruth. My family should be on the cover of Fucked Up magazine.”

“So everybody says Hollywood is this messed-up town and all the really crazy people gravitate there, but you know what? I don’t think Hollywood’s any more messed up than Bellevenue, Mississippi, or Armpit, Minnesota, or any other place. So I’m going out there to write screenplays about messed-up people and see if I can’t make a living at it.”

“What are we gonna do without you?”

“You don’t think we’ll be in touch? For Chrissakes, Mags! Herb and Lucille’ll be tugging me back home for visits on every holiday that has something to do with either Jesus or the Pilgrims, plus ya’ll will all be looking for excuses to come out to L.A. and sleep on my floor, just watch.”

“When are you leaving?”

“As soon as I can. Viv won’t like it. She’s asked me to move in with her twice already.”

“Will you miss her ?”

“Of course I will. I really like Viv, you know that. But I don’t like it here . Everybody wandering around, waiting for something to happen and then when something does happen, it’s horror-movie shit. It’s like what those people in London went through during the Blitz.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Well, I’ll tell you: you sit around and drink your tea with nervous hands and talk about puddings and then some German flies over your house and drops a bomb on you. That’s kind of what we got now. Mind-numbing boredom followed by sudden apocalypse and then whoever’s still standing when all the dust settles gets to go right back to being bored again.”

“I think you really are going to make it as a writer, Ruth.”

“Thank you, doll. Do you want to go over to the casino with me? It might be nice to have someone else in the room when I have to drop the arrivederci bomb on Viv.”

Maggie shook her head. “Do you mind if I don’t? It’s so peaceful and quiet out here on the patio. I like watching the way the clouds darken up before a storm. Sometimes I really like storms, Ruth. I like getting blown around by forces that have absolutely nothing to do with human beings. It reminds me that as much as we think we’re in charge of our destinies, we aren’t. We’re just leaves in the wind.”

Ruth got up. She walked over to Maggie and kissed her on the cheek. “You’re just now figuring that out?”

Vivian Colthurst took it better than Ruth thought she would. Partly because Ruth left the window open for Vivian to move out to Hollywood herself if she liked, “maybe after I get myself established. Otherwise, it would be a step down for you, Viv. I know you like your supervisor’s job at the casino and I don’t know how many casinos there are in Southern California, let alone whether you could find another job like the one you have now.”

“I suppose you’re right,” sighed Vivian. “You know what? As a little going-away present, I’m gonna time-clock you in for the next two weeks. That way you’ll have a little extra money for your move.”