Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

“One engages,” Elliot said, “and then one sees.”

“How can you have done it?” she demanded. “You promised me.”

“First the promises,” Elliot said, “and then the rest.”

“Last time was supposed to be the last time,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, “I remember.”

“I can’t stand it,” she said. “You reduce me to hysterics.” She wrung her hands for him to see. “See? Here I am, I’m in hysterics.”

“What can I say?” Elliot asked. He went to the bottle and refilled his glass. “Maybe you shouldn’t watch.”

“You want me to be forbearing, Chas? I’m not going to be.”

“The last thing I want,” Elliot said, “is an argument.”

“I’ll give you a fucking argument. You didn’t have to drink. All you had to do was come home.”

“That must have been the problem,” he said.

Then he ducked, alert at the last possible second to the missile that came for him at hairline level. Covering up, he heard the shattering of glass, and a fine rain of crystals enveloped him. She had sailed the sugar bowl at him; it had smashed against the wall above his head and there was sugar and glass in his hair.

“You bastard!” she screamed. “You are undermining me!”

“You ought not to throw things at me,” Elliot said. “I don’t throw things at you.”

He left her frozen into her follow-through and went into the living room to turn the music off. When he returned she was leaning back against the wall, rubbing her right elbow with her left hand. Her eyes were bright. She had picked up one of her boots from the middle of the kitchen floor and stood holding it.

“What the hell do you mean, that must have been the problem?”

He set his glass on the edge of the sink with an unsteady hand and turned to her. “What do I mean? I mean that most of the time I’m putting one foot in front of the other like a good soldier and I’m out of it from the neck up. But there are times when I don’t think I will ever be dead enough — or dead long enough — to get the taste of this life off my teeth. That’s what I mean!”

She looked at him dry-eyed. “Poor fella,” she said.

“What you have to understand, Grace, is that this drink I’m having”—he raised the glass toward her in a gesture of salute—“is the only worthwhile thing I’ve done in the last year and a half. It’s the only thing in my life that means jack shit, the closest thing to satisfaction I’ve had. Now how can you begrudge me that? It’s the best I’m capable of.”

“You’ll go too far,” she said to him. “You’ll see.”

“What’s that, Grace? A threat to walk?” He was grinding his teeth. “Don’t make me laugh. You, walk? You, the friend of the unfortunate?”

“Don’t you hit me,” she said when she looked at his face. “Don’t you dare.”

“You, the Christian Queen of Calvary, walk? Why, I don’t believe that for a minute.”

She ran a hand through her hair and bit her lip. “No, we stay,” she said. Anger and distraction made her look young. Her cheeks blazed rosy against the general pallor of her skin. “In my family we stay until the fella dies. That’s the tradition. We stay and pour it for them and they die.”

He put his drink down and shook his head.

“I thought we’d come through,” Grace said. “I was sure.”

“No,” Elliot said. “Not altogether.”

They stood in silence for a minute. Elliot sat down at the oilcloth-covered table. Grace walked around it and poured herself a whiskey.

“You are undermining me, Chas. You are making things impossible for me and I just don’t know.” She drank and winced. “I’m not going to stay through another drunk. I’m telling you right now. I haven’t got it in me. I’ll die.”

He did not want to look at her. He watched the flakes settle against the glass of the kitchen door. “Do what you feel the need of,” he said.

“I just can’t take it,” she said. Her voice was not scolding but measured and reasonable. “It’s February. And I went to court this morning and lost Vopotik.”

Once again, he thought, my troubles are going to be obviated by those of the deserving poor. He said, “Which one was that?”

“Don’t you remember them? The three-year-old with the broken fingers?”

He shrugged. Grace sipped her whiskey.

“I told you. I said I had a three-year-old with broken fingers, and you said, ‘Maybe he owed somebody money.’”

“Yes,” he said, “I remember now.”

“You ought to see the Vopotiks, Chas. The woman is young and obese. She’s so young that for a while I thought I could get to her as a juvenile. The guy is a biker. They believe the kid came from another planet to control their lives. They believe this literally, both of them.”

“You shouldn’t get involved that way,” Elliot said. “You should leave it to the caseworkers.”

“They scared their first caseworker all the way to California. They were following me to work.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“Are you kidding?” she asked. “Of course I didn’t.” To Elliot’s surprise, his wife poured herself a second whiskey. “You know how they address the child? As ‘dude.’ She says to it, ‘Hey, dude.’” Grace shuddered with loathing. “You can’t imagine! The woman munching Twinkies. The kid smelling of shit. They’re high morning, noon, and night, but you can’t get anybody for that these days.”

“People must really hate it,” Elliot said, “when somebody tells them they’re not treating their kids right.”

“They definitely don’t want to hear it,” Grace said. “You’re right.” She sat stirring her drink, frowning into the glass. “The Vopotik child will die, I think.”

“Surely not,” Elliot said.

“This one I think will die,” Grace said. She took a deep breath and puffed out her cheeks and looked at him forlornly. “The situation’s extreme. Of course, sometimes you wonder whether it makes any difference. That’s the big question, isn’t it?”

“I would think,” Elliot said, “that would be the one question you didn’t ask.”

“But you do,” she said. “You wonder: Ought they to live at all? To continue the cycle?” She put a hand to her hair and shook her head as if in confusion. “Some of these folks, my God, the poor things cannot put Wednesday on top of Tuesday to save their lives.”

“It’s a trick,” Elliot agreed, “a lot of them can’t manage.”

“And kids are small, they’re handy and underfoot. They make noise. They can’t hurt you back.”

“I suppose child abuse is something people can do together,” Elliot said.

“Some kids are obnoxious. No question about it.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Elliot said.

“Maybe you should stop complaining. Maybe you’re better off. Maybe your kids are better off unborn.”

“Better off or not,” Elliot said, “it looks like they’ll stay that way.”

“I mean our kids, of course,” Grace said. “I’m not blaming you, understand? It’s just that here we are with you drunk again and me losing Vopotik, so I thought why not get into the big unaskable questions.” She got up and folded her arms and began to pace up and down the kitchen. “Oh,” she said when her eye fell upon the bottle, “that’s good stuff, Chas. You won’t mind if I have another? I’ll leave you enough to get loaded on.”

Elliot watched her pour. So much pain, he thought; such anger and confusion. He was tired of pain, anger, and confusion; they were what had got him in trouble that very morning.

The liquor seemed to be giving him a perverse lucidity when all he now required was oblivion. His rage, especially, was intact in its salting of alcohol. Its contours were palpable and bleeding at the borders. Booze was good for rage. Booze could keep it burning through the darkest night.