Joy Williams - The Visiting Privilege - New and Collected Stories

Lucy had fostered Daisy’s friendship because she knew Daisy was still in love with Dwight. If someone, God, for example, had asked Daisy if she’d rather have her leg back or Dwight, she would have said, “Dwight.” Lucy felt excited about this and at the same time mystified and pitying. Knowing it always cheered Lucy up when she felt out of sorts.

“Did I tell you about the man in the supermarket with only one leg,” Daisy asked. “I had never seen him before. He was with his wife and baby and instead of being in the mother’s arms the baby was in a stroller so the three of them took up a great deal of room in the aisle, and when I turned down the aisle I became entangled with this little family. I felt that I had known this man all my life, of course. People were smiling at us. Even the wife was smiling. It was dreadful.”

“You should find someone,” Lucy said without much interest.

Daisy’s leg was in ashes in a drawer in a church garden, waiting for the rest of her.

“Oh no, no,” Daisy said modestly. “So!” she said. “You’re going to have another car!”

—

It was almost suppertime and there was the smell of meat on the air. Two small, brown birds hopped across the patchy grass and Lucy watched them with interest for birds seldom frequented their neighborhood. Whenever there were more than three birds in a given place, it was considered an infestation and a variety of measures were taken, which reduced their numbers to an acceptable level. Lucy remembered that when she was little, the birds that flew overhead sometimes cast shadows on the ground. There were flocks of them at times and she remembered hearing the creaking of their wings, but she supposed that was just the sort of thing a child might remember, having seen or heard it only once.

She set the dining room table for three as this was the night each spring when Rosette would come for dinner, bringing shad and shad roe, Dwight’s favorite meal. Rosette had been the most elegant of Dwight’s girlfriends, and the one with the smallest waist. She was now married to a man named Bob. When Rosette had been Dwight’s girlfriend, she had been called Muffin. For the last five springs, ever since Lucy and Dwight had been married, she would have the shad flown down from the North and she would bring it to their house and cook it. Yet even though shad was his favorite fish and he only got it once a year, Dwight would be coming home a little late this night because he was getting another opinion on the T-Bird. Lucy no longer accompanied him on these discouraging expeditions.

Rosette appeared in a scant, white cocktail dress and red high-heeled shoes. She had brought her own china, silver, candles and wine. She reset the table, dimmed the lights and made Lucy and herself large martinis. They sat, waiting for Dwight, speaking aimlessly about things. Rosette and Bob were providing a foster home for two delinquents, whose names were Jerry and Jackie.

“What awful children,” Rosette said. “They’re so homely too. They were cuter when they were younger, now their noses are really long and their jaws are odd-looking too. I gave them bunny baskets this year and Jackie wrote me a note saying that what she really needed was a prescription for birth-control pills.”

When Dwight arrived, Rosette was saying, “Guilt’s not a bad thing to have. There are worse things to have than guilt.” She looked admiringly at Dwight and said, “You’re a handsome eyeful.” She made him a martini, which he drank quickly, then she made them all another one. Drinking hers, Lucy stood and watched the T-Bird in the driveway. It was a dainty car, and the paint was so black it looked wet. Rosette prepared the fish with great solemnity, bending over Lucy’s somewhat dirty broiler. They all ate in a measured way. Lucy tried to eat the roe one small egg at a time but found that this was impossible.

“I saw Jerry this afternoon walking down the street carrying a weed whacker,” Dwight said. “Does he do yard work now? Yard work’s a good occupation for a boy.”

“Delinquents aren’t always culprits,” Rosette said. “That’s what many people don’t understand, but no, Jerry is not doing yard work, he probably stole that thing off someone’s lawn. Bob tries to talk to him but Jerry doesn’t heed a word he says. Bob’s not very convincing.”

“How is Bob?” Lucy asked.

“Husband Bob is a call I never should have answered,” Rosette said.

Lucy crossed her arms over her stomach and squeezed herself with delight because Rosette said the same thing each year when she was asked about Bob.

“Life with Husband Bob is a long twilight of drinking and listless anecdote,” Rosette said.

Lucy giggled, because Rosette always said this, too.

—

The next day, Dwight told Lucy of his intentions to bring the T-Bird into the house. “She won’t last long on the street,” he said. “She’s a honey but she’s tired. Elements are hard on a car and it’s the elements that have done this sweet little car in. We’ll put her in the living room, which is underfurnished anyway, and it will be like living with a work of art right in our living room. We’ll keep her shined up and sit inside her and talk. It’s very peaceful inside that little car, you know.”

The T-Bird looked alert and coquettish as they spoke around it.

“That car was meant to know the open road,” Lucy said. “I think we should drive it till it drops.” Dwight looked at her sorrowfully and she widened her eyes, not believing she had said such a thing. “Well,” she said, “I don’t think a car should be in a house, but maybe we could bring it in for a little while and then if we don’t like it we could take it out again.”

He put his arms around her and embraced her and she could hear his heart pounding away in his chest with gratitude and excitement.

Lucy called Daisy on the telephone. The banging and sawing had already begun. “Men go odd differently than women,” Daisy said. “That’s always been the case. For example, I read that men are exploring how to turn the earth around toxic waste dumps into glass by the insertion of high-temperature electric probes. A woman would never think of something like that.”

Dwight worked feverishly for days. He removed the picture window, took down the wall, shored up the floor, built a ramp, drained the car of all its fluids so it wouldn’t leak on the rug, pushed it into the house, replaced the studs, put back the window, erected fresh Sheetrock and repainted the entire room. In the room, the car looked like a big doll’s car. But it didn’t look bad inside the house at all and Lucy didn’t mind it being there, although she didn’t like it when Dwight raised the hood. She didn’t care for the hood being raised one bit and always lowered it when she saw it was up. She thought about the Thunderbird most often at night when she was in bed lying beside Dwight and then she would marvel at its silent, unseen presence in the room beside them, taking up space, so strange and shining and full of rot.

They would sit frequently in the car, in their house, not going anywhere, looking through the windshield out at the window and through the window to the street. They didn’t invite anyone over for this. Soon, Dwight took to sitting in the car by himself. Dwight was tired. It was taking him a while to bounce back from the carpentry. Lucy saw him there one day behind the wheel, one arm bent and dangling over the glossy door, his eyes shut, his mouth slightly open, his hair as black as she had ever seen it. She couldn’t remember the first time she had noticed him, really noticed him, the way he must have first noticed her when she’d been a baby.

“I wish you’d stop that, Dwight,” she said.

He opened his eyes. “You should try this by yourself,” he said. “Just try it and tell me what you think.”