Joy Williams - The Visiting Privilege - New and Collected Stories

Before Heather and the Dunes on a glass-topped table was the bottle of gin, two-thirds gone, three grapefruits and a hand juicer. The label on the bottle had a picture of a little old lady who gazed out at them sternly. Beneath the table, their knees were visible, Heather’s young dimpled ones and the Dunes’ knobby ones. The knees looked troubled, even baffled, beneath the glass.

“We could take her to Mexico,” Don said. “Lu-Lu would love Mexico, I bet.” He was wearing a dirty blue billed cap with a fish leaping on it.

“Not Baja, though,” Debbie said. Her left arm was bandaged from where she’d burned it on the stove. “Too many RVs there. All those old geezers with nothing better to do in their twilight years than to drive up and down Baja. They’d flatten Lu-Lu in a minute.”

“I’ve heard those volcanic islands off Bahia Los Angeles are full of snakes,” Heather said.

The Dunes looked at her, shocked.

After a moment, Debbie said, “Lu-Lu wouldn’t like that at all.”

“She don’t know any other snakes,” Don added.

He poured more gin in all the glasses.

“Do you remember tequila, my dear?” he said to Debbie. He turned his old wrinkled face toward her.

“The beverage of Mexico,” Debbie said solemnly.

“On the back of each label is a big black crow,” Don said. “You can see it real good when the liquor’s gone.”

“The Mexicans are a morbid people,” Debbie said.

“What I like best about snakes,” Heather said, “is how they move without seeming to. They move, but they seem to be moving in place. Then suddenly they’re gone. ” She snapped her fingers wetly.

“That’s the thing you like best about ’em?” Don said morosely. “Better things than that to like.”

Heather looked at her fingers. How did they get so damp, she wondered.

“We got inquiries as far away as San Diego, did we tell you?” Don said. “San Diego wants her real bad.”

Debbie raised her chin high and shook her head back and forth. The stringy tendons in her neck trembled. “Never!” she said. “People would stare and make comments.” She shuddered. “I can hear them!”

“She’s got second sight, Debbie has,” Don confided to Heather. “It don’t use her as a vehicle much, though.”

Debbie had shut her eyes and was wobbling back and forth in her chair. “San Diego!” She groaned. “A cement floor. A room with nothing in it but Lu-Lu. Nothing! No pictures, no plants…and people staring at her through the glass. There’s a little sign telling about her happy life here in Tampa and a little about her personality, but not much, and her dimensions and all…And I can see one big fat guy holding an ice-cream sandwich in one hand and a little girl by the other and he’s saying, ‘Why that thing weighs fifteen pounds more than Daddy!’ ” Debbie gave a little yelp and dug in her ears with her fingers.

“Second sight’s no gift,” Don said.

“We’re so old,” Debbie wailed.

Don tapped the elbow of her good arm solicitously and nodded at her drink.

“We’re so old,” Debbie said, taking a sip. “Can’t take care of ourselves nor the ones we love.”

“And Heather here is young,” Don said. “Don’t make no difference.”

“We live in the wrong time, just like Lu-Lu,” Debbie said.

“Lu-Lu should have lived in the Age of Reptiles,” Heather said slowly. Speaking seemed to present certain problems. She looked at the stern old lady on the gin bottle.

“She would have loved it,” Don said.

“Those were the days,” Debbie said. “Days of doomed grandeur.”

“You know what I was reading about the other day?” Don said. “I was reading about the Neanderthals.”

Debbie looked at Don proudly. Heather scratched her shoulder. The sun beat down on the crooked part in her hair. Why has love eluded me, she wondered.

“They weren’t us, I read. They were a whole different species. But we’re the only species that are supposed to have souls, am I right? But the Neanderthals, it turned out, buried their dead Neanderthals with bits of food and flint chips and such, and even flowers. They found the graves.”

“Now how could they know there were flowers?” Debbie said.

“I forget,” Don said impatiently. “I’m seventy-six, I can’t remember everything.” He thought for a moment. “They got ways,” he said.

Debbie Dune was silent. She smoothed the little skirt of her bathing suit.

“My point is that those things might not have had souls but they thought they had souls.”

“That’s a very pretty story,” Heather said slowly.

The Dunes looked at her.

“The flowers and all,” Heather said.

“I don’t know what you’re saying, Don,” Debbie said politely.

“What I’m saying,” Don said, “is who’s to say what’s got a soul and what hasn’t.”

“Another thing I like about snakes,” Heather said, “is how they can occupy themselves for long stretches of time doing nothing.”

“I think,” Debbie said, “that what it boils down to soul-wise is simple. If things cry, they got souls. If they don’t, they don’t.”

“Lu-Lu don’t cry,” Don said.

“That’s right,” Debbie said pluckily.

“May I get some more ice,” Heather asked.

“Oh, that’s a good idea, honey. Do get some more ice,” Debbie said.

Heather stood up, carefully passed the swimming pool and went into the kitchen. Lu-Lu was there, drinking from a pan of milk.

“Hello, Lu-Lu,” Heather said. Deaf as a post, she thought.

She opened the freezer and took out a tray of ice. She looked inside the refrigerator and saw a dozen eggs and a box of shredded wheat. I should do something for these poor old people, Heather thought. Make them a quiche or something. She nibbled on a biscuit of shredded wheat and watched Lu-Lu drink her milk. Lu-Lu stared at her as she watched.

Heather walked outside. It was hot. The geraniums growing from Crisco cans looked peaked.

“Whoops,” Debbie said. “I guess we need more gin now with all this ice.”

“This is a difficult day for us,” Don said. “It is a day of decision.”

“The gin’s right on the counter there beneath the emergency phone numbers,” Debbie said.

Heather went back into the kitchen. Lu-Lu was still working away at the milk.

“Lu-Lu’s eating,” Heather said, outside again.

“She don’t eat much,” Don said.

“No, she don’t,” Debbie said. “But she does like her rats. You know when she swallows a rat, she keeps it in her gullet for a while and that rat is fine. That rat’s snug as if it were in its own little hole.”

“That rat’s oblivious,” Don said. “That rat thinks it might even have escaped.”

“Her gullet’s like a comfy little waiting room to the chamber of horrors beyond it,” Debbie said.

“You know in Mexico, in that big zoo in Mexico City, once a month they feed the boas and everybody turns out to watch. They feed ’em live chickens.”

“ Such a morbid people,” Debbie said.

Heather looked across the Dunes’ yard into the one behind her little rented house. Her diaphanous nightie hung on the clothesline, barely moving. Time to go, Heather thought. She sat in her chair, chewing on her sun-blistered lip.

Lu-Lu slithered toward them. She placed her spade-like head on Debbie’s knee.

“Poor dear doesn’t know what’s going to happen next,” Debbie said.

“We know neither the time nor the hour,” Don said. “None of us.” He peered through the glass-topped table at Lu-Lu. “Is she clouding up again?”

“She molted less than four months ago,” Debbie said. “It’s your eyes that are clouding up.”