Joy Williams - The Visiting Privilege - New and Collected Stories

“This is the one, I’m going out in this one,” her child said. He was thin, his hair was gray.

“I wasn’t thinking,” May said. “Please give it back, I can’t think about any of this.”

“I was born to wear this shirt,” her child said.

—

In the Lucky Kittens, over the bar, was a large painting of kittens crawling out of a sack. The sack was huge, out of proportion to the sea and the sky behind it. When May looked at it for a time, the sack appeared to tremble. One night, as she was walking home, someone brushed against her, almost knocking her down, and ran off with her purse. Her purse had fifteen dollars in it and in it too were the postcards and pictures of Morocco. May continued to walk home, her left arm still feeling the weight of the purse. It seemed heavier now that it wasn’t there. She pushed herself forward, looking, out of habit, into the handsome homes along the street. The rooms were artfully lit as though on specific display for the passerby. No one was ever seen in them. At home, she looked at herself in the mirror for bruises. There were none, although her face was deeply flushed.

“You’ve been robbed,” she said to the face.

She went into her parlor. On the floor above, in either the rose room or the yellow room, someone shifted around. Her arm ached. She turned off the light and sat in the dark, rubbing her arm.

“The temperature of the desert can reach one hundred and seventy-five degrees,” she said aloud. “At night, it can fall below freezing. Many a time I awoke in the morning to find a sheet of ice over the water in the glass beside my bed.” It was something that had been written on one of the cards. She could see it all, the writing, the words, plain as day.

Some time later, she heard Bomber’s voice. “Gramma,” he said, “why are you sitting in the dark?” The light was on again.

“Hi!” May said.

“Sometimes,” Bomber said, “she lies out in the garden and the fog rolls in, and she stays right out there.”

“The fog will be swirling around me,” May said, “and Bomber will say, ‘Gramma, the fog’s rolled in and there you are!’ ” She was speaking to a figure beside Bomber with a flamboyant crest of hair. The figure was dressed in silk lounging pajamas and a pair of black work boots with steel toes.

“Gramma,” Bomber said, “this is Edith.”

“Hi!” Edith said.

“What a pretty name,” May said. “There’s a hybrid lily called Edith that I like very much. I’m going to plant an Edith bulb when fall comes.”

“Will it come up every year,” Edith asked.

“Yes,” May said.

“That is so cool,” Edith said.

—

A few days after she had been robbed, May’s purse was returned to her. It was placed in the garden, just inside the gate. Everything was there, but the bills were different. May had had a ten and a five and the new ones were singles. The cards were there. May touched one and looked at the familiar writing on the back. It never grows dark in the desert, the writing said. The night sky is a deep and intense blue as though the sun were shut up behind it. Her child had been a thoughtful tourist once, sending messages home, trying to explain things she would never see. He had never written from the prison. The thirst for explanation had left him. May thought of death. It was as though someone were bending over her, trying to blow something into her mouth. She shook her head and looked at her purse. “Where have you been?” she said to the purse. The pictures of Morocco were there. She looked through them. All there. But she didn’t want them anymore. Things were never the same when they came back. She closed the purse up and dropped it in one of her large green trash cans, throwing some clipped, brown flowers over it so it was concealed. It was less than a week later that everything was returned to her again, once more placed inside the gate. People went through the dump all the time, she imagined, to see what they could find. In town, the young people began calling her by name. “May,” they’d say, “good morning!” They’d say, “How’s it going, Gramma?” She was the condemned man’s mother, and Bomber was the condemned man’s son, and it didn’t seem to matter what they did or didn’t do, it was he who had been accepted by these people, and he who was allowing them to get by.

—

Edith was spending more and more time at May and Bomber’s house. She had dyed her hair a peculiar brown color and wore scarves knotted around her neck.

“I like this look,” Edith said. “It looks like I’m concealing a tracheotomy, doesn’t it?”

“Your hair’s good,” Bomber said.

“You know what the psychiatrist at school says?” Edith said. “He says you think you want death when all you want is change.”

“What is with this guy,” Bomber asked. “Is there really a problem at that place or what?”

“Oh there is, absolutely,” Edith said. “You look a little like your granny. Did your dad look like her?”

“A little, I guess,” Bomber said.

“You’re such a sweet boy,” Edith said. “Such a sweet, bad boy. I really love you.”

The summer was over. The light had changed, and the leaves on the trees hung still. At the Lucky Kittens, the dancing went on, but not so many people danced. When May went there, they wouldn’t take her money and May submitted to this. She couldn’t help herself, it seemed.

Edith helped around the house. She washed the windows with vinegar and made chocolate desserts. One evening she said, “Do you still, like, pay income tax?”

May looked at the girl and decided to firmly lie. “No,” she said.

“Well, that’s good,” Edith said. “It would be pretty preposterous to pay taxes after what they did.”

“Of course,” May said.

“But you’re paying in other ways,” Edith said.

“Please, dear,” May said, “it was just a mistake. It doesn’t mean anything in the long run,” she said, dismayed at her words.

“I’ll help you pay,” Edith said.

—

With the cool weather, the tourists stopped coming. When school began, Edith asked if she could move into the yellow room. She didn’t get along with her parents, she had been moving about, staying here and there with friends, but she had no real place to live, could she live in the yellow room?

May was fascinated by Edith. She did not want her in the house, above her, living in the yellow room. She felt that she and Bomber should move on, that they should try their new life together somewhere else, but she knew that this was their new life. This was the place where it appeared they had gone.

“Of course, dear,” May said.

She was frightened and this surprised her, for she could scarcely believe she could know fright again after what happened to them, but there it was, some thing beyond the worst thing — some disconnection, some demand. She remembered telling Edith that she was going to plant bulbs in the garden when fall came, but she wasn’t going to do it, certainly not. “No,” May said to her garden, “don’t even think about it.” Edith moved into the yellow room. It was silent there, but May didn’t listen either.

Something happened later that got around. May was driving, it was night, and the car veered off the road. Edith and Bomber were with her. The car flipped over twice, miraculously righted itself and skidded back onto the road, the roof and fenders crushed. This was observed by a policeman who followed them for over a mile in disbelief before he pulled the car over. None of them were injured and at first they denied that anything unusual had happened at all. May said, “I thought it was just a dream, so I kept on going.”

The three seemed more visible than ever after that, for they drove the car in that damaged way until winter came.