Joy Williams - The Visiting Privilege - New and Collected Stories

Rose was particular about the restaurant. She wanted it dark, with booths, no salad bar, no view of the outside. They got into Janice’s car and drove up the street again. Zorro was sent into several establishments to determine their suitability. He had put on a T-shirt that said BAN LEGHOLD TRAPS. A number of birds and animals crippled and quite conceivably dead were arranged colorfully around a frightful black iron trap.

“He loves that shirt, but I don’t think he gets it,” Rose confided to Janice.

“You should bury that shirt, with Zorro in it,” ZoeBella said quietly.

Janice continued to scan the street for Richard. She saw no one who even remotely resembled him, not that she would have settled for that, of course.

“You sure you’re not looking for someone,” Rose asked.

“Not at all,” Janice said. “I’m just trying to be aware of my surroundings.”

ZoeBella leaned over the front seat and said softly, “I think that policeman behind us wants you to pull over.”

“Yes!” Zorro said. “There go the misery lights!”

Janice was told by the officer that she had drifted through a stop sign. He very much resembled the officer she and Richard had encountered at breakfast. While he was writing out the ticket, which was for two hundred dollars, Rose asked him which eating establishment he would recommend, and he recommended the one they were parked in front of.

“This kind of event calls for a cocktail,” Rose said to Janice. “It always does.”

Inside, Janice felt disoriented. ZoeBella placed her small hand in Janice’s and led her to a booth. They sat holding hands opposite Zorro, whose T-shirt featured prominently in the darkness. Janice ordered a double gin with ice and Rose specified an imported bottled beer, then ordered turkey plates for everyone.

“Turkey plate’s always the best,” she said.

ZoeBella did not release Janice’s hand even after the food arrived. The children ate as though starved.

“Do you believe in God?” ZoeBella murmured.

Janice was trying to locate a hair that had found its way onto her tongue.

Rose said, “When I was ZoeBella’s age, every time I thought of God I saw him as something in a black Speedo bathing suit and I saw myself sitting on his lap, but this perception was drummed out of me. Just drummed out. Now whenever the name comes up I don’t think anything.”

“I think of God as a magician,” ZoeBella whispered, looking closely at Janice. “A rich magician who has a great many sheep who he hypnotizes so he won’t have to pay for shepherds or fences to keep them from running away. The sheep know that eventually the magician wants to kill them because he wants their flesh and their skin. So first the magician hypnotizes them into thinking they’re immortal and that no harm is being done to them when they get skinned, that on the contrary it will be very good for them and even pleasant. Then he hypnotizes them into thinking the magician is their good master who loves them. Then he hypnotizes them into thinking they’re not sheep at all. And after all this, they never run away but quietly wait until the magician requires their flesh and their skin.”

ZoeBella’s skin was very pale and her eyes were large and blue. “Goodness,” Janice said, perturbed. Only a piece of bread was going to find this hair, she decided. She pushed one into her mouth.

Zorro said, “I think of God—”

His mother yanked his arm sharply. “We don’t want to hear that again,” she said.

Zorro collected everyone’s forks and put them in the pocket of his shorts.

“We always need forks,” Rose explained to Janice. “I don’t know what happens to them at our house.”

The children ordered large butterscotch sundaes and polished them off within minutes. ZoeBella ate delicately but with lightning speed. She had released Janice’s hand to better wield the long spoon, but when she finished she tucked her hand in Janice’s once again.

“I hope I’m at school tomorrow,” she said in her almost inaudible voice. “If I’m not at school tomorrow I don’t know what I’ll do.” She arranged her face in an expression of horror.

Janice couldn’t imagine a child like ZoeBella thriving at school, but she squeezed the child’s sticky hand. The magician and the sheep had caused her to feel a little unwell and considerably undirected, though she now knew what she would do. She would take Rose and the children to their home. She was sure that the situation with Leo and the van had not improved and she was eager to finish what she had begun. Otherwise, how would she be able to think about it? She wouldn’t be able to think about it. They lived in a town that wasn’t exactly on the way to Santa Fe, but she could still make it to Santa Fe before dark if they left immediately. Richard had made reservations at a hotel there. There would possibly be a message waiting, or even Richard himself. If there wasn’t, if he wasn’t, then when she arrived she would be the message. One’s life after all is the message, isn’t it, the way one lives one’s life, the good one carries out?

“I can see you’re thinking,” ZoeBella said in a quiet, disappointed voice.

Back at the garage, Leo was agreeable to Janice’s idea. “I believe I’m going to be here for days,” he said. He kissed the children and shook Janice’s hand. In the car again, Janice remarked that Leo seemed like a good man.

“He’s all right,” Rose said. “Whenever he gets drunk he threatens to kill the kids’ rabbits, but he hasn’t done it yet.”

They drove in silence for a while. When they got to their home, Janice was not going to go inside. She would be invited, but under no circumstance would she go inside. She didn’t want to go so far as to enter that home even in her thoughts. She would leave them at their own threshold and be gone.

“What’s your credit card look like,” Zorro asked. “Is it black with a mountain on it and an eagle and a big orange sun? Because if it is, you left it back there by the cash register. I saw it when I got the toothpicks.”

“Zorro sees credit cards everywhere,” Rose said. “I’ve told him never never pick them up. He’s got a shrewd eye, and I want him to have a shrewd eye, but my feeling is that he could go from shrewd to dishonest real quick.”

“I’m not going back,” Janice said.

No one contested this. They were on a narrow blacktop road streaking urgently through the desert. In the distance, a man was riding a horse.

“There is a horse,” ZoeBella said reverently.

Then Zorro saw the snake on the edge of the asphalt.

“Look at him!” he screamed. “Look at the size of that sucker! He’s a miracle, you can’t just pass him by!”

He grabbed the wheel and turned it toward the snake, but Janice wrenched it back and slammed on the brakes. The car shot off the road, not quite clearing a stony wash, and with a snapping of axles it crumpled against a patch pocket of wildflowers — primrose and sand verbena and, as ZoeBella pointed out quietly later, sacred datura, a plant of which every part was poisonous.

“Is everyone all right?” Rose said. “All in one piece? That’s the important thing, nothing else matters.”

“I just wanted that snake so bad,” Zorro said.

“He’s always after his dad to hit things for him,” Rose said. “You’re in somebody else’s vehicle, Zorro! You are a guest in another person’s car!”

They got out of the car with difficulty and looked at it. It was clearly a total wreck. The key had snapped off in the ignition, so Janice couldn’t even unlock the trunk to retrieve her suitcase.

ZoeBella touched Janice’s hand. “I’m glad you didn’t run over the snake,” she whispered.

“I have a terrible headache,” Janice said.