Short Stories

Jesus, the fuckin' car won't start and it's pissin' rain and I swear to God if I go back in there I'll smack the bitch. Get me outta here. I'm walkin'!

It's been like this for months. Hell, who am I kiddin'? It's been years.

"That's your third beer in an hour," she says, and that's it for me boy. She's always countin'. It's like livin' with a human calculator. Some guys I know, they got princesses, me I scored the countess. She counts the days to Christmas. She counts the people in line at the checkout. She counts the fuckin' hairs fallin' outta my head for chrissake. But what really pisses me off is she counts out loud.

"The mortgage is due in five days Harry." she tells me first thing this mornin'. For lunch I get "Ed and Noreen are going to the Poconos for three days."

" Whadya want from me," I says.

"Nothin'," she says,"Cos you ain’t good for nothin'".

It wasn't so bad when I was workin' cos then I didn't hear it all fuckin' day long. Now it's mornin', noon and night. The only time she lets up is for "Wheel of Fortune," then she's all eyes. Except when she's suckin' on a cigarette, her mouth is shut from 7 to 7:30.

I dunno when it started, this numbers thing. In high school she was the worst at math but she always said so what, she'd never need it. She couldn't add for shit then. That's how we got pregnant the first time. Back then she couldn't figure out the time of day. She was always late when I picked her up, but it didn't matter 'cos she'd look so pretty comin' down the stairs, her face one big smile at me standing there.

"You be home by eleven or else," her father'd yell over the TV

"Don't worry Mr. Morelli," I'd say, "I'll have her home on time." and I always did. Hell, I didn't wanna die. I mean I loved her an’ all, but hey.

Carla was as Italian as they come. All curves and mouth and hot for it. Back then I was it and I could do no wrong. To hear her talk I was the handsomest, the funniest, the sexiest and it didn't matter too much I was Irish just so long as I was Catholic.

Maybe it was the baby being stillborn or somethin'. Come to think of it, it was right around then she began pinnin' everythin' down. In the hospital she looked all broken an’ empty, like somethin' had gone outta her besides the baby.

"The doctor says to wait six weeks and we can start another one," she'd said. I dunno. Who can figure? All I know is I'm sick of walkin' around in this fuckin' rain. Maybe I'll stop by Archie's. His wife's workin' tonight. We can suck down a beer or two. Check out the Mets. They must be in the bottom of the seventh by now. That way I can still get home by eleven. That's when the "Honeymooners" comes on. We always watch the "Honeymooners", me and Carla. That's one thing you can count on.

The truth is, I don't trust this woman. I know she has a great reputation and Sally swears by her, but you can't rely on that. You know how women are when they get together, a man doesn't stand a chance. Talk about equality.

Sally started seeing her about a year ago. We were standing in the kitchen, I can't quite remember what she said, it was some sort of revelation though, something to do with us. She'd quit drinking about six months earlier and to tell the truth I'm not sure if it was an improvement. Of course I was very supportive, I always am, but when she was drinking it was easier to....oh I don't know. Anyway, we were standing in the kitchen having one of our philosophical talks and she was looking very good, that I do remember. She'd just cut off all her hair, very short, and it made her look real sexy and new. It's true I was more interested in getting her into bed right at that moment, so maybe I was distracted, but I do remember her saying she was tired of something never changing and she'd decided to go into therapy. Like I say, I'm always very supportive, so I didn't say anything.

Actually I'd just got back from town. We were having friends over for lobster that night and I'd run in to pick up a bottle of Meursault. It was Sally's favourite, and although she wasn't drinking

at that point, she didn't seem to mind anyone else partaking. I took the bottle out of its bag and put it on the counter. Sally said something about remember when we first had it, the wine that is. To tell you the truth I don't remember the exact occasion, but of course Sally does. Evidently it was in some little inn near Pawling. I do remember we drove home and made love on the couch -- twice in an hour. Sally reckons it was the Meursault and who am I to tell her different.

Anyway, like I said, we were standing in the kitchen and she'd just finished telling me she was going into therapy when all of a sudden she reaches for the wine and says "Why don't we celebrate?" To be honest I was a bit surprised, but who am I to stop her. Actually I thought a bit of wine wouldn't be a bad thing. Loosen her up a little. Ever since she'd stopped drinking she'd become a bit of a nag, quite frankly. Always asking me why I'd wanted to marry her. Because I love you, I'd tell her, but evidently that wasn't enough.

So, to cut a long story short, she started therapy and having a couple of drinks here and there and we seemed to be back on track. Then one day, about six months ago, she came home from a session and I could tell something was up the minute she got out of the car. Normally she comes right over to the foundry if I'm still working and checks out what I'm doing. She says it turns her on to see me all dirty and sweating and struggling with steel. That's one thing about Sally, she's not shy, or at least she didn't used to be. We've had a few downright horny times right there in the foundry. But on that particular day she got out of the car, didn't even glance at me, just went right into the house. That's strange, I thought, maybe she has

to go to the bathroom or something. I couldn't stop right then as I was in the middle of a crucial weld and I'm known for my welds. Seamless. It's one of the things I love about working with steel. It's thrilling to take something that powerful and make it do what you want. You can feel it in your hands. When it's going well it's no different than butter. Everything has its soft spot and once you learn where it is you can go right in there and make magic. I'm in my element out in the yard with a pile of steel and my torch, to me it's just like paper and pencil and I've got so I can put two pieces of steel together so you can't tell where one ends and the other begins.

By the time I got in the house she was standing at the kitchen counter making dinner. I tell you, I love the way she looks from the back. There aren't many women who look as good going as they do coming, so to speak. She's not that tall but she's got long legs and an ass like a teenager. You'd never know she's thirty-eight. Like I said, her hair is short now and as close to black as makes no difference. You could say she looks boyish from behind, but you sure whistle another tune when she turns around. Sally has impossible tits. She hates that word, but in all honesty that's what they are. And they defy everything from gravity to her tiny waist. Usually she loves it when I come up behind her and kiss her neck and fondle her tits at the same time. But she certainly wasn't interested that particular day.....nor too many since, if you must know.

"Stop it." she'd said and pulled away.

"What's the matter, babe?" I asked.

"Look," she said, "we have to talk"

"Okay, sweetie." I said and asked her what she wanted to drink.

"Nothing." she said. "That's one of the things we have to talk about."

Christ, I thought, here we go again. Look, I know I'm not perfect, but the truth is I'm a pretty damn good husband. A lot of women would give anything to be in Sally's place. Believe me, I know. I mean really, look where we live. We've got one of the best views of the river. The kitchen's the latest in everything. I've never said she should work. We go somewhere warm for a week every winter. We have great sex. What more does she want? Now she wants to stop drinking again. So whatever makes her happy.

"The therapist says she won't see me anymore unless I quit drinking,” she says.

"What's that got to do with anything?" I ask.

"According to Dr. Jamison, everything. She says I have some important issues to look at and unless I stop drinking I don't stand a chance of figuring it out."

"Fine," I told her "Whatever you want babe." Frankly I couldn't see what the big deal was, but like I say, I'm very supportive so I let it go. But then she tells me "Look, I really need your support in this.

I know you don't think it's any big deal, but for me it is. Dr. Jamison thinks it would be helpful if we had some sessions together."

Jesus Christ, what is she crazy? "Listen babe," I tell her, "let's take it one step at a time. Why don't you quit drinking for a while and see how it goes.? Then in a few months if you still feel the same way we can check into it ." I figured if I just went along with her eventually she'd settle down again. You know how women are. They're never satisfied. It's just the way they are. You can't take it

personally. They get a bee in their bonnet once in a while and the truth is if you just agree with them you make things a lot easier for yourself.

Anyway, like I said, that was six months ago and I figured it was just another phase. Ever since she found out we couldn't have kids she's been restless, always searching for something. Frankly it doesn't bother me. I like it the way it is. I mean kids are great and all but they take up a lot of space and the truth is, from what I see and hear from my buddies it plays hell with your sex-life. I reckon Sally and I have it pretty good and I say be grateful for what you've got. But not Sally. Here I am bending over backwards and it doesn't make a scrap of difference. I'm telling you, every time she stops drinking she gets real uptight and frankly this therapist isn't helping any.

Look,I'm a good- natured guy -- live and let live is my motto --but this is ridiculous. I mean, I've gone along with the no-drinking, even though I can't see what the big deal is; and I pay for her damn therapy sessions. You'd think she'd show a little gratitude, but no. She says I don't treat her like an equal. Now where does that come from?

"If you really loved me," she says," you'd put the house in both our names"

What that's got to do with anything your guess is as good as mine. And it doesn't stop there.

"I'd feel a lot better," she says, "if I could have my own car instead of driving yours."

And here's the kicker.

"You don't trust me." she says."If you did you'd let me have my own checking account or at least a joint one."

Can you imagine? Like I don't give her everything she asks for. But it doesn't let up. Six months she's been like this. Now let's be honest, it wasn't like this before she quit drinking and it sure as hell wasn't like this before she started seeing that goddamn therapist, so you tell me who's to blame? Well, enough is enough. A man can only take so much, right? So I figure'd it was time I went and saw this shrink and put her straight. Beside, Sally had been on at me non-stop to go with her so, this way I figured I could kill two birds with one stone.

I tell you, I don't know how some people get away with it. I knew this bitch was no good for Sally. All along I've felt she's been putting ideas in her head and sure enough I was right. And crafty too. I'm telling you, you can't trust women, they have a way of twisting everything round so it's pointing at you. I mean listen to this. I get in the room there, it's all very nice and discreet, very clever, something about it makes you feel safe, you know, and of course she comes on very friendly and understanding at first. Tells you how wonderful you are for coming, how courageous etc., etc. Then when she's got you where she wants you --zap!

"Tell me," she says, "How do you feel about being sterile?"

Jesus Christ. What's with her? And it's all downhill after that. By the time the session's halfway through she's telling me I feel threatened and she has the fucking nerve to say I'm afraid Sally will

leave me if she gets too independent. What is her problem? I tell you, you have to be careful, you give them an inch and they soak you. Well I'm nobody's fool. I know how to handle women like that, so I just calmed down and yessed her for the rest of the hour and sure enough they both settled down. Then when we got in the car I let Sally know I'm not going to be taken for a ride anymore. I told her, that's the last time Dr. Jamison sees my money.

I’m the nondescript one. If any one of the triplets weren’t a triplet, she’d have me beat. But when you see that much blonde blandness in a row it becomes phenomenal. They’re sitting up against the wall, the triplets, like pale clay pigeons, watching the rest of us from formica perches, their eyes going back and forth in total harmony like maybe they’re watching ping-pong.

It’s the day after the wedding -- July-May, she up and did yesterday. The last to arrive and the first to go, said Papa. It ain’t no surprise, she’s their baby, Ma and Pa’s. Six daughters they had to produce to get one turn out like them -- dark and sexy and hijinxed to the teeth, maybe beyond.

I guess I left out Mattie. I figured you’d have noticed her already. She’s the one sitting next to the triplets. The one with the lit cigarette stuck in her hair, knitting pink booties for July-May, who’s pregnant already -- of course. She always did put the trunk before the hood. Aunt Mosey reckons its on account of her name. Says there ain’t no way you can mix up the calendar like that without it having an adverse effect. ‘Course none of us know what she’s gonna have in the baby department. It’s Mattie’s decided to stick her with a girl baby. But just about everyone’s willing to bet it be a breech.

“Mama, would you look at this?” That’s July-May come in the kitchen all aglitter in a roomful of smoking, drinking family. Vinnie, her husband is tagged on to her, just about. They’re that hot for each other all the time. Just like Ma and Pa. Juma -- that’s what we call July-May -- she’s wearing some kind of beaded vest over her black leather motor-cycle jacket. She and Vinnie are readying to leave on their honeymoon -- the Harley Davidson special.

“Aunt Mosey made them for us,” she says, shimmying up and down like a go-go girl, the beads rattling like a snake. Vinnie holds his up, like show and tell. Knowing Aunt Mosey, she’s part Indian, she made the vests to ward of some evil spirit, probably the spirit of skid.

“Oh, darling, they’re just great,” says Mama, stubbing out a cigarette, smoke coming out of her nose like she’s a movie star. She looks at Juma like she always does, her blue eyes brilliant with pride and jealousy. “Put yours on Vinnie,” she says, her ass flirting in Pa’s lap while her eyes strip Vinnie from head to toe.

Mattie puts down her knitting, sticks one needle in her hair, leaving two unformed booties looking like premature mice on a skewer in her lap and takes the cigarette out of her hair about a second before she goes up in flames. Mattie’s the oldest. She was born old and senile, and real crafty. She dunt know nothing fit to earn her keep, but she has a keen sense of timing and an evil wit. And she wears the world in her hair. Puts everything of any use to her there. It’s like if she can’t keep it in her brain, she’ll get as close as she can. Half-eaten rolls of life-savers, paper-clips, crayons, matches -- all manner of things end up in Mattie’s mousey nest of teased hair. Getting Mattie’s head next to water is harder and worse than taking food from a beggar, but Mama manages once a month, chasing her round the house, promising candy and cigarettes and that dime-store spray that’ll help Mattie fix her hair round her head like a basket. When she comes out from under the faucet she’s shaking and frantic, lifting up her frock, sweeping her possessions off the drainboard into the skirt, her chubby, doughy legs showing younger than the whole rest of her. She don’t come back down till her hair’s fixed. Dried and teased and sprayed and stuck with her goodies.

“Vinnie, Vinnie, Vinnie,” she whinnies, puffing the filter of her cigarette fast, like she’s blowing kisses.

Slow as a slug and just as eager, Vinnie lifts the vest over his head, careful not to disturb his bi-level. It rattles on down over his hunk shoulders and playboy chest, settling around his hips, as much as anything can ever settle there on Vinnie. He grabs Juma by the waist and the two of them laugh as their vests come together like skeletons -- we all know she’s the one got a hold on him. Just like Ma with Pa.

“Vinnie, Vinnie, Vinnie,” there goes Mattie again, clapping her hands together, the butt flying out and landing at my feet. She takes a straw out of her hair, puts it in her coke bottle and sucks long and hard before lighting up another cigarette. She takes the needle out of her hair, a long green steel thing that glitters and sparks like a witches wand as she pokes it in Juma’s direction. Then she picks up the knitting and cackles while the needles clack- clack, the cigarette sticking out of her head like a chimney. I swear her brain ain’t fried, it’s just smoking.

Juma, looks at her, the youngest to the oldest and the hatred sizzles out of her eyes like pus out a pimple.

“Well,” she says, her mouth all pouty and pretty, “I guess it’s time we was leaving, Vinnie.”

Mama uncurls herself from Pa’s lap, going all teary at the same time she’s fixing her jeans from out between her legs. Everything on Mama is skin tight, including her skin. She was only eighteen when she had Mattie. Pa, twenty. Then a year later she pushed out the triplets, as if the sheer quantity could make-up for Mattie. I guess Ma and Pa had their hands pretty full, ‘cos they took a break for six years, Then I came along. Course I was supposed to be a boy, so they had another go right away and got Juma, ten months later. She ain’t no boy, but you could tell from the start she was a live one. Mama took one look at her and told them to tie her tubes right then and there. Whatever you say about Mama, you have to admire that much wear and tear coming and go in one body without leaving hardly a trace. From the back you’d swear she was Juma’s twin, but when she turns around you see her face hardened somewhere along the line.

The wedding was something. To give you an idea about Juma, she’d wanted to come down the aisle on Pa’s Harley and go back up on Vinnie’s. For some reason the preacher didn’t think that was quite seemly, so she settled for wearing her best biking boots under Mama’s wedding dress. You should have seen the inside of that church. One side was all decked out in it hill-billy best while the other was filled with the wrong kind of angels, black leather taking up the pews like sin. I doubt that church has seen that much hell since the triplets were babtised.

Pa did look handsome,his dark hair slicked back and down, sideburns trimmed back just a bit -- for God’s sake. He’d splurged on a black suit, the first he’d worn since he married Ma, his best bolo choking shut the collar of a white shirt.

Of course,Juma was an eyeful. Her black hair wild, eyes glittering inside of lashes so thick with mascara they looked like a pair of black widows. She was wearing Mama’s wedding dress from the sixties, the bolero keeping the bodice decent for church, the tiny waist that didn’t need to be cinched -- neither on Mama or Juma; the full, full skirt all froth and fakery considering what lay underneath had laid underneath Vinnie not two hours earlier. Right up there in Juma’s bedroom, Mattie’s ear pressed to the door her lips sucking smoke, another lit butt in her hair.

About halfway down the aisle Juma got real. Her eyes stuck on Vinnie, she let go of Pa’s arm and hoisted her skirt to show those wicked boots. A great cheer went up from the left side of the church. The triplets blushed the color of their rose satin bridesmaid dresses, eyes pasted to their posies. Ma in the front pew with Aunt Mosie, the two of them all atwitter with tears and hankies. Me an’ Mattie in the second row, her stomping from one foot to the other like a wind-up toy against a wall, me waiting for her to run down, wishing to God she had a cigarette.

Mattie? She’d dressed for the occasion, but not for Juma. It was for Vinnie she’d spent the morning in her room, going over and over her hair with the spray, teasing it with the comb, spraying it some more, shaping it with her pudgy hands till it became the best headress any church or tribe could ever hope to see. She had her Sunday cigarettes in her hair, the kind where the ad says “you’ve come a long way baby”; a couple of packs of matches, one unopened roll of Lifesavers, yesterday’s orange sucker, a couple of crayolas,two straws, a rolled-up dollar bill, and lined up in front like a crazy tiara, ten little plastic ballerinas Vinnie’d given her just this past Christmas.

Things were going along without a hitch till the preacher got to the part where he asked if anyone had anything to say or forever hold your peace. That’s when Mattie raised her hand.

“I do, I do, I do, “ she said, hopping from one foot to the other, the whole congregation looking her way. What I really wanted to do was hug her. I figured that was the only chance she’d ever get to say those words and she took it. But what I did was something I never dared before. I took the Livesaver’s out of her hair, peeled back the paper and offered her one.

She looked at me, all doughy in the face. Her eyes, like pale blue clouds, cleared for a second then she grabbed the roll from my hand and took three, one for the left cheek, one for the right and the third for her tongue, clamped her mouth down tight. Then she did something nearly burst my heart. Old Mattie, she offered me a lifesaver. She don’t ever offer no-one nothing from her head.

While we was busy sucking, Juma and Vinnie exchanged rings and saliva and the whole church went to clapping and stomping and hooting -- even the triplets, their posies smacking against their palms like wildflowers in a hurricane. Then we was all filing outside, bikers and babies and neighbors all chittering and chattering and digging into pockets and purses for rice.

Next thing we was on the steps for family pictures, the wind picking up all of a sudden and Juma having me crouch behind her to hold down her veil, like I was some kind of pet rock. There must have been fifty Harleys lined up like bad bugs in the sun, Vinnie and Juma’s decked out with toilet paper and beer cans, a pair of Juma’s panties flying from the side mirror. That’d be one object would always be closer than it appeared.

Then everyone was climbing onto saddles and piling into pick-ups to head back here for the party. They ran out of room when it came to Mattie and me and I had a hell of a time getting Mattie to come. She was puffing and sucking and stomping and checking her hair for ballerinas.

“Stay, stay, stay,” she begged, trying to pull me into the church.

“Oh, Mattie,” I said, “Don’t do this to me. You know I have to serve the drinks and ready the food. Mama’ll get madder than a pig in lace if I don’t get right home.”

“Mama, Mama, Mama,” Mattie said, throwing her cigarette in the dirt and spitting orange sucker juice onto it.

I finally convinced her to come. Told her we’d go the shortcut through the field, so she could go barefoot. Mama never let’s Mattie go barefoot. Says it’s bad enough she’s wrong in the head she ain’t gonna risk the feet. But I know for a fact, when Mattie’s feet touch the ground something in her head vibrates different. I reckon there must be some kind of tendon goes from her toes to the back of her squinty eyeballs cause they pop right open the minute her bare skin connects with the earth and she starts to sing everytime. There ain’t never any words to her songs, it comes deeper than that. Starts off in a hum somewhere way down, maybe from underneath her feet and it comes right on up through that pudgy body and out her mouth in a pure call, like what you might imagine would come from a squaw, early morning, the mist rising up off a flat dark lake and her in a canoe, making it to the other side.

Mattie loves that field. It’s a scrubby old thing, half-assed with grass and dandelions. In the middle is a square patch of earth that just won’t grow even a single weed. It’s where the old house stood before it burned, way back when I was a baby. Ain’t nobody talks about it. I saw a picture of it once in Ma’s jewelry box. A rickety, two storey affair, with a wrap-around porch, Ma and Pa standing there stuck to each other like well-chewed taffy.

“Gone, Gone, Gone,” Mattie said when we got to the patch. It’s the same thing everytime. She won’t put a foot, bare or otherwise on that patch. She just will stand in front of where the door used to be and reach up for a cigarette. throwing the lit match onto the dry earth.

I wasted nearly fifteen minutes trying to convince her to put her damn shoes back on, but she just would stand there by that burned patch and look at me all squinty and just as I’d get close enough to snag her she’d be gone, glumphing around the field, yelling “Gone, gone, gone”. I could just have killed her, standing there holding those ugly brown shoes, same kind she’s worn all her life -- lace-ups with crepe soles. I once got smacked ‘round the head begging Mama to please let Mattie have a pretty pair of slippers like she craved for.

“You just mind your business,” Mama had said whipping her hand across my cheek like a wet towel. “If she can’t be sensible her shoes damn-well will be,” she said, and I’d had to do extra chores all week, like I didn’t have enough to do already.

In the end I gave up on getting Mattie and her shoes to come together. If I didn’t get home soon enough I’d never hear the end about how I ruined Juma’s wedding day. Mattie followed me out of the field into our back yard just as all the Harley’s came tearing up the lane, kicking up enough dust to choke a herd of hogs. God forbid they should just park nice and quiet in the lane, but no they had to circle the house, yelling and honking. Mattie clutching me, doing her jig, her hands pressed to her ears, ballerinas dancing in her hair. Then I saw Ma and Pa’s pick-up head into the lane, leading the rest of party and I shoved Mattie’s shoes in the wood-bin and got me in the kitchen fast.

The party was a glorified cook-out, really. Pa and his friends got to slapping meat on coals I’d lit before going to the church. They was all swigging away on beer, kegs of it lined up within easy reach. Over to the side I’d set up a couple of trestle-tables covered with pink crepe paper and I was hauling out bowls of chips and pretzels and onion dip to keep them all happy while the steak and dogs and burgers were sizzling their way to done. Then I’d be bringing out the cole slaw along with a couple of salads -- one plain and reliable for the men, the other fancy with popcorn and grapes for the women to natter over.

Everything seemed to be buzzing along like flies to road kill. The band arrived shortly , The Backwood Devil Boys. They’re real popular around here, playing over at Papa Joe’s Roadside every weekend. And I had to admit they were perfect for this wedding, being as they could switch from country to rock as smooth as syrup on a pancake.

I was squeezing pink icing into rosebuds on the cake when Ma came tearing in the kitchen hissing and whopping me across the back of the head with her mean hand.

“What in hell are you doing letting Mattie loose with no shoes on her feet?” Whop, went her hand, nailing me in the self-same spot. “Who do you think you are Miss Know-It-All-High-And-Mighty? ”

She whipped me around by the shoulders, her face as tight and scarlet as her skirt. Her frilly, off the shoulder blouse was covered in red polka dots that swam before my eyes, her eyes blue as blazes, black hair newly permed, coiled out from her head like mad snakes and a red carnation stuck behind her ear looked like it was as hot as it could get without bursting into flame. She’d splurged on acrylic nails, red and shiney as fresh blood that curled around a glass full of Vodka and cranberry juice like a grip around death.

“We should have left you to burn,” she said, smacking me one more time with her free hand, not one drop of her drink going to waste. “You and Mattie are more misery than any human should have to suffer. You finish that cake and perfectly and then you can just go to your room and stay they’re till breakfast, you hear me?” And she turned around on her red stilletoes and left the kitchen like a flame from a comet.

It must have been near midnight when Aunt Mosey came knocking on the door. I was long since cried out and tired of looking out the window at that many grow-ups drinking and yelling and smoking and carreening around in the name of love.

“I brought you some cake,” Aunt Mosey said, sitting her large, shapeless body on the bed. Her hair, once as black as soot was gone to ash, braided down her back, ending where her waist had once begun.

“I don’t want no cake,” I said, “I just want out of this damn hole and into my life, what’s left of it.”

“Well, maybe it’s time I told you, you wouldn’t have no life if it weren’t for Mattie,” Aunt Mosey said, groaning as she leaned over to put the cake on the floor.

“What on earth are you saying, Aunt Mosey?”

She stood up and went to the window.

“You was only a baby,” she said, planting her feet wide, her body taking up the shape of a wig-wam against the night sky. “Mattie was about eight, the triplets seven.” Aunt Mosey’s voice was thin and sing-song, like it was coming from the other side of the glass, maybe even as far back as the field. “I come over that day to be with you all while your Pa fetched your Mama and Juma home from the hospital. The air was heavy with bad spirit and the broody heat of an August evening. It was early enough to be light but the sky hung dark with the kind of still that’s on the move. I couldn’t soothe you for nothing. You were wailing like all your teeth were coming in at cross purposes. The triplets were sitting at the kitchen table making a welcome-home sign for your Mama -- they always was a team of bum-lickers.”

I let out a snicker at that one and Aunt Mosey settled her feet even wider. Maybe it was the way the shadows fell on the window but I swear I saw feathers in her hair. Outside the party was working its way through the maudling stage, the band all whining guitars and whiskey vocals, one of them stuck in the chorus of “My Heart Bleeds For You”.

“When your Ma and Pa come in the door with Juma,” Aunt Mosey went on, “you let out a wail like your teeth had come and gone. The triplets came pussy-footing over to look at Juma. They was holding hands like a daisy chain and I swear they wilted when they laid eyes on that baby. Mattie was still looking out the window. She’d been standing there since your Pa left for the hospital, shifting from one foot to the other saying “No, No, No,” every other minute.“What are you looking for, Mattie,” I’d said to her. “You’re baby sister’s home now.”

“No,no,no,” she said, and we had the hardest time getting her away from that window and into bed.”

Suddenly the window where Aunt Mosey stood started flickering and the sky around her lit up red. I got out of bed and went over, had to stand on tippie-toes to see over Aunty Mosey bulk. Damn if those Angels hadn’t lit a fire where the old house used to be. Aunt Mosey stood her ground like it was meant to be, but I don’t mind saying I had the shivers.

“If that don’t look just like it did that very night,” Aunty Mosey said, “It was way after midnight when your Pa woke me up, yelling at me to get the hell out of the house. Everything was crackling and hissing like we was in the mouth of a dragon, smoke already filling up the air so I could barely find my way to the stairs. The kitchen was mad with flames, little tongues of them starting to lick their way across the hall to the parlour. And then we was all standing outside watching, your Pa already down at Bill and Lonnie’s house calling the fire department. So it was just us women standing there like witches fresh out of spells. Your Ma holding Juma, the both of them screaming. The triplets holding each other, light from the flames giving them the only color they’ve had before or since.”

Aunt Mosey uncrossed her arms and reached out to the window as if she could may be stop the fire which was wild in the field now, two storeys high, surrounded by Angels swigging beer and passing joints. I was afraid I’d never here the end of the story. Then again I was afraid I would.

“Like I was saying,” she continued, “We was all just standing there watching the fire when all of a sudden I noticed Mattie. She was hopping from foot to foot and I swear she was happy, her hands clapping together, singing “Good, good, good,” -- your Ma screaming at her to shut-up. And then she did. All of a sudden, like she had a revelation. Next thing she was pulling off her shoes and racing toward the house as fast as her pudgy legs could go, your Ma and I screaming after her and then she was gone into those crazy flames and we figured that was it for Mattie. But it couldn’t have been more than a minute when out she came, crouched over like she was in labor and she was coming toward us like something fierce and I think she would have run to the end of the earth if we hadn’t stopped her and she straightened up and there you was clutched into her and Mattie’s eyes were crazed as we tried to pry you loose and you was reaching for her as we pulled you away, your hands grabbing at her hair all wild and singed and standing up and you wouldn’t let go and she was screaming “Mine, Mine, Mine.”

“And give us those who trespass against us...”

“That ain’t right, man. It’s give us our daily bread.”

Rosie looked through the peephole of her apartment door. She could barely make out the figures of two men at the bottom of the stairs.

“Right, give us our daily bread, then it’s give us those who trespass against us”.

“How can that be right, dumkoff? Why would we be asking Him to give us the bums who screw us over?”

He had that right, Rosie thought. She took her glasses off and scrunched her face up to the door but all she could see were shadows moving somewhere below her. Must be the carpet guys. The second one was laughing, he sounded big.

“Give us those who trespass against us? What are you crazy?” he said.

“Well, that’s the way we say it at my church,” said the first guy, his voice as plaintive as a choirboy’s. “Makes sense to me,” he said, “Ain’t it all about forgiveness?”

Rosie snapped the peephole shut and went back to the sink. Forgiveness? What did they know about forgiveness? She could hear Don’s voice as thin as his frame and coarse as a horse’s cough from decades of smoke and booze. “Put a dribble of vinegar in with the detergent, Rosie, it cuts the grease”. Always telling her what to do. And now where was he? Flat on his stick of a back in intensive care. Rosie bent down and looked under the sink, squinted at the shapes of buckets and bottles. Too bad vinegar couldn’t cut through the film over her eyes.

She found the spritzer Don kept the vinegar in, it was nearly empty. The nozzle gave out a dry hiss as Rosie depressed it and in her mind’s eye she saw a flock of birds rush out of a winter tree like blackened leaves blasted into the gray sky, the way they had that time Upstate New York, how many years ago? Don had had a rare win at the track and came home with a rented car the next day. Years he’d been promising her a drive in the country. But they didn’t leave until mid-day; he’d had a bottle of whisky to sleep off. By the time they got to the country it was mid-afternoon, the sky already tinged with pink, the landscape littered with trailers and broken cars, and every leafless tree they passed had flung a cloud of birds into the air.

“In’t that amazing?” Don had said, his eyes so dark in his gaunt face Rosie wasn’t sure if maybe they’d been pecked out. “Just think,” he said, “Some of them birds have come as far as Canada already. They may even having been sitting in Mother’s back yard just last week. In’t that amazing, Rosie, the way they do that every winter, go all the way down south like that?” But Rosie couldn’t see why they bothered. Couldn’t envision such a destination. All she saw was that the noise of their car startled the birds from safety. To Rosie the birds’ flight was filled with a terror inflicted by her own small, disillusioned journey.

She watched the vinegar hit last night’s dishes, watched it fling the grease into scattering blobs. One of the carpet men sang a line from what sounded like opera, his voice surprisingly sweet.

“My back is hur-ting.”

His co-worker echo-ing him, “Your butt’s too bi-ig.”

Rosie went back to the peephole. They were on her landing now, one at each end.

“Your wife’s a mor-on.”

“Your mother ea-tsit.”

Rosie flicked the peephole closed. If Don were here he wouldn’t stand for such derision. But he wasn’t here. He wouldn’t ever be here again, not really, not a hundred percent, maybe not at all.

She’d been at the sink, about to do the dishes. “Put some vinegar in the water, Rosie,” and she’d snapped at him, “You take care of the windows and I’ll do the dishes. I don’t tell you how to do your job, you don’t tell me mine.” “Rosie. . . .” “Don’t Rosie me” “Rosie, something’s happening to me” and when she turned from the sink he’d gone down in a fold and a jerk, his shoulders coming together over his heart. All those years she’d dreamed of him falling from window ledges, seen him turning through the air, his vinegar-soaked rag clutched in his hand, cleaning the sky on his way down to the sidewalk. Thirty-five years she’d been waiting for the call from some emergency room. Thirty-five years of watching him go to work with the shakes. Thirty-five years he’d been shining it on: six-over-sixes, sashes, casements, French, sliders, louvered, ground floor, penthouse. Only residential. Only Greenwich Village. He had his reasons. No use cleaning the industrials, the office buildings; “What do I want to clean their windows for, Rosie,” he’d say, “They don’t have no vision those people. They’re too busy looking for the next buck to see what’s out the window.”

“Well, maybe they have a point,” Rosie would say, “Money doesn’t grow on trees”.

It was always between them, money. Their lack of it. His squandering it on horses and booze, her sneaking what little was left out of his back pocket and into that week’s hiding place. In the early days it had been easier, he’d been a once-a-week binger then, a Friday night drunk and all day Saturday at the races. The few dollars he’d come home with would go into the box Rosie kept her sanitary napkins in; Don was very particular about the privacy of women’s paraphernalia. But after the hysterectomy there seemed no place left to hide and as his drinking and gambling increased Rosie had been hard pushed to stay one step ahead of him sometimes getting up in the middle of the night to move the money from a tea canister to the pocket of a coat to the lining of the cushion on her armchair, dreaming

of the day she’d have a lingerie drawer to hide things in, like the heroines in the romance novels she used to read coming home on the subway after a long shift of sewing the kinds of clothes she could never afford. A lingerie drawer? Huh! One change of underwear, that’s what she’d had all her life, underwear she’d washed out nightly along with Don’s, the drying rack lowered over the bathtub, her stockings, his socks, her bra, his undershirt, her panties, his briefs, all hanging side by side like limp doves.

At least his underwear was clean when they came for him last night. Two young guys asking her all those questions. What did she know? One minute he was pestering her about the vinegar, the next he was on the floor. Yes, he smoked. Yes, he drank. No, he wasn’t drunk. Yes, he was underweight. How would she know if his blood pressure was high. Just help him, help him, she had cried. By the time they strapped him to the stretcher his skin was as gray as his underwear, the oxygen mask strapped to his face like an ill-fitting skylight.

Skylights. They were his favorite. “One day, Rosie we’re gonna have one of them right over our bed”. And Rosie had pictured looking up to the underside of the O’Grady’s mattress upstairs. “That’s the trouble with you Rosie, you can’t see no further than your nose. Where’s your imagination?” And he’d described the house they were going to have one day, up in Nova Scotia, all the way up on Cape Inverness, where the sea froze in January and God was in every sunset. He’d tell her how in winter they were going to lie in bed and watch the birds fly south, the two of them lying side by side while Don made it all come alive, his eyes flashing in the dark, his hands drawing pictures in the air and back then that life always seemed so near, so available, never more than a year away. “Next year Rosie...” But next year had come and gone thirty-five times and the only one who ever made it to Nova Scotia was Don, once a year to see his Mother. Each year borrowing the money to take the train and the bus. Rosie packing him food enough for the two-day trip.

The sound of the door bell was jarring. Rosie wiped her hands on her apron. What now? Nobody ever knocked on their door without demanding something they didn’t have the wherewithal to give. Rosie blew a couple of stray wisps out of her eyes and went to the door, looked out the peephole and saw nothing.

“Who’s there?” she called.

“It’s the carpet installer Ma’am.” It was the one who sounded like a choirboy.

“What do you want?”

“I need to run the carpet up to your sill, Ma’am.”

Rosie opened up.

“Sorry to bother you, Ma’am”.

He was the kind of man who would always look like a boy. Early thirties, chubby, downy blond hair, rosy cheeks, and eyebrows half-way up his forehead in the constant amazement of a toddler. If she and Don had had a kid it would never have looked like this, she thought, they would never have given birth to such innocence.

“Ma’am?”

“Oh, all right,” Rosie said, opening the door all the way but still clutching the doorknob.

“If you like I could keep it open with my tool-bag?” the man said.

Rosie shuffled from one foot to the other. Don was always telling her to be careful who she opened up to. Don’t let anyone in, Rosie, you never know.

“What’s your name?” she asked, the question coming out of her like a crumb she’d been trying to clear from her throat for a lifetime. Rosie couldn’t remember the last time she’d asked anyone anything.

“Charlie, Ma’am. Charlie McNeil. He was on his knees already, a big can of glue by his side. He held a strip of wood with nails embedded in it, held it in both hands like he was offering it up to the Holy Ghost.

Rosie let go of the door knob. “Would you like a cup of coffee, Charlie?”

Charlie didn’t like coffee, but something in Rosie’s voice, something about the look on her face as though some supreme effort had been made, put Charlie in a bind.

“Would you by any chance have tea?” he asked, looking up at her and in that moment Rosie would have died for him as she would have died for a child, over and over again, all those years of trying and failing, of Don saying never mind, we’re okay Rosie, just the two of us and each day, each week, each year she had watched him go out the door with his bucket of rags, his scraper, his damn vinegar and the door would close behind him leaving Rosie standing there in the kitchen feeling the world go further and further away as she listened to the hum of the fridge, the drip from the ever-leaking faucet, the grind of the electric clock, its fraying cord snaking down the wall to a taped plug and broken outlet. Some days she would stand there for five minutes imagining Don whistling on the window ledge of some fancy place on Bank or Jane Street. Would imagine him looking through the newly clean panes of a six-over-six to some beautiful young mother in a negligee and then Rosie would stop imagining and dress for work, walk to the Garment District, sit at her machine and watch the lines of silken stitches racing up the sides of satin slips, darting along lace-trimmed gowns and chiffon robes, each seam a road to some other woman’s luxurious life.

“Tea?” Rosie said. She looked up at Charlie, bewildered. “Tea,” she repeated, not sure if it was the sound of a missing letter of the alphabet or some exotic destination beyond the realm of her imagination.

Maybe it was all the cocaine nasty-ing her mind, or the steadily rising tide of alcohol in her blood, or maybe enough really was just fucking enough. Anyway Thea had had it with him. She'd had it with everyone, but particularly she'd had it with him. Her anger, long undergoing a chemical change, had finally reached the stage of distilled venom. It burned in her throat like stuck vomit.

Thea used to be a slender, vulnerable creature. A dancer, who had trouble re-entering the world after rehearsal. "I just don't know how to go from dancing till I fly, to shopping the aisles of A & P," she used to say to Gerry, her husband then. What could he say? Gerry didn't know what it was like to fly. He was a psychologist,a rescuer of waifs. Thea was a fragile, wounded bird when he met her and took her in. Now she was on her way out and he knew it. Years later she would tell people that he was the first man to see more in her than just her good looks. Gerry was, in fact, the first person to tell her how he loved the way she saw the good in everyone and everything.

Now, three years later, thirty-one years old and twenty pounds underweight, Thea stood ragged with rage in a phone booth in San Francisco. It was eleven o'clock on perhaps a Thursday morning. She was a mean ninety pounds with long blonde hair and blue eyes that held ice and fire in vying amounts. Where once she had been soft and pretty she now glinted with betrayal and hard sexuality. She was on her second phone call. The first one had confirmed what she'd been up all night suspecting. Her boyfriend, the drummer, was fucking around. Again. She tried to take a deep breath. She was calling him now to see if he was home. She was

plotting. She was gonna get him. But she didn't want him to know what was coming.

The phone rang four times before Joey picked up.

"Hallo?"

"Joey?"

"Yeah"

"It's me, are you awake?"

"Sure."

"Can I come over"

"Sure babe"

"Okay, see you in a bit then"

"Great."

"Bye."

Thea waited for him to hang up and then smashed the phone into its cradle and wrenched the door of the booth open. Her teeth hurt. A line of cold sweat began its slow trickle from each armpit, drawing a thin seam down each side of her ribs, from which she felt she might burst any minute.

The nearest bar was half way down the block. It was stale and mean inside and therefore familiar. She flung her bag on the floor, sat on a stool and looking at the bartender's chest, ordered a brandy. She lit her umpteenth cigarette of the morning, which was still really part of her night. The smoke sucked in and spewed out. It all hurt. Damn the hurt. The brandy was gone in three swallows. She ordered another. Thea wasn't looking for courage. She was methodically killing off her last ounce of forgiveness. The third brandy did it. She paid up, slung her bag over her shoulder and headed for the bus that would take her to Twelth and Mission.

When Thea was five she was too shy to tell people she wanted to be a missionary when she grew up. Jesus was her friend then. He suffered the little children to come unto him. By the time she was fifteen God had come between her and her friend and she knew there was no shelter once you were born.

The bus pulled up to the curb. She cursed the slow-moving door. When she put her fare in the box next to the driver he looked up at her and smiled, said "How ya doing?"

"Who the fuck wants to know?" she spat and sat in the first seat facing forward. At the next stop a "groovy" young man got on and sat on the side seat in front of her. She stared straight ahead.

"Hey, how's it going?" he asked.

"How does it look? You fucking asshole." Thea's voice was a thin , tight line of steel. She would actually have liked to smack this stupid fucker but she was saving her violence for Joey.

Years later, when Thea was in her forties and had a few years of sobriety in her, she would look back at this day and see herself, as if from a helicopter. Would see herself streaking through the streets like a series of thin black lines on a map, heading toward an unknown destination, and it would horrify her to see how far from her true self she had run back then.

Thea could barely stay in her seat. Felt as if she was being pushed from behind. The devil, no doubt, come to keep her company. She kept seeing Joey's face and her hands burned with the desire to hit him. This rotten, puny , fucking man. He wasn't a man. He was some thin, slimy thing she'd once loved. Her gypsy boy she'd called him when they first met. Black-eyed, skinny-hipped, high-assed, drummer boy. Seven years younger than her and oh so good in bed. Her live-in rhythm section she used to call him. Now she was going to hurt him. Maybe she could beat his head against the wall nice and steady. Maybe he'd like it in six-eight time. It wasn't that she actually wanted to kill him. She wanted to hurt him till it showed, till something gave. She wanted him to get it. Finally. She wanted to hear him pray through swollen lips. And who would forgive him? Would God show up for this one?

She was not amazed that she was not amazed to be this foul in public. She knew her vicious face was an invitation to hell and she didn't care. There was nothing left in her to care. She had been robbed blind, she had been knifed in an already deadly wound. Her baby had been taken from her and where was Joey when she stood there all alone in the courtroom, her cheap, new lawyer useless against Gerry's big wheel from New York. It had been months now since she'd somehow walked out of the courthouse and sat by a fountain , the gentle young lawyer gray with her first loss, Thea near death with her greatest loss ever.

"Where were you, you bastard?" Thea screamed as she got off the bus. She was packed down tight, every inch of her being was taken up with abuse. Every abandonment, every childhood lie, every accusation, every

failure, every unheard cry, was topped of now with booze and drugs, caffeine and smoke and candy bars and eggs once a day.

Four blocks she had to walk to get to him. Four blocks that had no dimension other than her fury. She saw nothing but his face. Held it in front of her at arms length, watching it bob within her reach. She wanted to go faster, but she would not run, it would break the momentum. Every step was crucial, unyielding. She was marching off to war.

Thea was at Joey's building now. She felt the excitement of what she was about to do gurgling in her throat, like girlhood glee. She flung open the downstairs door. Everything inside was painted maroon, the walls, ceilings, stairs. It was a crappy building, chipped and dingy and the color rose up to meet her like the walls of a stale heart. She was almost out of time. Violence had its own time. Like a back-beat. You had to push it. She took the first flight of stairs. No need for the banister. Up the second, round the landing, straight to his door.

His door was unlocked, but she kicked it open anyway, tore down the murky hall and into the grungy living room. He was sitting on the couch. She flew to him and grabbing the front of his shirt , wrenched him up from the couch.

"You shitty, fucking bastard," she yelled, as he flew out of her hands and across the room. He stood there with a stupid look on his face. She leaped on him again, smacked him hard across the face and slammed him into the wall. "You lousy scumbag. You filthy, fucking weasel, you're a joke," she screamed and smacked him again.

"Please baby", Joey cried, covering his precious face. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry baby".

"You don't know what sorry is you stupid, fucking asshole. I hate you, I hate you. I want you to fuck off and die."

"Oh baby please, I'm sorry," Joey sobbed. He was cowering against the wall, hands raised in front of him, shielding himself from God's wrath. He made no attempt to move. Tears fled his eyes as he tried to reach for her.

"Get your hands off me," she screamed. "Don't ever fucking touch me again, I hate you." Her arms whipped exclamation marks all over him. She wanted to get at his face again but couldn't get inside his hands. She was vaguely aware of a bruised stinging beginning in her own hands. And she was tired, deep down tired. She had a flash of lying in a snowy hollow on a vast mountain-side. "Fuck you Joey," she muttered and turned from him, walked out the living room, down the hall, all still dark red, dark red her soul. Such a tired life.

As she started down the stairs she heard Joey call to her.

"Please baby, don't leave me. I'm sorry, please baby, I love you."

Love . The word came hurtling after her like a planet off course and the nearer it got the smaller it became until it was just a prick on her skin. She started to laugh. Loud and crazy and bitter. Love? She was at the bottom of the stairs now , reaching for the door, Joey reaching for her, following her onto the street. She turned to him.

"Love?" she jeered and sucking in her cheeks, gathered every last drop of saliva her dry mouth could yield, sucked and sucked till she had a gob of it then leaned in close and looking him right in the eye spat it there, turned from him and walked into the bar next door. Another hour and she could call her dealer.