Читать книгу What It Might Feel Like To Hope - Dorene O'Brien - Страница 10

falling forward

Faith was sipping organic aloe juice and munching Skinny Chips when she was summoned, via telephone, to spring Ed from jail for the third time that month. What had he done now? she wondered. The sheriff wouldn’t say, but he did tell her that she had better bring $500 because this time it was bad.

She clamped down the receiver, slid her feet into the salted water churning in her footbath, and tried to put Ed out of her mind. When the phone rang again fifteen minutes later, she was elbow-deep in the chip bag sopping crumbs with her wet fingertips, her toes raking the hard plastic nubs on the floor of the Vibra-Matic.

“It’ll do him good to wait,” she said. “Let him think about what he’s done, whatever that is.”

She heard a ruckus in the background—the clanging of pots and pans, like the sound of a hubcap skittering down the road—and then Sheriff Waldon’s weary voice: “Get him out of here, Faith.”

By the time she arrived at the jail—really just a room with a desk and four cells—smelling of ginger-peach spray and fingering a small bump that had sprouted suddenly just above her left wrist, Ed was asleep.

“Well,” said Faith to Sheriff Waldon, “I guess I’ll do some shopping. I’m all out of yogurt and echinacea.”

“He was cursin’ up a white storm all night.” The sheriff glanced over at Ed’s cell. “I don’t want a replay when he comes to. Please. Let’s just get him up.”

Faith frowned. “Well, what’d he do this time?”

Sheriff Waldon gave her a defeated look, then jerked his head derisively toward the row of cells. “Ask him.”

FAITH AND ED HAD BEEN neighbors going on two years, and although they were nearly the same age—fifty-six and sixty-one, respectively—Faith felt she was a paragon of health next to Ed, a creased and rumpled man with doom etched in his face. She shook her head in sad disapproval of Ed’s health regimen when she glanced over the fence to see him passed out in a lawn chair, the sun baking his pale flesh, or when she saw the cases of empty beer bottles stacked in his garage like a wall, one that sealed him off from the good things in life: early morning walks, the happy cries of grandchildren, the smell of Protose-loaf and Nuttola streaming from the oven after having been placed there by the loving hands of a health-conscious wife bent on prolonging her time with him. Ed wasn’t a bad man, Faith thought, just a selfish one. She’d heard his wife had emptied the bank account and stolen off with the adorable twins, and Faith felt bad about that, no question. But didn’t a part of her feel he deserved it? Couldn’t she tell by the way he dropped off mowing the lawn halfway through or launched his Buick into the driveway, its fender nosed deep into the hedge after swerving home from the Tap Shoe, that he’d had it coming? Still, when Ed approached her that scalding day last month to request a favor, brushing her hand with his as it rested on the fence between them, her legs trembled slightly. Close up, he looked a little like Marvin, who’d been dead going on twenty years.

“Can you hold this for me?” he asked, passing a worn leather shaving case over the fence. Faith had once told Ed to stop by if he needed anything—Really, she’d said, nodding her head like a dime-store dog—and was glad he’d finally felt comfortable enough to do it, to break free, if even temporarily, of his self-imposed isolation. She stared at the bag for a moment, thinking drugs, jewels, the severed digits of his former wife’s right hand.

“It’s money,” Ed shrugged. “For when I get in trouble, which seems to be more and more these days. I appreciate it.” He smiled at her, shyly, then looked away as if her gaze would wound him.

“I don’t understand,” said Faith. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

Ed turned to her, and she thought he looked confused, as if she’d just cracked a bad joke or asked him how to make a soya fritter.

“Right,” he said, “Sheriff Waldon’ll call you. I gave him your number. I appreciate it, Faith.” And with that he walked off purposefully, as if late for a shareholders’ meeting.

Faith took the bag inside and made a cup of tea—there was no need to rush it. She moved through the kitchen methodically, reaching for the china cup, drawing a silver spoon from the dish rack, sliding the kettle from the burner, her poker-straight spine tingling with anticipation. When she was finally perched atop the Dr. Zielbach Ergonomi-Stool, she thought about waiting to open it. Maybe tomorrow. Faith lived for moments like this: a scandalous peek into a neighbor’s life. She stared at the bag, thinking. Or, more accurately, imagining. Maybe there was a love note. Or a suicide note. Who could tell with Ed? You’re pathetic is what she finally said to herself. She then tore it open and found that Ed, who may have been a slovenly, unhealthy drunk, wasn’t a liar. The case contained money, only money—$1,250.00, to be exact—and Faith was disappointed. At first she considered hiding it with her own valuables in her underwear drawer, but the thought of the rough edges of flaking leather tearing into her cotton briefs made her neck go stiff. She finally threw it onto her closet floor and refused to think about its interaction with her shoes. She would help Ed, sure. Why not? She would gain his trust; maybe she would even save him from the things he didn’t know were killing him.

MARVIN HAD BEEN A ROMANTIC when Faith met him more than thirty years before at the Blue Goose, where she’d go for the occasional grasshopper before she discovered herbal tea and Dr. Zielbach. He’d sing Smokey Robinson songs to her, fold bar napkins into roses and insects, ignore the welts that would suddenly flame red on her face and arms when he spun her around the dance floor. No man had ever had this type of physiological effect on Faith, had excited her to the point of eruption, and she imagined each red splotch was the shape of a heart, or a wedding ring, or a part of the anatomy that would turn her face crimson. They were married three months after they met—Faith wasn’t getting any younger, her mother always said—and shortly afterward Faith realized that she remained welt and hive free when Marvin licked the back of her knee or slid his fingers over her breasts. She wondered why she had been cured—she still loved him, after all—and ultimately determined that she was now content rather than happy, in love rather than in lust. But the more she eased into the comforts that a long-time relationship provided, the more Marvin wanted to recapture what Faith felt was no longer required. He wanted to take her to the Blue Goose and sing to her, though she felt silly when he reembarked on a courtship ritual that had already been successful, and she felt he was sullying the memory with this bad, albeit unwitting, parody. She just wanted to go home and read a book while Marvin watched the news.

But the more Faith wanted to be home, it seemed, the more Marvin wanted to be out playing her Romeo, caressing her hand while crooning oldies at the piano bar or dipping her as they waltzed at Sparle’s. In public the welts and hives resurfaced, and that’s when Faith understood that they had not been the physiological effects of love but something much more sinister: an outer manifestation of her inner discomfort; she was not bursting from love but from embarrassment. She suddenly recalled not the rich baritone of Marvin’s young voice as he belted out a soulful version of “My Girl” or the strength of his arm as he held her parallel to the dance floor, but the disapproving stares, the forced smiles, the comments that in retrospect were not as friendly as they had once sounded.

She’d meant to tell Marvin, gently, that she no longer enjoyed his overtures, his overblown displays of affection, but he preempted her. After twelve years and seven months of marriage, twelve years and seven months of wining and dancing and dipping, twelve years and seven months of welts and hives and public inflammations, he fell into a plate of linguini at Marco’s and didn’t get up. Faith blamed herself for the heart attack: she should have watched his drinking, cooked less meat, convinced him to exercise. The day after Marvin’s funeral Faith dragged the industrial trash bin from the garage to the middle of the kitchen floor and chucked into it every bit of food in the house: canned peaches in syrup, frozen T-bones, orange soda, garlic bologna, hamburger buns, even butter. For three days she drank water and ate nothing, unplugged the phone and let the doorbell ring. Then, after she could no longer tolerate her hunger headache, she searched the directory for a health food store and slowly traded her grief for carrot fritters and vegan tacos, Tai Chi and yoga.

She’d forgotten about the hives and rashes until Ed entered her life. They had returned with a vengeance when the neighbors stared over fences to watch her offer Ed a bag of homemade granola or to share the health-food-store circular with him, or even when she climbed into her car to drive to the jail, Ed’s money in hand, as if they knew she was going to fetch the man she thought looked like her former husband, one she might save in place of the one she couldn’t.

FAITH HAD DIPPED INTO ED’S bag twice before, both times after Ed had been dragged in for drunk and disorderly after putting up a stink at the Tap Shoe. This time the sheriff told her to bring twice as much bail money, and she figured as she entered the jail that Ed had moved from being a pain in the ass to full-scale criminality.

“Ed,” she called through the thick iron bars on his cell, but Ed remained a snoring, undulating heap. Faith turned to the sheriff.

“Does he have a car to drive?” she asked, having just then understood that it may have been impounded.

“Yep,” said the sheriff, smirking.

“Is he fit to drive?” she asked, and Waldon nodded as he counted out the money, plunking each bill onto his desk.

“Well, then,” said Faith, “let him.” She turned to leave, and Sheriff Waldon tsked.

“What?” said Faith. “What?”

“He’s a lucky man, Faith. Not many women would put up with him … with this.” He glanced around the small jail and his eyes landed on Ed.

Faith was appalled. “I don’t put up with him,” she said, caressing the rash that had suddenly spread across her right shoulder. “He’s my neighbor, that’s all. I’m just being neighborly.”

“Well, sure,” said Sheriff Waldon. “That’s all I’m saying.”

“Who else has he got?” Faith said defensively, knowing those words would make Waldon think she pitied Ed. But how else could she justify her behavior? How else could she explain her trips to the jail, cash in hand, to bail him out for the third time that month? She could say she was a lonely, pathetic widow with nothing else to do, or she could convince him that she was engaged in a humanitarian effort of the highest sort, or she could say that she was fond of Ed, that the fact that he took the circulars and seemed to at least consider the value of tofu bites had awakened something in her. But all of these things were too close to the truth to admit, even to herself. Damn Ed, she thought as she exited the jail. Damn him to hell.

Faith was in her living room in mountain pose an hour later when she heard Ed’s Buick clanging up the street. She was fully prepared to give him the ultimatum: help yourself or I can’t help you. The night before she’d dreamed about Marvin, who turned into Ed and then back into Marvin so gradually that one man’s head topped the other’s body. She would tell him this, all of it, make him see it her way. She exited her house at a good clip, but when Ed pulled into the driveway she noticed it: he had been in an accident. A strange one. The driver’s side door was caved in, the left front quarter panel was missing, and the antenna was bent double. Still, she stalked across the mowed section of Ed’s lawn toward his driveway with resolve, sensing eyes peering at her from behind curtains and hedges, lawn mowers and garages. As Ed struggled toward the passenger door, muttering and cursing all the way, Faith rubbed the dry patch of skin on her left elbow that had suddenly burst into a flaming itch. The curses rose several octaves when Ed couldn’t force open the door, and when he started kicking at it Faith rushed to his aid.

“Keep your shirt on,” she snapped, and when she looked at Ed through the cracked passenger window she saw a little boy; his clothes were rumpled, his hair a mess and—the most shocking of all—he was crying. She opened the door quite easily and noticed then that the inside handle was missing. Ed stared at the dashboard, breathing heavily, but made no effort to get out of the car. He looked defeated, worn down, resigned to spending the rest of his life perched uncomfortably on the cracked vinyl seat. A few of the neighborhood kids gathered at the foot of the driveway, mouths agape and fingers pointing, and Mrs. Bushnell across the street was on tiptoe, leaning against her broom to get a better view of the mangled carcass of Ed’s car.

“Ed,” said Faith quietly, “let’s get you inside.”

Ed turned to her then, his eyes red and swollen, and sighed. “I can’t,” he said.

“Sure, you can,” said Faith, and in one motion her inflamed elbow was hooked under Ed’s bulk and pulling as if her life depended on it. Ed tapped his feet on the passenger-side mat, as if checking to see if they still worked, and slid them slowly toward the door. After rocking to-and-fro several times, he exited the car on shaky legs and the neighborhood kids started cheering.

Once inside, Faith deposited Ed’s mass on the sofa and then, to avoid giving the neighbors an encore, ran to her house via the back door to retrieve two Edamame Rice Bowls, some mango juice and her arnica gel (surely Ed’s muscles were stiff from sleeping on that rack Sheriff Waldon called a bed). But when she returned to Ed’s place she heard the distant buzz of a beehive, a motorboat: he was snoring into a paisley sofa cushion. Just then it started to rain, and as Faith placed the tube of gel on the coffee table beside Ed she felt eyes boring tiny holes into the small of her back. Turning suddenly, her throat seizing up, she saw it there, not six feet away, its scaly feet and long, threadlike-fingers splayed against the aquarium wall. As Faith approached with trepidation, the tiny creature remained still but for its eyes, which followed her as she inspected its scaly green body, its long, narrow tail, the fringe on its oversized head. “Why, you’re a lizard,” she said. “And you must be a hungry one.”

The cupboard beneath the aquarium was empty, so Faith heated one of the rice bowls in Ed’s microwave before searching his cavernous cupboards for a small container. All she found were two cans of Campbell’s Chunky soup, some Hamburger Helper and a bag of cheese popcorn. Processed food, she thought, would drive anyone to drink; she had to stop herself from trashing it all.

“Here you go, darlin’,” she said as she flipped open the aquarium lid and scooped three teaspoonfuls of rice into the creature’s corroded dish. But it remained immobile, its stony silhouette reflected in the wall of glass adjacent to it, evidently imbued with the patience and fortitude of its prehistoric ancestors.

Faith swayed slowly from side to side and watched the lizard’s eyes rotate to keep its gaze fixed on her.

“Why, you’re a little hypnotist,” she said. “You’re really something.”

She smiled at the little green dinosaur because she believed it liked her. As a child she felt she had the ability to communicate with animals, driving the baboons into a frenzy at the zoo by planting thoughts of freedom and rebellion into their heads, or calming a skittish horse by speaking gently into its ear of brown oats and alfalfa. She never told anyone about it—after all, who would believe her? But she felt a connection to the little green reptile, and so she told it to march right up to its food dish and eat. It must have liked her quite a lot, she thought, because it remained propped against the glass, its tiny fingers twitching, saliva dripping from its puckered mouth.

Faith didn’t know how long she and the creature stared at one another, silently commiserating about the challenging task of befriending Ed. At one point she thought she saw the little green head nod, its black eyes full of the wisdom of the ages, and although at the time she did not know it, somewhere inside the recesses of her heart she began to nurture an admiration for the wreck of a man who lay snoring on the sofa behind her, a man with the wisdom or intuition or simple dumb luck to acquire such a stoic and majestic pet.

“My wife never liked him.” Faith turned to see Ed rising slowly, almost gracefully, into an upright position. He rubbed his head and nodded toward the aquarium. “Little Richard,” he said. “Carmen never liked him.”

“Why not?”

Ed took a deep breath. “Well, first off, he stinks. And he drools. And he never liked her.”

“He’s just following his nature,” she said.

“That’s right,” said Ed. “That’s right. Come to think of it, that was something my wife didn’t like about me either.”

“Well,” said Faith, choosing her words carefully, “who we are is who we are. But how we behave … well, now that we can control.” She looked to Little Richard, her confidante, her sounding board.

Ed just laughed. “I wouldn’t place any money on that,” he said. “Take last night, for instance.”

Faith was wildly curious about the events that had culminated in Ed’s bail being doubled and his car looking like it had lost the demolition derby. But she held back; she would emulate Little Richard’s detached calm.

“It was Carmen,” he said. “My ex. I don’t hate her, although I’d like to. She lives in Oakley with some guy owns a junkyard. I’ll tell you what, that guy can take a car apart.” Ed laughed, rubbed his left eye. Then he stared right through Faith, and she knew he was watching Carmen with someone else, watching his car being broken apart like a puzzle.

“Ed,” she said, “you don’t have to talk about it.”

“She come sashaying into the Tap Shoe like she owned the place,” he said, “wearing some checked ruffled number looked like a goddamn kitchen curtain—pardon my French—hanging onto her grease monkey like he was a magnet. I ignored them, I did.” He looked at Faith, his expression one of defiant sincerity.

“Why, sure you did,” said Faith. “What else were you supposed to do?”

“Then the little monkey says, ‘That him? That the guy? You there,’ and Carmen’s trying to shush him but he keeps on until I offer to buy them a drink. How do you like that?”

“That was very generous,” said Faith.

“The monkey walks over and calls me Diamond Jim. ‘Diamond Jim’, he says, ‘big shot. Buying rounds with money you stole from this lady and her twin boys.’ He points to Carmen, and she looks sorry. Sorry that she lied about the money, sorry she came into the Tap Shoe in the first place, sorry she’s tangled up with this monkey. She tells him let’s go but he keeps on until his voice becomes like kindling, like a lit fuse, like a trigger. I get up to leave—Boyle’s already reaching for the phone—but then I’m suddenly outside myself. It’s like I’m watching someone else punch this guy in the gut, lay him out like a rug.”

Faith, simultaneously exhilarated and repulsed, couldn’t speak.

“Maybe if he’d gotten in a punch they’d have hauled him in too. Instead, they scraped him up and threw some ice on his face. Boyle didn’t notice it until he locked up, but he came straight to the jail to tell me the monkey’d taken a crowbar to my car—had the crowbar and everything. Found it hooked into the passenger-side window.”

“Well, that’s cowardly,” said Faith. “Downright cowardly.” She felt the unfairness of it. She felt sorry for the defenseless Buick, its cracked windshield, a gaping hole where the grille once was. As if to express his outrage, Little Richard began leaping about the aquarium, his wiry fingers hooking into the mesh on the ceiling.

“He wants out,” said Ed. “I don’t blame him. It’s no good to be locked up. People pointing fingers, staring.” Ed watched his reflection in the aquarium glass. “It’s no good,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “I should let him out.”

“Let him out! What if he gets into something? He could get hurt.”

“I don’t mean let him out here,” he said. “I mean let him go.”

“You mean set him free?” Faith stared at Little Richard as he dangled from the mesh, watched his small chest bounce with each quick breath, tried to read his thoughts. “Yes,” she finally said, “I think it’s what he wants.”

“It’s what we all want.”

“Where would you take him?”

“I dunno. How ’bout a swamp? Somewhere there’s plenty of bugs.”

Faith wrung her hands; she hadn’t expected this. Just like Marvin, Ed had preempted her, stolen the moment she had selected to make her point by embroiling her in another quandary, though she soon realized that this one did not feel fraught or even overly complicated.

“So now he can change his life,” she said. “Just like that.”

“Yes,” Ed said, the words hovering over them like a benediction. “Just like that.”

Ed took a deep breath as if readying himself for a long stint underwater, then rose and without a word approached the aquarium, opened the lid and scooped Little Richard into his palm. “Okay, buddy,” he said, turning to Faith. “Let’s go.” She wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or to Little Richard, but then Ed took her hand and the three exited Ed’s house to the amusement and great satisfaction of the neighbors.

They marched down the front steps and climbed into the passenger side of the Buick after the door opened with an excruciating whine. Faith would have offered to drive, but she’d grown so flustered when Ed took her hand that she’d simply followed. Slowly and silently they made their way toward the outskirts of town. The driver’s side mirror flew off like a projectile when Ed made a right-hand turn at Brimley, and as they bumped along the gravel road that led to the Racine Nature Preserve, the license plate skittered off into the gutter.

“It’s no good being locked up,” Ed said to Little Richard as they sat on the damp earth near the edge of a small pond. “Eating whatever they give you, being stared at or ignored. Being called a freak.”

“No one called you a freak,” said Faith, and Ed turned to her.

“I meant him.” He nodded at Little Richard. “Carmen said he was a freak of nature. Some sort of genetic mix-up. When I told her that Little Richard’s heart was bigger than hers, she broke all our dishes.”

As she watched Little Richard, his eyes fixed on Ed, his left front foot tapping Ed’s wristwatch, Faith was convinced he understood, and she was suddenly happy he would be forever freed from his fishbowl, his glass house, his observation tank. She thought of her neighbors then, how she’d allowed their stares to penetrate her skin, how she had put herself on display, made herself vulnerable by obsessing over what others thought.

Faith placed her hand on Ed’s, and Little Richard stepped onto it slowly and carefully, his head jerking to the sunset tunes of crickets and bullfrogs, dragonflies and peepers. “Are you happy?” she asked Little Richard. Just then he flicked his tail and opened his mouth wide, revealing a small red tongue, little serrated teeth, a razor-sharp smile.

The sun hung low in the sky, casting small shadows across the water and the stunted trees that fringed the pond.

“Well,” said Ed as he leaned toward Little Richard and stroked his chin, “I guess this is arrivederci. Happy trails, big fella.” He sniffed, rubbed his nose with a balled fist.

“We don’t have to do this,” said Faith.

“Yes,” said Ed. “It’s the only thing to do.”

Little Richard jolted upright in Faith’s palm, and she imagined she felt his heart beat as she spoke to him silently of fresh grass, of murky water, of freedom in all its pain and possibility. This is your chance, she thought. Here is a fresh start. For a while Little Richard stayed, rigid and immobile, his feet hooked in, rooted to his past like a myth. But when the moon took the sky and the sun bowed in homage to a new day, he sprung skyward, over the embankment and toward the water, falling forward into a new life.