Читать книгу Butterfly Soup - Nancy Pinard - Страница 9

S ince last Thursday when the doctor named his intermittent symptoms multiple sclerosis, Everett dreads morning. Not the whole morning, just that moment when daylight jolts him from his dreams, as if he’s been cruising down the freeway in his Ford Fairlane—Rosie at his side and Valley, frozen in his mind at age eleven, prattling away in the back-seat—when the car slams into a tree. His stomach flies forward; his body remains belted to the car.

Everett closes his eyes, tries to meld with the warm water in the new mattress and opens his eyes a second time. His vision is fine, today at least. The edges of the room, where walls meet ceiling, are clear, not fuzzy. The wallpaper’s red and white stripes are as distinct as prison bars. He wiggles his toes and taps his fingers on the mattress, then flexes his knees and elbows. The mattress ripples beneath him. He reaches for Rosie.

Instead of her usual sleeping form—sprawled on her stomach, left hand beside her cheek—he finds a pillow. He smiles in spite of her absence. He loves her soft breasts, the curve of her hips, how her skin springs back to his touch like yeasty dough. She’s all woman, not a skinny stick like Helen—always working out and picking at her food as if it’s poison. But Rose isn’t strong like Helen, either. When he can no longer walk, how will she wrestle him out of the bathtub, into a wheelchair? He likes being the caretaker. Carrier of suitcases and heavy grocery bags. It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way.

The worst part is not knowing what will happen. Or when. He was fine two days ago, before he knew his episodes had a name—and a deteriorating prognosis. Now he feels like a goddamn time bomb. In his mind’s eye, a lighted fuse snakes across the quilt connected to bundled sticks of dynamite. He’s got to snuff that fuse. Somehow.

He hasn’t told Rosie. The thought of her expression, eyes soft and vulnerable, brows lifted, makes his stomach turn over. But he can’t keep it secret forever. Maybe it’s best to just tell her—to get it over with.

He hears her feet pad along the hall carpet and into the room. He senses her closeness, smells her breath as she peers over the quilt. He pretends to be sleeping, but when she gets close enough he grips the tie on her robe. The front comes loose as he tugs. “Not now, Everett,” she says in her daytime voice. “We have to talk.” When she flattens her robe to her chest, her nipples protrude through the pink cotton. He’d like to push them like buttons, but then she’d know he can see them. Even at night she wants the lights out. Can she really be so modest after all this time? Or does she just think she’s supposed to be?

“Were you awake when Valley came in last night?” she asks.

He tells her he got up at one.

“Her mascara’s streaked all down her face. I knew that boy was no good.”

There she goes again, jumping to conclusions. Everett tries to distract her, reaching under her arm to knead her breast, but she’s not falling for it. When he won’t jump on her worry wagon, she flounces off. Everett imagines himself slipping her robe down off her shoulders, watching it fall to the floor as she dances in the morning light. He rocks the bed to the slinky music in his head, tightening and loosening his hips.

It will never happen. The bed settles.

Until Thursday he’d told himself her modesty was fine. It brought back the feeling of the first time, kept her always new. Maybe she knows that. Maybe her shyness is just an act. His groin stirs. Nah. Rosie isn’t clever. She is Rosie of the White Sheets. A goddamn Catholic saint. She doesn’t know that time is running out. By next week she may not want him at all, even in the darkness. He’s got to tell her.

Everett rolls back onto his side and pushes himself up. So far so good. Nothing is numb, though so far he hasn’t wakened to numbness. Reading a pamphlet shouldn’t make symptoms appear, but since reading it, he’s tracking every twinge. His legs hold when he hoists himself onto them—not like last Tuesday, when his right leg buckled suddenly and he fell from the fourth rung of the ladder. He’d chalked up his bruises to the hazards of work when Rosie had asked. But it wasn’t the first time he’d fallen without cause.

He listens to the water run through the pipes as she turns the taps on and off. The silence means she’s dressing. “Rosie?” No answer. He raises his voice. “Rosie?” Silence. His speech may go someday. He’ll blabber, and people will think he’s retarded and avert their eyes. No one will hire a retarded electrical contractor. “Rooo-ssieee!”

“I have to run to the store, Everett,” Rosie says, emerging from the bathroom fully clothed and wriggling her bare feet into heeled pumps. “We’re out of cream.”

“Wait.” She’s halfway down the stairs before he formulates what it is he really wants. “I thought we might go somewhere today. You know, take a little day trip. Spend some time together.” Her shoes tap on the kitchen tile and the door shuts behind her.

Okay, he thinks. If that’s the way you want it. See if I’m here when you need me. He pulls on boxers, shorts and a polo and ties his sneakers, plotting to exit before she returns.

In the bathroom Everett pushes the clutter of Valley’s makeup aside. He wipes her blond hairs from the vanity with a damp sponge and wonders at the irritation he feels. Maybe Rosie is right. Maybe feeding, clothing and sheltering a daughter isn’t all there is to fathering. But Rose doesn’t know what it’s like to be him. He’s never admitted it to anyone, but from day one he and Valley were off-kilter. In the hospital he had looked at the wrinkled, slimy infant Rosie held, seen the adoration in her eyes, the protective curve of her shoulders, and felt like a stranger. He’d chalked it up to Valley’s early arrival. He and Rosie hardly knew one another when Valley turned up. Rosie’s growing belly had seemed a pleasant pacifier that compensated for her disappearing figure. The pregnancy slowed Rosie down after the agitation of their courtship. She’d laid quietly on the couch many evenings with her head in his lap, loaning his hands her nightgowned breasts and belly, a drowsy smile on her face. He’d led her off to bed easily after that, and she’d folded herself around him, accepting his attentions to the end. Then Valley arrived and he got lost in the chaos of feedings and diapers and crying in the night. Rosie’s breasts weren’t his after that. None of her was.

Now that Valley is grown, Rosie is paranoid. He can’t make a living and still worry over every little thing. When Rosie harps about the things he doesn’t do for Valley, he wants to withhold what affection he does feel. He rinses the sponge under the tap, squeezes the water out and scrutinizes its intricate structure of cell walls. Outnumbered by women, he feels like one of its holes—surrounded but not connected. When his walls break down, he won’t exist at all.

He hurries through his shave, musing on places he might like to go. With Rosie at the store, he doesn’t have much time to make his getaway. He’s combing the hair over his thinning crown when he sees the copy of the AAA magazine on the floor next to the john. The Miami Valley insert features adventures on Lake Erie. A sportsman’s paradise waits three hours north, and he hasn’t sampled any of it. A photo of a man harnessed to a yellow-and-orange parachute particularly fascinates him. Parasailing, the caption calls it. The chute is pulled by a speedboat, but the man is flying high in the air. One step short of skydiving, it looks to him. He’s always wanted to know how it feels—that moment of free fall after leaving the plane, before the chute opens. A lot like an orgasm, he suspects, a gigantic orgasm. He’ll do it while he’s still able. And if part of his body gives out while he’s doing it…well, he’ll go down enjoying himself. It will serve Rosie right.

Everett grabs his duffel from the closet and stuffs it with underwear, another shirt and swim trunks. He stops at Valley’s door on his way by and looks in. On the other side of her latest caterpillar and the phone he added when her friends began tying up his business line, her feline form curls toward the wall. He watches the quilt rise and fall with her breathing. The distance between them grew when puberty hit. Valley became sullen then. Setting foot in her room felt like trespassing.

Maybe he’ll wait to tell Rosie. There will be plenty of time later. Years. If he tells her now, she’ll strap him to a wheelchair the way she wants to chain Valley to the bedpost. She’ll insist on driving everywhere, and he’ll just sit there watching life pass by as if it’s television. If he doesn’t hold tight to the checkbook, he’ll lose control of everything. Thank God he’s invested their money. Hasn’t let her spend it.

He scribbles a note before he leaves.

Rosie,

I’ve gone out to make a bid. There’s a big one on the line. I may be late.

Love,

Everett

He chuckles to himself. He hasn’t lied exactly, considering what he has in mind. His sense of humor is one thing he won’t lose. Not if he holds on tight.

As Everett backs out of the garage, he glances at the garden. Small shoots are pushing through the soil, but from a distance he can’t tell if they’re plants or weeds. At the end of the driveway he glances up the road nervously. Just his luck, Rosie will pull into sight before he can make his escape.

The air’s heavy this morning, laying a haze over the horizon. He’s grateful for his air-conditioning as he speeds out of Eden. He plays with the radio dial. An announcer’s voice tunes in midsentence.

“…the British in their ongoing countersiege of the Falklands. Port Stanley is defended by some seven thousand Argentine troops.

“Israeli land, sea and air forces invaded southern Lebanon in retaliation for the assassination attempt on Ambassador Shlomo Argov in London on June third. Ground troops occupy the territory from Tyre on the coast to the foothills of Mount Hermon following Israel’s June fourth air strikes on Palestinian targets near Beirut.”

Everett turns it off. Air strikes are everywhere.

Ten miles north, he stops to tank up in Union City—first at the McDonald’s drive-through where he orders two sausage-egg-and-cheese biscuits with a large coffee, then at a Sunoco. Everett eats one of the biscuits, then gets out to pump his gas. It’s hot. Dr. Burns said heat and humidity aggravate his condition, and this June has been a doozy, with all the rain. He checks his oil and tire pressure, though before the diagnosis he wouldn’t have bothered. Now his car has to be dependable in case he has an episode.

“Find everything you need?” the attendant calls, stepping from behind the raised hood of a Thunderbird. He’s just a kid, nineteen at most, in work boots and a baggy one-piece coverall that says Ben. Hell, if Everett were a car, this kid could rewire his circuits.

“Just need to pay my bill,” Everett says, feeling connected to Ben by the cord strung across the concrete. He might like to take him aside. Buy him a coffee. Tell him not to waste his youth or take his health for granted.

Ben would nod his head, say yeah and light up a cigarette.

Inside the station Everett pays with plastic, buys cigarettes from a machine and heads back to the car. The driver’s door stands open, and Everett is surprised to see a dog lying on the floor on the passenger side. “Hey, Fella,” Everett says and puts his hand out, palm up, to a beagle mutt with brown eyes, droopy ears and a pointy snout. Fella has a biscuit wrapper crumpled between his paws and looks up at Everett with guilty eyes, cowering slightly. Everett laughs. “Teach me to leave the door open.” The dog stops licking the grease-stained wrapper to lap Everett’s fingers. “Good stuff, huh?”

“Hey, Ben, this your dog?” Everett calls. “A dog jumped into my car.”

Ben walks over and peers in. “Not mine. I hate dogs. My kid sister got attacked by a Doberman.”

A lopsided silence hangs between them, then settles on the kid’s end.

“No shit.” It’s all Everett can think to say. He wants to ask if she’s okay but couldn’t stand to hear that she isn’t. He’d have to feel worse for Ben than he feels for himself.

This dog is no Doberman. “Must belong to someone,” Everett says finally. He turns up an ID tag on the dog’s collar. “I’ll get him out of here for you. Where’s Morningside Court?”

“Over there behind the Baptist church,” Ben says and points the way.

Everett raises the window, lights a cigarette, then circles the block with the church steeple. He parks opposite a brick ranch at 136 Morningside, where a man is out back throwing a football to a gangly boy, six maybe, in a Cincinnati Bengals cap. A Jeep and a riding mower sit side-by-side in the open garage, and a gun rack hangs in the Jeep’s back window.

Everett watches the ball bump end over end when the kid fumbles it. The kid and his dad lunge after it and roll around in a snarl of bodies that knocks the cap off the kid’s head. Everett takes a drag on his cigarette, watching its tip turn red. He waits while the nicotine floods his blood and blows smoke out his nose. Everett and his dad had played together sometimes, but it was baseball. His father, clad in Sears coveralls, would set his empty Thermos in the sink. “Hey, Rett,” he’d say. His father called him Rett. And if supper wasn’t ready he’d ask, “Want to throw the ball around?”

Everett always said yes but wished for more players—to have a game. He would ask his mother to play, but she’d say someone had to cook—an odd excuse since she barely touched the meals she made. His mother didn’t sweat. Little lines radiated from her lips in permanent discontent. She never even ate her lipstick off.

A dog would want to play ball. Everett had asked for one for his birthday. His mother had shuddered and given him fish instead. She hadn’t seemed to get it—that he’d wanted to do more than just look at his pet. Despite his disappointment, he’d spent his allowance on snails and colored gravel and a ceramic castle with turrets for them to swim around. At fourteen, when his shoulders broadened and his hips narrowed and his mother shied away from touching him at all, he took cool baths and released the fish into the tub water with him. They’d flipped their fantails at him and chased one another around his legs.

Everett feels the dog’s belly but finds no genitals. “Guess you’re not a Fella,” he says, rumpling her loppy ears. She stands on the seat, cocks her head slightly to one side and wags her tail as if she’s known him forever. She doesn’t seem to know he’s driven her home. Maybe if the windows were down.

Everett removes her tag, shifts into Drive and steps on the gas. The kid is too young to catch the damn football. Any dog will do for him. And the man—he has a son, a house, a Jeep, a gun. He doesn’t need a dog, too.

The entrance ramp to Route 75 is not far down the road. He speeds onto the highway as if he’s being chased, checking his rearview mirror for police cars. After a few miles he relaxes and lowers the passenger window. The dog sticks her nose into the wind. He lights another cigarette. Her ears blow back as they pull into the left lane to pass an eighteen-wheeler.