A Wife of Noble Character (39 page)

She slept in her old sheets. They'd been balled up and sealed in a box and still smelled like the room where she grew up. She made a nest of them and lay listening in the glow of the streetlights: cars thrumming by outside, louder than she'd imagined. Drunk people yelling. Muted thuds, muddled voices, a dog yapping. She thought she'd be more frightened than she was. Her heart was calm. The four thin walls felt, if not like home, like a home.

 

II

Vivienne got to know a few of her neighbors, and they were mostly women. There was the old woman who'd lived in the building since the sixties, who had a hovering and mousy way of coming and going. Vivienne harbored quiet fears of becoming this woman, of thirty years from now possessing the same feeble, scurrying manner. There was also the happy woman, whose abundant positive energy seemed a compensation for that of the old lady. She hugged everyone, so much so that after the first few hugs, Vivienne didn't feel very special about it anymore.

For a month now she'd been nannying three days a week for her next-door neighbor, Audrey. They'd met a few days after Vivienne moved in, when Audrey knocked on Vivienne's door after Vivienne left her keys hanging in the lock. Audrey was a private caretaker who worked for elders in empty mansions in River Oaks. She and Vivienne discovered they were the same age. Audrey had a three-year-old son named Arthur, a sprightly kid with a pile of brown curls and matching gaps between his top and bottom teeth. Arthur stayed at day care or at his grandmother's during the day, but Audrey was taking extra shifts just to cover the day care and her mother lived across town. She asked Vivienne if she would help for nine dollars an hour cash.

Today she went to Audrey's at two. The scene there had become familiar: Audrey in pink scrubs, tooting around the one-bedroom apartment, dropping toys into piles and giving Vivienne random instructions. She kept her black hair back in a loose ponytail and wore white nurse shoes with a confidence reflected in her impressive posture.

“If he wakes up and starts going ballistic, you can let him watch a show, but only one show. Otherwise, draw or something. Or take a walk. And don't let him play with your phone. I made a casserole for dinner. He pooped right before he fell asleep, so you probably won't have to change anything atomic. I promise he'll be out of diapers soon. I'm giving myself till next week. It's nuts. He's not getting into his preschool if he's still in diapers. We're doing daytime pees now, but he's still scared to poop. I promise, any day now. Sing him the potty song if he pees in the potty.”

She began conducting with her finger, singing to the melody of “Jingle Bells,” “Artie pottied, Artie pottied, Artie is a big boy! Artie pottied, oh, yes, he did, what a big smart boy he is!”

Audrey was a tiny person whose energy belied her frame, with big blue eyes and a permanent tan, the legacy, she told Vivienne, of her Italian ancestors. She was the kind of girl who would have intimidated adolescent Vivienne and Waverly at the mall simply by being so forthright and brunette. When Vivienne had answered Audrey's knock, Audrey handed over the keys and said, “Good job.” She was blunt with life details, revealing them with the same cavalier ease she did the childcare instructions. She'd dropped out of Sam Houston State in Huntsville because she thought the classes were too easy and she wanted to earn money, not sink into debt, so she moved back to Houston and got certified as a home health aide.

They stood over the crib in the bedroom Audrey and Arthur shared. Audrey shook her head. “It sucks,” she said. “He doesn't have a dad. But the thing is,” she said, leaning in, “I think I made it happen because I feared it so much. I think subconsciously I thought I only deserved to be a single mom.”

Vivienne looked down at Arthur. He slept as hard as he played.

“Have you been to a lot of therapy?” Audrey asked.

“No,” Vivienne said. “Have you?”

“Here and there. Girls from the west side don't go to therapy unless their parents send them, right? Like, their parents have to legitimize their problems before they help themselves?”

Sometimes Audrey said things Vivienne only somewhat understood. “I don't know,” she said. “I was just thinking that I used to feel like I didn't deserve to be anything else but a rich guy's wife.”

“Better to be a pretty girl in a crappy studio apartment,” Audrey said. “You know how many women actually want the privilege of being bored?”

“Because it's a lot less stressful,” Vivienne said.

“Well, if it counts for anything, I've done a great job making my life stressful.”

“So have I,” Vivienne said.

Arthur woke an hour later, wailing “MOMMY” in his usual earsplitting way. Vivienne bargained with him—one video and then a walk. He watched
Thomas & Friends
as if he were a mental patient, his round eyes glassy, apple drool running down his chin. He was so blazed out on the screen that he didn't notice her staring. She loved how Arthur was basically openly insane. He said things that made no sense, had little control over impulses, danced at random, and often mumbled to himself. He was the most fun and sincere human she'd ever met, the first child she'd ever known. She liked his scruffiness. He was a no-nonsense guy.

Once Vivienne asked him if he minded going to day care, and he replied, “Mommy has work.” Vivienne remembered her own fancy-pants day care and the over-air-conditioned concierge bus that dropped her off in the afternoon, to a house occupied by a silent housekeeper wiping down an already-spotless countertop. She and Arthur—they were both day-care kids.

He darted out of the bedroom, his black sneakers blinking red behind him, and flexed his biceps. “Rarrrrr!” he said. This meant he was ready to go.

She pushed him around the neighborhood, pointing at the flowers, asking him about the colors. He squealed, “Boo! Wed! Gween!” He was still getting the hang of yellow, orange, and purple. They stopped at a park on a quiet street of apartments, and Arthur ran it out while Vivienne jogged after him. He ran in circles, leapt like a clumsy gazelle, rolled around, and dug little holes in the grass where he claimed “the airpwanes would land.” So Vivienne got down on her knees and made her hand into an airplane that landed, much to Arthur's delight, in his shallow dirt hole. He ran to her to sip from his water bottle, flapping his arms like a pterodactyl.

“Let's go to de sweeping star,” he said.

“What's the sweeping star?” Vivienne asked.

“It's ober dere,” he said, pointing to a wisteria bush in wild bloom.

She wiped his nose as he wriggled away, then crawled after him through the opening in the branches into the hollow of the wisteria. It formed a delicate umbrella, like the secret underside of a waterfall, sunlight beaming through fractured branches.

“Dis is de sweeping star,” he said, very serious.

“What does the sweeping star do? Should we sweep?” She sat cross-legged.

“No, sweeping!” he cried, stomping his foot and plopping down. “Like nighttime nap.”

“Oh, sleeping?” Vivienne said. “The sleeping star?”

He nodded. His gapped teeth shone out from his mouth. “It's, it's, it's—” He sighed, and wiped the curls from his forehead with the back of his dirty hand. “It's de, it's, it's when de—” He furrowed his brow, then grinned. He'd found the word. “Magic! It's when dere's magic.”

Vivienne gasped. “There's magic here?”

He nodded fast. “Yes, and de people, de people, dey come here, and dey get de magic!” He held his arms open wide and puffed his cheeks.

“Wait, wait,” Vivienne said, closing her eyes. “I smell it, Artie. Do you smell the magic? Doesn't it smell good?”

Arthur sniffed. “And de people, dey get the magic because dey smell!”

“Yes, they smell it.” Vivienne reached for a hanging purple blossom and held it under his nose. “This is purple,” she said.

He giggled, without verifying whether he'd smelled anything.

Vivienne brought the flower to her nose—the sweet, magic scent of wisteria, a weightless purple blossom in her palm.

“Who aw we?” Arthur asked suddenly. He wanted to understand the game. The people came here to breathe magic in the flowers, but who were the people?

With a stick, Vivienne drew a circle around them in the dirt. “We're the people who live here,” she said. “We protect the magic.” She lifted some pollen from the ground with her fingertip and wiped it in two lines across Arthur's cheeks.

“We de good guys.”

Vivienne smiled. “Yes we are.” She dabbed the pollen onto her own cheeks.

Arthur clambered to his feet. “My gotta go peepee!” He pulled his pants and training diaper down to his ankles, stuck out his belly, and urinated at the base of the wisteria, his tiny, chub-pocked buttocks clenched with effort. When he finished, he pulled it all back up and turned around with big eyes. He was nearly out of breath.

Vivienne put her hands atop her head. “You know what this means?” she gasped.

He froze, then screamed. “My peepee in de potty!” To Arthur, anywhere other than his diaper was the potty.

Vivienne took a deep breath and opened her mouth, hanging there as Arthur looked on with a delirious smile. “Ohhhhhhh … Artie pottied! Artie pottied! Artie is a big boy! Artie pottied, oh, yes, he did, what a big smart boy he is!”

Beneath the shelter of wisteria, he danced and danced as she sang, and finally fell into her lap, limp with triumph.

 

III

“Well, you're alive,” Randal said.

Vivienne stood in her doorway and crossed her arms. “How did you know I live here?”

He took off his black Cutter hat. “I called the post office and asked for your forwarding address.”

“Is that legal?”

“Don't know. The mailman owed me a favor. Can I come in? Last time I saw you, you kept me outside in a hurricane.”

He'd trimmed his beard so that it didn't connect to his chest hair anymore. The sheer size of his body made letting him inside her apartment, which was a mess, with the unmade bed in plain sight, impossible.

“Hang on.” She grabbed the yogurt she'd been eating for breakfast. Barefoot, she stepped outside and shut the door behind her. “Want to sit in the courtyard?”

He glanced over the railing. Below them was the courtyard, a communal, treeless square spotted with puddles. “There?”

“Yep,” Vivienne said, already on her way down the stairs.

“So you don't want me in your apartment,” Randal said, taking a seat beside her on an iron bench. “You still know how to shoot them darts, Cally.”

“It's a mess,” Vivienne said.

“Well, this bench is a little damp,” he said, “but that was some good rain last night. Clouds are moving fast.”

Vivienne looked up. Low, gray clouds were streaming over from the Gulf. She ate a spoonful of yogurt. “So, what are you doing here?”

“I'm here simply as a messenger of friendly greetings,” he said, lifting his hands. “Nothin' more.”

“You came by to say hi to me?” Vivienne said.

“I tried calling,” he said. “I got a cell phone. I'm not just a door knocker.”

“I have spotty service,” she said. “I don't always pay the bill on time.”

“All right,” he said. “I am here simply as a messenger of friendly greetings, and I have a pair o' box seats to George Strait tonight.”

Vivienne laughed. “Nice ulterior motive. Whose box?”

“My box,” he said. “No strings attached. I'm not gonna talk about trying to have dinner with you or any of that stuff you don't wanna hear about.”

“It's not just that I don't want to hear about it,” she said. “I don't want you to think about it.”

“Harsh dart, Cally,” he said. “You used to care what I thought.”

“That's because I was scared of you.”

“Well, a lot's changed,” he said. “For one, I quit smokin' cigars.”

“Randal, do you wear a doctor's coat with a cowboy hat when you see patients?”

He laughed. “You bet I do.”

“Do the women still have a lot of spider veins?”

“You bet they do,” he said. “You're feisty. I like this new, hardscrabble Cally.” He slid his boots over the concrete. Someone had inscribed it in fingertip print:
JIM 1968
. “You think Jim is still around?”

“If he is, I hope he doesn't still live here,” Vivienne said.

He squinted around at the building. “You doin' okay?”

She became aware of her hair, tied back in a messy bun, and her sweats, stained with Arthur's tempera paint.

She nodded. “I'm fine.”

“You're not gonna tell me anything, because you think I'm gonna go screaming back and tell everyone what I find,” he said.

It was clear he was joking, but she didn't find it funny, not because she cared but because she felt so distant from the person who did care, or had the energy to care. “So are you in the inner circle now?” she said. “It's not easy to get a box, especially for George.”

She hadn't seen George Strait in many years, but there was a time in her life when she saw him every year when he came through for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. The rodeo in all its bright, manure-stinking glory—she loved the livestock show most, especially the chubby auctioneers singing their mumble beside steers the size of compact cars. George Strait was always the biggest night; she and Waverly looked forward to it for weeks, hyperactively lip-synching in Bracken's Astrodome box, or down on the floor, in the first rows, swooning over George's butt.

Randal snickered and scratched his short beard. His hands, she noticed, were so milky and soft.

That was what gave him away every time. Randal couldn't play a good ol' boy with hands like that. Even Bucky, privileged city boy on a four-wheeler that he was, had rough spots on his hands.