I'll Love You When You're More Like Me (16 page)

“What's a sawbuck?” A.E. asked.

“A sawbuck is a ten-dollar bill,” said my father. “Asking for money embarrasses Albert, as it should, so he resorts to slang.”

“All he's ever done with his life is resort to,” said my mother.

“That's right,” said my father enthusiastically. “He resorts to this job, he resorts to that place to live. A rolling stone gathers no moss and no roots. Of course certain people at this table aren't particularly interested in roots, anyway.”

“I'm interested in roots,” I said, “but I'd like to be able to put them down myself.”

“Certain people,” said my father, “believe that old, established professions are to be scoffed at.”

“Linguistics is an old, established profession,” I said. “So is semantics. So is plain old journalism. I'm not scoffing at them.”

“Are you going to send Uncle Albert the ten sawbucks?” A.E. asked.

“Certainly not,” said my father, who would; we all knew it.

That night my father didn't even come to the table. He had pains, my mother said. He was resting in his room. “Another thing,” said my mother. “Adelade Hren called me a while ago to say that Harriet is a complete wreck because
of some letter you wrote her. Adelade wanted to know if I knew what was in that letter, and I told her I had no idea you'd even written Harriet a letter.”

“It doesn't have anything to do with Mrs. Hren and you,” I said.

“I just hope it wasn't a Dear John,” said my mother. “I wrote a Dear John to someone during the war and to this day I think about it at night when I can't sleep. It's something I'll always regret doing.” In our house there was only one war, which was World War II.

A.E. said, “Is a Dear John a letter saying you don't love someone anymore?”

“I never really loved this particular person,” said my mother.

“Then why did you write him a Dear John?” A.E. said.

“
Because,
Ann Elizabeth, I
imagined
that I loved him,” said my mother.

A.E. said, “ ‘After all, my erstwhile dear,/My no longer cherished,/Need we say it was not love,/Just because it perished?' Edna St. Vincent Millay.”

“A.E.,” I said, “stop quoting yourself and saying it's Edna St. Vincent Millay.”

“That really was her,” A.E. said. “If I could write like that, would I be sitting around this dinner table wasting my time worrying over what's going on in your dull life?”

“Your brother's life isn't dull, A.E.,” said my mother. “Uncle Albert's is a lot duller.”

“What does his life have to do with mine?” I asked.

“You're thinking of imitating him, aren't you?” my mother said.

“I'm not thinking of teaching canoe at a boy's camp, or
teaching dancing at Arthur Murray, or exterminating rats, or playing piano in a roadhouse. I'm thinking of going to college and doing something with words.”

“Well you've just done something with words,” said my mother. “You've dashed your father's fondest hopes with words, and apparently you've done something with words to poor Harriet Hren.”

“You're off to a brilliant start,” said A.E.

Since we had no guests in the house, my mother had made pork chops and home fries with extra onions. I could still taste the onions after I'd showered and brushed my teeth and dressed, so I went back down the hall to the bathroom to try mouthwash.

My father was sitting in his room with the shades pulled down, no light but the one from the television. He was watching a ball game, his leather recliner in the third position, a glass of skimmed milk on the table next to him. My father usually shut the door when he watched television upstairs, but the door was open that night to make a point, to tell me I was responsible for the shape he was in.

He finally called out to me, “Wallace?”

I went to the door and looked in at him. He was still wearing the trousers he'd worn to the funeral, a white shirt and dark tie, but his shoelaces were untied. He began cleaning his glasses with the edge of his fresh white handkerchief; it was easier for him to talk with me when he didn't see my face clearly.

“What is it, Dad?”

“Tell your mother to put on the Ansafone. I don't feel up to taking calls directly right this moment.”

“All right,” I said. I lingered a moment to see if he'd say anything else.

He finally said, “Is it the girl, Wallace?”

I stepped inside the room a little more. He kept cleaning his glasses, not looking up at me. “It isn't the girl,” I said. “Her name is Sabra, by the way.”

“Your mother and I are well aware of her name.” He sighed.

Then he shook his head. “She's just passing time at the end of the summer, Wallace.” He blew on his glasses. “She's turning your life around, and all she's doing is passing time at the end of a summer.”

“It isn't Sabra,” I said.

“I'll be lucky if Mr. Trumble lasts through fall.” He didn't put his glasses back on after he finished cleaning them. He held them by one of the arms and swung them slightly. “It seems to me you're burning all your bridges behind you, Wally.”

“Maybe that's what you have to do if you don't want to go back over old ground again,” I said.

“The Hren girl was one in a million,” said my father.

“Well she still is, for someone else.”

My father put his glasses down beside his milk and put his hand up near his heart.

“Are you all right, Dad?”

“Oh I'll be all right.”

“I can help out around here,” I said. “I still have another year of high school.”

“
If
you even finish,” he said. He shut his eyes.

“Are you sure you'll be all right?”

“I'll be fine,” he said.

“What do you mean if I finish? I have to finish.”

“I'm beginning to realize you don't believe you have to do anything.”

“I have to finish high school to go on to college.”

“I have to find a way to afford it, I suppose,” said my father. “If anything happens to Mr. Trumble, I'll have to sell out, Wally, or let someone buy in.”

“I'll look into scholarships,” I said.

“I don't want to talk about it anymore,” he said. “A girl comes along and
pffft
, you don't listen to reason. I knew you took them in the hearses but I never said anything.”

“Dad, it isn't the girl. I just don't want to be in this business.”

“So you said,” my father answered, “so you said. Now shut the door and go.”

My mother was on the phone with Mrs. Trumble when I was ready to leave for Sabra's. I asked A.E. to tell me if there were onions on my breath. A.E. pretended to keel over from the stink. She was stretched out in the hall her usual way, with her eyes open and staring, her tongue hanging out, legs and arms apart and stiff.

“Ann Elizabeth!” my mother interrupted her telephone conversation long enough to call in. “I told you that you were never to do that again!”

A.E. got up and told me, “You'll be fine, really, if you just don't sit next to her, dance with her or talk to her.”

“I want you to go right to your room, Ann Elizabeth,” said my mother, “and stay there!”

“See how you've got everyone in a panic around here?” A.E. said. “Why can't you just accept the idea that the
dead are no different from you or me, they're just in another stage of development.” Then she moved stiffly down the hall, lumbering like Frankenstein's monster, her hands outstretched, face frozen in position, deep moans escaping from an exaggerated O-shaped mouth.

I bent over and kissed my mother's forehead while she was still on the phone.

“Try to keep him in bed, Mrs. Trumble,” my mother was saying. “He should always rest between guests.”

16. Sabra St. Amour

Mama said she had this colossal idea: She'd go out and buy all the makings for paella if Charlie would like to have dinner with her. Charlie said he didn't even know what paella was but he'd like to have dinner with her anyway. Mama said tonight's the night you learn all about Spanish food. She said they'd start with gazpacho, paella would be the main course, they'd end with flan, and wash it all down with sangria.

“And what'll I eat?” I said.

“You'll eat some roast chicken which I'll pick up for you,” said Mama. “You'll have to eat earlier than us because of your party.
We
will dine at the fashionable Spanish dinner hour of around ten o'clock.” Mama did a few fast flamenco steps, and pretended to click castanets in her hand. “How does that sound to you, Señor?”

“Olé,” Charlie said.

Mama went charging off in the Mercedes to shop, and Charlie and I sat out on the deck playing backgammon.

“I hope you don't feel like you're stuck with Mama for the night,” I said.

“I hope she doesn't feel like she's stuck with me,” he said. “I really like your mother.”

“That makes two of us,” I said. “After you move to New York, you'll see a lot of us.”

“
If
I move to New York,” Charlie said.

“What do you mean if?”

“Why should I move to New York where I'll be mugged by some heroin addict, when I can live out here by the ocean?”

“Hey, don't get cold feet,” I said. I remembered something Storybook Sabra had been told by her mother's best friend, Etta Lott, who'd been ostracized by everyone in Pine Bluff for having her baby without marrying or identifying the father. He was Pine Bluff's powerful mayor.

“Don't be afraid of what's new: It's the old, tried-and-true ways that should terrify you. Nothing creative, original or beautiful was ever begot by walking in step like everyone else. You have to step out of line to give the world something special.”

“Well I have stepped out of line,” Charlie said. “I don't know about giving the world something special.”

“You'll do that in New York,” I said. “New York will appreciate you.”

“Will
I
appreciate New York, though?” Charlie said.

“Why are you even having second thoughts, Charlie? You said yourself your father wishes you'd go even farther away.”

“Why should I live my life in a way that'll make him more comfortable?” Charlie said. “He never lived his to make mine more comfortable.”

I became Etta Lott again. (It was funny: I couldn't even remember who'd played Etta on the show, but I could almost see her idiot cards cueing me.) “Don't find excuses to conform. Find excuses to excel.”

“My father likes to say that if an ass goes traveling, he
doesn't arrive somewhere else a horse.”

“Your father is typical of the great unwashed,” I said. “That's a name we use for those members of our viewing audience in the sixty-to-seventy I.Q. range.”

“I could excel here, is all I mean,” Charlie said. “I don't know what at, though.”

Etta Lott told him, “Take long steps and by all means look back. You'll see everything behind you getting smaller, and eventually passing completely out of view.”

“I like the way you put things, Sabra,” Charlie said.

Charlie beat me again in backgammon, then went down to take a swim. I bathed and washed my hair. I heard Mama when she came back, banging things around in the kitchen. When the phone rang, Mama called out “St. Amour residence!” Then I heard Mama talking in a low voice, for a long time. I went out into the hall and tried to make out what she was saying, but I couldn't hear her clearly. When my curiosity got the best of me, I pretended I'd picked up the phone in my room to make a call. Mama was talking to Bernadette Young, who did publicity for
Hometown
and was a friend of Mama's from the old days.

“Oh, and did you get my letter, Peg?”

“It came this morning.”

“Is that you, Sabra?” Bernadette said.

“Sabra, are you on the extension?” Mama said.

“Be sure and tell her about the book,” Bernadette said.

“I'm right here on the extension,” I said.

“I'll tell her,” Mama said.

“He'll only be in New York for twenty-four hours, Sabra,” Bernadette said. “He's passing through on his way
from Europe to the coast, and the idea just came to him.”

“Who?” I said.

“Oh my God,” Mama said, “I'll
give
her the message!”

“Milton Tanner is who,” said Bernadette. “G'bye.”

I hung up and ran downstairs with my hair still wet. “Mama, did Bernadette say Milton Tanner?
The
Milton Tanner?”