Our Daily Bread (12 page)

When they got home she stepped inside the door and let her coat crumple to the floor, then untied the halter top from around her neck and let it slither to her waist, revealing the lacy strapless bra she wore underneath. “Make love to me, Tom,” she said.

“Patty! Bobby's upstairs.”

“He's either in front of the computer or he's asleep. You know Bobby.”

He didn't bother to take off his coat. He picked her up and carried her up the stairs. They passed Bobby's door. Dark. A light snore. He kept going. He lay her down on the bed and stripped off his clothes, scattering them around him on the floor like so many skins, his erection nearly painful, too urgent to be contained. She made a motion to take off her skirt, but he shook his head and she lay back. He took off one of her shoes and then the other and rolled her pantyhose down her legs and lifted her foot and ran his tongue along her instep. She rose up on her elbows and watched him. He rolled her over and placed his hand on the middle of her back, pinning her gently there, the span of his fingers nearly covering the expanse of her skin. He undid the zipper on her skirt, the buttons on the base of the halter top and then rolled her back and lifted her, so he could slip the skirt from her hips. She felt as light as balsa wood and the scent of roses and amber came from her. He began again at her foot and worked his mouth slowly up her calf to the inside of her knee. She moaned then, and covered her eyes with her arm. Tom took her arm away. “Look at me,” he said, and she did, her expression a little frightened, vulnerable and slightly lost. Her lower lip, he thought, trembled ever so slightly. It occurred to him that he wouldn't mind making her cry. He lowered his mouth to hers and she flicked her hot, pointed tongue against his lip. The lace of her panties was damp under his fingers and he moved it aside, anxious to feel the softness, the heat of her. She arched her back.

After that, it was all sensation and texture and smell and the sound of sighing and sharp cries. He moved into her as into a lake of warm honey and drowned there, his mouth filled with her taste and his ears filled with her moans and his skin flame and electricity wherever they met and his nostrils full of the scent of crushed roses.

In the morning, he woke late
and found her already up. The smell of coffee and the radio news ascended from the kitchen. He pulled on sweatpants and went to the bathroom. His penis was sore and the sensation made him smile. Such a good sore. He hoped she was limping. He wanted a mark on her and was not, for once, ashamed of this desire. He felt, albeit with a semi-sheepish self-awareness, as though he wanted to strut, wanted to throw out his chest and tuck his thumbs in his pants. He flushed the toilet, brushed his teeth and washed his face, rubbing his hand over stubble, which he decided he wouldn't bother to shave. Not today.

When he came into the kitchen, he was surprised to find Patty sitting at the table, a coffee cup between her hands, a bare foot tucked up underneath her, staring intently into the black liquid. He had, he realized, expected to find her humming, dancing, ready to spring into his arms.

“Hey, beautiful,” he said.

She smiled. Warm, but not the smile for which he had hoped. “Hey. You want coffee?”

“Sure. We alone?”

“You just missed Bobby. Cranky this morning. I think he heard us last night.”

“It's good for him to know his parents are in love.” Tom came around beside her, squatted, and put his arms around her, nuzzling her neck. She put her arms around him and held on. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too,” she said, in the sort of voice she hadn't used last night, the sort of voice one might use for a child, or a favoured pet.

“Want to go back upstairs? Ivy won't be back for a while yet.” He waggled his eyebrows.

“What am I going to do with you?” She took his face between her hands and kissed him.

“I can think of a thing or two.”

She squirmed out of his arms and stood up, the belt of her housecoat dragging across the floor, picking up crumbs. “What do you want for breakfast? I can scramble up some eggs.”

Tom stayed where he was for a moment, one arm on the back of the empty chair and one arm on the table. He hung his head. There was a split in the seat of the chair and some of the greyish-yellow stuffing spilled out like fat from a deep wound.

“You want to go to a movie or something today?” he said.

“No, I don't think so. I've got to get new heels on my shoes and pick up some new socks and underwear for the kids. And we need a few things from Wilton's.”

She opened the fridge door, and a chill draft encircled his bare ankles. Eggs and butter, milk and some pre-grated cheddar. Pan and plates, another mug for his coffee. She was all efficiency and resolution there in the chill florescent light of the kitchen. Her bathrobe might just as well been made out of razor wire.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong. Why are you starting up? We had such a nice time last night, Tom. Don't spoil it.” She kept her back to him, her eyes on the frying pan.

“I don't get you.”

He waited for an answer. But there wasn't any answer. Just the splatter of grease in the pan. Tom sat in the chair she'd vacated; it was still warm from her backside. He considered throwing the cup she'd left against the wall, but he didn't have the energy for that, or all that would come after. He didn't know what the hell had happened between last night and this morning. Didn't know if he had the ambition to try to find out, to shred his skin trying to breach her defences yet again. He only knew he wasn't at all hungry. The smell of the food made him faintly queasy.

Still, when the eggs were in front of him there seemed nothing else to do; he put the fork to his mouth. They were rubbery and too salty. When he asked her where hers were, Patty said she'd already eaten.

“I'm going to get dressed,” she said and left the kitchen without looking at him.

He chewed the eggs, tasting the alien metallic chemicals of the cheese that wasn't cheese at all, just a cheap imitation of cheese. When he'd eaten not quite half of what was on his plate he realized if he ate one more bite he would vomit. He threw the rest in the garbage and returned to his chair, and to his bitter cup of coffee. He listened to his wife moving around above him, and then her steps on the stairs and the rattle of her keys.

“Okay, Tom. I'm off. You need anything at the store?”

“Not a thing,” he said. She closed the door and he wondered if she'd even heard him. The car started up and pulled out of the drive and then the silence of the house descended. The husky hum of the refrigerator sounded like whispers, as though ghosts haunted the house, speaking through the white noise of appliances. He sat a little while longer and saw that sitting would change nothing. He went upstairs to shave. Ivy would be home soon. It occurred to him he had no idea where Bobby was.

An hour later, Dorothy dropped Ivy off at the house. Again, she didn't come up to the door, just beeped and waved from the car. Ivy trotted up the steps and threw her arms around him. Her eyes were bright pieces of dark amber, and she chattered away about the pretty crystal glass Mrs. Carlisle had let her use for milk, fragile as the wing of a moth, and the paintings in the house, some of Mrs. Carlisle's own ancestors, and about the minerals she'd be able to buy with the money Mrs. Carlisle paid her and about when would he take her out rockhounding, as she called it, and he half listened and tried to say the right things and probably didn't. She went up to her room to put her things away and Tom sat in the kitchen for a while and then went out to the garage, with Rascal on his heels. He couldn't think of anything else to do, so he began cleaning up his work shelves, banging things about with perhaps more vigour than was strictly required.

At dinner that night, it was just the three of them. They set a place for Bobby but he didn't appear. Dinner was hamburger fried in a pan with a topping of processed cheese, which sat greasy and wet on the plates, and some raw carrots and nobody enjoyed it.

When Bobby hadn't come home by seven, Tom cleared the dishes, put his son's dinner in a plastic leftover container in the refrigerator, and began washing the dishes. Patty went to her station on the couch in front of the television and Ivy went to her room to do her homework, and when Tom had left the dishes to drain on the rack, he sat in the kitchen, nursing a beer and waiting for his son to come home.

Patty went up to bed at ten without kissing him, without touching him at all and without even looking at him sitting there at the kitchen table, and he didn't know what he'd done that was so wrong. He should be in bed himself, but knew he wouldn't be able to sleep. He got up and turned off the overhead light, leaving only the bulb from the stove hood to cast an oily glow. He felt better in the half-light—less exposed.

Soon it was nearly eleven. Rascal pricked up his ears and barked and headlights flashed along the wall. Tom rose and went to the window, tried to see who was in the truck as it drove away, but couldn't, only saw Bobby slouching up toward the house, his hand over his mouth as though checking his breath.

The front door opened, admitting a gust of night wind that smelled of pinesap with an under-note of truck exhaust. Tom stood directly inside the vestibule and was gratified to see this startled his son.

“Where have you been?” said Tom.

“Nowhere.”

“Close the door. That is not an answer. Try another.”

Bobby stood with his back against the door, his eyes flickering, jittery in their sockets. His eyes were red. Now that the smell of night had dissipated in the interior funk of cooking smells, another odour was evident: cigarettes and that of smoke from neither tobacco nor campfire.

“I've just been with friends.” Bobby's breath carried the yeasty musk of beer.

“What friends?”

“Friends from school.”

“I want their names.”

“What the hell is this? An interrogation?” Bobby's voice rang shrill and his skin mottled. “Why should I have to tell you anything?”

“Because you are fifteen and I am your father.”

Bobby ran his tongue over his teeth. “Just some guys from school.”

“You're drinking and smoking grass.”

A stupid grin. “No, I'm not.”

“Don't lie to me. You reek of it.”

Bobby just stood there, a grin coming and going on his face like a crawling worm. He wiped at his mouth, struggling not to laugh. It was very hard not to slap him.

How did the father look to the son? Tom tried to be intimidating, to loom, to assert, and yet, stoned as Bobby undoubtedly was, how did he look? A big clown, lumpish, slow and dim, laughable in his gravity. Encysted deep in every father is the son he once was, who compares everything he does to what his own father did—the old king is dead, long live the king. The distant image of himself as a boy, not much older than Bobby, swaying and unsteady from a night of drinking out in the woods with the football team (that night Rita Kruppman had taken her blouse off on a dare from Ed Carlaw and she'd blazed in the mystical white gleam of her bra in the moonlight). His own father had stood almost exactly where Tom stood now, wearing his raggedy brown bathrobe, his head a glinting orb under the hall light, demanding to know who Tom thought he was, a big man, a real man, just because he could down a few beers and make a puking fool of himself? The implication, not lost on young Tom, was that perhaps he would never be a real man at all, no matter how much he drank, or didn't. It had infuriated Tom then, and he swore in his inebriated swagger he'd never let the old man know anything about him, even as the shame, the truth of his own ridiculous adolescence became apparent. And so Tom had vowed to be a different kind of father, and yet here he was, in the same hall, pressing down on his son with that same age-old superior masculinity. An urge to pick his son up and hold him to his chest swept over him; to hold him until the need for all this fell away, dissolved in the sound of synchronized heartbeats.

And then Bobby said, in a voice that seemed exploratory rather than purely defiant, “Fuck you.”

“What did you say?” said Tom, whose hands had formed fists the size of axe heads.

Bobby did not answer. The words hung sharp and rusty in the air between them.

“Say it again,” said Tom. “You go on and say that to me again.”

Bobby, thin as a feral cat, diminished in the hulking possibility of being struck down, struck dumb, struck dead by his father's shock and fury, stood silent, but stood his ground. He looked like a cornered stray. He looked like his mother.

“Jesus Christ,” said Tom. “What's happening to us?”

I am against sin, brothers and sisters and I know you are, too. I know you are on the train to heaven and not on the hell-bound train. You know that poem?

Tom Gray lay down on the bar room floor

He drank so much he could drink no more

So he fell to sleep with a troubled brain

And dreamed that he rode on a Hell-Bound Train

The engine with blood was red and damp

And brilliantly lit with a brimstone lamp.

For fuel an imp was shovelling bones

While from the fiery furnace rang a million groans.

The boiler was filled with lager beer

And the Devil himself was the engineer.

He said, You have laid up gold which canker and rusts

And given free vent to your fleshy lust

You have drank, and rioted, and murdered, and lied

And mocked at God in your Hell-Bound pride

You have paid full fare so I'll carry you through

It is only just you should get your due

Why, every labourer expects his hire

So I'll land you safe in the lake of fire.

That's right, brothers! That's right, sisters! That's where they're going, those who truck with Satan, who turn God's green mountain into a cesspit of moonshine and unnatural, ungodly practices. Paint your doorway with the blood of the Lamb, my neighbours, and let evil just pass on by.

—Reverend Clarence Goodall,
Church of Christ Returning, 1925

On saturday afternoon
, Gus's Corner Restaurant was crowded with high school students lingering over fries and a pop. When Albert Erskine walked in with Bobby Evans in tow, the students stopped talking, nudged one another, gestured with their chins, and whispered behind their hands. Bobby walked with a little bounce, a little strut in his step. Albert chuckled; Bobby gained street cred being seen with him. They walked through the tables to a booth, Bobby nodding at this kid or that. One of the two waitresses, Carol Everett, a twenty-nine-year-old blonde whose pudginess began under her eye sockets and continued to the ends of her fleshy fingertips, stood behind the counter near the cash register, fussing with the pyramids of ice cream dishes, glasses, cups and saucers on the shelves, surreptitiously glancing at herself in the mirror that ran the length of the counter. Albert caught her eye and winked. Her mouth hung open. Albert and Bobby slid into a back booth, Albert with his back to the wall, on which someone had scratched,
“To some it's a six-pack—to me it's a support group.”

The other waitress, Jayne Miller, popped up from behind the counter and came over. “Hey, how are you two?”

“Can't complain now I'm looking at you,” said Albert.

She smiled and Albert tried to think of something even wittier to say. Jayne had chin-length, gently curling dark hair that he imagined she shook effortlessly into place in the morning, forming a flattering halo of soft curls around her elfish face. It was the kind of hair he thought of as belonging to French girls, girls from Paris. Girls who knew how to tease a guy. Her grey eyes, pale enough to note, gave her an air of wisdom Albert was not completely convinced she merited, but they were absorbing.

“Sweet,” she said. “What can I get you?”

“Burger, fries and a coffee,” said Albert. “He'll have the same.”

“I want a Coke.”

“He'll have a Coke.”

“Coming right up.”

Albert watched her walk away. She was slender in her A-line white uniform and her legs and arms were very thin, like a dancer, or a gymnast, but she was not without some intriguing curves. It was because of Jayne that Albert had agreed to Bobby's suggestion they come to Gus's. Normally, he preferred the dim, licensed interior of Maverick's, but Jayne Miller had been on his mind ever since that afternoon at Stan Mertus's, when her ex-boyfriend Keith had been so broken-hearted. There was something about a girl who could reduce a guy to that snivelling mess. Something challenging. Something that indicated she had taste and spine. Albert had walked past Gus's a few times in the past week. Just checking her out. He'd had a few daydreams. Dreams about a clean little apartment somewhere with African violets on the windowsill and a big bed with this girl's tousled head peeking from the covers. The sound of kids' voices in the other room. Toots and Kenny and Ruby, playing and laughing; Griff and Frankie, unafraid of what would happen that day. He'd thought about dropping in and sitting at the counter and maybe asking her out sometime, maybe go for a drink at Maverick's. And he'd started to, once or twice, and then hadn't. She made him shy. There, he admitted it. He wasn't used to feeling this way, didn't get it, but it was the truth. Him, Albert Erskine, shy around a fucking girl. There had been more than one night since then when he'd fallen asleep with his hand around his dick and the image of this girl in his head. And then Bobby had suggested coming here and here they were.

She returned with their order a few minutes later, and Albert was sure she would have stayed and talked, but Pataki, the owner, yelled for her from the pass-through. She rolled her eyes and smiled at Albert again. He'd never liked Pataki.

“I don't know what the fuck's wrong with my dad,” said Bobby. “He's like, gone all weird.”

“Why, because he busted you for smoking dope?” Bobby had told him what happened. He'd thought he was going to get grounded for sure, but then apparently Tom Evans had kind of deflated and backed down. Told Bobby nothing more than to pull himself together before it was too late.

“No, and I'd like to see him try anyway.” Bobby scowled but only succeeded in looking like a spoiled kid. He swirled a soggy French fry in a puddle of ketchup.

Albert bit into his burger and watched Jayne bend over to pick up a fork someone had dropped, noted the rounded swell of her ass under the uniform, and the lack of panty line. She must be wearing a thong, he thought, and his dick twitched in his jeans.

“Anyway, my mother smokes dope,” Bobby was saying. “I know she does. I saw the roach, and it sure as hell wasn't Ivy's. They're such fucking hypocrites.”

“Your old lady smokes weed? Where does she get it from?”

Bobby sucked on his straw and pulled it out of the soda, his finger against the end so the liquid stayed in the straw, then he let it drain out. “I don't know. But I've seen her come out of the bathroom after she's been in there for a damn hour, saying she's reading. She's stoned. I can't believe he doesn't know.”

“Maybe he does know. Maybe he smokes with her.”

Bobby laughed. “My old man? Are you kidding? I'm surprised he even knows what grass is.” He shook his head, grinning. “My father, Chinese-eyed. That'd be something to see.”

The door opened and Bill Corkum stepped in. As he ran his hand over his shaved head, he looked around, his eyes pausing on Albert for only a nano-second before coming to rest on Jayne, who stood behind the counter. He smiled, walked to the end and took a seat where Albert imagined he could keep an eye on him and Bobby. Albert finished the last of his burger and pushed the plate away. So, that's why Bill had looked at Keith so funny that afternoon. He was trying to stick it to his old lady, huh? Well, Jayne wouldn't go for that shit. Not Bill Corkum. Bobby hadn't noticed Bill; he was folding creases into his placemat and mumbling about his mother.

“You not working?” said Jayne to Bill.

“Mixer broke down again. Told us to take lunch.”

“Must be hard working at Kroeler's,” said Jayne.

“Naw, it ain't hard.”

“You like it?”

Bill laughed. “No, girl, I don't
like
it, I
do
it. So, you coming to Aunt Gerry's tonight?” he said, popping a toothpick in between his teeth.

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Eating. Food. At the house.”

“No,” Jayne laughed. “How could I do that?”

And Albert thought,
smart girl.

“Which means what, exactly?” said Bill.

And Albert thought, it
means she's not going to fuck you, pal.

The bell rang in the kitchen. “Table six up. Table nine up,” Pataki yelled.

“Excuse me,” said Albert. “Can I get some more coffee, please? If you're not too busy.”

Blushing furiously Jayne said, “I gotta go. I'll be right with you, Albert.”

Bill did not look at Albert. Jayne picked up two meatball sandwiches and one grilled cheese and bacon and delivered them to the waiting customers. As she circled round, she stopped to grab the coffee pot and came to Albert and Bobby's table. Albert leaned over the table, drumming his fingers on the surface.

“Can I get you anything else?” said Jayne, pouring the coffee.

“Whatcha got?” said Albert, smiling at her with that smile he knew was his best feature.

“Well,” Jayne said, smiling back, “we've got pies—apple, blueberry, cherry.”

“I think I'll have a cherry,” said Albert. “Bobby, you want anything else?”

“Naw,” said Bobby. He dangled his dripping straw over a pile of salt in the middle of his ketchup-stained plate.

“So have another Coke, and stop playing with the fucking straw,” said Albert.

“Coming right up,” said Jayne.

Carol stood by the register, facing the mirror, pressing lightly at a pimple on her chin. Jayne whispered something to her as she walked past and Carol gave her a dirty look, one hand caressing the small gold cross around her neck. Jayne cut the cherry pie, licking her thumb afterwards, pulled a fresh cola from the soda gun and brought the order to Albert and Bobby. Before Albert could say more than thank you, she ducked back around the counter in front of Bill. “Okay Bill, what can I get you?”

“How come you won't come to supper? Not town enough for you?” He grinned at her, his tone teasing.

“Are you the cook?”

“
Hell,
no.”

“Well, I can't just go to supper at someone's house when they don't even know I'm coming. A person just can't barge in like that.” She stood with pencil poised. “What can I get you?”

A gaggle of boys at the register pushed and shoved as each one tried to pawn the cheque off on someone else. They waved their goodbyes to Jayne and she waved back. The restaurant was quieter now, only a few girls left, and they looked about to follow the boys, disappointed they hadn't been asked.

“Give me some fries and coffee, lots of cream,” Bill said.

She fetched the coffee pot and a heavy mug and as she put the cup down Bill took her hand. A flush of proprietary jealousy sat in the pit of Albert's stomach like a frozen rock.

“Listen,” Bill was saying, “you don't get it. My Auntie Gerry don't care. One more ain't going to make a bit of difference.”

Jayne took her hand back, but not, Albert noticed, without a friendly little squeeze. “She run a restaurant, or what?”

“Feels that way, but it's all family.”

Bobby, who was also listening now, muttered “I'll bet,” and Albert glared at him so that he shut up. The kid didn't get it. You kept your mouth shut—that was the way you learned. You let people tell you things they didn't know they were telling you. It was an art he'd learned, growing up in a place where your life depended on recognizing the slightest change in vocal inflection, the smallest shift in conversational subject. An unintended glance could tell you where someone stashed a bottle, or some extra cash, or a hoard of bread and baloney. And if you talked too much and missed the clues, the bruises and blood were your own fault.

“She's a pretty great lady. Come on, meet her.”

“I don't think so.” Jayne blushed prettily.

Albert was happy to see her looking uncomfortable. He thought he'd let her squirm for a few more minutes and then step in.

“Too mountain for you?” said Bill.

The bell in the kitchen rang. “Table fifteen up.”

“You flatter yourself, Bill Corkum,” she said, walking away.

“You're killing me!” he called after her. “I heard you were a heartbreaker!”

“Guess that's one name for it,” said a familiar voice.

Albert watched as Keith Keyes walked through the door and Jayne stopped in her tracks.

“Hi, Jayne,” Keith took a table in the window. He ordered fries, grilled cheese and a cola.

“This should be interesting,” said Albert.

Bill stayed in his seat, but all the jokiness of a moment before disappeared. He sat straight, his forearms placed before him on the counter. His left leg was flat on the floor, but his right one was cocked, in a stance Albert recognized as one designed for the fastest upward movement, if required.

“Keith,” said Jayne, in a flat voice.

Pataki stuck his head out the order window. A goatish little man, he sported a tidy moustache that was better suited to a tango dancer. One of Gideon's few “foreigners,” Gus Pataki never seemed to leave his restaurant. He spoke with the myth-laden accent of his Greek homeland and had married Alice Sully, a local girl. They lived in one of the town's finer houses, on Washington Street, facing the Trout River, and it was widely agreed he couldn't possibly have made his money solely from Gus's, which was, after all, little more than a diner.

“We slowing?” Pataki asked, and Carol said they were.

Jayne busied herself putting on a new pot of coffee and didn't see Mr. Pataki come out of the kitchen. He took her by the elbow and gestured with his chin in Keith's direction. Albert strained to hear and even Bobby had stopped playing with his drink and turned around to watch.

“You see who's here?” said Pataki.

“I saw.”

“You two getting back together? Going to kiss and make up?”