Our Town (15 page)

Mourning Marvin came in second place. Dorothy pushed. She didn’t win, and she didn’t lose. She was the same. She looked over to the bathroom, again. A man held his brown leather jacket over his shoulder. Another in a tracksuit shook himself off and then ashed in the urinal. From behind them, a disabled person pushed open the door to the handicapped stall. Band-Aids covered his bare, shaved-down scalp. He put his cowboy hat back on, adjusted his bolo, and then rolled by the urinals in his wheelchair and left the men’s room. Dorothy watched him leave and then walked to the bathroom door. She pushed it softly. It dawdled closed.

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When Dylan was twelve he was home alone without his mother. She’d been gone for hours, and Dylan had school in the morning. He was going through a going-to-school phase. He liked the girls. They’d all gotten much older. They’d grown and
they’d
grown. It was half past one in the morning. Dylan lay in bed, his mother’s bed, where he slept until his fifteenth birthday, or when she brought someone home with her, when he slept just outside her door. Until his fifteenth birthday, only because he got taken away. When she was there, and they were sleeping, he’d always make sure he had his foot touching her foot, so that he’d know if she’d gotten up and left. He waited and waited. He didn’t sleep. From then on, really. She was out and he was worried. His feet were cold and twitched under the down quilt, which fell on him, heavy as a carcass. He sat up and pulled on the red velvet canopy that hung down over his head, and it felt good in his hands. His hands were cold because he had bad circulation, but he could still feel the rough grain of the velvet in his fingers. He waited and he sweated. Mama had turned up the heat—all the way up—before she left because Dylan
said he was chilly. But then it got too hot. But Dylan didn’t turn it down. He knew how but he didn’t, anyway. She must have left it like that for a reason. It must’ve been important for something. He pulled on the velvet again. He rubbed it between his pointer finger and his thumb.

Then he heard the front door open and he got up and rushed to it. But Mama pushed past him and through to the bedroom and then to the bedroom’s bathroom. Before he could stop her, she closed and locked the door. And he banged, and he banged, and he banged until his right hand hurt. And his hand hurt so he started kicking. And he kicked the door until his big toe began to swell, and then he went back to his hand. He didn’t cry though. He didn’t like to cry.

She let him in, finally, and he sat on the edge of the bathtub. She stepped back from him and lowered herself, slowly, onto the closed lid of the toilet bowl. He gripped the cool, cream porcelain with four fingers and a thumb. And he watched, as she smacked her arm, and pulled the belt around her bicep, tighter with her teeth, and then sunk a long syringe deep into a dark, round bruise between her wrist and her elbow. She looked at him defeated as she pulled it out and dropped it into a basket beside her with Q-tips and hand towels. She stared at him, defeated, and then empty, but he was okay. He only wanted to be included. He slipped off the tub and sat on her on the toilet and she rested her face against his.

THE THEOLOGY OF PRESENCE

D
orothy got in her car. It was near Christmas, 1977. Dale had the kids for the holidays. The holidays were supposed to be fun. Dale still lived in Malibu, so Dorothy drove from Venice to Malibu. She took the Pacific Coast Highway, all the way. Dale lived on the ocean side of the PCH. He’d bought the house when he was young, after his first hit movie, when he’d first made money. It ended up being quite the investment. Savvy. Brains. Today, Dorothy had made it most of the way down to the house and had only—maybe—fifteen minutes to go before she got there. Dale was having a Christmas party. He didn’t want to invite his ex-wife, but the kids wanted their mother there on Christmas. They knew she might be lonely. They pitied her. They knew she didn’t have anybody else. They knew it was the right thing to do. Uncomfortable, but probably the right thing to do. But she was nervous. She hadn’t seen Dale in a year, and the last time wasn’t pleasant. Deep, deep, deep in her heart, though, she still did have a soft spot for him. He was still as handsome as ever. And he was still once a hero, in her eyes. That’s what she thought, anyway. First love’s a bitch. So she got dolled up. Pink lipstick. Purple under-eyes. Her blonde wig. The blondest. But she was nervous. She saw a bar in the distance on the left side of the highway. A beachfront bar—Moonshadows. She clicked on her left-hand turn signal.

The maître d’ met her at the doorway. He was a tall, thin blond. Tan and wiry. He told her to sit anywhere. She found a table by the window that looked out on the water. A waitress came over. She took Dorothy’s order. Then she left and came back with a carafe of white wine. Dorothy drank and watched the waves crash. Then Dorothy finished and the waitress cleared it and left and came back with another. Then she cleared that and came back with one more. When that carafe was done, Dorothy asked for some water—if she stayed hydrated then she’d be fine!—and then she asked for the check. She’d been there an hour. Now she was late. Oh no, she was late. She’d lost track of the time. Not really, though. She knew. She knew but she just couldn’t. But she got in her car, and she got on the highway, and she drove fast. She drove fast to get to her kids. She drove fast and she’d come to their rescue. That monster is pulling them down! But then there were sirens, and she pulled onto the shoulder. And when the officer stepped up beside her, he smelled the liquor on her breath. And he saw the skew in her eyes. And he listened to her gargled words.

“I’ve gotta go, sir. You’ve gotta let me go. I promise it’s important. Please, just give me a warning. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. Please?”

He stared at her longer. He lifted his sunglasses and rested them above his fading hairline.

“Please,” she pleaded. “I’m begging here. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary I’m begging.”

When she reached for her purse and removed her pack of cigarettes, he decided to take her back to the precinct. And her car was towed and then impounded. And she was stuck in the drunk tank for hours. And she never made it to the holiday party. And she loved eggnog, too.

Soon after this, Dale requested custody of both of his children, and his request was granted. Dorothy was embarrassed, so she didn’t put up much of a fight.

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Dale held his cue stick in his right hand and pointed the green chalked tip at his opponent. Clover, sixteen, put her iced tea down on a bamboo coaster on the small table beside her. Pieces of sea glass and beer bottle caps glassed together atop three uneven, steely legs. She listened to the ocean. She felt the breeze on her cheeks. She sat beneath a large fish tank that hung down over an empty hearth. A fireplace without fire. Once it housed an electric chimney. But that only lasted two days. In the tank were six fish—large and colorful—and, as she stood up, they all seemed to be looking at her, staring into her face. Past the fish stares Clover noticed her own turquoise reflection. She smiled and saw her snaggletooth. And noticed that her face had begun to gain shape. Rounder. Like a heart. But she didn’t think it was cute, like a heart. She just thought it was a round heart. It bled out her insecurity. Fat, ugly heart. She turned around. Dale was playing pool with his friends with his shirt off. He was going through a Mexican-cowboy phase—“ranchero”—so he wore his blue jeans tucked into white cowboy boots. The sun was setting, it was getting cold. He wrapped himself in a bandito blanket. His amigo cut one long line—maybe a foot and a half—across a vanity mirror and they all took turns taking it. An inch in the right nostril, another in the left. When they were done, he told them to sit, now, because he wanted to teach his daughter billiards. Drinking beers—Coronitas—and doing cocaine with a hundred-dollar bill after Clover got home from school on a Wednesday—Dylan’d signed up for judo, he’d skip school then just do that—Dale wanted to teach his daughter something. He wanted her to be beautiful, like her mom. But not weak like her. Not pathetic. He wanted her to be wry, and self-aware. Clever, and sure of herself. He wanted her to be brave. A girl that could play pool with men could do anything. Like the heroine in a screwball comedy, whom all the men pine after but no one has the courage to court.

“You’re up, baby,” Dale said, and he sipped his mini-beer and hit the big end of his pool cue on the Navajo carpet beneath the table on the floor.

“One sec, Daddy” Clover replied. “Let me get some food in me.”

“Yeah, all right,” Dale answered, but only because he wanted to get back to the drugs. “Make it fast though. And try to not eat too much.”

Clover didn’t answer. She walked to the kitchen. The house was bright, with high windows, and it hung out over the sand. The front room featured a shag carpet and had two plump, brown leather couches—cracked from years in the sun—that sat parallel to each other in the middle of the living area. The kitchen looked over the living room from one step up. And above the wooden center table hung pots, pans, and skillets. Clover sometimes played Frisbee fetch on the beach with Rex, in the old days. But we all know what happened to Rex. But Clo was still good at Frisbee. She just needed another Rex. The stairs led up to the bedroom, and the bedroom connected to the sauna. She didn’t take the stairs. She walked up toward the kitchen and took a serrated knife from the knife block. She halved an avocado near the fridge. She removed some grain crackers from the pantry and cut a lemon into quarters. She plucked out the seeds, and squeezed the rinds onto the avocadoed toasts. Then she salted and peppered the squares before she walked back toward the game. Dale, still waiting—eyes wide and black, owled—knocked his pool cue again against the ground, this time harder.

“Let’s do it, baby,” he said, and he handed her a stick. She ate a toast then placed the plate on the table next to her tea. She licked her fingers, then wiped them on her jeans. Dale winced. Disgusting.

“All right, so what do I do?” Clover asked as she brushed her fingers against the table’s blood-orange felt. Dale’s nose flared. He waited ’til she was done to talk.

“Hold the stick like this, and aim it. Put it in the bridge of your fingers, so it feels real solid. The firmer, the straighter. Remember that.”

Clover leaned over the table and tried. She tried to bridge her fingers like Daddy’s, but she didn’t feel strong enough. They began to crumble as she pushed the stick and she missed the ball entirely.

“No, no. Keep your fingers taut, goddamn it.” Dale came up behind Clover and smushed her fingers down. “Like that,” he said. “Tightly. This is how you keep your hand, okay? You hear me?”

Clover nodded. He let go and stepped back and picked back up his cue. She tried again. She leaned back down, with her hand exactly as he’d forged it, and shot, and missed, and Dale poked her in her ribs with his cue. So she chalked up and tried again, and missed again. She missed again, and again he poked her in the ribs. And, again, and again, until her white mohair sweater began to polka dot. Finally she sunk one. Not because she understood how. More just law of averages. He shooed her to the side and directed with his stick for her to sit down at the table with the gang.

“Jesus, finally.”

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly putting her head down. “Maybe I’m just not strong enough,” and Clover reached for her plate of food. But Dale turned away from the table and stared at Clo, and she knew to stop eating and talking. Then Dale went. And Dale didn’t miss. He made one. Then two in a row—a double. Three in a row. A turkey. Four in a row. Hambone. And five a row. All five in a row. Game over. Yahtzee.

“Yahtzee,” he exclaimed. “Maybe next time, honey,” and he smiled and sniffed, as his
compañeros
cheered him on, and then he walked back toward the mirror. “You wanna try this, by the way, baby? I think it’ll help you focus. You seem tired. Plus I know it’ll help your appetite if you’re hungry too often.” And he lifted off his blanket and held it up with his teeth and drummed his flat stomach along to the salsa music that played from the hi-fi in the back. “You look like you’re getting a little fat in the face, honey. A little top-heavy.”

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Once, after another of Dorothy’s arrests, Clover had to bail Mama out of jail because no one else would. No one else cared enough, then. Everyone else was too busy. Or too bored. Just the same story. Just always the same story. Clover was in high school. Her freshman year—her first year—and when Mama first called Clo hung up on her. She refused. She didn’t wanna talk. She didn’t like the phone. She knew Mama was drinking, again—not like she ever stopped, really—and she couldn’t talk
to her that way. She couldn’t listen to her. She didn’t like when she talked through her teeth. Grinding through her molars. She could just see her hanging slack jaw. And her eyes flitter flitter. Clover could always tell from the first word when she spoke to her mother. And that was just too hard. She was in school—she had to try—and it wasn’t worth it. It just wasn’t worth it. But finally—thirteen calls later—she finally answered.

“What?”

“Clo, baby. It’s me. It’s Mom. I’m in fucking jail, but it’s bullshit. Call Lindsey. You have her number, right? I’m sure I put her card in your purse. Anyway, if she doesn’t answer, find another lawyer.”

So Clover found Lindsey’s number—deep in her wallet, folded in half—and called her and she answered and then she called the precinct and they found out the bail was two hundred dollars and Lindsey paid and Clo promised she’d repay her even though she wasn’t sure how and Clo and Lindsey waited in a cab outside, and when Mama came out they gave her purse back and she opened the taxi’s yellow door and reached into her purse and found a clear orange bottle and took whatever she had left. Everything she had left. She was anxious, obviously. Jail’s sorta hard. They dropped Lindsey off and Clo said thank you and then they took the cab back home. Well, back to her mother’s.