Our Town (9 page)

“What?”

Dorothy placed Clover’s little hand on the peas to steady them and let go and pulled her chin up with her long-nailed fingers and looked her in the eyes.

“Maybe later we can use some of my self-tanner to cure those see-through hands of yours. I don’t know why you wanted to wear those old gloves anyway. Now look at ’em. White like ivory.”

“Really, Mama? You can fix ’em?” Clover asked, misty.

“Really, my sweet. Really,” Dorothy said, and Clo hugged her mama. “I’ve got you, baby. I’ve got you.”

When Dorothy stumbled to get the peas, she also grabbed a bottle of bourbon from the liquor cabinet and uncorked the top. A sour mash.
A blend. When she came back, she hid it behind her ass in her right hand and with the other pet Clover’s freckled-out face. When Clover closed her eyes and grabbed Mama’s hand with all her might in her little fingers—Clover was excited, she finally felt safe—Dorothy took a swig and it burnt her throat and it made her even hotter. Ah. Her cheeks reddening, she poured the rest on Clover’s scratches, understanding that this was best for her in the long run, and without much belief in the present. So Clover yelled, and kicked Dorothy in the gut, and then ran to the bathroom and slammed the door behind her. Dorothy—stunned—looked around, her daisy-print sundress stuck to her sweating belly. She hadn’t eaten yet that day. Recently she hadn’t really been eating. She felt the whiskey more than she had expected. Suddenly slightly nauseous, she walked to the bathroom and knocked on the door.

“Had to do it, baby,” Dorothy shouted. “Like a Band-Aid, baby. Needed to make sure you didn’t get infections.”

No answer.

“Baby?” Dorothy knocked. “Baby, what’d you do with my cigarettes, baby? Where’d you put ’em, baby? Where are they?”

Dorothy was itchy. There was a long silence, and then the toilet flushed.

“Baby?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s happening in there, baby? What’s wrong?”

Sometimes, some mornings, when she felt like acting “better,” she’d write herself lists on napkins, or envelopes, about the ways she’d try and change. How tomorrow would be different. About how much more she’d do. About the kind of woman she could be. Work out tomorrow. Call Pony. Get better. Do more. These same mornings, Dorothy often asked Clover to hide her cigarettes. “And when I ask, baby,” she’d say, “don’t give ’em to me still.” This morning was one of those mornings. She usually remembered, though, to buy more from the Sunoco on Saticoy Street and hide them in her truck’s glove box—or near the boiler, or in a box of tampons underneath the sink—before
she really needed one. She made sure not to tell Clo about those. That way she could smoke and Clo would think she wasn’t and Clo wouldn’t judge her. But Clo always knew even if she didn’t let Mama know she knew. Today, however, she’d been too busy. Actually, it was just too hot. And the truck was broken. Something about the rear compressor. She couldn’t go drivin’ herself to the store when the truck wasn’t functioning. And she didn’t know a damn thing about how to fix it. Isn’t that what she keeps the boy around for?

“Nothing’s wrong, Mama. I’ll be out in a second, okay?” Exasperated.

“Do you have ’em?”

“What’s that?”

“My cigarettes?”

“No.” She paused. “They’re gone.”

“What do you mean they’re gone?”

And silence.

“Where are they?” Dorothy lifted her voice now.

“They’re gone, Mama. I flushed them.”

Clover opened the door and came back out. She walked past Dorothy and out the door as Dorothy shook her head with her hands to her eyes.

“Goddamn bitch,” Dorothy said, and then she went back to the kitchen.

The screen door pushed open—filled with holes, like Dyl’s undies, it didn’t do much to keep the bugs out—and Seth entered the front room wearing a yellow hard hat. He’d got off work the hour before. He’d left early. Couldn’t take it anymore. Had enough. His pants hung low, and his black-and-blue, short-sleeved, checked, silver-snap, button-down shirt was stained with oil. He usually parked his truck—which he’d borrowed from his father, he had two—underneath the fir tree in the yard. The ranch was eighteen acres. The ranch had a long, low roofline. Stucco. Paneled brick and brown wood siding. A rambler, single-story, with vaulted ceilings and exposed beams, large, overhanging eaves, and a hip roof. The ranch had two yards—front and back. Both were covered in grubs—long, white, wood-eating larvae, which made for a
suspect back porch. The fir tree was in the backyard. Seth walked to the fridge for a Coors—
The Banquet Beer
. A tall boy. He was Dorothy’s boy. He worked with his hands, and thus they were rough, and coarse, appropriately. He’d recently dropped out of school. He was fifteen. Well, almost sixteen. Fifteen and three-quarters. From his back pocket hung a red bandana, once soaked with sweat but now salty-dry from a few days straight of long work.

“Where you been, baby?” Dorothy asked.

“Workin’.”

“I thought today was your day off?”

“Yeah. No, I had to work, but I got off early. There was a lot of pools today. They’re all mucked up from the drought, and Dad made me do the last two by myself so I said forget it and left when I got finished.” He cracked his cold one. “There were still some leaves in the last one.”

Dorothy ran toward him and then jumped up on his back as he leaned down looking into the fridge. They were about the same size so Seth could only hold her like that a moment before his knees buckled beneath him. Dylan was in the bathroom staring into the mirror. Clover sat on her half of the bed staring at her still-pale fingers. Sad. Dorothy could see Clover through the doorframe from Seth’s back. The kids’ room was off the kitchen. She hadn’t helped her daughter, yet, but Dorothy didn’t care much anymore. She’d do it later if Clover asked. But she had to prioritize. Right now she was busy. Happy in Seth’s hairless arms.

Seth held Dorothy as long as he could, but when his hands slipped off the small of her back he spun around and gripped her to him—with his forearms—and pushed her up on the kitchen counter as the icebox door swung closed. This took all his strength. He leaned between her. The cracked porcelain counter was cold on her hamstrings. She was sitting on the ledge. Like she didn’t care. She hooked her feet around Seth’s back. She was drunk, by three, and happy. He stared at her. She stared back.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” he said.

“Can I come?” she asked.

“No. No. Not this time,” he replied. “I really have to go. Stay here. Make us some drinks. I’m tired, and I really have to piss.”

“All right, sweetheart. Okay, baby. I get it.”

“But be ready for when I’m back.”

“You know it, baby. I’ve got you. I’d never leave you in the lurch, baby. I’ve got you forever.”

He walked back to the fridge, found his beer, sucked on it, then brought it with him to the bathroom. After he flushed, he walked back into the kitchen and finished his beer and threw it at the silver trashcan in the corner. Missed. He forgot something in the truck so he walked straight out to the yard. Dorothy moved gingerly as she jumped off the counter, her bare feet enjoying the cool, mosaicked, slate kitchen tile. She went to the fridge and took out an orange, then went to the cupboard for molasses. Then she went to the bar cart for bitters and bourbon. Old Fashioneds were her favorite cocktail. Her grandfather—Blackie—used to let her sip his when she was Seth’s age. He was called Blackie because he played football in college and he was fast. An athlete. He used to say, when she was little, “In Georgia, you put molasses in everything. That’s just our way. That, and peanuts.” But maybe he just liked molasses and spun that out for houseguests to get away with everything he made being so sweet. Dorothy took two rocks glasses off the drying rack and placed them in front of her, in line with her left and right leg. Left for her, right for him. That’s how she’d remember. She cut the orange in half on the countertop. She let the juices drip all over. Then she cut the halves in half. She took the two handsomest quarters and put them to the side, then took the remaining two and squeezed them into the tumblers and dropped in the rinds. She removed the bottle’s yellow twist-off top and then added two dashes of Angostura Bitters—always mix bitters with pleasure—to each glass. She swirled in a teaspoon of molasses to both. This was her favorite part. She liked the way the oranges looked all dark. Half-covered in black. Inky. No longer beautiful. Marred. She went to the freezer and got an ice tray and put two fat cubes in each glass. She splashed around the glasses and saw she’d spilt some. She knelt
down and licked the juice from the counter. The coarse grout between the tiles was tough on her tongue. Like a cat’s tongue on your face. Grainy. Perfectly grainy. Then she took the pretty two orange quarters and stuck them, like half-moons—on the left side of the right glass, and the right side of the left—so that they were touching. Together. She liked them to be together.
Life is only a paper moon, sailing over a cardboard sea. But it wouldn’t be make-believe if you believe in me
.
If you believe in me. If you believe in me.
She hummed and swayed. She reached for the open bourbon bottle. She filled his glass halfway. She filled hers full. He was young so she had to monitor. Then he walked up behind her and took off her wig and reached into her housedress and undid her bra. She tried to squirm away, but he held her to him with strong arms.

“What are you doing, Sethy? Hey.”

“Come on, Mama. I missed you today.”

“Oh, Sethy. I missed you too. But the kids are here. The kids are somewhere.”

She gave in and leaned back into him.

“Oh, Mama. Come on.”

“Oh God, fine.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him closer and backed further into his groin. “I don’t know where they are. I don’t see ’em anywhere. Just go close the door to their room, babyboy.”

He did and then came back. She’d already put her wig back on. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. She pulled on his greasy hair. It was thin like her real hair. She pulled him closer and kissed him harder.

“Babyboy, I just licked the counter. Kiss me, babyboy. Kiss me and you’ll kiss the ’lasses.”

HISTRIONIC PERSONALITY DISORDER

S
ingle Dale enjoyed being single Dale. He enjoyed the freedom that came with sleeping with a variety of women—always lookers. Always. Please. He was a star. He, too, enjoyed being able to do drugs when he wanted, as much as he wanted. He enjoyed being able to do drugs without anyone knowing he was doing drugs, even though most of the time everyone knew he was doing drugs because, where he often was, everyone else was also doing drugs, and thus assumed everyone around them was doing drugs as well. But he didn’t like the camaraderie that came with standing around a glass table—at least not yet, anyway—and instead preferred doing lines with Scotch before he left the house and then, out, doing key bumps in the bathroom, alone. When people asked him why he had to go to the bathroom so often—jokingly, even though they sincerely wondered—he’d say he drank a lot of water during the day. He’d say he’d been exercising. He’d say his doctor told him to do so. Eight full glasses, he’d say. “Good for the body and the mind. It is. That’s how I stay clean,” he’d say. “That’s how I stay clean.” He liked the idea that people thought that this personality—this “energetic yet spiritual” personality—was how he always was. Was how he was born. He’d always had a certain pep to his step. He was always this together. It was easy to stay out this late. He enjoyed the world, and he loved his friends, and just wanted to be
around them longer. He just loved their company, and he didn’t want it to end. Having to do drugs to feel alive was weak, he said, even though he was doing drugs and just pretending not to. When he awoke at girls’ houses with nosebleeds after long nights, often, he’d say it was the changing weather. Or that the climate in, say, Marina del Rey was so dry this time of year. You know? “You know what I mean, baby?” he’d say. I’m just getting over a cold. And I really do feel better, but for some reason I just keep getting these damn nosebleeds. So I have to keep blowing it, and blowing it. I’ve had to use so many tissues, honestly, it’s just nuts. Let me go clean up, though, baby. But be ready by the time I get back, ’cause I’m gonna get right back up on ya. And then he’d go to the bathroom and sit on the toilet with his head tilted back and a hand towel in his nostril until the blood finally stopped.

He also enjoyed the nights he stayed in. The few nights he stayed in. Or, in the morning—to be able to watch sports on television, something Dorothy always gave him flack about.

“Can’t we watch something we both like?” she’d say. “Or can’t we just be together? Snuggle? Maybe just talk?”

Jesus Christ, that was annoying. Because Dale loved sports, in particular boxing—having been, as a youth, a Golden Gloves boxer himself. He’s thirty, now, but eventually his favorite fighter will be Gerry Cooney, referred to, during his time, as Gentleman Gerry or “the great white hope.” Cooney’s style was unorthodox. Cooney was known for not throwing punches at the head, aiming instead for his opponents’ chests, ribs, or stomachs. But this made him, at times, vulnerable. Anyway, he liked being able to watch him whenever he was on. For every fight. He was from the same hometown as Dale—Huntington boys—and Dale would come to feel, with him, a certain kinship. They both had their troubles, but they both continued fighting. Continued fighting on.

Single Dale, though, also had his moments of doubt, and friability—in other words, the ability for a solid substance to be reduced to smaller pieces with little effort. The opposite of friable is indurated. Dale certainly hardly felt indurated. These moments, moments when
the appearance of solidity began to crumble beneath his toes, came when Dale had to spend too much time in his new home alone. When he’d come home from a girl’s house in the middle of the night, say. Or during the day when he didn’t have to be working. The middle of the night when he’d done too much cocaine also comes to mind. When he couldn’t sleep and so he’d go to the wet bar in his bedroom’s corner and pour himself a Scotch, and then another, but then he still couldn’t sleep so he’d lie in bed and listen to birds chirp-chirping outside his window as the sun came up—he could tell even through his navy blackout curtains—until he finally put a robe on and made his way downstairs to the kitchen and opened the freezer, removed the vodka, and poured himself a highball full—no ice, forget the ice—and drank it all in three medium-sized sips before sleeping from noon to nighttime.