Sorrow Floats (33 page)

Three months later, Labor Day morning, the gang lined up for the good-bye scene from the
Wizard of Oz
. Or I tried to line them up. The entire city and all major characters paid strict attention when Judy Garland clicked her heels. I couldn’t even get my primary three to cooperate. Marcella chased Andrew through the brand-new barn, Brad sat on the steps playing “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” on Shane’s harmonica, and Lloyd was on his back under Moby Dick, doing whatever he did on his back under Moby Dick.

I loaded my day pack, suitcase, and Sam Callahan’s tent into the ruby slippers—in this case, Hugo Sr.’s Oldsmobile—which would take me on the first step home. The day was hot, by my standards, anyway, but for a change the humidity had dropped into the livable range. Maybe that’s autumn in the South—summer with less humidity.

Granma had a man out from a tavern in Gastonia to give her an estimate on the fourteen cases and then some of Coors. Lloyd and I had been too sentimental to sell it or even talk about selling it. Plus, now that I was what us AA types call a recovering alcoholic—we’re not allowed to use the word
ex
—I didn’t feel like making money on booze. Even if Coors is cow piss in a can, no one can deny it passes for booze. I wondered if back in Wyoming Dothan had filed the necessary papers to make himself my recovering husband.

Granma, on the other hand, wasn’t a woman who allowed sentiment to interfere with working capital. Now that she had a barn, she aspired to chickens and a milk cow. I was bailing out in the nick of time. Hamburger cows are labor intensive enough, but at least in the summer you can turn them loose on the national forest and let them eat. Milk cows require attention every single crack-of-dawn year-round. And don’t even get me started on the living nightmare that comes with chicken ownership.

Granma haggled. “My grandson said you would receive five dollars a bottle, therefore I want three fifty.”

“Your grandson was wrong, ma’am.” The beer man wore a
Gamecocks
cap and had that pot belly guys in the South seem to equate with manhood. “I can’t get more than three, so I’ll give you two.” As I recall, Shane planned to sell the stuff for ten bucks a six-pack. We bought it for four eighty-five a case.

Brad jumped in from the steps. “He’s lying like a dog. Any less than three and you’re getting screwed.”

Granma cast her hawk eyes on Brad. “I know he’s lying like a dog. You don’t have to tell me he’s lying like a dog. And I won’t have you using disgusting language on my property.”

“What’s disgusting about screwed?”

Brad and the old lady had adopted a kind of domestic churliness toward each other, like a married couple who’ve been ragging for fifty years and no longer hear the words. Lloyd and I had never quite reached that depth of homey familiarity. We still listened to each other.

Since the Tin Man wouldn’t come to me, I went to the Tin Man.

“I hear you’re starting school tomorrow,” I said to Brad.

He blew a flat note. “Granma says if I skip a single day, she’ll throw me off the farm.”

“Wouldn’t want that.”

“She also says I have to cut my hair again.”

I sat next to him and touched his golden hair, right above the ear. “I like it a little bit long.”

Brad shrugged. “Grown-ups rate moral fiber by hair length.”

“That’s just Freedom and Granma. Not all grown-ups are crazy.”

“Show me one who’s not.”

“Me.”

Brad laughed. The notion was too bizarre even to argue. He reached down a step for a large manila envelope. “I made you a going-away present.”

It was the picture of me helping Shane up a curb in Memphis, only this one had been done in pastels. “Brad, it’s color.”

“Shane wanted me to try it. He said everything isn’t shades of black.”

“I think he was speaking symbolically.” Shane had lost weight from the original, but my mouth was still open. Every picture Brad drew of me, my mouth was open. I don’t know why.

“You never could tell with Shane.” Brad blew a single note, then lowered the harmonica. “Everything he said came out sounding like he meant something else. That’s why I like Granma. There’s only one way to take her.”

Granma and the pot-bellied man were arguing over the horse trailer. I’d given it to her in hopes she’d buy a horse to make the farm a tad classier, but all she wanted was a better tractor. After a summer in and around her fields, I had to admit a tractor might be handier here than a horse.

Brad and I stood up and hugged. He’d grown two inches over the summer and put on twenty pounds of muscle. Farm work may be a pain, but it’s a lot healthier than sitting on the couch watching hippies fall down.

I felt the muscles in his back. “Come to Wyoming when you grow up. I’ll give you a job.”

He shook his head. “I’m going to Paris to be an artist.”

“Where’d you get that idea?”

Stupid question. Together Brad and I said, “Shane.”

***

Marcella handed me Hugo Jr., then hugged me with him between us so her arms were around me but mine were busy with the baby. She looked right at my face, which I was still a little self-conscious about because of the scar.

“What’ll Andrew do without you? What’ll I do without you?”

“Andrew’ll be in love with his second-grade teacher within a week. And you’ve got Hugo Sr.”

She nodded toward the house. “He’s got the trots again. Working with kids always gives him the trots, I don’t understand why he does it.” Hugo Sr. had a job selling children’s shoes at a Kinney’s shoe store in Gastonia. He was supposed to give me a ride to the bus station if he could ever get off the pot.

Hugo Jr. reached up and pulled my hair. His head was getting boxy, just like his father’s, and his ears seemed to be growing faster than the rest of him.

“Remember what I told you,” I said to Marcella.

She set her mouth in a line and recited, “Accept no shit from my man.”

“That’s the spirit. If he ever takes you for granted, remind him what it’s like to drive cross country alone. Did you look at that book I bought you?”

Her neck reddened. Even though she could say
shit
, Marcella still had modesty limits. “I can’t believe people do those things to each other. What if they got stuck and had to call an ambulance?”

“Getting stuck is physically impossible. I think. All I’m saying is, if you introduce a new position or game every three months, he’ll stay intrigued and won’t go nail any sleazeball with cotton flowers in her hair.”

“Hey!” Andrew leaned way out of the barn loft and aimed Charley at me.
“Bang, bang-bang. Bang!”

I pointed a finger at him and hollered, “
Bang
back at you.”

“Your finger’s not loaded.”

“I still can’t believe Shane gave him that gun,” Marcella said.

“Me either, it’s my gun.” Before he went comatose Shane had removed the firing pin and trigger and presented Charley to Andrew as some kind of heirloom. I spent the summer arguing with Andrew that Charley wasn’t Shane’s to give, and Andrew spent the summer ignoring my arguments. Not that I missed Charley—surrogate pricks were no longer cool—but I’d rather give the kid the gun.

“If you go away, I’ll track you down and shoot you,” Andrew shouted.

“Be careful you don’t fall out that loft until I’m gone.” This was one hell of a loft, too. Built by hand, one board and one nail at a time, by Lloyd Carbonneau and Maurey Pierce. My dream was to drag all my friends and family down here and say, “Look what I did, doubters.” They would fairly swoon at my competence.

Andrew went back to
Bang, bang
, then he threw a chunk of lumber at Merle—missed by two yards.

“Bye, Andrew,” I yelled.

“Bye, Murray.”

“Maurey.”

I walked over and kicked the soles of Lloyd’s bare feet until he slid out from under Moby Dick. He probably wasn’t even fiddling with ambulance underbelly parts down there but hiding from me because he knew I’d try to guilt trip him into coming to Greensboro.

“Sharon’s just as likely to be in North Carolina or even back in Wyoming as Florida,” I said. “You have no reason in the hell-bitch world to think she’s in Florida.”

He stood up, wiping grease onto his overalls leg. “I have a feeling in my gut,” he said.

“What if I need you? After you leave here I won’t even have a phone number. I bet you’re the kind who says ‘Sure, I’ll write letters’ and never writes.”

His eyes avoided mine. “I’ll write, I promise. I’ll send postcards, and after I find Sharon we’ll have you over for Christmas some year.”

“After you find Sharon? You men are all alike, get a woman dependent on you, then run off to Florida or some godforsaken land with oranges.”

One trick I learned from Sam Callahan—whenever you say what you really mean, make it sound like a joke so people won’t believe you. The corollary to that one is whenever you lie, be sincere.

“You slept above me every night for three months, and the whole time you were thinking of another woman,” I said.

The eyes went perplexed. “Well, yes.”

Since I was leaving, I could be semi-audacious. “Didn’t you ever have one lascivious thought about me?”

“No.”

Lloyd sounded so sincere, I took for granted he was lying. I gave him an extended hug that was as emotional as anything I’ve ever done with a person I didn’t give birth to.

“What do you say to someone who saved your life?” I asked.

Lloyd smelled like barn wood. “Shane always told me to pass it on.”

I looked into his eyes and saw pain, tolerance, humor, the ability to love—pain more than any of the others. I suddenly wanted Lloyd to find Sharon and her to be the same person she was all those years ago. I also wanted world peace, a cure for cancer, a GMC four-by-four, and true love—any of which seemed more likely than Sharon taking him back even if he pulled off the impossible and found her. But, hell, you have to start somewhere.

“How would it be,” I said, “if I write a testimonial note to Sharon. I’ll tell her she’s amazingly lucky to have you and amazingly stupid if she doesn’t take you back in a heartbeat.”

Lloyd took off his cap and scratched behind one ear. “Can’t hurt. I’ve got some paper and a pencil in Moby Dick.”

At the bus station in Greensboro I negotiated a cab and headed across town to one of the snootier neighborhoods, where Sam Callahan’s grandfather had built the manor house. The cabdriver had an unfiltered cigarette tucked behind his right ear and a tattoo on his shoulder—
Semper Fi
. He didn’t care that I was going to one of the snootier neighborhoods; to him I was another faceless fare in an afternoon of faceless fares.

Greensboro itself was so typical you’d think a Hollywood committee dreamed it up for a movie set in Real Town, USA. Wide streets, big hardwood trees, grocery stores where you can buy milk and be back in your car in forty-five seconds. It was one of those towns where the high school kids think everyone in the world lives the way they do.

“Do you know of an AA meeting later tonight or in the morning?” I asked the driver.

He glanced in the rearview mirror, suddenly aware that I was an individual. People like it when you admit to being Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s confessing a flaw. They compare your looks and personal hygiene with their own, searching for that detail that makes them morally superior.

The cabdriver more or less grunted, “The Presbyterian church rec hall has a ten o’clock meeting. First one in the morning is VFW.”

Here’s one of the lessons Lloyd taught me: When in need of a meeting in a strange town, ask a taxi driver. That’s because a high percentage of alcoholics have legal problems where driving is concerned.

Lloyd said, “Taxi drivers know where the next meeting is, only to find out you’ll have to sit through anecdotes of the driving-drunks-home variety.”

Sure enough, the driver went into a story about a three a.m. fare who had to be carried into the house where a pissed-off wife almost shot them both. Fairly tame stuff after you’ve heard it from the drunk’s point of view.

“I haul a lot of alcoholics,” the cabdriver said. “They have me drop them off at a meeting, then pick them up an hour later and take them to a bar. I want to say, ‘What’s the use?’ but it’s none of my beeswax.”

“Maybe they don’t know where else to go.”

“My old lady wanted me to join AA, but I don’t like all that religious stuff. If she can’t accept me the way I am, to hell with her.”

“You sound like a scratched record,” I said.

He didn’t know what I meant, so he decided I was a nutcase and dropped the conversation. I was categorized again—nutcase—back to nonindividual.

Not that I cared. I was more interested in being nervous about Shannon. Seeing your child who doesn’t live with you is a lot more nerve-racking than people who haven’t tried it think. There’s a guilt ratio involved. Will my daughter hurl accusations of abandonment? And a fear of discomfort. What happens if we’re strangers? I’m supposed to have a deep bond with this person I hardly know. What if we have nothing to say to each other?

Here’s another lesson Lloyd taught me: Just because you stop being a drunk doesn’t mean the world will turn hunky-dory overnight. Sober people have problems, too.

The driver took the cigarette from behind his ear and tapped it on the dash. “She thinks I can’t control it,” he said. “I can control it, I just don’t want to.”

“Yeah, right.”

***

I stood on the manor house steps between two fake Greek columns, concentrating on my breathing. Lloyd says if you focus on deep inhale-slow exhale, your brain won’t explode. It’s very important that recovering alcoholics avoid brain explosions. I wanted to waltz into Sam Callahan’s front room tanned, strong, and self-assured, which is how I felt, sort of, but feeling like your shit’s together and acting that way aren’t always the same.

The neighborhood seemed colored from an eight-color box of crayons—green yard, blue sky, paper girl riding a red bicycle, wearing a yellow sweatshirt. Piano music came from inside the house—
Für Elise
. Music for daughters. Across the street, lawn sprinklers circled slowly clockwise, whirred back counterclockwise, then circled clockwise again, and far off a siren chased down someone else’s emergency.

I imagined I’d just dyed my hair blond and was poised on the edge of a room full of friends and family who weren’t expecting a change. The most pain-free way of making the transition would be to slip in unnoticed and get on with life, but they won’t let you do it that way. They have to make a big deal over the new you—touch you and say that you’re much improved, even though you know a certain percentage are lying through their teeth. Everyone who was once one way I could count on would be different now. And I wouldn’t know if they really were different or it was me.

The girl’s arm cocked back and she threw the newspaper in a graceful arc across the lawn onto the front walkway, where it slid gently against my day pack. In a single, fluid motion, the girl waved to me, then dipped her hand into the bag for the next-door neighbor’s paper. Two doors down a kid yelled, “No way!” as his dad slammed the trunk of the car. Time for me to either move forward or backward—some direction. Wouldn’t do to hyperventilate out here and be found passed out on the doorstep.

As I bent to pick up the newspaper, Sam Callahan’s old cat, Alice, came bounding around the side of the house, giving mean excuse to put off the entrance deal. I knelt and said, “Kitty, kitty,” and scratched under her neck. Sam and I got Alice from Pud Talbot almost ten years ago. She and I had always been friends in spite of her one and only trick, which was peeing in open suitcases.

“Well, Alice,” I said. “Time to dive in.”

She flipped onto her back and
mew
ed.

When I rang the doorbell
Für Elis
e stopped and I could hear the clatter of a piano bench being shoved back and someone young running across the room. Biting my lower lip, I touched my hair, inhaled deeply as possible, and made my face smile. The door was flung open and there stood my Shannon, taller than I remembered, wearing a sky blue jumper and white leotards. She didn’t recognize me for a half second, then her eyes lit like sunlight on the Rockies and she said:

“Mama.”