Taking Care (26 page)

“It’s obviously a cry for help, wouldn’t you say, Liberty?” her mother said.

“I don’t know why you’d want to call Liberty up and pester her and worry her sick,” Daddy said. “She has her own life.”

“That’s right,” her mother said, “excuse me, everything’s fine here. I made some peach ice cream yesterday.”

“Damn
good
peach ice cream,” Daddy said. “So, Liberty, how’s your own life. How’s that Willie treating you?”

“Fine,” Liberty said.

“Never could get anything out of Liberty,” her mother chuckled.

“You’re getting to be old married folks yourselves,” Daddy said. “What is it now, going on almost four years?”

“That’s right,” Liberty said.

“She’s a girl who keeps her own witness, that’s a fact,” her mother said.

“I want you to be happy, honey,” Daddy said.

“Thank you,” Liberty said.

“But honey, what is it you two do exactly all the time with no babies or jobs or whatever? I’m just curious, understand.”

“They adore one another,” Liberty’s mother said. “‘Adore’ is not in Daddy’s vocabulary, but what Daddy is trying to say
is that a grandson might give meaning and significance to the fact that Daddy ever drew breath.”

“That’s not what I’m trying to say at all,” Daddy said.

“They’re keeping their options open. They live in a more complex time. Keep your options open, Liberty! Never give anything up!” Her mother began to sob.

“We’d better be signing off now, honey,” Daddy said.

Liberty went into the living room and looked out the window at the light beginning its slow foggy wash over God’s visible kingdom, the kingdom being, in this case, an immense banyan tree which had extinguished all other vegetative life in its vicinity. The banyan was so beautiful it looked as though it belonged in heaven or hell, but certainly not on this earth in a seedy failed subdivision in the state of Florida.

She didn’t know about the ‘adore.’ ‘Adore’ didn’t seem to be in Willie’s vocabulary either. She supposed she could have told her Daddy about Willie saving people, making complete his incomprehension of his son-in-law. “He’s going through a crisis,” Daddy would say. “I wouldn’t rule out an affair either.” Once one got started saying things, Liberty knew, there were certain things that were going to get said back.

In the last six months, Willie had saved three individuals, literally snatched them from Death’s Big Grab. It was curious circumstance, certainly, but it had the feel of a calling to it. Willie was becoming a little occult in his attitudes. He was beginning to believe that there was more to life than love. Liberty didn’t blame him, but wished she had his vision.

The first person Willie had saved was a young man struck by lightning on the beach. Liberty had been there and seen the spidery lines the hit had made on the young man’s chest. Willie had administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation. A few weeks later, the man’s parents had come over to the house and given Willie a five-pound box of chocolate-covered cherries. The man’s mother had talked to Liberty and cried.

The next two people Willie had saved were an elderly couple in a pink Mercedes who had taken a wrong turn and driven briskly down a boat ramp into eight feet of water. The old
woman wore a low-cut evening gown which showed off her pacemaker to good advantage.

“You’ve always been a fool, Herbert,” she said to the old man.

“A wrong turn in a strange city is not impossible, my dear,” Herbert said.

To Willie, he said, “Once I was a young man like you. I was an innocent, a rain-washed star, then I married this bat.”

“‘A rain-washed star’ is nice,” Liberty said when Willie told her.

Willie smiled and shook his head.

“Well, I guess I’ve missed the point again,” Liberty said.

“I guess,” Willie agreed.

Willie was making connections which Liberty was finding harder and harder to bypass. She believed in love and life’s hallucinations, and that every day was judgment day. It wasn’t enough anymore. Willie was getting restless with her, she knew. He felt she was bringing him down. His thoughts included her less and less, his coordinates were elsewhere, his possibilities without her becoming more actualized. This was marriage.

Liberty turned on the television without sound and picked up a piece of paper. She sat on the sofa and drew a line down the center of the paper and on the left side wrote
things i would like
and on the right
things i would never do.
She looked at the television where there was a picture of a plate with a large steak and a plump baked potato and some asparagus on it. The potato got up between the steak and the vegetable and a little slit appeared in it which was apparently its mouth and it apparently began talking. Liberty turned on the sound. It was a commercial for potatoes and the potato was complaining about the fact that everyone says steak and potatoes instead of the other way around. It nestled down against the steak again after making its point. The piece of meat didn’t say anything. Liberty turned off the television and regarded her list. She was sweating. She had closed all the windows late last night when she had heard the rain, now she cranked them open again.
Deep inside the banyan, it still dripped rain. On one of its trunks, Teddy had carved
I LOVE LIBERTY
with his jackknife. Teddy was seven years old and fervently wished that Liberty were his mother. He often pointed out that they both had grey eyes and dark hair and a scar on one knee. She could easily be his mother, Teddy reasoned. He and Liberty had been friends for several years now. In the beginning, she had been paid by his mother for taking care of him, but now such an arrangement seemed unseemly. Teddy lived nearby in a large sunny house in a far more refined area of swimming pools and backyard citrus, but he preferred Liberty’s more gloomy locus. It was also his mother’s preference that he spend as much time as possible away from his own home. Janiella was a diabetic who did not allow her disability to get her down. She was a slender, well-read and passionate, if not nymphomaniacal, woman who enjoyed entertaining while her husband was away, which he frequently was. With Teddy she enforced a rigorous mental and physical schedule and was not very nice to him when he wet the bed.

When Teddy first began to wet the bed, Janiella had long discussions with him about the need for him to accept responsibility for his own bladder. When Teddy continued to refuse responsibility, Janiella began smacking him with a Whiffle bat every time she had to change the sheets. Then she decided on an alarm that would awaken him every three hours throughout the night. All the alarm has managed to do so far is to increase the number of Teddy’s dreams. Teddy dreams more frequently than anyone Liberty knows, he dreams and dreams. He dreams that he steals the single candy bar Janiella keeps in the house in the event she has an attack and has to have sugar. He dreams of Janiella crawling through their huge house, not being able to find her Payday.

When the phone rang again, Liberty walked quickly past it into the bathroom where she turned the water on in the shower. She stood in the small stall beneath the spray until the water turned cool. She turned off the water and stared uneasily at the shower curtain, which portrayed mildewed birds rising.

“Hey,” Willie said. He pushed the curtain back. His lean jaws moved tightly, chewing gum. Willie made chewing gum look like a prerequisite to good health. He was wearing faded jeans and a snug, faded polo shirt. His eyes were a faded blue. They passed over her lightly. Communication had indeed broken down considerably. Signals were intermittent and could easily be misread. Liberty didn’t know anything about him anymore, what he did when he wasn’t with her, what he thought. They had been together for six years. They had a little money and a lot of friends. There didn’t seem to be a plan.

“That was Charlie,” Willie said. “We’re going to have breakfast with him.”

They could never refuse Charlie when he wanted to eat. Charlie was an alcoholic who seldom ate. He was currently sleeping with Teddy’s mother and between his drinking and this unlikely affair, Charlie was a busy man. Liberty thought that Janiella was shallow and selfish and chic. She felt that it was ridiculous for her to be jealous of this woman.

As Liberty was dressing the phone rang again. It was Teddy, whispering.

“Is that tree still outside your house?” Teddy whispered. “Because I’m sure it was here last night. It was waving its arms outside my window, then it flopped away on its white roots. It goes anywhere it feels like going, that tree.”

“Trees aren’t like people,” Liberty said. “They can’t move around.” She felt her logic was somewhat insincere. “Dreams sometimes make you feel you can understand everything,” she said. Liberty herself never dreamed at night, an indication, she believed, of her spiritual torpor.

“Can I come over today, Liberty? Our pool is broken. It has a leak.”

“Certainly, baby, a little later, OK? Bring your snorkel and mask and we’ll go to the beach.”

“Oh, that’s fine, Liberty,” Teddy said.

Liberty can see him sitting in his small square room, a room in which everything is put neatly away. He jiggles a loose tooth and watches his speckled goldfish swimming in a bowl, swimming
over green pebbles through a small plastic arch. Once, he had two goldfish and the bowl was in the living room, but his mother gave a party and one of her friends swallowed one. It was just a joke, his mother said.

Willie and Liberty got into their truck and drove to a little restaurant nearby called The Blue Gate. Clem sat on the seat between them and from the back he could pass for another person, with long pale hair, sitting there. At the restaurant, they all got out and Clem lay down beneath a cabbage palm growing in the dirt parking lot. The Blue Gate was a Mennonite restaurant in a little community of frame houses with tin roofs. Little living petunia crosses grew on some of the lawns. The Blue Gate was popular because the food was delicious and cheap and served in large quantities. Sometimes Liberty and Teddy would go there and eat crullers.

Inside, Charlie was waiting for them at a table by the pie display. He wore a rumpled suit a size too large for him and a clean shirt. His hair was combed wetly back, his face was swollen and his hands shook, nevertheless he seemed in excellent spirits. The last time Liberty had had the pleasure of Charlie’s company at table, he had eaten three peas separately in the course of an hour. He had told her fortune in a glass of water and then taken a bite out of the glass.

“Been too long, man,” Charlie said to Willie, shaking his hand. “Hi, doll,” he said to Liberty.

Charlie ordered eggs, ham, fried mush, orange juice, milk and coffee cake. “I love this place, man,” he said. “These are good people, these are
religious
people. You know what’s on the bottom of the pie pans? There are
messages
on the bottoms of the pie pans, embossed in the aluminum. Janiella got a pineapple cream cheese pie here last week and it said
Wise men shall seek Him,
man. Isn’t that something? The last crumbs expose a Christian message! You should bring a sweet potato pie home, Liberty, get yourself a message.”

“There are too many messages in Liberty’s life already,” Willie said. “Liberty is on some terrible mailing lists.”

“Yeah,” Charlie nodded. “Yesterday, I got a letter from Greenpeace. They’re the ones who want to stop the slaughter of the harp seals, right? Envelope had a picture of a cuddly little white seal and the words
Kiss This Baby Good-Bye.
You get that one, Liberty?”

“Yes,” Liberty said.

“You know what those Greenpeace guys did one year? They sprayed green dye all over the seals. Fashion fuckers don’t want any
green
baby seal coats, right!” Charlie laughed his high cackling laugh. The Mennonites glanced up from their biscuits and thin pink gravy.

Liberty ordered only coffee and looked at Charlie, at his handsome ruined face. He was a Cajun. His mother still lived in Lafayette, Louisiana. She was a “treater” whose specialty was curing warts over the phone.

“Janiella has a fur coat,” Charlie said. “She has lots of lousy habits. She never shuts doors for example. I have to tell you what happened. I was there yesterday, right? I’m beneath the sheets truffling away and her kid comes in. He’s forgotten his spelling book. His spelling book! ‘Mommy,’ he says, ‘have you seen my spelling book?’ I’m crouched beneath the rosy sheets. My ears are ringing! I try to be very still, but I’m
gagging,
man, and Janiella says sweetly, ‘I saw your spelling book in the wastebasket,’ and the kid says, ‘It must have fallen in there by accident,’ and Janiella says, ‘You are always saying that, Ted. You are always placing things you don’t like in the wastebasket. I found that lovely Dunnsmoor sweater I gave you in the wastebasket. That lovely coloring book on knights and armor from the Metropolitan Museum was in the wastebasket also.’ ‘I’m too old for coloring books,’ the kid says. Picture it, man, they are having a
discussion.
They are arguing fine points.”

Liberty did not want to picture it. Breakfast had been placed before them on the table. Charlie looked at the food in surprise.

“Well?” Willie said.

Charlie seemed to be losing his drift. He kept looking at his food as though he were trying to read it.

“So what happened?” Willie insisted. “Finally.”

“Well, I don’t know, man. The future is not altogether scrutable.”

“Janiella and Teddy,” Willie said, glancing at Liberty. “The spelling book.”

Charlie giggled. “I fell asleep. The last thing I heard was the kid saying, ‘I thought Daddy was playing in Kansas City.’ I passed out from the heat, man.”

“Playing in Kansas City?” Willie asked. He poured syrup on his fried mush. Liberty reached over and scooped up a bit for herself with her coffee spoon.

“He’s a baseball player. He catches fly balls and wears a handlebar mustache and spits a lot. I think he suspects something. They’ve got this immense swimming pool wherein Janiella and I often fool around and there was this little rubber frog that drifted around in it, trailing chlorine from his bottom. Cute little frog with a happy smile, his rubber legs crossed and his rubber eyes happy? Well Mr. Mean came home last weekend and took his twelve-gauge and blasted that poor little froggy to smithereens.”