The Best American Short Stories 2015 (6 page)

“It's not your place,” Marlene hissed.

“Just put her on the boat and let's go,” Phillip interrupted. “Let's go now. She's going to die. I'm going to get a stretcher and we'll put her on the boat.”

“You'll do what I tell you to do,” Joe snapped, solemn and intimidating. “For starters, you can shower and sober up before you come to my dinner table.” Georgie looked down at her plate, at once ashamed of Joe's savage authority and in awe of it.

“Do you want to go outside with me?” she whispered, lightly touching Joe's shoulder. “Walk this off, think about it?”

Joe ignored her.

Phillip stood up from the table, foggy spectacles sliding off his nose in the wet heat. “Sober up? Please. You're so regal, aren't you? The villagers hate you. You punish them for infidelity and you've got a different woman here every month. You walk around with a machete strapped to your chest like you're just waiting for an uprising. Maybe you'll get what you want,” he said.

“They're talking about it, you know,” he said. “Maybe we'll just take the boat.”

Joe stood up and leered at Phillip, practically spitting across the table. “They can hate me all they want. They need me. Why don't you get back on that goddamn canoe you came in on? Yale degree, my ass. You're a deserter. Don't think I don't know it.”

“You don't know anything about me,” Phillip spat back, storming out of the dining room. Georgie could hear him shouting as he marched away in the still air. “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked!”

“I think we should take her to Nassau,” Georgie said, turning to Joe.

“Oh please,” Marlene said, rolling her eyes. “It isn't the time to interfere.”

“It's the right thing to do.”

“What do you know?” Marlene snapped.

“A little rum will make us all feel better,” Joe said, forcing a smile. “Hannah?”

“It doesn't make
me
feel better at all,” Georgie said quietly. She had been determined to hold her own tonight, to look Marlene in the eye, to prove to her that she and Joe were a worthy couple. But she quickly sensed a loss of control, of confidence.

“It's all about you, is it?” Marlene asked. “You're lucky to be here, darling, you know that?”

“We need to get the hell out of this room,” Joe announced, knocking over her chair as she stood up.

Joe gathered her guests in the living room, which was full of plush sofas and polished tables covered in crystal ashtrays. Mounted swordfish and a cheetah skin decorated the whitewashed walls.

Joe put on a Les Brown record and opened a cigar box. She clamped down on a cigar and carried around a decanter of Scotch in the other, topping off her guests' drinks.

“No restraint,” she said. “Drink as much as you want. It's early.”

Georgie leaned against a window, gulped down her drink, and stared out at the black sea. Joe pulled her away and into a corner.

“Are you having a good enough time?” she asked. “Are you angry?”

“What do you think?” Georgie said.

“You're drunk,” Joe said.

“What?” Georgie asked, voice falsely sweet. “I'm the only one who's not allowed to have a big night?”

“It's just unusual for you,” Joe said.

“We should take the boat to Nassau,” Georgie said.

“You're slurring,” Joe said. “And besides, I've said no. If I go, I'll lose authority.”

“You might lose it anyway.”

Joe was silent and turned to refresh her drink, pausing to talk with the financiers. Georgie stayed at the window. She could hear the islanders' voices outside. She couldn't understand what they were saying, but they were loud and animated. Hannah, who was making the rounds with a box of cigars, lingered by the window, a worried expression on her face.

Would the native islanders riot? Or worse, attack the house and guests? Maybe. But what weighed most heavily on Georgie was the sense of being complicit in Celia's suffering.

Marlene approached, locking eyes with her. She topped off Georgie's glass with straight rum and lit another cigarette.

“Got ugly in there, didn't it?” she said, exhaling.

Georgie nodded.

“Bet you don't see that every day in the mermaid tank,” Marlene said. “But Joe can handle it. Even if you can't. Those of us that have been to the war—”

Georgie held up a hand, stopping Marlene. She felt claustrophobic, drunk. She knew she wasn't thinking clearly. Her body was warm from the rum and wine and she felt anxious, as if she needed to move.

“Tell Joe I'm off for a walk. To think about things.”

“Stay out awhile,” Marlene said, calling after her.

Georgie left the house through the kitchen and walked away from the group of islanders who had clustered near the dock. She wanted to tell them that they were right, that they should take the boat, but she was too ashamed to look them in the eyes, too afraid to speak against Joe. She wanted to talk to Phillip, so she followed the path of crushed oysters and sand north toward the simple silhouette of the small stone church.

Georgie recalled the hymn her mother liked to sing—“O God, Our Help in Ages Past.” She was tone-deaf but couldn't help herself from singing. As the words came, her tongue felt too big for her mouth, but still the sound of her voice filled her with unexpected serenity. She took another drink from the crystal tumbler she'd taken from the house and sang the first verse again, and then again, until she could feel her mother's nails on her back, calming her down, loving her to sleep.

She found Phillip passed out on a wooden bench in front of the church.

“Phillip,” she said, gently rocking him with her hands. He was shirtless and his skin was warm. A single silver cross Joe had given him hung around his neck and across his chest.

“Phillip,” she said. He stirred but didn't open his eyes. She pinched the skin above his hip bone.

“What?” he said, opening his eyes into slits.

“Take the boat. Just take it.”

“I'm in no shape to drive a boat.”

“You have to. Someone has to.”

“I like you, Georgie,” Phillip said. “But you have to leave me the hell alone now.” He waved her off with one hand, the other tucked underneath his head.

“But you said—”

“I give up. You should too.” He rolled away from her, turning his face toward the back of the bench.

She took another sip of her drink while waiting for him to roll back over. When he didn't, she walked to the place where the sandy island broke off into high cliffs and began to walk the rim of the island, staring at the water below.

Looking down at the waves from the cliffs, she remembered Florida. She remembered sipping on the air hose and drinking Coca-Cola while tourists watched her through thick glass at the aquarium show. Sometimes Georgie had to remind herself that she could not, in fact, breathe underwater.

“Whatever you do,” the aquarium owner had said, “be pretty.”

And so the girls always pointed their toes and ignored the charley horses in their calves or the way their eyes began to sting in the brackish water. Georgie recalled the feeling of her hands on the arch of another swimmer's back as they performed an underwater adagio, the fatigue in her body after the back-to-back Fourth of July shows. She remembered a time when she felt good about herself.

She thought of Joe, and her arm around Marlene's back. She thought of the stone house, and for a minute, she wanted to leave Whale Cay and return home. But home would never be the same.

In days the yacht would pull away and Joe would wake her up with coffee in bed. Hannah would make her eggs, runny and heaped on a slice of white toast with fruit on the side. She would take her morning swims and read a book underneath the shade of a palm. And would that be enough?

They had a rock in the yard back home. Her father used to lift the copperheads out of the garden shed with his hoe and slice them open with the metal edge, their poisonous bodies writhing without heads for a moment on top of the rock. The spring ritual had horrified and intrigued Georgie, and it was what she pictured now, standing above the sea, swaying, the feeling of rocks underneath her feet.

But she might never see that rock again, she thought.

It was dark and she couldn't see well. There was shouting in the distance. She felt bewildered, hysterical.

She set down her glass and took off her sandals. She would feel better in the water, stronger.

With casual elegance, she brought her hands in front of her body and over her head and dove off the cliff. As she began to fall toward the water, falling beautifully, toes pointed, she wondered if she'd gotten mixed up and picked the wrong place to dive.

She was falling into the tank again, the brackish water in her eyes, but no one was watching.

She was cherry pie.

She was a ticker-tape parade.

Her hands hit the water first. The water rushed over her ears, deafening her. Her limbs went numb, adrenaline moving through her until she was upright again, gulping air.

She treaded water, fingers moving against the dark sea, pushing it away to keep herself afloat. There were rocks jutting out from the water, a near miss. There were strange birds nesting in the tall grass, a native woman bleeding on a straw mattress in a hut on the south shore, a stone house strangled by fig trees.

JUSTIN BIGOS

FROM
McSweeney's Quarterly

A
STORY
: A man, once a wealthy banker but now anonymous in rags, retired, richer than ever, wandered the streets of our city. He dug through trash, ate trash, slept on sidewalks, walked with a slight limp, as if he had years before suffered a minor stroke, or a terrible beating. Years before, in fact, his wife and children had died on a highway. After drinking away a decade of his life, the man quit alcohol, quit his job, quit his life. He became someone else. Do we still think it possible? To become someone else? We know this is just a story, so: He wandered the streets of our city and he smiled at anyone who met his eyes. And to those who then returned his smile with their own, he would speak: “Excuse me, ma'am,” or “Sir, just a moment,” and he would fake-limp with all his dignity—they could see this now, the ones who looked—and he would reach out a hand. Those who took it—very few, very few, God save us all—would find he had pressed into their palm a hundred-dollar bill. And was already walking away.

Another story: Sometime in your teens, in high school, around the time your father started showing up again, your house was robbed. In the night, the family asleep. No one awoke, no one was hurt. In the morning: “Mom, where's the car?” The slow realization: missing VCR, missing jewelry, missing wallets and purses. Also missing: a baseball cap from your bedroom, a Cabbage Patch doll from your sister's. “Are you sure, are you sure it's gone?” said your mother, your sister crying. “Why would someone steal a doll?” Your stepfather silent, raging. The police found the car a few blocks away, in the projects, a man asleep, passed out, high as a kite, behind the wheel. It took weeks to get the smell out.

Your father didn't show up again until a few days after the robbery. Sitting at the table, shaking for alcohol: “It's horrible, son. You should have an alarm system.” He comes, as if by magic, only when your mother and stepfather are not home. “Just pour me one drink, son.”

This man you cannot say you love, cannot say you don't. He is the mystery man, the question mark. After a few weeks of his visits, always at night, the house empty, your sister asleep, he stopped showing up. The last visit you knocked him to the ground. He limped to the door, faking it a little, maybe, it was impossible to know, and he said something deliciously cruel. But you have never been able to remember what it was.

He said,
Your eyes are like two sapphires in a window in Chinatown on the kind of day that makes a man want to get down on one knee
. That was the first date, your mother tells you. Talked like that for a few months, then they got married. Her second marriage, his first. Marie had introduced her to him, the Italian guy who owned the deli across the street. He had noticed her walking by one day and asked Marie who she was. On the first date he wore about six gold chains around his neck, paid for everything with a fat wad of hundred-dollar bills. They did cocaine and drank beer, and he whipped out the line about the sapphires. Smooth customer, she says. Look at him.

And you look, you remember: white T-shirt, two gold chains, pressed slacks, black loafers. He dresses like his brothers, his friends. Cooking calamari and clams casino on the deck, working at the deli all day, asking you why you want to date a nigger or kissing your mother behind the ear, he has looked the same since the day you met him, when you were four years old. Your mother wanted at least a father for you and your sister. She got a man, twenty-one years older, who worshipped her—even if he eventually lost the words for it. On the first date, she tells you, I had no idea he'd been living with another woman and her daughter for almost ten years. An entirely different family. I told him, Look, you make a decision. And he left me. Next morning, there he is, at the door with a suitcase, cigarette in his lips. She smiles. That fucker, you should have seen the look on his face.

But she hadn't yet told him she was separated from her husband—that he had tried to kill her and was still trying to find her and his children. Like the new man she knew she would marry, she had an unshakable sense of timing.

Your father at the table in jacket and tie. Have you ever seen him not in jacket and tie? Raised a Jehovah's Witness, he learned early that one must represent God as His witness, and when you knock on someone's door it can't hurt to have pressed your slacks. He downs a glass of gin like milk.