The Practical Navigator (31 page)

Now she'll understand.

“Look at it! That's your daughter sucking a dick! That's her, letting some tattooed pig screw her up the ass!”

“Oh, God,” says Tisha Beacham, the blood draining from her face.

“Yes! Sitting in my locker. A
friend
thought I should see it. Hah! No doubt everyone else has!” Turning, Neal Beacham screams down the upstairs hallway toward his daughter's bedroom. “Aneeetah—!”

“What.”

Standing in the foyer below them, Anita remembers a lesson from an acting class. When you want focus, speak quietly. No matter the hubbub on the other side of the stage, speak softly and succinctly and the focus will come to you. And it does. Yanking something square and plastic from her mother's hand, Neal Beacham throws it down at her. She knows immediately what it is. The cover. She was never supposed to be on it. She was a participant, yes, but not a name player. How gullible can you be to believe anything people like that would tell you.

“Is this it? Is this what you are?” yells Neal Beacham. “Answer me!”

“I guess so.” The lack of emotion in her voice surprises even her.

“Anita.” It's her mother speaking now. She has never seen her mother look frightened before. It's not a good feeling and she pushes it away. Her sister is crying on the stairs and she pushes that away as well. “How could you? Was it money? You have money. When you need it, I give you more.”

As if it's so
tragic
.

“Maybe I was tired of asking.” Good. Let them think it was about money. She can see the matter-of-factness of it stuns them both.

“I want you out of this house,” says her father. “I want you out now.”

“Not a problem.”

“No—” her mother starts to say.

“Yes! After all we've done for her! All
I've
done!”

It's finally too much, it really is. “What have you ever done for me, Dad? What have you done? I'd like to know.”

“Oh, don't you talk to me like that—don't you dare.” Her father is shaking now as if indignant. It actually seems funny. “The strings I've pulled? To get you back what you should have never given up in the first place? Well, so much for that.”

And suddenly, it's not funny at all. “What are you talking about?” she says.

“Neal, stop
now
—” she hears her mother say.

“No. You're talking about Michael. What did you do? Did you offer
him
money?” He did. She knows he did. She
knows
it.

“Hah! It should be so easy. No, I promised him a job, that's all. A real one. Thank God, he's a little more employable than you. I opened the door but once again you've managed to slam it shut. Well, good riddance this time. To the both of you. Good riddance to bad trash.”

Wrong, Anita thinks. I've been so wrong.

*   *   *

Beth isn't quite sure what's going down but whatever it is, it's something momentous. No, actually it's something that would normally happen at
her
house.

“Shut up!” her mother screams—
screams
—at her father, her father, whom, she, Beth, has somehow finally found the guts to beat the shit out of.

Her father turns to her mother as if offended. “What?” he says. “What did you say?”

“Shut up!” her mother screams again. “You
idiot
! Shut up!”

Beautiful.

Down below, Anita is moving toward the front door.

“Anita, wait—please—” her mother calls.

Too late. Her sister is out the door. And now her mother—
will wonders never cease?
—is hurrying down the stairs after her.

“Let her leave!” her father calls after her.

“Fuck—you!”
her mother screams back.

Beth can't remember the last time she heard Tisha Beacham use profanity.

Beautiful.

“You are such a pathetic bastard,” she says to her father. As she hurries down the stairs and out the door after her mother and sister she realizes, with such a sense of relief, she will never be coming back to this house again.

*   *   *

Tisha comes out into the courtyard just in time to see Anita slam the car door behind her. “Anita,” she calls. “Anita, please!” Please
what
? she wonders. What is she saying? Please stop? Please come back? Please, I'll make it better? She feels as if there is a small metal box inside her. It is where she has put unwanted feelings for as long as she can remember and now the box is on the verge of bursting and spilling its tightly compressed contents. No, she tells herself.
No.
She stands, unmoving, as Anita drives away. She is vaguely aware of someone behind her.

“Where's she going? What are we going to do?” asks Beth.

“You are going to go home,” says Tisha.

“But—”

“
Please.
Don't argue with me.” The box inside her is on the brink of breaking again.

Shore it up, shore it up.

“We've all had enough drama for one day.”

“So much for curtains, huh?”

It actually makes her smile. “Yes. So much for curtains.”

*   *   *

She finds her husband in the kitchen. Neal Beacham is pouring himself a drink. “Would you like one?” he calmly asks. Cocktail hour at the Ritz.

“Yes,” she says quietly. He hands her his. How thoughtful. She drains half of it in one swallow. “Are you happy now?” she asks.

“The truth,” says Neal Beacham, “has never made me unhappy.”

Tisha Beacham throws the remains of the liquor into her husband's face.

“I should have left you years ago.”

No anger. No sputtering indignation. Acceptance.

“You did.”

 

52

It's subflooring for the second story of the house, three-quarter-inch tongue-and-groove plywood glued and nailed to the first story's ceiling joists. Hard and heavy work, tough on the knees, tougher on the back, and even with Michael there to help, the work is going slowly.

“That was Bobby.” Jose puts his cell phone back in the pocket of his baggy, low-riding jeans. Bobby, who has gone missing the last two days, finally calling in. “He's in Vegas. He got married over the weekend.”

“I didn't know he was engaged,” Michael says quietly.

“He wasn't,” says Jose. “He says he met her in the casino Saturday night.”

Bobby, a good kid, hardworking and reliable, but often a yard short in the brains department.

“Whata you think, Luis?” Jose is grinning now. He enjoys goading the dour older man. “Does he stand a chance?”

Luis shrugs. “All that matters is she make him happy. Women today, they forget their job. It's what they're supposed to do.”

“Yeah, I'll tell my girlfriend that. Then I'll run.” Jose's girlfriend, a sociology major at San Diego State, is a retired Cerco Blanco gang sister from L.A. who could kick the shit out of most men in a fight. “Hey, you think we should send Bobby a gift?”

“How about a get-well card,” says Michael.

Happy.

*   *   *

Hitting the brakes, Anita stops in the middle of the street. The Prius lurches forward as she opens the car door. She slams the button on the console with a closed fist, hating a car that allows her to forget to put it in park.

She can see them up on the second floor, working. Sees Michael rise up off his knees and, balancing on a beam, approach the edge of the roof, hammer in hand, tool belt at his waist. And at that moment, she realizes that she despises him—
has
for such a long time. That he chose
this
as a way to make a living. This trapped, plain-wrapped, unending
thing.
He could have been anything else. And if he had been different, she would have been different. They would have been different. All so different.

Your fault.

*   *   *

“Whoa. Here comes happy,” murmurs Jose.

“Shut up,” says Leo, his face grim. This is going to be bad, he thinks. He knows an angry woman when he sees one. All you can do is hope that they're not armed.

“Get back to work,” says Michael. He lowers himself to the beam, dangles and drops to the ground.

*   *   *

Leaving her car in the middle of the street, Anita strides across the sidewalk and onto the rough ground of the worksite. Michael sees that her face is pinched and pale. What should be a pretty sundress seems like a rough bag of fabric on her, barely holding her together.

“Hey. What's going on? What's wrong?”

Bending, Anita picks up a piece of scrap wood and throws it at him. It bounces off his quickly raised arms, hurts him.

Good.

“What the hell—”

She grabs for other pieces of scrap, anything she can get her hands on, anything that will make for a projectile. “Damn you! Damn you! Fucking bastard, I trusted you!” Throwing, reaching, throwing. Wild and inept and frantic.

“Anita, are you crazy? What's wrong with you?”

Nothing left to throw now. Nothing to hurt him with but closed, ineffectual fists. “Poor Anita! Huh? Needs a home and a husband to take care of her! Can't do it by herself, can she?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Bullshit, Michael! Bullshit! He paid you! He paid you off and you took it! You took it!”

Oh, God, Michael thinks, knowing now exactly what she's talking about. What did Neal tell her? What did he say? Be calm. “Okay, wait. If you're talking about that job offer, no. No, I never did. I never told him yes.” It sounds clumsy and false coming out of his mouth. “I never promised him a thing.”

“Did you say no, Michael? Did you spell it out for him? Because he thinks you did.”

Michael knowing the truth. Good intentions suddenly made bad. Conveying it with silence.

“If you didn't say no, you said yes, and that makes you the asshole in my book. Oh, God, I am so out of here.” She turns quickly away, striding for the street.

Futile to call after her. So futile. Still. He does. “Anita! I would have done it anyway. I didn't need his help to make me want to try.”

“Fuck! You!” she screams. Not even breaking stride. Not even listening.

He starts after her. On her quickly. He is a dog at her heels and anger is suddenly a bone in his mouth, something to grind and break with his teeth. “This is what you've been looking for, isn't it? Just waiting. Another reason to bail. Just like last time.”

“Shut up!” she says. “You know nothing about me! Nothing! You never did!” A worthless response. No leg to stand on. Pitiful.

“Tell me you haven't! Tell me you haven't, Anita!”

She turns back, screaming at him, her rage now every bit the equal of his own. “Leave me alone!”

He doesn't. He no longer can. “What is it you want from me? What is it you want, period? You think I'm fine this way? That it was supposed to be like this? A fucked-up wife and a screwed-up kid?”

“Stop it,” she says again. Turning away again. Beginning to cry now. “Just stop talking.”

“
You
stop. I am barely getting by. I am trying my best. What is your best? I haven't seen it yet. I keep waiting for the conversation we never had. The one where you explain everything to me so that I finally understand. It's never gonna happen, is it?”

Her anger is gone now. She wishes it wasn't. Anger is such a good alternative to feeling what she's feeling now. “All I do is hurt you.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I can't be what you want. I'm not that thing.”

“I don't care about me. Not for me. For him, Anita, stay for him.”

Anguish.

Anguish, Penelope once told Michael, is standing at the edge of a cliff knowing you have the freedom to throw yourself off or stay put and wanting desperately to do both. It is anguish that he sees in Anita's eyes.

“Why did you love me?” she asks, her voice a dead thing. “Why did you try and save me? You knew. Why couldn't you have left me alone?”

Your fault.

Anita turns and walks, half stumbling, into the street. Somehow she gets into the car. It starts silently. It crawls slowly away, rounds the corner and is gone.

On the second floor, Leo, Luis, and Jose have stopped working. Who can nail plywood when two people are nailing each other?

“Go home,” Michael calls out, not looking back at them. “Everybody go home.”

 

53

Tisha is in the kitchen, forcing herself to boil water for tea, when the phone rings. Steeling herself, she answers it.

“Yes, hello.”

“It's me,” Michael's voice says. “Has Anita come back?”

“What do you mean?” Tisha asks, fearing the worst.

“She came by the worksite. She was upset. Tisha, is she there or not?”

“No. She's left, Michael,” says Tisha. “Anita's … left.” She quickly puts a hand over her mouth. Something is coming up inside and it wouldn't do to let it out. “She came home, gathered up her things, and now she's gone.”

“Let me talk to your husband.”

“He isn't here either, Michael. He went to the club. The country club.”

“You're fucking kidding me.”

“No.”

“What did he say to her, Tisha?”

“Horrible things. Unforgivable.” The taste in her mouth is horrible. It's bile. It's vinegar. It's amniotic fluid gone sour. “Please know this is not your fault.”

“Are you okay?”

“No, Michael, I'm not okay. At the moment, I'm not okay at all. As a matter of fact, I've got to go now. The kettle's boiling, I've got to go.”