Walking Dunes (22 page)

“I don't send cards either,” he said. “I just sent that one to you.” Sending cards was for old people, but this one had served its purpose. She did not speak. “It doesn't seem much like Christmas, does it?” he said. The sun had been brilliant every day. It frosted at night, but nothing stayed on the ground in town.

“Four more days on the chain gang,” she said. “I'm going to buy some clothes in the after-Christmas sales.”

“I'm saving up,” he said. “Hey, I liked your red dress.”

There was a long silence. Now that she was on the phone, he did not know what he wanted, except that he had wanted her to call, to save him the embarrassment of trying and being rejected. He did not expect Patsy to follow the same rules as girls like Glee.

“There are a couple of neat guys living in the motel now.” she said. “One is from New York City.”

“Interesting.”

“I was thinking, maybe you'd like to meet them. I could ask them over Sunday afternoon.” He could hear her take a breath. “You don't have a date on Sunday, do you?”

One of the men, James Notley, was a 1954 graduate of Basin High School. Tall, blond, crewcut, he looked like a West Texan, and he had a hard, strong look, too, from his time in the army. His roommate was Ari Finberg, with whom he had served in Germany. Ari, with his heavy New York accent, was a smaller man, wiry and dark and intense. He looked like Saul might have looked in his early twenties. Every time David looked at Ari, Ari was already looking at David. It made David uneasy.

James and Ari were spending the rest of the school year in Basin, attending the junior college on the GI Bill. James laughed about it. He said it was Ari's idea. Ari said, “He talked about Basin all the time. I thought it sounded exotic, something I ought to experience.”

“And do you think it's exotic, now?” David asked. All of them laughed. Ari did not bother to reply.

Patsy had made some tiny sandwiches of pimento cheese, and had laid out pickles and olives on a saucer. When they had eaten everything, Ari said they ought to go over to their place, where there was a record player. “We've got a lot of platters,” he said.

Their place was untidy and interesting, with books and records, jackets and shirts, magazines lying over every surface. The tacky little couch was covered with a crinkly length of fabric printed in an unusual, bright pattern. David sat on a cushion on the floor and drank a beer while they listened to Billie Holiday. David had never heard Billie Holiday before. He could not think of anything at all to say. He seemed to feel the singer's voice glide over his body, like a soft breeze that rustled the hair on his arms, and then when she moved onto a plaintive higher plane, he wished he were alone so he could cry. Patsy came with another cushion and sat beside him. She sang along for part of one song. “Isn't she fabulous?” He nodded. He wondered if she and Ari were lovers; he found that the thought distressed him. Ari was sure to know things David did not, for he was a world traveler, an army veteran, a native of New York, a sophisticated man.

Ari and James said David would have to come again and hear more music. “You into music, man?” Ari said. David was dizzy and tired, and strained to find anything to reply. He nodded his head yes. “I listen to the radio all the time,” he said, but he saw by the look on Patsy's face that that was the wrong thing to say.

The afternoon before Christmas Eve, David dressed up as Santa Claus and handed out stuffed animals in the pediatrics ward. Glee went along with him. She was charming with the children. She cooed and asked everyone's name. She sang “Frosty the Snowman” and “Jingle Bells,” and told them all she knew they'd be strong and big and well in the new year. He was hot and claustrophobic in the silly costume, but the ambulatory children clung to him and crawled up on his lap. They whispered their wishes for tricycles and toy guns, doctor's kits and dolls and puppies. Nobody said he wanted to go home; they knew that was not in Santa's power.

Afterwards, he drove Glee to his house. While he showered and dressed, she straightened his room and sat on his bed, listening to the radio. After the gaiety of the children's ward, she seemed unusually quiet; she did not even try to kiss him.

They had dinner at a steak house. Although he tried to talk her into having the filet mignon, she ordered spaghetti. He had a New York strip. It took a day's wages to pay for the evening. He ate too fast and finished almost before you could even tell she had begun. He fiddled with his fork against his plate, while she chewed self-consciously, sometimes halting mid-bite to study his expression, until finally she said, “I can't eat, I'm not hungry anymore.” He raised his water glass and proposed a toast: to the end of high school. Her eyes filled with tears and she put her own glass down. “It's only December,” she said, not looking at him. “I'm sorry, I said the wrong thing,” he groaned. Did she not look forward to the future? Did she not want to stop being a girl, a daughter and stepdaughter who had to ask for everything? As if he had spoken his thoughts out loud, she said, “I love school, Davy. I love my friends—and you. Us. I dread it ending.”

“But everything's ahead, Glee!”

“I'll have to get a job. What will I do?”

“You could go to the junior college, or to secretarial school.” Tears welled and spilled onto her cheeks. He could not stop himself: “You'll get married.”

She left the table for a long time. He felt like an ass. He knew he had said a cruel thing.
He
would not marry her. He did not want to be married, not any time soon, and Glee, who was pretty and sweet as a girl could be, would never be the person he would want anyway. He thought about the Kimbroughs, about marriage as a contract to make lives work. A beautiful and wealthy woman, a powerful man. What had Saul and Marge thought marriage was? What it was for most people, sanctioned coupling? Of Glee he thought, we shouldn't be dating. I'm cheating her. I'm keeping her from other boys. But it was what she wanted. When he tried to back away she went crazy.

She brightened when he gave her the pearl. “I'll treasure it,” she whispered, “always, always.” She had his gift in her purse. It was a fountain pen, with his name engraved on it. He wanted to tell her, I'll treasure it, but it wasn't that kind of gift, and what was the use of a lie. If it had not had his name on it, he could have given it to Saul with the ballpoint.

He had put a blanket off his bed into his mother's car. He drove out of town, along a farm road, looking for a view of sky that caught his fancy. He did not feel like parking near a pump jack or a derrick. He wanted an open space, the way the pioneers might have found the prairie. It was bitter cold, and they huddled close with the blanket wrapped around them. He put his hand between her legs and held it there, as though it were only a way to keep warm. She leaned her head on his shoulder. “I wish you could tell me what to do,” she said, but there was nothing he could say to that. She did not seem to want to be kissed. She did not have her hands on him.

When he said it was too cold and they should go home, she said that Evelyn Singleton was having a New Year's Eve party at her house, and they were invited. “You'll go, won't you? We'll go? All my friends will be there. It'll be the best party of the night.”

Ari Finberg would play jazz records on New Year's Eve and make love to Patsy Randall. David's throat constricted and ached. He turned to Glee, pulling the blanket all crooked, and he kissed her forehead and cheeks, and he said, “Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, don't think it's you, that it was ever you that went wrong.” He felt her tense. “What?” she asked anxiously. “What are you saying?”

“We ought to have as much fun as we can,” he told her, backing away from whatever was inside him wanting to be said. “New Year's Eve, whenever.” She relaxed. She said, “I keep thinking you're going to tell me you don't love me any more.”

He touched her cheek, then bent and put his face in her lap. Her warm musky smell filled his nostrils. Her skirt absorbed his tears.

22.

His parents woke him Christmas morning with their quarreling. He moaned and pulled his pillow over his head. He heard his mother shout, “My house!” her eternal cry, and then, “your daughter.” Saul yelled, “MY daughter! Now she's MY daughter,” and David got up.

“It's Christmas, folks,” he said. His parents had settled down. They were seated at the table with cups of coffee in front of them. They looked surprised to see him. “Hey, it's me, I live here,” he joked, pouring his own coffee. He put bread in the toaster and took out the oleo, then sat down. “You going to Aunt Cheryl's today, Mom?” he asked, wording it like that so she would know he did not plan to go. She shook her head. She did not have the evening off.

“So are we cooking here?” he plodded on. He just wanted somebody to say something ordinary and civil, they did not have to say Merry Christmas. If there was food in the house, he would offer to cook it himself, if need be.

“I'm going to make that chicken with Campbell's soup, like Joyce Ellen likes so much,” Marge said. “It's easy. We can eat early in the afternoon.” Saul harumphed at her announcement. “I'm going to go get her as soon as I get dressed.”

“And Kelton?” David asked. He could not believe it, a Christmas gathering, how about that. “Kelton is coming over, too?” He knew his sister could not get away otherwise.

Saul snarled. “I should have tied her up and locked her in her room for a year. Now I ought to lock her out.”

His mother said, “Pete's still in Dallas.”

“Still?” David asked.

“He's been there since the first of November.”

He did not understand the charade his sister was playing, but he knew he could count on repercussions. His mother had a stubborn, gritty expression. She would prevail. “I don't understand.”

“The Big Mouth doesn't want to have a baby,” Saul growled.

“She's more pregnant than she said at Thanksgiving,” Marge said. “She's nearly four months. When she told him, he went to Dallas. And he isn't coming back. Only she didn't know that. She called the station. He quit five weeks ago.”

“This is not making sense,” David said. Saul said, “Ha.”

Marge shook her head. “You work fifteen years with crazy people. Maybe it sticks to your hair, you bring it home. Your daughter marries a madman.” She did not look like she had slept much. “It's complicated, Davy. Too much to explain right now. He's not coming back, and she doesn't have any money. She needs us now.” She started to cry. “She's barely seventeen.”

Saul stormed out of the room. David ate his toast. Saul reappeared. “You go get her, all right. You cook cream of sick chicken soup. I'm leaving.”

“Where are you going on Christmas?” Marge asked wearily.

“To the greyhound races.”

“Juarez?” David asked.

“Right now.”

David jumped up. “Hey Pop, I want to go. Can I go?”

“Move fast.”

Marge shut her eyes. “This is Christmas?”

David kissed her on top of the head. “I'm sorry, Mom. I've got to go with Dad. You get Joyce Ellen. It doesn't matter what day it is, we can straighten it out later. Don't you see, I need to go? You and Joyce Ellen, you can have the day together. Hey, she's pregnant, she'll want to nap won't she?”

He ran to his room and dressed hurriedly. He put two twenties in his wallet from the stash in his sock drawer. Suddenly he felt happy. It was Christmas, and he was getting out of town.

They did not get to the races. They did not even find out if there were any. It took the rest of the day to reach El Paso, where Saul checked them into a motel, turned on the television, went for ice and 7-Up. He had brought a bottle of gin. They stripped to underwear and stretched out on the two double beds. “Now, this is the life,” David said. The water glasses were gleaming, the pillows hefty, the bed like a rock. You could put a quarter in and jiggle yourself. There was a faint odor of disinfectant, sweetish and clean and anonymous.

His father raised his glass. “I should have been a traveling salesman.”

“You were.”

Saul slapped his thigh. “What a life it turned out to be.”

On
TV
, a chorus was singing Christmas hymns. Saul turned the volume down to a murmur. In a while a movie came on with James Cagney. David never did know what movie it was, or what it was about. It did not take much gin for him to feel drunk.

“I've been thinking about marriage,” he said, slurring only a little.

“Shit,” Saul said.

“Not getting married. I'm not thinking about getting married. I'm just thinking about marriage.”

“The way two people join forces.”

“Against the world.”

“They think they do at the beginning. Later they learn something about the scale of conflict in the world.”

“It cuts off a lot of possibilities. Marriage.”

“If there are any out there. Possibilities.” Saul belched loudly. “The mistake young people make is, they think the possibilities are there, when they're not. They think they're doubling their odds because there are two of them. It's a condition of youth, naivete. Like acne.”

“Something has to happen. Why couldn't it be good?”

Saul went to the bathroom. David got up and washed his face with cold water. He was shaky, hungry. When his father came out he sat on the end of the bed, with his feet between the two beds, and he asked him, “If it turns out to be a bad idea, do you just give up?”

“I thought so once.”

“But you changed your mind.” David thought, maybe he will tell me about the woman downtown. There was no way to ask. He did not want his father to leave his mother again. The quarrels were not that bad.

Saul lifted his glass again. “You kill the pain.”