Warped Page 2

  #

  Melanie agreed to meet me for lunch and maybe she figured the rock on her finger would take my attention away from the purpling bruise she couldn’t completely cover with the sweep of hair she fixed so it would curl around her jaw.

  “Don’t do it,” I said after I pushed away my plate. Like I could eat?

  The look Melanie gave me had about a thousand parts, and it would have taken a smarter man than me to lay them out straight.

  “You know, Gil, there’s places that’ll let you adopt at my age,” she said. “With money, she didn’t say. With influence.”

  I could have ripped down the place and it took everything I had to keep my hands flat on the table. Would I have adopted for Melanie? Hell yeah, only that’s a conversation she never had with me. She was so focused on the body that had betrayed her, that was all she could think about. All she could see.

  “Melanie,” I said, opening up my own wound as far as it would go without killing me. “Pick somebody else, anybody else. Just not Stroker. Please…I know what he’s doing to you.”

  And Melanie folded her napkin in half and in half again until it was a little square. Put it carefully next to her glass and stood up, smoothed down her skirt.

  “You don’t know anything, Gil,” she said, her eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance. “You don’t know anything at all.”

  #

  Frank always circles around to things in his own time. He sucks down those club sodas like they’re eighty proof and I work on matching my real-time buzz to his hypothetical one, and long about midnight it’s settling time, the moment for calling in markers.

  Frank goes quiet. Pushes the little cardboard bar mat around in the puddle all those club sodas left on the table, finally looks me hard in the eye.

  “Just that one rule,” he says.

  Don’t I know it well. One rule: the same one he gave Cyril when they were getting the arrangements all worked out back when Frank decided that what was left of the boy’s spirit could stay.

  The worst guys only.

  Which is really just Make sure the ends justify the means, said how an eight-year-old can understand it.

  #

  How do you nail a guy like Stroker?

  First of all, don’t go assuming he’s all that smart. Sure, he’s built up his own business from scratch, done well for himself, but I know his weakness. Rage makes a man blind. Rage makes a man dumb.

  Frank calls him up and orders a pool. A few laps in the morning will do him good, he says, and he’s got the cash lying around. He goes for the interlocking paver deck, the bubbler, fancy tile insets—the whole nine yards. Stroker’s boys get busy and all’s well for a while. But when they’re putting the finishing touches on the pool walls, Frank calls Stroker up and asks him to come out after the crew’s gone home for the day. Says they’ve got a problem.

  Stroker goes, already loaded for bear. But he’s no match for Frank. Frank’s had time to get his story right, comes out swinging. What the hell’s this? I could have sprayed that gunite better myself, No way those walls are six inches, I can see the rebar through it. Like that. From there it’s a short trip to commenting on Gray’s character, his little pecker, and Frank just keeps it going in that calm way of his, hammering and hammering at Stroker until Stroker does what the Strokers of this world do—

  He loses his shit.

  Loses it right there in the backyard and takes a swing at Frank. Which Frank catches the short end of, no doubt about that. He ends up with a shiner to prove it. But he doesn’t let up, keeps ducking and stepping out of the way, never hitting back, just reminding Stroker all the different ways he’ll never be much of a man until Stroker’s flailing like a kid in his first school fight, arms churning and eyes streaming, and that’s about when Cyril must have decided enough was enough.

  Of course, Cyril had been watching it all. He sees everything from his little corners and empty spaces in the house. It’s not like he didn’t hear the things Frank said. Not like he couldn’t tell that Stroker was pushed and then pushed some more.

  But you got to remember that Cyril’s only eight. And eight isn’t an age where you have much room for subtleties. Cyril saw Frank, not defending himself. Helpless, almost, against Stroker’s attack. And Cyril knew only too well what helpless feels like.

  I responded to the scene, of course. “Twain Lakes Estates again,” my partner said as we hit Road 9 lights and sirens. “That place is cursed.”

  It was a steel radius shaper that Stroker fell on. Cleaved his skull, nice and neat. We got Frank out front, set him on his teak bench in a patch of impatiens, and then the paramedics took over, treating him for shock, and that was the end of the police questioning.

  I’m a sorry enough son of a bitch that I wondered if maybe Melanie and I would have a shot, once it was all over. I went to the funeral, stood well off to the side in my suit and fresh haircut, didn’t make my move until a few weeks later.

  Not right now, Gil, was what she had to say. Said she had a lot to deal with. Said she didn’t need any more complications. Said she needed to figure a few things out.

  I figured that was good enough for now.

  Frank was fine, not even stitches. He had a barbecue when the pool was finished. The whole neighborhood was there, kids splashing and dunking each other, their mothers looking pretty in their sundresses and shorts.

  Frank caught me on my way in to get a beer. He was wearing an apron that read “Boss of the Sauce” and he had a platter of raw burgers in his hand.

  “We’re square,” he said, giving me a grin and a pat on the shoulder as he passed me by.

  I was alone in the kitchen then, listening to the sounds of the party outside, kids shrieking, the outdoor speakers playing Jimmy Buffet. I closed my eyes and tried to see if I could sense Cyril there with me. If he bore me any ill will.

  I felt nothing. Nothing but the breeze through the window, gentle on my face. So I got my beer and went back outside to enjoy that fine day.

  ###

  MY SIN

  Aunt Git always said my sin was Pride. She had a sin for each of us. My little brother Bullet’s she said was Gluttony. That was hard to argue, him larded heavy with fat till he got to junior high when he shot up clear of all that. Lydia’s was lying all the time.

  Mine was Pride. Git with her Bible on the porch on Sunday afternoons when us kids were too full of dinner to chase each other around—Git had lots to say. My punishment, she said, was I was going to have to carry big stone slabs on my back for all eternity. Bullet would go fetch some big rock and I’d stagger around the yard with it on my back, all of us laughing to bust a gut.

  I took some satisfaction on account of Git said Pride was the worst sin of all. It was kind of like being the best at something. But we all agreed lying was worse, even Lydia—even though lying wasn’t even a deadly sin. Git didn’t know the punishment for lying, but she said if it was up to her it would be to have your mouth sealed shut, the lip skin fused together. Lydia said maybe they ought to do it to Bullet so he couldn’t stuff his face, but Git said no, Bullet would have to eat rats and snakes in purgatory, that was his punishment. But we didn’t pay her hardly any mind, we all had our mouths clamped shut making “mmm-mmm” sounds like we were Lydia struck with her punishment.

  #

  I didn’t think Pride was my problem, just I was a little too pretty. Everyone said it. I’d been pretty since I was a baby, so how could it be my fault? Besides, I wasn’t afraid of purgatory or even Hell. Someone like me, that everyone liked, that was everyone’s favorite—I was going to Heaven, no doubt about it. And I’d just bring Bullet and Lydia with me. They’d let me, they’d have to. I’d say I wasn’t coming in unless they did.

  If Git had to go to purgatory, that was okay with me. She wasn’t even a real aunt, just my mom’s old cousin who didn’t have any other kin. But we’d miss making fun of her.

  Git was old, but by the time I married Mitchell Stancyk she was bent-over ol
d. She sat in a chair Bullet dragged around for her all afternoon so she could be right where everyone else was. For our wedding gift she gave us a Bible—what else?

  My bridal portrait stayed up in the Holt’s Photography window for two years. Mr. Holt gave me ten percent off my album, in exchange for me letting him put my picture in the window, blown up huge.

  When people found out me and Mitchell were expecting a baby, it was like the whole town had something to celebrate.

  #

  Now maybe you think I had it coming, what happened to me. But the thing is, I never asked to be pretty in the first place.

  #

  Git hung on almost nine more years. By the end, she didn’t know anybody, didn’t do nothing all day but rub on her blanket with one scrabbly old hand.

  Lydia and me went to see her a few days before she died, a hot day in June. They said the end was coming soon. We were sitting on chairs we pulled up close to the bed and we were whispering, I don’t know why because it wasn’t like she could hear us.

  All of a sudden Git makes this suck-in sound and her head lifts off the pillow a little and her eyes flutter and then she’s looking right at me and her lips move around like she’s trying to say something, and my heart went crazy pounding, and Lydia and me jerked back away from the bed.

  I don’t know if Git was trying to say an actual word but a sound came out…it was kind of like “haaaaaahhhhg.” She looked at me the whole time she said it and I backed up, scraped my chair across that shiny linoleum floor trying to get away from her.

  She settled back down slow, like that little spark of life that was in her was slipping out, her lips going loose and her eyes rolling back.

  I don’t know what made me do what I did next, with my heart slamming around like it was, but all those years of being scared of Git—and then this last thing, it was too much.

  I got out of my chair and I leaned over Git like I was gonna kiss her cheek and I heard Lydia behind me go “Jeannie, don’t” and then I said in Aunt Git’s wrinkled-apple ear “There ain’t any such thing as sin!”

  Then I grabbed Lydia’s arm and pretty much dragged her out of that room. Not that she didn’t want to go. I think she was shocked at what I had done, but I also think she didn’t like to leave it like that with Git. Maybe she knew this would be our last visit. I guess I knew it too, but I didn’t care.

  I knew what I did was wrong. I even felt a little bit bad about it. But mostly I was still angry. It never stopped ringing in my ears, the way Git used to talk all the time about sin, making lists of all the sins she could think of, and their punishments, and reminding us which ones were ours.

  Mine being Pride—that was the biggest hurt of all, now that the years had worn down my shine. I didn’t have any pride left. I put on weight with the babies and I didn’t fuss over my makeup and hair anymore. Mitchell turned out to have a temper and he couldn’t hold a job more than a couple of years at a time before he’d piss off his boss. We were in a shitty rental house and I spent my days in dirty sweat pants with my girls, eating Stouffers pizzas and ice cream to make the time pass.

  Git died soon after our visit, and there were fewer people at her service than I can count on both hands. I tried to work up a few tears, but I didn’t have much luck. Neither did anyone else. They put her in the ground and I think we were all relieved.

  Candy and Jorry Rayburn showed up a few days later.

  Around four on a warm afternoon, I was out pushing the mower around the yard. The girls were drawing on the street with chalk. Here comes this car, a long shiny red one, and I hollered at Gloria and Cheyanne to get back on the lawn.

  The car’s coming real slow, and I see this woman leaning out the passenger window with her long blonde hair blowing in the breeze. They pull over in front of our place and I go and say hi.

  The woman says hi in a real friendly way and this brown-haired strong-built man leans out his side and says they’re moving in down the street, and he was the kind who makes you forget what you had in mind to say. Nice looking, with a smile that looked like he meant it. They had a boy in the back, cute with short brown hair like his dad, and he piped up and said hello. The man said wasn’t it nice, their Cole was about the age of my older girl. I look over at my girls and Gloria’s got snot trailing out of her nose and Cheyanne’s got dirt around her mouth and I know she’s been eating it again.

  #

  I took the Rayburns a pitcher of lemonade while they waited for the moving truck. We sat on the front porch steps and talked while the kids played in the front yard, Cole sharing the toys in the backpack he brought in the car.

  I knew they got the Muller place for a steal. The bank foreclosed on it when Erwin Muller took off and left his wife and she let the bank have the place and went back to her family. I’d wanted for me and Mitchell to put a bid on it, but we couldn’t scrape together the down payment. Candy said with the money they saved they were going to have the house painted inside and out and put down new carpet.

  Jorry was working at the Wal-Mart auto center. He said he’d been with the one up in Cavern Springs, and they wanted him to come down to Chester. I said that was nice and he said yeah, it was a big step, he was going to manage the place. That shut me up: he wasn’t any older than Mitchell, and Mitchell was back at square one with yet another construction job. Mitchell wouldn’t ever manage anything, not with his temper and all.

  Candy said she was excited to be in a new home, a new town. She said she loved to do yoga in the living room and go for walks in the mornings and why didn’t I join her.

  When Mitchell came home, I told him about the Rayburns. About Jorry’s job and how Cole had nice manners and how I might start walking with Candy. Mitchell said it was going to take more than just walking to get my ass under control. That made me crazy mad. But not just at Mitchell, at myself, too. When I bent over my stomach made folds, thick rolls of fat. My tits were sagging flat too. And my face had gotten puffy. I hated that, hated it worse than the rest. In pictures, I didn’t recognize myself.

  There’s no way I can say this next part without sounding bad. I’d say I was sorry about that if I didn’t figure I’d been punished enough.

  Here it is: when you’ve been beautiful your whole life….not just pretty but beautiful, and then one day you wake up and realize you’re just ordinary? I can’t tell you how much that burns. It’s like losing everything you knew about yourself.

  The next day I took brownies over to the Rayburns and in the evening Candy and Jorry and Cole walked over to return the plate and you should of seen how Mitchell’s eyes just about fell out of his head when he saw her. Candy had me beat and then some. Don’t know what she birthed Cole out of but her stomach was still flat and smooth and she looked good up top too and it was plain she liked to show it off. She had on a tank top with tiny straps, and as she walked up the drive with the plate in one hand she tugged on her shorts with the other, they’d rode up some but I couldn’t make out any cellulite on her. Tan skin and gold bracelets and no chips in her nail polish.

  I talked my fool head off, saying to Mitchell wasn’t it nice how Jorry did the management training program. Jorry smiled and told a couple jokes and when he left he clapped Mitchell on the back, said let’s watch the game sometime, hey? When they were gone, I stood in the kitchen, looking out the bay window and watching them walk away, and I didn’t know it then, but it was already starting. I watched Candy’s gold bracelets all glinty in the sun. I watched Jorry put his hand on her back, lean toward her while she said something that made him laugh, his arms rippling muscle, and I felt pure want in the hollow of my gut. I could have had a man like that once, but not anymore. Candy had him, Candy had everything I wanted, and my skin tingled and itched and I rubbed at it but rubbing didn’t make it feel any better.

  #

  Candy called the next morning and said come for dinner, just casual. They were all moved in and she wanted to celebrate. I must of tried on four different outfits. I had an allergy
or something, my eyes had been tearing up for a couple of days, and that morning I’d woke up with them crusted shut. I thought it was just pink-eye, but when I took a hot wet washcloth to my face, it wasn’t just yellow pus came away but also some sort of black strands, spiky short things that jabbed at my eyeballs and left them sore and red.

  All day my eyes streamed and I had to keep wiping off the pus and the little strands. I thought maybe it was my eyelashes coming out and I looked real close but the strands seemed to be coming from the rims of my eyes, where the little tear ducts were, and I thought about going down to the clinic but we were between insurance until Mitchell was six months on the new job.

  And there was something wrong with my skin, too. I thought maybe it was related, some sort of virus going through me. It started out itching but it wasn’t an itch so much as kind of a numb cold feeling. My cheeks were turning pale and when I put my fingers to them, the skin was hard and chilly. It was worst around my face, but I could feel it down my neck and chest and even along my arms.

  Mitchell got home late and sure enough he’d stopped for a beer with some of the guys. He barely even looked my way when he came in the door. I said you’re not going in that, he had on this old shirt with sweat stains under the pits. He said why not and I thought of Jorry with the nice pressed golf shirt, the way his shoulders bulked up the sleeves and I could see the outline of the muscles in his stomach.

  There was a time, not so long ago, when I would have flirted a little with a man like Jorry. And a little would have been all it took, they ate it up. When I married Mitchell, they said there were a lot of hearts broke that day.

  But as I got dressed in my one good pair of khaki pants that fit and a loose top to hide my gut, I realized that Jorry hadn’t looked at me that way when we met. He hardly looked at me at all. And why should he, when he had Candy to come home to?