Warped Page 3

  Mitchell came out in a different shirt, but he didn’t look much better. But in the kitchen where the light was good he looked at me and said holy fuck, what happened to you and I put my hands on my face, kinda scared now, but what came out of my mouth was if he could keep a Goddamn job maybe I could go to the clinic and get it looked at.

  Mitchell didn’t say anything for a minute and I figured he was getting ready to really light into me but then he looked at me closer and said what’s that in your eyes so I had to go back in the bathroom and pull out more of the little black things and put on more concealer.

  By the time I was done, we were half an hour late to the Rayburns.

  First thing I noticed was they’d had new bark put in all the flowerbeds and planted some little baby trees. I told the girls don’t you run in them flowerbeds.

  But what Mitchell was looking at was the car. He whistled and told me how it’s a forty thousand dollar car with the options they got on it. Sunroof, spinners, like that.

  Mitchell put out his hand like he was going to pat that car and then he pulled his hand back and I saw that he was afraid to touch it. Like he’d put a mark on it or something. Like we weren’t good enough, that’s how it made me feel. And that tingle on my skin stretched out down to the ends of my nerves.

  Candy came to the door before we could even knock. She had these shorts on that had sailboats on them. If I wore those, I’d look like a cow, but she was so thin they just looked cute. She had a red halter top that showed off her shoulders and I saw the way Mitchell looked at her.

  Suddenly everything I’d thought of to say seemed stupid. I just gave Candy my plate of cookies and followed her in. Inside the house, I had to take my sunglasses off, though I would have liked to keep them on all night, the way my eyes looked.

  Jorry came into the room looking nice and fresh, just out of the shower with damp hair, and I saw him look at me and lose his place for a second. I knew what I looked like but at least the itching was gone, in fact, I couldn’t feel much at all, my skin was numb and getting number. It was all the way down my arms now and down my back and starting down my butt and legs. Jorry said can I get you folks a glass of wine and I said sure before Mitchell could ask did they have any beer.

  Candy’s dining room set was the nicest thing I ever saw, made out of dark wood. There were curlicues and flowers carved in the legs and the chairs had cushions covered in pale pink silk. I said didn’t she want to put something on the chairs in case the girls spilled their juice and she laughed and said no, she didn’t believe in saving things for special occasions. She said life is too short and she liked to use her best every day. It made me think how when me and Mitchell got married we got just one place setting of our china from our cheap-ass families, and how we said we’d buy a little every year but we never did.

  Jorry called down the hall for Cole to come on out, they had company. His hair was combed down with gel and he had on a neat striped polo shirt. Cole came around and shook Mitchell’s hand and said hello, Mr. Stancyk it’s sure nice to see you. He turned to me with his hand out to shake and then he looked at me and his eyes got all big and he said what happened—and then he smacked a hand across his mouth like he knew it wasn’t polite. He looked at me about knee level and nodded his head once and walked out of the room fast.

  Candy just about started crying, she was working so hard to apologize for Cole, and Jorry filled up my wine. Mitchell just stood there looking around with his hands in his pockets and it was him I was angry at, for some reason.

  After that, I knew the night was ruined.

  Candy put out this appetizer that had layers of red and green and white, I don’t even know what-all was in there but Mitchell couldn’t get enough of it. I said let me help when she went in the kitchen to put dinner on, but she said no, no, you’re the guest, relax.

  I went to use the bathroom. But when I got to the hall I saw that I could look around a bit and I peeked in the other rooms. They had nice furniture in every room, nothing looked hand-me-down. Their bedroom suite was light wood with brass trim, right out of a magazine, with pillows and curtains and everything all matching, even the shower curtain in their bath. I peeked in Candy’s closet and you wouldn’t believe all the clothes she had: jeans and pants folded over hangers and tops sorted by color. And shoes: twenty pairs easy, all lined up on shelves. Even her sneakers were practically brand new, white with pink trim.

  I went back to the bathroom, but I squinted so I wouldn’t have to see myself in the mirror. The numbness was in my scalp now, and down to my fingers; I could barely work the zipper on my pants. When I smoothed down my hair, it seemed like a lot of it came out in my hands. I didn’t want to put it in the waste basket where Candy would see it so I rubbed it into a ball and flushed it.

  Around my eyes I knew that more spiky strands had poked through the rims because I could feel them brushing against my eyeballs. I knew it ought to hurt like hell, but the numbness was almost everywhere now. I could feel water leaking from my eyes but couldn’t feel it on my cheeks. I took some toilet paper and rolled it up and pressed it against my eyes and rubbed the rims. When I pulled the toilet paper away there were two of the little spikes on it, and they looked blacker and thicker than before. I knew there had to be more still in my eyes, but I couldn’t bear to look in the mirror.

  I had to get to a doctor. I knew that. Tomorrow was Saturday, though, and the clinics would be packed. And I couldn’t go to the emergency room, not when we were still paying for Gloria’s stitches from a swing set accident two years ago.

  So I splashed some water on my face and tried to act confident when I came out of the bathroom.

  Dinner was so pretty, even if I’d had an appetite I don’t know if I could of eaten it. Chicken stuffed with something green and sliced in little pinwheels, tiny buttered potatoes. A salad with nuts and cherries on top. Jorry lifted his glass and said Here’s to good neighbors and good friends and then we all clinked glasses, the girls and Cole giggling at the little card table Candy had set up for the three of them.

  I tried to eat. I did. I chewed up a few bits of each thing and swallowed, but it was like I couldn’t even taste the food, like I could barely even feel it on my tongue. And then I looked down at my plate and there was this little piece of something lying there, like a corn flake, but gray.

  I pushed at it with my fork and tried to think what it was and if I was supposed to eat it when another one drifted down. Smaller, with a little white in the center.

  An awful thought came to me and I put my fingers to my face and what I felt there gave me a shock. My skin had gone all loose and crumbly, and what had fallen on my plate was a piece of it. I could feel dry feathery edges where the skin had come loose, places where other patches hadn’t flaked off yet but were holding on like when you have a sunburn and the skin’s shredding and working itself free.

  I looked down at my arms and saw that they had gone almost totally white, but there were spots of gray here and there. In one or two places the gray was almost black and the centers of those areas were cracking and separating, and I knew that it was just a matter of time before the skin was going to come loose from there too.

  The other thing was that my vision had a black line across it. One of the spikes must be sticking up right in front of my eye. I had to get it loose, but I didn’t want to do it here. I had to get out of the Rayburns’ house.

  It had been a mistake to come here, looking like this, when the Rayburns were so perfect. I thought about my picture in the window at Holt’s Photography, how people used to stop me on the street and wink and ask me how was that honeymoon going. How everyone loved me. If only the Rayburns could have seen that picture, I thought—but then I realized that Candy was every bit as pretty as I ever was, and maybe even prettier. That she had her fancy dishes and furniture and the car and Cole probably got perfect marks at school and Jorry brought her flowers just because he missed her during the day. It made me feel so empty inside it was like e
verything that I’d once been had been scooped out and I’d been filled up with black bile instead, and now the poison was leaking out of me into my skin and my eyes. I pushed my chair back, practically knocking it over and I said I don’t feel well and I pretty much ran out of there and back to our house.

  I found my phone and called Lydia, I had a hard time dialing because more of the black streaks were in front of my eyes and I don’t know what I said exactly because I was crying but she said she would come, just stay put and she’d come as fast as she could.

  I looked at my arms and the gray patches were turning black so fast that it was like watching storm clouds come in. One of the patches had come loose on the way over—a chunk of my skin had fallen off and was probably lying in the street, dead and black. Underneath was not the shiny pink raw like what’s under a bad burn, but yellowish and globby. I lay down on the couch and laid that arm carefully on top of my stomach and prayed hard for Lydia to come fast.

  I prayed, but I knew that no one was listening. I’d said there wasn’t any such thing as sin. Said it hatefully to Aunt Git practically on her dying day.

  I didn’t think she’d heard me with her rattling stinking breaths in that awful room, but I was wrong.

  But Git had been wrong, too. Pride wasn’t my sin.

  My sin was Envy.

  As I lay there waiting for my sister, I remembered Git’s voice on those warm lazy Sunday afternoons.

  “Envy “she’d say, sighing and rubbing the worn cover of her Bible. “Punishment for Envy’s havin’ your eyes sewed shut with wire. And submersion in freezing water. Forever. You cain’t ever get out.”

  She recited her list of sins with trembling awe, but they floated away like dandelion fluff on the breeze, and I never paid any mind because I was the prettiest girl in Chester and everyone loved me.

  ##

  REPARATIONS

  Sparks drifted up into the night as the homeless tribe gathered around the burn barrel seeking a little bit of warmth. Ever cautious, their eyes flickered between the flames and the man pacing the sidewalk across the street, trying to decide if he was friend or foe. Their survival depended on knowing the difference. Laughter rumbled around the barrel when one of the men made mention that the twitchy stranger looked like Alice’s white rabbit, peering at his watch like he was late for the Hatter’s party.

  Only Kendall stayed silent. Damn them, they’d laugh at anything. It wasn’t for nothing he’d left Santa Cruz: no one listened. Even Gretchen with her lanolin-smelling neck, her fistfuls of hair brittle in his hands—fucking her was like fucking a series of women, none of them paying any attention to him, all of them thinking of something else, so that his own tortured memories danced across her slack and chilly breasts, across her old wool coat laid open beneath them.

  Still, maybe leaving Santa Cruz had been a mistake. It was warm enough, most nights, and the hippies just as likely to clap your shoulder like you had the answers as turn away. But Kendall wasn’t any kind of hippie or sympathizer.

  He was restless, and he’d had the money for the ticket. Christmas present from the one brother who still took his calls. Santa Cruz to South Lake Tahoe—him and the ski bunnies, he thought, a light-hearted crew. Only it wasn’t. It was other worn and wasted faces, and no one giving him a second glance as they lurched down the aisle of the bus.

  South Lake Tahoe was where he’d come in 1995, a celebratory weekend, skittish but intact from the first Iraq. He had a GWOT Expeditionary Medal in a box in his duffle, and a ringing in his ears. Him and Corvus, though, they did okay, they had good times. Embrace the suck, that’s what Corvus said the day he died. Ironic, right? Gave Kendall a thumbs-up and that shit-eating grin and then he was face-down in the sand ten feet away and Kendall never knew who fired only it was one of their own.

  They interviewed everyone separate and they wouldn’t tell, weeks went by and they wouldn’t say, and everyone reassigned by then. It wasn’t one of those you saw on the news. And Corvus with no family and a girlfriend who was already shacked up with someone else. No one to mind he was gone.

  Only Kendall figured it for Toad. Thomas “Toad” Welles, manager of an Ace in southern Arkansas. Toad who wore aftershave even under the battle rattle, Toad who rubbed his fingers together all day long, the sign for money, scratch, for gimme some—Corvus said give him a break, Corvus said it was just a nervous habit. Corvus: we all got to fuckin get by, man.

  Kendall hated it all the same. But he kept quiet. Corvus had that effect on him, making him calm, making him not mind the shit so much.

  He found Toad in San Francisco. It wasn’t hard, it just took a while, Kendall biding his time, keeping an eye out. Kendall wasn’t sure why Toad had been sitting at the dim far end of that particular bar, didn’t wonder until later. Didn’t doubt until later. Maybe it hadn’t been Toad. The blood that ran over his fingers was real. The bubbles at his lips were real.

  But maybe it hadn’t been Toad.

  Because now he saw that across the street, through the wafting smoke from the burn barrel—there was Toad, with that squared-off chin of his, those too-far-apart eyes.

  South Lake Tahoe was not what he remembered. Now it was bitchy housewives and corporate types in rented SUVs and three-story condos. And this crew, not much: a sorry group kept docile in the cleared lot behind the post office, no one there at night to run them off. Kendall had been thinking of leaving, hitting the road again, the central valley, Sacramento maybe.

  But look—there was Toad! The real Toad! He could see it now, how wrong he’d been; that other guy had been a little too wide, a little too smooth—the real Toad was lean and twitchy. Just like this guy. Looking at his watch, looking up, looking at his watch—and there, there, there it was, the thumb and finger working away even with gloves on, that gimme some.

  I’ll give you some, I’ll give you plenty, Kendall thought as he made his way around the barrel, dipping his hand into the heat, welcoming the burn. No one paying attention. Just laughing, just talking and saying nothing, the way they did, all day long and all night long. Just nothing.

  At the curb, he hesitated. It was Toad, wasn’t it? The hair—a little long, and cut across straight like that; was that how Toad would wear it? But yes—yes. The finger and thumb. The gimme some.

  Kendall moved with intent, with stealth, fingers closing on the blade. It was too bad about the other guy, the one in San Francisco. But he’d probably done something too. Something bad, something he needed to make up for. Most people had.

  ##

  TEMATANGI

  Every time Blaze walked out the door I worried. People had so much mean in them. It wasn’t so bad in our little hometown, where everyone had pretty much got used to him, but now we were halfway around the world and I just wanted to keep him close.

  Our motel room wasn’t much, but it was bigger than the tiny cabin we’d stayed in on the cruise ship. Blaze’s parents got us the middle-price room. It had a window that looked down on the water and I was glad for that. Being below the water wasn’t for me, not when I’d never swam good enough even to cross the reservoir at home, and now that I was thirty-four years old it wasn’t likely I ever would.

  Thirty-four’s not young and I know most people gave up on me ever getting married but they had sure all come to the wedding, what with the Gramonts throwing the reception at the Silver Lake Club where no kin of mine ever went unless it was to hand out towels in the bathroom or mow the golf course.

  When we finally got to Tahiti, Blaze told me we were going to stay a while before we turned around and cruised back. It was his special surprise for me. None of the other passengers got to stay—we watched the ship sail away until it was just a little dot, with our suitcases next to us on the concrete ground of the goodbye-saying area, bottles of cold beer in our hands.

  You never in your life saw anything like this place. Water bluer than a baby’s eyes. You come up on the island and it rises up out of the water, but instead of sand beaches like you’d ex
pect there’s rows and stacks of buildings and palm trees down at the edges. Boats with their toothpick masts sticking up, clustered in the harbor. Way above the city are jaggedy low mountains, blue-green with trees. Regular-looking trees—I didn’t expect that.

  We didn’t have room reservations, but Blaze said it was more fun that way. I sat in a little restaurant that had an outdoor patio and read one of my magazines until he came back with a key. The motel wasn’t the fanciest place, maybe, but now the wedding was done Blaze said we weren’t spending his family’s money no more. We were going to make it on our own and that was just fine with me. I didn’t need rich. And I guess it’s obvious I didn’t need pretty. All’s I needed was a man who loved me for me and that’s what I got.

  After we set the suitcases down on the bed, Blaze went out to explore around and find us somewhere nice to eat dinner. I was happy to have a few minutes to get us settled. Laugh if you want but I figured it for a stroke of luck I was married at all, and I intended to hang my husband’s shirts in the closet and line up his toothbrush next to mine in the bathroom, and put a little perfume on before he got back.

  Blaze made me feel more than loved—he made me feel safe. I’d been passed around starting when I was eight, right up to the time I was old enough to just give it away. For a bad while, I was too cranked to know who was doing what to me. Still, I figured I had more luck than most, because I got clear of all that and found a man who wanted me.

  Hanriette—Blaze’s mom—she took my measure the first time we met, when I was changing Blaze’s bed linens. For months after that, she pretended to forget who I was. But now she was about a million miles away and I was glad of it. Two more weeks away from her was two more weeks of paradise even if our room smelled like takeout Chinese and the lobby had tiles pulled up off the floor and you could hear folks yelling and playing the radio next door. Hanriette might of gave us the cruise to Tahiti for a wedding present, but I was pretty sure she’d just as soon of poisoned me as kissed me goodbye, even after her son shot his face off and I took care of him till he grew enough of it back to come out of Sawyer County Hospital.