“Not too.”
We started walking—smack down the middle of the road, for there was no car in either direction. He had hold of my arm again in the same sore place as before. His hand felt small and wiry. “Listen,” I said, “can’t you let me walk on my own? Where would I run to, anyway?”
He didn’t answer. Nor did he let go of me.
The air had a damp smell, as if it might rain, and seemed warmer than what I was used to. At least, I wasn’t shivering any more. From the little I could see, I guessed we were traveling through farm country. Once we passed a barn, and then a shed with the sleepy clucking of hens inside it. “Where on earth are we?” I asked.
“How would I know? Virginia, somewheres.”
“My feet hurt.”
“It don’t make sense that you can’t drive a car,” he said, as if that were to blame for all our troubles. “That’s about the dumbest thing I ever heard of.”
“What’s dumb about it?” I asked him. “Some people drive, some people don’t. It just so happens I’m one of them that don’t.”
“Only a whiffle-head would not know how to drive,” said Jake. “That’s how I look at it.” He wiped his face on his sleeve. We walked on. We rounded a curve that I had some hopes for, but on the other side there was only more darkness.
“I thought you said it wasn’t far,” I said.
“It ain’t.”
“I feel like my feet are dropping off.”
“Just hold the phone, we’ll get there by and by.”
“My toes ache clear to my kneecaps.”
“Will you quit that? Geeze, you’d think that guy could’ve filled his gas tank once in a while.”
“Maybe he didn’t know how long you’d be stealing it for,” I said.
He said, “Watch yourself, lady.”
I decided to watch myself.
Around the next curve was the filling station, such as it was: one dimly lit sign, two pumps, and a lopsided shack. As soon as we saw it, Jake let go of my arm. “Now, pay attention,” he said. “You’re going to ask the guy for a can of gas. You got that?”
“Well, how come I always have to ask for things?” I said.
Something jabbed me in the small of the back: the gun. Oh, Lord, the gun, which I had thought we were through with, and in fact had let slip my mind as if it never existed. That prodding black nubbin in the hand of a victim of impulse. I crossed the road and climbed the cinderblock steps, with Jake close behind me. I opened the warped wooden door. For a moment all I saw was a pyramid of PennZoil tins, a faded calendar girl in a one-piece latex swimsuit, and stacks of looseleaf auto-parts catalogues. Then I found an old man in a wicker chair. He was watching TV with the sound turned off. “Evening,” he said, not looking around.
“Good evening.”
“Something I can do for you folks?”
“Well, our car ran out of gas and I … we need a can of …”
“Fine, just fine,” said the old man, and he went on watching TV. There was a commercial on, someone holding up a bottle and silently rejoicing. Then a news announcer appeared at a bare, artificial-looking desk, and the old man sighed and stood up. “A tin,” he said. “Tin.” He went rummaging behind a stack of tires in one corner, but came up with nothing. “Wait a minute,” he said, and went outside. As soon as he was gone, Jake pushed me further into the room and leaned over to turn up the sound on the TV. “… with no end in sight,” the announcer said, “though experts predict that by mid-summer there may well be a …”
Jake switched channels. He traveled through a lady shampooing her hair, a man making a speech, a man playing golf. He arrived at another news announcer, pale and snowy. “Traffic on the Bay Bridge this summer is expected to reach an all-time high,” this announcer said from a distance. Jake turned up the sound. The man grew louder but no clearer, and sadly shuffled his papers as if he realized it. A picture appeared of Jake and me, backing away from the camera. In spite of the snow, our faces seemed more distinct now. By next week you would be able to count our eyelashes, maybe even read our thoughts. But our stay was much briefer this time, cut off in midstep. We were replaced by my husband, a towering hatrack of a man, gaunt and cavernous and haunted-looking as always, sitting on our flowered sofa. I felt something tearing inside me. “That bank robbery in Clarion,” the announcer said, “is not yet solved, and police are concerned about a woman hostage who has been identified as Mrs. Charlotte Emory.”
My husband vanished. A picture teetered up of me alone, photographed by my father for my high school graduation: my fifties self with lacquered hairdo, cowgirl scarf, and cheeky black smile. Then Saul returned. The announcer said, “Our own Gary Schneider talked with her husband this evening for ‘Views on News’ cameras.”
Gary Schneider, who wasn’t pictured, asked something I didn’t catch. Saul stopped cracking his knuckles. He said, “Yes, naturally I’m worried, but I have faith she’ll be returned to us. The police believe that the bandit is still in this area.”
His voice was hollow. He didn’t seem to be thinking of what he was saying.
“Would you care to comment, sir,” said Gary Schneider, “on that sidewalk witness who said they appeared to be running away together? Do you have any feeling that this may have been a voluntary action on her part?”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Saul, and he straightened slowly and took on a looming, ominous appearance that caused Gary Schneider to say, “Uh, well, I just—”
“Charlotte wouldn’t do such a thing. She’s a good woman, really, it’s just that … and I know she would never leave me.”
Something clanked. Jake spun around. The old man stood there with a gasoline can, shaking his head at the TV. “How long you been watching?” Jake asked—so mean you couldn’t miss it, but the old man only smiled.
“Why, I was one of the first in this valley to purchase a set,” he said. “This here is my third; run clear through the other two. Matter of fact I been thinking of color but I’m scared of the cancer rays.”
“Yeah, well,” said Jake.
He paid him for the gas and the can. The old man said he would trust us for the can, but Jake said, “Might as well do like I’m used to,” and handed over the money and took the can and nudged me out the door. When we left, the old man was already stooped before the TV trying to get his favorite channel back.
As soon as we were outside again, Jake said, “You told me you were leaving your husband.”
“I was,” I said.
“How come he said what he did, then? You lied.”
“He lied,” I said. “I don’t know why he said that. Not only was I planning to leave him but I’ve left before, and he knows it. Back in nineteen sixty. And I told him I would in sixty-eight also as well as a lot of other times, I couldn’t say just when, exactly …”
“Oh, hell, I might have known,” said Jake.
“Now, what is that supposed to mean?”
But he wouldn’t answer. We walked on, our feet luffing softly on the scabby highway. The air felt chillier and a fine cold spray had started up.
Oh, I certainly would have liked to give that Saul a piece of my mind. He was always doing things like that. Always saying, “I’m certain you won’t leave me, Charlotte.” I just wished he could see me now. I wished I could mail him a postcard: “Having wonderful time, moving on at last, love to all.” From Florida, or the Bahamas, or the Riviera.
But then I stepped in some sort of pothole and cold water splashed to my knees, and my shoes started leaking as if they were no more than paper, and we rounded a curve and came upon the car: hulking in the dark, tilting off the side of the road like a lame man. When we reached it, Jake opened the door and snaked an arm inside to turn the lights on. The headlights flared up, but the ceiling light wavered and died. “Why!” I said (for up till now I hadn’t taken a really good look). “Why, what is this?”
“Huh?” said Jake. He set the can down and unscrewed the cap of the gas tank.
“Why, it’s
a—some kind of antique,” I said.
“Sure. Fifty-three, would be my guess.”
“But—” I said. I stepped back, peering at the toothy grille, the separate bumper like a child’s orthodontic appliance. The long, bulbous body was streaked with chrome in unexpected places. Over the headlights there were visors as coy as eyelashes, and the lights themselves had a peculiar color, I thought—dull orange, and cloudy. “It’ll stick out a mile!” I said. “Everyone will notice. It will catch people’s eyes like … for goodness sake,” I said.
Gas burbled into the tank, on and on.
“This is just plain stupid,” I said.
The can landed far away, in bushes or branches or something crackly. “Get in,” Jake told me.
I got in. He climbed in after me and slammed the door. The motor started up with a cough, and when we pulled onto the road we bounced and swayed on our squeaky springs. I let my head loll back against the seat and closed my eyes.
“Well, there’s one thing,” I heard Jake say. “You’re shed of that Frankenstein husband at least and that cruddy flowered sofa. Shed of that spooky little old lamp with the beads hanging off it. Oh, you couldn’t keep me shut in no boring house. Ought to be glad you’re out of it. Any day now, you’re going to be thanking me. Is how I look at it.”
But that’s the only lamp we have, I wanted to say. I’ve given the others away. I’ve given the rugs away too and the curtains and most of the furniture. How much more can I get rid of? My head was growing heavy, though, and my eyes wouldn’t open. I fell asleep.
6
I dreamed about my husband, but he was younger and lacked those two vertical hollows in his cheeks. He had on a crewneck sweater I’d forgotten he ever owned. His trousers were khaki, like the Army pants he wore while we were dating. The sight of him made me sad.
My husband was the boy next door, but to tell the truth we didn’t grow up together. He was several years older than I was—old enough to make a difference, back in school. When I was in eighth grade he was a senior, one of the Emory boys, long-boned and lazy, up to no good. Anyone could tell you who Saul Emory was. While I was just getting my bearings, in those days. I still looked like a child. I’d been systematically starving myself ever since I’d discovered my breasts (two little pillows of fat, like my mother’s chins), and you could see the blue veins in my temples and the finest details of articulation in my wrists and knees and elbows. I had a posture problem and no one could figure out what to do with my hair.
Saul Emory graduated and went away, and I moved on through the years until I was a senior myself, and secretary of the student body and first runner-up for Homecoming Queen. I had come into my own, by then. I deserved to; I worked so hard at it. The one thing I wanted most of all was for people to think that I was normal.
Through an enormous effort of will, I became known as the most vivacious girl in the senior class. Also best-groomed, with my Desert Flower cologne and my noose of Poppit pearls, and my Paint the Town Pink lipstick refreshed in the restroom hourly with a feathery little brush like the ones the models used. I had a few boyfriends, though nobody serious. And girlfriends too; we rolled each other’s hair up at I don’t know how many slumber parties. I never gave a slumber party myself, of course. No one ever asked me why not.
I would stay after school for sorority meetings, Honor Society, Prom Committee, cheerleading … but those things can only last so long. In the end I would find myself home again, walking into the overused air and my parents’ eternal questions: Why hadn’t I said goodbye that morning? What had kept me so late? Who was the boy who drove me home? And would I be staying in tonight, for once?
Then I would look down at them (for I was taller than both, by now) and everything came back to me: I remembered who I really was. In the smoky mirror behind my mother, my pearls were as outlandish as a string of bear claws. My face had a yellowed look around the edges.
I graduated from high school and got a part scholarship in mathematics at Markson College, over in Holgate. It seemed too simple. I kept wondering where the catch was.
Yet the day after Labor Day, there I sat in my father’s pickup with my suitcases piled in the rear. My mother didn’t come with us; it was hard for her to travel. As I waved to her out the window I had a sudden worry that she knew how glad I was that she was staying home. I wondered if that were why she was staying home. I waved all the harder, blew kisses. This was one time I didn’t try to get out of saying goodbye.
Then my father drove me to Markson College, started to speak but gave up in the end, and left me at the dormitory. I was almost the first one there because I’d been so anxious to arrive. My roommate hadn’t come yet, whoever she was. It was noon but the cafeteria didn’t open till suppertime, so I ate an apple I’d brought and some Fig Newtons that my mother had tucked in my suitcase. The Fig Newtons made me unexpectedly homesick. Each bite caused my chest to ache. I had to hide them away in a drawer, finally. Then I unpacked, and put sheets on one bed, and wandered up and down the hall a while peeking into deserted rooms. After that I spent half an hour sitting at my desk, looking out the window at an empty sky. I’d brought along some curtains, but wasn’t going to hang them till my roommate approved them. However, time was creeping. I decided I’d hang them anyway. I unfolded the curtains, took off my shoes, and climbed onto a radiator. Spread-eagled against the window, I chanced to look down at the quadrangle. And there was my fat cousin Clarence, lumbering toward my dormitory in that ponderous, tilting way he had.
I had known all along that escape couldn’t be so easy.
My father was in the hospital. He had had an accident while driving home. The doctors weren’t so much worried about his injuries as about the heart attack that had caused the accident in the first place. Or maybe the accident had caused the heart attack. I don’t think they ever did get it straight.
For three weeks we stayed near his bed—Mama in her wooden lawn chair that Clarence had brought from home and me in an easy chair. We watched my father’s face, which looked queer in horizontal position. His skin around his eyes had gone all crumpled. It tired him even to say a few words. Mostly he slept, and my mother cried, and I sat willing him awake again so that I could get to know him. I couldn’t stand to think how I had let him slide through my life all these years. I made a lot of promises; you know the kind. I brought my mother tea and glazed doughnuts, the only things that would sit on her stomach. I dealt with the doctors and nurses. I tried reading various women’s magazines, but all that talk about make-up and weight control and other frills just made me sick. I don’t remember eating any food whatsoever, though I suppose I must have.
Then they let him go home, but only by ambulance. We fixed a bed in his studio and laid him flat upon it. His face lost a little of its chalkiness. He started acting more natural, fussing at the itchy tape they had bound his broken ribs with. It worried him that customers were being turned away. “Charlotte,” he said, “you know how to handle that camera. I want you to do it for a week or so, just till I’m back on my feet. Can you manage?”
I said yes. I was numb by then. Now that he was safe it had hit me finally where I was: home, trapped, no escape. My mother couldn’t even sit him up without me there to help. I saw my life rolling out in front of me like an endless, mildewed rug.
It seemed to me that photos froze a person, pinned him to cardboard like a butterfly. Why would anyone want them? But people did, apparently. Poor-white mothers in rayon shifts, holding overdressed babies. Soldiers with their arms around their skinny, frizzy-haired girlfriends. I took their pictures indifferently. The camera was old and clumsy; almost anything you did to it had to take place in the dark. But I’d been using it most of my life, and couldn’t see why my father became so anxious and critical all of a sudden. “Move that lamp off somewhat,” he would tell me from his bed. “You don’t want such a glare. Now get yourself more of an angle. I never did like a head-on photograph.”
What he liked was a sideways loo
k—eyes lowered, face slanted downward. The bay window displaying my father’s portraits resembled a field full of flowers, all being blown by the same strong breeze.
In the darkroom (a walk-in closet, remodeled) I had attacks of shortness of breath. I would grit my teeth and endure, meanwhile developing prints with the sensible half of my mind. Everything about that place was depressed: cluttered or leaking or peeling. All the labels had come off the bottles of chemicals. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. It seemed my father didn’t care any more than I did.
But you would never guess that from the way he acted. Fuss, fuss. Questioning every little thing I did. When it came time to show him any prints he would have me hang them on the clothesline near his bed. Then there’d be this long, disapproving silence while he lay frowning and pinching his mustache. “Oh, well,” he’d finally say, “most of these people have got no judgment anyway.” Yet I didn’t think I’d done so badly. In fact I think a lot of the customers preferred me to my father. My father had such set ideas, for one thing. He still photographed children against that Ionic column of his. Me, I would take a picture any way people asked. I had no feelings about it.
We lived in a smaller and smaller area of the house, now—shutting off floors my father couldn’t climb to, rooms we couldn’t afford to heat. Our neighborhood had narrowed too. The pickup was on cinderblocks out back, and anyway neither Mama nor I could drive, so we did all our shopping on foot. And nobody came to visit us. The Emorys next door had moved away by then; the other neighbors thought we were peculiar. All my friends were in college or married, divided from me forever after. It got so I would welcome the most random customers like long-lost relatives. But I saw how oddly they looked at us. I knew the picture we made: fat mother in elastic stockings, shriveled father, sullen spinster daughter. House where everything was mislaid under something else, and bats were surely hanging in the turret.
Markson College sent me a letter saying I could enter in January, if I liked. I don’t know what I’d been hoping—maybe for them to close the school completely till I could get there. But they didn’t even tell me who my roommate was, and I guessed anyway that she’d found somebody else by now. I felt nothing would ever go right for me again. Every customer standing on his head in my camera seemed happier than I was.