CHAPTER TEN
RUMMAGE
I watched her sleep.
I had promised Rollins that, for whatever good it would do, I’d stay with her. And so I had, fixed to a spot beside Teresa’s bed. Her head was turned and she was breathing loudly through her mouth. Her parted lips exposed gaps in her teeth, the few missing in the back, and twitched now and then as if lost in unconscious conversation or a reminiscence of a previous trick. As she dreamt I had visions of my own; of Jim wandering the streets in his drugged stupor, stumbling into more immediate trouble than he was in, though extortion set the bar pretty high. So did murder, for that matter, though I wasn’t sure if what was said to the person on the phone held any truth or was simply posturing for weightier leverage. But with a little luck and a slap of a providential hand he could be out of everyone’s life by morning, though I wasn’t content on waiting for either.
Still, I kept vigil, ever at the ready, until the guilt Rollins had affixed concerning Teresa began to wane and all that was left was blind obedience which asked no questions, for questions denoted thought and thought would reveal the utter uselessness of the task at hand. So, without thought, I kept track of the mindless details.
Breathe in, breathe out. Count the breaths. One, two, three, four. Keep good track, log them in, you never know which one might be the last and the people upstairs were watching. A fly buzzed about her face and I waved it away. I would keep her safe. So breathe, little prostitute, breathe, and dream of better days.
What would be a good day be to a prostitute? I wondered. Surviving it, of course, would be the very basic basis of what constituted “good” in such profession. Beyond that, on a deeper level, might find a day full of men and money, quick entrances and exits, like an actor on a stage. All the world was a stage, after all, even a sidewalk, and a whore in her life played many parts with the few parts she had. The characters she played, having no character of their own, were of low repute and spent most of Acts I and II on their knees, praying (no doubt) for intermission to come. Then Act III and the soliloquy, an oral history of the past where we are recounted with teary-eyes how these people came to be in their predicaments. Finally, all hands on stage for Act IV and the Finale, as the loose ends are tied and the tight ends are loosed and the audience applauds and the players take their bows.
This time of sleep, then, was Teresa’s backstage respite between acts; a brief time away from the glamorous facade to seek peace and regain energy for that closing curtain which would come, as they all do, sooner than expected.
My mind’s incoherent wanderings only increased my anxiety and the more I watched Teresa the angrier I became. For Tyler, asleep in his own bed, was far away and getting further with every breath, with every night. Safe, I hoped, safe and dreaming good dreams, where the only bad guys in life were comic book villains who always lost to the illustrated hero. Danger was on the cover but salvation would be found before the last page had turned. No drugs in that world, no hookers either, and no fathers shot to death on lonely roads after leaving their married mistresses. No fathers anywhere, for they were out chasing the bad guy and risking their lives and saving the world. Never home, but the universe was at peace once again...
...as I watched her breathe, in, out, in...
and all was right in heaven and earth as our hero...
in, out, inhale, exhale
...kept the world from felons and flies...
...out with the bad air, in with the good...
...until I rose and left.
I stood over my son’s bed.
Breathe in, breathe out, count the breaths: one, two, three, four. The dreams, count them as well: one thousand, two thousand, a lifetime to come. Dreams of teddy and his stuffed playmates who could never be hurt by an accidental fall or a too-hard hug. Dreams of cartoon images that would mesmerize with color and sound and were as close as friends but whom you could never touch.
Where did I fall on that scale of unreality?
Dreaming, perhaps, of his favorite things in the world: pigs, cows, horses. The basics of childhood. As a lover of animals, Tyler and I had talked about the future a few times, what he might want to be when he grew up. Maybe a farmer or veterinarian, though the latter word was too foreign and frightening to be understood, as was the future, for he lived in the land of Today and tomorrow’s were for grown-ups. Today was for play and dreams and imagination. Tomorrow...well, tomorrow never came.
I smiled as he slept, mouth open a sliver, a slight snore as he exhaled. My future farmer boy, crazy for cats and dogs. And hamsters and mice and birds and bugs. Always exploring, always curious. Curiosity and cats, I thought, and hoped him safe in a world of unsafe creatures as I kept vigil throughout the night.
It was morning pushing on seven-thirty and Tina had been up for over an hour. She had taken a shower that I painfully refrained from viewing, though I did help her dress. The attire wasn’t to my likings, but she could make jeans and a sweatshirt look good, and did. Her blonde curls bounced as she opened Tyler's bedroom door and came in.
"Tyler, time to wake up," she said, opening the curtain. Light cut across his face and he scrunched his eyes and turned away. "Come on." She shook him lightly. "Time for breakfast. Time to get ready for school."
"Grrumph," he mumbled.
"Time for cereal."
"What kind?"
Tina sighed. "Trix, Lucky Charms...granola,” she added hopefully. “You name it."
"Both," he said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. "Lucky Charms and Trix. Trix on top."
Tina and I smiled at our tiny connoisseur and she sat on the bed and began helping him with his clothes.
I sat in the back seat, leaning over the front as we drove Tyler to Kindergarten. He was quiet, looking out the window. Tina's face was blank, and she had been silent through breakfast until now.
Suddenly Tyler looked over at her. "When will I see dad again?"
Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel. "I don't know."
"I want to see him. Where is he?"
"He's...around."
I patted her head.
"Where did he go?"
"I'm not sure."
I patted her head again.
"When will he be home?"
"I don't know," she said sharply. "Stop asking me."
Tyler stuck out his bottom lip and he lowered his head.
Tina sighed. "I'm sorry, honey," she said, stroking his hair. "Mommy's just a little upset this morning. I'm sure you'll see daddy soon, real soon."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Soon?"
"Sure."
"When?"
"Here we are."
She pulled the car into the parking lot of the school and led him over to where a group of children were congregating around an older woman who smiled as if she didn't have to work with small children all day. By the time Tina came back, Tyler was already talking happily with his friends, and a moment later they all marched to their classroom.
"You're driving too fast," I told her as I sat in the passenger seat, holding on for dear life. "Don't slow down now, the light's green. Go, you have the right of way. Ignore that bus. Go, already. Watch that guy on your left, he's trying to merge. Give him room. That's better. Don't...stop...keep...what are you doing? You had plenty of time, now you'll have to wait for that whole group of cars to go. Now, go. No! Now! Aaaah!"
I slapped my forehead in mock agony. Just like old times.
She paid no attention, as if I wasn't there. Just like old times.
Her face was tense, worried. The spot near her upper jaw was pulsing in and out as her teeth clenched. I'd seen that often enough, usually when I was talking to her. Or, more accurately, listening to her. I touched her mind and felt foggy muck. Cloudy images, like looking through a glass darkly. Just like old...
Rollins had told me that there were reasons some people's minds were clear and others were not, and some clear at some times, and some clear once and never aga
in, and some clear only when sober. Reasons, and reasons for the reasons. There was certainly no right to know what someone was thinking, just as there was no wrong to it, either. There was no guarantee you would connect with what they were thinking at the moment or what they had been thinking an hour before. You might even tap into a memory that was ten years old. Rollins explained it as walking through a Fun House, wading through a lifetime of memories while they popped in and out at you along the path. The most recent thoughts, or the most important, were usually on the surface, but, again, that all-encompassing “no guarantee” clause was still in effect. What you found was just as likely to lead you astray than give you any concrete answers.
“And sometimes,” he had told me, “you’re just not supposed to know what someone is thinking.”
“And sometimes,” I had replied, “it's good you don't always know what I'm thinking.”
Even so, not seeing or hearing or feeling, I kept my hand on my wife's face. Caressing her cheek, running a finger down her straight nose, over her lips, her eyebrows, holding my hand over her eyes, trying to rub the worry out of her temples.
If money was the big problem, I did have life insurance, though not a great deal. Three-hundred thousand. Not nothing, but not the lap of luxury. She had made me take out a policy after I spent a night in a hospital, unconscious. A client's wife's boyfriend hadn't been hep to me taking a few indiscreet pictures of him and said client's wife's bedroom activities, and had spelt out his displeasure on my face, a pummeling of prose. Tina was adamant from that day on my being insured so that I would not leave her and any future children an inheritance of debt should I (God forbid) die.
So, not money. Then why the worry? Probably nothing. Probably everything. Not every day your husband dies. Might need a little adjustment period. A few days, at least. Get used to having the whole bed to yourself. Get used to not cooking for one less person. Get used to not having sex. No, she would need no adjustment period there; she'd begun that discipline a good year before my demise.
She parked in the driveway and I followed her into the house. She threw her keys onto the table and hit the phone's message button.
"This is Carole Kern of Mutual Life," a voice said. "Can you give me a call when you get in?"
Tina copied the number and picked up the phone and dialed as soon as it ended.
"Carole Kern, please. Miss Kern? I'm calling in regard a message you left. This is Tina...yes, that's right. Yes. No, I was concerned with the amount...of time..."
I patted myself on the back as a reward for my deduction. It was money, yet it wasn’t. Some trouble with the insurance company. I put my head to the phone and listened closer.
"...not up to us, you understand. As soon as the police finish their investigation we'll be able to settle the matter..."
"Their investigation? How long will that be?"
"I'm sure I don't know," the woman said. "If you like I could find out for you."
"Yes, yes, Please," she added with effort.
"I'll do what I can and be in touch soon."
Tina thanked her and slammed the phone down on the table.
I stayed away from her until she had a chance to calm down. She was never attractive angry. So I toured the grounds. The grass needed mowing, weeds were sprouting on the sides of the house like vines, and the trash cans near the garage were overflowing, like I'd never been gone. Some tools sat rusting where I'd left them, on the side of a shed I’d put up a year prior, and I was proud to see it still stood. I looked behind it and found two cans of paint upside down in the bushes. That area had been my toxic dump. Paint, thinner, oil. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, all elements returning to their beginnings. The shrubbery didn’t seem to mind.
I went back inside and found Tina in the bedroom. She was on my side of the closet, grabbing armfuls of clothes on hangers and dropping them carelessly on the bed, then turning to grab another armful and repeating the process until the pole was empty. Then she attacked the shirts and sweaters and sweatshirts on the wire shelves in the corner, dropping them onto the bed haphazardly. As she did, the different pieces of material brought back memories.
An old tuxedo t-shirt I'd worn one New Year's Eve to a party memorable for the big-busted red-head who tried putting drunken moves on me, and succeeded, until her husband showed up.
Another shirt I had made with a photo of my favorite album on the front, back in the days when there were albums. The image was worn but still recognizable to any ELP fan.
A long sleeve shirt that fit a few sizes and few years before, one I bought on our honeymoon in San Francisco.
Dress shirts I had worn, with accompanying tie still attached, for the occasional funeral or just-as-frequent night out with Tina.
Second hand suits that didn't fit, other clothes worn once, some worn too often. All scattered on the bed in one big pile.
To that she began adding all the items on the shelf above. Books on ballistics, articles about crimes, old yearbooks. Tina put it all on the bed, separating the yearbooks. She picked one up almost as an afterthought and began flipping pages. We'd met in college. She was majoring in business. My major was, and remained, undetermined.
"It sure isn't communications," Tina would say straight-faced, and I'd laugh like I was having dental work. Crime was my main interest, though she never tired of trying to steer me toward something useful.
Now she smiled at the pages, the pictures, turning them tenderly. Good times, good memories. Youth, hope, dreams. She stopped at a page, lost in the past, eyes glistening. Thinking, I supposed, about all the time we'd wasted arguing over meaningless things when we should have been holding each other and speaking words of love. Regretting the hours and days and weeks lost to the pride of being right while the other wronged us, wishing we could go back to that glorious past and start afresh. Wipe the slate clean and be cleansed, white as snow.
I peered over her shoulder as she wiped her cheek dry to see what brought about such remorse.
It was not a picture of me.
Ronny Heinz, the caption said, though I needed no reminder. He had been Tina's boyfriend when we met, she one of his many girlfriends. A no-name basketball player, a minus game point average, no personality, intellect or interest outside a rubber orb. I had won Tina over with my charm and ambitionless non-athletic aspirations. Ronny Heinz had twisted his knee soon after I made my appearance--pity--and he and I had shared aspirations ever since.
He fell out of the limelight and was never heard from again, as far as I knew.
I, on the other hand...
But there sat Tina, full of regrets and probably wondering the big ‘What if..?’ I wished Mr. Heinz would materialize right then so I could beat the crap out of him and rah-rah-ree, kick him in the knee a time or two. Or maybe rah-rah-rass, kick him back to the past. But even if he could materialize to meet the challenge, he wouldn't. He didn't need to. He was a smiling memory from another day, another page. That was how he was beating me and winning Tina, by staying an unchanged memory.
But I was far from jealous. Envious, maybe. Maybe I’d even go back to the past and join him, buy him a drink and talk over old times, as there wouldn’t be any new ones. It was safer there, where he lived. I had been dumb enough to go along for the ride, through all the years right up to the present, dragging all the baggage the two of us had along the way. A two-dimensional photo skims time with a smirk, as What if? is always preferable to what is.
Still, something within wished for one shot, right between his eyes. But only a fool tries to fight a memory.
Tina closed the yearbook and put it on her dresser for another lonely night and left the room. When she returned she was wheeling one of our large, plastic trash cans. It was empty. I wondered, as she leaned it toward the bed, what she had done with all the trash that had been inside, and immediately pictured a bigger mess on the side of the garage that I wouldn’t have to clean up.
“What are you going to do with that?”
With its mouth aimed at the bed, Tina swept her arm across and began filling the can.
“Hey! Stop that! What are you doing?”
Into it fell shirts and papers and notes, beginnings of reports and half-filled tax forms, and everything else of mine she had previously dumped onto the bed. When that was empty and the trash can full, she walked to her dresser and picked up an eight-by-ten framed photo we had taken one weekend in Catalina, and sent it spinning toward the container. It flew in, hitting the side and smashing glass, then settling silent. Looking around the room, satisfied there were no more treasures, she grabbed the trash can and wheeled it out of the room.
I followed, yelling. “You can’t throw that stuff away. It took me a lifetime to collect that junk.”
Unhearing, she moved it down the hall, then thumped it down the stairs and to the kitchen where she pushed it over the tile to the side door. She pulled it outside and around the house to the front curb, depositing it with two other cans, both full. Then she turned and went back.
I stood staring at the trash containers helplessly, turning my head to the rumbling sound of an oncoming truck, then ran in after her.
“You couldn’t even save one thing?” I asked as she walked by. “Not one picture? One scrapbook? What about all the notes I had made on that golf tee business I had wanted to start, or the first five pages from my autobiography, ‘A Dick’s Life?’ That would have been a bestseller. What about all those pictures of you I had saved? Sure, you were naked in all of them, but they held some good times for me. I had some good times holding them. Post those on the internet and you’d see some hits. And those baseball cards from last year...probably worth a fortune in another ten or twenty. Here you are worried about money and you’re throwing away a gold mine. Couldn’t you even have saved something? Is that all I meant to you? Not even one reminder left of my existence?”
She walked back into our bedroom and over to the closet. It was empty now, nothing but bare hangers dangling on the pole, like bare bones on a corpse. She scanned the shelves above, also empty, and stood on her tip toes, feeling the top shelf for something. She found it and grabbed it with her fingers, jumping twice to move it closer to the edge, then walked it out with her fingertips. It was a blue tin, somewhat rusty on the bottom, with pictures of cookies all around the sides and lid. Sugar cookies, the ones with the big crystal droppings. My favorite. She sat on the bed and put it in front of her. I'd never seen it before. Maybe it contained all the love letter I had written to her, or all the poetry I hadn’t.
She opened it and held the contents in her hands. My wedding ring? I looked down to make sure I wasn’t still wearing it. I wasn't. She held something else.
Glistening like a jewel, as fragile as a hammer, as ominous as a grave. My gun.
I'd bought it about a year before, a little 9mm Smith and Wesson luger. Because of the type of people I was dealing with at the time, I thought I might need some protection. I carried it once and it probably saved my life. A software firm hired me to follow an executive whose behavior was becoming erratic. It was soon apparent that he had a badly hidden heroin habit, but my surveillance found me spending time in areas not known for their cordiality. Spotted taking video of a transaction, and stupidly blocks from my car, I was chased by a group of irate salesmen. Knowing I couldn't possibly outrun them, I took out the gun and fired a few times at the ground behind me. I heard yelling and turned some time later to find they had disappeared.
After reaching my car, driving for ten minutes, then pulling over to throw up, I vowed to refuse other such assignments. Once home, I stuck it in the bottom of a box of papers and lived a safe life from that time on.
Tina held it now, weighing it, bouncing it, no longer trembling. Then she popped the magazine out and sprung it back in. She took sudden aim at me, took an imaginary shot, checked the safety, put it under her pillow, picked up the tin, put on its lid and took it from the room.