Black Tickets (3 page)

I put the towel around her shoulders and my eyes smart. She looks at her breast.

Not too pretty is it, she says. He took out too much when he removed that lump—

Mom, it doesn’t look so bad.

I dry her back, her beautiful back which is firm and unblemished. Beautiful, her skin. Again, I feel the pain in my eyes.

But you should have sued the bastard, I tell her. He didn’t give a shit about your body.

We have an awkward moment with the towel when I realize I can’t touch her any longer. The towel slips down and she catches it as one end dips into the water.

Sweetheart, she says. I know your beliefs are different than mine. But have patience with me. You’ll just be here a few more months. And I’ll always stand behind you. We’ll get along.

She has clutched the towel to her chest. She is so fragile, standing there, naked, with her small shoulders. Suddenly I am horribly frightened.

Sure, I say, I know we will.

I let myself out of the room.

Sunday my mother goes to church alone. Daniel calls me from D.C. He’s been living with a lover in Oregon. Now he
is back East; she will join him in a few weeks. He is happy, he says. I tell him I’m glad he’s found someone who appreciates him.

Come on now, he says. You weren’t that bad.

I love Daniel, his white and feminine hands, his thick chestnut hair, his intelligence. And he loves me, though I don’t know why. The last few weeks we were together I lay beside him like a piece of wood. I couldn’t bear his touch; the moisture his penis left on my hips as he rolled against me. I was cold, cold. I huddled in blankets away from him.

I’m sorry, I said. Daniel, I’m sorry please—what’s wrong with me? Tell me you love me anyway …

Yes, he said, Of course I do. I always will. I do.

Daniel says he has no car, but he will come by bus. Is there a place for him to stay?

Oh yes, I say. There’s a guest room. Bring some Trojans. I’m a hermit with no use for birth control. Daniel, you don’t know what it’s like here.

I don’t care what it’s like. I want to see you.

Yes, I say. Daniel, hurry.

When he arrives the next weekend, we sit around the table with my mother and discuss medicine. Daniel was a medic in Vietnam. He smiles at my mother. She is charmed though she has reservations; I see them in her face. But she enjoys having someone else in the house, a presence; a male. Daniel’s laughter is low and modulated. He talks softly, smoothly: a dignified radio announcer, an accomplished anchorman.

But when I lived with him, he threw dishes against the wall. And jerked in his sleep, mumbling. And ran out of the house with his hands across his eyes.

After we first made love, he smiled and pulled gently away from me. He put on his shirt and went to the bathroom.
I followed and stepped into the shower with him. He faced me, composed, friendly, and frozen. He stood as though guarding something behind him.

Daniel, turn around. I’ll soap your back.

I already did.

Then move, I’ll stand in the water with you.

He stepped carefully around me.

Daniel, what’s wrong? Why won’t you turn around?

Why should I?

I’d never seen him with his shirt off. He’d never gone swimming with us, only wading, alone, down Point Reyes Beach. He wore long-sleeved shirts all summer in the California heat.

Daniel, I said, You’ve been my best friend for months. We could have talked about it.

He stepped backwards, awkwardly, out of the tub and put his shirt on.

I was loading them on copters, he told me. The last one was dead anyway; he was already dead. But I went after him, dragged him in the wind of the blades. Shrapnel and napalm caught my arms, my back. Until I fell, I thought it was the other man’s blood in my hands.

They removed most of the shrapnel, did skin grafts for the burns. In three years since, Daniel made love five times; always in the dark. In San Francisco he must take off his shirt for a doctor; tumors have grown in his scars. They bleed through his shirt, round rust-colored spots.

Face-to-face in bed, I tell him I can feel the scars with my fingers. They are small knots on his skin. Not large, not ugly. But he can’t let me, he can’t let anyone, look: he says he feels wild, like raging, and then he vomits. But maybe, after they remove the tumors—Each time they operate, they reduce the scars.

We spend hours at the veterans’ hospital waiting for appointments. Finally they schedule the operation. I watch the black-ringed wall clock, the amputees gliding by in chairs that tick on the linoleum floor. Daniel’s doctors curse about lack of supplies; they bandage him with gauze and layers of Band-Aids. But it is all right. I buy some real bandages. Every night I cleanse his back with a sponge and change them.

In my mother’s house, Daniel seems different. He has shaved his beard and his face is too young for him. I can only grip his hands.

I show him the house, the antiques, the photographs on the walls. I tell him none of the objects move; they are all cemented in place. Now the bedrooms, my room.

This is it, I say. This is where I kept my Villager sweaters when I was seventeen, and my dried corsages. My cups from the Tastee-Freez labeled with dates and boys’ names.

The room is large, blue. Baseboards and wood trim are painted a spotless white. Ruffled curtains, ruffled bedspread. The bed itself is so high one must climb into it. Daniel looks at the walls, their perfect blue and white.

It’s a piece of candy, he says.

Yes, I say, hugging him, wanting him.

What about your mother?

She’s gone to meet friends for dinner. I don’t think she believes what she says, she’s only being my mother. It’s all right.

We take off our clothes and press close together. But something is wrong. We keep trying. Daniel stays soft in my hands. His mouth is nervous; he seems to gasp at my lips.

He says his lover’s name. He says they aren’t seeing other people.

But I’m not other people. And I want you to be happy with her.

I know. She knew … I’d want to see you.

Then what?

This room, he says. This house. I can’t breathe in here.

I tell him we have tomorrow. He’ll relax. And it is so good just to see him, a person from my life.

So we only hold each other, rocking.

Later, Daniel asks about my father.

I don’t see him, I say. He told me to choose.

Choose what?

Between them.

My father. When he lived in this house, he stayed in the dark with his cigarette. He sat in his blue chair with the lights and television off, smoking. He made little money; he said he was self-employed. He was sick. He grew dizzy when he looked up suddenly. He slept in the basement. All night he sat reading in the bathroom. I’d hear him walking up and down the dark steps at night. I lay in the dark and listened. I believed he would strangle my mother, then walk upstairs and strangle me. I believed we were guilty; we had done something terrible to him.

Daniel wants me to talk.

How could she live with him, I ask. She came home from work and got supper. He ate it, got up and left to sit in his chair. He watched the news. We were always sitting there, looking at his dirty plates. And I wouldn’t help her. She should wash them, not me. She should make the money we lived on. I didn’t want her house and his ghost with its cigarette burning in the dark like a sore. I didn’t want to be guilty. So she did it. She sent me to college; she paid for my safe escape.

Daniel and I go to the Rainbow, a bar and grill on Main Street. We hold hands, play country songs on the jukebox, drink a lot of salted beer. We talk to the barmaid and kiss in the overstuffed booth. Twinkle lights blink on and off above us. I wore my burgundy stretch pants in here when I was twelve. A senior pinched me, then moved his hand slowly across my thigh, mystified, as though erasing the pain.

What about tonight? Daniel asks. Would your mother go out with us? A movie? A bar? He sees me in her, he likes her. He wants to know her.

Then we will have to watch television.

We pop popcorn and watch the late movies. My mother stays up with us, mixing whiskey sours and laughing. She gets a high color in her cheeks and the light in her eyes glimmers up; she is slipping, slipping back and she is beautiful, oh, in her ankle socks, her red mouth and her armor of young girl’s common sense. She has a beautiful laughter. She and Daniel end by mock arm wrestling; he pretends defeat and goes upstairs to bed.

My mother hears his door close. He’s nice, she says. You’ve known some nice people, haven’t you?

I want to make her back down.

Yes, he’s nice, I say. And don’t you think he respects me? Don’t you think he truly cares for me, even though we’ve slept together?

He seems to, I don’t know. But if you give them that, it costs them nothing to be friends with you.

Why should it cost? The only cost is what you give, and you can tell if someone is giving it back.

How? How can you tell? By going to bed with every man you take a fancy to?

I wish I took a fancy oftener, I tell her. I wish I wanted more. I can be good to a man, but I’m afraid—I can’t be physical, not really …

You shouldn’t.

I should. I want to, for myself as well. I don’t think—I’ve ever had an orgasm.

What? she says, Never? Haven’t you felt a sort of building up, and then a dropping off … a conclusion? like something’s over?

No, I don’t think so.

You probably have, she assures me. It’s not necessarily an explosion. You were just thinking too hard, you think too much.

But she pauses.

Maybe I don’t remember right, she says. It’s been years, and in the last years of the marriage I would have died if your father had touched me. But before, I know I felt something. That’s partly why I haven’t … since … what if I started wanting it again? Then it would be hell.

But you have to try to get what you want—

No, she says. Not if what you want would ruin everything. And now, anyway. Who would want me?

I stand at Daniel’s door. The fear is back; it has followed me upstairs from the dead dark bottom of the house. My hands are shaking. I’m whispering … Daniel, don’t leave me here.

I go to my room to wait. I must wait all night, or something will come in my sleep. I feel its hands on me now, dragging, pulling. I watch the lit face of the clock: three,
four, five. At seven I go to Daniel. He sleeps with his pillow in his arms. The high bed creaks as I get in. Please now, yes … he is hard. He always woke with erections … inside me he feels good, real, and I tell him no, stop, wait … I hold the rubber, stretch its rim away from skin so it smooths on without hurting and fills with him … now again, here, yes but quiet, be quiet … oh Daniel … the bed is making noise … yes, no, but be careful, she … We move and turn and I forget about the sounds. We push against each other hard, he is almost there and I am almost with him and just when it is over I think I hear my mother in the room directly under us—But I am half dreaming. I move to get out of bed and Daniel holds me. No, he says, stay.

We sleep and wake to hear the front door slam.

Daniel looks at me.

There’s nothing to be done, I say. She’s gone to church.

He looks at the clock. I’m going to miss that bus, he says. We put our clothes on fast and Daniel moves to dispose of the rubber—how? the toilet, no, the wastebasket—He drops it in, bends over, retrieves it. Finally he wraps it in a Kleenex and puts it in his pocket. Jesus, he swears. He looks at me and grins. When I start laughing, my eyes are wet.

I take Daniel to the bus station and watch him out of sight. I come back and strip the bed, bundle the sheets in my arms. This pressure in my chest … I have to clutch the sheets tight, tighter—

A door clicks shut. I go downstairs to my mother. She refuses to speak or let me near her. She stands by the sink and holds her small square purse with both hands. The fear comes. I hug myself, press my hands against my arms to stop shaking. My mother runs hot water, soap, takes dishes from the drainer. She immerses them, pushes them down, rubbing with a rag in a circular motion.

Those dishes are clean, I tell her. I washed them last night.

She keeps washing. Hot water clouds her glasses, the window in front of us, our faces. We all disappear in steam. I watch the dishes bob and sink. My mother begins to sob. I move close to her and hold her. She smells as she used to smell when I was a child and slept with her.

I heard you, I heard it, she says. Here, in my own house. Please, how much can you expect me to take? I don’t know what to do about anything …

She looks into the water, keeps looking. And we stand here just like this.

S
HE KNEW IT
was only boys in the field, come to watch them drunk on first wine. A radio in the little shack poured out promises of black love and lips. Jesse watched Sally paint her hair with grenadine, dotting the sticky syrup on her arms. The party was in a shack down the hill from her house, beside a field of tall grass where black snakes lay like flat belts. The Ripple bottles were empty and Jesse told pornographic stories about various adults while everyone laughed; about Miss Hicks the home-ec teacher whose hands were dimpled and moist and always touching them. It got darker and the stories got scarier. Finally she told their favorite, the one about the girl and her boyfriend parked on a country road. On a night like this with the wind blowing and then rain, the whole sky sobbing potato juice. Please let’s leave, pleads girlie, It sounds like something scratching at the car. For God’s sake, grumbles boyfriend, and takes off
squealing. At home they find the hook of a crazed amputee caught in the door. Jesse described his yellow face, putrid, and his blotchy stump. She described him panting in the grass, crying and looking for something. She could feel him smelling of raw vegetables, a rejected bleeding cowboy with wheat hair, and she was unfocused. Moaning in the dark and falsetto voices. Don’t don’t please don’t. Nervous laughter. Sally looked out the window of the shack. The grass is moving, she said, Something’s crawling in it. No, it’s nothing. Yes, there’s something coming, and her voice went up at the end. It’s just boys trying to scare us. But Sally whined and flailed her arms. On her knees she hugged Jesse’s legs and mumbled into her thighs. It’s all right, I’ll take you up to the house. Sally was stiff, her nails digging the skin. She wouldn’t move. Jesse tied a scarf around her eyes and led her like a horse through fire up the hill to the house, one poison light soft in a window. Boys ran out of the field squawling.