Imaginary Men (11 page)

Read Imaginary Men Online

Authors: Enid Shomer

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Anthologies (Multiple Authors), #Literary Collections, #Literary Criticism, #test

BOOK: Imaginary Men
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Page 63
a bottle of tequila was waiting on the counter. It was the first time they had ever had a drink together.
"You had this in Texas?"
"Right."
"Make mine real sweet," Riva said. "I hate the taste of liquor."
He added an extra measure of grenadine, and she watched the fuchsia color swirl and dissipate into the orange juice. Her legs started to feel numb after a couple of swallows. "It's strong, isn't it?"
"Pretty strong. It's a shot and a half of liquor."
He took their glasses into the living room, turned off the lights, and undressed down to his Jockey shorts. "No steering wheel and no seat back," he said. "What luxury." He came over and kissed her on the neck. But when she began to remove her skirt, he grabbed her wrist. "Leave it on," he said. ''Please." He reached up under it and pulled her underpants down and unhooked her bra under her blouse. Then he dragged a bar stool into the middle of the room and sat down on it. "Come over here and sit on my lap,'' he said.
She sat on his lap sidesaddle, as if he were going to tell her a story. His soft lips nuzzled her ear and jawline. Everywhere his warm breath touched, she ached with longing. "Turn around and face me," he said, and then he was inside her, thrusting, his hands gripping her breasts under her blouse. A wave of nausea washed over her. "Wait," she protested.
"I'm really hot," he said.
"It hurts!" she lied.
He pulled out of her abruptly, still rocking back and forth slightly. She got up and sat on the sofa, her skirt wound tightly around her legs.
"I don't feel very good," she said.
"Maybe it's the booze."
"I don't know." But it wasn't the booze. "It makes me feel bad being here," she blurted.
"I thought you'd like it. It's like being married, in a way."
"It makes me feel cheap."
"I'm sorry."
"I want to go home."
"Come on," he argued. "We just got here. Come on." He sat down next to her and began kissing her neck again, and her eyelids. "Come on. It'll be all right."
 
Page 64
But it wasn't all right. "Something's different," she said.
He sighed and sat back against the sofa cushions. "Yes," he said. "For the first time in my life I'm not worried about money. God, I'm so happy not to have to worry about money for five minutes."
He got up and went into the kitchen to fix another drink. When he came back, he stood at the window and stared out. "I just can't lie to you," he said. "You mean too much to me."
He was going to say something she didn't want to hear and she couldn't stop him.
"I met this person in Texas," he began. "Her name is Merle. She's from New York."
Riva pulled on her underpants and fastened her bra while he spoke. If she kept busy, if she could just keep busy, she could hear the words but they wouldn't penetrate, like knives clattering along the surface, not sinking in. Later, when she was alone, she could call up the words and turn them over slowly.
Merle this and that. Merle who looks like you, the same dark hair and friendly eyes. Merle whose father invented contact lenses. Something came over me. Merle who didn't know I was poor. She's written every day. We've been talking on the phone. I feel better now that I've told you. Oh Riva, I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt you. Do you have to be hurt? I still love you, Riva. It's confusing. I didn't have to tell you.
"Yes you did," Riva said. "Oh yes you did. But you didn't. You made me make you confess. I don't want to hear your shitty confession."
He took her home, holding her hand as he drove, trying to comfort her, apologizing over and over. Making her swear she forgave him. By the time he dropped her off, he'd stopped talking about loving her and had made her promise they'd stay friends.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Mrs. Stern was insistent: she wanted the specific reason that Riva and Paul had broken up. Riva was too humiliated to say she'd been jilted and too loyal to use the loan from Pop Goldring as an excuse. She considered telling her mother the exquisite lie that they had broken up over whether to have sex or not, but a sense of dread and superstition stopped her. Finally, she said that she and Paul had in-
 
Page 65
compatible values. When Mrs. Stern asked what that meant, Riva said he laughed at all the wrong parts in the movies and probably wouldn't make a good father.
So this is how the broken heart beats. The same way as the whole heart, only you feel every contraction like a refusal
. That was very nice. It was really very nice.
Someday, years from now, I will see Paul, maybe with this Merle, maybe with someone else. And we will greet each other and act very polite and civilized. But I will know the minute I see him, even if it's thirty years from now, I will know from looking in his eyes if he ever forgot me. And that,
she wrote,
is the only time, those are the only circumstances when I would ever consider making love with him again
.
 
Page 67
ON THE LAND
 
Page 69
Taking Names
I'd never served on a jury before. In fact, I hadn't been downtown for yearsever since they built the Failing Waters Mall. Stan assured me I'd have no trouble spotting the new courthouse. "It'll be the only building with portholes over the entrance," he said, "like a big ship in dry dock." He drove me to the kiss-and-ride, and from there I took a bus.
The woman in the information booth pointed me to an elevator before I got close enough for her to hear my question. Everyone got off at four and streamed into the jury pool room.
I sat down and picked up an old copy of
Life
. "Nine o'clock. Let's get going," a man at the microphone announced. "Anybody here who can't serve this week?" I leaned forward, thinking of Stan alone
 
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at the farm with all the grafted trees that needed repotting. About fifty people stood up, waving their jury duty notices and talking. "Form a line," he ordered over the hubbub. I read about John Hinckley wanting to go home for Christmas until I heard the man's voice again. "Listen for your name," he said. A long scroll of computer printout spilled from his podium. ''It's a punishable offense to be absent, so make sure I get you.'' As he went down the list, one by one people slumped back in their chairs, as if released from a magnet.
"Now you wait. When we need you, we'll call you. No leaving the room. You've got two TVs, books, cards, magazines, checkerboards, puzzles, restrooms, and a coffeepot."
The woman next to me had brought knittingblue yarn with a silver fleck running through it that matched her tinted hair. Across from us, a group was forming to work a thousand-piece puzzle. "I'm good at finding the borders," I said, diving into the confetti-like mess. The box lid pictured an iceberg drifting at sundown, the colors of sky and sea nearly indistinguishable. Hard on the eyes but a good test of concentration.
A bell rang. "Williams, DeBaro, Feldman, Sanchezthat's RosarioGold, Eaugalle, Chesterton, Whelan, Eisenblatt, Samuels, Lattore, Jabotinsky, Wood, and Helms." He read the list rapidly, as if they were all one name. We congregated near the double doors. Then he led us like schoolkids across the marble hall.
The courtroom was beautiful, with dark walnut paneling and molding. I half-expected carved faces where the walls joined the high ceiling. The light was dim, and voices were muffled by thickly upholstered blue chairs.
The judge explained the procedures with great patience. He sounded like Johnny Cash and had a long, sallow face. "The victim was a young child, and some of the evidence is graphic." He looked at his hands forming a steeple on the bench in front of him. "It won't be pleasant," he cautioned, "but it's your duty." Two women behind me spoke up at the same instant. "I'm a grandmother," they said. "I couldn't stand it."
"We need grandmothers," he said. "Are you sure?"
They were both sure.
After we gave our addresses and occupations, two lawyers fired questions at us. Had we read about the case in the papers? Had we been abused as children? Did we know an abused child or abusive
 
Page 71
parent? More people were excused. Then we were removed to the jury room while they haggled over us.
"Helms," the bailiff read, then five more names and two alternates. So that was it. I had a case, a duty to perform, then home to Stan and the nursery where five hundred citrus trees were waiting to be repotted. Valencias and Parson Browns. Mineola tangelos and Satsumas. The grafts had taken well and were ready for two-gallon containers and new homes. It always pleased me to think of my trees taking root all over the country in climate zone 10.
Elvis Thornberry, the defendant, entered the room, accompanied by a guard and a washed-out-looking pregnant woman who sat behind him. The D.A. aligned his pad and pencil.
Elvis didn't look like the famous Elvis. He had sandy hair thin as seedlings and stooped shoulders. His chest caved in under a limp white shirt and brown polyester jacket. He was a man you'd never notice unless he held a gun to your head or saved your life.
The D.A. promised to present circumstantial evidence convincing enough to take us beyond a reasonable doubt. The public defender assured us that a crime without a witness was difficult to prove.
At lunch, I asked the knitter what was happening in the jury pool room. "Same as when you left," she told me. "The young ones are plugged into Walkmen. They might as well be on the moon." I turned to dump my sandwich wrapper. "Oh, a big bunch was called for a cocaine case, but most of them got excused. They're afraid to serve," she whispered. "I hear you can get a person's legs broke for under a hundred dollars these days.''
"Hmm," I said. I was glad that Elvis Thornberry didn't look like he had those kinds of connections.
"And," she went on, "I played solitaire for nearly an hour without a five of hearts." She spun the counting spool on her knitting needle and stuffed the yarn into her bag.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Elvis, his wife, and their toddler, Elvis, Jr., lived in a truck on the beach for two months before they found a cheap rental in the Palm Breeze Trailer Court. Elvis told the authorities that the refrigerator had fallen on his little boy. But when the police checked, they found no dents in the floor where he said it landed. We studied pictures of
 
Page 72
the floor. The refrigerator was banked so deeply in the gummy linoleum that I was pretty sure Elvis had lied.
Next were the photos of Elvis, Jr., not as terrible as I had dreaded because he didn't look dead and there were no outward signs of violence. This, the coroner explained, was because he had been killed with a single blow, a blow named the knee-slam by child abuse experts. The killer had lifted three-year-old Elvis over his head like kindling and smashed the child's abdomen across his upraised knee. All the damage done in one stroke, irrevocable and irreparable. I remembered the citrus counties ravaged by the '84 freeze: 160,000 acres destroyed in Marion, Lake, Orange, Polk, Hillsborough, Osceola, Sumter, Pasco, and Hernando. Only the coastal groves like ours spared.
The prosecution rested. Then, without rising from his chair, the defense rested. Not one witness. During his closing argument, Elvis's lawyer leaned over the jury box banister, pleading that no man should be put behind bars for a lifetime on the basis of his kitchen floor. We retired to reach a verdict.
The first ballot was five guilty, one abstention from a young TV cameraman who didn't understand the difference between Murder Two and Manslaughter. The foreman read the definitions from a sheet the judge had provided.
The next vote was four guilty, two abstentions. The cameraman still didn't get it, he said, and now the woman next to him was confused by the legal jargon, too. We didn't know each other's names so the conversation was blunt. Comments were offered around the table without apology or explanation, like chips in a poker game. "Murder is more brutal, then?" the cameraman asked. "Yes," we said.
The next vote was unanimous for Murder Two. The foreman rang the buzzer, and we returned to the beautiful room. No one was in the gallery, now a place of doom for Elvis Thornberry. The silence was cold and penetrating, like the nights in the nursery before we light the smudge pots when a freeze threatens. Soon there would be fire and the falling and rising of voices and heartbeats.
The judge read the verdict and polled each of us individually, tying our names to the word "guilty" forever. We passed into the grandeur of public record.
Back in the jury pool room, smoke rings hung in the stale air like complicated nooses. The boss man crossed our names off his list and

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