Our Lady of the Forest (13 page)

Snap it in front and work it around.

That's not my point.

I know it isn't.

Don't you talk to anybody?

I go to confession once a week.

You tell your priest about nights like this?

If I don't I can't take Communion, so yes.

What's he say about the mushroom girl?

I haven't heard him say anything.

Seeing the Virgin Mary, Jesus. How can something like that be true? Tammy wrestled into her shirt. Toss me a cig, she said.

She got into her jeans, lit up, and smoked, pulling even harder than he did. For a long time she'd accepted the risk that she could die from lung cancer or emphysema; in the meantime there were cigarettes. She'd also promised herself that one day, when she ended up breathing through a hole in her throat, she wasn't going to whine about it but instead quell the urge to whine by remembering the joy of smoking. You know what it is about you? said Tom. It's the way you smoke a cigarette.

I smoke with a death wish.

Yeah. That's it. And your cheeks get kind of hollow.

Like a blow-job queen.

I didn't say it.

Well what if you did?

I didn't, said Tom.

Why are you such an uptight Catholic?

I'm not uptight. But I believe in Jesus.

What if that's just a life preserver? Here you are thinking it makes things all right but you know what about a life preserver? You fall in the sea with one of them on you're still dead in an hour, Tom. From cold water or sharks.

No you're not. You're saved.

Saved. I've never understood that. Saved from what exactly? I don't see how you yourself are saved. And you're a church-going guy.

This is the problem with balling somebody. You feel obligated to talk.

Balling somebody, Tammy said. Your kind of balling, you owe half a sentence. Half a sentence or a word. A cough.

I never promised anything, Tammy.

The promise is—what do you call it? Implied, Tom. It's implied.

She tied her shoes and got her jacket on. This place is depressing, she said. It smells like mold in here.

I didn't make any promises.

Okay, you didn't make promises.

He was sitting by the window, low, with the cigarette hand against his forehead, and with the light from the bathroom across his face she could see his chin stubble flecked with gray; the light was at just the right angle. Tammy, he said.

I have to go. I'm out of here.

I can guess what people say about me.

That doesn't do you a lot of good, Tom.

You believe what you want to believe.

To tell you the truth I don't think about it. Except to feel sorry for your son.

Tom got up and threw his butt in the toilet. You offered, he said. I didn't lead you on. I even tried to talk you out of it.

Right, said Tammy. My mistake.

She stood in the doorway and tossed her cigarette at the rain. You're pathetic, she said. Go to hell.

Tammy left and he lay on the bed, waiting for her residue to dissipate enough for him to consider other matters. It took a while and some effort. The room smelled of their encounter. He imagined telling the priest about it: I slept with the bartender, Tammy, from the Big Bottom. Those nouns in combination sounded so sordid. Was there an act of contrition that would make it less so? He was married only in the technical sense, so the sin in it really was somewhere else, he didn't know how to name it. He'd been impersonal, he knew that. He hadn't reckoned with Tammy's soul. That was one of the problems with problems: they didn't leave room for other people. Reserves of understanding dwindled under duress, were pared down by despondency or depression. Whichever you called it, Tom woke with his and it inhabited even his snatches of sleep, his dreams and drunken interludes. He was trimmed for descent even while he fornicated and he thought he knew how craziness felt—it was just growing tired of being unhappy, it was what came after unhappy. Then you either had a heart attack or a switch flipped in your head. Things went dark and you weren't there. What held him back was the prospect of embarrassment; it kept him in the realm of the unadmitted, except that who would blame him if he lost it? Didn't he have the perfect excuse for checking out of this world?

In the morning Tom raked fallen cedar needles and cleaned them from the culverts. There were new rivulets in the parking lot: water finding its way. With a wheelbarrow of gravel he filled the potholes. He raked in grades to make the water run. The couple with the secret dog emerged. The man was pulling a suitcase on wheels, the woman had the little animal wrapped in a red checkered blanket. Good morning, said Tom. Did you sleep all right? Tom knew how to fly on automatic pilot. There was a certain degree of theater in his everyday behavior.

Fine, said the man.

The heater ticked, said the woman.

We're thinking of taking them out, said Tom. Installing fan-driven heaters.

Well you can listen to the fan, said the woman.

You can't win, said the man, and winced.

On request Tom showed them the campground on a road map. Then they spoke about the Virgin sighting. The couple had been to apparition sites in Conyers, Georgia, and Cold Spring, Kentucky, but this was the first in their own backyard. They were excited, they said, to be there at the beginning. Miracles might be accomplished, said the woman. Who knew what could happen?

A lot of people seem excited, said Tom. But how did everyone find out about it? How does everyone know so fast? That's the surprising part.

The Web, said the man. Boom.

On the way to church Tom drove by his house—it really wasn't his house anymore—a mildewed rambler with a carport, a toolshed, and a square of moss-throttled lawn. He stopped to spy on his former life from the cab of his idling pick-up. The gutters were choked with black needles, he saw, and the front gutter was no longer attached to the drainpipe, so half the roof was pouring its water right against the foundation. Probably the basement smelled like a sewer. And the toolshed door wasn't shut all the way. Then he noticed what he would have expected, that Eleanor didn't keep the firewood covered, the plastic tarp sat bunched up against it; she was no doubt spending a fortune on electricity instead of using the woodstove. She'd never had any appreciation of money and didn't have any now. What did he expect—change? She'd always bought expensive produce—kiwi fruit and avocados—and had let the kids' dentist swindle her, but did any of that matter anymore? They were both spending money they didn't have, so what difference did any of it make? He tried to let go of caring about it, her shopping out of mail-order catalogs, things going bad in the refrigerator. The bags of expensive fertilizer—shit for sale—and the rototiller she saw on television. Or that his wife was a sucker for infomercials and straight-faced sales pitches. The sort to buy the slicer-and-dicer after seeing the demo at the county fair, the electric back massager, the nonstick pans, the juicer and the set of steak knives. There was never any arguing about it: these were necessary purchases. I'm not extravagant, you know that, she'd say, so why do you accuse me of being a spendthrift? I shop the sales, I cook from scratch, I darn socks, I clip coupons, so I don't want to hear any more of this, it isn't fair to me.

I won't say anything then.

Well why do you all the time?

I'm all done now. Believe me.

But all of that was petty wrangling from a long time ago. It was just one area of picayune dissension that went with being married. He was pretty well worn out with Eleanor way before the current business, but in a minor key, like anyone else—it wasn't any big thing. He probably could have lived with it, made it to the end of his marriage when a heart attack or stroke would get him, but then along came Junior's “accident” and that was the beginning of the end of their arrangement, which until then had worked well enough: to live without any expectation that love would satisfy. In the long bitter run of bad blood that ensued he'd said more than once It's exactly what they say, something like this really tests a marriage. I'm tired of that, answered Eleanor finally. Pointing that out doesn't solve anything or take us anywhere, does it? Tom snapped then: What are we trying to solve? he asked. If you don't know that then I can't help you. I wasn't asking for help from you, though. There you go twisting things again, you asked for help ten minutes ago, you definitely asked for help, Tom, your memory is incredibly selective, I mean I remember exactly what you said but you can't even remember from yesterday when you told me this was all my fault and you didn't want to talk about it. Damn, said Tom, yesterday, here you go back to yesterday. Well this is a continuation of yesterday, I don't think we ever finished that, I know I wasn't done with it but you just swore and stomped out of the kitchen and what was I supposed to do, be nice to you and sweet? Sweet, said Tom. Don't give me that. When was the last time you were sweet to me? I know, you have a perfect memory, it was the day before yesterday or something like that, something I don't remember right because I'm a god damn idiot. Listen, said Eleanor, who has time for this? It's just endless circling, over and over. Talking to you doesn't go anywhere. I'm going in to help Tommy now. I can't waste any more time on you. That's fine, said Tom, go help Tommy. I'm sick of talking anyway. It's fine with me if we don't talk at all. Talk doesn't do me any good. See? said Eleanor. That's the problem. Your attitude is you don't want to talk so how are we going to get anywhere? You were the one done talking, said Tom. I thought you were going off to help Tommy. Why is it you don't answer me? asked Eleanor. We went all over this yesterday, answered Tom. Maybe you just don't remember.

Tom draped his arms across the steering wheel and pondered the gloomy facade of his house, its rain-beaten, slatternly profile. He knew that Eleanor had Junior in the living room where he could see outside and watch the street, so it was a bad idea to linger. Maybe the boy, with nothing better to do, was staring out the window. Tom didn't know because he couldn't go inside; there was a restraining order against him. There was a legal writ imposing exile concocted by Eleanor's attorney. After Tom's separation from his wife he'd showed up at the house persistently unannounced until, apparently, this had vexed her sufficiently that she'd retained legal counsel. So Tom had this… adversary. Some kind of junior partner Jew. Ostensibly because he'd made it a habit to amble into his own house and peruse the contents of his own refrigerator, select a can of pop or an apple bought with money he had earned, and sit at his own table with his feet up. After too many visits of this sort Eleanor had forced him to arrange a schedule, the attorney wrote him a letter about it, surprise visits were not acceptable, the letterhead named a firm in Tacoma, three Jews plus Garr and McMillan. They agreed on the hour before Tom went to work—this was when he was still on day shift—since that would enforce a reasonable time limit, at a certain point he would have to leave, it wouldn't be strained or ambiguous, a natural end-point was implied by this plan, if he started work at 9 a.m. he could visit from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. and still have time to drive to the prison, either that or be late for work, the attorney considered himself a creative genius for coming up with this timetable, Solomon, his smugness about it made Tom want to break every bone in his arrogant face. Sometimes while this attorney blathered Tom focused on the space between his nose and moving mouth or on the crescent under his right or left eye, selecting a place to hit him, shut him up, coldcock him, deck him, no warning. So extreme restraint was required. The attorney had civilization on his side. Tom regained the upper hand by switching shifts with another guard, getting himself transferred on a Sunday to swing shift, then arriving at the house at 4 p.m., waltzing into the kitchen humming, grabbing a can of pop from the refrigerator while Eleanor was chopping celery. Do I have to call my attorney? she asked. Wait, said Tom. Oh, yeah. Our agreement. Don't play games with me, answered Eleanor. Games, said Tom, and popped open the can. Word games or mind games—I'm up for either. We have, said Eleanor, a specific agreement. Read me the language carefully, said Tom. You're not supposed to be here, Tom. I am supposed to be here, darling. You know I don't have the physical strength to simply boot you out the door, said Eleanor, so why do you play these games with me, if the tide was turned you'd use your muscles to get your way you know you would, you'd just shove me out into the yard, so this is typical of your behavior, this is what makes me so sick of you. You're off the subject, Tom replied. The subject here is our agreement not your version of what I'm like which you always make up to serve your purpose. So call your attorney if you want darling let's get it on him and me.

She called the attorney. She had his home number. We're having a little problem, she said. Tom's here. And I can't make him leave. Then she handed the phone to Tom. Sorry to bother you at home, said Tom. I'm sure this isn't exactly your idea of how to spend a Sunday afternoon but Eleanor insisted we had to call you which I tried to talk her out of, sir. Anyway, please forgive her.

Your tone is supercilious, Tom. Let's not play this sort of game. Let's at least try to be serious.

I'm dead serious, Tom answered.

Then you understand there are legal implications for breaching your agreement, don't you? Don't you understand that?

I'm sorry, said Tom. Read me the language. I'll do whatever it says.

You know what it says.

I'm trying to remember.

Don't play games.

I'm not playing games.

So why are you there?

I'm following the agreement. I'm doing exactly what you told me to do. I'm doing what you commanded.

I didn't command. That's not the right word. We agreed, Tom. Mutually. You put your signature to the document. And the agreement was, one hour before work. Not on a Sunday afternoon.