The Practical Navigator (26 page)

“No problem. Neither do I.” She and her mother start for the house, each carrying a grocery bag.

Wow. How normal.

“By the way,” says Tisha, “Michael called while I was in the car.”

Was.

“What? Why didn't you—” Anita realizes she's not so much talking as spitting.

“He was trying to get in touch with you but you didn't answer.”

Anita takes a breath. “What did he say?”

“Something about Jamie. Apparently he was at the school the entire time. In the bathroom. What's that about? Are you all right?”

Her mother staring at her as if she's a fish sucking air.

“Fine. It's nothing. Don't worry about it.”

“Anita, if you're not going to talk about things, don't bother talking at all.”

“Good advice. I won't.”

The phone is ringing as they go in through the front door.

*   *   *

“Yes. Yes. Well, casual game or not, rules are rules.”

In the kitchen, Anita puts down the bag of groceries. Having answered the phone, her mother has taken it into the pantry, not pleased with something or someone, and so it seems a good time to open her own bag and grab for the vial.

“Well, I say it's cheating,” says Tisha Beacham, biting the words.

Taking a small orange pill out of the vial, Anita moves to the sink and is about to wash it down with tap water when her mother abruptly reenters the kitchen.

“Then I doubt I'll be part of this foursome anymore,” says Tisha Beacham “Good day.” Anita watches as her mother disconnects, then strides to the counter and puts the cordless phone back in its cradle.

“What was that about?”

“What was
what
about,” says Tisha, as she turns to unpack groceries. Her jaw is a smooth, stiff line, a telltale sign that she's upset or angry.

“Phone call?”

“Jodie Hill. She's constantly fumbling with her ball mark, turning three-foot putts into two, and I've had enough of it.”

“She's been doing it as long as you've known her and it's never bothered you before.”

“That's beside the point. It bothers me now.” Tisha abruptly turns, glaring. “What's that you're taking?”

Idiot, thinks Anita as she realizes that both pill and vial are still in hand. “Xanax. For anxiety. You want one?” She offers the pill to her mother on outstretched palm.

“Don't be silly,” says Tisha. She begins putting cans into cupboards, pulling them from the bag and thrusting them onto shelves with hard, impatient movements. “I suppose that
psychologist
you're seeing gave them to you.”

“Psychologist” obviously rhyming with “charlatan.” At the Beacham house, Anita knows, mental health problems aren't problems at all, they're a lack of discipline. “No, Mom, they sell them in the candy section at the supermarket.”

“Now you're being ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous or silly, which is it, make up your mind.”

“You have nothing to be anxious or depressed about.” Turning back to the counter. Folding and then refolding the brown paper bag for recycling, hands now as tight as her jaw. Anita waiting for it—waiting. “Oh, yes, I know that's what those other pills are for. All this so-called
therapy.
Well, I've had enough of it. You're just paying someone to listen to you complain about
me
.”

“You're a trouper, Mom, you can handle it.”

With a sudden, violent flail of her arm, Tisha Beacham sweeps the second bag of groceries from the counter, sending eggs, milk, and cream cartons and a box of Ritz crackers skidding across the hardwood floor toward Anita's feet, shocking them both.

*   *   *

Lord, may I be slow to anger and filled with love. Please fill my heart with patience. Thank you, Lord, that you are forever giving when it comes to forgiveness.

*   *   *

Sustenance. Sustenance is not food. Sustenance is love. Sustenance is validation. Sustenance is support. You give it, Mother. Or you don't.

*   *   *

“Anita,” says Tisha Beacham, staring into space. “If you could just accept Jesus into your life, things would be so much better.”

*   *   *

Anita places the vial of Xanax carefully on the white counter. Her mother is right. She doesn't need them. Like everyone in the family, she knows where Neal Beacham stores his gin and vodka reserves. It's time for something stronger.

 

42

The board has taken on its final shape and Michael checks its symmetry with calipers. He's done it at least half a dozen times now, knows it's perfect, knows that all that's really left is the fine sanding to make sure the surface is pure and then the glassing. But he knows too that there is a part of him that doesn't want to finish. A finished board, like a ship, is a tool meant to be taken into the water and Michael is no longer sure he's even capable of teaching his son to navigate on dry land.

Lifting her head, Abigail growls low in her throat and barks once, staring out the open garage door toward the unlit driveway. And then she's up and padding forward, tail wagging as Anita steps tentatively into the harsh, fluorescent light of the garage. Anita pets her, rubs her soft ears with both hands. “Hey, Abbie. Hey, sweet girl.” She glances toward Michael who hasn't moved. She tries to smile.

“May I come in?”

“You already are,” says Michael, and he begins sanding the board again, not needing the chore but needing something to pretend to do. He's aware that she is moving as if in sensuous slow motion, that her eyes are wide, blank saucers. He knows these are the signs that she has been drinking heavily.

“It's coming along,” Anita says, rubbing her fingers down the wood surface of the board.

“Slow but sure,” he says. It's an idiot reply but he's trying to fill empty space.

“I got your message.”

“Which one?”

“The one you left my mother.”

“I wanted to make sure you knew.”

“He was really in the bathroom?”

“Yeah. In a toilet stall. On a toilet.”

“Why?”

“He had no toilet paper and he wanted to wipe his ass.”

“You know,” says Anita, “I bet someday we're really going to laugh about this.”

“But not now.”

“No. Not just now, no.”

He watches as she turns away, seemingly appraising the untidy holdings and plain walls of the garage as if she were in the gallery of an art museum. He remembers the silences she'd fall into when drinking too much. Conversations with myself, she'd call them. Shoulda-coulda-wouldas. Mighta-beens. Hope-to-be's.

“I really fucked things up today,” Anita says softly, still staring at the wall.

“Only because you left.”

“I freaked.”

“I did too.”

“But you didn't leave.” She turns now to look at him, listing slightly. “Did he ask about me?”

“He wanted to know where you were.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him you hadn't been able to make it. That's why I was there.”

“And after that?”

“I brought him home, fed him. We read. I tucked him into bed.”

“So he's okay.”

“He's okay, yeah.”

“Good.” Her head bobbles as if it's momentarily lost its balance on her neck. She blinks as if trying to recall where she is.

“Anita?”

“… uh?”

“Are you okay?”

She'd like to tell him that the façade of balance she's been so carefully maintaining all day has finally left her. So have any semblance of words. It's not a bad feeling. It's just that the cement floor, unsteady now beneath her feet, is going to hurt when she falls.

*   *   *

As if in a dream, Jamie hears his mother's voice. But then, he's always heard her voice. He just didn't know it was her voice until she came back and then he remembered. It's good that Mom's come back. He wasn't sure it was at first but he is now. For some reason, Jamie doesn't have to work to tell what Mom's face is saying. There are things there he doesn't understand but he doesn't need to. Mostly her face says she loves him. Her face makes him feel it back. Now if he could only find the right words for that so that if his face can't say it to Mom, his words can. Dad will know. Jamie will ask him and then he'll know too. He falls back asleep hearing Mom and Dad whisper his name.

*   *   *

Anita awakes, alone in bed, head throbbing, first morning light coming through the windows.

Their room.

The same chair. The familiar bureaus. The framed photos that feel like old friends. She can't remember how she got here. And then she does. Michael. Catching her as her legs gave way. Carrying her into the house. She, in no position to walk anymore, let alone drive home. Bringing her down the hall past Jamie's room and into the bedroom, lowering her to the bed. Taking off her shoes. Her jeans and shirt. Stopping her as she struggled to take off her bra, to push off her panties. Pulling back the spread and sheets. Her arms going around his neck as he shifted her beneath the sheets, moved her head gently to the pillow.

“Kiss me, Michael. Be with me.”

“Shhh,” he said, gently covering her. “We'll talk in the morning.” She was asleep before he left the room.

She is increasingly aware of her hangover and how horrible she feels.

I am so out of practice.

Eyes closed, she is trying to find the coolest place on the pillow to rest her cheek when she hears the bedroom door open, then close.

“Michael?” she whispers. She raises her head. Opens her heavy-lidded eyes.

She remembers there was once a hummingbird nest outside the bedroom window. It was in the forked branch of a bush, the thin branches ensuring that the hatchlings would be protected from sun, wind, rain, or predators. Built by the female, Penelope told her, because other than copulation, male hummingbirds, like most men, want nothing to do with raising children.

She sits up in the bed that once was hers. She tries to smile. “Hi, baby.”

As fragile and breakable to her as any small bird, she fully expects him to flee. It doesn't happen. He moves forward toward the bed, and pulling back the edge of the sheet, he gets in.

“I'm sleepy,” Jamie says, resting his head against her shoulder.

“Me too,” she says. Pulling him close, Anita covers them both and settles back.

“Let's sleep.”

*   *   *

When Michael comes into the bedroom to see if she's all right, he sees the two of them. They are each on their left sides. Anita's arm is across Jamie, holding him against her. Her lips are near the back of his head. Both have the hushed breath of slumber. He feels he's looking at a painting, one painted in the colors of memory. When Jamie was a newborn, they would lie together like this. It seemed a private moment then and it does so now, something between mother and child, not to be trespassed on. He wishes he could leave his son to wake on his own and feel the graceful place he's in. But no.

“Jamie.” A touch. “Time to get up. School.”

Jamie stirs. Yawns. Opening his eyes, it takes him a moment to realize where he is and who he is with.

“Is Mom having breakfast with us?”

“Let's let Mom sleep, okay?”

“Okay. Sleep, Mom.”

*   *   *

She has heard him enter. She hears them both leave. She drifts, eyes closed, sleep close at hand but far away. The headache is a friendly companion now. It allows her not to think.

*   *   *

Penelope is in the kitchen when she hears the front door open and then close, and even though nothing was said, not so much as mentioned before Michael left taking Jamie to school, she knows who it is, knows that Anita has spent the night and now is leaving. She heard Michael carry her down the hall, heard Anita's soft, plaintive, slurred voice.

“Le' me go home, Michael, I should jus' go home.”

“This is home,” Michael had said.

She heard him come back down the hall shortly thereafter. He was asleep on the couch, still dressed, just a blanket over him, when she arose in the early hours. She resolved not to wake him. So many burdens on her son's shoulders. Herself not the least of them. Not fair at all. But then, who ever said it was supposed to be? You accept the bad with the good and you soldier on. There's no doubt she's becoming increasingly forgetful. When last she saw Dr. Curtis he asked her to count backward from one hundred by sevens. She was lost at eighty-six. But the truth is, it feels as if it's only unpleasant things she can't remember, and as for math, she was never good at it to begin with. Some of the better poetry has gone missing and that's sad. Penelope's early education emphasized learning by rote and her mind has long been stockpiled with miscellaneous quotes pulled from any number of different texts. People, she was taught, are what they learn, even if the lessons do not relate directly to their own lives. Having said that, she has come to realize that most of the verses and passages she memorized are useless in the modern world, and other than the pleasure she's always taken in them, they will not be missed.

Penelope wouldn't be a young person these days for anything.

She rises and goes to make the beds. It's the least she can do.

*   *   *

Anita calls him in the early evening.

“Michael? May I try again? Picking him up? At school?”

The voice is soft and vacant and he wonders if she's drinking again. Or if she even stopped.

“I'll ask him.”

“If he says yes?”

“Then you can pick him up.”

He waits for her to say something else. Maybe she needs help. He reminds himself that she's never asked for it in the past.