The Stories of Richard Bausch (67 page)

“Well, he better watch his tone. That’s all I have to say.”

“Mother, if you don’t shut up,” Carla said. There were tears in her voice.

“What did I say? I merely indicated that I wouldn’t tolerate abuse. This man abused you.”

“Ma’am, I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist.”

“Pitiful,” Lemke was saying, shaking his head. “Completely pitiful.”

“Who’s pitiful?” Carla said. She moved toward him. She could feel her heart rushing. “Who’s pitiful?”

The security guard stood between them. “Now wait—”

“You watch who you call names,” Carla said, and something slipped inside her. The next moment, anything might happen.

“I rest my case,” Lemke was saying.

“There isn’t any case,” Carla said. “You don’t have any case. Nobody’s pitiful.”

“They’re making my case for me, Officer.”

“—amazing disrespect—” Mother was saying.

“You’re wrong about everything,” Carla said. “Pity doesn’t enter into it.”

“Everybody shut up,” the security guard said. “I swear, I’m going to run you all in for disturbing the peace.”

“Do I have to say anything else?” Lemke said to him. “It’s like I said. They make my case for me. Ignorant, lowlife—”

“I’m going to hit him again,” said Mother. “You’re the one who’s ignorant.”

“See? She admits she hit me.”

“I’m going to hit you myself in a minute,” the security guard said. “Now shut up.”

Lemke gave him an astonished look.

“Everybody be quiet.” The guard held his hands out and made a slow
up-and-down motion with each word, like a conductor in front of an orchestra. “Let’s—all—of—us—please—calm—down.” He turned to Mother. “You and your daughter wait here. I’ll come back to you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ll be here,” Carla said.

“Now,” he said to Lemke. “If you’ll step over here with me, I’ll listen to what you have to say.”

“You’re biased against me,” Lemke said.

“I’m what?”

“You heard me. You threatened to hit me.”

“I did not.”

“I’m not going to get a fair deal here, I can sense it,” Lemke said.

“We’re not in a courtroom, sir. This is not a courtroom.”

“I know what kind of report you’ll file.”

“Listen, I’m sure if we all give each other the benefit of the doubt—” “This woman assaulted me,” Lemke said. “I know my rights.”

“Okay,” the security guard said. “Why don’t you tell me what you want me to do. Really, what is it that you think I should do here?”

Lemke stared into his face.

“I think he wants you to shoot me,” Mother said.

“Mother, will you please stop it. Please.”

“Her own daughter can’t control her,” Lemke said to the guard. Then he turned to Carla: “You shouldn’t take her out of the house.”

“I’m pregnant,” Carla said abruptly, and began to cry. The tears came streaming down her cheeks. It was a lie; she had said it simply to cut through everything.

Her mother took a step back. “Oh, sugar.”

Carla went on talking, only now she was telling the truth: “I’ve lost the last four. Do you understand, sir? I’ve miscarried four times and I need someone with me. Surely even you can understand that.”

Something changed in Lemke’s face. His whole body seemed to falter, as though he had been supporting some invisible weight and had now let down under it. “Hey,” he stammered. “Listen.”

“Why don’t you all make friends,” said the security guard. “No harm done, really. Right?”

“Right,” Mother said. “My daughter had a—a tiff with her husband this
morning, and he said some things. Maybe I overreacted. I overreacted. I’m really sorry, sir.”

Lemke was staring at Carla.

“I don’t know my own strength sometimes,” Mother was saying. “I’m always putting my foot in it.”

“A misunderstanding,” the security guard said.

Lemke rubbed the side of his face, looking at Carla, who was wiping her eyes with the back of one hand.

“Am I needed here anymore?” the security guard said. Lemke said, “I guess not.”

“There,” said Mother. “Now, could anything have worked out better?”

“I have to tell you,” Lemke said to Carla, and it seemed to her that his voice shook. “We lost our first last month. My wife was seven months pregnant. She’s had a hard time of it since.”

“We’re sorry that happened to you,” Mother said.

“Mother,” said Carla, sniffling, “please.”

“I hope things work out for you,” Lemke said to her.

“Do you have other children?” Carla asked.

He nodded. “A girl.”

“Us, too.”

“How old?”

“Thirteen.”

“Seven,” Lemke said. “Pretty age.”

“Yes.”

“They’re all lovely ages,” Mother said.

“Thank you for understanding,” Carla said to him.

“No,” he said. “It’s—I’m sorry for everything.” Then he moved off. In a few seconds, he was lost in the crowd.

“I guess he didn’t want his music after all,” Mother said. Then: “Poor man. Isn’t it amazing that you’d find out in an argument that you have something like that in common?”

“What’re the chances,” Carla said, almost to herself. Then she turned to Mother. “Do you think I could’ve sensed it somehow, or heard it in his voice?”

Mother smiled out of one side of her mouth. “I think it’s a coincidence.”

“I don’t know,” Carla said. “I feel like I knew.”

“That’s how I think I felt about you being pregnant. I had this feeling.” “I’m not pregnant,” Carla told her. Mother frowned.

“I couldn’t stand the arguing anymore and I just said it.”

“Oh, my.”

“Poor Daryl,” Carla said after a pause. “Up against me all by himself.”

“Stop that,” said Mother.

“Up against us.”

“I won’t listen to you being contrite.”

Carla went back into the store, and when Mother started to follow, she stopped. “I’ll buy yours for you. Let
me
get in line.”

“I can’t believe I actually hit that boy.” Mother held out one hand, palm down, examining it. “Look at me, I’m shaking all over. I’m trembling all over. I’ve never done anything like that in my life, not ever. Not even close. I’ve never even yelled at anyone in public, have I? I mean, think of it.
Me,
in a public brawl. This morning must’ve set me up or something. Set the tone, you know. Got me primed. I’d never have expected this of me, would you?”

“I don’t think anyone expected it,” Carla said.

They watched the woman with the twin babies come back by them.

“I feel sorry for him now,” Mother said. “I almost wish I hadn’t hit him. If I’d known, I could’ve tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, like the officer said.”

Carla said nothing. She had stopped crying. “Everybody has their own troubles, I guess.”

She went to the counter, where people moved back to let her buy the tapes. It took only a moment to pay for them.

Mother stood in the entrance of the store looking pale and frightened.

“Come on, Sugar Ray,” Carla said to her.

“You’re mad at me,” Mother said, and seemed about to cry herself.

“I’m not mad,” Carla said.

“I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what got into me—can’t imagine. But, sugar, I hear him talk to you that way. It hurts to hear him say those things to you and I know I shouldn’t interfere—”

“It’s fine,” Carla told her. “Really. I understand.”

Outside, they waited in the lee of the building for the rain to let up. The air had grown much cooler; there was a breeze blowing out of the north.
The line of trees on the other side of the parking lot moved, and showed lighter green.

“My God,” Carla said. “Isn’t it—doesn’t it say something about me that I would use the one gravest sadness in Daryl’s life with me, the one thing he’s always been most sorry about—that I would use that to get through an altercation at the fucking mall?”

“Stop it,” Mother said. “Don’t use that language.”

“Well, really. And I didn’t even have to think about it. I was crying, and I saw the look on his face, and I just said it. It came out so naturally. And imagine, me lying that I’m pregnant again. Imagine Daryl’s reaction to that.”

“You’re human. What do you want from yourself?”

Carla seemed not to have heard this. “I wish I w
as
pregnant,” she said. “I feel awful, and I really wish I was.”

“That wouldn’t change anything, would it?”

“It would change how I feel right now.”

“I meant with Daryl.”

Carla looked at her. “No. You’re right,” she said. “That wouldn’t change anything with Daryl. Not these days.”

“Now, sugar,” Mother said, touching her nose with the handkerchief.

But then Carla stepped out of the protection of the building and walked away through the rain.

“Hey,” Mother said. “Wait for me.”

The younger woman turned. “I’m going to bring the car up. Stay there.”

“Well, let a person know what you’re going to do.”

“Wait there,” Carla said over her shoulder.

The rain was lessening now. She got into the car and sat thinking about her mother in the moment of striking the man with her purse. She saw the man’s startled face in her mind’s eye, and to her surprise she laughed, once, harshly, like a sob. Then she was crying again, thinking of her husband, who would not come home today until he had to. Across the lot her mother waited, a blur of colors, a shape in the raining distance. Mother put the handkerchief to her face again, and seemed to totter. Then she stood straight.

Carla started the car and backed out of the space, aware that the other woman could see her now. She tried to master herself, wanting to put the best face on, wanting not to hurt any more feelings and to find some way for
everyone to get along, to bear the disappointments and the irritations. As she pulled toward the small waiting figure under the wide stone canopy, she caught herself thinking, with a sense of depletion—as though it were a prospect she would never have enough energy for, no matter how hard or long she strove to gain it—of what was constantly required, what must be repeated and done and given and listened to and allowed, in all the kinds of love there are.

Her mother stepped to the curb and opened the door. “What were you doing?” she said, struggling into the front seat. “I thought you were getting ready to leave me here.”

“No,” Carla said. “Never that.” Her voice went away.

Her mother shuffled on the seat, getting settled, then pulled the door shut. The rain was picking up again, though it wasn’t wind-driven now.

“Can’t say I’d blame you if you left me behind,” Mother said. “After all, I’m clearly a thug.”

They were silent for a time, sitting in the idling car with the rain pouring down. And then they began to laugh. It was low, almost tentative, as if they were both uneasy about letting go entirely. The traffic paused and moved by them, and shoppers hurried past.

“I can’t believe I did such an awful thing,” Mother said.

“I won’t listen to you being contrite,” Carla said, and smiled.

“Touché, sugar. You have scored your point.”

“I wasn’t trying to score points,” Carla told her. “I was only setting the boundaries for today.” Then she put the car in gear and headed them through the rain, toward home.

Dornberg, out for
a walk in the fields behind his house one morning, found a black high-heeled shoe near the path leading down to the neighboring pond. The shoe had scuffed places on its shiny surface and caked mud adhering to it, but he could tell from the feel of the soft leather that it was well made, the kind a woman who has money might wear. He held it in his hand and observed that his sense of equilibrium shifted; he caught himself thinking of misfortune, failure, scandal.

The field around him was peaceful, rife with the fragrances of spring. The morning sun was warm, the air dry, the sky blue. Intermittently, drowsily, the cawing of crows sounded somewhere in the distance, above the languid murmur of little breezes in the trees bordering the far side of the pond. A beautiful, innocent morning, and here he stood, holding the shoe close to his chest in the defensive, wary posture of the guilty—the attitude of someone caught with the goods—nervously scraping the dried mud from the shoe’s scalloped sides.

The mud turned to dust and made a small red cloud about his head, and when the wind blew, the glitter of dust swept over him. He used his shirttail to
wipe his face, then walked a few paces, automatically looking for the shoe’s mate. He thought he saw something in the tall grass at the edge of the pond, but when he got to it, stepping in mud and catching himself on thorns to make his way, he found the dark, broken curve of a beer bottle. The owner of the pond had moved last fall to Alaska, and there were signs posted all over about the penalties for trespassing, but no one paid any attention to them. Casual littering went on. It was distressing. Dornberg bent down and picked up the shard of glass. Then he put his hand inside the shoe and stretched the leather, holding it up in the brightness.

He felt weirdly dislodged from himself.

Beyond the pond and its row of trees, four new houses were being built. Often the construction crews, made up mostly of young men, came to the pond to eat their box lunches and, sometimes, to fish. On several occasions they had remained at the site long after the sun went down; the lights in the most nearly finished house burned; other cars pulled in, little rumbling sports cars and shiny sedans, motorcycles, even a taxi now and again. There were parties that went on into the early morning hours. Dornberg had heard music, voices, the laughter of women, all of which depressed him, as though this jazzy, uncomplicated gaiety—the kind that had no cost and generated no guilt—had chosen these others over him. The first time he heard it, he was standing at the side of his house, near midnight, having decided to haul the day’s garbage out before going to bed (how his life had lately turned upon fugitive urges to cleanse and purge and make order!). The music stopped him in the middle of his vaguely palliative task, and he listened, wondering, thinking his senses were deceiving him: a party out in the dark, as if the sound of it were drifting down out of the stars.