Waste (16 page)

The Lorax opened the drawer again and pulled the dirty plastic bag out onto the table. He caressed the bottles through the bag, but he didn't read the names on the prescriptions.

“Just keep an eye out when you're driving,” the Lorax said. “You say it was a lion, but it could've been like a big dog or something, or a kid. I don't want to go to court. You hit a kid, that's homicide. How about eight for you? You can owe me.”

Jamie snatched the pills from the Lorax's greasy hand.

“Everybody owes. I'll pay next time I see you.”

20

Three skinheads lurked in the back of Yuri's bowling alley, staring at all the women throwing heavy stones down perfectly straight lines. Their shouts mixed with the clattering pins.

“You knew my mother, right? Hey, you, thunder thighs! You knew her?”

“Who do you think you're talking to, boy?” Big Tina bellowed. “Thunder thighs?”

One of them seemed to be crying, refusing to follow the other two down to the lanes. His little arms could barely wrap around his chest. The one in front carried a teal bowling ball. The word
JUDGE
scrawled across it in black sharpie. The second boy's skull was bleeding from a half-finished tattoo. The bourbon smell washed over Big Tina as she turned to face the third.

“I said who do you think you're talking to, boy?”

The giant woman towered over a busted disco floor. Her team flexed their ten-pin skills behind her while old men put their cigarettes out on the plastic chairs and told dirty jokes with no punch lines. Their boots looked wet. Their eyes looked wet. A world full of weeping.

“You knew my mom, right? Elvira? Kinda crazy lady. You two used to bowl together.”

Big Tina was only one who went and saw Elvira Moon after the accident, the one who helped with the prescriptions after Elvira got arrested for public nudity at Paulie's Pins. Big Tina had been the one who picked her up from the station whenever they found her wandering the streets, asking for her husband Ted, asking for her boy, her little boy. That was a while ago.

“I don't know what you're—hold on. Oh, Moses. I thought they just up and took you away,” she said. “Jesus. I thought they took you away. Moses, what happened?”

Big Tina tried not to think about Elvira Moon anymore. It was bad enough when she'd quit the Blooming Broads and started her own team. Tina knew Elvira never really forgave her for that. Elvira never understood the bond Tina had formed with Claudia. It wasn't just love, but something else that made Tina's heart stronger.

“No, no, I didn't get taken away,” Moses said. “We just left. Why didn't you ever come to look for her? You helped before. And she was so fucking mad at you, I remember that too.”

Big Tina quit the league for a few years after her colon surgery, but the game called her back. The clatter of pins, the comfy plush seats at Paulie's, the feel of a good twelve-pound ball resting in your palm—all of these things meant home to Big Tina. Bowling alleys were where she fled from the world in her high school days and ever since. Her mother couldn't ask about boys there, couldn't berate her for wearing pants to school. Her father couldn't call her “my favorite ox.” He said it with love, he said it with a smile at the corners of his lips, but it burned her deeply. He'd branded her.

“Well, where did you go? Where is she at now? I had no idea, Moses.”

The clatter of ten pins after a perfect strike could break that image apart. It could drown out her mother and her three sisters. The call for another round of beers and the feel of Claudia's warm back against Big Tina's in the middle of the night made it all seem like someone else's life. Someone who woke up at 2 a.m. and told the mirror she hated herself.

“Of course you didn't. We got used to it, I got used to it,” Moses said.

Big Tina stared at the boy in front of her and his lumpy shaven head. Big Tina was still at the bottom of the rotation. Her last roll had sealed the win. Another splash of pins behind her broke up the stare. Big Tina knew it was a five-seven split based on the sound. She stopped visualizing Caracas and the beautiful heat and the snaking traffic of its bumpy freeways. Whenever the game got too close, she would envision Claudia's home and the vacation they took every February to escape the cold that encased Larkhill. She knew once she could taste the humid air that her next roll would be a strike. But Elvira was invading that now, her long legs and perfect posture splayed out in a mess on the polished hardwood lane. She wasn't wearing underwear, and her face looked like a child had drawn it. Big Tina tried to focus on Moses instead and avoid the sputtering ghost of his mother writhing under the lights.

“I couldn't do it, it was just too much, too much of everything. And Elvira, she was only floating along—what happened to you, Moses?”

“It's not your business, all right?” Moses said. “Have you seen her in the bowling alleys at all, or like around your old apartment? I know she used to end up there sometimes; you'd drop her off at our old place. The townhouse. She said you never came in because of a dog allergy. You seen her anywhere?”

The kid was talking too fast, words tumbling out of his mouth and trampling the ones ahead of them. Sure, Big Tina saw Elvira Moon from time to time, but only in the corner of her eye. Only when she was in the grocery store and some lady kept smashing jars of beets on the floor, claiming they had stolen her keys. Big Tina saw Elvira when she drove downtown into Larkhill and had to wait at the stoplights. She saw the long legs of women in high-heeled boots strut past, but their faces were never as pretty as Elvira's. She was just born tall, with strong, powerful knees. A lot of people forgot how important knees were in bowling. Elvira was the woman in the waiting room with her head done up in bandages, the old man Big Tina saw on the bus to work who had leaves in his beard. Elvira lingered by the curbs and wrote messages to herself on the inside of telephone booths in lipstick. Elvira was everywhere that Big Tina refused to look.

“No, I don't. Is she missing? She hasn't called me,” Big Tina said. “I don't think she'd even know where I was living these days. Kind of dropped off the map after a while.”

“I don't even know if she'd recognize you,” Moses said. “She doesn't recognize me half the time. She doesn't fucking recognize anybody. Only TV or photos. Maybe.”

“I haven't seen her,” Big Tina said. “No, she doesn't come around here. You called hospitals or anything like that? The police?”

“I spent like two hours doing that this morning. We did it again two hours later. Nobody answering on nothing. She ain't around. A six-foot blond woman isn't invisible. You haven't seen her at all though? Nothing? You swear?”

“I haven't seen her in ages. Where are you staying?”

“Outside town, just a little bit. She couldn't really have walked anywhere. Sometimes, she gets her mind back for a bit. She'll say your name, or Dad's or whoever, but she doesn't…she doesn't let me know. You have any idea where she might go?”

“They used to take her in at the hospital,” Big Tina said. “Back when you guys had the house still. You never even left a note, Moses. Did you ever think someone would find you?”

“What fucking hospital?” Moses said. “Where?”

“Old one. No more funding. They shut it down years ago. She's really gone?”

“She wasn't in her room, in the place, anywhere. We already checked the old house, streets, all the places she used to go. We found you, so that'll have to do for now.”

His voice was getting higher in pitch. Big Tina noticed his torn clothes and dirty jacket. Moses smelled like condiments. She tried to think about Caracas and the first time she'd met Claudia instead of the doctors sedating Elvira in a cramped room at the old hospital by the lake. Elvira kept asking Tina why she left, why she couldn't just let them be friends like always, why did she have to take her trophy away? Big Tina focused on Claudia's hips and the way she held a wine glass. So much of the weight hung on her thin wrist. It helped block out Elvira, who would never hold her or tell her she was all that she needed. Elvira liked Big Tina's firm arms and her wide stance, but only because it made the team stronger. It let them win and win again. Half-price wings for life. She only wanted Big Tina for the parts, not the whole.

Elvira had been shopping for a bowler. Big Tina pretended not to see it that way until Claudia came along. She pretended it would only take time, water turning rock to sand. Time and patience were the tools to use. But Claudia never saw Tina as a list of specifications to be fulfilled. She wasn't looking for optimal ball control or unparalleled dexterity. Claudia saw Big Tina in line at the Foodland buying four whole chickens and a bag of corn. She invited herself over for a barbecue, her accent mangling the word between crooked white teeth. Claudia didn't need Big Tina to bowl every Wednesday. Tina hadn't looked back.

“Your turn to roll, Tina,” said one of the girls wearing a purple vest. “You ready?”

“You can just skip me, I'm good, I've already got all your asses in a sling tonight.”

It wasn't like the old days, with the tournaments and the competitive leagues. All the trendsetters had moved on to lawn bowling or water polo. Some of the old alleys had closed and reopened as diners or auto shops. Those closed too as the years passed. Now the alleys were full of old men who smoked cigarettes with extra tar and liked to inhale the cleaning spray they used for shoes straight from the can. The orange chairs had lost their luster and the carpets bled beer. Strobe lights and disco floors sputtered on and off, but the lanes still clattered and the world still ignored them. Big Tina liked it that way. No one came looking for her in these places.

“The hospital was probably…she might have gone there,” Big Tina said.

The flickering green and orange lights announced Rock'n'Bowl was about to begin. Moses's eyes were fading from Tina's face; he wasn't really listening to her anymore.

The hospital pharmacy had been the place where Big Tina realized Elvira was gone from her, gone from this world. Every single shelf was too white, the lights too bright, every pill made to fix something that was wrong with you. There was no smoke, no clatter. That world was stark and bled around the edges like a nail clipped too close to the quick. Big Tina walked the tiny aisles and felt it throb under her skin. People wanted to look you in the eye and examine you in full—like a beached specimen on a steel table.

Elvira had talked to everyone while Big Tina sat and waited for the prescriptions. She explained that her husband never emerged from his room without first being served breakfast, and since she didn't know how to cook she hadn't seen him for years. You got used to it though, Elvira declared. She told stories about the Jolly Green Giant speaking to her in dreams and her long platonic friendship with Bill Cosby, who sometimes needed a weekend away from his family. They talked so much, you know. Bill could never get a word in with those people.

“Fucking closed-up hospital, that's all you've got?” Moses spat. His skull was shining in the orange light. “You shoulda, you shoul-da—fuck it. Useless, you're useless, you know that? She ain't here. The fuckin' loony bin. Fucking bullshit, fat bitch.”

People had stared and whispered to one another in line at the hospital pharmacy. They pointed at Big Tina; they looked at her wrinkled eyes and the thick set of ankles she inherited from her father. They whispered about farm animals and cattle runs and hopeless cases. Elvira was invisible, but everyone could see Big Tina. No one apologized for staring. Under the white light, she felt like she'd been put on display, split down the center.

“Moses, I didn't—you just disappeared, you know,” Big Tina said.

“Tina, it's your turn,” said one of the girls behind her.

Big Tina stopped seeing Elvira after that day at the hospital. She refused to pick up her prescriptions and never went to check in with Dr. Albertson for updates on Elvira's condition. Further mental deterioration—she knew the prognosis would not change. Months passed and Claudia found them a nice apartment overlooking the dead fields north of town, an apartment littered with love letters and bright red plants. Tina lay there at night with Claudia whispering about the future and the world they could build in that two-bedroom apartment. A world unto themselves, with no mention of livestock or grandchildren or illegal mass arrests. Across town, Elvira had dropped pills down the toilet and prayed to Bill Cosby to set her free from the fragile bonds of humanity. The constant flush drowned out her trembling prayers. Moses was in the kitchen heating up soup and talking to a postcard from his father. Big Tina slept through all of this, holding Claudia in her arms.

“I said I'm good, guys. I got your asses beat,” Big Tina said.

When she turned her face from the glowing scoreboard, the three boys were gone. She could see their scabbed skulls headed out the door, their ragged jackets puffed out by the wind. Journey blared from the speakers and a flimsy, sputtering Elvira Moon staggered down the lane toward Big Tina, huffing shoe cleaner and wearing Christmas lights like a sweater around her chest.

Big Tina closed her eyes and picked up the ball. The familiar weight soothed her nerves and realigned her thoughts. Elvira didn't flee, though. Lipstick drawn up and down her thighs, her long hair filled with needles and prescription bottles, the ghostly image asked Big Tina what a woman tasted like. She stood on the polished pine floor with her legs spread wide apart and asked Big Tina what it was like to hold Claudia in the cold. Sunlight was everywhere inside Big Tina's head, but it was too bright—it made her veins glow under the skin. Elvira smiled with neon teeth. One of them short circuited as she spoke. She asked Big Tina once again.

“So close, Tina,” one of the girls cackled as the ball clattered down the gutter.