“That sunrise is God setting his world on fire and we’re born anew out of the ashes,” Angela says. “Every day begins with the promise of the Resurrection.”
Angela is always saying stupid shit like that. Jesus loves you. He is risen. Judge not lest ye be judged. It’s why I fell in love with her. Angela trusts that the world is a rational place built according to God’s plan. She can’t imagine anyone might want to hurt her.
“I love you,” I say.
“So sweet,” she says. “What time are you leaving?”
“Few minutes.”
“I’ll miss you every second,” she says. “Daddy told me they’re opening a Boeing plant down by Charleston. It’d mean no more traveling.”
I hear the door open behind me, and a yawn.
“Brrr,” Karen says. “It’s fucking freezing.”
“I love it out here,” I say, not turning around.
Karen drops into the chair on my right, hands shoved into her armpits, boots unlaced, wearing one of my flannel shirts.
“We wouldn’t have to move,” Angela says. “It’s only a forty-five minute drive.”
“It’s a Nicole Kidman morning,” Karen says, hauling out one of her old jokes. “Pretty to look at but frosty as fuck.”
“I’ve heard that before,” I say, careful to make sure I’m always talking to them both.
“One of the churches I speak at has some guest apartments in Hanahan,” Angela says. “You could stay there if you’re ever too tired to drive back.”
“Think your material’s so fresh?” Karen snaps. “I’ve heard your jokes so many times, I’m about ready to stab you in the balls.”
I smile.
“Trying to get rid of me so soon?” I say to them.
“Oh, sweetheart, no,” Angela says, leaning on my shoulder and resting her hand on my heart. “I’m going to miss listening to this every night.”
“Hell, no,” Karen says, cupping my crotch with one hand. “Your balls are the only part of you I like.”
These are the moments that make my delicate situation worthwhile.
“Want to go upstairs?” I ask. “Say a real good-bye?”
Karen traces the edge of my ear with her tongue. Angela buries her face in my chest and gives a shy nod.
“Let me run to the little boy’s room,” I say. “Meet you there.”
Then I take my coffee cup and leave the two of them on the deck, watching the sun come up over the trees, completely oblivious to each other. I wash my mug and put it on the draining board, then I take a piss, brush my teeth, head for the bedroom.
The sex puts a pepper up my ass and makes fire shoot out my dick. I can’t remember having it any other way.
* * * *
My first jump is from Charleston to St. Louis with a load of generator enclosures. Whenever JT has something over-width, over-height, or overweight, they have me haul the load because I’m a careful guy by nature. Still, they’ve been pressuring me to take a partner again. This time, Danny tries to sweeten the pot by offering me a thousand dollars to train a codriver.
My sanity is worth more than a thousand dollars. Being on the road is the only time I’m alone. When my phone rings, it tells me if it’s Karen or Angela before I put her on speaker so I can relax and talk natural. I’m not giving that up for no one.
Driving long haul suits me. I like systems. I like organization. Every eleven hours I take a mandatory ten-hour break. The computer notifies dispatch every time I turn the key. There’s a governor on the fuel line that won’t let me go above sixty-nine mph. My Qualcomm lets me look at speed, routes, mileage, every single bitty detail. There aren’t any surprises.
Back when I first met Karen, I loved surprises. I was wearing my whiskey-face and throwing punches with some sailors on shore leave in a honky-tonk outside New Orleans when I saw her crawling across the floor on wallet patrol, scooping up cell phones and cash that fell out of our pockets. When the police arrived, I headed out the back door, where I discovered Karen having an intimate encounter with a familiar wallet.
“Finders keepers,” she said.
I pointed out that while her philosophy was punchy, it flew in the face of several hundred years of jurisprudence. She invited me to suck her dick. One hour later, we were in bed, and while I tried my hardest, eventually we gave up and she sucked mine instead. By the time I hit the road again, I was forty hours behind, which isn’t a problem if you’re willing to gobble speed and fake your logbook, which I was happy to do in those days.
I’d never considered myself a one-woman man, but when that haul was over, I found myself back in New Orleans. Life with Karen involved a whole lot of whiskey and a whole lot of fucking. My work schedule was the only fly in our ointment. While I was on the road, I knew that it was highly unlikely she was sitting in front of the TV sewing buttons on my shirts, and consequently, I became overly sensitive. Soon, the time we spent fighting was eating into the time we should have spent fucking, so I went down on one knee and made an honest woman out of her.
With my first big trucking money, I’d bought a piece of land way out past Walterboro and built a house that had sat lonely for the better part of eight years. I moved Karen there, and the novelty of buying furniture and playing Holly Homemaker kept her happy for a while, but before long, the same questions came back to torment me.
“Self,” I would ask, “what does a young woman of Karen’s inclinations get up to in Walterboro while you’re on the road?”
Self did not have a satisfying answer, and soon, the only time we weren’t fighting was when we were blowing rails or I was on the road, and after I failed a piss test, I wasn’t on the road anymore. Our situation quickly deteriorated. Soon Whiskey-Face was joined by his friends Coke-Face, Pill-Face, and Vodka-Face. We’d start fighting early Monday morning, and by late Friday evening, we’d still be fighting.
It all came to a halt one day when I woke up at the crack of dawn, cold and naked in the woods behind my house. At some point in the night, I had apparently burned my pants for warmth, been pleased with the results, and then piled the rest of my clothes on the fire. This must have been a bridge too far for Karen, because she was nowhere to be found. Instead, there was a note from her on the living room wall that read:
EAT SHIT
Impressively, she’d written it in actual shit.
I had to repaint the wall, but then it didn’t match the other walls, so I repainted them, too. That made the rest of the house look drab, so I repainted the entire place. Before I knew it, I’d ripped out the cigarette-scarred carpets, replaced the busted-out balusters on the stairs, hung a new bathroom door to replace the one I’d kicked down in a fit of romantic enthusiasm, and hauled all my furniture to Goodwill. Two months later, I realized I hadn’t had a drink in weeks and I didn’t much want one anymore. When I finished, my house was clean and empty and so was my mind. I got my CDL back in shape, found a job on probationary status with JT Trucking, and hit the road again.
A few years later at a Christmas oyster roast, Danny the dispatcher told me that I was a social misfit who needed a woman to make me less awkward to be around. He suggested his sister and that’s how I met Angela. A year later, Karen came back home without a word, and I’ve been juggling the both of them ever since.
* * * *
Unloading takes forever because all the docks are overbooked, so when I pull up to my house, it’s past three in the morning. I call it Schrödinger’s House because when I’m present, my wife seems to exist in two states simultaneously: as Karen and as Angela. I cut my headlights and roll into the driveway real quiet-like so I don’t wake either one of them up.
Key in the lock, take off my boots, tiptoe into the living room where Karen’s curled up on the sofa, an empty six-pack of Michelob Ultra on the coffee table, TV advertising some kind of rejuvenating cream.
“Hey, baby,” she says, all sleepy. “Missed you.”
Her body is warm and all her hard angles are soft and it isn’t until we’re about to begin round two that I hear Angela on the stairs.
“Robert?” Angela calls down softly. “Is that you?”
She starts walking downstairs as I pull my pants on. “Love ’em and leave ’em,” Karen says.
“I have to take a piss,” I say.
“I hate that phrase,” Angela says as I walk into the hall. “Can I get a kiss first?”
I give her a good one.
“Someone’s excited,” she says.
Then we go upstairs. I know there’ll be hell to pay in the morning for ditching Karen, but after two weeks on the road, I’m not really thinking much about consequences.
* * * *
“I think our house is haunted,” Karen says.
“Do you still love me?” Angela asks.
Karen is cutting her toenails on the couch, which is one more thing I’m going to have to take the rap for if Angela finds any stuck to the carpet. Biological byproducts tend to get noticed once they’re separated from the body, and I’ve had some close calls because Karen is not a big fan of flushing toilets. Angela is folding the laundry, which I’m going to have to pretend I did if Karen wonders how all my laundry wound up back in my drawers.
I ignore them both and keep reading. Ever since Karen came back, I’ve discovered that reading is the perfect pastime. No one demands an answer from a guy who’s got his nose stuck in a book.
“I said,” Karen repeats, snapping off another toenail. “Our house. It is haunted.”
This nail lands on my thigh and I pluck it off with distaste and put it in my pants pocket. It’s thick and yellowed. My father had toenails like this, minus the flaking red nail polish.
“Why do you think that?” I ask them both.
Angela bows her head and studies the interior of the laundry basket. Tears are sliding down her nose and plopping onto my clothes.
“You’re drinking again,” Angela says. “I found the cans this morning. And last night in the living room, I heard you pleasuring yourself. I know I must be doing something wrong as a wife for you to be so unhappy with me.”
“First thing,” Karen says. “I was wearing your red flannel the day you left. I dumped it on the floor by the bed after we fucked, and then half an hour later, I found it hung up on the hanger. Second thing, that spooky Jesus picture on the dresser in the bedroom. The second you leave, I turn it around to face the wall. Later, it’s facing the bed again. That freaks me out, so I put on the alarm and go stay with Clem and Louis. Almost every night you’re gone, the motion detector goes off and ADT has to call me. They woke me up five times.”
That’s bad. Normally, the two of them sort of glide past each other like ships in the night. Karen buys a bottle of Popov, and Angela reaches around it for the cereal. Angela hangs an inspirational Christian painting and Karen assumes I must have put it up before I went on the road. One of them thinks I’m a secret drinker, the other assumes I’m a Jesus freak. But Angela shouldn’t be setting off the alarm. Something’s changing.
“Why do you think that is?” I ask.
“I think it’s a fucking ghost,” Karen says. “I think there’s a ghost in this house, flushing toilets, cleaning up after me like my fucking mother, turning pictures around, setting off the alarm.”
“There’s a dark presence between us,” Angela says. “You’re always distracted. You’re always thinking of someone else. I only get half of you.”
“You know that’s not true,” I say.
“The fuck I do,” Karen says. “I’m getting rid of this ghost, and you can either lead, follow, or get out of the way.”
“Half the time, you don’t even look at me when you talk to me,” Angela says, crying harder. I hate seeing her cry. She’s always been an ugly crier.
“Don’t be like that,” I say, and they both think I’m talking to them.
* * * *
Karen announces she’s going to consult Clem and Louis, her gay friends, on how to get rid of our ghost, since their gayness makes them experts on everything. This gives me a chance to comfort Angela, who is becoming hysterical. I’m in the front hall saying good-bye to Karen while Angela runs upstairs and slams the bedroom door.
“Did you hear that?” Karen asks, pointing at the ceiling.
I shrug. It’s too risky to say anything in the front hall. Sound travels in this house.
“You’re such a punk,” Karen says, then storms out of the house and slams the door behind her.
I turn to head up the stairs and see Angela looking down at me, hands on the banister.
“I didn’t hear you go outside,” she says, wiping her cheeks with the flat of her hand.
“I was going to take a walk,” I say. “But I changed my mind. I owe you an explanation. Last night, I wanted to split a beer to celebrate with you when I got home, but you can’t buy less than a six-pack. Then I got here and you hadn’t bothered to wait up, so I guess I felt kind of ignored and I turned on the TV and before you know it . . .”
Carefully, I approach. She lets me put my hands on her frail shoulders.
“What about the other thing?” she asks. I give her my dumb face. “I heard you in the living room, making those sounds. Am I not enough for you?”
“I was frustrated. You were asleep,” I say. “It won’t happen again. And I’ll go to a meeting tonight. I promise.”
Soon, I’m rubbing her back and making comforting noises. Karen’s probably getting high with her buddies, so I’ve got plenty of time to turn this around. By the time I’m putting two fingers underneath Angela’s chin and turning her face up to mine, she’s starting to breathe harder and her lips are parted. She presses herself to my front and slides her hands into the pockets of my jeans. I remember what’s in there the second her hand jerks back. I twist away too late as, laughing, Angela pulls out the toenail and holds it up between us.
“Gross,” she giggles. “Put them in the toilet, honeybear. Are you saving—”
I’m grabbing for it, but it’s too small, and she sees the nail polish, and her face falls.
“It was in the cab of my truck,” I explain. “Probably one of the other drivers had himself a lot lizard.”
It’s not enough. The channels change and all of a sudden she’s channeling the wrath of God. Apparently, she had her own paranormal activity while I was on the road. Her picture of Jesus kept turning its back on the bed. The alarm kept getting shut off and reset. ADT came to the house five times in the middle of the night for no reason. She found my clothes thrown on the floor. There was a fifth of vodka hidden in the toilet tank. But her explanation differs from Karen’s. Angela accuses me of allowing demonic influences into this house via my alleged infidelity.
I don’t like being accused of things I haven’t done. I don’t like being called a liar. I don’t like being put on trial for a crime I didn’t commit, so I tell her what I think of her behavior, in no uncertain terms. Perhaps I speak more harshly than I intend.
It takes her a while to get herself under control, but eventually, she tells me she’s going to talk to Reverend Gary. She has some serious thinking to do. I tell her I’ll clean up the house, and about an hour after she leaves, I’m getting the laundry put away when Karen walks back in, stoned, a box beneath her arm.
“We’re going to solve this spooky shit right now,” she says, sliding her tobacco tongue into my mouth. “Lookie.”
She shows me the squashed-up box held together with masking tape. OUIJA, it says on the cover.
* * * *
Karen says the kitchen table is the best place to Ouija since it’s in the physical center of the house. The edges of her speech are softened by a beery slur.
“So, now what?” I ask, looking at her over the Parker Brothers board.
“Now we empty our minds,” she says, placing her fingers on the planchette.
“Shouldn’t be hard for you,” I say.
She shoots me the bird. Somehow, I knew she was going to do that. I put my fingers on the planchette and nothing happens. Fifteen minutes of nothing happening later, she breaks out the vodka. I tell her I don’t want any.
“Your ghost showing up anytime soon?” I say. “I want to get to a meeting tonight.”
“Maybe he’s busy,” Karen slurs. “Maybe he’s hauling a big load of sanctimonious bullshit to his wife in North Dakota.”
“Hand me that bottle,” I say.
I’ll do anything to keep the peace.
Another fifteen minutes pass and nothing happens unless you count getting drunk.
“Let’s call it a night,” I tell her.
“In a hurry to go hang with your crackhead buddies at AA?” she asks.
“If you’re not careful, I’m going to start taking your comments personally,” I say.
“Oh, no,” she says. “I’d better watch out or the big pussy might actually do something.”
We both have a couple of drinks from the bottle while we consider the implications of her comment.
“It’s ten o’clock,” I say, taking the high road. “We can watch The Daily Show and go to bed. Nothing good is going to happen tonight.”
“Is that a Christian thing?” she says. “Early to bed, early to rise?”
“Actually,” I say, trying to keep things light, “Benjamin Franklin said that.”
“Judge not,” she says, “lest ye be judged. And all you do is judge, you sanctimonious prick.”
“All you do is drink,” I say.
Karen and I sit there hating each other until Angela comes in and freezes in the doorway, purse over one shoulder, keys in her hand.
“What is that thing doing in my house?” she asks.
The vodka’s got me foggy, so it takes a minute to realize she isn’t talking about Karen.
“I’m just playing,” I say.
“Playing, my ass,” Karen says. “You’ve been judging me for years with your AA, your church, all your shit.”
“It’s a tool of the Devil,” Angela says, her eyes glued to the Ouija board.
“What is it you’re scared of?” I ask.
“You’re changing,” Karen says, and the bottom of her eyes get wet. “And when you realize I’m not changing too, you’re going to ditch me for another woman.”
“You’re inviting evil into this house,” Angela says.
“That’s not on the menu,” I say to both of them. “This is the house that love built. We have our problems, sure, but nothing bad is going to happen.”
“You’ve been drinking,” Angela says, noticing the vodka.
“You’re full of shit,” Karen says.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s play. Let’s play Ouija together and you’ll see there’s no call to be scared.”
Karen makes a dismissive sound and stands up. Angela turns to go. Sometimes, it’s more than I can take.
“Sit right down right this fucking minute!” I shout. “You’re going to sit the fuck down and play the fucking Ouija with me and we’re going to have a nice fucking time.”
Karen freezes. Angela stops. They both look at me scared.
“Please,” I say. “Sit down.”
Angela and Karen sit down next to each other.
“I don’t want to do this,” Angela says. “Please don’t make me do this.”
I look at my two wives sitting across the table from me, their four eyes red and wet.
“It’s okay to be scared,” I say. “But you have to push past your fear.”
Putting my fingers on the planchette, I nod at it encouragingly. Karen crosses her arms. Angela raises her hands, then lowers them.
“Don’t be like that,” I say, then I raise my eyebrows to let them both know I am not to be fucked with right now.
In one of those beautiful moments of synchronicity, they place their fingertips on the planchette simultaneously.
“Now what?” Angela asks.
“Let’s ask the spirit if it has a name,” I say.
“No,” Angela says.
“Spirit, what is your name?” Karen asks.
The planchette slides around the board on its little felt feet and I can’t tell which one of us is steering. It stops on A, then it stops on N, then it stops on G, then it keeps on stopping until it spells a name.
“Who the fuck is Angela?” Karen asks.
“How does it know my name?” Angela asks.
“Ask it,” I say.
“Who’s Angela?” Karen asks.
The planchette burns up the board, and together Karen and Angela spell out two words:
HIS WIFE.
“What the fuck?” Karen asks the board. “What the fuck?” she asks me.
Angela is pale and her lips are trembling. I hate seeing Angela upset. Karen, on the other hand, she can go fuck herself.
“It’s just the subconscious mind of the people playing,” I reassure them. “That’s all it is. You aren’t even aware you’re doing it, but your subconscious mind spells out what you’re thinking with involuntary muscle contractions. So, if you’re scared of something, you spell out what you’re scared of.”
Karen stands up.
“Your fingers are on it,” she says. “Your fingers are on it, so why the fuck are you thinking about some wife named Angela?”
I wish she could be quiet for one minute.
“That’s not true,” Angela says. “I didn’t do that. I didn’t move it. Someone else was moving that thing.”
“Answer me!” Karen screams.
They’re talking too fast for me to figure out a response that’ll suit both of them.
“It’s just a game,” I say. “We don’t have to play.”
“I always thought something was fucked up,” Karen says. “What man lives in an empty house with no furniture? What man doesn’t have any friends and is either in his truck or sitting on the sofa reading a fucking book all the time? Did you kill Angela? Was she your first wife? Or just some truck-stop whore you picked up? Don’t tell me I’m lying. There’s a female presence in this house. I been feeling it for weeks!”
“There are no evil presences,” I say. “There’s no one here but us.”
“You invited something in here,” Angela says. “Your self-pleasure, and your drinking, and I know you haven’t been faithful to me. You let something dark in here with us. You’ve let a demon of lust and addiction into our home.”
These two start carrying on and they have no idea of the pressure I’m under. They have no idea what it feels like to be pulled in two different directions all the time. They have no idea what it’s like to watch every word you say.
“Pray with me,” Angela says, reaching across the table and gripping my wrists while Karen stalks the kitchen, ranting. “Pray with me. There’s something in this house. We’ll pray, then we’ll burn this thing in the backyard.”
“Think I’m stupid?” Karen shouts. “Think I’ve bought your bullshit? I know you been cheating on me from day one, but so fucking what? I can cheat on you anytime I want. You murdered your first wife? I’ll put your ass in prison if you so much as touch a hair on my head. I’ll lock you up, motherfucker!”
Finally, it all gets to be too much.
“I didn’t kill Angela!” I shout.
And I know I’ve made a mistake. Angela’s face crumples, Karen’s eyes light up.
“Why would you say that?” Angela asks. “Why would you say that about me?”
“Then why do you keep talking about her?” Karen asks, and storms out of the room.
I hear Karen slam the door of the downstairs bathroom. Angela jumps.
“What was that?” she asks.
“Wait here,” I say.
I check the bathroom door in the front hall, but Karen’s locked it from the inside. Angela stands in the living room doorway, watching me.
“It’s jammed,” I explain.
“It’s locked, you bastard,” Karen shouts from behind the door.
“I’m leaving this dark place,” Angela says.
“Let me explain,” I say. “There is a perfectly logical explanation.”
But before I can gather my thoughts, she’s backing away from me, shaking her head, hands feeling behind her for something to put between us. My own wife is scared of me, and this isn’t what I meant to have happen at all.
“There’s something in this house,” she says.
“No, it’s nothing—”
“Nothing except a giant cheating asshole who murdered his wife,” Karen screams from the bathroom.
“It’s you,” Angela says. “These things only happen when you’re here.”
I get down on my knees and clasp my hands and say the Lord’s Prayer.
“Let’s pray together,” I say to Angela.
But she’s still backing away. The bathroom door opens behind me and I smell wet shit.
“You’re a fucking psycho,” Karen slurs. “So, let me spell it out for you. We’re finished.”
She goes into the living room and I swear she has a turd in one hand but maybe I’m drunk? I get there just in time to see that it actually is a turd and she’s using it to write on the living room wall:
EAT SHIT
Angela stares at it in horror.
“What the fuck is that?” she asks.
I have never, ever heard my wife cuss before. Karen certainly has a knack for the grand gesture.
“It’s okay, honey,” I explain to Angela. “I can paint over it.”
But she’s running away, and Karen is shouting again, and I need them both to just hold on a minute. Can’t they see that I can fix this if they just stop pulling on me all the time? I get my hands on Karen, or maybe it’s Angela, and I admit I’ve been drinking, so maybe I’m not quite as gentle as I ought to be, because she’s screaming at me, or maybe Karen’s screaming at me, as if this situation is somehow my fault.
Everybody just needs to calm down for a minute and let me think.
* * * *
I’m outside burying something in the treeline, and thank God I brought along that vodka to keep me warm. Karen’s shit is smeared all over my clothes and there’s no way I’m putting these filthy pants in my new washing machine, so I light them on fire, then sit down next to the flames and drink vodka and nod off as I watch them burn. It’s cold out here, but any second, I’m going to get up and go inside and wait for my wife to come home. It’s like Angela said: every day begins with the promise of the Resurrection.