A SATURDAY MORNING when he came in, that alone made the guy look promising. Plus the day was so sunny for October that the taverns must have been slow all over the valley. Nellie saw no wedding ring. No signs of a real bender in progress either, bloody eyes or black veins. She shot Fitzie a look. Later on she more or less apologized: “I know you’d never mess with my game, Fitz.” But the other waitress had to remember—for weeks now Nellie had been worrying about how she was going to make ends meet till New Year’s.
He said he’d seen the satellite dish from the highway and he’d wanted to watch the Series. “It’s always something like that,” she told Fitzie later on. “Something a little herky-jerky-crazy that gets it started.” She gave away the secret deliberately, needing some support herself by then.
But when he first came in, all the standard openers seemed to be working. They seemed to be clicking. Nellie pooh-poohed the dish, cheap and black; the guy came right back with, yeah, looks like an umbrella got caught in a hailstorm. You didn’t usually get that kind of speed around the Drop By Cafe. She hung in—yeah, she said, and it’s about that flimsy—but when Nellie discovered he was rooting for the East Coast team she wasn’t surprised. She went for something fancier, she adjusted the dish so they could watch the World Series in Japanese. He loved it. He said he wanted to leave here knowing the Japanese for “foul ball.” Plenty of time, she said, on a Saturday morning.
“He told me he only got divorced this past summer,” she told Fitzie later. “So I think that would have kept it from getting complicated, between us. Also they never had kids. So I figured with my Wade, the disability, that gave me some leverage.”
Though of course when she told the story she came out tougher than she’d actually felt. Nellie Nails: she didn’t want anything to throw off the situation established between her and Fitzie. At the time, though, she’d found the man a rare one. When he shot her back a dime on the second draft, she’d noticed that even Ernie’s hands were the kind you thought of when you thought of New York. Interesting quick small hands. His lips were better still, when he grinned it was like he’d lost fifteen years. And he had his cagey side. She never picked up where he worked, though the hours made it sound like something over at Oregon State. In fact she found herself getting defensive. Never mind how slow the place looked now, she lied; most weeks she made as much as most of the girls over at the university.
Then she got to the point. Ernie was starting on his burger, he’d said he might as well make a day of it. But when he made some crack about the ballplayers’ uniforms she took the opportunity—with gestures, lip-action, the whole bit—to call attention to the tight red tops she and Fitzie had to wear. She added that some days she was in such a rush that she couldn’t be bothered with a bra. After that she just let him look. She enjoyed the way her breathing made the leotard shift, and she knew that in this light the smoker’s triangle round her mouth wasn’t so pronounced. Why wait? She was the fast one at the Drop By. Behind her the Japanese announcers were having a fit, strange words so short and yappy that they sounded like Nellie’s dog. And she became aware of the entire outsized room as well, bikini-beer ads up on one wall and the cigarette machine against the other, all of it falling into place around this one stretch of eye contact, altogether cool of course and yet sinking its weights through both of them, while she kept the rest of her face set in something a little mouthier than a smile. Fitzie minded her own business down by the grill. A few old lodge types had taken the tables with the best view of the TV. Looks like the game’s a lock, the old guys were saying. No way New York’s going to come back from this.
Except then the satellite hookup shorted out and the wiring caught fire. “I could just strangle that Richter,” she told Fitzie, ten or a dozen times over the next couple weeks. “Getting his brother in-law to do the wiring. He saves a few bucks, and I just may have lost my one chance to give Wade a half-decent Christmas.”
The screen went static, the sound turned to a shriek. Ernie wound up with ketchup in his eyes. The old-timers dropped from their chairs and backtracked gingerly, covering their ears, while Nellie opened the fridge and ducked behind the door. She heard the set pop, but it was a good several seconds more before she noticed the smell. By then the burning plastic overwhelmed even the fridge-stink. She came out of her crouch cupping her face. The old-timers were stumbling over each other at the door, shit noway, lemme out a here. The sunlight was painful off their wind-breakers and rain gear—though Nellie didn’t blink, she didn’t shade her eyes. The pain came out of nowhere so far as she could tell. A spasm, a pang. Something else stung her about all that flimsy look-alike gear, shiny and stitched with the names of factory teams, clubs and schools. Engine Co. #5, Elks, Sisters High. But what was she doing standing blinking at the ones who were already gone? “Help, Nellie for God’s sake help!” Fitzie was shouting. “The damn menu’s on fire!”
“He was nice about it,” she reminded Fitzie later. “At least he didn’t just duck and run with the herd.”
Much later: by now the fire was three weeks past. And Nellie didn’t like the way the other waitress nodded, tonight. It made her worry that she’d been talking too much. Granted, the man was a lost opportunity. He’d never returned. But guys like that had blown through her life before, more than once, more than a couple times. Plus this was after hours. When Nellie got this tired, she couldn’t be sure how she was coming across.
“Calling the fire department,” Fitzie said, “that was really very nice of him.” But she sipped her liquor flat-faced. “Though of course they already knew about it. I mean the guys from number five were sitting right behind him.”
Nellie tried to look like she was checking the place out. Not much to it: the busier ads had been switched off, the jukebox was dark.
“Didn’t that plastic stink, though?” Fitzie said. “Those little letters and numbers. I must’ve fitted them in that menu a thousand times, I never would have believed they’d stink so bad.”
“I could just strangle Richter. That guy was just what I needed.”
“Oh.” Nellie didn’t like the way Fitzie turned to look at her, either. “Forget him, would you? From where I sat he looked like a married man anyway. I know, I know.” Fitzie waved her cigarette. “He said he was divorced, I know. But you still can have that look, even if you’re divorced.”
Nellie waited till her whiskey was at her lips before she spoke. “Signing the papers don’t complete the deal.” She drained the rest of the shot.
“Right. Exactly. So what’re you getting all bent out of shape about, Nell? Social Security gave you that extension, didn’t they?”
“Two more weeks. Two weeks, and then they’re probably going to send someone out to the place to make sure I conform to all their piddly little regulations.”
“Can’t Wade help?”
“Fitzie. Wade isn’t even fourteen yet. This whole goddamn—this whole réévaluation bullshit only came up in the first place because he’s just started high school.” She got off her stool and went for the Johnny Walker. “No, what I need’s a goddamn professor. Somebody over at the university, he would have been perfect for them. He would have written them something on the fucking letterhead.”
Fitzie laughed. Nellie felt the payoff herself, familiar by now, a rush in her chest and a bite in her grin.
“Only thing better than a professor would be if I got myself a man in the state legislature.” She was twisting the pourer out of the scotch, working against the bind at the leotard’s armpits. “I mean, that’s what politics is all about, right? Just start messing round with some lightweight up in fucking Salem. Rig the whole damn game in my favor.”
The pourer came free and she drank from the bottle. Fitzie slapped a hand to her mouth, she loved it.
“Nellie Nails,” she said.
Nellie understood what the other waitress got out of the deal. Fitzie’s Jack was one of the few married men she’d known that long who’d never made a play for her. Nellie to them was the local exotica. She kept them feeling hip, a little bad themselves. Oh, Jack might try and tease Nellie. He might recite her two rules for handling men. One, if you’re sleeping with a guy never lie to him, and two, be sure to let him know from the start exactly what sort of a project he is. But when Jack had finished reciting his grin would be soft, impressed. Whoa Nellie, he’d say. It’s like you’ve got different muscles from the rest of us. She’d only shrug. Her main thing was simple after all: just, never let a guy feel like he’s settled in. If a guy’s a rehab case, tell him he’s a rehab case, and he’ll stay a case till he’s re-habbed enough to walk away on his own. If he’s a little boy who needs to do some growing up, tell him so even if he happens to be sitting with the gang from high school. That way—though this part of the system, she wasn’t so clear on—before the men moved on they always left her with something practical.
She wasn’t so clear on just why. But it had gone on since Wade had first been accurately diagnosed. The first going-away present had been drugs, speed fresh from the lab. Of course the boy had expected Nellie to use it herself, eating your own was the party line. But she’d already sworn off the hard stuff by then and she’d needed the money more. Since that time, she’d received parting gifts of everything from carpentry around the trailer to free service at the Bug Works. She’d even picked up the occasional sale appliance. It was as if the guys couldn’t wave goodbye till their fingers were bruised from splitting wood or stained with axle grease. Everything from rails on either side of the toilet to a cable hookup for the trailer. Why on earth—? Not that Nellie was complaining, no way Jose. But the strictness of the give-and-take had caused her aggravation. Lately especially, it had led to rough stuff. Not that anyone had actually laid a hand on her, nobody had done that since before Wade was born. But there’d been trouble nonetheless, strange and private trouble, the kind of thing she didn’t care to let a drinking companion hear about.
Wade’s father for instance still came through Philomath now and again, selling office supplies, and lately even he’d made it hard on her. This past summer, they’d wound up going halfsies on a new wheelchair. And beforehand she’d laid it down plain as newsprint that the project this time would be Memory Lane. She plucked the gray hairs from his mustache and called him good old Rustyroo. She reminisced about the blues crowd they’d run with, the record contract he’d been forever on the verge of signing. “How many girls’d you score with that record contract?” But at the end, as they headed up to Salem to get the chair, he turned desperate. He insisted they stop at a motel off I-5. Red-flecked wallpaper straight out of The Wild, Wild West, neon that growled so loudly she couldn’t concentrate. And yet the sex wasn’t the thing for him. The sex was incidental. The whole time there all the father could talk about was following her home after the trip in order to help set the chair up in the trailer.
She was well over the speed limit the rest of the way. When she parked she propped the checkbook on the steering wheel and wrote out one for her half. As she hustled across the lot the screek of passing carts made the perfect soundtrack. Then once he arrived she wouldn’t let him in the store, he had to hear it right there on the entrance ramp. Take a hike, Russell.
“Lighten up, Nellie. Please.” By now he was pathetic, looking for help up and down the nearby rows of cars. It only made her realize that this was another thing she hated about Salem. What kind of a state capital was it, when even in the middle of the city you never heard shouting in public?
“Wade wasn’t any part of the deal, mister. Now just take your money and go.”
“Nellie, Nellie…I realize I’ve always played the bad guy, okay? It went over big with the sorority girls, you know what I mean. But now, please. I haven’t seen the boy in five years.”
“Why don’t you send him your record?” she said.
No, people like Jack and Fitzie didn’t have the whole story. Nellie suffered complications. She suffered breakdowns; she was getting nowhere fast with the Social Security. Her lawyer, forget it. The man at least had finally left his wife. But the next time he and Nellie had gotten together, she’d had to back him off with something almost as mean as what she’d told Rusty. Now whenever she called his office, the secretary said he was out. The last straw came when the girl tried to tell her he was over in Corvallis, watching the Beavers.
Nellie checked the kitchen clock. Not quite 10:30.
“I don’t mean he’s actually watching them play,” the secretary went on. But Nellie wasn’t interested, all she could think was: Basketball already? No more World Series?
“No no, of course he’s not watching the team play. He’s talking with the men in charge over there. He’s—“
Nellie hung up. The men in charge.
Four days remained before the réévaluation. She figured she could swear off the booze that long. She did a thorough fall housecleaning, even raking her turnoff (the trailer park was never more than half-full anyway; she’d taken an isolated lot in the back) and dumping her leaves in the woods. She bought Elmer’s and reglued the maple-colored stickum where it had peeled from the kitchen plywood, the cupboard-doors under the sink especially. And she crocheted. She’d never been able to take daytime TV, the soaps made her sneer and the game shows got her angry. Instead there’d been afghans, dress mesh tops, or magnet-holders like the anvils and cherries that held the calendar to the refrigerator door. There’d been the liner for the dog’s basket, designed so the section that lapped outside the opening bore his name, Lurid Romance. Now she started a new bedspread for Wade. She kept the stitching tight, so his fingers wouldn’t catch in the eyes. Of course it made her think of Christmas, a bedspread wasn’t much of a present, but then the dog got interested, that was fun. The animal would study her hands as they worked the hook and needle. Finally he’d lay one paw on her knee, heavily.
“Try my Mom, Lurid,” Nellie would say. “I think my Mom would let the cows play with the yarn, if they wanted.”
Still the day of the appointment she woke before five, and she couldn’t stand the mirror. Looked like she’d spent the night trying to fit her face in a vise. She decided to drop Wade at school herself, swapping a few one-liners with the boy always steadied her nerves. But he hadn’t slept well either. His eyes—Nellie recalled the doctor’s word, canthus. Another nitpick bastard. So after that first look she couldn’t seem to take the boy in, entirely. As if he’d grown bigger overnight. She saw how the coffee made him tremble, but she took his word for it when he said it was just that he’d never taken it black before.
Once they were out on Route 20, never mind that they had to keep his chair strapped to the wall behind the driver’s seat, Wade held up his end of the deal. Never mind, also, that he didn’t quite know the difference yet between the locker-room gonzo and the man of the house. He made sure she could see him in the rear-view. He worked up some pretty good faces, Bozo to Godzilla. Nellie however couldn’t think of a decent comeback. She couldn’t even be sure of her smile.
“Mom, come on,” he said at last. “Look on the bright side. In five years we’ll all be overrun by the Sandinistas anyway.”
But when he said “Sandinista” it was obvious that his throat muscles were giving him trouble again, it sounded to her like “son hysteria.” Even after she’d returned to the trailer, the winter mung in the floorboards reminded her too much of Wade in the bus. The chill had her aching for a drink. She lit a joint and poured coffee. She wound up out on the back stoop, staring up warily at the coastal hills.
This time of year you had fog every morning. It made the forest black at the horizon, roadless. After a few minutes, she recalled the guy who’d given her the dope. The guy had sketched directions to his place, grinning fiercely as the map took shape, grinning and telling her that every night was party night up in the hills. Every night, girl. After all the troopers might come rapping at your door any time, that’s why you kept the keys in the truck and the Dobermans hungry. Nellie discovered that she was murmuring the stuff’s name. “Red-haired Indica,” tongue-full words, they had her retasting her coffee. Strange that the landscape looked black but what they grew there was red. But her laughter sounded papery, her perspective was off. The hills had grown bigger at the peak than at the bottom. She tried repeating different words: my home, my comfort. There was a throb like a bus engine.
Then Nellie had gotten no farther than bending over the yarn bag when the knock came at the door. So soon? Her hands were still cold, the dog still outside. When she found out it was in fact the Social Security, she could only go for her purse, her compact and brush.
“I’m sorry I’m early, I don’t know the roads yet.” The man’s voice was tin, behind the shut door. “I expected it would take longer, everybody said the place was so far out.”
“Far out? What does that mean, far out?”
“At the office. The people there all—“
“Oh the office, the office!” Now she was starting to catch up. Her lips and mouth looked so young and hot, it made her remember that the compact mirror bulged a little, it made her realize how furious she was. “That’s all you people care about, is the office.”
“Wait a minute, Miss Therow. Please. If you’d just open the door—“
“The office and your goddamn regulations.” Next the hair, why not? Get one thing right this morning at least. “I mean you come out here with your regulations, and meantime I’m on this side doing what I can, on my own—but neither of us is really what this is all about, are we? Really, this is about Wade.”
“Uhh. Well he’s who the money’s intended for, yes.”
“So what are you doing here, then? What are you poking around in my private life for?” Her wave was coming out the way she liked, airy and full over her right ear. “Listen, my son has athetosic cerebral palsy. His muscle control come and goes. Sometimes it looks like he could almost go out for the Babe Ruth League, sometimes he has one of his seizures. It’s a birth defect, it happened when I was carrying him. Now what the hell else do you need to know? Honestly. What the hell brings all you people barging in on me all the time?”
“Miss Therow, come on. One thing for sure, I’m not here to blame you.”
“Blame me? Blame me?” Obviously the guy had it in for her. “Listen, brother. You ought to be here when Wade has one of his seizures. I’d like to see what you’d do when it gets that real. I’d like to see if you’d get so picky about dotting every ‘i’ and crossing every ‘t’ then.”
Wetting a fingertip, she did a last adjustment at the edges of her blush-on. If this joker was going to make her go to court to get her money, she was at least going to get the satisfaction of making him ache for what he couldn’t have.
“Now I ask you.” She whipped open the door. “Compared to Wade, what does, does either of us…”
The heat in her face changed. She’d come out shaking her fist, the one with the compact in it; now her hand dropped so limply that when the dog rushed in, the plastic grip was knocked away.
“Ernie?” she asked. “From over at the Drop By?”
He still had that great teenage smile. “I saw the name on the form. I had to come out here, see if it was really what I thought.”
University hours: he said he could stay through lunch if she wanted. “When you work for the state,” he said, “you can always give the apparatus a little fine-tuning.” And there it was, the other university thing about him, talk as slick as a game of Frisbee. A line like that in fact made the guy seem a little spooky. She took him on a tour of the trailer, stick to business, sure. She got the folder of Wade’s medical reports from the file in the bedroom closet. But though Ernie gabbed the whole way, it was all one-liners, nothing she could get a hold of. When they got back to the kitchen, he actually seemed more interested in the dog. She joked back, part red spaniel and part cannonball, but she figured that if they were going to get anywhere it was up to her. As she got out the butter cookies she brought up their last meeting, how long had it been. She tried to keep them headed in the right direction.
“Ahh, Nellie. I guess I might as well ’fess up. The night after I met you, she called me.”
“Still something there, huh?”
“Something—something won’t give, yeah. Oh it’s all on my side, whatever it is, I know that much. I know on her side, she’s just being nice to me.”
“Oh? You just have a birthday or something?”
That got him grinning differently. And the wheels were turning on her end as well, the hangup about his ex might come in handy some time, with Fitzie if not with the guy himself. But then: “Don’t try to be funny, Nellie. I’m the funny guy here. I practically get paid to be funny.”
And with that he was off on a riff about his work, explaining how the job had been part of the trouble between him and his wife. Not that he wasn’t sending other signals at the same time. Whenever he paused, he’d stroke his chest, slowly. She still noticed his belly, that old-folkie turtleneck didn’t fool her. But she played along, hooking an arm over the back of her chair and keeping her chin high. Look me over. And yet she couldn’t be sure that was really what they had going here. Talking about the job and the wife was a way to get intimate, sure. But since when did a guy on the make ever come on so soft and nervous?
“Believe me, Nellie, I’m so sorry my wife never heard what I was trying to tell her.” Shrug, stroke the chest. “See, what other people would call being selfless? I would say that was all just part of my job. I mean just sticking to the rules of my job, I have to be selfless.” At the Drop By she’d liked his hands; now they seemed faggy. “That’s politics, right? According to the rules, you have to be this very nice, funny guy.” This was the second time Nellie had noticed him whipping round his wrist, snap snap, trying to spin his watch back face-up.
“And someone like my wife, she kept expecting that one day I’d break down and start screaming. Like I really hated welfare mothers or something. I swear to God, she wanted me to start screaming at the end.”
Welfare mothers? By the time the conversation shifted to Nellie’s job, she wasn’t sure how to play it. He’d started working his lips, smiling then pouting, but by now the sex question seemed like the last thing she should be worrying about. A parent couldn’t take home much above zero if they wanted to get the Supplemental. She told him the truth, she didn’t make anything near those girls at the university.
“Most weeks,” she said, “I carry my keys in my pocket just so I can feel a little weight in there.” But the joke did nothing for her, her chin had dropped. Here was the hard part. Laying out how little she had and how much she needed—her grin had gone mean, smoke-sour—it threw her so much that at first she missed what Ernie was saying.
“So, Nellie, you don’t even have to worry about that part of it.”
“What?” Though she believed she understood already, her head had come up again. “Ernie, are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Well actually, by the time you finished showing me around I’d made my decision on that part. I’ll sign the approvals before, ah, before we’re through here.”
“S.S.I.?”
“You’ll continue to receive the full amount. Sure.”
Nellie got a little careless. She grinned so wide and happily that it gave him something on her, this was supposed to be business. Her hands wandered too. She was patting his forearm, total turnaround from fifteen seconds ago, while she fumbled her thanks. “Well well, Ernie, well hey….” Though of course the man didn’t have the kind of reactions you’d expect. It all just seemed to make him nervous. “Nellie, come on, I only wanted to get that part behind us.” That part? “Oh yeah?” she asked. “Well what’d you have in mind for the next part?” Why not, after the rest had been so herky-jerky-crazy? Ernie started wringing his watch into place again. “Ahh, I mean I just wanted to put your mind at rest, so far as the state’s concerned—“
At which the dog got into it. Lurid couldn’t take it any longer: Ernie held a cookie in his watch-hand. The mutt sprang and got one of the saucers as well. A blur of hair and teeth, a splatch of plastic, and then Ernie was out of his chair with his fingers curled at his neck and coffee seeping down his thighs.
“I know you weren’t expecting me,” he said.
And she was giggling, making it worse. She wouldn’t have had the strength to haul the animal to the door if the place hadn’t been so small.
“Lurid,” she managed, “Lurid! Get out of here.” Ernie trailed behind her, so close that when she shut the door on the dog she hardly had room to stand.
“You have a dog named Lourdes?” he asked. “Like the place in France, Lourdes?”
The real laughter, too much for an answer. She needed to hang on his neck a moment, a long moment, maybe an entire minute or so regaining her breath while in the contact from neck to knee she made clear to him that before he left today they were going to have to see this thing through. Too fast? She didn’t want to hear it, they weren’t in high school. She could put the impulse in its place—Red-haired Indica, sure sure—and likewise Ernie insisted that they sign the forms first. He even came out with this incredibly formal black pen. She had to ask, “Richard Nixon ever own one of these?” He laughed so wildly she was afraid he’d break her hash-pipe. She went back with that thing, pretty little Moroccan cherry wood. But as he choked down his next hit she believed she had her project for the man: “Who’s the funny guy here, Ernie? You think you’re the smart mouth? Well we’ll just see, we’ll just see.” The wimps who nitpicked about moving too fast, they thought control could mean only one thing. They didn’t realize how far a person could go.
He charmed their pants off at the Drop By. Some nights it might be just her and Fitzie and a couple of the lodge types, the kind of men who didn’t even bother to unbutton their jackets, and still as soon as Ernie hit the scene he’d make it seem like a party. The game everyone liked best was New York vs. Out West.
“Black bars, Ernie? You sayin’ you actually walked right into bars that had nothin’ but black people in ’em?”
“It’s all right. I had my welfare checks to protect me.”
“Ernie…are you tellin’ me people actually talk when they eat a meal, back there? They actually sit around the dinner table and talk?”
“That’s right, guys. Sometimes when I’m in a restaurant out here I start looking around for the sign. You know, the sign. ’Quiet Please. People Eating.’”
Yes, it appeared to be happening just the way she’d set it up. A thing of one-liners, breezing along on the culture shock. The word Nellie used was assimilation. “When he realizes he’s not the only smart mouth to make it across the Great Divide,” she told Fitzie, “then he’ll move on.” In this way too she could justify him buddying up to Wade. Now and again Ernie picked up the boy at school, and after dinner they sat talking basketball. The two of them had even established a running argument. Ernie claimed that pro ball was the only kind that mattered, and of course the only organizations that really knew what they were doing were Boston and Philadelphia (though she was over the sink pretending not to listen, Nellie had to grin; God she could see his lines coming so clearly sometimes). Wade meantime pumped for the college game. And if Ernie insisted on talking the pros, hey, how about those Lakers? Assimilation. Ernie bought himself a decent pair of hiking boots and replaced his over-the-shoulder bag with a Beaver orange backpack. “The man’s sure getting with the program,” Fitzie said. “Zip, zip.”
Nonetheless all of this left Nellie once more with trouble she didn’t know how to talk about. Zip, zip was the problem. She’d been sleeping with the man how long now, three weeks? And already he was out buying a new outfit. He was playing Papa, he was asking to meet her friends. In fact when it became clear that Nellie didn’t have the kind of friends he was after—no one so close; no one who’d drop over and stay late—the result was something like a fight. Something like. What else should she call it when, after a couple nights of it, she was left combing all these quips and turns of phrase out of her overworked nerves? But when you were actually talking to the guy, it seemed he’d hardly laid a hand on you. Just, suddenly she would realize that he’d worked her job into every conversation. Her “so-called job.” But this had gotten started at the Drop By after all; if he was so upset about her working he could have reported it the first time her name came across his desk. Instead, he came hinting and fluttering around. “If someone back at the office wanted to kick up a fuss, about your so-called job.…” Eyebrows up, significant pout. The first time Nellie fully understood what he was saying, she went straight for the heavy artillery.
“What if this got out?” she shouted.
She’d been bent over, lighting the incense candle; now she gestured round the bedroom with it, agitated enough to put out the flame. “What about that, hey Ernie? Think they’d like to know you’ve been popping one of your cases?”
She should have known. Ernie laughed. He took the matches from her and stood unnecessarily close, getting one of his own hands around the squat red candle as he relit it.
“Popping?” he said. “Last woman I did this with, we were consummating our marriage. Now it’s just, popping?”
Admit it: she hadn’t known too many like him. Most guys she’d been with, the first time they argued, that was the death knell. In fact most guys she’d been with couldn’t argue. Their emotional baggage was too much, kick over just one piece and next thing you know the guy would be stamping off to his truck. Nellie would watch them from her stoop, still mouthing their sawed-off insults after the ignition had roared on. But Ernie now, watching him argue was like watching him eat. Only the good leaf lettuce, see Nellie, and God not that mustard; try some Nance’s. Or: see taste the beef, Nellie, you don’t have to have money to eat decent Chinese. You’ve just got to start the marinade the night before. She’d told him that Wade was the reason they could never meet at his place, when in fact what stopped her was this, his absolute killer instinct for quibbling. Sifting the facts through his active fingers and turning up yes partly this, but also partly that. Yes just a so-called job, but also maybe some serious trouble over in the Albany office. Quips and turns of phrase. On his turf, Nellie figured she’d be overwhelmed.
Even the way he’d wriggled out of the shouting match over the candle, the wisecrack comparing his ex to Nellie—that too started pitching around uncomfortably. Not till afterwards of course, when she stood by the sink trying to keep it quiet, using a washcloth rather than taking a shower. Then she started to think: on the one hand consummating a marriage, on the other hand merely popping. Who was this guy? Since when was that their only choice? Even her lawyer hadn’t gotten in such subtle digs and irks.
Not that Nellie was completely in the dark about him. She’d seen some things like this before. “I mean,” she told Fitzie, “it is so obvious that he’s just gotten a divorce. It’s like a goddamn billboard. He has to keep punching your buttons because otherwise he feels helpless.”
After hours again, Johnny Walker Red, Fitzie nodded but kept on setting up tomorrow’s menu, slipping letters into the new board.
“He just feels—totally helpless,” Nellie said. “That’s what makes divorced guys such a drag.”
Fitzie only snorted. She’d moved on to the numbers, and Nellie found the red digits aggravating somehow, a reminder of the night before. Ernie had inadvertently put a foot through one of the sliding cupboard doors at the head of the bed. The trailer panelling was nothing but pressed cardboard, cheap and lightweight as the Drop By menu, and the bedroom walls were warped to boot. Though last night, none of that had bothered her any. On the contrary, Nellie had gone ahead and kicked in the other door. Howling with laughter, forgetting even Wade for a moment.
“You know, I think about his ex sometimes,” she said. “That poor woman.” Her sneer felt natural, Fitzie’s snort was more satisfying.
“Because I mean, he hasn’t really sprung her on me yet. Oh I’ve got the basics, everybody feels guilty. Sure. But I’d like to really—I’d like to get my hands on where the real breakdown was. Then I’d know something.”
“I don’t see how it’ll ever get that far.”
Fitzie had gone back to the other box. Fingering up black letters, it took her a while to realize Nellie was staring. “Well I just don’t see it, Nellie. You already got what you wanted.”
Nellie got both arms up on the bar. “Did I ask him to put the papers through on me?”
“Nellie, come on. Everybody knows—“
“Did I ask him to? Did I?”
“What are you getting so upset about? I’m just saying you already got what you were in it for.”
“Fitzie, the last time I asked a man for money was when Wade was born. And that’s the last time I’m going to.”
“So? So that’s just what I’m saying. This whole thing started because you needed some way to get through Christmas. And now that you got it, if you’re not going to ask for anything else I don’t see how you’re ever going to find out about his ex-wife. Not Nellie Nails.”
“Oh, so now you’re going to tell me what I should do. You. Fitzie Faithful.”
Fitzie’s look shortened. She tongued her front teeth, thit, and returned to the toy-like letters and prices.
Still it was another week at least, three or four more times with the incense candle going and Ernie leaving his curls all over her neck and chest, before Wade gave her the kick she needed in order to make a move. Wade, as always. Before she’d started tending bar, same thing, she’d needed his go-ahead. Mom I’m old enough. This time, Ernie offered to take the boy Christmas shopping in Portland, and Wade just couldn’t handle it. He’d already taken on managing the basketball JV’s, something that had come out of all that sports-talk with the man.
“And Christmas shopping on top of that?” she told Fitzie. “In Portland? I mean, I shouldn’t even have waited till they brought Wade home from that exhibition game. As soon as Ernie sprang that one on us I should have said no, this was getting much too serious. Too serious on Ernie’s end I mean.”
At least tonight Fitzie wasn’t diddling around with the menu board. Nellie had let her know to begin with that it was some heavy-duty news, and the other waitress hardly broke eye contact to light a cigarette.
“But I blame myself, Fitzie. I blame myself. They had to bring Wade home, first basketball game of the year and he’s like totally stressed out—he had to go through that before I realized the kind of pressure we were under.”
The worst was how the boy tried to giggle his way through it. M-Mom, I’m afraid there’s been an accident. This, when she could see he’d had to borrow one of the team’s sweat pants for the ride home. Of course for months he’d been warning her that he wasn’t going to haul around that stupid waste bag all the time any more. In front of the coach, Nellie had lifted Wade’s chin, checked out his eyes. In fact she would have taken him off the team then and there, if it hadn’t been for that coach.
“I mean Fitzie, who does that guy think he is? Big shot high-school junior varsity basketball coach.” It made no difference that she’d suffered through his kind of thing before, all that smug I’m-so-sorry. You never got used to how people wanted to score points off the Bad Girl. “To hear him talk, you’d think he had a hotline to George Bush himself.”
And Wade, well. This was all about him anyway, right? “The last thing he told me before he went to bed, the first thing he said when he got up—Wade really wants to stay on that team. So I figure I know the boy, it’s worth the risk.” But when it came to going out with Ernie, she’d laid down the law. No way.
“I mean I even called Ernie at the office to let him know. I even left a message, so the other people there would see it.” She shook her head, crick-crick against the long night’s ache.
“So that’s your heavy-duty news? That’s not so—“
“Hold on, hold on. It gets better.” Fitzie was right, though; this wasn’t coming out nearly hard enough. “I mean that man—I might as well be trying to stop a fucking bulldozer. Swear to God. The next time Ernie comes over, the very next time, he starts in trying to get around me.” Ernie had suggested another kind of trip, all three of them together. “Some kind of benefit concert down in Eugene. I didn’t get it all, something for the homeless.” Still, that much had only left her worn down, worn and unsure; she hadn’t gotten angry with the man till Wade had gone to bed. “See, once Wade’s out of the way, the guy starts pulling all this nostalgia stuff on me. You know. Like, ‘Some of your old crowd should be at the concert, Nellie.’ Like, ‘Some of the people you took drugs with, Nellie. They should be there.’ I mean, he was asking for it after he said that.”
Fitzie kept her look set, drawing smoke.
“Some of the people I took drugs with, Jesus Christ on a crutch. If there’s one thing that really fries my ass…” “What’d you pull on him, Nellie?”
“Oh.” She fought down a shiver, pretending to shrug. “Wade’s father came back through town a couple days ago. Him and me we went to the old motel. Then after that, you know me, Fitzie. I had to stick by my rules.”
And she was able to look the other waitress in the face, another taste of Johnny Walker was all it took. The signs were good, just what Nellie had hoped for. Plainly the delay in getting to the point hadn’t cost her, Fitzie was going through such changes. First she was shocked (“You told Ernie? You told him?”), then she was smart. The cigarette and the shot glass seemed suddenly much too delicate for such a big unstable body. Nellie got some of the old hardball payoff, especially after a fresh mouthful.
“Nellie Nellie girl. Sometimes you scare me.”
“I can’t out-talk the guy, Fitzie. I have to give him that, he’s one guy I just can’t out-talk.”
Some of the old payoff, sure. But also the other woman’s face sagged so badly by two in the morning. Had Nellie actually given her such a tumble, or was it just that Fitzie’s eyes had gone pouchy, her neck was starting to flap? “Nellie Nellie,” she was saying. “Whoa. Sometimes I think you should live up in those hills. I mean it. You should take Wade out of school before he gets too big to leave you, and you should go hide out up there with the growers. You know who I mean, the people up there who sell sensamilla. You went with Rusty to the motel?”
Nellie lowered her eyes but kept her grin fixed.
“How’d he take it, anyway?”
Through the red liquor, it looked as if her fingers were broken. Still the shrug came easy: “Ernie? You notice he didn’t bring his act in here tonight.” Then, drinking, she glared across the ungainly dim lounge and allowed herself to sink at last into the low-grade soreness that had nagged at her since she’d come in. Such a dud joint. Those lamp-cages along the ceiling, filthy with grease, the lamest kind of play for class. Especially combined with the cheesecake shots for Red Hook Ale, frat-house stuff. You’d think there’d be some decent highway trade at a place along Route 20. But it was over a year now since Richter had made them wear these damn tit-shakers, and the most interesting guy who’d stopped to talk—she admitted it, sank into it—was Ernie. How could she help but miss him? On her break tonight, when she’d called Wade, same thing. Tonight when he’d started in on his usual round of cracks about her boyfriends, it’d stung so much she couldn’t even think to change the subject. High school had turned him into such a wise guy. And much as she needed that smart mouth sometimes, tonight as she’d listened she hadn’t been able to think. She hadn’t been able to tell the boy that Ernie most likely wouldn’t be coming by any more. She’d sat with the phone at her neck, buffing her nails with a bar rag, working till the red polish was hot. Nellie didn’t like to dwell on the sex in these things. She didn’t like the idea that at the heart of all her machinations and teases there was nothing but a few soaked minutes of wildcat clutches and grunts. Kicking out the cupboard doors. More soreness just to think of it tonight. But then Nellie herself had been the one to keep a running tab on Ernie’s performances, so regular that now she could probably remember every tumble. If you assigned a rating, it helped you maintain control.
So how was she supposed to handle it when the next morning, Sunday morning, Ernie showed up to make brunch? As if nothing had happened, sure. Except of course he’d come banging at the door before ten o’clock. While Nellie stumbled to get it she was fighting off paranoia, the FBI or a government crackdown. Ernie brushed past her and went into his setup like a pinball, so quick that at first she didn’t notice how carefully he was checking the place out.
“Don’t worry,” she croaked. “Nobody else spent…”
But before she could finish Wade hauled himself out of his bedroom, skipping the wheelchair because he didn’t want to miss anything. Nellie settled on a kitchen chair. She hardly glanced at the pack of Camels Ernie tossed onto her place-mat. Keep the priorities straight, check the boy out.
Like most of the c.p. victims she’d seen, Wade had a handsome head. She could read his eyes so well because they were so sensitive, with the kind of wide, slow lids that would be sexy on another man. His nose was large enough to give the rest a center, and while Wade hadn’t stopped grinning since he’d seen that it was Ernie, his lips were so bright and defined that he didn’t look goofy. When she’d finished her onceover—the strain told: the skin under one eye was twitching and that lid drooped—Nellie rose and got his juice and vitamins from the fridge. She took one of his unbreakable cups from the rack and fitted it into the boy’s better hand; she made sure to slip the index and middle fingers inside the handle together.
Ernie kept up the hustle. The radio had gone on, some bang-the-can blues out of a college station somewhere, and he worked around Nellie and Wade as if the kitchen were house-sized. Even singeing a finger on the coffeepot didn’t stop him. What sort of a person wakes up ready to rock? Wade made a crack about the burn throwing off his aim, and in another minute they were trading ball scores. Just how was Nellie supposed to handle it? She took a cup of Ernie’s “earthquake bean”—Italian and Maxwell House, at least she’d had it before. The eggs were steaming spiky with dill in front of her and she was working up to them, nearly done with her first cigarette, when Nellie realized the conversation had gotten round to Mom.
“Wouldn’t you like it if Mom here went back to college?” Ernie was saying. “Wouldn’t you like to say, ’My Mom the bachelor?’”
Wearily she made a face. “Ernie, do we have to go through this?”
“Go through this? Gnarly girl, go through this?” God he was hungry for an argument. “How can you call this anything after what you’ve been through for the last ten years?”
“Ernie,” the best she could manage was trying to be reasonable. “You just got finished with one catastrophe. What have you got to prove, that you have to go straight into another?”
“Mom,” Wade said. “Come on, never mind that stuff now. Tell him about what happened with your comp teacher.”
“I can imagine.” Ernie opened the Sports, flat-faced.
Nellie had to laugh, the nasty thought starting to warm her up at last. “Oh Ernie. Honestly. You think I—“
“Mo-om. Come on. Tell him.” Wade’s robe-sleeve flopped over his hand when he tried to point. “And Ernie, you listen. Mom tells a great story when she gets into it.”
Okay, made as much sense as anything else this morning. Nellie’s comp teacher. “Talk about having something to prove. The guy wore a coat and tie and like, serious dress slacks in June. In June. I mean I know he can’t be making more than 12 K a year.” She noticed that while Ernie kept his eyes on the scores, he’d held one page so long that the butter on his burnt finger had started soaking into the print. “And then one day he starts telling the whole class about how he and his wife are trying to have a baby.” That got his head up.
Wade was giggling. “Listen, Ernie. The best part is when she starts foaming at the mouth.”
“Right in front of the whole class.” Nellie liked that last crack herself; she figured she could risk a piece of bacon. “I had to wonder, was this Writing 121 or Sex Education?
“I mean, imagine if a guy like that walked into the Drop By. You’d see through him right away, right? But up there in front of the blackboard, dress slacks in June. The guy actually comes across like he’s somebody who knows something. And he stands there, and he has the nerve to tell us that he and his wife have it all planned. I mean I’m sitting right there and he has the nerve to say that if they don’t have a kid in the next year they’re not going to have one at all, because it would increase the percentile risk of disability. Increase the percentile risk!”
Wade was laughing, Ernie grinning. He’d worked a hand up under his turtleneck, scratching for effect.
“Very next class I brought in Wade. Oh yeah, I hauled Wade in there front and center and I said, ‘This is my son.’”
“It was beautiful,” Wade crowed. “Really Ernie, I wish you could have seen it. Every time the guy tried to write on the blackboard he misspelled another word.”
Now Ernie had begun laughing, Wade had got him into it. And she’d talked enough to blow off a little anger, so at last Nellie caught on to what the boy had been doing. Talking slick—“the guy.” Setting up the rules for this part of the conversation and then following them through. Wade was even playing along with Ernie’s touch-game, his better hand under his robe. Grinning smart and happy, father and son. And so here it came, a classic mybaby flash. Nellie never got used to them. Start with mybaby, mybaby and somehow in the same moment see him in the computer lab or behind the biggest desk at a government agency; start with picturing his disease as if the muscles drained from his arms and legs had to be dragged behind him in a sack, rotting and bleeding forever, but at the same time imagine a day when the c.p. might be nothing more than an offhand chuckle, a one-liner like “It was harder on my mother than it was on me.” Grinning smart and happy.
Her eggs had gone cold, that helped. But after her second rubbery forkful Nellie realized that the two men were still at it: get Mom back to school. She needed another cigarette.
“No way Jose.” But she hadn’t meant to hit Ernie with the match, she’d been aiming for the sink.
Wade adjusted his lapel, his stalky fingers hooking the terrycloth expertly. “This isn’t just you, Ernie. You should know that. The last couple Christmases, Mom was saying she was going to join the Communist Party.”
“Ganging up on me only makes it worse. Look Wade, this guy is a loser.”
“M-m-mom!” She felt his look in her spine. “All we’re saying is, you did g-g-good that year you were in school. When you got that A in P-poly Sci, you p-put the exam up on the f-f-fridge.”
She’d dropped her forehead onto her fists, but now the tabletop itself seemed to aggravate her. Jesus what clutter, a pepper mill and ajar of British jam. Wade had actually fallen for this?
“Tired of the same old grind?” Ernie said. “Of dead-end jobs that get you nowhere?” The rap was so-so at best, but Wade was laughing already. “Well have you ever considered a future in—“
The knock at the door saved him. Saved him, positively: she’d hooked her fingers under the coffeepot trivet. But the aggro was so zingy in her by then that when it turned out to be Wade’s father on the stoop, thrusting roses in her hand and brassing his way through hello-may-I-come-in, Nellie could only stand and stare while the man kept going on whatever had brought him this far and brushed past her into the house. Wade’s father, Rusty. His guitar-player’s body still too rangy for a place this size. Plus he’d handed her these impossible cherry-red roses (fakes of course: paper was the best you could get on a Sunday), plus he carried three stacked, hefty presents for Wade. Somehow he made room for these on the kitchen table. Nellie couldn’t really see, and she couldn’t pick up what kind of excuses he was giving Wade and Ernie either. The back of the man’s good London Fog or whatever blocked her view, and with the door open behind her the rain was too loud. Jesus God, had she asked for such a Sunday morning? The weather on her back was cold, as well; she had nothing but panties and a t-shirt under her robe.
At last the father turned, one hand nervous up and down his tie.
“You can call me all the nasty names you want,” he said. “I’m not running scared any more.”
Nellie couldn’t trust herself. She lowered the flowers and tried to get the whole picture clear.
“I haven’t seen the boy in five years, Nellie. And I was still a jerk back then.”
But his smile was rickety. He didn’t know how to play it except as the Gangster of Love, his old never-fails. Meantime Ernie had made himself unreadable, his eyes on Rusty’s back and his hands steepled at his mouth. Wade however was nothing so predictable, a herky-jerk cut from a silent movie. No color in the boy’s face at all. Lips and tongue and erratic fragments of teeth. Nellie didn’t realize she’d begun to move towards him till the father flinched.
“Let me just talk to the boy, please Nel—“ But the man had let her get too close. She had the knot of that tie up in his gullet, growling get out of here get out of here. No question she could push him around. The man’s face had gone red and childish, all she felt of his chest was shirt and tie. She could turn him and drive him right back out into the rain. Except then Ernie was up, coming round the table playing peacemaker.
“Nellie, come on. Lighten up. The man is trying, here.”
“You shut up too.”
But she’d been distracted, the father’d had a moment to regroup. “Nellie, please.” She felt his upper body against her forearm now, his fingers at her wrist. “There’s the Scrooge movie over in Corval—“
“Shut up!” She saw Wade had begun to splutter. “Shut up and let him speak!”
So the dog erupted through the open door, the woman who fed him was in trouble. Nellie and Rusty weren’t fast enough letting go of each other. They fell together against the table. The father’s gift-wrapped presents, Ernie’s Brunch Deluxe—Nellie went into a clench against the crash. She shouted, cracked her hip, and groaned. But the rest of the noise didn’t seem like much, only plastic and the dying noise of flatware, buh-dingle, buh-dingle. Cardboard walls. Then she found herself wet, coffee grounds somewhere under the robe. But by now her muscles had relaxed and the only worry she had room for was that Wade hadn’t used the wheelchair this morning. By the time she’d heaved herself over Lurid and the father (the animal was too much for a man with coat and tie in the way), the boy had already gone into a fit.
The nearest thing to hand was a newspaper. Wade sprawled across the kitchen, he’d kicked off the grill at the foot of the fridge and his head was almost in the opposite corner, bucking so raggedly that he’d flattened one of the paper roses. The hands trembled like a puppy doing Beg. Nellie fitted her knees against his shoulders, bracing his head between her folded legs. As she rolled the paper tight enough to gag him she noticed that it was scores and photos, the sports, and her thinking skipped to Ernie a moment. She realized he’d be doing something helpful like getting the dog out of the way. With that she was furious again. She put it into the effort of prying Wade’s chin down, who gives a fuck about Ernie, till at last she jammed the scrolled newsprint between his teeth. As usual she couldn’t bear to watch the boy’s eyes. They became something different during a seizure, black somehow. Impossible color, it meant she made no difference, she fluttered useless and dithery over the surface of his need. Nellie tried concentrating instead on the gag. No better: spatters of blood off the lips were seeping already across the letters and numbers. Blood, another bottom line. It set off spasms of fright, actual shakes, even while she told herself to stop being paranoid. The ink had gotten into a cut. The scores from a damn ball game had poisoned him. And how could she have done this to him, what a shit she was; the blood was as hard on her as the dark in his eyes. Never mind that she actually helped the boy. Sweating so much her breasts itched, groaning with the effort of holding the gag—never mind. Nellie knew a fake when she saw one. She could spot a liar coming a mile down the road.
But now as she tried to find someplace else to focus, she saw that Wade’s hands had settled onto his chest. The trembles were draining down his wrists, his neck, and she risked a look at his eyes. Flat and unconscious. His legs lay limp enough for Ernie to fold them away from one of the fallen chairs.
“Get away from him!” she screamed. “Don’t you touch him!”
The rage surprised her as well. She dropped her chin, eased out the paper and saw that the boy’s tongue was unhurt. But there was Rusty, arms spread against the stove front; just catching sight of him was all it took to set her off again.
“What’re you staring at? What’re you so scared of?”
He couldn’t hide it. All those years of working indoors had left him so pasty that when he blushed it was like neon.
“This is what you’re after, right?” She cradled Wade’s head, still glaring at the father. “This is what you want to buy with your fucking roses.”
“Nellie, it’s over now.” Ernie said. “It’s over, okay? You just relax, lighten up now. I’ll call the hospital.”
“Yeah it’s over. Yeah that’s exactly it, that it’s over.” Revving like she hadn’t felt since she’d given up amphetamines. She found Ernie tucked in the corner by the phone, but she hardly saw the breakfast wreckage, all she noticed was the stench. Wade’s stench: of course a seizure meant you lost control of everything.
“If it’s over, why are you calling the hospital? Hey Ernie? What the hell difference does it make, being such a nice guy? Oh you useless fucking phony. We know all about each other’s games, don’t we? I mean you’re such a good committee member, you’re filling in all the forms. Nice nice nice, pick pick pick! Except one day finally even your wife had to realize, it’s a goddamn act!”
Forget the phone. Ernie was whipping his hand round, trying to wring his watch back into place.
“I mean, of course you wouldn’t want to burden yourself with something like this.” She was worried she would hurt Wade’s head, she knotted her fists in her t-shirt. “Such a nice guy, you wouldn’t have the guts to slow down for a minute and take on something like this.” She nodded towards the space between her legs, but she was tearing up so fast that she couldn’t be sure where she was pointing.
“Oh, you think we don’t both know all about it? I know exactly how scared you are, you’re scared shitless. I know every fucking one of your empty fucking games.”
Then it was shirt to face, she didn’t want her bawling to wake Wade. And who cared what the men saw? She was stained with coffee and egg anyway. It only bothered her to hear them talking, making decisions. The men in charge. But something had really given way now; it took all Nellie’s strength just to back away from Wade, just to find a place against the nearest wall. When she heard the father leaving, the click and rustle of his London Fog, she couldn’t lift her face. After that it was nothing but the radio for a while, some grindstone vocal, Well well well well wahwl. Tears spattered Nellie’s lap and her aches made her think of her mother’s arthritis.
Nobody touched her till the outburst was pretty much past. Nonetheless when she felt a hand at her shoulder, she scrunched up tighter still.
“Ernie,” she gasped, “I chose to live this way. I wanted to live this way.”
“It’s me, Mom,” Wade said. “And heh heh, I guess I got you all that time, hey? Hey? Ernie my man—whoo! Well I guess now you know the way it can happen.”
Nellie sat up too fast, spots in her eyes. But she knew already what the boy was doing.
“I mean I’m sorry you had to see it, Ernie. My man. But hey, you know about those hormonal changes. Heh-heh-heh-heh. The doctor told me, he said the early teens are the worst.”
Trying to breeze along, talking like it never touched him. Her head cleared, she saw the newsprint had left some bad stains and the front of his shirt was filthy with grape juice. But the boy’s grin was strictly Elvis.
“Hey really, it’s lightweight. It’ll probably just, dry up and blow away by the time I get out of high school.”
Nellie didn’t have the strength. Yes this was the last straw, this was what it felt like. She got her first good look at the morning’s ruin. The table’s cast-iron base was upended, the frayed rubber mouth of the juice pitcher still dripping purple. The works at the bottom of the fridge were spattered with grounds, and the dog had left jam-prints everywhere. Now how dear God was she supposed to start with Wade? Someone like her, useless and dithery and fake, a fake—where was she going to get the energy? It must have been simple relief, then, that had Nellie smiling like such a Mongoloid a minute later.
Smiling so widely she tasted the morning’s freshness: the door had stood open long enough to air the place out. Plus she was having the craziest thoughts. Nellie thought that now she’d like to have some breakfast, or how about if they let Wade open one of his presents early? Herky-jerky-crazy, it had to be relief. But though she believed she had a handle on it, Nellie couldn’t stop, not even when it became obvious that a grin like hers was no help to Ernie. The man was doing his best to hang in there, after all. He’d crossed the room and cut off the radio. He’d found some paper towel and squatted down to start the cleanup, bending under one of Wade’s arms, looking rather burly and heavyweight in contrast to the boy’s spidery pale reach. And Ernie’s talk was quiet, serious. But there she sat grooving away, fingering her robe together over her own outstretched legs and settling more comfortably against the wall. Not at all the kind of support he needed.
At the Drop By Cafe Christmas was another loss. Come New Year’s, Richter decided that the only way out was to have all the girls wear something more revealing. His timing wasn’t any good either. The owner called everybody in late on a Monday, when Wade needed a ride home from basketball and Nellie had already agreed to run a special errand with Ernie. She worked it out. The boy was taken care of and Ernie was with her in the bus. But then she walked into the Drop By and found her boss tacking up a poster of some cheerleaders.
The photo had been extensively retouched; the first thing she thought of was the sheeny hard-rubber cars she used to buy for Wade. These girls wore black skirts crotch-high. Plus, of course, the same damn red leotards.
Yet with all the other shakeups going on that Monday, it was Fitzie who got to her most. While Nellie stood gaping at the poster, the other waitress was already redoing the buttons on her jacket—pretty flashy stuff itself, since Jack had joined the Elks’ over the holidays.
“People,” Fitzie said, “before I wear black and red like that, somebody’s going to be black and blue.”
And she gave Nellie a look, and she walked. For a moment there Nellie couldn’t see past the word “Auxiliary” stitched across the jacket’s back: of course the Elks’ was men-only.
It was all she could talk about when she got back out to the bus. She didn’t even make sure the other woman’s car was gone. That Fitzie was hard as nails, Ernie; she didn’t care who she hurt. The man pursed his lips. He waited till she’d stopped kicking the floorboards and pounding the steering wheel. He went on waiting, tapping his fingertips against the window. But she couldn’t pull out either. A VW this old needed a minute to idle during the rainy season.
Finally he asked if this was about the errand they’d planned for this afternoon. Was she really that anxious?
He whisked his spread hand side to side across the glass, clearing a sloppy crescent in the condensation. “I mean if the trip’s such a problem for you, babe—if it’s going to make you throw a fit—well hey.” They could skip it. They could go pick up Wade instead. Or maybe she had a better idea: he showed her the old gym-class smile. When Nellie was slow responding, Ernie reminded her that the boy’s father had left a message at the Social Security office. Rusty was only too glad to have some more time with Wade. He and the boy were cruising the music stores, looking for sheets Wade could use with the new synthesizer.
She geared up. “Fitzie’s got nothing to do with today’s deal,” Nellie said. “And besides, when you’ve told a guy you’re going to buy some of his sensamilla, you can’t just not show up. The guy might be an outlaw, but he’s an outlaw for keeps. For real, Ernie. If we wimp out on a deal like this, he’s liable to sic the Dobermans on us.”
Ernie wouldn’t back off. On the first straightaway he lit a cigarette for her and took advantage of the eye contact. This woman shook you up pretty bad, babe? Nellie allowed her spine to sag. Okay, okay. Ernie Hernia. She explained that at one time it had looked as if she and Fitzie were really going to get close.
“I realize now that she’s not like me. I mean, whatever I do with men, it’ll always be a joke to her. ‘The Lady in Red’ or some such bullshit. She’ll always think of me as the lady in red. When what I need is a person who can see the games for what they are.”
“But you two nearly got close?”
Nellie’s eyebrows came up slowly. “Ernie, I almost told her about the drugs I took when I was pregnant. Honestly, almost. I mean of course you’re right about that, we can never know for certain. Even the amphetamines, we can never know. But Wade’s sick, Ernie. Wade is very sick. I only got around to telling you about those drugs just last week.”
Ernie nodded, spoke again. She didn’t catch it because she was turning off the highway, fighting the transmission. The windshield quivered and the suspension was all chirps and squeaks. But Nellie got the message. She smiled when he patted her thigh. Nonetheless she wasn’t prepared for how fast Ernie changed the subject. A minute later, not even a minute later, he seemed to be talking as if any feelings about Fitzie were way behind them. He was asking about her thing next week, up in Salem. Nellie wished she didn’t have to keep her eyes on the road. She frowned and smiled, shook her head.
“Testifying for the Senate task force?” He was so loud that, for the first time in weeks, she noticed how much he still sounded like he came from New York.
“The disabled-children task force, next week Nellie? Up at the State House? You know if you actually go through with that, someone like Fitzie might not understand.”
“Oh, I’m going to go through with it.” Okay. He wasn’t telling her to shrug anything off. “They think they can just go on the way they have, they think they can just drop by and tell me how to run my life? No way. I’m going to testify. From now on I’m going after them.”
Ernie nodded so hard she could feel it in the seat-springs. “Yeah babe. Yeah, good.” Nonetheless his look remained serious. “But see, Nellie, see. It’s like you were saying earlier about games—politics can also seem like a game. Same as sex, exact same problem. And you’re like already an outlaw to Fitzie about sex; just wait’ll she sees you getting into politics. You think that won’t be way too heavy for her? I mean when I give someone like Fitzie one of my contracts, I want to say, Look! This is for real! They’ve got your whole life right here between the black lines! But she just sits there trying to figure out what the trick is.”
“Well I realize she’s just trying to protect herself. I guess I can learn to handle that.”
More nodding. “It’s not like it doesn’t make me crazy too, Nellie. I mean, we’ve gone from ocean to ocean here. We’ve shucked our whole former lives. We’re outsiders, all of us. Outsiders. And still we all go on trying to play the same old pissant games inside the same old black lines.”
She nodded, then shook her head more firmly. She hoped he understood. They were well off 20 now, out of the Valley now, rocketing up into the hills along an old logging road. Ridiculous trying to hold a conversation in such rough going. The bigger oaks and birches closed overhead, and this early after New Year’s the sky was nothing but murk anyway. Murk, webbed here and there with darker clusters of dangling tattered moss. She may have glimpsed bright trillium fingertips, or the spastic knots of a dormant wild rose. But by and large roadside details were lost under a rain so fine and steady you noticed it only when the clay along the edges of the way ahead caved outward to fall among the undergrowth. Amazing, trying to do serious relationship work under such conditions. Ernie at least had lightened up. His face was a horror show, good and toothy. But Nellie could barely grin back, the ride was too hard on her breasts. She almost regretted turning in her leotard.