Ricky, p.18
Ricky, page 18
“It’s a twin,” Sawyer’s mother says. “You’ll have to get creative.”
This and the crab make Judith blush. Charles keeps on eating, voracious and shiny, butter all over his face and hands. Sawyer holds up a crab claw and cracks it for Judith, to show her how it’s done.
* * *
Sawyer has a new plastic pony the color of grape gum. His name is Morrison. On the first morning of vacation, Sawyer gets up at eight and sits on the bathmat near the toilet, raking through Morrison’s mane and tail with a comb. Behind the closed door, Sawyer’s brother is breathing hard. Sawyer grooms her pony. She braids his tail, fastens it with a barrette. After a while, the panting stops. There’s not a sound from Judith. Sawyer counts backwards from 300 Mississippi, then opens the door and takes a peek. There’s Judith, flat on her stomach in the far twin bed. Charles is asleep on her back, his bare bottom the color of snow. Judith is trapped beneath him, but awake, the bedsheet drawn to her middle. She gives Sawyer a little smile and a four-finger wave. She seems sorry.
* * *
Judith has a tattoo of a cross on the back of her neck, which is revealed when she wears a ponytail. Charles calls her “a Jesus freak.” Judith has a big laugh to make up for the fact that she often appears to be on the verge of tears. Around the pool, she wears a yellow bikini and has poor posture. Charles says that for the size of Judith’s ass, you’d think her tits would be bigger. Sawyer hears her brother announce this into the cordless phone, over and over. “For the size of her ass, you’d think her tits would be bigger.”
Judith comes from South Dakota. Sawyer’s family comes from Westchester and can take a train into the city to see Les Mis whenever they want. “I only know corn!” Judith jokes. She looks out of place everywhere, which makes her seem young and foolish, and that’s why Sawyer likes her. She’s like a new classmate that Sawyer feels sorry for.
* * *
On the second morning, when Judith wakes up, she sees Sawyer’s hazel eye in the door crack, just like yesterday. What has Sawyer heard? Not Judith, that’s for sure. The wicker headboard is noisy. Charles is noisy. But Judith is silent. If she’s going to be bad, she can at least be quiet. She can at least put her face in the pillow and name things from the Bible that begin with J: Jesus, Jerusalem, Jezebel, Judith. Of course, she suspects this is sacrilegious, but at this point, what isn’t? She’s letting Charles go right in the door that won’t get her pregnant but will definitely send her to Hell. There’s no redemption now. When all the other girls in the dorm got tattoos of snakes, Judith got the cross, and what did that accomplish? Judith glances around the room. There’s an empty wine bottle by the bedside, a washcloth on the floor, a bra on display. She flutters her fingers in another sheepish wave and smiles her apologetic smile.
* * *
That night, Judith remembers to slide the empty wine bottle under the bed and put her bra under her pillow. At 7:30 in the morning, when Charles rolls her over on her stomach, she says, “Wait.” She gets up and tries to lock the bathroom door, but it won’t lock from their side. Still, the show goes on. The whole time Charles is on her back, Judith watches the door, waiting for that hazel eye. When Charles slumps off to sleep, Judith crawls out from under him. She puts on a baggy sweatshirt and clean underwear. She sits on the other bed and waits for Sawyer.
* * *
In the morning, Sawyer opens the door to find Judith sitting on the nearby twin in a sweatshirt, smiling. She invites her into the bathroom to have a look at Morrison.
“Morrison is going to a horse show,” she says. “It’s in West Palm, and he has to compete with Queen Elizabeth’s champion.”
“What’s his name?” Judith asks, pressing her palms to her temples.
“I just told you,” Sawyer huffs. “Morrison.”
“No,” Judith says. “The Queen’s horse.”
“Oh,” Sawyer says. “You mean her. Lady Marmalade the Fourth.”
Judith shakes three aspirin out of a pill bottle. “I don’t like competition. It scares me.” She jiggles the tablets in her hand like dice.
Sawyer frowns as Judith drinks from a toy cup. “Have you seen the closet in my room?” she asks. “I’ve made it into an elevator that goes to Planet Popsicle.”
Judith squints and swallows. “I have not had the pleasure.”
“Well, come and see,” Sawyer says.
* * *
Judith crawls into the closet on her hands and knees. The door is slatted, and the tropical morning sun stripes the walls light and dark pink. The closet smells of watered-down little-girl perfume, the sort that comes packaged with make-believe compacts and cheap, glittery nail polish that peels off like glue. When Judith sniffs the air, she can remember when God loved her—back when she made straight As and was going to stay in South Dakota and be a weathergirl. Back when achievement—competition—had tricked her into a sense of security. Her plan back then had been to have good highlights and three children who weren’t afraid of cows. But then, in Judith’s sophomore year of high school, her mother died of breast cancer. In her junior year, Judith entered the “Big Dreams” essay contest to make her dead mother proud. She wrote something cliché about a silo and the Empire State Building. Something about tractors, taxis. Something about preciousness and the present moment. And the next thing Judith knew, she was in Times Square, then crying in a city dorm, then drinking too much beer, snorting cocaine, getting a tattoo, and taking Ritalin and Xanax. And then Charles.
“Do you want cake?” Sawyer asks. “I made it yesterday.” She opens a toy oven and brings out a little silver heart-shaped pan filled with old, flat, yellow cake.
Always eat the cake, Judith’s mother liked to say.
“Yes, I’ll have some cake,” Judith says.
Sawyer flips the yellow heart out of the pan, into her own palm. She tears it in half and hands one side to Judith. “Charles’s mother was a lush,” she says. “Daddy left her when Charles was ten and they never saw her again. She drank with breakfast. She drank at lunch and dinner. One time she drove right into a dry cleaner’s and Charles bit through his tongue.”
Judith swallows the cake. It tastes like salt and metal. “That can’t be right,” Judith says. “Charles told me his mother was dead, like mine. That she died of breast cancer, too.”
Sawyer shrugs. “He lies.”
“Who lies about something like that?” Judith says. “You must have the story wrong.”
“You can ask my dad. But I wouldn’t if I were you.”
The aspirin and cake feel stuck in Judith’s throat. Charles told her the story at freshman orientation. They’d been asked to find three things in common. They both liked mushroom pizza. They were both bad at karaoke and loved it anyway. They both had dead mothers.
“Is she still alive?” Judith asks.
“I hope not,” Sawyer says.
“What was her name?” Judith asks.
“Lucinda,” Sawyer says. “Lucinda the lush.”
Judith says it to herself. She sees the dry cleaner’s window, Charles’s bleeding mouth. She wonders if the woman has maybe changed her name, remarried, been in and out of rehab.
“Elevator closing,” Sawyer announces. “Ready for liftoff?”
* * *
On the fourth night, Sawyer can hear Charles and Judith arguing. It’s mostly Judith doing the talking.
“What else have you lied to me about?” Judith asks. “Have there been other girls?”
Sawyer does not hear Charles answer. There’s some fumbling and scraping. A long sniff. “Have a line,” her brother says.
“You didn’t answer my questions, Charles.” Judith’s voice is getting louder and higher. She sounds like someone who’s lost something. Sawyer remembers a lady in the park: Have you seen my dog? He’s everything to me. Judith’s voice trembles the same way. “Answer me! Is your mother alive? Have there been other girls? This isn’t even coke. What are you getting me into?”
There’s a pause. More scraping and shuffling. Another long sniff, then nothing for a long time. Sawyer hears a sob from Judith.
“I know you think I’m stupid. You think I’m fat. You think corn is dumb. Well, who makes your food, Charles? Where do you think bacon and eggs come from? A window box?”
Sawyer is nervous. She puts Morrison under the bathroom sink. She sits on the bathmat, on her hands.
“I used to be a good person,” Judith says. “I used to know who I was and what I wanted, and then I met you and now I don’t fit in anywhere. I’m too smart for South Dakota and too stupid for New York. Where do I go? Besides Hell. Answer me that, Charles. Where do I go besides Hell?”
Sawyer hears more sobs. Then a smack, a yelp, a groan. “I want my mother!” Judith cries. “Jericho, Joseph, Jesus!”
Charles finally joins in. “Jesus is right! You’ve really lost your mind this time.”
Sawyer hears a scuffle. The sound of sheets being torn from a bed. Sawyer wonders, should she look? Just a little? She goes to the door and opens it a crack. Her eye sees what it sees: her brother’s fist raised over Judith, and Judith, cowering on the ground, her arms making a cross over her face. Sawyer shuts the door. She goes into her closet with Morrison. The elevator goes up, up, up to where the popsicles are.
* * *
Judith wakes from a fitful sleep. Her nose has bled and dried. If Charles weren’t on her back, she’d get up, pack her things, thumb a ride to a Waffle House or a bus station. But Charles is heavy. She goes in and out of sleep, or consciousness. She dreams of thirst. Of being on a bridge over a rushing river. She has no bucket, only a rope that she dangles in the current and hauls up to press to her lips.
When she wakes again, Charles is gone. There is blood on the pillowcase that has soaked through to the pillow itself. She sits up with some effort. The room is blue and bright. The house is silent. She goes into the bathroom, holding the pillow. Her face, from the nose down, is red with dried blood, her right nostril nearly crusted shut.
“My brother did that, didn’t he.”
Judith startles. In the mirror, at her side, is Sawyer holding Morrison.
“Everyone went to play golf,” Sawyer says. “I told them I’d stay. That you would babysit me when you woke up.”
Judith remembers the dream: the thirst, the rope. “There were seven devils in Mary Magdalene,” she says.
“Who’s that?” Sawyer asks.
“A girl I know,” Judith says.
“Who were they?”
“Who were who?”
“The seven devils.”
Judith washes her face, slowly, with handfuls of water. “I don’t know,” she says. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
* * *
Sawyer helps Judith wash the pillowcase and pillow. They lay them out to dry on a chaise by the pool. Sawyer puts on a bathing suit printed with daisies, and she floats in an inner tube, humming, in the shallow end. Judith sits in a chaise with a glass of orange juice and vodka, wearing sunglasses. “Coke,” she eventually says. “Pills, booze, Charles, ink, crab, cancer. There’re your seven devils. There you go.”
Sawyer twirls her legs underwater and spins in a circle. “Everybody gets bloody noses,” she says. “A boy in my class gets them twice a week and he’s still a good person.”
“Oh, is he?” Judith finishes her drink. “Well, good for him.”
After that, Judith doesn’t have much to say. Sawyer knows better than to suggest hide-and-seek or Marco Polo. When the sun gets hot, they go inside and watch television on the couch. The coyote’s wearing roller skates with rockets. He is forever doomed but never dead.
Judith goes in and out of sleep. When she wakes up for real, she says, “Hey. What about some popsicles?”
Feeling a sudden lurch of joy, Sawyer goes to the freezer and brings out a double orange popsicle and snaps it in two. Sawyer eats one half and Judith eats the other.
“That bubble gum perfume of yours,” Judith says. “Could you go get it and put it on my neck?”
* * *
That night, Sawyer doesn’t hear fighting. She doesn’t hear talking or breathing or slapping or sniffing. She sits on the bathmat with Morrison until she gives up and goes to bed. The next morning, when she tries to spy, her bathroom door is locked. When she presses her ear to it, she can’t hear a thing. In the kitchen, her parents and Charles are around the white wicker dining table.
“Judith is going home early,” her mother says, smiling.
Her father is smiling, too. “I think she’s had all the fun she’s going to have.”
Charles hunches over a plate of eggs and eats ravenously. Sawyer’s mother brings Sawyer a blueberry muffin on a cocktail napkin. When she’s finished, her mother takes her out of the house. They get in one of the rental cars and drive around until they find an old Kmart, where Sawyer’s mother buys her another plastic pony, this one the color of an orange popsicle. Back at the house, in the bathroom, Sawyer finds that Judith has left behind her toothbrush, a hair elastic, and an old razor. Morrison is on the counter, his hooves on a scrap of notebook paper: Thanks for everything, popsicle pal!
Sawyer picks up Morrison and goes out to the pool. Her parents recline on chaises, side by side. They’re holding drinks, wearing sunglasses. Sawyer cannot see their eyes.
“I want to ride horses,” Sawyer says.
“Right this second?” Her father sighs. “Or generally speaking?”
“I want to learn how to ride them in shows.”
“Well,” her mother says, taking a sip of her drink, “we can think about it. That kind of riding is very competitive.”
Sawyer holds up Morrison so they can see how well groomed he is. “I like competition. Competition doesn’t scare me.”
The Split
They ended their marriage to save their marriage.
“If we stay in this any longer,” she said, “it’s going to fail.”
He saw it differently, which was no surprise.
“The only way to stop failing,” he said, “is to get out.”
They decided to break up over dinner at a restaurant they’d frequented when they were dating. They’d forgotten about the restaurant until they reached the impasse, then it just fondly reappeared as an option, like a recipe fallen from a soft cookbook.
“How about Gerald’s?” she said. “For steaks?”
“Gerald’s,” he repeated thoughtfully, with a glint in his eyes that signified either sadness or glee, “for seafood.”
So, Gerald’s it was. In the parking lot, they held hands as they walked from the car to the restaurant door, which he held open for her and at which she smiled, because there were no hard feelings, only differences. It was cold outside and her hand was soft and icy and his was damp and warm and the autumn sky was the color of gravestones. The restaurant put off the smell of woodsmoke, which made her think of Christmas and reminded him of hunting ducks. Once inside, they sat in a far corner of the restaurant in a black leather booth as shiny as motor oil.
“We could split something,” she suggested, eyeing the menu, though as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew it was a silly thing to say. He wouldn’t want half of a petite filet and there was no easy way to share a bowl of bouillabaisse.
“Or we could just split,” he said with a little laugh. The play on words was both tender and pitiful, like a child’s cough. They both fell silent in a way that was best overcome with a toast. “To Gerald’s,” he said, raising his martini.
“Then and now,” she said with champagne.
* * *
All who knew them were bewildered by their decision.
“It was going to fail anyway,” she explained.
“Then wait till it fails,” her friends said.
“It didn’t seem broken,” his friends said.
“Get the plane on the ground while you still have an engine,” he replied.
* * *
They went to a therapist so they could say they’d tried everything. The therapist held up a series of inkblot cards.
“An Easter lily,” she said.
“An appendicitis,” he said.
“Joan of Arc,” she said.
“A rack of lamb,” he said.
“Two moths kissing,” she said.
“An airbag, deployed,” he said.
The therapist confirmed what they already knew. They went home to divide their things, but instead of dividing them, they sat on the back porch in their coats and didn’t speak. He claimed the view of the thin crescent moon as his, while she went on thinking the thoughts she had never shared. After some time, a speck of something fell into her right eye, and she blinked and blinked, then stood and said, “Something has fallen into my right eye.”
He looked at her for a moment as if he still loved her and said, “Let me help you with that.”
Inside, she tilted her head back and held her eye open with her thumb and forefinger, while he stared deep into an eye he had once stared deeply into. “I don’t see anything,” he said.
“But I can feel something,” she said.
She rinsed her face and her eyes at the kitchen sink, and when she was done, she looked like a child who had finished crying about something adults didn’t think was worth crying over. She went into their bedroom and got under the covers on her side of the bed, and he followed her and got on top of the covers on his side of the bed. They lay on their backs and stared at the ceiling and held hands right down the center. Before long, they slept.
That night, they both dreamed the same dream. That her right eye watered and watered until it made a swift, black river that carried both of them away. For a while, the current kept them in sight of one another, but eventually, they lost track of each other and all either of them could see was the river pouring out in front of them like ink and something bright and pink bobbing, in the distance, on the horizon. Neither could say for sure if it was the head of the other or the sun coming up or the sun going down, but one thing was certain: they were finally getting somewhere.
