Don't Cry Stories Part 6

And they were gone. Bea saw Lee Anne slap her son on the head once more before they disappeared. Oh, don't, thought Bea Please don't. But of course she would. The woman was alone and overworked, had probably never married, probably hadn't wanted the child. At least I talked to him, thought Bea; I talked to him and he responded-he responded almost like an adult speaking a child's language.

And she got on the plane. The stewardess smiled at her, and she slowly made her way down the neutral s.p.a.ce of the aisle. She found her seat, stowed her bag, then took out her book and opened it. Children had always responded to her. When Megan and Susan were little and they fought, she rarely had to punish them; she just talked to them in her love voice, and usually they would forget their fight and look at her, waiting to see what she would say next. She could say, "Let's go out into the yard and see what we can find. Maybe we'll see a field mouse or a four-leaf clover!" And quiedy they would take her hands and go.

The stewardess came down the aisle, closing the overhead compartments, making sure they were tucked into their seat belts. What luck: She had the whole row to herself Before they went to sleep, her children would talk to her about anything, ardessly opening their most private doors so that she could make sure all was in order there. When Megan wet the bed, she would go, half-asleep, to her parents' room, pull off her wet gown, and get between them in her mother's chemise, a little white sardine still fragrant with briny pee. Even at thirteen, Susan would run to her, crying, "Mama, Mama!" Once she sank down on the floor and b.u.t.ted Bea's stomach like she wanted to get back inside it.

The plane pushed back. Now no private door was open to her; not even Megan's face was open to her. Susan hadn't come to I her even when she was raped in the parking structure, hadn't even I told her about it until ten years later, when she could say, clipped I and insistent, that it wasn't "such a big deal."

The plane turned on the runway like a live thing slowly turning I in heavy water. Sunlight glinted on its rattling, battered wing. Still, I Megan had flown her out to visit, and taken her to a play. Susan and I her girlfriend were coming for Easter. Both girls came to visit every I Christmas, and had since they'd moved away from home. When I she left Mac and was living from apartment to wretched apart- I ment, the girls divided their Christmas time with scrupulous fairness. Megan spent two nights in Bea's apartment, while Susan I spent two nights with Mac; then they switched. The two of them I spent Christmas Eve with her, and Christmas Day with him, then 1 the other way the next year.

But she knew they'd rather see her than Mac. Sometimes Susan even sneaked in extra time with her mother, pretending to Mac that she'd left on Tuesday, when she had really stayed through Wednesday with her mother. It was cruel, but so was Mac. When the girls stayed with him, he walked through the house, yelling about how terrible Bea was or declaring that he wanted to die, and that if it wasn't Christmas Eve, he'd kill himself that night. When he did calm down and talk to one of his daughters, it was about grocery-store prices or TV shows. "And I tell him over and over again that I don't watch TV!" said Susan, laughing. Susan laughed, but Megan got mad and fought with him. "Oh give it a break!" she yelled. "You've been talking about how you're going to kill yourself for the last ten years, and you know you aren't going to!" And then she told her mother and Susan about it.

"When I was there, I did a meditation with him," said Susan.

"With him?" asked Megan. "Or at him?"

"I told him I was going to pray," said Susan. "And we sat together in the dark."

They were in the living room, she said, at night with the shades open so they could see the heavy snowfall. Susan went into "a light trance." In this light trance, she "connected" with Mac as he lay on the couch, seemingly in a light trance of his own. She connected with his heart. In his heart she saw a small boy, maybe five or six years old, alone in a garden. The garden was pleasant, even beautiful, but it was surrounded by a dense thicket of thorns, so that the boy could not get out and no one else could get in.

"I asked him if he wanted to come out," said Susan. "And he just shook his head no. He was afraid. I told him I loved him and that other people out here love him, too. He looked like he was thinking about it. Then Dad got up and went to the bathroom."

Megan sn.i.g.g.e.red. The plane picked up speed. Bea thought, Mac was six when his parents died. But she didn't say it.

Stop it, you little idiot! You little- That child, playing on the chairs, full of hope and life. Making up a hero father whom he could be proud of, longing for him, longing to be worthy of him. Didn't the mother see? How dare you? said Megan. How dare you disrespect his service> The plane steadily rose, but she felt as if she were falling.

Mac died in his apartment, with the girls taking care of him, or trying to. She did not spend the night there; she did not sit at his side. But during the day, she went there to be with Megan and Susan. They had a hospice nurse who monitored him, washed him, and told them how much and how often to give him morphine. The nurse's name was Henry, and they all liked him-Susan said that Mac seemed to like him, too. When he was finished upstairs, they made coffee for him, and he would sit in the living room, talking and looking at pictures of Mac when he was young. Megan showed him the picture of Mac in his army uniform, just before he s.h.i.+pped out. "He volunteered," she said. "Before he was even eighteen, he signed up."

"That's not true," said Bea. "He was eighteen. And he only signed up because he knew he'd be drafted anyway."

Televisions came down from the ceiling in whirring rows. White-faced, Megan left the room. Henry looked at Bea, looked away. Colors flowed across the rows of dark screens, making hot rectangles, oblongs, and swirls. In the kitchen, Megan faced her, eyes glittering with tears of rage. "How dare you? How-" Bea said no to a beverage but accepted the packet of peanuts. She looked out the window, holding the nuts. The sky was bright, terribly bright, but still she felt the darkness coming. Do you remember the first time, Beatrice? How you were scared and I held you? You were so beautiful and so innocent. But you scared me a little, too, did you know that? Mac had written these things on brown grocery bags, cut to the size of notepaper to recycle and to save money. He never sent them; she found them, stacks of them, when she and the girls were going through his things. We could have that pa.s.sion again, I know it. Remember, Beatrice, and come back. Please, Beatrice, remember what we had.

Faces bloomed on the overhead screens, clever, warm, and ardent.

She did remember. She remembered that she had been fright' ened and that he had held her; that he had bruised her body with the salty, spilling kisses of his s.e.x, that each bruise bloomed with pleasure, and that pleasure filled her with its hot dissolving blossoms.

And still she couldn't cry. A stewardess came down the aisle, headphones draped gracefully over her arm. It had been two years and she had not cried for him once. The stewardess smiled and offered her draped arm. Bea shook her head and turned away, into the darkness. I am old and worthless, and I am going home to shadows on the wall. Susan- Megan- She raised her fists and weakly beat upon her forehead. Why are they so far away? Why don't they have children? Why does Megan stare at me so coldly when I tell her she is beautiful?

Shadows on the wall: streetlamp, telephone wire, moths, bits of leafy branch. A pale rectangle of light. When the darkness came, these things lost their earthly meaning and became bacteria swim-ming in a dish or cryptic signaling hands or nodding heads with mouths that ceaselessly opened and closed, while down in the corner, a little claw pitifully scratched and scratched. Loving, conceiving, giving birth; if human love failed, it was bacteria swimming in a dish, mysterious and unseeable to itself From a distance, it was beautiful but also terrible, and it was hard to be alone with it night after night, without even an indifferent husband lying with his warm back to you.

Hard to bear, yes. But she could bear it. She had been a child herself, and so knew the cruelty of children. She knew the strength of giving, even if you did not get what you wanted back. She had thrown her body across a deep, narrow chasm; her daughters had walked to safety across her back. They had reached the other side, and she had stood again, safe and sound herself; all was as it should be. The darkness pa.s.sed. She picked up her book. And he came to her: Michael, the little boy.

He came first as a thought, a memory of his face that interrupted her reading in the middle of the second page. He had so much in his eyes, and so few words to express it. How could his mother give him the words? Or the music or pictures? She thought of him. And then she felt him. She felt him in a way she would later find impossible to describe.

"He was looking for me," she would say to Susan some time after. "He needed me."

But it felt more specific than that. She felt what was in his eyes, hot and seedlike and ready to unfurl. Waiting for the right stimulus, like a plant would wait for the sun. Vulnerable but vast, too, like a child in her arms.

When she told Megan, Megan surprised her by saying she'd had experiences like that, too. "But you never know," she said, "if it's really the other person communicating with you, or if it's just your mind"

"No," said Bea. "It wasn't my mind. It was him. It felt just like him."

Love me. See me. Love me. He had no words, but what he said was unmistakable.

"What did you do?" asked Susan.

"I answered him," said Bea. "I tried, anyway. I tried so hard, I wore myself out."

I see you, she answered. You are a wonderful boy and you will grow into a wonderful man. I love you; I love to look at you. She put her arms around him, gently, not too tight. She held him and talked to him until finally, she felt him ebb away, as if he were going to sleep. She reclined her seat and closed her eyes. Just don't get lost in the thorn garden. We need you right here. Don't go behind the thorns. A tear rolled down her cheek, and she turned her head to hide it. We need you right here.

She waited a long time to tell Megan because she was afraid of being sneered at. She waited a long time to tell Susan because she was afraid Susan would talk about the astral plane. But she didn't.

she just said, "I've heard people who had abusive childhoods say they survived because they had a good experience with an adult outside the family. Even one, even if it was tiny."

Bea opened her eyes. Before her were clouds, vast and white, their soft clefts bruised with lilac and pale gray. She wiped her eyes with her little peanut napkin. She leaned back in her seat. Good night, Mama. Closing her eyes, she remembered the sudden warmth and heaviness as Megan sat on the edge of the guest bed in the dark. She remembered her singing "The Sun, Whose Rays Are All Ablaze" from The Mikado, her voice off-key but still piercing in the dark. She sang and then bent down, and her nightgown fell open slightly as she kissed her mother good night. Beatrice crumpled the peanut napkin with an unconscious hand as she began to dream a dream that began with that kiss.

The Arms and Legs of the Lake.

Jim Smith was riding the train to Syracuse, New York, to see his foster mother for Mother's Day. He felt good and he did not feel good. Near Penn Station, he'd gone to a bar with a green shamrock on it for good luck. Inside, it was dark and smelled like beer and rotten meat in a freezer-nasty but also good because of the closed-door feeling; Jim liked the closed-door feeling. A big white bartender slapped the bar with a rag and talked to a blobby-looking white customer with a wide red mouth. A television, showed girl after girl. When Jim said he'd just gotten back from Iraq, the bartender poured him a free whiskey. "For your service,", he'd said.

Jim looked out the train window at the water going by and thought about his white foster father, the good one. "You never hurt a little animal," his good foster had said. "That is the lowest, most chicken thing anybody can do, to hurt a little animal who can't fight back. If you do that, if you hurt a little animal, no one will ever respect you or even like you." There had been green gra.s.s all around, and a big tree with a striped cat in it. Down the street, ducks had walked through the wet gra.s.s. He'd thrown some rocks at them, and his foster father had gotten mad.

"For your service," said the bartender, and poured him another one, dark and golden in its gla.s.s. Then he went down to the other end and talked to the blob with the red mouth, leaving Jim alone with the TV girls and their TV light flas.h.i.+ng on the bar in staccato bursts. Sudden flas.h.i.+ng on darkness; time to tune that out, thought Jim. Time to tune in to humanity: He looked at Red Mouth Blob.

"He's a gentle guy," said Blob. "Measured. Not the kind who flies off the handle. But when it comes down, he will get down. He will get down there and he will b.u.mp with you. He will b.u.mp with you, and if need be, he will b.u.mp on you." The bartender laughed and hit the bar with his rag.

b.u.mp on you. b.u.mpety-b.u.mp. The truck b.u.mped along the road. He was sitting next to Paulie, a young blondie from Minnesota who wasn't wearing his old Vietnam-style vest. Between low sand-colored buildings, white-hot sky swam in the sweat dripping from his eyelashes. There was the smell of garbage and s.h.i.+t. A river of sewage flowed in the street and kids were jumping around in it. A woman looked up at him from the street and he could feel the authority of her eyes as far down as he could feel, in an eyeless, faceless place inside him, where her look was the touch of an omnipotent hand. "Did you see that woman?" he said to Paulie. "She look like she should be wearing jewels and riding down the Tigris in a gold boat." "That one?" said Paulie. "Her? She's just hajji with p.u.s.s.y." And then the explosion threw them out of the truck. There was Paulie, sitting up, with blood geysering out his neck, until he fell over backward with no head on him. Then darkness came, pouring over everything.

The bartender hit the bar with his rag and came back down the bar to pour him another drink.

He looked around the car of the train. Right across from him there was a man with thin lips and white finicky hands drinking soda from a can. Just up front from that there was a thick-bodied woman, gray, like somebody drew her with a pencil, reading a book.

Behind him was blond hair and a feminine forehead with fine eyebrows and half ovals of eyegla.s.s visible over the frayed seat. Beyond that, more foreheads moved in postures of eating or typing or staring out the window. Out the window was the s.h.i.+ning water, with trees and mountains gently stirring in it. She had looked at them and they had blown up. Where was she now?

"Excuse me." The man with thin lips was talking to him. "Excuse me," he said again.

"Excuse me," said Bill Groffman. "You just got back from Iraq?" "How did you know?" the guy replied.

"I got back myself six months ago. I saw your jacket and shoes. "All right," said the guy, like to express excitement, but with his voice flat and the punctuation wrong. He got up to shake Bill's hand, then got confused and went for a high five that he messed up. He was a little guy, tiny really, with the voice of a woman. Old, maybe forty, and obviously a total f.u.c.kup-who could mess up a high five?

"Where were you?" asked Bill.

"Baghdad," said the guy, blatting the word out this time. "Where they pulled down Saddam Hussein. They pulled-"

" What'd you do there?"

"Supply. Stocking the shelves, doin' the orders, you know. Went out on some convoys, be sure everything get where it supposed to go. You there?"

"Name it-Ramadi, Fallujah, up to Baquba, Balad. Down to Nasiriyah, Hillah. And Baghdad."

"They pulled down the statue ... pulled it down. Everybody saw it on TV. Tell me, brother, can you-what is this body of water out the window here?"

"This is the Hudson River."

"It is? I thought it was the Great Lakes."

"No, my man. The Great Lakes is Michigan and Illinois. Unless you're in Canada."

"But see, I thought we were in Illinois." He weaved his head back and forth, back and forth. "But I was not good in geography. I was good in MATH." He blatted out the word math as if it were the same as Baghdad.

But he was not thinking about Baghdad now. He was tuned in to the blond forehead behind him, and it was tuned in to him; it was focused on Jim. He could feel it very clearly, though its focus was confused. He looked at its reflection in the window. The forehead was attached to a small pointy face with a tiny mouth and eyegla.s.s eyes, a narrow chest with t.i.ts on it, and long hands that were turning a piece of paper like a page. She was looking down and turning the pages of something, but still, her blond forehead was coming at him. It did not have authority; it was looking to him for authority. It was harmless, vaguely interesting, nervous, and cute.

When Bill was gone, he realized that n.o.body at home would understand what was happening. He realized it, and he accepted it. You talk to a little boy in broken English and Arabic, make a joke about the chicken or the egg-you light up a car screaming through a checkpoint and blow out a little girl's brains. You saw it as a threat at the time-and maybe the next time it would be. People could understand this fact-but this was not a fact. What was it? The guy who put a gun in his mouth and shot himself in the portable s.h.i.+fter, buddies who lost hands and legs, little kids dancing around cars with rotting corpses inside, shouting, "Bus.h.!.+ G.o.d Is Great! Bus.h.!.+"-anybody could understand these events as information. But these events were not information. What were they? He tried to think what they were and felt like a small thing with a big thing inside it, about to break the thing that held it. He looked out the window for relief. There was a marsh going by, with soft green plants growing out of black water, and a pink house showing between some trees. House stood for home, but home was no relief. Or not enough. When he came home, his wife told him that the dog he'd had since he was sixteen was missing. Jack had been missing for weeks and she hadn't told him. At least six times when they'd been on the phone and he'd asked, "How's Jack?" she'd said, "He's good."

"Hey," said the little guy. "You sure this a river?"

"Positive."

Positive. She said she didn't tell him about Jack because he had only a few weeks left and she wanted him to stay positive. Which was right. They both agreed it was important to stay positive. And so she'd said, "He's good," and she'd said it convincingly, naturally He hadn't known she was such a good liar.

"The reason I'm asking is, it looks too big to be a river. A lake is always going to be bigger than a river. I remember that from school. The river leads to the lake; the river is the arms and legs of the lake. Only thing bigger than the lake is the ocean. Like it says in the Bible, you know what I'm saying?"

Bill didn't answer because the smell of s.h.i.+t and garbage was up in his nose. The feel of sand was on his skin, and he had to try not to scratch it, or rub it in public like this crazy a.s.s would surely do. Funny. The crazy a.s.s-he should have some idea of what it was like, even if he was just supply But even if he did, Bill didn't want to discuss it with him. All the joy you felt to be going home; how once you got home you couldn't feel it anymore. Like his buddy whose forearm had been blown off, who still felt his missing arm twitch-except it was the reverse of that. The joy was there, almost like he could see it. But he couldn't feel it all the way He could make love to his wife, but only if he turned her over. He could tell it bothered her, and he didn't know how to explain why it had to be that way Even when they lay down to sleep, he could relax only if she turned with her back to him and stayed like that all night.

"But that don't look like the arm or the leg. That look like the lake. Know what I'm sayin'?"

Bill looked out the window and put on his headset. It was Ghostface Killah, and he turned up the volume-not to hear better, but to get his mind away from the smell and the feeling of sand.

Like it says in the Bible, you know what I'm sayin > The white guy across the aisle laughed when he heard that, a thick, joyless chuckle. Puerile, thought Jennifer Marsh. Like a high school kid. Probably racist, too. Jennifer had marched against the war. She didn't know any soldiers; she had never talked to any. But she was moved to hear this guy just back from war, talking so poetically about rivers and lakes. I should reach out to him, she thought. I should show support. I'll get up and go to the snack car for potato chips, and on the way back, I'll catch his eye.

The idea stirred Jennifer, and made her a little afraid. Afraid that he would look at her, a middle-aged white woman, and instantly feel her to be weak, artificially delicate, a liar. But I'm not weak, thought Jennifer. I've fought to get where I am. I haven't lied much. Her gaze touched the narrow oval shape of the soldier's close-cropped head, noticing the quick, reactive way it turned from aisle to window and back. Sensitive, thought Jennifer; deli- cate, and naturally so. She felt moved again; when the soldier had stood to shake hands with the guy across the aisle, his body had been slim and wiry under the ill-fitting clothes. He looked strong, but his strength was wiry and tensile-the strength of a fragile person made to be strong by circ.u.mstance. His voice was strange, and he blurted out certain words with the harshness of a sensitive person trying to survive the abrading force of the world.

Sec me comiri (blaow!) start runnin and (blaow! blaow!) ... Phantom limb, phantom joy. Music from the past came up behind Ghost's words; longing, hopeful music. Many guys have come to you... His son, Scott, : had been three when he left; now he was nearly five, healthy, good-looking, smart, everything you would want. He looked up at his father as if he were somebody on TV, a hero, who could make everything right. Which would've been great if it were true. . . t| With a line that wasn't true . . ."Are you going to find Jack tonight, Daddy?" asked Scott. "Can we go out and find him tonight?".1. And you pa.s.sed them by...

"The lake is bigger-but wait. You talkin' 'bout the ocean?"

Jennifer's indignation grew. The soldier's fellow across the aisle was deliberately ignoring him and so, stoically adjusting to being ignored, he was talking to himself, mimicking the voice of a child talking to an adult, then the adult talking back. "The ocean is bigger than the lake," said the adult. "The ocean is bigger than anything."

He hadn't meant to look for Jack; the dog was getting old, and if he hadn't come back after two weeks, he must be dead or somewhere far away. But Wanda had done the right thing and put up xeroxed flyers all over their town, plus a town over in every direction. He saw Jack's big bony-headed face every time he went to the post office or the grocery store, to the gas station, pharmacy, smoke shop, office supply, department store, you name it. Even driving along back roads where people went for walks, he glimpsed Jack s torn, flapping face stapled to trees and telephone poles. Even though the pictures showed Jack as a mature dog, he kept seeing him the way he was when he got him for Christmas nine years before: a tiny little terrier, all snout and paws and will to chew s.h.i.+t up. He greeted Bill every day when he came home from school; he slept on his bed every night. When Scott was born, he slept in front of the crib, guarding it.

Jennifer tried to imagine what this man's life was like, what had led him to where he was now. Gray, grim pictures came half-formed to her mind: a little boy growing up in a concrete housing project with a blind face of malicious brick; the boy looking out the window, up at the night sky, kneeling before the television, mesmerized by visions of heroism, goodness, and triumph. The boy grown older, sitting in a metal chair in a shadowless room of pitiless light, wait-ing to sign something, talk to somebody, to become someone of value.

The first time he went out to find Jack, he let Scott go with him.

But Scott didn't know how to be quiet, or listen to orders; he would suddenly yell something or dart off, and once Bill got so mad that he thought he'd knock the kid's head off. So he started going out alone-late, after Scott and Wanda were in bed. They lived on a road with only a few houses on it across from a stubbly I field and a broken, deserted farm. There was no crime and every- I body acted like there could never be any. But just to be sure, he took the Beretta Wanda had bought for protection. At first, he carried it in his pocket with the safety on. Then he carried it in his hand.

Jennifer grieved; she thought, I can't help. I can't understand. But I can show support. This man has been damaged by the war, but still he is profound. He will not scorn my support because I'm white. As if he had heard, the soldier turned around in his seat and smiled. Jennifer was startled by his face-hairy with bleary eyes, his mouth sly and cynical with pain.

"My name's Jim," the soldier said. "Glad to meet you."

Jennifer shook his proffered hand.

"Where you headed today?" he asked.

"Syracuse. For work."

"Yeah?" He smiled. His smile was complicated-light on top, oily and dark below. "What kind of work?"

"I'm giving a talk at a journalism school-I edit a women's magazine."

"Yeah? An editor?"

His smile was mocking after all, but it was the sad mocking men do when the woman has something and they don't. There was no real force behind it.

"I heard you talk about being in Iraq," she said.

"Yeah, uh--huh." He nodded emphatically, then looked out the window as if distracted.

"What was it like?" ; He looked out the window, paused, and began to recite: "They smile and they say you okay f Then they turn around and they bite / With the arrow that fly in the day / And the knife in the neck at night."

"Did you make that up? Just now?"

"Yes, I did." He smiled again, still mocking, but now complici-tous, too.

"That's good. It's better than a lot of what I read."

Did you make that up> Just now> Stupid, stupid woman, stupider than the drunk n.i.g.g.e.r she was talking to. Carter Brown, the conductor, came down the aisle, wis.h.i.+ng he had a stick to knock off some heads with, not that they were worth knocking off really. That kind of white woman-would she never cease to exist? You could predict it: Put her in a car full of people, including black people who were sober and sane, h.e.l.l, black people with Ph. D.'s, and she would glue herself, big-eyed and serious, to the one pitiful fool in the bunch. He reached the squawk box and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the mouthpiece.

"To whoever's been smoking in the lavatory, this message is for you," he said into it. "If you continue to smoke in the lavatory, we will, believe me, find out who you are, and when we do, we will put you off the train. We will put you off, where you will stand on the platform and smoke until the next train comes sometime tomorrow. Have a nice day."

Not that the sane and sober would talk to her, it being obvious what she was-another white jacka.s.s looking for the truth in other people's misery. He went back down the aisle, hoping against hope that she would be the smoker and that he would get to put her off the train.

"Did you talk to the Iraqis?" she asked.

"Sure. I talked to them. I talked mostly to kids. I'd tell 'em to get educated, become a teacher. Or a lawyer."

"You speak their language?"

"No, no, I don't. But I still could talk to 'em. They could understand."

"What were they like?"

"They were like people anywhere. Some of them good, some not."

"Did any of them seem angry?"