“Besides Sammy moving his skinhead girlfriend into his bedroom? Oh, I’m living on my wife.” Reuben tugs an earlobe. “My hearing’s wonky. Getting fitted for a hearing aid in my left ear next week. My oldest boy’s in the Persian Gulf in the middle of a shooting war. Karen’s—well, you know all about it, Freddy.”
Freddy catches Tommy Vallone’s gimlet eye and scribbles in the air, signaling for the check. “I’m sorry about Karen. If it would get her off the street, it might be worth supplying her the shit. You know the problem. There’s never enough for an addict. You give’m a gram and it’s gone and they want another one. You give her all she wants and she’ll kill herself with it.”
“Gonna kill herself with it anyway, the way she’s going. Or she’ll pick up the wrong guy, get strangled in a gravel pit by a maniac. Get AIDS. Sometimes I feel like she’s already dead, you know?”
Rising from his chair, Freddy rests a hand on Reuben’s shoulder. “Easy does it, cowboy.”
On the sidewalk a few minutes later, the mechanic looks up and down Main Street. The brave parade of flags on the storefronts pop in the cutting wind of a brilliant day. His ears hurt. Used to be even on a cold winter Saturday, there’d be traffic, foot and wheel. Not anymore. Half the buildings boarded up, the flags a patriotic gesture that is almost cruelly ironic. The Mill Brook runs with raw sewage from the village and the town breathes the sickly stench of the paper mill at the Bend in South Greenspark where a branch of the Saco makes the southern border of the township. The smell of money, the old-timers always called it, but only the brimstone stink of that money seems to linger here.
Karen and Deanie, he thinks. Maybe Deanie Gauthier’s my second chance. I better not fuck this one up.
In the Rodrigues sisters’ upstairs bathroom, the Mutant swishes the johnny brush through the water in the toilet. The old women have fallen behind and there is a lot to do to put the house to rights. First they had to fuss over her and prevaricate about how well the wound is healing and how invisible the scar is going to be. At least they didn’t pretend it wasn’t there.
It was funny to see them blow their gauges over Bigger. Creaking old ostriches were dribbling in their snuggies. Maybe it is some kind of yearning after missed motherhood. Then again, Mrs. H. in the cafeteria had about a billion brats and she’s the same way, another old puss who just adores boys and young men. There is this weird compulsion to stuff them full of food. Fatten them up like they were going to eat them some day, like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. Of course Miss Reggie and Miss Katherine seem to want to fatten her up too. The Mutant pinches her arm. Still too bony to make a meal, she decides.
She tries to summon up the picture of the nude descending the staircase, trying to recapture her old feelings about it. If she could see it today, maybe it would be different, richer, more resonant. A cigarette, a joint, would be such a relief. She had an orgasm, she came. She knows what that means now. She’s warm, fed, in a safe place with people who are kind to her. She might even actually play hoops again, ‘god loves her. He said so. Why does she want to scream?
In the late afternoon, Sam picks her up again and brings her home for supper. Entering the house with a new awkwardness, they are met by a surprisingly disinterested welcome. His father and stepmother seem more focused on each other than the errant lovers. Their flirtatiousness is positively embarrassing. Reuben rises when he finishes eating, kisses the baby and then his wife, twice, before he reaches reluctantly for his jacket.
“Got to go back to the garage and finish a couple jobs I promised. Be home early.”
“I’ll ride with you, Dad,” Sam says, and stuffs a last chunk of sourdough into his mouth as he rises. Shrugging into his jacket, he stoops, ears burning, to kiss Deanie’s upraised face. Watching him stumble over his own feet and grope for the doorknob, she smothers a giggle behind her hand. Reuben bends over Pearl again and takes a longer, promissory kiss, before he follows Sam out.
Pearl and Deanie look at each other and burst out laughing.
When the men return from work, Pearl has retired with the baby and Deanie is curled up on the couch, watching the late news.
“I’ll lock up,” Reuben volunteers, but his eyes fix on the screen and he sinks into his favorite chair and zaps to the late-evening war coverage.
Deanie takes Sam’s hand and follows him up the stairs. Halfway up, they roll their eyes at each other and bite their lips. Leaning against the bedroom door as he closes it, Sam whispers, “Jesus, I can’t believe I just brought you upstairs with me.”
Giggling, she throws her arms around his neck and he picks her up and plops her onto his bed.
At the end of Monday-morning practice, the girls’ coach plants herself between the Mutant and the gym doors. “You work with Sam this weekend?”
The Mutant nods.
“Good. He made you open up, didn’t he? I wish I could clap one of those masks on all of you. You notice the difference?”
“Yes’m,” the Mutant admits. Sunday had been better. A lot. Recalling it evokes the wild swings between elation that he had been right and resentment that this huge improvement only cost her half her face.
“You’re feeling okay? No facial pain?”
The interrogation is inevitable, she has to go through it
