“Lookit her go. Runnin’ like the goddamn dickens. How old is she, anyway, Knuter? Five, six?”
“Four.”
Combine Jo sighed heavily. “I heard you two were in town, Knute. I had to come and see you. See her. You know I’ve got no way of getting to the city to see you. How was I gonna see you and S.F.?”
“Nobody invited you.”
At this Combine Jo slapped her thigh and barked, “Ha! You haven’t changed at all, Knute. Not one iota. Still a spark plug, you crazy kid. You and I should have a drink together some day. But, you know I like your spunk. I’ve always loved your spunk. And you know what? So did Max. Of all Max’s girlfriends you were my goddamn favourite and that’s no lie. The rest were pffhh … In fact, that’s another reason why I’m here.”
Dory handed Combine Jo her coffee and immediately Jo spilled a few drops on her anchor dress. “Whoops. Shit.” Then Jo did it again. “I’ll be goddamned!” she said. Dory attempted a tortured smile. Knute stood a ways away with her arms folded across her chest. The thought of a drink wasn’t a bad one. But not with her. Knute looked at her and raised her eyebrows placidly in an unfriendly gesture, egging her on.
“Max called me. Finally, the little bastard, and he’s coming home. He’s broke and tired of Europe. Who wouldn’t be? He’s coming back, Knuter. And he wants to see his goddamned daughter!”
“Are you serious?” Marilyn muttered over the phone later that evening. “That’s what she said? Just like that?”
“Yeah. Can you believe it?” Knute was soaking in a tub of hot water and talking to Marilyn on Tom’s new cordless phone. Tom and Dory and S.F. were all in bed together eating popcorn and watching TV. She could hear an occasional laugh track through the bathroom wall.
“I can believe that he’s broke,” said Marilyn.
“Some things never change,” Knute answered.
“What are you gonna do?” she asked.
“I don’t know. What can I do? I can’t keep him from coming back. I’m not gonna leave just because he’s coming back. And besides, he’s not a terrible person or anything, he’s just completely hopeless. I don’t know.”
“Well, he’s an asshole, Knute. He knew you were pregnant and he took off.”
“Well, I kind of told him to get lost.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean get lost, get lost like for five years. It means just fuck off for a while and don’t bug you.”
“Yeah, but he might have figured that out himself if he wasn’t such a slave to his mother. She’s the one who told him his life would be ruined forever if he became a father and stayed in Algren.”
“Well, that’s probably true.”
“Thanks, Marilyn.”
“Well, for Christ’s sake. He’d have to be a total moron to believe her.”
“Yeah, shhh, I know. I know. Actually I think he just wanted to leave. He couldn’t deal with it. I don’t think he ever listened to his mom.”
“Oh, so he’s Leonard Cohen all of a sudden, moping around Europe in a big black coat all grim and sad-faced because it’s what he has to do? Gimme a break. So now you’re just gonna forgive him and let him see S.F. and waltz right back into your life, just like that? Have some self-respect, for Pete’s sake, Knute.”
“Yeah, but what about S.F.? He is her father, after all. If he wants to see her, shouldn’t I let him? Just because he’s a moron doesn’t mean she wouldn’t want to see him, right? She knows about him and everything. I mean, she can decide later if she hates him enough never to see him again. I can’t really decide that for her, you know.”
“Why not? Lots of parents do that. If you think she’s better off without him in her life, then that’s that. You decide.”
“Well, you let Ron see Josh even though Ron’s an idiot.”
“Yeah, but he pays me, Knute. You know, child support? I’m forced to let him see Josh.”
“But don’t you think you’d want Josh to know Ron even if he wasn’t paying you?”
“Absolutely not. Ron’s a twit. Josh can do better than him for a father.”
“Well, Marilyn, that doesn’t make any sense. He is his father. You’re the one who could have done better than him for a boyfriend. There’s nothing you can do about him being Josh’s dad. And just because he’s a twit doesn’t mean Josh doesn’t like him.”
“Hmm, I don’t know, Knute. You know what I think? I think you’re still hot for Max.”
“Wrong-o.”
“You are! I can tell. I can always tell. You definitely are still hot for Mighty Max.”
“Oh God, Marilyn. I don’t even know him anymore.”
“Yeah? So what’s your point? Welcome to—”
S.F. came into the bathroom and asked if she could join Knute in the tub. Marilyn heard S.F. asking and said, “Oh God, don’t you hate that?”
“Yeah. I have to add more cold. Okay, I gotta go.”
“You know what you have to do, Knute?” said Marilyn.
“What.”
“You have to learn how to make pudding. It says on the box you have to stir constantly, constantly, and it takes a good twenty or thirty minutes before the stuff boils. So if S.F. is bugging you, you know, asking for this and that, you say, Sorry ma’am, do you want pudding or not? I cannot leave this pudding for a second.”
“Yeah?” said Knute.
“Yeah,” said Marilyn, “it’s great. I make tons of pudding, and while I stir I read. Thin, light books ’cause you only have one hand to hold ’em. Josh can’t do a thing about it, so he actually amuses himself and I get a decent break. All hell can break loose around me. I don’t care, I’m making pudding.”
“That’s a great idea, Marilyn,” said Knute. “What happens when he gets sick of pudding?”
“I don’t know, I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll think of something when that time comes, though. Something less fattening.”
“Yeah. Marilyn, you have to come and visit me here soon, okay?”
“Definitely,” said Marilyn, and they put off saying good-bye for a while and then eventually hung up.
That night just before Knute went to bed she watched S.F. sleep. A strand of hair was stuck in her mouth. Knute removed it. S.F. put it back in. She was beautiful. An angel made in heaven, as Combine Jo had said. God, thought Knute, that woman was S.F.’s paternal grandmother! Not that it mattered. In Knute’s opinion, Combine Jo was more interested in her next drink and her piles of money than she was in S.F. Or even Max.
Dory had told Knute, when she was pregnant with S.F., that Combine Jo hadn’t always been the way she was now. Years and years ago, she had been the wife of the wealthiest farmer in Algren. She had been beautiful and serene. Before Max was even a year old, she had had an affair with a farmer from Whithers. One stormy spring night she had stayed at her lover’s place under the pretext that the roads were too treacherous to get back to Algren. The next day she returned home to find Max, her baby, just about frozen to death, lying unconscious and bruised on the kitchen floor — her husband beside him, dead and covered with logs. Apparently he had had an epileptic seizure while trying to fire up the woodstove, dropped Max, whom he had been carrying in one arm, fallen down and died right there. After that Combine Jo started eating and drinking and swearing and generally raising hell all over Algren, until she became too fat and alcoholic to easily make her way out of her house.
With all the money left to her and Max in her husband’s will, and by selling most of the farm, Combine Jo was able to hire enough people to look after Max when he was little, and bring her food and booze. She got the name Combine Jo not because she was as big as one, but because each spring she would take her husband’s old combine out of the barn and drive it up and down Algren’s Main Street as a personal spring-seeding celebration. Dory thought that Combine Jo might carry a sawed-off rifle in the cab of the combine, but nobody knew for sure. She would career down the street, one hand on the wheel, the other clamped around her bottle of Wild Turkey. She would then drive the combine to her husband’s grave, often right up over it, and enjoy a toast with him. She’d pour half a bottle of bourbon into the grass on top of his grave, light a cigarette and prop it up, as best she could, in the grass around where his head would have been, six feet under, and then she’d lie there beside him, where she felt she belonged.