Outside Target, as his tiny daughter twisted and jumped in his arms, wanting to ride the fifty-cent Dumbo, Georgeann waved to him. Three years later she was able to do that. He lifted his arm, smiled widely and walked toward her, but she moved swiftly through the double doors without a backward glance.
Georgeann had known in her heart before she knew in her head that Ross was cheating on her. When she’d found him throwing pennies in the garbage, sweeping them off his dresser into the trash bag, she asked herself, just who is he—this careless, careless man? Then without conscious effort her love began to untangle its hold and dissolve.
“Listen to me,” Georgeann now says to the woman, grabbing her arm. “Listen…” But she doesn’t know what to say to her; Georgeann’s own experiences have left deep impressions, but where, she wonders, is the grace of wisdom? “Come,” she says instead, following the scent of chocolate and butter as she steers the woman to the bakery counter at the back of the store. The candle casts a warm, inviting glow on the trays of round butter cookies sparkling with sugar, little buttery men filled with chocolate and raspberry, cupcakes dipped in rainbow sprinkles, a small cake decorated with a chocolate ribbon. “Here,” she says, pulling the woman behind the counter.
The sweets are gleaming and beautiful, and at this moment everything feels possible to Georgeann—the world feels vast and comforting. Clarity pushes in on her amid the scent of luscious chocolate. Move it, it tells her; move, move. They kneel in front of the goodies. “Eat!” Georgeann cries, sliding open the glass case. “Eat something.”
Slowly they reach into the case and eat one cookie at a time. Soon they start exchanging treats, passing the fanciest and the gooiest ones to each other. Georgeann wants to eat everything. She grabs an éclair, licks the icing and then stuffs it in her mouth. The woman’s hand hovers over a tray, unable to decide. Her hand creeps back to her side and thrusts forward, snatching a cupcake and stuffing it, paper and all, into her mouth. Georgeann eats a cannoli, feeling crumbs fall from her lips onto her lap.
The woman and Georgeann have chocolate rings around their mouths. Georgeann wipes her own mouth, feeling queasy with sticky sweetness, but she’s tempted by a thick brownie. It’s heavy and slick with icing, and she swallows it down in gobs. Gooey chocolate coats the roof of her mouth. As she stuffs in the rest of the brownie she feels her bowels turn. “I have to find a bathroom,” she says, standing and bumping into the cookie case.
The woman makes a small, understanding noise as Georgeann rushes to the rear corner of the store, where a light shines. A stockboy mops the floor by the dairy case, his large flashlight illuminating a milky puddle. “The bathroom,” Georgeann says. “Where is it?”
“The bathroom isn’t for customers, lady,” he says, turning from her and going over her wet footprints with the mop.
“I have to go!” She clutches his arm; it is a skinny boy’s arm.
He makes a sour, huffy noise that says, just who do you think you are? I haven’t a clue, kiddo, she thinks. He leads the way through a set of metal doors and into the meat locker where hunks of beef hang from hooks. “You should have gone before you came here.”
“Hurry,” she says, pulling him along faster. She’s not sure she will make it.
He shines his light into the dirty little bathroom so she gets an idea where the toilet is, before he gives her a small push and shuts her in.
Georgeann unbuckles her jeans. Constipation is more her style, but now she has to take an urgent shit in the blackness of Safeway. The air is cold and creepy on her naked skin as she squats over the toilet until she must sit. Feeling along the wall she finds the roll of toilet paper.
There must be a mirror above the sink, and she reaches out and touches the smooth, chilly surface, but in the darkness there is no reassurance of her face. She is just a woman alone in a dank bathroom, a woman who wishes she’d lived a little better. At this moment she’s certain a touch of rot has taken root inside her heart, where instead there might have been expansion. She also knows she still might live better if she knew how not to be afraid. Her heart pounds loudly, letting her know she is still very much alive, as she gropes with the faucet and feels for the soap dispenser. When she flushes she hopes it all goes down.
There is no stockboy with a flashlight waiting for her when she opens the door. The overhead lights begin to flicker as she makes her way past the slabs of bloody meat. It is a hard life, there’s no doubt. She gives the side of a cow a fairly good punch. It is a cold and dignified piece of beast. Large and stupid and ugly, but it is what it is.
On the other side of the double doors, the lights continue to flicker in spurts, and Georgeann moves quickly to the front of the store, ready to leave. By the checkout line she eyes a shopping cart wedged against the magazine rack holding a T-bone steak and a five-pound bag of potatoes. “Is this anybody’s?” Georgeann asks.
The checkout girl shrugs under the sputtering lights. Georgeann lifts the food onto the conveyer belt and digs for her wallet, discovering the avocado, ripe and warm, buried in her purse. After she pays the girl she carries her bag to the car, squinting into the brightness. The sunset is a swirl of red and purple melting together and hanging low over the Tucson Mountains.
When Georgeann returns home she peers under the living room curtains at Sam Bailey’s salmon-colored adobe, listening to the whir of his swamp cooler, watching the billow of his ratty T-shirts on the clothesline. “You,” she says; the word sounds almost accusatory.
She takes a cool bath. The rye bread is stale without any nibbles in it and there is no sign of the lizard—hopefully it found its way out to the yard, she thinks, biting into the hard bread and feeling the pressure between her teeth. She changes into her nightgown and moves to the living room, feeling deeply unsatisfied, and sits in different chairs, finally falling to sleep on the couch.
At dawn, sunlight fills the room and she wanders into the bathroom, where she discovers the lizard clinging to the side of the bathtub. “Oh!” she yells, kneeling in front of it. “You’re going to die on me, aren’t you?” The lizard is completely still and she notes the translucent front legs, as elegant as a dancer’s, and the dainty tip of its tail. “Lovely,” she whispers. She gently touches it with one finger. “Please,” she whispers, her voice faint and airy. “I won’t hurt you.” The lizard turns its neck and looks into her eyes with its own black, unreadable ones. It is weak, she can see. Its body has probably started in on the business of dying. “Let me take you outside,” she whispers. She brushes it into her hand and feels the little body there in her palm, trusting her, and she wonders at the mystery of this.
Warmth rises from the earth, this desert valley, beneath her bare feet as she moves slowly past the cholla and rose bushes. Cupping her hands, she talks to the lizard in a low, soothing voice and sets it down next to the Joshua tree. “Be well,” she says as the lizard moves uncertainly across her fingers to the ground.
As she stands, she sees Sam Bailey sitting on his back stoop, working his feet into a pair of socks. One of his beagles stretches out next to him. Faint music is playing on a transistor radio. Sam sees her then, half-hidden by the Joshua tree, standing in her nightgown. A warm breeze, like a breath emptying from the lungs, blows through her yard into his as she moves toward him.
WILDLIFE OF AMERICA
MY SISTER FRANKIE’S EVENING-OF-BEAUTY COUPON was good only on Fridays, so she’d made an appointment for this coming one and when she’d spend the evening swaddled in seaweed and dipped in Middle Eastern mud, and since my brother-in-law Chuck had his impotence support group, after which he and the guys would usually go for a beer, could I please babysit?