Thank goodness Mr. Mugglewump came home that night.
“Where have you been?” Humphries cooed over him, as did his wife, Mrs. Josie Humphries.
The cat couldn’t tell where he had been. Neither could Humphries.
Now I have a terrible secret, he thought.
He lay in bed next to Josie and had private visions of torment.
It was a small neighborhood. He would run into the mysterious siren. Maybe Josie, who loved a pleasant stroll, would be on his arm when the confrontation occurred! All scenarios were distasteful.
He couldn’t sleep.
Humphries read the New York Times on the Internet every day like a big shot. He disdained the local rag. It was a way to get back at his wife, who had moved to this Podunk burg for a job. Humphries was a landscape painter, so he could live anywhere. That’s what Josie said. But what was he supposed to paint around here? A ditch? He stood on the back porch every day and painted pictures of turds for spite. Josie said they were good.
She was all right.
She noticed that Humphries had started walking down to the drugstore in the morning and picking up the local paper. She made knowing faces at him. Now that Mr. Mugglewump had survived on the streets, Mississippi was looking okay to her. Humphries cringed and shuddered at her implicit optimism and got back to the paper. He was looking for a story about some local jerk getting assassinated.
On the third day he almost gave up because he didn’t want to give his wife the satisfaction. But he rose in the first smeary light, while Josie was still asleep, and walked to the drugstore. He didn’t have to bring the paper home. Without that clue, Josie wouldn’t be able to guess he was happy. Because he was happy. He was happy being miserable. He was happy that living in Mississippi would give him a great excuse to be a failure.
There were some old codgers spitting in a cup for some reason. Humphries stood on the corner reading about Buddy Wilson, who had owned a struggling poster shop. He was a large, fat man who had been found at the county dump, his head nearly severed from his body. Police suspected garroting by banjo string because there was a banjo lying nearby with a missing string.
It was cool out. Humphries’s palms were sweating. He threw the paper in a trash can and wiped the slippery newsprint on his pants. For the first time, he went back to the house where he had spotted the girl with the gun.
The window glowed. He could see everything from the street. It was like a different place, draped in fabrics, oranges and pinks, full of light and life. There was a homey smell of bacon in the air.
A young couple — nothing like the yellow-haired girl with the gun — pulled a twee red sweater over their little white dog. They had a string of white Christmas lights blinking along the mantle, though Christmas was miles and miles away.
The dirty old glider was still on the porch. It was the only thing to convince Humphries he wasn’t crazy.
He had a bad day and couldn’t get any turds painted.
That evening, just before the sun went down, he went back to the odd little duplex. The young couple had put up curtains. The black cat, a fixture of the neighborhood, was back in its place on the soiled glider. The white dog in the red sweater stood smugly on its hind legs between the curtain and the window with its white forepaws on the window ledge, safely behind the glass, staring at the cat with sick superiority.
Cheap Suitcase and a New Town
by Chris Offutt
Lucedale
Betsy had been raised to hold grudges forever, but long ago realized it required more effort than she cared to exert. She remembered the very moment when she’d understood that forgiveness had nothing to do with an adversary, but would benefit solely herself. Her entire worldview had shifted, like discovering her house contained a new room full of light, a chamber she wanted to occupy forever.
Ten months before, Betsy had moved to Lucedale and found work in a breakfast café, becoming the very person she detested most — a woman in a shapeless uniform serving eggs to workingmen, the oldest waitress in the place, alone and not wanting to be, living in a dump and drinking herself to sleep. She was not yet forty. She thought she should know better and felt worse for it.
An eighteen-year-old girl named Thadine joined the breakfast crew. Betsy envied her youth and vitality, the cheery optimism, her slim hips twitching among the tables. Betsy had been the same as Thadine twenty years earlier in another town and had progressed nowhere. Worse, Thadine actively sought Betsy’s attention, craving approval, trailing behind her like a pup who’d been kicked but never with severity.
During the midmorning lull before lunch, their side work included refilling salt and pepper shakers, marrying half-empty ketchup bottles, and topping off the sugar containers. Thadine chattered about inconsequential subjects, a running narrative of what lay immediately before her, a commentary on the obvious. Occasionally she tested safe opinions. She laughed readily. The boss liked her and the cooks strove to conceal her errors. In another context, Betsy might have found her adorable — slight and needy in old loafers — but Betsy was reminded of all that she herself had lost: everyone she’d ever loved, a familiar landscape, the security of deep belonging, but most of all the naïveté of seeing life as fraught with promise.
For two weeks the girl had gotten on Betsy’s nerves. Fed up, her voice hard, Betsy finally said, “Get away from me. I’m your coworker, not your friend.”
Thadine’s face turned red as if she’d been slapped. Her eyes, formerly as brimful of hope as an egg is of yolk, filled with tears. She hurried to the kitchen and Betsy ignored her during the rest of the shift, grateful for the efficiency of working alone. She counted her tips at the Formica breakfast bar, cashed her change into folding money, and left.
The incessant heat pressed against Betsy as if she’d stepped into the sea. Though mid-September, there was little autumn to behold. In the parking lot Thadine was leaning against Betsy’s car, her face downcast.
“Why do you hate me?” Thadine said. “I only want to be like you.”
Betsy’s knees seemed to give, as if the struts that held her upright had become elastic. Her polyester uniform clung to her skin, smelling of bacon, stained along the perimeter of her apron. She was tired. Perspiration sheened her face. This was the girl’s hometown. She no doubt wanted out, same as Betsy had wanted out of her own. It never occurred to Betsy that seeing her young self in Thadine was a two-way enterprise. Thadine’s life must feel drastic for Betsy’s to appear worthy of emulation.
The unforeseen arrival of forgiveness relieved Betsy of a burden she didn’t know she carried, an invisible shawl of stone. She’d felt the burn of betrayal many times — lied to, taken advantage of, abandoned — left alone with the numb opacity of loss. But she had done her share of hurting people too. It all worked out in the end. The balance of life was achieved by weighted extremes. She had no appetite for moderation, no patience for people who did.
With the stunning clarity of sunup after a fierce storm, Betsy realized that her life wasn’t a case of failing to learn from her mistakes, but one of repeating the same patterns again and again. Waitress shoes, a narrow bed, a damaged man. A cheap suitcase and a new town. She wanted to warn the girl, to give her advice Betsy had never received: Don’t let them hit you, don’t drink on an empty stomach, don’t cry alone. But Betsy knew it wouldn’t have done her younger self any good to hear it, no more than it would for Thadine.
Only two things ever helped in life — love and money. Any love Betsy could muster was reserved for the next reckless man, not this waif weeping in the harsh light. She offered the day’s tips.