John-William’s mother lets the water run in the tub. Back in the bedroom she peels the sticky dress up over her head, drops it on the floor. Just like John-William, she thinks. Doesn’t get all his bad habits from Jack. On the way back she stops, stands there in the hall. Something seems to move, something in the almost not quite corner in the dark. Something nearly there, something nearly out of sight. John-William’s mother turns around fast. Gives a little jump, a little start. And there’s Betty Ann looking back, just as surprised, just as naked as Betty Ann herself. Betty Ann knows she ought to look away, knows she shouldn’t stand there staring in her birthday suit. Still, the sight in the mirror holds her fixed, holds her still, like a doe caught frightened in the light.
My lord, who’s that, thinks John-William’s mother. It sure isn’t me, isn’t anyone that I ever knew! It looks like her. But it can’t be John-William’s mother, can’t be Jack’s wife. Betty Ann feels sticky from the heat, from the sweat between her breasts, from the tingle in her nipples, from the heat between her knees. The woman in the mirror has beaded points of light in the dark between her thighs, has slick-silver flesh, has an opalescent glow like she’s just stepped out of a moonlit sea. The woman in the mirror doesn’t think about meatloaf at all, doesn’t think about carrots on the stove. She thinks about the soldier and the need in his eyes and the hard thing pressed against her belly that night.
The woman in the mirror remembers every feeling, every moment with the soldier in the grass, later with a boy named Freddie and one named Alex, and Bob after that, and every single night, every morning with Jack, even the moments when he hit her too hard, when her face swelled up and she went out back to cry….
Goodness sake, thinks John-William’s mother, uneasy with the thoughts in her head, and the warm spots farther down than that. “Well that’s what you get,” she thinks out loud, “gawking at yourself like a Fort Worth floozie struttin’ down Third Avenue.”
John-William’s mother remembers the water in the tub. Lord, she’d gone and left it on. There’d be water running out the door, into the hall and onto the carpet, and Jack’s wife, Betty Ann, running naked ’round the house with a mop and John-William’s supper in the stove.
Betty Ann stops right there and frowns at the tub. She’s real sure she turned the water on, but there isn’t a drip or a drop, and the tub’s dry as a bone. Betty Ann shakes her head, says “Well, I declare,” pads in her bare feet back down the hall, back to the kitchen, back to the stove, back to the counter and the peels in the sink, back to the meatloaf in the stove. Walks to the screen to check the latch. Stops, looks out the back. Remembers where she is and has to laugh. No one walks around naked in the kitchen, bare ass naked, not a stitch at all, even in the dark. If Jack came in right then he’d think she was crazy as a loon. Which doesn’t much matter, she remembers, Jack’s not coming back at all.
Betty Ann stands at the screen and looks out. Doesn’t seem that long ago she was watching the light slink away, waiting for the dark to slide in. She looks past the drive to the Hooper’s back yard. The walls are black, the roof has faded into night. She can see the Prewitts’ fence, but the Kamps are out of sight. John-William’s mother looks up as something flutters in the night. Just for an instant, it hangs there, a smudge against the inky sky. Maybe it has red eyes, she thinks. Maybe its tongue is colored orange.
A wind hot as syrup fills the night. Betty Ann’s heart skips a beat. Skips two, hesitates, decides to try again. Betty Ann catches her breath, backs away from the door, leans against the sink. Lets her eyes touch the room. The garbage can, the broom, the chair, and the stove. She opens the pot, peers inside. The carrots are limp, dry as brittle leaves. The pale blue flame has gone out. She opens the oven door. The meatloaf is cold, pink, with little eyes of fat. The radio is dead, the refrigerator, too. The lights, the gas.
Turn on the faucet. A sputter and a cough. Betty Ann tries the phone. “Hello? Hello?” Just like in the movies. Nobody’s there.
Betty Ann walks naked through the gray heavy gauze of her first brick house. She’d been real scared once before, when she and John-William were alone and Jack was in Tulsa overnight. Something had scratched on the window and made wet steps on the lawn. In the morning, there was nothing there to see. The next night Jack was snoring by her side, but Betty Ann didn’t sleep for a week.
“It’s all right,” she says, “everything’s fine. Everything’s off right now, but it’ll all go on again.” Her voice sounds funny in the still and empty house. She feels her way back to the kitchen, finds her Old Golds, a box of matches on the sink. Paws through the junk drawer, finds a wad of string, pencil stubs, and dry fountain pens. No candles at all.
John-William’s mother moves back down the hall. Looks in the mirror. Can’t hardly see herself at all. Lights a kitchen match. Betty Ann naked, skin white as tallow in the flare of sudden light. The living room carpet’s black as tar. The easy chairs are blurs against the greater dark. Feels for the sofa. Can’t find it anywhere at all. The match doesn’t work. She tries another and another after that. Tosses the box on the floor.
Moving real slow, doesn’t want to bump her toes. Opens the front door a crack. Can’t see much better than she did in the back.
The houses across the street are just like hers. Stubby brick, living room, bedrooms, kitchen in the back. Arch across the porch. Now all the houses are solemn and gray, all the color drained out, the life washed away. No lights in the windows, no lights at all.
Betty Ann opens the door a little wider, a little wider still. One bare foot outside and then the next. John-William’s mother, Jack’s wife, Betty Ann, stands naked on the hot front porch. Night wind brushes her flesh, tickles her breasts, whispers naughties in her ear.
Betty Ann stands very, very still. She can’t remember when she last stood out in the night. Didn’t flee, didn’t run when the big clock deep in the earth warned everyone the light was dying and the dark was sweeping in, told everyone to hurry, get safe inside.
Still, it isn’t so bad if you stand real still, if you don’t think hard — if you don’t let the dark know you’re there. It can’t see everything, can it? A whole world of night out there, it can’t watch every leaf, every stone, every time a dog does his business on the lawn….
It comes to her then, like the secret was there all the time, like she knew it in her head. Grandmaw didn’t know it all — she knew the scary part, knew about the bad, but she didn’t know the rest. All you have to do is stand very, very still, listen, listen, to the great stone clock down deep-deep within the earth, listen to it tick-tick-tick away the quiet moments, the hours, the long years of the night. Don’t move, don’t breathe, feel the silence and the wind, feel the whisper of the dark against your skin….
John-William’s mother, Jack’s wife, Betty Ann, peers into the dark, looks into the inky night for a very long time, and after a while she wonders if she might not be Betty Ann standing naked on the porch, she might be Betty Ann dreaming somewhere, Betty Ann back at Mama’s on the farm, looking at the rusty old Ford. She might be Betty Ann having ice cream with Johnny Two Horse, who said he was pure Cherokee. She liked Johnny Two Horse a whole lot, kissed him twice till Mama found out he wasn’t white, washed her mouth with soap and put a stop to that.