“Where did you say you were staying? I can’t tell you how upset Dad’s been. I tell him there’s nothing to worry about, but … you know Dad. Every little thing …”
“Tell me who’s been there.”
“Is there someone you’re afraid of? We can’t help you if we don’t know what’s happening. Tell me everything’s all right.”
“Everything’s all right.”
“That you say so makes me feel better, Chris. You’ve had some calls; every time the phone rings it seems to be for you. Some young man — I can’t remember his name — who says you called him about a place to stay. He says to call him back immediately. And this girl with this very, very soft voice you can hardly hear keeps calling, though I’ve told her you’re not here. I assume you know who she is because for the life of me I couldn’t get her to say. Why is she so shy?”
“What else?”
“Someone wanted to know what television program you were watching. When Dad answered, he just said you didn’t live here — he’s very disturbed about your leaving the way you did, but that’s for the two of you to have out.”
“The man in the hat — he never came back?”
“Do you know who he is, Chrissy? He was rude to Dad. Yesterday morning he was here. Dad said he didn’t know where you were and the man kept asking as if he thought Dad was lying. He wouldn’t state his business and I had to restrain Dad — you know how he gets. In his anger at the man, he knocked me into the wall.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. Just a black-and-blue mark where he grabbed my arm. And he was so contrite afterward, like a little boy, I had to forgive him. Chrissy, what does this man want that he can’t tell your father? Are you in some kind of difficulty?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m confident — I told Dad this — that no matter what kind of trouble you get into you’ll make the best of it. When you were five or even younger than that, three or four, do you remember the time …?”
“I didn’t mean to disturb you, Christopher.” Her hand in the air like a bird. “Go back to sleep. Please.” Shaking her head at something. She was gone. My hope for America, my stake in the future, standing at attention. Bad manners in front of a teacher’s wife. (Am I to blame for bad dreams?) I heard her playing with her baby in the next room, calling it “love.” Feeling left out. “Here, love.” Here. Here.
Carolyn came in, said to give her my dirty clothes, that she was doing a wash.
I told her not to worry about it, I was all right.
“Christopher” (as if I were some child that belonged to her), “you’re wearing the same thing today you wore when you came here.”
I said not to worry about it, but she got some of Parks’ clothes. Throwing them at me. She said, only half closing the door, peeking in, she would wait outside while I changed.
“Have you changed yet?” she said, trying to catch me. I was staring at the ceiling.
“No.”
“Well, hurry up. I’m not going to wait much longer for you. If you stay here, you have to abide by the rules of the house.”
With my back to the door — she wasn’t going to see anything — I put on Parks’ clothes, threw her mine. His pants a little short. Loose around the waist. As a way of passing time, I imitated his voice to myself. “The trouble with you, Christopher, is that you have no commitments. Carolyn, Christopher has no commitments. Carolyn, you.”
Parks came home at about five, with a Post under his arm, looking burned out. The other Parks (his guest) refreshed from a day in his bed. He threw me the Post and went to the liquor cabinet.
I took the Post to the bathroom. The little girl, who had been playing in there, hammered on the door when I put her out. Their whispers, ice clear, under the hammering. “He never once left the house. Whose guest is he supposed to be? Did you think I was lonely here alone, is that why you invited him to stay?”
Headline on page five: REJECTED HUSBAND KILLS WIFE, LOVER. He wanted, he said, to start over from scratch.
“I can’t believe you spend the whole day in the library.”
“Don’t you think he can hear you?”
POLICE SAY THEY HAVE LEAD ON BROOKLYN CRIPPLE KILLER (a small box on page six). The evidence is mounting, the article says. Among those picked up for questioning are: “A Negro lawyer, a high school dropout, a father of nine with a homosexual history, a former professional football player, an Army deserter, and a writer under psychiatric care. Police sources indicate that the fiend or fiends, if more than one is involved, may still be at large.”
“You act as if your life depends on what a nineteen-year-old — who looks sixteen — thinks of you.”
“He’s more than nineteen, for God’s sake.”
“Well, if he is, he keeps it under his hat.”
The baby yelling while we ate. We pretending not to notice.
“Maybe she needs something, Carolyn,” Parks said, his face twisted as if the screaming were happening inside him.
“It’s very likely that she does. You know where the diapers are”.
“You’re the mother.”
“If you want her diaper changed”—nodding at me — “you’re the one who’s bothered by the noise, you change it. I’ve had it all day.”
He had been drinking for an hour and a half. Eyes rimmed with blood. His voice bleeding. “I want you to do it.”
Carolyn suffered in my direction. Smiling bravely as if secretly dying (sparing us the pain) of incurable disease. “It’s my fate,” she said. “I’m doomed never to eat a meal from beginning to end,” and she went off, doomed.
“Can I talk to you alone?” I said. Something wrong with my voice.
“Any questions you have, I’ll be glad to answer.” He stood up, staggered, sat down.
What kind of destiny do you have in mind for me? I took a drink of wine to clear my head. “I need a place to hide,” it came out.
“Christopher, if there’s anything I can do for you, I’ll do it. You can stay here as long as you like. As long as I’m here you’re welcome to stay.”
“What do you think of someone who follows women around?”
His eyes moved back out of range. His face suddenly flaming. “Why are you always putting me on the defensive, you bastard? Do you think I approve of everything you do?” He pointed a wavering finger at me. “What kind of trouble are you in?”
I pointed my finger back at him. “Did you spend the whole day at the library?”
“It’s you we’re talking about, not me.”
She was standing behind us in the doorway (holding a child, patting its back). I nodded to her.
“Let’s not fight,” he was saying. “Not over a woman, for God’s sake. You know, when I saw you that time with her, I could have killed you.”
Trying to warn him, I knocked over his wineglass with my elbow. Wine spreading across the green tablecloth like a shadow.
“What are you trying to do to me?”
“Your wife …” When I looked back over my shoulder, she wasn’t there. Parks was laughing at something. “I’ll help you if you help me.”
“There’s no help,” he said. “What do you have in mind?”
She was back without the child, looking pleased with herself, no longer doomed. “I don’t know which of you is the more helpless,” she said, blotting the cloth with a sponge, something amusing her.
“It’s my fault,” he told her.
I said it was mine.
We moved into the living room because of what I had done. Parks said it looked like a battlefield, went into his room to change his pants. Didn’t come back.
“I think both of them are asleep now,” Carolyn said, and I followed her into the bedroom to see. Sprawled out as if someone had dumped him there, he looked like a corpse. Carolyn took off his shoes, covered him with her coat. She whispered something in his ear which hammered in my head. Parks moaned, turned his head to the other side. We went back as we came, quiet as insects.