No Story to Tell (35 page)

“Grab the wheel, Vic!” he yelled as he took aim, leaning still further out the window until Victoria was certain she felt the whole truck following his direction, felt it slowly begin to lean toward the opposite side of the road. She watched hypnotically as the ditch opened below them and revealed its entrails: blurred swipes of cardboard boxes, unsprung mattresses and a long-dead deer. He hollered again, commanded her to take the wheel, but something in her sat rigid and her limbs refused to obey.

“Grab it!” John Jr. shrieked at her then grabbed it himself when he saw defiance had rewritten her face. The crackle of tires on gravel filled their ears as John Jr. wrenched the truck back onto the road, a sharp thwack signaling Bobby’s bottle had indeed found its mark. Raucous applause pounded the cab roof as Bobby whooped and hollered and congratulated himself.

“Two cases and a mickey!”

“Bullshit! Ya didn’t git the
N.
”

“Bloody did too. Didn’t ya see it? Nailed the bitch dead on!”

“Naw, I didn’t see ’cause someone had to keep the frig-gin’ truck on the road.” He shot a glare at Victoria. “Let’s go to Trappers, I’ll buy you a beer.”

“Screw that! You bet me two cases an a friggin’ mickey to boot.”

“Tough shit for you numb-nuts. Didn’t shake on it!” John Jr. grinned victoriously.

“Ah, shit, that ain’t fair JJ! Deal’s a deal.”

“Not if ya don’t shake on it. Ain’t nothing but negotiations lessen you shake on it.”

“Shit!” Bobby pounded the steering wheel. He could see when he was defeated. “Damn shit! Well, least you owes me a beer iffin’ nothing else.”

“Sure, I’ll buy you a beer. Swing by Trappers.”

“Bobby, I don’t want to go to Trappers. I want to go home, okay?” Victoria’s voice barely rose above the roar of the motor. Bobby looked down at her, surprised, as if he’d forgotten she was even there. Instinctively he began to deny her request, but John Jr. cut in before he had a chance.

“Ya, send her home, Bobby. We can pick up my rig.”

Bobby sped down Main Street, swerved around two corners and tried to hit a sleeping dog before roaring to a stop outside John Jr.’s bedraggled house, where a clutch of equally bedraggled children offered up grubby hands in a tentative wave, which their father ignored as he left Bobby’s truck and clambered into his own. Grinding into reverse, Bobby zigzagged back out the driveway, down the street and all the way over to the bar. Victoria felt completely sick to her stomach now, and she wished Bobby would just get out so she could go home and be alone. But he sat making no attempt to move, watching the rearview mirror like he was waiting for something to happen. And when it did happen, he abruptly popped the clutch causing the truck to jump ahead and send Peter sprawling like a sack of potatoes. And each time Peter made a renewed attempt to get out of the truck, Bobby sent him sprawling again, squealing and cursing like a stuck pig, until finally he became annoyed at being the amusement and refused to cooperate, hunkering down in the back of the truck and glaring at anyone who caught his eye. Bobby, having had a good laugh, fell out of the truck, grabbed Peter by the scruff of the neck and hauled him out as well, easily sidestepping a few weak blows as they staggered off into the bar followed slowly by Sam.

Victoria scrounged through the garbage on the floor, found a semi-clean rag and wiped slopped beer from the driver’s seat. Slipping behind the wheel, her eye caught the forms of two men leaning against the garbage bins breathing hair spray from paper bags. Coaxing the truck into gear, she bucked and lurched into motion then, despite herself, looked over and caught the unmistakable gesture of a feeble wave.

She picked up the phone apprehensively, profoundly relieved when no one answered her tentative hello. The calls had come in a trickle at first then developed into a torrent as word got out about Bobby’s gun-waving performance: apologetic or angry mothers calling with translucent excuses why they had to immediately pull their children out of dance classes. In less than a week the studio’s roster went from over-full to annihilated. Victoria looked down at her half-empty glass, absently pulled the whiskey bottle from the cupboard and topped it up.

“Oh, hi. I was wondering when you’d call again. I was beginning to think you’d forgot my number. Or forgot about me . . . or something like that.”

She fished the words carefully into the line, desperate for a bite, a nibble, a response however small that would reassure her that it was not possible for him to ever forget her, or even her number. She hesitated a moment but didn’t wait long. She’d long ago learned his words either erupted in a short burst or not at all. Pressing the small of her back against the refrigerator, she slid unevenly to the floor, twirling her fingers in the black cord. She found a pen lying beside her and, pulling her knees up to her chest, causing her nightie to slide down across her hips, she began doodling on her thigh.

“Guess you heard about my husband? Out at the sale? Sure everyone has by now. Well, he’s managed to get his way. Again.” She stopped, licked her lips as she carefully etched a leafy tree up her left thigh. “He never wanted me to have a studio in the first place, and now he’s scared off every mother in town.”

She blossomed apples onto the tree, “Sometimes, I wish he would just do it.” The words held an ice that froze her, but considering them, she let them be. “I do. It’s true. Don’t tell anyone, okay? Never. I know it sounds awful to say. It
is
awful to say. I’m sure I don’t really wish it. I don’t. It’s just that I’m so confused. He makes me feel so trapped, so useless. I just don’t know what to do anymore.”

She listened for a response, gave up and stretched her legs out, admiring her artwork from a different perspective. She added three blue and flesh daisies at the base of the tree, reconsidered and rubbed one away with her thumb.

“Doesn’t love me, anyhow. Not really. More of a possession thing. Bobby’s wife. You know? Apostrophe
s,
as in the wife belonging to Bobby.”

“Leave him then,” the voice and the static spilled out together.

Starting a little, she dropped her pen. Even after all the time she’d spent in these solitary conversations the caller’s few, infrequent advances still unnerved her.

“What?” she asked, but carried on without waiting for an answer, knowing he never repeated himself no matter how long she waited for him to do so. “Easy for you to say. Easy for everyone to say. But not everyone knows Bobby the way I do, do they?” She coaxed the pen back toward her with slender fingers. “He wasn’t just messing around out at the sale, you know. He’s pulled that stuff on me before. Like the night with the cards. We’d only been married about a year then, but I’d already had enough. Told him I was leaving. I actually thought it was that easy. Ha! Made me stay up all night. His Dad’s old Enfield and a pack of cards on the table between us. Him ranting and raving about every little injustice anyone had ever done him. Then every once in a while he would stop and make me pull a card from the deck. ‘Don’t pull that Ace of Spades,’ he’d yell. ‘You pull that Ace of Spades, I gonna blow my goddam head off. All night long. Until he finally passed out. There were only five cards left. Five. I can’t even begin to tell you what an insane hell that was. Anyhow, wasn’t till a week later I found that goddam Ace of Spades, crumpled up in the pocket of the jeans he was wearing that night. Never forgave him for that. He destroyed something in me. Something that can’t ever be fixed again, you know?

“Runs in his family. That’s what makes it so hard for me to know what to do. It’s like he got a bad gene or something so how can that be his fault, right? Like his greatgrandfather hanging himself and his uncle Johnny blowing his brains out. And you know his dad’s hunting accident? You can’t ever tell anyone this, okay? Never. The thing no one knows about there is that Bobby found his dad at the bottom of the rock bluff, wearing nothing but his pajamas in minus forty degrees. It wasn’t any hunting accident. It was the family disease.” Taking a deep swallow from her drink she squeezed back the tears. “So, what am I supposed to do?” she whispered, starting to cry silently. “I mean, he frustrates me beyond belief. Sometimes I think I even hate him. But I can’t just take off and have him kill himself, can I? I mean, what kind of a person would that make me?”

Sketching a flock of “v” birds above her tree, she landed a few in the apples. A leaf fell from the tree, and she quickly etched it into a bird then surrounded it with a larger bird, confining it within itself. “Anyhow, even if I could leave, what would I do? Don’t have a job, a place to stay. Nothing.” Hesitating, she hoped for an answer and grew angry when she received nothing but static. “See! Not so easy, is it? You can’t give me any answers, either. You can’t even give me your name.”

“You want my name?”

This caught her off guard. Her accusation had been empty, driven by the frustration of her situation and not by any real desire to discover the caller’s identity. She pulled her legs crossed and reflected soberly on his proposal. Did she want to know? She had spent countless sleepless nights in pursuit of that answer, offered to her so simply now. But to know, really know, seemed anything but simple and fear began to bubble at the edges of her curiosity. She felt a sudden protectiveness toward the person she had created. Not Elliot. Not Sam. Not Mark. Not one, but all three.

“No. No, don’t tell me. We know who we are, right? I think it works better this way anyhow, don’t you? At least for now.” She resumed her sketching, adding the framework of a house beside the tree. “I’m sorry if I sounded rude. I just get so desperate sometimes. You’re right though. I could leave. I mean who even knows if he’d ever really do anything, right? He’s been threatening me with it for years. He doesn’t think I’ll ever leave, but one day he might come home and I’ll be gone. Love to see his face then.” She fumbled with the phone as tears surprised her, and she angrily wiped them away. Reaching for a tissue, she blew her nose, took a couple of deep breaths to calm any tremors from her voice and continued speaking.

“He’d probably be fine, anyhow. Have me replaced by the weekend. Replace me with Rose in a second if he thought he had half a chance. Ha! Good luck there. She can’t stand him. Even thinks I should leave him. And maybe I will. Some time. But not yet. Who knows—”

“I dream of you.”

“What?”

“I want you.” The words struggled through the static, lost their way and for the first time were repeated. “I want you—” the static again overwhelmed them and the sentence ended with a sharp click.

She sat still, breathing into the dead line, a self-conscious smile slowly edging shock off her face.

“Me? You want me?” she questioned, then answered herself. “He wants me. Me.”

Night drifted slowly around her as she sat running his words back and forth through her mind. Eventually she rose to her feet and stretched her legs, thighs almost completely tattooed with little ink hearts etched secretively with
? loves Victoria.
So. He dreamt of her. Desired her. She tipped her nightie straps off her shoulders and let it slip onto the floor.

Walking into the bathroom she flipped the switch on with a tight snap and remained in the dark. She spat Bobby’s name like a curse. He’d gone into the bathroom that morning and discovered the light bulb burnt out, so he’d told her about it. Told her about it as if it was beyond him to replace it himself. She turned to find a replacement bulb then stopped, set her jaw and decided she was not going to fulfill his expectations. He wasn’t coming home until later anyhow. Errands to run in town, then a stop by JJ’s to help with the ‘cuda. He’d told her not to wait up for him, and she’d quietly marveled at how lost his touch of their reality was. She’d given up waiting for him more than a decade ago.

Leaving the bathroom door ajar, she groped the darkness and patted her way to the faucet controls. Feeling the water until it was comfortable on her palm, she popped the shower lever and stepped into the beating stream. Closing her eyes, she relaxed under the warm massage of liquid velvet hands as they pressed the tension from her neck and shoulders. Leaning against the wall she drew moist air deep inside herself and exhaled slowly. The blackness wrapped her in a silky robe, slipped its arms around her and enveloped her. Delighted itself in her, teasing fingers seducing as a thousand silver-tongued devils licked lacy patterns down her body. Clenching her fists against herself, she attempted to alleviate her suffering, but the time was past. She could no more stop the storm within her than press back the rays from the sun. Sinking on weakening knees, the water pounded her lower, pressed her down on top of herself until her heels, rising up to meet her detonated an explosion that shook her spirit and rocked her world.

Hovering in a universe distorted, she watched as she felt the planes around her shift, then solidify and eventually reconnect. Discomfort began to seep in and register on her brain and she straightened up, still seeking support against the wall to steady herself. A new sensation began to emerge, uncomfortable and intrusive, and her senses were sharpened back to assess it. The water was turning cold. Instantly reason and intellect seized their positions, and she twisted off the faucets. Her hands fluttered like delicate twin butterflies as they searched through the darkness for a towel. Pulling one to her, she rubbed herself roughly, kept rubbing long after the dampness was gone.

Cool air met her as she stepped into the hallway, and she was startled to find the porch door ajar with a night breeze stealing through it. The strong, steady thrum of a million crickets announced a brilliantly sequined indigo night, and she took a seat on the top stair to admire them both. She marveled at the blessing of the crickets. So humble an existence and yet lucky enough to be deeply stamped from the moment of creation with a song to be sung in unison and a purpose they knew without knowing. And she considered her own life, a dull flat prairie with a song unknown. The river of youth having seeped through her hands long before it could even begin to find its course.