How It Ended: New and Collected Stories (17 page)

“Momma, are you all right?”

“I'm fine, Bunny,” she said, returning Faye's embrace.

“You didn't know,” Faye said hopefully. “You thought it was a burglar.”

“It was a burglar all right. He was walking off with the silver.”

“She got Mr. Hunt's little pearl-handled Colt from the bedside table,” Martha said.

“Your father used to take me to the shooting range on Sundays after church. I heard a noise downstairs, and I knew you were out.”

Faye suddenly realized that she hadn't even inquired about her brother's condition. “Is he going to—”

“He gonna be all right. Your momma done shot him in the butt.”

“Gave me a mighty big target,” Sybil said.

“You couldn't tell who it was in the dark. Could you, Momma?”

“You know those damn Yankees turned Eliza Teasdale out of her own house.”

Martha and Faye exchanged a look. “She confused,” Martha said.

Sybil shook her head. “Jimmy says I'm losing my mind, but I'll tell you one thing. I can still recognize my own son. And I can recognize a thief.”

“Momma, what are you saying?”

She looked up at Faye and stroked her hand. Her gaze was clear and direct. For the first time in weeks, she seemed fully present.

“Did I just say something?” she said. “Don't mind me. I'm a crazy old woman. My mind plays tricks on me. Just ask your brother. He'll be glad to tell you.”

2008

Simple Gifts

By the time they dropped her off at Irving Place, it was nearly midnight. The thruway ride from Buffalo had been harrowing. The van was barely roadworthy under the best of conditions; between the ice and the wind, it was practically a miracle they'd made it home, especially when you considered that Lenny admitted somewhere around Utica that he'd dropped half a tab of acid. Rory had taken the other half, which disqualified him as a driver, and Zac had lost his license after the DUI in Cleveland, which left Lori as the only eligible pilot. Once again she was den mother to a trio of stoned Scouts.
Backup:
Wasn't that supposed to imply support, solidity, watching
her
back, if not massaging it on a nightly basis? When she'd hooked up with these guys, she hadn't imagined that it meant carrying amps and covering licks they were too stoned to remember.

She didn't think she'd ever been so tired in her whole life, between the drive and the partying last night, although the sight of the city had briefly revived her, the lights, the people, the improbable beauty of the snow on the streets.

“Hey, Merry Christmas, babe,” Rory said as he slid across the seat to take her place at the wheel. He reached out the window and slapped a foil packet in her hands.

She watched the wheels spin as the van fishtailed up the street with its vanity plate:
THE MAGI
. They'd been the Magi before Lori signed on with them—Zac's girlfriend had given him a copy of a way cool novel,
The Magus
, which “had this, like, magician guy doing all this, like, crazy shit”—and since the band already had a local following, they'd just added to the name: Lori and the Magi.

Jeffrey was fooling with the lights on the Christmas tree when she came in. “Jesus, I thought you'd died on the thruway.”

She detected the note of petulance in his voice.

“Almost.”

Tired as she was, she wanted to lift his mood, and she bounded over to kiss him, tasting the sweet-sour tang of whiskey on his breath.

“You know, until I was about twelve I thought all men smelled like scotch. I thought it was a—what do you call it? A secondary sexual characteristic, like facial hair.”

“How are the three wise men? Following any stars tonight?”

“I just hope they can make it to Brooklyn.” She told the story of the trip—most of it anyway—trying to strike a fine balance between comedy and suspense.

“Jesus,” he said, “when are you going to get rid of those clowns?”

The Magi were a source of some friction in the household. She kissed him again. “As soon as you learn to play bass and drums.”

He turned away to adjust one of the lights on the tree. “So how was the last gig?”

“I would've called,” she said, “but I didn't want to wake you. Forty-two Buffalo metalheads in a bar the size of this apartment.”

“How do they compare to Syracuse metalheads?”

“A little hairier, I think.”

“Ah, the glamour of the rock-and-roll life.”

“How's the play?”

“Incomprehensible. But the lighting's going to be a killer.”

She went into the kitchen and got a beer. “I am so fucking beat,” she said.

“I was kind of hoping we could go out.”

“Out? Tonight?”

“I sort of felt like dancing.”

“Is this, like, a tradition in your family? Going to some club on Christmas Eve?”

“It's my answer to midnight Mass.”

It was their first Christmas together, so they didn't have their own traditions yet. Well, why not dancing? Lori wanted to please him. He was practically the first guy she'd ever gone out with who wasn't a complete asshole. Or bi. Or a junkie. Who was, in fact, so far as she could tell after six months, a great guy. Just as she was starting to make a name for herself singing songs about what creeps guys were, she'd gone and fallen in love. Hooked up with a lover and a band at almost the same moment.

As much as she wanted to go right to sleep, she was conscious of the occasion. She liked to imagine they might be spending future Christmases together, and it seemed important to set the right precedents. He'd bought the tree and gone insane with the lights—it was his profession, after all. One of the first things she'd liked about him:
lighting designer
. The very concept—a man who taught light how to act. In the places she played, she felt lucky to get a spotlight. And how matter-of-factly he'd said it, like another guy would say
computer programmer
.

Seeing the lights and the wrapped presents beneath the tree, she suddenly felt guilty.

“Is that really what you want to do? Go dancing?”

“Don't worry about it,” he said. “It was just an idea.”

“It's not that I don't want to stay up with you,” she said, moving closer to him on the couch and kissing his ear. “I think I could summon the energy to give you a special Christmas treat.”

“A treat? Could it be … the Vulcan mind meld?”

“It's not your mind I'm interested in.”

“That's good. For both our sakes.”

“Maybe a shower will revive me.”

“Don't worry about it. We can celebrate tomorrow.”

Jeffrey seemed sincere, but she felt terrible about disappointing him.

In the bedroom, she lay down and dozed off almost immediately. Waking a few minutes later, she suddenly remembered the packet Rory had given her. That was the answer. Jeffrey was so excited about their first Christmas together, and she didn't want to let him down—especially now. In Syracuse she'd seen an old lover, Will Porter. He'd come to the gig and then she'd gone back to his apartment after, ostensibly because he didn't like to hang out in bars. A year out of rehab, he suddenly appeared to be everything she'd wished for back then. Was it possible to change that much?

Feeling a fresh stab of guilt, she fished the drugs out of her jeans and walked over to the dresser, opening the foil carefully, separating out two fat lines with a MetroCard and rolling up a bill.

The first line almost took her head off. Jesus, she thought, it's
crank
. For some reason, she'd assumed it was coke. Like who wouldn't? At first she was pissed, but then she thought, What the fuck. If she wanted to stay up, she might as well
stay up
. She could sleep tomorrow. In the meantime, Jeffrey would have a dance partner. She did the other line for good measure, then stepped into the shower.

By the time she emerged, she was up for anything, though she was a little too jumpy to give Jeffrey his blow job just yet. Right at this moment the idea seemed kind of nauseating. But now they had the whole night ahead of them. She changed into her black vinyl skirt and the pink spandex top she'd bought at Patricia Field for her gig at CBGB.

Emerging into the living room, she found Jeffrey sitting on the floor in front of the TV, watching
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
. She stole up behind and tack led him.

“Whoa, what's gotten into you?”

“It's just your rock-and-roll girl, ready to dance.” He fended off her attack and held her at arm's length, looking into her eyes. “Oh my God. You're wired.”

“I wanted to stay up with my baby.”

“I don't believe this.”

“What's the matter?” She stopped wrestling with him. He'd never been judgmental about drugs before.

“You're fucking
wired
.”

“I left some for you, if that's what you're worried about.”

“This is rich.”

“What's rich?”

He took her hands in his. “You looked so tired and I felt so sorry for you. I just took a Xanax and an Ambien.”

It took a moment for this dart to lodge itself in her speeding brain. “Oh shit.”

“Yeah.”

She collapsed into his arms, laughing. “Merry Christmas,” she said.

He kissed her. As much as she wanted to kiss him back, his lips felt strange on hers, which were slightly numb and had begun to take on a life of their own.

He managed to stay awake for another half hour, during which she regaled him with tales of upstate New York and Toronto, the quirks of the locals and the outrages perpetrated by her band mates, until he began to nod off on the couch.

“I'm awake,” he said several times, snapping his head upright. In the end, she pulled off his shoes and put a quilt over him.

How was it that on this night, the first promising Christmas Eve of her life, she'd ended up alone again? She tried to think of whom she could call. Certainly not her parents, whom she hadn't spoken to in more than a year. She briefly considered Will Porter, her lost-and-found lover, who'd taught her how to play the blues like Bukka White and later how to live them. Waiting all night for him to come home, hiding her money in the toilet tank, one night dragging him into the bathtub and filling it with cold water and ice, just like he'd told her to. Will finally turning blue, if not black.

She was crying. To console herself, she did another couple lines, not that the first were wearing off, not that they wouldn't keep her buzzing into the dawn, but she wanted to get past the guilt about Will. She was entitled to that, surely, on a lonely Christmas Eve.

She called the loft in Brooklyn where the boys would be, but she only got the answering machine, which played a bar from the Sex Pistols' “God Save the Queen.”

After watching
Carnal Knowledge
and sweeping the entire apartment, she tried to rouse Jeffrey, who was asleep on the couch, a thin trail of saliva running down his cheek.

“Honey?” She shook his shoulder. “Honey, are you awake?” She turned up the volume on the TV and then undid his belt and began to massage his cock. After a few minutes he shook his head and rolled over, burying his face in the cushions. She scratched at the skin on her arms, tormented by an invisible rash. If only Jeffrey would wake up long enough to scratch her back.

On one of many circuits through the kitchen, she decided to scrub the sink. She scoured and polished until the green Comet slush and the pink sponge had both disappeared; then she took an old toothbrush to the grout around the tiles. Jeffrey wouldn't be able to complain about her housekeeping when he woke up tomorrow. Afterward she took the toothbrush to the elusive itch beneath the skin of her arms and her neck. Lighting a cigarette, she looked down into the shiny white sink with the sudden conviction that she'd be sucked into the drain if she didn't move away immediately. She backed off and lit a second cigarette from the first.

She walked back to the bedroom and looked out into the courtyard, counting the lighted windows as she reached behind her shoulder to scratch her back. Twenty-three the first time she counted, twenty-four the second. As she watched, one third-floor window went dark. Walking back through the living room and past the Christmas tree, she stopped to look at the gifts underneath. Five packages, plus a bottle of Cuervo Gold with a ribbon around it. His presents to her were wrapped up in pages from
Interview
magazine. The square box, which she was pretty sure was a DAT recorder, showed Chrissie Hynde's face. Looking at the presents, she found herself remembering the Shaker hymn:

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be
.

That was all she could remember. As she walked into the kitchen, she wondered where she would be next Christmas, and with whom. She opened the refrigerator, though she had no desire to eat. Surely there was something she wanted to do, something that would fulfill this nameless compulsion, this desire with out object.

Somehow it always ended up like this—solo at the edge of dawn. The stage was dark, the audience gone home. She tried to picture a lifetime of Christmases with Jeffrey and couldn't. It wasn't his fault. It was her. It was how she was. She shivered, feeling the chill from the open refrigerator on the prickly envelope of her skin. She tried to imagine herself rising away from her body skin and leaving the skin behind—like a snake's, like an empty shell of wrapping paper, then emerging strange and new.

That's what she really wanted to give him: a whole new girl.

“Wake up, honey,” she would say. “It's Christmas.”

2000