The Bride of Catastrophe (31 page)

“Butchy's making
a lot of
money,” she went on. “You know the old drywall plant out by the railroad tracks, the Nubestos plant? Somebody's bought it, they're going to make running shoes or something in there. But they've got to get all the old junk out of there and they pay in cash, no taxes!”

“But Nubestos abandoned that place. They just laid everyone off and closed it overnight.”

“Yeah, there was some kind of change in the law.”

“Yeah, that Nubestos was going to be liable in about a billion dollars' worth of lawsuits when all the workers died. Sylvie, that place is poisoned, that's why they're paying under the table.”

“Butchy's not afraid of it, not at all,” she said stubbornly. She'd not hear her man called a coward. She'd taken up his life and that meant taking up his views, his ideals, even his ignorance—something unmanly in the fear of ingesting poisons, and, I supposed, something unrealistic. Butch was going to die in a fight or a car crash; asbestos wasn't
quick
enough to kill him. Sylvie always said “I don't know” so sweetly, with such generosity: she was happy not to know, so someone could have the pleasure of explaining. She
did
know what could be accomplished with an admiring look, how much would be given to the girl who stepped back and seemed to want nothing at all.

“Sylvie, you've heard of mad hatters, right?”

“Like, in
Alice in Wonderland
?” she asked, sounding out of her depth. I
would
have to bring up English literature (that is, her lack of education).

“No, or, yes, but, do you know why hatters used to go mad?”

“No,” she sighed. “You mean there was more than one?”

“They lost their minds because they worked with arsenic every day!” I said.

“That's terrible,” she said politely, without seeming to make the connection. Who can really imagine everyday actions—good things like hard work—as harmful? The history lesson of the Wolfe dinner table had been that the past was a hellhole, not to be peered into. Suppose you lost your footing on the bank? No, you lived with your back to it, and all its mad hatters.

“I put geraniums on the front steps, and yesterday I put Contac paper with pictures of flowerpots on the kitchen walls; I just couldn't scrub them really clean, you know?” She drew on her cigarette and I heard real happiness in her voice, the unfathomable satisfaction manifest in domestic particulars: the geranium at the window, the patchwork quilt, and under it, the man and woman, lost in each other's love. She'd never guessed she could have it all so easily, so soon.

*   *   *

I HAD
flowers too—a pot of calla lilies Lee had brought me as a gift—a secret apology for being the kind of person who had never wondered about fin-de-siècle Paris, I'd thought, when I saw her standing there in the door, wearing her corduroy pantsuit and carrying these flowers.

“I don't need calla lilies, not when I have you,” I'd said.

“You always say the right thing,” she mumbled, as I took her in my arms. I was never, ever going to admit that I knew there was an aspidistra on her end table at home. I was going to help her make lasagne and then we were going to get in bed and watch a
National Geographic Undersea Special
together, if we could manage to keep awake. Sleep pulled on us irresistibly now, as if by finding each other we'd done our work on earth and were folded into comfort, away from strife, for evermore. Every night I dreamed I was walking the dirt road home.

*   *   *

“
TEDDY GOT
me a new lamp, from school, so I can work at night now,” Ma said.

“Did they have some kind of a sale?”

“No, he found it in the faculty lounge.”

“Found it?”

“It was in the back corner, no one used it.”

“You mean he
took
it.”

“Well, found, took—you wouldn't understand this, of course, Beatrice, but people in our situation have to live by their wits.”

“I guess that's true,” I said. What did it matter to me whether Teddy found a lamp or stole one?

“Without Teddy I don't know what I'd do,” Ma said. “
No one
else is helping.” Then, suddenly, she broke into flirtatious laughter. “Larry!” she asked, in a dramatic whisper, flaunting her divine secret, “what are you doing back here?” Then came some kind of muffled struggle and the phone crashed to the floor.

“Is somebody there?” I called into the phone, telling myself that Larry is a common name, and this was probably a much older and more distinguished Larry than the one whose eyes had poured something wonderful into hers.

“No, no, nobody,” my mother said lightly, “Thank you, my darling, it always helps me
so much
to talk to you. You give me hope, and strength. Don't forget, sweetheart, no matter what,
never, ever
forget how
much
I love you … good-bye, good-bye.”

*   *   *

“
YOU HAVE
to have faith, Beachy,” said Sylvie, when I repeated my conversation with Ma to her the next day. “Love overcomes all obstacles.”

“I do, I do, I have faith in love,” I protested dully, thinking that Sylvie was never going to read
Madame Bovary
or
Anna Karenina
and so would be unlikely to get any great perspective on love—its sources, its consequences, its sacred power. I could still hear her wistful twelve-year-old voice singing: “Ta-a-mmy. Ta-a-mmy, Tammy's in love.” That was all she had dreamed of—being precious to a man. A man full of strength, grace, and a certain suppressed rage—and in his eyes, that longing a woman knows she can fulfill. (Hubris, Sylvie, is the pride that goes before a fall.) Once this longing sucks all a woman's love and effort into it and is still not filled, and there's no hope to keep the rage in check anymore, things get broken, whole lives get broken. If there was money—but in Brimfield Valley there was no money, only television, alcohol, and faith-in-love. Love, a wheel worth breaking yourself on.

On the other hand, Ma had read Flaubert and Tolstoy, and all she'd noticed was that Madame Bovary was the heroine, the eponymous
main character
of a Great Work, while the others, the good and happy wives and mothers, were part of the scenery against which Emma's drama played out.

“He's not really her boyfriend,” Sylvie cajoled me. “He's her assistant, more like.”

“And with what does he assist her? Overcoming obstacles? They've already overcome two fairly large obstacles: her marriage, and her job!”

“You're such a know-it-all, Beach,” Sylvie said, with admiration and disapproval at once. Not only had I stepped beyond the family pale; now I went so far as to question Ma's supreme right to map our moral territory according to her own caprice. There was that choice to be made—Ma or reality.

“Larry's really nice,
really
,” Sylvie said. “He's sweet, you know, in a hulking sort of way, and he's thoughtful—he stacked all Ma's wood for her without her even asking—and he's good with Teddy, just like a big brother.”

“Which makes sense, really,” I said, “in that he and Teddy
could
be brothers.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean he's not that much older than Teddy! Ma is dating a boy!”

“No,” she said, “
not
dating, not the way you mean…” her voice trailed away and after a moment she said, “Butch turns twenty-one next month, imagine! He'll be legal. I wanted to have a party but he got all huffy and said what did I want, everyone to figure out he's been using a fake ID?” She laughed. “Not that anyone doesn't know it now, it's just so Don won't lose his license if the bar gets busted. They'd just say Butch tricked them, that's all. But the cops won't bust Butchy. Like Don says, Butchy knows when to trickle and when to pour, and they never bust a pourer.”

For the first time in her life she knew things I didn't. She
was
somebody—the bartender's girlfriend, as fine a position in the valley as the mayor's wife held on the hill. The old ladies there fussed over her pregnancy, telling her to put her feet up, knitting afghans, all the things she'd dreamed of, watching those
Tammy
movies with Ma through the endless insomniac nights, learning that love existed over bowling alleys and out back of the auto body shops, not behind the leaded windows of the fine homes. That—marrying up—had been Ma's mistake, but she wouldn't make another, now that she knew where she'd gone wrong. And Sylvie had collected her fallen hatchlings and abandoned kittens and now this stray man, one of those outlaw men whose feelings were stronger because they're never dispersed into language. It was almost like the love and need bottled up in there made them big, because it made them restless, they had to spend huge effort to get rid of it, by lifting enormous beams and hauling in giant tuna and whatever. Sylvie had a man she could take shelter beneath, and she was fitting herself to him in every single way, becoming his comfort, his only luxury, picking up his mannerisms and habits of speech, withdrawing into his world, giving up everything else.

“No, I like a
real
man,” she said, with a deep laugh of satisfaction, of knowledge beyond her years. “Though, I wish he was more excited about the baby,” she said. “He cares, I know he does, but, it's like he doesn't dare love anything for fear it will hurt him in the end. Oh, Beatrice, I just know I can make him happy, we'll be such a nice family, don't you think? But he's so tense now, he gets mad at the drop of a hat—it's the money, and we need a bigger place, and—”

Little Springtime was barking wildly and she told him she'd take him out in a minute. “The neighbors have these huge dogs and they just let them run. He's afraid of them,” she said. “I mean, I don't think they feed them … they're stoned all the time.

“I saw the Mushroom in the Grand Union yesterday,” she said, getting off the subject. She meant Mrs. Markham, the ninth-grade teacher who Ma suspected had turned her in to the principal. “She didn't even say hello to me, just stuck her nose in the air and walked right by, just because I'm pregnant. Jealous old prude, she can't stand the thought of it—I've got Butchy and she's all alone.”

Ma had called Mrs. Markham a “poisonous old mushroom” in front of a room full of boys on detention, which had caused Mrs. Markham, who was in fact short, pale, and large-headed, to develop this nickname, a problem exacerbated by the fact that Sylvie had, purely by accident, called her “Mrs. Mushroom” to her face. So there was no room for question about the reason for the angle of her nose.

“Why is everyone so small-minded?” Sylvie asked in a tone of perfect bafflement, Ma's habitual tone. “Why can't they just be happy for me, that I have a boyfriend who loves me, that I'm expecting a baby?”

And so she sped happily, gloriously, even, toward her precipice, waving to those poor crabbed souls who, unloved by Butch, unpregnant, refused to wish her godspeed. As our conversation wound on, she lit the gas ring to start a new cigarette, praised her midwife (“She asks me—‘Did you eat your yam?'—can you imagine that, someone worrying over you that way?”) and told me more about the neighbor, whose idea of a family outing involved giving his two kids psilocybin and taking them to see
2001: A Space Odyssey
. “And, did Pop tell you he's teaching Dolly to fly?”

*   *   *

“
DON'T TELL
Mommy,”
Dolly said.

“I won't, I won't, but Dolly, he doesn't know how to fly a plane yet himself. How can he teach you?” It was one thing for him to
take
flying lessons—but to give them?

“You have to promise. I don't want to upset her.” Then she paused, listening: “It's okay,” she said, hushedly, “he's taking a shower.” She listened again, and, satisfied, began to explain. “He's so depressed,” she said, “that's the thing. And the flying makes him feel hopeful. And if this deal gets, you know, off the ground, he's going to buy a plane—it's the best way to get out to the site, really, so he needs to know how. He
is
good at it,” she insisted. “He picked it up right away. Peabo says he's natural.”

“Peabo?”

“Corwin Peabody—he's the teacher,” she said, a bit stiffly—she sensed my skepticism and was defending my father against some charge I hadn't yet made. Or, she was doubtful herself—but doubt was a sin to her and she refused to recognize it. “He's teaching Pop, and Pop's teaching me. I mean, just showing me a few little things. He loves to take me up there and show me what things look like from the sky,” she said, and laughed happily all of a sudden. It was the first time I'd heard her laugh since they'd left. “You'd think he owned the state of Wyoming, when he's up there,” she said.

She was there beside him, asking him starry questions, taking him more deeply into her possession every time he answered one. This was to be her consolation, for the loss of her mother—she would own her father absolutely, and forever.

“It's not expensive?” I asked, looking for a way to discourage her without seeming to speak against Pop.

“No, it's not, Beatrice,” she said sulkily—did no one trust her? “Flying lessons do cost a lot, usually, but Pop made a deal with Peabo—he's helping him get in on the ground floor of this mining deal, so the lessons are reasonable … actually they're free.”

And how was school? She liked school very well, she said primly—true, she had studied these same things last year, but there was nothing wrong with a little review, and it meant less homework so she had the time she needed to keep up the house. The real education was the new geography, the culture of the West—who had known about all of it, the Indians, the Spanish Catholics? There was so much she was learning by living in a new place, meeting new people, seeing a completely different way of life, and goodness, learning to fly.