The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards (7 page)

Monica pressed the letter to her chest. The book would write itself. It would win all the prizes. She and Brian would cruise to Hawaii, Greece, Fiji. Sally would need a private tutor.

The curtains in the Stalker’s house parted. She would keep him waiting another few minutes. The suspense would be good for his heart.

There was no question whether Brian would show up, only when. Fate being what it was, she guessed it would happen soon. His wife was already so explosively large, Monica could hardly bear to watch her wade into Casa Azul and drop onto her chair. Their baby was not due for two more months. One day Brian would come to Monica, appear at her trailer door, just before the baby was born or shortly thereafter. He would resurface in her life like a man in a boating accident who has held his breath too long: gasping and clutching, weeping over the good fortune of merely being alive.

Monica didn’t volunteer at Casa Azul in order to see Brian’s wife. It was important work. She had gone there the first time to gawk at her, but then she saw what they were doing. Food for the hungry. Shelter for the abused. A woman and her baby had spent one night in Monica’s trailer. She had forgotten their names, but they had been dark-skinned, and the woman spoke with an accent. Monica had let them have the bed, while she slept on the sofa, next to Sally’s crib—which was too small for her now. Brian would buy Sally a new bed when he came back.

Monica lunched in Waffle Park, sharing a picnic table with a guy in a black suit, red tie. His chin was too strong, pulling his face out of proportion, but Brian might be jealous, anyway—he was younger than Brian, closer to her age, and his suit was pressed and creased. If she showed any interest at all, Brian would be jealous—if he had some way to know about it.

“Are you through with that section?” she asked the man with the chin casually, lightly touching the folded newspaper at his elbow.

“Help yourself,” he said, pushing it her way.

Business section, but she glanced over it.

“Investments?” the Chin asked her. “Checking on your money?”

“I like to be informed,” she said.

Her tone was brush-off, but not too brush-off. She didn’t want to ever see him again, but she didn’t want him to know that yet.

He returned to his lunch—a sandwich, no vegetables at all. She gave up on the business section, pulled her book from her bag. Poetry. Monica had studied poetry for a while, taken classes at the community college and through the library. She had published two poems in the college magazine. She had given up poetry to write fiction, and then given that up to paint. She sold two paintings, one to a boyfriend for twenty-five dollars, the other to a man in Santa Fe who wanted her to pose in the nude, for fifty. She had been surprised when he didn’t make a pass at her. Just painted. She had spent hours at his house naked, even after he paid her. She watched
The Sopranos
naked on his couch, the artist beside her but not touching her. His painting had included the slight stretch marks on her stomach, the memory her body held of being pregnant, the way her hair remembered the hot iron with its curl.

She read her book:

She glanced up at the Chin, who was studying the sports section now, his newspaper folded down to a little square.

“Are you nervous about something?” she asked him.

“Me?” he said, lowering the paper and beginning, then, to appear nervous.

“You look nervous,” she said.

“How can you tell?” He flicked one eye oddly, a tic in the early stages.

“I bet I know your nickname,” she said. “Do you have a nickname?”

“When I was a kid, I had one,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“That’s not important,” she said.

“I’ve seen you, though. Before. You bring your lunch here often?”

“I used to,” she said, which was true.

Before Brian, she had come to Waffle Park twice a week, directly from the Stalker’s house on Tuesdays and from the Colonel’s on Fridays. Then she met Brian, and he had wanted to take her out so much—ethnic food, expensive places, once to a hotel in the middle of the day. He had been crazy for her, and she had quit coming to Waffle Park.

It wasn’t really called Waffle Park, of course. She gave things names.

“So what do you think my nickname was?” The man with the chin shoved the paper aside. She had his complete attention.

“Water Boy,” she said, smiling, cocking her head.

“Water Boy?” He sounded shocked, or tried to, then attempted a smile, but he was disappointed, that much was clear. What she said to him mattered.

“You were hoping I’d say
Romeo or Mr. Beautiful?”
She rolled her eyes dramatically.

“Well, no, but Water Boy?” Flicked, and flicked again, that nervous tic.

“Did I get it right?”

“Skeeter,” he said. “My father—”

“I had a nickname, too,” she said, though she had not yet thought what it might be.

He hesitated. His eyes wandered over her chest.

“I bet I know,” he said. “I bet it was
Foxy.
” His eyes were bright now and zeroed in on her.

“Oh, please.” She made a face to convey disgust. “My mother started it—the nickname—then my sisters used it, my girlfriends. It was a female kind of nickname.”

“So?” he said. “What was it?”

“
Sting
,” she said. “Mostly. I mean, my mother would say, ‘My little Sting,’ and my sister would call me ‘Stinger,’ and the girls called me ‘The Sting.’”

She made a bridge of her fingers and let her chin rest there, happy with her invention.

“How… why’d they call you Sting?”

“They called me Sting because I have a big nose. It is big, isn’t it?”

“I think you have a great nose.”

“My ex-husband used to say that. He loved me for my nose.”

“What did the boys call you?”

“Some called me Sting, the rest used my name.”

“You’re not going to tell me your name?”

“I come here twice a week,” she said. “I’ll tell you another time.”

The Chin smiled again, a knowing smile, which she didn’t like, and no tic. She could read him already. She would not come here again for at least a month. This idea pleased her, and she raised her book, as if she had forgotten about him.

“You must like the Police,” he began. When she lowered her book and frowned, he added, “The band, you know. Sting is the lead singer, or was. I don’t guess they’re a band anymore.”

“I hate them,” she said. “They’re so insipid. I quit going by that name when that band came out. That, and the last boy who called me Sting stepped on my heart.”

“I have to go,” the Chin said, gathering together his paper and lunch bag. “But you’ll have to tell me how he did that, how he broke your heart.”

“I didn’t say he broke it. He stepped on it.”

“Durable heart. I like that.” His smile was full of self-appreciation. “See ya,” he said. “I’ll be looking for ya.”

She gave him only a twist of her head to indicate good-bye. Already, she could hear herself tell Brian that he, Brian, had stepped on her heart, which he had, after all. He would know that already if his wife hadn’t intentionally gotten pregnant. Blinding him. The idea of a baby, of becoming a father again, blinded him. Monica had meant to tell the Chin that her ex-husband stuttered, that she liked men who stuttered but she didn’t like facial tics.

One time Sally’s father had said to her, “What you don’t know would sink a ship,” which had made her think love was dependent on what you didn’t know—a kind of blindness. Myopia, glaucoma, amblyopia, heterotropia, esotropia—she’d written a poem about it, eons ago, back when she had loved Sally’s father and been seeing a guy named Eddie, not sleeping with him, just seeing him. Eddie had been to Nicaragua right when it was interesting to go. He had been desperate to screw her, which was why she had not let him. She had seen himtwice a week for almost a year. Just petting, a little hand play.

Petting, what a funny word. She took her notebook out and wrote down the word
petting
and then made a list of the things that one might pet, starting with dogs and then describing the places on her own body that men liked to touch.

Her last house of the day was Mrs. Nighetti, whose apartment was as cluttered as Mr. Chub’s was empty. Photographs of her nine sons lined the mantel of her fireplace, black-and-white photographs of beautiful young men.

“And only Vincent makes his mother happy with a grandchild,” she told Monica, as she did every week. “Nine of them. Boys the girls go silly over. My phone never stopped ringing. Now their papa’s dead, the phone is quiet, and what do I have to show? Only Vincent makes his mother happy with a grandchild, a girl, no less, Carlotta, which you may not know, but Carlotta is my name. Names her after his mother, my Vincent.”

She did not look like a woman who had borne and raised nine sons, did not really look old, except for the bags beneath her eyes. She was confined to a wheelchair or Monica doubted she would permit someone to clean her apartment.

“Do you have any new pictures?” Monica asked her.

Mrs. Nighetti, from her wheelchair, showed Monica her palms. “You’d think that wife of his would know I want new pictures of my Carlotta every week, but she’s too busy getting famous. ‘I’m going to be a famous model,’ she tells Vincent. To hear her talk, the baby set her back years.” Mrs. Nighetti waved her hands as if to push away the very idea. “But I may have some old ones you haven’t seen.”

Of the three hours Monica put in weekly at Mrs. Nighetti’s, half would be spent in conversation, often over cups of hot tea. She handed Monica a photograph.

“Here’s my girl sitting in the lap of Miss Famous.”

Miss Famous
. Monica liked that. She felt sort of famous herself, a private sort of fame. A secret celebrity. It was the one real thing she knew, while the rest of the world was ignorant. She recalled, for an instant, the trip her senior class had made to Disneyland, how she had liked to pause behind people while their relatives snapped photos. All over the country, she appeared in pictures, the mystery woman in dark glasses at the border of the photos.

“Now tell me,” Mrs. Nighetti said. “This Brian, has he come to his senses yet? Has he come rushing to you with an armful of roses?”

“Not a word,” Monica said and sipped her tea.

“I’ve written my Pauly, my youngest boy. Handsome like Clark Gable, but with better skin. An electrical contractor with his own truck like they’ve got to have, and dating a woman whose name he won’t remember in a year. Trash, forgive me for saying it.”

She quickly made the sign of the cross, touching her fingertips to her lips at the beginning and again at the end. Monica had made Mrs. Nighetti teach the gesture to her during one of the visits. It took some flair to make it compelling.

“I forgive you,” Monica said, which made Mrs. Nighetti flap her big hands and laugh.

Monica let her eyes roam the photographs for the one that might be Pauly. She had never met him, but his mother had written to him about her. No doubt he pictured Monica in his mind, thought about her, imagined her body, her life. What was that if not fame? The Chin was picturing her right now, she guessed. Not to mention the Stalker and Mr. Chub. Brian. She touched her fingers to her lips and crossed herself in the quick solemn manner that Mrs. Nighetti had taught her.

Sally ran her slow gallop, arms flailing, across her father’s grassy yard to Monica’s open arms.

“She took a nap,” the new girlfriend called out, sitting on the steps, keeping her distance. “’Bout an hour and a half.”

A frightened bird, Monica thought, eyeing the girlfriend. “Chirp,” she said aloud but beneath her breath. “Thanks,” she yelled, her voice as vibrant and happy as she could make it. She lifted her daughter into the car, buckled her into the car seat Brian had given them. “What did you do today, sugar?”

“Play,” she said, taking on her car personality, the sweetly quiet child who stared out the window and clapped for dogs and trucks.

Brian would be upset about the car seat in the front—the instruction booklet recommended the rear—but Monica thought it only fair to Sally to let her ride beside her mom. What did Brian know about raising children, anyway? His own daughter was a mess. A fat, moody adolescent with pimples and an attitude. It occurred to Monica, as she pulled into traffic, that his daughter, when she’d been tiny, had probably seemed as sweet and perfect as Sally. It was not possible that Sally could turn out so badly. Monica had gotten high with Brian’s daughter a few times. All after Brian had left her. A way to keep in contact with him, even though he didn’t know about it, and his daughter didn’t know who Monica was. “I’m the love of your father’s life,” she imagined herself saying.

From her car seat, Sally clapped at a passing truck, saying, “Big.”

Her life is in my hands, Monica thought, steering them down the freeway, her hands resting at the bottom of the steering wheel.
My hands
, she thought, picturing a close-up of them: her fingers fill the screen, the delicate bones almost visible beneath the skin. Some actresses had stand-ins for their bodies, she’d read. It was never Nicole Kidman’s breasts you saw, but some perfect girl without a face. Did her lover know that her breasts were famous?

Monica planned her evening as she drove. She would stop at Casa Azul briefly to see how huge Brian’s wife was, to see if his daughter wanted a ride somewhere. She would stop at Alpha Beta to get milk and Pampers. She would drive by Brian’s house without even glancing at it. She would get to the trailer in time for the last half hour of
Sesame Street
. She would read Mr. Chub’s letter again. She might begin the biography. Notes about his condominium, the way he walked, the way his beautiful breathless voice rode the air. He had wanted to know whether she’d bathed, which meant he had pictured her naked. She would mention the shiny vacuum, and the belts in his closet, the custom-made shoes that gave him balance. And his shirts, all those shirts, the way they faced the same direction, one after another, identical but for color, one spaced perfectly after the next, like promises kept, like a series of snapshots all the same, like the days of a life.