The Parallel Apartments (58 page)

He and Livia looked at each for an instant.

“I am sorry, Livia,” said Lou.

He went back into his room.

Livia turned and walked down the stairs, then out the door.

Charlotte, confused, angry at her daughter, impatient with Lou, went upstairs.

“Now, you didn't even get under the covers,” said Charlotte, pointing at the side of the bed Lou had obviously been sleeping on. “How can one get any rest on top of a bedspread?”

Charlotte did not ask why he had drained the hot-water tank without ever showering. She did not chastise him. She did not tell him to not break her heart again. Instead, she smiled and began to unknot his tie.

“We'll sort everything out tomorrow,” she said sunnily. “Everyone is just bananas right now.”

“I'll get it.”

He pulled off his tie. His large hands were sunburned. The opening of his shirt collar revealed thin, light hairs on his chest below his collarbone. It was not the chest of the fourteen-year-old Lou that she remembered. It was the chest of stranger.

“I wish I had some pajamas for you.”

“I don't need any,” said Lou.

Charlotte shivered. She lubricated so fast it was as if a tiny robin's egg had broken inside her.

“I'd like to just sleep down on the divan,” he said, stepping carefully past Charlotte. She gently grasped his jacket cuff. And he gently took her hand away.

“Stay up here, Lou. It's so much more comfortable. Now please help me with the clasp.”

Charlotte turned her back to him and lifted her heavy black hair off her neck.

“I can't believe I've been in this horrible black weenie casing all day,” she said, looking in her vanity mirror to see if Lou was looking at her. He wasn't. “I'm exhausted. I expect I'll fall to sleep the instant my head hits the pillow.”

Lou undid the hook and eye at the neck of her dress. He pulled the zipper down to her bra strap. She turned around and allowed her dress to fall to the floor. Lou had already turned away.

“I've come to enjoy sleeping on divans, Charlotte,” said Lou, heading towards the door. “We'll visit in the morning.”

Charlotte grabbed a pillow by a corner and boomeranged it at Lou at an angle that caused it to land on his neck with a delectable
ntph.

“Ha.”

“Hey.”

Charlotte giggled and ducked behind the bed as if to parry a pillow, but Lou didn't return fire. He simply held the pillow by a corner, then dropped it onto the bed.

“I'm tired,” he said.

Charlotte stood up. She was wearing only a bra and panties and gartered stockings, all black. She had worn them for Burt's funeral; afterward she had come home and stripped bare, leaving all her clothes on the floor. Then, two days later, she'd picked the same clothes off the floor and put everything back on again for Mère's funeral.

“Lou,” said Charlotte, reaching behind quickly to undo her bra clasp before he could leave. “I look good, Lou. I know I do. Turn around, goddammit. Men want me. Burt wanted me, though god help me if Livia knew that. But I've been waiting for you. Lou. Dammit. Come on.”

Charlotte had been waiting for Lou, that was true, but she'd slept with several men in the parenthesis. Ernie, the cookie decorator with jailhouse man's-ruin tattoos all over his body; Carver, the ne'er-do-well oilman's son from San Angelo who made up extraordinary, bewitching fables that he would whisper to her after they made love; Gilberto, the confused, excitable Richie Valens lookalike whose knees were just splinters from jumping out of C-119 Flying Boxcars during the Korean War; a man whom she only ever knew as Numie, who had once so assiduously licked her anus while she was bent over an iron-battened treasure chest (that he claimed he'd pulled out of a sunken xebec on the floor of the Libyan Mediterranean) that she ejaculated a small quantity of urine as she experienced orgasm, prompting a visit to her female-issues doctor who explained that minor cataracts of that sort were not terribly uncommon and certainly nothing to worry about. Charlotte could not think about Numie without blushing like a plum and needing to tinkle.

And, every now and then, she fooled around with Bull Wheeler. She'd been doing so for years, the most recent encounter being late last week, before everyone was dead.

“I can't have you,” said Lou.

“What does that mean? Turn around.”

Charlotte had removed her bra and was bent over trying to undo the plastic garter stays, sharply conscious of the sagging-breast gene that had come from Mère's mother, Wuthering, leaped right over Mère, who was enviably perky the whole of her adult life, landed hard on Charlotte, and bounced, so to speak, right over Livia, whose breasts' alertness was as noteworthy as their fullness, and would land again on Livia's child—that is, if Burt had been able get the work done in the few days between his nuptials and his death.

The stays would not unstay. Charlotte stood up straight and drew her shoulders back, like she'd seen Livia do when boys were around.

“Lou!” she cried, collapsing into a supplicating hunch. She began to crawl across the bed towards him.

But Lou left, closing the door behind him.

Charlotte turned on her back and lay in the warm spot where Lou had been resting. She lit a cigarette. She had read in
LIFE
that cigarettes burned at around 800 degrees Fahrenheit. Without warning, she felt a sweeping and entirely novel urge to burn her breasts. With the cigarette between her lips, she guided the hot, trembling tip of it, which trembled all the more as she tried to steady it, down to within a quarter inch of her nipple. She held it there until the ambient heat scorched her. She quietly yelped, then sat up, feeling polluted and irredeemable, as if she'd been dreaming of horrific crimes she planned to commit.

She smoked three cigarettes while staring at the window, imagining that a Peeping Tom had been watching from the moment she'd let her dress fall. She imagined the Tom was disappointed with everything he'd seen so far.

I'm bored,
said Tom,
and it's all your fault. You can't see, can you?

Charlotte, unnerved, got up and pulled the blind. She turned out the lights, sat down at her vanity, and smoked in the dark, listening for the sound of Lou's breathing.

She realized she had no idea what his breathing sounded like: they'd never slept together. There had been plenty of incautious, emergency sex, often interrupted by a school bell or a car pulling into a concrete driveway or the house lights at a picture show, but they had never had the luxury of falling asleep together, naked, spent.

She got up, put on her yellow nightgown, and opened the door. The hallway was black dark; Lou had turned off all the lights. Charlotte recalled
it was a new moon: there would be no seeing tonight, at least not without flooding the living room with the margarine glow of the hall ceiling light.

She went into the bathroom, not turning on the light until she'd shut the door. She ran the faucet, but the tank hadn't yet refilled; the water was no hotter than a puddle in the sun. Her nipple was beginning to itch, so she got in and lay down in the cool water, allowing it to rise until it touched her chin. She turned off the faucet with her toes, and listened to the
pyik poyk
as the water leaked through the imperfect seal of the rubber stopper and dripped into the abyss of the old copper plumbing.

She relaxed. She let her arm dangle over the edge of the tub, waited until her hand drip-dried, then reached down to the bath mat and found her cigarettes.

It will be all right.

In the morning Charlotte would let Lou sleep as late as he needed while she Easy-Offed the oven and opened condolence cards. She'd call Livie at her house on Threepenny; Livia would answer on their brand-new wall-mounted telephone and in the warm lullaby voice she used when she felt sheepish would tell her mother she didn't know what had gotten into her last night, that so many things had happened all at once, but that she'd be over after she put on her face and ironed her blouse, and Charlotte in turn would counsel her to give freedom to the yoke of noisy lovebirds that her new, well-meaning neighbors had negligently given her as a token of their condolence, and to not invite Burt's bandmates—Jerry, Gary, and Larry—over because they'd just smoke marijuana joints and argue over which of them Burt's Vox and Silvertone guitars should descend to; and then Charlotte would advise her to come over and allow Lou to take Burt's place as the man in her life. Charlotte would remind her: he is a good man.

She scratched at her nipple. She wished she'd turned the light out; a bath in the dark was something she liked to have during troubled times.

She wished Lou would come in and sit on the edge of the tub and tell her about himself. Tell her about the women he'd loved; about his job, his pets; does he still collect bottle caps; does he still like the smell of tornadoes, of kerosene; has he kept in touch with his uncle Georges, or with Win Chambers from the football team, or with Cyndy May from Boston; has he heard about fat old BamBam Dworchek and the big St. Louis Hotel fire; has he been back to Wichita Falls; does he have a car; did he ever go to a doctor
about the whistling in his head; is his little toe still numb; did he go to war; is he still afraid of bugs and spiders and the sight of blood; what beer does he drink; has he heard of Ye Moppe Hedds—they got a record contract, you know, Lou, they're on the radio sometimes—do you still draw pelicans and explosions and pocketknives and P-38s in the margins of newspapers; why do you smell briny, do you live near the ocean; is there a baseball team where you live; do you have friends or do men still frighten you; do you have any children; are they boys or girls; do they look like Livie; do they look like me; where are they; do you see them; do they call you Daddy?

Charlotte got out of the water. She looked at the mirror and was surprised—shocked, really—to see her reflection; the glass was always hopelessly steamed over when she got out of the tub.

She looked at herself closely. Her eyes were marbled with wandering, red-black veins, her nose was red and swollen, more on one side than the other; she had a moustache that seemed to grow swarthier every week; a weird mole had sprung up in her hairline; the skin across her breastbone had attenuated as though her falling bosoms were pulling on it like taffy; and her teeth were not so white anymore.

She wrapped herself in two towels, then went back into her room, this time not bothering to edit herself for the sake of Lou's sleep.

She sat at her vanity, looking at herself in the far more flattering light of her two fake art deco lamps. She smoked. She ignored her nipple. She thought of Livie, by herself in her and Burt's queen-size bed under the beautiful quilt their neighbors the Rooneys had gotten them from Mervyn's as a wedding present. Charlotte wondered if Livie slept naked now that she didn't live at home. She wondered if Livie
needed Burt.

Of course she did. At least she could have her daddy back.

Charlotte stood up, dropped her towels, and went downstairs.

But Lou was gone.

XXII

May 2004

Charlotte picked up Dot's diary again.

          
September 19, 1969. DD, I wish I could call Kellys to leave a message for Lou about me being here in New Orleans but if Kelly found out he might come and hurt Lou, then there wouldnt of been any reason to leave Texas City in the first place. So far everybodys viscious here and carries a knife theyre not afraid to show you. I have more than a g but I hid it all in a old crabmeat can under a board by the Mississippi River which looks like just a big muddy field, because I am afraid somebody will slit my throat for it. I think they slit throats for a nickle here. I hope Lous not too dumb to figure out this is where I am even though he might think I went someplace else because of Camille. I dont think he is too dumb, we talked about New Orleans all the time and Camille missed anyway and hit Mississippi instead, those poor people there.

          
ps. DD, can you believe I know how to spell Mississippi because of some old song.

          
ps. DD, Im staying in a room in a part of town called Treme, you say ay at the end but I can see the beer joints on the edge of the Quarters. I watch for Lou out my balcony.

Charlotte had no idea how to prepare for what she knew was coming. She didn't know exactly what it would be, or where it would strike, but she was fairly sure it would sicken her. Only something sickening could be reason enough to have messed everything up like it did.

          
September 26, 1969. DD, Thought I saw Lou driving a yellowcab on St Claude so I chased it down but it wasnt him. This morning this fellow Loup-Garou, he told me how to spell it with a dash and everything because I asked him once well, he came by really early knocking and I told him I was off the clock so go fuck your mama and that made him awful mad and he banged on my door til it broke and he whupped me pretty good too. I have a yellow eye all bloodshot and he pulled on my hair in back so it feels like the skin peeled off my skull like a orange peel. So I got 20 dollars out of my crabmeat can and got a little pistol. The pawnshop man told me to shoot at the door to his backroom that there wasnt anybody in there, so I'd get the hang of it because I told him I only ever fired a shotgun and that was Lous. So I shot 8-10 bullets at his storeroom door and it echod pretty loud in his pawnshop but he said I was a pro and gave me fifty bullets too. He didnt ask for some throat. Maybe he didnt know what I am. He is handsome. His name is Heron Scaro.