What You Have Left (15 page)

Beatty turned back to the screen and drew a hand down his face, as if he wished he could erase his own mouth. “Gambling husband's better than a drinking husband,” he said. “Anyhow, nobody thought he'd go through with it.”

Holly found her way outside to the pay phone and lit a cigarette. So that's what burning the flag had been about— money. Or maybe it had been about principle, and the money was just gravy. What mattered was that Lyle hadn't been straight with her, but she couldn't manage to get worked up about that considering she hadn't been straight with him, either. Somehow they'd managed to balance things out. As she dug into her pocket for a quarter, she imagined him back at the house, shuffling around in his slippers
and feeling ashamed for letting her think better of him than he deserved.

When he answered the phone, she told him she was at the video parlor on Bluff Road. She told him she'd been there every morning for months, during which time she'd lost several thousand dollars. “And I wasn't even going to tell you. Or I was maybe going to tell you, but only because I was scared you'd find out anyway, but now Beatty—did I mention Beatty's here?—he just said you burned the flag for money.”

“My father's on the other line,” Lyle said. “Can you hold on?”

“I want you to take the job. I just didn't want you to take it because of me.”

“I know,” he said. “Anyhow, I start on Monday. Now, don't hang up.” He clicked over to finish the conversation with his father. When he came back, he told Holly to stay put. “I'll be there in five minutes,” he said. “We'll celebrate.”

Lyle arrived at Fortunes carrying the bag of cash he'd won from his coworkers. “We're either going to get back your money or go broke trying,” he said. They found a pair of vacant machines in a room where two white-haired women sat sharing a bowl of peppermints. Lyle surprised Holly by handing each of the women a ten-dollar bill. “What goes around comes around,” he said.

At first, playing poker alongside Lyle gave Holly the willies, but he kept peppering her with questions about rules and strategies as if this were a perfectly normal way for them to spend an afternoon. He didn't seem to notice that in the course of the last day, he had become exactly the person he never wanted to be. And only once or twice did Holly
accuse herself of cowardice—selfish cowardice—because in fact it didn't really bother her. All in all, she was feeling pretty good about the way things had turned out. Each time she was hit by a pang—each time her stomach turned over and she felt sure that the giddy glow of their afternoon was about to wear off, that it would all seem hollow and sad— Lyle shoveled another bill into the machine, betraying no doubt or regret. As they began to lose money in earnest, they grinned at the irony of it and made jokes about patronizing the family business, investing in their future. If Lyle was faking it, Holly couldn't tell. A half hour later, when he hit a seven-hundred-dollar jackpot, she took it as a good omen.

The electronic cascade of bells had just ended when Covey poked his head in. “This must be the lucky room,” he said. Then he saw Lyle and his smile withered into a frown. He peered around, like maybe he was hoping to find some cousins of his waiting in the wings, and then he was swinging at Lyle. Lyle saw it coming. He stepped aside as Covey's fist disappeared into the wall with a sickening crack.

“Fuck.” Covey yanked his hand free in a cloud of plaster dust and together he and Lyle spun past Holly and the white-haired ladies, out into the hallway. Lyle caught Covey in a headlock, but somehow Covey managed to wriggle free. As he crabbed away from Lyle, he sniffled and ran a finger under his nose. That's when Holly realized he was crying. Tears were coming out of him like a baby. His knuckles were bleeding, but Holly could tell it wasn't pain making him cry. It was outrage—fury so strong, he couldn't do anything
but
cry. The idea of it blew her mind. Even if he did think the flag was more than a dumb piece of cloth—even if he truly bought into all of that blood-of-our-fathers business—still, was it worth it? By now Beatty was hurrying up
the hallway from one end and Billy Pecan was coming from the other. As Holly stood there with a handful of money, watching the future vice president of Gandy Amusement close in on Covey, a small part of her wanted to cry, too, but even then, she knew the feeling would pass.

She grabbed Billy Pecan and held him back as Lyle cornered Covey against the change machine. “Show him, Lyle,” she said. “Kick his cracker ass.”

 

Some of the other kids are already doing addition, but Claire's having trouble with basic counting. One, two, three, four, six, five, sixteen, seventeen, eleventeen. Holly is convinced she's dyslexic. During the parent-teacher conference, Miss Peavy tells them not to worry, Claire's talking circles around her classmates, the numbers will come. But it's Holly's nature to worry. She took up smoking again when she was breast-feeding—maybe that's what did it. “She'll count when she's ready,” Lyle says. “I didn't count till I was eighteen.”

He's thirty-five now, Holly's thirty, and Claire's almost four, which means, according to the syndicated columnist in the paper, she'll soon begin forming permanent memories. “I don't want her first memory to be Mom sucking a Camel,” Holly says. And on that point, Lyle agrees. They've worked hard to keep their habit a secret from Claire, going so far as to never utter the words “cigarette” or “smoke” in her presence. So it spooks them both, the following week, when Claire walks into the kitchen with a crayon dangling from her lip.

That night, they decide to quit together. Mathematically,
it's a no-brainer. “Subtracting a negative is the same as adding,” Holly says. “Adding is positive.”

“And positive,” Lyle says, “equals good.”

Holly picks the day, a Saturday, because they'll both be home. “I'll need the moral support,” she says—as if she's the only one quitting. Lyle lets it slide. She smokes a pack a day compared to his half pack, and she's been at it since high school whereas he didn't start until his twenties. Lyle intends to quit cold turkey, so he starts tapering off a week in advance. Holly, meanwhile, stockpiles prescriptions for nicotine gum and patches, asks around for a hypnotist, arranges to take the weekend off work, and starts smoking double time to make up for all the cigarettes she'll miss out on for the rest of her life.

On Friday, their last official day as smokers, Lyle comes home from work, where he's been negotiating a deal to distribute video poker machines in West Virginia now that they're illegal in South Carolina. He finds Holly and Claire on the kitchen floor, playing with wooden blocks. Claire is fidgeting. “What's two and two?” Holly says, moving pairs of blocks into a foursome. Claire looks away, pokes out her lip. Then, a huge smile. “A tutu! A tutu! Can I put on my tutu?” Holly says, “I give.”

Once Claire is busy with her dress-up clothes—tutu, princess crown, elbow-length sequined gloves—Holly and Lyle slip out to their spot beside the rosebush, where they can keep an eye on her through the window. Holly kisses her cigarette before she lights it. “Little friend,” she says, “your days are numbered. Your number's up. You can't argue with the numbers.”

On average, nonsmokers outlive smokers by ten years. Holly has posted this bit of info on the fridge, for inspiration. They're determined to stick around long enough to see Claire graduate from college, get married or not, become whatever she becomes. Even so, quitting feels like a loss. In Lyle's memory, their early days are suffused with smoke, a gauzy cocoon holding them close. Cal hadn't approved, so they'd been secretive back then, too, indulging their vice behind the milk house, down by the bluff, up on the silo late at night.

“Would you still do that”—Lyle's flirting now—“share your last smoke with me?”

He's remembering when he first started working for Cal. It was his second day on the job, and during a break, he asked to bum a cigarette off Holly. He didn't really want to smoke, was just looking for an excuse to talk to her. “It's my last one,” she told him. “But I'll share.”

Now Holly gives him a curious look, hooks a finger in the pocket of his oxford. “Sucker,” she says. “It wasn't really my last one.” And then, before he has time to be surprised, she puts her other hand on his chest and kisses him hard, which is exactly what he'd been imagining that years-ago day as he passed the cigarette back to her.

“Hey!” Claire's tapping the window with a magic wand, her voice tinny behind the glass. “Too! Much! Kissing!” Holly says she'll be in soon and shakes loose another smoke as Lyle heads inside to start dinner. That's how it goes the rest of the evening, her ducking out while he brushes Claire's teeth, helps her into pajamas, reads to her in bed. Normally he and Holly do the whole routine together, but tonight he doesn't mind going it alone, especially not if the kiss was a preview of what's to come. It's been two months, two weeks,
and four days; by now even Holly has to be getting the itch. But this is math they don't talk about. As Lyle lies in bed, watching a ball game and waiting, he tries not to get his hopes up. Probably the only reason she kissed him was the sudden memory of the old days, how much she wanted him back then. After a few innings, he gives up, turns off the TV, and goes downstairs. He's opening a bottle of wine when Holly comes through the screen door carrying spreadsheets.

“You coming to bed?”

“Soon,” she says. “I'm enjoying my swan song.”

“You know, they say nicotine kills your sex drive.”

Holly opens a Diet Coke. “You know, they say the same about alcohol.”

When Lyle nods off around eleven, drowsy from his fourth glass, she's still outside.

“Ouch,” Holly said, shifting her weight on top of him. “Something's not right.” She told him it felt like the equipment down there had been rearranged. Claire was four weeks old, and this was their first try since she was born. They were clumsy as teenagers, but in spite of the discomfort, Holly seemed happy afterward, pleased to know he still wanted her. After a couple weeks, though, it was as if she no longer needed to do it now that she'd proven to herself they still could. At first Lyle was patient. She'd feel sexier once she lost the extra pounds, once she stopped wetting herself every time she coughed, once it didn't hurt. Besides, her body was busy providing for Claire, and that was the important thing. But even after Holly quit nursing, even after he could once again put his tongue to her breast without feeling
like a trespasser, even after whatever had been rearranged during labor got itself back to rights, still nothing.

Lyle took into consideration biology, was willing to allow for the possibility that what his body needed two or three times a week, hers now needed less often. But as the months wore on (the “once-a-months” was how he thought of them), he began to think Holly simply wasn't trying. If he pushed her, if he dropped enough hints, eventually she'd come around, but even that could take days. And then he was still left feeling not quite right, because he didn't just want sex, he wanted his wife to want him. When he brought it up, she was apologetic, then defensive.

“Look,” she said. “I can't help it if I'm not in the mood. Do you want me just servicing you like a broken-down car?”

“No,” he said. “Of course not.” And he meant it. Sex as a favor was even more depressing than no sex at all.

Holly nudges Lyle with her elbow. It's Saturday morning, six-thirty. “I've been up since five,” she says. “Can we have a smoke now?”

“Afraid not.”

“Then there's not much reason to get up, is there?”

When Lyle ventures a hand on her thigh, she rolls over and blows her nose, probably trying to wake Claire. “I've been thinking,” she says. “As long as we're at it, why don't we quit drinking, too?”

Lyle reaches into his briefs to adjust himself. What she means of course is that
he
should quit drinking. She stopped before she got pregnant, and now she hardly drinks at all. “We're quitting cigarettes because they kill you,” he says. “Drinking a little bit doesn't.”

“But you don't drink a little bit.” She rolls over to scratch his back, a consolation prize. “And even when you do, you change. You're not you.”

There's a knock on the bedroom door. Claire has a million excuses for venturing in before the hands of the clock point to seven and twelve. When Holly says, “Come in,” she hops toward them, underpants on backward, both legs squeezed through one hole.

“My underwear is broken.”

“What a coincidence,” Lyle says. “I think your mom is broken, too.”

Holly pats his cheek and sends him to make breakfast while she helps Claire get dressed. When they come into the kitchen, she tosses a pack of Camels onto the table. “Get these away from me, please.”

The feel of the pack between his fingers is enough to make his lips tingle, and as he throws it away, he's already plotting to come back later, fish it out. “Hang tough,” he says, handing Holly her coffee. “Don't puff.” It's a saying he picked up the first time they quit, one that got on Holly's nerves, but he means it as a joke. He's hoping for a smile. Instead, over Claire's head, she shoots him a look so full of venom that Lyle at first thinks she must be kidding.

“You know,” she says, slumping in her chair, “I was doing just fine.”

Fine, she means, until he started back. Fine to the point that she could sit behind the register at the antique mall with smokers coming and going all around and not even be tempted. They'd both quit when they were trying for a baby, but then, around the time Claire turned one, Lyle lit up after a few too many beers at the office Christmas party. Soon he was smoking three or four a week. One night in
January, Holly followed him outside, drew a cigarette from his pack, and stared him down. “This is your fault,” she said. “I asked you not to keep them around.”