The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors (36 page)

“It went swell.”

“Tell me about it. Did you sell any of your paintings?”

“I already told you. You weren’t listening!”
My paintings
, she thought,
have no more to do with you than the men I’ve fucked and forgotten
. Becca said, “It’s late. Take my bed, and we’ll talk in the morning.”

By morning, the loft floor was strewn with sketches, and Becca slept, her narrow waist and shoulders beneath an old quilt on the sofa, her father rubbing circles on her back. He whispered, “Bec. Hey, Bec.”

“Are you leaving?” She stretched out her legs, arching her back.

“I guess so.”

“I think you should. Go to Auntie Jane’s.”

He sat on the edge of the sofa. “Are you sure?”

Becca squinted up at him before rubbing her eyes. “I have a lot of work to do.”

“I left your Christmas present over there.”

There was no reason to look. She knew it was cash since there was no more pretty Patty to buy her things she didn’t need.

Rising from the sofa, her father squeezed her shoulder. “You know I’m proud of you.”

She smiled. He could be anybody.

“I’ll see you soon, sweetheart. I love you.”

“Bye, Dad.”

He left with his suitcase and Becca fell back asleep. For the first time in a long time, she slept soundly.

Winter had a beef stew simmering in the Crock-Pot. She was making biscuits. John Whitehouse came up behind her, putting his hand on her back. “It smells good.” She felt his breath on her neck.

With a palm full of peanut M&M’s, he said, “A sweet for my sweet.”

She smiled. “Your
sweet?
You’re plumb out of your mind.” She loved John Whitehouse, the man her daughter rejected. She was seventy-four years old, and she loved him more than she’d ever loved Joe Pitank. She couldn’t much stand Joe—she could now finally admit.

After Abigail was born, he’d always favored his daughter over Winter. It’d been his idea to name her Abigail. Winter had thought Summer would be more appropriate—what with her own name being Winter. He hadn’t liked it.

Joe spoiled Abigail while Winter washed laundry, while Winter worked her fingers red and hard. She hadn’t much mourned his passing, she remembered. He died a lifetime ago. Abigail was another matter. For Abigail, she still felt guilt. She could have loved her more. Abigail might not have strayed and had a bastard child if she’d been a more attentive mother, but she saw Joe in Abigail. She could admit that now too. She was old.

As for Buckley, she wondered about him—what had become
of him, if he was alive. She felt that she and John Whitehouse had done right by him. And off he’d gone, disappearing like his mother tried to do.

Sitting across the table from John in their same cinder-block house, he slid a letter to her. “I’ve already read it,” he said. “Couldn’t resist.”

The letter was from Buckley. She hesitated before pulling the stationery from the envelope.

He wrote
, I’m living at the ocean with Padraig John—the man my mother loved
. He wrote,
I’m happy. Life is like a card game. You either play or you fold. I’ll never fold
. Winter wondered what in God’s name Buckley was talking about. Playing or folding. He was as nuts as ever. Still, she was glad to know that he was happy. The letter continued:
I’m never coming back to Mont Blanc. I plan to avoid the whole state of Arkansas
. (Buckley had laughed when he wrote that particular sentence.)

He needed to say goodbye to the reverend and Winter once and for all. As long as they were ignorant of his feelings, he felt haunted by them; like they could come and get him anytime they wanted. He was a man now. He didn’t want to be afraid. He wrote:
I don’t think either of you treated my mom with love or kindness, which is a shame, because I know now that the love she gave me in just fourteen years of life has sustained me
.

Finishing the letter, Winter scratched her face. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”

“Not really.”

She dug into her stew. “He’s a bastard,” she said, “and it sounds like he’s judging us. What nerve!”

Buckley and Paddy John sat across from each other eating Shake ’n Bake pork chops and applesauce on a red checked tablecloth, and Buckley said as nonchalantly as he could, “I know where
Tide is living. It’s only two miles from here. What if we sent him to one of those drug treatment places?”

“Pass the salt.”

“Or we could have one of those interventions?”

“Tide is old enough to do as he pleases.”

It was hard for Buckley to watch anyone kill himself, let alone Tide, but Buckley was only a boy of thirteen when he’d first met Tide, and Buckley didn’t know then and he didn’t know now that up until he was five, Tide lived with his “unfit” mother, Judy, in a three-room dump. Buckley didn’t know that Tide remembered sleeping on a dirty Coleman sleeping bag while his mother, high on heroin, had sex with Big Lime, her supplier, in the next room. Buckley didn’t know that Tide ate dry cereal and cold Franco-American Spaghettios almost every day for a whole year and that he still remembered their metallic taste. He didn’t know that Tide, desperate for his mother’s love, sometimes went into the room while Big Lime was on top of Judy.

Big Lime grunted, and his mother’s eyes rolled up white, and Tide sat down beside her on the mattress, the coils squeaking, her breasts lolling one to each side.

Tide didn’t know enough not to be there beside her, and he still remembered the smoky, moist smell of her brown hair. He remembered Big Lime telling him to “get the fuck out,” but Tide kept coming back. Finally, Big Lime gave in and let Tide stay.

Even while Big Lime sweated and heaved and grunted on top of Tide’s mother, Tide held her hand.

Like Buckley, Paddy John didn’t know what Tide had seen, but he knew there was a time to let go of the past, and he thought it was well past time for Tide to let go of his.

In Galveston, Judy McGowan, fifty-four this month, still worked at Trina’s whore house. She took her methadone. Some
habits you don’t break. You only replace. She no longer serviced Big Lime or any other man unless he paid cash up-front.

She didn’t want to see or know her son, Tide. She carried the guilt only a mother can carry, and she never wanted to confront it.

In 1991, Becca moved to East Ninety-ninth Street in Spanish Harlem. On the weekends she walked Central Park to breathe in something other than bus fumes and turpentine. She did not graduate from the School of Visual Arts, but dropped out three credits short. If you asked Becca why and she liked you enough to tell you the truth, she’d say, “Degrees don’t matter. Jealous egomaniacal professors make students jump through hoops, and for what? For what? So you can get some job working for some advertising firm after you graduate, doing what you never wanted to do in the first place, or so you can kiss so much ass trying to get your work seen and get so wrapped up in so much bureaucratic bullshit that you forget why you started painting in the first place?” That’s what Becca would say if she liked you. That’s what she explained to her mother.

Becca stopped taking her father’s money and took the subway to and from a full-time job at the Corner Drugstore on Fifty-seventh Street. She worked days as a cashier, catching the grimy coins tossed across the narrow countertop. She said, “Have a nice day,” and sold Fleet enemas and candy bars and cigarettes. She wore a blue smock with a name tag,
REBECCA
embossed with a plastic label maker. At the beginning of each shift, she used the handydandy label maker to give herself a new identity, like
CATHERINE
for Catherine the Great. Her manager, Spencer, who took his job far too seriously, told her, “It has to be your real name. You’re not ‘Joan
of Arc’ or ‘Catherine the Great.’” Becca didn’t care. He could fire her. She could get another low-paying job.

At night, she painted in her one-bedroom apartment and listened to her neighbors, Jose and Maria, shout at each other and their two kids. She couldn’t imagine four people living in a space not much bigger than the space she occupied.

She kept in touch with Jack and Lucy, but neither of them came to visit. (“Spanish Harlem,” they said, “is a little too close to
the
Harlem, and a little too scary all on its own—what with all the Latinos and the gangs and those bandannas they wear. And what’s with those creepy Jesus candles they sell in the bodegas?”) Mostly, they just spoke on the phone. Lucy still got bit acting parts. Things hadn’t worked out as well as she’d anticipated with Johnny Depp. Her speaking role got turned into a nonspeaking role, and she didn’t get to spray him with cologne. Jack was still happy about not living in Newark. He still worked at Macy’s with Paulo, who made a habit of visiting Becca Burke. Paulo latched on to the talented whenever possible.

Her paintings sold. For a pittance, much of the time, but they sold. To Paulo, Becca was the quintessential starving artist. He said, “If my father were rich, I’d take him for every penny he’s worth. You should absolutely do that. You should consider what he owes you.”

Sometimes it was hard to talk to Paulo. She said, “I don’t want his money. He’s a liar.”

“All the more reason to take it.”

Her father called once a week to ask about her paintings and to offer money. Oftentimes she said, “I’m just on my way to work.” Oftentimes she lied. He asked if there was anything he could do to help. Her answer: “No.”

She telephoned her mother in Chapel Hill and said, “I don’t know how you ever put up with his shit. No wonder you drank.”

Her mother said, “I don’t know how I put up with him either.” Of course, Mary knew. She’d been in love with the man, and love
is a scary thing. If not reciprocated, it can turn a person into a monster. Mary had recovered, but the wounds ran deep.

Each year, like clockwork, Becca showed her work at Sue’s in Soho. She wasn’t the star artist anymore; in fact, most years she was relegated to a back corner of Sue’s, where she could hang only a few paintings. Each year, she sold one or two, and Sue took fifty percent, but still, she was painting, and that’s what she wanted to do. That’s what she
needed
to do. Occasionally she saw Roderick Dweizer—the man who had given her her big break—but he was no longer interested in her paintings. She wasn’t painting fish anymore. Instead, she painted black men, dogs, old women, and hillside funerals. Not for him, but thank you.

Becca knew from eavesdropping at the gallery that there was a buyer from North Carolina who bought one of her paintings each year. She assumed it was Buckley R. Pitank, but there was no way to find out. Not without traveling to Wanchese, North Carolina, and she had no intention of leaving New York. Nor did Becca have fond memories of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Additionally, she didn’t really know Buckley R. Pitank.

Paulo said, “You should go. Take a vacation. He told you to look him up.”

“I can’t afford it.”

“Yes you can. I’ll come with.”

Her father was in agreement. He knew Peggy at the Seaside Gallery. Becca should send Peggy some photos of her paintings. Becca didn’t want her father doing her any favors. “That’s okay, Dad.”

“But it’s about your paintings, Becca. It’s not about me. You should call her. She doesn’t take fifty percent. She takes thirty.”

Becca worked days at the Corner Drugstore. She painted at night.
Life is good without waves
.

Then Sue telephoned. “I’ve known you a long time, so I won’t beat around the bush: I don’t have the room this winter, Becca.”

“Not even for one?”

“I don’t want to seem harsh, but your paintings border on pastoral. There are all these farmlike images. I’m sorry. There’s the guy in North Carolina who we can count on to buy one, but to be honest, I don’t want the work in my space. It’s not worth the check. I’m sorry. You need to do something new. Something exciting. Do you remember Johnny Bosworth? He used to be my assistant.”

No response.

“He’s painting Russian prostitutes overlaid with fairy images. It’s fascinating. Remember Lightning Fish?
That
was fascinating.”

The next day at work, Becca’s manager, Spencer, said, “You took thirty-five minutes at lunch. You need to stay five minutes past six.” He was short and bossy, with mousy brown hair, a fat wife, and a fatter kid.

Fucking breeder
. “I don’t need this,” she said.

“You don’t need what?”

“This!” She took off her smock. About to drop it on the counter, she remembered her name tag. This morning, she’d used the label maker, becoming
WONDER WOMAN
. She slipped the name tag into her pocket and stuffed the smock in Spencer’s hands. “I quit.”