Authors: Larry Brown
I told her I could start the next night. She hadn't understood that I was going to do it at night. I had told her, though. She just hadn't been listening. She said she thought I was in business for myself. I told her I was, at night. I told her I had to work my other job in the daytime. Then she wanted to know all about that. She just wanted somebody to talk to. Tracey was going to sleep in my lap. I asked Betty if she'd take her but she wouldn't even look up. She was still reading her magazine.
She wanted to know didn't I get tired of working all the time, at night and on weekends. Hell, who wouldn't? I told her, sure, I got tired of it, but I needed the money. That was all I told her then. I didn't want to tell her about Tracey. I didn't want to tell her all my personal business.
She sat there for a while and didn't say anything. Then she wanted to know if there was any way I could come down on the price. That pissed me off. She wanted to know if that was the very least I could do it for. At first I told her I didn't see any way I could, but I needed the money. Hell, I have to put gas in my truck and all. . . .
I told her I'd cut it twenty more dollars but that was it. I told her if she couldn't live with that, she'd just have to find somebody else to do it. And I told her that if she found somebody cheaper, she wouldn't be satisfied with it.
I had to tell her a couple of times that I'd be there the next night. I told her I had to go by the building supply and get the doors. She wanted to talk some more, but I told her I had to put my baby to bed. Finally I got away from her. I wasn't really looking forward to going back.
I got up with Tracey and Betty wanted to know who that was on the phone. I told her a lady I was going to do some work for. Then she wanted to know what kind of work and how old a lady and was she married or divorced and what did she look like. I told her, Hell, normal, I guess, to let me put Tracey to bed.
She started crying when I laid her down and I had to stay in there with her and pet her a while. I guess her legs hurt. She finally went to sleep. Betty won't even get up with her at night. I have to. It doesn't matter if I've worked twelve hours or fourteen hours. She can't even hear an alarm clock. You can let one go off and hold it right in her ear. She won't even move.
She was smoking the last cigarette I had when I went back
in the living room. She said that kid hated her and I told her she just didn't have any patience with her. I picked up the empty pack and asked her if she had any more. She said she was out. I just looked at her. She'll sit in the house all day long and won't walk a half block to the store and get some, then smoke mine until she makes me run out. Then I have to go.
I got my jacket and told her I guessed I'd have to go get some. She told me to bring her some beer back. I told her I didn't have enough money to buy any beer. I wanted some too but I was almost broke. She told me to just write a check. She says that shit all the time. I told her we had enough to pay that doctor bill and that was it. Then she said something about the saw I bought. It was eighty-nine dollars. But good saws cost good money. And if I don't have a saw, I don't have a job.
She wanted to know when I was going to marry her. I told her I didn't know.
I went by the building supply the next day, after I got off from work. I priced the locks, but they were almost twenty dollars apiece. I decided to see if I could use the old locks on her doors and save her that much anyway. I signed for the doors and the trim, the linoleum.
I didn't want to go straight over there. I wanted to go home for a few minutes and see Tracey and get Betty to fix me something to eat. I'd asked Leon to let me borrow ten dollars until Friday, so I stopped at the store and got a six-pack of beer. You can't just go through life doing without everything.
I loaded up my sawhorses and left the linoleum in the carport. Tracey was sitting on the floor, wanting me to pick her
up. I set the sack on the table and told Betty I'd brought her some beer. She was reading another magazine so I played with Tracey for a while. Then I got her building blocks and set her down with them and got one of the beers out of the sack. Dirty clothes were piled up everywhere. She won't wash until we don't have anything to wear. I lit a cigarette and just watched her. She didn't know I was in the room. I drank about half my beer. I had a lot of shit going through my head.
Finally I asked her if she could fix me something to eat before I went over there. I told her it would probably be late when I got back. I told her I was hungry.
She asked me what I wanted. I told her I didn't care, a sandwich, anything. She said she didn't know of anything we had to eat. She said I could go in there and look.
I told her I wanted some supper. She didn't look back up, and I thought, Work your ass off all day and come home and have to put up with some shit like this.
I sat there a while and then I got up and made out like I was going to the kitchen. She wasn't watching me anyway. She had her magazine up in front of her face, picking at the buttons on her blouse. I bent down behind the couch. I peeked over her shoulder to see what she was reading.
THE LAUNDROMAT AXE MURDERER WOULDN'T COME CLEAN
. I don't know how she can stand to read that shit. She gets so deep into it, she'll get her nails in her mouth. I got up on my knees right behind her. She was nibbling her bottom lip. I was just trying to have a little fun.
She jumped about two feet high when I went boo in her
ear. Turned around and slammed her magazine down. She was pissed. Bad pissed.
I told her I was just playing with her. She told me to just go on and leave. Said I was always hollering about saving money. Why didn't I go out and make some? Instead of worrying the hell out of her?
I got up in her face, said let me tell you one goddamn thing. You lay around here on your ass all day long and don't do nothing. Won't clean the house up. Won't even wash Tracey's face. I told her if I could go out and work at night, she could fix me something to eat.
She said there wasn't anything to eat.
I said by God she could buy something.
She said give her some money and she might.
I told her I gave her money, and she spent it on those stupid fucking magazines.
She whispered to me. Hateful. If I was so damn unhappy then why didn't I just leave? Just pack up and go right now?
I didn't answer. I picked up Tracey and she put her arms around my neck. We went into the kitchen. I looked in the refrigerator. There was some old bacon, and a half cup of chili in a Tupperware bowl, and a quart of milk, and a little brown hamburger meat, and one hot dog. I found some Rice Krispies under the counter. I fixed two bowls and ate with Tracey. I washed her hands and her face.
I didn't want to leave. I'd said some of the words I'd been wanting to say but I hadn't said all of them. My words wouldn't hurt her as bad as hers hurt me. I held onto Tracey and looked
at my watch. There wasn't much time. Your life goes by and if you spend it unhappy, what's the point? If staying won't make you happy, and leaving ruins somebody else's life, what's the answer?
I didn't know. I still don't. But I'd told her I'd be there by six. And finally I couldn't wait in the kitchen any longer.
I was so nervous I changed clothes three times before he got there. I ended up wearing a dress that was too short. I cleaned the house twice, even though I knew there would be sawdust and tools on the floor. I'd been thinking about him all day, I couldn't help it. He was so quiet and mysterious and he had such lovely hands. I'd had a few drinks, and I was going to offer him a drink when he got there. Just thinking about him being all alone in the house with me excited me. Maybe if he had a few drinks, he'd loosen up and talk to me. I wanted to talk to somebody so badly. It's not easy being alone after being married for thirty years. It's not easy to come home to a house so quiet you can hear a clock ticking.
I kept waiting and looking at my watch, and I kept drinking. I thought it would calm me down. I was so nervous my hands were just trembling.
Finally he pulled up and I looked out through the curtain in the living room. He had two doors and two sawhorses in the back of his pickup. I watched him get out and put on a tool belt and lift the doors from the truck.
I opened the door for him and smiled and told him he was right on time. He said hi or something, and then started bringing
everything in. He didn't have much to say. I just watched him and smiled. He brought in some kind of a crowbar and a power saw and a long orange extension cord. I couldn't get that idiotic grin off my face. I had a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Harold used to tell me that if I didn't drink myself to death, I'd smoke myself to death. But he was always so cruel. Always so cruel.
I asked him if he would like a drink. He said he didn't like whiskey, and took the crowbar and tore the facing off the wall like he was mad at it. It made this awful screeching sound when the nails pulled loose. He just. . . attacked it. Within five minutes he had the frame and the door lying in the carport and was pulling finishing nails from the studs. The nails screamed when he pulled them. I said something about how he didn't waste any time. I was smiling. He said he wasn't making much money on this and had to get through as quick as he could.
I thought he was probably mad at me for talking him into coming down twenty dollars. But I'm single, I don't have Harold's money, I have to get by, too.
I told him I had some beer if he wanted one. He said let him get this door up and he might take one. He pulled a screwdriver out of his tool belt and stepped outside to the carport and closed the door behind him. Almost like he didn't have time to talk to me. Or was angry with me. I hadn't done anything to him. The paneling was rough and splintered where he'd taken the door off. You could see the wires inside the studs. You could see the nails. It all looked so raw.
I made myself another drink, and checked my makeup in
the hall mirror. You would have thought I was having a cocktail party the way I was acting. He was out in the carport and I watched him through the window. He was kneeling beside the door, doing something, I couldn't tell what. His shirt had come up and I could see the bumps of bone in his back. His back looked so smooth. I wanted to feel it with my hands, run my hands over it, up his ribs, down over his hips, I wanted him to put his mouth on my throat and slide it down to my breasts and take one of my nipples in his lips and say Myra, Myra. . . .
My goddamn back was killing me. If I bend over for more than five minutes at a time I can't straighten up. Sometimes in the mornings it hurts so bad I can just barely get out of bed. I have to get up and walk around and bend and stretch to get to where I can go to work. It usually stops hurting midway through the morning and starts hurting twice as bad around three. I'd been laboring for a bricklayer all that day, mixing his mortar and handing him his blocks. They just scab us out to whoever needs help on a big job. If you're not in the union you don't have any say. I can't stand the dues so I pay my own. But I'm afraid I'll get disabled. I'm afraid I won't be able to work anymore. I worry about that every day.
I fell three months ago. We were bricking a bank. A scaffold leg collapsed, one of those cheap ones they rent from the building supply. I was fourteen feet up, not that high, but I landed on a sheet of plywood that was propped up against a water cooler. I thought I'd broken my back. Everybody who saw me
fall thought I'd broken my back. When the ambulance came for me, they treated me like a patient with a broken back. They pulled traction on me and immobilized me. I was screaming. I bit my tongue.
My foreman came to see me in the hospital. He told me the company took care of its employees. He only stayed a few minutes. I could tell he couldn't wait to get out of there.
I had to go on workmen's comp after I got out of the hospital. What I drew was about half my pay. You can't live on half money. You've got to have whole money. I went over to the job a few times, to talk to the guys I worked with, but I was just in the way. They couldn't work and talk to me, too. I stopped going after a while. I stayed home and drank beer with Betty and read those Little Golden Books to Tracey.
I'd never felt so useless in my whole life. There wasn't anything to occupy me. Betty didn't want to do it. I had to do the grocery shopping to make our money stretch. We fought over the money, over the TV, over anything and everything. I had to put up with these assholes every week in the office where I got my check. Some days I wanted to just go away somewhere and never come back again. I was supposed to stay off for four months, but I went back after two by forging my doctor's signature on an insurance release. They set me to mixing mortar and carrying twenty-pound blocks.
I got the knobs and the lock out of the old door and took them back into the house. She was sitting on an ottoman. She had on dark stockings. I told her I'd probably bring another boy
with me the next night, to lay the linoleum. She just nodded. It was like she was listening to something in her head. I didn't know what I'd do if my back got to hurting so bad I couldn't work. I didn't know how bad it would have to hurt before it stopped me. I didn't know how I'd pay Tracey's doctor bills if that happened.
I told her I'd take that beer now if she didn't care. She nodded and smiled and went to get it. I watched her, and I thought about the twenty dollars she had talked me out of. I should have just told her to forget it. I should have just told her to get somebody else and keep her lousy twenty dollars.
He was certainly a fast worker. I didn't know if he wanted a glass or not. I figured carpenters usually drank theirs straight out of the can. He wasn't making it easy for me to talk to him. He acted like he had things on his mind. We couldn't talk at all with all that ripping and hammering going on.