Lit Riffs (11 page)

“This place is one of the most expensive in the country. Our insurance doesn’t come close to paying the bills.” My dad told me that, in tears, one time when he was visiting me at the hospital, without my mother, and I wouldn’t look at him or say anything but
fuck
.

William gets out of his blue Chevy and starts to walk toward the big door at the front of building D. I get out and follow him a few steps behind; I walk all the way up the stairs and see him unlock the door of apartment 217. After he shuts the door, I stand outside, trying to decide what to do next. I suddenly realize how strange it might seem if I just show up at his front door.

I sit down on the green rug in the hall to think. I wish I had a cigarette, even though I don’t smoke. Everybody at the hospital talked about wanting a cigarette all the time, and after a few weeks, I did, too. I even smoked one outside, with a guy named Benjamin, because when he found that half-empty pack of Winstons in the trash, we both knew it was as if he’d stumbled onto gold.

I’m afraid to go to the door, but I’m not afraid of William. I know that some people think a lot of the Vietnam vets are crazy, but I’ve read enough to know they’re wrong about that. Plus, I’m not afraid of crazy either.

It’s almost dark out and I’m still sitting on the green rug, staring at William’s door. I can’t stay much longer. My parents eat dinner at exactly seven o’clock—except when my mother’s on call—and if I don’t show up, they might call the police. (They’ve done it before. Once when I spent the night with my friend Brian in the hills outside of town, having sex in his car. The other time when I went into those hills by myself, after Brian moved to California, and I camped in the woods for three days before the police finally found me.)

My watch says six thirty; I’ve got to do something. And of course I will do something because I can do anything now. I’m invincible; I can do whatever it takes. I can sit in the little windowless room, padded in rubber, with the hundred-watt light-bulb hanging from the ceiling, surrounded by a wire cage, and not even want to cry, no matter how long they keep me there. And I can knock on a total stranger’s door, if I feel like it.

I do, so softly I’m not sure he could hear me, but after a minute or so, he comes to the door. Still in the blue suit from the meeting. He doesn’t recognize me at first, so I explain that I’m the girl with the uncle who died. He stares at me for a minute; then he asks if I want to come in.

His voice is just like I knew it would be. Low, melodic, real. He doesn’t sit down but he tells me I can have a seat on his couch. Two of the brown cushions are covered with magazines and papers, so I sit down on the third one, near the window. He stands by the TV, across the room, silently looking at me. Then he reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out a pack of cigarettes. He lights one, but before he can put the pack away, I ask him if I can have one, too. He hands me one and his Zippo lighter; I light my cigarette and start coughing.

“You don’t smoke, do you?”

“No, not really,” I say, stifling another cough. “But I want to learn how.”

“Why would you want to do that?” He looks out the window. “I’m sure you’ve heard it’s bad for you.”

“It’s bad for you, too,” I say, dropping my ashes in a yellow plastic bowl filled with butts on the end table next to me. “I don’t buy all that research anyway. I think it’s part of some government plot to trick people into forgetting about the real problems in the country by making them so busy hating smokers.”

I think about what my mom would say if she could hear me. She’s fanatical about the damage people do to themselves when they smoke. She always complains about her patients who won’t quit; she told my father that she’d like to refuse to take any patients who smoke, but her HMO won’t let her.

William’s mouth moves a little. Almost a smile.

He brings out a white plastic chair from his kitchen and sits across from me. He smokes the cigarette until it’s almost down to the filter; then he tells me he has to go to work in about five minutes.

“Where do you work?”

“At the mall,” he says. “Sears. In the furniture department.”

So that’s why he has to wear a suit. But I’m not disappointed; I didn’t want him to work behind some desk at a bank or an insurance company. The mall is as good as anywhere to make a living. I remember my dad saying how sad it is when older people have to work in retail or fast food, but I don’t feel sorry for William.

“I’ve got to go, too. My parents have dinner at seven.”

He pauses for a minute, and then he says, barely moving his lips, “You haven’t told me why you’re here.”

I stand up and move toward the door. “It’s a long story. I’ll have to save it for some time when you don’t have to work.”

He picks up his wallet and keys from the top of the television.

We walk out of the apartment and down the stairs: him in front, me trailing behind. When we get to the parking lot, I ask if I can come again tomorrow morning.

“Don’t you have school?”

“Yeah, but I can skip whenever I want. I already have enough credits to graduate. It doesn’t matter what I do now.”

He shakes his head, but he says I can come if I want. Then he gets in his blue Chevy and leaves.

I resist the temptation to follow him to Sears instead of going home.

That night, I dream about William and Jessica and me, but we’re not in the hospital anymore. We’re in a silver boat and William is holding Jessica in his arms—she’s so small, the size of a baby—and he’s rocking her and singing. The song sounds like a hymn, but it’s sweeter than any I ever heard at the All Saints’ Episcopal Church. When I wake up, I don’t remember most of the words, but I still hear one line, repeating: “Go across the water, to the other side; Find the peace you’ve longed for, always been denied.”

As I get dressed to go to William’s house, I decide I’ll bring him a present.

The present is ready at ten, but I wait until eleven to knock on his door, in case he’s a night person. But he doesn’t answer. He isn’t home. It occurs to me he’s done this on purpose to avoid me, but I don’t want to believe that. I sit back down on the green rug and wait, with the present behind me, so he won’t see it right when he walks up. I want to explain it first; I don’t want him to feel strange about getting a gift from someone he hardly knows.

I don’t have to wait too long. He nods when he sees me; he says he had a feeling I might show up during the ten minutes he was gone, but he had to get a few things from the mini-market. Cigarettes and coffee, he mutters, can’t live without them.

I follow him through the apartment door, still holding my present behind me. When he motions me over to my spot on the coach, I sit down and tuck the present under the coffee table, out of sight.

This time he gets the white plastic chair right away and sits down. He’s not wearing the suit; he’s wearing blue jeans and a black, short-sleeved shirt, but he still has the wing tips on. Maybe the only shoes he has, I figure, and that’s okay with me.

He leans back in his chair. “I called Ken last night after I realized I didn’t remember your name. Stacey Janzen.”

“Pretty boring name, huh?” I’m nervous about Ken knowing I came over here, but I try to sound casual. “Did Ken tell you I called him earlier for your address?”

William exhales a puff of smoke and it swirls and disappears in the sunlight streaming in the window. “He did. He also said he wouldn’t give it to you.”

I cross my legs and smile. “But, hey, I’m pretty resourceful, huh?”

He doesn’t smile back. “Why are you here, Stacey Janzen?”

“Well, like I told Ken, my uncle Johnny was a POW, too, for a while, and I thought that maybe you could tell me what it was like.”

He puts out his cigarette and stares at the glass ashtray next to him. “Ken used to work for the VA. He mentioned something about calling a friend of his to find out exactly what happened to your uncle.” He pauses. “Do you want him to do that?”

He knows, I’m sure of it. And in a way, I’m glad. It’s hard to lie to William after hearing him sing last night in my dream.

“No.” I sit up straighter. “No, I guess he shouldn’t call them.”

William gets up and takes a styrofoam cup out of his grocery bag. While he sits and sips his coffee, I walk over to his window. It looks down on the corner of the parking lot where the green trash dumpsters are. I see a white bird feeder hanging from the window ledge and ask if he hung it there.

“Yeah,” he says. “I like to listen to them in the morning.”

I feel my breath coming quicker. “Sing to me, Stacey,” Jessica would say. She was my roommate, the youngest kid at the hospital. There were rumors that her dad or an uncle had done something to her—like half the girls in the place. “My sister used to sing to me in the morning.”

“Dammit, Jessica, I can’t do that. Okay, okay, just stop crying.”

“Do you want a drink?” William asks, pulling out a can of Pepsi from the grocery bag. I say sure, and he hands me the can. While I’m sitting on the couch, drinking, he asks me again what I’m doing here.

“I want to give you something.” I reach under the coffee table and pull out the present.

He stands up and puts his hands in his pockets. “You feel sorry for me, is that it? Some kind of charity work at school? Or maybe for your church?”

He doesn’t sound annoyed, but his voice has lost the melody. I want to explain that I don’t feel sorry for him at all, but I can’t find the words.

Finally I say, “I’ve been dreaming about you.”

He sits back down and looks at me. “And what am I doing in the dream?”

“Open the present first,” I tell him, with a note of pleading I can’t keep out of my voice. “Then I’ll tell you.”

He reaches across the coffee table and I hand it to him. He takes off the purple wrapping paper carefully, without tearing it. It’s a T-shirt, men’s size medium. I got it at this store where they’ll put anything you want on a T-shirt. On William’s T-shirt, I put in bold black letters:

Do Not Lose Hope

Our Hearts Will Always Be Free

“Thanks,” he says, and pauses. “You wanted me to have this because I was in prison in Nam?”

“Yeah, sort of. But it’s from a poster I made a few months ago. For another friend of mine.”

I taped it to the wall of our room the night before I left, over Jessica’s bed. But she was on so many meds, I wasn’t even sure she read it before the counselor took it down.

William smiles then for the first time, and I realize I’ve said, indirectly, that I think of him as my friend. I blush, something I never do, something I pride myself on being above. I hope he doesn’t notice.

“Who was this other friend?” he asks, putting the T-shirt down, carefully, on the floor next to him. “A vet?”

I shake my head. “A kid. A little kid, only thirteen. Her name was Jessica.” I realize I’ve used the past tense. Her name is Jessica. Is. Even if she doesn’t know it half the time now.

He stares out the window for a minute; then he tells me he has a kid. A boy named Matthew, fifteen years old now, who lives in Seattle with his mother.

“That’s far…. Do you ever get to see him?”

“No. Not since my ex-wife remarried when Matthew was five.”

I lean forward. “But you’re still his dad.”

“Not legally,” he says, lighting another cigarette. “I signed some papers so he could be adopted by his stepfather.”

The pack of cigarettes is lying on the TV; I ask William if I can have one and he says sure. When I walk across the room, I notice William’s hands are trembling.

“Give me a light, okay?”

He picks up the lighter; I put my hand under his wrist to stop the shaking. He lights my cigarette, but I don’t let go of his wrist.

He looks up at me. “I really don’t understand what you’re doing here.”

I drop his hand and walk to the window. There’s a red bird perched on the feeder. “I told you already; I keep dreaming about you.”

“You’re a kid, Stacey,” he says quietly. “You shouldn’t be dreaming about me.”

I take a puff of my cigarette, without coughing this time. I turn around and stare at him. “It’s not a sexual thing. I’m not here for a fuck.”

He doesn’t seem shocked or embarrassed; I knew he wouldn’t. “You don’t have an uncle though?”

“No.” I sit back down on the couch. “But I do have a friend named Jessica. And I can’t see her anymore because she’s locked up.”

“Your friend’s in prison?”

My throat is burning from the cigarette; I can’t answer his question. I pull the skin on top of my hand until it hurts, until the surrounding skin loses all its color. Then I take a deep breath and tell him that Jessica is in a mental hospital.

He sits there for a few minutes without saying anything; then he picks up the T-shirt I gave him and goes through a door on the other side of the room. When he comes back out, he’s wearing the shirt, and he asks me if I want to go to McDonald’s for lunch. I tell him I’d rather go to Wendy’s because it’s farther from school.

He whistles a song as we drive to Wendy’s in his blue Chevy. It might be the hymn in my dream, but I’m not sure. I can’t hear that song anymore now that William is whistling.