“Mom, you let a man give you a back rub you don’t even know. What’s his name?”
“He seemed nice, he said he learned from a therapist how to do it. Now I can’t walk, I can’t dress myself or take a bath. I should’ve known better than to let an ironworker touch me. I’m not going to the hospital, the way they treat you. If I lie here on the floor and try not to move ... It’s so cold in the house, I’m gonna have to see if I can reach the thermostat and turn the heat up. But I raise my arms, it just about kills me.”
“Mom, if I was home you know I’d come. I’m seven hundred miles away.”
A car appeared in the front window. There for a moment creeping past the house. A light-colored car.
“How long would it take you?”
Carmen stared at the window, empty now.
“Not more than a day, would it? ... Carmen?”
“I can’t just drop everything and come. Wayne’s off on a job.”
“I don’t need Wayne. You drove your car, didn’t you?”
“There must be someone you can call, one of your friends.”
“Like who? They work or baby-sit or have husbands they have to take care of. Doctors don’t make house calls, they don’t do you any good anyway. Sit and wait hours to see them, they give you a prescription . . .”
The car appeared again and Carmen was ready. A cream-colored Plymouth, Ferris’s car, no doubt about it, creeping by, going the other way now. She couldn’t see the driveway in the window. The car passed from view but might have turned in.
“They give you so-called pain pills that don’t come near reaching the pain I have now. If you ever suffered from it you’d know what I mean. Well, I’m gonna try to get up those stairs and go to bed. I have that extra-firm mattress with a board
under it . . .”
“Mom, I’ll have to call you back.”
“Not that it did me any good last night, and I can’t stay up there, but I just don’t know what else to do.”
“Mom!”
“What?”
“Someone’s here. I’ll call you back, okay?”
“Who is it?”
Carmen said, “I’ll call you as soon as I can,” placed the phone on the floor and ran into the living room.
Wayne’s pickup stood in the drive. There was no sign of a cream-colored Plymouth.
Carmen stood by the window knowing Ferris would be back, wanting to be ready but thinking about the keys for the pickup too, wanting to get out of here.
She had looked everywhere in the house Wayne might have dropped or left a ring holding a half dozen keys and a St. Christopher medal. She had looked in the pockets of his dirty coveralls, the pants and shirt he’d worn yesterday, on top the refrigerator, where his new work gloves were lying and he’d forgotten them, even inside the refrigerator and behind it. She pictured him entering the house last night, turning the light off in the kitchen, he might’ve gotten a beer but she didn’t think so, coming in the bedroom then. She tried it again, pictured him entering the house and stopped, almost certain where the keys were.
She found them, the house key still in the side door, the rest of the keys hanging from the ring, the door open a few inches, like that since Wayne had run out of the house this morning.
Carmen changed her clothes, from jeans to a pair of good beige slacks. She stood in the bedroom in her cotton bra trying to decide what to wear on top, a blouse, a turtleneck, wanting to hurry, get dressed and get out of here. But couldn’t make up her mind and ran into the living room in the bra and slacks and felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
Ferris’s Plymouth was coming up Hillglade Drive.
She watched it slow down, coasting, and creep past the house, its windshield wipers sweeping back and forth, side windows streaked with rain, a figure inside that had to be Ferris. The car disappeared up the road, past a stand of trees.
Carmen moved closer to the window and stood watching for several minutes, wondering why Ferris hadn’t stopped. The only reason she could think of, he saw the pickup in the drive and thought Wayne was home.
It could be safer to stay than leave. She turned a chair to face the window and sat down. About ten minutes later the phone rang. Carmen remained in the chair.
By noon it had stopped raining.
At twelve-thirty the cream-colored Plymouth came up Hillglade Drive again and crept past the house. The car’s side window was down and this time she saw Ferris behind the wheel, his face, sunglasses on, looking at the house.
Fifteen minutes later the phone rang. Carmen didn’t answer it.
Ferris drove by again at one-thirty. Carmen was sure he was going to stop this time. The car seemed to pause at the driveway before continuing up the road. She waited for the phone to ring, but no sound came from the kitchen.
At two o’clock she changed back to her jeans, took off her bra, put on a tank top and a clean white Oxford-cloth shirt and returned to the window to watch and think some more, though she was almost certain now what she was going to do, tired of watching, tired of being here.
As dumb as Ferris was he could find out Wayne was off somewhere on a towboat. Or even if he thought Wayne was home he could ring the bell to find out, or he could walk in—why would he be afraid of Wayne? And if she saw him coming up Hillglade again, called the Cape Girardeau Police and told them he was driving past the house . . . Oh, is that right? They could find him in the house, so what? It was his. They would have to catch him ripping her clothes off . . .
Carmen went into the kitchen, stood at the breakfast table, dialed a number and waited.
“Who is this?”
“Mom? I’m coming home.”
“Well, it’s about time. Are you watching Phil Donahue?”
“No, I’m not.” Carmen brought the phone away from the table to stare through the living room at the front window, bright sunlight outside.
“He’s interviewing couples who live together and engaged couples who say they aren’t going to, you know, have relations till they get married. They show one of the girls real close and the word virgin comes on the screen telling that’s what she is, a virgin, like she’s some kind of rare bird. Can you imagine? It’s like they’re saying, ‘Look at this virgin, everybody.’ You didn’t see it?”
“Mom, I’m leaving as soon as I hear from Wayne.”
18
THE CAPTAIN OF the Robert R. Nally said to Wayne up in the pilothouse, “Put your hand on your chest halfway between your neck and your belly button. Now look over there at your elbow. That’s the kind of bend I’m coming to at Gray’s Point and have to get around without stubbing my tow on a sandbar. If I do, this whole shebang will come apart on me and I won’t look too good, will I?”
In the rain and mist, fog shutting them down as they approached the Thebes railroad bridge and the captain told Wayne Thebes was where the rivermen sued the railroad for building these obstructions, Abe Lincoln represented the railroad and the scudders won. Wayne said, well, you have to have bridges, don’t you? “Nineteen and forty-eight,” the captain said, “I was a deckhand on the Natchez when she hit the Greenville bridge and went down in ninety feet of water, twelve drowned. Abe Lincoln might’ve freed the slaves, but he didn’t help rivermen none.” The captain in his suit and tie stood there working his chrome-plated controls staring straight ahead, his three football fields of barges hidden in the mist. He had radar and two deckhands on the front of the tow with Handie-Talkies, but still couldn’t run a bridge in fog, so an eight-hour trip was going to take about ten.