“Now you don’t want to?”
“I’m tired.”
“You’re scared.”
“I’m scared because I don’t know what you want. You can’t want me.”
“Why not? And if I don’t really want you — I mean, you’re right, I don’t — maybe I want something from you.”
“I’m really tired.”
“What was your mother’s name?”
“Louisa.”
“Call me Louisa. Touch me there and call me Louisa.”
Max didn’t say no (he was not as scared as Elizabeth wanted him to be, but he was uncomfortable and he was angry; he’s dying, for Christ’s sake). He closed his eyes. Soft, matted hair brushed his nose and lips. He smelled her.
“Is this necessary?”
“It’s hard to say. Was I necessary for you?”
“Oh, sweetheart, why don’t you just leave? You don’t have to take care of me. Take the hat, take my passbook, and just go.”
“I don’t want to go. I want to stay here and be Louisa, that sweet little thing. Do you think having an alcoholic slut for a mother is what made you chase little girls?”
He wanted to say, You were not little. You were a young woman, and I was wrong, but you were not a little girl. He coughed very hard, bouncing Elizabeth on his chest.
She stood up and handed him a kleenex.
“Never mind,” she said.
She left the cherry-trimmed hat on and dressed in her own clothes.
“I’m sorry, Pops.”
“Forget it. I owe you.”
Elizabeth looked away. “Yeah. Well. Can I keep the hat?”
On Thursday he was better. She found a bright red flannel shirt for him, and in his black overcoat and black beret he looked frail and chic, a French grandfather driving out to inspect the vineyards.
“Let’s go feed the ducks, and we can pick up a couple of bags of apples. I’ll make an apple pie.”
“I never understood ‘feeding the ducks.’ Think about it. We buy stale bread so we can have the pleasure of feeding the ducks, who can’t be hungry, since they’re always being fed. And the store maintains the ducks so it can sell us stale bread. There are no more starving children? We have to come up with this arrangement so we can all play Marie Antoinette by the pond?”
He shut his eyes and Elizabeth kept driving, glad he was talking. It was always a good sign when he had the energy to talk, no matter what he said. Even if it was about the stupid ducks.
Max thought, Why am I talking about this?
He sat on a bench while Elizabeth fed the ducks, and when she sprinkled breadcrumbs right at his feet, two fat black ducks came up, honking mildly. They were dirtier than she had imagined, something dark caked into the tiny holes on top of their beaks, algae and muck trailing their orange feet.
Max ignored them for a while, pulling his beret down over his eyes, covertly enjoying the sun on his shoulders and legs. The ducks pecked around the bench, and when he shuffled his feet a few times, they retreated and then came back, honking a little louder, pecking more aggressively.
“They must be female,” he said, smiling. She didn’t answer him except to bite down on an apple and chew it loudly. Max could no longer chew apples.
They drove home in silence, and when Max touched her thigh, Elizabeth looked down at the trembling loose skin and patted his hand. There’s no point in being mad, she thought. There’s not enough time. I could yell at him and then he’d keel over and the last thing I would have said would be, Don’t be an asshole, Max.
That’s how you know you’re dying, Max thought. I could burn her clothes, shit in the kitchen, wave my dick at the goddamned ducks, and she’d just smile and pat my hand.
Max’s place was tidier, piles consolidated and concealed, the air filled with motes of lemon furniture polish, ten pink roses as open as bowls, but it was not transformed. Elizabeth was glad she hadn’t mentioned Margaret’s true and apparently grandiose intentions. Her mother had failed; it still smelled like seeping death.
“Nice roses your mother left. Nice vacuuming. Thank her for me.”
“Maybe you could. When I call. TV?” Elizabeth steadied Max on her hip, pulled off his coat, and held him up with one hand while she reached out to clear the recliner and slide him down into it. She saw that the recliner was empty, in an alien, pristine, showroomlike state.
Max patted the cushions. “All right. I wonder where she put my stuff?” He shut his eyes. “How about those monks?” Yesterday Family Feud had monks versus nuns and Max laughed until he cried.
“Okay, you watch. I gotta go out now, just for a little while.”
Elizabeth picked up her keys.
“Where are you going?”
“We need some stuff, Max. I’ll be back in an hour.”
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Can’t Turn You Loose
She saw him from the diner window, coming around the corner from the parking lot, his jacket flapping over his high country behind. Suit, white shirt, red tie. Polished black loafers on his big country feet. More waist now, just a little bit of gut pressing against his belt. Big, easy comfort, a long velvet-sofa man. Still those long legs and arms, coming past the rotating dessert tower.
“Well, Liz Taube. Bless your heart, good to see you again,” Huddie said, and put out his hand.
Elizabeth stared like it had turned from hand to snake as he spoke. “Bless my heart?”
Huddie slid into the booth and leaned forward.
“Elizabeth? Liz? You still go by Liz? I work in this town, I own a business here now. I have customers in here, Nikos and I are on the same delivery run. You have no goddamned idea. You never did. I am a model minority businessman. I am a family man, I give to the church, hell, I give to the synagogue. You want me to stick my tongue down your throat by way of hello? Bad enough you showed up in my store like the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
“What are you so pissy about? It’s been seven years and you’re the one that’s married, not me. You’ve got babies, I don’t. Excuse me, I would have written when you were in Buttfuck, Alabama, but you didn’t. And I didn’t know you were back.” Elizabeth looked down. “Running your father’s store. Christ.”
The waiter stood by the table, grinning at Huddie.
“Hey, George, how’s it going?”
“Good, Hud. Going good now.” He licked the tip of his pencil, willing to wait for twenty minutes if that was how long Huddie took. George worked two nights at week at Nassau Produce, Huddie’s store, and Huddie paid for twenty-two English classes, something his cousin Nikos didn’t give a good goddamn about. If Huddie Lester wanted to take his time about ordering coffee, and then take this angry, sort of pretty girl to the motel next door, that was fine with George Pascopolous. Huddie Lester was his man.
“Give us a few minutes, buddy.”
“Okay, Hud, when you want me, you do like so.” George raised one finger discreetly.
She would have kicked Huddie under the table if he hadn’t made her feel that everyone in the diner was watching them, completely fascinated. All that time apart, and now together, and it was not the same, of course, and this conversation would do nothing for them.
His jacket cuff rode up on his sleeve, showing a half-circle of brown skin through the white shirt.
“Are we having a conversation?” Elizabeth ran her palm over the Formica, rolling sugar granules with her fingertips.
“No,” he said. “Lets get out of here. Let’s not run out of here, but let us, by all means, get the hell out of here.”
Elizabeth drove blind to Wadsworth Park, and he followed, watching the oncoming cars for familiar faces, composing a businesslike, everyday expression. She didn’t even look at him getting out of the car, just slammed the door and walked into the woods like an Indian widow. Huddie looked around the empty lot and called to her.