When Teddy first began to wet the bed, Janiella had long discussions with him about the need for him to accept responsibility for his own bladder. When Teddy continued to refuse responsibility, Janiella began smacking him with a Whiffle bat every time she had to change the sheets. Then she decided on an alarm that would awaken him every three hours throughout the night. All the alarm has managed to do so far is to increase the number of Teddy’s dreams. Teddy dreams more frequently than anyone Liberty knows, he dreams and dreams. He dreams that he steals the single candy bar Janiella keeps in the house in the event she has an attack and has to have sugar. He dreams of Janiella crawling through their huge house, not being able to find her Payday.
When the phone rang again, Liberty walked quickly past it into the bathroom where she turned the water on in the shower. She stood in the small stall beneath the spray until the water turned cool. She turned off the water and stared uneasily at the shower curtain, which portrayed mildewed birds rising.
“Hey,” Willie said. He pushed the curtain back. His lean jaws moved tightly, chewing gum. Willie made chewing gum look like a prerequisite to good health. He was wearing faded jeans and a snug, faded polo shirt. His eyes were a faded blue. They passed over her lightly. Communication had indeed broken down considerably. Signals were intermittent and could easily be misread. Liberty didn’t know anything about him anymore, what he did when he wasn’t with her, what he thought. They had been together for six years. They had a little money and a lot of friends. There didn’t seem to be a plan.
“That was Charlie,” Willie said. “We’re going to have breakfast with him.”
They could never refuse Charlie when he wanted to eat. Charlie was an alcoholic who seldom ate. He was currently sleeping with Teddy’s mother and between his drinking and this unlikely affair, Charlie was a busy man. Liberty thought that Janiella was shallow and selfish and chic. She felt that it was ridiculous for her to be jealous of this woman.
As Liberty was dressing the phone rang again. It was Teddy, whispering.
“Is that tree still outside your house?” Teddy whispered. “Because I’m sure it was here last night. It was waving its arms outside my window, then it flopped away on its white roots. It goes anywhere it feels like going, that tree.”
“Trees aren’t like people,” Liberty said. “They can’t move around.” She felt her logic was somewhat insincere. “Dreams sometimes make you feel you can understand everything,” she said. Liberty herself never dreamed at night, an indication, she believed, of her spiritual torpor.
“Can I come over today, Liberty? Our pool is broken. It has a leak.”
“Certainly, baby, a little later, OK? Bring your snorkel and mask and we’ll go to the beach.”
“Oh, that’s fine, Liberty,” Teddy said.
Liberty can see him sitting in his small square room, a room in which everything is put neatly away. He jiggles a loose tooth and watches his speckled goldfish swimming in a bowl, swimming over green pebbles through a small plastic arch. Once, he had two goldfish and the bowl was in the living room, but his mother gave a party and one of her friends swallowed one. It was just a joke, his mother said.
Willie and Liberty got into their truck and drove to a little restaurant nearby called The Blue Gate. Clem sat on the seat between them and from the back he could pass for another person, with long pale hair, sitting there. At the restaurant, they all got out and Clem lay down beneath a cabbage palm growing in the dirt parking lot. The Blue Gate was a Mennonite restaurant in a little community of frame houses with tin roofs. Little living petunia crosses grew on some of the lawns. The Blue Gate was popular because the food was delicious and cheap and served in large quantities. Sometimes Liberty and Teddy would go there and eat crullers.
Inside, Charlie was waiting for them at a table by the pie display. He wore a rumpled suit a size too large for him and a clean shirt. His hair was combed wetly back, his face was swollen and his hands shook, nevertheless he seemed in excellent spirits. The last time Liberty had had the pleasure of Charlie’s company at table, he had eaten three peas separately in the course of an hour. He had told her fortune in a glass of water and then taken a bite out of the glass.
“Been too long, man,” Charlie said to Willie, shaking his hand. “Hi, doll,” he said to Liberty.
Charlie ordered eggs, ham, fried mush, orange juice, milk and coffee cake. “I love this place, man,” he said. “These are good people, these are religious people. You know what’s on the bottom of the pie pans? There are messages on the bottoms of the pie pans, embossed in the aluminum. Janiella got a pineapple cream cheese pie here last week and it said Wise men shall seek Him, man. Isn’t that something? The last crumbs expose a Christian message! You should bring a sweet potato pie home, Liberty, get yourself a message.”
“There are too many messages in Liberty’s life already,” Willie said. “Liberty is on some terrible mailing lists.”
“Yeah,” Charlie nodded. “Yesterday, I got a letter from Greenpeace. They’re the ones who want to stop the slaughter of the harp seals, right? Envelope had a picture of a cuddly little white seal and the words Kiss This Baby Good-Bye. You get that one, Liberty?”
“Yes,” Liberty said.
“You know what those Greenpeace guys did one year? They sprayed green dye all over the seals. Fashion fuckers don’t want any green baby seal coats, right!” Charlie laughed his high cackling laugh. The Mennonites glanced up from their biscuits and thin pink gravy.
Liberty ordered only coffee and looked at Charlie, at his handsome ruined face. He was a Cajun. His mother still lived in Lafayette, Louisiana. She was a “treater” whose specialty was curing warts over the phone.
“Janiella has a fur coat,” Charlie said. “She has lots of lousy habits. She never shuts doors for example. I have to tell you what happened. I was there yesterday, right? I’m beneath the sheets truffling away and her kid comes in. He’s forgotten his spelling book. His spelling book! ‘Mommy,’ he says, ‘have you seen my spelling book?’ I’m crouched beneath the rosy sheets. My ears are ringing! I try to be very still, but I’m gagging, man, and Janiella says sweetly, ‘I saw your spelling book in the wastebasket,’ and the kid says, ‘It must have fallen in there by accident,’ and Janiella says, ‘You are always saying that, Ted. You are always placing things you don’t like in the wastebasket. I found that lovely Dunnsmoor sweater I gave you in the wastebasket. That lovely coloring book on knights and armor from the Metropolitan Museum was in the wastebasket also.’ ‘I’m too old for coloring books,’ the kid says. Picture it, man, they are having a discussion. They are arguing fine points.”
Liberty did not want to picture it. Breakfast had been placed before them on the table. Charlie looked at the food in surprise.
“Well?” Willie said.
Charlie seemed to be losing his drift. He kept looking at his food as though he were trying to read it.
“So what happened?” Willie insisted. “Finally.”
“Well, I don’t know, man. The future is not altogether scrutable.”
“Janiella and Teddy,” Willie said, glancing at Liberty. “The spelling book.”
Charlie giggled. “I fell asleep. The last thing I heard was the kid saying, ‘I thought Daddy was playing in Kansas City.’ I passed out from the heat, man.”