Is it devilishness or caring that makes the desire suddenly come into my mind? I am in a card store. I came to get a card for my wife. So why do I remember it is five days before my former mother-in-law's birthday? There have been no words between us for ten years, since the divorce. Still I wonder, should I send her a birthday card?
Have things changed that much, or is it my guilt speaking? Mechanically, I flip through the selections. I can picture her fearsome look as she must have stared with intense disapproval when she first heard the news of our divorce. Weeks late, though, maybe even months late, before she would have been told of the divorce papers being filed. It was the same when we got married. June didn't tell her mother until weeks later.
They were a secretive bunch, all of them. Now I know why. But now is too late. She sure could give a good evil eye, her mother. I'll bet she gave it then, when she finally heard we were splitting, to me in absentia and to June in person. She was pretty good with the cutting remarks, too. I have to smile at the thought. What would she do now, after all these years, if I sent her a birthday greeting? Something in me wants to know. I casually browse through some of the cards.
Yes, it was a bitter divorce, but I never knew how her mother actually felt about it, because once I told June I wanted out, all communication ended. Well, she had tricked me into marrying her. I know this now. She was in trouble and needed a cover, and marriage was the brilliant answer to the whole situation. It made her detractors look foolish and saved her job as well. How could they accuse her of those other things, if she was married? Out of the question, right? Ha! Can't mix business and pleasure, at least not in those days, not in that town.
I was naive then, but not that naive. I knew what the score was. But my effervescent, ever-hopeful male ego was challenged. I thought I could cure her. And for a while I did, I guess. My touch was exquisitely fine, as Keats might have said. At least I thought so. She did, too. Things went swimmingly for the first few years. We rode the crest. We caught the big ones and surfed like mad for shore. There on shore was her mother. The rocks at the bottom of the cliff. Where the spray dashes. Cold water. I wonder if her mother knew the truth, then, or ever. Probably not.
Send her this card? I catch myself smiling wryly. I turn it over to look at the price. What would old Pru think? The two of them never got along very well as I gradually came to discover. Am I just stirring up trouble, or would the old lady really enjoy getting a card from me? Show how big I was. Right? No more grudges. Would she call her daughter, berate her, take my side the way she used to? ("Hello, June guess what? You'll never guess who I got a card from today--a birthday card! John. Yes, John! John Thomas! Can you believe that!? Gall? I thought it was rather nice of him to think of my birthday after all these years! Yes. Well, (change in tone) it's more than I've gotten from you. Don't you scream at me! Well I never....") Tell her what a fool she had been to let such a good man like me slip out of her hands? (Wrong expression, I think.) Better than Atlanta's ball. ("You never did appreciate that man. He was a gentleman.") I can hear it now. I put the card back in its slot. Look at some others.
I can remember how the only time they could talk civilly together, June and Pru, was when they sat at the kitchen table with Auntie, playing cards. Even that could degenerate into an argument. "Don't throw the ace!" her mother would say. And she would shoot back, "Shut up and let me play it my way!" Then her trembling hand would reach for a cigarette, and she would scrape a match, light it, take a couple of drags before playing her next card. (Auntie silently studies her hand, then looks at the table.) What a household! Three women growing up together, and I the only male around--wishing I was invisible--and that just at Christmas. It was the only time we came "home" to Chicago each year, for one long week. She dreaded it. Complained for weeks before and after we went. I could not get over the way June and her mother greeted or parted, with never a hug or a kiss or any sign of affection at all. I at least gave hugs all around, and kisses, too, mouth ending up tasting of dry powder, which I surreptitiously wiped off with the back of my hand.
I'd love to ask some of these older women here in the store what they think of the idea. Check out a card or two with them. Which one would warm an old lady's heart the most coming from an errant ex-son-in-law who wanted to send a covert message that he was sorry things turned out the way they did? Should I risk it? The two of them even seemed to give and receive their presents grudgingly, self-consciously, with a kind of grunted "Thank you." "You're welcome." Seeing this wrapping paper reminds me. They made a great show of care in opening the packages, so as not to damage the paper, carefully slitting the Scotch tape with a sharp paring knife from one of the kitchen drawers, never the one on the mantle, thank God. I used the small blade on my Swiss Army Knife. It was a rule--it was a house full of rules--that in wrapping, one used as little tape as possible to preserve the virgin appearance of the paper. It was over quickly then, except for the elaborate afterglow of smoothing and folding the sheets so they could be reused next time and the time after that. There was great pride in some sheets that had been used year after year and still looked as fresh as new. Sometimes a sheet of paper even had a history, a pedigree. Sometimes a stain--a tear or coffee?
They had sharp memories for those kinds of things. (I think they tried to forget the seriously important things.) Actually they all got wrinkled and brittle together, paper and people, the whole bunch of them. But of course they denied that, too. It was a regular house of denial, that place. Pru worked in one of the big meat packing houses over near the stockyards as a secretary, office manager. It was probably a natural, since she'd grown up `til she was ten, on a farm in Texas not far from the Mexican border. Familiar sights and smells to the farm, you know, that kind of thing. She'd been at the stockyards for ages, probably since her wartime job gave out. For her twenty-fifth year at the Yards they gave her a party and presented her with, among other things, an old bull-castrating knife someone found "out back" and cleaned up. It was supposed to be a joke, ("sure cuts through the bull") and that's how she took it. She did threaten several of the men in the office with it, though. Chased them all over the third floor before she let up. That's what she said, anyway. Telling that story was one of the few times she laughed, really. She kept the knife on the mantle at home, "In case I ever need it real quick," she used to say. She had that kind of macabre humor.
She would take it down from time to time, polish and caress it as though just waiting for the chance. She would eye me mysteriously. I could never tell when she was joking. I always got shivers looking at it, all shiny with its dark, sweatstained, bloodstained wood handle. I would get a twinge between my legs, and a shrinking feeling. The blade had a curious hook shape, something like a large pruning hook. The edge and point were sharp as her words. She would spit on it and polish it on her apron. The handle was dark and worn, like it had seen a lot of use back then. Not the kind of thing most people would keep around, though, do you think? Especially on the mantle, propped up against the mirror so you got two images of it. Once I caught myself trying to figure out how it must have been used. Did one approach the bull from the back? How would you keep him from kicking out and getting your you-know-whats? What if she tried to use it on me? My mind was running away with itself. How would she do it? She was a big woman, true.... Oh, stop it! I would tell myself, as I found myself mentally clutching the Crown Jewels, bent over in self-defense.
They were big on cards, greeting cards. Were always sending cards, for every special day on the calendar. June had a shoebox full of cards for all occasions, mostly silly, sentimental ones that embarrassed me to look at. She never signed her name, just her initial, J. I think she even disliked that gift, her name, from her mother, so she minimized it too, the way she minimized everything ultimately, including me. She used to like to drive, would go out and drive and drive in that big old car of hers. And her so small. She hated sports, men's sports, that is, especially football and wrestling. She used to get mad every time I'd tie up the TV watching a game, until we got another one so she could watch her shows. Talk shows, mostly. Then she'd disappear and didn't give a damn what I was doing. The one good thing I can say about her, besides that the sex was good in the beginning, after we got things going, and if we followed her rules--there were certain parts of anatomy that were off-limits to touch....
What was I thinking, oh, that she was an excellent cook, took great pride in it, meticulous as always. (She was a better cook than my present wife, but I don't dare say so.) In the culinary arts she was much better than her mother, who was strictly meat-and-potatoes and old Wearever Aluminum Cookware. Both had a good talent for bitchiness, though, and June tried to imitate her mother's evil-eyed stare, but she couldn't quite get it right. It made me laugh when I shouldn't have, especially if we had been drinking.
Here's a card: "Have a drink on me!" No, I guess not. Too glossy. She wouldn't think it was funny, either. No man in that house for nearly fifteen years! The old man had died when she was a freshman in high school. He died at home. That's all I know. Nobody ever spoke of him. It was like he never existed. I wonder if that's what's happened to me. Do I no longer exist? Never mentioned, like a bad odor the dog left? Flatulence on the evening air? Not a picture around the house or anything. Pru gave me some of his old tools. That's the only sign he ever existed. He went off to war and came back to a four-year-old daughter he had never seen, except in photos taken once a year, each birthday, a wife he barely knew, and her older friend all living together--and he a stranger. No wonder she liked women* better than men, weren't any around. Those she knew she badmouthed. I wonder if I'm still at the top of the list. I sure did get tired of hearing all the vitriol in those days. Now, am I vitriol or am I nothing?
What would she do if I dropped this card in the mail to her? Pretty suggestive. Tacky. Even when we went to visit, Prudence (what a name!) always put us in the small bedroom in the front with the little twin beds. She could've put a double bed in there if she'd wanted to. It was as though sex couldn't exist, probably didn't for her. If it ever did. June never said a word about the beds. Sometimes I thought she was terrified of her mother. We whispered a lot. She was always shushing me when I started to make a comment about Pru. We never could make love in that house. She always thought someone would be listening or that an evil eye was somehow peering at her in the dark from under the bed, or something. Too many shadows. That's what she said anyway. If she had been a man I would have said she probably just couldn't get it up--well, you know what I mean--the equivalent. Of course, it wasn't always much better at home either by that time. She had funny notions about what she wanted and didn't want, like only after half a dozen drinks, or only in the morning, or only once a week--stuff like that's hard to take, you know what I mean? Rules about what to touch and what not to touch (her breasts), fences everywhere. Sharp ones, with little spikes at the top. I began to feel like I was just there for her convenience. She never liked to be seen in her "birthday suit." (She hated the term--didn't think it was funny.) Always covering and contorting. I can feel for her now, though. Knowing what I know now, just found out that is.
The really weird time was when she wanted to buy that parrot. She saw them at the nursery where we got some of our plants. They had two. One was scarlet red with bright green and yellow trimming around its neck and, she liked this, it talked a lot. It also had a hard yellow eye when it turned its head and stared at you. That's the one that got her fancy. Probably reminded her of her mother. We went all over town to pet shops while she looked and looked. Of course if she had gotten one, I would have had to take care of it, especially clean up its cage. She wouldn't have anything to do with that kind of stuff. She made that perfectly clear. She hated kids, too. "Brats," or "Rug Rats," she called them. She spent about two months looking and looking for a bird but was never able to find one she liked, thank God! Told her mother all about it, and even had her looking for one out in Chicago. But it made me think, I'll tell you. Take a living creature like that out of nature, put it in a little brass cage, and then not even be willing to clean up after it. Just have it there to look at and talk at. In a brass cage! If it reminded her of her mother, maybe that was the idea. Put her in a cage and talk at her. The one at the nursery had a warning on its cage, though--it could give a nasty bite to little fingers that came too close. Chop one right off, I bet.
Pru, her mother, was overweight. She was big, pretty strong, too. She never looked good. Her face was like half-risen dough, lumpy in the bowl and lightly floured over. I think that's why June smoked so much, cigarettes without filters, sometimes those little long, thin cigars women sometimes smoke--to stay thin so she wouldn't look like her mother, but she still did, in some ways. Even their girlhood pictures, though, which should have been cute, showed unsmiling, painfully plain faces, no matter how pretty the clothes. Pru especially. My guess was that just before the war a boy on an impulse of fear of dying, asked her to marry him, and Pru said yes on an impulse of patriotism and fear she'd never be asked again, and they got married at city hall on an impulse of phony feelings, and she was pregnant as he sailed off to Europe on the troopship. That was it. June. She was born in March. She probably didn't like that her name memorialized her conception.
Pru and this older woman, who became "Auntie," shared an apartment during the war while they worked patriotic shifts in the Chicago naval yard and divided time taking care of "the little kid." June was as fond of her "Auntie" as she was of anyone in the world. Auntie must have mothered her better than her real mother. When her father came back from the war, though, Auntie stayed on, a part of the family (he got no say in the matter, apparently), till she died some thirty years later, several years after we got married. She always had the second best bedroom in the house. She had been a widow when Pru took her in, or vice versa, and she lived past the death of Pru's husband, outlived two men, both scoundrels, to hear them talk. You know, I don't think I ever knew either of their husbands' names, or what they did for a living, Auntie's husband or Pru's husband.
Pru's old man came home from the war, probably shell-shocked, wounded, certainly grown up--not the teenager he was when he left--and was shocked by a family he didn't know. Maybe he cheated on her, maybe he just abstained or was frozen out. Maybe he just drank himself into oblivion, either at home or at the legion where he must have played darts or shuffleboard with the other boys from the war. Funny, him dying at home, and them never talking about it. I sometimes used to wonder whether he ever bothered June. I never asked her. She never said. [Here Bonnie puts down her book, rubs her eyes, and considers whether to go to bed.]
The emotions run silent and deep beneath a thick layer of ice on those streams, her's and her mother's. It's too bad. Maybe she complained to her mother, and she ignored her. Maybe she didn't. Maybe they all suffered in silence. Maybe he hit her. Maybe she hit him. Maybe she found out about an affair. Whatever happened seems to have destroyed any real feeling she might have had for men. I found that out too late, unfortunately.
Anyway, there was no grieving at his death, that's for sure. No mention of him ever afterward. His death was always a mystery to me, though. No one ever said exactly what he died of. One might have thought they put the old man to sleep, bopped him on the head one night when he came home drunk, or something. It was strange the way they avoided speaking of it, like a conspiracy, and only they knew what it was all about. On that subject there was more than silence; there was a vacuum. All traces of him have been cut out. Except for those unspoken ones, except for those invisible ones, etched on those speechless tongues. It was a secret I was shut out of. Still am, pretty much. Hell, now I've probably joined him in the mystery. Consigned to some other circle of the same inferno. What I did wasn't of the same magnitude; I just said I wanted out. Was I a coward? Should I have stuck it out? I don't know. Maybe I should have. We all have to live our lives as best we can. Maybe Pru understands; maybe she, at least, has forgiven me (if she ever was mad at me).
Hey! here's a card I could send! Now this would be just the one.... Or should I? I don't know.... Hmm. That time Pru came to our house for the holiday, after Auntie died, June wouldn't let her out of her sight. Stayed in the house the whole time. She was afraid her mother would "snoop," go through her things, find who knows what, the Hustler centerfold pictures maybe. She wouldn't go out with her, didn't want to be seen with her. So there they sat the whole vacation, condemned to stay in the same house together, hating each other the whole time. Two old prunes drying up. Her mother reading or watching television. Complaining. June grumbled and did the same. I stayed out of the way as much as possible, except when I was co-opted into a card game. It was the one time spirits rose, people talked, and June was lively, until she had a couple of drinks too many and began to get mean again. Someone would slam down the cards, say "shit, what a dumb play," and that would be the end of the game.
So what happens when the old lady gets this card? Will she phone, one of those rare phone calls--she's such a tightwad--and say, "You'll never guess who I got a birthday card from today, dear." June's card not yet having arrived, always pointedly late. Or will she just keep quiet, and then bring it up innocently at Christmas, "Say, guess who I heard from a while ago?" Maybe she'll rip it up and toss it in the garbage, not the trash, and say nothing. Surreptitious old woman, she just might do that. Should I put my return address on it?
"I'll buy this card." I jump at the sound of my voice impinging on my thoughts. Then I smile at the picture of it and take the card to the register. There's a bright red parrot on the front. Inside it says "I just missed being President, but you just had another birthday!" I sign it with my initial, no return address. No need to tell my wife, she wouldn't understand anyway. She never does. I cross the street to the post office, get a stamp, and drop the card in the slot. Something feels better. What am I atoning for? Last week I was looking for a little screw to fix my desk lamp. One had fallen out, and the shade was hanging loose. It is an old lamp, so I knew there was no hope of going to the lighting store for help. I took the other one out to use as a sample and went down to the basement to see if I could find one that matched. I went through all my little jars of screws, dumping each one out on an aluminum pie tray and searching, but I couldn't find a thing that was right. I looked in the bottom of my tool box for odds and ends. I was at my wits' end. Then I saw his old toolbox in the corner. It was the one thing Pru had ever given me--as though she were getting rid of the last trace of him. It had a bunch of old tools in it that I never used, but they were almost in the class of antiques, wrenches with wooden handles, and the like, so I kept them. Now I wondered whether there might be a matching screw in the bottom of his box. I lugged it over to the workbench and began going through it. I had to take everything out to get to the bottom where an errant screw might be hiding. I was hoping.
At the very bottom amidst the bits of sawdust and dirt, brass tacks, finishing nails, and the odd screw, washer, and bolt was a flat package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. I had never been this far down before, so I had never seen it. Curious, I took it out and untied the string under the light. I unwrapped the paper carefully; it was old and brittle. Inside was a little stack of photographs. I was surprised and curious. The first one was a naked baby lying on a table, kicking its legs up. The next was a little child, in diapers, standing, holding on to a playpen. The next seemed to be about a year later. I flipped through the photos. The rest were all naked. They looked like, June. There were thirteen. There were dates on the back. Her birthday. All a year apart.
Most of them were taken in front of the fireplace in the living room. The last four were in color, but the colors weren't true, after all these years. In the first three photos, the youngest ones, she had mostly a cute smile. Then she began looking that characteristic unhappy look that she and her mother shared--dour. In the eleventh photo she began to show some breast enlargement. They were about the size of quarters, maybe. In the next and the next there was more development. Besides being in color, the last four photos were taken in a different place. I thought it must have been in her bedroom. She was standing next to a bed with brass rails.
I got out my magnifying loupe. This was a side of June that had been in the dark to me. She looked progressively more and more uncomfortable in the last three. In the last two more than a few hairs were beginning to show. She looked like she desperately wanted to cover herself with her hands, but wasn't allowed to. The expression on her face was one of abject pain and abject bondage, and a fear of not pleasing. She might as well have been tied naked to the brass bars of her bed. In the last one, next to her on the bed were a bra and panties, apparently placed so as to be sure to be in the picture. The bed was unmade. Her expression was defiant, but submissive at the same time. The look on her face was totally new to me, and I can't adequately describe it, except to say that as I studied her face, looked at its tightness in the magnifying glass, in my eyes I could feel rising tears blurring my sight.
I had heard of people who did this. Took anniversary photos of their children, but I had never seen such a thing. I got a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach and a cringe in my groin. I didn't want to know this. I didn't know what to do with the pictures. I was surprised, shocked really, to find these of June. I restacked them in the original order and tapped them against the bench top to straighten them. Then I picked up the brown paper that had wrapped them, and as I did--and I hate to say this, even to myself--out fell a little bunch of light brown hairs tied with a faded piece of thread. Just the color of June's hair. But not straight, like hers, short and tightly curled. The image of her father with his little trophy-hunting scissors snipping off those hairs from her newly-fledged delta rose up before me like a demon from the jakes. It almost bowled me over. It was as though I had got a whiff of the caustic fumes of drain cleaner working in the sink trap. It made me purple with anger. My hands were shaking as I tied the infernal package up again. I didn't put it back in the toolbox when I replaced the tools. I left it there on my workbench, under the light. Such a thing can not be buried. I turned quickly, went upstairs, and out for a furious walk.
* * *
Today a card comes in the mail, postmarked CHICAGO. There is no return address, but I know it is from Pru. I slit the envelope with the big blade on my Swiss Army knife. It seems to be one of those do-it-yourself cards. There is a picture of a steer on the front; probably going to say something about "a bum steer," or whatever, inside. Her and her cattle humor. I open the card. Inside is handwritten in big block letters:
IF YOU EVER BOTHER ME, OR MY DAUGHTER, EVER AGAIN, I'LL PERSONALLY COME TO YOUR HOUSE AND PRUNE YOUR PRAIRIE APPLES, CUT OFF YOUR COJONES, GET THE PICTURE?
I got it. Alright, I got it! I admired her spunk. She was some tough old bird, Pru. If only she had had the knowledge or the courage to say that to the old man, things might have been better between all of us. It might have made a difference. It might have made a difference. Damn!