The Miss America Family Page 16

  We had no money to speak of. Eventually, I would get a job at the Dairy Queen, handing out soft-serve while teenage boys came on to me, Ezra sitting on the floor behind the counter, an angelic kid sticking to his coloring book, staying in the lines. But early on we relied entirely on Russell’s income. He got financial aid from school, but we still had bills. He was always getting jobs selling things door-to-door, but he usually resented the capitalist organization’s underpaying him and thought that his product was overhyped by a greedy sales force somewhere far away from honest middle-class Americans. He often took the opportunity to sit down with a lonely housewife, not to show off his wares but to discuss politics, to talk about the evils of the war and our repressive society. He came home tired, his feet sore. He reminded me of my mother when her angina acted up and her chest seized as if she were being pressed to death. As I look back on it now, he was lonely. And I was lonely, too, but I didn’t know any better. Maybe he didn’t either.

  And Ezra was sick off and on, often on the verge of drowning, in fact, his little lungs filling up with fluid. It made me sick with worry. Sometimes I would have to run from a room and throw up. I didn’t eat much. I only wanted to save him. I was maniacal about his health from the very beginning. When he wasn’t in the hospital, which we couldn’t afford, I kept him wrapped up in blankets and never took him outside. I remember our small, dingy apartment, the smell of shit, especially when summer arrived and I was still too frightened by a sudden chilly breeze to open the windows more than a crack. I laid him on the bed in a sun square from the window and baked with him.

  And then my mother called. She said, “Cliff stepped on a mine. He’s dead.” Her voice was flat. There was no expression, not even a hitch in her breath. I wondered how she’d perfected it, this detachment. She didn’t want a ceremony. There was no real body to speak of, anyway, left to bury. She started buying caged birds and stood hunched in front of their cages saying, “Hello, pretty, pretty, pretty.”

  For me, it seemed that the whole American military had collapsed, that there was nothing left to protect us in this world. I thought of the last letter from Cliff that I ever got, how he didn’t sound like himself anymore. It was the one about the moaning dog, belly filled with stones, and how he shot the dog out of mercy, and he started to hear the dog’s moan everywhere he went. I started to hear that dog, too, a sound that I didn’t understand, like a hand over someone’s mouth, the whine that comes through their nose. I saw danger everywhere. I worried that Ezra was going to choke on a peach pit, tip over in a chair and crack open his head. I was afraid he would suffocate on his own pillow. For years I went on like this, hovering around Ezra, his thin body, his skin so fine I could see the pale blue veins etched beneath it, smiling at Russell when he drifted in with a paycheck and bounced Ezra for a minute or two on his knee. And I felt almost dead, because, I guess, I was so afraid of life. I’d learned that tragedies could happen when you least expected them, so I tried to always expect them. For years I stared at the furniture, remembering how once my accordion had become my father, his air-filled lungs, his voice rising up, and I wanted the chair not to have to be a chair. I wanted the table to get up and walk away from this place. I wanted the waxed fruit that my mother had given me as a wedding gift to become real, filled with its own sweet juice. Looking back, I think I wanted most of all to be myself, not this wooden version, but really alive. For years, though, nothing changed.

  When Ezra was five, my mother called again one afternoon out of the blue. She said, “Soldier wrote me a letter. A fellow named Jamison. He sends his condolences, a couple years late, I’d say. And he says if either of us want to talk to him about Cliff that we can travel to him in Perth Amboy. He says he’s injured and can’t travel well. Who would want to go to Perth Amboy?”

  “Don’t you want to know what he’s got to say?”

  “What’s there to say? Cliff’s dead. It won’t bring him back.”

  I decided to go. I told Russell that I’d be gone overnight, that Ezra and I would take the bus and get a hotel room. I’d sent a letter on ahead of me, and even though I didn’t hear back, I decided to arrive when the letter said I would. I packed our suitcase. It was the middle of the day, a Sunday in spring, the weather warm enough for just a light sweater. The bus was crowded and dirty and made too many stops. The kid in the seat across from us threw up in a paper lunch bag, and, for a minute, Ezra turned greenish, but I said, “Please don’t throw up.” And he was such a good kid that he didn’t.

  Once in Perth Amboy we had to catch another bus, a local. Ezra was five, but very small for a five-year-old. He sat on my lap, just the size of a wooden dummy, the suitcase between my feet. We were actually underdressed, because everyone else had been to church and the ladies were all wearing hats.

  An old woman said, “You need help? You lost?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” I said. I pulled the address out of my pocketbook and she told me it was just two more stops.

  “Don’t stay too long. That’s not the nicest part of town.”

  “I don’t think I will,” I said, but I wanted Jamison to tell me as much as he could. I’d hated Cliff when he died, and I wanted Jamison to tell me something that would make me forget that I hated him at all, ever.

  The building was brick, old. Jamison’s apartment was on the first floor and when I knocked, I heard a woman’s voice, “Just minute please.” A small Asian woman answered the door, Vietnamese, I figured. “You Cliff sister?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I figure because we don’t see door-door Avon-selling women around this place.”

  “Is Jamison here?”

  “Jamison always here,” she said, and she pulled me in the door, closing it behind me. “Jamison, it’s Cliff sister with her child.” She took my suitcase and put it next to the door and quickly shuffled out of the room.

  The apartment was small and smelled like medicine and sleep-breath. There was a bed in the living room when you first walked in, and Jamison was sitting up in it, pillows stuffed behind his back, wearing a T-shirt that was too tight for his broad chest. “That was my wife. She likes to be called by her American name—Almaz. I told her there’s no American by that name, but some English teacher in Vietnam called her that. You can’t change her mind about anything,” he paused. “You’re just like he said you were. Is that your boy?”

  “Yes, this is Ezra.”

  “I didn’t think you’d come all this way. But I promised Cliff I’d talk to you. We made a deal, a long time ago. Cliff could have just as easily been standing in a room with someone from my family right now, if things had worked out differently. Sit down.” He pointed to a folding chair next to the bed. “I’d get up, but my insides came out. I’ve got a scar that runs up my side into the pit of my arm. I still don’t move around much. It’s been years now. I’ve had twenty-two surgeries. So these doctors might never get it all straight. They don’t know a damn thing.”

  Almaz came in with cups of tea and juice. “Here, for you,” she said. “And the boy.”

  I said, “Thank you,” and Ezra did too, his eyes too big for his head.

  “You not going to talk war stories, are you?” Almaz said to her husband in a scolding tone.

  “I’m going to talk about Cliff,” he said.

  “Not too much war, you know. That too much.” She looked at me. “Too much for him.”

  Ezra drank his juice quickly and put it down on a bedside table covered with pill bottles. “I’ve got to pee,” he whispered as loudly as his little voice could whisper.

  “I take him,” Almaz said, grabbing his hand and leading him out of the room.

  “No,” I said. “I’ll take him.”

  “It’s okay. He not going to fall in.”

  I let her take him, out of politeness, but it made me nervous.

  “Cliff was a good kid,” Jamison said.

  “Yes, he was,” I said.

  “I’ll tell you, Cliff had the idea that yo
u’d needed him and he hadn’t come through. We don’t have to get into it. You know what I mean? That he hadn’t been man enough.”

  At first I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then I thought maybe he’d wanted to be the one to have come to my rescue, that he was talking about the man, the stranger in my bed. I had the impression that Cliff had been there, standing by, but my father had taken charge, my father had perhaps stolen Cliff’s heroic moment. You see, I didn’t really understand, but I said, “I guess I know what he was talking about.”

  “Good,” Jamison said. He seemed relieved, like he’d said what he’d had to say without having to say it. “He always felt bad about that, about not having been a better brother. He felt so bad about it that I think he wanted to be everybody’s brother. He wanted to save all of us. He wanted to save the whole damn country. He wanted to be an American hero, even though America didn’t want a hero.”

  I thought about poor Cliff with his sweet girlish mouth, that maybe I’d read him wrong, that maybe he didn’t want to just go over there to kill people but to save some, too. “How did he die?” I asked. “What was it like?”

  “No, you don’t want to hear that crap.”

  “I do,” I said. “It’s why I came.”

  Jamison looked at me carefully. He rubbed his nose and then looked down at his hands. He said, “You know, I used to keep everything to myself, but then after part of what was once inside me was busted open, I got different. They stitched me up all right, but I don’t keep everything inside me like I used to. I’ve sprung some kind of leak,” he said and laughed. “You know?” And then more seriously, “Do you know what I mean?”

  I nodded. “I do,” I said, but only now do I really understand him. He stared at me to see if I was telling the truth, and I gazed back, convincing him, I guess, that I was sincere. He started talking. “Cliff was out ahead of me. There were lots of us. Lots of soldiers didn’t make it. It wasn’t good. Shit,” he said, “people were just being blown up. The VC came out of nowhere. They just came right up out of holes in the ground, and there we were in with the nipa palm trees, trees filled with red ants, and the red ants come at you, crawl down your back. I saw a guy strip naked, screaming his head off, in that fire fight ’cause of the red ants from a nipa palm tree, and the VC just coming right up out of holes in the ground.”

  “Did you see Cliff die?” I wanted a picture, I guess. I wanted Jamison to paint a glorious death scene.

  Jamison looked down at his bedside table, his eyes darting from bottle to bottle, but not really looking for anything, it seemed. “One guy was blown away next to us. And Cliff looked at me. He said, ‘Fucking shit.’ I couldn’t hear him, only see his mouth, wet with rain, and somehow I knew he was spooked, that he wasn’t going to make it.” I could see Cliff’s mouth, too, drops falling off his full lips, spraying off him as he turned his head toward the crashing noises. “Then there was a bright flash,” he said, “a thundering noise, but not thunder, and rain. Our uniforms almost black with all the rain. His body was blown to pieces, really, nothing left of him but broken pieces. I started after him, crawling on my elbows and knees. I started to look around for something to put back together. I tried, but there was nothing all around me, but pieces of his body and other men’s bodies. I turned and turned. I walked on my knees, my gun to my chest, but I could hardly see. My eyes were so wet, rain beating down on my face.” He looked out then, across the bed, the floor. “But everywhere I looked there were just pieces of us. How could I put anything back together? Arms and legs, blood, the ground red with it.” His face was clouded over, his eyes now all over the room, the walls.

  Almaz was back. She pushed Ezra toward me and sat on the edge of the bed. She grabbed Jamison’s hand and started rubbing his arms like he was cold, and he looked cold. “Too much,” she said to me. “I knew it. Too much. What I say?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, but he wasn’t fine. He was still distant, his eyes still bleary, glazed. I felt suddenly lonely. I wondered when the last time was that Russell had touched me, really touched me. I envied their tenderness.

  I stood up and took Ezra’s hand. “We’ll go,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “You go.”

  “No,” Jamison said. “You don’t have to go.”

  There was more I wanted to ask, like when Cliff shot the dog and Jamison sang like his autistic brother in the tree. I wanted to ask if his brother was still alive. For some reason, that seemed suddenly important. But I knew I couldn’t ask. “We should go,” I said and we did.

  I didn’t get a hotel room. There was no need. It was still light out. We rattled home from one hissing bus to the next. Ezra fell asleep on my lap. I carried him from the bus station to our apartment, finally dark, the suitcase beating against my knees. He woke up as I climbed the steps to our floor. The apartment was quiet. It was late by now, after midnight. I went to fix myself a drink in the kitchen. I told Ezra to go see if his daddy was there, and he tottered off down the hall. Soon enough he called back to me, “Daddy’s in here, waking up with his friend.” I walked to the bedroom and saw it too—Russell sitting up in bed, foggy and disoriented, the kid next to him, a little younger, but not much, wide-eyed, both of their bare white chests almost glowing.

  “Go make a peanut butter sandwich,” I told Ezra. “Go!” and he ran down the hallway to the kitchen.

  I don’t remember much—what I said exactly or what he said, or if the kid next to him even moved the tiniest bit. I think I stood there for a minute, just taking it in, letting everything wash over me, things suddenly making sense. I think I said, “Fuck you.” But I didn’t even mean it. Russell looked beautiful just then, innocent really, the most innocent I’d ever seen him, even though that sounds wrong. He looked pure; he looked like the angel. I backed out of the room.

  “Pixie,” he said; maybe he only whispered it. He stood up, grabbing one of Ezra’s stuffed toys to cover himself, an oversize rabbit, white and furry with pink satin ears, one floppy and one upright. He looked ridiculous. I actually thought of Cliff and how what he went through was real, and this, well, how could I take it so seriously? I started to laugh, my hand up to my mouth and then I thought I might cry, so I stopped laughing. I thought about all of Russell’s sweet gazes and I knew that they weren’t real, that they were out of some sort of guilt, and I was flooded with all my girlish feelings of dirtiness. I remembered the man and all of that, what I thought was the truth. I thought about how Cliff had said he was more an American than he was a Kitchy, but you can’t ever shake who you are. I knew that if Cliff had come back, he’d have to be a Kitchy again. He’d have had no choice. It would come back to him when he least expected it. And I knew I’d never have tenderness, not the kind I was looking for, that it wasn’t possible for me.

  He said, “Wait, Pixie.”

  I turned and walked out of the room. I closed the door behind me. I picked up the suitcase that I hadn’t unpacked and I yelled at Ezra to come on, to hurry up, to bring the sandwich, and we left.

  “How did you feel?” the psychiatrist asked.

  “About what?”

  “About your visit with Jamison, about finding out your husband was gay and having an affair, about leaving with your son?”

  “I didn’t know much except how to be an escape artist. My mother was right all those years ago when she said a woman can’t chain her hands behind her back and jump into a river like my father did, but still I was getting pretty good at leaving. I disappeared. I became a woman in a slip on a sofa. I stopped feeling. I needed a plan and I made one up.”

  Ezra

  Rule #9: Good people buy your peanuts and bad people don’t.

  Rule #10: Always send in the lamb first.

  Mrs. Pichard served meatloaf and whipped potatoes with gravy—a dark beefy gravy with round oil slicks on top. She offered ginger ale and whole milk. I chose the whole milk, something I hadn’t tasted in years. It was too rich and sweet, almost buttery. For dessert, she laid o
ut small yellow-trim plates, each with a canned pineapple slice topped with mayonnaise, cheddar cheese bits, and a maraschino cherry. My father didn’t touch his. Richard whispered, loudly enough for everyone to hear, like he was whispering in a school play, “I’ve gained a zillion pounds and I’ve been here six days. But if I don’t eat, she thinks I don’t love her.”

  There was something intolerable about mayonnaise and fruit. It reminded me of the stuff they passed off as food to my grandmother at the hospital, something my mother would have unwrapped from plastic and spoon-fed her. But it seemed very normal, excessively normal and therefore heterosexual, even though Richard was eating it for all the wrong reasons. I decided to eat it for all the right reasons, in the name of American red-bloodedness, the way Dilworth would, I thought.

  I said, “This is delicious, Mrs. Pichard. A real treat!”

  She smiled.

  Halfway through his pineapple surprise, Mr. Pichard said, “I made my money in shoes. What about you?” he asked my father.

  “I’m a dabbler. I used to be in politics.” He glanced at me. “I’m an entrepreneur. I’m always seeking opportunities.” And he repeated the last statement, because it sounded best. “I’m always seeking opportunities. In fact, I’ve got a deal I’m working on now. We’re looking for investors.” I wondered who “we” were. It wasn’t me and him, and I got the impression that it might just be him. “It could be the kind of investment deal you’ve been looking for,” he said to Mr. Pichard. All I could picture was a ship, even though I knew it was just an expression, but I pictured my father’s ship coming in, a cruise ship with confetti and streamers. Mr. Pichard never responded to my father’s proposition. My father still looked too big, the silverware like play silverware, the cup not near big enough to wash things down his throat. He had to duck down to see people below the chandelier, a fake thing with lots of sparkly glass that was hung much too low and was too dim, anyway, to really show you clearly what you were eating.