This Wicked Tongue Read online

  This Wicked Tongue

  Stories

  Elise Levine

  a john metcalf book

  BIBLIOASIS

  Windsor, Ontario

  Also by Elise Levine

  Blue Field

  Requests and Dedications

  Driving Men Mad

  For DS

  And then we sang! And then we sang!

  —Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

  Contents

  Money’s Honey

  The Riddles of Aramaic

  Armada

  Made Right Here

  All We Did

  The Association

  Public Storage Available Now

  Death and the Maidens

  This Wicked Tongue

  Princess Gates

  As Such

  Alice in the Field

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Money’s Honey

  If I moved my head, the air turned dark and blurred my breathing and I felt sick, bad sick.

  It was the middle of the day in the middle of July, mid-desert. If we ran the AC, the car overheated. If we drove over sixty, the car overheated.

  Are you drinking enough? he said. I told you, keep drinking.

  I couldn’t—the water hot as tar. I gave myself up. Whatever happens, I said silently, careful not to move my lips. Believe I’m yours.

  But I faced forward to behold the black and white in front of me. What a world. It was like the heat gave me X-ray vision. A bus breached past, air-conditioned—I could tell because the windows looked sealed and inside people chatted and played cards, ignoring the nothing outside. Twenty minutes later we passed the bus pulled over on the interstate shoulder, engine smoking, suckahs. We snailed on until a stray palm snaked into view—better believe I kept my eyes open—and then an exit, Indio, a gas station where we could fill up and a café where we could eat.

  Partway through my burrito I wobbled to the bathroom, thinking I should after all this time. No pee came. My underwear, stretched between my knees, webbed with lines of salt. So much in me.

  I flushed though I didn’t have to and struggled to do myself back up. I splashed water on my face. I opened the door to the tiny bathroom. The café wasn’t like what I thought a café should be, candles on the tables and music playing, him facing me.

  I moved nearer. His plate lay at his elbow, and by his lowered head and bobbing shoulders it seemed he’d started on mine. Mr. Skinny. I never knew where he put it—bags of corn chips and plastic-wrapped hot dogs and subs, jewel-boxed Krispies washed down with Supersizees, and starting in Oklahoma the biscuits and gravy at Mickey Dee’s. And still his bones left bruises on me each time we joined our hearts together. Always hungry. His thin brown hair matted to his head, sticking up in places like he’d slept in a ditch for a year. The rest of him a scarecrow fixed to poles. Or a scrap of torn plastic bag flapping in a field—I wondered was it ever filled with something, who it used to belong to.

  But I loved him, yeah. I felt baggy myself from the drive, my skin too big and stretched over me like a waste of plastic wrap. And that blur so near it felt like any which way.

  Dizzy and ditzy are not the same thing. I believe in signs and in knowing what I know despite what anybody tells me. Stubborn bitch, you’re so stupid. Or, Dummy. And those aren’t the worse.

  Mostly I lay in the back all the way here, at first sleeping or pretending to, and then with my eyes staring at all I’d never seen before and not ashamed to admit it, once we were a long way from Ontari-ari-ari-o. So much sky, each moment different. When I sat, green hills, sands like the sea. He drove far into the night and I’d wake to pink licking the windows like a thousand wet puppies. I’d manage him apart from me and let myself out. Fog welling in the ditches. I’d walk a few steps and the haze would lift, as if I’d squeezed my last tears and could get on with things. Like a rest stop with clean bathrooms. Truck rigs neatly lined up. Men mostly, asleep. I never felt so safe. When I’d come back to the car and open the door, on my side there’d be food piled from the stash in the trunk, chips and chocolate bars grabbed in quick handfuls, whatever was most convenient at each station while I’d slept, only waking to the gunning engine and the over-lit midnight stores blown behind us like nuclear blooms in old movies. And then the grainy aftermaths of night forests, local roads.

  In Indio, in a café where no music played, he chewed the burrito as if afraid it might escape. His shoulder blades were thin moons.

  What could I say to draw him to me, or me to him? Most of the time words don’t mean a thing. They twist mean and not much to do with the truth.

  So I closed my eyes to make our closeness more real. And that’s when I knew—later there would be Nevada. And later, sure enough, I played a slot at a stop near Reno, lost someone else’s fifty cents.

  And I knew that before near-Reno I would leave my burner behind in a burger shop bathroom. Just in case. I knew I would shut my eyes to Hollywood and Vine, and when I woke behold a blue-powder PCH heaven pressed to my skin.

  In the café in Indio, I took a step blind, then opened my eyes. He’d finished eating and pushed away my plate too.

  And oh, his hair was dark and long.

  He is someone I left behind. Terrible to say. But knowing it, my scalp tickles, my knees plump.

  My shit is together. I’m coming home.

  This one’s Rudolph or Dieter. Maybe Sheck? Definitely weird.

  I get ice at the next gas station while he pays. He shoots me a look like he can’t believe his kingdom of lost lambs and charity is ending here and now with a roll-over skid into the bang-wall of my ingratitude. For I am a prison unto myself.

  You want that too? the cashier asks him.

  I slug the five-pounder down on the counter and the boy punches the numbers in. But no, Sheck whatever has to make an issue, patting the left pocket of his yellow windbreaker. Just put my wallet away, he whines.

  He blinks several times, trying to hold his ground. Which to me makes no difference. His eyes are like candles that have already gone out.

  We get back in the car. I dandle the bag on my lap. He drives us onto the interstate again, then gets off at the next exit which has lodging, and checks us in.

  He sits on the one chair in our room. I lie on the bed, crack cubes between my teeth to keep the nausea down.

  Shut up, he says, I can’t hear myself think.

  A guy who likes to hear himself think. I guess that’s what he’s doing now in the shower.

  Yay me—with the water running so loud, I’ve got the TV on, sound tamped so he won’t know. I don’t mind not hearing what people say.

  I spread dinner on the bed. I like orange crackers the most. Next, popcorn. Then anything salty, or sweet-sour—mac ’n cheese, peanut brittle, lime taffy enough for two. As for beer, I secretly prefer Michelob Light but if asked I say Bud, their commercials are so cool. When I have my boy that’s what I’ll call him.

  Fat girl, some call me. Hey there, fat slut.

  Like I’m there just to get a load of them. What they don’t know is, I’m saving, one bill at a time. No one notices, their attention always somewhere I’m not.

  The water shuts off. This one comes out of the bathroom wearing a towel, eyes gray and serious like there are no good memories to fill them—all there is to notice about him. Plus that he belongs to some church.

  He starts with it. Didn’t the lord deliver Daniel? Mr. Moody Voice sings into the motel ceiling. Didn’t the, didn’t the, Loord?

  I’
m still cramming food like there’s no tomorrow and he gives me a look then catches himself, gives it a rest. Ever since yesterday morning at the Utah line he knows what’s coming—things he can’t help but like.

  He can’t help himself with the singing though. Join me, he bids, holding his pale arms out so his towel slips to the carpet. Stand with me lovely bride and drop your jaw, lift your palate. Let Jesus hear you love him. Remember Lord is a long-held note.

  He taps his hairless chest where his heart might be. Listen for him here, he says.

  The next morning we sleep late, creamy dreamy. He showers again while I sneak-watch TV. Later at a service center he buys me a snow globe with salt-sprayed mountains. Then I sleep and wake at a truck stop in Wyoming, order anything I want off the menu, tater tots and an ostrich burger, ketchup, no onions.

  The waitress is old. She smiles and her wrinkled face resembles fork-tender pastry. First time? she asks and I smile as shyly as I can.

  Back in the car I can’t stop thinking. Wasn’t she the nicest thing? Wasn’t she?

  He rolls his eyes upward as if he’s forgotten he’s driving. Makes me nervous. Lord Jesus help me, he says, shaking his head and gazing at the road again as if Jesus has instructed him to do so.

  Thank you, Jesus, I think and don’t say.

  Shut up with it already, he says anyway, fingers clenched on the steering wheel. You’re so stupid you ought to put a lid.

  I make a point of not answering though he probably won’t notice, he’s now so intent on hands at two and ten, making time as darkness grows. We’re making good time, he says, like I don’t already know, then he points to a highway sign that looks like a deer in headlights. Nebraska, he says. Brasker and then Chicago. Shy-town, get it?

  And after a while I do.

  Took you long enough, he says.

  The lights of passing cars roll off me like drops of water. The windshield streams. I speed in bubbles of near sleep and when I fully wake, Iowa, morning, eggs and waffles at a truck stop called The Deck. I’m a bit ripe but not too bad, a sour smell rising from my thighs, the backs of which are plastered to the booth seat while he cuts his Denver with the edge of his fork and double-doubles his coffee. I wait until he’s halfway through to make a second round of the buffet. Crunchy hash browns, sausages and bacon, chunks of cantaloupe and watermelon in heavy syrup, and the line of customers waiting to be seated, and a woman saying, Chi-cah-go, it’s-my-kind-of-town, in a way that sounds like something she’s heard before. Like it means something. She hoots and several other women honk in. Behind them, beyond the large window, there’s a giant sign with a picture of playing cards. Beneath the sign, giant rigs sit neatly cut and shuffled across the monster lot.

  I sit back down with my brimming plate.

  Looks like we got here at the right time, he says.

  I drizzle syrup over my bacon. I butter my toast. Judging by the brochures arranged in wire racks near the front of the restaurant we’re near the Quad Cities. But before or after, and what does Quad mean? I mean, four I know, I wasn’t born yesterday contrary to popular opinion, but what’s figured in? I pick at a piece of burnt potato, bite my lip to taste blood. And the supreme creator of Mr. Choir Director’s church lives downstate Illinois and apparently wants me to go too, and why?

  No matter what happens, no way will I ask.

  The waitress who pays me no mind slaps the check down in front of him—before I’ve finished—and he slides out of the booth. Sit tight, he tells me. In all seriousness this might take a while, would you believe I’ve been stopped up for days?

  Three drops of Tabasco on my spoon.

  He chuckles. I suggest you make yourself right at home, he says.

  I chuckle right back. And when he’s gone I leave the check on the table and pad through the restaurant. Outside, I turn the handles on the gum-ball machine, wish I had a quarter. I recheck the folded-over bills in my jeans pockets. It’s not raining but it feels like it might.

  An old couple says, Morning, morning. Looks like rain, don’t it, don’t it just?

  Retirees, dollars to doughnuts. They’ve got a hunchbacked Bichon with a floppy red bow in her frizzy white hair. She suddenly zings toward me, pretty fast for an old girl.

  Missy, Missy! the couple calls at once in a mock mad that Missy ignores.

  I kneel, let her lick my face—a good sour.

  Say how do you do, Missy, the man and woman warble over each other. How do you do?

  Still on my knees, deep breath, I don’t say it but I see it—for starters, my poor boobies are so squashed by my too-small bra that I’m crawling inside like I’m getting ready to take the first steps out of my mind, like Miss Missy here doo-dahing in circles around me, how cute.

  I stand. But my too-tight jeans remind me even more and I try to smooth them down below my hips. Which reminds me at least my money is there.

  So I kneel again. And bless her, the dog licks my hands and her tongue is like lightning and soft rain, a shower of coins. Rain that’s to come, only better.

  I close my eyes and it happens again—only this time there’s more. A cloud drops off I-80 and sails over, and I suddenly know how to play the hand I’ve been dealt, a blur that’s not darkness blotting things but a brightness so fast I can’t slow it down.

  It’ll be, Are you hungry, child? Are you tired and thirsty? While the gray man in the bathroom fumbles to open himself and in my mind I draw a blind against him. The couple and Missy will live somewhere like Bumfuck, Michigan, where they’ll put me on the International, the train that takes me home.

  My spirit fills me, dips and doodles like laundry on a line.

  When I get there, Daddy will call my boy Little Man. And all will be forgiven—all my ways. There’ll be pink store-bought cakes for birthdays, butter-brickle ice cream. Rides on a pony called Pickles.

  Buddy boy, I’ll say one day. We’ll be sitting on the steps leading to the kitchen door, his grampie crouched in the drive, attaching streamers to the handlebars of a training bike. It’ll have a banana seat with sparkles underneath the plastic see-through. I can just see my little guy big-wheeling around.

  I’ll lean over, hold him close, press his ears to his little head. Float lines from Snoop Dogg like a charm over his Ritalin dreams. Who’s Mummy’s boy? I’ll whisper, pull his leg to get him going. Let him wonder who loves who.

  The Riddles of Aramaic

  Your life is in my hands, Em usually thinks—and a green surge, voltaic, jams her jock’s tight gut. When she leans closer over the pale and weak, laid out inertly in test tubes of hospital beds, a bug-zapper sound commands her cochlea. She knows no one else can hear it. It is her privilege.

  Stay with me, the loved ones shrill, rent with panic at the thought of being left behind. Some make clawing motions at their throats.

  They look like birds—hollow where they should be solid, entirely crushable. Others bellow at the soon-to-expire like pricked bulls.

  Don’t go.

  Not Em. She apprises the curdled skin and damp kitten sighs, brows furrowed with suffering. Go, is what she thinks. Let me help you. I am blessed.

  This morning she feels irritable. A black mood jimmies her veins, equal parts guilt, shame, desire—the tumblers of a lock tidying into place.

  The patient—a man only recently delivered by Team Oncology into an awareness of his metastasizing condition—blinks at the acoustic-tile ceiling like a newborn. Opposite Em, his wife strokes his arm, calmly gazing at him as she sits in her chair with unfussy composure. Today she is a neat package, fancy pants creased, pale-blue driving mocs the colour of her eyes. Hair expertly highlighted, warm copper graining rich mahogany.

  Yesterday she’d undone. Head down, neck jutted forward, she charged up to Em’s table in the cafeteria, despite only having met her the previous afternoon and clearly oblivious of how Em had pushed for this first date ov
er thin coffee with the ENT.

  Tell me, the woman honked. You’re the expert. What am I supposed to say to our friends? Sorry, can’t do dinner Saturday, Ken’ll be dead by then?

  Two months into her residency in clinical pastoral education, Em has grown certain of one thing. Grief makes people greedy, selfish as insects. She stared back at the creature whose name, Em only then recalled, was Marta. Her face was bloated, almost engorged. Like a tick.

  The doctor—knee-jiggling perfectionist handsome with high forehead and narrow wrists, high strung, twice married—recoiled fastidiously, excused himself and fled.

  Em felt a spray of annoyance at the top of her head, crystals glittering into the bucket of spite one at a time. Ken, she thought. Right, the patient’s name is Ken and he’s going fast. She allowed a cruel micro-smile to laminate her lips, and settled in for the show. Soon the gestures would trip across Marta’s visage, the visible spasms of the snakes and ladders of inner reckonings. Self-recrimination, incendiary hopeless rage, despair—self-justification if she were lucky or insensate or both. In anticipation Em pushed back her paper cup and danced her fingertips on the table top.

  But Marta flicked straight, her expression blade bright as if she’d just discovered she could strip to the pith of the thing—she would be a widow shortly, but for the moment that was inconsequent, because she had her enemy now. She looked almost happy with the knowledge.

  Em had run yesterday evening to shake the scene. Humility, mortification, forgiveness. Counting street lamps, cars, her breath between this curb and that—a counter, she’d count the bats slopping through the heliotrope twilight if she could be sure of each smudged shape—she peeled off a sixteen-miler, seven-fifty pace, her marathon tempo, cycling through to a serviceable redemption, flanked by night as she stretched. She hadn’t behaved that badly, had she?

  Today she’s really paying—pain, Ibuprofen galore, CBD oil in moderation. She cautiously stretches her legs in front of her while behind her the sheers covering the windows gasp in the hospital’s air system. Her left Achilles is hot. A cranky yawn stalks her throat and blooms like a weed in the back of her mouth. Her jaw pops suppressing it.