Violin Face

Violin Face • Part 30 • Jackie

“Hi, Mrs. Thayer,” she said.
    “Eddie taking a shower?”
    “Yeah.”
    She looked young. Then again, girls are always more mature than boys and you can’t really blame them for liking older guys who know at least a little bit how to show them a good time.
    “Who are you?” I asked.
    “Oh, I’m Thora. Eddie sometimes stays with us. I’ve met you a couple times before, but it was a while ago.”
    “Thora, that’s right. So why are you here?” I laughed. People always do turn up. Eddie could be gone for six months straight, but he always came back because he always knew that he could be himself here and bring his friends. I’m sort of the cool mom, if you know what I mean. I understand kids on their level.
    “Needed a place to stay, I guess,” she said.
    “Well, dearie, I think that part of it is obvious. The question is why. Want some coffee?”
    She shook her head. “No, thanks.”
    “Suit yourself,” I said and poured myself a cup.
    I heard the shower go off and a little while later he came out, his shoulders still covered in drips of water, a towel wrapped around his waist. His body looked like a man’s. His shoulders were heavy and broad. “Come here, Eddie-baby, give Mama a hug,” I said. He walked over to me really slow, like he was angry, but then he just grabbed me up in both arms and gave me a big hug.
    That felt good, for him to hug me that way. He smelled so clean, like my soap. Suddenly I had a great idea: “Let’s go on a picnic today, huh? You and me and your friend, go out to the woods and have a picnic.”
    “It’s kind of cold today, Mom,” Eddie said as he let go of me and stepped back a bit.
    “Nonsense,” I said, “Just bring a jacket. It’s fucking California. We don’t have winter here!”
    “You have coffee made?” he asked.
    “Here, I’ll get you a cup.” I love having visitors, having company, playing the hostess. I’m good at it because I have that genuine warmth about me, that sort of sparkle.
    He sat down on the couch beside his girl and put his arm around her. “Mom,” he said, “Can we stay here a while?”
    “Are you in trouble?” I asked, pretending to be mad, but I couldn’t be, not with my boy wanting to come and live with me again.
    “Not bad trouble,” he said, “Not police trouble.”
    “Alright then,” I said, trying to sound stern, and brought him over a cup of coffee. I sat down on the ottoman by them and drank mine. I looked at him and I loved him. We were going to have good times. Him and his girl and me. We’d go on that picnic in the woods. We’d celebrate.
    She leaned over and whispered something in his ear. “Not yet,” he said. “Maybe in a few days, when everything cools down.”
    “What?” I asked.
    “Her dad, he’s in the hospital. She’s just worried about him.”
    The girl looked down at her hands. She had a sweet little face. Just like an angel in a painting.
    “What day is it?” I asked.
    “It’s Sunday, Mom.”
    “Can I borrow some money?” I asked.
    “What for?”
    I knew what he was thinking, but it was for such a better
cause than drinking that I didn’t even bother getting offended.

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Violin Face • Part 29 • Jackie

The day before I had gotten a letter from Eddie’s daddy, saying he was getting out and could I send him clothes to parole in. Doesn’t write me for six years, and then he writes asking for clothes. Like after raising his son, I have enough money to buy him anything. He even wrote down all his sizes. That’s how sure he was that even now I would do whatever he said.
    So there was nothing else to do but send Tim to the store for a liter of Jack and get shitty drunk trying to make a dartboard out of old corncob holders and a square of cardboard and wind up falling asleep holding each other in the bathtub. Tim is just one of those guys who hangs around. Young enough to be my son, but he still wants me. You should hear him when we fuck—begs me to keep riding him like he was praying to God. I may have had a kid, but I know how to tighten myself up and no one would ever call me loose. He needs a place to stay, which is part of it, but that’s okay. It gives me all the power anyway.
    Regardless, in the morning I was feeling just terrible. When I puked, there was a little bit of blood in it. There had been a little bit of blood in it the last few weeks. I was pretty sure I had an ulcer. But after I was done puking, I walked out into the living room and there was Eddie curled up on my couch with some girl.
    They were both sleeping. Eddie had his mouth hanging open, but he still looked beautiful. He always does. Like an animal—like a bear or a lion. Like he fits inside his skin just right. At times I remember that I made him, that I grew him in my belly and I feel proud. I mean, I know I’ve fucked him up. I’ve pretty much accepted that I’ve won the worst-mother-in-the-world award the last fifteen years running. I mean, the boy can’t even read. Trying to get him to go to school even when he was nine and ten was a nightmare, and I just wasn’t up to it. It was nice having him around the house anyway. He always was fun to talk to—smart about people and fixing things.
    I thought about waking him up and asking him what he was doing here, and I would have if the girl hadn’t been there, but I guess I wanted a little while alone and so I just made some coffee and climbed back into bed with Tim, who was sweating so bad the sheet all around him was wet. Hard to go to sleep next to that, so I just sort of lay there for a while feeling my brain sparkle. That’s always how I feel when I’m getting sober. Like little flashes are going off softly in my brain. As pretty as that sounds, it’s scary as hell. When I heard someone start the shower I got out of bed.
    The girl was alone in the living room.

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Violin Face • Part 28 • Mandy

“Long day?” he said, finally.
    I nodded. “Thora and Eddie have been having sex.”
    “Oh, my God,” he said.
    “And then with John and the heart attack. He has a fiancé. Didn’t know about that either.”
    “Mandy,” he said, as though saying my name were a way of caressing me.
    “I just feel like such a fool.”
    “You’re not.”
    “But how is it that I don’t know anybody—that everybody is in love and nobody wants to tell me about it. Why is that? What’s so awful about me that everybody hides everything from me?”
    “The world is a mysterious place,” he said. That was one thing about Lenny. He was incredibly sweet, but he was often prone to repeating maxims at inappropriate moments, when they didn’t apply to the situation at all. It made one feel rather desperately alone.
    “What are you going to do?” he asked.
    “About what?”
    “About Eddie?”
    “Well, I don’t think he’s coming back, so I don’t think there really is anything to do.”
    I hesitated. Part of me wanted to tell him about the disability office that morning, but another part of me wanted to hide it, just hide it forever so that it was like it hadn’t happened. And marrying him. He had a good job.
    “I don’t think I can marry you, Lenny,” I said. He was silent and I was silent and I couldn’t believe what I’d said. “It’s not that I don’t want you. It’s just that for tonight, I’m not able to answer questions like that. Is that okay?”
    I knew I was throwing it away. But I also knew that at that moment I wanted to marry him for the money more than I wanted to marry him for him, and it scared me so badly that there wasn’t anything to do but say no.
    He sighed. “Will you at least try on the ring?”
    I let him slide the ring onto my skinny finger. I couldn’t help but feel it wasn’t the right ring. No girl really likes pear cut diamonds. I don’t know why they make them—perhaps there are simply asymmetrical diamond bits that they have to do something with. And yellow gold, which always has seemed to me a little tacky in an engagement ring. Gold just doesn’t look as nice with diamonds. But he made me wear it while we went to get burgers.
    Really we did have fun at the burger joint. He stuck straws under his lip and pretended to be a walrus and he kept his left hand on my knee under the table, even as we ate. I wished I had met him when I was young—when he would have impressed me more. When I would have been able to let him fill me with delight.
    “I’ve been thinking we should take Thora to Disney Land before she gets too old for it,” he said.
    “I don’t think now is really the time for treats,” I said.
    “I guess you’re right. Still, some family bonding might be good. Not that I’m really part of the family.” He sucked the last of his soda up through the straw.
    He was so hurt. But for some reason it annoyed me. It was like having to hug Sarah at the hospital. The demands the world was making were too much, were ridiculous almost.
    “I don’t know what to say, Lenny,” I said.
    “Just say you love me,” he said.
    But I couldn’t say it. So I said, “You know I do.”

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Violin Face • Part 27 • Mandy

“Don’t apologize—when I got here and no one was home I knew something or other was up, and I figured you all would be hungry when you got back from wherever it was, so I cancelled our reservations and went to the store. You hungry?”
    “Starving,”
    “Good.”
    “Really, though,” I said, “Wasn’t this supposed to be some special night?”
    He leaned close to me and raised his eyebrows, “It still is.”
    “I love you,” I said. But I was so tired and my joints were hurting.
    “Do you?” he said. And he paused, but then got down on one knee. I was ridiculously high above him on the stool and I watched him fish in his pockets, and I knew what it meant, that kneel and that fumbling in his pocket, and I didn’t want it to happen, I wanted to delay. I was afraid I would fall off my stool my knees hurt so bad.
    He found the small blue velvet box and opened it. “Mandy, you are my heart, my darling, and my companion. Will you be my wife?”
    I looked down at him, wearing my apron, and I started to laugh—at first from some kind of nervousness and then from joy. I closed my eyes but the laughter got even more out of control and turned the edge over into crying, until I was just sitting up high on that stool hysterically sobbing. Part of it was my knees and my elbows, which felt like they were on fire. But it was also the money, and Thora, and John. No one could want me. No one could really want me. He hugged my knees and that made me cry harder.
    “Is it time to go sit on the couch?” he asked.
    “What about--?” I pointed at all the pots simmering, the vegetables half cut up on the counter.
    “Screw it,” he said and flipped all the burners off, “We’ll get burgers.”
    We went and sat on the couch in the living room. He put his arm around me and we both sat, looking at the window where we were reflected yellowly. Just a tiny yellow man and a tiny yellow woman sitting on a couch.

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Violin Face • Part 26 • Mandy

It was only when I saw Lenny’s car in the drive that I realized we had planned a date that night and that I was a little over an hour late. It was supposed to be a special night, just me and him out to dinner without the kids.
    When I opened the front door the house smelled wonderful—pot roast, onions. Lenny came out of the kitchen wearing my flower print apron, a bunch of carrots in his hand. “What’s up, Doc?” he said to Thora, but she just stomped right past him to the stairs up to her room. I thought I heard her say, “Idiot,” under her breath, but I was too tired to call her on it.
    “Oh, well,” he said.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Good to see you, anyway,” he said, and hugged me, “What’s the emergency?”
    “I’m so sorry I’m late—John had a heart attack.”
    “Is he alright?” All the humor drained from Lenny’s face. The carrots quivered in his hand. I loved him. I loved him so much.
    “Yes, he’s okay. It seems like a very small heart attack and it didn’t damage his heart at all. But he was up in Emery, and so I only now just got back, I’m so sorry.” I followed him into the kitchen and perched on a stool at the counter.

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Violin Face • Part 25 • Mandy

“Well, how is he, what happened?” I asked.
    “It was a very small heart attack, and it doesn’t seem like it’s done any permanent damage to the heart. It was all that magic stuff he was messed up in,” she said.
    “Magic?” Against my will, I imagined John in a purple wizard’s cloak.
    “He was having some ceremony done and he had a heart attack right in the middle of it.” She exhaled through her nose. It turned out I didn’t know who anybody was—secret lovers and magic ceremonies. And my secret, my secret was just that I hadn’t read the paperwork.
    “What sort of ceremony?”
    “It was, well, I don’t really understand it, but it was to have the spirit of a beaver put into him, I think. He thought it would heal his colon.”
    “I see,” I said. I didn’t, really, but I didn’t want to ask. “But he’s going to be alright?”
    “It seems that way. Mainly now it’s that he might have another one. It’s a whole new health crisis to deal with. I’m just so—” She paused and started crying. It took me a moment before I realized I was supposed to hug her, and in that moment I just stared at her. It seemed totally unfair that after everything I was expected to comfort this woman, this young thing, the lover of my husband. But it looked like that was what I was supposed to do, and so I did.
    When she had recovered herself, I asked, “How long—have you been together?”
    “A little over a year,” she said.
    “Do you live together?”
    She nodded. “I really—I can’t believe he didn’t tell you.”
    “I know,” I said. And it came home to me that I wasn’t really wanted there. That he hadn’t needed me— he’d needed Thora. I wasn’t even a woman anymore, just the guardian of his child.
    When we went back in the room Thora and John were talking in low whispers and we remained in the entryway, as though we were waiting for a signal to enter.
    “I guess that beaver was just too big for me,” John said.
    “I’m so sorry, Daddy,” Thora said, and brought her cheek down to his hand and rested it there. “It’s my fault.”
    “No, it’s not. Get that idea out of your head. It’s not your fault at all. You have to promise me to be careful, though,” he said, “I don’t know what those bees were, but you have to think about it and be careful. Be careful with your heart, girl.”
    “Okay,” she said.
    “What bees?” I said, even though I was aware I was crossing some line, intruding somehow.
    “Nothing, Mandy,” he said.
    “Alright then, that’s great. So you’ve seen her, now I’ll drive her home again. I hope you heal well. Best wishes,” I said, and grabbed Thora by the wrist.
    “Ow, Mom, what are you doing?” She gave me a look—to let me know that I was the worst mother in the world. But honestly, I hardly minded. I hated all of them. I really did.

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Violin Face • Part 24 • Mandy

And of course they didn’t—I knew when he came back from Nam that all of that sort of thing was over for him. But the thing was, it wasn’t over for me. How can you shatter your own innocence just because someone else has lost theirs? In any event, I loved those pictures and he never did.

    But somehow I never did stop loving Johnny. I think if there is a man—one man for a woman, who is what a man is, who is just the man—then Johnny was that man for me. And if he wanted me, I would take him back in a heart beat, even though I know we couldn’t stand to live together, that it would never work. That I would drink again and cheat. Just to make him feel something. Just to make him feel something towards me. But I would do it all over again if I had the chance—not just all the old mistakes but new ones, a whole new car wreck. I really would. Because at least with him it felt like everything meant something. Like you were part of a myth or a novel. Even though it was a horrible, ugly story, you were still part of it.

When we got there John wasn’t in the ER anymore and it took a while to find him. We had to go across a parking lot and into another building, to the second floor. I was almost running and Thora kept telling me to slow down. Odd that she should be the sensible one. But I couldn’t stand it. I needed to see him. When we finally found the room, I looked in. He was slumped back on the bed and a beautiful young woman was sitting by his bedside. She stood and motioned to go out into the hall with me. Thora went to her father and took up his hand, even though there were cords and IV’s coming out of it. We went out into the corridor and the woman hugged me, which made me extremely uncomfortable. Was she a volunteer of some kind?
    “He was asking for Thora,” she said.
    “And you are?” I asked.
    “I’m sorry—My name is Sarah. I thought—never mind. I just thought he must have mentioned me. John and I are engaged.”
    It felt as though he were still my husband and was cheating on me. Her face was splotchy pink from crying but she was still remarkably beautiful and so young. It amazed me that John had found a woman so young. I remembered even when I had first fallen in love with him, taking care of him, the keen awareness that he was older than me. And now, now he had found someone even younger than me. Now I was the old one. The one who was worn out and dry.
     “My goodness, I can certainly see why you would have expected him to.” That is another thing about disaster—no matter the circumstances I find myself insufferably polite. “Well,” I said, “I’m glad to meet you now.”
    “It’s wonderful to finally meet you.” She seemed sincere. I admired her for that.

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Violin Face • Part 23 • Mandy

I really should never have been a mother at all. A gardener, maybe, but not a mother. And yet, I think maybe if John had stayed, if I had just had some support, I think I could have been really good at it.
    The telephone rang.
    It was a woman. Calling from the Emery hospital. John had just had a heart attack. After I’d gotten the address and hung up, I got Thora and drove us the two hours north. The weather was extravagantly beautiful. It isn’t that I wanted the sky and the trees to feel sorry for me. It was just so clear that I concerned them not at all. That Thora and I in our aging economical car were utterly beside the point. Thora didn’t say a word to me the whole way. And all the time, as I was driving, I just kept thinking: he needs me. My John needs me.
    I had grown up in Emery, but I hadn’t been back in ten years or more, and it felt eerie and wonderful to hit that point on the highway I recognized and find that my body made the turns and knew the way better than my mind did. It felt like I was coming home to John. Somehow he was home in the deepest way.
    It was a terrible disappointment to me when our family fell apart. I liked so much when things were happy—we did have that, those sort of Kodak family moments. Taking Thora fishing when she was little. Though I always hated fishing, fishing and camping both. I never could catch any fish—Johnny said it was because I couldn’t think like a fish, that I didn’t have that natural touch. I like to think it was because I snuck off to smoke mentholated cigarettes and the scent lingered on my hands and ruined the bait. But there are photos of us that look just perfect: Thora holding up a big rainbow trout, all three of us smiling on the shore. And while it is true that I ended the marriage, that I pushed him away, it still seems to me that he left first. That those photos did not mean as much to him as they did to me.

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Violin Face • Part 22 • Mandy

It was difficult to make myself put that much sugar in her cup, but I did it. “Thora, it doesn’t matter if you thought you wanted it, you’re a child. Eddie’s fifteen. That’s a huge difference.”
    “Dad’s ten years older than you,” she said.
    “Thora, that’s not the point.” I set the cups down on the table much harder than I’d meant to.
    “Well, you know what, none of this is the point because it’s over, okay? Can we talk about something else?”
    “No,” I said, and sat down, “We can’t.”
    “Listen, I’m sorry I lied to you okay?” She said, in the voice of a petulant teenager, which is, I suppose, exactly what she was. But it broke open something in me.
    “Do you know how betrayed I feel? That you’ve been lying to me, day in and day out? When I am trying as hard as I can just to keep this family afloat? It makes me feel like a fool.”
    “Well, I’m sorry if taking care of me is hard. You should have thought about that before you had me!”
    “This isn’t about that, this is about the way you disrespected me by lying to me. Because you aren’t really sorry. You don’t even know what you’ve done. You’ve let him turn you into a little monster.”
    Her face froze. She had both hands around her coffee and she looked like such a grown up. Her face was serious like a woman’s.
    “I am glad,” she said, slowly, “that I lied to you, because you would have stopped me and I wanted to do it.”
    “Are you happy now?”
    It was one of those horrible moments. I had done the very worst thing—I was now, somehow, outside of my control, rubbing my daughter’s nose in her own heartbreak, for childish and vindictive reasons. I knew that I was doing it, and I knew it was the worst thing for a mother to do, but I didn’t stop and I watched her as she stood up very slowly, walked with her cup and poured her coffee into the sink, turned and said, “In a way,” and then walked out the door and stomped up the stairs to her room.

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Violin Face • Part 21 • Mandy

Thora didn’t drink coffee, as far as I knew, but I knew she needed something after crying like that and I couldn’t really offer her a cigarette, which is what I would have wanted.
    I herded her into the kitchen, put her in a chair and put a fresh pot on. I sat down. I was tired after watching her cry all this time, even though the daylight was coming in full through the windows. All the sun did was make me want to take a nap. I didn’t know what I was going to do. How I was possibly going to fix all of it. The cards were already maxed out. I was just barely able to make the interest payments.
    “When did it start?” I asked.
    “About four months ago,” she said. She said it easily. That was one thing about Thora: if it were me, having now to confess to my mother, I would still consider lying, still weigh how things would be taken. But Thora just told the truth, sort of matter of factly, and seemed relieved.
    “How did it start?”
    “A tickle fight,” she said. As though that explained everything. How could she know that it mattered to me who touched who first, who kissed who, what happened next?
    “Did he take advantage of you?” I asked.
    “No,” she said, shook her head and smiled.
    “He’s a lot older than you,” I began, but she cut me off.
    “I kissed him,” she said.
    “Still—” I said.
    “I begged him to fuck me for weeks before he would.”
    I felt like I had been hit in the face and so I got up to pour us coffee. Her thirteen was certainly different than mine had been.
    “Do you take cream and sugar?” I asked her.
    “Four sugars, no cream,” she said, “Listen, it’s the one thing Eddie always worried about and so I have to tell you—everything was always what I wanted. He never made me do anything, not one thing. It’s my fault too and if you want to punish anyone it should be me.”
    “Four sugars!” Her teeth would rot right out of her head.
    “Mom,” Thora said and stared at me.

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