​SIX

Mitch

“They bought a new car,” Elena says.

Dinner is a sloppy pot roast, potatoes drowning in a thinned-out sauce. She’s a good cook, my wife, but then I think about the Roquefort served with nuts and honey on the sideboard in Aaron’s dining room—a dish I still can’t pronounce, but I’m mentally holding onto because Elena’s meat is a brick wall in my colon.

“Color?” I ask.

“BMW,” is the reply, which tells me what kind of evening it’s going to be. I sometimes think when you’re dirt poor, you end up in either two camps: wants for nothing or wants for everything. I know all too well which one Elena’s in.

“Well, some people work hard and get BMWs in this life.”

“You work hard,” she says. She plops another dose of potatoes onto Sela’s plate, although she doesn’t ask for them. Our daughter sits between the two of us, her chair slightly closer to me. I notice her mimicking me, not in a silly laugh out loud way, but as if she’s trying to commit me to memory.

“Did you see Trudy’s new car, honey?” I ask Sela, ignoring Elena’s stab. You work so hard, Mitch, but it’s like we don’t even get to see any of it. That’s the plight of owning a small business, I always tell her when there’s still energy in my lungs. Bills, car insurance, health insurance, clothes for school, clothes for dance, food on the table. You’d think she’d understand by now.

“Blue,” Sela says, already anticipating my follow-up question. I smile at her, and it hurts my cheeks. I watch, and she smiles the very same way.

“Blue,” Elena says quietly and takes a bite of her pile of bricks.

#

I expect to meet her at the kitchen cabinet later—after the dishes and Sela are put in their proper places—but Elena’s not there. The whiskey’s left out though, so I find an old cup from Floyd’s—the Razorback worn to the point of looking more like a hedgehog—and fill-er-up. No more need for chasers, just a quick hot swallow. I think of all the times Jimmy has tried to get me to drink during lunch, and I always shake my head and say, “One of us has to be able to run this business.” Like refusing a drink mid-day makes me any less of an alcoholic.

The thought burns down with the whiskey and pounds my cranky gut awake. It’s one of those things I don’t talk about—how drinking this much feels like I’m getting an ulcer—not even to Elena because we have to be in tip-top baby making shape. The hypocrisy of it all is likely to kill me before the alcohol does.

I take one more before gliding quietly down the hallway. Our bedroom door is closed, and I calculate the percentages of getting my chewed butt out if I go in. But I open the door anyway out of habit.

She’s in bed. I’m embarrassed thinking of how long she’s been there, waiting for me to find her.

“It’s time?” I say, trying to remember the ovulation schedule, but the whiskey makes it and everything else a little murky.

“No,” she says.

“Then?”

“Can’t you just hold me?” she asks and rolls to her side. Her hair curls around her shoulder, and I can tell she’s put on lip gloss. I fall into bed next to her, just like that. I place my head into her neck, and right now, she smells like vanilla.

“Are you crying?” She lifts my face and shame washes my cheeks, makes its bed in my stubble. She rubs my skin dry as I close my eyes, and we’re fourteen again.

“I’ll love you forever,” she had said once, up on my daddy’s tractor. She was behind me, her arms tight like a belt as we pulled the planter along, cotton seeds diving into the furrows. The cows with their bulbous eyes were watching us, and I remember thinking, Y’all are my witnesses.

I don’t know what it’s like for other men. But I do know when your heart’s wired wrong—and your mother hits you because she knows it, too—it’s an easy feeling being loved. Even if it is by the wrong person.

I take in the clean earth scent of that day again as I hold her tight and kiss her shoulder. I pay Elena every ounce of kindness I owe her.

#

At St. Bonaventure, there’s a penny in one of the brick posts that supports the covered entrance. Our group gathers here after Sunday Mass: me, Elena, Sela, bottle-lensed Trudy Gibson and her parents. The topic of discussion is the new BMW, and I grind my nail into Abraham Lincoln’s face. Sela watches me, grazing her thumbnail against the pad of her pointer finger, in tune with my rhythm.

“Ever gotten behind the wheel of a Beamer, Mitchy?” Luke asks. His hair is fashioned after one of Sela’s Ken dolls, and he smells like a perfumed paper ad in the pages of Elena’s Cosmo. He also has a thing for nicknames.

“Well, Lukey-boy, I have to say that’s a negative.” Elena shoots me a look, and Luke clears his throat and nods. The other parishioners buzz around us, and my bare arms brush against blouses and sport coats too hot for this weather. “You should wear your sports jacket,” Elena had said earlier, supporting her reasoning with the reliable, “I’m sure Luke will be wearing one,” which made me automatically reach for my polo. Clips of the homily (what love thy neighbor means in the twentieth century) play at our shoulders, but a good portion of talk is centered on deer season (led by Father John, as if he believes I need yet another reason to hate church).

“Not everyone’s thing but that engine—wooh does she purr!” Instead of slapping Luke, I smile and nod back, solely for Elena’s sake. She’s all roses this morning, flushed cheeks, last night’s lip gloss making a reappearance. But I can tell by the way she’s grinding her black sandal into the stone walkway like she’s killing a cigarette that last night’s “I love you” won’t be.

“Well, we better head to Luke’s parents,’” Ronnie says, brushing back her sleeve to reveal a gold Rolex with a face the size of my head. “They’re time sticklers,” she adds, dramatically whispering behind a manicured hand.

“I heard that!” Lukey-boy says and squeezes her shoulder. I glance at Trudy who has her finger jammed up her nose.

“What about you guys? Heading anywhere special?” Now this is the kind of stuff that annoys me about Ronnie, the questions she asks like she didn’t see us roll into the parking lot in a ‘92 Dodge Dakota. And then there’s Elena who makes it even worse by pulling the good student act, reciting the acceptable answer.

“Oh, probably just grab brunch at New Hampton. I love the omelets.” And it’s embarrassing because I’m sure the Gibsons go there weekly and have realized by now that we’ve never set foot in the place. But Elena’s still grinning like the prized pupil, and I hate myself for somehow making omelets unattainable.

“So do we! Well, you all have fun, all right?” Ronnie smiles and places a hand on Sela’s shoulder, an act of kindness I’m sure people pay kids with delusional, underpaid parents.

“We will!” Elena’s glossed lips are stretched so wide, I’m afraid they’ll snap like rubber bands. As soon as the Gibsons are out of sight, she sighs, and her eyes go to Sela and she sighs again.

“You’d think that girl would have the decency to remove her finger from her nose for two seconds,” she says. She keeps looking at Sela, and I know what she’s thinking. Here’s a beautiful girl, a girl who deserves omelets and ponies and two parents who don’t mess everything up for her. But Sela has this pleasant look on her face like today’s just Sunday. Today’s just another day she gets to hold her parents’ hands.

When I look up, I see Elena looking at me this time, and again, nineteen years loving the same person, it’s like her thoughts send a drumbeat through my brain. AA, she’s thinking.

Fine. I’ll go.