A Slipping-Down Life

9

She lay awake most of the night, listening for the creak of the swing. It never came. In the morning when she got up she seemed to have returned to the way she was a week ago, brisk and cheerful, willingly sitting on a board while her father sawed it and then humming while she washed the dishes, since it was Clotelia’s day off. But toward noon she grew restless. She followed her father aimlessly while he built shelves in the kitchen. Once she pointed to his work pants and said, “Are you going to wear those all day?”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“Well, if you’re going out, I mean. Aren’t you going downtown?”

“No, I hadn’t planned on it.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday, you know.”

“Was there something you needed?”

“Oh, no,” Evie said.

She went out into the back yard and sat on the steps, looking toward the field of grass where Drum used to wait. Nothing moved. She sat there for hours, for an entire afternoon, without so much as a book in her lap. Her eyes began to sting from staring at one place so steadily.

After supper she went outside again, this time to the front porch. Neighbors’ televisions blared up and down the street. From the window behind her she heard her father’s shortwave radio flicking rapidly across continents. “Evie, come here, I’ve got Moscow,” he called once. And then, a little later, “There is too much Spanish in this world.” Evie picked up a cushion and set it in her lap. It smelled musty, like the inside of an old summer cottage. If every evening lasted this long, how much time would it take to get her whole life lived? Centuries. She pictured herself growing older and fatter in this airless dark house, turning into a spinster with a pouched face and a zipper of lines across her upper lip, caring for her father until he died and she had no one left but cats or parakeets.

Her father went to bed with a book. Lights blinked off up and down the street, and chairs were scraped off porches through bright yellow doors that finally closed and darkened. Then someone came up the sidewalk, all alone. She watched him swing over the hedge and cut across the lawn to the front porch steps. “Oh, you know better than anyone, don’t you?” he said.

“Know what?”

“How come you’re sitting out here? You’re waiting for me to slink back, nowhere else to go.”

He climbed the steps and sank down on the swing, at the opposite end from her. “Everybody asked about you,” he said.

“Who do you mean?”

“At the Unicorn.”

“I thought you weren’t going there this week,” Evie said.

“No call not to, is there? Sure we did. Last night and tonight, same as ever. People said, ‘Where is that girl who cut herself up, has she found her someone else by now?’ I was thinking of saying you had killed yourself. ‘Finished what she started,’ I would say. That would have gone big.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Evie said. “Do you think I would kill myself over the likes of you?”

“Then I went back home with David and slept in the tool shed. His mother came out in the morning with a broom. Old witch, should have been riding it. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asks. I swear if she wasn’t about to sweep me right out.”

“Well, I don’t blame her,” Evie said. “You just hang on and hang on, Drum Casey. When are you going to leave me alone? As soon as I get used to you being gone, you turn up again. Will you ever just get out and stay out?”

“Oh, now, don’t make me go,” said Drum. “It’s late. I’m tired.”

“Well, so am I.”

She drew in her breath, waiting for him to say something else that she could fire back at him, but he seemed to have given up. He sat slumped against the arm of the swing. All she saw was a black shadow with his T shirt making a triangle of white above his jacket. Finally he said, “You know Joseph Ballew? He says, ‘Where is that plump girl with “Casey” on her forehead? Lost her interest? You’re slipping, man,’ he says.”

Evie didn’t answer.

“Have you ever thought of losing some weight?”

It took a moment for his words to sink in. Then she said, “Well, my God in heaven.”

“Have you?”

“Why do you feel free to act so rude? I eat less than you do.”

“I was just asking. You know, in Tar City they got this slenderizing place. Steam baths and exercise machines. You ever been to one?”

“No, I have not.”

“Well. This girl was telling about it. Seems they can really slim people down. And make-up, and hair styles — You know, I saw in this magazine once where they decide the shape of your face and then fix your hair to fit it. They had before-and-after pictures; it looked real good.”

“I wish you would go,” Evie said.

“What, now?”

“Nobody makes you sit here. If you can’t stand my looks, find someone else’s porch to sleep on.”

“Well, wait now,” Drum said. “You got it all wrong. I’m trying to help out.”

“I didn’t ask for any help.”

“I just want you to look your best. There’s no reason you should get mad about it.”

“What business is it of yours if I look my best?”

“Well, I was thinking we might could get married,” Drum said.

Evie held still for a minute, not breathing. Then she began to laugh.

“Did I say something funny?” Drum asked.

“Yes,” she said. But the laugh, which should have flowed on, suddenly rusted and broke. “I believe you’re out of your head,” she said.

“Why? Don’t you want to?”

“No, I don’t,” said Evie.

“I don’t know what you got to lose. You must like me some or you wouldn’t have, you know, cut the letters. You wouldn’t hang around me all the time. And here I am with no home. And my career’s at a standstill, we could get our pictures in the papers. Human interest. Plus I do like you. I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t.”

“What do you like about me?” Evie said.

“Jesus.”

“Well, go on. Name something.”

“I don’t know. I like the way you listen to people. Is that enough?”

“No,” said Evie.

“Look. I like you. I want to get married. I feel like things are just petering out all around me and I want to get married to someone I like and have me a house and change. Make a change. Isn’t that enough? Don’t you want to change your life around some?”

Evie held the cushion closer to her and breathed in its musty smell. Then she lifted a hand and ran one finger across her forehead, tracing the narrow ridges of the scars, which always felt pleasantly crinkled. In the opposite house, the last of the lights went out. People slept fitfully in hot, rumpled beds hollowed to fit their shapes, in houses they had grown up and grown old in. Beside her, Drum shifted in the swing. He was waiting for her answer, which would be yes, but only after she had taken her time over it. Things moved too fast. She had wanted a courtship, with double dates and dances and matching shirts, but all she got was three minutes of staring at sleeping houses before she said, “Oh, well. Why not?” and Drum slid over to kiss her with cool blank lips.