By Beth Gilstrap
The Denial Weeks
The dresser got good light in the morning. A sprawling, pooling light that kept the walnut warm. On sunny weekends, I liked to have my coffee in bed. Since the mill was closing soon, I hoped to make it an everyday thing—provided of course I could still afford such luxury. But Highland Mill No. 3 wasn’t out of business yet, and the calendar said Tuesday, so I figured I’d better get my butt in gear instead of longing for shit I couldn’t do nothing about.
As usual, Paul’s legs were spread-eagle and his face was still half covered with the pressed-down-to-nothing wad of a thing he called a pillow. You’d think I’d have gotten sick of looking at this man with his briefs stretched out so much you could see all his business laying there, no covers or nothing, but the strangest things grow on you. Like most mornings, I peeked at him and felt a snicker creep. I couldn’t help myself. The truth was, since Daddy died on Mama and the rest of us long before Paul and I are the age we are now, I felt grateful to have good company, if nothing else. I didn’t even mind him sleeping in the room next door. We had small rooms and a little space don’t do anybody harm. Besides, if he was next to me, I’d never see that sprawled-out something every morning.
I thought money was tight, then. If you’d told me what was coming—that the whole damn structure was about to float away like mimosa tree fluff—I’d have joined my sister at her trailer in Myrtle Beach like she’d asked. But since I wasn’t no psychic, I put one foot in front of the other and tried not to let on that the thought of not going to work every day hurt my calves. No matter how much I rubbed them with baby oil or soaked them in Epsom salt baths, the ropes my muscles had become never loosened. It was easier not to look the man in the eye, otherwise I might swing to one of my moods folks don’t much care for, the finger-pointer, the crier, the sometimes-violent plate smasher because damn it all to hell somebody will share the load, sometime, somewhere. But who was I to complain when I’d agreed to handle the household accounts shortly after we married. Before I took over, we were barely three months into our marriage when Duke Power cut the lights. He confessed he’d bungled it, said he never could make a workable budget, he got side-tracked by shiny things. He said it was so cute I’d thought it was a joke, but I learned hell is when a man speaks his truth. But our twentieth anniversary was coming up a week from Tuesday, and there we were, still together, still broke as shit, and losing the jobs we’d never been brave or financially secure enough to walk away from. Still though, I was eighty percent thankful.
“You up?” I asked, cutting off his boxed fan.
He grumbled and rolled to his side, getting twisted in his underwear. “I am now.” He shifted himself back into position. “You get the coffee. I’ll make us an egg sandwich.”
“We’re out of bread.”
“Got any of those hot dog buns left?”
“Yeah, there’s a few. You sure you’re up?”
“I’m up. Up, up, up. Glory be it’s gonna be one gorgeous day.”
“Okay, then,” I said, eyes rolling. “I’ll start the coffee.” The floors creaked down the long hall to the kitchen. The back half of the house was so dark I always wished we’d made enough money to build us a sunroom or have Danny up the street put in a skylight like the one he’d installed for him and his mama. Paul always said if we waited until we had money, we’d be waiting our whole lives and damn if it don’t seem like he was right all along. I tried to imagine the kitchen with better light, or what it would have been like if they’d designed the place so the kitchen was where the bedrooms were. It would have made all the difference, but then that was life wasn’t it? Put bedrooms where a kitchen should be and you go through half your life feeling like something ain’t right. About the time I sat down and started fantasizing about a supercell storm gifting me hail damage so bad I could have the insurance company remove our dark roof, the doorbell rang.
“Got that, Imogene?”
“You get it. I just sat down.”
“I’m trying to find some clean pants. You want me to come up there half-naked?”
“Lord, don’t give the rest of creation the view you give me. It’s only Earl Jr. anyways.”
“What’s he want now?”
“I’m fixing to ask him.”
The boy stood, waiting for the door to open like he hadn’t knocked on it a hundred times in the past year, his eyes startled and half on the verge of tears. Hard not to answer when you know what’s on the other side, looking at you like you’re the only person who ever offered him a kind word. Boy was so much like a beat dog it wasn’t funny, but the state don’t take him away because he’s more or less fed and clothed, and manages to make it to school most of the time.
“Mrs. Pressley?”
“Come on in, Junior. I’m waiting on the coffeemaker to finish its thing.”
“What do you say, Junior? What do you know?” Paul said, buttoning his pants.
“Can y’all give me a ride to school?”
“Miss the bus again?”
“Yeah.” He rubbed his nose and brushed his hair behind his ear, but he didn’t cry this time.
“Your no-good daddy still drunk?” Paul asked.
“Yeah. Some woman in there with him, too. Saw her uniform on the floor.”
“Lord in heaven,” I said, pulling a chair out for the boy.
“We’ll take you, Junior. Care for an egg sandwich? I’m making me and Imogene one. Got an extra egg anyways.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“No need to sir me, Junior. We’re buds.”
We needed that egg for the pancakes I had planned to make for supper, but who was I to say anything. That was Paul. Paul showed him how to fry an egg and as the whites bubbled in the butter, the two of them cut up some—a ten-year-old who seemed twice as old as he was and a man five times his age, but seemed ten, telling knock-knock jokes until they snort-laughed. Paul dangled the spoon on the tip of his nose and for a second, I saw the longing flash across Junior’s face. We had to be gentle with this child. Paul didn’t understand.
“Hand me them buns, woman.”
“Call me that again and I’ll hand you something you won’t like.”
“Okay, okay. Please, Imogene, my love, won’t you slide those buns on over here so I can finish making your breakfast?”
“Better. Did you fry mine hard?”
“Yes, love. We cremated the shit out of it, didn’t we, Junior?”
“Lord, Paul. Can’t you be the grown-up?”
“I’ve heard worse, Mrs. Pressley.”
“I don’t doubt that, child. Wrap those sandwiches up. We need to hit the road.”
Paul showed the boy how to make “to go” parcels with wax paper so we could eat in the car. He dug two ketchup packets out of the condiment drawer and off we went. In the car, he passed the ketchup to Junior, who dabbed little red circles on his, like ants on a log in some other dimension where everybody makes do all the time. Junior slid the other packet into his back pocket.
“I never had an egg sandwich on a hot dog bun before.”
“Us neither,” I said. “But whatever works, right?”
“I like the way the egg folded up on itself.”
As we turned in the school’s main entrance, Junior told us not to pull up front. He didn’t want anybody to see who was and wasn’t taking him to school. He’d learned a long time ago to lay low. Questions weren’t good for anybody.
“Thanks, Paul. Thanks, Mrs. Pressley.”
“You’re welcome, hon. Have a good day in school.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him he had ketchup on his T-shirt. Poor kid was always stained.
As we drove away, Paul turned the radio on and sang along to some old country song I’d never heard. Clouds—the remnants of a gulf-born hurricane—spread themselves thin across the sky, a right nice contrast to the shifting sunlight. It wasn’t yet fall, but there was a stray red leaf here and there. I always thought the few weeks before the trees burst into color were the denial weeks. The midlife-crisis weeks. The no-way-are-we-about-to-go-through-the-damn-holidays-and-winter-all-over-again weeks. I’d have put money on the fact that those weeks had the highest percentage of extramarital shenanigans. The last moments of exposed skin before the great seasonal buttoning up and layering and burrowing.
“What’s that song?”
“It’s a cover of an old Hank Williams song. You wouldn’t know it.”
“No, I don’t guess I would. Since when do you listen to country and western?”
“Dad listened to it when I was a boy.”
“I don’t recall you ever talking about him and music.”
“Do you have to be like this in the morning?”
“Like what?”
“You know.”
“I’m only asking questions. Don’t make sense is all. Live a lifetime with somebody and he don’t mention his daddy liked country and western.”
“Hell, hon. It ain’t like I set out to keep it from you. It hasn’t ever come up.”
“You don’t talk to me enough.”
“Christ, Imogene.”
When we got to work, Paul parked in our usual spot under the big maple near the back of the lot. I left the car without saying goodbye and walked on ahead of him so mad I barely paid attention to my feet under me. I tripped over the curb and fell hard on my right knee. Paul came up behind me and helped me up, handing me his handkerchief to dab on the scrape.
“You okay?”
“It’s nothing,” I said, handing back his blood-spotted handkerchief.
“Why are you passing that back—” He trailed off as he realized the gate was locked and a small piece of paper was taped to the iron above a thick chain. “Posted: Out of Business.” It was only after we read the sign that we noticed how few cars were in the lot. Some stragglers came up behind us. Josephine from inspection and Clara from the dye room.
“They could’ve told us,” Josephine said, pulling the scarf off her head and letting the wind muss her hair.
“Maybe they didn’t know,” Paul said.
“Maybe they did and wanted to get another day’s work out of us yesterday.”
“Too bad we don’t have unions down here,” Clara said. “We’d have some kind of recourse. Some kind of compensation.”
Josephine said, “Hell, I’d settle for closure. Eighteen years and no goodbye, kiss my ass, or nothing.” She pulled a flask out of her hip pocket, took a long pull, and offered us the same.
“Isn’t it a bit early?” Clara asked before knocking a little back anyway.
“Who gives a flying fig?” I said. “Give me that thing.”
Paul tugged on the gate and looked closer at the sign. “I guess that’s that.”
“I never thought I would have to deal with finding a new job at my age,” Josephine said.
Clara, who was fifteen years our junior, was all optimism and ambition, saying we would all be all right, that this was an opportunity to reinvent ourselves, pursue our dreams, and all that horseshit. Her voice got so amped up and loud, I finally piped in and told her to bring it down a notch. Maybe drink some more of Josephine’s cheap vodka. Things weren’t the same for us as they were for her. She went on and on about staying friends like losing touch with each other was more harmful than having to go to a damn food bank. But when I saw her a few weeks later at Walmart, her tune had changed. She had a freezer bag full of change, her baby was out of formula and diapers, and her face was beet red and so sweaty her hair stuck to her cheek. At least I had experience making do.
At first, the opening of our new life was sort of sweet—a right nice contrast to the never-ending momentum of working days. Paul tooled about in the yard. I lounged and napped and watched game shows and Little House. I liked the sway of all that wide, green space, and how nobody seemed cynical even when it all fell to pieces. Smile and pray and believe in the goodness of the human heart. We ate rice and beans for dinner the first week. For our anniversary, Paul wanted to try to do something special so I sold some clothes that didn’t fit anymore and bought generic brand cold cuts and sliced cheese, spicy brown mustard, and mayonnaise. We made sandwiches and packed some of that fake lemonade that comes in a gallon jug.
“Seems like a good day to go to the lake,” he said, pouring ice in the cooler. When he was happy with the ratio of ice to food, he put a trash bag over top of it as extra insurance the sandwiches wouldn’t get wet and soggy. The man hated soggy more than you’d think possible.
“Probably the last warm day for a stretch. Supposed to turn cooler tomorrow.”
“I can’t believe it’s been twenty years,” he said, kissing me on my bare shoulder and opening the truck door for me. I swore I would put the bills and the constant puzzle-working anxiety that comes from being broke out of my head for the afternoon. Focus on us. Toast a lengthy marriage. If things had continued like that the rest of the day, we might have made it even longer. But that’s not the way of things. Just ask Clara.
We rolled the windows down. With warm air whipping my hair around, I felt like a girl again. At a stoplight where two sides of the crossroads were planted down with tobacco and the other two with cotton, Paul said, “Turn around for me.” He took a rubber band off the gear shift, brushing my hair with his fingers the best he could, separating it into three sections for a braid. With his hands looping my hair so close to the back of my neck, I closed my eyes and breathed in the grassy smell of the country. Before he had the braid fastened, a semi pulled the horn on his rig, knocking us out of our bewilderment.
“I can get it the rest of the way,” I said. “Better get to it before the jackass behind us has a conniption.”
When we got down the road a ways, the excitement had waned. We were still the same unemployed, middle-aged couple who slept in separate rooms. The truth was that both of us were terrified and had no intention of talking about it. Paul still tried to engage me by reminiscing about our courtship—how he’d first seen me in town with my mama, pulling a red wagon full of groceries behind us, how if he’d judged by how I fit into my yellow dress, he’d have never known how poor we all were—but it still didn’t take me long to give up on my happy mood altogether. When I put my face in the wind, he quit, too. Maybe I could live there in the movement of air over a vehicle that had taken us up and down the East Coast. I could cease having to pay for things, having to work, having to keep trying to fix every damn thing in my tiny world.
About that time, the truck sputtered a time or two and rolled to a stop.
“Well, that’s that,” Paul said.
“What’s wrong now?”
“Out of gas.”
“Figures,” I said. “I guess you didn’t feel the need to warn me.”
“I hoped we’d make it.”
“And what was the plan for getting home?”
“I thought we could borrow some gas from somebody up at the lake.”
“Lord in heaven. What a plan.”
“We could still have a day together,” he said, pulling the keys out of the ignition. “Come on, Imogene. We’re only about a mile from the lake. I’ll carry the cooler. You get the blanket. We’ll deal with this later. It ain’t going anywhere.”
“Fine,” I said. “But when it comes time, you’re the one who’s got to go beg strangers for gas.” I slid my flip-flops back on and draped the blanket over the top of my tote bag. He fiddled with the cooler, muttering something about how the drive must’ve been bumpier than he realized. His careful packing of the cooler hadn’t held up as much as he hoped it would; it didn’t stay as cold as it should’ve.
“It’s the consistency of your failed hopes and wishes and all your big, whirlybird dreams that gets me.”
“That’s right. Make it bigger than it need be.”
“You’re the one whining about your cooler not being cool enough.” I caught it that time—the cruelty welling up in me for no good reason so I tried to soften, to put a silk filter between my meanness and Paul. “I’m sorry, babe,” I said, slowing my gait enough to walk side by side. “Don’t make sense. Nary a cold cut should have budged.”
He said thank you but I could tell by the way he watched his feet as we walked that my demeanor had taken its toll. I wished more than anything I could go back to the moment he pulled over and tell him to forget about the rig behind us, let the driver have his conniption so long as he finished my braid, pulled my back to his chest, and slapped the fat of both thighs like we were nineteen again. I wished I could shore up gratitude for having had him in my life all those years, but it was hard to be grateful when collectors rang your phone twenty times a day and your husband came in joyful from a day of mowing lawns up and down the block, barely bothered by the growing space between items in our kitchen cabinets.
We walked on—up the last hill before the lake and down into the curve leading to the trail. This particular access point had been around since our parents’ generation though it had all but grown over. We avoided the new public beach for fear of crowds even on a weekday. It had been years since we’d been there ourselves. Paul walked ahead, using the cooler to push through the brush, holding back branches for me to pass. The lemon-sweet scent of decaying magnolia leaves warmed my temper a little.
As luck would have it, the spot was empty and the old diving board still floated on a small dock about twenty yards from shore. I spread the blanket out directly in front of it so if you came upon the scene it would be like some Italian movie man had planned it out, with the gentle lap of the water a foot from our cooler, the clear yellow of it a right nice contrast to the avocado cotton. Paul sighed, content.
“I don’t know about you,” I said, sliding the lid off the cooler. “But I’m starving.”
“I could eat.”
I started making our plates, but something was wrong. I counted one bologna and two turkey sandwiches. “Someone’s been in this thing.”
“I knew it,” he said, crawling over on his hands and knees. “Let me see.”
“The lemonade ain’t here and we’re missing a bologna sandwich.”
“If that don’t beat all. When could someone have gotten in there? When we were stopped at that crossroads?”
“I don’t think we were there long enough, Paul. You didn’t even have enough time to finish my hair.”
“But it’s so strange. It don’t feel right.”
“It’s just bologna and lemonade. Or rather, lemon drink. Let’s eat so we can swim. We wasted a lot of daylight on the drive up.”
“But—”
“But nothing. Don’t you reckon anyone who was hard up enough to take bologna might as well be left alone? I’m trying here.”
“Okay, okay. You can have two. I’ll be fine with one.”
I pulled the damn thing in two, handing him half.
“Thank you,” he said with a hint of shame.
In between mouthfuls of white bread and poor quality meat, we tried to remember every time we had gone swimming together in the past twenty years. It was a sweet exercise filled with limb-entwined memories of pontoon boats and freckles, of cliffside leaps, salt spray, and bathing suits lost in the surf, of our black lab Dolly swimming out to the dock now in our eyeline again. It was peculiar to recall the temperature variations from all those bodies of water we’d waded in, but the strangest things occur to you when you start comparing all the thousand times you’ve experienced one thing. The thousand times I’ve walked past Paul in the morning. The thousand ways his face and mine have changed. The ten thousand ways I’ve put off this bill for that. The way it’s all basically the same except for little details like the coolness of the water. Drowsiness set in and before my mind had a chance to turn again, I stood up, holding out both hands to Paul. “Let’s go,” I said. And so, we swam out to the diving board.
Pushing ourselves up was more difficult than it used to be, but we managed with only a few knee-cracks and shoulder spasms. “Who’s first?” he asked.
“Go ahead. I need to catch my breath.”
He was careful in his ascent, keeping both hands on the rails. Once atop, he bounced, but hesitated long enough to shield his eyes from the sun. “Someone’s out there,” he said. “And he seems to be headed straight for our stuff.”
“What should we do?”
“Hell, Imogene. Can’t say as I know.”
“Go on and jump. We can’t get there before he takes anything, if that’s what he wants.”
“I suppose that’s true,” he said, without taking his eyes from shore.
His bounce turned to a quick jump and he dove without flourish.
When he resurfaced, he blew water from his nose. “That hurt worse than I remember. Your turn.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t.”
“You’ll be okay. I’m here.”
I’d like to say I was graceful, but the way I hit the water would purple my right side for a month. But Paul told the truth—he was there. He helped me get back by wrapping my arms around his neck and dog paddling toward shore. Once we reached shallow water, he yelled for the person rummaging in our cooler. Paul was more surprised to see it was Junior than I was.
“Junior, if there’s any ice left, bag it up so we can put it on Mrs. Pressley’s ribs.”
“It’s all melted.”
“You took our sandwich?”
“Yeah.”
“What are—how did—”
“I thought if I could sneak out here with y’all, maybe I could get away for good.”
“You’re running away?” I asked.
“Never mind,” Paul said. “We’re glad you’re here. Let’s pour some of that cool water in the garbage bag. You hold it open, Junior.”
He held the bag as wide as he could, but Paul’s pour was off and most of the water hit the ground, me, and the blanket. “You couldn’t have done that away from the blanket?”
“Oh God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He held the bag and its piddling contents, unsure of what to do next.
“Can’t we put lake water in the bag?”
“It’s too warm.”
“Call off the cavalry,” I said. “Give me a little while to adjust to the pain, then we’ll pack up and start trying to find our way home.” Junior flinched at the idea of going home. It took half an hour or more, but the two of them finally calmed down enough when Junior mentioned a scouting mission for medical supplies. I lay there on the hard ground, drying out and wishing (for the thousandth time) I could do it all different. Every last thing.
They returned with a walking stick and informed me that they would be wrapping my torso with the blanket. I looked ridiculous, but I had to admit once they finished spooling the thing around me it did offer some relief. It took more than an hour for us to reach the road. Paul and Junior stuck their thumbs out, hopeful and drunk on adventure.
“You’re kidding. This is your plan?”
“No choice.”
And as I propped myself up on the stick, trying to maintain balance so I didn’t wind up like a turtle on my back, I knew they were right. A family in a VW bus stopped for us right before dusk. The two kids climbed to the back row, letting the weirdos from the street, as they referred to us, have the middle.
“Thank you for giving us a ride,” I said.
They asked what had happened and told us they were driving their kids across the country. They’d been driving for weeks. The youngsters might not appreciate the scenery and wildlife and road time now, but they would one day.
“I’m not so sure,” the woman said, catching my eyes in the rearview. “You know what I mean?”
She had the look of a woman who’d been cooped up for too long. She wiped sweat from her neck with a handkerchief. This was a woman who’d rather leave the kids with her parents, jet off to Paris, and sit for portraits. She was too thin-boned and lipsticked to have packed trail mix and car games, to sing songs with the family, or eat burnt hot dogs on sticks. I felt like she could disintegrate gazing at her own reflection. It didn’t take her long to turn away when she realized the boy must not be mine. The coloring was off. Bone structure, too.
Junior lay his head on my lap as best he could. I had more heft than usual thanks to the blanket. I petted his head, rapt by the texture of his forehead, his hair. It took the better part of the ride, but eventually he closed his eyes and drifted off. It wasn’t all I would lose in the coming months that got me. Not the big armchairs. Not the thousand tulip bulbs I’d planted over a lifetime. Not the sunken den we added on in the boom years. Not even the comfort of Paul splayed out on his bed. It was the sight of Junior’s face softened by sleep that made the inevitable move more than I could bear.
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Beth Gilstrap is the winner of the 2019 Women’s Prose Prize from Red Hen Press for Deadheading & Other Stories. She is also the author of I Am Barbarella: Stories (2015) from Twelve Winters Press. Her work has been selected as Longform.org’s “Fiction Pick of the Week” and chosen by Dan Chaon for inclusion in the Best Microfiction Anthology 2019. She holds an MFA from Chatham University. Her stories, essays, and hybrids have appeared in Ninth Letter, The Minnesota Review, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Stream Lit, and Wigleaf, among others. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with a house full of critters.