Corpus Christi Read online

  And not unexpectedly he heard Max—the memory of his voice still strong and clear, like a good radio signal. They could’ve been sitting in the Shamrock kitchen, the boy’s elbows propped on the newly laid-in countertop, an evening when they studied for the merit badge test. He was eight, fawn-skinned and sharp-cheeked like Nora, fascinated by windmills and in the habit of climbing into their bed after they’d gone to sleep. Recently he’d been prone to lying, was in fact currently grounded for it. The restriction opened up the after-supper hours to tie knots and practice splinting broken limbs and to review the history of the Karankawa Indians, the first inhabitants of South Texas: Members of the tribe stood over six feet tall, wore no clothes and were known cannibals; they slept on dried palms, tattooed themselves from head to foot and smeared the inside of their leaky pottery with asphaltum that had washed ashore. Sonny asked Max for the translation of the tribe’s name.

  The boy filled his cheeks with air, pouting, stalling, then he exhaled. He said, “Waterwalkers.”

  “No,” Sonny said. “Dog-raisers.”

  “But also Waterwalkers,” he said. “They can also be called Waterwalkers.”

  At Janice’s, the drill twisted again, and Nora said, “Guess you didn’t need help.”

  Her voice made him feel cornered, ashamed. She had changed into a loose sweater, a fisherman’s hat and old sneakers. He’d liked her in the scoop neck and wished she hadn’t taken it off, though maybe that was precisely why she had.

  “Small potatoes,” he said. It was not something he’d said before, and he had no idea where it had come from. His heart was still pumping hard. His face felt raddled, his mind dull; he regretted that he hadn’t shaved before work, that he’d worn such a wrinkled shirt.

  “That one would’ve been a bugger,” he said.

  The front of the two-story house across the street was more glass than brick.

  “Architects,” she said. “Remember? The Christmas party.”

  “That’s all a blur for me. The old noggin mixes things up lately.”

  “I doubt that. But if you’re serious, at least you held out longer than I did.”

  He returned to the plywood, cranking down already tight screws. He wanted to shy away from solemn conversations.

  “The first storm of the season, in August, and it just turned Category Four.”

  “Welcome home,” he said, but the words sounded laden, riven with an inappropriate, boastful enthusiasm. He said, “We’ll get some wind, but she’ll spare us. There’ll be a good haul of shrimp behind the weather.”

  “Alicia. They always pick pretty names for the first ones.”

  She had believed this since he’d known her and had always cited the first storms—Ayla, Antonio, Amelia—to evidence her point. That she still observed it pleased him.

  A kettle whistled inside Janice’s kitchen, a room where he’d carved beef for holidays, Super Bowls, the funeral. The night of the architects’ party, he’d crossed the street for more gin and spied Janice bent over the butcher-block table, an architect biting her neck and groping her breasts.

  A stiff breeze riffled the palms near the street. Across Ocean Drive, the sky faded downward by degrees, violet to lavender to oyster silver, until at last it softened into a seam of sallow light on the horizon.

  Nora said, “I boiled water. I thought some tea might take our mind off things.”

  ONCE, HE’D SEEN JANICE IN THE CLUBHOUSE OF Oso Municipal Golf Course. She’d played nine holes with partners from the law firm and sat at the bar drinking screwdrivers. Raking her fingers through her hair and leaning back to expel plumes of smoke, she resembled Nora. The men around her burst into laughter at a joke she made while fishing through her purse. One of them said, “That is a hole in one,” as she started for the door. Sonny thought he’d escaped her, then she shuffled over to his booth. He was finishing a Reuben—gratis, like his rounds, because he maintained the course’s carts and sprinklers on weekends—and he was reading about Karankawas.

  He said, “These fellas used to slather themselves with mud and shark grease.”

  “Injun Old Spice,” said Janice. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her lips slow.

  “Repelled mosquitoes,” he said. “They also talked— communicated—with their mouths closed.”

  “So do those lawyers.” She pointed at them with her chin.

  Her hair was cropped, highlighted white and gold. Not a style Nora would ever wear, so having confused the resemblance irritated him. He’d intended to carry on about the Karankawas, explain how they would tie lanterns to a mule’s neck and lead it in circles on darkened beaches to attract vessels at sea. A captain would read the distant light as a buoy and steer his boat toward the harbor he assumed it marked. By the time he realized his mistake, he’d have struck the outer sandbar and the naked Indians would emerge with spears. But now all of that seemed trivial and Sonny explained nothing. He heard himself say, “I haven’t gotten a word in a while.”

  Immediately he wished he’d not mentioned Nora, and at the same time he wanted Janice to spill what she knew. For a while, he’d received postcards and late-night weepy calls. He told her that he’d not contested when Coastal proposed the early retirement; she said she missed hearing surf reports on the radio, missed good chalupas. He resisted the urge to call her Honey or Love or No-No. They never spoke of Max. Then the communications dwindled, and a blankness set in, as if not reporting his actions to Nora, not even planning to report them, stripped them of any significance. She had lived in Michigan, Arizona, Nebraska and North Dakota, locales untouched by the ocean, and he knew she would never return to Corpus. His days were incurably wide and ponderous, and at night he fought phantom jealousies of other men.

  After the retirement, he’d moved through life like a fugitive, trepidatious and worried that he would meet someone from the old times. If he glimpsed an acquaintance in the supermarket, he lingered in a far-off aisle or abandoned a full cart of groceries and fled to his truck. If someone caught him, at McCoy’s or Oso or a pre-dawn bait stand, his veins surged with dreadful eagerness. Those mundane encounters left him utterly unsure of his identity. No longer a father, no longer a husband. And though he felt on the verge of some old, indolent connection—maybe they felt that, too—he’d erected such sturdy walls, perfected such inconspicuous deflections that the conversations passed without even the slightest revelation. The men told him about the refinery hub, which plants were producing more barrels per day, who had passed on and who was stealing compressors to sell out of his garage; they avoided mention of families. Sonny spoke of golf and fishing; he told them he was living the life he’d always worked for.

  At the clubhouse Janice had run her tongue between her teeth and lips. She was older than Nora by five years, but people had always thought her younger.

  “She’s working at a bakery. In Ann Arbor,” she said. “But that’s yesterday’s sad tune. I want to hear about good old Sonny.”

  He said, “I put one foot in front of the other, like a good soldier.”

  “And the ladies? Still need a stick to keep them away?”

  He washed down the last of his Reuben and wiped his mouth with a napkin. Lois Whipple was at her house, slow-cooking a roast, vacuuming, and curling her hair for tonight. He’d been seeing her for two months, but already he smelled the relationship rotting on the vine.

  “No,” he said. “Mostly they stay away on their own.”

  That same afternoon his shoulder numbed. On the sixth green, he recognized the tingling in his fingers and sharp punches in his chest with an almost grateful, razorlike clarity. In his mind was the image of a fist squeezing an aorta, of a child clenching a water balloon, dreading and courting the moment it bursts. He replaced his putter, sat down and waited.

  GUSTS STARTED BREAKING BRANCHES OFF TREES, Del Mar was pooling. Tallow leaves eddied in tight circles above the gutters. No doubt boats had been pulled from the marina, trailered into parking lots and vacated streets. An early, slatey dusk d
escended. If Sonny waited much longer, he’d be marooned through the storm.

  “I never got my degree,” Nora said cheerfully. “Never transferred my credits. I just enrolled willy-nilly.”

  They sat at the butcher-block table, opposite each other on wicker stools. She had brought in Janice’s grill, the redwood patio furniture and potted plants—azaleas, macho ferns, a bromeliad. The grill smelled of sodden ash. Six jugs of water sat on the counter, beside a new fire extinguisher.

  “Nursing classes mostly,” she said. Her eyes went to the abrasions on his thumb, which immediately started throbbing. “We’re not wired to remember what hurts us. Our bodies have no memory for pain.”

  Then she winked. “Biology 101.”

  “You’d make a keen nurse. Or will make. You’ll finish soon enough.” Then because he couldn’t stop himself, he added, “The college just expanded its nursing program here.”

  “The hospital was the first place I went when I got back. Isn’t that typical? The place still smells the same. What did we used to say?”

  “Iodine and clover.”

  “And that hideous mural, Jesus and the Jackass.”

  A clap of thunder rattled the windows. Nora had always closed her eyes during heavy thunder, as if it saddened her. Opening them, she looked embarrassed. He thought she might be wearing contacts; maybe her vision had deteriorated over the years. How did he look to her now? Had Janice described him from Oso? As a shell, a ghost, a man who’d lost his religion? Or did she afford him that cruelest kindness— he’s holding up fine. Nora had coped with the events one way and he’d done it another. While he burrowed, she fled.

  Yet here they were. The wind straining against the house, rain like pebbles on the plywood. Holding her gaze was impossible, but he stole glances. With one, he noticed the silken line of her neck; with another, the cleft of her lips; another, the creases on her knuckles. Over the years her speech had hastened, her words had acquired the occasional unfamiliar diphthong—she pronounced “about” like a Canadian now. He stayed guarded, flexed against whatever else had changed, ready to absorb how her presence would dissolve his memories, like water on sugar. Still, an anticipation buoyed him. He liked being in the room with her.

  A flow of memory rushed just beneath the waking world, like a frozen-over stream; if he wanted, he could punch through the ice and let the current drag him under. Max had stayed here once, sometimes twice, a month, and his aunt ordered pizza, rented movies Nora wouldn’t allow at home. He’d always adored Janice, behaved best for her. She had opened her house after the funeral—men and women from the refinery had crowded the stark halls. Many of the artifacts Sonny had discussed with relieving, unprecedented thoroughness still lined Janice’s shelves—a framed scrimshaw and wooden giraffe from Kenya, an antique clock from Paris, a bronze statuette from Athens. Commanding one wall was an enormous chiaroscuro of a policeman studying his reflection in a parking meter: Max’s favorite.

  Nora had started talking about the hurricane again. Sonny said, “I think she’ll miss us.”

  She smiled, then peered into her mug. “You’re that same man.”

  “Same old Sonny.”

  “Still chasing storms on your little map?” She laughed a small, breathless laugh. A chinaberry’s soaked limbs whipped the house, a metal trash can rolled across the street. He paced to the front door, daring himself to imagine a more unlikely, more longed-for night. What else, he wondered, do you remember? What else do you want to know? Probably she wondered if he still searched out information on the Karankawas, but she kept such questions to herself. Had they been in his duplex, the various Karankawa books stacked in his breakfast nook and around his bed would have prickled his flesh with shame. She stood behind him briefly, touched his shoulder like a woman in a crowd, then returned to the kitchen. Soupy brown water was inching up the yard. His truck, reversed in, was up to its headlights. The weight of her hand lingered, an imprint in drying cement.

  NORA HADN’T WANTED MAX TO GO TO CAMP Karankawa; he’d never been away from home for anything close to a week, and a tropical storm was brewing in the Gulf. Meteorologists predicted it would turn and head out into the ocean, but she had undertaken a benign, halfhearted campaign to discourage the trip. (“You could go next year,” she said. “You’ll be older.”) Still, she allowed herself to be convinced that if other scouts were going, if the camp opened despite the weather, then he should go, too. He wanted his merit badge, and he’d been grounded for the last week, so the trip must have seemed a beacon. He’s just at Janice’s, she began telling herself, trying to dismantle his absence into manageable increments. But nothing—not work or cleaning or sleep or conversation—could fill the void; nothing could deliver the nights swiftly enough. She tried distracting herself, her mind and body—restaurants with tasseled menus, candlelit baths, ice cream, letter writing, aerobics. Most of the ideas paled, though, and those that didn’t—soaking baths and mint chocolate chip—invigorated rather than relaxed her. Both letters she wrote were to Max.

  So she felt relieved and vindicated, Sonny had described her as “plucky,” when three days later Max called for them to fetch him. His stomach hurt; he didn’t like the beds; mosquitoes bit him at night; he’d pulled a deer tick from his shoulder. The Scoutmaster said Max had a slight fever, but mostly his interest in the camp seemed to have waned after he’d earned his Karankawa patch. Then the homecoming became a double relief because the storm—now Hurricane Fay—had stalled, organized, and was churning back toward the coast. Forecasts anticipated that storm surges would bring tides fifteen feet higher than normal; rain up to an inch every hour. She’d told herself not to throw a fit, not to demand that they drive up and abscond with their embarrassed son, but now that he wanted to come home, she knew she’d been right all along.

  Or so Sonny had imagined.

  The doctors diagnosed the boy with a flu that was making the rounds; Nora had taken him the day after his return. Sonny intended to meet them there, but a fire had started in the heater of the refinery’s No. 4 platformer, then the boss ordered a weekend shutdown because of Fay. When Sonny arrived home that afternoon, Max said, “They didn’t give me a shot.” And Sonny said, “No? Well, we’ll have to go back.”

  That night, the wind squalled. Max was asleep on the couch, his fever rising with the evening. Now that he was home, Nora wanted, ironically, inappropriately, to make love. She liked sex during storms, always had, but Sonny also knew that Max’s being back had returned Nora to herself, and whole again, her body was yearning. And didn’t being parents sweeten intimacy anyway? Didn’t their lovemaking benefit from the pleasure of escaping accumulated responsibility? Rain in her hair, vodka on her lips, the lovely, briny smell of her sweaty neck, they were nearing that moment when they would forget mortgages and storms and summer colds for a few seconds, the moment when they’d be brilliantly freed from their senses, but she paused and said she wanted to move the boy into his room. “Stay here,” she said, the words slow as honey.

  What a time for Sonny to recall the raffle tickets: Max wears a dress shirt, creased slacks, loafers that blister his ankles—church clothes. White sunlight dapples the street, a thick wind stirs leaves as he walks; maybe he rehearses his speech. He carries a notebook to record the donations and raps on neighbors’ doors. The pitch is that someone’s name will be drawn at the end of the fund drive—Frasier Elementary needs money for a new gymnasium, playground equipment, fish tanks and fish—and the winner and two guests will fly, with the top-selling student, to Astro World in Houston. He relays the information with the eager, distracted seriousness of a boy whose feet do not yet touch the linoleum under the chair. He accepts cookies and Cokes, kisses on the cheek and hand-shakes along with the cash; he does not accept checks. He wads the money in his pocket, then proceeds down the block, trying to meet his goal before his father gets home for supper.

  What did Nora’s screaming sound like as Sonny waited in their bed—how to describe that voice that ripped throu
gh the reverie and made his heart knot and turn over in his chest? A barbed, hoarse gasping, like a woman being choked? A wounded wild animal? Are there no words for such afflicted noise?

  Max wouldn’t wake. In Sonny’s memory, time had warped; by the moment he’d kneeled beside the boy, his mind processing the limp arms, the awful surprising weight of an un-muscled, unconscious child, Nora had already been told that ambulances were caught in the weather. She argued irrationally, or hyperrationally, with the dispatcher, but Sonny had slipped into chinos and bolted outside to start the truck, struggling to shut out the sudden overpowering fear that it wouldn’t crank. Despite himself, he noticed the mailbox gaping open; a cedar plank in the fence had sunk inches below the rest; their welcome mat floated down the street. There was the consideration of whether to cover Max with something— a garbage bag?—to shield him from the rain, then the decision instead to take a towel and pat him dry in the truck. After Nora situated herself in the passenger seat, he scooped Max from the couch, keeping him swaddled in the blue afghan, and cradled him out into the storm. Ducking outside, Sonny thought: Breathing, he’s breathing. He did not think to put on his shoes.

  A constant sluice of water, the harsh, labored squeak of worn-down wipers. Wind slammed the truck like waves. Nora talked: Daddy’s getting us there. His foot slipped from the accelerator, his forearms and wrists burned from fighting the steering wheel, water dripped from his hair into his eyes, mouth. Are you cold? Want more blanket? The wiper blades wouldn’t clear fast enough, each sheet of water replaced by another. He drove in second gear, shifted to third, then back to second. Rain skidded over the pavement, made it appear clean, soft. Pretend we’re on a boat, a ferry. The engine bogging, bogging, almost choking out under the water. Remember the ferry? The jumping fish? Remember the Flippers? Sure you do. He deliberated everything at once; what to do if the engine quits; which streets to take; alternate routes if necessary; what to tell the doctor; in what order. You’re the good one. You’re okay. We love you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.