“Is JJ the one?”
“Of course not. Oh dear god. Of course not.” What a sad piece of man Henry turned out to be, all hangdog and dirty, a pleading beggar in front of her. She did feel sorry for him against her better judgment, but that’s all she could feel. Her pity was almost the most accessible, most enduring emotion she could ever call up for Henry. She’d never liked him, never wanted to get to know him, and surely never understood him. He was a handsome man, a man with a job and few dollars, and nothing but his own warped mind holding him back. But always sad. If a man with most anything couldn’t find happiness, who else had a chance?
“See what I’m talking about. I just said you are weak and all you can think about is what I think about JJ. You need to work on yourself. Get yourself together. I just hope you will do right by your child. That’s the main thing. Children have to have somebody expecting them to do better. If you don’t expect much you won’t get much. Can you understand that?”
Sylvia was embarrassed, like she’d done something wrong. If she could have found a way to love weak-ass Henry, maybe she could have saved Ava some heartache. A sob almost escaped from her chest as she continued to search for food.
“I won’t see you much from now on.”
“Take care of your child. Nothing else matters now. You hear me?”
“You’ve never cared about me, Sylvia. I don’t blame you. I didn’t look like much. I still don’t. I’m sorry you have to be in all this.”
“You made your own bed, Henry. Just don’t ruin your life.”
“You are a good woman. You should know that. You made a good woman. I probably won’t see you anymore. How long have you been waiting for me to say that?” Henry sighed. “I’ll get my stuff some other day or maybe never. I don’t care about it. I hope you make it all right,” Henry said as he opened the front door to leave. “You take care.”
The figure Henry cut in the world was of a confident man, so handsome, so sure in his body, a natural coolness that made him look like he belonged anywhere. A man like that you expected to be haughty, a player with a player’s mind. That he was an insecure fool didn’t make Sylvia like him better. It should have, but somehow his most significant failing was failing to be what he seemed.
Sylvia rushed to the doorway. “Don’t ruin your life, Henry. You hear me?”
“I ruin everything, Sylvia. You know that.”
38
For a few panicky seconds when she awoke that morning Ava was unsure where she was. Death is an empty house hollow and echoing. She quickly calmed herself and sat up from Jay’s bed while the morning still crackled awake, the air cool like an exhalation on her skin. She heard the manic whir of a lathe in the back of her brain that meant Jay was already building something in his workshop. She’d fumbled for her jeans, slid her cool, bare feet into tennis shoes. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She considered never speaking another word. It was too early to be awake and stirring, but Ava walked outside to the front of Jay’s house into the yard, bald except for the dandelions and wild onions that had already taken root. Before her was the kind of vista you might see in a romantic movie. A stately house surrounded by tall pines at the top of a mountain. In the movie, sheets would hang from a clothesline and billow like sails in the breeze. The white girl in the scene would walk between the sheets, her shift dress clinging to her thin frame with the blustery wind, her hair flapping behind her, like at any moment she might take flight. Ava stepped into the yard. In two steps her shoes were covered with a thick sole of red mud. She cried at the sight of her ruined shoes. Couldn’t she have one moment safe from the threat of ruin? Ava then cried because the damn shoes made her cry in the first place. After her brief commune with nature she had planned to get back in the bed and stay there all day, but her mother called. Henry was on his way to her.
Henry had parked far away from the door and from their cars, like he hadn’t wanted to intrude. He blew the car horn and turned off the engine. He’d considered driving to Pores Knob to the lookout, maybe walk one of the trails, maybe get lost somewhere in the woods. He’d been to the mountain only once before on a church trip, but the view, the highest in the Brushies had made him feel strangely powerful like he was in on something few other people knew. Henry took out a coin and let it roll on his knuckles, back into his palm and onto his knuckles, one to the other again and again. Though he had wanted to be a magician when he was a kid, even checked out books from the public library, this was the only trick he’d learned. The idea of being in front of an audience, begging for their approval, trying to make them forget that he was an ordinary man unable to harness even the most ordinary powers of the universe, made him self-conscious and ashamed. Nobody wanted to watch a shamed magician.
Henry’s gauntness made him look shifty, like he could easily dart in and out of places. He was dirty and unkempt, like he had not seen himself for days, like he’d turned out to be a person nobody gave a damn about. Henry got out of his car and leaned against the passenger’s side door. Ava stepped out of the house with Jay right behind her.
“Did your mama tell you I was coming?”
“You know she did, Henry. What are you doing here?” Ava said.
“I guess she figured,” Henry said. “I didn’t tell her I was coming here.”
“What do you want from me? I don’t want to see your face.”
“I just wanted to talk to you, Ava. I need to talk to you a minute, one minute. That’s all I ask.”
“But I don’t want to talk to you, Henry. Did you ever consider that? I get a say in this and I say no. Not right now and not ever.”
“Will you get in the car with me? One minute. I swear to God and then I’ll leave you alone.”
“How I got stuck with you, I’ll never know. I don’t want to talk to you. You need to hear me, Henry. I know all you have to say. I’m tired and I’m tired of you. I’m tired of your depression and your problems. And then on top of all that you betray me. Do you think I owe you? Don’t be a dick all your life. People get tired of that.” Ava turned to go back into the house.
“I’m going through a slump, Ava. This is not me.”
“You better get some help,” Ava said.
“I should have told you about Zeke, Ava. Things got out of control.”
“You killed me!” Ava screamed. “But what do you care? Everything is always about you.”
“You’ve been in a doctor’s office for the past eight years and everything is about me? Is that what you’re saying, Ava?”