The idea that these days had been taken from her struck me as vile. It was a swallow of curdled milk. It was indecent.
There was no justification for the loss of her memories and understanding, no defense the universe could offer for the corruption of her mind. She had loved me, even if I’d been too witless to know it or value it. Anyone who looked at these pictures could see she loved me, that I delighted her somehow, in spite of my fat cheeks, vacant stare, and tendency to eat in a way that smeared food all down my bad T-shirts. In spite of how I thoughtlessly accepted her attention and affection as my due. And now it was all melting away, every birthday party, every BBQ, every plucked ripe peach. She was being erased a little at a time by a cancer that fed not on her flesh but on her inner life, on her private store of happiness. The thought made me want to fling the photo album at a wall. It made me feel like crying.
Instead I swiped at the water in my eyes and flipped to the next page—and made a sound of surprise at what I found there.
When I had glanced into the back of the Phoenician’s car, I’d seen a photo of a bodybuilder, a darkly tanned youth in an orange tank top, perched on the hood of a Trans Am. Some part of me had recognized him—had known I’d seen him before—even though I couldn’t place him or guess where we’d crossed paths. And here he was again, in my own photo album.
He held two straight-backed chairs over his head, one in each hand, gripping each by a wooden leg. I sat in one, hollering in what looked like joyous terror. I was in a damp swimsuit, jewels of water glittering on my fat-boy boobs. Shelly Beukes sat in the other, gripping the seat with both hands, laughing with her head tipped back slightly. In this photograph the big guy was dressed not in a tank top but in navy whites. He grinned wolfishly beneath his Tom Selleck mustache. And—look—even the Trans Am was there. I could just see the rear end of it, sitting in the driveway, visible around one corner of Shelly’s house.
“Who the hell are you?” I whispered.
I was talking to myself and didn’t expect an answer, but my father said, “Who?”
He stood in the doorway to the kitchen, wearing a single oven mitt. I wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing there, watching me.
“Guy with the muscles,” I said, gesturing at a picture he couldn’t see from halfway across the room.
He wandered over, craned his neck for a look. “Oh. That jackass. Shelly’s boy. Sinbad? Achilles? Something like that. That’s the day before he shipped out to the Red Sea. Shelly had a going-away barbecue at her house. She made a cake looked like a battleship and was almost as big. We brought home the leftovers, and you and I ate battleship for breakfast all week.”
I remembered that cake: a three-dimensional aircraft carrier (not a battleship), churning up waves of blue-white frosting. I also remembered, faintly, that Shelly had told me that the party was a graduation party—for me! I had just finished the third grade. What a Shelly Beukes thing to do: tell a lonely little kid that a party was all about him, when it had nothing to do with him at all.
“He doesn’t look so bad,” I said. It bothered me, my dad calling him a jackass. It seemed like an offhand criticism of Shelly herself, and I wasn’t in the mood.
“Oh, you loved him. He was Larry’s boy through and through. Competed in bodybuilding contests, liked to show off with his muscle-boy tricks. Pick up one end of a car with his dick or whatever. You used to think he was the Incredible Hulk. I remember that stunt. Picking both of you up at the same time and walking around with you while you balanced on those chairs. I was afraid he’d drop Shelly on her head and I’d have to find a new babysitter. Or he’d drop you and I’d have to find a new kid to eat my Panama Thrill. Come on. Food’s done. Let’s tuck in.”
We sat catty-corner to each other at the dinner table with the Battle of Stalingrad on our plates. I wasn’t hungry and was surprised when I found myself using a roll to mop up the last of the gravy. I moved my bread around and around, smearing juice and thinking of all those photo albums in the back of the Phoenician’s car. Thinking of the picture in my shirt pocket that showed something it couldn’t possibly show. An idea was developing, not unlike a Polaroid, swimming slowly, inevitably, into clarity.
In a distant, artificially calm voice, I said, “I saw Mrs. Beukes today.”
“Oh, yeah?” My father gave me a thoughtful glance, and then asked, in a mild tone that was as artificial as mine, “How’d she look?”
“She was lost. I walked her home.”
“I’m glad. I wouldn’t have expected you to do anything different.”
I told him about finding Shelly in the street and how she thought she was supposed to work today and how she wouldn’t say my name because she didn’t know it. I told him about Larry Beukes swerving into the driveway in a panic, how he’d been scared to death she might go wandering into traffic or wind up lost for good.
“He gave me money for bringing her home. I didn’t want to take it, but he made me.”
I didn’t think my dad would like that, and a part of me expected—was maybe even hoping—to be shamed. But instead he got up for the Panama Thrill and said, over his shoulder, “Good.”
“It is?”
He set down the Jell-O, wobbling under four inches of sherbet-colored whipped cream, and began to scoop globs of it into bowls.
“Sure. Paying you is the way a man like Lawrence Beukes makes himself feel that he’s back in control. He’s not a man who lost his senile wife because he’s too old to see to her needs himself. He’s a man who knows how to pay someone to solve a problem.”
“He asked if I’d help out sometimes. If I’d . . . you know, come by and sit with her when he has to go out. For groceries or whatever.”
My dad paused with a spoonful of Panama Thrill at his lips. “I’m glad. You’re good to help out. I know you loved that old lady.”
Funny, huh? My father had known I loved Shelly Beukes, something I hadn’t known myself until only a few minutes before.
“Anything else happen this morning?” he asked.
My thumb crept to my shirt pocket, ran along the edge of the Polaroid (Solarid?) there. I’d been touching it off and on in a nervous, restless, helpless way ever since getting home. I considered saying something about the Phoenician and the clash at the Mobil mini-mart, but I didn’t know how to bring such a thing up without sounding like a rattled little kid.
And then there was that idea creeping around the edge of my awareness, a thought I was studiously trying to ignore. I didn’t want to go anywhere near that idea, and if I started talking about the Phoenician, I wouldn’t be able to avoid it.
So I didn’t say anything about the run-in at the gas station. Instead I said, “I’m almost done working on the party gun.”
“Outstanding. It’ll be easy to celebrate when you’re finished. All you have to do is pull the trigger.” He got up and carried our plates to the sink. “Mike?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t get too down if Shelly doesn’t know you or says things that don’t make sense.”