Black Maps Read online

  I slammed the car door and started up the walk. Lenny was playing “In the Mood” so loud I knew he was in bad shape. Mrs. McDougal across the street had probably already called the police. I walked up the steps and put the key in the lock. Then I just stood there a moment, looking at the peeling siding Lenny had promised to scrape and paint, the broken shutters, the overgrown shrubs. Finally, I turned the key and stepped in. The living room was warm, all the lights on. I didn’t see Lenny anywhere.

  “Turn that thing down,” I yelled.

  Lenny came out of the kitchen then, wearing a blue apron that was dusty with flour. His hands were white too and he held them out in front of him, like Frankenstein in the movies.

  “Gloria,” he said. “You’re home.”

  “Lenny,” I said. “You’re drunk.”

  He wiped his hands on a corner of the apron, then turned down the record player. “No, I’m not,” he said. “I’m plastered.” Then he went back into the kitchen. After a second, I heard him kneading dough on the squeaky table. It was midnight, and he was baking bread. I set my purse on the end table and sat down on the old flowered loveseat. For a second, I thought of just blurting it out: I don’t love you. I don’t want to marry you. But I decided to wait, to build up to it so he wouldn’t take it so hard.

  In a few minutes, Lenny came out of the kitchen, still wearing his apron, and sat down in the La-Z-Boy next to the loveseat. I could hear the timer ticking away in the kitchen. He always lets the bread rise three times, thirty minutes a time. That meant it’d be at least an hour, maybe two, before he was done baking. I saw him sitting in the La-Z-Boy, waiting to take his bread out of the oven, while I slept in the bedroom alone, and I suddenly felt so sorry for him I thought I’d wait until tomorrow to tell him. But I knew I couldn’t. I couldn’t wait even one more night.

  Doris Day was singing “Sentimental Journey” now. “What music,” Lenny said, nodding toward the record player. “You can just see all the people dancing. The whole country dancing.” He looked at me, woozy, and blinked his eyelids hard. “I’m making bread,” he said.

  “I know,” I answered, and tried to smile.

  He looked away then and sighed. “I thought you’d never get home,” he said. “The time, it’s been moving so slow tonight.”

  I didn’t say anything. Lenny sighed again, then tapped a Winston out of the pack on the end table and lit it. Taking a long drag, he leaned his head back and exhaled slowly. Lately, his rash had started up his neck, and I wondered if one day it’d cover his face. I imagined his face raw and burned-looking, and I shivered.

  Without looking at me, he said, “Hear anything interesting at work?”

  For some time now, all we talked about was other people’s conversations. It was easier than having our own. Sometimes, when I hadn’t overheard anything interesting, I made something up, just to have something to talk about. But that night I didn’t have to make anything up. I told him about the clay-eaters, just like I heard it, only I said it was two businessmen from Memphis who told me about them. Somehow, telling the story exhausted me. I wanted to go to bed and sleep.

  “Clay?” he said, blowing out a stream of smoke. “Actual clay?”

  “That’s right. River clay. They dig it up right out of the banks of the Ohio.”

  Lenny threw his head back like a wolf and laughed. Then he began to sing. “Drifting with the current down a moonlit stream, While above the Heavens in their glory gleam…” He laughed again, softer this time. “The beautiful Ohio,” he said, shaking his head. Then, his voice suddenly quiet, almost a whisper, he added, “Gloria, you’re killing me. Don’t you know that?”

  I got up.

  “Where are you going?” Lenny asked.

  “I need a drink. I’ll be right back.”

  Switching on the kitchen light, I saw the crockery bowl on the table, a dishtowel over it and, beside it, the timer, ticking hard and fast like my heart. I opened the cupboard where we kept the liquor and took down a bottle of Evan Williams and poured myself half a tumbler, then filled it with cold water from the tap. I took a couple of long swallows there at the sink, and felt my insides burn.

  “Gloria,” Lenny called.

  “Just a minute,” I yelled back. I took a long, deep drink, then started back out to tell him it was all over.

  Lenny’s head was slumped down over his chest and his eyes were closed, so for a second I thought he’d passed out and I could go to sleep in peace. But then he lifted his head and, eyes still closed, said, “Blue Moon.” He pointed to the stereo. “People fell in love dancing to that song.”

  I had to say something, but I didn’t know what. For weeks I’d been trying to decide what I’d say—I wanted it to be something gentle but firm, affectionate but cool—but I could never concentrate enough to get the words right. My mind always slipped ahead to the morning after, when I’d wake up alone and sit at the kitchen table drinking coffee and watching the sparrows play at the feeder outside the window. I saw myself sitting there, the room warm with sunlight, the birds making their quiet music, and I knew I wanted that moment more than anything.

  I sat back on the loveseat and took another burning swallow of bourbon.

  “Lenny,” I finally said. But then I found I didn’t have any other words.

  “What?” Lenny turned to look at me. He was chewing on his mustache.

  I took another drink. “Nothing,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “You were going to say something.”

  “I’ve forgotten,” I said. “It’ll come to me later.”

  Lenny stood up then, swaying a little. He looked at me a moment, like he was about to say something, but he bit his lip and sat back down.

  “Gloria,” he whispered. “Tell me.”

  I looked down at my lap. Finally, I said, “I want to have a talk with you.” It was a simple sentence, but after I said it, I was out of breath.

  Lenny looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “I’d like us to have a baby,” he said. “I want us to be a family. I want to do all the things families do. I want to push our baby down the aisles of Safeway in a shopping cart. Get Christmas cards made from a photograph. Sit in the barbershop while he gets his hair cut. And every year on his birthday draw a line on the doorjamb to show how much he’s grown.” He looked back at me. “After we die, there’ll be nothing left of either of us.”

  That was the one way Lenny was like Roy—he wanted a baby too. I’d told him time and again that I was too old but he never listened. It wasn’t that I didn’t want a baby. I’d wanted to have one with Roy, but he had something wrong with him. His sperm count was okay, Dr. Phelan said, but for some reason they moved too slow. Dr. Phelan even removed a varicose vein from his testicle, figuring it was making his sperm too hot to move fast enough. But that didn’t do anything either. Every now and then I wonder if he ever got that dropout pregnant. Sometimes I hope he did, and sometimes I don’t.

  I looked at Lenny, his sad face. “We talked about this before,” I said.

  Lenny stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. “No, we haven’t. Not really. I’ve talked, but you haven’t.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Lenny looked at me. “Just what are you so scared of?”

  I started to get up. “Maybe we should talk about this when you’re not drunk.”

  “I’m not drunk,” he said, taking my arm.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Okay, so I’m drunk. What’s your excuse?”

  “Please,” I said, but I wasn’t sure what I was begging for.

  “Okay,” Lenny said and let go of my arm. “Just sit down. I won’t say anything more about a baby.”

  I sat down. The stereo was playing “Chattanooga Choo-Choo.”

  “Can we turn that thing off?” I said. “Can’t we just sit here in quiet?”

  Lenny got up and switched it off. Then he turned to face me. “I was hoping,” he said, then closed his eyes and swallowed hard, “I was ho
ping we’d do some dancing tonight. I was hoping this would be the night. I even bought some champagne and”—he gestured toward the kitchen—“I’m baking bread.”

  He looked so sad standing there that I closed my eyes, and for some reason I found myself thinking back to a day years ago when I was still in high school, long before I’d even met Roy. I was sitting in a dark classroom staring at the slides Mr. Moffett had taken that summer in Spain. There were castles on high cliffs, cathedrals, goatherds leading their flocks beside mountain roads, white houses with red tile roofs, markets full of tapestries, sheep’s heads, fish, and pots, and dancers in red and black whirling under colored lights—so many amazing and beautiful things. I remembered imagining myself standing on a castle parapet, looking out over hills of olive trees, the wind whipping my hair off my forehead. Someday, I vowed, I’d go there. Even the names Mr. Moffett recited in the darkness made me ache to be there: Salamanca. Jaen. Torremolinos.

  I opened my eyes and looked at Lenny. “I don’t know what to say to you,” I said. “I really don’t.”

  “I’m going to get a job,” Lenny said. “Really, I am. I’ve decided to go into refrigeration. Appliance work. I could take a couple of courses. There’re lots of jobs. Small engine repair. Things are breaking down everywhere and I could fix them.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I took another swallow of the bourbon. “Don’t make me say it,” I said.

  “Okay,” he answered. “Let’s talk about something else. Let’s talk about Roy and his little sweetheart, okay? What do you think they’re doing right now?”

  “Lenny,” I said. “Stop.”

  “Do you think maybe they’re dancing and drinking champagne and—”

  “Please stop,” I said.

  “Stop what?” he said, swaying before me. “Breathing?”

  “Don’t you talk to me like that,” I said, and shook my finger at him. Then I felt foolish, like a schoolteacher scolding a little child.

  Lenny hung his head. “Gloria,” he said. Just my name, nothing else.

  “It’s late,” I started to say.

  Lenny looked up then. His face was wet. “Don’t leave me,” he said.

  The day Roy left, I was already late for work but I went into the kitchen where he was packing and reminded him to take some silverware or some of the beer glasses he liked. He was just piling things into a Jack Daniels box. I remember telling him he should wrap the glasses with some newspaper; that way they wouldn’t break. And all the time I’d wanted to say, Please don’t go.

  I said yes. He held me against him, and I said, “Your apron…the flour,” but he said, “It doesn’t matter” and kissed me. Then he said, “Let’s take the champagne to bed.” I said, “But the bread…” and he said, “Let it keep rising.”

  In bed, he started to touch me. I wanted to say no, but I couldn’t. I had already said yes. Such a simple word, almost a hiss. I wanted to say I was too tired, too…something, but I didn’t dare, not now. I let him take my panties off, and I let him enter me bare, without a rubber, for the first time.

  “I love you,” he was saying, as he rocked on top of me. I thought about all those nights Roy and I tried to make a child, all those nights he came in me again and again. And I thought of the bread rising in the kitchen, rising over the lip of the crockery bowl, huge, and then Lenny kissed me and I tasted smoke and beer in his mustache and I thought The smell of coffee and sunlight. The quiet music of the sparrows. Torremolinos.

  And suddenly I felt bloated, not with child, but with clay, and I saw myself lying there, on the banks of the beautiful Ohio, my mouth and hands smeared with clay. I shut my eyes on that vision, and Lenny arched over me, holding himself at arms’ length above me, and moved in me faster and faster until finally he came. “Oh,” he said then, and it could have been a word in a foreign language: I didn’t know what it meant, whether happiness or discovery or pain or surprise. And then he lowered his weight down on me.

  THE BIGS

  I am a baseball player. I come here from the Dominican Republic the home of Juan Marichal because baseball can’t make you the same much of money in the Dominican League. That is why I live in the U S of A and play baseball for the Arkansas Travelers which are a team in the Texas League but live in Arkansas. The Arkansas Travelers are a team which is called a Double A team, meaning not so good as Triple A or Major Leagues—what everybody call The Bigs. Everybody here want to make it to The Bigs. There is no Bigs in the Dominican Republic and that is why I am living here so miserable and now that my family leave me I am more miserable ever than before. The only time I smile is after when I win a big game or if I forget for some minute and think my little Angelita is waiting at home for me to kiss her for goodnight. But tonight I am more miserable than I think a dead man because Coach he suspend me off the team and all because they leave me.

  I love baseball. I love to pitch the ball. When I am the pitcher everybody depend of me, if I just stand there and hold the ball nobody do nothing. When I throw the ball everything happen. It is a good feeling but not the same as love which is something I have too much of I think. My heart it feel like it is in shreds each time when I think about Angelita and her black braids. And Pilar. I can not even say her name now without wanting to cry. Pilar is so beautiful, sometimes when I was in her I could not breathe right. When I think about her gone and Angelita with her I want to be on the mound throwing hard like Juan Marichal who come from Santo Domingo the same like me. I am a starter so I pitch the ball each four days, no more, and the rest of the time it go by so slow. I want I could pitch the ball each night if I will not tear my shoulder which is what I do at St. Peterburg my year of being a rookie when I try to show off I have stuff. Now my shoulder it hurt when I think about Pilar and Angelita so I try not to think about them when I am pitching the ball. But most of the time it is of no use because I think about them anyway. That is why I get in such big trouble tonight, I think of them when I should be thinking curve ball or slider, down or up.

  The nights they are the most bad. I have dreams. Jackie say I grind my teeth when my dreams get so bad and when I wake up I am all wet with sweating and scared. Jackie try to make me all right then but it never work. She hug me and kiss me and say it only is a dream. Then I tell her what I dream and she say what it mean like a curandera. Some times I dream Pilar is opening her legs for Antonio who was sent back to Santo Domingo for weak field and no hit. Other times I dream I am pitching the ball when Angelita run out on the field with her arms reaching out for me but I don’t see her before it is too late and I have already throw the ball and it hit her in the face and make her be dead. To me the dreams mean I love Pilar and Angelita so much my heart want to die. Twice I almost buy a gun and shoot my head. But Jackie say a gun is dumb, she say my dreams mean I should get married again and show Pilar some thing or two. She tell me to stop being a Mr. Sadface. That’s what she call me when she try to make me smile. I know she want to marry with me by these signs but I don’t want to marry with her, I want her to go away and leave me to be alone.

  Pilar take Angelita back to the Dominican Republic because she don’t care about The Bigs. She don’t care about Juan Marichal or the Hall of Fame or driving a car with electric windows. She miss her mama and papa and the pacaya grove in her yard in Santo Domingo. When she look at the photographs of home that was when she would start crying and then a minute later yell at me for taking her to the U S of A. She don’t understand English so good and no one except Antonio who play second base like a hole in his glove also speak Spanish. And she don’t understand baseball too. To her it make no sense, to her it is crazy to pitch a ball that no one can hit it. She say to watch a game if no one hit the ball is no fun so I should make the batter to hit some home runs. She say Why you keep everybody from having fun, you think the fans pay so much of money to see pop-ups. She is a woman and she think like a woman. S
till I did not suspect her to leave me. The trouble I am in tonight is all because she leave me. I try to tell Coach so he understand but still he suspend me off the team maybe for good. He have a wife who never leave and no kids.

  The day Pilar go I pitch six and two-third no-score innings against the Shreveport Captains which are a team too in the Texas League, East Division. Then my arm it get sore and Coach say to get a shower and ice my shoulder up. I think now my shoulder ache because Pilar and Angelita are going that same minute. It was a sign but I don’t see it then because I am wondering if Parisi will lose my win for me like usual, the rag arm. But this time he is lucky and I don’t lose my win but because I am worrying so hard I miss the sign. God give all of us signs like a manager so we know what He want us to do. But now I don’t know what to do. I don’t see any signs. I think maybe God is mad with me and I am scared.

  The night Pilar and Angelita leave I am halfway to almost home when all of a sudden I know what my sore arm mean and I drive fast with my foot down on the floor and run through red lights one after each other and squeal into the parking lot like a madman. I go up the curb and almost into the swimming pool next by the apartment manager’s office I am so much scared they have left me. And when I open the door Pilar and Angelita are gone and I can not find them everywhere. I look in the kitchen and living room and both bedrooms even behind the shower curtain but they are so gone I can feel how they are not there. I sit down on the bathroom floor and look at the shower curtain which Pilar buy when Angelita pull the other one down. She buy it because there is parrots on it like in our country and palm trees. I am so much sad I want to hold this curtain against me tight.