Meredith Lewis, housewife, mother of three, sat watching her second hour of television on a cloudless morning in Virginia. Dressed in a pink robe with matching slippers, she wept furiously. One of those advertisements, from Oxfam or Greenpeace or some organization like that, ran and ran and implored her to help the starving denizens of some small nation in Africa whose name Meredith didn’t even dare try to pronounce.
The situation there seemed tenuous. She couldn’t tell whether the government was a victim of imposed circumstances, whether they were especially corrupt or just poor. The camera panned across another woeful scene, and more buffalo tears welled as Meredith realized how fragile everything was. The most permanent of fixtures was nothing more than a well-built tent, houses shoddily constructed of canvas, threadbare schools with throwaway books, scantily dressed children in scantily fed bodies, and dust everywhere. Everything was so thin she knew that one brave gust of wind could push this tiny civilization into the sea.
But there was hope. Development could come into existence and be sustained, but it wasn’t going to be easy. It was going to take money. It was also going to take fundamental changes in politics, collective amnesia about colonialism, and faith. But the money was what they needed now. Some busty celebrity came in from camera left and made the final plea. Her chest heaved from grief. The situation was as follows: no food—ribs bravely protruding through skin, thirsty flies who, finding no safe ponds, feast on eyes instead—vague, beige bags of rice flown in from the good guys, seven cents could feed seven children, no clean water here, the heat: unbearable, the wind off the vast sands: bitter, the great rivers: gone dry. Simply put: this was not fair. Meredith Lewis, help us, help us help these children. Cry for the horror of this world, for its depravity, for its interminable thirst for entropy. Help us now.
She thought to light a cigarette, didn’t, and chewed her lips instead. She shuffled to the bathroom for a fistful of tissues. Like the rest of the house, this room was modestly appointed, with a lavender ribbon pattern running from baseboard to ceiling. A bowl of potpourri rested by the sink, a medley of dried purple flowers. She took a fluffy towel, also purple, and used it to cover her face. And suddenly the sweetness of the room, its scent, its color—each piece a cute counterpart to another—it all seemed unbearable: a morbid lightness amongst so much horror.
Staring into the mirror, with its gilded frame, she was utterly confused by her appearance. A housewife all cried out in the suburbs. With no mascara, the tears did little to disturb her face. But they made her eyes raw and red and searching. Were her tears for Africa? Or were they for that feeling, deep in her belly, a sad expectancy that any day now she would find lipstick on her husband’s collar, or that he would rush through the door and make straight for the shower, with no explanation save a liar’s grin?
She had not looked at herself for a very long time. She viewed her face shyly at first, then with immodest intent. Mer-edith had medium-length brown hair, which was burnished by the naked light. Her green eyes were as flat and clean as a newly clipped lawn. Her cheekbones were substantive, but not pronounced, which made her appearance delicate and accommodating. She had once been beautiful.
She rarely flattered her appearance with the many products she spotted in other women’s cabinets. Meredith’s morning routine consisted of the same old foundation and blush she’d first bought the night before prom. She had always clung to simplicity like some familiar womb. But she could feel things unwinding, felt some loosening that precedes a clamor.
She’d spent time in Lyon looking at churches when she was a student, and had once even skinny-dipped in Interlaken on a dare. But adventure was a short-lived pursuit; she loved the cozy streets of the West End and the circumstances of home best. She had never wanted to be anything other than a mother, and since she had birthed her boys she thought of nothing else. She sighed, said her name, and turned her head from the mirror.
To her left was a window. Pear trees were heavy, threatening to bear fruit. Local university boys walked by all dressed in khaki, their hair wet, books shoved tightly in their cases. There was no breeze; not a single branch stirred.
Stepping into the living room, she realized that half an hour had passed. Could I have spent that much time in dumb contemplation? Or was it like all other days when tasks ate her time like corrosives? The commercial was still running on the television. The number on the bottom had been there so long she feared it would burn its impression into the screen: a 1, an 800, and a reminder of suffering in some part of the world she would never, ever want to visit.
Meredith gave Harry’s sixteen-digit credit card number with expiration date, was promised future mailings and a picture for her refrigerator of a darling black girl, and in exchange received relief, temporary relief from all this shit.
The rest of her day spread before her. She had watched her boys go to the bus long ago, and recalled their three heads in single file as they walked: capped, small, anxious. Harry had left this morning quietly. He tiptoed in the mornings, his thin black socks barely touching the hardwood floors. Lights flickered on and off in quick succession as he made his way from room to room. And the way he left the bed was an elaborate, silent ceremony, sliding off in an awkward balancing act so that he wouldn’t wake Meredith and her desire.
The house was empty and ready for more of her tears. She decided to leave it. She went to her closet and decided to not wear much. She donned a white sleeveless crochet dress that finished just above her knees. She wore white shoes with modest heels. Around her neck hung a cheap Spiga necklace that had the pin and sprawl appearance of a bolo tie. She got into the station wagon and, as if seeing it for the first time, thought it old-fashioned. She drove north to Monument Avenue without thinking, jerking the stick, switching gears, the mindless radio playing songs she already knew, or thought she did. And soon, without any recollection of her journey, she was at Hash and Mash.
Hash and Mash occupied a low-slung building walled with windows and topped by beaten-up brown shingles. The day’s specials were painted on the glass, inventive and banal interpretations of the diner’s muse: the potato. Meredith walked in and heard the loud crackle of a sizzling grill, smelled the sharp hint of fried onions. Will, the manager, had droopy eyes, which looked at her, then directed their gaze to his right, where an empty booth sat. He never moved, just walked patrons to their seat with those eyes, which always seemed on the verge of bored tears. A waitress came and took her order, never looking up from her pad.
Pennants and posters of athletes lined the walls. All the short order cooks wore paper chef hats and grease-stained white polos. The local radio played music but was occasionally interrupted by news bulletins, Harry’s news bulletins. He had been reading the news for seventeen years now, his voice the city’s voice; he had delivered Richmond new presidents, used car sales, and the impending doom of market indicators. It was the voice that sent them to sleep, and got them up at an hour when everyone was dreaming except for maids and truck drivers. Here was Harry, on the radio, only a voice, a faceless bogeyman, as he was at home.
She could hear that voice and imagine him at his desk, a packet of Pall Malls beside him, reading the wires, breathing down a ribbon microphone, all the better to catch his timbre, which was querulous, slightly frightened at what the AP might send him next. Privy to too much war, too many fires, too many car crashes in the night. All of it had made him tired, just as something was making Meredith tired, making her fear that she wanted something more.
Harry never came to Hash and Mash. It was local, and cheap, and he said he thought it was the sort of place where you might run into someone you’d always hoped you’d never run into again. For Meredith, this made it sweet.
Her hash browns arrived like a mountain of steaming flesh. She wished she was wearing sleeves, so that she might roll them up in order to properly enjoy this meal. She devoured it, nothing but streaks of ketchup left on the plate. She left a five-dollar tip, left Will in his dependable stupor, and drove to Short Pump. To paradise.
For Meredith, the American mall—with its anchor stores and boutiques, its cacophony of sing-along music, its sheer level of harmlessness—had always been a world unto itself. For Meredith, this was the ultimate escape. She bought lots of things. First Bouvier glasses too big for her face. Then a dress covered in sequins that made her look like she was coated in the eyes of sea monsters. And finally she went to the counter for a makeover. She wanted to make over her face—make it new again, wipe out that carrot-shaped birthmark beneath her chin, the slight wrinkle that had erupted on her brow, and the permanence of worry that she never asked to be there. And after the formulas and approving looks from the makeup girl, she believed it was gone. She critically gazed into the mirror, and unlike this morning she was utterly pleased. With her face fixed and her donation made, she felt downright cheery: about Africa, about herself, about everything.
She returned to the car and did what she never did: she ventured to the Tavern, a place she hadn’t visited in three careful years. This was a rare treat, but with the way the morning had gone, with this rare and acute sensation all over her like a happy rash, she pulled the wagon out and headed down Broad Street toward a once familiar bar and its reliable disrepair.
Inside the main entrance, she pushed through the set of saloon-style louvre doors, practically made of plywood, weighing nothing. They made a clatter, which meant her entrance was noted by the patrons. Her white dress was the only unsullied thing there, as everything else was worn but handsomely dirty. The bar was full, but there were no groups, no polite chit-chat, only the friendly haggling over life’s minutiae that preoccupies barflies at midday. She found her second booth of the day and sat down.
The music on was known to her; she could not be sure but it sounded like Elvis, the voice muffled by the crowd’s screams, while little girls at home bemoaned the fact that he was only filmed from the hips up. She had two glasses of Pinot Gris and smiled as the wine opened in her mouth like a flower. She sat in the quiet corner and tried her best to think of nothing. When she departed, the bartender stood up and doffed his hat.
She got into her car, turned the ignition, and prepared to head home. The front of the wagon peeked out of the road like a turtle’s head and was smashed, mercilessly and with great violence, by a roadster. The last thing Meredith Lewis ever saw was an old Mustang speeding toward her. She did not see three-by-five shots of her little boys—John, David, and Robert—in her mind’s eye, nor did she see the wrinkled and cavalier face of Harry; she saw red, coming at her all too heavily and too soon and she was dead.
The driver of that red roadster was Marco Dogliotti, on his way to Atlanta to deliver three suitcases to two sweaty men who wore open collars. He had a belly full of vodka, what looked like paper cuts all over his face, and a wrecked auto—but he was alive.
It was just after dusk south of New York City and Marco had the swagger of a man with a country. America, it was like a song on his tongue, each new detail embellishing this embarrassment of riches. Here he was, behind the wheel of a convertible, registered to his many-syllabled name, tumbling down a highway so fast the windows shook, hatless, with his brown, thinning ponytail tousled by the wind.
Route 78 was a four-lane highway. Traffic lights interrupted its flow only every few miles. On each side was the detritus of a country with too much land: gas stations, junk shops, car washes. Otherwise just concrete trying to squash grass—so nothing to visit but a lot to see. The monotonous scenery thrilled him because this was American soil, and American boredom was a new sort of boredom—bigger, more of it to study, somehow pretty in its unnaturalness.
Mother of God, how far am I from Naples? Only two months and he was already forgetting its sooty port and oranges. Its gawking visitors, pickpockets secreted in the very cracks of walls, unruly traffic, and girls’ skirts that never lifted an inch above the knee. Its rituals, its thievery, its charm. Here in the U.S.A. everything was too new, hung too loosely. One moment it all seemed too transparent and simple to read. Other times he saw only tops of icebergs, understood only parts of meanings—things slipped away in translation. He would think e but say or, bow his head in thanks as locals eyed him queerly. He could not yet trust his tongue.
In his car he drank heavily from a thermos. His sunglasses had white frames and had come free with his last tank of gas. He straightened his ridiculous posture and grinned for no other reason than it was morning. This hour was often accompanied by a giddiness that would die just before lunch, that could somehow never be sustained. Today, though, he would find out what this giddiness ate, and would feed it luxuriously: pollute it with rich foods, regardless of the cost. Today he would genuinely try to be happy. For he wanted, very badly, to be a smiling American, and make this place’s incorrigible sweetness a daily habit.
He mouthed the names of gas stations, fiddled with his dial, ignored the speed limit, and waited, as he always waited, for something significant to happen to him, for a simple change of luck. Engrossed, he didn’t see the red light until it was flush upon him.
His foot flattened and the car groaned to a stop. After the shriek of the brakes died down, he heard that rapid and aggressive sort of chatter that reminded him of talk radio. To his left was a bearded man in a big white make. The man rolled down his window and screwed his face. He said something so angrily that spit flew from his mouth and speckled Marco’s closed window.
He was unable to interpret the English fast enough, only picking out words here and there: mother, dumbest, cunt, ugly. He felt unsure and unwanted and as if a door to a very comfortable room was being closed before him. The stranger stared, shook his head purposefully, and finally pulled away.
The shadow cast, his mood soured, Marco pulled to the shoulder of the road and sat quietly. The rearview mirror had been affixed to the front window by glue and wire. But the heat, which made dreamy lines rise from the asphalt, had melted the adhesive, so that the mirror had started to come off, and was attached only by a thin, naked wire. So now the wind pushed the mirror back and forth like a pendulum. In it, Marco saw flashes of his face, seesawing so as to make him slightly nauseous.
It was olive-skinned with slim features. His hair was the color of assorted, processed tobacco and his eyes were doleful but prying. His mouth was tight and dry, as if his face was in pincers. He viewed the reflection in the mirror, and was disappointed that this new country had done nothing for his appearance. He frowned at its smooth, unblemished contours, wishing a scar or some other mark of distinction might emerge, thinking America at least owed him that. He felt that in this nation of so many, he might never be able to distinguish himself. And surely not with a face so plain it was rendered blank.
He started the car again. He drove seventy miles an hour for as long as it took both sides of a Sam Cooke album to play on CD. At the sight of a sign that read, Middletown, he turned off the highway and went to the first bar he saw. It was just before noon but already raucous inside—tight, big-hair riffs came from the juke box, while boys in baseball caps raised hell and screamed in shorthand. A girl sat alone at the bar. She was his type—destitute—so he crawled over and asked if she liked the vodka.
“That and anything else,” she said, so he ordered two, and two again, and it didn’t stop until his vision was so blurred it was like seeing the world through tears.
When they got to the hotel she silently disrobed. He offered her his white bag, and she unfurled a line long and thin as a snow corn. She took the scraps and applied them to her gums, which made her wince, then blush.
Twelve hours later they hadn’t slept. Unaccustomed to attention, she was talkative. He learned that a perm couldn’t tame her hair and she liked waterfalls. She’d traveled. Done a tour of Texas, where her ex lived. Farthest she’d ever been from home. Sick on the plane. In a monotone voice she listed cities visited like exotic but affordable items from the market: Plano, Dallas, Argyle, Cee Vee. He pretended to be impressed, widening his eyes each time a name left her lips. But all he was thinking of was if she would lay him again, and if not, what he might do to keep her quiet.
She said they had a bond, but the bond wasn’t forever, because when the coke ran out so did she. Her possessions looked like trash, but she put them in her purse anyway, and then shuffled out, scrubbing her nose. She left the door open, letting a ruler-straight line of light into the room.
Feeling unclean, he showered, and when he returned there was less money in his wallet than there used to be. Inwardly he shrugged his shoulders: so life would be as life was. This land did not want him but he wanted it, could already taste a new existence. He slept like the dead and promised himself that he would cross the Mason-Dixon the next day.
He woke up wet from the heat. Sometime in the night the air conditioner had given out. The hotel robe was thinner than a paper napkin, but he wore it anyway. He put on a ragged pair of sandals too, and came out of his room looking like a forlorn Jesus, all disciples up and gone, no one but he and the Bible out here in a forgotten-about America, lost counties abutted by lost counties, weak radio signals, shabby concrete, and long highways, the very end of some backwoods called Earth. He wanted to say a prayer but could think of none.
He went out to the car, tiptoeing on the hot asphalt. The key entered the trunk’s lock, pricked the spring, and he heard the satisfying pop. It yawned open, revealing three gray suitcases. One would be innocuous, but three, lined so neatly, sitting so idly—made him think of gravestones in an abandoned field. He staggered back—awed yet again by his smallness and the sheer stupidity of his task. It had sent him north, south, and sideways. They told him to never go in a straight line, to never give the appearance of making sense, to always take the circuitous route of a phantom or an idiot.
He cleaned up in the shower, then returned to his car and drove the speed limit forever. Delaware looked no different to his eyes than Pennsylvania had, and Maryland was but a field of grass. To Virginia then, with a red cardinal on its welcome sign, and the instant and confused surety that he was no longer North.
The buildings were suddenly squatter. There were advertisements for grits, pancakes, and cobblers. A hotel offered rooms for twelve dollars a night. Pines crowded oaks out of the landscape and hawks flew in wide arcs over the crown of his thinning head.
A few hours in and he neared Richmond. He got flustered though, and when 95 and 64 split, he choked. The simplest decisions flummoxed him, and at the last minute he went west on 64. Then came the sense of stupidity that follows such an error. He called himself horrible things. Impatient, he got off the highway. He followed the Broad Street exit and proceeded to drive in circles. Finally he parked his car, preferring to use his feet.
Walking, he came upon a restaurant called Dune, standing two stories tall. Its first-floor windows were closed to the heat, blacked out by plantation shutters. The second floor had French doors that opened onto a short patio, with a sturdy guardrail protecting the diners. He sensed something closed about it: colloquial, clubby, but full of black sheep. He decided that it might be a pleasant place to lunch.
But instead of lunch he had five vodkas with tonic water. The day was clear and the view from the second floor laid the town out like a canvas. He was confused by the sprawl’s repetitiveness, how, in an effort to be neat, people could make things ugly.
He settled into his seat. He settled into the voice of his waitress because it too was a place—a lazy hammock in the sun. The hours passed with his eyes closed not in sleep but in something like mental dawdling.
He felt an angel touch his shoulder and tell him the restaurant closed between lunch and dinner, and so he was asked to leave so that they might clean up. The pretty waitress chatted to him amiably, said she wished he could stay. He heard her but didn’t hear her, for they spoke differently down here, vowels stretched like rubber, the pitch nasal and too sweet.
He left Dune and got into his car. Stationary, he turned the dial and fished out a college radio station. The song was one of the Stevie Wonder numbers from back when he was called “Little Stevie.” The crackle of an old record like fat in a pan. The instruments made noise first and the singers followed. The tune featured gospel-style call and response. Little Stevie lets go an outrageous howl that sends the piano jumping. The engine turned over and purred. He put the car in reverse and swung it to the left real easy. He started to navigate his way through the parking lot. The call comes like it deserves an answer; the singer pleads for assurances. He edged forward at a slow pace and the gravel went crunch underneath. He pulled into the long line waiting to leave the lot. Shifting the vehicle into neutral, he hopped out and rolled the canvas top down. The interior was flooded with light. He pushed the car forward. The response comes: six women, six women with thighs like hams sing a chorus. Finally at the front of the line, he turned his head left to address the attendant. A lanky boy with pimples and a bowl haircut told him that it was five dollars. He went to his wallet and handed over the first thing that his fingers found, producing an enormous tip. He wanted to congratulate himself for this, for having made this kid’s day. The song slows now, not with an abrupt bang but with one of those old-school Detroit fades. Turning right out of the lot, he gathered speed as he crossed over Glenside. The outdoors was all around him. With few cars on the street he felt alone. Then something timidly pulled out on his right-hand side. His foot just could not find the brake, and then the sound of metal going through itself. He had crushed her.
The road is closed and the cops’ lights blaze brightly. Shrill whistles direct traffic elsewhere. The ticket boy says the man slurred, “Good afternoon,” and the Italian is rabid and gesticulating wildly. He is sweating and looks like a tortured, bleeding child. A helicopter makes awful noise overhead. A man with aviator shades looks down and tells the city how to crawl around the accident. There are so many people crying that it is like a wake. But the woman is newly dead and her body is still warm. Three newspapermen drive up in town cars and all smoke cigarettes in the same deliberate way. And the corner of East Broad and Willow Lawn has now become the city center.
In his office miles away, Harry dreams of making love to his secretary, which he has lately had the pleasure of doing. She peeks her head through the door and raises an eyebrow. She’s too young, and her come-hither gestures are unschooled, sophomoric. But she gently rubs her calf against the door and Harry feels like he is breathing pure air, like everything and everyone outside this room is as dour and sluggish as church. She has long bangs and a porcelain face. Her lips are red and easy. But she hasn’t come here to give him satisfaction. She says in a voice that is mock professional that he should go to the newsroom right away, that there is something coming off the wires that needs to make the 6 o’clock feed.
Harry walks over to the wires and sees what is there. There is one scroll of paper, bright yellow. The ink is applied by a machine that runs back and forth over the paper like a cross-cut saw. The effect is that these stories come in line by line, inadvertently making revelations tortuous, overly long. He sees that there has been a car crash. A man and a woman, and the woman is dead. An idea begins to form but tears start to swell in his eyes like blisters and the water washes the page. It is very sunny outside and he suddenly becomes aware of the immense noise of the tiny newsroom. His neck cranes and he looks toward heaven, but all he sees is a coffee-stained ceiling.
Harry gnaws his fingers, says the name of God, and all at once realizes his dirty, fitful prayers have been answered.