Que Pasa, Colleen?: Stories from a Texas Town

Kimberly

CHAPTER ONE

SONGS OF ATONEMENT

Mary Lee Brockway’s tears dropped on the paper placemat as she sat crying at the kitchen table. She thought of how she had felt when her father died: vacant and empty. How she longed for that numb detachment now. Damn him, she said to the wall clock, and double damn Wanda Redshaw. Mary Lee cried with abandon for a while, then tore off a strip of the placemat to wipe her eyes and nose.

She wondered if other wives learning of their husband’s infidelity felt as terrified as she. She thought of other couples known or rumored to have experienced a husband’s affair. None were as happily married as she and Fullerton Brockway. Upon finding themselves betrayed, she wondered, did other women feel that their entire adult life had been some kind of sham? Maybe she was the only one who had been happily married these past twenty-one years. Perhaps Fuller had just suffered her silently. She lay her head on the table and said dully, Maybe my whole life has just been ‘The Truman Show’ with everyone in the know except me. She uttered the words in a nasal twang because her nose and throat were swollen from crying. As soon as she heard the strange words, she knew they were untrue. Head up, she enlarged her conversation to include the refrigerator. "By God, Fuller really did love me! And our kids have had, do have, a real life, with real parents, who really love them! Ripples of fear and desperation traversed her abdomen, like ghostly fingers plucking a requiem on her bowel. The fingers tightened their hold whenever she thought of her teenaged son and daughter, both so happily, so egocentrically, so vulnerably adolescent. The tenderness she felt for them caused her crying to take on a new sound, Above all else the kids must not be hurt! She spoke to the kitchen as a whole, as if begging understanding from that tidy room with its familiar items, now that her life had become unfamiliar. Her chest felt empty, as if part of her were missing. She thought of the lyrics to a song of lament her Irish father used to sing; The place where me heart was, you’d aisy roll a turnip in."

Sitting at the vanity table in the upstairs window, Wanda Redshaw kept an eye on the street below as she carefully and expertly polished her long acrylic nails. Downstairs in the Don-Wan BBQ & Grill she could hear Lupe and Gustavo preparing for the noon rush. Her ex-husband, the Don in Don-Wan, had deserted her eight years earlier. He left her, as she loved to say, Without chick, child, or cash. She kept his name on the restaurant because she thought it was cute, and she knew being cute was important in life. Wanda fervently hoped that everyone who knew her - customers, beer salesmen, Mexican short order cooks - and especially other women, thought of her as the best looking woman in town. She worked deliberately toward this end. Why hadn’t Fuller Brockway come in for a sliced beef brisket plate or a burger basket at lunchtime? She listened for the sound of Fuller’s pickup truck over the noise of the nail dryer. Wanda felt a lump in her throat and she tried to think how to be irresistible the next time she and Fuller met. This guy could be the One, she whispered to herself. "He just could be It! She thought of the past weekend and Fuller’s longing smile as he watched her brush her hair, nude at the vanity. She thought of his awkward, tender lovemaking, and of her small hand in his large one under the pillow, afterward. She only considered these things because they were useful building blocks in stacking up evidence that she, Wanda Redshaw, was good looking, desirable, and therefore, okay. Her curiosity about and interest in Fuller Brockway only extended as far as wondering what effect she was having on him, and if he thought enough of her to leave his wife. Wanda wanted to remarry. A nice guy, she mused, putting in her order with the Universe. One who would take care of me. And his face should light up whenever he looks at me. And he should want me to have real nice things. Last winter, Wanda had been very ill with viral pneumonia. She had been afraid, so alone in her upstairs rooms, delirious and confused with fever. The illness had been an epiphany for Wanda. She now realized the truth in the song lyric everybody needs somebody sometime. She had given up on her former criteria: a man who would buy her a diamond ring, a brick house, and a Cadillac Catera. She had even given up on her criterion that he be single. Her nails dry, Wanda stood up and moved close to the mirror. She opened her blue eyes wide. You’re okay, Wanda, she said fiercely to herself. You do real good at watchin’ your weight." She wondered if her eyes would look bigger with her bangs pulled back and she reached for a comb.

Fullerton Brockway was a smart man, and a sensitive man, and he was afraid. His remorse was so intolerable to him thoughts of suicide fluttered across his mind. Already considerably shaken, he had been completely undone that morning when Matilda O’Hanlan, the town schizophrenic, (some would say soothsayer) had rushed up to him uttering a pronouncement of doom. She had stuck her head in the window of his pickup truck as he sat at a stop sign, fixed him with her great green accusatory eyes, and intoned sadly, Cut. Not just to the quick, but clean to the bone. As she removed her head from the window, a large tear fell from her left eye, clearing a path down her dirty cheek.

Fuller could not bear to think of Mary Lee’s face that morning. She had not been accusatory or vengeful. He understood that her hurt was too great for that, she was in shock. He wished she had berated him, slapped him, behaved like a fishwife. He knew now that he had wounded her too deeply for her to take action, she was immobilized by the enormity of his adultery. The oldies station on his pickup’s radio began to croon, You always hurt the one you love, the one you shouldn’t hurt at alllll. He snapped it off smartly. It wasn’t the lyric, it was that all music had become excruciating to him. He had just tried the classical station, but the Bach reminded him of last Christmas when he and Mary Lee took the kids to midnight mass. He pulled off the road and sat, shaking, behind the wheel. He thought of the day he and Mary Lee were married, of his big, Irish father-in-law pressing a hundred dollar bill into his hand at the reception. He thought of his father-in-law’s likeable grin and his words, Take good care of my daughter, Son. Fuller recalled how he had swelled with pride to be called, Son by Seamus Allen. It’s a good thing he’s already dead, thought Fuller, or this would have killed him. Or maybe he would have killed me. Half laughing, half sobbing, he turned off his engine and sat. Fuller thought of his brief, mad, erotic lust for Wanda Redshaw. It was a type of insanity, any man could tell you that. Why did women confuse it with love? He thought of the banter that men trade as if it were their credo. Get all you can! I’ve always been grateful for every piece I ever got! If caught in the act, lie. If caught in the lie, lie again. His friends routinely greeted one another with the cheery question, Gettin’ any? Or, Gettin’ any new or just the same old thing? But after all the exotic Wanda’s outrageous flirting and hints of unplumbed pleasures, when he had finally broken his wedding vows of more than two decades to bed her it was not what he had expected.

Last Saturday afternoon in the shady upper bedroom of Wanda’s apartment, Fuller found that he was very excited about touching Wanda, very excited about seeing her lovely nudity, but that the lovemaking was not at all what he had envisioned. He had felt awkward with her, they did not know each other’s ways. She did not press her forehead gently to his and look deeply, steadfastly, and lovingly into his eyes, murmuring endearments punctuated with breathless little sobs of pleasure, as Mary Lee did. Nor did Wanda caress him. She allowed him to have sex with her. She did not make love to him. Fool! Fool! Damned old horny goddamned fool! He spat out the curses at the dashboard. If anyone in town knew about this, then everyone would know. He felt sure that Lupe and Gustavo had seen him climb the stairs with Wanda. But hell, maybe they would think he was going up to fix her toilet. He gingerly tried to think of what would happen if his children found out about his infidelity. It was like trying to touch a boil, he quickly and immediately retracted his mind. "Don’t go there. Just do not go there!" Suicide would surely be the only way out, if the kids knew. Fullerton Brockway took a deep, resolute breath. He knew exactly what he had to do. He found great comfort and hope in the instructions he began to give himself as he started his pickup. Beg. Crawl. Goddammit, you know you could never be more debased than you have already made yourself. Let her know that she is your only reason for living, for Chrissake. Her and the kids. Crying softly, he pulled out on Highway 62.

Wanda Redshaw sat on the customer side of the counter at the Don-Wan BBQ and Grill, totaling cash register receipts. She liked doing this chore because she could admire her own pretty hands and impeccable manicure. Wanda heard a noise that instantly perked her senses to full alert. It was the unmistakable rattle and roar of Fullerton Brockway’s muffler-less twenty year old Ford pickup. An eyesore and a public joke, Fuller still adored that truck. It was a matter of honor with him to see how long he could keep it running with minimal maintenance. He would grin good-naturedly at jeering friends who teased him about how badly the plumbing business must be doing if he still had to drive a rattletrap like that truck. Hell, Fullerton would joke, it’s a damn fine downhill, summertime truck, and everyone can hear me comin’ so I don’t need a horn.

As he drove by, the beer salesman looked up and asked, What the hell is Fuller Brockway’s new license plate all about?

Well, I dunno, said Gustavo. Maybe he got religion, no? Wanda turned her head to see Fuller’s pickup truck being parked at the curb down the block. His new vanity plates read 4 GIVEN. Fuller was coming around the truck to meet his passenger, his son, Skeets. The boy was expertly slithering out the passenger window as the door on that side of the truck had not opened for several months. Fuller tossed his arm loosely across his son’s shoulders as they walked into the hardware store. Wanda felt the cold fear upon her again. Surely that don’t mean what you’re a-thinkin’, she mused to herself. Still that would explain Fuller’s total avoidance of her; treating her like a one night stand. Wanda took a deep, cleansing breath as she had been taught by the counselor at