Part 21 (1/2)

In the bathrooone Plus, antuan pores-I never exfoliated! And boy am I shi+ny I shi+ft the pins at the back ofloose on one side I try slicking it doith a few flecks of water The hair spray in it enlivens it to jut out

Eventually, I latch , dizzy It occurs to me I actually need to brace my hands on either side of the walls My insides are ricocheting around when the old advice burbles up

Pray Get on your knees and get still

So I kneel down, my bony knees in a puddle of Lord knohat None of the promised quiet comes to me Breathe Breathe, Joan tells me all the time If you don't believe in God, you know there's scientific evidence about the psychological benefits ofnonbelievers Breathe deeply to calm yourself Then count your breaths to ten, over and over If you don't believe in God, you know there's scientific evidence about the psychological benefits ofnonbelievers Breathe deeply to calm yourself Then count your breaths to ten, over and over

But when I start counting breaths-slow, deep inhalations-I al for it, I speed uplike a pooch After a lifetiotten how For a fewunderwater

I try to detach frohts that float up in me, and they start to drift away fro in Silently, I say one of the few prayers I know, the serenity prayer-maybe my second or third truly desperate prayer

I clasp ether before , I find unusual space Please keep , but I really need it Please please please Please keep , but I really need it Please please please Starting to get up, I kneel again And keeplike such an asshole And keeplike such an asshole

Those of you who've never prayed before will cackle like crows and scoff at the change I claim has overtaken me But the focus ofin ether I feel like a calmer human than the one who'd knelt a fewin my skull has dissipated as if some wizard conjured it away

I walk back to the table with a pearl balanced in ry

Lux is in place, and lass has been swept away, replaced by ice water I ask for the bread basket and tear off a piece of the rough Tuscan bread and dunk it in the peppery green olive oil-never has bread tasted so good I gobble up three pieces before the salad comes

Forto other people's tales with little thought for where I can wedge in a co down

As the dessert plates are being cleared away, Toby nudges aled him with as a student Since I've just been in Texas to clear out her ex-boyfriend's belongings that summer, her latest romantic misadventure is fresh in my head

Toby says, This was your mother's new boyfriend? What happened to the nurse?

She got sober He didn't, the nurse That's the hell of it She picked this subsequent guy sober

At first Mother described the new guy as a boarder Ben Barker, his name was I expected some homely local Joe, but in the picture she sent, Ben towered over Mother with the lean frame of a basketballer He had steely razor-cut hair and deep blue eyes A health nut, Ben occupied a room in a house whose curtains were saturated with menthol setable juicers along with a flat of wheatgrass for squeezing all the chlorophyll out of

It's supposed to clean your liver, Mother told me It's filthy stuff to drink

How can you tell your liver's dirty? I said

That's what I wanted to know, Mother said

Tell ot a job at least, I said

He's retired, she said

I thought he was, like, fifty

(Which, by the ay younger than Mother) She toldall over the Midwest, but the crop prices kept dropping and he'd sold out

He kept his truck parked in the garage butbike worthy of the Tour de France He also had a fancy fiberglass kayak he took out in the bayous at dawn aot Mother taking pricey vitamins by the fistful He wanted her to flush out her nose with salt water snorted from the spout of a porcelain Indian neti pot, but she eschewed that and kept burning cigarillos, though she did sip infusions of Chinese herbs he bought at the Buddhist te Mother called e

Did you ever ht wasn't who they said they were?

I hadn't I'd e individuals But other than a tripped-out guitar player who'd told everybody he was Moses, I'd never met anybody whose stated identity I questioned How, I asked Mother, had she co a story, and he'll say, ”The guy said to me, 'Bill'” And I'll say, ”But your name's not Bill; it's Ben”

At that tiuy I used to steal watere didn't sound overexercised Ben Barker's truck was registered legal in the naangster

Lecia told ht dangerous (Which, I now think, fails to take Ted Bundy into account) Anotherearly, and Mother whispered that Bill was in the shower, but she'd gotten his license out and his name wasn't, in fact, Ben Barker It was Wilbur Fred Bailey, she said And his ID was from-let's say-Kentucky

At this point Toby interrupts to couy's actual name Wilbur Fred Bailey, Toby repeats It has a Faulkneresque ring

I notice the rest of the table has gone quiet The agent has her hand on a glass of water Toby's editor is leaning forward

Fred's the ideal uy, Lux says, who's heard the story before Fred Fred has that foreshortened, temporary feel to it A real trailer-park name has that foreshortened, temporary feel to it A real trailer-park name

So what'd your ine, for it's different telling the story sober-and to these people But Lux gives htest tap, and, since the current of the story hasMother found the license, I told her to run to the library and xerox it, then drop it by Stooge's office She did copy it but changed her mind about the sheriff, because-it turned out-Wilbur Fred was paying all her bills

Which pissed rocery bill As was, it turned out, o down there and call me with Mother on the line, so we could confront this bookkeeping inconsistency

Mother elided it by saying, Oh, Ben doesn't pay those He helps me out all kinds of ways

Helps you out hoanted to know

How? Lecia said

Well, he cuts the grass, Mother said

I pay Sweet to cut the grass, I said, referring to an old pal of rass! Lecia said

The agent said, Hilarious Triple-dipping What a woman

Lecia said, Let's you and rass get too long, Ben cuts it Plus he edges the walk real straight He takes the tops off jars He hooked up my VCR He takes er here, Mother, Lecia said

He's good company, Mother said Besides, I'd hate to be a dime-dropper

A what? Lecia said