Fires. Essays, Poems, Stories

hands and letting her talk.) "You don't live here," he said.
    "Please, please, please, Mike," she pleaded. "Let me in."
    He let her in and she swore at him. Like that, he punched her hard on the shoulders several times—whop, whop, whop—then hit her on top of the head and generally worked her over. Finally she was able to change clothes, fix her face, and rush off to school.
    All this happened not too long ago, three years about. It was something in those days.
    I left my mother with the man on her sofa and drove around for
    a while, not wanting to go home and not wanting to sit in a bar that day either.
    Sometimes Cynthia and I would talk about things—"reviewing the situation," we'd call it. But now and then on rare occasions we'd talk a little about things that bore no relation to the situation. One afternoon we were in the living room and she said, "When I was pregnant with Mike you carried me to the bathroom when I was so sick and pregnant I couldn't get out of bed. You carried me. No one else will ever do that, no one else could ever love me in that way, that much. We have that, no matter what We've loved each other like nobody else could or ever will love the other again."
    We looked at each other. Maybe we touched hands, I don't recall. Then I remembered the half-pint of whisky or vodka or gin or Scotch or tequila that I'd hidden under the very sofa cushion we were sitting on and I began to hope she might soon have to get up and move around—go to the kitchen, the bathroom, out to clean the garage.
    "Maybe you could make us some coffee," I said. "A pot of coffee might be nice."
    "Would you eat something? I can fix some soup."
    "Maybe I could eat something, but 111 for sure drink a cup of coffee."
    She went out to the kitchen. I waited until I heard her begin to run water. Then I reached under the cushion for the bottle, unscrewed the lid, and drank.
    I never told these things at AA. I never said much at the meetings. I'd "pass" as they called it when it came your turn to speak and you didn't say anything except Til pass tonight, thanks." But I would listen and shake my head and laugh in recognition of the awful stories I heard. Usually I was drunk when I went to those meetings. You're scared and you need something more than cookies and instant coffee.
    But those conversations touching on love or the past were rare. If we talked, we talked about business, survival, the bottom line of things. Money. Where is the money going to come from? The telephone was on the way out, the lights and gas threatened. What about Katy? She needs clothes. Her grades. That boyfriend of hers
    is a biker. Mike. What's going to happen to Mike? What's going to happen to us all? "My God," she'd say. But God wasn't having any of it. He'd washed his hands of us.
    I wanted Mike to join the army, navy, or the coast guard. He was impossible. A dangerous character. Even Ross felt the army would be good for him, Cynthia had told me, and she hadn't liked him telling her that a bit. But I was pleased to hear this and to find out that Ross and I were in agreement on the matter. Ross went up a peg in my estimation. But it angered Cynthia because, miserable as Mike was to have around, despite his violent side, she thought it was just a phase that would soon pass. She didn't want him in the army. But Ross told Cynthia that Mike belonged in the army where he'd learn respect and manners. He told her this after there'd been a pushing and shoving match out in his drive in the early morning hours when Mike had thrown him down on the pavement.
    Ross loved Cynthia, but he also had a twenty-two-year-old girl named Beverly who was pregnant with his baby, though Ross assured Cynthia he loved her, not Beverly. They didn't even sleep together any longer, he told Cynthia, but Beverly was carrying his baby and he loved all his children, even the unborn, and he couldn't just give her the boot, could he? He wept when he told all this to Cynthia. He was drunk. (Someone was always drunk in those days.) I can imagine the scene.
    Ross had graduated from California Polytechnic Institute and gone right to work at the NASA operation in Mountain View. He worked there for ten years, until it all fell in on him. I never met him, as I said, but we talked on the phone several times, about one thing and another. I called him once when I was drunk and Cynthia and I were debating some sad point or another. One of his children answered the phone and when Ross came on the