House of Blues

greeting
everyone, sometimes sitting down, telling a joke, touching the men's
shoulders. He was grand; he was regal. Grady was proud to be his son.
    Later, all that had looked phony and he had learned
the word glad-handing, which he had said once with a teenagers
contempt, and only once. His father had struck him.
    His mother had been no help: "It's what puts
bread in your mouth, you idiot. or course it hurt his feelings."
    They were that way with each other, forever
explaining each other's points of view, complaining that he could
never see anything but his own.
    But he was never permitted to have one.
    Don't get into that, Grady old boy. Go back; go
back to ten or twelve.
    He saw his father, gliding about the dining room,
everyone smiling at him, and he got the fuzzy feeling again.
    That's it, Grady, stay with it. Stay with it now
and see if you can feel a human feeling. You're supposed to be sorry
when your father dies. If you can't, you'll never eat garlic again.
    He was drunk enough to look in the mirror above the
bar, to make sure he could see his reflection.
    All right, it's there. You're not Undead yet .
    But if you're alive, why don't you feel anything?
    Actually, you do. Admit it, why don't you? Your
throat's closing on you.
    Oh, God, he never had a chance to be a person. He
died without having the least idea.
    Finally, he felt the tears. Automatically, he stole
another glance in the mirror, to see if they showed. It was way too
dark, of course, and he would have felt silly if he hadn't got
distracted.
    There was a blonde standing behind him, in a black
dress. A gorgeous skinny woman with hollows in her cheeks, a little
wasted-looking.
    He whirled. "Evie?"
    The blonde smiled. "Leslie."
    He was surprised that he had said it aloud. She
didn't look that much like Evie. Her eyes were brown and had the glow
of health in them. Evie's were blue-green, slightly washed-out.
Tragic.
    The last time he'd seen her, her hair was dirty and
hung in hunks, as if it had broken off in places. She was wearing
filthy jeans and a halter, so that her thinness showed, her wrecked,
pathetic body—her ribs, her shoulders, fragile as fish bones. He
had tried to keep himself from looking at the insides of her elbows,
but he couldn't help himself. One of them was horribly bruised.
    That was five years ago.
 
 
    4
    Sugar was wrong about being able to sleep. She was to
mad. Her fists clenched and her neck got stiff she was so mad.
    She had tried to make the marriage work. For
thirty-odd years she'd tried, but Arthur was determined not to have a
marriage, even though legally he did and even though he lived with
her. She wanted closeness, she wanted to really know him, but he
wanted to keep her as far away from him as possible. He did it a
number of different ways—staying at the restaurant all the time,
being short with her, even downright nasty when he felt like having
other women.
    Getting himself killed.
    I hope you're satisfied, Arthur.
    She held her teeth tight together. She was pissed
because now it was never going to work, she was never going to have
the marriage she wanted. All those years of praying, out the window.
    Goddummit, God, I mined my knees for nothing.
    He was a bad father—she was always having to
explain his behavior to the children—and he was a bad husband. He
hadn't slept with her in twenty years. That is, he hadn't made love
to her; he slept with her every night and acted so goddamned pious.
    His lady friends came right into the restaurant,
right in there with their little giggling girlfriends, their gay
gentlemen friends,their mothers. Whenever Arthur comped a woman and
her daughter, everyone knew. She'd seen it herself at least once. He
said the mother was someone he worked on a committee with and he owed
her because she'd voted right. He thought that was how the world
worked, and he expected Sugar to buy it too.
    Votes bought with pommes de
terre soufflés .
    What a small mind.
    And what a liar, when all along he was sticking it in
the daughter, who might as well have had the word "floozy"
tattooed on her cleavage.
    That was years ago, but there was always someone. She
heard him on the phone, whispering, whispering all the time.
    God, I hate the bitch. If she comes to the
funeral, I swear I'll snatch her bald-headed.
    She'd learned the phrase from a maid she once had
who, in the end, she had also wanted to snatch bald-headed. She
turned on her side, furious.
    She'll probably wear black, maybe a veil;