Mr Hands Read online

  The paper I wrote it on was really pretty.

  I wish I could remember where I got it.

  Thank you for the card.

  Yours Truly,

  Lucy

  * * *

  She never mailed it. It was too demeaning, meandering, and empty-soul pitiful.

  But she never threw it away, either.

  That was after the end of the Bad Time.

  This is how the ending began:

  During the months following her hillside picnic with Larry and his friends, Lucy’s life became a long, dreary, gray night, chiseled from gray stone and shadowed by gray mist. More than a night of freezing rain, it was a tone—the kind that is part of the province of loneliness and cannot be vicariously conveyed to anyone who has not lived with the physical tension, stilled violence, and protracted anguish of regret. Her father never spoke to her unless it was to call her a whore, or a disgrace, or to remind her that she wasn’t anything special to look at and never would be because all whores were ugly to God and to all men; once in a while he would draw back his hand to deliver a blow to the side of her face which never came because Mom, bless her sad heart, was always nearby to intervene, to calm Dad and try her best to maintain some semblance of love and familial compassion.

  On those few occasions when she was able to catch him at work, Larry either ignored her outright or made it clear that he was too busy to be bothered. She thought it would be easy to tell him about the pregnancy but there was always someone else around whenever she tried to talk to him—he seemed to make sure of that. Then came the afternoon when he’d stopped by the store for his check and found her waiting for him when he got back to his car.

  “Ain’t this supposed to be your day off?”

  “I wanted to see you.”

  “Well, hey, y’know, I want to see you, too, but I’m kinda busy right now. Gotta get to the bank and—”

  “Why won’t you talk to me?”

  “‘Cause I don’t want everybody here knowing my business, that’s why. They see us talking, just by ourselves, and they’re gonna start thinking that maybe you and me got something going on.”

  “Something going on? You fucked me, Larry. It was the first time I’d ever been with a man like that and you act like it was...was—”

  “You enjoyed it, didn’t you?”

  “While it was happening, yes, but everything since has made it seem so—”

  “—I don’t need this shit from you, not today. You got something to tell me, then just say it, please?”

  It was the “please” that did it, that should’ve said nothing at all but told her everything she needed to know, because when he said it a corner of his mouth twitched, curving slightly upward, a smile-in-progress abandoned at the halfway point, the syllables rising half an octave in pitch before they tripped over something caught in his throat and he coughed a false cough, looking down at his feet, and in that moment, because of those simple, telltale signs, Lucy knew it was hopeless, and saw in a flash what would happen if she were to tell him: he would start by denying that the baby was his, might even demand a blood test; then, when confronted with the truth, he’d try to defend himself by saying she’d wanted it just as much as he had, maybe even accuse her of having initiated the sex, and if the question of birth control came up he could always get Jim and Wanda to say that he’d wanted to put on a rubber but she’d been too hot to trot and how could she do this to him; even if he were to surprise her and accept his share of responsibility, the terrified look in his eyes and the tightness of his face told her he’d be an awful father, ignoring the kid, maybe even abusing it because it was the child’s fault his youth came to a screeching halt just when it should have been gaining momentum, he’d hate the kid, he’d hate her, and she might even wind up hating herself worse than she did right now—God, how could she have been so stupid? To get involved with a guy who used his cock like a divining rod to guide him from one pussy to the next, doing whatever it took, saying whatever words were necessary to get the panties down and the legs spread wide—

  —she should have said no; it was that simple. Should have, but she’d been too caught up in being an object of desire for the first time in her life. This was now her problem, hers and hers alone. She didn’t want anything to do with him, this man who might one day learn to regret the brash actions of youth but for now only looked upon her as another easy lay. There might be a note of fear in his voice right now betraying his bravado, a note that told her he knew what was coming, but in his eyes there was nothing but amused contempt, and she felt dirty and diminished for having shared her body with him.

  “Nothing,” she said, never taking her gaze from his face. “Just...nothing.” Then she walked away. For just a second there she’d wanted to say Have a nice life or Good luck or something like that, something to let the man he’d someday become know there was no bitterness in her heart, but that wasn’t true. She was bitter. And that made her too much like every other woman in this town.

  It wouldn’t happen to her. She’d have the baby, and she’d raise it like a good and loving mother should, and if that earned her the scorn of her father, so be it.

  Even a whore knew how to show tenderness.

  * * *

  This is how the Bad Time ended:

  It was a Wednesday night, right after dinner. Dad was still floating around in a constipated cloud of resentment and only looked at Lucy when it couldn’t be avoided. When dinner was finished, he pushed away from the table and went into the living room to read the paper. Mom chattered away about everything and nothing, her voice the background noise of a radio playing in some distant room, tuned to a station no one ever listened to. Lucy busied herself clearing the dishes, then wiping off the table and kitchen counters. She was two weeks into her third month. The tension was killing her; between Mom and Dad and the people at work with their forced civility and snickering behind her back and whispers and disapproving glances, she felt like a leper. God, how she hated small-town minds. She knew she shouldn’t let any of it get to her, and she tried to keep on keeping on, as the song said, but for the last several days her appetite hadn’t been what it should have, and she wasn’t sleeping for more than a few hours at a time. The only real comfort she had was knowing that Dad would probably change his tune once he held his newborn grandchild for the first time.

  As she was preparing to do the dishes, she thought back to her visit to her O.B.G.Y.N. that morning, how she’d had that sudden attack of the Weepies on her way out, and had sat down on one of the outside benches. There had been that little boy, Ronnie, who’d come over to talk to her, who’d asked if he could touch her and feel the baby, and that had damn near made her day—except for the moment where she could have sworn he’d muttered part of the “Mirror, Mirror” nursery rhyme—but that was probably her hormones shifting her imagination into overdrive. He’d been so sweet to her, had made her feel so much better…and there was something about his touching her that sent a…a tingling sensation through her. It was such a lovely moment. No woman in her right mind could feel depressed after that.

  She was still thinking about Ronnie as she was adding dish soap to the water in the sink when she felt the smallest of twinges deep inside. She paused for a moment, waiting for it to pass, and was reaching for the first plate when the twinge returned, stronger this time, hotter, shooting into her back.

  “Something’s not right,” she said to herself.

  “What’s that, hon?” asked her mother.

  “Huh? Oh, nothing. I, uh...I have to go to the bathroom. Could you watch the water for me? Make sure the suds don’t run over the edge.”

  “I been doing dishes since I was four, hon. I think it might be okay to leave me unsupervised for a minute or two.”

  Lucy smiled at her, then left to do her business.

  By the time she got to the bathroom, the twinge and heat had passed and she felt just fine—well, she needed to remove her bladder and slam it up against the wall a few
times, but what else was new? She peed ten to fifteen times a day now, something her doctor and other pregnant women assured her was par for the course in the wondrous journey toward Motherhood. If she could lay claim to no other epiphany resulting from this, she could firmly state that, in the past few months, she’d learned the truth about the so-called “radiance” of an expectant mother. It had nothing to do with her carrying the miracle of life in her womb; oh no, that was a romantic myth best saved for the daytime soaps and cheap tearjerker novels. The truth was, if a pregnant woman appeared to “glow,” if she took on a “luminous” quality, it was because she had just peed, or needed to pee and just discovered there was a bathroom nearby.

  Lucy laughed a small laugh as she unbuckled her belt and unzipped her jeans and slid the works down past her calves as she simultaneously glided down onto the toilet seat. This was another thing they never told you about—how a pregnant woman learns to turn the act of sitting down on the toilet into a beautifully choreographed ballet.

  A breath, a sigh, a contended hum in the back of her throat, and the sweet, waterfall sound of radiance filled the cramped bathroom.

  For a few seconds, it was bliss.

  Then an invisible hand rammed itself deep inside of her and dragged rusty steel hooks down the throbbing walls of her uterus.

  For the rest of her life, she would remember the next sixty seconds in all of their terrible detail: first, the pain, wrenching and merciless; then the sound she made, somewhere between a shriek and a scream; next, the floor rushing up to meet her as the invisible hand wetly tore itself free and shoved her off the toilet seat; and then she was curled up on the floor, knees pressed against her stomach, feeling the blood seep from between her legs as she shuddered, then shook, her hands clasped tightly together and mashed against her vagina. She lay convulsing for what seemed hours before she heard the sound of the bathroom door being opened and then there was Mom, her warm, soapy hands cupping Lucy’s face, tears streaking her cheeks, muttering, “Oh hon, my little girl” over and over as she gently helped her to sit up, and then embraced her, rocking her back and forth, stroking her sweat-soaked hair and whispering, “All right, it’s all right now, shhh, there, there, it’s over, it’s passed, it’s all right, I’m here, I’m right here, hon, you don’t need to—”

  “What the hell’s all this racket in—?” Dad stood in the doorway, his eyes wide and furious, his jaw working as if words were still coming out of his mouth.

  Mom turned toward him and said, “You just get on back to your paper, leave us alone,” then reached over and grabbed the edge of the door and began to close it in his face but Dad was having none of it; he bent his arm and slammed his elbow against the door, knocking it open again, then stormed into the bathroom, yelling, “You don’t tell me what to do in my own house, woman! I’ll not have—” And then the rest of it withered on his tongue and he fell silent.

  Lucy pulled away from her mother, wiped the sweat and tears from her own face, leaving streaks of blood in their place, and saw that her father was staring into the toilet.

  “Oh my dear Lord,” he said.

  Lucy moved forward to look but then Mom was there in front of her, saying, “Don’t, hon, you don’t—”

  Lucy pushed her out of the way and leaned over, her hands gripping the edge of the toilet bowl.

  And there was her baby; small, like a bumblebee, like something you could balance on the tip of your thumb, Tom Thumb, that was its name, floating around in the center of the blood and urine and placenta and what remained of the amniotic sac, wriggling around as the force of its mother’s beating heart against the porcelain created ripples in the water, little swirls, and as she stared Lucy could make out things, little things, microscopic Tom-Thumb-things like fin-flaps that would have been arms, knobs that might have been its hands, a bump that could have turned into a more flattering version of her own nose as Tom Thumb grew older, a dark pinprick of eye, all of it curving into a semi-human shape my child, my baby, swim to shore, swim like a good strong little boy, over here, I’m right over here—

  —the lid slammed down on her fingers and she cried out, falling backwards and yanking her hands free.

  “I told you,” said her father, his breath coming out in angry, wheezing bursts. “I told you God would punish you for your shameful behavior.”

  “Stop that right now,” said Mom.

  “A common whore, that’s what you was, and now look what you went and did! Poor little child never had a chance—you killed it, you know that, don’t you? Killed it just as sure as if you’d gone to one of them murderin’ sons-of-bitches call themselves doctors and had it cut out of you.”

  Mom was getting to her feet now. “Get out of here. Do it now.”

  “I told you once, don’t be—” he reached for the handle “—ordering me around in my own house.”

  Mom’s hand like a stone from a slingshot struck his wrist. “You can’t flush it. She’ll have to...to take it to the hospital so they can test it and see what went wrong.”

  Dad pulled back to strike her.

  “Go ahead,” said Mom, reaching over to snatch something off the shelf above the sink. “You go ahead and you hit me just as hard as you want.” With a flick of her wrist the pearl-handled straight-razor revealed its shiny contents. “But you try to flush this toilet again, I’ll open you from stem to sternum, so help me God!”

  Lucy reached up and took hold of her mother’s free hand. She was shocked at how strong Mom’s grip was, and how much her touch helped.

  “P-please, D-Daddy,” she said. “Please leave us alone.”

  One breath. For one breath she saw his face soften at hearing her call him “Daddy,” then the Bastard came back, stronger than before.

  “This’s God’s punishment on you, girl. I’ll leave the two of you to do...what needs to be done. But you hear this: You ain’t no daughter of mine anymore. I want you out of this house by tomorrow night.”

  “Then I’ll go with her,” said Mom.

  “Suits me just fine.”

  “See how well it suits you at the end of the month when you won’t have her paycheck coming in.”

  No words between them after that, only gleaming hatred from their eyes, only the ice-pick in Lucy’s throat.

  Dad stormed out of the bathroom, then out of the house. A few seconds later the sound of his pickup truck roaring to life pierced the silence, followed by squealing tires.

  “Write when you get work,” said Mom. Then: “We gotta get you cleaned up and over to the hospital.”

  They managed to temporarily staunch the worst of the bleeding with a knot of Kotex pads, then Lucy’s mother spent a minute mopping away the blood on the floor, all the time checking with her daughter to make sure the bleeding hadn’t worsened.

  “I’ll go get...uh, a few things, hon. Why don’t you come out and lay down on the couch?”

  “No. I’ll just...wait here.”

  “Do you think you ought to—?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, then.”

  Mom quickly returned with a plastic ladle and a large, clear plastic freezer bag. “I poured some rubbing alcohol on the ladle so it’d be sterile and this bag’s got one of them airtight seals, see? I figure something like this would be best.” She opened the lid and knelt down.

  “Mom?”

  “What is it, hon?”

  “I’d like to do it.”

  “Want me to stay here with you?”

  “No, that’s all right.”

  “You gonna be okay?” Her mother was on the verge of tears, so heartbroken was she over her daughter’s pain and loss.

  “I’ll be fine,” said Lucy, placing her hand against her mother’s cheek. “Thank you.”

  Mom’s eyes misted over. “You don’t gotta thank me, hon. You’re my little girl. I’d do anything for you. Don’t you pay any mind to anything he said, all those names he called you. I’m not ashamed of you and never have been. You’ve never been a dis
appointment to me. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” She was stunned by the sudden, deep rush of affection she felt toward this woman who she’d secretly laughed at and pitied so many times. A rocking chair in the shadows at day’s end with a glass of whiskey and some sappy Nat King Cole records; the measure of her happiness in the twilight of her life.

  Lucy hugged her mother. “You were always there, weren’t you?”

  Mom shrugged. “Well, yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?” She softly kissed Lucy’s forehead, rose to her feet, then left, making sure to give one last smile before closing the door behind her.

  Lucy knelt down, wincing against the pain and the bloodstone-knot of Kotex pads, took a deep breath, then did it quickly, making sure not to stare at the thing that would have been her child for too long. Everything went into the bag—fetus, placenta, blood, urine, amniotic sac—then with a quick zzzzzzzip! the bag was sealed.

  She closed the toilet lid and sat on it, holding the bag near her chest.

  Two minutes. She allowed herself to sit there and hold the bag and cry for two minutes, no more.

  Mom filled Dad’s metal lunch pail with ice and Lucy placed the bag inside, then secured the lock on the lid.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to take a cab over to the hospital,” said Mom, shoving a twenty-dollar bill in her daughter’s hand. “We can’t afford what they’d charge us for an ambulance—”

  “—s’okay, I think the bleeding’s getting better now...God, I’m getting kind of...of dizzy...”

  “—I’d come with you but I have to call Aunt Eunice and see if we can’t stay with her for a few days, until your father calms down—and he will calm down. And probably be damned sorry once he does. You ain’t gonna have to move out, I’ll see to that.”

  “You sure he’ll want us back?”

  “You know it. For no other reason, he can’t cook worth a damn. You wait. Six or seven days living on TV dinners does wonders for helping a man find humility. Can you make it by yourself? You’re so pale.”