46
" The fizzy sip tastes of roasted grain, tidy fields waving in wind. By the second or third sip, I remember the slosh of lake water against a boat Daddy had rented, how I sipped from a metal can of Lone Star while he picked through lures alongside me. Thus starts—for healing purposes, of course—my daily beer or two. Within weeks, I stop breastfeeding, partly because I know three or four or five beers could affect Dev’s milk supply. Warren’s at school, so he must miss these escalating beer guzzles. And that’s how—in some cosmic accounting of our family’s rampant dipsomania—Mother’s recovery dovetailed with the start of my own years’ long binge, for from that day forward, I drank in increasing amounts, as if our gene pool owed the universe at least one worthless drunk at a time. "
― Mary Karr , Lit
49
" Sammy’s common, Warren says, referring to something his mother said about a cousin’s wife. I’m common, I say. I always fancied an affair with a scullery maid, he says. I’m propped on an elbow studying him. He fails to open his eyes, as he says, Aren’t you even a little sleepy? I’m pouting, I say. Can’t you hear me pouting with your eyes shut? He reaches up a hand to pinch my pouting mouth with two fingers. Okay, duck lips, he says, rolling over. My father thinks you’re smart and funny—both uncommon virtues. My mother thinks if you keep jogging, you’ll damage your female organs and fail to reproduce. Do they think I’m cute? He’s half blind. She wants to dress you in hot pink or lime green. Tell me they like me and I’ll sneak back to your sister’s room. "
― Mary Karr , Lit
50
" We stare at each other to stave off the inevitable spat over who misses work. Warren’s down to his last few vacation days; I’d have to reschedule forty student conferences. But enough of the night sparkles through me that I say I’ll handle it, then I add, It’s good for me to get out every now and then. I hope so, he says. A few heartbeats keep me there in silence till I say, Was that sarcastic? He meets my eyes again, saying, Of course not. I start up the stairs and stop. I feel another urge to slide my arms around his strong middle and have him hold me, but if he withdrew, peeled my arms off—the refusal would’ve scorched me like a nuclear blast. I lean tentatively on the door jamb. Don’t you think I need to go out? You believe so, he says. Some rage burbles up, and from nowhere, I say—calmly but with force—That’s a shit thing to say. "
― Mary Karr , Lit
52
" Bent Bender “Well, if God doesn’t exist, who’s laughing at us?” —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov One day Lecia rings me up. Tawdry, she says. An adjective meaning crude or trashy or otherwise unseemly, I say. Talk to me. Mother’s sleeping with Harold, she says, meaning Daddy’s pill-popping nurse, crashing of late in the spare room. Never happen, I say. That man has got to be gay. Happened, she says. "
― Mary Karr , Lit
53
" You know what I’m gonna do? A lot of obscene and illegal stuff, I’d wager. He said, I’m gonna fix this Lincoln up and drive it back to Leechfield. My senior year ride. No more Mama’s Torino. Like you will, I said. Like I won’t. My brain was starting to melt and soften again around an old image of Daddy from childhood. How he’d come home at dawn in his denim shirt, and I’d be the only one up, peering out the back drapes till he walked across the patio. Lots of times, he’d come in and lie on his stomach on the bare boards of our yet-to-be-carpeted floor, and I’d walk barefoot along his spine. I’d have to hold on to the bookcase to keep from sliding off the sloping muscles of his back, but I’d work my toes under his scapular bones, and he’d ask, You feel my wings growing under there, Pokey? And I’d allege that I did. He claimed it always helped him get to sleep in the daylight. It was maybe the only time I felt like a contributor to the household, somehow useful in our small economy. "
― Mary Karr , Lit
54
" So I start whispering my tale of marital woe to Jack, who sits in the hunched posture of somebody tensing against a blow. Occasionally, he’ll tug a red curl over the crease in his forehead.
Eventually, I wind down and ask, what should I do? And I wait for the word salad of his scrambled cortex to spew forth. Instead, his eyes meet mine evenly, and he says—as it seems everybody says—You should pray about it.
But what if I don’t believe in God? It’s like they’ve sat me in front of a mannequin and said, Fall in love with him. You can’t will feeling.
What Jack says issues from some still, true place that could not be extinguished by all the schizophrenia his genetic code could muster. It sounds something like this:
Get on your knees and find some quiet space inside yourself, a little sunshine right about here. Jack holds his hands in a ball shape about midchest, saying, Let go. Surrender, Dorothy, the witch wrote in the sky. Surrender, Mary.
I want to surrender but have no idea what that means.
He goes on with a level gaze and a steady tone: Yield up what scares you. Yield up what makes you want to scream and cry. Enter into that quiet. It’s a cathedral. It’s an empty football stadium with all the lights on. And pray to be an instrument of peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is conflict, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope…
What if I get no answer there?
If God hasn’t spoken, do nothing. Fulfill the contract you entered into at the box factory, amen. Make the containers you promised to tape and staple. Go quietly and shine. Wait. Those not impelled to act must remain in the cathedral. Don’t be lonely. I get so lonely sometimes, I could put a box on my head and mail myself to a stranger. But I have to go to a meeting and make the chairs circle perfect.
He kisses his index finger and plants it in the middle of my forehead, and I swear it burns like it had eucalyptus on it. Like a coal from the archangel onto the mouth of Moses. "
― Mary Karr , Lit
55
" It would’ve been a vintage personal ad. Scared, provincial girl desperate to escape family insanity seeks quietly witty, literate gorilla. Profound loneliness a must. Belief in poetry must supersede belief in capitalism. She: abrim with self-loathing, incapable of chilly silence. He: won’t yell, wag firearms, or leave. Were Warren laboring over this story, I’d no doubt appear drunkenly shrieking; spending every cent I could get my mitts on; alternately crowding his scholar’s home with revelers, then starting to vanish nights into a kind of recovery cult—none of this entirely untrue. I would’ve preferred that my ex vet this manuscript and correct the glaring flaws. Wisely, he balked—I’d have hated to see his version, too. "
― Mary Karr , Lit