Breaking and Entering Read online

  JOY WILLIAMS’S

  BREAKING AND ENTERING

  “Hypnotic … one of our most remarkable storytellers.”

  —ANN BEATTIE

  “She catches, better than anyone writing today, the ominous vision at the corner of the eye and makes it inevitable.”

  —MARY LEE SETTLE

  “For Joy Williams, the human personality is of most interest and most truth when it is under the most extreme pressure.… This notion of truth emerges in Joy Williams’s work in a complete Americanness of setting, language, and psychology that I find to be of great beauty and meaning.”

  —HAROLD BRODKEY

  A Vintage Contemporaries Original

  Copyright © 1981, 1988 by Joy Williams

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Parts of this novel have appeared in slightly different form in Esquire and The Paris Review.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: Macmillan Publishing Co.: excerpt from the poem “The Shadowy Waters” from Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. Canadian and open market rights administered by A. P. Watt, Ltd. on behalf of Michael B. Yeats and Macmillan London, Limited. Reprinted by permission of Macmillan Publishing Co. and A. P. Watt, Ltd. Tree Publishing Co., Inc.: excerpt from the lyrics to “Another Place, Another Time” by Jerry Chesnut. Copyright © 1968 by Tree Publishing Co., Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Williams, Joy.

  Breaking and Entering.

  (Vintage contemporaries) (A Vintage contemporaries original)

  I. Title. II. Series.

  PS3573.I4496A79 1988 813’.54 87-45941

  eISBN: 978-0-307-76385-3

  v3.1

  For Elisabeth Williams and William Williams

  For Caitlin and Rust

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part II

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Books by Joy Williams

  I

  Then the strangest questions

  are asked, which no human

  being could answer: Why there

  is only one such animal; why

  I rather than anybody else

  should own it, whether there

  was ever an animal like it

  before and what would happen

  if it died, whether it feels

  lonely, why it has no children,

  what it is called, etc.

  —Franz Kafka, “Cross Breeze”

  1

  Willie and Liberty broke into a house on Crab Key and lived there for a week. The house had a tile near the door that said CASA VIRGINIA. It was the home of Virginia and Chip Maxwell. It was two stories overlooking the Gulf, and had been built with the trickle-down from Phillips-head screw money. Willie achieved entry by ladder and a thin, flexible strip of aluminum. Crab Key was tiny and exclusive, belonging to an association that had an armed security patrol. The houses on Crab Key were owned by people so wealthy that they were hardly ever there.

  Liberty and Willie saw the guard each morning. He was an old, lonely man, rather glossy and puffed up, his jaw puckered in and his chest puffed out like a child concentrating on making a muscle. He told Willie he had a cancer, but that grapefruit was curing it. He told Willie that they had wanted to cut again, but he had chosen grapefruit instead. He talked quite openly to Willie, as though they had been correspondents for years, just now meeting. Willie and Liberty must have reminded him of people he thought he knew, people who must have looked appropriate living in a million dollar soaring cypress house on the beach. He thought they were guests of the owners.

  Willie did have a look to him. People would babble on to Willie as though, in his implacability, they would find their grace. Willie walked through life a welcome guest. He had a closed, sleek face that did not transmit impressions. He was tight as a jar of jam. People were crazy about Willie.

  The guard said, “The doctor says to me, ‘Say you want to see the Taj Mahal. You travel all the way to the Taj Mahal, but then you don’t go inside. You don’t pay the little extra to make the trip worthwhile.’ ”

  “What was he talking about?” Willie asked.

  “Me! The Taj Mahal was the inside of me! They go inside there to see what’s up, and while they’re inside they shine their light in all your corners. They take out whatever they want to besides. Haven’t you ever talked to a doctor? That’s the way they talk.” The guard sighed and looked around him. “If I were young, I wouldn’t be here,” he said. “The big show is definitely not out here.”

  “The big show is in our heads,” Willie said.

  Willie and the guard got along famously.

  In the house, Clem was lying in the air-conditioning, before the sliding glass doors, his breath making small parachuting souls on the glass. Clem was Liberty’s dog, a big white Alsatian with pale eyes. His eyes were open, watching his vacation.

  The guard said, “You know, I’ll tell you, my name is Turnupseed.”

  “Pleased to know you,” Willie said.

  “That name mean nothing to you?”

  “I don’t believe it does,” Willie said.

  The guard shook his head back and forth, back and forth. “How quickly they forget,” he said to an imaginary person on his right.

  Liberty said nothing. She supposed they were about to be arrested. She and Willie were young, but they had been breaking into other people’s houses for quite some time now. The town was a sprawling one on the Gulf Coast of Florida, and there were a number of Keys offshore. Everywhere there were houses. There was certainly no dearth of houses. They had their own that they were renting, but it didn’t seem to suit them. Anyplace they saw that appealed to them, and even some places that didn’t, they just went inside. They seemed to have a certain freedom in this regard, but Liberty thought they were bound to get caught someday.

  “My nephew, Donald Gene Turnupseed, killed Jimmy Dean. You know, Jimmy Dean’s car ran into his car.”

  “Well,” Willie said, “1955.”

  “It seems like a long time ago, but I don’t see what difference that makes,” Turnupseed said. “We are talking about something immortal here. Young girls have made a cult of Dean even though he was a faggot.”

  “Life is not a masterpiece,” Willie agreed.

  “Life is a damn mess,” the guard said. He seemed genuinely outraged. He looked at Willie. “I’m somewhat of an expert on that incident. Ask me a question about it.”

  “There was something definitely sinister about the Porsche,” Willie said.

  “There sure was!” Turnupseed said. “A mechanic had both legs broken when the wreckage fell off the truck—a Beverly Hills doctor who acquired the engine was killed using it—another racing doctor using the drivetrain was seriously injured when his car turned over—the wreckage, with admonitory notices declaring THIS ACCIDENT COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED, was toured by the Greater Los Angeles Safety Council, and it was at such a show in Sacramento that the car fell off its steel plinth and broke the h
ip of a teenage spectator …” Turnupseed was out of breath, wheezing heavily. “Coincidences are a hobby of mine,” he panted. “Another hobby I got is reading cookbooks.”

  Turnupseed enjoyed reading cookbooks. In inclement weather, he could be seen sitting in his patrol car, poring over colored plates of food. He and Willie would speak with fervor about chili and cassoulet and pineapple-glazed yams and pastry sucrée.

  “I guess I’ve read just about every cookbook there is to read,” Turnupseed said. “I get a big kick out of it, not being able to eat much myself. I only got one quarter of a stomach. It really don’t bother me much. It’s nice just looking at the pictures. Now Mrs. Maxwell has had a cystostomy, but she’s chipper as the dickens about it, I don’t have to tell you that.”

  “She’s always been a very chipper lady,” Willie agreed.

  There were indications in the expensive house that an unpleasant operation had recently been endured. The Maxwells were subscribers to the Ostomy Quarterly.

  “She’s a scrapper, Mrs. Maxwell,” Turnupseed said. “You know, after she come home from the hospital, she called up the paper and wanted them to send out a reporter to do an interview with her, but the paper wouldn’t do it.”

  “The media prefer not to handle the subject of excreta,” Willie said.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Turnupseed said. He removed his hat and his thin hair fluttered, startled. “She got herself a Windsurfer. I’ve never seen her use it, but it’s the attitude that counts is my belief.” He looked at Liberty, his chin trembling gently. “Your wife looks sad,” Turnupseed said to Willie. “Has she had a loss recently?”

  “She’s just one of those wives,” Willie said.

  “What do women want, let me ask you that,” Turnupseed said. “My last two wives always maintained they were miserable even though they had every distraction and convenience known to modern times. Number Two had a four-wheel drive vehicle with a personalized license plate. Every week she’d have her hair done. She died of a stroke, at the beauty shop, under the dryer.”

  “Liberty isn’t distracted easily,” Willie said.

  “What would our lives be without our distractions,” Turnupseed said, “that’s the question.”

  Liberty excused herself and went inside. She stared at the Gulf, which was always there, every time she looked, filling the windows. Clem was lying on his side, his legs shuddering in a dream. Perhaps he was remembering the mailbox he was stuffed into as a puppy, by unknown persons, before Liberty found him, barely breathing, years ago.

  Liberty wandered through the house. Breaking into houses caused Liberty to become pensive. She would get cramps and lose her appetite. Stolen houses made her think of babies all the time. She supposed that was common enough.

  The house on Crab Key had chocolate-colored wall-to-wall carpeting covered with Oriental rugs. It had five bedrooms, four baths, two kitchens, a liquor closet that contained eleven half gallons of gin, and one piece of reading material on a polished oak coffee table, a notebook containing Mrs. Maxwell’s philosophic musings. The advantages of a cystostomy are myriad, one of the musings stated. Each new day brings me increased enjoyment. Sunrises are more radiant, sunsets more glowing, flowers more brilliant. And even the grass is greener!

  The handwriting was round and firm. It appeared likely that it was not Mrs. Maxwell who was the drinker.

  Liberty looked down at Willie conversing with Turnupseed on the beach. From above, Turnupseed’s head looked like a vulnerable nest. Willie was wearing a sweater he had found in the Maxwells’ closet, a green and white sweater covered with daintily proceeding reindeer. Willie loved living in other people’s houses and sleeping in their beds. He wore their clothes and drank their liquor, jumped in their pools and watched himself in their mirrors. Breaking into houses and living the ordered life of someone else appealed to Willie.

  In the large walk-in closet off the Maxwells’ bedroom, there were mirrors and cosmetics. There were shoe boxes and garment bags. There were hats and ties and shoes. Everything was neatly categorized. Cruise Wear. Ethnic Shawls and Dresses. Daddy’s WWI Uniforms. As in the other homes that Willie and Liberty tended to occupy, the absent owners were hopeful, acquisitive, and fearful of death.

  Liberty selected a white terry-cloth robe from the closet and lay on the blue satin coverlet of the king-size bed. She dreamed of fishing, her feathered hooks catching squirming rabbits. She dreamed of rowing down the streets of a flooded town, rowing into a grocery store where they were selling ten unlabeled cans for a nickel. She woke with a start and took off Mrs. Maxwell’s white terry-cloth robe.

  Liberty and Clem took a walk along the beach. They passed women searching for sharks’ teeth. The women had elaborate tooth scoopers made of screening and wood. They had spotting scoops and dip boxes. They were dedicated and purposeful, and hustling in and out of the surf they knew what they were about. Liberty admired them. They knew the difference between a spinner’s tooth and a lemon’s. They were happy women, ruthless in their selections, rigorous in their distinctions. In their bags they had duskys’ and blacktips’ and nurses’ and makos’ teeth. They loved those teeth. In their homes, lamplight glowed from glass bases filled with teeth. On their walls the best teeth were mounted on velvet and framed behind glass. The more common teeth spelled out homilies or were arranged in the shape of hearts.

  The women ignored Liberty. And they regarded Clem with downright unease as though fearing he would squat on their fossiliferous wash-ins. Liberty felt that the women were correct in not introducing themselves and being friendly. She, Liberty, was a thief and a depressive. She and Willie had been married by a drunken judge at Monroe Station in the Everglades. The bridal couple had eaten their wedding supper in a restaurant that had antique rifles and dried chicken feet mounted on the wall. Their meal consisted of a gigantic snook, which Willie had miraculously caught on a doughball, and a coconut cake that the cook had whipped up special.

  The women on the beach, holding their bags full of teeth, probably saw Liberty’s problems just written all over her.

  As for Clem, they avoided him like shoppers swerving from a swollen can of bouillabaisse.

  Liberty strolled back to her stolen home. Willie was on the beach, roasting potatoes over a little fire. Turnupseed stood nearby, his hands on his hips, his back toward the water, surveying the row of expensive houses under his protection.

  “Them houses are filled with artwork and jewels and all sorts of gadgetry,” Turnupseed said, shaking his head. “It gets to be a burden just responding to it all. I’ve tried to respond to everything that’s been presented to me all my life, and I am just now thinking that I could have saved myself considerable time and effort. Response has been my bane. Number Two and I once went to Niagara Falls. You know we put on them slickers and got wet? Three days, two nights and seven meals. We slept in a heart-shaped bed. You ever try to sleep in a heart-shaped bed? Number Two said I was as exciting as a bag of cement.”

  Liberty looked around her, at all that was being guarded by Turnupseed, a man obsessed with woks, dead wives and movie stars, and armed with a floating flashlight and a tire iron. He was obviously not in the best of health. His eyes looked like breakfast buns spread with guava jelly.

  Willie said, “All worldly pursuits and acquisitions have but two unavoidable and inevitable ends, which are sorrow and dispersion.” He rearranged the potatoes in the pit.

  “Yup, yup, yup,” Turnupseed said, shaking his head. “But each one of us has to find that out for himself.” He turned to Liberty and politely said, “That certainly is the strangest white dog I’ve ever seen. Nothing unfortunate is about to happen to you, not if that dog can help it.”

  “I don’t know,” Liberty said.

  “Thank God it ain’t a black dog. Black dogs are bad luck.”

  “Thank god,” Liberty said. The thought of a black dog! Black as dirt and filled with blood. She would never have a black dog.

  Liberty and Turnupseed gazed a
t one another. It seemed as though they could never build up a dialogue.

  “Where’d you get that dog?” Turnupseed asked, cranking up again, his voice hoarse.

  “Found him,” Liberty said.

  “I’ve never found a thing myself,” Turnupseed said. “I try not to dwell on it.” He gazed at Clem, not knowing how to salute him.

  Turnupseed lived on the mainland in a little cement block house on land sucked senseless by the phosphate interests. Every time he tried to plant a tree in the queer, floppy soil, the tree perished.

  “I’ve had three wives, and each one of them died,” Turnupseed confided. “Isn’t that a ghastly coincidence?”

  “In continuity there is a little of everything in everything else,” Willie said when Liberty just couldn’t seem to pick anything out of the air. Willie and the guard seemed to have a way of conversing that was satisfying to them both. Liberty guessed that Willie enjoyed a simple deceit more than just about anything in the world. The words he exchanged with Turnupseed rocked gently in her head, unwholesome crafts on a becalmed sea.

  Liberty and Willie sat in one of the Maxwells’ several tubs. She sat behind him, her legs encircling his waist, writing words upon his back with soap.

  “WIZ,” Willie said. “SKY. SEA.” Liberty erased the invisible marks with her hand and splashed water upon Willie’s shoulders. She put her lips to his warm back, then drew away and wrote a U, then an 5. “WITHHELD,” Willie said. “INCARCERATE.”

  Purple, monogrammed towels hung from hooks. Liberty got out of the tub and patted herself dry with one of them. She was tanned and high-waisted. Pale hair curled from her armpits. At her throat was a soft scar that looked like a rosebud. She put on a man’s black bathrobe, rolled up the long sleeves, cinched the belt tight. She imagined Mr. Maxwell standing in this robe, breathing heavily, looking around his house at his things in it.