Too Much Happiness

“Musta slipped through my fingers.”

She got down another plate, set it on the counter until she was ready to put the toasted muffin halves and then eggs smeared with ketchup on top of it.

He had stooped down, meanwhile, to gather up the pieces of broken china. He held up one piece that had broken so that it had a sharp point to it. As she set his meal down on the table he scraped the point lightly down his bare forearm. Tiny beads of blood appeared, at first separate, then joining to form a string.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s just a joke. I know how to do it for a joke. If I’d of wanted to be serious we wouldn’t of needed no ketchup, eh?”

There were still some pieces on the floor that he had missed. She turned away, thinking to get the broom, which was in a closet near the back door. He caught her arm in a flash.

“You sit down. You sit right here while I’m eating.” He lifted the bloodied arm to show it to her again. Then he made an egg-burger out of the muffin and the eggs and ate it in a very few bites. He chewed with his mouth open. The kettle was boiling. “Tea bag in the cup?” he said.

“Yes. It’s loose tea actually.”

“Don’t you move. I don’t want you near that kettle, do I?”

He poured boiling water into the cup.

“Looks like hay. Is that all you got?”

“I’m sorry. Yes.”

“Don’t go on saying you’re sorry. If it’s all you got it’s all you got. You never did think I come here to look at the fuse box, did you?”

“Well yes,” Nita said. “I did.”

“You don’t now.”

“No.”

“You scared?”

She chose to consider this not as a taunt but as a serious question.

“I don’t know. I’m more startled than scared, I guess. I don’t know.”

“One thing. One thing you don’t need to be scared of. I’m not going to rape you.”

“I hardly thought so.”

“You can’t never be too sure.” He took a sip of the tea and made a face. “Just because you’re an old lady. There’s all kinds out there, they’ll do it to anything. Babies or dogs and cats or old ladies. Old men. They’re not fussy. Well I am. I’m not interested in getting it any way but normal and with some nice lady I like and what likes me. So rest assured.”

Nita said, “I am. But thank you for telling me.”

He shrugged, but seemed pleased with himself.

“That your car out front?”

“My husband’s car.”

“Husband? Where’s he?”

“He’s dead. I don’t drive. I mean to sell it, but I haven’t yet.”

What a fool, what a fool she was to tell him that.

“Two thousand four?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“For a minute I thought you were going to trick me with the husband stuff. Wouldn’t of worked, though. I can smell it if a woman’s on her own. I know it the minute I walk in a house. Minute she opens the door. Instinct. So it runs okay? You know the last day he drove it?”

“The seventeenth of June. The day he died.”

“Got any gas in it?”

“I would think so.”

“Nice if he filled it up right before. You got the keys?”

“Not on me. I know where they are.”

“Okay.” He pushed his chair back, hitting one of the pieces of crockery. He stood up, shook his head in some kind of surprise, sat down again.

“I’m wiped. Gotta sit a minute. I thought it’d be better when I’d ate. I was just making that up about being a diabetic.”

She pushed her chair and he jumped.

“You stay where you are. I’m not that wiped I couldn’t grab you. It’s only I walked all night.”

“I was just going to get the keys.”

“You wait till I say. I walked the railway track. Never seen a train. I walked all the way to here and never seen a train.”

“There’s hardly ever a train.”

“Yeah. Good. I went down in the ditch going round some of them half-assed little towns. Then it come daylight I was still okay except where it crossed the road and I took a run for it. Then I looked down here and seen the house and the car and I said to myself, That’s it. I could have took my old man’s car, but I got some brains left in my head.”

She knew he wanted her to ask what had he done. She was also sure that the less she knew the better for her.

Then for the first time since he entered the house she thought of her cancer. She thought of how it freed her, put her out of danger.

“What are you smiling about?”

“I don’t know. Was I smiling?”

“I guess you like listening to stories. Want me to tell you a story?”

“Maybe I’d rather you’d leave.”

“I will leave. First I’ll tell you a story.”

He put his hand in a back pocket. “Here. Want to see a picture? Here.”

It was a photograph of three people, taken in a living room with closed floral curtains as a backdrop. An old man-not really old, maybe in his sixties-and a woman of about the same age were sitting on a couch. A very large younger woman was sitting in a wheelchair drawn up close to one end of the couch and a little in front of it. The old man was heavy and gray haired, with eyes narrowed and mouth slightly open, as if he might suffer some chest wheezing, but he was smiling as well as he could. The old woman was much smaller, with dark dyed hair and lipstick, wearing what used to be called a peasant blouse, with little red bows at the wrists and neck. She smiled determinedly, even a bit frantically, lips stretched over perhaps bad teeth.

But it was the younger woman who monopolized the picture. Distinct and monstrous in her bright muumuu, dark hair done up in a row of little curls along her forehead, cheeks sloping into her neck. And in spite of all that bulge of flesh an expression of some satisfaction and cu

“That’s my mother and that’s my dad. And that’s my sister Madelaine. In the wheelchair.

“She was born fu

“It must have been hard for you. And hard for your parents.”

“Huh. They just rolled over and took it. They went to this church, see, and this preacher told them, she’s a gift from God. They took her with them to church and she’d fuckin howl like a fuckin cat in the backyard and they’d say oh, she’s tryin to make music, oh God fuckin bless her. Excuse me again.

“So I never bothered much with sticking around home, you know, I went and got my own life. That’s all right, I says, I’m not hanging around for this crap. I got my own life. I got work. I nearly always got work. I never sat around on my ass drunk on government money. On my rear end, I mean. I never asked my old man for a pe

“Jesus. I never heard that before. I never heard that was the deal before. I always thought the deal was, when they died she’d go into a Home. And it wasn’t going to be my home.