“What’s this talk about Claire?” Mattie asked.
“She’s always cracking how fat I am. Do you think I’m fat, Mama?”
“I mean the part about the love spell? You and her aren’t up to anything, are you?”
Pink found a fried chicken breast wrapped in tin foil. He threw the foil in the trash and bit a chunk from the side, leaving a glowing white patch of exposed meat.
“Pink, you answer me.”
“Mama, now, don’t get yourself all worked up.” Pink poured himself a glass of milk. “There ain’t nothing going on between me and Claire. Hell, that skinny little girl is just a child.”
Mattie eased down into the kitchen chair, rolling her fingers into a ball on her lap. It made her feel unfit as a mother that she couldn’t tell if Pink was lying. She often wondered if he had grown in her own belly, if they’d shared a contract of blood, maybe then she would be capable of knowing him completely the way she imagined a natural mother would know her own offspring. She had hoped that time alone would bond them in such a way that she could tell what he was thinking before he knew his own thoughts. She conjured numerous fantasies about a real mother’s connection to her child, how a real mother could peer into his soul, protect him from himself. She had tried to protect Pink, but it was all falling apart again. She looked into his eyes and prayed he was telling the truth.
*****
On Friday, Pink stayed home from the office. Friday was when Claire came to clean Pink and Isabelle’s house. Pink watched from the couch as Claire elbowed open the front door, her skinny white arms hugging a mop and broom. A scrub bucket full of supplies—Mr. Clean, 409, Windex, an assortment of brushes and other things Pink didn’t recognize—dangled from her hand. Her nails were painted red and shiny as plastic. She wore a skintight exercise outfit with a white tank top pulled over it. She asked how he was doing then went back to the front porch for the sweeper. The attachments rattled as she dragged the vacuum inside by the hose and shut the front door.
Claire asked Pink if he’d been fishing lately, told him that her Kenny was out the other day catching walleye down where the Little Pigeon River flowed into Lake Burtran.
“Under the bridge, there,” she said. “Where everybody fishes. He’s there now. At least that’s where he said he was going. Him and Curly.”
Like a magician, Claire pulled all kinds of cleaning supplies out of the bucket, including a long wand with a rainbow-feathered head she used to knock cobwebs from the fan blades. Pink watched the cheeks of her ass work like pistons, up and down, as she moved around the living room. Her hair was a bundle of curls piled on top of her head, and Pink figured the only thing holding them in place was the yellow plastic flower tucked behind her ear. He couldn’t understand the mechanics of it.
“How’s Isabelle feeling today, Pink?” she asked, dusting the ceramic wizards and unicorns on the mantel. With her back to him, she dusted the pewter figurines on the top shelf of the curio cabinet, working her way down to the bottom, bending over to wipe the porcelain swans and pigs. Pink pulled himself off the couch and clamped his hands to her hips, pressing up against her from behind. Still bent over, she looked up at him past her shoulder then motioned her head toward the sweeper. He stretched his toe out and clicked it on. The vacuum drowned out the noise of the television as Claire turned toward him and unzipped his pants. She guided him backward toward the couch and pushed on his chest to make him sit. She knelt on the floor between his legs and stuck her hand into his trousers. With her other hand, she grabbed the handle on the sweeper and pushed it back and forth, making it sound as if she were vacuuming. The television mixed with the roar of the vacuum as Pink closed his eyes and buried his fingers in Claire’s bouncy curls.
When Claire finished, she stood, turned off the vacuum, and went to the kitchen. Each time the refrigerator door opened and closed, Pink could hear the bottles and jars in the door clink together. He zipped up his pants and thought about taking a nap. But listening to Claire rummaging through the cabinets and refrigerator made him hungry. Claire came out of the kitchen carrying a glass of milk in one hand and a plate of sliced sandwich sections, vegetable strips, and potato chips in the other.
“Is that for me, cuddle cakes?” Pink said.
Claire smirked and rolled her eyes, walking past him toward the back bedroom.
“Good,” he said. “Because I hate them little carrot and celery sticks. It’s like eating bamboo.” Pink went over to the coffee table and grabbed the remote off the stack of Glamour magazines. He pushed the button, grimacing each time another program popped onto the screen. Men in suits, a woman wearing a necklace, a girl reading a diary, a preacher behind the pulpit, police cars racing down a country road after a blue car, a woman crying, a boy laughing at a frog, everybody talking, everybody caught inside that little box. He hoped to find a program on antelope hunting in Wyoming or peacock bass fishing in Mexico.
He thought maybe he should go fishing, call Clarence and head down to that bridge and sit with Kenny and jerk walleye out of the river and drink all of Kenny’s beer and tell him what fine blowjobs Claire gave. No woman did it like Claire, Pink thought, especially not Isabelle. Isabelle gave him neurotic little blowjobs, gagging and choking the entire time, like she was being forced to swallow a lamp. That was before she got sick. Pink half-figured that’s why she wasn’t getting well, so she wouldn’t have to perform orally anymore, or any other way.
Claire came out of the bedroom empty-handed and went to the kitchen. Pink walked out to see what she was doing.
“What are you going to do all day, Pink?” Claire asked, wiping down the countertops. “Sit around getting fatter?”
Pink sidled up beside her, wrapping his hands around her waist. “I thought I might go down there walleye fishing under the bridge with Kenny,” Pink said, a grin pushing his plump cheeks apart.
“Kenny would like that, Pink. You should go.” She pried his fingers from her waist. “Just don’t forget about that .357 Magnum he’s got stashed in the bottom of his tackle box.”
Pink spun away from her and went to the fridge. He pulled the door open, scratching his head as he surveyed the shelves. After finding a couple of leftover pork chops from Fat Jack’s Barbecue, he went out on the back porch and sat in the rocker. Before too long, Claire came out and draped a rug over the rail and proceeded to beat it with a broom. Lint, dust balls, and hair floated across the porch and stuck to Pink’s pork chop.
“Goddamn it, Claire!” he said. “You’re ruining my damn lunch.”
“How many is that for you today, Pink?”
“Pork chops?”
“No, lunches,” she said, folding the rug and taking it back inside.
“Why do you always have to make fun of how fat I am?” he shouted at the screen door behind her then looked down at his belly bulging over his pants. “Goddamn women,” he said, throwing the pork chop bone at a sycamore tree in the backyard like he was throwing a hatchet, half expecting it to stick.