Eye of the Storm

Valentino doesn’t have anything on him; he’s insurgent, a lover, and an ex-concert pianist with a handicap. Yes, I despise him, despise the way he could persuade me into his life. Like the echo of a train’s whistle as it nears the deck – squeal of brakes, sweaty palms gripping the suitcase. Always leaving town with a suitcase in one hand and ticket in the other; running from the 9 to 5, the marriage license, and the entrapment which leads to generations of low-income family alcoholism and spousal abuse. Even a family pet would commit suicide in this situation; take the risk of running into 65 mph traffic of the four-lane highway.

“Roberto,” he pronounces his name with a thick, Spanish accent. But we all just called him Robin, half Italian, half Mexican with pale skin and bedroom eyes. A culture clash, a Siamese headed personality. Truthfully, I don’t even remember when we met. It was an A.A. Bingo Halloween towards the end of summer, which seems to be the basis of all my horrible relationships. Halloween—with its candy assortments, masked figures, so pagan. The old ladies of the church choir would have a fit if their bouffant heads could wrap around illegitimate children and fornication without marriage. I had just moved to an east-Texas college town with only a few bars, churches, grocery store, Boy Scout parades, Alcoholics Anonymous, and feed-store.

The town itself has a strange crossbred mystique; old town southern Christian meets 80’s throwback rock-n-roll rebellion meets modern technology of the university. Everything seems to be the extreme, either extremely religious/spiritual or extremely hedonistic. Meth-labs run amuck in the piney woods beyond the parameter of the prestigious University and its newly built million-dollar art gallery. The pine trees hover over neighborhoods like a stalking lover, tucking them into discreet corners and blocking the sun on warm, winter days.

The town’s Main Street captures visitors with its red brick roads, antique stores, and art boutiques. The locals abhor change silently, in their own hastening ways, grumble while they cook burgers and mashed potatoes for those “snotty”, invading students. Many of them refuse education, prefer to spit on burgers and eradicate any hope for their children. We changed elementary schools twice, the last being a branch of the university where the students practice teaching. Rooms of children yet to learn about drug-wars, gang rape, city traffic, and the mass of mess the city perpetuates. They were small-town and hung up on the past.

“Stop staring.” Robin is the type to stare. When I met him at the AA Bingo night, he obsessed. It was an evening of dingy lights, Styrofoam cups of strong coffee, long tables, alcoholic rants from washed up men and women, and this dark-eyed man staring longingly as he thumbed his pencil thin mustache. Let him stare, I thought to myself. I spent my days in class or working at the art gallery and nights studying as I fail to potty-train my son. He urinates on the beds, rugs, and floor—like a puppy. Even on a winter night when he would awake lying in freezing urine, he’d just roll over. His father back in Houston, in a bi-polar relationship, moving in and out with his girlfriend every 6 months, one day marriage, the other day he’s having affairs.

“Why don’t you drop your children off with a babysitter and stop by tomorrow?”

“Why don’t I not. Haven’t you been relapsing lately? You called me from a bar last night, then again on the freeway, and then again at 3 a.m. doing god only knows what. I was expecting a call at 4 from a ditch, or the police station.”

“I brush past the music hall in the late afternoon; I could stop by your class to pick you up.”

Like high school only with crippled, middle-aged men.

“Tomorrow’s my Art day—scribbling, sketching, painting, and morphing all day long…I’ll think about it.” I prefer the idea of wrapping my hands around a large mound of clay and squishing my fingernails deep into its core. The meticulous pressing and molding is a pleasurable sensation, much like God. Or technology, they reconstruct DNA in laboratories; visualize the human robot, its rubbery skin smooth. A welfare state would arise if millions were not employed, were not factory laborers creating more product and gimmicks for our everyday living. From proms and bicycles to hybrid vehicles and technology class for 4th graders.

6 a.m., the children catch the yellow bus to school and I bike off into non-traditional student role. To me, southern culture is a depressant, to all the snowbird professor transplants; it’s a change of pace. We live south of the University and Robin lives to the north with a mix of early settlers, and professors. .

Up on the hill, the left side of a duplex off the loop, he plays his classical music with a gimp hand, studies accounting, and chain-smokes. He came to me one hot, muggy night, calling from his car as he drove the loop drinking coffee. Smoking, dipping, coffee, how did I find him the least bit attractive? It was the dark hair, high cheekbones; the way he lowered his voice to a loud whisper and sweet-talked. I’m sure he, himself questions how he went from a swinging, sugar-mama lifestyle in New York to a crippled hand and backwoods University town.

My ‘smooth body and blue eyes’, he claims, the attraction of my ‘fish lips’. He bats his eyes as he arrives at the door of my apartment. He might be high, I’m unsure, I allow him entrance, try out his moves on this ex-punk-rock, vagabond mother. Maybe he senses I’m easy because I’m a single mom. He breathes on my shoulder, his warm torso pressing against mine, saying he’s wanted to do this for six months. The kids have packed their bags, angrily escaping through the back windows. Their stomps echo in the apartment stairwell.

It’s mid-summer, when the tropical fronts move in and hurricanes begin to pound the Gulf Coast of Texas. Even three to four hours inland, we’re still at risk for torrential downpours, flooding, toppling trees, power lines, and flying debris. Robin has left. I chase the children through the parking lot and corral them back in. I’m studying among piles of papers; he’s still obsessively calling, demanding to come over. The living room floor is covered in paint and canvas, children fall asleep, and he expects me to kick my son out of his bed so that he can come over to “watch a movie”.

He wishes he could play again, taps his fingers along the bar over the phone, hums, and orders another drink. I can hear him slamming the glass down after one long gulp.

“No, tomorrow,” I tell him and the line dies with no response. I turn the radio on to drown him out, any afterthought that could be lingering. He went somewhere that night he wouldn’t say, calling the next day to invite me to drive-thru Starbucks, a rush drive for ice cream, smoking, and Zane coughing in the back seat. Robin takes to dipping, spitting in a coffee cup in the console.

“Don’t drink that one,” he says, pointing. It happens again – I fall dumb, deaf, and blind to any man who takes me out for coffee. We drive up the hill; he feels the need to impress us with his fading talent.

A hurricane is on the horizon, pushing a breeze of oceanic air into the hot, summer day. Tree limbs snap, debris tumbling down streets. He cranks the air-conditioning, opening doors to let the smoke out, ranting about his Modigliani, propped at his piano. Distress, tension, rising, he is angry with himself. Zane is eight, clueless, watching cartoons. I should leave but he plays beautifully, swaying, as his fingers demand control of the ivory keys while the TV warns us of an approaching tropical storm.

“Turn it down,” I whisper to Zane.

Robin must have stayed up all night, his eyes are drained, they close as he plays, the cloak of the beast wrapping around to sink its teeth in. I sip the stank coffee, tell Zane we need to clean the house before the hurricane, buy gallons of water, and fill the bathtub.

“Robin,” I motion that we needed to go.

“Come back later,” he says, thinking a moment, “for the hurricane.”

The winds pick up and according to the last beeping news scroll across the box screen, the beast will be making landfall in an hour or two. The energy levels are rising. We rush to our apartment at the bottom of the hill – taping up windows, filling water jugs, packing bags and food. An hour later, as the rain begins falling, it was as if we never left. Roberto’s TV blares as he leans on the piano, he smokes as he strokes the keys.

The rain is striking the windowpanes, wind rushing the smoke about through the open door as it slams against the wall. His eyes are glassy with remorse and loss. Rain splatters the porch.

“Shut it, shut it,” he yells, bolting up from the bench.

Wet from rain, Zane and I huddle together to stay warm. I tuck him in on the couch, following Robin into the adjacent room. He will be leaving back to Houston soon, taking an accounting job he’s “lucky to have”. He pulls me close to his flanks, switching off the lamp. The streetlight outside streaks into the room; rain pounds the roof while he feeds me with compliments, to curb any insecurity. It’s almost too easy; his eyes are closed so I don’t believe a word he says. The darkness is convenient for the thrill of the carnival along the horizon. I can imagine he’s the French man I met on vacation, tall and handsome on the train, the musician who constructs lyrics about me in his head.

“What if a tree falls on the roof?”

He hushes me; I’m disrupting whatever fantasy he has concocted.

Darkness, I am replacing the void, the wind squealing past with force and fury as Zane rushes into the room screaming.

He pads at the bed, hovering, “Mom, mom!” He stops to take a deep breath, “Are you okay? I had a nightmare; something was trying to kill you.”

“Your kids prophetic,” Robin laughs deeply, switching on the lamp.

A branch thuds against the wall outside, rain splatters against the pane, and I snuff the cigarette he tries to light. ‘Roberto’ growls and stomps off into the kitchen. Thirty minutes later, we are all asleep in separate beds. The hurricane fizzles out before it hits the small town, leaving us downed power-lines and flooding streets of rushing currents and clogged drains.

The next day, I receive a phone call from one of Roberto’s other “girls”, this one is college age, asking me if I had left a pair of earrings at his house. Out of spite and jealousy, she makes the claim that they are now in her possession. She is young and naïve, anxious for revenge on Robin, and doesn’t seem to grasp the concept that I knew he was using me, that I allowed him to.

Stupid little girl—I just want my earrings back.

TRACY LYALL, currently a cat lady, enjoys long walks along dark and deserted beaches, strange cats, Goths, fire escapes in dark alleys, and travel. Her stories and prose have been published in various online and collegiate presses. Past E-Books are available through Apple Books. Art and photography of her travels on her website https://tracylyall.com.

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