“And don’t slap the trigger. Take it home tonight and practice.”
^/A-^ _
tw> That night, Brazil stayed in his room and dry-fired West’s . 380 until he had a
significant blister on his index finger. He aimed it at himself in the mirror, that he might
get used to seeing a gun pointed at him. He did this with music playing and fantasies
spinning, the
deadly tiny black eye staring at his head, his heart, as he thought of his father, who had not drawn his gun. His father had not had time even to key his radio. Brazil’s arms were
beginning to tremble, and he had not eaten supper.
It was a few minutes past nine, and his mother had refused to eat earlier when he had
offered to fix her a hamburger patty and a salad of fresh tomatoes and Vidalia onions,
with oil and vinegar. More alert than usual, she was watching a sitcom, and in the same
faded blue flannel robe and slippers she wore most of the time. He could not grasp how
she could live the way she did, and had given up thinking he could change her or the life
she hated. In high school, he, her only child, had been the expert detective, rooting
through the house and her Cadillac, seeking her hidden stashes of pills and liquor. Her
resourcefulness was amazing. Once she had gone so far as to bury whisky in the yard
beneath the rose bushes she used to prune when she still cared.
Muriel Brazil’s greatest fear was to be present. She did not want to be here, and the
nightmare of rehabilitation and AA meetings darkened her memory like the shadow of a
monstrous bird flying over her and splaying its claws, ready to snatch her up and eat her
alive. She did not want to feel. She would not sit in groups of people who had only first
names and talked about the drunks they once were, and binges they used to go on, and
how wonderful it was to be sober. All spoke with the sincerity of contrite sinners after a
religious experience.
Their new god was sobriety, and this god allowed plenty of cigarettes and black
decaffeinated coffee. Exercise drinking copious amounts of water and talking regularly
to one’s sponsor was critical, and the god expected the recovering one to contact all he
had ever offended and apologize. In other words, Mrs. Brazil was supposed to tell her
son and those she worked around at Davidson that she was an alcoholic. She had tried
this once on several of the students she supervised at the ARA Slater food service that
catered the cafeteria in the new Commons building.
“I’ve been away a month at a treatment center,” Mrs. Brazil told a junior named Heather, from Connecticut.
“I’m an alcoholic.”
Mrs. Brazil tried the same line on Ron, a freshman from Ashland, Virginia. The expected
catharsis was not there. Students did not respond well and avoided her after that. They
regarded her fearfully as rumors floated around campus. Some of what was said got back
to Brazil, heightening a sense of shame that drove him deeper into his isolation. He knew
he could never have friends because if anyone got close, the truth would be known. Even
West had been confronted the first time she had called his house. Brazil was still
perplexed, if not stunned, that this had not seemed to affect the deputy chief’s opinion of
him.
“Mom, how about I cook us up some eggs?” Brazil paused in the doorway.
Light from the television flickered in the dark living room.
“I’m not hungry,” she said, staring at the screen.
“What have you eaten? Probably nothing, right? You know how bad that is for you.
Mom. ”
Pointing the remote control, she changed to another channel, where people were laughing
and exchanging bad lines.
“How ’bout a grilled cheese?” her son tried again.
“Well, maybe.” She changed channels again. It was hard for her to be still when her son was nearby. It was hard to look at his face and
meet his eyes. The nicer he was to her, the more abusive she felt, and she had never figured out why. She would not make it without him. He bought food and kept the house