The Triggerman Dance

In fact, Vann Holt hates this time more than any during his day. He has privately nicknamed it "The Children's Hour," because it is the time that Carolyn slides into one of her many ruts of bullet-induced damage and wants to talk about the children. Not that she doesn't talk about them during his several visits during the day and night, but at one a.m. it is almost always the children. Whose children would not be altogether clear to the outsider, because Carolyn's encyclopedia of names is a shifting, dynamic book. But Holt has realized over the years that no matter what name his wife attaches to what person, she is referring to her own. He is long past correction, past the many months of trying to reeducate Carolyn to the fact that she has only one living child and her name is Valerie, no son. Holt hates this hour because he realizes how much of Carolyn is gone, how Patrick is fully departed, and how deep is his own collusion in his wife's dementia. He hates this hour because he has to look at what the world did to her, witness the half-paralyzed, steroid-bloated, psychotic mess of a woman they turned her into. At times he wishes she was dead, so his memory could select good moments and stanch the flow of the bad, cutting them down to a manageable trickle. It is difficult to remember the good because she remains in the here and now, actual and undeniable as a mountain, a living testimony to her own ruin. In Holt, a fury is always building.

"Where did you get the new jacket?"

"Nordstrom, hon."

"It seems a little small."

"I'm probably gaining weight."

"Did Susan help you pick it out?"

"Yes."

"What color did Nicky get?"

"Same as mine," says Holt dispiritedly. "Blue."

Holt has concluded that "The Children's Hour" is a kind of derivative from the years when Carolyn was a healthy, beautiful woman, and she was always waiting for him in their bed when he came to it, always at one a.m. That was when Holt's workday was finished. He was tired but rarely too tired to make love to her, and she was always eager. They had at least one unbreakable date each day, and that was at one a.m.—work done, children asleep, a nightcap glass of wine for Vann, Carolyn half dreamy and toasty warm, the smell of sleep on her breath, her thighs so unbelievably smooth and soft, her center deep and slick. Whatever was holy about that time, Holt has decided, got translated into this: talk of the children.

"Did he call today?"

"No call. Busy with studies, I guess."

"I hope the Catholics don't get to him."

"?" He just looks at her, mouth open.

"Nothing worse than a lapsed Catholic."

"Oh, well, that's true, honey."

The fact that Holt and Carolyn were married in the Mormon Temple in Los Angeles does not even strike him as odd.

Carolyn's insistence on a living, college-age son—be it Patrick, Randy, Nicky, Steve—has worn Holt down over the years The fact that she hasn't seen this son since the day they were both shot and he died on the floor of a fast food place in Santa Ana; does not affect the march of Carolyn Holt's one a.m.'s. During "The Children's Hour," Patrick is alive and doing well at a good Eastern college—now apparently Catholic—though during the day, Carolyn might weep over his death. Or she might not.

She'll want another postcard soon, Holt thinks, and I'll have to mock one up.

"Terri's lips all healed?"

"Quite nicely."

"Those braces hurt her. I wonder if Dr. Dale could loosen them a little."

"I'll talk to him about it."

"Would you?"

"Of course. We're going bird hunting in the morning."

"You and Terri?"

"Yes. You know, down in Anza. We'll be back the day after sometime around noon. She wants to bring Lewis and Clark from this year's litter."

"Terri picks out cute names."

"I agree. And they're fine dogs. She's been working them for nine months."

"What about Sally?"

"Oh, I'll hunt with Sally, don't worry about that." "I miss those days."

Times like this hurt Vann Holt most, times when Carolyn is lucid and real, when he can communicate with the genuine Carolyn for a few sentences and taste something of what has been, realizing that she is still sometimes very present and very alive. The doctors explained her burned and broken brain matter as something akin to bare electrical wires clotted by wax— sometimes the signals will get through, and sometimes they won't. With a gunshot to the head, they had prophesied, anything can happen.

They talk until almost two, when Carolyn smiles and stretches the upper half of her body, then lowers the head of her bed back into sleeping position. Joni and Holt help turn her so the bedsores on her back—those perennial, agonizing plagues—can heal up and start again.

He kisses her goodnight—once on the lips and once on the forehead—then goes to his room, undresses and gets into the huge empty bed. He feels his heart beating hard in his side, and hears it clanging against his eardrums. It is the rhythm of rage.