Throw Like A Girl (20 page)

Melanie brought him a beer and turned up the air conditioning, although they had agreed to try not to run it until the weather got really hot. Chad tilted the beer bottle and took a big smacking drink. “And the crap they play! It makes you realize the failure of universal public education. Anyone who attended the sixth grade should see right through it.”

Melanie made sympathetic noises, although she couldn't help thinking he was overenjoying the chance to be eloquent about his grievances. She was coming to realize that Chad wasn't exactly one of those guys who put his shoulder to the wheel and saw a job through in a stoic, manly fashion. “Could you do sales for somebody else? Another station?”

Chad let out an expiring breath. “There's not a decent independent left in this town. They're all tight playlists and canned slop. Man, I used to love radio, it was the sound track of my life. I ran the campus station back in college, I ever tell you that? We were just kids, sure, but we did edgy, eclectic stuff. Jazz, blues, progressive rock. Nobody does that kind of programming now. Hey.”

He realized he had talked his way into an Idea. Well, why not? Well, money. But he was tired of money being the answer to everything. Where was passion, where was delight, wasn't this the brave new self he'd hoped to inhabit?

He might persuade some of his ad customers to get behind him. The crew at the station wasn't crazy about the new regime. He thought he could get the guys to volunteer a few hours a week, lend a hand, sort of like helping to build a treehouse. After some negotiations with Diana, Chad was allowed to visit the garage of his former home and carry off three cartons of his old records. They were even more peculiar and varied than he remembered. There were piano rags and show tunes, ancient Mississippi bluesmen who sang accompanied only by the squeak of porch rockers. There was folk music and hard jazz and a cache of early rock and roll, the album cover photographs picturing the now-famous bands as baby-faced tough guys.

Melanie pointed out certain fiscal realities. Chad said he'd get a bank loan and give himself a year to turn the station into a moneymaking proposition. After that he'd go back into harness in some kind of sales job. He just wanted a crack at it. In a surge of love and dread, Melanie cosigned the loan application. She wanted Chad to be happy, sure. But why wasn't he already happy, or why hadn't he resigned himself to being a grown-up and settling for finite amounts of happiness?

Now when Melanie drove around town she could tune in to Chad's broadcast, to Gaelic trios or robotic synthesizer music, or sometimes it was just Chad talking. He kept up a chatty stream of commentary, welcoming people to the show and introducing the music and remarking on the weather or whatever stray thought came into his head. “I've been thinking back to when I was ten years old and I had rheumatic fever and had to spend the whole summer in bed.” He did? He had? Melanie was sure he hadn't told her about it. Wasn't it the oddest thing in the world, Chad sitting in a little room by himself and sending his words far and wide. Although not too far or very wide; the station didn't have much wattage. If Melanie drove past a certain radius, the signal fizzed out and was lost. She found it disturbing that he was talking to all these unknown people, sharing himself with them. It felt a little like the old days of their affair, when she'd been forced to be jealous of Diana.

“I wonder if any of us can ever make decisions without second-guessing and regrets.”

She heard his radio voice say this clearly. Her heart froze. She'd been maneuvering through an intersection and hadn't been paying complete attention. Now the music started up again, hillbilly bluegrass. Had he meant her, the two of them? Moreover, did she have regrets of her own? Maybe. Yes. Sometimes.

She turned the car around and headed for the studio. On the way she stopped at a deli and bought sandwiches and potato salad and sodas. The studio was a storefront on a narrow, edge-of-downtown street. Melanie stepped carefully along the uneven sidewalk, past the bricked-over entrances to disused warehouses, and entered the cramped little office.

Chad was visible behind the glass panel that housed the broadcasting apparatus. He waved her on back. Melanie waited until he had finished speaking (“Let's see if anybody else out there remembers the Coney Island Whitefish”) and cued the music before she went in.

“I brought us some lunch.” She held up the deli bag, an offering and an excuse.

“Wow, thanks. Is this roast beef? Can I have it?” Chad was wearing a T-shirt and shorts, his new work clothes. Melanie missed his salesman's suits, his beautiful crisp shirts and silk ties. There was something irritating about a man who went native. They settled in to eat and every so often Chad leaned over the console to play an ad or introduce a new song. “So, what do you have to do this afternoon?” he asked her.

“Oh, this and that.” She really had nothing to do, or at least nothing urgent. She felt forlorn. A thin stream of air conditioning came from the clanking wall unit and she tried to maneuver herself beneath it. “Hey. Can I ask you something? Do you ever talk about me when you're on the air?”

Chad was surprised. “Well, maybe once in a while, sort of. Like, 'Last night my wife and I had pizza for dinner.' Why?”

“I don't want you to.”

“What, I have to pretend you don't exist?”

“No, just don't…tell everybody in the world what you think of me.” He frowned; she could see him shaping denials, working up resentments. “Never mind. Don't tell me either. If I was some kind of big mistake, I don't want to hear about it.”

Melanie marched out before he could answer. She knew she was being childish, unfair, and later there would have to be tears and apologies. She sat in the car for a few minutes to collect herself. When she started the engine and turned up the radio, Chad was saying, “This one goes out to a special lady, she knows who she is.” There was a blip of static, then the music started, Janis Joplin singing “Turtle Blues”: “Oh I'm a mean, mean woman, I don't mean no one man no good. I'm a mean, mean woman…”

As Melanie drove away she thought she saw Danielle's car parked on the corner but she wasn't sure and it would have depressed her to go back and find out.

Melanie decided she was being mopey and fearful, qualities she did not admire in others, and that she should not lose sight of her own goals and sense of individuality in this new estate of couplehood. She resolved to move forward. She made further advances to her children and patiently allowed them to abuse her. She began a diet plan. Her own business needed attention. She sold her import products online, from a website, dispensing jade Buddhas and teakwood salad bowls to people who desired them in places like Tennessee and Minnesota. She had never visited the faraway countries where the merchandise was produced. (For that matter, she had never been to Tennessee or Minnesota either.) She'd bought the business from the woman who'd started it, slid right into the driver's seat. The Internet made it unnecessary to go anywhere anymore. Besides, she'd never been much of a traveler. She was squeamish about insects and diarrhea and discomfort and the general unsanitariness of that part of the world. But she was aware that much of life there was difficult beyond her imaginings. At times she fretted that hers was a largely frivolous existence, lived out in a too-narrow channel. Doting on Chad was not taking up as much of her energy as she had imagined it would.

So that when the letter reached her from Miss Poona Chumnoi of the Christian Relief and Rescue Center, based in Pattaya, Thailand, she read it with attention and then showed it to Chad. Miss Chumnoi sent respectful greetings. Her organization had as its mission the rescue and retraining of women forced to work as prostitutes. The sex trade flourished notoriously in Thailand. Women and girls from poor rural districts were lured to the brothels under false pretexts, then exploited, subjected to horrific violence and deadly disease. They had little hope of ever returning to their families. The CRRC offered safe haven, education, medical treatment, and instruction in skills such as hairdressing and embroidery. Miss Chumnoi knew firsthand the degrading lifestyle and hopelessness that were the sex workers' lot; she herself had endured it until the CRRC had come to her aid and told her of Our Lord Jesus Christ's message of faith and redemption. She offered her personal story as testimony and hoped that Melanie would be moved to aid the CRRC in its important work with a generous donation, she asked it In His Name.

Chad said, “Oh yeah, Thailand. You can book special tours there, sex tours they call them. Never mind.”

“They look so young,” said Melanie, examining the brochure included with the letter. There was a picture of laughing, sparrow-delicate girls in modest smocks, preparing a meal in a tidy kitchen.

“Could be a scam.” Chad had a more jaundiced view of organized religion after his forced acquaintanceship with the radio preachers. “Why do those guys always have their hands out?”

“Well this is actually helping people,” argued Melanie. “Not building some kind of megachurch. Besides, I looked them up on the Internet, they're for real. OK, they have a website.”

Chad told her she should do what she thought was best, and so Melanie sat down and wrote an e-mail to Poona Chumnoi, congratulating her on overcoming her difficult circumstances, and mentioning that she was sending a donation of five hundred dollars to the CRRC via international mail. Miss Chumnoi answered almost immediately, thanking her in the most affecting and heartfelt terms. “You will receive a blessing,” Miss Chumnoi declared.

Melanie loaded the dinner dishes in the dishwasher and tucked the leftovers away beneath plastic wrap. She felt buoyed by her virtuous deed. It was sobering, really, to think how seldom she did anything altruistic. What must it be like to live one's life in the pursuit of good works, trying to make the world a better place? Instead of selfish gratification and underhanded, hurtful behavior of the sort, she had to admit, that had characterized her and Chad's furtive courtship. She was not at all religious, but she did believe in guilt.

They'd had lemon cake for dessert and Melanie wrapped a couple of slices in foil and set them on a plate outside the garage door in case Danielle came by tonight to lurk. They had taken to leaving occasional snacks for her in this fashion; the dishes were always replaced neatly the next morning. She and Chad watched some television and then got ready for bed.

But when they'd turned out the lights and Chad lifted her nightgown to begin his fond, preliminary explorations, she burst into tears.

“I can't help it,” she said, still weeping, the tears running into her open mouth. “I keep thinking about those poor…the poor little…”

It took her some effort to articulate it, that the suffering of the unrescued Thai prostitutes filled her with empathetic sorrow and made it impossible to allow herself untainted pleasure. She knew it was unreasonable. She apologized. Chad was very patient. He pointed out that the Thai prostitutes were entirely unaware of her feelings, and that punishing herself made no difference whatsoever. And that she should feel even less responsible than most people, since she had made a tangible effort to improve their lot. And that given the mass and volume and variety of human misery, the logical extension of her scruples was that no one should ever enjoy anything.

I know, I know, Melanie said, but tonight, could they just lie here together, could he just let her be sad? Chad said, Of course, it was no problem. If he was disappointed he knew better than to sulk and risk seeming like the kind of man who might consider signing up for a sex tour.

And so they fell asleep chastely entwined. Melanie dreamed about a school of tiny glittering fish that turned tail and darted away, transformed into a length of silk fabric, and then into a shower of coins. She woke with a light heart, determined to get another check to Miss Chumnoi as soon as she was able.

Chad had his own preoccupations. The radio station was a long way from turning a profit, or even getting out of the red. It required great amounts of his time, energy, and effort. With the help of his pals from the old station he was gradually building up the number of on-air hours. He recruited a couple of people to host their own shows on weekends, devoted to topics like gardening or pets. But he was still the iron man, the anchor, the one who held it all together. He couldn't tell if they were building much of an audience, beyond the local cranks and oddballs who adopted the station as their own discovery, and who felt free to call with opinions and suggestions or just to chew the fat, mistaking Chad for an idler like themselves instead of the humming nerve center of a growing enterprise.

Where did they come from, his loyal fans, the spidery old men and dough-faced, garrulous widows, the peculiar citizens who wore fuzzy hats and let their facial hair grow into topiary shapes? Or rather, where had they been all along? It was as if they had lived their entire crankish lives waiting for the airwaves to summon them, move them to contribute their life experiences, their wisdom, their expertise. Some number of them took to coming around the studio itself, clutching old record albums so softened with use that the circle shape of the disc was visible from the outside, or a homemade tape of a washboard and mandolin duet. They hung around underfoot until Chad put them to work making coffee or answering the phone or pasting mailing labels. The place took on something of the air of a sheltered workshop. Well, the station was meant to be a community enterprise. You had to take your community where you found it.