Zoe Mullery

Zoe Mullery

FEED MY LAMBS (AN EXCERPT)

The chair slowly swiveled around to face her, as Gerald made tiny sidesteps with his slippered feet to move it. He was wrapped in another bedspread, a dirty gold one edged with long fringe that Martha recognized as having been in the dog’s corner for a long time. His face was slack and crusty-looking and he had some mustard or something stuck in his beard. Though Martha couldn’t see any empty cans, she could smell the beer. Skunk jumped up on Gerald’s lap and licked his face.

“I thought you said that last binge was it,” Martha said severely, crossing her arms. Gerald stared at her, blinking. Martha walked past him and saw the pile of empty cans between the chair and the window. She began picking them up and tossing them in the paper bag standing there, no doubt the bag he’d brought the beer home in. The cans clattered on one another and Martha let them make noise, one of the many ways she would show her displeasure. She had come to take his binges somewhat personally, since she had made a tremendous effort to get him to stop, and he had always seemed to make huge emotional breakthroughs when they talked that led her to believe that he was really going to stop, inspired by her perceptions and care.

“Martha, do you love me?” Gerald asked hoarsely. Martha stopped throwing cans. She couldn’t see his face as he was still facing the door. Once he had boasted to her that he knew how to find girls who didn’t mind being paid well for sex in this small town, and Martha had never felt quite as comfortable around him since, though he always treated her respectfully, even reverently.

“Of course I love you, Gerald,” she said breezily. “You’re my friend.” She resumed throwing cans into the bag, a little quieter this time.

Gerald said, “Feed my sheep.”

“What?” Martha said. Gerald cackled. He turned the chair around to face Martha. “Feed my lambs!” he said again. “The dogs!” he shouted. “They’re hungry.”

Martha went into the kitchen and opened two cans of Alpo, opening the bottoms too so she could push the can-shaped meat through into the big dog bowls. Skunk and Rocky waited as she set the bowls on the kitchen floor. When she went back into the den to finish cleaning up the beer cans Gerald had pulled the bedspread up around the top of his head so the fringe hung on his forehead like bangs, and he was sobbing silently, huge tearless sobs and a face as dramatically tragic as a face could be. Martha had been susceptible to his drunken sentimentality the first few times but had become as hardened to it as a long-suffering wife, deaf to his pitiful fleeting repentances and regrets. In the beginning she had sat with him, her heart heavy with all his sorrows, trying to help him cathart or remember or forget or forgive or berate or whatever it took for him to get past the seemingly bottomless anguish of the moment. It was a quick lesson; she soon realized he not only never actually repented or forgave or stayed with any of the conclusions she bullied and cajoled him to get to, he never even remembered the conversations at all.

“Pull yourself together, Gerald,” she said, taking a bath towel off the back of a chair and using it to sop up beer dregs which had soaked into the gold shag carpet where the cans had been. She pressed the heels of her hands into the towel, which darkened with beer wherever she pressed. He must have spilled a whole one. There had been at least eighteen cans on the floor; she wondered when he had started. There was also an empty bottle of Tagamet, the medicine for his bleeding ulcer, mixed in with the cans on the floor. That’s just beautiful, Martha thought. Drink three sixpacks and then pop some Tagamet. That’s lovely.

“Have you eaten anything lately, Gerald?” Martha asked. Gerald answered by gasping for air and choking into another sob. Martha felt her heart soften a little; whether beer-induced or not, he was still in agony. She walked over to him and knelt by his knee, looking into his face. “Gerald,” she said softly. “Gerald, it’s OK.”

Gerald opened his eyes and looked straight at her like a drowning man. He grabbed her hand. “Pray for me, Martha,” he gasped, like a bad actor in an overly dramatic play. “I’m dying. I’m dying, Martha,” he sobbed.

“You’re not dying, Gerald. You’re drunk,” Martha said, standing up and trying to free her hand. He gripped it tighter.

Read the entire story in the Fall/Winter 2005 Issue.