The Fresco Read Free Page B

The judge had put Bert on house arrest, sentenced him to an electronic anklet that set off an alarm at the station house if he wasn’t within fifty feet of the monitor at home or at his so-called job in the Alvarez salvage yard. He was supposed to call the station before he went from one to the other and they gave him thirty minutes to arrive. Most of the time, Bert figured it wasn’t worth a phone call to get to work, especially on weekends when Benita was home and he could get some fun out of bedeviling her.
    The rest of the week was bearable. Ten to nine, Monday through Friday, she was at The Written Word, doing more than a bit of everything. Marsh and Goose, the owners, were casual about their own work hours and pretty much left it to her. She’d been there part time for two years, starting when Carlos was three and Angelica was one, then full time for fourteen. The first two years were mostly learning the job, stocking shelves, unpacking, doing scut work. Gradually she progressed, and after they put her on full time she read reviews and ordered books and paid the bills and sent back the unsold paperback covers and did the accounts. She took adult education literature courses so she could talk to customers about books, and computer courses so she could use bookkeeping systems and inventory systems. When she ran out of anything else to do, she read books. Considering the correspondence courses, the books and the Internet, PBS, Bravo and the History channel, she’d soaked up a good bit of education, maybe even a hint of culture, occasionally comforting herself with the thought she was probably as well read as some people who came into the store, people who had obviously not hung their lives out on the line like an old, ragged dish towel.
    Sometimes it was hard to remember how she’d felt more than twenty years before, a kid, a high school senior madly in love with an older man. Among her friends, there’d been a little cachet in that, his being older. She’d been too naive to wonder why an older man, a self-described artist, would be interested in someone just turned seventeen. She was pretty, everyone said so, and artists were romantic, everyone knew that, and the label wasn’t an actual lie. Bert had never claimed to make a living as an artist, and he had won a few third prize ribbons or honorable mentions at regional shows.
    A man of minor talents and major resentments. The marriage counselor had said that, quietly, to Benita. It had been a revelation, not the fact that Bert had major resentments, she couldn’t have missed knowing that after all these years. But the bit about the minor talent, yes, that was a revelation. Somehow, Benita had come to think of him as being too lazy to live up to his potential. After that, she’d fretted over it,wondering if he thought he had no potential, and if he drank rather than admit it. She felt sad for him and wanted to comfort him, and that coincided with a few days when Bert wasn’t drinking so they had a weeklong second honeymoon, not that she’d ever had a first one. It made her feel better until the next time he got drunk and knocked her down.
    It was really hard to be understanding or sympathetic with Bert. When he was sober, he would sit at the table listening as she begged him to talk to her. He would grunt or utter a monosyllable, or he’d grin, that infuriating grin that told her he was teasing her, goading her. She never got close! Oh, he had good points. He was always good to his mother. He wouldn’t work to help her out with money, but he was always ready to help her out with advice or carrying stuff or taking her somewhere. He never once laid a hand on the children. If he was sober, he was delightful with them: he’d tell the tall stories about places he’d been, things he’d done. He’d take them to the zoo or the playground or the movies. Of course, if he was drunk, he could tongue-lash them raw,