And whatever the Bible may say to the contrary, don’t let your lefthand forget what your right hand is supposed to be doing. Your leftmay be your ashtray-throwing hand, but your right had better be yourglass-catching hand, Jessie. There’s only a few inches of shelf where you’ll have a chance to get hold of it. if it slides past that area, it won’t matterif it stays up-it’ll he as out of reach as it is right now.
Jessie didn’t think she could forget what her right hand was doing-it hurt too much. Whether or not it would be able to do what she needed it to do was another question entirely, though. She increased the pressure on the left side of the shelf as steadily and as gradually as she could. A stinging drop of sweat ran into the corner of one eye and she blinked it away. Somewhere the back door was banging again, but it had joined the telephone in that other universe. Here there was only the glass, the shelf, and Jessie. Part of her expected the shelf to come up all at once like a brutal Jack-in-the-box, catapulting everything off, and she tried to steel herself against the possible disappointment.
Worry about that if it happens, toots. In the meantime, don’t lose your concentration. I think something’s happening.
Something was. She could feel that minute shift again-that feel of the shelf starting to come unanchored at some point along Gerald’s side. This time Jessie didn’t let up her pressure but increased it, the muscles in her upper left arm standing out in hard little arcs that trembled with strain. She voiced a series of small explosive grunts. That sense of the shelf coming unanchored grew steadily stronger.
And suddenly the flat circular surface of the water in Gerald’s glass was a tilted plane and she heard the last slivers of ice chatter faintly as the right end of the board actually did come up. The glass itself did not move, however, and a horrible thought occurred to her: what if some of the water trickling down the sides of the glass had seeped beneath the cardboard coaster on which it sat? What if it had formed a seal, bonding it to the shelf?
“No, that can’t happen.” The words came out in a single whispered blurt, like a tired child’s rote prayer. She pulled down harder on the left end of the shelf, using all her strength. Every last horse was now running in harness; the stable was empty.
“Please don’t let it happen. Please.”
Gerald’s end of the shelf continued to rise, its end wavering wildly. A tube of Max Factor blush spilled off Jessie’s end and landed on the floor near the place where Gerald’s head had lain before the dog had come along and dragged him away from the bed. And now a new possibility-more of a probability, actually-occurred to her. If she increased the angle of the shelf much more, it would simply slide down the line of L-brackets, glass and all, like a toboggan going down a snowy hill. Thinking of the shelf as a seesaw could get her into trouble. It wasn’t a seesaw; there was no central pivot-point to which it was attached.
“Slide, you bastard!” she screamed at the glass in a high, breathy voice. She had forgotten Gerald; had forgotten she was thirsty; had forgotten everything but the glass, now tilted at an angle so acute that water was almost slopping over the rim and she couldn’t understand why it didn’t simply fall over. It didn’t, though; it just went on standing where it had stood all along, as if it had been glued to the spot. “Slide!”
Suddenly it did.
Its movement ran so counter to her black imaginings that she was almost unable to understand what was happening. Later it would occur to her that the adventure of the sliding glass suggested something less than admirable about her own mindset: she had in some fashion or other been prepared for failure. It was success which left her shocked and gaping.
The short, smooth journey of the glass down the shelf toward her right hand so stunned her that Jessie almost pulled harder with her left, a move that almost certainly would have overbalanced the precariously tilted shelf and sent it crashing to the floor. Then her fingers were actually touching the glass, and she screamed again. It was the wordless, delighted shriek of a woman who has just won the lottery.
The shelf wavered, began to slip, then paused, as if it had a rudimentary mind of its own and was considering whether or not it really wanted to do this.
Not much time, toots, Ruth warned. Grab the goddam thing whilethe grabbing’s good.
Jessie tried, but the pads of her fingers only slid along the stick wet surface of the glass. There was nothing to grab, it seemed, and she couldn’t get quite enough finger-surface on the thricedamned thing to grip. Water sloshed onto her hand, and now she sensed that even if the shelf held, the glass would soon tip over.
Imagination, toots-just the old idea that a sad little Punkin likeyou can never do anything right.
That wasn’t far from the mark-it was certainly too close for comfort-but it wasn’t on the mark, not this time. The glass was getting ready to tip over, it really was, and she didn’t have the slightest idea of what she could do to prevent that from happening, Why did she have to have such short, stubby, ugly fingers? Why? If only she could get them a little farther around the glass…
A nightmare image from some old TV commercial occurred to her: a smiling woman in a fifties hairdo with a pair of blue rubber gloves on her hands. So flexible you can pick up a dime! the woman was screaming through her smile. Too bad you don’t have a pair,little Punkin or Goodwife or whoever the hell you are! Maybe you couldget that fucking glass before everything on the goddam shelf takes theexpress elevator!
Jessie suddenly realized the smiling, screaming woman in the Playtex rubber gloves was her mother, and a dry sob escaped her.
Don’t give up, Jessie! Ruth yellecl. Not yet! You’re close! I swearyou are!
She exerted the last tiny scrap of her strength on the left side of the shelf, praying incoherently that it wouldn’t slide-not yet, Oh please God or whoever You are, please don’t let it slide, not now, notyet.
The board did slide… but only a little. Then it held again, perhaps temporarily snagged on a splinter or balked by a warp in the wood. The glass slid a little farther into her hand, and now crazier and crazier-it seemed to be talking, too, the goddam glass. It sounded like one of those grizzled big-city cab-drivers who have a perpetual hard-on against the world: Jesus, lady, whatelse ya want me to do? Grow myself a goddam handle and turn into afuckin pitcher forya? A fresh trickle of water fell on Jessie’s straining right hand. Now the glass would fall; now it was inevitable. In her mind she could already feel the freeze as icewater doused the back of her neck.
“No!”
She twisted her right shoulder a little farther, opened her fingers a little wider, let the glass slide a tiny bit deeper into the straining pocket of her hand. The cuff was digging into the back of that hand, sending jabs of pain all the way up to her elbow, but Jessie ignored them. The muscles of her left arm were twanging wildly now, and the shakes were communicating themselves to the tilted, unstable shelf. Another tube of makeup tumbled to the floor. The last few slivers of ice chimed faintly. Above the shelf, she could see the shadow of the glass on the wall. In the long sunset light it looked like a grain silo blown atilt by a strong prairie wind.
More… just a little bit more…
There IS no more!
There better be, There’s got to be.