The Elementals by Michael McDowell

didn’t need an excuse to come to Beldame. I’ve been begging you for years to come back down here and stay with me, and bring India. And Dauphin and Leigh have been begging too. Luker, you haven’t been to Beldame since you were here with that woman in ’ 68 . And you know what she said to me then? She said—”
    “I don’t want to know. I don’t want to talk about her.”
    “I just wish I could believe that woman was dead! A photograph of her headstone would make your mother a happy woman, Luker! A happy woman!”
    “No, she’s not dead, she . . .” Luker turned his face against the pillow in a yawn.
    Big Barbara rolled him back over. “Luker! Don’t you tell me that you’ve seen her!”
    “No. I don’t know where she is.”
    “Good,” said Big Barbara, “there aren’t enough days in hell for that woman . . .” She vindictively snatched her brassieres off Luker’s chest and pushed them into the top drawer of the dresser. “Good!” she said again, “that’s all done. Now, why don’t you run down and make me a drink and we’ll go over and see how Dauphin and Leigh are doing.”
    “No,” said Luker.
    “No what?”
    “No, I’m not going to get you a drink.” For this he opened his eyes and looked at her.
    “Well,” she said cautiously, sensing that something was up, “I’ll have to get it myself. Do you want anything?”
    “No.”
    “Luker—”
    “Barbara, there’s no liquor in the house. I didn’t bring any down.”
    “Luker, I set out the box, it was right in the laundry room, ready to go in the trunk. How you could have missed it, I don ’ t know.”
    “I did see it. But I didn’t pack it—on purpose.”
    “Well,” said Big Barbara, “then I just hope that Dauphin had the good sense to put it in the Mercedes, I—”
    “Dauphin didn’t bring it either,” said Luker. “Barbara, Beldame just went dry, by vote of the populace.”
    “I didn’t vote!”
    “It didn’t matter. Majority would have gone prohibition anyway.”
    Big Barbara had seated herself at the vanity and now talked to her son’s reflection in the mirror. Luker had sat up on the bed.
    “ That ’ s why you’re here,” said Big Barbara softly. “ That ’ s why you’ve come to Beldame, isn’t it—to be my keeper.”
    “That’s right.”
    “You could have had the decency to tell me, Luker.”
    “You would have tried to wiggle out of it.”
    “Of course I would have, and you should have given me the chance!”
    “No,” said Luker quietly. “Barbara, you’re an alcoholic. And you won’t get help. I know Leigh’s already talked to you and Lawton’s talked to you, and if Dauphin weren’t so goddamned polite, he would have talked to you too. But you wouldn’t do anything about it and every night you’d come in and fill yourself up to the dotted line with booze—”
    Big Barbara turned away from the mirror. “Luker,” she pleaded, “I wish you wouldn’t—”
    “I tell you, Barbara,” said her son, “of all the problems that you can make your friends and your family deal with, alcoholism is the most boring. It’s got nothing to recommend it. And you ’ re particularly bad. When you drink you start talking, and there’s nothing that’s going to shut you up. You tell things that ought not be told, you tell them to anyone and you embarrass everybody. And I tell you, Barbara, when you’re full of booze, it’s hard to love you.”
    “And so ,” said Big Barbara, “you’ve brought me down here to work the miracle cure. You’re going to take the leather straps off your bags and tie me to the bed, and then you and India are going to run over to the next house hoping that you can’t hear me screaming!”
    “If that’s what it takes.” Luker shrugged. “Barbara, if you go on drinking, you’re going to be alive for about five more years, and most of that time you’re going to be sicker than Marian Savage was. You’re a fool to drink the way you do. I don’t know why you do