The girls were laughing, and Clémence said, “Susie doesn’t want us to talk to Ben. She says he feels very ashamed,” and David laughed, too.
“I think maybe the sense of shame has been a little overdeveloped in the family.” His handsome face, under the stubble, looked like a fat boy’s; the cigarette glowed in his mouth.
“Is this your idea of an apology?” Jean asked him.
Against the background of all this Henrik was aware of his ex-wife and children, whom he had left that morning in the house they once shared to enter these new scenes … and he felt now not exactly adrift at three a.m. Greenwich Mean Time (they would all be asleep in bed), but unanchored or even free of all that, in a way that made his life slightly less meaningful than before. But maybe that wasn’t true, he was too tired to think, and Jean was there, who was happy he was there, so this landscape (the Canadian producer smoking, the wood in the firepit smoking, blazing, resettling, and shedding sparks, the Christmas lights strung between the leafless trees, the broken stones of the courtyard, the laughing twenty-something girls, the accent of their waitress, the pale slightly tasteless beer) wasn’t entirely foreign ground, where he was a tourist, but somewhere … he couldn’t finish the thought. It was connected to her, and her life, it was information, but that’s all, and when they flew back home after New Year to their flat in Kensal Green, it wouldn’t really matter. But he was here now, he was really here.
“You should see this development,” Kurt said. “Near Kyle, off I-35.”
“That’s on the road to Wimberley. That’s not far from me.”
“There’s a kind of gatehouse, with a tower and a bell, which doesn’t work. And a security booth, where a guy sits watching CCTV. The swimming pool has some insurance issues, I don’t know what they are. Anyway, it exists but it hasn’t been functional in two years. Other than that, there’s a little playground area, next to the highway. That’s really the only communal space.”
“What are we talking about?” Paul asked.
“Where the guy … where one of the guys …”
“Who started the lights on 37th Street moved to,” Clémence said.
But it really was too cold to sit outside (though one of the girls wore nothing but a halter top, a skirt, and cowboy boots), and after half an hour they paid the bill and walked up the road to Mike’s Donuts. “I’ve heard about this place but never been,” Kurt said. “It is not supposed to be very good,” Henrik told him. He was joining in where he could. David said to Clémence, “All of this is not really about Ben and Julie, it’s about Susie and Nathan.”
“Julie was very upset,” Clémence said.
“Of course she was, he was trying to scare her.”
“That doesn’t seem important to you?”
“It was a stupid prank, that’s all; he wanted attention.”
To get to Mike’s you have to cross a four-lane intersection. There are pedestrian lights, but Jean ignored them … the traffic wasn’t bad at ten o’clock, though Henrik couldn’t tell where the cars were coming from. He followed Jean, who ran or half-ran in her ankle boots across the road. All of the stores had parking lots in front; there was a gas station on the other side, the red of taillights diminished ahead of them, the white lights approached, slowed down.
“I told you it was open,” Jean said. She was breathing a little heavily, you could see her breath.
The bakery was lit by harsh fluorescent lights; one of them flickered. The floor was dirty white tiles, and behind the counter, at an angle, you could see two or three long metal tables, like hospital carts on wheels, where the ovens were. Formica table-and-chair combinations stood in the wide front window, which overlooked the four-lane road. An Asian guy worked the cash register, but otherwise the store was empty. Behind him, lined up on plastic trays, which were stacked in a glass box or refrigeration unit, lay shelf after shelf of donuts (plain glazed, chocolate glazed, chocolate cake, blueberry cake, chocolate sprinkles, multicolored sprinkles) and donut holes and samosas.
“I feel like you’re trying to enlist me in a conversation I don’t particularly want to be a part of,” Clémence said. “Especially since last night Julie felt so scared she had to sleep in our bed.”
“I’m sorry about that but it was silly to let her sleep there.”
“In our bed?”
“In the playhouse.”
“You think it’s her fault?”
“Of course not, but you didn’t want her to either. This is just Nathan and Susie egging each other on.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with Ben.”
“The kids get caught up in it, too.”
“You’re not making sense. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Why are you interested in this guy?” Paul asked, so Kurt told him. Joel Beigott used to live on 37th Street but then moved out to Manzano Lane (that was the name of the development) after his mother’s dementia began to require full-time care. He needed the money. So what you have in this story, Kurt said, is all kinds of things coming together, a historic and unique community tradition, which was the 37th Street lights, slowly dying out because of lots of other things that are going wrong with this country, urban creep, healthcare …
“Where are you from?” Paul asked.
“Vancouver Island. At least, that’s where my mother lives.”
There was a blackboard next to the counter with a question scribbled onto it in pink chalk: “What movie did Roy Scheider drop out of, which is why Universal Pictures could force him into making Jaws 2?”
“If you know the answer, they’ll give you a free donut.” Jean was warming her hands in the pockets of Henrik’s cardigan, leaning against him from behind, with her head on his shoulder.
“Airport ’77,” he guessed, but the guy shook his head.
“Star Wars,” Jean said, but he only smiled.
“How much is a donut anyway?” Henrik asked and ended up insisting on paying for them. Like the grown-up here, like the old man, he said, which made Clémence pretend to protest. He bought a samosa, too, which he ate standing up; middle-of-the-night hunger had kicked in, and the fat and sugar were doing him good. As they walked outside, he said to Jean, “What should we do now?” because he felt happy, his girlfriend was somebody who so far as he knew and against the odds hadn’t suffered any damage at his hands, and they were in the middle of nowhere, in Texas, with occasional cars going past on the wide roads. Ahead of him, he could see the lights of restaurants or bars. Under a streetlamp, against a breeze-block wall, someone had written LOVE GOAT in cartoon letters.
But Clémence was tired, she wanted to go home. Kurt said, “Should I pick you up tomorrow? There’s no point in taking two cars.” He offered to walk with her back to Wheeler Street, but she turned him down, and the rest of them set off toward the Drag.
They ended up at a place called the Ace in the Hole—a neon OPEN sign blinked in the window. The glass was plastered with posters and personal ads, everything had a makeshift feel. Inside, the walls were painted black, the music was country metal, and as they walked through the door a voice on the sound system sang out angrily or peevishly “What did I ever see in you?” But there was a pool table at the back, and a TV showing the football game. Western Kentucky led Central Michigan 21–17 as they came out of the commercial break. Snow had piled up by the side of the field, you could see how cold it was under the lights, but it wasn’t snowing anymore. A couple of college-age kids were playing pool.
David bought a round of drinks, and Paul put a stack of quarters on the table.
“I don’t know how it works,” he said. “Is this how it works?”
“How what works?” But it turns out one of the guys needed a piss anyway, and the other guy was going home.
Paul racked up. They played some kind of straight pool, where three people could play at the same time—you were defending a run of balls, Paul explained to Henrik, who let Jean play instead. David was used to English tables, he’d had a
misspent youth, but the fact is it didn’t really matter, because Paul always won. He said, “Obsessive repetitive precision is what I do. I mean this is basically what I spent my life on.” People stood up and sat down and Henrik watched them. He watched the football game, too. It was called the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl.
He said, “Imagine a world where that’s a normal thing.”
“You don’t have to imagine it,” Jean said. “I like it when you’re like this.”
“Like what?”
“Dopey.”
He tried talking to Kurt, who sat with his elbows on his knees and his hand on his phone, thumbing the screen. But he glanced up when spoken to; he returned eye contact. His pale fresh skin looked blotchy under the harsh light. Maybe he had a reaction to alcohol where it made him red-faced.
Henrik guessed he was late twenties, Kurt was happy to answer questions about himself. He moved to Austin for grad school, because he wanted to be a writer, but he never finished his degree. Even at McGill he spent a lot of time volunteering at CKUT, the student radio station, so when he got to Austin he managed to get part-time work at KUT, which turned into something full-time. He was really very excited to be working with Clémence. This was a big deal for him. She’s a real pro, he said. He said this a couple of times.
David and Jean were in the middle of a conversation. David said, “Susie and Ben have been fighting like this all year. She thinks the problem is he doesn’t feel bad about anything. I think that’s the opposite of the problem. He’s a twelve-year-old boy, he feels bad about everything.”
Paul finally missed so she stood up to shoot. When she sat down again, she asked, “Why drag Clémence into it?”
“I don’t know. Nathan and Susie wind each other up. There are always higher principles at stake … nobody can live up to them.” He felt drunk, for the second time that day. “And Julie and Ben are just the same. It was a silly thing to do, he shouldn’t have done it, but it’s hardly the end of the world.”
“Boys will be boys,” Jean said.
Paul won the first two games, then he let the others play doubles, Kurt and David against Henrik and Jean. Jean was pretty good; she grew up with a table at home and moved confidently with the cue in her hand, but also with an air of hamming it up. Henrik wasn’t bad either, but he didn’t care much. He had bought himself another beer when nobody else wanted one and sat down between shots, drinking it steadily.
“You’ve had a hell of a year,” Paul said.
“I didn’t think at the end of it I would be sitting here.”
“Are you glad you are?”
“I am glad I am not dead.” He was saying what occurred to him. “I am glad to live openly with Jean. But you know something about that.”
“I don’t know what I know.”
Jean watched them from the pool table but couldn’t hear; it gave her pleasure to see them talking intimately.
“A friend of mine,” Henrik said, “who was married for twenty years calls it palliative sex. It doesn’t cure the problem, which is that you want to sleep with other people—and not just sleep with other people, but open yourself to other experiences, instead of the same experiences again and again, which is why people in a family get on each other’s nerves. Especially when you have teenage girls. But your wife if she is sensible will continue to sleep with you, even if she doesn’t particularly want to, because she knows it helps.”
“That’s not what …” Paul began to say. “I mean, that has nothing to do with …” But it was Henrik’s turn to shoot, and he stood up carefully and drunkenly and lined up his cue. He made a shot and then he made another and then he missed and sat down again next to Paul, who went on: “My problem is that I really don’t want any of it anymore. I mean, the other experiences.”
“I want to make clear that my situation was not the same as my friend’s,” Henrik said. “When I thought I was dying I thought, What do you want? Something I know about myself is that I don’t find it hard to be selfish. It is not difficult for me. But I have also learned my selfishness is okay. It’s not too bad, it’s not too greedy. Jean is an exceptional person. I am not so stupid I don’t know that. Sometimes I think it is also wrong, when good things happen, to say no. I don’t know if this makes sense.”
“It makes sense,” Paul said.
The college kid had come back; he put some quarters on the table and looked at Paul. “Is this what we’re doing?” he said. “Is this the system?” But his friend had gone home, he was happy to play whomever. So Paul played him and lost. Jean for some reason hated to watch him lose. Paul never talked much when he was playing, he never looked particularly happy. When it wasn’t his turn, he stood to the side and pretended to watch the football game. The kid was taking it pretty seriously, too, he kept chalking his cue. Afterward, they shook hands, which Paul initiated—it was like he felt there should be some formal gesture. But he didn’t like losing, it pushed him inward.
“You want a rematch?” the kid said.
He was a long-haired guy, a little overweight, but well-built. He filled out his T-shirt, which was sort of peach-colored. He wore a charm around his neck on a brown string. Jean thought Paul would take him on and was strangely disappointed when her brother said, “I think most of these guys are ready to go home. This guy just got off a plane. It’s like five in the morning for him.”
So they walked out into the fresh air, into the cold night.
Kurt said, “The Deer Hunter, that’s what it was. I looked it up.”
“Do you want a free donut?” Jean asked him. Her ears were ringing.
“They’re probably closed.”
Jean said, “They never close,” but nobody could be bothered, and Kurt lit a cigarette instead. They crossed Guadalupe in the middle of the road and walked the backstreets toward Hemphill Park, passing a row of recently constructed campus apartments, with bikes on the balconies and a few lights on. Paul said to Henrik, “Listen, I know what it’s like upstairs.” Jean’s bedroom was next to Susie and David’s, and the two boys’. They were sleeping on a foldout sofa, with a lot of old furniture squeezed in around them—armchairs and bookshelves with nowhere else to go. French doors separated their room from Susie’s, the glass was covered by thin curtains. “If at any point you guys want a night away … I mean, I’d be happy to stay at Wheeler Street. You could sleep at my house.”
“Right now I don’t care where I sleep. I could sleep on the grass.”
“Not now, I mean, but later.”
“I know what you mean. Thank you.”
Kurt peeled off at the Spider House, where he had parked. “I guess I’ll see you in the morning,” he said, a little sheepishly, and Jean felt something like pity, watching him get in his car. He rented a room in Hyde Park; his housemates were students. Then they walked the long way round, by the creek. She put her arms around Henrik, it was really very cold. Clouds covered the treetops, the wind was busy, but the creek bed was dry, it was mostly moss and reeds. At Wheeler Street, she gave her brother a hug, transferring her physical affection from her boyfriend.
“Why don’t you crash here,” she said. “You had too much to drink.”
“I had two beers in three hours. I’m fine.”
“It’s a long drive.”
“I’m used to it.”
“I don’t like you going home alone.”
“I’m used to that, too,” Paul said.
Liesel had left the light on in the front hall, and the rest of them went up the steps into the house. Henrik took off his shoes at the bottom of the stairs; the floor creaked. They let David use the bathroom first, so he could creep through their bedroom without waking the boys. (He had taken off his sweater and his pants and carried them with the belt still in its loops. His extra-large T-shirt sloped outward like a lampshade; he had strong legs and tiptoed heavily, smiling.) But Willy lay with Susie under the duvet. He felt hot to the touch, his cheeks were flushed; they were both fast asleep. So David went into the boys’ r
oom next door and climbed into Willy’s bed under the window. He thought, I shouldn’t talk so much, but he didn’t really care, he was ready to go home.
Henrik and Jean used the bathroom together. He splashed water on his face, he brushed his teeth. He whispered to Jean, “Maybe it’s too late now, for me to sleep. It feels like the morning,” but when he lay down on the sofa bed, he felt cleaned out. The distance traveled, the cramped airplane seat, the endless noise, his ex-wife coming down in her nightgown to say goodbye, none of it mattered, and Jean pushed herself against his armpit and stayed there, even after he fell asleep.
THURSDAY
The cold front blowing through had littered the grass with leaves. Fat sycamore leaves that fell all winter and lay on their backs collecting wet. Liesel thought, looking out her bathroom window, if Bill were here, he’d put on his sweatshirt and rake them up. Maybe the kids can do it. But they had other things to do, it wasn’t really their problem anymore.
Bill called before she went down to breakfast. He didn’t have much to report—that’s what he said. The funeral was in Port Jervis; Rose wanted to be buried with their parents. “I don’t expect anybody will come.” But they were having a reception at her house this afternoon, which meant an hour and a half each way in the car. It was all a little crazy. In a few minutes he planned to walk over to Polanka’s, the deli on Nepperhan Avenue where Rose once took him to lunch, to buy some food. It’s a twenty-minute walk, maybe a little more in the snow, but he wanted to get out of the house, and he didn’t want to drive. He wasn’t sure about parking. The roads were mostly clear, but there was still snow piled up by the curb where you wanted to park. Liesel listened to him talk—he could have been talking to anyone. At least, his tone made no differentiation, but what mattered was to let him get off his chest these practical details. They occupied the part of his brain dedicated to grieving.
She said to him after a few minutes, “Henrik is here,” but she had told him last night, she didn’t have any fresh impressions.
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