The End As I Know It

by Kevin Shay

  “OK, I have to run a couple of errands and then pick up Morgan. You want me to help you pull out the bed?”

  “No, I might just jump in the shower and then decompress a little.”

  She points to a stack of perfectly folded sheets and towels on the sofa. “Well, there are towels. Make yourself at home. You can use the shower in the bathroom off the second-floor hallway. Make sure the bathmat—” With an effort, she cuts herself off midinstruction. “You’ll figure everything out. Call my cell if you need anything.”

  I find my way to the designated bathroom, taking along a change of clothes so I don’t have to streak back half naked. Showered, I wallow in an oversized thick fluffy towel. For weeks I’ve used nothing but motel towels, those threadbare bleach-reeking swatches of sandpaper. I feel refreshed, but according to the bathroom mirror I still look beat to hell. Didn’t realize my hair had gotten so long and unruly. Last cut was in Florida—Grandma tried to take me to the beauty parlor, but I opted for a barber the next strip mall over who looked like he might have a better idea how to handle a male, nonelderly head of hair. When was that, six weeks ago? Better put a haircut on the agenda, then. For my talk with Nicole and Boyd, the less I look like John the Baptist, the more seriously they might take my prophecies.

  I tiptoe into Nicole’s office, careful not to disturb the perpendicularity of the items on her desk, and give my email a quick check. And find this, from Hilary Bursey:

  hi randall:

  just checkin’ in, hope your visit with your sister is going well! i know we still have to get you directions, etcetera-willl send you all the info next week. there is one thing i wanted to mention before you arrive, and that is to warn you to be prepared for claude’s appearance. i know that sounds ominous but it’s really just— a “cosmetic” medical condition, not even harmful to his heath. really nothing too terrible, we are even able to laugh about it now. anyway, will give you the full story when you get here but just thought i would clue you in so you won’t be alarmed when you arrive, best, hilary

  Interesting. What’s wrong with poor Mr. Bursey? Eczema, rosacea, port-wine birthmarks (but it sounds like a recent problem, not congenital)? That thing Michael Jackson claims to have? Hard to picture Claude stricken by any of these, since I don’t even know what he looked like unblemished.

  Now I find myself at loose ends in this huge house. I wander, taking a quick survey of the family photos on display. Morgan predominates, of course—infant Morgan, toddler Morgan, Halloween Morgan (Power Ranger), a triptych of Morgan Supermanning around the yard with a towel for a cape. Morgan and his dad at an Orioles game (skybox, naturally—media insider’s privilege). A few wedding photos, and there’s yours truly as a diffident groomsman. And here are the four of us in a posed nuclear-family shot from sometime in the early eighties, Nicole uncomfortable in her newly adolescent skin and me pleased as punch to sport a ludicrous ensemble involving flared green corduroy trousers and a Charlie Brown–influenced one-stripe shirt with a big pointy collar. This was, what, three years before the divorce? I peer into my parents’ Kodacolor faces for portents of discord. No, all’s well here.

  I fix a glass of instant iced tea, retire to the back patio, and contemplate the yard. Probably a half-acre of lawn, fringed by trees that have blanketed the grass in a week’s worth of falling leaves. Inspiration strikes: I’ll rake it! The activity will wake up my stagnant blood, plus Nicole and Boyd will appreciate it. Ingratiation, exercise, and time-killing in one fell swoop. Perfect. I find a rake in the garage and get started. I work back and forth in neat rows, raking the even rows to one end of the yard and the odds to the opposite end, then accumulate the resulting minipiles into the corners. I rake vigorously, try to raise a sweat. In the process come a few memory flashes of raking and romping with my father and sister. Diving into a pile of leaves. The Nicole of today would sooner pack her son a lunchbox full of compost than let him dive into a pile of leaves.

  An hour later I return to the patio to finish my iced tea and survey my results. Pristine lawn, two pleasing leaf piles in opposite corners. The sight of it fills me with a strong sense of accomplishment, of well-being. But what’s this undercurrent of unease? Oh, right, the end of the world. Shit.

  Still nobody home. Should I go the extra mile and bag up the leaves? No, I’d end up using the wrong color bags, or find out they mulch them, or something. Luckily there’s not enough wind to disturb the piles much. I go into the house and resume my aimless skulking.

  Eventually I hear a car pull up and station myself by the door to greet my nephew.

  “Hey, buddy!”

  “Uncle Randall!” He drops his little knapsack, which Nicole snatches up almost before it hits the floor, and runs over for a hug.

  “You’re enormous, dude!” I scoop him up and whirl around in a circle with him clutched to my chest, making him shriek with laughter. Oops—Nicole’s on her cell.

  “What? I’m sorry, I couldn’t—Cheryl, Cheryl, just try to calm down. We’ll work everything out. I’ll be over as soon as I can. Make yourself a cup of chamomile or something.” She hangs up. “That is one frazzled woman.” She pulls an address book from her purse and leafs through it.

  I return Morgan to the ground. “Everything OK?”

  “Oh, yeah, I just have a client in crisis.”

  “To the Batmobile!”

  She ignores that. “I just have to go over to this person’s house for a half-hour or so and talk her down.”

  “Has she taken hostages?”

  Again she fails to stoop to the bait. “Do you think you boys can amuse yourselves for a bit?”

  “I think we can manage. What do you think, Morgan?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Great. He can have a snack, but nothing real sugary, it’ll get him too worked up. See you soon, honey.”

  “Bye, Mom.” Nicole kisses Morgan on the top of the head and rushes off to handle her client’s urgent discombobulation. My God, the triviality of the whole concept. My pulse quickens with anger. The nerve of calling some woman’s lack of organization a crisis, when just around the corner we’re facing—

  “Can we have peanut butter and pretzels?” A hopeful voice cuts off my bitter reverie. I look down at my nephew, his small eager face.

  “Definitely! Lead us to the peanut butter and pretzels.”

  After our snack we retire to the basement. Morgan proudly shows me his guitar, a ukulele-sized plastic toy with five (five?) nylon strings. I coax it into an open tuning so he can just bang on it to produce some semblance of music. I take out my own guitar, accompany him for a few duets. Then it’s on to his action figures. Why don’t we introduce them to my puppets? And we’re off into the land of make-believe, where there are no silicon chips except the ones that make Godzilla bellow when you press his neck, no enterprise-scale systems, no SCADA stations, no Iron Triangle, no bank defaults, no martial law. Just toys that come alive in our hands and act out funny rambling stories. Y2K is upstairs. I gratefully let the playroom absorb me, and I’ll stay here until someone drags me out.

  “I’m home!” My sister runs down the stairs and looks us up and down, her brother and her son and her basement, for signs of damage, of hazardous activity.

  “Hi, Mom,” says Morgan, not especially psyched about her return.

  “Hi, Morgan’s Mom!” says Jersey Joe Giraffe, who happens to be on my hand.

  “Are you two having fun?” Nicole asks, like a headwaiter asking if the meal is satisfactory. She picks up R. K. Raccoon with thumb and middle finger and holds him at a safe distance, examining his fur. “Do you ever wash these things?”

  “No, he does not! Bathe us! Baaaaaathe us!” pleads Jersey Joe, whose voice I pretty much ripped off from Eeyore (what does a giraffe sound like, anyway?). Morgan giggles. His mother does not.

  “I’m serious. They’re sort of mildewy. Where there’s mildew, there could be bacteria.”

  “Just look at me—I’m a veritable petri dish,” the giraffe compl
ains.

  “What’s a verrable petri dish?” Morgan asks.

  “Never mind,” says Nicole.

  “Fine, I’ll throw them in the washer.” I remove Jersey Joe from my hand.

  “Come on up when you guys are ready. I’m gonna start pulling some dinner together.”

  “Roger wilco.”

  “Roger wilco!” Morgan echoes. I just taught him that.

  Nicole eyes me quizzically. “Randall, did you, ah, rake the backyard?”

  “Oh. Sure did! I forgot to tell you. Was that all right?”

  “Of course it was. I mean, thanks. I just—I mean, why did you—” The phone rings. She shakes her head in bafflement and goes to answer it.

  We spend a few minutes cleaning up, erasing all evidence that fun was had here, and go upstairs. “I have to wash my hands,” my well-trained nephew says, and scurries up to the second floor. I find Nicole dashing around the kitchen. The countertops are now half covered in bowls and ingredients and baking sheets, and she’s pulling out more by the second with precise, efficient movements, like an elite commando assembling his weapon.

  “Some dinner!”

  “This is all for the party. I’m way behind on getting everything ready.”

  “Do you need a hand?”

  “No!” she says quickly, probably picturing the damage I’d do to her hors d’oeuvres. She must need things floreted and layered and uniformly diced, and I’m still stuck in the pasta-boiling stage of my culinary development. “But thank you. That was Boyd on the phone, he’s stuck at work, surprise surprise. I was wondering if you could take Morgan out for dinner.”

  “Sure.”

  “We could order in, but I mean, look at this place, and I’m just getting started.”

  “I’d love to take him.”

  “There’s a pizza place he likes. I’ll give you directions. Just no pepperoni or sausage, OK?”

  “Does he not eat meat?”

  “No, he does, but I don’t want him loaded up with nitrates and nitrites.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “The difference,” she snaps, misunderstanding, “is between a piece of pizza and a vat of chemicals. Maybe you don’t care what kind of crap you put into your body, but—”

  “No, no, no.” I raise a placating hand. “I meant the difference between nitrates and nitrites. Never mind. No sausage, no pepperoni.”

  She lowers her hackles. “Oh. OK, then.” Deep breath. “Or hamburger. Or seafood, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  She takes me to the garage and shows me the Isuzu I’ll be borrowing. It starts a little sketchily from long dormancy but seems serviceable once it’s running. I drive it around the block a couple of times to adjust to not leaving the driving to Greyhound. When I pull up in front of the house, Morgan and my sister are standing on the front steps. She stoops to zip his little windbreaker, shepherds him to the car. He opens the back door and starts to get in.

  “You don’t want to ride up with me, Morg?”

  He looks at his mother.

  “Oh, he always rides in the backseat. Our other cars have airbags.”

  “Ah, gotcha.”

  “This one doesn’t. But the back’s still safer. He’s really too small for the shoulder belt…” Morgan stands poised with one leg in the car, waiting for his mother to render her opinion. “I could go get his booster seat.”

  “No, forget it, Nicole. He can just ride in back.”

  As I chauffeur Morgan into town, and especially after we park and walk down the busy commercial street the restaurant is on, I start to remember how different he is outside the confines of his home. Cowed and wary, he clings to my side and darts his head back and forth, scanning for—what? Any of the thousand overblown threats his mom incessantly warns of? Hard to believe this is the same boy who was romping around the basement an hour ago. Nicole, can’t you see this is how agoraphobics are made?

  The host seats us in a booth near the back. It’s not a pizza place per se but a trendy neo-Italian restaurant with a selection of individual-size pizzas. I read the options to Morgan, who reads fairly well for his age but can’t be expected to make much of words like “radicchio” and “calamari.”

  “What sounds good to you, Morg? Just regular pizza, or one of these fancy ones?”

  “I like regular.”

  “Regular it is. I think I’m gonna have this one: three cheese and pesto. You can try it if you want.”

  Morgan frowns, apparently frightened by my choice.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Um, Mom said someone once died from pesto.”

  Died from pesto. Let’s see, where did that come from? Oh, right, pine nuts. “Well, pesto has nuts in it. Some people have a really bad allergy to nuts. But neither of us does. We were just eating peanut butter, remember?” I lick my lips in memory of our snack.

  “Yeah.” Not altogether reassured.

  “So it’s not gonna hurt us, right?”

  “I guess so.” Starting to come around. Better add a little goofy patter to distract him. Or I could just switch pizzas. No, damn it, he has to learn to get over Nicole’s nonsense—the sooner, the better. And that pizza sounds tasty.

  “What it will probably do is make me smell like garlic.” I lean forward, turn solemn. “Morgan, will you make me a promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you promise not to call me Garlic Breath?”

  “OK.” A smile cracks the worried set of his mouth.

  “OK what?”

  “I promise.”

  “Promise what?”

  Finally, a chuckle. “Not to call you Garlic Breath.”

  “Good. So we have a deal.”

  After the waitress takes our order, Morgan gradually seems more at ease. Starting to forget he’s supposed to worry about everything. Wait, that guy standing at the takeout counter. He looks an awful lot like my friend Rob from Philly. But what the hell would Rob be doing here? He’s wearing a baseball cap and watching the street, not facing me. I stare at him, waiting for him to turn and give me a frontal view. Yep, definitely him.

  “I think I know that guy,” I tell Morgan, who by this time is turned around in his chair trying to figure out what I’m looking at. “Rob! Rob!” Too noisy in here. I stand up and tap Morgan on the shoulder. “Come with me for a sec.”

  We march over to Rob, and I catch his attention. “Rob!”

  I expected surprise, but he’s positively dumbfounded to see me, mouth agape. He takes a few seconds to find words.

  “Hey! Randall! What, ah, brings you here?”

  “Nicole lives here, remember? This is my nephew. Morgan, this is my buddy Rob.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Morgan.”

  “Hi.” Morgan starts to reach out a tentative hand for a shake, but Rob goes with a quick hair-tousle.

  “And you? What’s in Bethesda?”

  “Just a business trip.”

  “On a weekend?”

  “Yeah, there’s a conference. I get to sit and take notes for my associate. Big fun.”

  “That is fun. Lisa come with you?”

  “Nah.”

  The host comes out of the kitchen with Rob’s brown-bagged order.

  “You want to grab a drink later or something?” I say.

  “Ooh, love to, but I have an early, ah, early session. You still be around tomorrow night?”

  “Sure.”

  He gives me his cell number in the margin of a takeout menu, then pays for his food and departs with a thin smile and a “Call me tomorrow.”

  We go back to the table. I chew on a breadstick, thinking. Rob didn’t exactly overflow with warmth and glee at the sight of me. Did he expect another lecture and flee out the door to avoid it? Have I managed to torpedo my oldest friendship? I hope he was just preoccupied or double-parked or something. But he seemed receptive before, damn it. Well, better stop brooding and amuse the kid.

  “So, Morgan, Rob lives in Philadelphia. Have yo
u heard of Philadelphia?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Did I ever tell you how the Philadelphia steak sandwich got its cheese?”

  “No.”

  “Really? It’s a very interesting story. It all started one day in 1777…”

  chapter 11

  420

  Days

  “Jesus!”

  “Hi, Uncle Randall!”

  Morgan, lying in wait on the other side of the basement door, nearly startles me into falling back down the stairs.

  “Ah, good morning. You surprised me there.”

  Despite this jolt, my legs are sluggish, eyelids leaden. First uninterrupted night’s sleep in weeks—maybe something to do with not passing out drunk—and my body wants another eight hours right away. I follow Morgan to the kitchen.

  “Who’d you find over there, son?” My brother-in-law gets up from the breakfast table. Boyd and I didn’t cross paths last night. He was still at work when I crashed shortly after bringing Morgan back from the restaurant. Nicole didn’t seem put out by his absence. She was up to her elbows in the party preparations, in her element, Saran-Wrapping this and toothpicking that.

  “Hey, Boyd. Good to see you.”

  “Right back at you.” He grips my hand alpha-malewise for longer than necessary. Boyd is five-six, an inch shorter than Nicole, five shorter than me, and tends to overdo it on the masculinity by way of compensating.

  “I hear you had a hell of a trip here.”

  “Good to be back behind the wheel, I’ll say that. Thanks for the loaner, by the way.”

  “Hey, listen, anything we can do. So, my wife tells me you’re in the market for a blazer.”

  A Chevy Blazer? Why would Nicole think that? “Um, I don’t—oh, a blazer. Yes, I am. And a haircut.” This came up last night when I asked her if I should make myself scarce for tonight’s shindig. No, she said, of course I was welcome to attend, but…I took the words out of her mouth and told her I’d stop at a men’s store on the way back from the barber.