by Mary Miller
The bed belonged to both of them now—Maxine and Sasha, their ghost selves, back-to-back with their arms crossed, displeased. I had only ever tried to please them but they’d outsmarted me at every turn.
Layla licked my hand—she still had to use the bathroom—and I got up to let her out. Then I started the coffee and called the Social Security office. After an extended recording instructing me to do everything online, a woman answered. I told her I wanted to sign up for my benefits and she transferred me to someone who wasn’t there. I had no intention of leaving a voicemail so I called back and the same woman answered and transferred me to someone else who put me on hold. Seven minutes later, I hung up.
Layla sat watching me, ready for her walk. “You know what would be great?” I asked. “If you could pour me a cup of coffee. If I could teach you how to pour a cup of coffee I’d . . .” I couldn’t think of what I would do. “Be very pleased.” I petted her aggressively with one foot to try and stay calm.
On my third attempt, the same lady answered and I explained what had happened the previous two times and asked if she could help me make an appointment but she said she only transferred people.
“Are you telling me your whole job is to transfer people?”
“That’s right,” she said.
“That’s your entire position?”
“Hmm hm.”
“Do you take messages or anything like that?”
“No,” she said. “I greet people and I transfer them.”
“Do you know if the person you’re going to transfer me to is actually at their desk?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “If I stand up I can see just about everybody in the office.”
“How often do you stand?”
“It depends on whether I feel like standing,” she said. It sounded like she could do this with me all day, answering my questions honestly and without any sort of guilt or fear because she was a government employee and would never be fired. If she did a particularly bad job, she might be promoted. Up and out.
“How often do you figure you feel like it?” I asked.
“Ohhh,” she said, like she was really enjoying this now, “I suppose not very often, especially if it’s after lunch. I get pretty tired after lunch.”
“Hmm,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say except that I also got tired after lunch.
“Well, would you like me to transfer you now?” she asked.
“Will you stand up and transfer me to someone who’s there?”
“For you I’d do anything,” she said, and she sent me to a man named Jimmy who picked up on the first ring. I could tell he was obese by the sound of his voice; it was strange that you could tell something like that. Was it the cheeks—did they muffle sound? He encouraged me to fill out the information online but I told him I didn’t want to do that, that I wanted to meet with a real live person and get everything taken care of in person.
“I don’t make appointments,” he said, blowing my mind, but then he said he had a cancellation for that very afternoon and could squeeze me in if I could make it work. He acted like he was doing me a big favor so I thanked him and told him I’d be there and he gave me a list of documents to bring along. After that I was exhausted. I looked at the day ahead, which consisted of a visit to the Social Security office as well as a date with Diane and I missed the days when I woke up and had nothing on my plate. I’d felt good when there was nothing on my plate even though I’d spent most of the time lonely and bored, wishing I had something to do.
I decided to make some breakfast. I was hungover but not too bad considering the beer and the Wild Turkey, and then, after Marvin and Frank left, a few more beers to celebrate the remaining hours of my birthday. I remembered Ellen calling at some point so I checked my phone but she hadn’t, or she had, but not the previous night. I scrambled a couple of eggs and got the water boiling for grits while debating between deer sausage or regular sausage, deciding on deer sausage because Arnie’s did a good job, better than anyone I’d used in the past. I drank another cup of coffee as I stirred and flipped and then the dog and I enjoyed our breakfast without turning on the TV. Of course the bird had returned to keep us company. Since I was on a roll, I gathered my whites—all of my underwear and T-shirts were dirty other than the V-necks Ellen had bought years ago in an attempt to make me fashionable—and put them in the wash. I dumped some detergent in and set it on a regular cycle even though the machine always made me feel like I should do something special. Then I sat in my chair and fell asleep. I did my best sleep in my chair and never had nightmares, didn’t even remember my chair dreams.
When I awoke, I reheated a cup of coffee and drank it while sitting outside with Layla. The weather had turned cool again, the sky bright and cloudless. It was a perfect day, a clear bluebird day.
Layla watched a cat walk the fence line. She whined, stood on her hind legs, and looked at me as if I might get it for her.
“You want to kill that cat? Is that right, girl? You want to kill the cat?” I repeated “cat” a few more times so she could associate the word with the thing. I told her cats were our enemies, feral, godforsaken. I’d never had one and never would. Best-case scenario, the cat pissed on the dirty clothes you’d left on the floor, things you were planning on washing, anyway; worst case, it pissed on the baseboards and in the vents, on blankets that were dry-clean only. Hissed, scratched your arms all up. I picked up an acorn and chucked it at the animal. It missed. Then I went inside and searched through all of my important documents to find the ones Jimmy had requested—birth certificate, marriage license, divorce decree—and cried for a while.
At the Social Security office, I waited with all of the people who didn’t have appointments until Jimmy came to the door and called my name. He had a file in his hand to make him seem important. He was even fatter than I’d imagined.
We shook hands and I followed him to his desk, which was separated by a partition from a coworker’s. I sat where he pointed and he kept standing, continuing the conversation he’d been having before he’d come to get me. I coughed. Coughed again. Finally he explained that Gina was about to go to the dentist for a root canal, which I could plainly hear.
“I never had a single cavity until I was twenty-seven years old,” she said from behind the partition. “For a long time it was my most impressive achievement. Now what do I have?”
“You have a nice head of hair,” Jimmy said, taking a seat.
“No, it’s frizzy and gets tangled easily. It’s all knotted up right now—that’s why I stuck it in a bun.”
“Well,” he said. “You have hair. That’s something.”
She sighed. I was desperate to get a look at her at that point, so I stood and stretched, smiled down at her. She returned my smile, showing me all of her teeth. Gina was a well-dressed woman in her early thirties, pretty, much too good to work in an office like this, in a town like this. You would think people like her would have graduated high school and promptly moved away, no reason to come back, and yet many of them did come back. Like Maxine. They went out into the world and experienced life in the big city and probably did drugs and had lots of sex and then moved home and reconnected with their high school boyfriend or some such. I looked at her fingers—nothing but a ring on her left pinkie—and tried to come up with alternative scenarios. Perhaps a teen pregnancy that led to the GED and junior college, her mother’s house.
“Your teeth are still nice and white,” I said. “And straight, too.”
“Thank you. That’s kind of you to say.”
Jimmy seemed annoyed by our exchange and asked if I was ready to get started. A short time later, however, their conversation resumed and circled back to the beginning, only he managed to ask me questions and type them into the computer at the same time.
Gina stood and opened her mouth to indicate where the problem was.
“Don’t show this man your nasty mouth,” Jimmy said.
She looked at me and apolo
gized, said she was very nervous. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” I said. “I’m glad I didn’t fill out the forms online—I would’ve missed all this.”
“Well, good,” she said, “but don’t tell anyone that,” and she sat back down where I couldn’t see her. Did they always talk like this when clients were around? Though I didn’t mind, found it refreshing even, it also seemed highly inappropriate. Made me wonder what kind of operation this was and how much work got done. Perhaps they acted differently with other, more important people, while I was just another middle-class white man who insisted on bothering them instead of filling out the forms online. I could hear Gina eating and wanted to see her, see what she had in her mouth, wished she’d been the one taking my claim. I’d have a reason to call her up and ask questions.
Because Ellen and I were married over ten years, she’d be treated the same as my wife, Jimmy explained.
“So she’ll get part of my retirement each month?”
“No, it won’t ever affect your money. But if you die before she does, she’ll be paid as if the two of you are still together, like she’s your widow. She could receive up to a hundred percent of your benefit, depending on her age.”
“Divorced women all across the country must be praying for their ex-husbands to drop dead,” I said, and Gina laughed and Jimmy said he was sure that was true but Social Security probably wasn’t the reason.
I watched Gina stand and button her sweater. Put her sunglasses on top of her head. “Ugh. I guess I’ll get this over with. Maybe they’ll knock me out. I sure hope they do.”
Jimmy wished her luck and I wished her luck and she was gone. I wanted to ask about her but showed some restraint, sitting quietly and signing the forms where Jimmy put the Xs. Then he walked me out and I looked around for her, waited. She could still be sitting in her car, stalling or putting on makeup—or she might’ve made a detour to the bathroom to brush her teeth first since she’d been eating—but I didn’t see her. She was gone.
I didn’t want to waste another second of the day, so I went home and put the dog in the car, drove to the beach.
As I pulled into the lot, I saw Harry Davidson getting out of his truck. I let my foot off the brake and sank down in my seat, reclining it like a gangster as I cruised past. Someone told me hoodlums leaned back like that so the bullets would miss them, and not because they thought it looked cool—or not just because they thought it looked cool—which had surprised and delighted me. As I got right up on him, however, I could see that the man hardly looked like him—roughly the same build and head shape, but this guy was shorter and clearly Hispanic. The color of the truck wasn’t even right. I recalled a breakup with the only woman I’d loved prior to Ellen and how she’d dumped me without warning, or any warning that I’d seen coming. For months after, I saw her face in so many faces; it was like she was everywhere and nowhere all of the time.
Layla scrambled out of the car, trotted over to him.
“Leave the man alone,” I said.
“It’s okay,” he said, petting her. “That’s a nice dog you got there.”
“Thank you,” I said, feeling a surge of pride. “She’s a good girl.” Everyone was always telling me how good she was, how pretty, and it made me feel like I’d done something right. “Okay, well, goodbye,” I said, and I hooked the leash to her collar and walked her over to the dumpster so she could take a sniff around. While Layla busied herself digging, I called Maxine.
“Good job!”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Hey, Maxi. Layla just found a bone—I was congratulating her—it’s a really big one.”
“You mean Katy?” she said.
“She’s Layla again. Anyhow, I was just calling you to apologize about the other day. I know it was awkward and I’m sorry for it.”
“Who was that person?”
“No one,” I said. “No one important.”
She pressed me on it so I told her that Sasha was somebody I’d tried to help because I cared about her dog but she was gone and the dog was back to being mine and mine alone. The more I said, the more questions she had as Layla dragged me around the lot to search out the next spot. “Look,” I interrupted. “It’s over, and we can all move on.”
“Okay, then. . . . I don’t know if you remember me telling you this—you were pretty distracted—but Laurel’s birthday is Sunday.”
I had not remembered. I did, however, remember going to visit the baby in the hospital, holding the baby in my arms while she screamed her goddamn head off. “That’s right—just a few days after mine. She was my birthday gift that year.”
“We’re having a get-together at the house, around five-thirty. Her big party with all her friends’ll be next Saturday—there was a conflict at the bouncy place, we called too late, I don’t know why we left it to the last minute—so it’s just a small gathering, pizza and cake. Do you think you can make it?”
“Of course I can make it, I wouldn’t miss it. You’ll have to give me some gift suggestions, though. I don’t know what she likes.”
“Mom will be there. Is that okay?”
“Your mother and I are on fine terms—we’re on good terms.”
“Really?”
“Well, we’re not on bad terms. She called me the other day to let me know she’d sold her burial plot.”
“That’s a morbid thing to call you about,” she said.
“It’s just a practical matter. Something we all have to think about at some point.”
“She wanted to tell you she’d sold it so she wouldn’t have to be buried next to you for all eternity?”
“Exactly. That’s exactly what she said.”
“She is really something, that lady.”
We discussed gift ideas, and she told me some of the things Laurel liked, which primarily seemed to consist of robotic animals. I tried to remember the names of them: Hatchimals and Little Live Pets, some kind of mice that may or may not have been different from the Hatchimals and Little Live Pets. So many animals in my life all of a sudden.
“I need to write all this down,” I said. “Hold on, let me see if there’s a pen in the car.”
“I can text you, but you know what would be easier?” she said. “I just thought of this—Laurel saw a commercial the other day for an Easy-Bake Oven, like I had when I was a kid.” I had forgotten about Maxine and her Easy-Bake Oven. She’d used it for years, unlike most of her toys and dolls that she had quickly abandoned. Those cake mixes had been outrageously expensive and she’d have me running out to buy more so she could bake something shitty for me. I could still taste the icing—thin and grainy—and the cakes were so dry I’d have to drink an entire glass of milk to choke ’em down. I had eaten every one she’d ever made me, though, and complimented her on her skills.
“Those cakes were so bad I wouldn’t eat them myself,” she said. “But you seemed to like them.”
“I was just thinking about that.”
“And I burned them half the time—how did I manage to do that? Weren’t there fail-safes in place?”
We chatted for a few more minutes, and it was all quite pleasant. She didn’t mention Lucky or ask if I’d spoken with him and that whole business seemed done, which was a relief. I was tired of worrying about it. And I was glad she had the money, what little of it there was, and was sorry I wasn’t going to be able to leave her more. I would’ve liked my child and grandchild to never have to worry about finances again, for Laurel to go to any college she wanted and stay single if she didn’t want to marry and be some kind of weird artist if that’s what she turned out to be, which was pretty much a given so far as I could tell.
Maybe we would never talk about the inheritance that didn’t come. And I was going to be fine. The house would be paid for. There was a retirement account I hadn’t touched; it was small but coupled with my monthly Social Security check, I’d be fine. Perhaps I’d use that fourteen grand to update some things around the house—paint
the outside and fix the gutters, put in a hot tub on the patio like a real bachelor pad. And buy some patio furniture, some nice stuff, so that Layla and I would be comfortable. She could chase squirrels and sun herself while I had a soak. A cooler of beer perched on the side, or built in. Surely they had something to accommodate their heavy-drinking clientele. Hell, I might even buy a new mattress.
I got off the phone thinking about those cakes and little girls everywhere baking them for their fathers. And then I recalled how Ellen had helped me get rid of them when I couldn’t eat any more, burying them beneath the trash and feeding them into the garbage disposal. Had Ellen told her flat out she didn’t like them, or had they only been offered to me? When Laurel opened the oven, Maxine and I could reminisce some more, and she might help me reconstruct other things, as well. Our lives before it all changed, how happy we’d once been.
Layla began to gag so I walked her over to a bench and sat down. She continued gagging and I continued to sit and look out at the water. The water was calm, the sun hitting it so it blinded you if you stared too long. I was thirsty and a bit dizzy, my blood sugar too high. Or too low. I ignored the gagging, pretended as if I couldn’t see it or hear it even though she was doing that thing where her eyes were worriedly searching out mine so I could tell her it was okay, that it would soon pass. My new tactic would be to pretend there was nothing wrong. My new tactic did not seem to work any better than the old one.