Fridays at Enrico's

by Don Carpenter

“Oh, I was hoping you’d be downtown . . .”

  “What’s up?”

  “I just feel like talking to you, is all. Nothing important.”

  “I can be late,” Charlie said. “I’ll call the base.”

  He got dressed for work. They were casual at the air base, so he wore comfortable clothes, jeans, boots, old dress shirt. It was a nice day for a change, sunny and cool. He stepped out on the back porch to kiss Jaime and the baby good-bye, but they weren’t there. He could see Jaime, holding Kira, out among the trees. “Bye!” he yelled, and Jaime waved. He went back into the house and into his office. He didn’t need his briefcase today. He looked around. His manuscript, neat in its cardboard boxes. He picked them up. Heavy. He carried them out the front door and down the graveled drive. He set the two cartons next to the trash cans beside the mailbox and went back and got into his car, started it, and drove off.

  He met Linda at the corner of SW Fifth and Alder. She was dressed for work in a black suit with a red blouse open at the throat. She smiled up at him. “Coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  She led him into a little café and they sat at the counter. They were the only people in the place apart from the old man in a dirty apron behind the counter. They ordered coffee and sat quietly waiting until the old man brought it and went back to his corner. Then Linda said, without looking up, “I’m leaving Dick.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m going sailing.” She turned to him. “I’m tired of Portland.”

  “When do you leave?”

  “In a few days. The boat’s in Astoria.”

  “Where you headed?”

  She smiled. “Greater Polynesia. Around the world. I don’t know. Hawaii first.”

  “Sounds great,” Charlie said.

  “I just wanted you to know. I always thought there was something between us, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Charlie admitted. “Does Dick know you’re leaving?”

  “He should, but he doesn’t. It’s just that I’m up to here.” She held her hand to her neck. “I could leave today, in fact.” She sipped her coffee. “You’re my only regret.”

  “Where’s Astoria?” he asked. She told him and he said, “Let’s go.”

  She looked at him. “I’ll cut class,” he said.

  They got into his green Volkswagen. “Are you sure about this?” she asked him.

  He looked at her blankly. He felt nothing. Had felt nothing all day. Whatever held him together all these years had dissolved, at least for now, and he felt pleasantly empty.

  “I’ve always wanted to fuck you,” he said to Linda. He started the car.

  “Now’s your chance.” They drove west, out of Portland.

  36.

  When Jaime took out the garbage she found Charlie’s book and right away she knew. She picked up the two cartons and carried them back into the house, trying not to think. Kira was asleep in her playpen, lying on her stomach holding her teddy bear. She’d lost her old teddy bear and Stan Winger had given her this new one, a cinnamon bear with a white vest. “Every kid should have a first-class bear,” he’d said when he handed it to Kira. Jaime thought about calling Stan. But he had no phone. She could call the air base, but she knew Charlie hadn’t gone there. A man doesn’t throw away ten years of work and probably his wife and child, and then go off to teach typing. She knew what that phone call had meant. Charlie and Linda were together. Jaime sat at the kitchen table, stomach hard as a rock. She knew Charlie was with Linda because that’s what she’d have done under the same circumstances, with some man. She didn’t want to think Charlie might be gone for good. She assumed an insane wild romantic running off, followed by a sheepish return. The question was, how would Jaime make him pay? Or would she?

  Charlie wasn’t even really missing yet. He’d gone to teach typing. That left him free at four in the afternoon. His next class was Comp at six forty-five, and he usually went downtown to the Portland library or his office at Multnomah to correct papers. Sometimes to movies, or to hang out in a pool hall. Sometimes Jerry’s or the Caffe Espresso. He wasn’t due home until after night class, and even then sometimes he’d go out drinking beer. Charlie wasn’t officially missing until well after 1:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. She wouldn’t worry until then.

  Shortly after dinner, while Kira made noise in the background and her mother sat at the kitchen table looking at her, Dick Dubonet called and said that Linda hadn’t gone to work and was missing. “I hoped maybe she was out there,” Dick said. “Can I talk to Charlie?”

  “He’s at work.” Just then Kira let out a shriek. After some meaningless words, she hung up. Her mother stared at her.

  “Where’s Charlie?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh God.”

  Jaime pulled Kira out of her chair and held her, patting her back as if she were an infant. “Tell me, Mom,” she said, a hard edge in her voice. “How did you deal with it?”

  “With what, honey?”

  “Am I supposed to take him back? He’s obviously out fucking Linda.”

  Edna looked unsurprised. “Are you sure, dear?” Edna was fine, Edna was getting married again, to a man whose entire life was devoted to box scores. Edna hadn’t read the manuscript, didn’t know what it was about. Jaime wondered if she’d ever have the courage to tell her. “It’s about you swallowing Dad’s adultery, about our life of sham and deceit on Washington Street, and how wonderful it all was.” Yeah. In the book she’d forgiven her father. Was that what sent Charlie running to Linda?

  But lying in bed that night, stomach tight, she considered the devastating effect her novel must have had on him. Such a good man probably couldn’t face the swelling of jealousy, the envy, the rage at her for doing what he himself could not. Couldn’t face such a mass of ugliness coming up out of himself. So, recognizing his inherent evil, he flees to a woman. Not just any woman. The one Jaime herself might have run to, if she’d been a lesbian. A woman with a beautiful ancient face. Just the opposite of Jaime’s modern mug. The same with their bodies. Jaime’s was slender, small, perfectly proportioned, unless Charlie was a liar as well as an adulterer, while Linda’s was spectacular, her breasts a little too big, her waist a little too narrow, her behind smaller than you’d expect, yet still voluptuous. No wonder Charlie sought to bury his suffering in her voluptuosity, if there were such a word.

  Jaime awakened at three, thinking she heard something. Going into the kitchen all she saw was Isis. “Where’s Charlie?” she asked the cat. She got a glass of water and then checked Kira. Looking down at her child she knew she’d forgive him. It was that or wreck everything. She wasn’t going to do that.

  Charlie rarely spoke of his time in the prison camp, but once Marty Greenberg had asked him how many of the POWs had cooperated with the Chinese. “We heard a lot about brainwashing,” Marty said. He smirked. “Does it really work?”

  Charlie laughed. They were sitting around a booth at Jerry’s eating burgers. “Brainwashing? Hell no, anything they asked, we told ’em. There wasn’t any fucking resistance. Two guys escaped and made it back to our lines and got court-martialed for their trouble. They’re still doing twenty in Leavenworth.” Charlie had been drinking. He pointed a finger at Marty. “Brainwashing is something the government made up to cover the fact that everybody cooperated. Good clean American boys wouldn’t tell the Chinese shit, right? So there better be some weird oriental method of making us talk. Brainwashing my ass!”

  Lying in bed waiting for the noise that meant he was home, she wondered now if Charlie had been brainwashed. Maybe that was why he couldn’t finish his book. Simple as that. Or Charlie’s book might be so big, so important, that it was simply going to take years and years to write, and she’d have to help Charlie stay on track. Certainly forgiving a little adultery was part of the deal. Even the way it made her feel. Betrayed. Abandoned. Down below the hurt, rage, hate, revenge. When she got him back she’d make him pay. No, that was terrible. Either let him go
or keep him. And if you keep him, forgive him.

  She awakened to Kira’s cry. She looked at the clock. It was after 6:00 a.m. Charlie was not beside her. She rose and tended her child and then made herself a cup of tea. Her mother came in dressed for work and sat down. Edna’s eyes were sympathetic.

  “Do you want some tea?” she asked her mother. Why did she feel so humiliated?

  “I’ll get something at the drug store,” Edna said. “Have you decided what to do?”

  “No,” Jaime admitted. The phone rang. Dick Dubonet. He was hysterical, and Jaime had to be superior to him and ease his mind, telling him not to jump to conclusions, Charlie and Linda were probably somewhere drinking coffee and talking. “They are friends, you know,” she snapped at Dick, and got off the phone.

  “Is that a possibility?” her mother asked.

  “No.” Jaime began crying for the first time. She sat at the table and cried while her mother stood behind her holding her shoulders and murmuring in her ear. Jaime felt about fourteen. Fourteen and jilted.

  “I can stay if you want,” Edna said.

  “No.”

  Then the house was quiet, her mother gone to work, Kira asleep and the cat off in the trees.

  37.

  After three days, when Charlie hadn’t come home crestfallen and sheepish, Jaime lost her temper. He’d left her without a car, not that she ever went anyplace. The thoughtlessness infuriated her. What if Kira got sick in the middle of the night and her mother wasn’t there? Edna volunteered to leave her car at home for Jaime and take the bus to work, but Jaime wouldn’t have it. She’d leave Oregon first. She called Southern Pacific and found out what time the Shasta Daylight left for California. She called their landlord, Mrs. Baker, and asked if they could get out of the lease and discovered Charlie had never signed the lease. Jaime gave thirty days notice and asked Mrs. Baker if she knew anybody who wanted a small chocolate-point Siamese with a crook in the tip of her tail. Mrs. Baker did not, so Jaime called Dick Dubonet, though she hated the idea of talking to him. What if he started crying?

  Dick was fine. “I’ll come right out,” he said cheerfully. She heard his little MG in the drive less than an hour later. They sat on kitchen chairs back in the shade of the porch while Kira ran around like an expert. The garden was gone except for a few dry cornstalks, and most of the greenery under the trees had died back. Dick spoke forgivingly of Linda, and obviously expected her back any day. They’d run off to have an affair, that was all. In the old days that would have meant the end of everything, but not anymore.

  “What are you getting at?” Jaime sat tilted back in her chair, a cold bottle of Miller between her legs.

  “Just that maybe you shouldn’t be so drastic,” he said. “Why move? Are you really going to leave Charlie over this?”

  “You make it sound like nothing. It’s not nothing.”

  He smiled appreciatively. He had beautiful teeth. He was in fact a very handsome man. It was a gorgeous fall day again. Oregon at its most beautiful, and Dick in the backyard in tee shirt and jeans. It would serve them right, wouldn’t it? Come back to find Dick and Jaime happily entwined? But Dick made no pass. In fact he was everything you could ask of a friend.

  “You’ve never strayed, have you,” he said.

  “I’ve never slept with anybody but Charlie,” she heard herself admitting. Dick’s eyebrows went up, but he brought himself under control by taking a big slug of beer.

  “That makes it different.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Why does that make it different?”

  “Well,” Dick started, then stopped.

  “I want to move because it’s time to move. It really doesn’t have anything to do with Charlie.”

  “You finished your book, now it’s time to go. I’d love to read it sometime. But don’t show it to me. Send me a copy, a free copy. Autographed.”

  “Is everybody mad at me for finishing my book?” she asked him. He laughed instead of answering, and she said, “Anyway, you can have Isis. I can’t take her on the train, and I won’t put her in a box in a baggage car somewhere.”

  Isis wandered in from the trees and Kira ran to her. “Key! Key!” she cried. Kira picked up the cat and walked around the yard holding her. The cat was limp, obviously enjoying herself. “Kira’s gonna miss her,” Dick said. “Maybe after you get settled you can come up and visit us.”

  “That would be nice.” Suddenly she knew she was really leaving Oregon. Charlie or no Charlie.

  He came home the next day. Jaime happened to be sitting on the toilet when she heard the familiar rattle of the family VW. It was around three in the afternoon, Kira sleeping in her playpen on the porch. Another perfect day. Beautiful Oregon, she thought helplessly, as Charlie came into the house and called her name. Was Linda with him? Of course not.

  Jaime came out of the bathroom numb and frightened. Charlie stood in the middle of the kitchen, staring at her. His hair was getting too long, she noticed, and he had a slight sunburn. Fucking out in the sun?

  “School called,” she said to him coolly.

  “I’m sorry.” For once, Charlie wasn’t grinning. “I just went nuts.”

  “All right,” she said. “Why are you back?”

  Charlie got a beer out of the refrigerator. “You want one?” She nodded and they sat at the table, drinking beer like a couple of college chums. “You want to know what happened?” he asked her.

  “Sure.” He wasn’t acting guilty. Still, she couldn’t let herself feel anything.

  “Linda’s gone,” he said. “She’s not coming back. She’s going sailing with some friends, down the coast to Mexico, then across to Hawaii.”

  “Why didn’t you go with them?”

  “I damn near did,” Charlie said. “I told you, I went nuts. She told me she was leaving Dick, and I offered to drive her to Astoria. That’s down the coast, beautiful little town. But we stayed in Seaside. It’s a resort town, deserted now with the kids in school. Amazing place. Most of the businesses shut, big wide beach with nobody on it. We both wanted to get away, see? So I drove her to the coast. But I wasn’t ready to come home. We talked day and night, I mean we really talked. Linda is terrific.”

  “Is she a good fuck?”

  Charlie looked her right in the eye and said, “We didn’t. We slept in the same room, but different beds.”

  “Are you asking me to believe that?”

  “I’m telling you what happened. I love you. I’m not that crazy. We didn’t sleep together. We talked about it, but we didn’t do it. I think we were both too numb. We walked along the boardwalk, we played some pinball, and sat and got drunk in this little club that plays nothing but cool jazz, and we sat up at night and talked. I talked about you, she talked about her life, Dick, her kid, everything under the sun. You want to know something? She’s a fine person. I wish her all the best.”

  He said this last with such honesty, such conviction, that she began to believe him. Her stomach started to unknot. They drank more beer and smoked more cigarettes. Charlie kept talking, now about how her novel had temporarily deranged him because of its obvious excellence. “In Kim Song you had to be a psychopath just to survive,” he said. It was getting dark out, and Jaime fed Kira. She’d been very happy to see her daddy, and now sat on his lap while Jaime spooned food at her. “After I read your book I think I just kinda fell back into that, you know, the old look-out-for-yourself mode. It’s not much of an excuse for running out on you, but there it is.”

  Jaime fed Kira her banana. They hadn’t slept together. She believed him. She had to. She concentrated only on what would happen next. They’d go to bed, after dealing with Kira, and if they made love, it would finish the event. It would be all over, and all forgotten. She’d have to call Carol Baker and tell her they were going to stay after all. She’d have to get the kitty back. But no. Linda wasn’t coming back. Dick would need the cat. Charlie stared at her.

  “What?”

  “You have a look in your eye
,” he said. “All I can do is apologize. Do I live here or not?”

  38.

  Charlie wanted to be honest, but he couldn’t. The practical truth was, he wanted to keep his marriage even though he didn’t deserve to. He’d taken marriage lightly enough up to now. Easy to be married and play by the rules because he had no reason not to. He was in love with Jaime and didn’t want or need other women. Everything on a high moral plane of love. He’d even wondered why other men strayed. He’d never been tempted. He hadn’t even been tempted by Linda.

  When he read Jaime’s manuscript he knew at last why he could not finish his own book. He wasn’t a writer. Jaime was. It wasn’t the words, it was the organization. Jaime knew instinctively how to put things so they flowed from one scene to the next. Charlie’s work was all over the place, great long sections of dialogue followed by great long sections of description or action, but nothing flowed. It was maddening. Ten fucking years to learn the ropes. Like everything else he had tried. Automobile mechanics. He’d been all thumbs at first, but then he got it. Same with football, same with drill, same with shooting, hunting, fishing. Even academic stuff. Charlie could organize, research, outline and write a term paper with the best of them. But off on his own, trying to write honestly about his experiences, he couldn’t. A built-in barrier. One he’d hoped, expected, would eventually fall away if he did everything right, followed the rules. But no. As he read Jaime’s work he saw clearly that she had a natural gift he didn’t have. Call it talent.

  Charlie had no talent. He had the tools. He knew the rules. But he couldn’t play. Sitting in his office sweating over Jaime’s writing, he recalled the little guys who never got picked for football until last. Charlie had always been picked first. Or done the picking. He’d been bland enough about it, picking only the guys with talent. Leaving the little guys, the guys with no talent, standing there with their fingers up their asses. Now Charlie found himself one of that group. Talentless unpicked asshole. Embarrassingly eager, humiliatingly gung ho, and yet unavoidably and eternally untalented. He’d been given a Eugene F. Saxon Award, not because he was talented, which he wasn’t, but for some other reason which he didn’t even want to think about.