For this was the hot truth; it seared him to say it.
Morehouse, though, gave him the look of a man whose wife brought home the bacon now. It was the look of a man who knew what would fly in his house, end of story. He lowered his dust mask.
Did you or did you not find a friggin’ dumpster? he asked. His mask was not clean, but neither was it caked with dust, like the masks of Jose and Ovidio. What you could see of their faces looked dull and crackled, like ancient earthworks that had started off as mud.
In the end, Goodwin looked the other way as more bags were filled. And though Morehouse had promised to do the dumping, it was Goodwin, finally, who drove the bags to the mailbox-blue dumpster. At least there was, as he predicted, some trash in it now. He did not make much noise as he threw his bags in deep, where they were less likely to be seen by the bowling-alley crew in the morning. The bags were heavy and shifted as if with some low-valence life force. Still, he hurled them as best he could, glad for the working streetlight but a little paranoid that someone would drive by and see him. No one did. He did think he saw, though, a bit of white smoke rise from the dumpster as he drove away. That was not really possible. The asbestos was in bags, after all; the bags were tied up. He was probably seeing some distortion in the lamplight. And didn’t other things besides asbestos send up dust? Sheetrock, for example. Sheetrock sent up dust. Still, he thought he saw asbestos rising up on that dump, and on another dump he made before switching to yet another dumpster he had found, behind a Masonic temple. He didn’t think there was asbestos in any of the new bags of trash, but who knew? He didn’t ask, and Morehouse didn’t say.
In a further effort to save money, Goodwin and Morehouse roughed out the walls themselves; and though they didn’t have an electrician’s license, they took care of the wiring too. They even set a new used cast-iron tub, or tried to. In fact, they got it three inches too high and had to turn once again to Jose and Ovidio for help getting the thing back out. Of course, Jose and Ovidio shook their heads and laughed when they saw what had happened. ¡Que jodida! they said. Then they spent an entire day grimacing and straining, their faces almost as purple as the ceiling. When the tub finally rested back on a pallet in the hall, Ovidio stared at it a long moment. ¡Tu madre! he muttered, to which Jose swore back ¡La tuya!, his arms jerking up and down, his neck twitching with anger. He pulled up his pants, maybe because they were too big; Goodwin made a mental note to bring him a belt, though what Jose and Ovidio probably needed was more food. Would Goodwin have been right to insist, as he wanted to, on finishing the job without them? After they’d already helped with the dirtiest and most grueling parts? He decided to let Morehouse have his way, and had to admit that Jose, at least, looked happy to have the work. Goodwin gave him a belt, which he seemed to appreciate; he slipped both men an extra twenty too. Take it, Goodwin told them. Por favor.
Was this why the work went quickly and well? And yet, still, Morehouse and Goodwin kept their parents from the site for as long as possible, knowing that something about the project was bound to spark their disapproval. House cost nothing, but look how much you spend on renovation, their mother might say. Or, How come even you have no job, you hire other people to work? Morehouse, naturally, was well stocked with rebuttals, starting with, Don’t worry, we barely pay those workers anything. What difference these could make, though, was unclear.
Finally, though, it couldn’t be helped; their parents came for a visit. They looked around stupefied. The house was not much bigger than their apartment, but it was big enough to make them seem smaller; and all new as it was, it made them look older.
Very nice, said their mother finally. She clutched her leather-trim pocketbook as if to ward off attackers; she showed real excitement about the window in the bathroom and the heating ducts. No radiators! she exclaimed. Their father looked as much at Jose and Ovidio as at the house. Spanish guys, he said. Jose and Ovidio laughed and kept working. Goodwin tried to explain what they were doing. What the house used to look like. What it was going to look like. And how much they, his parents, were going to like it. It was like trying to sell them on the assisted-living place. Everything on one floor! Close to their sons! Right in the same town! His pitch was so good that Morehouse stopped and listened—as if he himself suddenly was touched by what they had wrought. He beamed as if to say, Behold what we’ve done for you! He leaned toward their shuffling father, as if expecting to hear, What great sons you boys are!
Instead their father tripped over a toolbox and fell as if hit by a sledgehammer. Dad? Dad? He was conscious but open-mouthed and breathing hard; there was some blood, but only, Goodwin was relieved to see, a little. I fine, their father insisted, flapping a shaking hand in the vicinity of his hip. Your hip? asked Goodwin. Their father nodded a little, grimacing—his brown age spots growing prominent as his real self, it seemed, paled. Don’t move, it’s okay, said Goodwin. It’s okay. And, to Morehouse: Do you have an ice pack in your lunchbox?
Morehouse called an ambulance. People said the ambulance service was quick around here, or could be; that was reassuring. As he and his family waited, though, Goodwin stared at his father lying on the floor and was shocked at how much like a house that could not be fixed up he seemed. He stared into the air with his milky eyes as if he did not want any of them to be there and, oddly, covered his mouth with his still-trembling hand. It was a thing he did now at funny times, as if he knew how yellow his teeth were; or maybe it was something else. Goodwin’s father had always been a mystery. Now he was more manifestly obscured than ever. The few things he said were like ever-darkening peepholes into fathomless depths. You don’t know what old is, he said sometimes. Everything take long time. Long, long time. And once, simply: No fun.
His more demonstrative mother cried the whole way to the hospital, saying that his father fell because he didn’t want to move into this house, and that she didn’t either. It was her way of making herself clear. She didn’t care whether or not it was the sort of house a person could live in by herself one day, she said. Chinese people, she said, did not live by themselves.
They were passing the turnoff for Goodwin’s house when she said that. Goodwin was glad they were in an ambulance. He smiled reassuringly at his father though his eyes were closed tight; he had an oxygen mask on.
Right now we need to focus on Dad, Goodwin said.
His mother would not take her pocketbook off her lap.
Morehouse, following them in his car so that they would have a car at the hospital, called Goodwin on his cell phone.
If they ask whether Dad needs a translator, tell them to fuck off, he said.
Does he need a translator? asked the admitting nurse.
He’s lived here for fifty years, answered Goodwin politely.
The nurse was at least a grownup. The doctor looked like a paperboy.
Does he need a translator? he asked.
Fuck off, said Morehouse, walking in.
How Goodwin wished he had said that! And how much he wished he had ended up like Morehouse instead of like Morehouse turned inside out. For maybe if he had, he would not have sat in the waiting room later, endlessly hearing what his mother wanted him to say—You guys can come live with me—much less what she would say if he said it: You are finally learn how to take care of people. Who knows, maybe next time your wife get divorced, she come back, marry you again.
Instead his mother was probably going to say, You know why your wife dump you? She is completely American, that’s why. Even she marry you again, she just dump you again. You wait and see.
Fuck off, he would want to say then, like Morehouse. Fuck off!
But of course, not even Morehouse would say that to their mother anymore. Now, in deference to her advanced and ever-advancing age, even Morehouse would probably nod and agree. Their mother would say, That’s what American people are. Dump people like garbage. That’s what they are.
And Morehouse would answer, That’s what they are, all right, the fuckers.
BRET ANTHONY JOHNSTON
Encounters with Unexpected Animals
FROM Esquire
LAMBRIGHT HAD SURPRISED everyone by offering to drive his son’s girlfriend home. The girl was three months shy of seventeen, two years older than Robbie. She’d been held back in school. Her driver’s license was currently suspended. She had a reputation, a body, and a bar code tattooed on the back of her neck. Lambright sometimes glimpsed it when her green hair was ponytailed. She’d come over for supper this evening, and though she volunteered to help Robbie and his mother with the dishes, Lambright had said he’d best deliver her home, it being a school night. He knew this pleased his wife and Robbie, the notion of him giving the girl another chance.
Driving, Lambright thought the moon looked like a fingerprint of chalk. They headed south on Airline Road. A couple of miles and he’d turn right on Saratoga, then left onto Everhart, and eventually they’d enter Kings Crossing, the subdivision with pools and sprinkler systems. At supper, Robbie and the girl had told, in tandem, a story about playing hide-and-seek on the abandoned country club golf course. Hide-and-seek, Lambright thought, is that what y’all call it now? Then they started talking about wildlife. The girl had once seen a blue-and-gold macaw riding on the headrest of a man’s passenger seat, and another time, in a pasture in the Rio Grande Valley, she’d spotted zebras grazing among cattle. Robbie’s mother recalled finding goats in the tops of peach trees in her youth. Robbie told the story of visiting the strange neighborhood in San Antonio where the muster of peacocks lived, and it led the girl to confess her desire to get a fan of peacock feathers tattooed on her lower back. She also wanted a tattoo of a busted magnifying glass hovering over the words FIX ME.
Lambright couldn’t figure what she saw in his son. Until the girl started visiting, Robbie had superhero posters on his walls and a fleet of model airplanes suspended from the ceiling with fishing wire. Lambright had actually long been skeptical of the boy’s room, worrying it looked too childish, worrying it confirmed what might be called “softness” of character. But now the walls were stripped and all that remained of the fighter fleet was the fishing-wire stubble on the ceiling.
Two weeks ago, one of his wife’s necklaces disappeared. Last week, a bottle of her nerve pills. Then, over the weekend, he’d caught Robbie and the girl with a flask of whiskey in the backyard. She’d come to supper tonight to make amends.
Traffic was light. When he stopped at the intersection of Airline and Saratoga, the only headlights he saw were far off, like buoys in the bay. The turn signal dinged. He debated, then clicked it off. He accelerated straight across Saratoga.
“We were supposed to turn—”
“Scenic route,” he said. “We’ll visit a little.”
But they didn’t. There was only the low hum of the tires on the road, the noise of the truck pushing against the wind. Lambright hadn’t contributed anything to the animal discussion earlier, but now he considered mentioning what he’d read a while back, how bald-eagle nests are often girded with cat collars, strung with the little bells and tags of lost pets. He stayed quiet, though. They were out near the horse stables now. The air smelled of alfalfa and manure. The streetlights had fallen away.
The girl said, “I didn’t know you could get to Kings Crossing like this.”
They crossed the narrow bridge over Oso Creek, then came into a clearing, a swath of clay and patchy brush, gnarled mesquite trees.
He pulled onto the road’s shoulder. Caliche pinged against the truck’s chassis. He doused his headlights, and the scrub around them silvered, turned to moonscape. They were outside the city limits, miles from where the girl lived. He killed the engine.
“I know you have doubts about me. I know I’m not—”
“Cut him loose,” Lambright said.
“Do what?”
“Give it a week, then tell him you’ve got someone else.”
Her eyes scanned the night through the windshield. Maybe she was getting her bearings, calculating how far out they were. Cows lowed somewhere in the darkness. She said, “I love Rob—”
“You’re a pretty girl. You’ve been to the rodeo a few times. You’ll do all right. But not with him.”
The chalky moon was in and out of clouds. A wind buffeted the truck and kicked up the odor of the brackish creek. The girl was picking at her cuticles, which made her look docile.
“Is there anything I can say here? Is there something you’re wanting to hear?”
“You can say you’ll quit him,” Lambright said. “I’d like to have your word on that subject.”
“And if I don’t, you’ll leave me on the side of the road?”
“We’re just talking. We’re sorting out a problem.”
“Or you’ll beat me up and throw me in the creek?”
“You’re too much for him. He’s overmatched.”
“And so if I don’t dump him, you’ll, what, rape me? Murder me? Bury me in the dunes?”
“Lisa,” he said, his tone pleasingly superior. He liked how much he sounded like a father.
Another wind blew, stiff and parched, rustling the trees. To Lambright, they appeared to shiver, like they’d gotten cold. A low cloud unspooled on the horizon. The cows were quiet.
“I see how you look at me, you know,” she said, shifting toward him. She unbuckled her seat belt, the noise startlingly loud in the truck. Lambright’s eyes went to the rearview mirror: no one around. She scooted an inch closer. Two inches. Three. He smelled lavender, her hair or cool skin. She said, “Everyone sees it. Nobody’ll be surprised you drove me out here.”
“I’m telling you to stay away from my son.”
“In the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere.”
“There’s no mystery here,” Lambright said.
“Silly,” she said.
“Do what?”
“I said you’re silly. There’s mystery all around us. Goats in trees. Macaws in cars.”
Enough, Lambright thought. He cranked the ignition, switched on his headlights.
“A man who drives his son’s underage girl into remote areas, that’s awfully mysterious.”
“Just turn him loose,” he said.
“A girl who flees the truck and comes home dirty and crying. What will she tell her parents? Her boyfriend? The man’s depressed wife?”
“Just leave him be,” he said. “That’s the takeaway tonight.”
“Will the police be called? Will they match the clay on her shoes to his tires?”
“Lisa—”
“Or will she keep it to herself? Will it be something she and the man always remember when they see each other? When she marries his son, when she bears his grandbabies? These are bona fide mysteries, Mr. Lambright.”
“Lisa,” he said. “Lisa, let’s be clear.”
But she was already out of the truck, sprinting toward the creek. She flashed through the brush and descended the bank, and Lambright was shocked by the languid swiftness with which she crossed the earth. Blood was surging in his veins, like he’d swerved to miss something in the road and his truck had just skidded to a stop and he didn’t yet know if he was hurt, if the world was changed. The passenger door was open, the interior light burning, pooling. The girl jumped across the creek and bolted alongside it. She cut to and fro. He wanted to see her as an animal he’d managed to avoid, a rare and dangerous creature he’d describe for Robbie when he got home, but really her movement reminded him of a trickle of water tracking through pebbles. It stirred in him a floating sensation, the curious and scattered feeling of being born on waves or air or wings. He was disoriented, short of breath. He knew he was at the beginning of something, though just then he couldn’t say exactly what.
SHEILA KOHLER
Magic Man
FROM Yale Review
SANDRA HOLDS HER eldest child, S.P., tightly on her lap while she listens to her sister, who is telling her about her
husband, a heart surgeon. S.P. is for Sweet Pea or Sweety Pie or maybe it’s Simply Perfect, Sandra can’t even remember anymore. The child squirms a little, leaning forward as the mother runs her fingers through her fine brown hair. “Of course, his secretary adores him, his nurses adore him, his patients adore him. He’s wonderful with post-op care,” her sister is going on, talking about her blond, handsome husband, her large blue eyes shining with tears, while Sandra watches her two little ones, who sit facing each other on the slate that surrounds the big blue pool, their bare legs stretched before them.
Her babies are in their identical white swimsuits and their white sun hats, with the lace around the brim and the elastic under their chins. They are pouring water, which they scoop up from the pool in their green buckets, over each other’s legs and feet, wiggling their little toes and laughing loudly.
“They are too close to the water,” S.P. says, and Sandra laughs at her and says to her sister, “What a worry wart!” and leans back in the chaise longue.
“I’m not a wart!” S.P. says to her aunt, and adds, “And they can’t swim yet.”
“I’m only joking! You are my Best One! My Angel! My S.P.! who does know how to swim!” Sandra whispers in her ear, talking to her and squeezing her tightly, taking a playful nibble from her ear. The child shifts about on her lap.
“Do sit still, darling,” she says.
Sandra’s head is throbbing as she surveys the scene, shading her dazzled eyes from the glare. She stares in some disbelief across the vast, empty garden, the cluster of oaks, jacarandas, and royal palm trees, in the distance the brilliant beds of dahlias, strelitzias, and nasturtium, the fishpond, and the green lawns that stretch out before her. None of it seems quite real: the light too bright, the shadows too dark, the sky too blue. Even her sister’s blond curls and large blue eyes, which are filling with tears, don’t seem quite real.
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