The Difference Between Women and Men

by Bret Lott

  “Shut up,” he said. “Stop crying. I don’t know.”

  Then Mother stood in the bedroom doorway, only a silhouette in front of the hall light. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Can’t we even go out once in a while without you tearing down the house and terrorizing the babysitter? Your father. Your father will give you a whipping for this.” She slammed the bedroom door closed. Again the pictures bounced.

  A few seconds later the door opened slowly and Dad appeared, silhouetted as Mother had been. My crying was loud now, blubbering. Brad was crying, too, but silently.

  “You boys,” he said.

  He looked at us a few minutes in the light cast from the hall, then left. That was all.

  We did not have Charlotte for a babysitter again.

  2

  “Should we bring the boys?” Mother said at dinner a month later.

  “Sure,” Dad said. “Good for them.”

  “What do you mean, good for them? A funeral?”

  “Why did you ask me?”

  “All right, they’ll go.”

  “Who’s the funeral for?” Brad asked.

  “A funeral?” I said.

  Mother gave me another helping of peas. “Eat this. Mrs. Fitzweld’s son Ronnie. Charlotte’s brother.”

  Charlotte’s brother. He was real old. He graduated from high school. He was in the army.

  Brad put both elbows on the table and put his chin in his hands. “What happened? Did he get killed?”

  “Never mind. Get your elbows off the table.”

  “Aw, come on.”

  “That’s enough.” She stared at Brad until he took his elbows off the table and finished eating.

  The funeral was up in the hills of San Pedro at a cemetery looking out over the Pacific. It seemed we would never get there. Brad leaned forward and crossed his arms over the top of the front seat between Mother and Dad. “Why are we all going so slow? The people behind us have their lights on, too. Why?”

  I looked out the back window. They had their lights on, and it was daytime, the middle of summer.

  “Because we’re supposed to,” Mother said. “This is a funeral procession.”

  I leaned forward and crossed my arms over the seat like Brad did. Dad looked at us in the rearview mirror. “You boys sit back,” he said.

  I sat back first, Brad a few seconds later.

  “I was talking to Ricky Kohler about Ronnie,” Brad said. “You know what, Mom? He says Ronnie was over in Viet Nam, and you know what else? He said Ronnie stepped on a land mind.”

  “That’s enough.”

  “A land mind,” Brad repeated. “How cool.”

  “Neat,” I said.

  At the service we sat in the back with the rest of the families on the block. Ricky Kohler sat next to Brad. Ricky was short and talked fast, a lock of hair always falling down in his eyes.

  “Yeah,” Ricky said, “a land mine. That’s what my dad told me. He knows Mr. Fitzweld real good. They went over to the Pussy Willow the other night after Mr. Fitzweld found out about Ronnie.” He pushed the lock of hair back into place. “My dad was real drunk when they got back from there. He forgot his keys and was knocking on my window when he got home. Mom would’ve killed him if she caught him coming home like that, but she was over at my aunt’s house that night. So when I was—”

  “You don’t have to have a babysitter?” Brad cut in.

  “No,” Ricky said. “That’s for babies.” He pushed the hair up again. “You guys don’t have a babysitter, do you?”

  “No,” Brad said quickly, and looked at me. I said nothing.

  “So anyway,” Ricky went on, “when I was helping him to bed I asked him what happened and he told me. He probably don’t even remember.” He laughed.

  Mother, in the row in front of us, whispered over her shoulder, “You boys be quiet.”

  Ricky leaned over closer to Brad and whispered, “Yeah, and the weird thing is, Mrs. Fitzweld don’t believe Ronnie’s dead. Mr. Fitzweld told my dad it’s because Ronnie got blown up, and they don’t want nobody looking at his blown-up body, but Mrs. Fitzweld don’t believe it. They wouldn’t even open up the coffin for her to see him, he’s so blown up.”

  Afterwards we all went outside into the hot summer morning for the burial. All I could see were a few soldiers and someone holding a brown umbrella over a few people seated next to the grave. We children were back behind most of the people there and only stood in silence, sweating.

  I did not see Charlotte until later that day at the Fitzwelds’ house. The house was full of neighbors, all the children playing outside in the yard. Mother came from inside onto the porch and called Brad and me in to see the Fitzwelds, but Brad wouldn’t go, went instead across the street to the Adkins’ front lawn and a football there.

  Mother grabbed me by the wrist before I could follow Brad and pulled me into the house. I waded between people’s waists until Mother finally broke through the crowd and I was standing in front of Charlotte and Mr. and Mrs. Fitzweld. Mother said something to them, but I just looked at Charlotte. She was crying into a handkerchief and was wearing a white blouse with pearl buttons, a gray skirt, and burgundy high heels. Her hair was a soft amber in a bouffant style, high on the top, curled under on the sides and back. All I could think about were those tomatoes breaking up on that old white shirt she wore and the tomato seeds and skins.

  Charlotte looked up from her handkerchief at me, then whispered, “You bastard,” just loud enough so that, with all the people talking everywhere, I was the only one who heard.

  Her eyes were on me, digging into me and tearing at me. That was what I saw, and what I knew, and I knew I was alone too, in the Fitzwelds’ living room, in the middle of a hundred thousand people. A million people. In the middle of everyone, dead and alive.

  That was what I saw, and what I knew.

  She started crying into the handkerchief again, and Mother pulled me away from Charlotte and back into the crowd, saying something about staring and being polite.

  Mother and Dad stayed in the house, but I went back outside and walked home. The gate to the backyard was open. Brad was already in the backyard under the pine tree playing with G.I. Joes.

  “Watch this,” he said as I closed the gate behind me.

  He dug a hole in the sand and put his hand in it, palm up. Then he buried it with the other hand and walked a G.I. Joe over the area. “Land mind!” he shouted, and brought the buried hand straight up into the air, flipping the doll end over end until it landed on its head in the sand. Brad laughed.

  I laughed, too, though I thought I probably shouldn’t.

  I went inside.

  HE BELIEVED THERE WAS A WAY THROUGH THIS. HE BELIEVED IT with all his heart.

  He said, “I can see us getting through this.”

  She said nothing. She set her coffee cup on the table, looked out the kitchen window onto the small backyard. She saw the three trees back there, the sandbox he’d built, an old swing set. Past it all stood a chain-link fence.

  She thought then of the children, and of them playing on the swing set. They’d bought the swing set from a family down the street who’d bought for their own children a wooden play structure, complete with two towers, a rope ladder, a slide. There was a name for these structures, she knew.

  Then she remembered her own children shouting in the car one afternoon as they passed 84 Lumber. “Look!” they’d shouted. “Pirate’s Fortress! Pirate’s Fortress!” She’d turned, saw set up in the lumberyard parking lot the same wooden structure as in their neighbors’ yard, a Pirate’s Fortress, strung about it colorful pennants that reminded her of a used-car lot.

  She believed there was no way through this. She believed it with all her heart.

  He sat across from her at the table, had a can of Diet Coke instead of coffee. He brought the can to his lips, saw his hand begin to quiver. He allowed himself only a sip, thought perhaps the quivering was due to caffeine in the soda.

  He
thought then of his children, and of what they might think. He’d been the one to see them off this morning, his wife here at the table.

  He’d smiled, the can of soda in his hand, and waved as they left for the bus at the end of the driveway. He’d seen Tina glance at him as she climbed up the steps and inside. Sam hadn’t looked.

  He wondered, now, what they might believe about their parents, about himself. He wondered if they knew he and his wife had not gone to bed last night but had stayed right here in the kitchen. He wondered if they knew they were trying to find a way through this.

  He looked at her, still looking out the window.

  He longed to look out the window with her, but would not allow himself that luxury: light, sky, green.

  Instead, he looked only at the inside of this room, the kitchen. There was the toaster with its calico cover, the coffeemaker, the huge empty eye of the oven door, the refrigerator like a stone coffin on end.

  He took up the soda again. Still his hand shook. This time, though, he knew it was not the caffeine but what he had done to bring them to this point in their lives.

  What he had done.

  She looked out the window, saw out there the world, and longed to be out there, floating free, maybe, above their house, above their backyard with its sandbox and swing set and chain-link fence, longed maybe even to be flying past this city toward some other place, some other home in a town she’d never visited, a home with no sandbox, a Pirate’s Fortress instead of a swing set, her children there with her, all three of them playing in a lush and fenceless backyard; though she longed for all this, longed for it all in just these moments, there arose unbidden in her the image of her husband and the woman, so that suddenly she no longer flew above an unknown town, no longer even floated free above her own house and yard and sandbox and swing set, but was here, in the kitchen, a coffee cup before her, her husband across the table.

  He took a sip of the soda. Still his hand quivered.

  He looked around. He was still there in the kitchen of the home he and his wife owned. He saw the cupboards and the cabinets, the row of drawers beside the stove.

  But now he could see inside the cabinets and cupboards the orderly rows in which his wife had placed their plates and glasses and pots and pans. He saw silverware in the top drawer beside the stove, saw hot pads and books of Green Back stamps in the drawer beneath that one. He saw, too, food his wife had purchased inside the refrigerator, saw more food inside the pantry, spices on the lazy Susan, lunch bags, and canisters full of flour and sugar and coffee.

  He thought it a miraculous thing that he could see all this, the contents of their kitchen revealed to him like some secret out of his own life.

  He looked at his wife, saw she still looked out the window.

  He saw the two of them before all this, saw them making love in an innocent room, their own bedroom upstairs in this house, their home. He saw her above him, her eyes closed as she moved. He saw her beneath him, felt her arms around his neck as he moved.

  It was his wife he saw, not the woman, and he believed this, too, to be a miraculous thing: the fact the pictures in his head were of himself and his wife, no one else. Though at times, he reasoned, the woman and what they had done would come to him now and again. Of course it would. How could it not?

  But not here. Not now.

  He could see everything in the kitchen. He could see the two of them—himself and his wife, not the woman—making love as they had before. He could see all of this.

  “There’s a way through this,” he said. He took up the soda again. “I can see it,” he said.

  She heard in his voice his belief that there was a way. She could hear that he believed this with all his heart.

  But with his words, too, in their pitch and conviction, she saw once again a Pirate’s Fortress, saw again a lush and fenceless yard in a town she could not name. She saw her children, Sam and Tina. They were playing, all three of them pirates. Shipmates. They lived in a town she hadn’t yet visited.

  She said, “I see it.” She picked up her cup, sipped at it. “You’re right,” she said. She said, “I can see us getting through this.”

  She turned to him, seated across from her at the table. She smiled at him.

  He smiled, astonished at his luck, at the blessing of a wife who could see alongside him the way through this.

  He allowed himself to look out the window then, a reward for his having hung on here, through this night. He saw an old swing set back there, saw a sandbox, too. He saw some trees, past it all a chain-link fence.

  And above everything hung a bright and huge morning sky, a brilliant sky filled with limitless possibilities.

  She looked from her smiling husband to the kitchen. Their children’s breakfast dishes lay on the counter, ready to rinse for the dishwasher; the carton of orange juice sat beside the toaster, waiting to be put back in the refrigerator. There was the paraphernalia, too, she’d left out after making the children’s lunches: a jar of mayonnaise and one of mustard, the plastic wrappers from slices of cheese, what was left of a bunch of grapes. An open bag of pecan sandies.

  Evidence, she saw, of her shipmates, beloved cohorts in a Pirate’s Fortress, and now the room became for her filled with limitless possibilities, the ceiling in here as broad and bright as the morning sky outside this window.

  Still he smiled at her from across the table, but it seemed somehow her eyes were different now, and he saw in that moment the woman’s eyes, saw in his wife’s strange smile the pale pink of the woman’s lips.

  He blinked, felt terrible for this fleeting breach of her newfound trust in him and his belief that there was a way through this.

  He blinked again, and here was his wife, the same eyes he loved, her same lips.

  She looked back to her husband, but she could not see him. He was gone, vanished into thin air, and she smiled, astonished at her luck, at the blessing of a husband who knew when to leave.

  Even though he was afraid she might see how his hand quivered with the caffeine from sodas all night long, he reached to her then, moved his hand across the table toward her.

  But he could not see his hand, nor could he see his arm. He looked down at himself, saw nothing, saw he had vanished into thin air, though he’d had no intention of ever leaving.

  He had believed there was a way through this, had believed it with all his heart.

  Then she stood from the empty table, turned to the kitchen counter, to the tidying up of everything before the children got home.

  THE MAIL HADN’T COME.

  Larry’d put the bills—the electric, water, Citibank, the mortgage—in the mailbox when he left this morning, then pushed up the red flag and headed for downtown, confident in the way things worked: he would offer up these sacrifices, these slabs off his paycheck, in order to live as he and his family did, content in the good knowledge the lights were sure to come on when he flipped the switch, the water to flow when he turned on the faucet. Soon, he’d thought, as he placed the bills in the box, a representative from the United States Postal Service would arrive, take up these obligations, and send them on their way, route them as they ought to be routed, deliver as they ought to be delivered. The way things worked.

  But the flag was still up, he saw in his headlights, this day over, the sun already down, dusk making way for dark, and he only shook his head at the sad truth of how seldom, in fact, things actually worked as they were meant to work. He pulled up in the driveway.

  Take, for example, the library bid. He’d had this one in the bag, he’d believed, had done his homework, followed the paper trail first to the federal building, then to county, then to city, all in an effort to find exactly who it was could authorize the wiring bid. Routine, certainly: Be pleasant to Laqueesha, the black woman who worked the archives at federal, offer to buy her a cup of coffee and a jelly-filled, let her turn him down twice before trying one more time, when she always took him up on it; offer Dorinda at county a Snapple Raspberry Iced T
ea, who would take it on the first go-round; make certain not to make eye contact with Benny O’Hearn, the bastard, down to city hall.

  It’d paid off, too: the bid on the new library, he’d finally figured out, had to go through county, but not before approval by federal and by city.

  Routine.

  But then he’d gotten the flat tire, then the ticket for speeding, then, once he’d finally made it back to the office a little after five, he’d watched from his desk while a uniformed officer served papers to the boss, who turned, papers in hand, and went into his own office, closed the door gently behind him. A few moments later he emerged, briefcase in one hand, softball trophy in the other, and headed for the door.

  Of course this would be about the death of that janitor at Whitesides Elementary last week, the one who’d touched wires he should have been able to touch.

  They watched their boss go, no one saying anything, all nine of them at the offices of Hemley Electric, Inc., only staring as the door closed behind Mr. Hemley.

  Then, one by one, they left, no words between them.

  So much for the library bid.

  Now he was home, the red flag still up, the bills not mailed. What next? he thought, and reached to the visor, pushed the button on the garage door opener.

  Nothing happened.

  He saw, too, there were no lights on in any of the windows, and his home, here in the failing twilight of a day gone bad, seemed somehow not his home at all but a hulking shadow, big and anonymous, nothing he knew as his own. It was a house, he saw, dark and vaguely empty for the lack of lights and a garage door shut tight, no matter how many times he mashed the button on the visor.

  Was this his house? he wondered. Had he mistaken this one for his own, where each evening warm light through windows spilled softly onto the sidewalk and lawn and driveway? Maybe, he thought, he’d simply skipped a street, too preoccupied with the ramifications of that janitor’s death and the ensuing fire that’d razed the entire elementary school the day before classes started, all of it simply cutting too close; it had been his schematic, after all, that’d been used for the layout and hookup, though his boss had given him the final verbal okay. He’d approached Mr. Hemley with the layout, sketched out on a Burger King napkin, between the top and bottom of the ninth inning of the last game of the season. Mr. Hemley’d just finished off his sixth beer and was headed for the on-deck circle when Larry’d made the presentation; Mr. Hemley’d smiled, nodded, then gone to bat, knocked a solid line drive down the first base line, drove in the winning two runs. Game over, schematic okayed. The world a wonderful place, Larry recalled. The way things worked.