Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

by Sweany, Brian;

  “Sailboats have lines or sheets, not ropes.”

  “Hey, Hank.”

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Nautical douche bag know-it-all is not a good look on you.”

  The wind died, as it’s prone to do in the summer in Indiana. Beth yelled at me for not bringing along the electric trolling motor. I said something about being a sailing purist and quoted Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World. She called me a douche bag again. As we crawl into the marina, I see Jack sitting on the edge of the dock, his shoes off and his feet in the water.

  Mom and Gillman came back to Empire Ridge last month for his high school graduation. It was the first time they had been back since they moved to Utah a year ago. Jack’s grades fell off a little during the tail end of high school, but he still made the National Honors Society and graduated in the top five percent of the Prep Class of 2007. He broke up with Caitlin after the pregnancy scare, got back together with her, then broke up with her again. I still rarely see them apart, although Jack insists they’re just casually dating, which I take to mean they’re still casually having sex with one another. With all due respect, son, this isn’t my first rodeo.

  I throw the line at Jack. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

  He catches the line, cleats me off at the dock. “How’s the sailing today?”

  Beth rolls her eyes. “Ask Captain Douche Bag.”

  “Ha!” Jack laughs. He offers Beth his hand. “Milady.”

  My wife accepts the offer, stepping out of the boat and onto the dock. She kisses Jack on the cheek. “At least one of you knows how to be a gentleman.”

  “Where are you going?” I ask. “We still need to break the boat down.”

  “I’ll leave that to you two,” Beth says. “If you need me, I’ll be up at the marina bar drinking margaritas.”

  I shake my head. Prima donna, I mouth silently to Jack.

  “I heard that,” Beth says.

  Jack laughs. I squeeze his shoulder. “Ain’t love grand, buddy?”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Jack says. “You two make it look easy. How long has it been now?”

  “Married twelve years this August. In fact, doing some quick math in my head, next year will be twenty years since we first, uh…”

  “Kissed?”

  “Exactly.”

  “You talk to Laura recently?”

  “Uh, no,” I say. “What the hell kind of a question is that?”

  “I don’t know. Just thought I’d ask.”

  “I mean, I know you two have been talking.”

  “You do?”

  “I see the letters in the mail and the occasional text on your phone. Just because I do a lot of idiotic things, doesn’t mean I’m an idiot.”

  “So you’re not mad?”

  “Why would I be mad? She’s your birth mother.”

  “That’s good to know. In fact, it’s kind of the reason I came out here today.” Jack hands me an envelope. Another fucking envelope? Really? It’s addressed to Jack. The top two lines of the return address read, University of Notre Dame, Admissions Office.

  “What’s this?”

  “You don’t want to read it?”

  “I’m sorry, have we met? Hell yes, I want to read it!”

  I unfold the off-white paper. Before I read the letter, I hold it to my nose. It carries with it the smells of expectations: fresh-waxed floors, leather chairs, a professor’s aftershave, the mustiness of an old textbook tempered by the chemical-sweet note of the book glue binding its pages together. Where’s the Rudy soundtrack when I need it?

  “Uh, what are you doing?” Jack asks.

  “Just give me a moment.” I close my eyes, then open. I begin to read.

  Dear Jack,

  The Committee for Admissions has completed its review of your application for admission. I am pleased to report that your academic achievement and personal qualities have earned you a place in Notre Dame’s 2007 Freshman Class. I trust that you will view this offer of admission as a special recognition of your accomplishments during the past four years and as a vote of confidence in your potential for success during your college years.

  To confirm your enrollment at Notre Dame, please follow the instructions on the enclosed sheets, noting all the important dates and deadlines. If you have not already done so, please forward a copy of your final transcript when it is available. If you have any questions or need some personal attention, please call us and ask to speak with one of our counselors.

  Those who love you must be proud of you—who you are and what you have accomplished. We at Notre Dame are eager to have you with us because your intellectual and spiritual growth will continue here.

  Sincerely,

  Sister Vivian Rose Morshauser, O.S.F.

  Assistant Provost for Enrollment

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I grab Jack in a bear hug, heaving him up in the air. “You did it!”

  “I take it you’re excited, then?”

  “Best day ever.”

  “Come on, really?”

  “Okay, there’s the day Mom brought you home, the day I married Beth, and the days Sasha and the twins were born, but this has to be a solid number five on that list.”

  “Wow.”

  “You don’t understand, Jack. This was Dad’s dream for me, and I let him down. I never even filled out the application. He’s up in heaven right now looking down at us with the biggest ear-to-ear grin, and I bet Grandpa George and Grandpa Fred are right there with him.”

  “What about Grandma Eleanor and Grandma Louise?”

  “Yeah,” I say, folding the letter carefully into the envelope and handing it back to Jack. “I think those two might be living the afterlife in a different zip code.”

  “I’m glad you’re happy, Dad.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You guess so?”

  “It’s just that, well, Notre Dame was…like you said. It was Grandpa John’s dream for you, and it became your dream for me. But it’s never been my dream.”

  “Then make it your dream, Jack. Opportunities like this don’t come around every day.”

  “I realize there are a lot of rare opportunities in life.”

  “Good.”

  “And that’s why I’m not going to Notre Dame.”

  “Wait…what?”

  “You heard me. I’m not going to Notre Dame.”

  “Slow down, son. Let’s not rush things.”

  “That’s just it. I’ve been thinking about this all year, during the entire college application process. Laura has really been there for me. She’s talked me through it.”

  “Oh no.”

  “I was hoping the Notre Dame Admissions office would make my decision a little easier by declining my application. I purposely slacked off a little over these last two semesters just to stack the odds against me.”

  “This isn’t happening.”

  “I’m going to attend Temple University in Philadelphia. Laura and Ian live within walking distance of campus, and they have a spare bedroom.”

  “Jack!” I shout.

  “What?”

  “I need you to stop talking.”

  We break down Heather in silence. I make sure she’s tied fast to the dock and her rainfly fits snug over the cockpit in anticipation of some rain later in the week. I finish the breakdown by buffing out a couple of scuffmarks on her stern with a small shoeshine cloth.

  “Heather…” Jack says, watching me. “Where’d that name come from again?”

  “Highlander.”

  “Second-greatest movie ever?”

  “That’s right. Second only to?”

  “Road House, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  We
both smile, the tension subsiding.

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah, son.”

  “You know this isn’t about you, right?”

  “I wish I could believe that.”

  “You’ll always be my number one—my teacher, my friend, my father. But this is about building a relationship—building at least something—with Laura. You’ve had me to yourself for eighteen years. She deserves to get to know me. I deserve to get to know her.”

  “Not to mention those three sisters of yours.”

  “I know, right?”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “Their boyfriends don’t stand a chance with me.”

  “I would expect nothing less.” I stand up, shove the shoeshine cloth in my pocket. “When did you get to be such a grown-up?”

  “I had a great teacher.”

  “Can I meet him?”

  “Get in line,” Jack says. “There’s a lot of people who love him, so I’d have to check and see if he could fit you into his busy schedule.”

  Reaching across to Jack, I grab his arm. “Thanks for that.”

  He returns my gesture, squeezing my opposite arm. “I still don’t get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “Why Heather? Why not something cooler from the movie like Ramirez or MacLeod or even Kurgan?”

  “You don’t name your boats after guys.”

  “Why not?”

  “Some people say it’s bad luck. I don’t really know. That’s just the way it’s always been. When you’re ready to take a boat out, you’d never say, ‘Let’s take him out,’ would you?”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “I guess there’s just something inherently feminine or maternal about a boat. It’s comforting to know she is there for you when you’re out at sea and all alone.”

  “So a sailor is just a boy who needs to be by his mother?”

  Mom watched as Dad and I came flying into the lee shore, the shore that was facing into the wind. The storm front was closing, wind and salt spray roaring over our backs. A wave caught the bow just right, pitchpoling our boat. The Laser flipped end over end, the aluminum mast snapping in half after getting stuck upside down in a sandbar. I nearly drowned.

  A father and son obliviously living in the moment. A mother not caring about the moment, wishing nothing more than for them to be safe and in her arms.

  “Yeah, Jack,” I say. “That’s exactly what a sailor is.”

  Chapter one hundred four

  I hate my fucking boss.

  Dean Zacharias is one of the lingering legacy hires at Random House. A direct descendant of Frank Nelson Doubleday, the nineteenth-century founder of Doubleday Books, he still brandishes the staunch Roman Catholicism of the Doubleday family like a badge of honor. He’s the guy who gives good Catholics a bad name: gives Opus Dei half his income, thinks women are merely receptacles for his kid-producing man juice, a poor man’s Mel Gibson. Not only is he a raging misogynist, he’s grossly underqualified for his job. He doesn’t read. He thinks all librarians and women writers—save for Ayn Rand and Ann Coulter—are lesbian socialists and that the Crusades were invented by the liberal mainstream media. He’s the worst kind of manager, the type who is so small-minded and unintelligent that the only thing he can do for validation is micromanage menial tasks. His favorite ritual is to bring employees into his office and yell at them about their To Do lists. Never mind the fact that you’ve managed the only imprint under the Random House umbrella to stay in the black every quarter for the last decade; you e-mailed him your To Do list three minutes late, so you’re a lazy, uncommitted employee.

  I’m sitting in Dean’s office. Random House flew me in this week with no explanation, other than it was urgent. We’re in the midst of our sixth reorganization in as many years, a bloodletting I’ve managed to avoid by being profitable while most other New York publishers stare down the barrel of a once-in-a-lifetime recession that is shrinking wallets and shuttering bookstores.

  “You know what your problem is, Hank?” Dean pretends to read one of my spreadsheets through his reading glasses. He wears the glasses on a chain around his neck, raising them to his eyes and dropping them to his chest intermittently, trying to create the impression that he has so much as an ounce of intellectual curiosity.

  “Enlighten me, Dean.”

  “You got no clangers.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Dean stands up. He grabs an unlit cigar out of the ashtray on his desk, sticks it in his mouth. He quit smoking ten years ago, but he still chews through a box of cigars every month. A woman hater with an oral fixation: yeah, like that’s a fucking surprise.

  “You got nothing swinging down there between your legs.” Dean points at my midsection. “No fucking clangers!”

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at, but I don’t think this is an appropriate conversation to be—”

  “What’s with all these books you’re buying?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Dean grabs a hardcover novel off one of his shelves. He throws it on his desk. “Like this garbage.”

  I pick the book up and read the title aloud. “Teaching Yoga in Belize.”

  “What the fuck is that?”

  “It’s a great memoir. Won a lot of awards.”

  “I’m sure it did. I’m sure a bunch of intellectuals got in a room and agreed this book was the next Atlas Shrugged.”

  “Dear God, I hope not.”

  “See, that right there is what I’m talking about. No fucking clangers.”

  Dean’s rant continues. I tune him out, flipping through the first few pages of Teaching Yoga in Belize. I lean my face into the book, smelling the rough-cut pages. This particular copy carries some unusual notes—freshly ground coffee buffeted by something almost familiar and intimate. It reminds me of that oily-haired smell of the inside of my father’s baseball hats. I kept a half dozen of them in a cardboard box in my closet for about four or five years after his death. Every now and then, when I had a day that knocked the wind out of me—and I had a lot of those days after Dad died—I’d take out the hats and bury my nose in them.

  As I place the book back on my boss’s desk, I think about that son who just needed to smell his father’s hats. “Dean,” I say.

  “Don’t interrupt me, Hank.”

  “Oh, that’s okay. I haven’t listened to a word you’ve said for the last five minutes.”

  “Now you listen here, you disrespectful son of a—”

  “Fuck you, you sanctimonious buffoon. I quit.”

  “What?” Dean says. “Now wait just a second.”

  “Good luck finding somebody who will keep College Avenue Press in the black for another ten days, let alone another ten years.”

  I stand up and make for the door. Dean gives chase. “Calm down, Hank. You’re making a rash decision here.”

  “And that’s exactly why I know it’s the right decision.” I open the door to his office, smiling. “There’s just one thing I have left to say, Dean.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Pope John Paul II is fucking overrated.”

  Chapter one hundred five

  Beth and I sit in a dorm room in St. Francis Hall on the campus of Marian College. We’re playing a drinking game with some nursing students. Beth’s mother is babysitting Sasha and the twins for the night.

  “Ladies,” I say. “Before we’re all too far gone to remember, I want to make a toast to my brave and beautiful wife, Beth Fitzpatrick.”

  After I quit College Ave, things got a little tight, but we managed. I called Brian Sweeney at Talk Hard, and he hooked me up with a job as the Midwest library sales rep. This past year I’ve put close to fifty thousand miles on my Subaru Outback, peddling audiobooks to librarians in Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois. It pays the bills, and I sti
ll get to be around book people, so I can’t complain. I’ve also started writing again.

  Beth is the real story here. Unwavering in her support of my decision to quit my job, she decided to follow my lead and turn her own life upside down. She retired from coaching gymnastics, a career that essentially began when she was thirteen months old in a Mommy & Me class and ended at the age of thirty-seven when she came to the long overdue realization that no amount of money was worth babysitting moody teenage girls—never mind their overbearing mothers—ten hours a day. She enrolled in the accelerated nursing program at Marian College in Indianapolis. Within eighteen months, she had graduated from nursing school, passed her board exams, and accepted a job in hospice care. Depending on my monthly bonus or lack thereof, Beth’s take-home pay will be at least as much as mine.

  We toast to my wife. Beth wipes a trace of beer off her bottom lip, looks at me. “Drink, Asshole.”

  If there’s an official card game in the state of Indiana, it has to be euchre. But honorable mention, especially when drinking is involved, has to go to Asshole. Numerous variations of the game exist, but we stick to the basics tonight: fifty-two cards, four players, suits are irrelevant, cards are ranked high-to-low two, ace, king, queen, jack, ten, and so on. All the cards are dealt. First one out of cards is President. Last one out is Asshole.

  In the first game I am summarily dismissed to the bottom of the Asshole hierarchy, President Beth issues edicts from her throne: “I said drink, Asshole.”

  I lift the cold, cheap beer to my lips. Thirteen years after my graduation, Keystone Light has apparently supplanted Natural Light as the beer of choice of the frugal collegiate drunk.

  Each person has to know his place in the hierarchy. As President, Beth can tell anyone playing to drink for whatever reason and is beholden to no one. Each successive player has varying levels of executive authority, save for Asshole, who obeys the whims of all who precede him and inevitably drinks the most.

  “Shit!” I throw my cards down on the table in disgust. I’m the last one out. Asshole again.

  I’ve managed to be Asshole for five consecutive hands—a dazzling feat of ineptitude. Beth has been President twice already, VP the other three hands. To Beth’s right sits Vicky Elstrom. Vicky is an attractive redhead in her early twenties. Slim-figured, she’s been debating getting a boob job and about a month ago was wine-drunk in our hot tub when she asked if she could feel Beth’s breasts. Beth said, “Of course,” and took off her bikini top while Vicky fondled her for a good five minutes.