I could see the color had drained from Paul’s face. I took no pleasure in this. I was not seeking revenge, but clarity. Enough is enough and we had been dancing for a while but not really seeing each other.
“Is that it?”
“Yes. I will be coming back tomorrow to work and will help in orchestrating the dance and the game and whatever I can do. I want Toby to get his nine credit hours and I want him to graduate and then I want to get the fuck out of here.”
Georgia had returned.
“More coffee?” she asked, giving us a shot of wrinkly boobs.
Paul smiled but I could see the strain. Georgia left and I turned to him.
“You can’t be that surprised, Paul.”
“I thought we might work it out,” he said weakly.
I didn’t want to bust him right there. But it is a small town and things don’t go unnoticed. I knew where he had been staying and I wasn’t going to bring it up, but sometimes your hand gets forced.
“While you are screwing your assistant, really? You thought we could work it out?”
“That’s not true,” he said, but we both knew it was.
I stood up and looked down at my soon to be ex-husband who had turned a lighter shade of pale.
“You really should have become an actor and stuck to your guns. You really do believe your own bullshit.”
And then I drove back home and went to bed. Staying Alive thumped up from the basement.
THE SHAFT
PAUL
YES, I HAVE BEEN staying at Amber’s motel room. I mean I have been paying for it, so it seems ludicrous that I should sleep in my office. I needed a place to shower and Amber offered a solution to a lot of problems. And the sex was amazing in that way only new sex can be after you have been with someone for twenty-some years. And I only felt mildly guilty because I felt Julie had brought on the Amber situation.
This was a justification I realize, but I wouldn’t have slept in the office and gotten drunk with Amber if we hadn’t fought. So I went back to a place in my life when I owed no one anything. I mean that is what an affair is all about. You go back to being a teenager in a sense. You have done the worst thing so you are free to make as big an ass of yourself as you want to. Isn’t that what all middle-aged flings are about? That and sex.
I always suspected that in some way Toby would be behind any kind of breakup. Not that I am blaming him. I am not. But we have always fought over the heartbreak that has followed in his wake. Some sort of frustration welling up as we navigated problem after problem and right in the middle of every crisis we would fight. It was as if we couldn’t say what we really wanted to so we tore down the fabric of our marriage just a little bit more each time. And I knew we were at some sort of fork in the road. It came down to that I felt abandoned at a crucial juncture and maybe Julie did too.
And I did not intend to play house with Amber, but there we were. We took our showers in the morning and drove into High School Central in the Mustang and then we would go for drinks after work and take drives in the country and I completed the male fantasy of a life with a young pretty woman without all the complications of marriage. I felt like I was back in high school and pretty much sailed along until Julie called and told me she was going to divorce me.
I knew divorce was in the offing, but you never quite recover from hearing those words for the first time. I am going to divorce you. Your life will be permanently different. Amber tried to console me but I was pretty much in shock when I went back to the hotel room and thought about life without Julie and Toby. It was somewhere in there I saw that life with Amber would not be a substitute but a Band-Aid. I made it part of my ritual to meet Toby after school between the logistics of getting ready for the dance and the game.
We began to practice for the game. Toby would run as far as he could in the yard and then I would let sail a bomb. In a weird way we went back to when he was a boy and we would play football or baseball in the backyard. It was growing cooler in the evenings with the sun slanting behind the trees. We were really training for a moment. If everything else failed this would be the final ringer that allowed him to hit the brass bell.
“Go long! Go long! Go long!”
I watched him every day sprinting down the yard with those gangly legs with his arms outstretched. He would catch it about half of the time. Usually if I led him just enough and his hands were straight out I could place it in his palms and then he had to remember to pull it into his chest.
“Remember to bring it in to your chest.”
“Okay Dad,” he said lining up again.
And sometimes I realized that as we practiced we were participating in a very old ritual of fathers and sons in towns all over America. And in this way we were doing something that was our right, and I took pride because these moments are the core of being a father—even a divorced father. I guess I always knew there would be a price to pay beyond money.
A LOOKER
COACH
I WAS NERVOUS WHEN Linda walked in. I could tell steak joints weren’t her thing but she looked around and smiled and said, “This looks like a very nice place Ronald.” I mean it was just a Cattleman’s Ranch, but you could have all the salad and rolls you wanted.
“Yeah the steaks aren’t bad,” I said pulling out her chair for her.
We picked up our menus and I tried to keep my eyes on filet mignon because she was wearing this blue top that made her eyes like emeralds, and for the first time I could see she was built. Linda always had on a sweater and reading glasses with her hair pinned up in a bun or something. But this woman in front of me had a rack, and with her hair curled and flowing back she looked a lot younger.
“I will take the salmon please,” she said to the snotty-looking kid that took our orders.
“T-Bone. Rare. Baked.” I barked, handing him the menus.
So then we sat there and suddenly neither of us had anything to say. I mean at Sycamore High she was the English teacher and I was the Coach. Now, I didn’t know what the hell we were. Her wine came and then my beer. I think I downed half that Miller right there. She set her wine down and smiled.
“So Coach, now what?”
I laughed and thought of Marie at home just then. I mean I knew exactly what she was doing. She was watching Cake Boss. Then she would watch the gay guy who plans rich people’s weddings. Then she would watch HDTV and stare at homes worth over a million bucks. And then she would gab with her mother in the nursing home and after eating ice cream and chips she would hit the sack and snore like a truck driver.
I shrugged and looked at Linda.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
The place was pretty empty and we made some small talk about school and somehow we got around to the Clampet kid.
“Basically this guy is orchestrating the whole thing so his kid can have like this great year. I mean, I don’t have kids or anything, but I don’t think I would spend all the loot he is just to let his kid catch a pass in a football game.”
Linda leaned in and I saw a smudge of lipstick on her front tooth.
“You mean he is paying you to do this?”
I shrugged and tilted my head.
“Yeah and I think he’s giving Randy some money, and I hear he is paying Macy to go to the Homecoming with his kid.”
“That’s amazing,” she murmured.
I shook my head and watched the pimply guy bring our drinks.
“Yeah. Like I said I don’t quite get it, but–” I paused because this was something I had been thinking about with Marie snoring on the other side of the bed. “It’s almost like Clampet is bending fate. It’s like he’s reordering things for his kid. I mean I liked high school but I know a lot guys hated it because things didn’t go their way you know and here is Clampet fixing events so his kid’s memories will be different.”
Linda lifted her wine. “I didn’t like high school. I was the ugly girl who got good grades.”
This shocked me. Because ugly is o
ne thing she was not. I say this honestly. I think Linda is the prettiest woman I have ever met. So that is why I said what I said.
“Linda there is nothing ugly about you. You are a very beautiful woman.”
She smiled then showing her small white teeth.
“Oh Ronald, you don’t have to say that.”
I sat back and shook my head.
“I don’t lie about something like that. It’s the truth. Why you aren’t married I don’t get at all. If I was out there I would have snatched you long ago.”
She smiled again but it was sort of sad.
“All the good ones are taken,” she said looking at me.
And right there I got a hard on. I mean neither of us said a word for a minute and the restaurant fell away and I didn’t care about our food anymore. And then she put her hand on mine on the table. She did it very softly and I grabbed it and now I knew what those ten years talking in parking lots and outside her classroom and in the teachers’ lounge meant.
“You can bend fate too, Ronald,” she said softly.
PENT UP
LINDA
DOWNTON ABBEY. I LOVE that show. I love the manners and the genteel traditions. I love the way people put emotion ahead of sex. I see Ronald as Mr. Bates—a tragic figure with a heart of gold—and I am Anna. They finally get together after Mr. Bates gets out of jail for killing his ex-wife and then Anna gets raped and Mr. Bates avenges her. They want to have a family and if they ever can get clear of all the baggage that drags them down they will do it.
I didn’t think Coach could be so tender and I don’t think he thought I could be so wild. But all the good ones are taken when you are an English teacher in a small town, and ten years is a long time to think about someone. The motel was something out of The Postman Always Rings Twice; a very noire ‘40s feeling place out on a lonely stretch of the highways just outside of town. Ronald got the key and came up to my car window and leaned down.
“Are you sure about this, Linda?” he asked, his breath visible in the autumn cool.
“What is the room number Ronald?”
“112.”
“I will meet you there.”
Coach is a big burly man who was quite an experienced lover. I don’t want to use the word love because there was a lot of lust on that bed. I tore down his pants and I don’t think he expected me to hit my knees, but women who read a lot of Virginia Wolfe have quite a bit of built-up sexual energy. And then we just tore that bed apart with the MOTEL BAKER sign blinking in the window. It was very noire and after we lay there naked with my head against Ronald’s chest.
“Wow,” he said.
“Yes wow,” I murmured putting my leg across his.
“You are quite the tiger Miss Fielding.”
I looked up.
“You too, Coach.”
And then we were silent with the traffic bleeding by outside the window. There were just a few cars in the lot and we had both parked around back. I rubbed my cheek against his chest.
“You know this is all going to end soon. I mean when the school closes Ronald there is a chance we will never see each other again.”
I felt him breathe.
“Yeah. I know.”
I stared at the small room with the television and the Bible by the phone and thought of all the poor souls who had passed through there.
“I hope Toby Clampet catches his touchdown pass,” I whispered.
Ronald was silent for a moment.
“Me too,” he said kissing the top of my head.
MIDLIFE CRISIS
TOBY
MY JOHN TRAVOLTA SUIT has arrived for my routine at the Homecoming dance. My shoes arrived the day after and I took both down to the basement and put on the suit and the shoes in front of the full-length mirror. The pants were high as my legs are abnormally long and the suit coat did not cover my wrists. But the effect was positive. When I went through my routine to Staying Alive by the Bee Gees I did look like Tony Monero, redeeming himself in the final dance sequence of the movie.
This routine will be imperative, as I have told both Amy and Macy I would meet them at the dance thereby solving transportation issues. Also I do only have my learner’s permit, which is problematic in taking a date to a dance. Dad has agreed to drive me and Mom and Dad are both chaperones for the dance. Dad no longer lives with us but is staying with his assistant. Mom says she is a slut. I heard this through the bathroom door when Mom was doing her hair and frequently talks to herself.
Marital issues have driven Dad from the domicile and divorce should soon follow as this is a separation and a separation in the marital union precedes a divorce 90 percent of the time. Dad attempted to explain this to me while we were practicing for the Homecoming game in the backyard.
“Your mother and I are just giving each other some space.”
“So you can have sex with your assistant,” I pointed out.
Dad turned a different color as I have seen him do before.
“No, it was not so I can have sex with Amber. Where did you hear that?” he asked, holding the football.
“It is obvious Dad that you cannot have sex with your assistant when you are still living with Mom. That would violate your marriage vows. So you would have to leave and sleep somewhere else and the logical place would be at the motel with Amber who Mom says you employed because you were having a midlife crisis.”
Dad shook his head. “I am not having a midlife crisis.”
“It would make sense Dad,” I pointed out. “Your age is approaching fifty, and 75 percent of adult males experience depression and feelings of melancholy as sexual powers and drive decreases and worries over mortality increase. This is why Cialis and Viagra have such a strong hold on the market of forty-plus men because of erectile dysfunction syndrome, which coincides with the lessening of testosterone in the blood, which all contributes to a lessened drive in career, sex, and energy in general. Topical testosterone is often prescribed for men your age, though there are many side effects including prostate cancer.”
Dad puckered his lips and lodged his tongue behind his front teeth.
“Your mother and I separated because of a difference of opinion on several matters.”
“You mean financial. Eighty percent of marital problems are rooted in financial stress with 65 percent of the financially stressed couples filing for divorced. But since the Great Recession there has been a curious cessation of divorce due to the fact the marital home will not sell in the depressed market and therefore the 50 percent rule of Illinois cannot apply to marital property so people stay together even though they hate each other’s guts.”
“Your mother and I don’t hate each other Toby.”
“I don’t think you hate Mom, but I am certain Mom hates you. This is based on conversations she has when she thinks she’s alone.”
Dad frowned.
“What does she say?’
“She says that she hates you and hopes you get run over or die in a fiery plane crash or get a fatal agonizing disease.”
“She really said that?”
“I think she was talking to one of her girlfriends so she might have said this in more jocular terms than I am relaying.”
Dad was then silent and we resumed throwing the football. But a lot of familial issues were solved by the final routine in Saturday Night Fever including Tony Monero’s distressed family life. I have also received my African-American wig and leather trench coat and Mom has bought me several turtlenecks. I have purchased a blank gun that looks very realistic. I will hold these items in a bag that I will take with me if Randy makes good on his threat if I take Macy to the Homecoming dance. I am taking Macy and I am taking Amy. So, I have to assume Randy will be an assailant much like the assailant that John Shaft dispatches with karate chops and guns. I have taken out a book on karate to that end from the library and I will have Isaac Hayes’s groundbreaking soundtrack on my iPod just in case.
The blank gun I will have in my leather trench coat
.
DEATH STARE
AMBER
I SEE MEN WITH their wives stare at me all the time. They pretend to be looking at the bread or the beans or the canned soup but I feel their eyes. Some men don’t even bother to hide it and stare at me in a kind of desperation. Their wives are fat, usually, and bossy and they follow around behind them going though stores like some kind of dog trying to please their master. I mean it’s not my fault that I work out and eat right and that I have only twenty-five years behind me. Most men would give their left nut to have sex with me.
That’s why I think Paul must still be in love with his wife. He has been staying in my motel room, which is cool because he’s been paying for it, and since his wife came back it has been really tense at the office. She stares at me like I’m a hooker or something and one time it was just the two of us in the office working out the logistics for the actors coming for the game and interfacing with Homecoming.com to make sure the dance comes off and I was like feeling all this hostility coming from Julie. Talk about a frosty bitch.
So I turned to look at her.
“What,” she said without turning from her computer.
“Julie,” I began.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
She kept typing away on her laptop like her fingers were on fire or something. I mean I know my future was screwed so I figured I have nothing to lose.
“Julie—”
Then she turned and her eyes were very red.
“What don’t you get? I said I don’t want to fucking talk about it!”
I bit my lip. I mean she was staring at me with such hatred. So I stood up and grabbed my coat and walked out into the warehouse past the lines we had painted on the floor to work out the logistics for the football team. I stopped and went back. She was crying by now and still typing.
My Best Year Page 10