A Perfect Universe

by Scott O'Connor

  “Hey, space cadet,” Bruce called. “Let’s get to work.”

  The big oak stood in the center of the yard, curved and gnarled and shedding crisp leaves even as they raked beneath it. There had been winds the last few days, warm dry breaths in the afternoons and evenings, what Bruce called the Santa Anas, the devil winds, which made people crazy and brought the coyotes down from the mountains.

  “See that light?” Bruce said. He’d stopped raking and stood with his arms out, the late afternoon sun falling on his bare forearms. “You don’t get that anywhere but here. That quality. The smog holds the sunset in the air. You can almost feel it in your body.” He closed his eyes. “It changes how you feel.”

  Claire watched Bruce. He looked peaceful, maybe even happy, standing there in the orange light. He looked like he belonged here, in this strange, rough landscape, under his tree, beside his mountains. Claire closed his own eyes and slowly lifted his arms, trying to feel what Bruce felt, tried to feel his body as a part of this place, this light, but then Bruce coughed and Claire snapped his eyes open, embarrassed, coughing in response to try to clear the moment.

  They raked in silence for a while, just the sound of the leaves scraping across the grass, and then Bruce spoke again from the other side of the tree.

  “Seeing you with that bike reminded me of my boys. They were always on their bikes, always jumping over things, off things.” He pulled his leaves into a single low pile. “I haven’t seen them in I don’t know how long. They’ve got their own lives now.” He set his rake against the trunk and looked down at their work. “I can handle the rest. You go on back. Make sure you put this on your invoice.”

  When Claire got home he found the phone cord stretched through the kitchen and out the back door. He could see the top of Diane’s head through the window. She was sitting on the back steps. Her voice was muffled, but it was obvious that she was arguing. No, no, you listen. You listen to me now. He heard Steve’s name, said in anger, said as a kind of plea. Steve, listen to me. Steve, why is this happening again?

  When Diane came back inside she was carrying the receiver like it was a dead animal, the handset held away from her body. Claire started washing the dishes in the sink to make it look like he hadn’t been eavesdropping.

  Diane said, “Since when do you wash dishes?”

  Claire shrugged.

  “Don’t think you’re going to give me an invoice like Bruce Bartlett.”

  She left the kitchen. Claire could hear her in the hall closet, then back in her bedroom. He didn’t know why he suddenly felt so knocked back by this. Diane had had breakups before. Every relationship she’d been in had ended in a breakup. And Claire hadn’t even met Steve. Steve hadn’t taken him bowling or to the movies or the dirt bike races like some of the other boyfriends, as if auditioning for a part in their little family show. Steve was just a name on a letter. He wasn’t anything real.

  After a few moments Diane came back out in her hospital scrubs. She told him what to do for dinner, not to watch too much TV. She looked at the sink and told him he was wasting water.

  Claire turned off the faucet. “Don’t forget to ask at work.”

  “Ask for what?”

  “The day off,” he said. “Friday. Remember, you’re the next contestant on The Price Is Right.”

  * * *

  Claire woke to shouting out on the street, Tammy’s voice, pointed and accusatory. At his window he watched the lights coming on at the Bartletts’ house, and listened to Tammy yelling, louder than normal, then Bruce yelling back, lower but no less angry, their shouts building to screeches that made Claire shake, standing with his face pressed against his Pufnstuf bed sheet.

  The Bartletts’ front door flew open and Claire saw Bruce cross the lawn. Tammy followed, still screaming, almost wordless now, just a primal high-pitched shriek, and then Bruce’s voice, lower but just as loud and violent. He was dressed, but she was wearing a bathrobe that kept flying open, revealing her bra and pajama bottoms, the bare skin at her stomach. She followed Bruce to the driveway, to his truck, and when he got inside she started pounding on the door, then the hood, still screaming as he started the engine. When he began to back the truck out, she moved as if to block it, but he shot an arm out his window and pushed her away. She stumbled sideways and he gunned the engine, backing out onto the street, and when she started to scream again, he put the truck in gear and drove up over the hedges lining the driveway and onto the lawn itself, full bore, cranking the wheel and turning doughnuts, digging up grass and flower beds, flinging cacti into the air. Tammy’s screams matched the whine of the truck’s engine. Lights came on up and down the street, other neighbors stepping out of their front doors in their own robes and pajamas, craning their necks to see. The truck spun in a whirl of plants and dirt, then beelined back out onto the street, pausing for one final scream from Tammy before tearing off down the road.

  “What the hell?” Diane said. She stood in Claire’s doorway in her nightgown. Claire didn’t know how long she’d been watching. He turned back to his window. Tammy was up now, robe flapping, staggering across the ruined front lawn.

  Diane went back to her bedroom. The neighbors went back inside their houses, leaving Claire to watch alone. The sound of the truck and the screaming still seemed to ring, filling the street. He could see Tammy standing in the middle of her yard. She lifted her arms, then dropped them to her sides. Her palms smacked against her thighs. After a moment, she knelt where a poppy bed had been and began gathering the uprooted flowers, trying without much success to set them back into their holes in the dirt.

  * * *

  The day of the taping, they ate breakfast in nervous silence. Diane was wearing the pale blue dress from her first date. She sat drinking coffee, asking Claire to call out products so she could name the price. Finally, Claire said, “You’re ready. You gotta relax.” Diane smiled and stood from the table, mussing his hair as she passed to the sink.

  At school, Claire couldn’t concentrate. He kept picturing Diane out in Television City, imagining what that place must be like. Some kind of radiant electronic kingdom—like Oz, maybe. Maybe Diane had been right.

  At lunchtime, he walked out the front doors at school and rode home and turned on The Price Is Right, as if somehow he’d see her, as if the show weren’t taped a week in advance. There was Bob Barker shepherding a giddy old man toward the Showcase Showdown. There was Anitra Ford in a flowing paisley-print dress revealing the price of an Amana refrigerator/freezer. A contestant guessed wrong about Spic and Span. Diane would have known that one. Diane would have gotten that one right.

  When the show was over, he went into the bathroom, noticed the water level in the toilet was low. He flushed and the plumbing coughed, pushing back up into the bowl. There were little squares of paper floating on top now, torn neatly from larger sheets. It was Steve’s note, what was left of it. Claire recognized the handwriting in the blurred ink.

  He rode around the neighborhood, slowing down every time he passed the mess that was now the Bartletts’ front yard, the clumps of sod and mud, the scattered piles of flowers and grass. The tire marks from Bruce’s truck had hardened deep into the ground, like fossilized tracks from some prehistoric beast. Claire hadn’t seen the truck since the night of the fight; hadn’t seen Bruce at all. Every morning when he brought the newspaper up the driveway he snuck a peek in the garage windows, but Tammy’s Fiat was the only car there.

  Back in his room, he drew up that week’s invoice and then walked across the street, up the long drive to the Bartletts’ front door. Bruce had always answered when he’d knocked before, but this time, of course, it was Tammy. She was wearing the same purple robe she’d had on the night of the fight. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and her hair was a mess. It looked like she’d just gotten out of bed. Claire wanted to ask about Bruce, when Bruce would be back, if Bruce would be back, but now, facing her, he couldn’t think of anything to say. He looked past her into the hallway. He’d ne
ver been inside their house. He had no idea what was in there, how big it was, how many rooms.

  He stood on the smooth red porch where he’d once set his cheek and held out the invoice. Tammy flinched, like he had pointed a weapon. Then she took the invoice and looked it over and handed it back.

  “I can get my own paper from now on,” she said, and closed the door.

  * * *

  He was pulling listless wheelies in front of their house when the Corolla turned into the driveway. He pedaled up to the car, looking in the windows, at the back seat for any sign of cash and prizes. Diane got out, set her purse on the roof. She turned to Claire, shrugged her shoulders, clapped her hands at her sides. There was so much he wanted to ask, about Television City, about Bob Barker and Anitra Ford, about Johnny Olson, what his voice sounded like in person, booming in that big room. But something in her face, in her body, stopped him. Diane looked shaken, stunned. She looked so thin—he hadn’t noticed how thin she’d become. Like a good wind, like one of those Santa Anas, could blow her off down the street.

  “There were so many people there, waiting outside,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe all the people. But I had my VIP pass, so they took me right to the front of the line. You should have seen the looks people gave me. They brought us in for interviews with the producers, these very nice young men. We only had a few seconds. Some of the others were acting like idiots. Pick me, pick me. Desperate. I wouldn’t do that. I tried to think about the questions. I wanted to give good answers, intelligent answers, but they were already moving us along again.”

  She shook her head, still smiling. “I sat there for the whole hour, waiting for my name. And, Claire, I knew all the prices! Every one! I kept waiting, thinking, Call me, I know these things!”

  Her smile widened, trembling, then it gave altogether and Diane turned, picking up her purse and slamming it down again on the roof of the car. She started coughing, started yelling.

  “This goddamned smoke! I can barely breathe!” She turned back to him. Her eyes were wet. She shook her head.

  “I feel lied to,” she said. “I feel like I lied to you.”

  She closed the door and carried her purse inside. Claire sat on his bike for a while, then rode it back out into the street, imagining the Bartlett twins’ ramp there, the line of traffic backed up. He understood now why they’d done it, despite the risks, injuries and cops and punishment. He could imagine it, shutting everything down, making everything stop and be right for just a moment. Racing down the street, the suspended moment, their tires, his tires, hitting the end of the ramp and then lifting, weightless in air.

  * * *

  The day of the broadcast Claire skipped out of school again before lunch, even though the principal had called Diane about his last skip and Diane had warned him that the bike would go, TV privileges would go, if he ever did it again. He rode through the quiet neighborhood, the midday ghost town, everyone at school, at work. In their living room he stood and stared at the TV, wondering if he should turn it on, like if he watched the show there could be a different outcome, Johnny Olson would call Diane’s name and she would throw her arms up and scream and Come on down! She would show them all what she knew, stunning Bob and Anitra, spinning the Big Wheel, nailing the Showcase Showdown. Instead, he stared at the dark screen for a while until he heard the sound of a truck engine outside. He turned to the window just in time to see the familiar blue pickup driving off down the street.

  Claire opened the front door and found an envelope wedged under the security screen. Inside was that last week’s invoice, in Bruce’s handwriting, including everything Claire had done, even the leaf raking, and then another line down at the bottom, right above Bruce’s signature. It read, Severance, $5, and then below that another line, Buy a second brake for that bike.

  Claire took the puzzle box from the closet and brought it into his room. His window was open and there was a slight breeze blowing, the last gasp of the Santa Anas. The Pufnstuf bed sheet moved with it, revealing the view of the Bartletts’ house, the mountains beyond. Claire pressed the box’s hidden button in the sunflower petal and put his pay and the invoice in the bottom drawer.

  He was outside on the bike when Diane got home. She climbed out of the car, brushing something from the front of her scrubs. “Crumbs,” she said. “I had a late lunch.”

  He rode up the driveway with her and she put her lunch bag down on the front step and sat, blew out a breath. She looked at him sitting above her on the bike.

  “I don’t know where else to go,” she said. “Is there anywhere else you want to go?”

  Claire looked across the street to the Bartletts’, the top of the tall oak reaching high above their roof, the mountains bathed in sundown. The late afternoon light was warm on his face and arms. He thought of Bruce standing under that tree, in this light, his arms raised, his eyes closed.

  When Claire looked back, Diane was still watching him, waiting for an answer. He shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “Just here.”

  She nodded and looked past him, facing west, and he turned to see what she saw. Past the silhouettes of rooftops and telephone poles and TV antennas the sky deepened, the faded pickup blue going metallic purple and pink, shining in the smog, the distant palm trees standing tall against a cherry-red burst at the horizon.

  “Well, look at that,” Diane said. “My God, would you look at that.”

  Interstellar Space

  When we were girls, we would lie in the cool blue orb of the above-ground pool in the backyard, our bodies flat across the surface, heads down, arms out, lifeless, what we called Dead Man’s Float, five minutes, ten, lifting our chins only for quick gulps of air, then back down, eleven minutes, twelve, counting in our heads and waiting for our mother’s voice from the kitchen window, calling, Girls?, then a pause, and in the waiting silence we could feel her watching, her straining concentration, squinting into the sun toward the pool, then calling again, this time with a small note of panic in her voice, a tight, electric trill, Girls, are you all right?, still holding our breath, cheeks full and lungs burning, listening for the sound of the screen door clacking shut, the frantic swish of our mother’s bare feet running through the grass.

  Girls!

  We played Dead Man’s Float; we played Prisoner. Meg curled on the floor of the aluminum shed, her wrists and ankles bound with silver duct tape stolen from our father’s workbench. A rough rag in her mouth, a blindfold. Tell me what you know. I paced the warped wooden floor, poking her ribs with my big toe. Pasadena summers in the mid-fifties; twenty years ago now. The interior of the shed hotter than hell. An Easy-Bake Oven, walls scalding to the touch. Both of us soaked in sweat, our skin reeking with chlorine. Tell me the truth this time. Meg thrashing and moaning or lying preternaturally still, her body going slack. Dead Man’s Float out of water. Frustrated by Meg’s will to silence, tired of asking questions, I’d release her and we’d switch places, the tape around my wrists and ankles now, the rags in my mouth, over my eyes. Meg pacing the shed, the whispered interrogation. My turn to withhold, to try not to break. But I was never as skilled a prisoner; I couldn’t hold out nearly as long. I gave in to the ache in my arms and legs, the choking panic of the gag filling my mouth. I wasn’t able to go inside like Meg did, the full withdrawal from questions, from the shed, the world. Occupying some distant interior space, there but not there, not really.

  * * *

  I sit on the bench by the window in the visiting room, waiting for Manuel, the orderly. The hospital was designed to resemble one of the classic Spanish missions dotting the California coastline. The floor is tiled terra-cotta red; the doorway is set within a high, smooth arch. The windows, though, are modern and institutional: thick glass shot through with wire mesh. Outside in the courtyard, the thinnest branches of the sycamores sway gently in the ocean breeze.

  The door opens and Manuel comes through, holding Meg by the arm. Today’s a bad day, I can see it in her face. She’s go
ne in. The blank retreat. He leads her to the bench, waits for her to sit. He looks at me, nods. Meg moves away from him and sits at the other end of the bench. Manuel walks back to stand by the door.

  Meg stares intently at the floor tiles. I smile, trying to draw her attention. I ask how she’s doing. Manuel clears his throat, then raises his eyebrows in apology for the disturbance. He’s young, maybe twenty, big and soft-faced, his hair slicked up and back from his high forehead. Once, on another bad day when Meg had folded completely within herself, he’d told me that he was in a punk band. They played down in L.A. sometimes, a couple of bars in Chinatown. I should come check them out, he’d said. I didn’t hold the self-promotion against him. He was just trying to break the silence. How many meetings like this did he chaperone every day? I couldn’t blame him for wanting to hear some semblance of normal conversation in the room.

  I turn back to Meg, about to speak again, when the speakers up on the opposite wall begin to hum. A woman’s voice follows, slightly muffled, paging one of the doctors. Meg’s eyes widen. She lifts her face toward me, leans in.

  “Do you hear that?”

  A harsh whisper. She isn’t talking about the announcement. The announcement is over. But whoever had spoken has forgotten to switch off the microphone, leaving a low electric hum in the room.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Those little voices.”

  “Yes.”

  This is how we’ve been instructed to respond, how we’ve been advised by her doctors. Try to agree, to normalize the situation. Of course I hear the voices, Meg. Everybody does.

  “They’re just little voices,” I say. “Like kids playing. Just ignore it. I’m going to ignore it, too.”