“Is Michelle in?”
The teller disappeared, but before long returned with a thin blonde woman wearing a blue pinstriped skirt with matching jacket. A buzzer rang. Claude pulled on the lone door in the bulletproof glass, and followed Michelle to her office. She removed a stack of papers from a chair, invited Claude to sit, and walked around the desk to sit herself.
“So how you doing, Bugsy?”
“Good, good. How’s everything here?”
“No complaints. What can I do for you?”
Claude fidgeted. He promised himself he’d be cocky. Instead, he felt uncomfortable, like he wanted to scratch but had no itch.
“I’d like to raise the limit on my credit card,” he said. “I think $5,000 should do it.”
Michelle punched his account to her computer screen. “You’re almost at your credit limit now,” she said. “Looks like you paid the minimum due each month—oops, there’s once you were late. There’s another. But no months missed. Mortgage, same thing, nothing missed. Looks like all in all your record is good. Let me print this information and take it for a signature. Shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Terrific.”
Michelle took the pages from the printer and said she’d be right back. She wasn’t. As five minutes turned into ten, and then to fifteen, Claude resumed fidgeting. Finally, Michelle poked her head into the office.
“Hey Bugsy, are you out on disability?”
“Um, yes.”
“That’s what Archie heard.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem, though,” Claude said. “I don’t really need the money, I’m only applying for it just in case. You know, as sort of an insurance policy. Tell Archie I’m good for it. We’ve known each other a long time. He knows I’m good for it.”
Michelle left again, and when she returned a short man with salt and pepper hair accompanied her. Claude stood. The man offered his hand, and Claude shook it.
“Hi Arch,” Claude said.
“Hi Bugsy. How’s tricks?”
“Not bad.”
“Listen,” Archie said, “I understand from Schulke that you’re out on disability now.”
“The company felt it was in my best interest.”
“Be that as it may, it affects your application. It’s an income hit. I can’t tell you how many guys have gone out on disability and within three months are in here looking for more credit. They’re used to spending at a level up here, and all of a sudden have to get used to spending at a level down here. It isn’t easy. I wish matters like this were none of my business, but unfortunately they’re very much my business. I can’t approve $5,000. I’m sorry.”
“What can you approve?”
Archie looked to Michelle. He picked a pen from the top of her desk and drummed it on the stack of papers. He frowned, and tossed the pen onto the blotter. “Give him $2,000.”
He looked back to Claude. “It should be zero. But Joan’s a hard worker, and if she’s okay with it I’ll go out on a limb for you this once.”
“Thanks Arch,” Claude said. “When will the two grand be there?”
“Three business days.”
Chapter 42
The extra credit arrived on time, but aside from $40 worth of vodka and orange juice, Claude left it alone. He looked at the wall calendar in the kitchen and counted backwards twelve days to the last time he saw Joan. He sat at the table and drew the smell of steaming coffee into his nostrils. Used cups, unwashed dishes, empty cracker boxes, and crumpled napkins cluttered the counter in front of him. A lone fruit fly hovered above a black banana in the fruit bowl on the table. Near the fridge, a can that had slid from the pile in the recycling bin rested upside down on the floor.
“Ah fuck.”
Claude stood. He picked up the phone, dialed information, and asked for Connie Farley in Matunuck. He vowed not to hang up if Connie answered. She’s just a woman too, he told himself, she’s just a woman too.
“Hello?”
Claude smiled. “Joan?”
“Claude.”
Claude pulled the long phone cord around the front leg of his chair and sat down. “Look, I’m sorry about not taking you in the boat. I’m sorry I made you drive all the way to Maine because I locked myself out. It was dumb. I’m sorry.”
Joan said nothing on the other end.
“Joan? Did you hear me?”
“I did.”
Again, silence. What the Christ, Claude thought. I friggin’ call and apologize, and this is the shit I get?
“So what’s the story?” he said. “When are you coming home?”
“When my improved self-expression helps me become more self-respecting and self-sufficient.”
“What are you talking about? Self-respecting? When are you coming home?”
“My counselor says I’m not ready.”
Claude lept to his feet and squeezed his left hand as hard as he could around the plastic phone. “Counselor?! You mean a shrink? You’re seeing a shrink? Unbelievable! I’m running our home all by myself and you’re spending your days talking about me to some stranger?”
“It was Connie’s idea,” Joan said. “She thought it would be good for me to go, and she was right. I’m a good person. I should feel good about myself. My counselor’s very nice, and I really like her. Mostly she just listens, but once in a while she tells me what she thinks.”
“I’ll tell you what I think. I don’t like you running off on your family and badmouthing me to some do-gooder with three college degrees on the wall. Your place is here, in your home, where you belong, here, in your family room, in your kitchen, in your garden, not 45 minutes away at the beach while your husband and your daughter do your chores on top of their own. A man and a woman stay together, for better or for worse, because they vow that they will, and you vowed it and I vowed it. You vowed. But Jesus, I’m the only one paying attention to vows around here, because you, you’re...”
“Put a sock in it.” Connie’s voice loosened Claude’s grip on the phone as it tightened every muscle between his two elbows.
“Now listen, mister,” Connie continued. “Joan will be back when she’s ready and not a moment sooner. Not one moment sooner. Is that understood?”
Claude said nothing.
“I said, ‘Is that understood?’”
When the pause became unbearable Claude hung up. He kicked the plastic recycling bin, sending four more cans off the wall and onto the kitchen floor. As a can spun in a circle, he kicked it through the doorway to the breezeway. Claude snatched an open bottle of vodka, splashed some into his coffee mug, and tried to gulp it down, but on his third gulp the burning sensation overwhelmed him and he cast the mug against the wall as he dashed to the fridge for something cold. The orange juice carton he grabbed had a tear near the opening, so as much juice dribbled down his cheek as made it down his throat, but the burning stopped, and Claude stared at the inside of the refrigerator as he paused to collect himself. He turned to look at the table area, where a puddle of alcohol-tainted coffee soaked itself into a week’s worth of mail. Five drip lines ran down the wall. Pieces of ceramic mug littered the table, chair, and floor.
Claude peeked into the carton to see how much orange juice remained. He tucked the vodka bottle beneath his armpit, pulled a not-too-dirty-looking glass from the pile in the sink, and headed to the family room.
Chapter 43
As November passed, Claude saw less and less of Jamie: she worked late, she wrote papers at the public library late, she worked on projects with Betty late, she spent weekends at Connie’s.
As Thanksgiving approached, Claude slept later and went to bed earlier. When he wasn’t in bed, he drank. Occasionally, he barked out loud at the television, at Joan, or at himself. He thought of funerals, and how sorry Joan would be if he died during the current silence.
At noontime the day before Thanksgiving, the phone rang, and Claude scrambled to answer it. He held the receiver to his ear and called hello, but nobody replied.
At last he heard a voice. “Is Mr. or Mrs. Claude Amogg-knees home?”
“No!” Claude shouted. “Mr. Amogg-knees is definitely not home!”
He slammed down the receiver. Claude needed the outside, something, somewhere, as long as it wasn’t the family room or the kitchen or the living room. He showered, dressed, and hopped in the truck to troll Pawtucket for a dive bar in which to get drunk.
His search didn’t take long. With his credit card on the bar, Claude drank Wild Turkey, played pool with a retired Navy man, and gnawed on a terrible roast beef sandwich. By 8:30, only he and the bartender remained. Claude watched television until midnight. Because he did, he missed the phone call Joan made when her day at Home & Yard ended.
When he returned home, he also missed the lock with his key, several times. He summoned enough mental clarity to ask himself how the hell he’d driven home, fumbled with the lock some more, and finally let himself in. He didn’t notice the outside light was on, and didn’t turn it off. He fell asleep with his jacket on.
The next day, only football got him up. He took off yesterday’s clothes and put on sweatpants and a sweatshirt. When he went to the kitchen, he saw a piece of paper and two twenty dollar bills on the table. He read the note:
Claude,
There’s a half chicken in the fridge. Here’s a little money for a treat. Jamie’s staying until Sunday.
Joan
Claude called information and had the mechanical operator dial Matunuck for an additional sixty-five cents. When he heard Connie’s voice he asked for Joan, then realized he’d gotten the answering machine. He hung up without leaving a message.
#
The Friday after Thanksgiving, the Amognes always decorated the house for Christmas, dragging a plastic Santa to the front lawn, framing the house with strings of gaudy colored lights, setting up and trimming their artificial tree. Claude and Jamie handled most of the outside work while Joan pulled her Santa Claus collection from the basement and set up the dolls and figurines in every room in the house. Joan had 121 Santas, of all sizes. One came from Australia, Joan liked to brag, though in truth all she did was order the outback Santa from a knicknack shop in Wickford. Jamie always concluded the decorating spree by placing the star atop the tree. Once the tree stood fully trimmed the Amognes toasted each other with Joan’s ultra-cinnamon eggnog.
Claude left the tree in its box in the crowded basement. But he carried Joan’s crates of Santas upstairs, and over the next four hours set each Santa, as best he could recall, in the spot Joan always placed it.
On Monday, after the long weekend, Claude didn’t relish another day on his own, so he jumped in his truck and drove to a diner on the opposite end of the city where he knew he could still get breakfast at 10:30. When he arrived, instead of taking a table in a corner, he grabbed a stool at the counter. The sun shone through a row of windows running along the front of the mock dining car, and already a haze of smoke hung in the air. After a hearty whiff of the tobacco smoke, Claude reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a cigarette. He lit it. The nearest ash tray rested in front of an older woman two stools down, and without thinking he tossed the extinguished match from where he sat. It landed in her scrambled eggs.
“Jesus, I’m sorry about that,” Claude said.
The woman pulled the match from her plate, puffed her own cigarette, and dropped the match into the ash tray. She had prunish wrinkles along her jaw and up into her cheekwells, and sags of skin hanging from each elbow. She wore a tee-shirt-like jersey over her enormous chest, and a beige short-sleeve smock over the jersey. Although her eyebrows were mostly white, her hair was a dull orange, with a touch of maroon, it seemed. The wrinkles from years of smoking extended from the corners of her eyes all the way to her womany sideburns.
“Don’t sweat it, fella,” the woman said. “With all the nicotine and soot I’ve drawn into my lungs since high school, I’m not worried about a little carbon in my eggs.”
She pushed the ash tray toward Claude. He smiled.
“Thanks.”
A waitress came and Claude ordered. The waitress poured him a cup of coffee. Claude and the woman stared straight ahead, took deep hits off their cigarettes, and exhaled their smoke at angles that crossed. Claude looked to her, and she smiled.
“The name’s Franny,” the woman said. “Never seen you in here before.”
“Oh, I’ve been here. Lots of times. Usually earlier though. The name’s Claude.”
“Well Claude, nice to see you. What do you do for a living?”
Claude set his cigarette on the edge of the ash tray and squirmed out of his coat. “I work at the electric company.”
“The electric company? Well what’re you doing here, in the middle of the morning? You’re too young to be retired. You on vacation?” Her voice rang like a siren from behind the huge chest.
Claude sucked on his cigarette before answering. “I’m out on disability.”
Franny tapped an ash from the tip of her cigarette. “Please?”
“I said I’m out on disability.”
The woman stared at Claude with an open mouth. At last the corners of the mouth rose, and a smile formed. She chuckled. Her head fell, and when she picked it up again she looked straight into Claude’s eyes and chuckled some more, punctuating the final gulp of laughter by slapping her palm on the counter between the two plates.
“If you’re out on disability, then you don’t work at the electric company. Don’t say you do, because you ain’t got nothing to do with them nor them you. Take it from me. I worked as switchboard operator at FirstLine Insurance all my life, right up to a few years ago when switchboard operators weren’t really needed no more, but for years and years they still kept me on until one day they told me I either had to retire or they were going to fire me—I had to make way for progress is how they put it. And just like that, I don’t work there no more. Just like that I don’t belong, after forty-three years on the switchboard, and now I want to meet a friend for lunch and they won’t let me in, me, who hardly missed a day of work in forty-three years. I’ve got to stand in the lobby until my friend comes out, and we have to eat in some crummy joint down the street even though they have a nice cafeteria right there. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.”
She sipped her orange juice, then returned the glass to the counter. “You ever go back to your old place?”
Claude looked off into space, as if the question required him to comb the depths of his brain. He looked back to Franny. “No. I haven’t been back once.”
“Good for you,” she said. “Don’t start, neither. Me, I keep in touch with my real friends, sure, but even so there’s another thirty or forty people who may not be close friends, but who are good folks all the same, and I’d love to see ‘em and say hello and have them say hello to me, but outside of the insurance company there’s no occasion to. That’s the place to do it. Just a smile and a brief chat, that’s all I’d like, a smile and brief chat like good people do. Nothing more. But the insurance company won’t have it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that anybody’s rude or anything, it’s just an attitude they got. They give you looks. They hold that fake smile while they’re nodding and listening. They slap you on the shoulder—you know, the entire time I worked there I don’t remember getting slapped on the shoulder once, but as soon as I retired just about everyone I meet smacks me a good one before walking off. When I went there, I mean. I don’t go no more, because I don’t belong. It’s hard, and for the life of me I can’t see how it makes any sense, how the retired Franny is one bit different than the working Franny, but it’s a fact, so I deal with it. After I retired, every time I went there I felt like an intruder, so the hell with it, I don’t go. You shouldn’t either. Remember that.”
Claude’s food arrived. He snuffed out his cigarette. The coffee smelled good, so good he waved it beneath his nose before sipping. He drew in the smell of bacon
before lifting a strip to his mouth and chomping off half.
“I don’t really want to go back,” Claude said with his mouth full. “Too many jerks. But if I did go back I’m sure a lot of people would be happy to see me. Real happy. It might be nice, I guess, to see them and say hello. It might be nice.”
Franny dropped her fork beside her plate but didn’t speak until she swallowed a big mouthful of scrambled egg. “I can tell you ain’t the brightest bulb on Broadway.”
Claude recoiled. “What makes you say that?”
“You haven’t understood a damn thing I’ve said.”
Franny waved for her check. With her big handbag in her lap, she dug through her purse for three dollar bills and a handful of quarters. She scrunched the butt of her cigarette into the ash tray, smiled quickly at Claude, and slung the handbag over her shoulder.
“See you, toots,” she said as she walked toward the coat rack.
Claude looked to the waitress, and shrugged when he caught her eye. “Is she something, or what?” he said.
The waitress smirked. Claude returned the smile and resumed his breakfast. He thought about the guys at work. It would be great to see them, really great. He made a pact with himself to stop by the Dub on Friday and see everyone and how they were doing. But his lack of funds made him think again. He decided if he showed, he wanted to show in style. Maybe the Christmas party, he thought. Maybe I can take some of the money I’ll have for Christmas and use it for a few drinks with the boys at the company Christmas party. That’s a good idea, he thought. No, it’s a great idea.
When he arrived home, Claude called Rhode Island Electric, asked for human resources, and learned from Clarke’s secretary that the Christmas party was scheduled for the second Friday in December at Sparta-by-the-Sea. He asked Clarke’s secretary to mail his free ticket to his home address.
Chapter 44
Alcohol, cigarettes, and money. In them Claude had a triangular puzzle he couldn’t solve. When he drank, he wanted to smoke. When he smoked, he chewed up spending money too fast. When he chewed up money too fast, he wanted to drink. He decided he needed to choose two of the three: booze and money, cigarettes and money, or booze and cigarettes with long stretches in between. It didn’t take long. He could live without cigarettes, or at least with far fewer cigarettes than he’d been smoking lately. He vowed a course of drunken discipline. When he drank, he would place a ration of cigarettes on top of the television, and would not smoke from the pack when the t.v. was bare, no matter how great the urge, no matter what rationale his body tried to sell his brain or vice-versa. It seemed to work. He smoked a little less, drank a little more.
The Jig of the Union Loller Page 33