In Mike We Trust

by P. E. Ryan

  “What’s he going to do?”

  “Well, he actually wants to ‘settle down.’ As in get married, get a job at a gas station or whatever, and become a dad. But my parents are hinting around at a whole nother course of action.”

  “Meaning…”

  “One guess, Einstein.”

  “They suggested it outright?”

  “Suggested it? They offered to pay for it!”

  “Well, what about his girlfriend? Doesn’t Stacey have a say in this? It’s her body, after all.”

  “That’s what I told my parents! I got that leave-the-room look they give me whenever the crisis is about Jason and not me. God forbid we ever both get into trouble at the same time.”

  “When have you ever been in trouble?”

  “Hello? Last summer? The Nude Descending the Monkey Bars shoot I did of Taylor Markson?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m still waiting for my copies of that, by the way.”

  “Won’t happen. Taylor made me promise, and my parents confiscated the negatives. Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see how this whole thing plays out, because I don’t think Stacy’s that into Jason, but I think she is into keeping the baby. So what’s up with you?”

  “Not much. Chores, mainly.”

  “Are we still going to hang out at my place this afternoon?”

  “Definitely. I’ll call before I come over.”

  “I’ll be the one without the pregnant girlfriend.”

  They hung up, and he rechecked his list. He’d saved the worst for last: the hedges. The front and back yards of the house were shared by all the tenants, but the landlord shaved thirty dollars off the rent for Garth to take care of basic outside maintenance, including the grass and the hedges. The grass was easy, just a few swipes with the mower, since there was almost no yard to speak of. But the hedges that lined both sides of the yard were a pain—especially in the dead heat of summer. He descended into the musky, cobwebbed basement and took the hedge clippers from the nail next to the fuse box. He was coming back up when he heard Mike’s voice through the kitchen window: “You’ve got nothing to worry about, Stu. I talked to Marty, and he’s going to have a money order in the mail within a month. Well, that was the arrangement made between Marty and Phil, so maybe you should talk to Marty yourself. He seemed fine with it, last I heard. Yeah. Talk to him. Talk to Phil, if you want. I’m sticking to what we agreed on. All right. Yeah, yeah, I got it. Later.”

  Garth hesitated next to the window and peeked in. His uncle was punching another number into his cell phone.

  “Marty? It’s Mike…. Mike Rudd, who do you think?…It doesn’t matter where I am. Listen, you know that juggling we talked about? Does Phil know about it? Well, you might want to do some fast footwork because Stu’s going to be calling you, and if he can’t get hold of you, there’s a good chance he’s going to be calling Phil directly…. Hey, the juggle was your idea…. Yes, it was…. Well, maybe my memory’s better than yours. Anyway, I’m out of the loop at this stage—well, I’m practically out of the loop. You know what I mean. The point is, you should be expecting a call from Stu and you might want to head it off at the pass. Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ll be in touch, okay?”

  Mike sounded more like a loan shark than a gambler. Garth was curious but thought it best not to ask. He ducked under the window and carried the clippers out into the yard.

  He’d worked three-quarters of the way around the perimeter when Mike stepped outside. The screen fell away as he pushed open the door. “Whoa!” he said, catching it with one hand.

  “Sorry,” Garth called from across the yard. “It does that. The tape is old.”

  “It needs one of those…what’s it called?”

  “A new door?”

  “Ha—no, I mean one of those…things to fix it with. Rubber piping and a whatsit.” He pushed at the tape until the screen was back in place, then crossed the yard to where Garth was clipping. Hutch lay stretched out on the grass nearby. Mike reached down and picked up a ratty tennis ball—one of Hutch’s toys—and waved it at the dog. He tossed it across the yard into the dead garden, and the spaniel got up, lumbered over, and retrieved it, but didn’t bring it back. “You’re working up a sweat, there.”

  “We get a discount on the rent if I do this,” Garth explained, wiping a hand over his brow. “I mow the lawn, too.”

  “Here,” Mike said, “let me take over for a while.”

  “You don’t have to do that. I’m almost done.”

  But Mike insisted, and took the clippers out of his hands. He clipped with a flair—one or two branches at a time. Even so, he seemed to move along at a pace that at least matched if not surpassed Garth’s. “Your mom tells me money’s been pretty tight lately.”

  “Yeah. That’s why I took my job—so she wouldn’t have to shell out spending money for me. I’m trying to save a little of what I’m making, too. You know, for emergencies. Mom already works two jobs,” Garth said.

  “There are ways outside the…traditional channels to make a buck.” He continued to work the clippers across the last hedge.

  Garth moved along with him, his hands in his pockets. “What, like rob a bank?”

  “No!” Mike laughed. “I’m just talking about less traditional, more creative ways to generate income.” Finished, he stepped back and eyeballed the hedge with his thumb raised before his eyes, as if gazing at a painting in progress. “Rob a bank,” he repeated, chuckling. “That’s a good one. What do you say we rake this stuff up and make some lunch?”

  Hutch knew the word lunch. He let go of the tennis ball and started for the house.

  There was bread in the cabinet. Bologna and American cheese and mayo in the fridge. Garth pulled all these out and laid them on the counter, then got down two plates.

  “Hold that thought,” Mike said, washing his hands in the sink and eyeing the food. “Let’s explore.”

  Garth was pretty certain there was nothing to explore in their kitchen. But he let Mike go at it while he moved the clothes from the washer to the dryer.

  Mike went through each of the cabinets and plumbed the depths of the refrigerator. He found a box of pasta shells and set a pot of water on the stove. As the shells cooked, he stirred up the contents of two cans of tuna fish, some chopped olives, and a tomato. He discovered a block of Parmesan cheese and a cheese grater Garth didn’t even know they owned. Canned asparagus. Sweet pickles. It seemed to take no time at all to prepare, and yet there it was: a lunch that could have been served in a restaurant. “Let’s eat in the living room,” Mike suggested. “That dryer’s turned the kitchen into a sauna.”

  They set their plates on the coffee table and sat on the carpet on either side of it. Hutch positioned himself between them. When Mike set one of his pickles on the table in front of Hutch’s snout, the dog gobbled it up.

  Garth took a swig of soda. “What sort of graphic design do you know? Web pages?”

  “How’d you know I did graphic design?”

  Oops. He’d learned that eavesdropping. He cleared his throat and said, “Mom told me. So is it mainly Web page stuff?”

  “Sad truth of it is the technology’s probably left me behind now. I don’t know why I got the degree; I’m never going to chain myself to a company. Not that knowing the basics doesn’t come in handy now and then.” He pointed across the coffee table at Garth in a mock-dramatic way. “And not that education isn’t important.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Garth said. He knew that was true, but at the same time he admired Mike’s take on life, how he lived it exactly the way he wanted to, despite the “norm”—the very qualities Garth’s dad hadn’t approved of. But maybe his dad never really got to know Mike as an adult.

  “How about you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you like to do—besides build boat models? Go to movies? Read? Fight the girls off with a stick?”

  Garth hesitated, mid-chew. “I don’t fight them off with a stick.”

  “A
good-looking guy like you? Come on. You’ve got the Rudd genes. You might have twins, you know.”

  “You think?”

  Mike nodded. “They tend to skip a generation, and you’re the generation that got skipped.” He stuffed a forkful of pasta into his mouth. “Oh, I get it. You don’t fight the girls off; you let them have you. Smart man.”

  Family, Garth thought. He’s family. If I tell him I’m not breaking the promise, right?

  Mike seemed worldly enough not to flip out about it. Plus, he couldn’t bear the thought of two, possibly three weeks with his uncle in the house making the same occasional, straight nudge-nudge remarks he had to endure at school. He took a swallow of soda so enormous it burned his throat and said, “I don’t plan on having kids, actually.”

  “No? Bachelor for life, like me?”

  “I’m not into girls.”

  He saw the grin leave his uncle’s mouth for just a moment. Mike studied him, narrowing his eyes, as if reassessing him as a person. Then, slowly, the grin returned and he began to nod his head yes. “All right,” he said. “That’s cool. I like somebody who…knows what he likes.”

  “Really? You’re okay with it?”

  Mike shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I be? I have gay friends.”

  “You do?”

  He laughed. “We’re talking about people, not Martians. What is it, nine, ten percent of the world is gay? Probably more than that, if truth be told. Of course I have gay friends. You’ve got gay friends, right?”

  Garth felt his face redden. “Actually, I don’t. My friend Lisa does, though.”

  “Well, why aren’t her friends your friends?”

  “Because…”

  “You’re not out to her.”

  “No, it’s not that.” Suddenly, the topic felt too complicated to articulate, even though he thought about it all the time. He was beginning to doubt whether or not he should have said anything. What was that phrase Mr. Mosier had used in chemistry class? In for a penny, in for a pound. “Lisa knows. But then I told Mom, and she freaked out and made me promise not to tell anyone else. Outside the family, I mean. So you don’t count. But then I couldn’t tell her I told Lisa, and I had to tell Lisa not to tell anyone. It’s kind of a mess.”

  “Wait—your mom freaked out that you’re gay?”

  “She’s just…hyperworried I’ll get beaten up or something.” He went on to give his uncle a condensed version of the argument they’d had.

  Mike took it all in with a puzzled look on his face. “How can someone be expected to ‘shelve’ his sexuality for three years? Someone who isn’t confused, that is.”

  Garth felt a wave of relief wash over him. Mike’s reaction was the same as Lisa’s had been, but it was different—and good—to hear it from an adult. And a relative, no less. It almost felt like he was hearing it from his dad.

  “You never told your dad, did you?” Mike asked, reading his mind again.

  Garth shook his head.

  “I wonder how your mom would have reacted if your dad was here. Obviously, part of her reaction is the fact that she’s still dealing with the accident. She’s grieving, I get that. But I also wonder how she might have dealt with your…announcement…if she had another person—your dad—here to talk about it with.”

  “Yeah,” Garth said.

  “Hey.” Mike reached across the coffee table and tapped Garth’s shoulder. “I’m glad you told me.”

  “Really?”

  “You confided in me. I take that as a compliment. Thanks.”

  Garth couldn’t help but smile. “You’re welcome.”

  A little while later, Mike tapped on the door to Garth’s room and asked him if they had a toolbox. They’d had several—his dad had been quite a tool collector, having owned two different hardware stores—but the toolboxes were in storage. The walk-in unit his mom had rented was like a microcosm of their former life. It was stacked with furniture from their old house that wouldn’t fit in the apartment, crammed with cartons of knickknacks and lamps, and, worst of all, filled with box after box of his dad’s shirts, pants, and shoes (his mom had eventually brought herself to clean out the closet, but hadn’t been able to give the clothes away). Garth had been in the storage unit only once since they’d filled it, and walking into that dank, crowded square of corrugated steel had felt like entering a tomb. An extension of his dad’s grave.

  “The storage place is way far away. It takes, like, an hour to get there,” he exaggerated. “Why? What do you need? We’ve got a hammer and a couple of screwdrivers here.”

  “A bit more than that. Tell you what—do feel like going for a drive? We can go to a hardware store, pick up what I need, and then you can give me a mini-tour of Richmond.”

  “Sure,” Garth said. “Oh, wait. I sort of told my friend Lisa I’d hang out with her this afternoon.”

  Mike shrugged. “Bring her along. You guys can tag-team tour-guide.”

  When Garth called Lisa, she sounded less than enthusiastic. “I thought you were going to be over here by now. I have this new CD I want to play you—a British import of a band called Kazooster. I’ve listened to it fifty-four times in the past two days; it’s amazing.”

  “Sorry, I—I just had all these chores. Why don’t we do the mini-tour first and hang out later? Mike says we can swing by and pick you up.”

  “‘Mike’? You’re not calling him ‘Uncle Mike’?”

  “He doesn’t want me to.”

  “Oh. Well, I guess Kazooster can wait.”

  The sharp blue Camaro was, by far, the coolest car Garth had ever been in. He rode shotgun; Mike steered with his right hand and hung his left arm out the window. In Lisa’s driveway, he did his shave-and-a-haircut tap on the horn.

  She came out a minute later, her camera hanging around her neck.

  “She’s going to take pictures of us?” Mike asked.

  “No. It’s her thing, though. Photography. She rarely goes anywhere without her camera.” Garth opened his door and leaned forward so she could climb into the backseat, but Mike put the car in park, left it idling, and got out to officially meet her. “I’m Mike,” he said, extending his hand.

  She seemed caught off guard by the formality. “Lisa,” she said, and shook the hand.

  “Lisa, it’s a pleasure to meet you. And clearly it was destined to happen, because of our shirts.”

  Garth peered through the windshield—they were both wearing Pink Floyd T-shirts. Lisa’s was fairly new, the decal deliberately scuffed up to make it look old; Mike’s was old, and falling apart, right down to the collar that was separating from the shirt in places.

  “Dark Side of the Moon is awesome,” she said.

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  Garth waved her over, and she climbed in.

  “So you’re a photographer?” Mike asked, glancing at her in the rearview mirror as he pulled away from her house.

  “I’m an artist,” she replied.

  “Good for you,” Mike said. “I’m not, but people like me need people like you to open our eyes to the world, you know? Most of us go through life in a…vacuum. When, really, there’s amazing stuff happening all around us—and not just beautiful stuff, but horrible, twisted, or sometimes achingly mundane stuff. A million missed moments every day, because we can’t see them. Artists help us do that. Particularly photographers, who deal with such concrete subjects. They help fill that void.”

  Garth himself couldn’t have scripted a statement that would have pleased Lisa more. It was as if Mike had been coached on the subject of her and was giving his oral exam. He turned around and glanced at Lisa in the backseat. She was nodding her head slowly and appeared a little stunned. After a moment she said, simply, “Yeah.”

  “So where’s this hardware store?” Mike asked.

  “Turn here. We’ll go to one on Broad Street,” Garth said. The last store his dad had owned had been across the James River, on the south side of town. It was a greeting card and party supply store now. He
hadn’t been inside but had ridden past it with his mom once; neither one of them had remarked on it as they’d passed.

  Mike told them he’d only be a minute, and disappeared into the Broad Street store.

  “So,” Garth said when they were alone. “What do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “My uncle.”

  “I think it’s completely spooky how much he looks like your dad. How can you stand it?”

  “The more I’m around him, the more I can see little differences. I don’t even know what they are, but I see them.”

  “His personality’s a lot different from your dad’s.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, your dad was a salesman, right? He had a store; he sold things.”

  “So?”

  “But he didn’t talk like a salesman.”

  “And Mike does?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m still getting a read on him. He seems a little…slick.”

  “Give him a chance,” Garth said. He liked Mike, and he wanted Lisa to like him. After all, they were the only two people he could truly be himself around.

  Before long, Mike emerged with a bag in each hand. He put the bags in the trunk, then got back in behind the wheel.

  “What’s all that?” Garth asked.

  “Necessaries,” he said. “So—where to now? We don’t have to get out of the car; you can just point out the good stuff.”

  “That may be a challenge,” Lisa muttered.

  At Garth’s suggestion, they made their way downtown to Capitol Square. They showed him the Capitol Building and the surrounding grounds, the governor’s mansion, the conglomerate statue of various American icons topped by George Washington. From there, they directed Mike past the grand Jefferson Hotel, and finally they cut back over so that he could drive down Monument Avenue—a wide, brick thoroughfare with a tree-lined median and stately houses lining either side.

  “The pride and joy of Richmond,” Lisa droned from the backseat.

  They rounded the monument to J.E.B. Stuart, his horse reared up as if a mouse had startled it.