Love in the Present Tense

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  He rolled his eyes. Tried to stand. I pushed him back again, and his head thunked the monitor again. He held still, looking away like a belligerent schoolchild. “Usually, yeah.”

  “So, have I earned your respect in return, then?”

  “Yeah. Okay. Enough.”

  I thunked his head once more on purpose, just to underline the point. “Then don’t ever give me less than my due. Okay? Get the hell out of here if you can’t act like a friend.”

  I let go. Stepped back. He rose to his feet, and we stood almost nose to nose for an awkward length of time. Maybe the count of five. You could hear the silence radiate. Even the Avian Americans were quiet. I could feel my teeth grind together. In my peripheral vision I saw Leonard’s head pop up over his computer.

  I waited for Cahill to hit me, or for me to hit him.

  Then he took a step back. Brushed off his shirt like I’d left germs on it. “Fuck you, Doc,” he said, hit the door, and kept going.

  I breathed it out a minute, then looked around. Everybody was staring at me. “Business as usual,” I said. I sat down and pretended to get back to work. Really I had no idea what was even on the screen in front of me.

  After a few minutes of this Hannah brought me a cup of coffee with a generous splash of half-and-half. She put her hand on my shoulder, tentatively, not sure if I would bite. When I didn’t she said, “Doc? Is Cahill coming back?”

  “Fuck Cahill,” I said. “Oh. Sorry, Leonard. Cahill can go work for somebody he respects.”

  “Want me to finish the account he was working on? I think it’s kind of ASAP. That new appliance store downtown. We promised to finish their Web site by Friday. I think that’s the day they run ads for their big sale.”

  “Yeah, thanks. That would be good.”

  The whole room began to breathe around me again.

  I got up and took my coffee and walked over to where Leonard was playing his computer game. I put one arm around his shoulder, and he stopped playing and looked up at my face and then let his head drop back onto my arm.

  “Sorry you had to hear that,” I said.

  “What’s boffing?”

  “Oh. It’s, uh…something you don’t have to worry about for a long time.”

  “But it’s something to worry about?”

  “Well,” I said. “It’s not supposed to be. But everybody I know worries about it. How are you doing on this game? You like it?”

  “Yuh,” he said. “I found the worm three times.”

  For the first of many moments, it struck me as touching that he hadn’t asked when his mother was coming to take him home.

  About ten-thirty that night, I was sitting staring at the TV in the dark when Cahill came back. I hadn’t locked the door yet. He stuck his head in.

  Leonard was asleep on the couch beside me, and Zonker was perched on the armrest, playing with that weed-hair and occasionally stroking the side of his beak against Leonard’s face.

  If you’d asked me what I was watching on the tube I couldn’t have told you. Actually it was just an excuse for staring. I’d just been staring all day, since the rest of the guys took off, a longneck beer sitting on one leg, sweating through my jeans, the cold neck tilted in my hand.

  “What?” I said.

  “I am your friend, Doc. I’m the best friend you got.”

  “I’ll cultivate enemies,” I said, but I didn’t put much behind it. All my wrath had abandoned me, leaving me stunned and tired and mildly drunk.

  He came in, slamming the door too hard behind him. I looked down at Leonard, but he didn’t wake up.

  “I’m down on her because I want you away from her. I want her out of your life.”

  “Let’s take this in the kitchen,” I said. “I got a sleeping kid here. I just got him to sleep.”

  Cahill looked down at the little lump on the couch. “Holy shit. Leonard is still here? Isn’t she ever coming back for him?”

  “Let’s take this in the kitchen,” I said.

  I hobbled in behind him. While we were in there I got another beer.

  “You have any idea how old she is, Doc?”

  “I don’t care. Get your mind on another track.”

  “I think you do care. I think you care plenty. So tell me. How old is she?”

  “Like…I don’t know. Mid-thirties.”

  “You don’t even know.”

  “And you do?”

  “Her fucking biography is on the Web site we designed for the mayor’s office.”

  “I didn’t do that part.”

  “I know you didn’t. I did. Forty-two. Four-two.” My stomach went cold. Don’t be a jerk, I told myself. It’s just a number. “And you do care. You know as well as I do this is a dead-end street. I mean, I’ve seen some guys lose it over love, but you take the prize, Doc. Look what she’s doing to you.”

  “What’s she doing to me? She makes me happy.”

  Cahill let out a snorting sound, spun around, walked to the other end of the kitchen, banged his head on the wall, and walked back. Like he had all this energy and could not contain it in the face of what I’d said. “Happy?” he said. “Happy? How many minutes out of every week is she making you happy? Look at yourself, Doc. Look what’s happened to you.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. You want a beer?”

  “When we started this business—”

  “We?” I said.

  “Okay, when you started this business and I got in on the ground floor with you, we did all kinds of shit. We went dancing. Hung out with girls. Got laid. You were a fun guy. You cared about all kinds of things. You cared about this business.”

  “I still care about this business.”

  “Do you, Mitch? Do you really? He’s the biggest account we’ve got. The biggest account we’ve ever had. What do you suppose he’s gonna do when he finds out—”

  I heard a little noise from behind him. “Mitch?” Leonard was standing there pulling the elastic strap of his glasses into place behind his head.

  “Shit,” I said. “Now you woke up Leonard.”

  Leonard said, “I was sleeping but then you guys yelled. Why are you yelling?”

  Actually, I hadn’t known we were. I’d thought we were exercising a certain restraint. “Sorry, buddy. Just working some stuff out. Come on. I’ll put you to bed.” I carried him back to the couch, trying to limp as little as possible, and tucked him in.

  “Whatcha watching?” he said. I had no idea. I looked up and a mummy lumbered across the screen in black and white. “Monster movie,” he said. “Cool.”

  “You going to get scared if I let you watch?”

  “Prob’ly, yuh.”

  “Just a few minutes.”

  Cahill was standing in the corner near the birdcage. Looking out at the street. He looked lonely. He looked as if he’d lost his best friend.

  “If you felt this way, Cahill,” I said, “you should have come to me and spelled it out like you’re doing now. Not sniped it out in front of our co-workers.”

  “I realize that,” he said. “I know that now. I’m sorry.”

  We all just stood our ground quietly for a minute. Zonker had found his own way back to the cage. Pebbles reached out and picked at a seam on Cahill’s shirt, but he didn’t seem to notice. The mummy came back on-screen and Leonard cupped his hands over his glasses.

  Cahill said, “So. Do I still work here?”

  For some strange reason, for just an instant, I felt something hard at the back of my throat like maybe I wanted to cry. “Nine a.m.,” I said. “Be here or you’re fired.”

  He walked over to the couch and stuck his hand out to me and I shook it. Then Leonard stuck his hand out to Cahill and Cahill shook that, too. Then he let himself out.

  Leonard said, “Are you guys friends?”

  I said, “Yeah. We are.”

  “Even when you yell at each other?”

  “That’s the best way,” I said. “If you can yell at each other and still be fri
ends then you know that’s a real friend.”

  “Oh,” Leonard said. “I didn’t know that. I don’t have friends. Except my mom.”

  “How can you say that, Leonard? You’ve got me. And Cahill, and Hannah and Graff. And Barb. And Zonker.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Yuh. That’s right. I got a lot of friends now. Don’t I, Mitch?”

  “You got ’em coming out of your ears,” I said.

  The following morning I knocked on Mrs. Morales’s door.

  “Who is that?” she said through the peephole.

  “Mitch Devereaux. Your next-door neighbor? I wanted to ask you about Pearl.”

  “I think she lied to me about her name,” Mrs. Morales said. “I think she was in trouble. She got arrested. Driving my car. I didn’t know she didn’t have a license. They called me, asked if she had my permission to use the car. Pearl Somebody, they gave me her name, but the last name was not the same as she told me. I forget what they said. I backed her up. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did. She was a nice girl. Even if she was in trouble. She kept this place so clean. I wish she would come back. Already it’s beginning to go to seed.”

  We were standing in the upstairs room she rented to Pearl and Leonard.

  “I’m sure she’ll come back,” I said. “I just want to get some of Leonard’s things.”

  “I hope so. My dishes are stacking up. You could eat out of that sink when Pearl was here.” She fretted her way down the stairs and disappeared.

  I made my way around. It was a tiny unit that I think had been two bedrooms once, now illegally converted to a studio with kitchenette. Spotless, like she said. The bathroom was only a half. She must’ve bathed Leonard in the sink. And herself? I didn’t want to know. It was none of my business.

  I still fully believed she would be back. At least I think I did. So I didn’t want to snoop. But then I thought about what Leonard said. How they were going to move someplace new. A whole new state. Orrington, I think he called it. I got a sudden all-over chill. Maybe Pearl just moved on without him. But she wouldn’t do that. Would she? She adored that kid. Then again, what did I really know about her?

  I gathered up two pairs of pajamas with feet, three shirts, some tiny underwear and socks, a stuffed giraffe from the one small bed.

  I opened the closet. I just had to see.

  Hanging on a few of the bare, mostly abandoned metal hangers were two dresses, a faded blouse, and a pair of jeans. And it was impossible to guess if this was all Pearl had left behind, or if this was simply all she’d ever had.

  LEONARD, age 5: the cuss jar

  I remember I was at the kitchen window talking to a bird.

  I was supposed to be eating my breakfast, but I took my toast to the open window, and crumbled up little bits of it and set them on the windowsill. This little sparrow was diving down to share my breakfast with me. If I just stepped back from the crumbs and very quietly said, “Come on, Pearl, it’s okay, Pearl,” the little bird would come.

  I never used to call my mother by her name. I always called her Mom or Mama, like any other kid. But after she left I started calling her Pearl, and I don’t even know why. But the name Pearl is special. It sounds like a treasure, like a gem. Something you’re all delighted and surprised to find, every time. Like when Mitch took me to the beach and the sun was going down, and the waves hit the rocks and threw splashes of ocean up into the air, right in front of the sun, and it looked like somebody—God maybe—took a big handful of diamonds and threw them up in the air, just to watch them sparkle. Except actually, that happened later, after I got my better glasses. But anyway. Like that.

  And, by the way, I think that was Pearl, too.

  Mitch came into the kitchen and asked what I was doing and I said I was talking to a bird.

  “Good conversation so far?” he asked.

  And I said, “Yuh.”

  Just then Graff yelled, “Shit!” in the other room, and Mitch and I said it together at exactly the same time.

  We said, “Cuss jar.”

  Everything was quiet for a minute, and then we could see him through the kitchen doorway, standing at the fish-bowl, digging in his pocket. “Damn it,” he said. “This is getting expensive.”

  Then everybody laughed at once except Graff and he had to put in two dollars. We made a lot of money off Graff. Every day. Everybody else got smart pretty fast and held on to most of their money.

  When I looked up, the little sparrow had flown away. But that was okay. Pearl came to me all the time in all kinds of ways, all kinds of different things. Candle flames and rain and little birds. But when it stopped raining, or Mitch blew the candle out, or the bird flew away, I never felt that she was gone.

  It was such a great thing. It just filled me up.

  Mitch said there was a lady coming to talk to me that afternoon, to make sure I was okay.

  What lady? I wanted to know, and why would she think I wasn’t okay?

  He said that any time a little boy is away from his mother there are these people who work with the government who come check on that little boy to make sure he’s doing okay. He said it was up to this lady whether I stayed here or not, so if I was happy here, which he figured I was, I should tell her so.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll tell her. I’ll tell her I got friends coming out of my ears.”

  He said later, after she was gone, if I wanted, we could cash out the cuss jar and go do something fun. Whatever I wanted.

  I could always use that money for anything I wanted. Toys or games, Mitch said. It was like an apology to me for bad language. I usually didn’t buy toys. I liked to use it to take Mitch places, like out for lunch or an ice cream or to the movies. I didn’t think Mitch was really all that happy, and I wanted him to have more fun.

  “How did she know I was even here?” I wanted to know. I never talked to the government myself, and it was hard to picture Mitch having a conversation with it, either.

  He said Mrs. Morales had talked to the police and asked them to look for Pearl.

  “Oh,” I said. “I don’t think they’ll find her.”

  Mitch seemed real interested and kind of worried that I said that. I had no idea why he was making such a big deal about it. He kept asking me why I would say that. Did I know something he didn’t?

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that question. It seemed like a complicated question. I told him I might know some things he didn’t, but I didn’t really know all of what he knew, so it was hard to say for sure.

  Then he spelled it out a little better and asked if Pearl had told me where she was going before she left, and I said, no, she hadn’t said anything.

  “Well,” he said, “then why do you think the police won’t find her?”

  I said, “I just don’t think they’ll look in the right places.”

  I didn’t know all that much about police, but I knew a little. I knew enough. When was the last time you saw them look for somebody in a raindrop or a candle flame or a splashy wave or a little sparrow?

  MITCH, age 25: love my wife

  Harold Stoller’s house consisted of thirty-five rooms on four acres. It sat smugly on a hill overlooking the ocean on one side, the lights of the town on the other. The guy had made a killing in my chosen field, computer software, only sooner, and better, and it showed. A valet parked my ratty, rusting Volvo, and I made my way to the door in my only good suit, and the silk tie Barb had given me as a gift when I complained I didn’t even own one to wear for the occasion. And with Leonard draped snoring over my shoulder. I’d dressed him in his newest, cleanest pajamas and wrapped him in a decent-looking blanket. Under the circumstances, what else could I do?

  I knocked, and a maid in a black-and-white uniform opened the door. I was thinking, this place is so bizarrely surrealistic. Nobody really lives like this, right? Or, if so, why?

  “Mitchell Devereaux,” I said.

  “Yes, come in.”

  I was standing in the foyer, wondering what to do next, w
hen I saw her. Wondering whether to ask the maid what to do with the kid. Wondering whether it would be decent and proper to slip the maid a few bucks to find him an inconspicuous place to sleep. I couldn’t just walk into the mayor’s dinner party with Leonard on my shoulder. Could I? But what if he woke up in this strange place and got scared? Then Barb strode out of the kitchen and stood at the end of the long hall, looking at me. Her hair was done in a rather fetching, not-too-conservative style, and she was wearing a snug, fitted dress that looked almost like a long suit jacket. And she was wearing those legs. She started down the hall in my direction, and the maid disappeared, and I wondered if, when she got to me, I’d still be able to put ten intelligible words together into a sentence.

  She took the two steps up to the foyer, where I stood frozen. Talk, I thought. You have to.

  “I’m really sorry about this. Hannah was supposed to babysit but something came up. She called me barely half an hour before I was supposed to leave. I couldn’t get anybody else on that kind of notice. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t just miss this. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Talk, I thought. Don’t babble. There’s a difference.

  She put her hand on my sleeve. “No worries,” she said. “We’ll fix it. Come with me.”

  I followed her up a carpeted staircase and along an upstairs hallway. She rapped quietly on a closed door, and we waited there for something to happen. I thought I could smell her shampoo from where I was standing and I wanted to reach out and touch her hair, but I didn’t.

  A heavy, middle-aged Hispanic woman opened the door. Over her shoulder I saw that her TV was on. She’d been watching something that looked like a soap opera on a Spanish-speaking station.

  “Marta,” Barb said. “Quiero que el niño duerme en tu cuarto. Vamos a pagar extra, no te preocupes. Si tienes problema, dime.”

  “Sí,” Marta said. “Sí, Missis, okay.”

  Marta accepted the limp parcel off my shoulder and laid him out on a daybed, tucking the blanket around him and running the backs of her fingers over his cheek.