Whacking it, actually. Ferociously attacking it with an unmotorized hand mower he’d picked up at a barn sale fifteen years ago — having met his wife in one, barns remained forever dear to Jacob Clowes’s heart, often to the detriment of his wallet. The mower was an antique, slightly ridiculous contraption. He’d bought the mower during what Amanda called his “green” phase. He’d put in the woodstove and started splitting firewood around the same time, made a big show of turning off the boiler, which he promptly had to turn back on when he realized it also heated the hot water. Later he installed solar panels on the roof of the house, but he was pretty sure they warmed nothing besides a family of raccoons, and he’d even planted a vegetable garden, which now bore only the tomatoes and cukes that reseeded themselves each spring. But neither nostalgia nor Jacob’s eco-consciousness had led him to pull out the mower this morning; rather, the simple fact that his neighbors would kill him if he fired up the Lawn-Boy at six AM. Besides, he needed to work off some of his frustration.
He was sweating now, pushing the heavy machine up and down the hill of the Cloweses’ decidedly un-lawnlike yard, which was narrow but long and steeply pitched. The year Neve was four there had been snow, and Jacob had made his daughter a sled out of the curved plastic lid of one of the trash cans. She had slid the length of the yard, whooping and screaming the whole way. Maybe it was the memory of that better time that had Jacob pushing the mower up and down the hill rather than across its slope, which would have been easier, or maybe he wanted to tire himself out, take out his aggression on the lawn so he wouldn’t take it out on Neve when she finally decided to drag her ass home. He had spanked his daughter only once, when she was three and tried to light her own hair on fire. He had smacked her hand and sent the match sputtering through the air (you could still see the burn mark on the carpet in her room, if you knew where to look), and a startled Neve had burst into tears then run to her father’s arms for comfort. Jacob would give anything to be able to swat this new threat away from his daughter, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen. So, lacking a better substitute, he attacked the lawn.
It was early and no one could see him, so he had taken his shirt off and let his stomach hang over the waistband of the cargo shorts Amanda had picked up for him at Old Navy, which Jacob, to preserve his manly identity, pretended actually came from the Army-Navy supply store. He dropped the mower and fished his cell out of the side pocket of the shorts: 6:43, and his daughter still wasn’t home. He had never learned to program the thing — he couldn’t tell one silly colored icon from another — and so, with damp, blunt fingers, he punched in the ten digits of his daughter’s number and pressed the phone to his sweaty ear. His pulse pounded in his temples and he knew he was going to have another one of his headaches today. He’d been having a lot of them lately.
Correction: Neve had been giving him a lot of headaches lately.
Hey, you’ve reached Neve …
His daughter’s innocent voice leaked into his ear without so much as a ring. She had turned her phone off. Jacob had to stop himself from throwing his onto the flagstone terrace at the edge of the yard. After all these years of testing his boundaries, she had found his line and marched across it without looking back.
Jamming the phone back in his pocket, he picked up the mower and attacked the lawn again. Neve was a good girl, he told himself as he panted up the hill. Loving but shy, like a new puppy who wants to jump in your lap but needs coaxing. A little spacey. Her SATs weren’t exactly Berkeley material, and though part of Jacob wondered if it was all that pot he’d smoked, neither he nor Amanda had the aptitude, let alone the attitude, for college. But when Neve started going out with Phil D’Amici’s son, K.A., Jacob had had a brief moment of calm. In six months of “hanging out” — that’s what Neve had called it — with his daughter, the boy had never pulled into the driveway later than 10:59. Of course, they spent another hour and a half fogging up the windows, but he was sure K.A. valued his balls too much to take them out of his pants in his girlfriend’s father’s driveway. Her grades even improved. When she showed him her A in history at the end of the year, Jacob had made a big show of holding it up to the light to see if the letter was doctored, but it survived inspection. The punch in the gut Neve gave him afterward was surprisingly painful, however, and even as he wondered aloud when his daughter had turned into such a brain, he wondered silently when he himself had turned into such a wuss.
The yard was long. And steep. And uneven. Jacob had to push the mower over the same strip of grass three times to cut it all. He could feel sweat pooling in the seat of his boxers, and tried not to imagine what he looked like from the back. What do you call the Jewish pizza maker’s version of plumber’s crack?
He was a “cool parent,” wasn’t he? A dad you didn’t have to be ashamed of? He didn’t even care if his daughter smoked pot — he knew she’d grow out of it eventually. And he wasn’t stupid enough to tell her not to have sex either. Like a good modern father, he’d sat right beside Amanda at the kitchen table while she and Neve had the talk about making your own choices and saying yes only when you want to and using various methods of contraception. Only after Neve had fled to one of her girlfriends’ houses did he go out on the back porch and drink his way through the last third of a bottle of scotch to erase the words “negotiated sexual contract” from his ears. Amanda had pulled the phrase from a book called So Your Teenager Wants to Have Sex. God bless the woman — but come on.
He’d managed to drink the words out of his head, but try as he might to beat the nagging sense of failure and doubt away this morning, he couldn’t eradicate it. Maybe his mother had been right about raising her out here. His Brooklyn friends were stockbrokers and lawyers now, despite their wild youths. And real estate. Jesus, what that modest brownstone he had grown up in in Cobble Hill would fetch now. His friends back East sent their kids to private schools, or magnets like Bronx Science or Stuyvesant, where Jacob himself had gone. Amanda had enrolled Neve in some extremely expensive “self-directed” program at Penwick, and even though their daughter left the house every morning, he had the sense she wasn’t always “directing” herself to school. It was all so “unstructured,” and as the years passed and his daughter grew further and further from him, Jacob found it hard to remember what it was exactly that he’d loved Portland for, back when he’d been not too much older than Neve was now. Then they’d decided Neve was going to be the picture of the Rousseau child — Amanda’s phrase, of course. In Jacob’s mind it was even simpler: his daughter was going to have the exact opposite of his experience in New York, with a father who expected too much of him, and a mother who expected nothing at all. His daughter was going to be supported, encouraged, loved. There was no way she wouldn’t be the perfect child. And maybe that’s what would have happened, until Neve, as all children do, grew up.
And discovered dust.
He leaned into the mower to make it up the last incline leading to the forest that bounded their property. He almost wished he could spank her. But once your daughter has lain out in a string bikini in the backyard, that option is definitely off the table.
Neve. String bikinis. Contraceptives. Dust. Amanda once reminded him that she’d been wearing less — at least on top — the first time he saw her. And that she’d been on the Pill, and that the joint she’d handed him at the barn dance had come into her hands from a complete stranger and for all she knew had been laced. Twenty-four years later she’d traded the braless overalls for linen shirts, gone off the Pill after Jacob had consented to a vasectomy. And most important, she reminded him, they had both outgrown drugs. So would Neve.
When it’s two against one, a man gets used to conceding to the women in his life. But as Jacob leaned his aching back into the mower — damn this thing could take it out of you — he decided he had to do something. This wasn’t pot. Pot grows in your backyard. This was a chemical made in a lab by some greedy, amoral little shit who got his formula off the goddamned Internet. Or at
least Jacob thought it was. The truth was, he didn’t know what dust was. The few times he’d asked some spaced-out customers at the pizzeria about it, he got answers along the lines of “Dust is totally mellow, man,” or “Dust is, like, magic,” or, his favorite, “Yo, dude! Dust!” Whatever the hell it was, he didn’t want his daughter on it. He didn’t want her hanging around with that asshole who peddled it either. Bleek. What a name. The thought of that boy pawing his daughter was the final straw. He wheeled the mower around to head back down the slope and decided he had no choice. Neve would be grounded.
He stopped to wipe the sweat from his face. Though it was barely morning and Portland was still cool and dewy from the storm the previous night, Jacob was steaming. Even his head. Especially his head. He felt steam pulsing from his temples, and he knew from recent experience that neither Advil nor Tylenol nor aspirin would cure it. A drink might, or two or three, but the last time Jacob had gotten drunk in the morning was the day he woke up to discover Ronald Reagan had been reelected. He would have to tough this one out.
He was at the high point of his yard now, looking over the city. A slight haze was developing over downtown, but everywhere else the sun shone indiscriminately, brightly, mocking the darkness that had sunk into him last night when he realized that Neve wouldn’t be coming home, yet again. Amanda, better able to separate from her daughter — and more capable of expressing anger — drank four glasses of wine in quick succession and went to sleep. Jacob, so mad he refused to drink, felt his wife was passing the buck, leaving it to him to stay up waiting for their daughter — as though that would make her come home sooner. He put on a Zappa album and turned it up just a little too loud, then watched a bad movie on television, then whipped up a calamari salad for himself around five AM. Nothing like the smell of squid in the morning. While he stared out the window munching it, he decided the lawn needed to be mowed. It was too early though. His neighbors would kill him. (Actually, they’d probably write a letter to the community board.) Then he remembered the push mower. Cursing Neve — as though she had somehow forced him to mow the lawn at this hour — he fished Amanda’s iPod from her purse and went outside in his cargo shorts and rooted around the garage until he found the mower, buried under three bicycles with four wheels among them, all of them flat.
Joni Mitchell got him through most of the job. Amanda had never lost her taste for her, through all those years, even though those talky songs sounded like a page — several pages — ripped from her diary. He almost jumped out of his skin when some strange caterwaul came on after “Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter.” The iPod said the singer’s name was “Björk,” which sounded to Jacob more like a brand of bike tire, and, wincing at the screeching, he sifted through Amanda’s albums till Blue came up. He had to wipe the sweat from his eyes three times before he admitted that it wasn’t sweat that was blurring his vision, making it hard for him to read the words on the tiny screen. He closed his eyes and tried to tell himself it was just anger or fatigue making his fingers tremble like an old man’s, but he wasn’t fooling himself. His head was throbbing and he hadn’t even turned on the music.
Jacob Clowes did not pray. He did not believe in god. But he was praying now. Dear god, please bring my daughter back to me. I will come home from the restaurant early. I will tell Neve I love her every day. I will lose thirty pounds. I will call my mother more often. I will donate twenty pizzas a week to God’s Love We Deliver. There are things I will do, god. I will change. I will. Just let me have this —
Jacob stopped. He asked himself what “this” was. What he wanted most. Just let me see this through, he prayed. Until Neve is safe.
He opened his eyes. His vision had cleared but his hands were still shaking. A strange tingling pulsed in his arms and legs. It didn’t hurt as much as it felt as though someone were touching his skin with a mild electrical current, and when he bent over to pick up the mower, yellow-ringed black spots danced in front of his eyes. He started back down the hill. He knew he couldn’t power his way through this, but that’s how he’d dealt with everything in his life. What the hell was wrong with him? He was forty-nine. He was a young man. He chastised himself for even thinking about his own problems at a time like this, when all his thoughts should be focused on Neve.
Jacob was halfway down the hill when he saw her wobbling through the back gate on the arm of a slight, black-haired boy. He had to squint to focus.
Nix.
The lawn mower’s handle fell from his fingers and he stepped over it. All thoughts of beer guts and plumber’s crack and the pounding in his temples vanished. Neve’s head hung like a broken puppet’s, but Nix had looked up and seen him before dropping his eyes back to the ground. Trying to sneak her around back. Was the little shit just going to dump her in the yard, wait for someone to wake up and find her? The ungrateful punk. To think that Jacob had once cared for the boy. Given him a job. Had tried to help him.
Jogging downhill, he pulled out his earphones and fumbled with them, not knowing where to put them. He looped the white cord around his neck. Neve was hanging off Nix while he tried to close the gate. In this, as in all things, the kid’s priorities were assbackwards. He was trying to cover his tracks when he should have been concentrating on speed. Get in, get out. That’s what the punk should have been doing. Get the hell out before your victim’s father rips your head off and stuffs it down the neck hole from which it had grown. Jacob was so angry he wanted to beat Nix like he’d beaten the kids in elementary school who’d called him a dirty Jew. Thank god he wasn’t using the Lawn-Boy — he’d have fed the kid to the blades one limb at a time.
First things first. He grabbed his daughter and pulled her to his side. Neve managed to register that it was her father whose hands had grabbed her, then her head fell again.
“Hey, Daddy,” she whispered, and giggled, a distracted, tinkling sound, like glass breaking in another room. He tilted his daughter’s chin up. Her eyes had that same glassy glow she’d had for months. But at least they were open, and focused. If his daughter had OD’d, Nix really would be dead.
He looked at the boy. The punk refused to meet his eyes.
Jacob cleared his throat.
“Right now you should be thanking my wife.”
Nix didn’t say anything. He still didn’t lift his head. It was almost as if he were scared to look up. First smart thought the boy had yet.
“A couple of years ago I wanted to buy a rifle, take up hunting. But Amanda wouldn’t allow a gun in the house. You should thank her for that, because if I did own a rifle it would be up your ass right now, blowing your brains out the top of your fucking misbegotten skull.”
With a visible effort, Nix roused himself to speech. “Look, Clowes —”
“Don’t you call me that! People who work for me — people I didn’t fire — call me that. But not you.”
Defiance flashed in Nix’s eyes, which almost — but not quite — rose to meet Jacob’s.
“You didn’t fire me. I quit.”
You had to hand it to the skinny punk: he almost had a backbone.
“Mr. Clowes,” he was saying now, still looking at the grass, “your daughter and I were at a … party. Out past Bend. Far out. In the mountains. Neve got fu — I mean, Neve got messed up. I found her with a guy.” He faltered. Jacob continued to stare, and Nix continued to avoid his eyes. “He’s not a good guy, Mr. Clowes.”
Without warning a siren seemed to go off in Jacob’s ears, a high-pitched sound that burned from one side of his skull to the other. Nix’s voice was drowned out and his face blurred like a wet painting. Jacob sank into a squat, almost fell. He managed to catch himself just in time, his hands slipping from Neve and smacking down hard on his knees.
What the …
The spasm lasted only a moment. When it passed he heard a sound coming from the boy. Like the kid was moaning. Breathing deeply, Jacob managed to stand again, though he had to grab Neve to make it up all the way. The two of them leaned into each other
like a pair of uprooted trees.
“He — he — he’s not a good guy, Mr. Clowes.” Nix was stuttering. “You need to keep your daughter away from him.”
The siren was receding. Jacob knew who Nix was talking about: goddamned Tim Bleeker. He was the one responsible for the way Neve was now. Nix’s destructive tendencies had always been directed at himself, which is why Jacob had cut him so much slack at the shop. But Bleek wasn’t here right now and Jacob needed an object for his anger. He needed to feel as though he were saving Neve, even if it was with his dying breath.
“I don’t see Tim Bleeker here,” Jacob said when he could finally talk. His voice sounded thin, as though it were coming out on a long string pulled from his mouth. “I see you. What the hell were you doing with Neve anyway? K.A. is in California.”
Nix’s eyes flitted up, down, sideways — everywhere but at Jacob’s face. “It’s not what you think, Mr. Clowes —”
Anger was the only thing holding Jacob up now. “Listen to me, Nix,” he said, again hearing the stretched-out sound of his voice, which came in little uneven spurts. “I’ve cut you breaks in the past. But you cross a line when you mess with a man’s daughter. Neve is my only child. If one skin cell is out of place on her body, then you’d better pray. Pray the cops throw you in jail before I get my hands on you. Because I will make you hurt in parts you didn’t even know you had. I —”
A stab of pain cut off his voice and his vision dissolved again. He wiped the sweat from his brow, but his eyes refused to focus. “You —” Nix’s body wavered in front of him like a candle flame, and Jacob closed his eyes. “You … little … bastard.”
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