A Hole in the Universe
Page 21
The women continued to look at him with wide-eyed, blank expressions, as if holding their breath against fouled air. He could feel their eyes on him all the way to the back of the store. Neil was outside, stacking the flattened boxes by the loading dock. “You don’t have to do that, Neil. I’ll take care of it.” He hurried down the rickety steps. Since the holdup, Neil had been barely speaking to him. He couldn’t seem to please him no matter how hard he worked.
Neil grunted and cut another box.
“Go inside. I’ll finish the rest.”
“I’m almost done,” Neil said, slicing all four sides.
“I’ll put them in the Dumpster, then,” Gordon said. He began dragging cut boxes toward the back of the lot.
“No! Leave them there!” Neil barked.
“But they won’t pick them up over here,” Gordon reminded him. The drivers took only what was in the Dumpster.
“I want to see about recycling them. Get a few bucks, maybe.”
“That’s a good idea,” Gordon said.
“Yeah.” Neil stood up, smiling. “It is, isn’t it.”
“You know, something else you might want to do is give the outdated bakery stuff to the homeless shelter. I go by there. I could drop it off.” He had seen Lida’s Bakery truck delivering day-old bread there the other night.
Neil drew in his chin. “Now why would I want to do that?”
“Charity?” Gordon said with a shrug.
“Charity my ass! Let them fucking work like the rest of us! Like you and me! The lazy fucking maggots, why the hell should I bust my hump just to keep them alive another day. Huh?” He continued to shout in Gordon’s face. “Nobody ever fucking helps me! Nobody gives a fuck if I live or die!” He caught himself and smiled that thin wet smile again. “But so the fuck what, right, Gloomis?”
Every muscle tightened. His eyes flinched from Neil’s. All these years, and it still stung.
“I’ll tell you what,” Neil said, taking a matchbook from his pocket. “Here. Next time you go by just give it a toss and do them all a favor.”
For the rest of the day he managed to avoid Neil, whose angry voice carried through the store now. He was berating Leo for ordering sides of beef without asking him first.
“That’s how much we always get!” Leo looked at him as if he were crazy.
“From now on you ask. You check with me, goddamn it!” Neil roared.
At three o’clock the store began to get busy. Gordon was bagging at Serena’s register for a woman with silver rings on all her fingers. When Serena rang up the total, the woman removed a white envelope from her purse and counted out the food stamps.
“Naturally,” Serena said under her breath.
The woman looked up, but Serena was smiling at her. Gordon was relieved when she left.
“But don’t sell the jewelry,” June said from the next register.
“God forbid,” Serena said with a sigh.
Leo stood at June’s elbow while she rang up an order. He was complaining about Neil again. His face was white, his dark eyes bulging from their sockets. “I’m telling you, he’s a psycho. He’s a friggin’ psycho. And something’s gonna happen, something bad,” he said in a low voice as June’s fingers flew over the keys.
“Come on, Leo, Neil’s just . . . just being Neil,” Serena said as she started ringing up the next order.
“Well, I’m sick of taking his psycho crap. I been ordering without his okay so long I can’t remember. Now all of a sudden he’s pissed? I’m telling you, something’s very wrong with this picture. The man’s headed right off the screen, and you mark my words when it happens, cuz it is. It’s gonna happen.”
A little while later, when the rush was over, June went into the office to rest. Gordon told Serena he was going to stock the dairy case. He’d be right back if she needed him.
“Hey,” she said before he could leave. “There’s something I been wanting to say. I mean, when you first started I kept thinking, I know this guy. And like the name, Loomis—I kept thinking, Damn it, I know that name, but from where?” She leaned closer. “It must’ve been tough, being so young and having something like that happen.”
He nodded. She had turned twenty-two a few days before she died.
“I mean, you probably thought your life was over, right? That when you got out you’d be an old man or something.”
He realized she was talking about him.
“And look, you’re what, in your forties? You got your whole life ahead of you. So really, all you did was miss out on the rat race.” Her husky laugh dragged through him, and he tried to smile.
After work the next night, he called Dennis. No matter what was going on in his brother’s life, they had to stay close. Dennis had never given up on him, and he owed him at least that now.
He wasn’t home yet. “He should be there pretty soon,” Lisa said. Dennis had called from the office to say he had to run some errands and then he was going to stop by Gordon’s and help him with the pipe in the cellar. Pipe? he wondered as Lisa continued.
“I don’t know about you two.” She laughed. “I mean, at this point, why not just call a plumber? Or is this some macho trip you’re both on? Some kind of plumbing bonding thing?”
He forced a weak laugh.
“I mean, after all—three nights in a row! Is somebody not getting the message here?”
Yes, you, he thought sadly.
“I’m only kidding, Gordon. Actually, I’m glad you’re spending time together. Dennis just seems so much happier lately.” She told him how glad she was he’d come to Jimmy’s party and how great it was seeing Delores again. “She’s such a wonderful woman. Oh, and I almost forgot. Father Hensile—he enjoyed meeting you, and he’d really like to get together with you sometime. He’s a very nice person,” she continued when he didn’t say anything.
“He seemed to be.”
“I think you’d enjoy his company.”
“I’m just a little busy right now.”
“What about this weekend? Saturday? We could—”
“No. I can’t. I’ll be doing yardwork. The roses—the leaves, they’ve got black spots on them.”
It was Sunday. Gordon looked out the window again: raining and still no sign of clearing. Dennis would be here soon. Gordon had called him at home this morning and said he needed to talk to him. Lisa had called last night looking for Dennis. He had told her he’d be with Gordon most of the day. When it was almost dinnertime and she hadn’t heard from Dennis, she’d called Gordon to say she and the kids were going to pick up pizzas at Lida’s and they’d be right over with them. She’d asked Gordon what he liked—sausage, pepperoni, anchovies?
“Dennis isn’t here,” he told her.
“Oh, darn! It would have been fun. I wish I’d thought of it earlier. What time did he leave?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I’m going to hang up. Maybe I can catch him on the car phone.” She called back minutes later. “That’s funny—he’s not answering. But I’ll keep trying, and if I do get him, I’ll call you right back.”
Her next call came two hours later. It was seven-thirty. She hadn’t heard from Dennis and she was worried. She wanted to know exactly when he’d left there. Gordon said he didn’t know. Wasn’t sure. Couldn’t remember. There was a pause. “You’re lying to me,” she said. “He hasn’t been there at all today, has he?”
“I—”
“Tell me. Tell me the truth, Gordon. Has Dennis been there today? Has he?”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Lie to me. Tell me he’s been with you all day. Since early this morning. Tell me he’s there right now and he’s in the middle of something and he just can’t come to the phone right now. That’s all you have to tell me. That’s all I need to hear.”
He couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying.
“That’s how ridiculous this is. How pathetic I am.”
“Don’t cry. Please don’t cry, Lisa. He’l
l be home soon. Something probably happened, that’s all,” he said, though he doubted she could hear him, she was crying so hard.
Even with the wipers on high, rain blurred the windshield. Dennis floored the accelerator. He drove at the same furious speed of his thoughts. Lisa didn’t believe that he had run into an old classmate yesterday and they’d gone into Boston for a few drinks and ended up meeting Charlie’s cousin in some bar, where they watched the Sox-Yankees game on television. Charlie who?
Ross.
From where? she had demanded.
Dental school, he had said, annoyed to be caught, annoyed to be doubted when it had always been his right to be believed, annoyed that she not only insisted he give her details, but annoyed that she would write them down, as what? Proof, evidence, of what? That he didn’t love his family, that he wasn’t doing the best he possibly could under the circumstances, and now Jilly said he had to choose, her or them, which of course was no choice at all, even though he didn’t want to lose Jilly, couldn’t bear the thought of her leaving him, but his family was the most important part of his life, as well as the most complicating. There wasn’t anything on earth he wouldn’t do for them. It was the pressure he couldn’t take, the constant pressure of always having to be more for everyone. Nothing was ever good enough. Lisa had known what he was all about when she married him. He’d never made any bones about who he was. She was the one who’d changed. What did she expect, with all her sweet piety and constant optimism? It was like living with a goddamn nun on Prozac. He was sick of always being told to look on the bright side and love his fellow man. He was sick of trying to understand people’s fears and forgive them their shortcomings. How could she call him selfish when he’d spent his whole life doing for others, making up for his family’s shame, his brother’s misery? And here he was, still at it, still being sucked into the miasma of weakness and ineptitude that was Gordon’s life. That’s the part she didn’t get. And never had.
Brakes squealing, he pulled up in front of the house. He hit the front door with his wet fist, banging, banging, banging harder, harder. “Open the door! Open the door! Open the goddamn door, you—”
“You’re all wet,” Gordon said in all his volitionless inertia, not letting him in, continuing to hold the door ajar, standing there in his tight gray pajamas, the sleeves skimpy, the cloth dull as his eyes.
He pushed his way inside, wanting to tell his brother how he’d gone through this once and he wasn’t going to go through it again, having his life turned upside down and everything he cared about threatened and compromised. He had known this wouldn’t work. What had he been thinking? He should have just sold this place a long time ago and forced his brother to go his own way, instead of always thinking he had to be the one to pick up all the pieces and put everything back together, because that’s the way it had always been, because that’s all he knew how to do, it seemed, anymore.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Gordon asked.
He sank onto the couch, for a moment bewildered that he had not said it and could not, because the wound that was his heart continued pumping its spasm of bloodred heat in his chest while his eyes tried to adjust to the dimness of this shabby room.
“Can I get you something to drink? A glass of water? A beer? I have one. I keep it there.” He pointed toward the kitchen. “For you. It’s cold. It’s in the refrigerator. I can go get it.”
Dennis laughed. He couldn’t help it. “What do you do here? What do you do when you come home?”
“I read. I watch television. Sometimes. If there’s something good on.”
“Tell me something. Am I the only one who ever comes here?”
“No,” Gordon said, blinking.
“Is that where you sit?” He pointed to the chair in the corner. “It is, isn’t it. That way you can see the street and the TV all at the same time.” He chuckled. “Gordon’s window on the world, huh?”
“Don’t be mad at me, Dennis. I didn’t do anything.”
“But I did, right?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You know all those letters you got? All the family news, the stupid jokes, the newspaper clippings? Well, did you ever wonder what was really going on here? Or did you think it was all the same?”
“I knew it was hard. How hurt you all were.” Gordon stared down at the floor, head bobbing faintly up and down in that maddeningly goofy way that made him look so stupid and inept. “I know what it did to everyone.”
“I don’t mean that! You’re still so caught up in self-pity you think everything’s about you, don’t you? Poor Gordon, nothing ever goes right for him, does it? Well, guess what, poor Gordon, while you were licking your wounds, I was the one alone here. Because of you I didn’t have a father or mother anymore. From that point on it was all up to me. Me! They expected me to make everything right.”
“I’m sorry, Dennis.”
“You’re sorry? Well, what the hell good is that?” he exploded, fists so tightly clenched that the nails gouged his palms.
“What do you want? What do you want me to say?” came the slow, dead voice.
“Nothing.” Dennis had forgotten just how obtusely cold his brother could be.
“The truth is, I didn’t really think of what it did to you so much as what it did to Mom and Dad. You always seemed so lucky, I guess, so on top of everything all the time.”
A chill passed through Dennis and with it deflation, a sense of his own diminishment. He looked away. He didn’t want to hear this. He didn’t want to be having this conversation. What did he want, then? He didn’t know, didn’t even know why he’d come. Gordon droned on. Hearing Lisa’s name, Dennis looked up.
“She sounded so sad. I didn’t know what to say.”
“What the fuck’re you talking about?”
Gordon’s face flushed. His chin quivered miserably. “You shouldn’t . . . you shouldn’t do that to her.”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” He stood up to leave and, seeing the two hideously wide white sneakers side by side at the bottom of the stairs, facing the door, waiting, wondered why, for what? For the same thing he had been waiting these twenty-five years? For nothing, he realized, for absolutely nothing, if it meant eating and sleeping, then waking again to discontent, this sense of illimitable loss. His brother was here, so what was this yearning for? It was supposed to be over now.
“You’re married, Dennis. You should be faithful to your wife.”
Dennis spun around. “Look, there’s only one way this is going to work. You want to come back here and live like this, fine. But my family is my business, not yours. You got that, Gordo?”
They stared at each other until Gordon looked away. Dennis started to open the door.
“They’re my family, too,” Gordon said under his breath.
It usually took only a few swings to get the right momentum, but some of the trash bags felt like dead weight. Two crates of rotting cantaloupes had come in, and the supplier said to throw them out. Another shipment was on its way. Gordon grabbed the bag with both hands, ready to heave it, when he heard a loud clang inside the swill-streaked Dumpster. He froze, listening. Too loud to be a squirrel or a rat. Something heavier, big, like a raccoon, maybe. Or a skunk. He stepped back.
“Fuck!” came a thin voice from inside.
He put down the bag and peered in, unable to see much over the piled trash. He jumped back as a crushed box of doughnuts flew past his head. He walked to the end of the Dumpster where a loaf of flattened bread and a deeply dented can of pineapple chunks lay on the ground among glinting splinters and rusted shards, the man-made till from years of trash haulings.
“Fuck!” There was a painful groan.
“Who’s that? Who’s in there?” For a moment there wasn’t another sound other than flies buzzing and, from the lone spindly tree beyond, the high-pitched, scolding chatter of a squirrel whose larder was being pilfered.
“I said, who’s in there?”
A head popped up on the opposite end of the Dumpster, then came arms and a torso in a roll over the side, with Neil sprinting close behind. “Mother o’ God, look at this,” he said, pulling the girl from the straggle of paper-blown bushes. “Look what was in there, the very bottom of the food chain.”
The long cut on her left arm was bleeding down her fingers onto her pants.
“Jada!” Gordon said. Her wild hair was snagged with bits of trash and what at first appeared to be torn flesh, until, seeing seeds, he realized it was the slimy skin of a rotten tomato.
“Tell him to let go-a me!” she snarled through clenched teeth.
“Tell her to shut up!” Breathless as a cat with prey, Neil grinned, eyes gleaming with the pure, high-octane thrill of her pain. “Nice, huh?” He pointed at her. “Nice country we live in.”
Every time she tried to pull away, he yanked her back, laughing.
“What hole did you crawl out of?” he said.
“Fuck you!” she shot back.
“Or maybe you live in there with the rest of the maggots.”
“She’s my neighbor. I know her. She lives across the street from me,” Gordon said.
“I wouldn’t admit that to too many people if I was you, Gloom.”
“Tell the asshole to let me go!” Jada shouted.
“I don’t think she was doing anything wrong, Neil. See.” He showed him the box of broken doughnuts. “She was probably just looking for food.”
“Food? Jesus Christ, what planet are you from? She was out here trashing cars, and then she needed a place to hide.”