SOMETHING WAITS

by Bruce Jones

  Meanwhile, my wife carved out a successful and far more realistic career in fashion design. She pretty much supported us until I began to sell a trickle of illustration work for pulps like FANTASTIC and AMAZING magazines (both gone now) while drawing comic books featuring tales of science fiction and horror (also gone now). Occasionally I scripted the same story I was drawing. Eventually the scripting, which paid less but took far less time than drawing, occupied more and more of my time. Some friends of mine were making big money drawing comic strips for certain men’s slicks, getting page rates the comic companies couldn’t compete with. I tried my hand and had a running, hand-colored adult-oriented strip of my own for a time; scandalous back then, tame by today’s standards--but the money was giddy. While working for the magazines, one of the editors asked if I’d be interested in contributing some short fiction. You have to understand that this was a time when fiction was still a regular and viable apart of much of NY publishing: every periodical but TV Guide carried some kind of fiction. If you had the chops—and the contacts—the money at PLAYBOY or THE NEW YORKER was nearly life sustaining. Chops aside, I had no agent and knew nothing about how to go about getting one; you know, sort of like knowing about leprosy but somehow never coming into contact with it. So I stuck with the short story offer. Unfortunately I soon discovered that now that someone was actually interested in my fiction, I was drawing a complete blank for ideas. Stage fright, maybe; I knew the feeling. Still, I was determined not to let it beat me. Do not look a gift horse in the mouth. Stay clear of a horse’s mouth on all occasions, in fact.

  I didn’t trust any of more old college-era stories; even rewritten they seemed trite and predictable, like badly forged versions of old Twilight Zone shows. But I still could not summon anything new from my fingertips. Maybe the environment was partly to blame. A tiny apartment with my friends the roaches and the Armenian landlord banging up and down the stairs. I was a suburban kid from the Midwest--there was always something open and grassy about my fiction. New York was not open, not the least grassy. And New Yorkers were…well, New Yorkers tend to think the Earth is an Eastern planet, if you get my drift, much as I love them.

  At the point of giving up and going back to drawing for a living, I remembered one rainy afternoon that old unfinished kernel of an idea banging for years in my head, the one that always begged off completion. Maybe now I could complete it. All I had was this scene, not even a whiff of anything around it, certainly nothing close to a plot, but I’d never been able to get that scene out of my head. Some stories are like that. Some eventually get finished, others just wander around, lost in the limbo between auspicious groundbreaking and literary foreclosure. This one badly needed a home, and I badly needed a check. Don’t let anyone fool you; it’s desperation that’s the mother of invention.

  Finally I took pencil in hand, placed spiral notebook before me (the way I always wrote before the advent of the home computer), planted myself at the kitchen table and, as the wise old sage once said, put one word after the other. I already had the title—had known what that would be for years. It was all that in-between stuff that baffled me--all but the sight of a little girl walking the wind-swept meadow fronting an old grade school playground. My old grade school, of course.

  That’s the great thing about writing; the scene you’re so sure is the crux of your story often turns out to be little more than an addendum to what the real thing is about. I’m still not sure if the tale that finally emerged lives up to that single (for me) haunting scene on the playground meadow. I suppose the underlying theme of this tale is deceit: the deceit of others and the way we sometimes deceive ourselves. You be the judge. See if you think all the years of uncompleted aggravation were worth it. But be kind; it was one of my first published stories. Perhaps I was still trying to find my voice…perhaps by way of the dark tangle and lonely childhood haunts of

  Abruptly, in the middle of a business conference, he remembered the old school. Or rather, he saw the school in his mind’s eyes. It was very clear, very distinct, like a newly snapped photo.

  It had been years since he’d really seen it, decades since he’d given it even a passing thought. Yet now, seated three feet from the president of the firm he worked for, at a time when he should have been paying attention, the elementary school of his childhood came rushing back to him as vividly as if he’d walked its noisy halls the day before. He saw every window, every brick, every inch of landscaping surrounding the building: the playground with its sliding board and monkey bars, the bike rack where he’d parked his Schwinn Racer every day. All of it. Even the expanse of meadow behind the school and the thick entanglement of woods and thickets surrounding it.

  Everything stood etched in his mind in such brilliant detail his real surroundings, the conference room, his business associates, seemed dim and muddled, as if they were the daydreams—his childhood memories the reality.

  He jerked as someone spoke his name, asking him something pertaining to the Calley account.

  He answered in a moment---after he remembered what the Calley account was.

  * * *

  On the train home, John Richardson mused over the incident that afternoon at the conference. He was a logical man, methodical even. Prided himself on it. Liked to know the reasons for the things he thought and did, had spent his whole orderly life that way. Why, after years of concerning himself solely with his marriage, kids and J.D. Tompkins and Sons Advertising, had his childhood grade school invaded his thoughts with such determined clarity? Was it simply moving into middle age? Is this what happens after forty-five?

  At home after dinner, the children in bed, he turned abruptly to his wife, put down his paper and surprised himself with: “I hate my job.” It almost sounded like someone else’s voice. He was as startled as she.

  “What on earth are you talking about, John? Fifteen years with the best ad agency in town, a brilliantly successful career and suddenly you hate it? This is the prelude to one of your little office jokes, right?”

  He stared thoughtfully into the fireplace, the dancing flames. “I know. It’s strange. I guess I never really thought about it before, had no reason to. But it’s true. It’s true, Jean. I always hated it. Just never admitted it to myself.”

  His wife gave him a cryptic look above her magazine.

  John studied the flames. “I hate everything about it,” he admitted, finding some relief in the admission. “The people, the work. I even hate the damn building--all that damn glorified art deco antiquity.” He turned to her with something like fear forming in his eyes. “Jean, if I have to go in there Monday I’ll go insane!”

  His wife put down her magazine, came to him, sat on the edge of his chair, ran a hand through his hair like she used to when they were first married. “Hey. Easy, kid. It’s been a long week and a longer year. That damn Calley account. You have a right to feel jaded, hollowed out. Tell you what. Why don’t we just forget dinner with the Patterson’s Saturday and stay in for the weekend, laze about the house? Would you like that? By Monday morning things will look different.”

  It wasn’t really an idea, or even a question. There were the bills, of course, the mortgage, the kids’ college. He leaned back heavily in his chair, resigned, but managing a weak smile. “Yeah. Maybe you’re right. I’m just tired.” Except he didn’t feel the least tired. He felt wide awake, onto something. Something bigger than the goddamn Calley account. “Never mind,” he told her, kissing her cheek. “Forget it. What I need’s a drink, a hot bath.”

  But his wife was frowning suddenly, rubbing guiltily at her chin. “Oh, damn. We can’t stay in this weekend! Sandy Patterson is bringing her daughter along for dinner, I forgot! She’d never forgive me if we cancelled. You remember little Kim Patterson from down the street, used to play with our Sandra?”

  John nodded obediently. “Sure. Cute kid. You’re right, we should go. It’ll be fun.” And added for good measure, “Great seeing little Kim Patterson again!” Not remembering her at all
.

  In his dreams that night, John Richardson hung upside down from the top of the monkey bars in front of the old school and heard the ring of children’s laughter and smelled the smell of new spring grass. Beyond the playground near the edge of gnarled trees and hummocks that formed the hollow, a little yellow-haired girl in a bright spring dress waded knee-deep in a meadow lush with dandelions. She stooped and picked, stooped and picked, gathering a golden bouquet. To the boy on the monkey bars she was more beautiful than all the spring days of all the Aprils of his childhood. He had loved her with willful abandon for months. Today he would find the courage to tell her.

  He climbed down from his perch atop the bars, crossed the asphalt playground and entered the golden meadow…

  * * *

  Monday morning he sat at the kitchen table in silence and drank his coffee and ate his two perfectly timed poached eggs. He regarded the wall clock with mounting dread as the big hand approached the hour. He thought back drearily over the vacuum that had been the weekend; the too-crowded restaurant, over-priced, too-spicy food, the aimless college chatter of the Patterson girl, the smile frozen to his face until his jaw ached. Weekend? It had been a two-day nightmare of never-ending stultification. From which he awakened to yet another nightmare: the ceaseless round table boredom of stupid associate faces talking with feigned energy and interest about the stupidity of being Number One, always Number One.

  “Did you hear me?” his wife was saying, buttoning her dress for her own job. “John? You’re going to be late for work, it’s nearly eight. And it’s Monday, your turn to pick up the kids at school. Does Jared have Little League tonight--better check your calendar. Oh, never mind, I’ll do it…”

  In the garage, backing out, he noticed his younger son’s bicycle leaning alone and unused among the lawn tools and paraphernalia. He’d bought the bike—an ugly, black, spidery-looking thing in contrast to the smooth lines of his own red Schwinn Racer—a year ago but it still looked new. His son never rode it. His son wasn’t interested in the bike, something his father could not fathom; his son was interested in X-box and texting. His mother drove the boy to school every day in the Saab. He shook his head with incomprehension: he’d ridden his Schwinn every day, to school and everywhere else. They were as one, he and the bike, like best friends. Where was it now? Melted down for scrap, no doubt. What he wouldn’t give to see it again, just one more time…touch the worn seat, grip the old handlebars…

  At twenty past eleven, he looked up from his office desk at the downtown traffic outside his window. As he sat there ruminating absently for a moment, a girl and boy materialize out of the busy stream of cars and the streets morphed into waving fields of golden dandelions. The boy stood uncertainly before the pretty blonde curls, shoved his hands into grass stained jean pockets and fidgeted nervously. The girl laughed at his shyness.

  “Go on,” she chided, “finish. ‘You think I’m’-- what?”

  He swallowed thickly at the blue, cloudless sky. “I think you’re…“

  “Yes-- yes?”

  “…very pretty. There. I said it.”

  Her laugher was the tinkling of tiny bells. “Oh, John, you’re sweet!”

  The boy folded his arms proudly about himself.

  “But pretty isn’t so much,” she continued modestly, “if you really liked me you’d think I was beautiful.”

  “I do!” he blurted.

  “Say it.”

  “No. You’ll laugh again.”

  “No I won’t. Say it, John.”

  “All right. I think you’re beautiful, Mary Ellen.”

  “Say you think I’m the most beautiful girl in school, and you’ll do anything for me.”

  “If you promise you won’t laugh.”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  “You’re the most beautiful girl in school and I’ll do anything for you.”

  She threw back her golden head, clutched her sides.

  “You promised,” he choked.

  “But your face,” she giggled. “The look on your face!”

  * * *

  On Thursday at lunch he called his wife from a bar.

  “I can’t stand it, Jean. I mean it. I’m going crazy!”

  “I don’t understand this, John,” she sighed patiently, “what’s gotten into you?”

  “This job! Our friends! Everything! I’m miserable! How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “Look, John. Dear. In three weeks your vacation is due, we’ll take—“

  “Damn it, that’s not the point! Don’t you understand? I don’t ever want to come back here again!”

  She was silent a moment. Then, less compassionately: “So, what exactly are you proposing? Quitting the agency? Jobs like that don’t grow on trees! Can you spell recession?”

  He sighed miserably into his phone. “I don’t know…I just don’t know. I keep thinking how great it used to be as a kid. Remember? No jobs, no worries. There was a grade school in Louisiana I went to—“

  “Yes, I’ve heard all about it. I’ve got to get back to work if I’m going to finish early tonight. Bill and Alice are dropping over, remember? Can we discuss this later? John? Hello?”

  “I’m here.”

  “I said, can’t we discuss this later?”

  “Sure. Later than you think.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. See you tonight.”

  At dinner he sat with their guests like a man outside himself. He saw them talking, watched their mouths work, but heard nothing. He watched in silence, ears bombarded by the meaningless drone, hands unconsciously clenching and unclenching under the tablecloth, a voice building inside him, aching to scream above the din: GET OUT! GET OUT!

  When at last they’d gone, he drank himself sleepy, came exhausted to bed, head pounding, unaware of the carpet beneath his feet. In a matter of moments he was lost in the sanctuary of sleep…of dreams…

  He was in the meadow again with Mary Ellen, surrounded by that sea of yellow flowers. Near them lurked the tangled labyrinth of the hollow with its dark mysteries and hidden fears.

  But someone else stood with them now, and for the first time in his childhood memories he knew discomfort, resentment. For the first time he remembered someone from those days he’d hated.

  Mary Ellen was laughing, that high, wonderfully musical laugh of hers: “You both say you love me. But which of you loves me the most?”

  “I do,” her young suitors answered in tandem.

  John eyed his rival with unbridled malice, the heat of jealousy flooding him.

  It was Kenny Watkins, a new boy from out of town, some place called Newport Beach. John hated him from the day he’d arrived; hated his tallness, his good looks, his worldly ways, his parent’s wealth. He’d avoided Kenny from the first, distrusting his snobbish airs, the way he looked at everyone from Louisiana as if they lived in a dirty swamp. He even succeeded in convincing most of his friends to join him in his hatred.

  All but Mary Ellen.

  “You both have to prove how much you love me,” she insisted with sly innocence. “Whoever proves it best, I’ll let kiss me. Maybe even on the mouth.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Kenny snorted, “beat him up?”

  “That’s not fair!” John quaked, “He’s bigger than me, he’s got an unfair advantage. Besides, it wouldn’t prove anything.”

  “Just say the word,” Kenny told her, arms folded aloofly, and he spit out the side of his mouth as if to show how effortless the act of beating up John Richardson would be.

  John stood his ground, knees trembling.

  Mary Ellen placed a thoughtful finger to her chin, accessed the situation with canted head like a spring robin. “No, John’s right. It must be something equal. I won’t love a man just for his muscles. There’s something wonderfully romantic about John, like a poet, don’t you think, Kenny?”

  “A faggot poet.”