Four
“Honey, the linguist is here.”
“Ooh.”
Cook, standing out on the porch, was encouraged by these noises from within. Although the front door was closed, the man’s voice announcing his arrival had carried to him easily from deep inside the house, as if borne by hearty optimism. The woman’s reply, which reached Cook not through the door but by an open bay window on the second floor, was also good. “Ooh” meant urgency, but without annoyance.
This was all fine. It would be even better when someone showed up to open the door. Cook kept anticipating the click of the latch, the swing of the door, face greeting face. As the normal range of time for this lapsed, the warmth in the initial signals from the house gradually cooled. Cook lifted his finger to the doorbell again and hesitated, wanting to avoid the extremes of pushiness and passivity—the classic social dilemma. He counted to five and pressed it again.
“Honey!”
The husband’s voice was louder, but it was still coming from some distance. The wife did not respond this time.
“Honey!”
No answer.
Through the upstairs window Cook heard the phone ring. This was a bad sign. The household’s attention was already divided. He would fall into further neglect. Then he heard a repeated ding, as from an oven timer. He felt as if he were in the midst of Poe’s “The Bells.”
Two little yelps behind him made him turn around. In a small wooded park across the street, a boy was playing catch with himself. He was throwing a baseball high into the branches of the trees, presumably as a personal challenge, for he had to react as the branches deflected it. But this meant that twigs also dropped on him, and he yelped when they did. Cook watched and thought it was a strange thing to do. But it was also the kind of thing he might have done at that age—around ten, he guessed.
Cook turned back to the house. The porch extended about one third of the way across the front, ending just short of a wide window. By standing on the side wall of the porch and leaning far over, he was just able to snatch a peek inside. No one was in sight. He went back to the door, sighed, and, just to stay in touch, rang the doorbell again. No response—not even the “Honey!” he had grown to expect and draw encouragement from. He opened the screen door and tried knocking on the oak door, figuring the bell didn’t work—a somewhat desperate theory, given that he could hear it every time from the front porch. His knocks felt puny on the thick wood, as if it absorbed them and dispersed them to all its cells.
He remembered a sentence from The Pillow Manual: “It is hard to get inside a marriage.” He had assumed a figurative meaning to it. Perhaps he had been wrong.
Cook turned around and saw that the boy from the park was now on the sidewalk directly in front of the house. He apparently didn’t see Cook on the porch. He wound up and thwacked the ball off the short run of steps midway up the walk that led to the house. Cook blinked, a little disoriented to learn that this boy, an object of his idle notice just a moment earlier, was about to become part of his life. Why hadn’t Pillow told him that children would be in the picture?
“Hi!” Cook called out. “Do you live here?”
The boy was about to throw again, and he halted in mid-windup. “Yeah,” he said.
“I’m kind of stuck. Your mom and dad are expecting me, but they don’t answer the door.”
The boy got a faraway look in his eyes and leaned his head to one side. “Someone’s taking a shower.”
Cook frowned. “What?”
“I can hear it.” The boy pointed to the ivy between the sidewalk and the street.
Cook decided that if he left the front door and came back to it his luck might change. He walked down to where the boy stood. In the midst of the ivy was a small round grate.
“Hear it?”
Cook heard it—the trickle of water deep down in the sewer line from the house.
“It’s got to be the shower because it’s a steady sound,” the boy said. “If it was real short it would be the toilet. That’s definitely the shower.” He spoke with conviction.
“Very impressive,” said Cook. “Can you tell from the sound of the water who’s in the shower?”
The boy hesitated, saw he was being teased, and suddenly grinned. “Yeah. It’s my mom.”
“Really? How on earth—”
“My dad’s watching the Cardinals on TV.”
“Ah. You got me.”
The boy’s grin grew, then suddenly disappeared when the flow of water stopped. “She’s done,” he said. “She’s throwing the curtain open. Her body’s all wet. She’s reaching for the towel. She’s drying herself.”
Cook, who was always easily aroused, felt an erotic surge. He was uncomfortable with its origin and tried to clear his head. He looked up at the house—three stories of red brick rising like a huge hand forbidding entrance.
“Can you help me?” Cook asked. “My name is Jeremy.”
“That doesn’t sound like a man’s name.”
Cook smiled at the boy’s bluntness. “What are you saying—it sounds like a woman’s name?”
“No. Like a boy’s name.”
“Oh. Yeah, maybe. What’s your name?”
“Robert.”
“Now, that sounds like a man’s name,” said Cook.
“People call me Robbie.”
“Oh. That’s better. You know what? People don’t call me Jeremy.”
“What do they call you?”
“Robert.”
The boy gave him a long look. Then he said, “Get out of town.”
Cook laughed. “Do you think you could go tell your folks I’m here?”
“The front door’s locked,” said Robbie. “I have to go around back.”
Cook thanked him and said he would wait out in front. As he walked up the sidewalk he watched Robbie run around the corner of the house. An odd kid, he thought. Such careful speech, such a sober face. A ten-year-old straight man. But he seemed to have a sense of humor, too.
In a short while Cook heard footsteps. Then the wooden door swung open. It was a wide door, and its opening seemed grand and baronial—an effect that was immediately destroyed when the man of the house cried out, “What a mix-up!” and threw open the screen door so violently that Cook had to jump back from it. “Come in. Come in.”
Cook thanked him, picked up his suitcase and briefcase, and stepped into the entryway.
“I’m Dan Wilson,” the man said, extending his hand. He was slightly shorter than Cook and athletic-looking, with a clean-shaven, broad, wide-open face. He seemed innocent, guileless.
Cook introduced himself and set his luggage down on the hardwood floor.
“Beth and I knew you were coming,” Dan said, looking around as if hoping she was there to support this claim, “and we got all ready for you, but then we bungled it.”
“That’s all right,” said Cook. “It gave me a chance to meet your son.”
“What fools you must think we are.”
“Not at all.”
“Can’t even answer the door.”
“No, no. Not at all.”
“I thought Beth got it, you see, and I was waiting for her to bring you in. Then the phone rang, and … Things just got mixed up.” Cook hoped they would get off this subject sometime soon. Dan’s eye fell on Robbie, who had come into the entryway, and he transferred his animation from Cook to his son. “Mr. Cook is the man we told you about, Robbie. He’s a linguist—someone who studies languages. He’s here to study how people in St. Louis talk. He’ll be staying with us a few days. Can you go get Mommy?”
Robbie gave Cook a sizing up, then said, “Sure.” He dashed up the stairs.
“I hate to lie to him,” Dan said to Cook, “but what can you do?”
Cook shrugged. “Sometimes you have to lie.”
A wild grin took possession of Dan. Just as quickly, it disappeared, and his face relaxed into its normal, merely alert look. It was an intelligent look, Cook thought—almost too
intelligent, as if Dan were starving for more than everyday life provided.
There followed an awkward silence. Dan had suddenly gone mute, sending Cook on a search for a thought to give words to. He asked Dan if he had any other children. Dan said no and seemed to want to say more, but he didn’t. Another silence fell. Cook heard TV noises from the rear of the house, beyond a swinging door, and he said, “I don’t want to take you away from your game.”
“Bah! It’s nothing.” Dan looked up the stairs. “Honey!” he yelled, his face full of hope. “Honey!” Still looking up the stairs, he said, “I can’t imagine what’s keeping her.” Dan seemed to lack a license to fly solo. Evidently nothing more would happen until Beth was on the scene.
Dan suddenly froze, listening, his eyes fixed on the swinging door. “Damn it,” he said. “Game’s in Chicago. Bottom of the inning. Cheers are a bad sign.” He gave his head a jerk toward the door. “You sure?”
“About what?”
“That you don’t mind if I go back to the game?”
“Of course! The whole point is that you should go on with what you normally do. That’s how I understand this. Is that how you understand it?”
Before Cook finished speaking, Dan was gone, a final brush of the swinging door the only evidence he had been there. In a second or two Cook could hear him interacting with the TV.
Cook felt abandoned again. He had made it inside, but he was no better off. He looked around the entryway, which struck him as ridiculously large. It made him wish he had a basketball to dribble around. To his right was an upright piano with “Golliwogg’s Cake-Walk” on the music stand—a title that always filled him with vague panic when he heard it pronounced on the radio. The living room was to his left. Ahead and to his right, stairs climbed a short distance to a landing with two large stained-glass windows. From there the stairs doubled back in the opposite direction and climbed beyond his view to the second floor. Ahead to his left was the swinging door Dan had just used. Between the door and the stairs was a wall with a mirror, in which Cook’s reflection stared forlornly back at him. He wanted to lean back and cry out, “Is there no place for me here?”
All was silent. Cook could tiptoe out and be but a dim memory to them, not even a ship in the night but more like a piece of driftwood. He suddenly heard a monstrous wail from Dan. Then “No no no! No no no no!” Cook wondered if he was still watching the game or if he had switched to a documentary about torture. Another cry followed, and then a shout, apparently to Cook: “Why don’t you join me? I meant for you to join me.”
Before Cook could answer, Beth came down the stairs. It was a dramatic descent, more for the pent-up energy Cook brought to it than for any other reason. She was nice-looking, but in a comfortable, everyday sort of way. She wore a white sweatshirt and jeans. Like her husband, she had a wide-open, welcoming face. Her hair was a rich black. It was not long and flowing. Nor was it crazy with tarantula-leg curls. Nor was it severely short, to suggest she was neurotic or took drugs Cook had never heard of. Any of these styles and he would have been afraid of her. Her hair was simple—of medium length and straight, with a slight curl forward at the ears. Nothing special. Nothing scary.
“I’m Beth,” she said, extending her hand. She added with a laugh, “And I’m very nervous.”
“I’m Jeremy Cook, and I was too, but I’m not so much anymore.” Easy to be with—that summed her up. Cook had never had such an instant feeling of comfort with anyone.
“Have you met Dan?”
“Yes. He’s watching the game.” Cook quickly added, “I urged him to.”
“You say that as if I was going to go yell at him for it.”
Cook was about to deny this, but then he laughed and said, “You’re right. You read my thought.”
“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Read our thoughts?”
“I suppose it is,” said Cook, laughing again and wishing she would join him with a laugh of her own—just a little one, anyway. But she simply stood there. Maybe not so easy to be with, he thought.
Her eye fell on his luggage. “Let’s get you settled.”
Robbie, whose footsteps Cook heard coming down the stairs, appeared on the landing and said, “I’ll take him up, Mom.”
Beth turned to her son, but then she sniffed the air and said to Cook, “Do you smell something burning?” Before Cook could answer—he was going to say yes, now that she mentioned it he did smell it—she dashed through the swinging door.
“Cookies,” said Robbie from the landing. “Too bad. Want me to show you your room?”
“Sure.” Cook picked up his bags. But some interesting sounds from the kitchen halted him. “Hang on a second,” he said, and he set his bags down and took a few steps toward the door.
Robbie sensed right away what he was up to. “You gonna listen in on Mom and Dad?” His eyes widened.
“I wouldn’t call it … I wouldn’t …” Cook gave up. “Yes.” He reached the swinging door and opened it a crack, not enough to see anything—just enough to hear clearly. Some metallic slamming noises made him close it quickly. He glanced back at Robbie, who was tiptoeing to him with dramatic stealth. Cook was about to give it up, but then he heard voices and cracked the door open again. He strained to hear over Robbie’s noisy breathing right behind him.
“… believe this. Didn’t you hear the timer?” Beth made an exasperated sound.
“Yeah. I turned it off but I forgot to take them out.” Dan laughed. “Jesus, this is classic. He’s gonna think we’re idiots.”
“Why? For burning cookies?”
“No. For arguing already, when he just got here.”
“I’m not arguing. I’m just mad the cookies burned. This top batch is shot. Didn’t you smell them?”
“Not really. I was in the sun-room. The Cards lost.”
“How come you turned the timer off and didn’t take them out? That’s what I don’t get.”
“Well—”
“And why did you just leave him in there?”
Dan laughed. “Be sure to let me know when this becomes an argument. I want to be ready. Now, first, he told me it was okay to watch the game. We’re just supposed to do our thing. Second, knock it off or he’s gonna think I’m henpecked.”
“Henpecked? You just step out of ‘Dagwood’?”
“Okay. Pussywhipped.”
“Ugh. My favorite word.”
“You know what happened?” Dan sounded spontaneously cheered, heartened. “I just figured it out. I forgot the cookies because the phone was ringing. Oh, shit.” The cheer was gone. “Your mother’s on the phone.”
“Right now? I didn’t hear it ring.”
“You must have been in the shower.”
Beth made another exasperated noise. “I got out of the shower ten minutes ago. God.” Cook heard footsteps, then Beth on the phone apologizing and saying she would call back later. Then the sound of the phone being hung up. Then the rattle of a cookie sheet again.
“Where are you going?” To Cook’s surprise, Beth’s voice was almost free of anger. He wondered if her anger didn’t sound like anger (that would make observation tough, he thought), or if she simply wasn’t angry.
“Where do you think I’m going?” Dan’s voice came from much nearer than before—from just the other side of the swinging door. Cook hadn’t heard him approach, and he had to fight the impulse to back off. He was exerting some pressure on the door to keep it open, and a sudden swing in his direction would give him away. Robbie, not troubled by this consideration, reacted purely to the proximity of his father’s voice and backpedaled away from Cook up the stairs to the landing, where he threw himself down on his belly like Audie Murphy in To Hell and Back.
“Shouldn’t I be with him?” Dan said.
“Robbie took him up,” said Beth. “Don’t worry about him. What did my mother say?”
“Oh, the usual stuff. We didn’t talk long.”
“You mean she just waited all that time?”
<
br /> “Maybe I should go up and help him get settled. I want to show him I can be sociable.”
By degrees, Cook was babying the door back into its at-rest position. A few more sentences and it would be there.
Beth said, “I can’t imagine her sitting there and … I don’t know what’s worse—that she had to wait all that time or that she could hear everything going on. You think she heard him come?”
“No. No way. What’s he doing? Unpacking?”
“Probably. What do you think of him?”
“Seems okay,” said Dan. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think he’s good-looking?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Just tell me. I’m curious.”
“Yeah,” Beth said, but in a high nasal tone that vaguely qualified it. “He’s kind of cute.”
Cook found himself staring in the large wall mirror, right beside him, to see if this was true.
“These’ll be okay for the bake sale, don’t you think? Are you sure she didn’t hear him?”
“Yes,” said Dan. “Yes to everything. Relax, will you? She couldn’t have heard anything, except for the ball game. No real excitement there—your dad was probably watching it, too.”
“Why don’t you ever have him over to watch it with you?”
“Your dad? Nah.”
“You both enjoy it. You could watch it together.”
“Nah.”
“Why not?”
“It wouldn’t be the same.”
“What do you mean?”
“With him here I’d have to watch it.”
“But you love watching it. What do you mean, have to?”
“I like being able to turn it off if I want to.”
“But you never turn it off.”
“But I like being able to if I want to.”
“It seems like it’d be a painless way to be with him.”
“Nah.”
“Try it once. When do they play again? I’ll make a dip.”
“Clam dip?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Nah. What would your mother do?”
“I don’t know. Play with Robbie.”
The Full Catastrophe Page 4