Twelve
“I Pillow. You Pillow. He Pillows.”
Cook recited this conjugation in rhythm with his steps as he came down from the third floor. Through his window, while clinging to the receiver, he had seen the two subjects of imminent Pillowing return—first Dan, full of energy, hauling large rolls of something over his shoulder from the van to the front porch, then Beth, who moved heavily as she walked from her car to the house, carrying two bags of groceries and looking tired. (Cook’s standoff with Pillow ended just as Beth drove up, but with no clear victor. As they breathed at each other, a call-waiting signal came in at Pillow’s end. Without a word to Cook, Pillow put him on hold and took the call. Cook pretended that Pillow had thereby conceded and immediately hung up his own phone.)
“I Pillow. You Pillow. Hi, Beth.”
She was holding the grocery bags and looking at him curiously from the bottom of the stairs. “Ah,” she said. “You’re back in the world of the speaking. Good.” She groaned. “Jesus, it’s hot.” She headed for the kitchen. Cook followed. She was apparently unaware he was behind her, until the swinging door banged into him. When she turned around he assumed it was to apologize. But instead she just frowned.
“Can you put the milk in the refrigerator?” she said. “I’m wiped out.” She set the bags on the counter and went into the sun-room, where the air conditioner was on. She shut the French doors behind her and threw herself into the recliner.
Cook bristled—not at Beth’s words but at the way she had said them. He hated “entitled” people, and she had just acted entitled. As he took the milk from one of the bags and opened the refrigerator, he struggled to match this impression with his overall view of her. The day before, she had spontaneously vacuumed his car. Entitled people didn’t do things like that. And they didn’t root through vacuum cleaner bags for mementos after being told not to bother. Still, right now he had a bad feeling—the resentfulness of grudging servitude—and while it wasn’t the same bad feeling he had already known with Beth (guilt for having let her down in some way), it was a close kin to it. He slammed the refrigerator door shut, threw a scowl through the French doors at the top of Beth’s head, just visible over the recliner back, and went to see what Dan was doing out in front.
“It’s a monster, Jeremy,” Dan called to him from the street. He was untying the rope holding a long ladder to the top of the van. “A sixty-footer. I’ve rented it to do the roof work myself. There’s a high school kid down the street who helps me with stuff like this. I’ll call him.”
“I want to help,” Cook said, walking toward him.
“No. It’s a monster.”
“I want to.”
Dan shook his head. “You’d hate it.”
“Let me help.”
“Okay, then. Stop lollygagging and get your butt over here.” Dan laughed.
Cook walked to the front of the van, where the ladder projected over the hood, and began to untie the knot at the other end of the rope. Dan explained that he had done some investigating around the neighborhood and learned that leaking tile roofs such as his were best treated “holistically”—by removing the tiles, replacing the underlying tar paper, and reinstalling the tiles. He said he would start on the dormer over Cook’s room.
“I should tell you something,” Dan said. He was gathering his end of the rope into tidy long loops. “Beth and I had a fight this morning.”
“What about?”
Dan scrunched his face up. Before he could speak, Beth called from the front door, “Honey! Phone. It’s Bruce.”
Dan made a strange, deep noise and went to take the call. Cook gathered the rest of the rope. Dan came back out and called to him, “Take a break, Jeremy. They need me at work, believe it or not. We’ll get the ladder later. I’ve got to go change.”
“Why wouldn’t I believe it?”
Dan went back inside. Cook wasn’t sure if Dan had heard him. He hurried to the house, leaving the coil of rope on the front porch, and went upstairs, arriving at the second floor landing just as Dan closed the bedroom door.
Cook walked up to the door and knocked. “Why wouldn’t I believe it?” he asked.
“You come in here and you’re gonna get bare-assed.”
“I’m used to it,” said Cook, sounding like a wily veteran of many campaigns in discordant households, though in truth his only experience in this line had been glimpsing the bare bottoms of babies at the Wabash Institute. “Why wouldn’t I believe it?”
Dan laughed in a strained soprano—an awful laugh.
“Tell me about your work,” Cook said. “You haven’t said a word about it.” He heard the opening and closing of dresser drawers.
Dan said, “The contract with your agency said the bedroom was off limits.”
“Come on. Talk.”
“Fuck off.”
Cook stared at the wood grain of the door. He finally went downstairs and opened the French doors into the sunroom. Beth turned and looked at him. Before he had taken a step, she said “What” in a low, short voice. Semantically it fell somewhere between “What do you want?” and “Get out.” He got out.
He wandered until he came to rest in front of the living room window, where he stared out at the park. He heard Dan hurrying down the stairs, and he watched him go out the door toward the van. But then Dan stopped in his tracks. He turned around, came back inside, and went through the kitchen to the sun-room. Cook was right behind him as he opened the French doors.
“Honey,” Dan said, “can I take your car?”
Beth looked up from the recliner, where she had been reading a magazine. “Close the door. You’re letting the air out.”
Dan obeyed, letting Cook squeeze in behind him without exactly encouraging him to. “I need your car. I’m kind of in a hurry.”
“When are you going to put the air conditioner in the bedroom?” Beth asked.
“Soon. Listen, the van—”
“There’s no privacy here. I want a room with an air conditioner where I can get some privacy.” She managed to say this without looking at Cook.
“Okay. I’ll take care of it as soon as I can. I’ve got about six different things going on. The van has a loose ladder on it. I need your car.”
“Can’t you take it off?”
“I’ll get all pitted up.”
“Why didn’t you take it off before you changed?”
“Because I forgot.” Dan took a deep breath. “Look, do you need your car?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What is there that you might need it for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you have any specific plans?”
“No. I just like the option of being able to go somewhere if I want to.”
“I knew you were going to say ‘option,’” Dan said, stamping his foot. “I knew it.”
Beth stared at him.
Cook said, “I have a number of questions I would like to ask at this point.”
“How about some answers?” Dan snapped at him. He stormed through the kitchen. Cook glanced at Beth. She watched Dan impassively. Cook followed Dan, and from the porch he watched him haul himself onto the roof of the van, squat down, and heave the ladder off it with a huge groan. It landed in the ivy with a clang, making several of the neighborhood dogs bark in protest. Dan jumped down, got in the van, and drove off.
Cook went back into the sun-room. Beth was reading her magazine, but turning the pages at a speed that suggested she was getting little pleasure from it.
Cook sat on the arm of the couch. “Why did you give Dan such a hard time about your car?”
“You heard my reason,” she said without looking up from her magazine.
“Were you mad because your brother ordered him to come in to work?”
“Bruce doesn’t order him to do things. They’re partners.”
“Do you mind that he went?”
“Why would I mind?” She turned a magazine page impatiently.
�
��Because he’s supposed to stay here and work on your marriage.”
She gave a little snort.
“Dan said you had a fight this morning. What was it about?”
“Do you mind?” Beth said nastily. “Do you mind?”
This clearly meant “Get out,” so he did, wondering as he closed the doors behind him how he was supposed to Pillow if everyone refused to talk to him.
He went up to his room. It was hot and stuffy. He threw open the balcony door in hopes of a breeze. Beth’s complaint about the air conditioning had struck Cook as another example of entitled behavior, but now he found himself wondering when Dan would put one in his room. Which proved … something. That there were many sides to the arguments in this house, he supposed. And that as much as he hated to do it, he would have to be open to entertaining the opposite of the view he had just entertained.
He stepped out onto the balcony. Through the trees a flash of orange caught his eye as it went around a corner of the house across the street. He sighed. The phone rang. Beth got it after one ring. A minute later, she went out the front door, carrying her purse. She walked quickly to her car and drove off—exercising her option.
Not quite an hour later, Cook looked up from the novel he had been trying to read. He heard the crunch of acorns under tire wheels slowing in front and the slamming of a car door. He looked out his balcony door and saw Beth walk into the house. A moment later, some mildly dissonant music drifted up the stairs. He considered going downstairs, but fearing another dose of “Do you mind?,” he closed his door against the music and went back to his novel.
About a half hour later, he heard another crunch of acorns. He set his book down and went to the balcony. Dan’s van was back. Cook watched him get out and walk to the house. Cook picked up his book and inserted the old postcard from Paula that he always used as a bookmark. Then he headed downstairs.
The piece that Beth was now listening to was by some heavy German, and it had been trying to climax for several minutes. Cook had heard it begin to end from his room, and now, finally, it did, just as he reached the bottom of the stairs. Beth and Dan were in the living room, and they had been talking loudly over the music. They probably hadn’t heard him approach, and because they were at the far end, near the dining room, he was just out of sight in the entryway. On impulse he froze in his tracks with the final chord.
“… kind of thing Bruce always does,” Dan said. “But I think it’ll be okay. Where’s Jeremy?”
“Up in his room.”
“What’d you two do?”
“Nothing.”
“You didn’t talk?”
“Not really.”
“Do you think he’s learning anything?”
“I don’t know. Bits and pieces maybe.”
“What’s the activity today?”
“Search me. He’s been asking questions. Maybe that’s it.”
“Sounds dumb.”
“Yeah.”
There was a pause. Cook barely breathed.
“I like him,” Dan said brightly. “Do you still think he’s odd?”
“Yeah,” said Beth.
There was another pause.
“Yeah,” Dan said, apparently having thought his way to agreement.
“I can’t get a handle on him,” said Beth. “Is he out of it because he’s an intellectual, or is he just out of it?”
“I didn’t tell you,” said Dan, “he’d never heard of Billy Joel.”
“You’re kidding.”
“We were listening to a tape in the van. He’d never heard of him. And he thought reggae was a guy.”
“What guy?”
Dan laughed. “Nobody in particular. He just thought it was the name of a guy.”
Beth chuckled. “Have you noticed how he wears the same clothes? He’s worn those khakis three days now.”
“Are they dirty?” asked Dan.
Cook looked down at his pants.
“I don’t know,” said Beth. “That’s not the point. “He just—”
“He told me he hates food.”
“What?” said Beth.
“Doesn’t believe in it. Wants nothing to do with it.”
“Yeah? Seems to me he’s been chowing down pretty well at the table. Listen, have you heard him talk to himself?”
“No,” said Dan. “Wait—yeah. In the shower.”
“What’d he say?”
“Something about Timbuktu.”
“He was talking about pillows when he came downstairs this morning.”
“Really? Doesn’t he have a pillow on his bed?”
“Of course he does.”
“Why was he talking about them, then?”
“How should I know? He talks to himself so much he’s probably run out of subjects.”
“Hey, I’ve got an idea. Robbie should send him in to ‘Our Own Oddities.’”
Beth laughed loudly. “That’s funny,” she said. This was followed by some kissing noises.
The phone rang.
“Probably Bruce,” Dan said. “He was going to call if he ran into any more trouble.” Dan made the same strange guttural noise he had made earlier, when Beth had called him to the phone. Cook recognized it this time: it was the name “Bruce” pronounced with a rasping elongation of the vowel. Dan went through the dining room into the kitchen. Cook listened from the entryway.
“Hello?” Dan said. “Hi, Rose.…” A fall in Dan’s tone made Cook visualize a shoulder sag. “Yeah,” he continued. “I’m home again. Home again, home again, hippety-hop. … Yeah, working on the house, spending some time with Beth. I’ll get her.” Cook heard the receiver clang on the floor, as if Dan had more or less tossed it there.
Cook decided to reveal himself at this point and walked through the entryway into the living room. Beth had gone to the radio and turned it on, and some screechy high strings were a nice background to the terror on her face when she turned around and jumped at his sudden appearance.
“Sorry,” he said.
She gave him a funny look. Dan appeared from the dining room, gave Cook his own look of mild surprise, and told Beth her mom was on the phone.
As Beth left the room, Cook said, “She seems to call a lot.”
“Once a day,” said Dan. “Just like a vitamin. The thing is I always seem to be the one to answer it when it’s her.”
“How do you two get along?”
Dan shrugged and leaned against the fireplace mantel. “She doesn’t know what to do with me. She likes me, I guess, but she probably finds me a mystery.”
Cook was surprised at Dan’s answer. It wasn’t strange that he gave just one point of view about the relationship, but it was strange that he gave her point of view instead of his own.
“How do you feel about her?”
“Don’t ever ask me that question.”
“Why not?”
“Because a husband sees his mother-in-law as the essence of his wife’s rotten qualities. Whenever Beth is a bitch, I’ll think, ‘Hi ya, Rose.’ Or I’ll hum ‘Mighty Lak a Rose.’”
“But what about Beth’s good qualities? Can’t the mother-in-law get credit for those?”
“Nah. I see those as spontaneous. That’s who Beth would be all the time if her mother hadn’t messed her up.”
“That’s probably not fair to Rose.”
“Who cares about being fair to Rose? I’m not married to Rose.”
Cook thought about this. “I see. Yes, that makes sense. It exonerates Beth. It’s a way of preserving your marriage.”
Dan gave Cook a goofy look. “Now why would I want to do a damn fool thing like that?”
Cook laughed lightly. They had both been standing, and he sat down on the couch. “What happened at work?” he asked.
Dan had moved as if intending to sit down as well, but he suddenly converted his motion into a mere pace, with an awkward hitch at the moment of shift. “Just a little problem that needed some attention.”
“Ah,” said Cook. �
�That roots it firmly for me. I know exactly what you mean.”
Dan gave him a quizzical look. A silence fell.
Beth came back into the room. As she sat down, Cook said to her, “I’m experiencing topic failure.”
“Sounds bad,” said Beth.
“I was asking Dan about his work—”
“‘Topic failure’?” Dan interrupted. “Is that a standard term, or did you make it up?”
“You’re just changing the subject,” Cook said.
“I’m changing the subject,” Dan admitted. “But I’m not just changing the subject. I’m interested.”
Cook hesitated, then decided to go along, for the moment. “It’s standard. It’s what happens when someone raises a topic and it gets a minimal response—or none at all.” He looked at Beth. “It happens to women a lot.”
“I know,” she said.
Dan said, “You mean, like out in the world? At parties? That sort of thing?”
“No,” said Cook. “In the marriage.”
Dan looked pained by the idea.
“Women work hard at conversation,” Cook went on. “They’re always putting forward topics for discussion, a lot more than their husbands do, and the topics fail more often. They just die. You read transcripts and you get the impression of big brutes just mumbling while their wives work like the devil at making a conversation.”
“Tell me about it,” Beth said sarcastically.
Dan pursed his lips. “Maybe the women’s topics aren’t as interesting as the men’s.”
Beth made some noises.
“No,” said Cook. “Sometimes a husband and a wife will raise the very same topic in the course of a conversation. When the wife raises it, it dies. When the husband raises it, it takes off. It all has to do with the spouse’s response.”
“Do you see that happening here?” Dan asked.
“Why don’t you ask me?” said Beth.
“I’m asking him.”
“Why don’t you ask me?”
“Because you’d just bitch me up.”
“You’re right. I would.”
There was a pause. Cook waited a moment, then said to Dan, “I haven’t observed it here, but I haven’t been looking for it either.”
Dan made a face. “That doesn’t tell me much. Look, if it was a glaring problem—if I ignored Beth all over the place—you’d have seen it, right?”
The Full Catastrophe Page 15