by Alan Cumyn
“Do you need any help?” Ray asked. Patiently, in a friendly way, in no hurry to move.
“No. No, I have to do it myself. But thank you, you’ve been a wonderful help, we really appreciate it.” Bob shook his hand and it felt true, it felt warm and connecting in an unfamiliar, grounded way. He turned and waved and walked off and Ray stood watching him, smiling, just beyond the tape.
Bob headed to the back of the house, then when he was safely out of sight darted to the basement window. It was cracked; part of a pane had fallen out – probably broken in his mad scramble to escape the night before. He bent down gingerly and pushed the window open, cautiously reached his right leg in while trying to avoid the bits of broken glass. The workbench had toppled over, he knew that. He knew he was going to have to ease himself in, balance the window open while gently lowering himself without the benefit of being able to step on anything on the way down. He was set in his mind to do that. He knew he shouldn’t take much time, but he couldn’t hurry, either, and while he was thinking that he shouldn’t hurry his support foot slipped on some mud and he fell about three inches onto the windowsill. It wasn’t far, but his legs were split and the point of contact included his testicles, which his full body weight slammed. The pain was immediate and shocking: he gasped once, wildly, for air, and managed a low, terrible moan, and clutched awkwardly even as he was falling, his body helpless as a bag of wood, and struck his head almost soundlessly on the concrete floor lost in the darkness below.
35
“I wish you wouldn’t keep missing me!” his mother said, and she turned her head just as Donny got the spoon to her lips.
“I’m not missing you,” Donny said.
“You are. You’re preoccupied!” she said. She raised her eyebrows and flapped her gums. “I wish men would talk about things.”
Donny wiped her chin with a napkin.
“Your father was a great man for the silent treatment!” she announced. Then she said, “This is terrible, by the way. You might as well shoot me now if this is the sort of rubbish you’re going to feed me.”
“You liked it yesterday,” Donny said. It was mashed cauliflower soup with mushrooms and carrots and a light touch of garlic and a secret vitamin E tablet crushed up and hidden.
“It’s baby’s mash. I would kill for a steak and a glass of wine.”
“It would kill you,” Donny said, holding the spoon patiently in front of her, waiting for the right opportunity. “Besides, you need teeth to eat steak.”
“You could just put it in the blender!” she said. “It’s what you do with everything else anyway!”
“There is a steak in here,” he said. “Can’t you taste it?”
Her mouth fell open and he shoved the spoon in, wondered for a moment if the mush would come sputtering back in his face. But she swallowed it down grimly.
“If you took away the hockey scores,” she said, “he could go for days without talking. Men are extraordinarily shallow.”
She accepted another spoonful, then another and another. Then she had a small sip of water.
“Where do you go at night?” she asked finally.
“I have to go do a dishwasher pretty soon,” he said, another spoonful ready. She looked at it with slightly crossed eyes.
“This is Pablum,” she muttered. “I thought I was through with that when I turned one.”
“You have to boost your immune system,” he said, and she made a noise with her lips, Bppbbptt!
“I asked you something,” she said. “And you just changed the subject. I hate to think what you get up to when you go out.”
He stopped talking. They were both looking at the spoon, balanced now in mid-air. She finally took it in her mouth. He wiped her cheek again, handed her the glass of water.
“It’s become quite cold,” she said.
“I don’t do anything at night,” he said. “I walk around, that’s all.”
“Because some men,” she said, “some very lonely men -”
“I know.”
“I don’t think you do. I hope not! There are men who will pay for-”
“I know, Ma.”
“Thank God your father was never like that.”
“Yes.”
“He could out-silence Gibraltar, but he was never that way.”
“I just go walking. I think a lot and I walk.”
“So you are pining,” she said, corkscrewing the word. “I have to tell you, in all honesty, there is nothing more pathetic to a woman than a man who is pining and mooning and a hopeless Milquetoast.”
“I know.”
“You will never get anywhere with a woman by -”
“I know!”
“Then why do you do it?” she said in exasperation. “You know and you know and yet there you are walking about in the middle of the night.”
“I’m just trying to make sense of things,” he said quietly. “I know it’s not smart and not attractive and it’s clumsy and stupid, but it’s what I know to do. I’m not a complete idiot. Are you going to finish this or not?”
“I’ve had quite enough,” she said, and pushed the tray away. “I met your father at a dance,” she said. “It was a cold, wild night and he was terrifying the way he looked at me. Don’t young people go to dances any more? I was just so frightened. But I stared right back at him. I was shaking like a leaf when he walked over. I thought I was going to overturn the table, my hands were so wobbly. And he was a wreck. He told me later on. He was more afraid of that particular moment than any time he spent on scaffolding twenty storeys above the ground. But he went through it. He blurted out the words and took my hand and he mangled my feet till past midnight, I thought we were both going to burst. It wasn’t like dancing today. We were hot as the sun in mid-August. You either stand up to it or you melt away.”
“I know,” he said. “I know,” and nearly dropped the tray in his hurry to get out. The course of one’s lifetime is like a great, winding river, and the individuals who are maladapted, who fight every turn, try to flow uphill, who overreach or fail to stretch at critical times will end up wasted in some inappropriate, rocky field or stagnating in some dark place, crowded with silt and cans of beer. Donny was thinking about one of Waylun Zhi’s most recent lectures. He was on his belly on Mr. Hopkins’s filthy kitchen floor checking the water hook-up under the new dishwasher and thinking about Julia, too, about how terribly much he wanted her and so the passion was unbalanced, it would never come to fruition. He would always be forcing or running away. It would never again be like that night when he had simply walked into her bedroom and there she was, half-asleep, naked, waiting, and she wanted him to touch her and he did, because it was a mistake, she didn’t realize what was happening. It was just a matter of timing and it would never happen again, because Donny Clatch doesn’t get Julia Carmichael. He doesn’t get her when she’s Julia Carmichael and he doesn’t get her when she’s Julia Sterling. He doesn’t get her because he never knows the right time to act.
He got up on his knees and pressed the button on the electronics panel to start the machine, then he went down on his belly again to check for drips. He was almost finished. He wanted so much to be on his way, to hurry to the lumber store and buy the plywood then head over to Julia’s house to work on the windows as she had asked. He really wanted her to be there, just her, without insurance men or husbands, just Julia. She’d asked him to work on her house during this difficult time. She’d stepped up and kissed him on the cheek and she’d looked so vulnerable, like she’d wanted him to embrace her.
He rarely was in real life, but when he was standing for long periods, when he was careful about his breathing and how he held his arms, when he could feel the energy circulation in his body, gentle and deep, the way Waylun Zhi described it – when all those things were happening he did have a slight sense of being somewhat nimble. Perhaps. An inkling. Of balancing. Of having a vague idea of when might be the right time, of what might be the right thing.
; That powerful, effortless sense of flow.
There was no leak. The motor ran fine. The dishwasher was in place and level, he hadn’t scratched the walls or the floor, he’d followed the building code and hooked the machine through the drain at the sink, even though it had meant outfitting new pipes over what the last idiot had done, which was to drain separately using pipes too narrow for the job. He screwed the bottom panel in tight and offered to take the wood and cardboard crate away. Mr. Hopkins, a retired auditor suffering from some kind of health problem that made him wear a scarf around his neck, even indoors, thought over the matter with painful deliberation.
“It doesn’t matter,” Donny said amiably. “Most people don’t like to keep the crate. I can take it away for you, or if you like I can put it in your basement.”
“What would you use it for?” Mr. Hopkins asked. He stood leaning on a dark-brown cane and the dome of his head was flaking.
“I just recycle the cardboard,” Donny said cheerfully. “I usually keep some of the wood. I’ve got so many little projects on the go. Sometimes I make wooden toys for the kids of friends. That sort of thing.”
“Do you want to buy the crate from me?” Mr. Hopkins asked, and then he coughed into a wrinkled grey handkerchief that he pulled from his drooping grey pants, gobbed up and coughed again. He looked at Donny with pressing eyes.
“No. No,” Donny said, trying to stay friendly and light. Trying to think of the right thing at the right time. “It’s just if you want me to take it off your hands.”
“I’ll sell it to you for twenty-five dollars,” Hopkins said.
“No. I’ll take it downstairs for you if you like,” Donny repeated. “Or I could just leave it right here. Your machine’s working. Nice and quiet.”
“You’ve got no dishes in it,” Hopkins said.
“I’m just running the cycle,” Donny replied.
“How do you know it’s working if you didn’t put dishes in it?”
Donny looked at him, grinned, knelt down, and started to collect his tools. “I don’t know how well it cleans,” he said. “That’s up to the manufacturer. But it’s hooked up. All wired and ready to go.” He closed his metal tool box, stood up again. It was a tiny, dark kitchen with warped counters, a sink full of dirty dishes, ashtrays on the countertop overflowing with cigarette butts. The curtains were ancient yellow chintz, evidence of a wifely presence from years ago, perhaps, or maybe a last feminine touch from the previous owners.
“You are not going to charge me the full hundred dollars,” Hopkins said. He had his chin out as if daring Donny to take a swipe at him. “There’s a scratch on the corner there. You did that!”
Donny looked at where the old man was pointing with his cane. There was a mark, but it wasn’t a scratch; it was a bit of glue stain left over from the manufacturer’s sticker. Donny told him, but he refused to believe it, said it was a bad scratch that ruined the value of the machine.
“You can just wipe it off!” Donny said. “Here. Have you got a rag?” He looked on the counter, in the dirty sink, on the stovetop. There was days-old soup and hardened remains of spilled sauce and a topless, fuzzy jar of jam, but no rag, nothing to wipe with.
“I don’t supply the plumbing materials!” Mr. Hopkins said. “This is outrageous.”
Donny bent down and rubbed hard with his thumbnail until most of the alleged scratch had disappeared. Then he stood up again and said, “It’s just glue.”
“Well, you only worked on it an hour,” Hopkins said. “I’m not going to pay you a hundred dollars for only an hour’s work. Do you even have a university degree?”
Donny swallowed hard, ran his tongue over his front teeth, took a deep breath. “It would have been a hundred dollars if I’d taken three hours to do it,” he said calmly. “It’s a flat rate. When I install a dishwasher it’s a hundred dollars. You might find someone who’ll do it for less, but they might do a crappy job, too.”
“I’ll give you seventy,” Mr. Hopkins said. He shuffled a bit on his cane, appeared to be looking around Donny at the dishwasher to see if he might find some other supposed scratch or dent to bring the price down even further.
“It’s a hundred dollars,” Donny said quietly. “I quoted you the price, you agreed to it. It’s a flat rate, and I’ve done the work.”
“Seventy,” the old man said, and shook his head as if disgusted to have to pay that much. “And you can take the crate if you want it.” His lip was trembling, and his skin was chalky grey, the colour of death. It was probably a battle for him to stay on his feet that long.
“It’s a hundred dollars,” Donny repeated. “I’ll take the crate off your hands if you want me to, but I’m not going to buy it for thirty dollars. I dare you to get twenty guys with university degrees and have them hook up this dishwasher and see if one of them – one of them – does it right without flooding your kitchen or electrocuting himself.”
“That,” Mr. Hopkins said, “is a bad attitude.”
He put his head down. He was reaching in his pocket, he was going to bring out his money, but Donny had suddenly had enough. He said, “Forget it,” and walked past the man, had to keep himself from upsetting the cane with his foot.
“Come on!” Hopkins said, and Donny could hear the rustle of bills behind him. “You’ll never get anywhere with that kind of attitude. Here’s seventy dollars, you’ve earned it!”
“Keep it,” Donny said. “Buy yourself a hooker!” and he slammed the door behind him, nearly broke the window.
It had been a while since he’d been jerked like that. He was angry driving, angry in the lumber store, he wanted to calm himself before he got to Julia’s, but he couldn’t. Not with breathing, not with soothing thoughts, not with roaring breakneck into traffic and leaning on his horn. He’d never get anywhere. Old Hopkins knew it and Donny knew it. He was pathetic. He had no hope. He’d be screwed and overlooked and forgotten every day of his life because he never got the hang of the right time, the right thing. He was disjointed, awkward and out of step, unco-ordinated; even when he was in the right time and doing the right thing it was because of a mistake, it wasn’t really what was supposed to happen.
When he got to Julia’s house she wasn’t there. No one was there. There was a sleek black Porsche on the road that he almost backed into, he was so angry and out of sorts. That was the kind of neighbourhood Julia lived in, black Porsches parked on the street. He got out of his truck and walked past the hazard tape to the door, looked at the first of the windows that needed his attention, began to measure with undue precision – they were Julia’s windows, he wanted somehow for her to look at his work and think about him.
It was getting cold, so he went back to the truck to put on a jacket and got the plywood while he was there. He measured and sawed with grim efficiency, looking around every so often in case she arrived, in case it suddenly became the right time. But it didn’t. He could’ve simply nailed the boards in, but he screwed them instead because it was more secure, more meticulous … even though she’d never notice the difference. It was an absurd, hopeless little detail.
Some kids came by and stared from behind the yellow tape and a cat investigated him when he was in the backyard. It took him nearly two hours and he would charge Julia one hundred and twenty dollars, which was fair, since the lumber had cost sixty-five. He was giving her a break on his hourly rate. It wasn’t her fault that her house had burned down, that she used to be goddamn gorgeous, that she’d married stupidly – lots of women did that. Donny wasn’t going to say a thing. He’d just look at her and maybe, maybe she’d see somehow that he was a decent guy, a fair guy, with a good heart and strong hands, and he wasn’t educated but he knew a thing or two, he wasn’t stupid or full of himself. What was wrong with all that?
Nothing except the timing, which he would never get right.
36
Julia looked at the caverns and craters in her face, the gaping pores, the sickly age marks, the dried, shocked, drained, ravaged
, pale, washed-out, horrible skin exposed in the mirror before her. She was sitting in Brenda and Doug’s guest bedroom, at the little girls’ mauve vanity in the corner with the chipped pink ballerina music box and the tarnished antique silver comb-and-brush set. Matthew was somewhere; perhaps Brenda was feeding him. He seemed to have made himself completely at home. If Julia really set her mind to it, she could say where he was, and what time it was, and whether or not she’d eaten dinner herself. But she didn’t set her mind, she let it fall and float in the ugliness of the present moment. It was the only way she could think of it: the desperate ugliness of this reality. Her plain, unadorned, abandoned face. She used to be pretty, she knew it; she used to restrain herself in her choice of clothing, in her presentation, since she didn’t want to be judged just by the lustre of her skin and hair, the symmetry and fashionableness of her face, the size and shape of her breasts. It was her mind she wanted to count.
Her mind! Where was her mind? What was she thinking when her husband was clogging up the drain with his body hair? When he was parading around in women’s clothing? Some of it must have been hers, she realized suddenly – her purple slip, of course, and other things too had gone missing. Where was her mind when he was carrying on with some undergrad “poetical and sexual anthropologist,” whatever that was? All her brain cells were dripping out through lactation, they were sliding into Matthew’s hungry mouth, she was drifting along in a dopey fog and had to have a friend show her on the Internet exactly what her husband was up to.
He hadn’t called. Everyone else had. Julia had asked Brenda to make a few discreet inquiries, and now the stories were pouring in – a dozen friends connected to the department had phoned to report that Barbara Law had seen him running through the halls in drag, that he’d been drunk and incoherent in front of his students, that Sienna Chu was fucking half the department, that she was bisexual, that no one had seen her. That Bob had bolted, no one knew where he was either. That he’d run off with Sienna, that they were driving to the States, that the bitch had gone to New York with him last weekend to the Poe conference, everyone knew …