The Futility Experts

by Margaret Broucek

  “It is?” she asked, as though he’d confirmed the unimaginable.

  “Oh, sure!”

  “What about the name?” They looked together at the name over the keyboard.

  “It’s a good name.”

  “See, I hadn’t heard of it,” she worried.

  “You can’t go wrong with a Klopotek,” he said, though he had no idea. Then he ran a scale on it and discovered it was crazily out of tune, but he didn’t want to change his mind in front of her, and he remembered the tuning lesson that week, which was about wrapping loose pins with cardboard and hammering them back in so any pin can be set to hold a tuning. “This is good wood, Mrs. Straub,” he said. “Buy this, and I will tune it.”

  # # #

  When he got home at nine, the house was dark except for the television glow in the living room, where Miles had assumed the gaming position. Tim found leftover macaroni in the fridge, nuked it, and carried it out on his way to bed. “You need to do other things,” he bellowed to penetrate his son’s ear pads.

  With his long, sticklike limbs, Miles looked like a praying mantis on its back. “I know,” he said, then tucked his avatar behind a ruined wall, laid his controller on the carpet, and arpeggioed the air to free up his fingers.

  Tim turned back toward him from the bottom of the stairs. “Maybe you should go into the military.”

  Miles let out a puff of air. “Ha.”

  “Women love a Marine.”

  “Why didn’t you do it?”

  “I tried.”

  “Ha.”

  “Ha,” Tim mocked him as he continued up to his bedroom, where he slipped out of his shoes and lay on the bed with the macaroni in the crook of his arm and the sniper book propped on his belly. He was going to reread it.

  He had left both his work and home numbers for Joe Masotta, but the phone by the bed wasn’t blinking about a voice mail. He thought he’d open the discussion by catching Joe up on the old gang and what everyone was doing. He would tell him that Maggie was a pharmacist. No surprise. She was always practical, as clarinetists are. He’d also seen Patty. He and Joe used to say that the best thing about their enormous instruments was that they could hide a boner, which they got often over Patty Papadopoulos when she sat her lovely ass in the folding chair in front of them and greased her French horn slides. “Patty’s a cop,” he’d tell Joe. He’d seen her on traffic detail once.

  When he made it up to the point in the book where the hero is told that another sniper will be replacing him on his fire team for a dangerous detail, Tim heard a key in the front door and then Mona saying, “That was fantastic!” followed by a thud like she had thrown herself against a wall.

  “I told you you should’ve come!” Vinnie chastised Miles.

  “Just the costumes, Miles!”

  “Dressed to kill. How many outfits? I cannot say.” Vinnie sounded like a commentator.

  “You would have hated it, but it was fabulous. A spectacle.”

  Vinnie sang, “‘If I could turn back ti-ime!’ Yo!”

  “I’m glad it was good,” Miles exhaled.

  “That woman is seventy,” Vinnie informed him. “So I am not old. Okay? Seventy! And the midsection on her? You know what, Miles? I am just a baby.”

  “Tim,” Mona shouted. “I’ve got good news for you.”

  Tim set his book on the floor and padded out into the hall.

  “She has fabulous news.” Vinnie beamed up at him.

  Mona clapped at the sight of him. “Daddy’s gonna pay for the parking space. He told me today! He’ll pay up to fifteen thousand. Now all you have to do is get them to sell it.”

  “Wow. That’s very nice.”

  “He doesn’t know why you ever bought this house with no space.”

  “And Cher was good?” The quick deflection.

  “In-cred-i-ble.” Vinnie said like it was four words.

  “Not to be matched,” Mona added on her way to the bathroom. “I’m gonna potty and then we’re gonna get the ball rolling.”

  Ironically, what Tim had first liked about Mona was her strong sense of self. Even as a teenager, when everyone else was trying on personality hats, Mona didn’t seek or need anyone’s approval. His friend Joe had met her when the Boston Children’s Chorus had sung Handel’s Messiah with the Youth Symphony and she’d come around to the back row and wanted to talk tuba. Why did Joe play it? Did it make his lips fuller? Then Joe started bringing her along when he and Tim went anywhere, and it became an automatic threesome, understood that if one of them went anywhere, the other two would join, even skinny-dipping in a pool where Mona was house-sitting. Unabashed, she was an exotic to the teen boys. The threesome did not extend to sex, however. She was Joe’s lover only. When Tim heard that Joe had made the Marine band, he wondered how Joe’s absence could play out for him and Mona. The very first night they went out after Joe left for boot camp, Tim and Mona worked each other up on the bench of a picnic table.

  “Okay,” she said, stepping out of her skirt at the foot of the bed, “call Andy and see if he’ll sell the spot. It’s only nine o’clock in California.” Andy Paik was the strip-mall dentist who, along with his ex-wife, Phyllis, owned the coveted parking spot. He’d moved to San Diego after the house next door had been foreclosed on. “We can’t miss out on this.” She was wild-eyed, like God had appeared to her in the john.

  When Andy Paik answered, he seemed genuinely pleased to hear from Tim. “How are you and Mona and Miles? I miss seeing you!”

  “We’re good! How’s California?”

  “Well, what can I say? It’s magical! It’s so much more relaxed here. What were we all killing ourselves for back East? You know? And people are more social here. Of course I miss Phyllis. I really loved her—such a beautiful woman.” Tim pictured Andy’s wide Korean face falling.

  “How’s my old house?” Andy asked, suddenly rejuvenated.

  “Kind of falling apart, really.”

  “Oh, really? Oh, that breaks my heart. I have so many wonderful memories of that house.” Every time Tim had caught sight of Andy, the guy was running away from the place, crossing the street to his car with his hand in the air to forestall any conversation, as he repeated, “I’m late, I’m late!”

  “Hey, I wanted to ask you about the driveway. Your old driveway? Do you still own that?”

  “Well, it was a separate sale from the house, since the space was carved out of the parking lot across the street.”

  “Did you pay cash for it?”

  “I think so, Tim, but I can’t remember how they worked all of that out at the closing.”

  “We’d love to buy it, Andy. Would you consider selling it if it has clear title?”

  Tim could hear him blowing air out of his infinite cheeks. “Well, sure! Why not? I can’t use it! But Phyllis is also on the deed, so she’d have to agree. She’s down in Mexico! Did you know that? Living in a ghost town!”

  “What would you take for it, Andy?”

  “Oh, gosh, I don’t know. What do you think it’s worth?”

  “I don’t want to mess around on this.” Mona nodded in determined agreement as he spoke. “We had a realtor look at it, and he said top dollar was ten thousand, and we’d be happy to give you that.” Mona popped two thumbs up.

  “Fine! But, listen. Text Phyllis. See if she’ll agree. She responds pretty well to texts.”

  Tim got the woman’s phone number and sent her a message about the driveway. Then he fell quickly asleep. He was awakened by the ding.

  “What is it?” Mona jerked herself over to face him as he felt around on the floor for the phone and then held it inches from his face.

  Hi Tim, Im advtising the space for 25K. Did you see the spot in Back Bay that went fr $560K????

  “It’s from Phyllis.”

  The pple who own the bar are interested in it…understandbly. Hwver, I lk you and Mona, wish we we’d been better aquainted.

  “What does she say?”

  “It’s super l
ong. I’ll let you read it after me.”

  Mbe you could’ve helped me flee Dr. Pain & his secret violence. Should’ve gvn you clue as to what wnt on inside 105, tho I’m sure you’d have found it impossible to believe tht your jolly sweet neighbor ws Bluebeard.

  “Does she agree to the price?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  I have nthing now. Mr. Hyde stopped payments on the house long ago WITHOUT MY KNOWLEDGE. I knew nothng. Myopic frm exquisite pain. Curled up in my rm. Now living in Mineral de Pozos, Mexico, in casita can barely afford. I hobble up a mountain every other day for physical therpy.

  Gentle Dr. Jekyll whom you waved to as he walked to car must hv pulled you aside on few occasions and shook his head over demented wife he dearly loved. I was recluse out of fear and immobilty! This is why you didnt know me except through his tales, whatever he conjured for you as you passed in the street.

  “What does she say?”

  “Hang on.”

  You once saw something. Once you opend your window onto my wrld. Do you recall??? Anyway, 25K will get you the spot.

  Kindly,

  Phyllis

  “She want’s twenty-five thousand.”

  “That’s crazy! It’s not worth that!”

  “Read it.” He handed her the phone.

  She put her glasses on. “What’s this, she’s advertising the space? The boys at the bar are interested?”

  “That’s made up.”

  Mona continued to read. “Dear God! That man beat her?” Finally she snapped her head to face him. “What did you see, Tim?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You saw something!”

  “I don’t know!” Tim rolled away. Then he soon rolled back. “It was a night you were performing. I was in bed, and I heard a woman screaming. But when I went and opened the window, Andy was just standing by his car with one of the back doors open—just standing there by himself—and he said, ‘Everything’s fine. Not to worry.’”

  “You should have called the police!”

  “You know, I would have, but she was so odd, I didn’t know what to think! And he was this mild-mannered guy! And after he said everything was fine, she didn’t say anything.”

  “You should’ve asked to speak with her.”

  “Well, yeah, now I can see that. Anyway, it’s twenty-five K.”

  “I cannot live here without that driveway, Tim. My nerves cannot take it.”

  After many minutes of silence, after he had shimmied back under the comforter and sighed and was just starting to let it all go and drift away, she asked, “Why did you buy this house?”

  His eyelids snapped open.

  “That house in Medford, with the professionally designed garden, why didn’t you buy that house?” she asked.

  “I believe you signed the papers, too.” He heaved away from her and packed the pillow over his ear.

  DAVIS

  Sasquatch is a bastardization of the Halkomelem word sásq’ets—Halkomelem being a First Nations language in British Columbia. Many other North American native peoples also had names for a large, hairy hominid, one who typically appeared to them only in times of trouble for their community. But without physical evidence, and because these hominids held a spiritual role in the native populations, scientists determined they were all imagined. Now let’s look at a similar story that took place in Indonesia. The only big difference here is actually quite tiny. What I mean to say is that the “imagined” hominids were only three feet tall as adults. According to the stories of the indigenous people living on the Indonesian island of Flores, the Ebu gogo, as they called the petite humans (and which loosely translates as “ravenous grandma”), were living among them as late as the sixteenth century, when Portuguese traders first arrived. Still other natives insist that the Ebu gogo were seen milling about into the twentieth century. According to legend, the hominids were hairy, with broad, flat noses, enormous mouths, and droopy breasts on the women, from which the “grandma” moniker likely came. They spoke in strange murmurs but could parrot anything said to them in other languages. They stole food from the modern humans and also took children, in hopes that they would teach them to cook. In the local stories, the Ebu gogo were so foolish that the children easily escaped and returned home. Eventually, the fed-up modern humans murdered them all, save perhaps a few who survive to this day, according to legend. None of these stories by the indigenous people were believed, of course, and scientists decided that the Ebu gogo had been monkeys. End of story. Until, that is, their bones were unearthed in a cave.

  # # #

  As he reviewed his Ebu gogo submission for a cryptozoology anthology, Davis wandered the Indonesian island of Flores in his imagination—the enormous rice paddies, the prehistoric komodo dragons, the volcanic lakes changing colors on a whim, red to blue to green—until he was reluctantly sucked back into his drab kitchen in Greenstown by some utterance of Megan’s, who was mooning over her iPhone on the other side of the table.

  “What?” he asked her.

  “I have almost thirty contacts,” she said, twirling a hank of hair around one ear. “I even have Eric’s number.”

  Davis snapped his laptop closed. “Dr. Lindstrom? Why do you have his phone number?”

  “He said we could call if we have any questions about the paper.”

  “Do not call him.”

  She smiled at the screen.

  “Do you hear me?”

  The whole cell phone debacle had happened because Jenny and Dr. Peggy had conspired against Davis. This was what he had decided. He’d replayed the phone conversation many times in his head.

  He and Jenny had been on opposite sides of the desk in his office at the college. They always called Dr. Peggy from there so that Megan could not overhear, accidentally or not.

  Peggy had told them, “Better if she gets a phone while Mother and Father can help her understand how to use it and how not to use it, I think. Why don’t you make learning how to use the phone her special time?” Special time had been Megan’s only successful motivator. It was half an hour each evening during which Megan did something—artwork or a craft project or performing a song—and Davis or Jenny paid exclusive attention to her.

  “Did Carla have a phone?” Davis asked about Peggy’s daughter, now an adult, who also had disinhibited RAD. This was how they and others had found Peggy, through her book, Dear to Strangers, Deadly at Home, in which she described how little adopted Carla moved from being a child who ate like a dog, smeared her feces around the house, and repeatedly stabbed her sister to being a fairly normal adult, capable of having healthy relationships with others.

  “No, but phones weren’t all the rage back then.”

  “Peggy,” Davis said, “I just feel that trying to control her with that phone is going to be—it’s going to put me right out of my mind. You know, right now she can use the computer in the kitchen when one of us is in there, but that’s it. And believe me, we have to watch. We have to stand there and watch. She had one site up that—”

  “Father, will she be living with you and Mother throughout her life?”

  “That’s what I said!” Jenny agreed.

  Davis’s voice took on a high, scraping sound. “It’s the very last year for us to exert any sort of influence. And I just see her slipping away with a phone before she’s ready, before she’s mature enough.”

  “What do you think, Mother?”

  “If she can’t keep up with the other girls socially, she won’t mature at all. That’s what I think. If they arrange to go out, they text and all of that, and she won’t know.”

  “They’re not texting her!” Davis flashed her a look of disgust.

  “That’s right! Not without a phone!” Jenny jolted. “That’s my point!”

  “They wouldn’t text her. That’s what I mean. They wouldn’t text her.”

  “Why wouldn’t they text her, Father?”

  He sighed. “Look, what’s your recommendation on this?” />
  They heard some crunching on the line, like the woman was eating a large nut. “This phone might just be your dream vehicle for behavior modification. It’s yours to give and also to take. Use it before she becomes eighteen and leaves. Because then”—the crunching continued.

  “I’m sorry, then what, Dr. Peggy?” Jenny cocked her head.

  “What?” Peggy asked.

  “She’s set loose upon the world,” Davis answered for her. “Our greatest hope and fear.”

  Davis now realized he had been ignoring Megan for much of this particular special time. “Do you want to work on Dr. Lindstrom’s video blog assignment What Is Blank?”

  She slid her phone across the table. “I need you to put Snapchat on my phone.”

  “Is this for class?” He’d recently put Words with Friends on the phone because her English teacher wanted them all to play it.

  “No, it’s for my friends. You send videos and pictures, but only to people you know.”

  “You can do that in email or on Facebook.” He slid the phone back to her.

  “No, these disappear! As soon as someone looks at it, it disappears.”

  “I don’t know if that’s good.”

  “You always say, don’t put anything on the Internet that you don’t want a future employer to see, so this is good, ’cause now it disappears!”

  “I’ll look into it.”

  “It’s free, Dad. Everyone I know uses it. Like, every single person except me.”

  “Everyone? Even the science nerds?”

  “Totally. Everyone.”

  He picked up her phone, found the app on the app store, and typed in the secret password. “How are your Words with Friends games going?”