The Futility Experts

by Margaret Broucek

  “Christ, Joe, how the hell are ya?” Tim stood up. “It’s been a long time, Joe.”

  “The note says someone wants to interview me?”

  “Well, yeah, as I said to your guy earlier—and I left three messages with that guy—but as I told him, I work for a magazine that a lot of marching-band directors read. It’s Bell’s Up, which is what some directors say instead of horns up, I guess.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Yeah. So my boss, The Publisher, she wants to interview you as the keynote to the big marching-band directors’ convention, and it’s happening the morning before you perform in Boston.” He laughed. “She’s been cyberstalking you.”

  “I’ll do it,” Joe said.

  “You will? Hey, that was easy. I didn’t know if after all this time you’d even call me back. Heck.” Tim picked up a pen and started to tap dots onto the Bells Up cover girl’s cheeks, a high school clarinetist. “I can build things up in my imagination, I guess.”

  Joe wasn’t talking.

  “I’ll tell you, I look at your life, and it’s beautiful!”

  Finally Joe spoke: “Tell me more about The Publisher. Anything I should watch out for?”

  “How much time ya got, Joe? She’s a nut job. But there will be a lot of dedicated band directors there who’ll really benefit from hearing you talk.”

  “How’s she a nut job?”

  Then Tim told Joe all about the forbidden words and the Selectrics and the light bulbs. “And she doesn’t even like music. She listens to talk radio.”

  He heard Joe tapping away on a keyboard. When that stopped, Joe asked, “How’s Mona?”

  “Mona? Well, she’s okay. Sure. But you know, you’re better off without Mona, Joe.”

  “How so?”

  He shrugged. “She’s punitive.” Then he whispered, “She’s kind of punitive, Joe. She hangs on to things. And you don’t have to be compared to her father over and over again. Hey, can I buy you a beer while you’re here? Can we talk old times over a beer?” Tim was tingling. He had really loved this guy, and now they would reconnect.

  “Maybe after the interview. Have your publisher send me the time and place. I’ll be there.”

  “Amazing. Amazing, man! Thanks.”

  Tim was about to end the call, when he heard, “So did you and Mona ever have kids?”

  “Yes, we did, Joe. A son, Miles. You’re not missing out on that front either, man.”

  After Joe hung up, Tim thought that it actually could’ve gone worse, the call. There was still some residual anger about losing Mona, but the guy was coming to the convention. He wanted to patch things up. Tim punched his wife’s digits into the phone.

  “Mona. I’m getting a raise. A very good raise. And you know why? Joe Masotta. The Publisher wants to interview him, and I’m delivering the goods.”

  “Wait, you told her you could get a favor from Joe Masotta?” Her volume moved into the red.

  “He already said yes, Mona. I talked to him on the phone just now. He’ll do it. He’s coming to Boston.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe it.” He could hear her clanging around in the cabinet with the pans and bowls.

  “He doesn’t talk to us for thirty years, and now he wants to help you?”

  “And I’m getting a raise.”

  “It’s about time. Listen, I’m making wings for Vinnie. I can’t talk now.”

  She hung up on him, and Tim gave his phone the finger. When did she start to hate him? Like all other trends, he hadn’t noticed until it was well established. The phone rang. Mona again.

  “Now that you’re getting a raise, maybe we can do some things,” she said.

  “Well I’m thinking of not doing some things. First, I’m gonna drop the piano-tuning plan, which, I gotta tell you, I was not into. That seems like the most boring, tedious work on the planet. Hitting the same note over and over and over again? Jesus! Anyway, now it looks like I don’t need it.”

  “I thought it was lawyer’s pay! Now it’s not good enough?”

  “Would you rather tell people you’re married to a piano tuner or a senior editor?”

  “Depends. Depends on what you won’t screw up. Listen, I want to go to Joe’s thing. I want to see him.”

  “No. Joe and I are going to rekindle our friendship. You were Yoko Ono. Anyway, it’s a work thing, Mona. It’s not for the public.”

  “Oh, please. So does this mean we can pay for the whole thing now?”

  “Sure. We’d have to borrow the rest of the money from your dad, but now I could actually pay him back.” It didn’t bother Tim that he had no intention of hanging around to pay the man back. The guy had never been a father to him.

  “If we can get that driveway, Tim, I will be so happy. It will mean everything to me to have that for my students, for company, for my father.”

  “And you know, I think it might be an investment that pays off big for you in the long run. I’ve heard parking spaces add fifty thousand to the value of a house. This one gives you two spaces back-to-back, Mona. You wouldn’t be underwater any more. And it makes sense because they’re not making any more land.”

  “Would you text Phyllis right now? Would you let her know we can buy it?”

  “I’m on it.” Tim hung up and looked around his cement-walled office, which was also the photo archives room for the company; they’d just shoved a desk in there among the file cabinets for him.

  He thumb-typed into his Samsung:

  Dear Phyllis,

  We are so upset about your situation with Andy!!! I really haven’t stopped thinking about it. Knowing what you’ve gone through, we are offering $25K for your parking spot, we are not dickering. I’ll send a purchase & sale agreement within the next two days to get the ball rolling. Wishing you well in your healing process.

  Best,

  Tim and Mona

  Then Tim fast-walked to The Publisher’s office and told her brightening face it was a go.

  “Oh!” she squealed.

  “No problem, he said it was absolutely no problem.”

  “You are terrific!”

  “He just needs the time and place.”

  “I can’t believe it!”

  “Yep. Said he was happy to help an old friend.” Tim jutted one hip out, his arms akimbo, still breathing fast from the walk.

  “Well, you must have been a very good friend! What a treasure you must be to him.” The Publisher leaned over and added, “Now, can I tell you my next idea?”

  He shifted onto the other hip.

  “A book. A book about the history of the President’s Own, the oldest professional musical group in the country. Did you know Thomas Jefferson invited them to perform at his inauguration? Think of all the incredible moments they’ve accompanied. Joe will have tremendous inside information, not to mention all the historical photos! So we do a book. Something I can sign at events and give away to VIPs. You and Emily can ghostwrite it. You’ll have to let her in on this.”

  “If she’s no longer senior editor, she’ll quit.”

  “Well, I just don’t believe she works weekends. Not like you! That’s when the best work gets done. Anyway, we don’t have to tell her she’s been demoted. So how many pages do you think it could be?”

  He slowly shook his head. “I don’t have any idea.”

  “Select your target, Mr. Turner. First, you must select your target.”

  “I don’t even know if Joe will help us with this.”

  “Your best friend? You underestimate yourself. It’s one of your weaknesses. Let me know tomorrow about the page count; then I can start costing it all out. Now, more ideas for the convention. Let’s brainstorm.” She swiveled her throne side to side. “What could we do?”

  “Music,” he said.

  A look of pity from her.

  “No, really,” he maintained. “Wouldn’t it be good to hear music at a convention for band directors? And I think they should play it. All these m
iddle-aged guys, they once had a dream of a life in music that did not include babysitting a load of brats. Let’s put them back in as players. It’ll be a gift.”

  The Publisher planted her palms on the desk and rose. “The Bells Up Band.”

  “Doesn’t the convention start the day after Veterans Day? They could march in the parade.”

  “Oh, it’s too late to get into the parade.”

  “No it isn’t. You just find a branch of the services that doesn’t have a band and ask them if we can accompany them. The Massachusetts Air National Guard won’t have a band.”

  “Bells Up honors the Massachusetts Air National Guard. I love it. I love it. I’ll get NMBA to send all of the attendees a notice.”

  “Let me write up their instructions once you’ve got it all set.”

  “I will. Send Rita in on your way out.”

  Just as he reached the door, she said, “Angela is definitely dying, by the way.”

  He turned back with a look of distress.

  “I’m afraid so. She’s denying it, says it’s a bad flu. And she says she doesn’t want any visitors, but I think you should go in. Just you and Marcel.”

  “How long you think she has? I just talked to her on the phone the other day.”

  “I would go tomorrow. I wouldn’t count on talking to her after tomorrow.”

  # # #

  It dawned on Tim that he needed money not only to make up the difference in what the driveway was going to cost them beyond what his father-in-law might be willing to lend, but also for Rusty, who could not go off into the world penniless, so there had to be an extra and immediate source of income. He stuffed pillows behind his back on the couch as he explored the next online tuning lesson, which concerned pianos you would never want to hire on to tune, because their pins become wobbly as baby teeth and you could never afford all the time it would take to wrap and pound every pin. Klopotek, Sunny Straub’s brand, was not mentioned by name.

  That night Tim practiced tuning Mona’s upright. She didn’t play the piano outside of her lessons, and she could really only chunk through the chords to accompany the easier songs, so the tuning needn’t be exact. It had been Mona’s mother’s piano and had been shipped all the way over from Revere. That’s how Mona would put it to anyone who admired the thing: “It was my old Italian mother’s until she died, and I had it shipped all the way over.” A distance of less than four miles.

  In between tuning each note, Tim set the lever down and took a break. He could hear his son on the phone upstairs. “In story mode I get precision kill after precision kill. My screen is, like, awash in yellow numbers. But in PVP, I can’t get a single fucking body shot. Maybe I’m just bad at it, but that’s enough justification for me to hate it.”

  PVP, Tim knew, meant “player versus player.” He could understand the thrill of a game that turned on the actions of other real people, the unpredictability of it. In one particular game Miles was into, Destiny, you chose your sex, race, and class. Sex and race were just window dressing, Miles had brought him to understand, while each class offered a special ability. Miles’s class was Warlock. His power was spells, which meant he couldn’t be cool even in a game. Tim depressed the E-flat again, still off, but he made no adjustments.

  “And in story mode,” Miles continued, “it’s the same thing every time—deploy ghost, fight hordes, deploy ghost, fight hordes. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great game as far as classes, action, and guns go, but talent and gun progression seem linear, and they lack personalization.” Tim hoped Miles wasn’t talking to a girl.

  Eventually Miles finished his telephonic review and lurched downstairs, toward the kitchen.

  “Miles,” Tim stopped him, “can you pick your age in that game?”

  “Destiny? No.”

  “Everyone’s the same age?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “That’s nice. That’s a beautiful world.” He trilled two of the highest keys and then slammed down on the lowest one and engaged the sustain pedal to make it ring, just like he used to as a child in the maestro’s house.

  DAVIS

  Just inside Davis’s college office door stood a fully articulated Neanderthal skeleton tethered to a rod on a wooden base. This was a copy of The Old Man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints in France. When it was discovered in 1908, it was the first fairly complete Neanderthal skeleton ever found. As he studied it now, from his desk chair, Davis reminded himself that although his copy stood erect, like modern humans, the first reconstruction of these bones, in 1911, showed a stooped, crouching creature to match the brutish Neanderthal stereotype of the time. That posed Neanderthal skeleton was even provided with an opposable big toe, like an ape, demonstrating that scientists are limited by their own preconceptions. Davis tried always to remain open in conceptualizing things, and one of the recent ideas he was especially open to came from researchers who proposed that relict Neanderthal clans may still be making their way around Central Asia and the Pacific Northwest, as evidenced by footprints identical to known Neanderthal prints. Neanderthals may, in fact, be the cryptids of several recent legends starring hirsute humanoids with great craniums, large noses, and superhuman strength. The merely four-thousand-year-old Epic of Gilgamesh, for example—

  “Hello?” Dr. Peggy finally answered, sounding typically bewildered.

  “It’s the Beardsleys, Peggy,” Davis said, positioning the phone closer to his wife on the far side of the desk. Davis refused to address Peggy as “Doctor.” She was not a doctor of any sort. If anyone should be called doctor during their phone calls, it should be him. Peggy called him “the father,” however, probably because she had back-to-back therapy calls and couldn’t be bothered to remember specific names. (And sometimes she even called him “the mother” because she found his voice a bit on the high side, she said.)

  “Oh, hello! Now, didn’t I just talk with you?”

  Jenny had not removed her jacket and still wore her purse over her shoulder. She had told her school that she was going for a tooth repair.

  “Yes,” Davis said, “but we have an emergency. I believe Jenny is breaking the authority bond. I think she’s covering for Megan, and she also helped her get an IUD.” He spanked the desktop.

  Long silence. “Was that the father speaking?”

  “Yes.” Davis sighed.

  Jenny bit her lip and stared at the phone.

  “Okay. How old is Megan now?”

  “Seventeen,” Jenny and Davis said at once.

  “Okay. At seventeen, she can have an IUD. Are you religious, Father?”

  His shoulders crowded both ears. “No, the problem is not that she has an IUD, but rather that I was never part of the decision. Okay, well, maybe the problem is also that she has an IUD. Jenny’s sending a mixed message here: you are not ready to have sex, and yet here is what you need to have sex.”

  “Father, birth control is a woman’s right, and it is not a decision that involves the father. Let that one go. What’s the cover-up issue?”

  Jenny positioned her face directly over the speaker phone. “There is no cover-up, Dr. Peggy, I can assure you of that, but Davis does not believe me.”

  “I can’t believe in something that defies logic,” Davis said to Jenny. “The Sasquatch arm was installed by a taxidermist, with a sinewy thread. Think of a leather lace. It’s not going to break simply because you bump into it. And here’s my big puzzlement. Why was it still on the floor? If you had caused it to fall, you would have picked it up. If Megan had done it, however, she’d have left it on the welcome mat like a horse head in the bed.”

  After a moment, Peggy’s voice came from the speaker. “I’m completely lost.”

  Jenny stared back at Davis. “Davis is suspicious of everyone now, Dr. Peggy. Megan can’t even play volleyball, because Davis threatened her coach.”

  “It was an easy mistake,” he said. “They were together at the fair.”

  “But he had taken the whole team to the fair!” Jenny was too
loud, now. Davis had to look pointedly at the office door as a reminder that they were at his place of employment.

  “Can I say something here?” Dr. Peggy asked. “When I was raising Carla, she didn’t have a father figure, because we divorced when she was only three, and I often wondered how a father, whose main job is protecting, would reconcile her vulnerability with all of the ways that she acted out—inappropriately, as you know. It’s like asking someone to protect a young piranha, isn’t it?”

  Jenny’s expression seemed to soften.

  “Mother, love the father for all he has done. Forgive him for ruining the volleyball. Forgive him for not believing you.”

  “I do. Of course I do,” said Jenny, who then put a hand on the desktop and slid it across toward Davis’s hand.

  “Does Megan still have the IUD?” Davis asked Jenny. “Or was it removed? I am out of the loop on this one.”

  “Get over the IUD, Father. You’ve got to let that one go.”

  # # #

  Davis walked his wife out, uncharacteristically helloing everyone in the halls, and on his return, he passed Lindstrom’s door.

  “Davis,” Lindstrom called out, “come in here a minute, can you?”

  But when Davis entered, Lindstrom was concentrating on making notes (with a fountain pen, for God’s sake) in his leather-bound notebook. Davis had only once been in the department chair’s office. It was before Lindstrom moved in, when Davis had placed a greeting card on Lindstrom’s desk—one showing a red lobster boat in a harbor—welcoming him to the department. Now the office was well established, with the canon of great zoological literature filling all shelf space, and framed black-and-white photos of animals from around the world on the walls. Davis slid out of his suit coat and hung it casually over the back of a chair upholstered in an imperial pattern before sitting in it to await his fate.

  “I wanted to talk about your Bio 112 lecture,” Lindstrom said, finally capping and setting the pen aside. No hair grew out of Lindstrom’s face. His skin was pink and smooth as a doll’s. It gave him a look of innocence, and when he was angry, the look read as pleading. “At this early stage, you should be covering basic cell structure and function. Shouldn’t you?”