The Futility Experts

by Margaret Broucek

  Tim hammered at the wrapped pin to try to force it further into the block, and in seconds the little dog was running through the foyer as if borne by a great wind, stopping just behind Tim’s right foot, and nipping him in the ankle. Just as Tim wheeled around to find her, she made for the entrance again, where she reset—every muscle coiled for another go. The dog had an underbite and pop eyes and appeared beyond sane. In frustration, Tim managed to overtighten and snap the string. Oh, hell. He hoisted his torso over the case to fish it out. Then he moved the mutes and dropped back hard onto the stool to start on the next string. The dog barks made his ears ring. Bea became the embodiment of his difficulty with the pins.

  Then the bitch skittered up and nipped his calf. “Damn it!” he cried.

  He removed himself to look at the piano from the farthest point in the room while the dog ran tight circles under the Klopotek. He wondered if she was rabid. “Get out!” He rushed her into the dining room.

  Back at the piano, he struck the fork on his knee and depressed the A key again, only to hear the fast beat of interference that signifies great discord. It was then that the dog made her last run in their game and needled Tim’s Achilles tendon, which made him turn with a start and strike her skull with the tuning fork.

  She rag-dolled. The dog was out cold, a tiny floor mat. He cocked her head up and checked for breathing with a finger to her nostrils. Dead.

  By the time Tim had closed the piano and returned his tools to the strap, the dog was glassy-eyed and as floppy as a hairy water balloon. Tim carried her through the entire house, until he figured to dump her outside, into the pool, where she floated around the perimeter like a bristly child’s boat. With a rag, he wiped the scotch glass and returned it to the case, then took the $250 check and left in its place a note saying that there would be a return visit. Oh, and he had let the dog out. Next he had to drive all the way out to Bells Up to screw in his bulb.

  # # #

  That night, Tim got a listing from Phyllis for a one-acre Mexican property. In the photo, the view was perfectly framed—a blooming cactus in the foreground giving way to an expanse of dusty-green high desert and a distant mountain range.

  This vista can be yours for $26K (CITY SERVICES NEARBY). Master craftsmn work for $20 a day here. Crying shame but what cn you do? You build over time. One rm to start. Others later, build around a central courtyd. Your tuba ranch, Tim! THIS ONE WILL GO FAST.

  When a man has twenty-five K, the world knows. Tim stood at the bedroom window to call Andy in California. It was cold that night, and he watched a man rushing down the street self-hugging.

  “Andy Paik,” the dentist answered in his jolly voice.

  “Andy, Tim Turner here. How are you?”

  After a few pleasantries, Tim told him that Phyllis was insisting on getting all of the money from the sale. “She says she needs it all for medical bills, Andy. I guess she’s pretty bad off, so do you think you can give it to her? It’s not that much, after all.” Tim had come to realize that God’s appointed time for his becoming Rusty would not arrive until after he finalized the driveway sale for Mona and also made a plan for Miles and his mother. That was what he himself had set up by creating the Fire Team Missions. Why should God not hold him accountable?

  After a bit of silence, Andy’s sweet voice relented. “Of course! I want her to have it! But this kind of makes me think. You know, she could do something for me, too. It’s an odd request, but she never signed our tax return from last year, so I actually had to do a ‘married filing singly,’ and that really messed up my taxes. So you could say to her that if she’ll sign the taxes, then she can have the whole twenty-five thousand.”

  Tim blew out audibly. “I don’t know, Andy, that seems like something that should be worked out between the two of you, don’t you think? This kind of thing doesn’t go into a purchase-and-sale agreement.”

  “But she doesn’t answer my calls.”

  “Can’t you get a lawyer to deal with this?”

  “She’s in Mexico. She just doesn’t respond. I think she will do this only if she has to sign the tax forms right there at the table before getting the check. Sorry, Tim, but I really think this has to be in the document before I can sign it.”

  Tim watched one of the brothers lurch out of the bar, yanking a woman along behind him, only half into her coat. He was pulling her faster than she could manage in heels, until one shoe tipped sideways and she dropped onto her bare knees on the cement walk.

  “You’re a dick,” Tim mumbled.

  “Well,” Andy replied, “you didn’t have to live with her.”

  DAVIS

  Finding Megan’s cell phone attached to the kitchen charger was like finding a rare bird out in the open, perched just there, beside the banana bread. Davis didn’t hesitate. He snatched it up and took it into his den, closing the oak door behind him.

  He knew the password. He had set the phone up. He tapped on the Pictures icon and then on Camera Roll. The first item was a video, which he then played.

  “Hi, and welcome to What’s Megan. I’m your host, Megan!” She was out on the back patio, turning in a circle, showing the whole windy, leafy yard behind her. “Megan is a type of creature where the parents travel great distances and leave their young behind. They don’t bring any food back for their young; in fact, they don’t come back at all. You would think this species would be extinct. But they survive.” She brought the phone in to show just her mouth. “They are amazing survivors.” Then her whole laughing face was back. “They are devastating creatures, really. They move into the dens of other species and pretend to belong. They suffer the consequences.” Now just a single bulging eye took up the screen before it went black.

  He placed the phone on his desk and floated his hands away from it, left them hanging in the air for a time. Had she played this in class? For Lindstrom? He felt an instant sense of betrayal, underneath which was the prickly realization that he’d done something very wrong. At some point, he had stopped seeing Megan, assumed she was on an unalterable track. Perhaps along the way, she’d become a regular girl and he’d missed it. For heaven’s sake, what kid didn’t take the parents’ loose change? And maybe Jenny really was the Sasquatch arm breaker.

  A short time later, Jenny found him at the kitchen counter, mixing up batter with a rubber spatula, the waffle iron out and open beside him.

  “I think I have an issue today,” Jenny told him.

  “I do, too.”

  “What’s yours?”

  “When she comes down.”

  At Dr. Peggy’s suggestion, the Beardsleys had instituted an “eggs-and-issues” Sunday breakfast, where anyone could voice his or her feelings about the goings-on in the household in a discussion separate from any heated moment.

  The parents sat, utensils in hand, a tower of waffles between them, and listened to Megan’s slow descent. When she appeared, she looked sad to Davis. Maybe she had been sad for a while.

  “Come on, girl, they’re getting cold.” Davis said as she swiped her phone off the counter and completed her death march to the table.

  Jenny pushed the waffles toward her, and she pinched two off the top and dropped them onto her plate. “No bacon?”

  “There wasn’t any,” Davis said, and he waited for Jenny to locate the smallest waffle for herself. The rules posters were back up on the walls. Above Jenny was a list of apps they had approved for Megan’s phone and the rule “No other app is to be downloaded without Dad’s approval,” which was an unnecessary statement since Megan didn’t know the iTunes password.

  “Who would like to start?” Davis asked. “Because I have something.”

  “Mmmph,” Megan grunted and surveyed the table like she couldn’t recall what butter and syrup looked like.

  “I’d like to discuss, in a relaxed way, Megan’s future. It’s time to really stake out a direction and a bit of a plan for your time beyond 107 Pleasant Street. Now, you’re the decider on this, Megan, but you have two good
advisers to consult here. What are your current thoughts?”

  She let her eyes roll up, lobotomized.

  “I think it’s still California.” Jenny chirped. “Is it still California?”

  Megan nodded, two nods.

  Davis pushed the butter closer to her. “And I don’t even care what you do there, but we do need to make a plan for an approach to this.”

  Megan shaved a peel of butter off the top of the stick and said, “Tara and I are going.”

  Another poster read, “No pornography is to be viewed on the phone. If it is discovered that pornography has been viewed on the phone, even by accident, the phone will be confiscated.”

  “Today, maybe, Tara is going,” Davis said. “Things can change. Tell me, what do you envision for yourself in California? What are you planning to do there?”

  “That’s real syrup, honey,” Jenny said. Megan was pouring it in continuous spirals over her waffles.

  “Okay,” she sighed. “I see myself maybe in a movie.” She set the bottle down and raked a curtain of hair behind an ear.

  “Acting in a movie,” Davis said.

  “You’re a beautiful girl,” Jenny assured her.

  Davis frowned. “If you’re interested in acting, why haven’t you tried out for anything at school?”

  “I don’t want to be in any of that stupid stuff,” she said with a mouthful of waffle.

  Davis picked up the now-goopy syrup bottle with his paper napkin. “So, I see myself as the sort of carrier of reality here. There will be nine thousand somewhat trained actors arriving in Los Angeles the same month as you will. How do you like your odds?”

  “Can we help you find a class?” Jenny asked.

  The girl let her forearms collapse onto the table. “You think anyone around here knows how to train actors? And what about child actors, Dad? Some children have won Oscars. Where did they train?”

  Davis didn’t know where to go with what he thought he knew, which was that Megan could no more interpret and model others’ feelings than she could build a fusion rocket. Maybe this was wrong, but it was tough to imagine. “What else, if that can’t happen? Maybe it’s best to start with what you don’t want. What are your absolute nos as far as jobs go? I would say working with the public is maybe not so good. And food. I don’t see you working with food or the public.”

  “Teaching volleyball,” Jenny suggested and twisted toward her daughter.

  “We’re starting with things she doesn’t want to do,” Davis reminded her.

  “Why? That’s moving in the wrong direction.”

  “I can walk people’s dogs,” Megan said. “A lot of people have little dogs out there.”

  “Do you like dogs?” Davis asked.

  Looking only at her plate, her long hair falling forward, walling her off, she said, “You put the leash on and walk them down the street. You’re not kissing them. They poop and you put it in a bag. It’s just something to do!”

  Davis then looked from one chewing woman to the other, neither sharing his gaze. “I’m impressed,” he said, “a little. It’s a bit of a plan. It sounds workable.”

  “You could get some referrals by walking dogs around here,” Jenny said.

  Davis had a disturbing vision and swallowed a large lump of waffle. “People love their dogs, Megan. Very much.”

  “I have something to say if that topic has finished,” said Jenny. “I’d like to take these posters down.”

  “Yes!” Megan tensed.

  “You’ve stolen my thunder,” he told Jenny. “I was about to make that announcement.”

  “Oh my God! This is the best day of my life!” Megan yelled at the ceiling. Davis shifted another waffle from the stack onto his plate while the women pulled down the posters and balled them up, laughing, banking them against the table beside him and a few times hitting him directly on the head.

  TIM

  Hi Phyllis, spoke to Andy. He will give you all monies if you agree to sign last year’s tax forms. I’m not comfortable with all of this personal stuff in the P&S and I’m not sure it’s even legal, but he wants that bit in there. If you agree, please add the two stipulations to the P&S I emailed you. You can handwrite them in. 1. Andy gives Phyllis all monies from the sale of parking space. 2. Phyllis will sign Andy’s taxes at closing. Are you still thinking you can come back here for closing? Is there a day that works best? Thanks for the property listing. It’s a shock that such a beautiful place costs the same as this tiny parking spot. – Tim

  # # #

  The first one he had caught only out of the corner of his eye, but the next mouse Tim saw fully, popping out of a burner on his mother’s stove and humping across the counter. “Look at that,” he said to Miles, who sat next to him on the couch.

  “What?”

  “There! There’s another one! In front of the oven!”

  “Huh,” Miles said observing it. “Good thing it got out.”

  “That oven doesn’t work. That’s probably their living room. But look at them, in broad daylight.”

  “Okay, let’s go,” Tim’s mother called as she emerged from her bedroom in a skirt of sneezing, leaping dogs.

  “You’ve got a mouse colony living in your oven.” Tim pointed toward the kitchen. “They don’t even care that we’re right here!”

  “You look nice, Grandma,” Miles said and rocked up off of the low couch to stand.

  “This will be the best lunch yet,” she told him.

  # # #

  She ordered her usual two glasses of wine on the way to being seated at the Olive Garden, ordered them right from the hostess. “I’ll have a Coke,” Miles joined in. Then, when they were seated and had opened their menus, she told Miles, “Zuppa is soup,” as though he might get stuck on the word and be unable to continue.

  “Zuppa,” he said with an extra-long Z.

  She closed her menu again, quickly, knowing her order, and watched her grandson like he was a pleasing and newly made specimen. “Miles, this is such a treat to have you with us.”

  “He’s gonna fill out an application before we leave,” Tim announced.

  “Good!” she said, clasping her ropy hands over her chest.

  Miles clapped the menu closed. “I’m getting steak.”

  “Look again,” Tim told him.

  “He can’t get a steak?”

  “He wants the lasagna,” Tim said.

  “With an Italian mother?” she cried. “He’s got lasagna coming out his eyelids!”

  Miles drummed the silverware on his plate and said, “Do you know how to set a mousetrap, Grandma?”

  “Well, I’m not as useless as all that.”

  Tim added, “I’m sure you can set them, Ma, but you won’t. You are an animal lover. Last spring, Miles, she found a rabbit’s nest in the backyard over there, and she would—do you remember this, Ma?—you put a metal strainer over the rabbits’ den so dogs wouldn’t be messing with them. She set her pasta strainer upside down over the den, Miles, and she would take it off at night so the mother could tend to them, but otherwise she trapped those bunnies in there all day long.”

  “I did not.”

  “Except when you were pulling them out and hugging them.”

  “The mother only comes back at night. I read that,” she said to Miles.

  “And what about the night bird?” Tim squawked. He wanted Miles to understand the kind of attention she needed, because it was his plan to put them on to each other. She would require his help, and helping her would force him to figure out how the world worked.

  As she craned around in a quest for her wine, Tim jerked his thumb in her direction. “So she tells me she has a bird trapped in her house. Sees it every night, flying around in her bedroom. Middle of the night every night, right Ma?”

  “Oh.” Miles smiled apologetically at her. “A bat, huh.”

  “And I’m supposed to be an expert on bats? It was sleeping in the vent fan!” Then she could see the wine coming and let her shoulders
fall. “Do you have a girl, Miles?”

  To Tim’s astonishment, Miles said yes.

  “Tell me about her.” She locked onto the stem of one of the glasses.

  “She’s a girl at school. Her name’s Marie. She’s wicked smart.”

  “Well, of course she is! She’s got you to keep up with.”

  “Quick, what’s she look like?” Tim asked, while his mother grasped one of Miles’s drumming hands and implored, “Is it too late for the homecoming dance?”

  “Yeah,” Miles said sadly. “That already happened.”

  “Unless you can dance to pathogens, Miles doesn’t dance,” Tim said.

  “Ha. Pathogenic.”

  “Miles, the calamari here is a delight,” Grandma said like she was talking to a foreign dignitary.

  “I don’t like calamari. Tastes like fried rubber bands.”

  “No, it’s tender here. I want you to try it when it comes.” Then the waitress arrived, and she repeated her statement: “I want my grandson to try the calamari when it comes,” as though the waitress should feed it to him.

  After they’d all placed their orders, she said, “Has your father told you about my book?”

  “I think so,” Miles said.

  “It’s a book about a woman’s gifts.”

  Miles continued nodding.

  “Women have a lot to give, and if you know what they are capable of, you will be more likely to welcome their input. I think if you’re going to be coupling with Marie, you should read it. And she should, too.”

  “How’s this lunch going for you, Miles?” Tim asked.

  “Your father can print it out.”

  “Nope, I have a Selectric at work.”

  “Can you email it to me?” Miles asked.

  “Show me how, dear, when we get back. I wish I’d had this book when I first coupled. Would’ve changed my life. What are you doing to your arm, Tim?”

  Both she and Miles gave his arm-scratching their full attention. They were a good pair, Tim realized. They were better together than either one was with him, and if Miles got a job here, they could maybe have free lunches long after Tim was gone.