Among the Ten Thousand Things

by Pierpont, Julia

  Jack was furious all of sudden. He’d been mad and now he was furious. “Does she even eat? Does she even eat food? Who’s to make sure she does that, Charlie, you?” He came right up against the desk, standing over his stepfather, towering. “No. You probably have her going into raptures. Seeing God.”

  “Don’t turn this onto God. We’ve been down that path already. Don’t make about God what is about me.”

  No, this is about something older even than you, Charles. Jack saw his problem in Charles’s question: What do you need that she can give you. To which the answer was: Nothing? There is nothing I need that she can give me. Which is not the same as, There is nothing I need.

  The problem was older than Charles, but Jack was too old for the problem. Such things expire. Your mother never would take the full weight of you, even when you were small and tried to be easy. Now you are heavy and her bones are weak; now is not the time to try.

  “I know what you think.” Charles leaned back against his chair, belly buoyed up as though separate, a large egg nesting under his checkered shirt. “I know what you think of me, my life. And I sure know how you feel about God. What I don’t know is what you feel about your mother, but I am going to hope and pray and give you benefit of the doubt that you wish her only well. As I said, I’m not your father. But so long as we’ll be under this one roof, I suggest, and suggest strongly, that we all put on a nice face until you get on that plane.”

  Jack spent the next day up in his room or out by the pool when he remembered it. In the bathroom he’d had a small proud moment finding his old purple trunks still fit, though in profile under the good lighting he had to admit that they hung not quite like before. His legs were thinner—that was what caused the nylon to gape out around his thighs. Also his ass had bloomed full. Maybe it was no real achievement, for thirty-year-old trunks still to fit. Was anything outgrowable that had a drawstring. Surely it had not always been this hard to see his feet.

  “Why didn’t you just take the key?” his mother said when he told her where he’d been. This was in the dining room, where sunlight still papered the walls but where, at six-thirty, it was dinnertime. Phyllis said the key because technically it was a shared pool, though because only the houses around their cul-de-sac were granted access, there was no lifeguard, and, while the women were supposed to wear swim caps, no one ever did.

  “Don’t need a key.” Jack unsheathed his paper napkin from its porcelain holder. He didn’t need a key because the fence around the pool was low and, like most every partition in the neighborhood, trespassable. When he went for a swim he still tucked his wallet in his shoe, but right at the heel, not even fingering it up into the toes.

  “People will think—well, they won’t know who you are,” his mother said, passing around a limp salad. Dinner at the house was Phyllis slicing a beefsteak tomato on Bibb lettuce and delivering to her son and husband a half can of tuna each.

  “I’ll tell them then,” he said, reaching for the bread basket. A grid of rolls, nicely thawed and reheated, that was dinner too, and a saucer of mayo with a miniature spoon, recurrently seesawing onto the table. Jack, since that morning’s grapefruit, had already felt himself going hungry. He tried surrendering to it, embracing it as an ascetic would. Little food, plus the sun and swim. Not that the pool was much exercise—he mostly floated—but for the elixir chlorine. After a dip he liked to air-dry on his stomach, mouth resting on his bleached-smelling arms, and breathe deep, sucking up the arm hairs, which danced with the nose hairs and tickled his nostril walls.

  “From their houses you’ll tell them?” His mother’s eyes ticktocked an appeal to Charles, who sat sorting the church mail, slitting envelopes open with a butter knife. She’d made her voice loud so as to reach, not just Charles, people in other rooms.

  “No, guess not. Guess I’ll just wave.”

  Other things chlorine did: It cleared his back of teenagery blemishes, drying them into pickable white nothings. It sluiced orange fudge from his ears, exhumed the crunchies deep inside his belly-button pit. Pool water purged him by the swallow or noseful, doses that made sterile his lungs and empty stomach. He basked monastic on his holey towel.

  —

  Later, upstairs on his invertebrate bed, Jack sat and he sank. Suddenly very close to his knees. The lamp went on with a tick. In the middle drawer of the nightstand, an old spoon, forsaken. He used to smuggle up ice cream, cups of yogurt, in zippered jackets. Phyllis had complained to the maid about missing silver.

  His mother, this house, Charles, always they had this effect, of reminding him why he’d built what life he had, away. No reason it should be any different this time, only a hopeless hope for something else. For the feeling of home, which he was nearly sure he used to feel, somewhere here.

  He bent between his knees and drew up the quilt. He saw the curve of his own weight dipped low between the bed frames. Also, the thing he was looking for, the orange rotary phone he’d had since high school, wound in all its cords. He dropped onto his knees and crawled with it to the jack by the window, where he used to lie on the floor and look out at the sky and talk to girls, or friends from his terrible band.

  The phone worked—a surprise, hearing that digital ohm. His finger was slow to find the numbers, pulling each one through and waiting for the dial to whir back around so that it felt like he was calling from another time, when he was another person. The rotary made him young and tender toward himself. The rotary and Deb, the careful way she answered, not recognizing the number, and him saying, “Hi, it’s me.”

  “God,” she said somewhere in Rhode Island. “I saw the area code and thought your mother—what’s wrong?”

  “Everything.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing, no. I’m just, losing my mind.” He walked his elbows out behind him, easing himself down until he was lying back that same way he used to. “Probably I’m dying.”

  “You’re not dying.”

  “You’re right.” He fingered the spiral cord, uncoiling it and wrapping it around his finger the opposite way. “Probably I’m not dying.”

  She asked if he’d been drinking.

  “I’ve been with my mother.”

  “Why on earth would you go there? I’m sorry. I’m a little drunk.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “Nothing, talking to Gary. It got late.”

  “Well, so.” He let go the cord and watched the bendy orange twist stubbornly back to form. “How is Gary? The worm.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Okay, fine, I’m not. He’s a worm, but I’m not saying so. Ignore me.”

  Like Ruth, Deb laughed when nothing was funny. Her laugh now meant: Right, ignore you. You make it so easy for anyone to ignore you.

  “Would you put the kids on please?”

  “You could try in the morning. You could call around ten.”

  “I think,” pressing his fingers to his lids, “I’ll be at church then,” and that she really did find funny.

  —

  “So,” Deb said. “How’s the Arizona project?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Okay. Anything from Stanley?”

  “How can I care about all that while this is going on?”

  “You mean multitask? I don’t know, Jack. You always seemed to before.”

  “I know I’ve been…not all the way here. Or there, I guess. You know, for years—ever since that September stuff—”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t use that.”

  “Well, but it’s true. I’m not using it, but it scared me.”

  “Of course you’d say it’s work. Of course you say that.”

  “Let me finish, please. Before you say. You know how I get, these things, they carry me. What next. It’s all I was thinking about: What next. Every day, what next. And nothing was good enough, and everyone had their eyes on me.”

  “With bated breath.”

  “Don’t—You were there. You k
now what I mean.”

  “I was there.”

  “But what you don’t know—or what I didn’t—and I am trying to tell you something here, all right? I really, really am.”

  “What?”

  “Is that, sleeping with someone…”

  “Sleeping with someone what, Jack?”

  “Yes, okay? Yes, she flattered me. She admired me. Like it was important, what I was doing. I think I thought if I could just hang on to that feeling—”

  “Vampires do that. Parasites. You can’t fuck somebody and have that not hurt us.”

  “Why?”

  “Because those are the rules.”

  “This was never supposed to touch us.”

  “This is us. Every time you chose to be with her, you chose not to be with us.”

  “People don’t have a limited amount of—affection, of interest.”

  “People have a limited amount of time.”

  “But, Debby, we fuck up. You of all people should know.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. You know what it means.”

  “Don’t you use that either.”

  “But why? It’s how we happened. I, we fucked up.”

  “Please do not go there with me now.”

  —

  “I’m sorry. I was making a point. You there?”

  “It was a shitty, bullshit point.”

  “I know.

  —

  “It’s your birthday tomorrow. Deb? You didn’t think I’d forget?”

  “Wish I could.”

  “Happy almost birthday.”

  “You stopped talking to me about your work.”

  “I didn’t know that bothered you.”

  “I was so, I don’t know, honored, or flattered, when you wanted my opinion. That you thought I could help you. I didn’t know a thing about art.”

  “You knew more than you thought you did. Instinct.”

  “But I was so young, you know, and a dancer. God. I’m not a lot of things I used to be.”

  “You are more than you used to be.”

  “You talked to her about your work.”

  “It’s how we met.”

  “You stopped wanting that in me.”

  “I want that in you now.”

  “Oh. Fuck off.”

  —

  “So what did you think of the show?”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Come on, tell me. What does it matter now?”

  “Well. I thought you made a mistake.”

  “Obviously.”

  “No, stupid. I mean the Tigger.”

  “The whatter?”

  “The stuffed animal, the Tigger.”

  “The tiger?”

  “He’s from Winnie-the-Pooh.”

  —

  “They sell those all over the world, though, right?”

  “In Ramallah?”

  “I didn’t say in Ramallah.”

  “It’s just funny to me, since you bought it for him.”

  “I bought it. For Simon.”

  “Yes, of course for Simon.”

  “Will you let me come see you?”

  “Don’t, not—no.”

  —

  “What you were saying about time, how when I was away from you I was with her, how we only have so much time?”

  “I remember.”

  “You assume that when I was away from you, I was closer to her, but I was far from her too. I was running from her the minute it started, my own mistake I was running from, and where I ran was into my work. You see? It’s why people have these messes. We make our lives impossible places to be, and that’s when we do our work.”

  “Not everyone is like you.”

  “Well, that’s what this was for me, more than anything. This was about work. Deb?”

  “You want to know if I believe you, or if I believe you believe it?”

  “Both. I do believe it.”

  “Both is I don’t care.”

  “Okay.”

  “Both, I don’t think it matters. Not one shitty bit.”

  “I understand. I get it. You know, I went to her apartment. She wasn’t home, but I wanted to tell her what—”

  “You saw her?”

  “She was gone, I said.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know, after she sent the package.”

  “So the very next day you’re there.”

  “To tell her off. I wanted her to know what she did.”

  “I don’t get why that mattered, to tell her that.”

  “Because she should know what her actions—”

  “Who cares what she knows? You do, obviously. You saw her?”

  “No, are you not listening? I didn’t see her.”

  “Too bad, maybe next time.”

  “Listen to me.”

  “No. I don’t trust you. I don’t trust you I don’t trust you I don’t trust you. Say what you want; I won’t believe you. It’s too much. Definitely, definitely do not come here. You will not be welcome here.”

  —

  She’d been down in the kitchen when they started talking, though she was vaguely aware, in the interim, of being other places too. Vaguely up the stairs, vaguely down the hall. Touching her face, absently, in the bathroom, in the angled mirrors where Rockettes of her receded endlessly. Staring into the empty hall closet, not seeing. She was at some point sitting at the top of the stairs and at some point sitting at the bottom. The phone warmed and sweated her hand.

  There, on the last step, she became aware of her breathing.

  “Deb, don’t—don’t do that,” the voice in her ear was saying. “You can’t say that. Please, Debby, don’t do that to me. Don’t tell me you would have let me come if I hadn’t told you that.”

  She did not think she could tell the voice anything. Her throat had cracked open, and in place of lungs she had two produce bags. They seized, fuller and emptier than her actual lungs had been ever.

  “What’s—Deb?”

  These bags! They took so much air and couldn’t get rid of it fast enough. She thought: I am a bicycle pump. I am some kind of wind-powered machine. Her breath was something being done to her, violent and involuntary, like sneezing.

  “Breathe. Debby? Baby, breathe. What’s wrong?”

  Wrong was that they’d talked themselves to where it felt natural, and it was good to hear Jack’s cello voice, the one every other man’s was higher or lower than. But talking wasn’t natural, the words weren’t right, and she’d let him too far in. That was what all the moving around had been about, as though new rooms could keep the minutes from collecting and catching up with her. Of course, everywhere she went, there he was.

  She let the phone down but could still hear the hum of him against the step. She stayed that way for she didn’t know how long. “I’m okay.” Seeing if it felt true. She picked up the phone and said it again. And yes, she’d thought of telling him, yes, that if he hadn’t confessed to her that last part, about going to see the girl, she would have let him come. It would be easy to say, but cruel, and untrue. “I wouldn’t have let you come anyway.”

  “How can you make up your mind without seeing me?”

  How was the phone this hot. She switched hands and wiped her palm on the step. “Because you’ll come and you’ll be sweet, and it won’t be real, is the point.”

  “You’re afraid it will be good.”

  “Obviously. Obviously I am.”

  “Fear is never a good reason.”

  “We’re afraid of the things that hurt us. That, repeatedly, hurt us.”

  There was a quiet, and when he spoke again she almost didn’t believe it, that this was the same—well. “You can’t do it, you know. Officially, you can’t make it so I can’t see my kids.”

  “What, you mean legally?”

  “That’s your word.”

  “Wow. That’s impressive, thank you. That’s nice.”

  “I’m just s
aying.”

  “I’m just hanging up.”

  That night off the phone Jack wouldn’t remember but in snatches. What he’d remember best was wanting, that he’d wanted for so many things. He’d wanted it to be an hour ago, or two, before the call, or a year ago, or several, whenever he’d started drifting. For it to be home. For home to be ten years ago. For ten years ago to be when he was still young.

  Also, he wanted a drink, and for that he needed a crowbar. How else would he get into Charles’s damn cabinet.

  After two or after three, he crept down the stairs and into the study. He knelt in front of the cabinet and pulled the knobs, stuck the fat of his pinkie in the keyhole, rattled the thing.

  He found a letter opener in the pen cup on the desk. It fit narrowly into the void around the cabinet door, knocked down and up against the metal bolt of the lock. He tried to pry the door and the opener snapped.

  The lamp fell as he was spinning the whole thing around, and Jack flapped his arms like a conductor—silenzio!—palms open to catch the waves of sound as they passed.

  The cabinet’s back was not fuzzy fiberboard but dark mahogany, no panel he could lift. Jack reached under and ran his hand along the bottom, and it was like this, on his knees, arm hooked under the thing like feeling inside a lampshade or up a dress, it was with this particular blocking that he became aware of his audience.

  Charles, of course, and the hour was indeed after two or after three but, worse, was after four and just past five, five-fifteen, and here was his stepfather come down to help Phyllis with the coffee.

  Sound came from the kitchen. He could hear the click-click-click of the gas range and his mother’s low hum-song to herself, la-da-da, and he heard Charles too, who didn’t have to say anything. A while later the sun was up and so was Jack, barely, for morning service, on the disagreeable planks of the church’s first pew.

  Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

  Jack had to leave, quite immediately, after that.

  Deb spent her birthday just how she said she wanted: lazy in her boxy blue sleep shirt, blowing the dust off old records with Gary. There weren’t any presents, though Kay devoted twenty minutes to a card made with orange highlighter and printer paper folded twice, and when Simon came back from the sandwich shop, he gave his mother the rest of his ice cream.