My mother is in the kitchen making tea while my father delivers this jeremiad. It’s an old story with the three of us, dating back to high school, when I began doing this sort of thing. They made a big fuss when they found us, but it’s their sort of fuss, which is not like anyone else’s. I told Cathy to go on up to my room and wait this out. Then I watched my father mix the drinks in his slow way, and I swear while he was doing this, he forgot what it was we were supposed to talk about. A son’s naked ass exposed to the moonlight, what is that, anyway?
“You’re thirty-five years old,” he says next. It’s an exhaled statement, something he just wants to rid himself of, hardly directed toward me at all. As it happens, he’s off by a year, but even I am not smart-ass enough to point out his mistake at this moment. He reaches for his drink and takes some, and I mimic his elegant gesture. I am beginning to feel the bourbon, and it makes me want to talk, but I reason I’d better shut up and endure this. Then I will take Cathy home. We’ll stop somewhere and finish what we started, that is if she’s not too pissed off at me. So rain down the blows, Daddy. Let them come and let’s move on. But there’s a silence now. My father rattles the cubes in his glass and looks over my shoulder at my mother in the kitchen. Then his eyes settle back on me and his face takes on this look of distaste.
“Doesn’t it humiliate you to find yourself in this situation, John?” he asks, and leans forward. “Coming home like this, being found …” His hand gestures to the vague outdoors, that place into which he’s poured so many thousands of dollars yet which he can’t imagine any use for, least of all that divine one to which I have so recently put it.
“I don’t feel humiliated at all,” I answer, and then I just look at him. The two of us share this glazed-eyed stare, neither really focusing on the other, and I suppose the wish on both our parts now is that this were over. He’s not really so bad, my old man, just soft and a little past it. (“Ha ha,” he’ll say on the golf course, when someone makes a joke, keeping his eyes open, same as me.)
My mother comes in then, with her tea, and sits on the couch, and makes a great fuss of arranging herself and taking a long, somewhat noisy sip. My father’s eyes are all on her, as if at any second she’s going to spill something, or else fall. He’s that way with her now, all closed in on her, the way a man with an unreliable car might get, listening all the time to its plinks and rattles, so that if you say something to him, he probably won’t hear you. And then suddenly he’s up, with his hands in his pockets, jingling the coins there, and I’m convinced the worst is over; he’s going to bed.
“Your father and I have decided, John”—it’s my mother’s voice that speaks, though my eyes remain trained on my father; he’s the one who seems about to act, but it’s a feint, just something to distract me—“that it’s not right for you to go on living here with us.”
Finally I’ve got to look at her. She puts her cup down and pats her hair. It’s one of those wave jobs hip older women wear now, but it exposes her neck in a way I find unbecoming. It’s a good thing to do, though, patting her hair, since it gives her an activity to cover her own awkwardness. I’m admiring the strategy, even as I’m ready to pounce. I don’t like to make it easy on them, even when, especially when, logic seems to favor them.
“Not right?” is what I ask then, since that’s the weak link in her sentence.
“Well …” She dusts her lap. It’s a neat, small gesture, but it does its work, lets me know it’ll be futile to pursue my little trick, that she’s said what she’s said and, however much I might dig at her weak spot, she retains the power not to let it affect her. “Something like that,” she says, and moves her hair, and finally looks up at me. It’s a composed look, very even and steady and distant.
I wait for her to break, but she doesn’t. Instead, her eyes hold still, and not a little cold. She’s good, my mother. She’s always been able to hold her ground, when it came to that, and I think everything I’ve learned in life I’ve learned from her.
It’s really a simple message she’s sending me now: It’s time for her to be alone, her and my father, time for the two of them to go into the world they’ve made. It’s odd. I’m in the midst of this scene, I’m sitting right across from them, but I’m seeing them on a veranda somewhere, an old missionary couple, maybe, in a photograph. They’ve sent this postcard to their son, who lives in another country. In the bottom corner is written, in Mom’s shaky but still legible hand, “Love, your parents.” That’s Mom’s teaching, right there: not to see people as the helpless and vulnerable creatures they may wish to appear, but as if they exist, at all times, behind the laminated surface of a postcard, lacquered and remote.
“You can take your time, of course,” she says. I don’t know what I’m looking at now. I shift in my chair. “But not this anymore. Not here. All right?”
She’s attempted to be feminine and motherly on that “all right.” It’s the kind of move you can afford to make only when you know you’ve already won.
My father is looking down at me. If anything, it’s the old man who’s feeling guilty about all this, and his concern, which makes his face look droopy and mangy, like an old hound’s, makes me laugh. The little hiccup comes out. It’s like a small turd someone’s left in their living room. They seem to agree, at the same time, not to notice it.
My mother rocks forward onto her knees. It’s a first step in the elaborate process of getting up. She has arthritis, and such movements often appear graceless and painful. I don’t avert my eyes, though. My father leans forward, accepting her into his arms, and when she’s up, in the moment before he lets go, it seems as though the two of them are about to start dancing. They’re locked for a moment in that sort of embrace, her head tilted back just a little, his hovering over her, like they’re going to dance away from the problem of John. You construct a life, is what their every move has always taught me. You do not live it, not close to the belly, as I have always tried to do; you find the pieces and delicately arrange them so that they form a design, an imitation that will not spoil. And then when the time is right, or else gradually, over time, you rub out what is unpleasant.
My father’s arm completes its motion—it’s like a small, weird arc in the air—and it breaks the illusion that they’re about to go off in their own version of the Anniversary Waltz. Instead, they hover awhile in my presence, not really looking at me but not judging it seemly to move off just yet. I’m certainly not going to help them out any. My look is as blank as I can make it. Finally they do manage to extricate themselves. There’s some business with the dirty teacup in the kitchen. For some reason it takes both of them to get it placed in the dishwasher. My father asks me to shut off all the lights before I come to bed.
A little while later, I realize he hasn’t left it up to me, hasn’t quite trusted me, because I hear Cathy making her way down the stairs in the dark. By now I’ve forgotten all about her. She curses, and asks me where the switch is.
Cathy takes on this bandy-legged look sometimes when things haven’t been going well for her. Her shoulders get stiff, and she carries them high, so that she resembles Olive Oyl. She doesn’t sit beside me, where I’ve gestured, but across from me, in my mother’s place. This, I suppose, is my punishment.
“I’ve been sitting up there forever,” she says, by way of complaint.
“I know.”
“So? What happened?”
“We had a small disagreement.”
She’s aware I’m being coy, but chooses not to push it. It’s family business, after all, and she knows better than to intrude. She’s checking out the room, besides, which she didn’t get to do before, when she was being exiled.
“Did they say anything about me?”
“No. Not a word.”
This is a disappointment, I can tell. She’s only the bimbo of the evening, in their view. She runs her hands down the sides of her skirt as if she’s wiping them clean.
“I want you to tell me the truth about yourself, John.”
/> She turns to me with that wide-open face of hers that makes me remember what it was, when I first walked into Dr. Petticord’s office, that gave me to understand how I could have her very easily. This is not, I realize now, precisely the same thing as having wanted her.
There’s all of a sudden a terrible stillness in the room. I recognize this mild urge I have to break something.
“Okay,” I answer, and I do, I tell her about my life. As I tell it, I recognize how it sounds unflattering, like a record of drift. Eleven jobs since college, that sort of thing. But I’m also aware that there are two stories going on, the one I’m telling her, which has all the earmarks of “truth,” and the one I’m telling myself, which has a fine icebergy consistency to it, and which consists mostly of remembered sensations. In my memory, my life seems to have played itself out almost entirely in a series of afternoons. The light is always the same, and the sensations, which are various, are nearly always centered—again—in my belly. I come to realize something about myself: that I am one of those people—and for all I know there could be millions, this could apply to everybody—whose lives have precious little to do with the events that hold them up. Instead, it is as though I found, early, some remote secret place of infinite satisfaction, and chose to live there; chose to call that my life.
I end with the last part, with the job I had up north teaching troubled kids. How I forged the certificate when they demanded it. I am remembering Currey’s face as it looked that day he had to fire me, and though there were a great many things mixed there, one of the things I saw was unquestionably desire. It was nothing so simple as homosexual desire; still, it gives me the sense now of possibilities unmet.
As for Cathy, I am watching her the whole time I’m talking. This is not her finest hour. What about the screenplay? she keeps wanting to ask. It’s like out of the dregs of all these discouraging facts I’m relating to her, a pure line will emerge. “And then I went to Hollywood and sold a screenplay for a million bucks.” That sort of ending. It doesn’t come. I finish and then I watch her. I’m waiting. It’s her move.
There’s a moment—I’ve been there enough times so I know this—when a woman’s looking at you and you come to see in her look your whole future set spinning like a dime on a tabletop. They’re deciding. The dime could come up heads or tails. You have no way of knowing, so you hold your breath. Maybe not your whole future, but enough of it. Right now Cathy could solve my problem—where to stay. I’m watching her, and I have this nice detached feeling that her next move is going to tell me something.
I watch her pull a thread on the sofa beside her. She’s hesitating, I know, and at this point my heart’s racing a little; I’m on tenterhooks to find out what she’s going to decide. Her eyes land on Will’s picture on top of the TV. He’s a fine-looking boy, even with the paleness, the sort of boy every woman wants to have. A future heartbreaker is what they call him. I see the way she looks at him.
And then, focusing on this look of hers as she contemplates my son, I do something that surprises even me. I say, “I’ll take you home.”
She stares at me, disbelieving. I’ve rushed things, and she’s not happy about it. If she’s going to extricate herself from this, she’d rather do it herself, thank you.
But at least there’s no fight about it. What leg would she have to stand on, anyway? I’ve forced the dime to land on tails. I’ve pressed my thumb down hard, and this feels mildly exhilarating, if only because I’ve never done it before. Never tried to save anyone from me, or from themselves. I suppose something in that look my mother gave me spooked me a little. I see how willing Cathy might be to want to change me. I believe she’d see that as possible, doable; on some level, they all do, the urge to live this sort of domestic life is that strong. You start out with a lie—that the man is changeable—but you somehow convince yourself it’s not a lie, that it’s something minor, a thing that will evaporate. And then, what’s worse is, you get pregnant. It’s a thing that happens. Cathy’s twenty-four. I have no doubt in my mind she’d have a kid. And I couldn’t tell you right now which would be worse, to abandon him the way I’ve done with Will, or for the two of us to grow old together like my parents, and to gradually work ourselves to the point where our own son is something we want to refine ourselves out of.
I drive Cathy to Dr. Petticord’s parking lot, where her car is. I watch her walk to the car and then fish in her bag for her keys. I can tell it’s something she wishes she didn’t have to do. The clean getaway is denied her. But I won’t be seeing Dr. Petticord anymore. This is the last of our exchanges.
After that I drive around awhile. I’ve got some things to figure out. They’re not so hard, but still I’ve got to do this. At least I don’t feel like making love. The residue of that last unfinished act with Cathy seems to have vanished. Maybe not entirely, but enough so that I’m not bothered by it. It’s worse when I get it this time of night and I can’t find anyone. Sometimes I drive around for hours.
By the time I get home, I’ve made a decision. I sit on my bed for a few minutes before I call. Then I pick up the phone and dial Currey.
It’s late by now—it’s nearly one. I’m expecting to hear Currey’s tired voice. I’m going to ask him if I can stay awhile. He’ll be surprised, and he’ll hesitate. But he wants me in his life; I knew that from the first moment. It’s his wife who answers, though. She doesn’t sound tired at all. It’s like she’s been up by herself and she’s grateful someone’s called. But she talks quickly, in this fierce, urgent whisper, like she doesn’t want anyone in the house to know she’s up, she’s talking on the phone.
“Hello,” she says.
I pause. I deal with my surprise.
“It’s John,” I say. I know she doesn’t remember. Who was I, after all? I was there one night, that’s all. It’s very odd. When I speak again, I hear a whole other thing in my voice. Some edge, some languor. I don’t know what you’d call it. It’s how you talk when you want someone to remember you, when you want it to be like you’re the only, the most important man in the world.
“It’s John,” I say again. “John from work.”
Don’t ask me how I know these things, but I do. It’s all there in the way she pauses after I say that, in the hush on the phone. I see her in her surroundings, her hair and the nightshirt she’s wearing, which would be cotton and reach halfway down her thighs. Outside would be the darkness of the yard, and she’d be looking there, looking at the deck chairs, maybe, or at the skin of a tree. I’ve got to work hard to see her behind the laminated surface of the postcard, in the grip of the world she’s made for herself, the world that little riot of the cells is trying to steal her away from. She doesn’t know yet that she’s just gotten lucky, because her urge now is to leap out of this closed, perfect world. I try to let her know, with just the deep and subtle sound coming from my throat, that someone’s waiting to catch her.
THE CUT OF HIS JIB
When I was fifteen years old, I mowed lawns for the summer. My biggest job (eleven dollars) was the house on the corner of our street. The man was a lawyer; his name was Matt Romano. He might have been thirty-seven then, a lean, tall, handsome man whose good looks—and this was nothing unusual, a characteristic of certain men of the time—bore a faint whiff of the criminal.
No one else on the street was quite like him, though. The men were older, for one thing. My father was older. They were Italian men who had started poor, worked hard, and “risen,” so that they’d been able to move from their cramped neighborhoods to this woodsy, “exclusive” hill. Here, they bought half-acre lots and built their big, modern houses, most of them acting as their own contractors. A common style had been agreed to for all the houses: two-story, split-level. The Delosas lived across the street, and the Zagamis. On our side there were us and the Noceras. It was all very serious, living there. You felt, distinctly, your father’s pride in having ascended.
The house at the end of the street was vacant for the first few mon
ths after we moved in. Deluria, the contractor, had built it on spec, and rumor had it he was asking too much. We, the families, big with our new sense of ourselves as landed gentry, sat around our tables after dinner and discussed such things. The side yard of the vacant house sloped downward, following the curve of the hill. The ledge that had had to be blasted in order to build some of these houses obtruded in spots, with vegetation sprouting from it. The house had, perhaps, more grandeur than the other houses because of this, and because of the number of trees in the back. Amidst them, Deluria had planted a fountain, an angelic woman pouring water from a jug. Couples came on Sundays to look at the house, but none of them seemed quite up to the task of living in it. The Sunday Matt Romano came, the air had a heightened quality; that is the way I remember it, though I know some parts of my memory are the result of additions, things gathered to the central, bare fact because they seem, now, appropriate. We had moved into our house in mid-fall and this was the beginning of spring. Lawns had only just been seeded, so the way I remember it—all the families gathered on green lawns, standing like alerted shepherds to view the coming of the Romanos—cannot be exact. More likely it was me standing alone in my driveway, while a family stepped out of a gold car, a Mercury Cougar, I think. First, a man who looked like he’d just emerged from the cover of a novel, in a blue double-breasted blazer and cream-colored slacks. Then a wife, with honey blond hair and sunglasses, followed by two daughters, dark-haired, like him. They carried about them an air of difference; something made you look at them as if, were you only to stare hard enough, you’d find something out. She was with them that day, I remember that much with absolute assurance. She emerged from the car last, a smaller, darker woman, much younger than his wife but too old to be his daughter. She wore sunglasses as well, but she removed hers. She took them off and glanced across the seeded lawn at us, for only a second’s lapse. My father must have come out and joined me by then, because I remember it was the two of us staring at her.
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