“Poor kid nothing. He did this himself, don’t forget.”
“You’re such a hard-ass.”
“Let me talk to Casey, please.”
“Hi,” Casey says, and her voice makes me smile in spite of the evening. I tell her we’ve got Dylan unscathed, the storm has stopped, and we’re on our way back.
“Good,” she says, and there’s something funny about her voice I can’t place.
“You okay?”
“Just really, really, really tired.”
“Everything okay with Mallory?”
“Sure!” She sounds almost chirpy. “We’re getting along famously.”
I don’t detect any sarcasm, which confuses me so much I wonder if I’m dreaming. “Well, great. Good. Why don’t you get some rest, it will be a long time yet before we’re home.”
“Sure, you bet.”
Mallory and Casey getting along?
I try to remember Mallory at her best, and imagine for the thousandth time what it would be like if she could stay that way. She was most calm immediately after delivering a baby, that baby euphoria carrying her like a wave over whatever rocks and cliffs lay under her surface. Most dads I know groused about those months. The grumpy wives, lack of sex, colicky kids keeping them up even if the wives were the ones rocking and feeding.
Not me. Three times, I had hope for a future with my wife.
And it wasn’t awful in the early days, either. Not immediately.
In college, during those months we dated, before she got pregnant, she was wild and passionate, but back then it came off as impulsive and freewheeling. If she was quick to anger, she was also quick to forget, like a water droplet on a griddle that would sizzle away: hot for one second, but gone the next.
Her jealousy flattered me. To think that any other girl would look my way. Not after Heather, anyway. Who was supposed to be “the one.” My parents loved her. My roommate thought she was awesome. Heather was the perfect easygoing girlfriend, I thought, until she went easy with my roommate.
I still remember Tom going, “Dude, there was a hat on the doorknob,” as if the fact that I’d barged in on sex—with my girlfriend!—was the bigger sin.
Then I went to that party, trying to drown my sorrows in beer—I couldn’t stand the dorm room, every time I glanced at the other bunk I remembered him screwing Heather—and that’s when Mallory swooped in on me.
Her smile was bright, her eyes narrowed like she was sizing me up, which of course she was.
My thought process—such as it was—ran something like, Take that, Heather.
And what Mallory and I did had nothing to compare with the boring missionary sex I’d had with Heather. We slammed up against walls, she hung from the towel bar, we got rug burns every which way, not that we noticed until much later, comparing our scars gleefully like prizefighters.
I have to stop thinking about this, or I’m going to get a hard-on right here in the SUV.
So instead I think of the day she threw a mug at me and sliced my face open.
My dad thinks I married her to be a rebel. My mother thinks I did it out of love and a sense of old-fashioned responsibility.
They’re both wrong.
Actually I did it for Angel, before Angel even had a name, or discernible gender. Because one day I came home to the apartment—we’d moved in together by then, assisted by my dad’s bank account—to find her glassy-eyed and giggly, her belly poking up under one of my old shirts, empty food wrappers all around. She’d gotten high.
She can’t do this, I thought. She’s not ready.
But ready or not, the baby was coming. And that’s when I knew I couldn’t leave her.
For our whole marriage I insisted to all doubters that I loved my wife, right from the beginning and right up to the end. It’s what a good person does, after all.
That’s a phrase my mom always used, my whole life, whenever she was giving me a life lesson, either directly or by telling some anecdote for my benefit.
You share your sandwich with your friend, Mikey . . .
Don’t honk from the driveway; walk up to the door to pick up a date, Mike . . .
Love your wife, Michael . . .
That’s what good people do.
She never told me out loud to love my wife. But I heard it anyway. It wasn’t until I met Casey that I started to second-guess all those strident assertions. I began to think I hadn’t loved her, genuinely, so much as I’d talked myself into loving her. To be a good person.
My dad startles me so much I almost spill my bottled water all over the heated seats.
“I’m sorry” is what I’d heard.
“For what?” I was so lost in thought, I almost forgot where I was.
“For all this trouble.”
Then I realize it’s a “sympathy” sorry more than an apology. Still, these are two words I never hear coming from my dad.
“Teenagers,” I mutter, not knowing how else to respond.
“He’s a good kid,” my dad says, peering out over the road. “I don’t understand it.”
“I don’t either.”
“Must be his mother.”
“Dad.”
I look back. Dylan is sound asleep. He always could sleep in the middle of a marching band if he had to, so I relax about him overhearing.
“What else could it be? Maybe you should take him to a psychiatrist. My friend Arnold—”
“We took the kids to a counselor once, remember? It cost a fortune and they faked the proper answers and it kept them from getting their homework done and going to practices and stuff.”
“I’m trying to help.”
“I thought you weren’t going to help me anymore.”
He shifts in his seat, and it’s childish of me, but I enjoy his discomfort. “I’m worried about him.”
“Me, too.”
“What if he’s . . . got problems.”
This is unlike my father, to soft-pedal something. “Obviously he does, Dad. He ran away.”
“You know what I mean.”
I do know, of course. But I shake my head. “It’s not like that. He’s too calm, too steady.”
“Still waters run deep.”
Now this is familiar territory for Dr. Turner. The platitudes and proverbs.
“You remember my brother,” my dad continues.
“Yeah?” I ask quizzically. Uncle Joe was a factory worker last I knew, out in Oregon. We don’t see him; there was some kind of rift years ago, and Dr. Turner doesn’t discuss it much
“Our parents believed in letting us sink or swim. They figured we’d rise to our potential, or we would not, but that would be up to us. So they didn’t supervise our studies, or do more than grunt at our grades. If I hadn’t had Mrs. Ellis as a teacher, I might have gone half deaf in a factory myself. But she saw that I was goofing off in the back of the class, and she took me aside and she told me I was wasting God’s greatest gift. This was back when teachers could still talk about God in schools, you know.”
“Don’t start.” I spit that out automatically, but I sit up straight, intrigued in spite of myself.
“Anyway, she challenged me. She knew I was competitive in sports, so she used that spirit, and challenged me to get an A in all my classes that semester, and if I did, she’d get me a scholarship. Not a huge one, just a few hundred bucks from the Chamber of Commerce, where her husband was president. But a few hundred went a lot further than now. I had a lot of ground to make up, but I did it. Yes, I damn sure did.”
He smiles under his mustache.
“Huh,” is all I can think of to say. “Well, good for you.”
“Didn’t get the scholarship, though. She was a little overconfident that she could have a hand in picking the winner. Or maybe she knew she couldn’t, and just figured I needed some kind of carrot on the stick. But the thing is, it wasn’t that hard once I sat down to do the work. Obviously I was smart, smart enough to do well. I’d just never really tried before. And I thought then—
and think often, now—what if Mrs. Ellis had never challenged me?”
“I thought we were talking about your brother.”
“Ah yes, my brother. Still waters running deep.”
He taps on the steering wheel, some rhythm I don’t recognize.
“He died in the factory. Got his hand caught in a machine; bled out before they got him to the hospital.”
“What? When?”
“This week.”
“What the . . . Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was going to. The funeral is this weekend. But then this with Dylan came up. And Joe and I weren’t close. We hadn’t talked in years. He thought that I believed myself better than him, and in an argument years ago I told him he was right, that I was better. But in the last few days I’ve been thinking maybe the only difference was that he never had Mrs. Ellis as a teacher. He had Miss Collins, who was very young and always seemed to be on the verge of crying.”
He taps some more on the wheel.
“Yes,” he says with finality, as if solving a difficult medical mystery. “I do believe if he’d had Mrs. Ellis, he wouldn’t have been a factory worker. And he’d be alive right now.”
“Dylan’s not going to be a factory worker.”
“My son the newsman. So literal.”
“I’m not taking him for granted, either.”
“No? Ah look, we’re back in Michigan. Lots of hours left, but that feels like a milestone to me.”
My dad turns up the classical music to indicate he’s done with the revelatory conversation.
I turn back to look at Dylan, the highway lights flashing on his face, and try to remember the last time I had a serious heart-to-heart chat with him, the quiet one in the family.
Chapter 34
Casey
Yes! Exactly!” Mallory slaps her hand on the kitchen table so hard I jump. “He’s so nitpicky. Like it matters how you load a dishwasher, especially when he’s not the one unloading it.”
Lucinda Williams sings from the CD player, “It’s a real love, a real love . . .” We have moved on to potato chips and dip in the kitchen, under a circle of yellow light from the hanging fixture.
I should feel bad about this. Unloading to his ex-wife, of all people. But it feels like I’ve been straining under the pressure of holding stuff in, and now I finally let it go and the relief is so powerful I could weep. I don’t have any girlfriends anymore, not since I left JinxCorp. No one I know from school will talk to me since I dumped Pete. I don’t even have Billy, who I think would have understood, despite not being a wife.
The dishwasher thing almost made me start throwing plates on the floor. I’d had a horrid day. Jewel was home sick with an earache, and I was trying to program a database for a grouchy, demanding client, and then I had to arrange a new ride home for Angel when her carpool canceled, and Michael was working late and came in just as I was loading the dishwasher.
I didn’t get a “Hi honey” or “How was your day?” or anything. He hung up his coat, looked at me, and said, “Those pans will never get clean in there, you have to scrub them in the sink.”
I told him I’d use the pots and pans setting.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, sighing. “And all the bits of food will get caked on there and it will be twice as hard to scrub, later.”
I tell Mallory now, “I used to think I was lucky that he’s so domestic, but it’s like, everything has to be done exactly his way. He gets after me about the way I fold the socks, too.”
“It’s like living with your parents, isn’t it?”
“I went on strike for a couple days. I figured if he was going to nitpick how I did stuff, he could do it himself. But he was working so hard it just didn’t get done, and I felt bad for the kids not having clean laundry. It’s not their fault.”
“Yeah, kids. They mess up all the best revenge plans.” Mallory winks at me.
“The bitch of it is? He was right about the dishwasher. I had to spend twenty minutes scrubbing the stupid pans the next day.”
Mallory flops her head down on her arms. “Oh, the rightness!” she says, her voice muffled by the table. Then she pops up again. “My God, he’s right all the time. I wish he were a fuck-up, you know? So then I could be relieved at not being awful in comparison.”
I nod, knowing what she means. It’s hard enough for me, and I’m a pretty stable person. These days, anyway. As far as Michael knows.
She goes on, “I used to try to lighten him up, but whenever he relaxes, he always assumes the world is going to crash down on him. And look what happens? Dylan ran away anyway. You can’t control this kind of thing, no matter what kind of grip you have.” Mallory shakes her head suddenly. “Enough. Tired of thinking about it now. Want something to drink? I’m thirsty.”
“Sure.”
She roots around in a paper bag on the counter I hadn’t noticed before. She must have ducked out when I was napping.
She smacks a bottle of Jack on the counter. The sound is like a gunshot.
“No thanks.” My voice comes out funny. Overly high, fake-casual.
“Aw, what’ll it hurt? The girls are asleep, the guys won’t be back for hours. Just a nightcap to shake off this day.”
“I thought you gave it up?”
“Not entirely, one hundred percent. Just . . . mostly. But today,” she says as she twists off the cap, “is an exceptional day.”
There’s nothing I want more than to call Tony right now. Or to see Michael, to hear him tell me that we’re going to get married and pick a date and have a baby.
A baby. I can hold on to that. I close my eyes for a moment and imagine a pink receiving blanket, tiny fists pinwheeling in the air. Toes like little round peas. Can’t have that while drunk. I can’t.
“You okay?” asks Mallory, and because I can’t tell her, I say, “Yep, just really tired.”
But I can’t go to bed, either. I can imagine crawling into bed, and Mallory going to sleep, and then it’s just me and a bottle of Jack in a dark, quiet house.
Mallory pours herself some. “Oh, I’m going to get some Coke.” She turns to the fridge.
Despite the agony it will be to watch her drink and not have some, I’m relieved to see things slipping back into their normal pattern. She was acting so normal and regular I was beginning to think I’d gone through the looking glass.
“So, why don’t you drink, anyway?”
I shrug. “No reason.”
“Yeah, right, come on. There’s always a reason. I don’t care, Casey. I’m just asking.”
She’s not going to let this go. I have to give her something, something plausible, something that won’t indict me.
“Well, my brother. He died, and it involved drinking, so . . . It’s just not the same anymore.”
This is sort of true.
Mallory’s face goes soft. She reaches out and puts her hand on my arm. Her fingernails are all ragged, but her touch is gentle. For a moment I wonder how I will explain to Michael that I acknowledged my brother first to his ex-wife, before ever telling him. For a long time I assumed he’d dump me, and I’d never have to talk about Billy. Then he proposed. After that, I could never find a moment when the words would come. How could I tell him that story without telling him what I really was?
Too late now, anyway. Mallory leans forward on her elbows, staring at me. Waiting.
So I start my story, and in doing so it’s like Billy is right there with me in the kitchen, nodding his head along, tipping the chair back on its rear legs, which drove our mom insane. I can even smell that stupid Polo cologne he wore, trying to cover up the cigarette smoke.
It was one of those random, accidental parties, where people just started drifting toward a particular house in town. There was a game on TV. People were playing cards in the kitchen, but mostly everyone was just lying around, draped on each other like housecats.
This was Lisa’s place, and we could still smoke there. A haze hung in the room. The doors and w
indows were open to the summer outside. It was one of those delicious nights when the evening air is a pleasant kind of cool.
Someone started a bonfire outside. I, myself, was at that stage of drunk where I felt so relaxed I was made of liquid, and walked around smiling at everyone. I wandered from the house out to the bonfire and plopped myself in Pete’s lap, tipping us both over in the aluminum lawn chair he’d been sitting in. We all found this hysterical. We detangled, and I picked leaves out of my hair. This time I sat down with exaggerated care, which we all found hysterical once more.
I’m telling Mallory about the poker game that started it all, but my memory is working on another level, going over scenes I much prefer to linger on, scenes that are too private to share. Pete’s strong arm behind my back as I perched sideways on his lap, curled up. His callused fingers stroking my waist inside my T-shirt. The smell of his cigarettes mixed with aftershave, which was not lovely but comforting.
It was just after my college graduation, and that may have been the last moment I was purely happy.
We all heard a ruckus after that. As the noise from the house increased, our talk around the bonfire died away, and Pete removed me carefully from his lap. He exchanged looks with several other men, and they strode off in a pack. The women followed, also swapping looks.
Inside, my brother was wrestling with someone on the kitchen floor, the rest of the party in a circle around him. It was mostly women in the circle, who were ineffectually yelling at Billy and the other guy, someone I didn’t recognize.
Pete and the others strode up and with much tussling and struggle, pulled the two apart. In the melee, someone knocked over the kitchen table. Poker money and cards scattered.
“What the fuck is the problem!” yelled my cousin Rick.
Billy angled forward at his foe. I could see the bulging veins in his arms from all the way across the room. “You take it back,” he said to the man.
“You’re psycho,” the guy replied. “I was just jokin’ around.”
Billy lunged again, and that’s when I recognized him, the other guy. He’d grabbed my ass at the bar the previous week.
“Okay,” the guy said. “Fine, fine. I take it back. Sorry. Jesus.”
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