by Drew Perry
The students straggle out of Gubbio’s in little clumps until finally and somehow it’s just the one girl left, his favorite, Sarah Cody. He realizes what’s happening while it’s happening, but can’t do much about it, or doesn’t want to. He didn’t do this. They did. The kids invited him out, he said yes. It’s only nine o’clock. Sarah orders them one more pitcher. Oh, come on, Jack. Just one more. He likes that she says his name. She smokes. The waitress comes by and clears the table, looks at them a little longer than she needs to. He wonders how much older than Sarah he looks. The booths are red plastic. The floor is a wood floor. An oversized TV on the wall is playing the Braves at the Mets. It’s drizzling in New York, cold. Here it’s beautiful, May, the end of the school year, warm afternoons. Sarah tells him about her family in Philadelphia, about her sister’s wedding, about how she’s going to be the maid of honor, how she has to find a stripper for the bachelorette party. Her final paper was not great, was adequate, a surface exploration of what it means for the western states to have used longitudinal borders instead of geographical ones. She’s bright enough, tries hard, just isn’t exactly committed to the idea of being a student all the time. But she’s his favorite anyway, has been all term. He likes the way she’ll get excited about certain ideas, likes that she’ll talk without raising her hand. He looks forward to seeing her. She wears T-shirts and jeans, T-shirts and little plain brown shorts. No makeup. Brown hair. Brown eyes.
Halfway through the last pitcher Jack’s a little drunk, and she is, too, telling him about her other sister, who’s older than she is by ten years. She’s retarded, she says. She goes to work at a place that makes lightbulbs. It’s sad. She lives in a home. She comes over on holidays. Last year she gave us 60-watt bulbs for Christmas. As much as anything that’s going on here, Jack’s relieved to be out of his own house, to be away from the flashcards and the beach ball and how completely tired they are by the time Hendrick’s in bed. He registers this in little washes of guilt, but still: It’s like he’s been living a different life altogether since Hendrick was born, and a second and parallel one on top of that since he was diagnosed. He and Beth move through the house in occasionally intersecting orbits, but he’s got the TV, got his baseball and weather and shows on PBS about the history of Tupperware, and she’s got her little studio, the back bedroom, where she revises her dissertation when she can, still hoping for her book. Jack doesn’t write at all any more, hasn’t answered a string of emails from Dr. Dunst about when he might resume his dissertation hours. They grade papers over red wine at the dining room table, share bad lines, go to sleep.
Sarah Cody sits across the table from him in Gubbio’s and tugs at the neck of her shirt, looks at him. She’s someone who is maybe aware of her effect on the world, someone who is almost certainly aware of her body in space. Also, she’s clearly in love with another kid in their little gang. Greg Alessa. When she came in to conference about her paper a few weeks ago, Jack had been amazed to find out they weren’t dating. He’d even called him her boyfriend. Oh, no way, she said, laughing. That would never work. Since then he’s seen Greg with the girlfriend, the typical Kinnett girl: Shiny hair, idiotic boots, thousand-dollar pants. He wonders when the last day was that Sarah didn’t smoke pot, didn’t get drunk. She is rough-edged. She’s a little like a version of himself he wishes had existed in another universe, or in this one: He doesn’t so much want her as want to be her. To take on her life for a while. He drinks his beer. Beth’s at home, Hendrick’s down for the night. She’s probably asleep on the sofa. He’s at Gubbio’s with Sarah Cody, listening to her stories about how once she passed out on a city bus in Philly, how some girl she knows got arrested in February for selling a mashup of Vicodin and Ritalin mixed into Gatorade, how my mom wanted to give me a boob job for my birthday. And what in the hell is he supposed to say back to that? “I think you’re doing fine in that department,” he says.
She smiles, gives him a raspy giggle, looks away, lights another cigarette. “I probably have to go pretty soon,” she says. “You know?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”
He signals the waitress, pays their bill, walks her out to her car, a brand new BMW. The money these kids have. She says, “Thanks for coming out with us.”
“Thanks for inviting me.”
“Yeah,” she says. “It was cool.” And then she puts her hand on his arm, leans into him a little bit, and he does, in fact, see it coming, sees the whole thing, sees how this is easily the dumbest thing he could possibly do, but sees at the same time how it might also be free, how maybe nothing would come of it, how maybe no one would ever have to know anything about it. Because there’s no way he’s getting ready to get in his car and follow her home. There’s no way she’s getting ready to ask him to do that. This is nothing other than a little blip on the radar, something that will happen right here and only right here, a tiny footnoted moment of time. And she knows what she’s doing, for sure: She’s had her share of the beer, but this is a girl who does not do something like this accidentally. You can read that much on her. For Sarah Cody, this will be like kissing a friend at a party. He should not do this, should not, and he does it anyway. In the fluorescent light from the Gubbio’s sign, in the parking lot, in Burlington, North Carolina, the cars whipping by out on the highway, she wraps her hand around to the small of his back and then there he is, kissing Sarah Cody, twenty-one years old, his student. She tastes like cigarette smoke and something sweet. He can smell her deodorant, can smell her sweat a little bit through that. He puts a hand in her hair, something he’s wanted to do since he called her name on the roll. Sarah Cody. Her tongue hits his lip and she presses her hips against him for as long as it takes the light up at the intersection to change, then pulls away. She smiles, looks at the ground, looks through her car keys. “Yeah,” she says. “OK.” He can see she’s already working on it, scripting it for her friends. We were pretty drunk. It was hilarious.
He doesn’t know what to do next. He can hear his own blood moving through his head. She gets her car door open, and he steps back. She says, “Well, you drive safely there, Jack.”
He says, “You too.” He says, “Are you OK to drive?”
“Sure I am.” Her eyes are bright.
“Good,” he says. “I was just checking.”
“Thanks, Dad,” she says, trying to make a joke out of it, but it comes out heavily, makes everything stranger, and she gets in the car, backs it out of the space, rolls the window down and waves at him. “See ya,” she says, and laughs, shakes her head, and pulls out of the lot. Like that, she’s gone. He’s a letch, a coward. But it was worth it. It was. That’s what he tells himself on the way home, holding the speedometer steady at 45, driving as straight as anyone has ever driven. It was worth it. He can still taste her. He finds 1100 on the AM out of Cleveland and listens to their postgame show. He puts both hands on the wheel. Ten and two. He drives home. He’s a fool. Sarah Cody. Gum and smoke.
Rena and Jack drink both bottles of wine, and he wakes up with a pretty good headache. And late. The clock blinks at him. They’ve lost power sometime during the night. No storms, but this happens: Old neighborhood, old electric. On and off. The angle of the sun on the floor means it has to be at least 9:30. He pulls on a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, hurries down the hall.
Hen’s in front of his cabinet: Not new. What is new is Rena lying on the sofa under a blanket, the green thing they keep in the closet for picnics. Pieces of last night slide back into focus, ambling conversations about old girlfriends and religion and a man she’d been engaged to before she met Canavan. She’s got a Ziploc bag of ice on her forehead. The wine glasses are on the counter, and Jack picks them up on his way to the coffeemaker, sets them next to the two empty bottles. Let’s drink all this wine. Yul Brynner’s on the floor, on his side, belly up against the couch, front legs out in front of him like he’s flying sideways through the world. He thumps his tail. “Jesus, shit,” Rena says.
Jack nods y
es. His head’s heavy, full of sand. Everything on this side of the kitchen is plugged into extension cords that run into the hallway. When he knocked the wall out, he had to cut the circuit to the outlets in the kitchen. One more thing for Beth to mark down in the ledger. Jack sits next to Hendrick once he’s got the coffee going. The tile is cool on the backs of his legs. He rubs Hen’s back. Closed. Forehead. Open. “How long’s he been up?” he asks.
“Not long,” says Rena. “When I woke up, he was still asleep.”
“Really?”
“Or just hanging out in his room,” she says. “I don’t know.” She watches him do the cabinet. “That doesn’t hurt him?”
“Not usually.” Jack reaches for him anyway, though, takes his chances, puts his hand flat on the cabinet in front of Hen’s head. “Hendrick,” he says. “Buddy. You’re making my head hurt, OK?”
Hen makes a few noises, looks at him.
“Your head,” Jack says. “Not today, OK? That hurts.”
Hendrick sits up straighter, knocks his knuckles together, then digs at his nose, wipes his finger on the tile. He says, “The Greensboro Grasshoppers: They’re Hoppin’ Fun.”
“They are?” Jack asks him. After they got through the wine, he remembers now, they moved on to whiskey.
“Call today to book your Family Fun Package,” Hen says. He’s getting himself cranked up.
“Would you flick on the weather?” Jack asks Rena.
“What?”
“The weather. The TV. Would you turn it on?”
She does, and the sound comes pouring out, huge in the room: LET’S GO NOW TO THE TROPICAL UPDATE. She shrinks back from it into the sofa, winces, holds the remote out at arm’s length, turning it down. Hen gets up immediately, goes and sits on his knees in front of the screen. He rocks back and forth while a pregnant woman in a blue shirt explains that most June tropical storms originate in the Gulf and the Caribbean. There are pulsing kidney-shaped areas showing where the storms begin, animated arrows showing where they tend to go after that: To Texas, to Kentucky, to Nova Scotia. Rena wads up the blanket, leans against it. She’s on his sofa. His life feels half-cooked. Jack reaches for the phone, to call the yard. Ernesto picks up after a couple of rings. “Hey, Ernesto,” Jack says. “It’s me.”
“Yes,” says Ernesto.
“Everything OK over there? Just checking in.”
“Everything is fine,” he says. “Butner will probably want the truck. Eventually.”
“No problem,” Jack says. “I’ll bring it in about an hour.” Ernesto says nothing. “Tell him I’ll bring it in about an hour.”
“OK.” He hears one of the loaders get louder, then cut off. Ernesto shouts, then gets back on the phone. “I told him,” he says.
“Is everything else OK?”
“Everything else is OK. We haven’t knocked anything over today.”
“Great.”
“Terry Canavan cut off his foot, Butner says.”
“Almost.”
“Castigo.”
“What?” Jack asks.
“It’s nothing. It’s a figure of speech.”
“What’s it mean?”
“Something like, ‘That’s what happens.’ ”
“Right.”
“Listen,” says Ernesto. “We have customers. I should go.”
“Oh,” Jack says. “Sorry.”
“It’s OK,” Ernesto says. “Adiós,”
“Adiós,” says Jack, and hangs up. On TV, there’s a green blob spinning off the coast of Cuba, and a graphic comes up that says First Named Storm of the Atlantic Season. He pours himself a cup of coffee, pours one for Rena. “Headed this way?” he asks her.
“They don’t seem to know.”
The blue-shirt woman sends it over to a guy in a suit, who keeps talking about the tropics. A new graphic runs the storm name across the bottom of the frame: Tropical Storm Ashley. “Ashley,” Jack says. It doesn’t sound fierce enough. It sounds like a baby-sitter.
Hendrick says, “Here are your tropical storm names for the season. Ashley. Bruce. Claudette. Diego. Eliza. Frederick. Grace.” He keeps going through to the end of the list, Wanda, then starts over, runs it again.
“I take it you boys watch a little weather around here,” says Rena.
“A little bit,” Jack says. “We like knowing what’s coming.”
“That’s sound.” She tilts her head back, puts the Ziploc on her forehead. “I’m wounded,” she says.
“Me too.”
“Red wine,” she says. “Not your friend.”
“Tell that to the Italians.”
“It was French,” she says. “I couldn’t believe your quickie mart had French.”
“They’re good down there.”
“That wine wasn’t,” says Rena. “French or not.”
“Yeah,” Jack says.
“We should go down there and warn them. We should tell them something’s wrong with their wine. Tell them it’s broken.”
“I’m right behind you,” Jack says. “Just let me finish this coffee.”
“Check.” She gets up, readjusts her ice, walks to the sliding glass doors, looks out at his yard. On the TV, the blue woman is back, has given up on the tropics, is talking about thunderstorms in upstate New York. “Thanks for letting me stay the night,” Rena says.
“Neither one of us could have driven you home.”
“I know, but still. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
She taps on the glass. “No offense, but for you being a landscaper, your back yard kind of looks like shit.”
“I’m not a landscaper.”
“I mean, I like those flowers over there, in the back, those are nice—”
“The daylilies?”
“Is that was those are? The orange ones? I never know. I like those. But the rest of the yard pretty much sucks, doesn’t it?”
There’s a skinny run of grass out to the left-hand side, but the rest is mainly weeds. He hasn’t cut it in a couple of weeks. Everything’s long. The fence is covered over in some vine. There’s a big patch where there’s only bare ground right behind the house. “I hit the water doing the kitchen wall,” he says. “There was a flood. It took out a lot of the grass.”
“Yeah,” she says. “The kitchen.” She walks around the island, knocks on the plywood wall. She’s inspecting the premises. “Did I ask you about this last night? About what it is you’re up to?”
“I was going to surprise her. I was going to put in a breakfast nook. A little sunroom.”
“Surprise,” she says. “Holy shit, right?”
“I know.”
“Sorry,” she says. “I think it’ll be nice when you get it all finished.” She’s wearing her same clothes, the Ore-Ida T-shirt, the worn-out jeans. Her blue hair is like what would be left over the next day from some Halloween costume. She keeps stretching her toes, laying them back down on the floor one by one. “I like the tile,” she says.
“It’s discontinued. I can’t find any more.”
“Well, it’s still pretty. What’s here is, anyway.”
“Thanks,” he says. “At least you think so.”
“Beth doesn’t like it?”
“She didn’t tell you about all this?”
“She talks about it in kind of vague, grand terms. She says ‘renovation’ a lot.”
“She’s pretty pissed off.”
“And now she’s with Terry,” Rena says. “Which is pretty fucked up, if I do say so myself.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he says.
“You’re sorry? What would you have said? Who needs to be sorry—and I feel pretty sure about this—is not us. I don’t know if either one of us owes anybody sorry right about now.”
“Yeah,” Jack says. He watches her work her toes along a line of grout. Her toenails are painted brown. Outside, an engine starts up. A lawn mower, or something bigger. Probably the neighbor, Frank, doing something to his yard. “Do you want
some breakfast or anything?” he asks. He should have asked her before, been a better host.
“I don’t eat it.”
“OK.”
“I mean,” she says, “sometimes leftovers. I like having coffee and Chinese. I like the sound the spoon makes on those takeaway Styrofoam boxes, you know? But not regular cereal or anything like that. I don’t believe in cereal.”
“How do you not believe in cereal?”
“I just don’t. Anyway. About our good friends Beth and Terry.” She puts her mug down on the counter. “This has been going on a week and a half, right?”
He counts it up. “I guess so.”
“And you’re doing nothing?”
“What are you doing?”
She checks her watch. “Hang on, alright? I’ve known for eleven hours. But you,” she says. “You’ve known for eleven days. I don’t get it. What’s your plan?”
“I’m waiting it out,” he says. “I’m seeing what happens.”
“That’s your plan?”
“I guess so,” he says.
“That is not a plan.”
“It’s the one I have.”
“It’s shitty,” she says. “It’s nothing.”
“What’s yours, then?” he asks.
“Give me eleven days, and I’d have something.”
“OK,” he says.
“I just can’t believe you’re not doing anything.”
“You started this,” he says. “She wouldn’t be over there if you were still there.”
“Nope,” she says, holding a finger out at him. “I don’t think we’re going to allow that. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It makes more sense than you not believing in cereal, or whatever you just said.”
“We’re not talking about me.” She looks around. “Except, you know what it feels like in here? In your kitchen? It feels like I’m making out with my boyfriend. You know that feeling? Like your top’s off and now you’re just listening out for the sound of the garage door opener so you can frantically look around for your bra and get dressed again before your parents make it inside?”