This is Just Exactly Like You

by Drew Perry

  It’s always a little ghostly delivering to houses where nobody’s home. Signs of life everywhere: Basketball goal, a basketball or two in the grass behind. There’s mail in the mailbox to the right of the door, flowers on the patio with puddles of water underneath, a piece of a bicycle leaned up against the garage. And a bicycle pump. Coffee mugs on a glass-topped table on the deck out back. A dog-house, a couple of chew toys in the grass. It’s as though the house itself might be alive, as though it’s the house that has carelessly left these things out. The family has been whisked away, winked into another time. There’s a shovel next to the A/C compressor, and Jack takes that, sticks it in the mulch pile, tapes the invoice to the handle. That’ll do. “Hen,” he says. “You want to come bring the bed back down?” With the bed up in the air, the truck looks like Yul Brynner trying to take a shit.

  Hen walks over, saying, “The Sleep Number Bed, so you can choose your mattress preference, your Sleep Number.”

  Jack hands him the control box. “That one right there,” he says, pointing out the right button. “Remember?”

  Hen says, “Remember?” He takes the box, which looks huge in his little hand. He holds his index finger out, but can’t quite figure out how to work the buttons and hold the box at the same time. He keeps dropping it. It bangs down onto the driveway, chipping a fingernail-sized piece up off the concrete.

  “Here,” Jack says, trying to hold it for him, but that’s no good. Hen starts making his noises, thinking Jack’s trying to take it from him. “No,” Jack says. “Look. We’re doing it together.” Which makes it worse. Hen lets go of the box completely, starts screaming and hitting himself in the head with the heel of his hand. “Come on, buddy,” Jack says, trying to calm him, “please now, come on. Let’s do it together.” Hen’s turning in circles, grunting, hitting himself. Jack gets behind him, gets both his arms circled around him, holds the control box right in front of Hen’s face. “Here we go,” he says. “OK? Look. Look.” And Hen bangs his face so hard into the box that even before he checks, Jack knows there’s going to be blood.

  The impact stops him cold, though: No more circles, no yelling, no hitting. A trickle of blood starts down and out from his left eyebrow. Jack holds onto him, holds onto the box, pulls the hem of his shirt up to pat Hen’s face dry. Hendrick reaches one finger out, pushes the green button, holds it a second, lets it go. The bed comes down a foot, maybe less, stops. Hen pushes the button again, and the bed bounces down a few inches more. He laughs. He laughs while he’s bleeding from his goddamned face. He pushes the button a third time, a fourth, and the bed comes down a little more, a little more. Jack holds his shirt against the cut. Put this in Extraordinary Parent Magazine. One of Beth’s subscriptions, one of the Bibles from which the scripture readings come. He’ll send in a letter. Our child really tends to come around when he concusses himself. Sharp edges seem to work best.

  It can’t be good for the truck hydraulics, dropping the bed down a foot at a time, but what the hell. Butner can fix that, too. Jack holds onto Hen, can feel the warmth of his little body through his shirt while he pushes the button, pushes the button. A car pulls in behind him, a diesel. Mercedes, from the sound of it. Low metallic rumble. This is the woman, or her husband. Has to be. He dabs at Hen’s eyebrow again: It’s a tiny cut, nothing more than a puncture from the control box. It’s putting out enough blood, though. The truck shudders every time the bed drops down.

  It’s the husband. He gets out, stands in his driveway, looks at his pile of mulch. “We’ll be out of your way in a minute,” Jack says. Hen bleeds.

  The guy’s wearing a coat and tie. “I guess that’s as good a place as any,” he says.

  Jack says, “We tried to pick some place out of the way.”

  “I’m gonna put it along the house, here, up front,” the man says. People are forever telling Jack what they’re going to do with the mulch, like it’s some kind of test they have to pass with him. They’ll stand on the yard at PM&T, let a handful of mini nuggets slide through their fingers, and they’ll say, I think this’ll probably do for underneath the swingset out back. Right? They need their choices ratified by experts. People tend to look desperate around mulch.

  The bed whines its way finally down onto the frame, and the man stands behind them, watching. It hits with a hollow bang. Jack takes the control box, fits it in its spot on the back of the cab. Hen’s got a thin stripe of blood running down his jaw, like war paint. He says, “Sawtooth Oak.”

  The man says, “Do you guys need a bandage or something? Is he OK?”

  “I’ve got Band-Aids in the truck,” Jack says, knowing Hen’ll never let him put one on. He hates sticky things. “It’s just a little nick in his eyebrow. He bumped his head on the box.” Jack points at the box. He’s got to look like some sort of child abuser here, like someone should be called about this, but the man just nods.

  “OK,” he says, and loosens his tie.

  “Sawtooth Oak,” Hen says again, and the man takes a handkerchief out of his pocket, wipes Hendrick’s face. He lets him. Another rule that’s null and void, apparently.

  “You like trees?” the man asks.

  “Sawtooth Oak,” says Hen.

  “Switchback Oak,” says the man. “One of my all-time favorites.”

  “Chestnut Oak,” Hen says.

  “Another good one,” the man says. “Chestnut Oak. That’s great.” He turns to Jack. “Great kid. Smart.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You know I’ve got one already looking at colleges? Wants me to take her to see Cornell this summer. Have you seen what tuition looks like these days?”

  “No,” Jack says, even though he has.

  “It’s a fortune,” he says. “It’s another mortgage. Southern White Oak,” the man says to Hen.

  “Pin Oak.”

  “That’s right,” the man says. “Absolutely. The Pin Oak.”

  “Well,” Jack says, touching Hen on his shoulder just to let him know where he is. “We better head on.”

  “My wife paid you already, I guess.”

  “In full,” Jack says.

  “She’s been wanting to put in a bank of hydrangeas there by the road,” he says. “Maybe this fall. You think hydrangeas would go in up there?”

  “I do,” Jack tells him, checking to see which spot he means.

  “Come see us when you get ready to plant. We’ll give you a good price.”

  “I’ll do that,” he says. “I will.” Then he reaches into his pocket, gets the handkerchief out again, gives it to Jack. “Here,” he says. “You better hang onto this.”

  The stripe is back along the side of Hen’s face. Jack takes the handkerchief, wipes him off. “Thanks,” he says. There are initials embroidered into one corner.

  “I’ve got dozens,” the man says. “Keep it. She gives them to me for every holiday.”

  “They’re nice,” Jack says.

  “I never use them. Almost never. But it makes her happy.”

  Jack wonders what the man would say if he asked him if he wanted to ride along for the rest of the day. For the week. Or maybe to come set up camp with them, maybe move into the house across the street. He hefts Hen into the cab, fires up the engine, cuts the brake loose.

  “Thanks again,” the man says.

  “No problem,” says Jack. “Thanks for this.” He waves the handkerchief at him, like he’s leaving on a transatlantic voyage. “Have a good day.”

  “You bet,” the man says, and Jack drives away, wondering if they’ll ever take Hen to look at colleges, wondering if the Lone Oak catalog will last them that long.

  They drive through for burgers. The girl at the window’s got braces, the space station walkie-talkie headset thing. Brown and yellow employee vest. She drops Jack’s Coke on the ground. She says, Shit, y’all, excuse me, and her manager, a boy maybe fifteen minutes older than she is, swoops in, pulls another drink, hands it to Jack, all apologies for the mistake. Then he tells the girl quietly, urgentl
y, that Your language just that minute ago was not very Christlike. She apologizes. Everyone at the drive-through is wearing rubber wristbands. Live Strong. Save Something. These are people with purpose in their lives. Jack bumps the back right wheels over the landscaping on his way out.

  For Jack: A double with fries. For Hen: Two plain hamburgers, two slices of cheese on the side, a stack of lettuce leaves, a handful of ketchup packets, a milkshake. Vanilla. He shreds his lettuce into dime-sized pieces and dips each one in the ketchup. Then he eats the burger patties, then the buns, then the cheese. They don’t eat fast food much because of his diet, but when they do, it’s this every time. Doesn’t matter what place. Always the lettuce, then the two small burgers, then the buns and cheese at the end. Then the milkshake, after it’s melted. He plays with it in the straw, pulls it up and down. It used to make Jack insane to watch him do it. Now it’s the most normal thing in the world. Comforting, almost. Hen’s is a life of ritual, like anyone else’s, give or take the ability to name the British Colonies alphabetically—though it occurs to Jack, suddenly, that he has no idea if Hen eats like this when he rides with Ernesto. Maybe not. Maybe they order straight off the menu. The gentleman will have the Number Four.

  He could be in a chair, in a helmet, could drool on himself all day long. He could have Down’s. He could have died at thirty months from MS or MD. He could be manic. Schizophrenic. A dwarf or a giant. He could have stage four pediatric leukemia. He could have an enlarged heart, a failing heart, a hole in his heart. He could have one lung. One foot. He could have Lou Gehrig’s or sickle cell or AIDS. A conjoined twin. He could be deaf, blind. When he’s quiet, like he was in the drive-through, no one knows. When he climbs to the ceiling on the shoe racks at the Stride Rite, everybody sees everything there is.

  Jack’s pretty sure that he’s not that great a father, that he’s not in line for any parenting awards or special commendations. He’s not even sure he always tries as hard as he can. He’s maybe not Living quite Strong enough. Hen is, after all, sitting next to him, having only stopped bleeding from the head about fifteen minutes ago. But what he’s always liked about fatherhood, about Hendrick, is his company, his physical presence, even from the first day they brought him home from the hospital. It’s what surprised him most—not the overpowering love all the books required that he feel for his child—just that he simply liked being around him. And even with the diagnosis, or even since, there’s something a little joyous, alongside all the disaster, about living with Hendrick. Some feeling he gets about being in better or closer contact with the things we need, the things we want. I want to run the controls on the dump truck. I want to touch the faucet. I want to open the drawer three hundred times in a row. Because who doesn’t want that from time to time? To fall deeper in? Who doesn’t do it? Some mornings Jack taps his own spoon a few extra times on the rim of the cereal bowl just for the sheer pleasure of it, and then he’ll wonder what the space really is, after all, between tic and illness. Where biting your fingernails falls on the spectrum. Ticking the button on the emergency brake. Ordering salad dressing on the side, having a song stuck in your head, watching a ball game on mute.

  Everybody wants him to plan. Butner wants the sprinkler system. Ernesto wants the second greenhouse. Beth wants him to think things all the way through, goddamnit, Jack, why don’t you. Even Rena, this morning. Jack doesn’t always want that. Often enough, here’s his plan: Not to. Today is maybe not a great example of the screaming success of a life lived like that, and maybe this week isn’t, either, these two weeks, but he knows it can work. So Hendrick’s bleeding from his face. He can speak Spanish now, can explain all about his dolor de cabeza. Still: Maybe Rena was right, standing on the tile. He might need something new.

  He goes by the lot to see if they need the truck, and they don’t. It’s empty. Butner and Ernesto are sitting up on the pallets of decorative stone, tossing pebbles into an empty five-gallon bucket, keeping score. I’m up big, Butner says. He’s up, says Ernesto. But it’s close.

  Take off, boss man, Butner says. Take a day. Do what you need to do. We’ll call if we need the truck. So he does. He is the P of PM&T, after all. He heads for home, for his house, to see what the street looks like, the yard, to see if Rena’s still there, to see if Frank’s pressure-washing the azaleas. To give the whole thing a good looking at. He checks the church signs on his way by. The First Whitsett says THE BIGGEST ROOM IS THE ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT. And the Holy Redeemer’s is better: IS PRAYER YOUR STEERING WHEEL OR YOUR SPARE TIRE? Jack’s not sure which to choose, which the correct answer might be. Prayer is more of a jackhammer, he thinks. Or a water leak. He should go in there and tell them they’ve got it all wrong. Instead, he crosses himself, muscle memory left over from growing up Episcopalian, sends up good wishes to whoever might be listening in. First-time caller, long-time listener. He starts in one more time making a list of the things Beth has been wanting him to do.

  Rena’s not there, of course. But there’s a note: Went home. Thanks for taking in a stray. Maybe drinks some time? I’ll call you— Jack reads the note a couple times over in his bombed-out kitchen, then gets Hen set up in front of the TV. Maybe drinks some time. Sure. Absolutely. They can sit on the porch and sip Mai Tais. He’ll hire a bartender. What’s she doing in our house? What’s going on? Excellent questions. Hen flips through the channels, settles on a financial news show. Stock prices scroll in both directions across the bottom of the screen. Soon they’ll be millionaires. Aluminum’s a good bet. The guy on the screen is screaming about aluminum.

  Hole in the window where he put the beer can through. Hole in the back wall. Hole in the floor where the rest of the tile needs to go. Hole in Hen’s face and hole in the truck where the bumper used to hang and probably yes some kind of hole developing in his own head, and Jack starts thinking he might need to get out of here for a night, or a couple of nights, maybe, gets a clear and present notion of what it could have been to be in Beth’s head the last few months or weeks, or that last afternoon when she said she had to go somewhere. He feels like knocking his own forehead into the dump truck’s control box a couple of times, see if that maybe straightens him out some. He’s got the handkerchief for it.

  He’s not losing his shit. He knows that. There aren’t talking birds in the microwave telling him he’s got to kill the school board. He’s just home in the middle of the afternoon and his wife’s moved out on him and shacked up with basically his only friend, and he doesn’t feel right about much of anything, can’t get comfortable. Aluminum, the guy on the TV yells out at the world. Aluminum. Jack stands in his open front door and looks out. Abierto, cerrado, que bueno. What he needs is a change of scenery. He needs a room for improvement, a spare tire. He needs a bracelet to tell him what to do. Yellow scooter, diesel Mercedes. These were men with tasks to complete. Rocks and piles of mulch. So he’ll get his own, he figures, looking at his other house. He will get his own. He’ll move his operation over there for a little while. Simple as that. Walk his whole life across the street and just see how that feels. Same house, different direction. Pointing the other way. And in doing so, make it look, to anybody who might be looking, like somebody lives there.

  It makes a certain kind of sense: He’d be right there, so he could spend a few weeks fixing it up, get it out on the market before the summer’s over. Might not even take that long. And he’d be out of this house, with its monuments to Beth, to what she says he’s done to her, to them. The house over there has some of that, but maybe not as much. The evenings might be easier. Quicker. At least the walls are different colors. At least the kitchen’s got all its walls.

  He doesn’t spend a lot of time weighing pros and cons—Beth isn’t here to force him into some kind of list-making exercise—so he just starts in on it, packs a few changes of clothes for himself into a duffel bag and gets going on Hen’s clothes before he realizes that the easier thing to do, probably, would be just to carry Hen’s whole dresser across the street, which he does, d
rawer by drawer. He looks both ways each time. He doesn’t need to be run down in the road by a trash truck, dresser drawer splintered into the street, little T-shirts everywhere, the pajamas Hen refuses to wear. The floor plan is nearly identical over there. The hallway’s a little narrower. He sets the dresser up in what would be Hen’s same room, on the same wall, because if this is going to work, for Hen, anyway, he’ll need to replicate his room as much as he can, bring all the furniture over, put it in the same formation. He won’t be fooling him. Hen doesn’t get fooled. Jack just wants to try to keep him as comfortable as he can.

  He comes back across the street and Hendrick’s standing in the center of the den, watching TV, watching Jack, now, too. “Don’t worry,” Jack says. “We’re going to like this fine.”

  “Aluminum has fallen to near historic lows,” Hen tells him.

  “OK,” Jack says. “That’s enough TV for now, isn’t it? Hang on. I’ll be right back.” He goes across the street, gets a Pittsburgh phone directory he found in one of the kitchen drawers. What it was doing there, he has no idea, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that when he comes back, when he presents it to Hen, it is received like an archeological wonder: Hen spins around, sits down on the floor with his back to the television, flips immediately to the blue government section. He drags his finger down the columns of city and county services. He’s whispering. Soon enough, he’ll have garbage pickup for most of Western Pennsylvania figured out. Motor vehicle taxes. Jack should get him on building permits. Hen turns another page. He’s a happy child.

  Jack goes down the hall, starts taking Hen’s room apart. He tries to make as little noise as possible. He gets the bed frame, the mattress, the half-sized desk they bought him last year. Trips and trips across the street. Head running about two speeds too fast. But why would you want to move across the street? she’ll want to know. Wouldn’t it have been easier to do the work the other way? He gets boxes down from the attic, packs Hen’s nightlight, adds a few toys that he’ll never pay any attention to. He unhooks the space shuttle replica that hangs off the ceiling fan. Thank God there’s already a ceiling fan across the street. It’s brown, but it’ll do. He gets his little desk chair. He gets his red rug. He gets the poster of the periodic table Bethany brought home from some friend in the chemistry department, pulls the pushpins, hangs it back up next to the window in his new same room.