by Drew Perry
“Let’s say he is,” says Rena. “As an indication of his faith in all of this.”
“His faith in this?”
“Yep,” she says.
There’s a little bit of wind. It’s hazy. A red pickup, an old one, Toyota or Datsun, pulls into the Shell, pulls up to a gas pump. A girl gets out, tall, pulls the nozzle down off the thing and starts filling up. Jack didn’t see her take the gas cap off, didn’t see her open the little door on the side of the truck. They both must be missing. She’s smoking. Everybody smokes over there. Cherry’s got a tin of cigarettes on the counter, sells them for ten cents each. Jack imagines the whole thing going up in flames, imagines running down there with the towel, or a blanket, trying heroically to put her out. There was nothing we could do. And then the whole thing just blew up. She pulls the nozzle back out of the truck, hangs it up again, digs in her pocket, comes out with money. She walks into the store and the bell rings against the glass door. Rena moves toward him. His heartbeat speeds up. He can’t right now remember the last time he kissed Beth. He remembers touching the back of her neck while she sat at the kitchen table, remembers bringing her another cup of coffee. The girl comes back out again, bell bouncing. She gets in the truck and pulls her door shut—she left it open the whole time—and drives back out onto the highway, a cloud of bluish smoke behind her. Jack has a good sense of where each bone might be inside his body, gets an idea of his vertebrae stacked one on top of the next. His hair itches. His mouth goes dry. Rena comes at him on her hands and knees, straddles him, is on top of him, pushes him down into the mulch. Even though this will untie his entire life, it feels familiar, like he knows how to do it, or like he could learn, and she’s kissing him, and she may be crying again, or she may just be sniffling because of the cedar—and he reaches for her, reaches for her shirt, pulls it up in the back. He’s touching her skin, feeling out the plane of her shoulder blade, moving back down to the waist of her jeans, slipping his hand under, one finger finding the last of her backbone in the cleft of her ass. She’s a rubber band. A spring. She kisses his ears, his neck, his chest through his shirt. He works his hand around to her hip, feels the outcrop of bone there, pushes against her, wraps a leg around hers. She’s tiny. He feels something starting to shift underneath him, feels them moving an inch or two, then a little more, and realizes too late that what’s going on is that the whole mulch pile is getting ready to give, and all at once they’re sliding down the back of it, a little avalanche, the smell of closets, of pet stores, and when they hit the wooden wall at the bottom, the cooler hits right after them, cracks open, spills ice and cans of beer everywhere. Rena’s already laughing and trying to stand, and Jack gets himself upright, sits up, trying to figure out exactly what happened, what’s happening. The cedar chips keep coming down the pile in a little trickle. Mulch is everywhere: In the cooler, in their hair, in his shirt.
He says, “Are you OK?”
“I hit my head,” she says, still laughing.
“Are you hurt?”
“I don’t think so,” she says. “You?”
“No,” he says. “I’m good.”
“I’ve got wood chips down my pants,” she says.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault.” She unzips her jeans, pulls them down to her knees and shakes them out. She pulls on the waistband of her underwear, looks in there. “Nope,” she says. “I’m unscathed.” He stands up, too, shakes cedar out of his sleeves. There’s dust in his nose, in his throat. She leans over, runs her hands through her hair, shakes it out. Her jeans are still down around her knees. He looks at her in the half-light. When she stands back up straight, she says, “Stop staring at me.”
“I’m not staring,” he says. “Just looking.”
“You’re staring.” She pulls her jeans up, rebuckles her belt. “Shit,” she says. “Maybe it’s a sign.”
“It’s not a sign,” he says.
“Everything’s a sign,” says Rena. “From one god or another. We’re just lucky they’re not down here raping us any more.”
His heart’s still going hard. He’s sweating. And he’d like to take her home, which can only be one more misstep in a long, long line, but it’s still what he wants. “Let’s get out of here,” he says.
She looks at him. “Oh, yeah?”
“Let’s go home, take a shower, and go to bed.” He’s got clean sheets on the mattress. He put clean sheets on this afternoon, felt like an idiot doing it, did it anyway.
She stands there. Another car pulls into the Shell, a white Ford. She says, “OK, Jack. Let’s go home.”
And without saying anything more about it, they climb around the cedar pile, leaving the broken cooler and the beer where it is. When they get to the truck, for a minute Jack’s afraid Hendrick won’t be there, that he’ll be standing across the highway, hands at his sides, repeating safety tips. Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires. Stop, Drop and Roll. But he’s fine. He’s right there, on the bench seat, asleep, face down and ass up in the air. Jack gets Rena up into the cab, shuts the door as quietly as he can. When he starts the engine, Hen moves around a little, but doesn’t fully wake up. The air smells like rain. Jack pulls out onto 70, makes the familiar set of turns that take him back into Greensboro.
He thinks about Bethany standing in their kitchen, back from Chicago, looking at the back wall, trying to understand it, trying, possibly, for ways to tell him that it would be beautiful if he ever finished it. Thinks of her standing in Canavan’s front hall, waiting for him to drop Hen off. Thinks about what it is that he might be doing here with Rena in the cab of his truck, what they might talk about tomorrow. When they get home, Yul Brynner greets them with the full show. Jack gets Hen put to bed, gets the door open the right number of inches, gets the nightlight shining in the correct manner. They shower, one at a time. Rena’s waiting for him when he’s done. Yul Brynner’s already asleep again on the floor by the TV. He takes her into the bedroom. She laughs at him, takes off her towel, takes off his. He reaches for her. Her hips feel like golf balls, like limes. She bites at his shoulder, locks an ankle behind his. She is in my house, he keeps thinking. She is in my house.
THREE
Backyard Sidewalk Tricycle Racetrack
Jack comes up out of a dream where he’s wearing blue coveralls with his name stitched in cursive over the pocket, and the coveralls feel kind of tight on him, and he’s riding an escalator down into a stark white room filled with hundreds of wooden tables holding flat after flat after flat of impatiens, all colors, the foliage looking really healthy, which is what he’s noticing in the dream, how good the foliage looks on all these impatiens, that these are the healthiest plants he’s ever seen, but the phone’s ringing, his work phone, and his bed’s in the wrong place, because he’s in the wrong house, and the light’s gray outside, cloudy, and Rena’s there in the bed, turned away from him, sleeping, and he gets up, finds the phone out in the den on the arm of one of the Adirondack chairs, looks for a minute at a National Geographic map of the Prince Albert Islands he’s hung on the wall. It’s a little crooked. The phone’s still ringing. He answers it. It’s Beth.
“What the hell?” she says.
He says, “What do you mean?”
“Where are you?”
“What?” He’s still half in his dream. He goes to check on Hendrick, who’s still sleeping.
“We said I’d take Hen out for pancakes. I’m parked in our goddamn driveway. Your truck is across the street. Rena’s car is across the street. I’m standing here looking at them. Nobody’s home over here. So what I want to know is, where the hell are you?”
He looks out the window. She’s standing in their front yard, by the lamppost. He can’t remember anything about pancakes. Doesn’t matter. Here she is. “I’m over here,” he says.
“Where’s over here?”
“In the house,” he says.
“In the house.” She looks over. “In that house?”
&nbs
p; “Yes.”
“With her?”
“Yes.”
“And Hendrick?”
“Yes.”
“OK,” she says. “Guess what? I’m coming over.”
“Wait,” he says.
“For what?”
“I need to make some coffee.”
“You want me to wait while you make coffee.”
“Please,” he says. “Yes.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Just give me five minutes,” he says. “Let me get Hen up. Let me make coffee.”
“He’s not up?”
“No.”
“He never sleeps this late.”
“I know that,” he says.
She stands in the yard. It’s strange, seeing her out there and hearing her on the phone. “Fuck you, OK, Jack?” she says. “What is this?”
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“Five minutes. Get him up. I’m still taking him out for pancakes. Whatever you’ve got going on over there doesn’t change that.”
“OK,” he says. “Thanks.”
“Fuck you,” she says again, quietly. And she hangs up, puts her phone in her pocket, turns around, and walks up into their house. Jack measures a few breaths in and out. He thinks about grabbing Hen, grabbing whatever else he can carry, driving to Mexico. Mexico might work. They could hide out down there for a decade or so, let this all blow over. Instead, he makes himself go to the kitchen to get coffee started. Grounds and water. The pot sizzles on its metal plate. Rena comes out, her hair bent at funny angles. “Hello,” she says.
“Hi,” he says.
“Who was on the phone?”
“Beth. She’s across the street.”
“She’s what?”
“Across the street.”
“Like here across the street?” She goes to the front door. “Holy shit, Jack, her car’s here.”
“I know,” he says. “That’s what I’m telling you.”
“This is bad,” she says.
“It’s not that bad.” He hears himself say that. It’s not that bad. He doesn’t believe it.
“It’s pretty fucking bad.”
“I know,” he says.
“Did you tell her I was here?”
“She sort of knew already.”
“Oh, great.”
“I didn’t go into any detail.”
“What do you mean, detail?”
“I mean I didn’t say anything other than that you were here.”
“Maybe we can still make this OK,” she says. “Maybe there’s still something we could do.”
“I don’t think there’s anything we can do,” he says. “We’re here. You’re here. She knows.”
And what happens is that Rena starts laughing. She covers her mouth at first, tries to keep it in, but she gives up on that soon enough, gives over to a kind of whole-body silent laughing. She’s shaking, holding a hand out toward him, making some signal to tell him, he thinks, to leave her be, that she’s OK, and then she’s laughing harder, making noise now, and he just stands there and watches her go. Finally she takes a huge breath, gets an I’m sorry out, turns both hands out at him, palms flat.
“Are you OK?” he says, and that starts her up again. She’s bent over at the waist. She keeps making these high-pitched wails. He has no idea what to do. “It’s not that funny,” he says.
“Oh, God, I know,” she says, still laughing, sliding down the wall until she’s sitting on the front hall floor. “Oh, no,” she says.
“Why are you doing that?”
“Because,” she says. “This is what happens. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She catches her breath, slows down. “Oh, fuck, Jack, she’s going to kill us. She’s going to kill me, anyway.” She wipes her eyes, keeps laughing a little bit. “I laugh when I’m nervous,” she says.
“It’s not funny,” he says again.
“It is,” she says. “A little bit. It has to be.” She looks up at him. “What do you think you’re going to tell her?”
He pours them some coffee. “What should I tell her?”
“It better be something good,” she says, and giggles.
“Maybe I won’t tell her anything,” he says.
“Maybe she won’t ask,” Rena says.
“She’ll ask,” he says. “You would.”
“You could tell her—” She stands back up, sniffs. “I know. Tell her I cut my leg, and you’re just here to help out. I hear that one works.” She opens the front door, and they both look at Beth’s wagon in the driveway over there. Rena pushes the screen door open a few inches, lets it fall back. The throw clicks in the latch. “You could tell her I need a kidney and you’re the only match.” She pushes the door open again. “We could say there was a gas leak in my condo,” she says. “Or a bomb scare. A baby in a well.”
“Those are good.” He expects Beth to walk across the street at any moment. The low light makes everything on the street look greener, somehow. “Those are all good.” Frank’s cat is curled up in the driveway under the wheel of his Cadillac.
“Listen,” she says. “I’m still glad I’m here, OK? I just want to say that. I mean, I’m not sorry about what happened. Whatever she’s getting ready to do to us, I’m not sorry.”
“Me, too,” he says. Except that he is sorry, or he’s some version of it, guilty enough about having done this, because surely this is not what you do. He’s just not so sorry he wishes it hadn’t happened. He’s in the damn middle. He doesn’t feel like he’s gotten even, or like he’s exacted any kind of revenge. Mainly what he feels like is that he’s gone to bed with Rena, something that had never occurred to him was really possible in any kind of actual way, and so it didn’t exist. Now it feels bizarre. It’s not that he wants to take it back. It’s that he’s been awake five minutes, and everything that was wrong with him yesterday is still and completely wrong with him today, and it all might be getting much worse. He wonders if you can drive past Mexico. If you can drive over the Panama Canal and all the way down to Chile. To Uruguay. To Argentina. “I’ve got to wake Hen up,” he says. “I told her I’d get him up.”
“Go ahead,” she says, and sits down in one of the chairs. “I’m good.”
“You can sit in the back if you want to,” he says. “You can hide out somewhere.”
“Maybe I will when she gets here,” says Rena. “But go ahead. Do your thing.”
He leaves her there in the living room, in his living room, goes in and stands over Hendrick, who’s awake now, staring at the ceiling. “Hey, buddy,” he says. Hen’s whispering the song to the Allgood Construction commercial. The smartest way to do your home work is Allgood. If Hen could understand it—if he could explain it to him—what is it he’d say? Honey, Mommy’s coming over in a few minutes, and she may be a little bit upset. He gets out some clothes. It already smells the same over here, or mostly the same. There’s a new dust smell, the smell of this air conditioner instead of theirs, but Hen’s room smells like Hen’s room, the odor of a little boy sleeping, a cereal smell. What to tell Beth: That he needed a change of scenery, same as she did. That he and Rena went out for some pizza. That after that they went to Mulch City and made an enormous mistake on purpose. He gets Hen into a pair of jeans, some socks, a Spider-Man shirt at least one size too big for him. He won’t wear any shoes, keeps kicking his feet away, so Jack just hands him his sneakers, and Hen takes them with him out into the den.
“Good morning,” Hen says to Rena, like he’s any kid in any house.
“Good morning,” she says back.
“Today I will be carrying my shoes.” Full sentences. More and more he speaks in full, relevant sentences.
“OK,” Rena tells Hen. “I think that’s just fine.”
The doorbell rings. Yul Brynner flies down the hall, barking, announcing imminent attack.
Hen turns to Jack. “Daddy, someone is at the door,” he says, leaving space between each word.
“Do you want to get it?” J
ack asks him, trying to act like Hen acting normal is normal.
“WFMY News 2 is the name you can trust,” Hen says. “When news breaks in the Triad, turn to News 2.”
Jack wishes he had something good to say to Rena, one last thing, but he doesn’t. The dog’s still barking. He goes to the door with Jack, wags like hell when he sees it’s Beth. “Hi,” Jack says, because the only other thing he can think to say is absurd: Welcome to our home.
“Give him to me,” she says, looking him right in the eye.
“Hang on,” he says. There’s a wren in a tree in the yard, screeching at them.
“Give him to me.”
“I’m going to. I just want to—”
“I’ll bring him back, Jack, goddamnit. That’s not what I’m saying. Just give him to me so I don’t have to stand here and look like—whatever I look like right now. I’ll bring him back in a little while, and we can deal with whatever else there is then, OK?”
“Fine,” he says.
“Where is she?”
“Rena?”
“Who do you think I mean?”
“She’s here. In here.”
“Don’t think this has anything to do with you,” Beth calls into the house.
“OK,” Rena says, from her chair.
Beth takes a step inside. “You’re right there,” she says.
“Yeah.” She doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t apologize.
“How the hell are you right there?”
“It’s hard to say, exactly,” Rena says.
“You’re not embarrassed?”
“I am,” she says. “Plenty.”
“You seem more relaxed than embarrassed.”
Rena doesn’t answer. They stare at each other. “Hello,” Hendrick says, still holding his shoes. Jack feels like his brain is evaporating through his eyes.
“Hi, sweetie,” Beth says, bending down.
“¿Como estás?” he says.
She puts a hand on his cheek. “Perfecta,” she says. “¿Y tú?”
“Perfecto,” he says. “Perfecto.” He holds onto the word, says it syllable by syllable.
Beth looks around, takes in the house, the plastic chairs, the TV on its box. She stands back up. “What is it you two think you’re doing with the furniture in here?”