by Drew Perry
Jack says, “It was in the garage.”
“This is how you live now?”
“I guess so,” he says.
“You know what?” She picks up a chair by the arm, sets it back down. “I don’t know who’s crazier. You, for doing this, or you,” she says, turning hard on Rena, “for dating him.”
“I’m not dating him,” she says.
“You like this?” Beth asks her.
“I’m here,” she says. “I’m just here.”
“You’re not just here. You don’t get to be just here.”
It’s all sliding somewhere, slipping. He says, “What if, instead—”
“I’m talking,” Beth says. “OK? I’m talking to Rena.”
“Sure,” he says.
She looks at the wall. “What is that a map of?” She’s not talking to Rena.
“Canada,” he tells her. “Some islands in Canada.”
“Show me his room.”
“It’s the same one.”
She pushes past him into the hall, opens his door, stops in the doorway. “It’s the same,” she says.
“I know.”
“I saw it over there. I saw it empty, I mean, so I figured you’d done this.”
“I did.”
“But I wanted to see it,” she says. “It looks the same. Exactly the same.”
“I know.”
“I like the pictures of the plants.”
“Shrubs,” he says. “From a catalog.”
“The catalog? You cut it up?”
“A different one.”
She flicks the overhead light on, then off. “He’s eating, right?”
“Yes.”
“He’s sleeping? You’re putting him to bed on time?”
“I’m trying to,” he says.
“Any more criminal activity, Jack? Have you painted your name on the water tower?”
“No,” he says, but that’s an idea. Maybe he should paint something up there. A blanket apology, an admission of guilt. Or just PLEASE SEND HELP.
She turns around, lowers her voice. “I don’t get it,” she says. It almost sounds like she’s pleading with him.
“Get what?”
“What are you doing? What’s she doing here?”
“What are you doing?” he asks her right back, whispering. “Isn’t it the same?”
“It’s not the same,” she says. “It’s not the same at all.” She reaches for a picture hook in the wall, spins it around. It’s all starting to press down on him. He can’t believe he’s really done this. He thinks he might cry, standing there, Rena in the other room and Beth right here. And he thinks Beth might, too, from the look on her face. Maybe he has done the one thing he could not do. Maybe the rules are different for him than they are for her.
“He’s still speaking Spanish,” she says.
“He is.”
“That’s good, right? That has to be good.”
“Yeah,” Jack says. “It is.”
“I can’t be in here with her here,” she says, looking at the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“You fuck off,” she says, her voice small.
“I didn’t—”
“You didn’t what?”
He doesn’t answer. He can’t tell what he’s supposed to say.
“I’m leaving,” she says. “We’re going. We have to go.” She slides around him, back into the front room. She’s in a hurry now, getting angry again. He can’t blame her. And angry’s better, easier. “When do you want him back?” she says.
“Whenever you like,” he says. “Pick a time.”
She checks her watch. “Maybe I’ll take him to the park afterwards,” she says.
“It’s supposed to rain.”
“I’ll take him before it rains,” she says.
“OK.”
“So, two o’clock, then? Does that fit your schedule?”
“Two’s good,” he says.
“Fine.” She tries to get Hen’s shoes on him, but he won’t let her do it, either. “It looks like a fucking frat house in here,” she says. “Except even those boys would have real furniture.”
“This is what was here already,” he says.
“Terry’s doing fine, by the way,” says Beth, not looking at Rena, still working on Hen’s shoes. “He’s doing great. In case you want to know.”
“Good,” Rena says.
“You want me to tell him anything from you?”
“No,” Rena says. “I don’t think so.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with you,” she tells her again.
“Maybe not,” says Rena.
“The both of you are a couple of goddamn fools,” she says.
“Goddamn,” says Hen.
She gives up on the shoes, takes Hen’s hand. “How does it all end up, do you think, Jack?” she asks.
He doesn’t answer her.
“What about you?” she asks Rena. “Do you have this figured out?”
“I don’t have any of it figured out yet,” Rena says.
“Yet? So we should just wait until you understand it all? Will there be some kind of announcement? A briefing?”
“You’re still with Canavan,” Jack says.
She spins around. “This cannot possibly be your way of keeping score.”
“No,” he says.
“So what is it, then?”
It’s karaoke night. It’s Gubbio’s. It’s whatever snapped free in his head when he bought this house. “I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe we could talk about it some time.”
“What?” she says. She stares at him, or past him. “Forget it,” she says. “I’m going. I’ll bring him back at two.”
“We’ll be here,” he says, but then he changes it: “I’ll be here,” he says.
She turns to Rena. “Do you have any tricks for getting him to wear his shoes?”
“I don’t,” she says.
“Good,” says Beth. “Don’t get any.” She puts her hand on Hen’s head. “And how about you?” she asks him, trying, Jack can tell, to make her voice bright. “Are you ready?”
“¿Listo?” he says.
“Sí,” she says. “Vamanos.”
“Kernersville Chrysler Dodge is the Triad’s Price Leader,” he says.
“Yes,” she says. “I know.” And she walks him out the door, leaves it standing open behind her. They cross the street. She loads him into the wagon. Jack follows her out. It’s the same as watching her back out of the driveway the day she left, except now she’s got Hen with her, which makes it not the same at all.
He sits down on the steps, tries to figure out what it is they might be attempting to do to each other now. He takes a few long breaths. Rena comes out, brings him his coffee. “Thank you,” he says, watching Beth stop at the end of the street, watching her blinker flash, watching her turn and pull away. He dips his finger in his mug to see if he can feel temperature, to make sure some or any of this is actually happening.
“You’re welcome,” Rena says. She cracks her neck. “Well.”
“Yeah.”
“That could have been worse, don’t you think?” she says.
“I guess so,” says Jack. Then he says, “I don’t know how.”
“Nobody got killed. There’s that.” She sits down next to him. “May I sit here?”
“Sure,” he says.
“We could have been at my place. That would have been worse.”
“How?”
“It would have been,” she says. “Believe me.” Jack looks at his yard, at his truck in this driveway. A couple of delivery vans drive past. He’s keenly aware of Rena being there next to him, of her having slept next to him. It’s like she’s some radio tower, blinking away above the tree line. He wants Beth to come driving back down the street. He wants to go back to bed with Rena. “I feel like something bad is coming,” he says.
Rena smiles at him, puts her hand on him. He stares at her knuckles. “Nope,” she says.
“Not something bad. Just something.”
Three kids skateboard by in the street. They’re fourteen or fifteen, skinny, tall, not caught up to their own bodies yet. They look like puppets. The skateboards on the asphalt sound like marbles in a wooden box. Jack thinks about Hendrick at breakfast, how he’ll space his twelve silver dollar pancakes equally around the edge of his plate, like a clock. The cement step is warm underneath him. Rena’s warm next to him. He used to teach his kids about the importance of mapping expeditions in the frontier west, about how much it meant for the next people to go to have even a badly drawn approximation of what they might find. He works on the difference between something and something bad. He works on what new kinds of trouble might be headed his way now.
A dinner, a year and a half ago, winter, Canavan’s back patio, Canavan’s birthday: The two of them out there, freezing, Canavan pushing a few logs around the bowl of a new copper firepit Rena’d given him. Beth and Rena had come outside with them at first, but when Canavan stoked the fire back up for one more round they said they’d had enough, said they were cold, went in to work on the end of the bottle of wine. You boys stay out here and play as long as you want, Beth said. Canavan and Jack were drinking scotch, a bottle Jack had brought him. Jack dropped his first glass on the ground while Canavan was fooling with lighting the fire. It’s OK, it’s OK, Canavan told him. Those are cheap glasses. I need to replace them anyway.
Well, what about the scotch? Jack asked.
That part’s the tragedy, he said. And he poured him another one.
Canavan was feeling it, was talking about turning thirty-three. My Jesus year, he kept saying, poking at the fire, sparks up into the sky. Jack listened, nodded, made noise when Canavan paused so he’d know he was still following along. Time for me to do something big, Canavan was saying. Right?
Like what?
Like I don’t know. Something big. Sell the house and buy a camper and get one of those maps for it where you add stickers for every state. See the country.
It’s not time for you to do that.
Why the hell not?
Because your life’s here, Jack said.
So’s yours.
Yeah.
And that’s OK with you? Canavan had wanted to know. I mean, all the time?
Jack was looking in through the sliding glass doors at Beth, at Rena, thinking about how he was maybe pretty lucky, thinking about Canavan being lucky, thinking that having a life here wasn’t such a bad thing, that he’d done fine for himself, that Canavan had done just fine, too. That was the scotch, probably, but still. It is, Jack said. It’s OK with me.
Me too, then, Canavan said, topping his own glass off, topping up Jack’s. You sold me. No campers. He leaned back, looked at the sky. You know what I think?
What?
I think this spot right here is the navel of the universe.
You’re drunk, Jack said. Inside, Beth said something, and Rena laughed.
Still, said Canavan, throwing another log on. You listen to what I’m telling you, OK? This is the fucking navel of the universe. The dead damn center.
They’re getting a thin rain now, from the storm, Ashley, and he runs the wipers back and forth on the way to PM&T. Rena’s following in her car so he can drop the truck off with Butner and Ernesto, who are in for a Sunday delivery, a big job. Twenty yards of hardwood. Two trips. Jack’s thinking hard about Beth calling him on the phone from their own front yard. About what he might say this afternoon when she brings Hen back. He keeps looking in the rearview to make sure Rena’s still with him. This all feels like it’s happening to someone else. At the yard, in the shed, Butner’s telling Ernesto about a strip club in Alamance County called The Parasite.
“Why are you always talking about things like this?” Ernesto says when Jack comes in the door. Rena’s waiting in the car.
“Shit, man, it’s OK,” Butner says. “Right, boss man?”
“Where’s Hendrick?” Ernesto wants to know.
“It’s a long story,” Jack says.
“Anyway,” says Butner, pulling Jack into the conversation. “Here. Come on. You’ll like this, too. They’ve got this one girl there with one leg shorter than the other one. She’s a hell of a pole dancer.”
“OK,” Jack says. “Maybe—”
“And she was going around the pole, and she kept sort of looking at everybody sideways, kept covering up her one side, and my buddy kept asking me what was up, and then when she turned around, she had a goddamned colostomy bag on!”
Ernesto says something Jack doesn’t understand, shakes his head like he feels sorry for them, walks out into the rain.
“She was fantastic,” Butner says. “Really talented. She had this move she did with her good leg? Amazing stuff.”
“The Parasite? It can’t be called that.”
“I’ll take you out there.”
“Thanks,” Jack says. “But no.”
Butner watches Ernesto move a couple of trees around. “Too much for Paco’s virgin ears, I guess.”
“I guess.”
“So where is the little man, anyway?”
“With Beth. For a few hours.”
Butner looks at Rena waiting in the car, looks back at Jack. “Who’s in the car?”
He feels caught. Or diagnosed. “Rena,” he says.
“Who’s Rena?”
“She’s Canavan’s girlfriend.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“It’s true,” Jack says.
Butner picks his nose, grins. “Canavan’s girlfriend,” he says. “Goddamn.” He waves to Rena. She waves back. “Nice job,” he says. “I mean, this’ll all end in violence, but nice job.”
“Violence, how?”
“Somebody will definitely end up fucking you up.”
“Why me?”
“Look at you,” Butner says. “It’ll be you.” Then he says, “Shit, I don’t know. Maybe you’ll get lucky. I’m impressed, anyway.” He picks up a marker off the desk. “But be sure to call me up after all y’all go out and purchase handguns and slingshots and Japanese army swords, OK? I want to watch.”
“I think maybe I’ve screwed up here,” Jack says.
Butner says, “But are you having fun?”
“A little bit,” Jack says.
“Enough fun?”
“I think so.” He’s always liked being around her. Turns out he likes sitting in the back yard with her, eating crackers. He liked last night just fine. He has not liked this morning that much.
“You didn’t start this, man,” Butner says. “Remember that.”
“Yeah.”
“So.”
Jack’s not sure what he means, so he doesn’t say anything. Butner looks at him. “What?” Jack says.
“So give me the damn keys to the truck and go do whatever it is you’re planning to do.”
“OK,” Jack says, and hands him the keys. They’re on a boat keychain, a blue floatable puff that says AAMCO.
“You wrapping that thing up?” Butner wants to know, pointing at Jack’s pants with the keychain.
“I’m not sure that’s really—”
“Wrap that motherfucker up,” he says. “This has been a public service announcement. Wrap up your peckers out there, germs and gents. Do not get warts on your dicks.”
“I appreciate your advice,” Jack says.
“I’m here to help,” Butner says, and he hangs the keys off a corner of the whiteboard. Jack tries to figure out what else he could say, if there’s any advice he could ask for, but there’s nothing. Butner says, “What are you waiting for?”
“Nothing.”
“So go,” Butner says, and he does. He walks back through the rain to the car, gets in. Her car smells clean. “What were you talking about in there?” she wants to know.
“Strippers,” he tells her. “With colostomy bags.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“It’s true,” he says.
“Do you want to go see
them?”
“See who?”
“The strippers.”
“No,” he says. “No.”
“Just offering,” she says, and pulls out onto the highway. It’s warm in the car. The windshield’s fogging over. She runs the wipers, and that makes no difference. She wipes a stripe clear with her hand. “Where do you want to go, then?”
“Let’s just drive,” he says.
“We should find somewhere to eat,” she says. “Do you want to?”
“Sure.”
“Can we find one of those places with the green plastic trays with the dividers? And metal forks?”
He says, “We can find any place you want.”
“I like those places,” she says. At the light, she turns south on 61, takes it over the interstate, keeps driving. Jack counts years back since he’s had breakfast with someone he’s just gone to bed with for the first time. That math’s easy. It’s Beth, of course. He tries to make himself think about something else.
They drive by a place that may be called Family Dining. That’s all the sign says, FAMILY DINING, in red block capitals. “Perfect,” Rena says, stepping hard on the brakes. “That’s our place.” It looks like it may have once been a gas station. Inside, there’s a long steam table with women behind it serving white beans, chicken quarters, cornbread pancakes. They’ve already switched over to lunch. While they stand in line, Jack starts to feel like there’s something he should be doing or saying, some grand speech he could be delivering. At the cash register, a man hands them each a Styrofoam cup of iced tea, a napkin, some silverware. Jack follows Rena to a table by the wall.
“You’re thinking about this too hard,” she says, once they’re sitting down. “That’s your problem.”
“I’m trying not to think about it at all,” he says.
“Well, it’s definitely one or the other.”
“The thing is, you were right,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“What you were talking about last night. I don’t have any idea how to do this.”
She takes a bite of beans. “How do you mean?”
“I mean, what Beth asked. How it ends. That’s what I’ve been working on all morning.”
“God,” she says. “Just eat your lunch. You are terrible at this.”