“Are you far from home?” I ask.
“No. I live nearby. But I have cats. I need to buy cat food.”
The cashier shouts from behind the counter, “I know you!” Both the lady and I turn to him. “You are in here all the time,” he’s shouting at her. She takes it as an accusation, shrinks back, wails louder. “No,” he reassures. “Show me how much you are taking and you can pay me next time. I know you.”
“Thank you,” she says, under her breath, then again more forcefully, grabbing cans of cat food off the shelf and getting a prereceipt from the cashier. He tells her the total and jots it down on a slip of paper. At that she weeps even louder, in gratitude, in the sacred relief that something has gone right amid the chaos.
Though I know it won’t work I swipe my card and punch in my PIN, Rebecca’s birthday, only to get an error message in response. This machine is currently not dispensing funds. We are working to resolve the situation. I nod to the cashier on my way out, holding up my empty water bottle as a gesture that I’m not stealing from him, that I brought it in with me. He waves me past; his eyes miss nothing—not his regular customers, not the strangers.
The black cab is still there when I come back out and he rolls the window down, this time just a sliver. “Listen, the ATM is down. It’s a citywide thing. All of the computers are down, the guy in there said so. I can give you my credit card numbers, or we can try some ATMs in Queens or Brooklyn, but I don’t have two hundred in cash right now.”
“I don’t take IOUs,” he replies. Then he closes the sliver. I wait a three count, staring at him, then knock. I knock with my keys so it resonates. Click, click, click. The sliver reopens. “Fuck off,” he instructs.
“Listen, I’ll pay you. I’ll let you hold my wallet until I can get to a working ATM. I just need you to take me home. Come on, it’s fucking crazy up here, it’s insanely hot, and I’m willing to pay you two hundred dollars, plus tip, to get me home. Please take me home.”
He mulls this over. Actually strokes his chin. Then he straddles the center console, sliding himself over to the passenger side of the car, so that we’re talking a little closer, like in a confessional booth. “You know what’s going on down there?” he asks me.
“No. Have they said on the radio?”
“No. I’ve scanned every station, but no one knows what’s up. Just that midtown is closed off, and that no one should be out if they don’t have to be.”
“We’ll avoid all of it, take the Kennedy to Queens. Please.”
“You think it’s terrorism?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. I don’t want to talk to someone with his skin tone about terrorism. Come on, dude. “Maybe.”
“See, you don’t know, and I don’t know. Probably nobody knows. And once they say what happened, it’ll take a while for everyone to find out, and even then, some people will still think it’s terrorism. Some people, no matter what you tell them or what you show them, will insist that it’s terrorism. And if I stop at a red light, in Manhattan, or Queens, or Brooklyn, and some asshole thinks that I’m a terrorist, then I’m going to get the shit kicked out of me, or my car is going to get all fucked up.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I try to reassure, my voice sounding more desperate now.
“Maybe not.” He taps his turban. “I’m a Sikh. Al-Qaeda’s just as happy to blow me up. Grew up in Oklahoma. Went to school at Grinnell. You believe that? Grinnell. So now you know, and you don’t think I’m a terrorist. But how fast do you think I could explain that to a group of assholes who spent the day drinking beer on their stoop and looking for brown people to fuck up?”
“Three hundred,” I offer.
“Forget it. I’m sorry,” he says. “I sympathize, I do. But I’ve got a kid. Not worth the risk. No cars today. Not until this shit is over.”
I straighten up. He slides back over to the driver’s seat. Something strikes me and I lean back down and say through the slit, “If you’re not driving anywhere, how come you’re just sitting in your car?”
“Rolling brownouts.” He shakes his head. “Funny how it always seems to roll up here first.”
Fuck. What would losing power mean for Rebecca and Jackson? What does he need daily that requires electricity? “Are you sure?”
“Positive. Rolling brownouts. That much the news can report. Everyone smart enough to stay inside is stressing out the grid. Power went out in my apartment an hour ago,” he replies simply. “No air-conditioning.” Then he shuts me out once more.
Michael Gould
Eleven Months Ago: August 28, 2009
Rebecca says good-bye with solemnity, clutching me close for the kiss, first on the lips (“I love you”), then on the forehead. She never kisses me on the forehead—it’s creepy, horror-movie maternal to me. She’s packed a batch of cookies and a loaf of zucchini bread in my bag alongside my tools and the wood samples, her baked goods talismans against a house that Death has visited, I suppose. Jackson grumpily twitches in his papoose chair so I peck him on the bean before venturing out, ruminating on how long I’ll do that. How old will my son be before I stop kissing him every time one of us goes out or comes home? With Rebecca, it’s an obligation. Once those planes hit those buildings, couples the world over insisted on the good-bye kiss and the restoration kiss. If I tried to leave without kissing Rebecca, even if I had to wake her up to do so, she’d chase me outside. But Jackson? How long until kissing my son embarrasses him?
We haven’t spoken about Paul and Jennifer since the dinner, though they interfere with our lives nevertheless. In the middle of baking cookies, Rebecca will count, then pause, lost in thought, and I’ve known her long enough to know exactly what she’s thinking, that she’s tied these cookies she’s made to the child that Paul and Jennifer have lost, and she absorbs the guilt, believing herself not only a designated mourner, but also somehow culpable, equal to the same untenable blame that Jennifer hoists upon herself. Rebecca accepts that fault on behalf of all womanhood, wombs of every land.
When I think back to the dinner, I imagine Jennifer as a series of tiny, unattended packages left in the subway. Each one explodes, not catastrophically enough to evacuate the premises, just enough to wound the person closest by—a limb blown to smithereens, ears ringing, skin scorched. And then another. And then another. All too small to get the city to shield the public from the danger, just large enough to do some damage.
I kiss Rebecca once more. Once more she mutters her victory love.
It’s the first gorgeous day in months. The first day that won’t find me sweating while waiting for the bus. The air blows cool off the rivers and the sun casts those tail-end-of-summer shadows, that gorgeous, horizontal light, over everything. I decide to walk to the subway. I’m in no rush to get to Greenpoint.
I’m in no rush to return to Red Hook, either, I think as I climb the steps to the subway. The dinner with Paul and Jennifer caught me on unguarded terrain, left me with an envy for something I’d never fully want.
Everyone talks about the bond a parent forms with a child, immediately ironclad. To fail at that bond is the purview of sociopaths. And to a cynical mind it all becomes alarmist, that my parents, and Rebecca, and all of her parenting books have united in this effort to convince me of something that I accept without controversy. Yes, I’ve bonded with my son. I love my son. You don’t need to keep telling me how much I love my son—there aren’t chalk marks rising up a wall to note that new level. I love my son. The end.
It doesn’t mean that I don’t look at Paul and Jennifer, the first couple I’ve managed to see in seemingly forever, and feel a pang of jealousy that they can venture outside without strapping on thirty pounds. Or even that they get to leave their house as they please. That they are beholden to each other, but mostly to themselves. That’s nonsense from a manchild cliché, sure. Not every thought has to be stitched onto a throw pillow. That’s why they’re thoughts.
I know Rebecca, and I know that she looks at life as a
massive checklist. She’s checked off husband—she doesn’t need to worry about that anymore. She’s checked off child, and whether she has a second as yet empty box, for a second as yet unconceived child, is information I’m not privy to. Rebecca checks her boxes and with each one a flood of endorphins rushes through her brain. As the train takes me from one obligation to the next, I wonder if a reset button exists to make my brain work the same. I’m a very comfortable man, and that comfort makes my skin itch like shingles.
Jennifer Sayles opens her door and stares at me, vexed. She wears flannel pants and a purple T-shirt pockmarked with holes. Her hair flies in all directions. The stench of cigarettes wafts off her in waves. She’s not getting out of the way, or inviting me in. “Where are your tools?” she asks.
Hopefully she didn’t see me take a step back. I tamp down my subway thoughts. They wax less philosophical and more idiotic when greeted on a front stoop by a refugee from the death camps.
“Just taking measurements and doing some drawings today. Everything I need is in my bag.”
“Paul is at work,” she says absently.
“Shouldn’t take long. May I come in?”
She squints at me and leans on the doorjamb. “Do you want a drink?”
I can’t just barrel past her, right? That would be the simplest solution, to physically move her, charge upstairs, lay some wood samples out in the kitchen while I deal with the room, and if she doesn’t choose one, I will.
“It’s a really nice day,” I posit. I’m not certain what dormant humanist instinct in me prompts this next offer, but I propose, “How about I finish what I need to get done and then we take a walk somewhere, hit up a happy hour.” Happy hours start at four. Or three. It’s eleven thirty.
She shakes her head. “I don’t want to go out today.”
I try raffish on for size. “Well fuck it, then.”
Jennifer blinks at the brightness of the sun, as if her brain has finally registered it. She looks confused, but also irritated. Her hands shake in tiny tremors as she knocks a cigarette out of the pack and lights it. She holds the pack up to my face. “I’d like one, but after I get a little work done. I’m going to go take some measurements and then I’ll join you for a smoke. Cool?” She takes two quick drags. I can’t tell if she’s ignoring me or not, so I add, “I’m going to keep the door closed if that works for you.”
It works like a password. She steps aside.
Paul broke the room down, gave away the crib and the glider. I’ll need to strip the walls of the robin’s egg paint. That will be step one. Interior decoration isn’t my strong suit—I build furniture; I don’t design rooms—but there’s a psychology with which I approach this project. The goal is to exorcise all latent spirits from the bedroom of their dead child, so that when they walk in, it’s an entirely new experience, a room they’ve never entered, charged with none of its old rotting emotions.
I open the closet doors and find garbage bags stacked up to my chest. A quick squeeze tells me it’s clothing. I glance upward to see enough ceiling space that I could create a nook, a place to tuck things out of sight if not out of mind, let them use this closet for more pressing matters.
A half hour later I’m kneeling on the floor, running a tape measure from wall to wall, envisioning the built-in bookcase I’m going to build for them. My pad is filling with notes and numbers, calculating how much wood. It’s easy to get lost in the work; it happens every time I start a painting too. It’s a running downhill feeling, control at the willing mercy of momentum. With each snap of the tape measure I crave another, notching length and width and depth like brushstrokes. I sense a presence behind me and spin to see Jennifer standing in the open doorway. She doesn’t look upset, her face isn’t any different from when she greeted me at the door. She’s stock-still, taking in the room like a prospective buyer. “I thought you were going to close this door.”
I straighten. “It slipped my mind. I’m really sorry.”
“That’s an inhumanely cruel thing for you to do,” she says, but without an accusatory edge to her voice; it’s just her casual observation.
“Again, I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be such a fucking monster,” she says, in the same detached monotone.
I don’t know what makes me stand my ground. I’m not an aggressive person. I don’t seek out confrontation. And yet I say, “I would be if I left it open intentionally, but I didn’t. It was an accident. It was a careless mistake, and I apologized. Would you like me to tell you what I plan to do in here?”
After a spell, she nods.
“Come in and I’ll show you,” and then I turn away, take a measurement of the window frame even though there’s nothing I plan to do with it whatsoever. I feel her stepping into the room. When I turn around she’s right in the middle, hands at her sides, fingers tugging down the hem of her shirt. “You get great light,” I explain. “So I’m going to build you built-in bookshelves along that wall and you can put a desk underneath. I’ll make sure you have a ton of space. I’ll run track lighting across the ceiling, put that on a dimmer. That wall is also going to have some shelving on it, not built-in though, so you can make this room a little more personal if you’d like. I’m also going to strip the walls and the floor, repaint and revarnish, so we should discuss what colors and shades you might want for those, whenever you’re feeling up to it. Do you want to have that cigarette now?”
If she’s listened to a word of what I’ve said she hides it like stolen fruit. She says, “I’m going to take a shower.”
“All right.”
“I like your plans.”
“I have a few more measurements to take.”
“Can you let yourself out?”
She doesn’t wait for my answer, just turns and leaves. I go back to taking actual measurements, noting where to put a small mirrored bar into the bookshelf, another step to render this room childproof. I hear a shower start up, the angry coughing fits of old building pipes sputtering to life, then a steady stream of water and the slither of a shower curtain drawn aside. The hum of an exhaust fan.
My phone chirps a marimba sound: a text from Rebecca.
How is it going?
I type back:
Almost done.
A moment later:
How is Jennifer?
And from me:
Quiet. Weird. This is uncomfortable.
I tuck the phone back, but it chirps again. That’s Rebecca following up; I can predict the text. She’s asking me, Uncomfortable how? When I explain that, she’ll keep the conversation going by poking and prodding. Weird how? Has she said anything to you? Did she go in the room? It’s all stuff I’ll answer later when I see her, later as in an hour from now, so there’s no need to prep her via text. After jotting down some final notes, I tuck everything back into my backpack and step into the hall, closing the door behind me.
Their bathroom is at the end of the hall, and the door to it is wide-open. My mind rushes to Rebecca, who gets annoyed with me when I leave the bathroom door open a crack, so that the mirror gets less steamy and I can see when I shave. She passive-aggressively shuts it on me when I’m already in the shower, so I step out into fog and shave a soft-focus version of myself.
That’s not the case here. I can see directly into the bathroom, the silhouette of Jennifer behind a translucent plastic shower curtain, soaping up an arm.
Clever lady, I think to myself. The cynic (or realist) in me suspects this is a trap, that she wants me to invade her privacy, saunter into the bathroom and talk to her while she showers, even if it’s to tell her I’m going, just to get close to her while she’s vulnerable. Naked, no less. Then when Paul gets home she’ll tiptoe around my visit, piquing his interest, hinting at some transgression, until she spills in a torrent of tears and self-recriminations. I shouldn’t have left the bathroom door open. I thought he was already gone.
I don’t know what kind of man Paul Fenniger is when his needle goes into the red.
Maybe he’s the type to come to my home and beat the everloving shit out of me in front of my family. Maybe he’s the silky type to draw me out, invite me for a drink to talk about the project, and then put my face through a bathroom mirror. Real mob shit, or what I think is real mob shit from movies, keeping dirty business out of the home. Maybe he’s just a screamer, and I’d get an irate phone call from him demanding that I keep away from his wife. End result: room stays the same. The strongest vibe I get thus far is that this is Paul’s pet project; Jenny feels nowhere near as keen.
The open bathroom door: the line. The naked woman behind a diaphanous scrim: the hook. And me: a little fishy, distracted in the hallway by a shiny object.
I’m curious. So curious I almost want to ask her, shouted from a safe and respectable distance in the hall. Or, I could go back into the room, wait until she’s out of the shower, and then confront her once she’s dressed. If entrapment was her plan all along, I want to ask, couldn’t she accuse me regardless? Tell Paul I did whatever pervy bullshit she needs to concoct to get me fired. It’d be her word against mine.
Somewhere in all this contemplation, in all this chess of clever, I process that Jenny has a very nice silhouette. My face flushes, a spark of arousal slides its way down from the lizard part of my brain. That doorway stands open to me, that threshold mine to cross, but I make my way outside, back into the blinding sun, the afternoon heat enough to make me sweat while standing still.
Michael Gould
Eleven Months Ago: August 28, 2009
I’m a block from home when it dawns on me that I forgot to give Jenny the baked goods. I forgot to show her the wood samples as well. I’m not usually the type to let things slip my mind—everything is in working order up there, and I leave my workroom only after notching every item off a mental list of tasks accomplished. But I’ve forgotten to hand off the cookies and the zucchini bread, and now if I bring it home and insist to Rebecca that I can bring it tomorrow, she’ll be furious with me at even the suggestion, since tomorrow they won’t be as fresh, and then Paul and Jenny will think less of her as a baker. Rebecca would rather be thought of as borderline genocidal than as less of a baker. So I double back to my shop, the empty shop, and place the baked goods in the fridge. In my best-case scenario, I grab them on my way tomorrow and no one is the wiser.
Little Disasters Page 11