Little Disasters

by Randall Klein

  In the quiet hours, the bedroom door opens and Jenny walks down the hall, past the bathroom, toward me. I could pretend that I’m asleep, quickly close my eyes, but there’s been enough duplicity. She should know that I’m lying awake and thinking about us. “You’re not asleep?” she asks.

  I shake my head. She’s in a T-shirt and boxers, more than she usually sleeps in when it’s hot out.

  “You let me treat you like a dog.” She doesn’t sound hurtful, just perplexed.

  “It’s how I love, Jenny.”

  “I wish you didn’t.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She sways from side to side. “I don’t like having to make decisions, Fenn. I might get one wrong and then spend the rest of my life regretting it.”

  “I get that.”

  “Do you?”

  “I’m a paralegal and a failed actor and I sometimes get off on pretending to be other people online. Decisions are scary. Inertia is scary. Everything is scary.”

  “Everything is scary. There’s all of it in a nutshell.”

  “You’re the only good decision I’ve ever been positive about. Whatever happens, I’m not going to change my mind about that.”

  Jenny climbs onto the couch, on top of me, lays on me like a second blanket. She works her hands around my waist, burrowing into the cushions until she’s clutching me in her arms. I wrap myself around her and hold on for dear life.

  Her skin is cool.

  Michael Gould

  Present Day: July 19, 2010

  3:59 PM

  In the movies, Jenny walks out of her apartment and kisses me full on the lips. Paul glowers as Jenny and I take each other’s hands and go back into our place. Roll credits. Or, Paul takes a swing at me, which I nimbly duck and then counter with a right cross I didn’t know I had in me but that drops him to the ground, blood trickling from his nose, Jenny looking down on him with disdain before unveiling an expert quip like, “I’m done with boys, Paul.” Kiss on the lips. Hand holding. Exit into the house. Roll credits.

  In the movies, it’s not this oppressively hot. Paul and I don’t stand slowly, helping each other, gripping the playground fence to get upright, then stare alongside Jenny, mute and squinting at the plume of smoke over Manhattan that has finally started to billow. Finally it looks like a cloud has emerged from the sidewalks of midtown and strives sullenly to climb back up to the sky. In the movies I don’t turn my head to see Jenny’s hand resting on Paul’s bare arm.

  “I need a shower.” Paul breaks the silence.

  “My towel is clean.”

  “A cold shower.”

  “We’ve been having brownouts along with everything else. The air-conditioning is working now, but it wasn’t for a couple hours.”

  Paul rubs the back of her neck in sympathy. A stream of black smoke cuts through the cloud like a skunk’s tail. We watch it for a while, watch it blow south toward Chelsea, toward Union Square, toward the Village, toward Wall Street and Battery Park and out over the sea. We watch the helicopters pull back, one at a time, a few breaking away from the pack, a few more taking their places. With a nod, Paul starts his way across the street. He pauses. “Is Michael joining us for dinner?” His voice rings out with a new authority, answering his own question.

  For the first time since she came out of the house, Jenny looks at me. “No,” she says over her shoulder. “Michael should get home.” He nods again and walks across the street. Through the front door. Closes it behind him.

  “You got burned,” Jenny says.

  “Had a long walk. Turns out the Cloisters are pretty fucking far away.”

  “I’ve heard,” she mumbles.

  “What’s going on here, Jenny?”

  “Paul and I talked …” She trails off, doesn’t elaborate.

  “Talked about what?”

  “About us.”

  “Which us is us?”

  “Me and Paul.”

  I try to keep my temper level. “I thought that conversation had already happened. I thought that you had the same conversation with Paul that I had with Rebecca and now those conversations were done.”

  She glances back at her apartment. “I’ve made a lot of bad decisions over the past year. Since the hospital.”

  “Don’t blame this on a dead baby,” I snap. That punches the air out of her. “We made decisions. We did. And I’ve done things I can’t go back on because of those decisions. Did you just change your mind?”

  “So many bad decisions,” she repeats. Then, poking her head up, proper as a waiter about to read me the specials, she intones, “There’s been an inordinate amount of horrible behavior on both of our parts.”

  I laugh and sneer at the same time. “There’s been a lot of love as well.”

  “Go home. Please. Go home and work things out with Rebecca. I won’t bother you again. I won’t call and I won’t text and even if Paul drops dead tomorrow I won’t see you ever again.”

  “What if that’s not what I want? What if I want to stay with you instead? What if I made my choice and I chose you?”

  This is the part she hadn’t thought about. Oh God. Oh God, it hits me full freight. This is all I’ve been thinking about for months. And she may not have thought about it at all. Or, she may have given it just enough thought to realize she doesn’t care. “I choose Paul,” she says plainly.

  Jesus Christ. Jenny’s got her arms crossed over her chest, stands back from me. I’m an unwanted visitor at her door, proselytizing. I’m a lonely cashier not ringing her up fast enough. Oh God, I’m going to have to walk all the way back to Red Hook. “I destroyed my marriage for you,” I say idly. I don’t know why I said that, possibly just to make her feel bad, or to continue the conversation. My water bottle swishes around in my shaking hands, it’s nearly empty and I wonder if she would actually take it inside and fill it for me, let me come in for a minute and throw on a fresh shirt. She has clothing of mine.

  “You have my stuff,” I stress. “You have my clothes and other stuff.”

  She gets close to me and takes the water bottle from my hands. “Wait here,” she instructs. Like I’m a dog at a post, like I’m fucking shameful. It can’t end this abruptly. I’ve earned the right to the ebbs and flows, to the sluggish, turgid grind of a relationship turning and spoiling, rotting, then dissolving. She comes back out a minute later with my suitcase and a full bottle. She’d already had it packed. “Go home,” she whispers.

  I mount a last appeal. In the movie she cries and listens and brings me inside and then Paul sees us together and realizes he is the spare and he’s the one who has to keep walking. “We made plans,” is all I can come up with. Vague notions of vacations to take, restaurants to try, the life we would build together. I boil it down to three more words, and Jenny brushes them aside like gnats. “I love you.” Hot tears well in my eyes. I’m fucking crying and sweating at the same time. I’d dive in the river if I could.

  Jenny recoils, finally disgusted by me. “I didn’t ask this of you.”

  “That’s exactly what you did!”

  She shakes her head, dismisses the very premise of my argument. “I want to love my life right now. For that to happen, we need to end. I’m going to go back inside now. Please leave us alone.”

  That was how she parried? That was her strongest comeback? I obliterated my marriage for her and she can’t do better than to brush me off with peevishness?

  I’m immensely frustrated because the answer is yes and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” I say finally.

  She turns her back to me, faces a place I’m no longer welcome. “I won’t answer.”

  Still across the street, I watch the door shut behind Jenny and stare up at their windows, waiting for her face to appear, for her to look out at me, see me and reconsider, understand that I was the better choice.

  All the things I was supposed to say. Now they come to me. Not even worth repeating to myself. Plenty of time and dis
tance to walk for that.

  I’m still standing there ten minutes later, with two Clif Bars eaten, with both bottles of purple sugar water chugged, with only my bottle of water and now a suitcase to lug. If I follow the river and cleave to the coast of Brooklyn, I’ll get home eventually. So I begin.

  Paul Fenniger

  Present Day: July 19, 2010

  4:12 PM

  The subway tunnel runs off me in a gray slick, a stream that stains the bathtub and swirls around the drain. Dark circles like cement dust splatter the tile walls when I rub my scalp. I’ll shampoo twice, scrub myself three times, until my skin is pink and raw. Even then I won’t feel completely clean. There are people who work in the tunnels every day. Do they have to wash themselves so thoroughly at the end of every shift?

  The cool water does purify. Makes me forget that the sun scorched me on the walk home, that I felt like I was being pressure-cooked. Ten minutes ago I was desperately thirsty; now I open my mouth and let shower water in to splash around my gums, gargle and spit.

  When I’m done with this shower I plan to lie down on the bed with the air-conditioning turned to full blast and sleep until my body doesn’t want to sleep anymore. If I wake up in the middle of the night, that’s okay. I may wake up and take another shower—that’s an option. We have enough soap. Landlord covers our water bill. My head still swims; I sit down in the shower, in the muddy gray water, and let it rain down.

  In a few days, whenever I next go into work, assuming the trains are running again, I will venture down to the Bedford stop, and I will wait on the platform for an L train. When one arrives, I’ll wait patiently for people to get off and then swim with the crowd into the belly of the train. The doors will close. We will slide into the tunnel, beneath the East River. I’ll tell Henry I love him as I pass underneath, as I do every crossing. I’ll hang on to the metal pole, headphones on, staring into space. And when it gets me to Union Square, three stops later, I’ll clamor out with the hordes, alight onto Fourteenth Street, and walk to the office. I’ll do this again and again and again, five days a week, until I get a different job and ride a different subway.

  The first few times those doors close and we dive into the tunnel, I’ll remember today. After that, I won’t. I’ll listen to a podcast instead, and get wrapped up in it, and won’t realize that I’ve even stopped thinking about the day I had to walk through the tunnel, until the next time my memory gets jogged, when the train stops in the middle to let the trains ahead get some distance. Then I’ll remember again, but it will quickly evaporate.

  This is how the trauma of today will work. First the shower washes away the evidence. Then rest makes me whole. And then it’s simply a matter of time and repetition. However bad today is, the memories will fade in time. It’s the good ones that get embedded. It might work differently for others, but I like how it works for me.

  There’s a gentle knock on the bathroom door. I stand back up. “Jenny?” She comes in, I hear the lid on the toilet clang. She sits outside of the shower. For a shampoo and rinse we stay silent, on opposite sides of the curtain. Then she speaks.

  “What do you want to do for dinner?”

  I’m simultaneously starving and completely disinterested in food. “I’m fine with anything.”

  “I could go out and get us something. I could cook tonight.”

  “No. Don’t go out if you don’t have to. Is there leftover lamb?”

  “Some.”

  “Enough for two?”

  “Definitely.”

  “I’ll have that later. I’m going to lie down for a bit.”

  “Will you drink some water first?” I hear the catch in her voice.

  “I will.”

  “If you’re up at six, there’s a press conference scheduled. Supposedly we’ll find out what happened.”

  It doesn’t matter. Something terrible happened. All that’s left is the getting past it now. “I can find out when I wake up.”

  “I will too then. We can find out together.”

  “Once it’s news it’s news,” I say. “Can’t unlearn something. Can’t unsee it.”

  “No,” she agrees. More silence. I run the bar of soap across my chest, bury it deep in each armpit. What a silly, small pleasure. “Fenn?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Tell me what happened to you today.”

  I will. I’ll recount it. From the moment the train stopped to when I gathered you close to me and we lay on fresh sheets in front of the chugging hum of our air conditioner. I’ll give you every detail.

  But not right now. Right now I don’t want to relive it. I want to get clean, Jenny. Please understand. “I’m still a little out of it,” I say. “Can you tell me about your day?”

  Jenny stops crying, gets it together for me. I love her grace. I love her glory. She’d be the New York today that stands bold and unruly, defiant and stubborn as the merciless sun, and she would tell all comers that she is here and she will not be moved. She opens her mouth. She starts to talk about what she ate when I left for work this morning. I close my eyes, let the water strip the soot from every pore. And I listen. I hear her soft and ethereal, in three-quarter time.

  Michael Gould

  Present Day: July 19, 2010

  5:46 PM

  Once I get past the tinted windows of the riverfront condos on the outskirts of Williamsburg, my journey back to Red Hook is more or less solitary. For blocks I’m the only person on the street, the only person walking through the Navy Yard, hauling my suitcase, banging it into my knee. The temperature has finally started its descent, still in the triple digits but on the downswing at least. Since I haven’t died from heatstroke yet, that fate starts to seem a little less likely with each passing minute. My water bottle is still half-full from Jenny’s; some curious nostalgia follows each sip, skipping all the other stages straight to bargaining that if I parcel out this last thing she has given me, this water from her tap, I’ll retain some part of her.

  Every few blocks the buildings part and I see midtown clearly, the smoke now more black than white, the air starting to smell acrid on my side of the river. The helicopters have all moved on save for one, a last sentinel. I can’t tell if it’s a news chopper or police. Something tremendous has happened today. And I walked through it.

  New York exists as a single-celled organism at war with itself. Brooklyn resents Manhattan. Manhattan begrudges Brooklyn. Both ignore Queens, pity Staten Island, and fear the Bronx. But the density of the city forces us together. There are simply fewer square inches another person doesn’t occupy on any given block. We bump elbows on the subway, sit thigh pressed to thigh at undersize tables in claustrophobic dining nooks. The smoke casts an ashen haze over the five boroughs, over all of us equally. Jenny and I came together partly because our bodies were literally smooshed together in a tiny office in Greenpoint, like handfuls of Play-Doh pressed into one another by a child.

  Partly because we chose to. I pointed at Jenny and said, “I want you.” The silent response to that call a resounding, rafter-shaking “And No One Else!”

  It hasn’t turned out how I thought it would. I take my long zombie walk to craft words of reconciliation. It’s simple enough—Rebecca didn’t do anything to make this a proportional apology. I’m sorry, Rebecca. I’ve done the worst possible thing I could ever have done, it will never happen again, and I will do everything in my power to deserve your trust again. That’s the long and short of it, with some flourishes for how profoundly sorry I am. It’s not insincere. Leaving Rebecca never felt good, but until about two hours ago it felt right.

  At long last I stand outside my own apartment. The first thing I’m going to do when I get upstairs is kiss my son. The second thing I’m going to do is stand before my wife and let her make the next decision. She may be so happy to see me alive that we’ll hold each other for a few days. She may be repulsed by me in myriad ways. When Jackson goes to sleep, I’ll start on both knees and put my hopes in Rebecca’s mercy. I turn my
key in the lock and step back into our home.

  The apartment is empty. I peek in Jackson’s room, and he’s not there, nor is his carriage by the door. Rebecca isn’t in our bedroom. Even the basic-level detective work—cold oven, dry shower, made bed—tells me Rebecca hasn’t been home in a while. A deep breath and it hits me: I don’t smell cookies. The scent of our apartment without sugar baking has a sterile hospital smell to it.

  I take out my phone to see if it’s finally working and discover that it’s completely dead. When I plug it in, though, it starts its slow refill. The power is back on, or here it never went off. While it charges I take the quickest shower of my life, every drop of cold water stinging my ruined skin. The sun and heat carved canyons into my lips; the tops of my ears show dead and white, skin peeling down, a horror movie effect I worry will terrify Jackson.

  While showering, I listen for the door, now thinking up an apology to Rebecca if she comes home and finds I’ve jumped straight into selfish needs. I resign myself to this being my life for a while, watching the sword dangle over my head with each choice I make.

  Forgoing the hamper, I plunge my clothes into the trash. My phone has enough juice to turn on, and thank Christ, I’m showing bars. Everything is returning, piece by piece. I call Rebecca and it goes to voice mail after one ring. One ring is what you get when she’s in the subway or has her phone turned off. Four rings would mean she’s ignoring me. This is a good sign. Another thing to resign myself to, reading every scenario of my life like tarot to identify the possible signs and signifiers. The affair has made my life a perpetual semiotics class.

  If Rebecca isn’t here, she’s gone to my parents. And of course that’s where she’d be—they would have come to grab her and Jackson the instant something went wrong, spirit them away to Midwood. Red Hook is on the water. Midwood is inland. Until the smoke clears, my parents would view Midwood as a fortress and Red Hook as Brooklyn’s front lines. It takes four tries to call my parents, but I finally get a ringtone.