Ride Around Shining

by Chris Leslie-Hynan

  “I still don’t understand why you made that up about your family.”

  I’d confessed in the waiting room, before the ice and the pills, and the tests for her and the sling for me, to keep her awake, because it seemed time, and because she knew anyway. I even made her promise not to tell Calyph, more to save him the embarrassment of having believed me than anything.

  “How’d you really grow up?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “My father installed water heaters. He and my mom died snowmobiling when I was six. I didn’t want to bore you with that.”

  “You should have. We’d have hired you anyhow,” she said reproachfully. “You saved our cat.”

  Beneath us the car rattled dangerously. I knew it wasn’t street-worthy, and soon they would say it was totaled, but I needed a few more miles. I knew it was the last time I’d drive for either of them.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Home,” I said.

  She looked at me skeptically, as if to say, I hurt and am cold, don’t fuck with me here.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “He’s gone. The place is empty.”

  “I don’t live there anymore, Jess.”

  “You’ve still got a key, right?”

  When we came to the security gates, they were closed, and I tried to remember if I’d done it myself or if that meant he really was gone, searching for me somewhere between the green spaces and the grid with an SUV full of dangerous men. We pulled up the drive and I knew I’d have no answer if the house was blazing with lights, if the police were there. Going around a bend I saw a glow, but it was just a faint spill across the Linux man’s lawn—the house was dark and the garage closed. The car knocked terminally to a halt and we sat a moment in the quiet.

  “You think he’s still chained to the sink?”

  I shrugged. I’d called 911 from the hospital and the operator had been confused. “He’ll look good in a face mask,” I said. “Guys wear it for style now.”

  “I really don’t remember doing that to his face.”

  “The world leagues will thank you,” I said, and it was true—by January he would be signed by CSKA Moscow.

  I undid the child locks and our doors squeaked open. She stood in the drive a moment, looking up at the dark house with the key in her hand.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure,” I said.

  She walked gingerly up the front steps, the ice melt sloshing around her knees. I told her I’d only be a minute and went around to the back door of the garage. The Jaguar was still there. I put my hand on the hood and it was cold. The tires didn’t look newly chalked.

  I stepped quickly into the house, where a light bloomed upstairs.

  “Hello?” My voice came out hoarsely.

  “In the bedroom,” she called.

  “Come down and have tea.”

  “In a minute.”

  I found a kettle and put on some water, and then I went and glanced in a few rooms, looking for any sign of him. Everything was peaceful save for my own disorder—the dried spittle on the photograph looked like Angel Falls. I picked up the poker I’d flung on the floor and put it back in its rack. If only the balcony floor were wooden, I could’ve gone outside and put a light through the slats and known.

  She came down the stairs just as the kettle began to whistle. She’d changed into a mismatched sleep outfit. Her shirt had the name of some electronics store, with a plug coming out of an “s” and wrapping around to underline the name. Her pajama bottoms had shamrocks. The ice packs around her knees had been replaced by two bags of frozen peas.

  “I miss that cat,” she announced and went to the fridge for milk.

  I tried to go for the tea, but I didn’t know where anything was and she shooed me off. “I’m indestructible,” she said. “Sit down. What kind do you want?”

  “Earl Grey,” I said, and she smiled a little at the stage quality of the response. When it was ready she gave me the little tray, which I could just manage with one hand, and with the tiny pitcher of cream rattling against the sugar bowl we went up the stairs.

  She’d straightened the room so there wasn’t any trace of the morning. The bed was made again and the closet door closed. It looked like the master bedroom of any big suburban home, waiting to soften any of ten thousand soft lives.

  “Can you believe there was a spear in here? The one from the armor. It was just lying on the floor.”

  I put on a broad, quizzical look. Already I was moving over to the curtains, which were just half closed. I couldn’t find the line to draw them fully shut, and my hand fumbled uselessly within the fabric.

  “What’d you do with it?” I asked, feeling up and down.

  “I just rolled it under the bed. There was a first-aid kit under there, too. The bachelor life.”

  At last I found the cord. Before drawing the curtains I looked out, but the spill of light was empty and beyond there was nothing visible.

  I took up my cup and sipped, gazing down at the stained undershirt I’d stripped down to when they’d put the sling on.

  “Have you got a robe or something?”

  “Sure.” She went to the closet and drew out a deep-red robe, cut so long of such thick terrycloth that it was halfway to being some animal pelt, fringed with a vestige of the beast.

  Handing it to me, she climbed onto the bed, propping the pillows behind her. I thought with familiar longing how easy it would be to put on the robe, to lie next to her and show her the spot on my thigh where her cat had bitten me, boast of breaking into her house, and tell her how tenderly I’d examined her delicate, insensate body. She was very tired, and probably wouldn’t take any of it seriously, but who knew how long and how far I could play the role of the usurping husband before the outside world caught up with us? But I knew I had no place with her. She had to learn how to be rich in the America of now, without delusion or embarrassment, and needed to be with those who could show her how. I had to go off and buy a plant or something, and learn how not to kill it or creep it out, and find a new small room to live in, where I could settle at last into my blanched and soon youthless skin, the skin of the past refusing to pass, the skin of obsolete conquerors and indifferent kings.

  I slung the robe over my shoulder and went again to the glass, and as Antonia looked at me strangely I unlatched the door and drew it back.

  “Who’s there,” he said instantly, in a weak, hoarse voice, and at the sound of his voice she gave a short cry.

  We heard him scrape to his feet, and again Antonia cried out.

  “It’s all right,” I said. My voice was casual. I felt nonchalant, with a strange, light feeling of relief.

  “I guess he’s home after all,” I said. I felt the heft of the robe in my hand, and thought how heavy it would have been around my shoulders. Without it my body was deft and responsive, and I stepped back from the doorway and stood aside to let him through.

  Calyph came in rubbing sleep from his eyes. His jacket was smirched and damp with dew, and he looked like a boy whose prom night had gone horribly wrong. I could see him straining to show that nothing bothered him, to have us know that every misfortune weak enough to happen in Dunthorpe was to be soaked up in stride. We exchanged a quick, uneasy glance. I could see his legs shaking through the tight slacks.

  “Fell asleep,” he announced.

  Antonia lay on the bed, the mug of tea forgotten in her hand.

  “Let’s get you out of that coat,” I said. I put my hand on his damp shoulder with easy familiarity, and he turned away from his wife and let me take it from him. When I brushed his hand it was as cold as if he’d soaked it in ice water. The tips of his fingers looked swollen and bruised, and I wondered if he’d tried to pry his way back inside.

  I laid down the coat and took up the robe and spread it as wide as my arm allowed. He squared himself and looked at me over his shoulder, watchful and hard. He looked at my bad arm and he seemed to be contemplating something, something surely
terrible, and softly I laid the robe over his shoulders, to forestall him.

  “I’ll let you change,” I said, as he put his arms through, and giving a small nod to Antonia, who was still staring at us from over the steaming cup, the packs of peas bunched carefully upon her knees, I went out of the room and shut the door behind me, and went down the stairs toward the garage, and the little room they’d given me for my own.

  11

  I didn’t know they were really back together until late the next morning, when I strolled into the mudroom and nearly went nose-over on the sleeping body of the serval. It horked to life and tore through the hall, and then it was being yelled at for damaging the Ninth Ward photo, and defended with meows that were all too human.

  All the little sounds within the house seemed more familiar than ever that morning—even the quality of light felt more cheerful. The rows of coats and little shoes seemed to greet me, to accept me as a regular part of life there, and to promise that the people within felt the same. I suppose I even thought they might ask me to stay on.

  But something went out of their faces when they saw me that day. They were standing in the kitchen, fully dressed, and when I came in they glanced at one another, as if in some confirmation, and when they looked back they both seemed farther away.

  “Morning, J.”

  I yawned politely and adjusted the sling I’d worn to sleep. My elbow was badly swollen and it throbbed some, but the sling felt precautionary, and mostly a symbol of sacrifice.

  Antonia proffered a large bottle of painkillers, and I took a few. “How’s your head?” I asked.

  “Meh,” she reported.

  Calyph cleared his throat. “Get something to eat,” he said.

  When I came back with a glass of juice, Antonia was looking at her phone, and when I set the glass on the counter near her, she jumped back a little.

  “How you sleep?” Calyph asked.

  I settled onto my stool and laughed. “Have you ever actually been over there?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Sure.”

  “It’s like a prison cell,” I said.

  Again Antonia shrank back from me slightly.

  “Ras and them people did it up. We’d have done it better, if it was us.”

  “I guess it’s too late now,” I said, willing them to say otherwise.

  Calyph cleared his throat again. “Is your stuff packed up? We’ll get you a ride back to your place when you’re ready.”

  “I can drive myself.”

  “Ain’t nobody in that kind of shape right now. We’ll get you a ride out.”

  “It’s no hurry,” I said, sipping.

  Antonia sighed a strange, drastic sigh.

  Suddenly I was on my feet. I could feel what she meant quite clearly. I felt like crossing my arms but I couldn’t, and willed myself to summon any kind of dignity. “If you want me gone, I’ll go.”

  “It ain’t that,” Calyph said.

  She was looking down at my glass blankly. “It is that,” she said. It was very silent then. I could hear the distant metal whine of a far-off contractor sawing something in half.

  “But I saved you,” I said quietly.

  Still she wouldn’t look at me, and spoke slowly. “We just need some space right now. You’ve become very . . . involved . . . in our lives. We’ve talked it over, and we don’t think we can have you quite as near anymore.”

  I looked over at Calyph wildly. “You already fired me once.”

  He wouldn’t look at me, staring downward with his jaw clenched so the muscle stood out. For once in his life, he was silent.

  “Why now?” I asked, hearing my voice break. “If it weren’t for me—”

  She lifted her eyes then, and looked at me very steadily. “We appreciate everything you’ve done for us,” she said.

  I could feel my hand go up to my neck with a jerk, my fingers worrying my spine.

  “I know it ain’t the best time to hear this, J. And we grateful for last night. I’m grateful. We just got to say goodbye now. We’ll mail you a check.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Antonia opened her mouth, and her face was full of terrible clarity, as though just that morning she had realized something that had made her see the whole of our relations anew, and I was afraid, so afraid of what she would say, even though at the same time I had no idea what it would be, and felt, too, that there were no charges that could justly be laid before me—that I was their friend and had always meant the best. I was prepared at once to be revealed by some awful truth and to be indignant at it, at her utter misunderstanding of my intentions.

  But she could say nothing. Her mouth shut again, and then they just looked at one another, helplessly, and from the drive came the sound of a door slamming.

  “That’s him,” Antonia said.

  “Who?”

  “He’ll take you home,” Calyph said. “He’ll take you wherever you want.”

  “But I still have nineteen days,” I said hoarsely.

  “Goodbye, Jess,” they each said. “Goodbye.” But they came no nearer, and softly beneath their words, I could hear what I had always known they would say one day: Get out, get out. And so I went, and in the driveway I met the man Mbakwe Trainor, called Nick, my replacement, who took me wordlessly and with great dignity back to my lesser home.

  12

  It was the end of November when my grandmother died and in Wisconsin the water in the ditches was turning to ice. The woman at the rental agency said that only two weeks past it’d been nearly seventy degrees and a warm fall wind the likes of which she’d never felt blew along the shores of Lake Michigan. But now the leaves that had even then been pinwheeled through McKinley Park by the gusts of summer undeparted shivered among the dry roadside grasses as Calyph and I drove southwest from General Mitchell into the reaped fields at the heart of the state.

  I used to like a frozen November day. After I stopped playing football I stopped caring about the feeling of falling onto frozen ground, and watched the landscape stiffen with the satisfaction of someone safe in a warm place who is glad to see things moving along. Looking out the window, I tried to feel again that connection to the midwestern seasons flowing one into another. I used to get a sort of solace from the thought of the mice creeping beneath the threshing and the thawing sounds of unseen streams, but now the ground looked only harsh and colorless, just the dirt people made their numb way over, huddled in old blankets, eating cheese sausage, and running rusted space heaters behind the counters of little auto shops. Somehow I felt no loss in this differing vision—I had the feeling of seeing the natural beauty and natural ugliness together, and feeling equal pride in each.

  “What’s a salt lick?” Calyph asked, pressing ineffectually at the buttons of the rental’s tiny, tacked-on navigation. He’d insisted on driving that day. He claimed his knee had got well enough to make it good exercise, and after the face he’d made at seeing the wrecked Mazda, I thought it best to go into retirement gracefully.

  “Where’d you see that?”

  “Just back there. Somebody wantin’ to sell ’em off a plywood sign.”

  I looked backward pointlessly.

  “Salt licks,” he repeated. “Five dollars.”

  It took me a second to get over my surprise at his not knowing every damn thing in the world. “Salt lick’s a block of salt for a deer,” I told him.

  “Huh! Is the salt as good? Or is it like some animal crude?”

  “I never licked any,” I said, feeling almost depressed at the impossibility of any other reply.

  “You shoulda known people was gonna have these questions,” he chided.

  There was a pause in which I was supposed to have apologized, and then he went on. “Then they shoot the deer?”

  “What?”

  “Deer come for the salt and then they lamp it and shoot it.”

  “Is that what they do,” I said.

  “Isn’t it?”

  “That wouldn’t be sporting
,” I said, adopting a patient, lecturing tone. “We have a code here. Not like the South.”

  “Oh, you got a code!” He laughed widely, all his teeth showing. It made him look crazed and dangerous, but it was his purest laugh.

  I nodded solemnly.

  “Who I know gonna teach me that? Andrew Bogut?”

  I ignored this taunt. “I’m gonna teach you. And you’ll have to learn, if you want anybody to respect you in this world.”

  Again he laughed crazily. “You! You all heart, huh?”

  “We all heart,” I said, and we sped on, in the kind of easy understanding that opens at last at the endings of things.

  I’ve heard it said that family is measured not by who comes to the weddings but the funerals. Two weeks after I left the Wests, I got another terse message from my aunt Rose telling me to get on a plane if I could by Sunday. There wasn’t any mention of a service, so I had to call her back and ask if it was imminent or—and then I thought of a white sheet coming slowly up, and Grandma Ellen’s spotted arms stiffening, and could think of no utterable word for that completion.

  “It’s all through,” she told me.

  Before I flew back I called and asked if I could come by and get the severance check Calyph had promised me, as it hadn’t appeared in the mail. He didn’t pick up, but a few hours later I got a text that read “tomorrow @ 3 good?”

  Even this perfunctory summons filled me with a final rush of apprehension and hope, and I was let down to see the check taped to the front door. But when I pulled it off I saw the words “come round back” written on the note line. It was a brisk, windy day, and Calyph was lounging in a tracksuit, leafing through a playbook with his headphones on. I remember it was a silly-looking thing in a three-ring binder, like it was made at Kinko’s for a D-III team. He didn’t get up, but we shook hands.

  “How you been, Jess?”

  “My grandmother’s died,” I told him. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I was standing over him and I wished I could sit. He wouldn’t have cared, but it would be taking license to sit without being asked, and I could see myself slumping a little, and then, without thinking of it, making some false little gesture, blinking back tears that weren’t coming.