I knew I was just kidding myself, but I wanted so bad to believe it. I wanted to believe I could hide the truth from her until I found another job. I’d been spending a lot of my time at the plant searching online and then calling up potential employers and e-mailing my résumé, but I still didn’t have any interviews lined up. I was seriously considering driving around to the fast food places to see if any of them was hiring.
And when I wasn’t all stressed out about a job, all I could think about was stealing that money. I wanted to believe the people from that meth house were so screwed up on their own product that they might never even notice the missing box. And what if they did notice it? How was anybody going to connect me to its disappearance? The girl had been too doped up to see straight, and dogs can’t talk.
Hoping for the best like that was the only way I could keep myself from going crazy.
It’s funny how foolish a man can become when he gets himself stuck in an impossible situation.
So I kept my mouth shut, kissed Cindy and the girls goodbye, and headed off to work like it was just another day. At the plant, though, everybody’s attitude had gone way past sour. We had four guys running equipment, and they were all at least ten years older than me, in fact two of them were closing in on sixty. But that didn’t keep them from giving me an earful at some point during the day, and they all had more or less the same thing to say. We should’ve had more warning than this. There’s no such thing as loyalty anymore. A man works his entire freaking life . . . I never thought Jake would treat us like this . . . Those damn Chinamen are taking over the world . . . When’s the government going to do something about what’s happening to this country?
And all I could do was to nod and say the same thing over and over again. I know. I agree. Me too. It’s not right. I’m in the same boat you are.
Truth is, I wasn’t in the same boat at all. As far as I could tell, I wasn’t even in a boat. What I felt like was that first day of my and Cindy’s honeymoon when we went to Ocean City for a long weekend. While she was laying there sunning herself, I went swimming so far out that the only way I could see our blue patch of beach towel with the tiny dot of yellow from her swimsuit was when a wave lifted me up. By the time I realized that the patch of blue was getting smaller and smaller and farther and farther to my left, and that without swimming a stroke I was moving past that long fishing pier, I felt more used up than on the first day of basic. At first I panicked and started swimming straight toward the shore, but all that accomplished was to wear myself out even more. When I finally remembered that the only way out of a riptide is to swim to the side instead of into it, I was a good three hundred yards from Cindy and fairly certain I was never going to see her again.
Maybe a half hour later I came trudging up the beach toward where Cindy was sitting up now and staring out at the horizon. Every breath felt like broken glass going down my throat. My arms felt like they were going to drop off, and my legs felt like they were filled with cement.
I dropped down beside her and laid out on my back. She said, “There you are. You take a walk down the beach?”
“Long walk,” I said.
“You weren’t looking at all the pretty girls, were you?”
“Not all of them,” I said.
“Well, you better not have worn yourself out,” she told me. “I have plans for you when we get back to our room.”
And that’s exactly how I felt when I got home after work Monday night after making a stop at the storage unit, that same combination of total exhaustion and the dread of an impending duty I was in no mood to undertake. And then all that misery tripled when I went into the kitchen to see Cindy’s father standing there at the kitchen sink, blowing cigarette smoke out the window screen.
“Hey there, Russell,” he said, as if we’d seen each other a few days before and not years ago. He took another long drag from the cigarette, then turned on the tap and flushed the butt down the garbage disposal.
I said, “You don’t put paper down a garbage disposal. It’s not made for that.”
He grinned and said, “You put paper down the toilet, don’t you? And it all ends up in the same place.”
“More important,” I told him, “there’s no smoking in this house.”
“I blew it out the window,” he said.
“There is no smoking. In this house.”
“You’re the king of the castle,” he said. “So how’s everything been going?”
Right then I knew it was a good idea I’d left Pops’ revolver in the saddlebag and hadn’t carried it inside with me. I turned and went into the living room in search of Cindy and the girls.
All three of them were in Cindy’s and my bed. The girls were sitting up against the headboard on either side of Cindy, watching some Nickelodeon show on the little TV on the dresser. Cindy was laying on her back with her arms crossed over her chest, hands tucked into her armpits and her feet crossed at the ankle. She looked at me in a kind of a squint and her mouth never twitched out of its hard, thin line.
The girls said “Hi, Daddy,” but otherwise they were doing their best to mimic their mother.
I came inside and sat on the edge beside Emma. “What’s this?” I asked. “A SpongeBob convention?”
She said, “It’s not SpongeBob, it’s T.U.F.F. Puppy,” and Dani said, “Grandpa’s here.”
“Don’t call him that,” Cindy told her.
I asked the girls a couple of questions about how their day was, then I suggested they go to their own bedroom and decide where they wanted to go out for dinner. “No fast food,” I told them. “You two go decide. Either the buffet at KFC, or pizza and salads at Joe’s.”
“Pizza!” Emma said.
“Go talk it over, okay? You both have to agree. I’ll come see you in a minute or two. Please close the door on your way out.”
The moment the bedroom door was closed, Cindy jerked her head around to look at me and said, “I did not invite him here.”
“I’d never think you did. Not unless you were standing here with a smoking gun in your hand.”
“I wish I had one,” she said.
All I could do was nod. Then, “What brings him here out of the blue all of a sudden?”
“Claims he came to see his grandchildren. What a bunch of bull that is.”
I sat there thinking the same thing I always thought on the other occasions I had seen her father. I never understood how Cindy could be so decisive and even tough when necessary, with me and everybody else, yet so, I don’t know, crumpled up and passive around her father. Early on I had asked her a couple times why she could barely speak to him without gritting her teeth, but the most she’d ever tell me was, “I hate him. I hate the sight of him. He makes me sick to my stomach.”
Of course I had a fairly good idea why a girl would hate her father with that kind of intensity, but I long ago decided to respect her privacy about it. I figure if she wants to tell me anything, she’ll tell me. I don’t have to know every little secret to love her. And I hope she feels the same way about me.
“What do you want me to do?” I said.
And she said, “I want him out of my house.”
I didn’t even pause on my way through the kitchen. “Out back,” I told him.
I stood up against the rail on our little patio deck, looking out into the yard. When your wife hates her father as much as Cindy did, I think it’s natural for her husband to hate him too, even if he’s not sure why. From what I’d heard, a lot of people seemed to like Donnie, claimed he was a friendly, decent guy. All I knew about him was that he appeared to change jobs a lot, and that he struck me as a cross between a used car salesman and a lawyer. He had the same soft way of talking and same greasy smile I’d encountered in men of those professions, though I’d dealt with a lot more used car salesmen than lawyers.
Truth is the only lawyer I knew was a guy who lived down the road from us in the first house on our street. He had a sign out in his yard that said WILLIAM GR
AYBILL, ATTORNEY AT LAW. The first time Cindy and I ever came down that street, looking for a house to buy, I had pulled the bike over right at his curb so that Cindy could look at the piece of paper in her jeans pocket that had the address on it. While we were checking the address with the house numbers, he comes walking up beside us.
“Can I help you?” he said, and not in any friendly kind of way. More like we were trespassing on his property instead of sitting on the side of a public street.
“No thanks,” I told him. “We’re looking for a house that’s for sale.”
“End of the cul-de-sac,” he said. He was talking to me but smiling now at Cindy.
Then he walked up closer to her, still smiling like he was running for governor or something. “Is that a wedding ring on your hand?” he asked her. “You don’t look old enough to date yet, let alone to be tied down and married.”
I was about to let the guy know how sleazy he was, flirting with a man’s wife right in front of him, but Cindy beat me to it. She looked him dead in the eye and gave his smile right back at him.
“Married with two children,” she told him. “And couldn’t be happier about it. You wouldn’t believe how many slimy old creepers have been hitting on me while my husband was fighting in Iraq. Thank God that’s over with. I mean I don’t like that violent temper he’s got, but it does come in handy sometimes, you know?”
His smile turned a little sickly then, which brought me no end of pleasure.
But that was over eight months ago, and now I’m standing on the deck, not even wanting to look her father in the face because I’m afraid I might haul off and punch him. Instead I study my grass for half a minute. Then I say, “So what are you doing here, Donnie?”
“I came to see my grandchildren. Is it okay if I smoke out here?”
“No,” I told him. “And your oldest grandchild is seven years old. She’s seen you twice so far.”
“Okay,” he says. “Truth is, I’m hoping to make things up with Janice. Figured if I could get Cindy’s blessing on it, she might put a good word in for me.”
“I’m fairly certain you can add ‘blessing’ and ‘good word’ to the long list of things you are never going to get from Cindy.”
“I don’t expect it to happen overnight,” he says.
“And where did you plan to camp out while you’re working on this miracle?”
“I guess I was hoping for an invitation from somebody with an extra room.”
I nodded. I thought about it. And then I turned to finally look him in the eye. “How’d you get here, by the way? No vehicle, no luggage?”
“Car’s a couple streets over at the convenience store.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what,” I said. “You go get your car. Then drive on out to the interstate. Six motels within a quarter mile of each other. Lots of empty rooms out there.”
Here’s another thing I’ve observed. I think it’s part of Murphy’s Law. If it isn’t, it should be. It’s the fact that when you have something important to do, something like figuring out whether or not to tell your wife you’re going to be unemployed soon—and whether or not to tell her about something very stupid you did—and figuring out why that meth lab out on 218 showed no sign of being raided—and figuring out what to do with all the stolen money crammed into your grandmother’s antique desk—and where to hide the probably unregistered .22 revolver now in your saddlebag—and figuring out why you felt compelled to take it in the first place—all while taking your family out to dinner and pretending like nothing’s wrong—then along comes something else you have to deal with first, like chasing your father-in-law away and trying to soothe your wife’s mood while the kids fight over whether to get pepperoni or not on the pizza.
On second thought, Spence, forget about Murphy’s Law. It should be one of the laws of physics: A body at rest tends to stay at rest until acted upon by a naked lady dancing in the rain. After that, it’s going to be sandstorms and IEDs all the way to the end.
Any parent who is trying to be a good parent knows that, for most of every day, their own interests have to be put on hold while the kids’ needs and interests are tended. Which meant that Cindy and I didn’t get to talk about her father’s surprise appearance until we were in bed that night. I told her how my little conversation with him had gone, and she was furious.
“No way in hell is that going to happen,” she said. I’d heard her swear maybe ten times in our entire marriage. “No way in hell is he getting back with my mother.”
“Do you know for sure she doesn’t want to? Has she told you that?”
“It doesn’t matter whether she wants to or not. I’ll never let it happen.”
“But if she wants to—”
“It doesn’t matter what she thinks she wants, Russell! Why are you fighting me on this? You should be supporting me right now.”
“Baby, I’m not fighting you. It’s just that . . .”
“What? It’s just that what?”
I thought of a couple questions I could ask her, but it didn’t seem a good time, considering how worked up she was already. “Nothing, baby. I’m sorry. I’m behind you all the way, you know that.”
“You should be,” she said, and then leaned over against me, laid her head on my chest and let her hand rest on my stomach.
We stayed like that for a couple minutes, me not moving except to stroke her hair every once in a while. It had taken me a while to learn to be quiet like that with her. Back when we first got married, I thought it was my job to solve all of her problems, so anytime she would bring something up, I would add my two cents by saying, “Maybe you should do this,” or “Have you thought about trying that?” Then one day she came right out and told me what she thought of my suggestions. “I don’t need you to fix everything, Russell. Telling you what’s bothering me doesn’t mean I want you to fix it.” She kept hitting the word “fix” like it was something dirty.
“Okay,” I said. “Then I guess I don’t know what it is you do want me to do.”
“Sometimes all I want is for you to listen,” she said.
So that’s what I’d been trying to do unless she comes right out and asks for my opinion. It isn’t easy.
After a while that night she started talking about one of the other bank tellers, a woman named Theresa whose thirty-six-year-old son still lived with her and had gotten some twenty-year-old who worked at the mall pregnant. Talking about somebody else’s problems seemed to calm Cindy down.
“The thing is, the girl wants to have the baby and get married, but Theresa’s son works part-time at best as a substitute teacher.”
“The son doesn’t want to get married?”
“He’s almost forty years old and living with his mother. What do you think?”
“Sounds like maybe Theresa’s going to have a couple more mouths to feed.”
“Actually she’s thinking very seriously about transferring her savings to a bank in Mexico or some island somewhere, then packing up and retiring. Leave her son to either grow up or else stew in his own juices, she said.”
“That’s how she put it—stew in his own juices? That’s pretty clever.”
“Umhmm,” Cindy said, and moved her fingertips in a circle atop my chest.
I waited until I was sure she didn’t want to say any more about it. Then I said, “By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you. After I dropped Pops off yesterday, one of the other residents stopped me as I was headed for the door. He wanted my advice on what to do with all the cash he’s saved up over the years. I told him I’d ask you about it.”
“Which one was it?” she said.
“Which guy? You know, I don’t even know his name. Tall, thin guy, early eighties probably. I think he used to be an engineer of some kind. I’ve sat and talked to him a couple times when Pops would fall asleep on me, but I don’t recall I ever asked his name.”
“Well what makes him think that I would have any investment advice? I don’t know anything about investment
s.”
“I think he’s looking to put it somewhere safe. In a bank or credit union, something like that. It’s all in cash. Actual cash.”
“How much cash is it?”
“Sweetie, I didn’t inquire of the specifics, you know? But the way he talked, I got the feeling it was a lot. Like maybe his life savings or something. Apparently there are old people who do that. Lived through the depression, stock market collapse, and now they keep everything they have stuffed under a mattress.”
“Except that now somebody else is changing his sheets,” she said.
“Exactly.”
“So he wants to put it in the bank now?”
“I don’t know, I’m guessing. I do remember telling him about you and the girls, and I probably told him that you’re a bank teller in town.”
“We have to report any cash deposit over two thousand.”
“Report to who?”
“There’s this thing called the Suspicious Activity Report that goes to the federal government. I think that only applies to what it says, though. Money coming from a suspicious-looking person. But even if it’s not suspicious, if it’s more than ten thousand the person has to fill out a special IRS form. These days you can’t even make a lot of small deposits. That will trigger a Suspicious Activity Report too.”
“Interesting,” I said. “A guy wants to put his own money into an account, where the bank can use it and make a profit from it, and the government has to investigate him.”
“Yep. That’s pretty much the way it works.”
“So what should I tell the old guy next time I see him?”
“Personally? I’d tell him to spend it and enjoy himself. That’s one thing you can still do with real money. Actually spend it.”
“Spend it or give it away,” I said.
“Hey. Maybe he’d like to buy me a new car.”
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