The Grievers

by Marc Schuster

  Be Neil. Be Neil. Be Neil. Be Neil.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Is there any chance it was someone else?”

  “I don’t think so,” Frank said. “I’m pretty sure it was you.”

  “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t,” I said.

  “Really?” Frank said. “You don’t remember? All of us taking shots at his haircut? And Billy was all, ‘What’s wrong with my haircut?’ And you were like, ‘Seriously, Billy? You look like you cut it with a sharp rock or something.’ Classic, man. The whole room was in stitches.”

  “That never happened,” I said.

  “Are you kidding?” Frank asked. “Of course it happened.”

  “No,” I said, vaguely aware that Karen was squeezing my knee under the table. “It didn’t.”

  Be Neil. Be Neil. Be Neil. Be Neil.

  “I’m pretty sure it did,” Frank insisted.

  Be Neil. Be Neil. Be Neil. Be—fuck it.

  “I don’t care what you remember, Frank,” I said. “I’m telling you it didn’t happen. And if you don’t like it, then maybe you should go fuck yourself.”

  I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth—not so much because they insulted Frank but because they made me look like an asshole.

  Maya cleared her throat and asked Frank to pass a pitcher of water.

  Frank passed the water and asked Karen what she thought of the salad.

  Karen said that the salad was delicious and told Maya that she loved her necklace.

  ALL THROUGH the main course and then through dessert, Maya and Karen kept the conversation on an even keel with talk of their jobs, their favorite movies, and whatever else people talk about when they have nothing in common. When I wasn’t complimenting Maya’s prowess in the kitchen only to find out that Frank had done the lion’s share of cooking, I was making noises deep in my throat to suggest that I agreed with everything that everyone was saying—if only to prove that I knew how to behave in polite society. But when Frank offered to give us a tour of the house, I declined. It was a school night, I told him, and I’d already stayed up way past my bedtime. Though Karen agreed, she promised to give Maya a call so they could meet for lunch sometime. When Maya said it sounded like a great idea, all I could envision was an eternity of dinner parties at Frank’s house, the four of us growing older and older with each passing year, with nothing but idle chatter and halfremembered lies about our days at the Academy to fill the silence between us. And when Karen and Maya went so far as to hug each other before saying goodbye, I knew my fate was sealed.

  “Lunch?” I said as the Dearborns waved to us from their front step. “What were you thinking?”

  I looked in my rearview mirror and cursed Frank as I pulled out of his driveway.

  “They’re not that bad,” Karen said.

  “Maybe she isn’t,” I said. “But he sure as hell is. And to tell you the truth, I’m not all that sure about her either. I wouldn’t be surprised if she works for Dow Chemical or something—developing a new improved formula for napalm.”

  “She teaches kindergarten,” Karen said. “You’d know that if you’d been paying attention.”

  “Oh, and I’m sure she invites her entire class over to the house all the time. Would you like the grand tour? Please. As if we don’t already know their house is bigger than ours.”

  “It’s what people do, Charley. They show other people their homes. It’s called being polite.”

  “Right,” I said. “Polite. They were politely rubbing our noses in the fact that we’re poor.”

  “We’re not poor, Charley.”

  “We’re not rich either.”

  “Since when has that mattered?”

  “It doesn’t.” I snapped the radio on and off, and we drove for a while in silence—out of Frank’s neighborhood and through the narrow tunnel that led under the railroad tracks separating my world from his. The wrong side of the tracks, I though glumly. Even my failures were shot through with clichés. “I just wish I were doing something with my life.”

  “You’ll hit your stride. Once you finish your dissertation—”

  “Sure,” I said. “My dissertation. Like that’s going anywhere.”

  “Give it some time,” Karen said.

  “Time,” I said. “I’ve had all the time in the world, and where has it gotten me? Did I tell you I went down to the bridge where Billy killed himself?”

  “No,” Karen said. “You didn’t. You don’t tell me much of anything lately.”

  “Well, I did,” I said. “I looked right over the edge and saw everything he saw. And for a second there, I understood why he did it. Only for a second, though. But long enough.”

  “Long enough for what?” Karen asked.

  I turned onto our street and pretended not to hear my wife’s question as the gravel popped under our tires.

  “Charley, please. Long enough for what?”

  “Long enough to know I could never do it,” I said, cutting the engine. “Jump, I mean. I don’t have it in me.”

  I opened my door, but Karen stayed still.

  “Are you coming?” I asked.

  “I don’t like when you get this way, Charley.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “How can you just say that to me? How can you just tell me that you nearly killed yourself and decided at the last second that you couldn’t do it?”

  “Nearly killed myself?” I said. “That’s not what I was saying at all.”

  “Then what were you saying?”

  “I was saying that I took a ride to the Henry Avenue Bridge. I was saying that I looked over the edge. I was saying that I knew how Billy felt. But I was also saying that I couldn’t do that—that I couldn’t jump. That was my whole point. I would never do something like that.”

  “Okay,” Karen said quietly. “But I want you to talk with someone about this. It doesn’t have to be me, and it doesn’t have to be a professional. But you really need to talk to someone. Neil, maybe. Or Dwayne, or Sean. Hell, talk to Greg Packer if it helps, but talk to someone, Charley. I mean it. Something’s eating you up inside, and I hate seeing you so miserable.”

  “I know,” I said again. And again, “I’m sorry.”

  Karen leaned over the gearshift and kissed me on the cheek. Her lips were soft and warm in the cool night air. I was a good man, she said. That was why she married me.

  All she wanted was for me to be happy.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The minivan pulled into the parking lot at noon. It was a boxy Plymouth Voyager with wood trim and tinted windows. The driver wore tight jeans and a white tee shirt, and she gave me a wave as she stepped from the vehicle. Or not a wave so much as a quick glance over the frames of her sunglasses as she raised a finger to indicate that she’d be with me in a second. Then she turned back to the minivan, and I knew I was screwed. Inside, I could see five shadowy figures trying their best to strangle each other in the cargo hold; and though I tried to back away as the woman reached for the silver handle of the sliding door, my costume was too bulky and my range of motion far too restricted for me to make even a respectable attempt at retreat.

  Tumbling from the vehicle in a chaotic tangle of bright yellow soccer jerseys, heavy cleats, and shin guards, the kids saw me immediately and made a beeline for my balloons. My guess as the earth shook beneath me was that I had approximately three seconds to live, and when the pushing started, I toppled right over.

  My first instinct was to let go of the balloons, but I’d tied them to my wrist on the advice of Sue and the guy who smelled like sausage. In theory, it was good advice, but in the real world, it only gave my assailants something to fight for, so three of them started kicking me with their hard, heavy, hateful cleats, and the other two yanked so violently on the balloons that my hand turned five shades of purple.

  So this was my life, I thought glumly, wondering where it had all gone wrong as the sprinklers came on and the kids skittered away. When I
was four years old, my mother used to warn me against doing anything dangerous by telling me that if I got killed, she’d have to put me in a box and bury me underground. Now here I was, sinking into the muddy lawn in front of the bank inside my giant dollar sign, and it wasn’t because of anything I’d done. In fact, with the striking exception of asking Karen to marry me, I couldn’t think of a single thing that I’d actually done since graduating from the Academy. College, sure, but even graduating with honors was more a matter of figuring out which classes would require the least amount of work than of cracking open the occasional book and learning something. Even grad school was nothing more than an attempt at escaping the real world after two years of bouncing from job to job in quasi-corporate America. Temping, editing, proofreading. Before Billy, I used to joke that I’d rather hang myself than line edit another accounting textbook—by way of an explanation for quitting my last job, by way of justifying my choice to return to school, by way of insisting that I wasn’t a failure. I was moving up, I was trying to say. I was taking charge. I was plotting a course to a better future. But really I was only taking the path of least resistance. The only good thing—the only real thing—that came as a result of grad school was meeting Karen. Now I was floundering with my dissertation and, if I really wanted to be honest with myself, floundering in my marriage as well. All because of my aversion to work. All because I refused to do anything.

  Because doing something meant change.

  Because change meant growing up.

  Because growing up meant leaving so much behind.

  Phil Ennis was only half-right when he said that I thought my hands were clean because I was a cynic. The real truth was the reverse of that: I wore a cynical mask to keep myself from getting too attached to anything, to protect myself from getting too involved, to distance myself from the living because in the end I knew the only thing that separated them from the dead was time and that everyone I loved would one day be gone. So I learned to turn everything into a joke—my friends, my job, my house, my life—and when Billy died, the joke stopped being funny.

  This was no way for an adult to live, I told myself as the sprinklers cut off and I heard a fresh set of footsteps squishing across the lawn. And it wasn’t enough to be Neil or the replacement Neil or whoever it was I’d been trying to be since Neil got pissed at me for sending the wrong letter to Ennis. What I needed to do was stand on my own two feet. What I needed to do was learn to be me.

  Whoever that was.

  “We’ve put this off long enough, Charley,” Sue said, huffing and puffing as she made her way across the lawn.

  THE PERFORMANCE review was not designed to penalize employees, Sue said mechanically, as if reading from a script. Rather, I should view it as an opportunity to assess my strengths and weaknesses in a way that would make me a greater asset to the company. Ideally, it would open up a dialogue between myself and management that would ultimately lead to advancement within my profession, but it might also give me an opportunity to assess whether my current career path was right for me.

  “At the moment, I’m curled into a ball inside of a giant dollar sign,” I said, in case she hadn’t noticed. “I’m not sure that counts as a career path.”

  “Just play along, Charley,” Sue said. “I need to do this for everyone. What would you describe as your towering strengths?”

  “Towering strengths?” I said.

  “Things you’re especially good at.”

  “I understand the question,” I said. “I just wasn’t prepared for it. I thought the whole point of this was for you to tell me what I was doing wrong.”

  “It is,” Sue said. “But it’s supposed to be a dialogue. I ask you a few questions, you give me a few answers, I tell you why you’re wrong, and we pretend we had a real conversation about your value to the company.”

  “Are you this forthcoming with all your employees?”

  “No,” Sue said. “Only the ones who are lying in mud. What do you see as your towering strengths?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’m good at holding onto my balloons.”

  “Okay,” Sue said, and she made a note on the clipboard. “Weaknesses?”

  “Pretty much everything else,” I said.

  “Could you be more specific?” Sue asked.

  “I’m sure I could,” I said. “How much time do you have?”

  Sue looked at her watch, and I told her not to worry. The job wasn’t right for me, I said. In fact, it probably wasn’t right for anyone—anyone with any self-respect, anyway. Or job skills of any kind.

  “No offense,” I added, untying my balloons and shimmying out of the dollar sign. “But this is ridiculous.”

  “So, what?” Sue asked. “You’re quitting on me?”

  “It looks that way,” I said. “I just hope my wife doesn’t kill me for it.”

  It wasn’t the same as all the other times, I told myself as I dragged the dollar sign back to the bank and shoved it into the broom closet looking scuffed, dirty, and bald in places where time and bad luck had rubbed away its glitter.

  I was quitting, yes. But quitting with a purpose.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The recipe called for two boned chicken breasts, an assortment of vegetables, and a splash of lemon juice. How hard could it be, I wondered? Chop the veggies, lay them on the chicken, add the lemon, wrap the whole shebang in foil, and stick it in the oven. With any luck, the end result would be a romantic dinner for two that would at least begin to make up for the fact that I’d quit my job. That four days had passed since I’d done the deed was beside the point. What mattered now was the element of surprise. If I timed everything right, Karen would walk through the door just as I was lighting the candles; but even if the meal went bust, the gesture alone would be so unexpected, so overwhelmingly out of character, that my wife would be speechless—in a good way, for a change.

  It was Thursday afternoon, nearly a week since I told Karen about my visit to the Henry Avenue Bridge. For Karen, it was a week lost to grading end-of-semester research papers, creative writing portfolios, and final exams. For me, it was a week of answering the phone and agreeing to whatever crass and misguided schemes my fellow Academy grads had cooked up for turning Billy’s memorial service into the social event of the season. But if a circus was what they wanted, I thought, chopping peppers into tiny squares as the telephone rang, then a circus was what they’d get.

  “Hey,” Neil said when I picked up the phone. “It’s me.”

  “I’m chopping peppers,” I said, cradling the receiver between my ear and my shoulder. “Red and green. Dangerous stuff, so this better be good.”

  “Did you get my message?”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “Greg. I meant to call you back.”

  “You gave him a ride to the airport?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  Neil let out a sigh. He sounded tired, and suddenly I felt bad for all the times I called him away from his job, away from his family, away from his life to help me pretend that I’d never have to grow up if I didn’t feel like it.

  “You okay?” I said.

  “He was arrested,” Neil said. “Greg, I mean. Apparently he went apeshit on his mother. Nothing physical, thank God, but they were out shopping, and he started screaming at her for sabotaging his life.”

  “He told you this?” I said.

  “In his own way, of course. In his version, he’s the hero, and it was all a misunderstanding.”

  “So, what?” I scraped the peppers off the cutting board and onto the foil with the chicken and the other vegetables. “His mother called the cops?”

  “Worse. They were in the grocery store when it happened, so it turned into a big to-do. The manager called the cops, and the cops hauled Greg away for disturbing the peace. They let him go when his mom came down to the station to make a statement, but by then? Jesus, the guy’s out of control. Sullivan’s still pushing for an interven
tion, but part of me thinks he just likes the drama.”

  “Does Sean have experience with this kind of thing?” I asked.

  “Not exactly,” Neil said. “I think he picked up a pamphlet at work.”

  “The car lot or the other job?”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t even know.”

  I put the chicken in the oven and told Neil it was his call. If he wanted to give Sullivan a shot and go ahead with an intervention, however loosely we used the term, then I’d back him all the way. But if he wanted to wash his hands of the entire situation, I’d understand completely. There was only so much Packer anyone could take, and Neil had already endured far more than I’d have guessed was humanly possible.

  “Thanks,” Neil said. “I’ll let you know what I decide.”

  I said goodbye to Neil and dimmed the lights in the dining room by standing on a chair and unscrewing two of the bulbs in the faux-brass fixture attached to the ceiling fan. Then I lit some candles and fluffed some sticky brown rice with a fork per the instructions on the package. In addition to the vegetables I’d chopped, I also steamed some spinach in compliance with Karen’s firm belief that vegetables cooked with meat products were not so much vegetables but a kind of garnish. Though I normally disagreed with this theory, I decided to acquiesce in the spirit of romance. As an added touch, I put on a jacket and tie and slicked my hair back so I’d look my best when Karen walked in the door. Since she was due back any minute, there was a slight element of haste as I selected music for the evening and filled a Rubbermaid bucket with ice to keep our wine cool while we dined. I was uncorking the bottle when I heard a knock at the door.

  Odd, I thought, because I was certain that Karen had a key.

  Or not so odd, I realized when I saw it wasn’t Karen at the door but Sean Sullivan.

  “I told Neil we should have done this a long time ago,” he said, brushing past me as I opened the door. “But he put it off and put it off, and now look. The police are involved. Greg has a criminal record. We all saw it coming, but did we lift a finger to stop it? No. We just sat back and laughed while Greg screwed up his life. Greg’s stalking a girl in Chicago? Oh, boy! What fun! Greg’s hooked on painkillers? What a character! I’m telling you, Charley, it’s only a matter of time before we turn on the news and find out that some nut strangled his mother in the Christmas room. Then they’ll start interviewing his friends, and every one of us will be on TV saying, gee, he seemed like such a nice guy, I have no idea what happened. We’ll be those people, Charley. Those people who never have a clue that their neighbor has fifty prostitutes tied up in the basement. You see them on the news all the time and think, God, they must have been dumb as rocks not to realize their neighbor was a psychopath, and that’s what people are going to say about us!”