Further Joy

by John Brandon

  We play a game, out under the roof of the front porch, called 20-Point Turn. All you do is sit with your drink, hidden among fronds, and watch the old folks try to park. The rules of 20-Point Turn can be changed on the spot. Every time a wife gets out and directs her husband—that’s two points. If she does it decently, without squawking, she gets points too.

  When I go to the mailboxes, the old men think I’m mocking them. I’ve done something to my back, something involving a disc. There’s never anything out there except coupon booklets, but I carry those inside so we can check if there’s anything funny about them, anything ridiculous about this week’s discounts.

  We talk about nicknames. That’s the type of thing we try to talk about, so Lara won’t cry. You can always talk about nicknames. Other types of inside jokes spoil, but not nicknames. If any of us ever have children, the first thing we’ll do is nickname them.

  My wife wants Lara’s nickname to be Dwayne for a while. My wife says she wants to leave notes for Lara and address them to Dwayne.

  What kind of pill is best for a backache is a topic. Whether to keep doing our own taxes is a topic. The yoga Lara does every day after lunch is a topic. Computer brands. Libertarians. The various ways movies can be made. I tell the gals about how Florida used to be, since I’m the one who’s from here—how there used to be orange groves everywhere you looked and now there’s Home Depots and chain bakeries. I tell them it used to be pleasant to drive on 41—people did it for fun—and now it’s a traffic jam of senile Long Islanders. You used to be able to camp on the beach, with a fire and everything; it was safe to be out there overnight and the authorities wouldn’t hassle you. There was a family-owned pecan grove right down the street from my childhood home, and my brother and I would walk over there every Saturday and get free pecan logs from the old lady. Now, I tell them, that plot of land is a used-car dealership. The trees are long gone, not a matchbook of shade on the whole lot.

  My wife bangs her tea mug down on a glass end table and walks out of the room, leaving an airless quiet in her wake. I know what the problem is. She’s tired of my complaining. She’s heard it all before.

  Lara picks up the abandoned cup and takes a sip from it, a breezy look on her face, as if to dismiss my wife’s behavior. We’ve both noticed her sour moods, but it’s not something we could talk about. My wife has made no effort to commiserate with Lara about her breakup. In the old days, she would’ve, but now it’s as if she’s unwilling to acknowledge that she’s in a position to pity anyone, to hand down aid or wisdom.

  Lara and I look over toward the TV. It feels like we’re allies, yet we avoid each other’s gaze. There’s a press conference on the screen. A black man in a three-piece suit is slouching against a podium. He could be talking about anything. Next to him, a stone-faced woman scans the crowd.

  There’s a spot on the edge of town where you can pull off the roadside and view alligators from the safety of your car. My wife and I haven’t made our way over there, and now Lara has started campaigning that we go, that we pack some sandwiches and find a radio station and stare at the huge languorous reptiles for an hour or two. She thinks it’ll cheer us up. I tell her maybe we’ll go tomorrow, if the rain stops. Then, because I can tell my wife has no interest in this field trip, I try to talk Lara out of it altogether.

  What the alligators do nowadays, I say, is wait for old ladies to walk their pooches too close to a drainage ditch. They collect indigestible collars in their guts. That shouldn’t cheer anyone up. I tell her there’s wildlife right outside the window, and it’s true—a tall white bird is out there in the drizzle, stabbing the soft ground with more urgency than seems necessary. The bird is in the rough and beyond the bird is the fairway. Beyond that, peering out from screened lanais, are pairs of dismayed old folks. They promised themselves they’d die in lovely weather, and now that they’re here it’s just raining and raining and raining.

  The note on my car says: HOW ABOUT GIVING US A BREAK, WE CANNOT GET IN AND OUT WITH OUR BIKES AND BUNDLES. It’s been taped to the driver-side window inside a plastic baggie. It’s not signed. Whoever left the note wants me to believe I’m blocking the front walk by parking where I’ve parked, in the closest space, but he and I both know why he doesn’t want me there. That space is bigger than the others. It’s wider. I park my little Honda there on purpose for the good of our game. My wife suggests we put a new note on my car window, one that will read: IF YOU WANT A BREAK, GO BREAK YOUR FUCKING HIP.

  We won’t do it, though. We’re not sure why, but we won’t do something like that. It’s the teenagers and old folks who do whatever they please. And there’s no one else in this town, just teenagers by the hundreds and old folks by the thousands.

  Each evening, we go to a restaurant in the ritzy downtown, our only outing of the day, jogging in the rain from the car to the closest awnings. I limp when I jog, but still, I can jog. The restaurants are too expensive for us, but we can’t let the old folks win. If they’re going to have red snapper in a tangerine and rum sauce, so are we.

  We enjoy food more than they do. And we know the wines from when we were out west. We hope, each of us silently, that when the old folks see us sighing and cooing and letting our jaws roll luxuriantly, they’ll think about the sex they once had.

  ***

  The condo we rent still has all the landlady’s figurines in it. The day we moved in, we piled them all in the spare room, enough ceramic and porcelain to fill a grave. Except one, a foot-and-a-half statue of a dark-haired angel in a tuxedo. That one we move from room to room with us. We take it out to the porch, and on car rides. The angel’s chest is puffed, his waist petite. He looks sort of like an exasperated maître d’ and sort of like he’s about to break into song. His hands are empty, his wings folded against his back. He stands sunk to his shins in a cloud, like someone in quicksand.

  The condo complex is immense. You could claim it’s ten square miles and no one could argue. The pool, which we have yet to walk over to, is the largest in this region of the state. The deepest it gets is four feet.

  The last night of her visit, Lara wins 20-Point Turn. She’s got a Nissan she’s taken great care of, that she takes religiously for waxes and transmission flushes and new tires even when it doesn’t need them, and an old man trying to park runs right into it. Now her Nissan has a dent in the quarter panel. Lara decides not to care. She decides that her incessant car upkeep is getting sad. The dent is a blessing. It’s worth a dent to win the game, because she could really use a win.

  When the guy finally gets into the space and rises up out of his Grand Marquis, the three of us stand and cheer. I hold the angel statue up like a trophy. It seems like the old days for a moment—Lara is genuinely giddy and my wife’s smile is full, unfettered. She’s not withholding a part of herself, not acting reluctant in order to make some point. And I feel I’m partly responsible for getting us here, having been a steady, buoyant presence in our little home.

  The next morning my wife gets up early. That’s not unusual; most nights, one of the two of us slips out, sleepless, to watch the wee-hour newsfeeds. An hour or so later I get up, too, and make a full pot of coffee. The night is just subsiding; by the time the coffee is done brewing, I can see out the windows. I pour myself a mug and carry it to the back of the condo to check out the birds on the golf course. As I pass through the living room, I see that my wife isn’t on the couch.

  I can hear now how quiet the condo is. I walk to the front end and ease Lara’s door open a couple inches, sensing that her room is empty. I set my coffee down on the Formica table in the kitchen. Maybe the two of them went running together, though that would surprise me. Out the front window I can see that Lara’s car isn’t there.

  I decide to forgo a bowl of cereal, in case they went out to pick up something for breakfast. I head back to the rear windows and lean on the sill. A mismatched gang of water birds is advancing up the fairway. It’s like they’ve fanned out to look for something one of them dro
pped. There’s a blue heron and an ibis and a snowy egret—a few distracted gulls, not helping with the search, nestle on the clipped grass like it’s a calm bay.

  When I’m too hungry to wait any longer and my coffee is cold, I return to the kitchen. The angel statue catches my eye, proud-looking, planted over on the white sideboard. And then I see the note pinned underneath it. The stationery bears the logo of a hospital, and the hurried writing tells me that my wife and Lara drove up near Sarasota for the day, to hang out on Lara’s friend’s boat. And that they may stay the night. It’s my wife’s handwriting. She didn’t put her name at the bottom, or put my name at the top—didn’t sign off with the word love. She’s being petty, Lord knows to what end.

  I dump my coffee and pour a fresh mug. No name for this friend of Lara’s? Near Sarasota? I suppose I should be happy the girls are reconnecting, returning to one another’s favor, but happiness isn’t the feeling that’s arriving. The note didn’t say whether they were going to sit at the dock or take the boat out, but I assume it’s raining in Sarasota too. It feels like the whole state has been under these clouds.

  I sit in the kitchen until my coffee is lukewarm again, then I grab my keys and head down the front steps. I’m not sure where I’m driving until I pull into the grocery store. I fill a hand basket with fruit and grab a sixer of cheap beer. I can already envision the apples and limes in bowls in the kitchen, already feel how they’ll help the condo, and I can see the forthright, cheerful cans of beer on a shelf in the refrigerator. At the checkout I take a newspaper too.

  Back at the condo, I spread the paper out. There’s an article revealing the best places to use a metal detector. An article about a wild boar that startled some beachgoers. A girl in Fort Myers was shot while sitting in her car. I read every word. I’m trying to lose track of time, and it’s working. A soldier went berserk in a post office. A new podiatry clinic is opening.

  When I fold the paper back up, it’s the middle of the afternoon. The coffee pot has been on all day, and I finally shut it off. I shouldn’t call my wife’s phone, but I know it’s only a matter of time before I do. I take a shower and eat something, then I open a beer and go to the front porch. 20-Point Turn is no good all alone. It’s just people parking and nothing more, people coming back from dinner before it’s even nighttime. I can hear the card games from the other porches—outdated games I don’t know the rules to. There are silences, murmurs, peals of laughter. Lara’s space is taken now, by a long, gray Lincoln. I find myself doubting very much that Lara has a friend in Sarasota, or that that friend has a boat, or that my wife would want to be on that boat.

  I pull out my phone, as I knew I would, and when I call my wife it goes straight to voicemail. Lara’s phone gives me the same treatment. It’s possible they’re offshore, out of cell range. I have no way of knowing.

  At lunchtime the next day, they still haven’t surfaced. What I understand is that my wife hasn’t been my ally for some time. It’s true we love each other. It’s true that eventually she’ll return from wherever she is and all this will pass. But we’re not allies.

  I wonder what to do next. There’s a mammoth sporting goods store nearby that I wouldn’t mind walking around in. Doubtless there’s a coupon booklet in the mailbox. On the muted TV there will be sobering news from Africa, from the Pacific Rim, from everywhere. The rain is going to cease soon—later today, tomorrow—and the thought worries me. All the old people will rejoice, beaming in their tennis clothes and grilling steaks and rubbing down their long automobiles to prevent water spots. They will cherish those little duties. Our neighbors are finished with the tasks they toiled away at in life; they know what it is to be finished, to have worked a lifetime toward a satisfaction that begins rotting after a week.

  THE DIFFERING VIEWS

  The man did not offer to buy Mitchell a coffee. He described the job as a sales position but managed to avoid saying exactly what Mitchell would sell. Mitchell found he could not get a word in, and after a while he quit trying. The man seemed like he’d been to prison, something about how cloudy and expressionless his eyes looked. His pinstripe suit was like a disguise. He had made several allusions to a payment of $300 and Mitchell finally understood that the man wanted him to pay $300. The man made wisecracks about some starving-artist types that were haunting the coffee shop, making fun of what they did with their time and also making fun of their clothes. He was holding a laminated graph. It showed a steep increase in something. Mitchell’s mind went to the gas he’d wasted driving into Albuquerque. His mind went to all the things he’d at one time or another studied in depth—the history of Paris, North American hummingbirds. He’d once known the entire Book of Psalms by heart. To buy himself an espresso drink would be, at this point, an extravagant expenditure.

  ***

  Mitchell had spent six years with Bet. Bet had family money and fancied herself a writer and moved every few months, on whims. Mitchell had met her when she’d passed through Chattanooga. He’d agreed to tag along with her, had left his crappy adjunct job at a branch of the state college to drive the open parts of the country with the windows down. That was the kind of thing he’d always been able to do—make his escape when others were afraid to. He’d come to know Bet better than he’d ever known another person, and perhaps they’d grown too close. This last move they’d wound up in some bleached, dusty town out east of Albuquerque, and after only two days Bet had said she wanted to pack back up and move again. She’d said she had complaints, but they weren’t really about New Mexico. There’d been a convoluted fight during which Bet had used the term “curdled” to what she believed was great effect, and then she’d left. Six years. She’d driven away in her tasteful little SUV, crying in sharp breathy yips. It was the same way she cried at anything—the death of an animal, songs. She produced these high-pitched whimpers and her nose got stuffed up, but only a tear or two would fall. It was one of the only things Mitchell didn’t like about her, her crying, and he was glad that this was the last image he’d had of her as she left. If she’d driven off with one of her resigned frowns, it would’ve crushed him. If she’d flashed him that look of distanced amusement, the one cheek bunched up and her eyes barely squinting, he’d probably still be standing out there, frozen at the edge of the parking lot like a cactus.

  Mitchell had been alone for a week now. He could see that he was worn out too, though not of Bet. He was tired of the road, of packing and unpacking, of learning new streets and new restaurants and new neighbors and new weather and suffering new allergies and not knowing the name of the county he lived in. He was tired of looking for work.

  He had a two-bedroom condo all to himself and the first month and security deposit were paid. He had a last-legs Isuzu Stylus he’d bought cheap a couple stops ago, when the only job he could find was twenty miles outside of town. He was a bachelor. That was the situation. Big clean appliances. He had nothing to put in the second bedroom but a folding chair and a lamp. He had $4,100.

  Left to his own devices, he ate twice a day, all his meals working out to about $7. Sandwich and potato salad and a Coke. Burritos and a Coke. Three stiff slices of pizza and a Coke. Chicken fingers and cheap beer. He knew his crappy diet was one of the reasons he felt sluggish. He and Bet had always gone out to good restaurants, usually on her dime, or if they ate in they had salads and expensive cheese.

  Bet had taken her laptop, which they’d used to read articles or listen to the radio. Mitchell had an old box TV, but they’d never used it as a TV. It hadn’t been plugged in since Chattanooga, and had become an ornamental artifact. At a villa he and Bet had rented in Maine, they’d used the TV as a centerpiece for their dining room table. In Baltimore, they’d taped a tropical beach scene over the screen, something to look at during the winter weather. This condo Mitchell was in now didn’t have cable hooked up, but he doubted the TV would work anyway.

  Before Mitchell and Bet had driven to New Mexico, they had planned a number of desert outings, and now Mitchel
l couldn’t find the gusto to undertake any of the outings alone. One of the places they’d planned to visit was a farm of gargantuan satellite dishes that monitored the webby corners of the galaxy for sonic anomalies. They’d planned to hike out into White Sands. Tour the pistachio groves. All these places had seemed foreign and enchanting before, but now, as a guy alone, they were just radio apparatus, just a wash of pale dirt, some nut trees.

  Mitchell bought a package of heavy paper and drove to a small library the color of tired earth. He obtained a library card and sat down at a computer and typed an up-to-date version of his work history. He put his fancy paper in the library printer and came away with a purposeful stack of résumés. It was eerie to look at his new résumé, to see all the places he’d been with Bet, all the things he’d done with his hands for money, to think at one time of all the warehouses and mills and machine shops where he’d logged a month or two, all these places he hadn’t been suited for and that had already forgotten him. And teaching hadn’t suited him either, if he was honest. He could remember clearly, even all these years later, feeling like an impostor in front of the students. He could remember acting like he cared about whether they learned, could remember drumming up just enough enthusiasm within himself before each class meeting.

  Mitchell looked at job listings on the Internet, ads for general labor. Some wanted his résumé emailed to them. Some jumped Mitchell to other sites, seemingly unrelated, where he was supposed to fill in questionnaires and compose statements about loyalty and tolerance. Mitchell’s time on the computer ran out and he logged off and wrote his name on the sheet again. He spent a half hour reading a science fiction novel and then looked up numbers for every temp agency in Albuquerque and called them all and made appointments to come in and drop off his résumé and do whatever else they had people do. He called three different numbers advertising “environmental jobs” and got no answer. He went and sat in a squeaky chair and scanned the want ads in the newspaper. People wanted HVAC technicians and exotic dancers.