He started out to the kitchen, but his hand hurt and it was hard to propel himself forward. When Al returned to help him, he mumbled, “I’m really sorry for what I said before.”
“S’okay.” Al picked up his cigarettes and lighter off the kitchen table but quickly set them down again. The Marine insignia on the lighter, a raised globe, made a metallic thump as it hit the Formica surface.
“You can smoke in front of me. My lungs aren’t so fragile anymore.” He felt he must continue to explain himself if he and Al were going to remain friends. “Used to be that I’d about die every time I got a cold. Now I’m better before I’m ready to be. I was taking the codeine ’cause I was stalling.” Until he could forgive Cheryl for her treachery. And he wasn’t quite ready yet.
Al picked the ashtray off the stove. It was a flimsy piece of tinfoil that Cheryl had brought home from work.
“It wouldn’t matter so much if she weren’t pregnant.”
Richard snapped his head up. “Who?”
“Cheryl.”
A nerve began to jump in his right leg. Al had been living here for a while. Could he and Cheryl have …? Had he been sick that long? He stared at the ashtray and tried to remember the last time he had seen Cheryl smoking. It had been months. He also remembered the day after her mother left when she wouldn’t take aspirin. That had been over a month ago, too. Of course, the baby was his. He felt deeply ashamed for thinking otherwise. But why hadn’t she told him?
“I’m not the one who should be telling you.”
That was for damn sure. Still, he was grateful to know. It put everything in a different light. In one of Cheryl’s medical books he had read about all the hormonal changes women went through during pregnancy. Cheryl’s sticking him in that day-care center hadn’t been malicious at all. No, she had just been scared and sick. The hard knot of hate within him lightened and burst as quietly as a child’s soap bubble. He longed to talk to her. But she was in a classroom at Software International and completely unavailable to him.
“How about some lunch?”
“Sounds good.” Maybe food would give him strength and help clear his brain. He had a considerable amount of thinking to do.
Al set out an onion, a stalk of celery, and a can of tuna.
“Give me the knife and I’ll do the slicing and dicing.”
Al plunked the wooden cutting board in front of him and Richard began chopping. The bandage complicated an already difficult job. He was able to chunk the celery; but when he tried to pierce the onion, it slipped off the board and rolled across the floor.
Rather than retrieving it, Al took the board and bounded upstairs with it. Richard heard the smack of a hammer. He shuddered. Al had been acting a little weird for a while. But destroying a harmless cutting board clearly put him in the ranks of the seriously deranged.
The board was still intact. All Al had done was to drive a large nail through it; now he anchored the onion on the nail. “Things won’t get away from you anymore,” he said proudly.
It was incredible! One simple nail would allow him to chop up the ingredients for stews, pies, hors d’oeuvres. “This is great. You’re a genius.”
“You and my mother. Take a nail out for her; stick one in for you. And you both think I’m a genius.”
Al’s eyes watered dangerously and Richard tried to think of something noncommittal to say about the late Mrs. Valerino. “Is the estate settled?”
Al served coffee and sandwiches before answering. “Sort of. She left the house to me.” He stirred his coffee but forgot to remove the spoon and now knocked himself in the mouth with every sip. “I thought I ought to sell it and split the money with my brothers. But this counselor I go to says I should keep it. So I thought maybe I’d give the house to Rose as reparation.”
The word counselor seemed to float ceilingward and hang suspended over the stove long after everything else Al said had evaporated. He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his wallet and handed it to Richard. “This is Rose’s number. I know she won’t talk to me. But I thought maybe you would talk to her and see if she’d like the house. The apartment house she’s living in looks like a real dump.”
Richard set the number to the left of his place mat.
* * *
He found the number in the morning and remembered he had promised to call. It wasn’t an assignment that worried him. Solving Al’s marital problems would be far easier than solving his own. What had happened to them was very clear. Al in the throes of a mid-life crisis had had an affair with a younger woman—maybe not even an affair. Probably just an infatuation. Whatever, it was over and now he wanted his wife back.
Solving that would be a piece of cake. He would just explain to Rose that Mrs. Valerino’s death had precipitated some kind of emotional crisis in Al. But what would he do about Cheryl? She had obviously slipped out to work early without waking him to say goodbye. How long could they live like this?
There wasn’t even anyone to discuss it with because Al had moved home last night. He drank two cups of coffee, then slowly read the newspaper, going through the want ads with more care than ever before. If he and Cheryl were truly going to have a baby, he would have to find a way to make some money. With summer over, the columns were getting smaller and smaller. He was hoping for something like telephone sales from the home. But the only listings in that entire alphabetical section were for a shampoo assistant and a tire changer.
It was hopeless. After lunch he pulled out Cheryl’s Fannie Farmer Cookbook and looked for an interesting way to prepare the chicken defrosting in the refrigerator. Paella! He had all the ingredients.
The freezer contained both frozen shrimp and peas. Cook; remove; set aside. That had to be done at least four times before combining the ingredients in a large casserole. It was the perfect recipe to occupy his afternoon. He got out the cutting board and began to slice—first an onion and then a pepper. Later he cooked the rice.
He hadn’t expected this meal to save his marriage. The way to a woman’s heart is not through her stomach. But he thought Cheryl might have appreciated the effort he went to.
She ate lightly, politely sampling everything. She would have done the same if he had served sawdust. Al’s abrupt departure had frightened her. “Damn it, Cheryl,” he wanted to scream, “we don’t need a chaperone. We’re married.” But he did not raise his voice; he had to be gentle with her. Besides, after reading all those romantic novels, something in this strained situation might appeal to her. Half the time, those heroes and heroines were already married but living as strangers because of some grievous mutual misunderstanding.
He personally could find nothing romantic in this awkward silence and decided there were times when the only way to get someone’s attention was to resort to gossip. And if that someone was the woman you love, you will even sacrifice your best friend. To stay spiritually pure, one had to be willing to remain unloved and alone. Now he knew why priests and nuns were forbidden to marry. “Al is seeing a counselor.”
“He’s what?” Cheryl shifted her attention from her plate to him. “Why?”
“I don’t know why. But he’s going—two nights a week. That’s what he told me.”
“So that’s where he went. He’d get dressed and go out. At first I thought he might be going to see my mother. But then he asked me where she was living.”
He was relieved to hear her voice soften and lose the hard, defensive edge she had spoken with earlier. Sure, she was hurt. But they would hash it out this evening. Make some resolutions so nothing like this could ever happen again. After that she would tell him about the baby.
“How did the class go today?”
She frowned ferociously. “I had a loop in a program. If my teacher hadn’t caught it, it would still be running. I’ve got to be more careful and study harder. I used to think I was in the running to be in the top of my class. But it’s impossible.”
She looked so disappointed. Why wasn’t she equally disappointed about their
marriage? It wasn’t the time for complaints. His job was to be gentle. “Why is it so important to be at the top of the class?”
“The top three in my class get to interview with Paul Birch, the design genius. I’ve heard his voice on the phone. But to meet him as a peer and have a shot at a really interesting job instead of just doing maintenance programming all my life would make all the difference.”
She had gotten so ambitious so fast. It was hard to understand how a discontented secretary could find maintenance programming, whatever that was, not challenging enough. “If you want it badly enough, you can still come out on top.”
She shook her head sadly. “Most of these people have already had data processing courses. Some even worked on the big T.I.C. Project #5 in the V.S. conversion.”
He didn’t know what she was talking about, only that it was terribly important to her. He was going to have to be patient. Surely some sleepless night she would realize that an IBM/370 mainframe was not a direct link to God. In the meantime if she needed and wanted to be first-string, he was going to help her make it. He owed her that. “You can beat them. There’s a lot to be said for natural ability and for just wanting it so much that it makes your teeth ache. Those kids who played peewee football are always burnt out by the time they get to college.”
“I guess so.” She sounded far from convinced.
After they finished their coffee Cheryl picked up her briefcase and said apologetically, “All those years when I was a secretary I really wanted to carry a briefcase and look important. I never thought about what it really meant. I have a bunch of homework to do.”
Homework? It was Friday night.
She appeared to read his mind. “I’ve also got to go in tomorrow and run a couple of programs. Turnaround is so much better on the weekends.”
“Sure. I understand.”
“Do you need help with anything down here?”
He shook his head vigorously.
“Then, I’ll see you in the morning.”
It was going to take a little longer than he had planned. Still, he had lots of time.
Too much time. The evening stretched ahead interminably, and he was glad the bottle of cough syrup was broken. Recovering from drug dependency must be close to impossible. When you were powerless and things turned out wrong, the urge to tune out was pretty strong. Cheryl used to do it with food. He hadn’t noticed her sneaking off with cookies lately. Her job was making her feel special and important—a state she hadn’t known since her father’s death.
His own ego wasn’t that dependent on work, which was a darn good thing. He had always known he had a certain power over other people—charisma, whatever. When he got into trouble was when he ceased to care about the people. But that wasn’t going to happen anymore. Together, he and Cheryl had created someone new, someone independent who was going to be dependent on them for a couple of decades. It changed the whole ballgame. Not it, he chided himself. The baby, the baby.
The baby was going to change his life, and so was Cheryl’s career. If she was going to remain so involved in her work, he was going to have to find something of his own to get into.
After finishing the dishes he got a yellow-lined pad to make a list of possible occupations. Nothing came to mind. He was an English major turned football player. Besides, transportation was a big problem. How would he get to a job?
1. WRITE A BOOK.
What kind of book would he write? What did he know to write about? Certainly not other people. He barely spoke to other people anymore.
1. WRITE A BOOK.
A) Autobiography
I started playing football to prove I wasn’t a coward. Let me explain that. Bear with me. I’ve got to backtrack.
One night when I was nine my grandma and I were staring out the window of our eighth-floor apartment window. It was one of those steamy Florida nights when you smell a combination of jasmine and smoke from those fires always burning in the Everglades.
A man in yellow slacks got out of a fish-tailed Cadillac. Something about Florida makes women lose their modesty and men lose their manhood. You see sagging wrinkled women walk down the street with their bathing suits all hiked up in the rear. Right behind them are the men in pink slacks and white knit shirts, all gone to blubber. This guy was like that, jowly with a big bloated stomach pushing against the polyester pants and white stretch belt. He got out of the car. Then he neatly and quietly keeled over.
The medics came, ripped off his shirt, and pushed on him. When that didn’t work, they put these cymbals to his chest, which caused him to convulse like a fish still on the hook.
Right then and there my grandma made me promise—cross my heart and hope to die—that if she was dying nice and clean from a heart attack not to call the rescue squad.
She didn’t get up one morning during my sophomore year in high school. When I went to her bedroom she was ashen and kept pointing to her mouth. I brought her a Dixie cup of water. She didn’t want it. Next I brought her husband’s picture. I was a romantic and thought maybe she wanted to kiss it or something.
She still kept pointing to her mouth. Finally I brought the false teeth that were in a plastic cup on her dresser. She patted my hand gratefully. Right after that she died.
The doctor told my mom that Grandma could have been saved if I had been calm enough to call the rescue squad. Word got out that I was a coward.
What crap! Richard read what he had written, then tore it up and slammed it into the wastebasket. A private trust was a private trust—even if one party was dead and the other was broke and lonely. There wasn’t going to be any book.
To pass the time, he looked through some of Cheryl’s magazines and copied recipes he thought they both might like. At least he could keep up his share of the cooking and housework. The cutting board Al fixed was going to be a big help.
And there was some progress with his mobility. Every day he practiced walking, and lately his left leg had shown a little improvement. It still felt stiff and rusty. But he was going to walk again. He knew it for a fact. He would tell Cheryl when she told him her news.
In the morning he fixed Cheryl a sandwich with the leftover tuna from the lunch Al had fixed, then perked a big pot of coffee so she could take a thermos with her.
“There’s a coffee machine at the office,” she said. But she quickly regretted her lack of gratitude. “But this will be much better.”
Halfway to the door, she turned and asked shyly, “Have you got anything to do today?”
Sure, he had plans. First he intended to take an inventory of the refrigerator and cupboards and make up a grocery list. Then he planned to go through the rest of the magazines for recipes, copy them for future reference, and pick one to have for dinner tonight.
It was going to be a full and busy day. But that sounded too pathetic to tell her. “I’ve started writing a book. I guess I’ll work on that.”
The refrigerator contained four different kinds of cheeses, two half-full bottles of wine, and very little else. Finding a recipe required some ingenuity. In the cupboard were canned goods, cereal, and noodles. He looked through two cookbooks, then started reading women’s magazines. In an issue of New Woman he came across an article on making it big at the office.
The author suggested the ambitious woman master football strategy and jargon so she could understand how to act in a male-dominated corporation. Well, if Cheryl needed any help in that area, she’d married the right man. He wished she’d start talking about the people in her class, instead of the computer equipment. Next he saw a picture of MacLogan Ross modeling a dress that looked like a man’s shirt. Poor Logan! She wasn’t aging well.
Finally in Complete Woman, he found a recipe for spinach noodle casserole:
8 oz. spinach macaroni, cooked
¾ cup chopped onion
1 can of cream of mushroom soup,
diluted with ½ can of milk
¼ tsp. paprika
8 oz. swiss cheese, sliced
⅓ cup buttered bread crumbs
Salt and pepper to taste.
He skipped the salt. He had heard it was bad for pregnant women. He served the casserole with three-bean salad. He gave Cheryl a big glass of water. In his morning reading he had also discovered the importance of fluids during pregnancy.
No matter what place mats he used, the dinner still looked poverty-stricken. Rather than apologize, he told Cheryl, “Al’s going to take me to the grocery store tomorrow. I think with careful shopping I can get groceries that will last us for about three weeks. You’ll only have to stop for milk and stuff like that.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to probably use most of my Social Security check for groceries.” He had never made any claim on this money before and was anxious for her reaction. She just nodded absently. It was obvious she had something else on her mind.
After eating two of the canned peaches he served for dessert, she set down her spoon abruptly. “There’s something I’ve got to tell you. I hope you’re not upset.”
His heart constricted and he steeled himself to hear about the baby that almost was. He couldn’t blame her. With a sick husband and a brand-new job most women would consider abortion.
“I called the sports editor at the Ridgely Journal and told him you were writing a book. He was amazed you weren’t in a hospital and that there was a story just in that. He said he was going to talk to the lifestyles editor on Monday and she would probably call you sometime next week.”
She found these newspaper types’ interest encouraging. She didn’t know they never turned down a story idea. Filling all that space day after day got to be such a nuisance that at times they would write an article about almost anything.
“What kind of book are you writing? I felt stupid when he asked and I didn’t know.”
His only attempt at composition had ended up in the garbage can. He stared over at the lined pad that now contained only recipes. “A cookbook.” One lie was never enough. He had to add: “A special cookbook for one-handed cooks.” He showed her the nail Al had driven through the cutting board. Once he started he couldn’t stop embellishing. “I’m going to call around to some occupational therapists and get some other tips.”
The Way It Happens In Novels Page 18