A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (16 page)

“
But on the application you said he had an income. I don
’
t see how that
’
s possible.
”

I explained Social Security to him. I explained to him the inheritance of money. I was cheerful about it, emphasizing that we were well aware that it was a little unusual, but anyway, now that that
’
s out of the way—

He tilted his head, his arms folded. We were still on the driveway. We were not being invited into the house.

“
Listen guys, I don
’
t want to waste your time. I
’
m really looking for a couple, an older couple preferably.
”

The wind sent to us the smell of those white flowers that are everywhere, the ones on the bushes. Rhododendrons?

“
Can you see where I
’
m coming from?
”
he asked.

On the BART, on the way to an As game, we sat, Toph and I, reading side by side, and across from us was a young woman, Latina, a little older than me, with her daughter, a bit younger than Toph. The woman, small and in a white shirt, was playing with the hair of the girl, who was sucking on a drinkbox. They could be sisters, with a wider age-gap than Toph and me—or could she be her mother? If she
’
s 25 and the girl 7... it could be. They seemed nice. The woman was not wearing any rings. I wondered if we could all move in together. She would understand. She would already know how it is. We could combine our households. It would be so good, we could share all the responsibilities, babysitting no problem. Toph and this girl would be friends and maybe
would end up getting married— And maybe the woman and I should be together, too. But she looked like she had a boyfriend. Did she? That secure look. So at ease. Not just a boyfriend, but a good man, too. A large man maybe. A boyfriend who lifts heavy things for a living. Or could, if he wanted to. She was now turning the girl
’
s hair around her fingers, around and around, the black threads tighter and— But we wouldn
’
t have to be romantic. We could just have a happy household. The boyfriend, whose name could be Phil, would be a okay with it, part of the mix. But he wouldn
’
t be living with us. That would be too much. No sleep-overs, either. No underwear or bathrooms or showers. But maybe she
’
s not with anyone. Phil went away. Phil was drafted. He was a Peruvian citizen and was drafted, and we were sad for him, but that
’
s how it goes, sorry Phil. So. How would we decorate? That would be a problem. But I would defer. Yes, defer. To have a happy easy house with help from this woman and to have her and Toph content in their room with their stomachs on the carpet and sharing some book I would defer.

In mid-August, by now desperate, I walked into a small adobe house a few blocks from Beth
’
s new apartment. The owner was a large, middle-aged black woman, looking not unlike the Bible-reading woman who had been with my mother at the end. The house was perfect. Or rather, it was not at all perfect, but was far less imperfect than anything else we
’
d seen. The woman
’
s son had just gone to college—she was also a single mother—and she was picking up and moving to New Mexico. The house was about the right size for us, snug on a street dappled through a canopy of interlocking greenery. There was a backyard, a porch, a shed, a sun-room even, no dishwasher or laundry but it hardly mattered, with us a few weeks from school starting—when she asked about financial matters, I threw down my ace.

“
I
’
m worried about your lack of a job,
”
she said.
“
Listen,
”
I blurted.
“
We can pay. We have money. We could pay the year
’
s rent all at once, if you want.
”
Her eyes widened.

So we wrote the check. At this point, all sense of thrift has fallen away. We grew up in a tightfisted house, where there was no allowance, where asking for $5 from our father elicited the heaviest of sighs, required detailed plans for repayment. Our mother was far worse—would not even shop in Lake Forest, where everything was overpriced, would instead drive ten, twenty, thirty miles to Marshall
’
s, to TJ. Maxx, for bargains, for bulk. Once a year we
’
d all pile into the Pinto and would drive to a place on the west side of Chicago, Sinofsky
’
s, where for $4, $5 each we
’
d buy dozens of slightly flawed rugby shirts, holes here and there, extra buttons, collars ruined by bleach, pink bleeding into white. We grew up with a weird kind of cognitive dissonance; we knew we lived in a nice town—our cousins out East often made that point to us—but then, if this was true, why was our mother always fretting aloud about not having the money to buy staples?
“
How will I even buy milk tomorrow?
”
she would yell at him from the kitchen. Our father, who was out of work a year here, a year there, never seemed impressed with her worry; he seemed to have it all worked out. Still, we were ready for and expected sudden indigence, to be forced out of the house in the middle of the night and into one of the apartments on the highway, at the edge of town. To become one of
those kids.

It never happened, of course, and now, though we are not rich, and there is very little money actually coming in, Beth and I have tossed away the guilt associated with spending it. When it
’
s a matter of expense versus convenience, the choice is not a choice. While my mother would have driven forty miles for a half-priced tomato, I
’
ll pay $10 for it if it means I don
’
t have to get in the car. It
’
s a matter of exhaustion, mostly. Fatigue loosens my wallet, Beth
’
s even more, loosens the checkbook tied to Toph
’
s account. We are done sacrificing, Beth and I have decided—at least when it
’
s unnecessary, when it involves money, which, for the time being at least, we have. Even the larger expenditures, those that require Bill
’
s approval, are pushed through with little resistance.

We lasted about a month without a washer/dryer. Every weekend, Toph and I would stuff our laundry into four plastic garbage bags, grab two each, his pair smaller, throw them over our shoulders and stagger, peasant-like, to the place around the corner and down the street. Because there is no way to carry two large, overstuffed garbage bags at once, after half a block Toph would have dropped one of his bags. With its cheap plastic ripped and his shorts and Bulls T-shirts spilling across the sidewalk, he
’
d run back to the house to get another bag to replace it. Seconds later, he
’
d return, with his bicycle—

“
What are you doing?
”

“
Wait. Let me try something...
”

thinking he could balance the laundry bags on the seat and the frame, and of course that wouldn
’
t work for shit, so we
’
d be on the sidewalk, picking it all up, four bags of laundry, the clothes stuck in his bike chain, on the neighbor
’
s lawn, ants making homes inside— twenty minutes later and only fifty feet from our front door. There was exhaustion, there was exasperation, there were thoughts of washing clothes in the sink or shower. The next day we called Bill, hummed loudly through his mild objections, and finally bought ourselves a washer and dryer.

They
’
re used, both found and delivered for $400, and they
’
re loud, and they don
’
t match—one is beige and one is white—but good lord, they
’
re beautiful, beautiful machines.

The house is about half the size of the last place, but it
’
s full of light, and there is room in this house, there is flow. The floors are wooden floors, and because the first room becomes the kitchen, there is room, if one is so inclined, to run from one end of the house to the other, without hitting a door or a wall. As a matter of fact, if one happens to be wearing socks, one can run, hypothetically, from the back of the house, through the kitchen, and when one gets to the hardwood of the living room,
 
               
fig-
²

one can jump, slide, and make it all the way to the front door, sometimes still at full speed (fig. 2).

We feel temporary here, like house-sitters, vacationers, and so we do very little in the way of mingling with the community. The immediate neighborhood includes an older lesbian couple, an elderly Chinese couple, a black man/white woman pair in their early forties, and Daniel and Boona next door, sandaled and beaded, unmarried—and just friends, it seems—both in some kind of social work. Elsewhere on the block are single mothers, divorcees, widows, widowers, single women living with single men, single women living with single women, and, a few blocks away, there is even Barry Gifford. Only here would we blend. Only here, by comparison, would we seem ho-hum.

We repaint the entire house. Toph and I do it all in one week, with rollers, skipping the corners, the molding, leaving the rooms loose, fuzzy, Rothkoesque. We do the family room a sort of light blue, and the living room a deep burgundy. My room is salmon, the kitchen is an off-yellow, and Toph
’
s we leave white—until one
night, the night before his 10
^th
birthday and in the middle of a spell of nightmares, for decoration and protection I paint two huge superheroes, Wolverine and Cable, on his walls, one flying down from above, one standing over his bed. He sleeps through the entire process, the paint dripping onto his bedspread, his exposed left leg.

The place is ours now, but it
’
s a mess.

We discuss the problem.

“
You suck,
”
I say.

“
No, you suck,
”
he says.

“
No, you suck.
”

“
Nooooo, you suck.
”

“
Well, you suckity suck suck.
”

“
What?
”

“
I said, you—
“

“
That
’
s so stupid.
”

We are on the couch, surveying. We are arguing over who has to clean what. More important, we are debating who should have done the work in the first place, before there was this much work to do. There was a time, I am reminding Toph, when a condition of his allowance was the completion of a bare minimum of household chores.

“
Allowance?
”
he says.
“
You never give me my allowance.
”

I rethink my strategy.

The coffee table is our home
’
s purgatory, the halfway point for everything eaten or worn or broken. It is covered with papers and books, two plastic plates, a half-dozen dirty utensils, an opened Rice Krispie bar, and a Styrofoam container containing french fries that last night one of us decided were
“
too thick and squishy
”
and were left uneaten. There is a package of pretzels that has been opened by the one person in the house who can
’
t open bags properly and so cuts holes in the middle with steak knives. There are at least four basketballs in the room, eight lacrosse balls, a skateboard, two backpacks, and a suitcase, still partially packed, which has not moved in four months. Next to the couch, on the floor, are three glasses that once held milk and now hold its hardened remains. The family room and its perpetual state of disrepair is the problem that we are attempting to resolve.

I have just delivered a State of the Family Room Address, sweeping in scope, visionary in strategy, inspirational to one and all, and the issue has now moved to committee. And though the committee has been looking at it from many angles, addressing matters of both the provenance of the various elements of its unkemptness and matters of precisely who would be best suited to carry out the committee
’
s recommendations, we are stalemated, solution-wise.

“
But it
’
s mostly your stuff,
”
he says.

He
’
s right.

“
Immaterial!
”
I say.

Early in the negotiations, I, the senior committee member, had proposed a plan whereby the junior committee member, Toph, being young and in need of valuable life lessons and no doubt eager to prove his mettle to his peers, would clean the living room not only this time, but also on a regular basis, perhaps twice a week, in exchange for not only $2 a week in tax-free allowance, but also the guarantee that if all expressed duties are performed satisfactorily and on time, he will not be beaten senseless in his sleep by the senior committee member. The junior committee member, insolent and obviously lacking both good sense and any notion of bipartisanship, does not like this plan. He dismisses it out of hand.