The Fives Run North-South (2 page)

2

I
walked into the house, throwing my keys, wallet, and cell phone into the hatbox we kept on a small table by the back door. The hatbox was antique, purchased to be used as the
easy
-
to
-
remember
place for that stuff you needed when going out into the world.
Easy for me to remember
,
I thought.
For Suze, not so much.
How she could walk by it every time she came in the house, only to throw her keys, phone, and purse somewhere else (a different place every time) was a mystery that clogged the logic lines in my brain. Suze’s routine
mad
-
dash
,
hyper
-
charged
, and overly rushed daily “Where’s my keys?” routine had once been a bit funny. Once. Now she would do the dash quietly, not asking the question as we both knew where it led. Nothing more toxic than a husband giving his wife the old “I told you so”…even telepathically. These days we were both well practiced in the art of conflict avoidance.

Suze was sitting on the couch scrolling through her tablet.

“Home already?” she asked, without looking up.

I looked at my watch. “No. Normal time.”

“I figured it would take you a while at Shaker’s.”

Dinner. Shit.

Suze turned around to look at me. Her eyes fell from my face to my hands, which held only a briefcase. She did that thing with her face where she appeared to be making an effort to mask her annoyance. It sent the signal that a) I’m annoyed, and b) I’m the better person because I’m going to hide my annoyance in an effort to save your feelings.

“I’m sorry,” I said.
Good move
.
Quick apology showing an even temper and not in the least bit defensive.

“No problem. Maybe something in the fridge I can whip up,” she said. She stood up (stiff hip acting up…subtle, but she did the wince) and walked into the kitchen.

“Don’t be silly. I’ll change and call something in. Can have it here quicker than it’ll take you to cook anything.”

“It’s okay.” She was already looking in the refrigerator. Moving her head in a way that indicated it would take some searching to find something worth putting together.

“Really,” I said. “I really was in the mood for Shaker’s.”

“Hmm.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

Silence for a second.

“I mean,” she said. “I don’t mind cooking tonight. Maybe you were in the mood for Shaker’s, but obviously not enough to remember to stop by on the way. We can do that tomorrow.”

“I’m working late tomorrow,” I said.

“All the more reason for me to cook tonight.”

I remembered a book I had as a kid. It was interactive. At certain points in the book, the reader could choose between three options and then turn to a different page depending on the choice. The story would go in three different directions each time. These crossroads appeared three times over the course of the story, meaning I could read it again and again and experience a new scenario each time. As it turned out, the ending was always the same, but I liked the process, and spent several days engrossed in the book, loving the control I had. But as it became obvious that the ending remained the same regardless of the path I took to get there, my attraction to the book waned. I felt a bit cheated and ended up writing my own ending. In that one the bad guy won. Equally unsatisfying, but somehow giving me a measure of revenge.

I was reminded of that book now, as I watched Suze shift the contents of the refrigerator around in a
half
-
hearted
attempt to select food. There were lots of directions I could take this conversation, from insisting on going back out for food at Shaker’s to thanking her for cooking…and a few options in the middle (cook dinner myself? Maybe too strange a direction, come to think of it). All those directions would ultimately lead to the same thing: winners and losers; hurt feelings and payback.

“Let’s just go and eat at Shaker’s,” I suggested. “Get you out of the house for a bit.”

Suze froze.

Ah-ha!

“Let me just wash up and change my shirt,” I continued.

“Hmmm,” she said.

“Take me five minutes,” I said. I started walking toward our room, not waiting for an answer. Though as I left, I heard her say okay.

Maybe I’d done it again: written a new ending. Maybe we’d have one of those rare nice nights.

Oops.

I had always been sure there was a plan. I was that kind of guy, even at sixteen or seventeen. The kind of
sixteen
-
year
-
old
who would lie in bed in my yellow bedroom. Yes, yellow. I was still not happy about that, but there you go. I was the kind of
sixteen
-
year
-
old
who would think about his future, which
is
—
when
I think
back
—
probably
why I didn’t have as much fun being sixteen as most of the other guys I’d known. For many, sixteen is defined by being oblivious to
consequence
—
leap
from the high rock without checking the water’s depth first.

Not me.

I would lie in bed in that yellow room and…well, let’s come clean: the room was not only yellow, but had yellow floral wallpaper. It was there when my family had moved
in
—
give
me that. My parents always let me know that changing it was scheduled on that list labeled “we have to do that sometime.” Thinking back today, I’m pretty sure that the people who lived there after my family left probably managed to find the time.

So there was a plan. One part of that
plan
—
determined
in that bed under the yellow
flowers
—
was
that I would grow up to be the type of person who didn’t have a “we’ll have to do that sometime” list. I would get things done. Check the boxes. Sleep easy only when the list was all crossed off. And lying in bed considering the consequences of such an approach to life, it was easy to see that the type of person who got things done would be admired. And probably get good jobs. And respect. Good consequences. And as it turned out, I was right about all three.

And completely missed the troubling side effects.

There was most certainly a plan made in the darkness under those yellow flowers: the plan that got thrown off course when at nineteen years of age I finally ignored consequences and got Suze pregnant.

Plans are good. I still believed that. But what was finally coming clear, what I should have learned twenty years ago when Suze gave me the news, is that most of the really important, major stuff that propels us through our birthdays is really just a series of…oops.

“You want that last roll?” Suze asked.

“Let’s split it,” I said. “I can ask for more if the waiter ever decides to step into this zip code again.”

We weren’t at Shaker’s. On the way, I had seen the sign for Ma’s Cucina and remembered hearing about the new place from Ed at work. “Got an offer for the patio set,” Suze said after we were seated.

“Oh?” I said. “How much?”

She told me.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“Let’s get rid of it.”

“That’s what I thought.”

I looked over to try and see her expression. She was looking out the opposite window. I smiled. Letting the old patio set go put another stone in the fence between where we were before and where we were now. It felt good to me. I took her hand. I thought I saw her jump. Just a bit.

She looked up at me and smiled. “Can I go shopping?” she asked.

“You’re asking permission now?”

“Have to give you some sense of importance around here,” she said.

“I’m the kingdom of this house,” I said. She smiled. Family jokes. Every family has them,
amber
-
coated
moments locked into the hearts and heads of only those who were there. In this case, a moment when Peter was six, all of us sitting around the table at dinner. He’d read a book, seen a cartoon, something with kings and castles and had said: “Where’s Daddy’s crown?” It had been out of context, sudden and silly, but neither I nor Suze knew exactly what he’d meant.

“What do you mean, hon?” Suze had asked.

“Well,” he said. “The biggest guy is always the kingdom of the house,” he’d said. “And you’re the queen. But he ought to have a crown.”

I had laughed, and often since reminded Suze that our son thought I was the “kingdom of the house.” It rarely failed to produce a chuckle, as it had at the table that night. Like most families, we had dozens of these private catch phrases, all anchored to good moments, all worthless to those outside of us. I had once nearly caught myself repeating the phrase to work colleagues in a moment of absentminded coasting of thoughts. You keep those in your pocket, can’t show them to others. I mused that when families dissolve, lots of trapped mythology evaporates with them. I wondered at what point Peter would forget that as his orbit around his parents widened.

“He called today,” she said.

“Oh yeah? How much does he need?”

“Why do you assume…?”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Okay,” she giggled. “Another fifty. You’re one to talk. I saw you transferred another hundred to his account a couple days ago.”

“Pizza money,” I said, lifting my glass and looking into it. “Has this wine started to carbonate?”

“No. Think that’s the sauce. But Peter called for more than to ask for money. He had another reason.”

“To pledge his eternal gratitude to your maternal skill set?”

She grinned. “Close.”

“No way.”

“Well,” she said. “He ran out of toothpaste.”

I waited for the punch line. She was looking at me with her best Bugs Bunny grin.

“I give up,” I said. “So he ran out of toothpaste.”

“He said: ‘For the first time in eighteen years, I had to get up off my ass and buy my own toothpaste. That stuff that was always just there before.’“

I rolled my eyes. “A college education’s not being wasted here.”

She whacked my arm. “Shut up,” she said. “He then thanked me for the things I did to take care of him that he didn’t even realize I was doing.”

“Well,” I said. “That’s something.”

She nodded.

I continued: “He must have really needed that fifty bucks.”

She hit my arm again. Then she let her hand fall back to the table, covering mine.

And so a good night
,
I thought. I was in my home office, quickly checking my
e
-
mail
inbox and sipping another glass of Chianti. It was nearing time for bed, and I rubbed the back of my neck as I rocked my head slowly back and forth.

As I shut down my computer and walked toward our room, I thought Suze was watching television. I could hear it from the den. I topped off my wine and went in, but the den was empty. I walked upstairs and as I passed by Peter’s room I saw her. She was sitting in the darkness on the side of his bed. In her lap was his pillow, her hand resting gently on it. Barely touching it. Her head was tilted down. She didn’t notice me, but I thought perhaps she sensed me. For a second, I thought of our son and caught a glimpse of something in my memory. A smaller boy, moving quickly. Then it faded and the events of the day displaced whatever it was I’d been trying to remember. The pit was there, clenching.