The Fives Run North-South (9 page)

To add to my growing discomfort, the next four days passed without incident.

“Good morning, Mr. Mann. It’s Curtis Viniteri,” he said over the phone.

Great. I’d been expecting this.

“Hi, Mr. Viniteri.”

“Did I get you at a good time?”

“There’s never a good time these days, but go ahead,” I said.

“Well, I could call this a status call, which I do routinely, but thing is, I’ve not got anything to report.”

“I’d say that’s a good thing.”

“Well, so would I. And believe me, in my line of work a guy has to get used to watching over a whole lot of nothing. But at the same time, I don’t really want to keep up on the billables for nothing.”

“Well, I appreciate your concern over my money.”

He chuckled politely. “You’re the client. I do what you think is best. I’ll be glad to keep monitoring. But as you’d imagine, I’ve not even got a sniff of anything out of whack.”

“What do you suggest?” I asked.

“Well, I can at least keep it up over the weekend. You know, sometimes folks loosen up then. Have a few beers. Get brave.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

The line went quiet for a bit.

“You still there?” I asked.

“Sure am.”

“You trying to think of a nice way to ask if perhaps I’ve overreacted?”

“Not exactly.”

“Okay. But you’ve not hung up, so you probably have something you want to add to this conversation.”

“You’re a direct fellow, Mr. Mann. Guess that’s part of a CEO’s makeup, hey?”

“Guess so.”

“Okay,” he said. “So is there?”

“Is there what?”

“A chance you overreacted?”

“There’s always a chance, Mr. Viniteri. But I supposed that’s why I hired you. Have to figure you’re better at making that determination than I am when it comes to odd circumstances. Am I supposing correctly?”

“Yes, I’d say you are.”

“So you tell me,” I said. “Based on your professional opinion and experience: am I overreacting?”

“Let’s give it the weekend,” he said.

“You have a deal.”

9

S
uze came back Friday. She sent me a text when she arrived, a few hours before I was to leave the office. I replied that I’d see her shortly. Neither of us mentioned that we’d missed the other, nor did either of us add any language that would indicate that it’d be good to be in each other’s company. Not sure what conclusions to draw from that. We were busy, had a lot on our minds, and it’s really not the kind of people we were.

She was gone when I got home. I assumed she was at the grocery store, and turns out I was right. I pulled out my laptop, grabbed a glass of wine, and sat on the couch wrapping up the last of my
e
-
mails
. I’d intended to take her out to dinner, but maybe she had something else in mind. Seemed odd and a bit much to hit the store immediately after getting back from a long drive following the week in Vermont with Peter. But that’s Suze for you.

After about
forty
-
five
minutes, I heard her pull into the garage. She came bounding through the door with her hands full of small plastic grocery bags.

“You think you can give me a hand?”

I stood up from the couch. “All you have to do is ask,” I said.

“Shouldn’t have to,” she said.

No
, I thought,
it’s so much easier this way
.
Imply all kinds of things, from laziness to lack of compassion.
All for the benefit of the invisible supreme court of marriage. Sitting, watching everything from somewhere—possibly over the fireplace mantle—overseeing our every move and conversation. Collecting evidence for when they must pass judgment.

I let her have that point, got up, and followed her back out to her car. The rear passenger door was open, her back seat full of groceries. Perfectly good trunk in back, empty and all that, but probably not worth pointing out again. I reached down into the car; some canned goods had rolled out of their bags and onto the floor. Once there’d been a pack of lunch meat that had slipped under her seat where it had rested for a few weeks, making a funny smell she was sure came from the engine.

“You happen to pick up any toothpaste?” I asked.

She pretended not to hear me.

I looped all the plastic grocery bags over my right forearm. Hated making trips. My record is ten bags hanging from my
arm
—
one
with
milk
—
and
all without dislocating my shoulder. Today’s grouping was much lighter, and I got it all in one trip without breaking a sweat. We went to the kitchen and started putting things away.

“Saw Jess at the store,” she said.

“She doing okay?”

She didn’t answer, instead letting go a small chuckle. A chuckle that said: “Nice try. I know you don’t give a shit how Jess is doing, so stop trying to gain points by pretending to care.”

I gave a nod to the marriage supreme court in the other room. Jess was the lady you see on the highway driving the largest SUV she could and talking on the phone, gesturing with her
hand
—
the
one who should be
driving
—
as
if the person on the other end was right in front of her instead of all those annoying vehicles and pedestrians. And with Jess, every other word was “I” or “me.” You could tell, because half her hand gestures were pointing back at herself. Even
Suze
—
on
a good day, which apparently was not
today
—
would
say to me that she had only so much stamina for her time with Jess.

“But she’d be there for me if I needed her,” she’d say.

“Meaning, if I died or something?” I once asked.

“Or something.”

I took care of the refrigerator stuff; Suze filled the pantry. Saw the bagels, but no cream cheese. She’d be upset in the morning. Made a mental note to slip out later for the toothpaste and her cream cheese. For your consideration, marriage supreme court!

I stood back from the refrigerator and almost stepped on Suze’s feet. She was looking at me slumped a bit. She spread out her arms, and I leaned in for her hug. She squeezed me tightly, burying her forehead into my neck. I felt her take a deep breath.

“Sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

“Just. Sorry.”

I squeezed back. After a while, she turned and pulled the rest of the stuff out of the last bag. I reached into the refrigerator and grabbed a chunk of cheese to slice up for us. For a second a thought flashed through my mind. Back about eleven years ago. Me and Suze. A
late
-
summer
day on the boat dock at the lake, sitting
back
-
to
-
back
drinking beer and watching Pete swim. The filtered sun beams through the thick tree canopy overhead. Flies that popped from visible to invisible as they passed from light to shadow above us. Peter had just learned how to do a backflip.

“Watch this one, Mom!”

Still held his nose, but was gaining confidence.

That was one of those days where you said to yourself: remember this!

You need those. A collection of them. For these other times.

Later that night we sat on the couch together. I flicked through the channels while beside me Suze pecked at her
I
-
Pad
.

I wasn’t really paying much attention to the television; instead I was thinking about the house. We’d been in it almost twelve years. I know because Peter was seven then, the one
and
—
thankfully
—
only
year he’d wanted to be a boy scout. Rules say if you have an only son who wants to be a scout you have to be a scout master. And wear that shirt, being seen in public with a
pretend
-
army
-
guy
shirt. There was the camping. Where everyone smells like smoke and beans. Farting and snoring in nature. Sitting around the
fire
—
too
hot in front, too cold in back.

So we bought a house. And I’m certain it wasn’t simply so I could distract him from scouting, but that’s what happened. Peter got to choose between two bedrooms. One was painted tan, the other gray. He’d said: “One is silver. The other one is gold.”

“Which one do you want?”

“Silver.”

“Why?”

“Because nothing rhymes with it.”

Suze had giggled. I’d nodded. “That’s a good reason.”

“Yup,” he had said. “That and orange.”

“What if you had to choose between a silver and an orange room?” I’d asked.

Wrinkling his nose, he’d said: “There’s no orange rooms,” He then went into his new room and jumped up and down, looking around.

Suze had walked up and put her arm around me. “You like it here, Petey?” she had asked.

“Uh
-
huh
.”

We’d put up a poster of the Hulk. That lasted about a year. He wanted dinosaurs next (a dinosaur phase is like required
reading
—
Peter’
s contribution to the young American male stereotype). He never did the sports phase; that was tough on me and made Suze laugh. After dinosaurs he did a round of Star Wars, but not the cool one from the seventies and eighties. He liked the new ones when Darth Vader was a kid and had an anteater for a sidekick. When we did those posters, we repainted his room from gray to pale green.

“Green rhymes with spleen!” I said. Suze and Peter had looked at me like I was wearing a scout master shirt.

Now the posters were rock groups. Peter thinks he wants a guitar. I’m not convinced it’s any more permanent than his scouting phase. But at least I let him put up the posters: Green Day. Lifehouse. Led Zeppelin. That one made me
laugh
—
Peter
and his best friend had discovered Zeppelin, and Peter had even found a
T
-
shirt
online that cost a bit extra because it was made to look thirty years old.

Soon, we’d probably have to take those down. He wasn’t coming back, not really. It’s not what’s supposed to happen. At some point, you change out the room. It will always be Peter’s room, but you have to take down the things he liked just before he left here because he’s moved on from them. I know that’s the case. It happened with my parents in my old room. It’s happened with a bunch of our friends. I just haven’t got the rules completely straight yet. How long after he leaves do we remove the stuff? What’s the statute of limitations on room conversion? Did I miss a meeting?

“I’m tired,” Suze said, rousing me from my thoughts. “What the heck are you watching?” I realized I’d stopped flicking the remote and the TV was playing a cooking show.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I was aiming for ESPN and missed. Not about to start cooking anytime soon.”

“You doing okay?” she asked.

“Yup.” Then after a pause. “Why you asking?”

She smiled and kissed me on the cheek. “You seem like you’re remembering something funny,” she said.

I lifted my eyes in surprise. “I kinda was,” I said. “Thinking about how nothing rhymes with silver.”

She smiled took my hand. Marriage supreme court is in recess. For a while. We turned off the TV and the lights and went to bed.

The weekend was quiet. We ate out. Went to the movies. Read way too much of the Sunday paper. We called Peter a couple times. It was a nice weekend.

I left for work Monday, and actually returned home at a fairly early time that evening. Suze was sitting at the counter in the kitchen reading a magazine. “How was it back at the grind?” she asked.

“Like I never left,” I lied.

She looked up at my hair. “Sure,” she said. I run my hand through my hair when I’m stressed. She’d learned to read the state of my hair as an indicator of how difficult a day I’d had at work. I looked over at my reflection in the microwave glass and smoothed down my hair. I also looked around the kitchen for any sign of food. My stomach felt both stretched and empty…an odd feeling.

“I want to go out,” Suze said.

I didn’t.

“But you don’t,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“You made that face.”

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “Besides, what face?”

“I know the face.”

“I’ll go out,” I said.

“Sure you can make the sacrifice?”

Don’t be like that.

“Let me change,” I said, turning to go to our room. I realized I was running my hands through my hair.