This is Just Exactly Like You (32 page)

“Has he got a thing about fish?”

“No,” Jack says, except that he’s sort of got a thing about everything. Depending. A part of Jack is sorry he saw this first, without him. He wonders what they’d want for the whole set, for the catfish and the octopus and everything else.

“So let’s go get him,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says. “Let’s do that.” With his good eye, the non-eye-patched eye, the catfish is looking at something off in the distance. He’s having a smoke, thinking about what to do with himself. He’s working on personal matters.

They get back in the car. Rena shoves the umbrella behind his seat. She says, “Why the catfish? Why that one, specifically?”

“I just know it’s something he’d want to see,” says Jack. “That’s all.” And he already knows he’s going to have to buy the catfish, knows he needs it. Hen needs it. What he doesn’t know yet is where he could put it. At the yard, maybe, up front, by the sign. Butner would surely be on board with something like that. They could have it out by the road, slow people down, bring them in. Or he could donate it to Hen’s school, see if they wanted to put it on the playground, adopt it as a mascot. Or, he thinks, he could drive that thing over to Canavan’s ruined front lawn and install it next to the driveway, bury it up to the base of its tail—a sure signal he’d be sending up to Bethany, to all of them, a smoking putt-putt catfish planted there, the flag of his nation.

Rena drops Jack off at the house, says it’s probably best if she’s not there when Beth brings Hen back, says she’ll come back later. Jack tells her that’ll be fine. He sits in the living room and thinks about putting one undersea creature in each room in the house, naming the rooms that way. The Jellyfish Room. Like some kind of bed and breakfast. He waits for Beth. She comes back right on time, but won’t come in. It’s pouring now. She stands in the door, huddled half under the little roof, ushers Hen inside, says, “Where is she?”

“She’s not here.”

“Good,” Beth says.

“Look—”

“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t tell me about how you’re sorry. Don’t tell me anything.”

“But what if—”

“I mean it, Jack, goddamnit, OK?”

“Alright,” he says.

“I can’t talk to you right now.” She squeezes closer to the door, trying to stay out of the rain. “I’m getting soaked,” she says.

“Do you want a towel?”

“Have you even got one over here?”

He doesn’t. Not an extra one, anyway. “I can find something,” he says.

“Jesus Christ, Jack,” she says.

He says, “What do you want me to do?” And at first it looks like she might actually answer him, might even step inside to discuss the matter, which would be fine—somehow it all weighs about the same today. Besides the prospect of buying the catfish, he can’t hold a whole idea in his head for any length of time. Maybe she reads that on him, because instead of saying anything else, she turns around, runs through the rain to the wagon, leaves. He’s found another way to disappoint her, a new way, and he’s not even sure what it is.

“Jesus Christ, Jack,” Hendrick says, and he’s probably right, too. Jack gets him set up with the
National Geographics
and the TV. It’s raining too hard to go back to see the undersea creatures. He wouldn’t even be able to get Hen out of the car. He’s not huge for standing in the rain, generally. They’ll have to go tomorrow. Jack’s disappointed—he wants to go now, right now. A dog on a TV commercial barks and Yul Brynner comes in to see what it was, then settles down in the hall. Their day winds itself through. He feels trapped in the house. He wants out, wants something to do. Hen’s fine. Jack marches up and down. Late afternoon, Rena shows up with wet bags of groceries: Cornish game hens, bell peppers, expensive cheese, bottles of wine. She’s got a recipe. A project. She’s got projects for him, too: She takes over the kitchen, digs a cutting board out of some drawer, hands him a knife and a pepper, says
julienne
. Jack slivers peppers. They drink wine. It rains.

All this is associated with Tropical Storm Ashley, says the TV, which over the course of the last couple of days has gone ragged out in the Gulf and half-fallen apart despite the breathless cataclysmic predictions—
first named storm of the season and it could be a monster, folks, you’ll want to keep it tuned right here—
and it comes ashore as just that, a tropical storm, not a hurricane, in Florida, does nothing, really, but rain and blow the live weather reporters around some. During the afternoon and evening the storm sprints through Georgia and into the Carolinas. Live from Augusta and Greenville. White guys in yellow and blue slickers stand in the rain and talk about how there’s really not that much damage. They use phrases like
dodged a bullet
and
Mother Nature’s wrath
and
agricultural concerns.
The storm stalls out and spins.

Jack gets Hen put to bed, and he and Rena sit up a while, watching the TV, watching it rain. Across the street, Jack’s yard is a lake. Over here it’s a lake, too. A woman looks into the camera and tells everybody watching at home not to drive into standing water, not to drown. She says that.
Do not drown
. Hendrick ate Rena’s dinner, ate the game hens, the peppers, everything. He said
gracias,
said
que bueno.
It’s possible he might be starting to crack open a little, Jack thinks, just enough for somebody to be able to see inside. Though he’s trying hard not to hope for anything. If Hen wants to eat game hen, let him. Don’t make it a thing. Let him be himself, and see what might happen after that.
At this point, Ashley is mainly a rain event. There may be some embedded thunderstorms overnight.
Jack stands at the window and looks out at his driveways, waits for alligators, for pairs of alligators, for some dude to ride by, lean out of the ark, explain that
at seven years old you may see some signs of change. You may see some improvement.
No doctor would say that to them. None ever has. Hen’s birthday is in a month.

“What would you do with it, anyway?” Rena asks him. She’s finishing a glass of wine, sitting sideways in one of the plastic chairs.

“With what?” he asks.

“With that catfish. That’s what you’re thinking about, right?”

“Maybe,” he says. The radar spins across the screen. He worries about the undersea creatures out there in all the rain, then remembers: They’re fiberglass. And fish.

“So what would you do with it?”

“Put it out front of PM&T? Set up some kind of little playground over there or something? I don’t know.” He keeps glancing over at her just to make sure she’s still there. It’s like she’s a planet, like she’s got her own moons. He’s one of them.

“What does a catfish have to do with mulch?” she asks.

“Probably nothing,” he says.

“You could change the name to ‘Catfish Mulch.’ ”

“I could get Butner to paint an American flag T-shirt on him.”

“You want a catfish wearing a T-shirt out front of your store?”

“People would stop to see that, don’t you think?”

“And then think to themselves, ‘I could really use some mulch’?”

“Maybe,” he says.

She gets up, puts her glass in the sink. “This is probably the part of you I like best,” she says.

“What?”

“A catfish in a T-shirt. I like that best. You’ve got big, stupid plans.”

“Bethany is not so fond of that part.”

“She’s got to live with it,” Rena says. “I get to just look at it.”

“What part do you like least?” he asks her, only half-wanting to know.

“God, I don’t know,” she says, standing behind him now, hands on his shoulders. “Can we go to bed?”

“You’re staying?”

“Why not?” she says.

He can think of plenty of reasons why not, but he lets her take the remote from him and she flicks the TV off, the screen fizzing, the weather gone. The room goes dark but for Frank’s streetlight finding its way in. It’s late. She takes his hand, leads him down the hall. It still doesn’t entirely feel like he’s doing anything wrong. Or: There’s nothing left for him to do wrong. He’s done it all. They don’t talk. They take off their own clothes, climb down into opposite sides of the bed. He kisses her, kisses her neck, gets his face buried in her hair. She smells like pine needles. She’s smaller than Beth is, slighter, more like rope. Her breasts are small. He keeps kissing her, tries to think about technique instead of anything else, about where his mouth is supposed to go, where his arms go, and somehow she gets up on top of him, gets her hands dug into his back, his side, and she pushes against him, down onto him, and as he pushes back she rocks her hips against him once, then twice, and that’s it, he can’t stop himself, grabs her, comes right then, right away, way too fast. There was one thing left to do wrong. He feels like a complete jackass. He’s sweating. They both are. She rolls away from him, says, “Well.”

“Sorry,” he says, whispering. Like if he talks out loud it’ll make it worse. “Give me a few minutes. We’ll try again.”

“You’re fine,” she says. “Don’t worry about it. That was fun. Like it was your first time.”

“I’m sorry,” he says again.

She puts her hand on his belly. “You seemed kind of desperate. I liked that.”

“I am kind of desperate,” he says, because it seems true.

They lie there on the mattress. The room feels bigger than the one across the street, even though he knows it isn’t. He’s measured. Maybe it’s because he’s got no furniture in it. He feels lonely in here and happy all at once. He’s almost comfortable, absurdly. Almost calm. The A/C kicks on, a whole different set of bangs and wheezes in this house. She says, “Are you OK?”

“Sure,” he says.

“You’re not OK.”

“I’m fine,” he says. “I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t want to talk about it.”

“Not right now,” he says, and hopes she’ll let him get away with that.

“Can we talk about something else, then?”

“Like what?”

“Like anything,” she says. “I don’t know. I’m awake. Tell me about your first time. Tell me who it was.”

“Come on,” he says.

“I’m serious. I want to know.”

He folds his pillow in half. “Lesley Wofford,” he says.

“Yeah?”

He says, “She played trombone.”

“How was she?”

“She was OK. She was the only girl trombone player, so everyone kind of liked her.”

“I meant in bed.”

“Oh. She was fine.”

“Fine?”

“I was fifteen. She was amazing, for all I knew.”

She turns on her side, facing him. “You want to hear about mine?”

He doesn’t, in his dumbass swashbuckling way, but he knows enough not to say so. “Sure,” he says.

“Bobby Theroux,” she says. “We were seventeen. His parents were divorced. We did it at his dad’s place.” She scratches at the inside of her thigh. “His dad worked late all the time, and we fucked on the living room floor, right in front of this huge aquarium. The whole time I just kept watching these yellow and black angelfish swimming back and forth. I was trying to figure out if they could see us through the glass. If they were watching me, too. We broke up a week later.”

“Why?”

“Because it was the end of the school year, and he was moving to Dallas. We were trying to be grown-ups about it, so we just broke up.”

“That’s a sad story,” he says.

“It’s not supposed to be,” she says. “It was actually really good. I got to figure out what sex was, and I didn’t have to be in love with him. Bobby Theroux. Everyone should get it that way.”

“I was in love with Lesley,” he says.

“Of course you were,” she says.

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing,” she says. “It’s a compliment.”

It doesn’t feel like one, but he lets that wash past. The wind pushes against the roof of the house, against the windows in their frames. “What do you think they’re doing right now?” he asks her.

“Who, Lesley Whoever and Bobby Theroux?”

“Or Beth and Terry,” he says. “Either way.”

“I’ll tell you,” she says. “Lesley went on to become a concert trombonist, and Bobby owns a Ford dealership. A big one.”

“That’s great for them.”

“I know, I know. Great news. A couple of great kids.” She rests one leg over his. “Beth and Terry,” she says, “since you didn’t ask, are probably sitting up watching movies.
Cannonball Run
.
Cannonball Run II
. Terry likes Burt Reynolds movies.”

“He does?”

“Yeah, but I have no idea why.” Jack listens for Yul Brynner, for Hendrick. Nothing. “She’s not fucking him any more, by the way,” Rena says. “In case you’re wondering.”

“Burt Reynolds?”

“Don’t be stupid,” she says. “You know it, too. Beth’s not fucking Terry any more.”

“She’s not?”

“I could see it on her right when she came through the door. Plus he’s crippled now, anyway.”