THE DRYER-WARM SWEATSHIRT, THE ZIPLOC BAG OF
scrubbed plums for the ride, the car registration, the Post-it note with the real estate agent’s phone number, the map of the Eastern Seaboard with the route highlighted, bottled water, extra sunglasses, a wad of cash. Oil and tires checked. Seatbelts checked. “Did everyone pee?” No answer. Finally the Explorer’s doors thunk shut, the air conditioner is set on high, and the vehicle eases back out of the drive. From his vantage point on the flagstone walk, Rick tracks Laura’s negotiation of the SUV bumper past the delicate shell of his Maxima. “Call me as soon as you get there!”
The windshield tint obscures Laura’s pursed smile. Is she concentrating on steering or is she pissed off at me for not sitting there beside her? Probably both. But it’s just One More Thing, isn’t it? An accretion compressed under its own weight, like soul coal, her resentment means nothing because there is nothing anyone can do about it.
In the backseat, Trina and Henry hang over their Game Boys oblivious, like puppets with their strings cut. Laura barks and they raise their Super-Mario-blinded eyes and comprehension dawns: Daddy is not driving the car! He is illogically standing on the front lawn, without them, left behind in their big house while they go on a fun vacation. They flap their hands good-bye, crazy as rabid poodles, the temporary insanity a welcome distraction from the vibes pinging back and forth between Rick and Laura. Finally, the car has slipped too far, its windows glazed white with summer light, impervious. The vehicle drifts off through the depths of the shaded street, as anonymous as an ocean liner cleaving the green sea. It turns right and disappears.
Rick examines a fallen chunk of rotten maple branch lying on the lawn. It’s good to remain out here a little while longer, in case Laura has forgotten something. If she has, she will see me in the middle of the front yard, the loyal dog standing guard. I will stay right here until Labor Day when you return with darker skin and lighter hair. That’s the deal, isn’t it? The family has fun and I do penance. We’ll talk on the phone every night and I will gripe about work and the city heat, and you will tell me about the frigid sea and the farmstand corn and the perfect peaches.
The street remains vacant, so Rick ambles up the brick steps. Inside, he stumbles over a mislaid brown paper sack of snorkle masks and flippers. First topic of discussion for tonight’s phone call. A visit to the pricey surf shop that smells of rubber and coconut oil to buy replacement stuff. Rick runs the numbers and calculates the outlay at about a hundred bucks. A small price for freedom.
Rick’s house is cluttered with sheet-draped furniture. Like a Chekhov set, he thinks. Laura has arranged this going-away present. Painters are coming next week. Nothing like a bunch of hulking, non-English-speaking Polish guys wandering around your house at the crack of dawn to keep you straight and sober. Her position, of course, is that the house is going to be empty all day while Rick is at work, so this will be the best time to get it painted. Rick is pretty sure he has relatives who died in Poland during the war.
The windows glow with the deep color of the maples, the sun-saturated flat lawns, the rhodies and peonies only now dropping their last pink blooms. The light enlarges the volume of the house. It’s a good house, but Rick has never thought of it as his own. Many families have lived here before my family. Probably many more will follow. Who knows how long we’ll stay here, or who will take our place?
He slips off his Top-Siders and pads into the brilliant kitchen. Why does it need to be painted? Why does Laura insist on this endless regeneration? Is she bored? Probably. The hum of a neighbor’s lawnmower wafts through the screened windows. My kitchen, he thinks. My stove, my fridge, my plates, my cutlery. That’s why people don’t get divorced. Don’t want to lose the props. Isn’t that what the black kids call it? “Props.” Even if it is all make-believe, it’s a home. It’s a home that symbolizes home. And I’m a husband and father who symbolizes a husband and father. I’m a man who symbolizes a man.
Rick finds a carton of juice in the fridge and sloshes a cold dollop into a clean glass. Laura bought this glass. Selected it, considered it. Harvested it and tucked it into the warp and woof of our nest. Spill. The ants will have to take care of it because I’m not wiping that counter. And so it begins. Ha! He gulps the cold sweet liquid in two swallows and burps. I could light a cigarette right now if I wanted to. Right in the middle of my kitchen. Laura’s kitchen, but mine now. I could gorge on a pastrami sandwich over the sink, let the fat juice dribble off my chin into the drain. Leave beer bottles on every horizontal surface. Fart. Take a dump with the bathroom door wide open. Fucking pee on the fucking floor.
I could have an affair! The thing Laura would least suspect me of doing while she’s gone. Smoking, not lifting the toilet seat, yes, but fucking around? Never. She doesn’t think of me that way. She knows what I am. A dependable, reliable, money-earning, ball-less husband.
Did she ever really lust for me? Would she have wanted my cock if it hadn’t been loaded with children? Does a woman ever want a cock the way a man wants her to want it? Look at gay guys. They do what men really want to do. Fuck each other like goats. Right? Well, some women obviously like to do that, too. Or pretend to want that. Just not the ones who want kids. Or just not Laura. Or just not Laura with me. Maybe with someone else. Not me.
Is it hormones? Fatigue? No. She just doesn’t like me anymore. Maybe she loves me. But she doesn’t like me. She’s angry at me for everything I’ve ever done, for everything that anybody’s ever done. We were friends once. We were allies. But we’re not allies anymore. We’re enemies. No, worse, we’re diplomats from foreign countries. We go through elaborate rituals to keep the peace, forgetting what it is we want from each other in the first place.
Rick roams the house picking up socks and towels and toys. He gathers up the morning newspapers, sorts them neatly and drops them by the basement door. Well, fuck her. I don’t like her, either. I live in a black hole of domesticity. Household appliances, kids’ school clothes, sneakers, just plain fucking food. How do you spend three hundred bucks in a supermarket? Oh, but she’s got an answer to that one: “You try shopping for this family, you’ll see.” The credit card bills come to four figures every month. And I come up with the money to pay them. I hold up my end. But it never ends. Prescriptions. Movies. Chess matches. Magazine subscriptions. Flowers. Underwear. P-T-fucking-A dues. Hey Laura, get a real job why don’tcha?
Does she ever bother to consider what I have to do to get that money? How much time the clinic takes up? That it’s a business? Cash in, cash out. Insurance companies, suppliers, bills from labs, rent. The phones alone. The air-conditioning. The law firm I had to hire to chase bad debt. Laura thinks all I have to do is hang out with patients, hold their hands and gossip. And the money arrives, just like magic. I should sit her down with the accountant for just one afternoon and open her eyes to the shenanigans of the claims adjusters and the patients who move and leave no forwarding address, show her the tax forms for Zoe, the limitless billing from the labs, the fees from the cleaning company. Or those plant people who take care of those fucking plants in the reception room. The plants she said I had to have. Never thought about what they’d cost. The bills from the accountant who cuts the checks to pay the bills.
But she’ll just start listing how much laundry she does in a week, how she has to shuttle the kids to the doctor and the dentist and the orthodontist. How she has to wait for them after school, how she has to endure the other mothers doing the same thing. How the cleaning girl is unreliable and has to be followed around the house. How she has to watch the yard workmen, the dry cleaners, the grocery boys, everyone. And she’s right. I know she’s right.
If it weren’t for the kids, we wouldn’t be together anymore, that’s obvious. And who are these kids? Organisms. Issue. Fruit. That’s all. Manifestations of DNA composed of muscles and bones and fat, self-conscious and fearful, each created with a built-in timer. They will endure for about seventy years, then die and decay just like I will die and decay. Of the billions of people who exist on this globe of saltwater and dirt, my two kids are genetically related to me. So what? There are probably lots of people who are genetically related to me and I don’t even know their names, let alone “love” them. I can “parent” Henry and Trina all I want, they’re gonna be who they’re gonna be, with or without me. Did Dad ever give two shits about what was going to happen to me in the future? If I were hit by a truck tomorrow, they’d get over it and still be who they were going to be.
Rick has one of Henry’s T-shirts in his hand. It smells of boy. I miss them more when they’re not around. What kind of love is that? Conceptual children. I love them most when they’re close but not too close, or sleeping, or in school. Whenever I’m actually with them, I want to get away from them as soon as possible. They’re kids. Lovable but annoying. Like a jigsaw puzzle you can’t be bothered figuring out because the picture is so obvious.
Maybe by being apart for a while, we’ll realize we miss each other. Or not. And if in the fall things are still like this between Laura and me, maybe we’ll go to a couples counselor. God, listen to me. Couples counselor. Put on the fucking blindfold and get up against that brick wall. Like I don’t know the steps: counselor (talk it out), Prozac (calm it down), Viagra (get it up)…whatever you have to do to endure. Already on the Viagra. For what that’s worth.
Hey, Rick, just hang in there and wait for the kids to grow up, wait for the body to stop having so many urges, wait till the fight goes out of you, wait for retirement. By which time you will be so beaten down by a compromised life, so old and decrepit, that you will be more than grateful to have a warm body to clutch in the middle of the long, dark, painful, good night.
That’s the deal, isn’t it? Compromise so you’re not left alone. Gather up a nest egg and wait it out. And then, impotent and postmenopausal, me and Laura will spend our last days clucking and fussing about how we miss the kids, take afternoon forays to the supermarket to cash in those coupons and reminisce about how nice that trip to Tuscany was?
Just get on that old conveyor belt of life, pal, enjoy those golden years and reserve your space in the assisted community (with the attached Alzheimer ward), where you will wander anonymous corridors until you lose your mind completely. Senile and incontinent you will lie in bed day after day after day, a few photos of unrecognizable grandchildren taped to the wall beside you, TV set aflicker, a world spinning on without you.
And then one night, after the volume of the TV sets is lowered for restless sleep, the shit and piss of your cellmates swabbed away by sullen Caribbean blacks, Celebrex and Plavix and Synthroid merrily coursing through your veins, your heart will hit the pause button and stay paused. And by then, everyone, especially you, will be happy to see you go.
Rick fishes out a brittle packet of cigarettes hidden behind the stereo and lights one. He lies down on the couch in the TV room, and thinking he might want to catch the ball game later, finishes half a beer and falls asleep. When he wakes, he makes a show of jumping up, brewing fresh coffee and looking for more chores. He tidies and sweeps the garage. Wipes off the lawnmower blades. He considers cleaning the gutters and stops for another beer.
Bottle in hand Rick trots from room to room yanking windows open, letting the leaf-cooled breeze into the vacant house. It’s early for dinner but he orders moo shu pork from the joint downtown and eats it while watching the Mets lose. He leaves the greasy cartons on the coffee table and takes a ride to the center of town for ice cream. He stops in the smoke shop, scans the dirty magazines, too intimidated by the Pakistani who runs the place to buy one, instead buys a fresh pack of cigarettes and heads home. He makes one more circuit of the house, mulls over jogging, doesn’t, takes an easy bowel movement and a hot shower, smokes another cigarette and hits the sack early. As he falls asleep he thinks, It’s so much easier when she’s not around.
A house finch yodeling outside his window greets him as he opens his eyes. Six fifteen, and he’s wide-awake. Buoyant, he showers, fries up some eggs, postpones jogging one more time and takes a long walk instead. He spends all day organizing the attic. He drinks two more beers, thinking, I’m the kind of guy who is energized by booze, and falls out on the couch. He wakes up from the nap hungry. He liked the Chinese food so much, he orders it again, joking with the delivery boy as if they are old friends. Sunday fades in happy isolation. He could call old acquaintances, the ones he complains about never seeing. “Hey, my wife’s out of town! What’s up?” And what would we do? Go to a movie? A strip club? Have dinner? Why bother? I love being on my own.
Rick calls Laura and she says she’s happy to be at the beach, that she wishes he was there with them. But Rick knows she’s relieved to be away from the stress of dealing with his moods. He complains weakly about all the patients with summer colds. It’s a game they are playing, happy to be separated but not copping to it.
For the rest of the week, Rick manages to rise with the sun and get to work before Zoe. He clears his desk. He carefully reviews all the lab reports. He digs out back issues of both the
Journal of the American Medical Association
and the
American Medical News
and reads them over his lunch, something he hasn’t done in years. He’s more easygoing with Zoe and she seems to appreciate it. He compliments her on her tan. Since many of his patients are gone for the summer, his workload is light and he’s back home before sunset every day. He roams the house, sniffing for damage or theft. The painters are making slow but even progress.