Jernigan, page 4
“Okay,” I said. “Sounds like time for beddy-bye.” I don’t suppose I really thought that once her head hit the pillow she’d pass out and that would be the end of it. Probably I just wanted to get the subject of bed stirred up again so she’d really start behaving unforgivably, so I’d have another thing not to forgive. And sure enough. See, we really were partners.
“Beddy-bye to do what?” she said. “So you can roll on your side with your limp dick between your legs?”
“Right,” I said, getting up and facing her, all charged up now to throw the Don’t Argue With Them When They’re Drunk rule out the window. “You make yourself so appealing, I can’t understand why I’m not hard for you twenty-four hours a day.”
She picked up her glass from the coffee table. “Oh Peter,” she said, in her mock in-love voice. “Wouldn’t it be romantic if we had a fireplace right on that wall?” She pointed, then threw the glass. Over-hand. I thought the noise would bring Danny out of his room, but he must have been far down in Stage Two sleep, or whatever stage it is. Either that or he knew better by now. She flopped back down on the couch and stared up at me. “As usual,” she said, “you’re just totally the master of the situation. Judith behaves herself so badly, and all Peter is doing is blamelessly trying to keep things under control.”
“Whatever,” I said. “I’m going to sleep. Good night.”
“It’s so thrilling,” she said, “the way you dominate me. Oh Peter, I’m your dog. Rip my clothes off and fuck me.” She bared her teeth. Then she laughed, and kept laughing, which was scarier than the teeth. “Oh my,” she said, finally. “In the morning I am going to be so contrite. And that won’t touch your heart either.”
3
One year ago today.
We had invited people over for the Fourth, and I’d put in the invitation that the theme of this year’s party would be entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial foods would be served—Perdue chicken, Ben & Jerry’s—and everyone was to come dressed as an entrepreneur. When they called up to ask what the fuck that meant, I got to tell them just to wear whatever they’d normally wear because in America anybody could be an entrepreneur. All so clever. This was the kind of fun we used to affect to like, Judith and me. Penny and Uncle Fred put off their weekend in New Hampshire for a day and came out from the city. And a couple from here named Steve and Sandy, who were about the only people in town we socialized with. Judith had met the wife at yoga. And Rick, Judith’s brother, and Rick’s friend Rich (which she and I agreed was probably a little narcissistic on both their parts), who were visiting from Minneapolis. Steve and Sandy, it turned out, almost didn’t come because Steve had been offended by the invitation. He had his own business, a store in the mall called Bedford Falls Video. I don’t know why I thought he’d have a sense of humor about entrepreneurship. In fact I probably didn’t think it. Probably I was doing something I knew would piss him off because Sandy was Judith’s friend and I resented having her friends foisted off on me even though she endlessly put up with having Uncle Fred foisted off on her. At least that’s the way Judith saw it. Or said she saw it, once a fight got going.
It had become clear over the years that Judith shouldn’t drink. But one glass of wine had never been a problem, and it didn’t lead in every case to another glass and another. We were drinking Gallo that day because the only entrepreneurial beer we could think of was Coors and Judith refused to have Coors in the house. And because Ernesto and Julio Gallo embodied the immigrant spirit. And because drinking white wine, even Gallo, on the Fourth of July was another fuck-you touch. We were all sitting around the pool in bathing suits—it was an aboveground pool with this redwood deck going around it on three sides—and I suppose I wasn’t watching Judith as closely as I might have because I was talking with this Sandy and thinking about how much better I liked the shape of her breasts than the shape of Judith’s, an awful thing to remember now. Judith also made several trips back and forth to the house: to fetch food, to carry back dirty dishes and leftovers. I should have helped. Not just out of simple decency, but because she was probably sneaking gin in the kitchen every time she went in. The alcohol level they found in her blood argued that she’d had much more than the few glasses of wine we’d seen her drink.
This shitbox house of ours didn’t have any back door—just a blank wall with a couple of small, high windows—so you had to walk all the way around the fucking garage to get into the kitchen through the breezeway. I couldn’t imagine how the people who’d lived here before could have gone to the expense of putting in a pool—I hope you didn’t think we’d put it in—and then not bothered to put a lousy screen door on the back side of the breezeway so you could get out to it. Then again, we’d been here, what, ten years and hadn’t bothered either.
So after several of these trips back and forth, Judith just lay back on her lounge chair not talking to anybody. Peaceful day. Sandy sitting between Steve’s spread legs, lucky guy. Rick and his friend holding hands and pretending not to be self-conscious, Uncle Fred looking away from them. Me listening to Penny talk about going back to the Ph.D. program part time. She was talking away and I was thinking about how she called it “her” Ph.D., as if it were somewhere waiting for her, when Judith got up, came over, stood staring down at me and said, “Is there anything you can’t fuck up? I mean, once you really set your mind to it?” She started out on Steve and the entrepreneur thing—I looked over and I saw him start whispering to Sandy—and then she went on to no sex in the marriage, which wasn’t even true, technically. By this time everybody on fucking Heritage Circle could have heard her. Finally she gave me the finger and dived knifelike into the pool. Everybody stood up. She swam to the shallow end, stood up, unhooked the top of her suit and hurled it at me. Then she peeled the bottom down her legs, stepped out of it and hurled that too. I climbed into the water to get hold of her and she hauled herself out, naked, dripping, and ran across the deck in front of everybody, down the steps, across the grass and around the garage.
I got into the kitchen in time to hear the front door slam. I looked out the kitchen window and saw her, still naked, getting into the Honda. (We had a new Honda Civic in addition to my shitheap Datsun.) She started the engine and revved it to a roar. I ran back through the breezeway and out to the drive, grabbed for the door handle and missed as the car leaped into reverse. She backed into the street at what must have been twenty miles an hour, looking not over her shoulder but right into my eyes: with hate. Hornblast, shriek of tires. The van that hit her, it had no chance to stop.
When I looked again I could see her hair, and one arm draped over some metal. Not moving. The driver of the van, either. He had gone through his windshield and was jackknifed at the waist, his legs still in the cab, his arms and head hanging down, fingers just touching his own bumper, as if he were diving.
I ran into the house but Rick was already in there shouting into the telephone, and back outside a crowd had gathered around the car and the van. But nobody was getting too close. It looked like a scene out of an old Twilight Zone, neighbors on some little suburban street looking at the flying saucer whose arrival would soon reveal what fascists they all were. Pretty inappropriate thing to be thinking, but. The whole thing, in fact, looked as if it were in black and white. I should have gone and pushed through the crowd and done something. Later they told me it had been over instantly: no blame. Right. But at any rate, I walked around the end of the garage instead and back to the pool, now deserted. I climbed the steps up onto the deck, felt like I was going to black out, quick sat down on something, and when the shiny flecks stopped swimming in front of my eyes I looked down and saw her wet footprints fading.
They questioned us at the kitchen table, a cop with a heavy gun in a heavy gunbelt sitting in my usual place, from which I had carved turkeys and asked blessings, rolling my eyes ceilingward so nobody missed the irony.
“It was just a family party,” I said. Except Rick was actually the only family. “I mean family and friends.”
“Must have been some family party,” the cop said. “Doing a little coke to celebrate the Fourth? We’ll be getting a lab report, but you could save time.”
I shook my head. “It was just a normal thing,” I said.
“This is a normal thing to you, your wife out driving the car without her clothes on?”
Rick spoke up. “What are you saying?” he said. “You’re talking to him like this was his fault. I’m her brother, you know? We all thought she was all right, and she was all right and everybody was just having a good time and it was normal like he said.”
“And you’re her brother?” said the cop. Looking at Rick’s too-trim body and too-neat mustache.
At least Danny hadn’t been home. He’d gone off with his friend Warren Robinson and Warren’s family for a picnic at the lake. I say at least, though in fact it might have been better for him to have been there and seen it happen and know for sure that there was nothing anybody could have done. Although on the other hand, if he’d seen it he’d have those pictures in his head. The hair, the arm. Not that he doesn’t probably have pictures in his head anyway. But at least they’re probably not accurate. Oh, at least at least at least.
I called the Robinsons’ house but of course got only the machine. So the thing to do was to drive out to the lake and try to find them, if that was the thing to do.
“Michael,” I said to Uncle Fred. “What am I going to do about Danny? Should I go out to the lake right now and go looking all over hell for him and break up the Robinsons’ picnic? You know, there’s like a million picnic areas. Plus the Robinsons are going to shit. I sort of feel there’s nothing anybody can do anyway, so why not let ’em, you know, have their day?”
“Fuck the Robinsons and their fucking day, man,” he said. “Whoever the fucking Robinsons are. You let Danny fuck around all afternoon at some picnic and he will never forgive you, man, I’ll guarantee.”
So we left Penny at the house to answer the phone and Uncle Fred drove me out there. We pulled into pine grove after pine grove, kicking up dust. Eventually we found Henry and Suzanne Robinson (Suzette?) sitting across from each other at a picnic table, drinking Battles & Jaymes wine coolers. Thank you for your support. Henry Robinson spotted me coming his way and put down his bottle.
Danny and Warren Robinson and Warren’s sister, whatever her name was, were in swimming. Henry Robinson pointed to a cluster of yelling heads and splashing arms. “I got my trunks on under these,” he said. “I’ll go out there and get him in for you.” I shook my head no. This much, these few more minutes, I was damn well going to let him have, no matter how much he might make me pay later for having let him have it.
4
I woke up in my chair. On the screen, that commercial was going where the dogs’ jaws flap open and they sing, “Lies! Lies!” The idea being that their owners can’t bullshit them into eating inferior dogfood. A song Danny will always know as a dogfood commercial, just as I’ll always know that waltz tune—whatever the hell it actually is—as Think of Rheingold Whenever Y’Buy Beer. I had my usual thoughts about everything being debased.
What had awakened me, apparently, was the kitchen door slamming—was the ballgame over?—because in came Danny, who gave me a pitying look right out of his mother’s repertoire. “You fall asleep again?” he said.
I picked up the remote control and hit MUTE just in time to avoid hearing the strongman bellow, “I’m not gonna pay a lot for this muffler!”
“Maybe you work too hard,” Danny said, without a lot of conviction. There I was, stubble-faced, shoes off, stinking t-shirt, and beer bottles all over the floor. Which really gave an unfair impression, although there it all was. On the screen, something that looked like a Fourth of July sparkler was welding a muffler in place, and I could hear the God damn Meineke Muffler March in my head even with the sound off.
“You been out?” I said, still looking at the screen so as not to miss the thing where they show the Meineke logo with the pronunciation: Mine-a-key.
“Just over Clarissa’s,” he said. This was the girlfriend. A depressed little dyed-platinum blonde who only came up to about here on him; you saw her in black jeans a lot, and a denim jacket with Grateful Dead patches. I didn’t know if that still meant you were an acid head or what the hell it meant anymore. I remember seeing a thing in the paper not too long ago about some asshole who made his living tie-dyeing Grateful Dead t-shirts; he said the skull meant we were all the same under the skin. I couldn’t imagine whether or not I would have understood that when I was fourteen, or whatever the hell this Clarissa was. Assuming it made any sense to begin with. At any rate, she was obviously a piss-poor influence on Danny’s schoolwork and general attitude. So what could you do. I wondered sometimes if they talked together, and if so what about. In addition to the obvious things to wonder. She was pretty, this Clarissa, in a brutalized kind of way.
“Hey Dad?” said Danny. “Wake up, okay?”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Listen,” he said, “do you want to come over?”
“Come over,” I said. When I repeat something that way, it means What do you mean?
“Clarissa’s house. Her mom said you could. She’s real nice and everything. She’s having this party in the backyard.” Backyard party on the Fourth of July, and even that didn’t seem to be reminding him. Well, hey, fine, more power to him.
“Kind of party?” I said. “Kids, grownups?”
Danny shrugged. “Whoever wants to,” he said. “It’s not any big deal or anything.”
“Sounds like it’s about my speed,” I said. “She told you to invite me?” This sounded like a pretty casual way of doing things for someone who was an adult and a parent, sending a message through the kid. We were in the phone book, for Christ’s sake. I mean, I was in the phone book. No: come to think of it, we were still in the phone book. One of a bunch of things I hadn’t had the heart, if that’s the word, to see about.
“Sort of,” he said. You could see him thinking. “It was like, Clarissa and I asked if you could come and she said sure.”
“Very gracious,” I said.
“Come on, Dad,” he said. “You’re not doing anything.”
“Out of the mouths of babes,” I said. “Yeah. Well. Why not. I suppose it’s time I met this alleged woman.” Not to be outdone in graciousness. “When does the gala event get under way?”
“Right now,” he said. “Or whenever you want to come. It’s real casual.”
“Sounds real inviting,” I said. I was giving him shit about the way he talked, but either it went right by him or he was being tolerant. “Can you wait’ll I take a shower and put on some clean clothes?”
“That’s cool. You know, if you even feel like coming,” he said. Then I got it: he was being too casual. So this was obviously a command performance, for whatever reason. Well, I was game. Well, maybe not game, but I did recognize my duty when I could no longer ignore it.
Clarissa’s house was at the end of a cul-de-sac off Maple Avenue. You went down into a little hollow and there it sat among a lot of trees, with only one other house in sight. Fake Tudor, two-story, stucco, which meant probably ’30s or ’40s. It had obviously been the only house on the street for years. Most stuff around here was built after 1960; Heritage Circle went up in I think ’64. At the time I was born, this house must have been sitting here alone in its little dell like Snow White’s cottage. Sort of. The gray paint was peeling now, the stucco was cracked, the picket fence was missing pickets the way cartoon hillbillies are missing teeth. But at least this house had something to it. Though maybe I mean therefore instead of but. That a house with character could produce a little girl as bombed-out as any kid from a split-level shitbox like mine made you wonder if you could ever make anything right.
I parked next to a faded mustard-colored VW bus, if you can imagine, and in front of a blue Reliant, doing my best to get so I couldn’t be blocked, and Danny led me across the crumbling blacktop, through the gate in the picket fence, around the house and into the back. He was right about this being no big deal. I counted six people, three and three, my age pretty much. Two women in shorts and t-shirts, one in shorts and halter top; two men in jeans and t-shirts, one in cutoff jeans and t-shirt. Then a couple more men and another woman came out of the house laughing about something. The women were still looking okay; the men had begun their bellies. Two of them had beards, which of course didn’t tell you anything anymore. A net was stretched between a maple tree and a clothesline pulley attached to the frame of the kitchen window; a volleyball sat in the grass, which needed cutting. In a galvanized washtub, cans of beer and Diet Pepsi; the necks of screwtop wine jugs sticking up out of the icewater. Taco chips in a wooden bowl, guacamole in an earthenware bowl. Two stereo speakers, each on a metal folding chair, the wires leading back into the house through another window. “My Guy” by Mary Wells bravely playing out of them. My kind of scene all right.
“She’s probably inside,” said Danny.
He led me into a kitchen, then into a living room. Funky in a way you wouldn’t mind sitting around in. Big oatmeal sofa, bottom sagging. A Morris chair, for Christ’s sake. The tv covered up by a white tablecloth with a pattern of red cherries. Even an old woodstove, which looked as if it got used. A woman in shorts was down on her knees, bare heels denting her buttocks. She was flipping through a red plastic milk crate full of LPs, going at it with both hands like a dog digging. Strong arms, strong legs, maybe a little overweight. But not unpleasingly. Her t-shirt had shrunk, or she had bulged, so you could see below the shoulder the—what would you call it?—that arc of skin, that ridge beyond which lies the armpit. I wanted to see what she was like in the face, now there’s a crude way of putting it. “Mrs. Peretsky?” Danny said, touching her shoulder. “This is my dad.”
She turned her head. Wide, pretty face. Eyes farther apart than I liked. She got to her feet and came toward me, tugging down one side of her shorts.
