I sit on my front porch, more of a slab of concrete extended just further than the front door, drinking coffee and examining my front yard. The tulips have withered to slender green stalks, the grass needs to be cut, it rained this week and the plastic slats woven in the chain link fence are filthy with dirt, only accented by neighborhood children’s hand-prints and stick drawings, modern day hieroglyphs. We live at the end of a cul-de-sac, a really nice plot, next to an old couple that aids sick horses back to health; former titans of the quarter mile now limp with brittle bones. Their little plot is nice to live next to, a few acres of country in the suburban sprawl. It’s nearly 11:00 a.m. and the right side of my head throbs like an angry wretch is pressing her bony finger at my temple.
Angie’s mother came in last night. Didn’t exactly “come in” as though we were expecting her––the bathroom set up with guest toothbrush, soap, conditioner, a loofah from the dollar store and an exorbitant amount Q-tips, cotton balls and cosmetic cleaning agents Angie insists are necessary when people come to stay. No, last night, at 3:00 a.m., Angie’s mother lumbered a ’78 Dodge Diplomat into the driveway, behind my side of the garage, which I’m sure is dripping small black dots of oil this very minute, small dots of oil which will remind me of her, last night, and this headache for months to come. I don’t even bother to look under the car or ask Mar (short for Marland, her maiden name which she started going by after her and Charlie, Angie’s father, divorced) to consider parking on the street while she stays. Dealing with Mar is like the longest heat wave of your life, you generally just avoid the heat but if you have to face the sun directly, you only do it to run to your car and crank the a/c. In no capacity would you ever bask in the heat or for God’s sake stare at the sun. Last night I stared at the sun.
Mar barged through the front door, she knows we hide the key in the planter, and started calling for Angie. Abby woke, and called for mommy. Angie of course went to see what the stir in the living room was about but I knew. I believe I woke up moments before that Diplomat even pulled into the driveway. The spongy suspension in that car and the madwoman driving it, slaloming through the avenues of our neighborhood caused a fissure in time which opened at the helm of that Dodge and closed at my frontal lobe. I gazed at the clock with bleary eyes. The time two-fifty-something, I closed my eyes again for maybe a minute, a lifetime, and the inimical calls from the living room began.
As Angie quelled the initial storm, I came in holding Abby, her sweaty hair plastered to her forehead, her tiny fists twisting in her eyes.
‘Mar, what the hell is this? It’s three a.m.’
‘You think I don’t know the time? I’m the one that had to drive all the way here. He’s done it Angela, he’s finally done it. We’re ruined, ruined.’
Mar repeats everything when she gets excited, she gets excited a lot.
‘Done what mother? I suppose you mean Dean?’
‘Dean, of course I mean Dean. That rotten SOB took every last dime I had, that we had, all of it, and gambled it away. Did you know those SOB’s at Frankie’s place actually got an ATM installed there?’
She’s was referring Frankie Rhey’s place on Myrtle Avenue. It’s a dive bar and they play cards in the back. Friends from college have invited me to the game, but after the initial Texas Hold’em fad, I don’t play much anymore; Frankie’s a nice guy but a terrible bar tender. Mar proceeded on a tirade about the impecunious affects of ATM machines and gambling. Angie held Mar’s shoulders and nodded. Abby told me she wanted a glass of milk. It was obvious it would be no early night; I needed a glass of bourbon.
I sat Abby at the counter and got her a glass of milk, microwave, 25 seconds. I handed it to her and she asked me, ‘Daddy, what does blithe mean?’ Angie’s going back to school to get her master’s degree in 19th century British lit. She was studying for the GRE all summer and Abby got into a deck of her vocabulary flash cards; there’s been more than one time when Abby has come into a room saying things like, The assiduous man works hard, and I have to think for a minute or excuse myself to go look up the word. A five year old shouldn’t have a vocabulary like that, I guess she’ll be six next month, but how is her pre-school teacher going to react when she tells her, Your peremptory requests are superfluous for such a ubiquitous task.
So I told her what blithe means and she said, ‘I’m not very blithe right now.’ Her response made me feel all right about pre-school for the moment.
Angie and Mar came into the kitchen and Mar asked me twice where her glass of water was and then if we had any chardonnay. I ignored the fact that she didn’t ask me for a glass of water and ignored the bottle of Sonoma-Cutrer in the crisper drawer. When Angie didn’t mention the wine I took the silent gesture as a conformation of her mother’s craziness, a parity of our displaced sleep. Mar continued her slanderous rant about Frankie and his ATM.
‘You know,’ I butted in, ‘last spring Frankie’s Place went to a cash only bar. The credit card companies charge a fee each time they run a card. For one guy getting one drink, it’s a hassle. I think that’s why they got the ATM.’ When you stare at the sun there’s a moment, right before that glowing star burns your retinas, that it makes prefect sense not to look away or blink.
‘Who the hell asked you anyway? Where do you learn stuff like that? You probably pick Dean up and hit these games with him?’ She taps the counter in front of Angie, ‘Have you been keeping an eye on your bank accounts lately, don’t let him have control of the money, he probably works late all the time too, doesn’t he?’
‘Mom, sit down. I think we have some wine in the fridge.’ She pursed her lips and glared at me as she went for the Sonoma, I was already going for the wine key. I poured a glass of bourbon and asked Abby if she wanted to sit with me in the living room. We went over some flash cards and she kept telling me to use the words in a sentence, her mother’s doing. I stayed there for a half-hour or so, Abby finished her milk, fell asleep on my lap and I put her to bed.
I went back into the kitchen and the conversation had predictably segued to Mar giving Angie marriage advice, obvious, as it were, that a woman of Mar’s experience had plenty to give. Just before I reached earshot Mar went silent and pointed from her of forehead to Angie’s, some collusion I couldn’t be privy to. I ignored it, poured another glass of bourbon over two cubes of ice and took the bottle of Sonoma from the counter, only a glass or so left.
‘Feeling a little better are we?’
‘I little tipsy, but not better, not better by a long shot.’ Mar swallowed the last of her wine and I looked her over from head to toe. I hadn’t noticed in all of the bustle what she was wearing––a silk, flower print tank-top tucked in to black Capri-slacks and a large square scarf folded diagonally in half, bedizened with sequins and gold thread. She was dressed for her age, but only with the consideration that women her age tend to dress ten years too young. I smiled at the lot of it and she asked me what was so funny. Nothing, nothing is ever funny when Mar comes to visit.
‘What goes on over there Jone?’ She calls me Jone, my name is Jonah, but she calls me Jone. If anyone else called me Jone, I wouldn’t mind it, Angie does at times. But every time she manages to emit that single syllable I hear the coarsest epithet.
‘Where, Frankie’s? Some cards, it’s not a big deal really.’ She pursed her lips in a similar manner that Angie did earlier. When Mar makes the face her lips flex with acuteness that only an aged churl could muster. And the crevasses her lips can conjure look like her face was molded out of clay and left in the sun. I’m comfortable with the face by now, after seven years of marriage and almost three glasses of bourbon at four a.m. I can handle the scorn.
‘I know you hate the place and you hate that Dean plays cards there, but Frankie’s a nice guy. He runs tabs for people he likes and he’s not the type of guy that’s going to come after you with a crowbar. That’s not this type of town, or this type of life.’
‘So you know that swindler then? That rat-bastard.’
I chuckled, ‘Rat-bastard.’
‘Rat-bastard is right. Dean’s in deep over there, deep. And when Dean gets in deep, he doesn’t know how to get out.’
‘I’m sure it can’t be that bad, how much is it?’
‘He wouldn’t tell me for sure, but that just means it’s deep.’
‘Well, as far as his safety, Dean is fine. I’m sure he’s at home right now sawing logs while we’re here talking about a precarious situation that’s of no worry.’ I raised my glass to my final comments and slurped the last of my bourbon through the ice. Neither of the two women was amused.
‘With that, I think we all should get what sleep we can and figure this out in the morning.’ I gestured toward the hallway and the two of them stayed at the table. What parity Angie and I shared by keeping the wine in the crisper drawer was engulfed by the deglutition of Mar’s presence and whatever it meant when she pointed to each of their foreheads.
I curled up in bed, didn’t look at the time, and wondered if Angie would one day knock down the door at Abby’s house at three a.m., if she had the constitution for such boorish behavior. The first couple years of marriage were tough, joint checking accounts, money, work schedules, the decision of children, all of what I took at the time to be quotidian concerns of newlyweds. Even through our toughest struggles Angie handled our disagreements with civility, at times correcting my temper and reminding me of my position and my new wife. But when Mar visits things change. The beacon of intellect and charm she possesses on any average day attenuates into a small pulsating glow of the affable woman I married, leaving only the dark shade of her mother’s offspring. And her lips, I thought about her and her mother’s lips, and that face molded of clay.
I don’t want to mow the lawn. I don’t even want to pull the hose out of the garage, attach the high-pressure nozzle, stand in the sun and spray off the hieroglyph fence. I feel that after last night, I’m due a day of lounging; a day of what would otherwise be the sixth workday in my week. Everyone slept in a little late today, even Mar. She normally springs up at six a.m. and starts cleaning random spaces throughout the house. That’s when she stays over, invited, on holidays, when family is allowed and all the intrusions of progeny are not only expected but encouraged. I shouldn’t have to endure any of those things today.
I look out at the mailbox, a slight dent in the aluminum that won’t allow the door to properly close and the list of the post makes it look pitiable. The flag is down and the leather strap of a man that takes over the mail route on Saturday always hits the end of the cul-de-sac first. This is a task I can handle, I can get the mail.
I walk across the driveway, pass the Diplomat, looking anything but regal, and gather the mail, mostly ads and coupons. Around the large spruce separating my neighbor’s driveway and mine, he has the high-pressure nozzle on his hose and is spraying off the concrete. I leaf through the attractive Saturday mail and notice the water being forced into the gutter. There’s surprisingly very little grass or weeds being washed away, which I silently condemn him for––washing his clippings into the gutter––but now a pinkish hew to the water. The water closest to my lawn is downright red, closer to his lawn it looks more like my mother-in-law’s old, painted lips.
Bewildered by the colors I walk over to get a view of what he’s spraying. I should tell you eight months after we moved in here he transplanted a mature Blue Spruce on the stretch of grass between our driveways. I suggested we split the cost of another fence but he refused. He responded by planting the massive conifer, which leans toward my house, the majority of which on my property. Needless to say he doesn’t like me, but I’ve seen him talk to Angie a few times, she believes I’ve conjured this man’s unfavorable disposition.
At the entrance of the garage, there he stands; more barrel than man in Carhart overalls, holding the hose like a child’s toy in his hand. When he sees me he makes a swooping spray in my direction, toward the red water, pushing most of it into the grass, then shuts off the water and walks toward me.
I just stare for a second, passed him, into the garage, where the carcass of a deer hangs by its hind hooves, the head of the animal hanging by sinew and torn flesh above a pool of thick, stagnant blood.
‘One shot,’ he says to me.
It takes me a moment to respond, ‘Excuse me?’
‘Right behind shoulder, from almost two hundred yards out, splash, right in the heart.’
I take my eyes off the deer long enough to see how pleased he is, either the deer or my response is making him smile, a rare occurrence.
‘And it just hangs there? I mean, you’re just going to let it bleed?’
‘It’s not really bleeding see, it’s dead. It’s just draining now.
‘In your garage?’
‘You got room in yours? I’ll bring her over.’
‘No, thank you, but is this okay, I mean legal, for all that blood?’ When I mention the word legal his jocund disposition becomes quickly staid.
‘Now listen to me,’ he points at me directly, ‘I know the season doesn’t start for another month but my family and I eat this deer, this is part of the meat we live on every year. Hunting season doesn’t start for another month, I know that, but I have tags for one buck and one doe, and this is my doe. I won’t shoot another.’
I have no idea about the beginning of the season or tags for does and bucks. I just stare at the crimson river where once my neighbor’s driveway was.
‘Aren’t there permits you need, bio-hazard bags or something?’
‘Maybe you’re just hard of hearing, this is a matter of dates and food. And when it comes down to that, I’ll take the food when I need it anytime.’
‘Did you almost cut its head off, or was that from the cannon you shot at it?’
He looks at his feet, the bloody water gathering around his Wellies. He backs away, starts the hose again, spraying the water directly toward my lawn. I dump my coffee in the grass, my mouth agape. I turn and walk back to my house.
I habitually sit on my porch, trying to make sense of what just happened. I have a neighbor that poaches deer, a disparaging mother-in-law and a wife whom with this woman has some brash accord. I look at the fence, a fresco of childhood expressionism, an imitation of a real hieroglyph; a horse, buffalo, maybe a turtle. The images trace a perfect line to the simple need of creativity in a child to the primitive beings that perhaps walked on this very land. All of it looks a gradation of blood and dry, twisted skin; a quixotic pattern of history and confusion. All of it, save the WASH ME printed by one of the older kids, their cleverness manifest by sarcasm and parochial humor.
I try for one last swallow of coffee and remember I dumped it in the grass. I go to my garage. I retrieve the hose and high-pressure nozzle. I catch eyes one last time with my neighbor as he puts in the code for his garage and steps inside, turns to look me in the eye; now it’s the look I know, that square head and those eyes as black as gun barrels watch me as the door descends––we’ve securely mended the wall between us once again.
I connect the hose and turn the faucet open until it will turn no more. I pull the massive black trigger of the nozzle, I adjust the setting to Most Ferocious, I shake the end of the hose furiously, I curse under my breath. The silt listlessly clinging to the soft, white plastic doesn’t appear to wash away completely. I shade my eyes from the sun to make sure there isn’t some shadow, some mirage or apparition confusing me in to an obsessive panic. I look over my shoulder, the neighbor’s garage is closed. I turn back and make quick snapping motions with my wrist; my venom, this stream of water, plastic and bloody street, all of it will be clean.
I’m going to tell Angie exactly what just happened and exactly what I think of her mother barging in on us at three in the morning. I go to the kitchen and no one is there. I put the mug on the counter and walk into the bedroom, empty. I hear Abby playfully scream outside so I go to the back yard. The two women sit there, content as nuns while Abby runs circles in the yard, trailing behind her stuffed animal with a string around its neck.
‘What is she doing?’ I demand, and walk toward her.
‘She’s walking Toby.’ Toby is her stuffed cat that purrs when you press a button on the collar and has a Velcro hole in her belly where she can give birth to up to six kittens, if you don’t lose three of them in a lawn mowing accident, I really should cut the grass today.
‘Stop that Abby.’ I grab the string from her and she cries out for it.
‘What are you doing?’ Angie asks me.
‘You will not believe what I just saw.’ I tell her about the deer and about the poaching. I take my time and tell her about the blood on the driveway and about him pointing at me. I point right at Mar and pump my fist a little so they get the affect. I pace as I talk and pass Toby back and forth in my hands, at times unknowingly hold the stuffed animal out of reach of Abby. I rant for a few minutes, expand on the irresponsible behavior of the neighbors, the filth he is dumping into the gutters, the runoff system and water purification plants and how it all works––I’m drifting in to unknown territory on this one but I need something extra to incite these two.
Angie looks over at her mother, who half grins, Angie grins the other half in turn.
‘Don’t you think you’re overreacting a bit?’
I’m stunned, I’m staring at two illegally slaughtered deer and their blood is being washed all over my back yard. ‘Me? I’m overreacting? Did you hear anything of what I just said?’
‘Yeah, but he’s using them for food right?’
‘That’s not exactly the point. You can buy venison from a butcher, what he’s doing is illegal.’
‘Venison is expensive,’ Mar chimes in, ‘Dean loves mince meat pie, I make one for him every thanksgiving.’
‘He’s only shooting it a month early, and you said yourself he has a tag for it.’
‘Are you high?’
‘Jonah.’
‘I don’t believe this. I really can’t believe what I’m hearing. You two are just fine with this. The tree, and this guy pointing at me like that and the deer, and you’re just fine.’
‘What tree?’
‘Jonah thinks the neighbor planted that pine tree out front because he hates us.’
‘Me. He hates me. And it’s a Blue Spruce and it leans toward our house.’
‘You need to just relax a bit.’ Mar reclines in her seat, lifts her glass to her cracked lips and takes a small sip.
‘You came barging in my house last night at three a.m. and I need to relax?’
‘You seem a bit high strung this morning honey.’
I stop pacing and drop the stuffed animal down to Abby. She takes the string and starts walking the animal again, telling it to sit and stay each time she turns a direction. I look at my hands, the only things that seem to make sense at this point and walk into the house. I go directly to the bedroom, undress, and get in the shower. I leave the water a little cold, hoping I can shock my system into a state of quick recovery.
When I get out Angie is sitting on the bed thumbing through a magazine, barefoot but dressed like she’s ready for the day. I curtly ask her if she’s going to shower and she tells me no, her and mom want to go into town and do a little shopping before it gets too warm. Although it’s October we’ve had a strange Indian summer and a heat wave last week that felt like July. I go into the closet and mindlessly gather some clothes, not even aware of what I’m grabbing. She asks me if I’ll be okay with Abby and I tell her we’ll be fine.
‘And one last thing, Dean called a couple of times but Mom doesn’t want to talk to him just yet. I think it would be nice if you give him a call, find out just how deep he’s in at Frankie’s.’ She thanks me and kisses me on the cheek. I stand there with a pair of briefs in my hand and she walks out the door, calling to her mother, it’s time to leave. A small breeze from the hallway creeps in and crawls around my thighs, over my exposed member, as if to remind me of the powerless child I am.
I dress and join Abby in the kitchen where her mother left her with an array of crayons and coloring books. She asks me how old dinosaurs are and I tell her they all died millions of years ago. She asks me how they died and I tell her that’s a good question. I do what few dishes there are; bread plates with stains of jam and butter, the wine glasses from the night before; I rinse my rocks glass and leave it on the counter. I clean the living room, fold the blankets Mar used last night and put away some of Abby’s toys. She helps me then asks if she can take her Reader out back and sit in the yard. Normally the Reader isn’t allowed in the yard since the plasma screen can warp in the sun leaving a rainbow of colors on the screen, like oil in a puddle of water. It’s okay today, but only for a little while, and stay under the awning.
I keep cleaning. I wipe counters two and three times, I clean the bathroom mirror and the spot behind the toilet seat, near the hinges of the lid, that accumulates urine stains and random lengths of hair. I wipe the chrome fixtures in the tub and the built-in porcelain soap dish in the shower. As I walk the length of the stairs with a damp rag, my fingers pressed to the grooves of the oak banister, the phone rings. I know who it is. I didn’t think it would take him this long to call back. I’m sure Angie told him to call me.
‘Hello.’
‘Hey Jonah, how are you brotha?’ Mar has been dating Dean for about two years now. I know his post-pubescent argot and his mannerisms well, frat house diction without the excuse of youth. If he were here right now he would clasp my hand like a fireman and pull me in for a hug.
‘I’m fine Dean. So what’s going on? Why is Mar coming over here at all hours of the morning waking me and Angie and Abby up?’
‘Whoa, right to the point there, huh man. The thing is, well, I don’t really want to talk to you about this over the phone.’
‘This is a little nuts Dean, my little girl is walking around here like a zombie, she didn’t get any sleep, and in a few hours she’s going to be rotten ornery and I have to take care of it.’
‘But I just want Mar to come back, you know? We do this every few months and I know she’s not gone for good. But it’s not a big deal this time, not at all man, I swear.’
‘Her knocking on our door in the middle of the night is a big deal. What’s going on?’
‘Not now, not over the phone. Meet me at Frankie’s in an hour?’
‘I’m with Abby, and even if I could, it’s one in the afternoon.’
‘Just to talk Jonah, how ‘bout tonight, seven, wait, nine?’
I don’t want to meet Dean for a second, not at two, not at nine, never. It’s not that Dean isn’t a nice enough guy, I just don’t want to get in the middle of anything Mar is affiliated with. Going to the mall with her is like bartering in a third-world country, the cashiers all speak a language of simple exchange where Mar considers every price tag an open debate. I don’t want to imagine the circumstances when she can place Dean and I as one singular target of guilt and shame, all the while pointing back and forth to Angie saying, I told you so.
‘My little girl Dean.’ I don’t even know what I’m debating at this point, it feels pretty cheap just throwing Abby out there. As many times as I’ve condemned the Save the Children debate right now it feels altogether appropriate.
‘Nine o’clock, please? You know Frankie and he likes you, you’ll help him and me make sense of this.’
‘I haven’t seen Frankie since college.’
‘C’mon Jone.’
Epithet. ‘Nine o’clock, as long as Angie’s okay with watching Abby.’
‘That’s real good of you Jonah. See you at nine, brotha.’
I pour a tall glass of orange juice and join Abby in the back yard. It’s only 74 degrees but in October it feels like 104. I sit in the chair swing under the awning and take big gulps of the orange juice. Abby presses color-coded, shape-based buttons when the Reader prompts her to; she adeptly performs the actions like a trained athlete, all instinct and reaction, no longer cognitive deduction and spatial reasoning required. I finish the glass of orange juice and walk through the garden; six above-ground planters we built last spring.
We borrowed a friend’s pick-up and brought in a load of topsoil and peat moss. Angie shoveled the whole load out herself. She was determined to make this project something of her own. At the time she was feeling a restless satisfaction of being a housewife that just got accepted to grad school, there was nothing she couldn’t do. After two weeks, the seedlings sprouted. With her thin fingers Angie pulled the small weeds that could not yet threaten the harvest. Every evening I watered the stock. When she complained that she never got to do the relaxing tasks of the garden, I let her take over the watering schedule. In a matter of days the green beans started to wilt. One evening I pointed at the chests of earth and the wilting greens and she dismissed the assignment to me with a wave of her hand, talking on the phone with her mother. I’ve watered and weeded the garden ever since.
It’s still hot and the garden doesn’t produce much other than crookneck squash and zucchini. I’ve already turned the vines of the green beans back into the earth and removed the wire wickets of the tomato plants. I cut the stalks of the eggplant short but left the jalapeno and poblano peppers, they didn’t produce much this year. Against the back fence, the side where the horses roam, a raspberry vine grows but is yet to yield any fruit. Next to it a set of five sunburst rosebushes, one for every mother’s day, for every year of Abby’s life.
I crouch down and gather dead yellow leaves from the planters, crush them in my hand. I twist the leaves into my palm. The subtle moister from my skin and the brittle autumnal resonance colors my skin jaundice and sickly. I gather more leaves and dirt, handfuls of dirt, and ball all of it into one great spherical mess of silt, topsoil, pumice and peat. I stand and take the wad of soil and launch it over the fence, into the land of fallen titans. One of the fallen neighs and puffs a great breathe of despair, or just complaint.
I rush to the fence and peer over. A horse flexes his flank and the remnants of the clod I just threw fall to the ground. In the gaping mouth of the barn my neighbor stares me with one hand on his hip, his eminence manifest by his massive gold and silver belt buckle.
‘Sorry about that,’ I cry out, waving my arm like a drowning victim. He continues to stare me. I smile extra big so he can see and I turn away.
As I bend to pick up the juice glass, trying to ignore my childish shame, the violent bark of a sullen canine rips through the air. I look up to see Abby flinch and draw her hand from the fence, the side where the poachers roam. She turns and runs for me, already tearing a little. I lift her quickly and examine her hands. In my panic she frightens and starts to bubble a proper cry; the heeler beyond the fence barks incessantly.
‘Are you okay honey? I don’t think he got you.’
‘He just barked, but it scared me.’
‘I know, it’s okay. Let’s go inside.’ I bend down to pick up her reader, oil and water on the screen. I stand and see the poacher, arms folded, glaring at me from his back porch.
‘You need to control that goddamn dog.’
He just keeps glaring at me and just before I step inside I hear him call out, ‘Lou,’ and the barking stops.
I take Abby inside and calm her down. We go to her playroom and she immediately opens her chest of toys. She carefully lifts each toy out and sets them in a row, naming them as she places them on the carpet. Some toys have names like Junior and Samantha; some are simply Stove and Car. At first glance it’s impossible to deduce why some she’s anthropomorphized. On a shelf just high enough for her to reach, she has lined her dolls, propped them up so they can watch her play. She talks to them and seeks their approval, often times arguing as to why one toy deserves special privileges and other must stay in the chest.
We painted the room light hazelnut last summer, covering the gaudy bright pink. Angie was hesitant about painting it, Abby being so young and as fond of crayons as any other toddler. But when we tried to explain to her how important it was not to draw on the walls, she simply said, ‘I like coloring books better.’
In the corner a 13’ television rests on a toddler’s plastic chair, just Abby’s size. I turn it on and turn the sound all the way down so Abby can have her conversation with her friends. I jimmy the antenna and try to improve the poor reception; three wavy lines continuously climb the screen. I can feel the grime on the little white box, the encrusted filth that at one time I’m sure was wet. I know I’ve spilled coffee on this television more than once when changing Abby. I lean back and rest against the wall, legs stretched out and crossed, and the reception kindly improves, if only slightly. Every few minutes Abby asks me to confirm her point in the argument with the dolls, a real life judge in an imaginary debate.
On the screen a reporter is talking into a microphone, standing in front of an unrecognizable structure, pale yellow lights lit in the windows. Overhead a great flash of light startles the reporter, she ducks only slightly but keeps her eyes fixed on the camera. The massive blaze could have been fireworks, rocket fire; celebration or war. I squint at the screen to make the picture out clearer, as if I forgot my glasses and I’m reading a clock, as if I wore glasses. Another flash. After a few seconds another. Just as I’m about to leave the room, to a television with a clear screen and no residual filth the network cuts away to a commercial for hamburgers so delicious a man forgets he’s pushing his mother in a wheelchair at the top of Lombard Street. The old woman waives her arms in a geriatric fury as her chair banks every turn, off buildings, car doors, a group of camera-snapping tourists and finally launches her out of the chair where she lands safely in a corner booth inside the restaurant serving the burgers with which the son was so enamored.
I chuckle a bit when she banks the tourists and forget about the fire in the sky. The news returns, back at the studio. An anchor behind the desk gives a short monologue and the camera cuts between split windows, two analysts. The moving waves up the screen wont allow me to see the topic of debate, Abby’s asking me to confirm.
‘That’s right dear.’
The camera cuts quickly, between the anchor and the analysts. All three of them look identical. With the poor reception the only distinguishing factor could be the anchor’s platinum blond hair. Her blazer could have been cut for either of the debaters; two button, royal blue, thin lapel. The two analysts, obviously of apposing views, share the same hairstyle, stare the camera directly, both trying to answer questions and retort simultaneously, one gestures with his hand and wins a free five seconds, the other does the same but achieves nothing, camera to mediator, quell the tempers.
‘Huh daddy.’
‘Yes dear.’
Camera to single window, one analyst, thirty seconds flash away on a timer that bends and contorts with the waves, time’s up.
‘Huh daddy.’
‘Yes dear.’
Camera to single window, one analyst, thirty seconds flash away on a timer that bends and contorts with the waves, time’s up.
‘Huh daddy.’
‘Yes dear.’
I blink, commercial break.
Angie and Mar get home around five. I mostly hide for the rest of the afternoon. I try to read in the bedroom for a while but those three small glasses of whiskey left me with a fog resting right behind my eyes, a fog I remember as an undergrad as a sign to keep drinking more, as a grad student as a manifestation of the guilt and shame I held for deliberating on my studies and then making the obvious, wrong choice. I don’t conjure the guilt and shame anymore but I always get the fog.
Angie fixes dinner, it’s some kind of spoon scoop, one-dish-serves-all. This is how it is when Mar comes to stay. Angie isn’t a decent cook, she is downright incredible. Last weekend, when she had all night to prepare, it was burnt pepper encrusted seared Ahi and a rosemary shiraz reduction. She makes the most amazing honey lavender crème brulee, I can’t even order it at a restaurant anymore. She did a half rack of lamb for Christmas with a mint coulis that made it into the community newsletter. She can get a bit obsessive and when we got married she was all about her cooking. I don’t want the Stepford wife life, I do my share, I puree chickpeas, I’m no slouch in the kitchen. But her tenacity and determination finds satisfaction among every cheesy scoop of One Dish dinner and a place to rest next to my indigestion when Mar comes to town.
After dinner I do the clean-up. It’s easy enough with the casserole, I wrap the baking pan in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge. Mar and Angie got two more bottles of wine while they were out and mother and daughter are in the living room finishing the first bottle. Abby watches television in the basement. Before dinner Angie asked me how things went with Dean and just as I was about to tell her about the rendezvous at Frankie’s Mar came in the room and we quickly separated.
‘Ang,’ I ask, ‘will you come in here for a sec.?’
She comes to the kitchen, ‘What’s up?’
‘So I spoke with Dean today.’
‘And?’
‘And he just wants Mar to come home.’
‘Are you just saying that to get her to leave?’
‘No, honestly. He really just wants her to come home. He said he misses her and what happened at Frankie’s isn’t a big deal.’
‘Well mom doesn’t want to go home, not just yet, not until she finds out more about what happened. Do you know what happened.’
‘No, he wouldn’t tell me anything. He wants to meet me. He wants me to go to Frankie’s at nine o’clock, says I can help him sort things out.’
‘Well are you going to go? It’s eight-thirty.’
‘I didn’t particularly want to.’
‘I think you should go. Dean doesn’t get many chances to talk to another man.’
‘Apparently he goes out with his friends all the time.’
‘With a responsible man. It would do him some good if you could talk some sense into him.’
‘I’m not even sure if that’s possible or necessary at this point.’
‘Go.’
I sit in the parking lot of Frankie’s until quarter after. Of course Dean wouldn’t have the simple courtesy to shop up on time, or even a few minutes early. Frankie’s looks exactly as it did when I used to come here during college, as if some Egyptian artifact perfect preserved behind glass. The asphalt in the small parking lot is cracked horribly and the potholes are deep enough to reveal earth. There are metal bars over the windows bent in such a way that an air conditioner could fit if Frankie ever got one. Instead he just opens the front and back doors and lets the noxious gale that blows down Franklin ave. every evening clear out the hot air. The glass behind the bent bars is painted black and wearing brittle. On the side of the bar rests Frankie’s old sign, what was almost Frankie’s sign. To pay off his tab, a regular who was handy with a skill saw built a wood mount for a large neon sign that Frankie intended to install out front. Every spring he used to threaten to remodel the place, appeal more to the young crowd. Rather, every spring comes with the hope of a new beginning and by June the hope is just a crippled figure placed out back, away from the already squalid scene of the entrance.
Dean pulls up and I step out and greet him. A clasp-hand-to-hug I also remember from college. He immediately begins rambling about some college football team from a town I don’t care about just crushing everyone in a conference with an acronym I don’t know about. I cut him off and ask him what took him so long and he asks me why I’m not already inside having a drink.
Inside is nothing like I remember it. The forest green carpet, which used to adorn the walls, is gone and now the walls are cream-white and the moldings are lavishly painted blue. There are old glass lamps hanging over the tables where once there was cheap track lighting from a local hardware store. The stools are all new; the sticky, black vinyl cushioned high-tops have been replaced with high-back oak spinners. Behind the bar there’s a large clean mirror and the shelves of liquor are bottom lit, alternating neon red, then yellow, then red. A cute girl with dark roots growing into a blond ponytail glides behind the bar, shuffling bottles of triple sec, gin, vodka, whiskey and the like. She smiles at us when we walk in and Dean greets her with a wink and twinkles his fingers, which I find effeminate and emasculating for a man his age. We wait a moment to order our drinks and Dean snags a plastic toothpick from the counter, twirls it in his mouth.
‘I guess it’s good you brought a friend with ya,’ the cute blond says, ‘I just don’t know how I’d give you a drink otherwise.’
‘I just don’t know how I’d come in here otherwise,’ Dean says. He grins like it’s cute, and clever. But it’s not cute, it’s not clever. She’s been told not to serve him, even I can tell that.
‘Can we start a tab?’ I show her my card, letting her know the money’s good.
‘What kind of tab you thinking to start stranger?’
‘Just drinks darlin’,’ Dean says, ‘just for tonight.’
She serves us our drinks, Dean gets a beer that looks more like a milk jug and I take Maker’s on the rocks. We sit at one of the rectangle tables under the lamp. We each take a sip before anyone says anything.
‘So why wouldn’t she serve you if I wasn’t here?’ I ask Dean.
‘She’d serve me. She’s just giving me a hard time.’
I take one more sip and the ice is already rattling in my glass, I get the reminiscent feeling of being ripped off, a feeling I used to get when I was broke and still drinking hard in college.
‘She’s not goading you for loosing a bunch of money the other night, Friday.’
‘She wasn’t even here Friday.’
‘But I imagine Frankie was, and I imagine he told all his bartenders something about what happened, about not to serve you.’
‘Alright here’s the deal,’ as soon as he starts I feel a sense of relief, as if all I have to do is hear this story and everything will be in it’s right place. Mar will be gone, my wife will be back to the woman I married and I can properly muse over a drink and go home.
‘I lost a bit of money the other night, I’m sure Mar told you.’
‘She did.’
‘But it wasn’t that much. The thing is, Frankie runs a tab for guys that play poker, a separate tab if they want, you know man?’
‘Uh huh.’ I rattle my glass and motion to ponytail for another.
‘So the other night I got my tab run up to two hundred, and that’s the limit. That’s when Frankie says you gotta stop playin’. But there are bar tabs as well. Frankie only let’s those get up to a hundred bucks. It’s totally cool of him to do this stuff cause he cuts a lot of guys off when they would just get in deeper. And there have been a few guys, regulars, who ran up both tabs and just didn’t come back, found a new place to drink kind of thing, you know man? But I’m not like that, I like Frankie and I respect his place, I like drinking here. But see, the problem is I ran up both tabs the other night. I generally don’t run up the liquor tab but I keep my poker tab pretty good, you know? But the other night I ran it all up to three hundred in the game. I told Frankie I paid off my drinkin’ tab earlier that week so he let me run the poker tab to three hundred.’
I already know where this is going, cute blond drops off another bourbon.
‘The real dirt-bag part about all of it is this. I didn’t actually pay off my tab, it was sitting at around eighty bucks. After the game that night Frankie came out and checked the books. He got real pissed when he saw my stuff wasn’t paid current.’
‘Dean.’
‘I know man, it’s not like that. I know. Just one of those nights. I was pulling good cards, just a couple guys were pulling better.’
‘God, Dean.’
‘So the truth is I’m in three-eighty. But I have the money. I work, you know that man.’ He takes long, big gulps from his tower of beer. ‘But payday isn’t for another week. I can pay off half then and the other half next payday.’
‘If you don’t lose it all in the meantime.’
‘C’mon Jone, I’m straightening this out here. Have I ever asked you for anything? I’m turning around man. I didn’t bail on Frankie like those other guys, I’m a good seed and you and Frankie know that.’
‘So where do we go from here, where’s Frankie?’
‘He told me he’d be here at eleven to help with the rush.’
‘Jesus Dean, eleven. Why are we here at nine then?’
‘Well you wanted to get a drink didn’t you?’
I rattle the ice in my glass again for another bourbon.
After the third whiskey I notice an electronic jukebox passed the line of rectangle tables. I ask Dean if he has any singles and he gestures to his beer as if that’s the only thing he could afford tonight, as if he actually paid for it. I walk over and swipe my card, no quarters, no ones, a dollar a song or eight for five, all done electronically now. I select some old tracks I remember from college, it takes me a moment to remember the names of the bands, their hits. Before I finish selecting my first song was playing and I was moving to the nostalgic rhythms. I see Frankie got a pinball machine and I outwardly express my excitement. I feel a bit ridiculous when I imagine my own reaction. I get quarters, put them on my tab, fill the machine to four credits and play all four games. The first few balls drop passed the elastic-wrapped arms like an amateur but in a minute I feel the time, I sense the cadence. I start nudging my hip against the machine with every snap of the arms. The lights dancing before me, the score running up like a stopwatch. I play three more balls and step back, I want a cigarette. I’m a college kid again and every habit falls on me like some forgotten task. Around the corner, into a small room, or hallway, where Frankie always thought he could put a dance room, there are old stacks of chairs, the forgotten vinyl tallboys, round tables with folded aluminum legs stacked in row, plastic signs that read old drink specials look wind torn and pathetic.
The bar is starting to fill up. Apparitions of men in boys skin line the bar, girls clutching tightly to their purses as they willingly slam shots of whatever the cologne reeking boys hand them. Dean is still sitting at the table where we started but now he’s got a bottle of beer and brown on the rocks. I walk over and sit next to him.
‘What you drinking there?’
‘Oh this,’ he deliberates, ‘I’m sorry Jone, she just came and asked me how I was doing and I said Bass and a bourbon. Just habit I guess.’
‘Don’t worry about it, tonight’s on me, that doesn’t mean get plastered, but I’ll get the tab tonight.’ I can’t remember when the last time I said plastered was.
Dean smiles and says, ‘Why don’t we do a tequila?’
‘A tequila? I’m not much of a tequila doer, you know what I mean?’
‘I know, me neither man, but shit, can’t we just have a bit of fun. No women. No worries.’
No women. No worries. I think about the phrase and imagine something profound should come out of my mouth next.
‘Do they have Patron?’
“Ha, I knew it.’ Dean orders us a couple of neat tequilas and we shoot them with no homage. Just as the two of us put our shot glasses down a thin rail of a man presents himself at the end of our rectangle table. I see his leather embroidered belt first and move my eyes up his torso, over the green plaid suit vest and stop right on a nifty bow tie. Nifty is exactly what it is. It’s not a clip-on junior prom bow tie; it’s been properly tied and measures well for length on both sides.
‘Dean, I didn’t think I’d see you,’ just as he was getting stern with Dean Frankie looked over at me. ‘Well it has been an age. Jonah Bradly, if I haven’t read that name on a credit card near a thousand times, how are you?’ His words are warm and dance in perfect time with his bristly grey mustache. As many times as Frankie and I have talked into the early hours of the morning I never knew if he really liked me, or if I was just another college kid passing time.
‘I’m well Frankie, it’s really good to see you.’
‘I swear it’s been a month of Sundays if it’s been one. Where are you living now?’
‘My wife and I moved to Bedford Court last fall, we live in a cul-de-sac, our little girl is six, will be six.’
‘That’s good to hear. I am real happy to hear that. What are you doing with this trouble here?’ He slaps Dean on the shoulder without even looking at him, Dean immediately smiles, feels welcome.
‘Well that’s what we came to talk about, you know he’s dating my wife’s mother?’
‘Yeah, I know all too well. She’s been down here a couple times herself. Not to partake by any means, more to partake him home.’ I smile at Frankie’s pun and rattle the ice in my glass. ‘Let me get you another one of them, on the house. It’s always good to see some of the young kids come back.’ He calls to the bartender to bring me one. Dean gets excited, thinks he gets one too. When she only sets one on the bar Dean sinks, doesn’t feel quite as welcome.
Frankie and I chat for another minute. I stand and we walk together to the end of the bar. He takes a rag from the counter and wipes a chalkboard behind the bar. In big looping letters he writes, SPECIALS. ‘What was that you said you were drinking?’
‘I didn’t, it’s Maker’s’
He swoops the letters of the name and sets the price at three dollars. I thank him nicely again and he takes the rag and wipes his hands. ‘So do you aim to pay off Dumbo over there’s debt?’
‘You know Frankie, I don’t know why I’m here, I’ll be honest. I just have a mother-in-law at my house that refuses to leave until this is settled and I would really love to not have a mother-in-law at my house.’
Frankie chuckles, ‘I can’t imagine a fellow who would. Well this is a real tight spot for me Jonah, I know he’s kinda like family and all but I was damn near ready to call the cops the other night. I was getting robbed blind, that’s the only way I could look at it.’
‘Frankie. Dean is harmless. I think we both know that. He’ll do anything to keep drinking here. What if he picked up some shifts, cleaning toilets or something?’
‘That’s not going to do it this time. Maybe just to cover the tab with me but I can’t speak for the other fella.’
‘Other fella? He just ran up both your tabs right, the bar and the poker, isn’t it something like three-eighty?’
He huffs, ‘Yeah, it’s three-eighty with me, that’s right. But Dean didn’t tell you what went down, did he?’
I look over my shoulder and Dean is looking at the wall, only inches from his face, as if there is some grand portrait, a masterpiece fit for only his eyes.
‘He was playing decent cards the other night. Not moving too quick like he likes, took down a couple of monster’s, then everything went sour real quick. He had a swell hand, nines rolled over queens, and got beat by another regular with a straight flush. I would have thought he was cheating if I didn’t deal the cards myself. I’ve never seen something like that, and Dean played it cool the whole time. Well, after that hand he went a bit nuts. Went outside, smoked for about twenty minutes, we thought he was gone. And he comes in and says he wants in. He was plumb broke, I knew about the tab at this point, I was upset but goddamn if Dean didn’t get beat hard. He comes in the back and lays down a pink slip in front of Marcus, the guy with the straight flush, says he’ll give it to him for four-hundred, thinks he can get his money back.’
‘Jesus Frankie, you didn’t stop him.’
‘He’s his own man Jonah, ain’t my job to do such a thing.’
‘So what happened?’
‘He lost, and lost fast. Burned through four-hundred like it was twenty.’
‘God. So why does he have his truck, he pulled up in it tonight?’
‘The pink slip wasn’t for his truck. It was for a ‘78 Dodge Diplomat.’
I hit every green light on the way home. I take the gesture as some karmic resolution, the universe telling me it isn’t entirely indifferent to my plight. When I get to the house I don’t bother parking in the garage, the sound of the garage door opening up at one a.m. would lead to Angie asking questions and Mar, if she wasn’t still up, demanding answers. I set the car in park and sit in the car.
In the parking lot I nearly punched Dean myself. I stormed out of the bar after an impressive string of expletives and paced the cracked black ground. Frankie and Dean came out, that’s when I almost hit Dean, and Frankie explained the details of the deal gone sour.
Marcus, the guy who beat Dean hard, already priced the Diplomat at $1,800 in fair condition. Since Dean told him it was a rolling pile of shit Marcus said he would be fair and take $1,000, give a guy a break. Frankie said that given the circumstances he would be willing to let Dean slide for a few weeks on paying his debts to the bar back, but he couldn’t drink there until it was paid in full and he wasn’t allowed to play cards there, ever.
I stare at the rear view mirror. Nothing. Behind me the pitch of night broken by a pale white buzz of the street lamps. I step out of the car and breath hard through my mouth. It’s just cold enough to catch a small glance at the silvery tendrils just past my lips. I shut the door of my car and the Poacher’s dog lashes out three quick barks. I startle and curse the demon.
I go into my house and Angie manages to fight off sleep enough to ask me how it went. I don’t answer her and undress. When I get in bed she’s asleep again.
Surprisingly, I don’t have much of a hangover. I actually think I’m still a little drunk. We all woke this morning and I said I would make breakfast. I made a simple dish, scrambled eggs with torn pieces of french bread in the batter, toast with local jam, and sliced potatoes with onions, garlic, and a whole lot of black pepper. When I was turning the eggs, potatoes in their pans, I calmly explained exactly what the situation was. I told them about the dismissive, yet cute, bartender. I told them of Frankie and his nifty bow tie. And I told them of Dean blowing not only a good deal of money playing cards, ‘but in a flighty attempt to win all the money back he bet, and lost, the title to the Diplomat as well. The eggs are ready.’ I smiled big and started plating the food. Naturally, Mar really went nuts. Angie just glared at me with a hateful gaze. It looked like they all lost their appetite so I fixed a plate and ate outside.
Now, I’m mowing the lawn, barefoot. I have something of a headache, but I also have a really good tune going in my head, Supertramp maybe, I forget. I can see in the back window where Mar continues to pace. She stops and points out at me, she looks back at Angie, she points back at me. I smile and wave back to her. Just as I wave to her the lawn mower catches something, makes a loud bang and dies. I move it to the side and reveal a baseball, cut to the strings. On one half the ball looks brand new, the seams still crisp and the leather taut. The other side is a violent mess of white string and chewed skin, deep in the center of the gouge is a pink rubber ball, the essence of recoil and reaction.
‘That’s my ball,’ a voice calls from over the back fence.
‘I don’t think it’s of much use anymore.’
‘I’ll still take it.’ I can only see his forehead and eyes, I trust my ears the words are from him.
‘Here ya go.’ I fling the ball over the fence, well over his head.
‘Dick,’ he says.
‘What did you say?’ I ask, but he’s already gone. I stand to look over the fence, to see who called me dick and the Poacher’s dog starts up again. This time the sound is different. Not the violent exclamation of a disturbed alpha, but a snarl and snap cadence that for some reason worries me. I walk toward the corner of the house to see what the beast is doing and I hear an awful cry, a piercing that lingers in the thin air long enough to lose breath and then silence, my little girl. I know the timing of her painful wallow and she inhales and lets out a massive scream, a sound fit for no five year old, for no adult.
Abby runs around the corner to me crying, and the most horrible thing you can imagine, blood on your own child, galvanizes this rush in me, this sort of half-sprint-jog. I pick her up and there’s blood everywhere, she goes limp in my arms and I have to gather every inert limb and lift that sweaty, bobbing head of tears, my god the tears. I think for a moment it might be her eyes that hurt. I yell for her mother and rush around the side of the house and there he is, that rat-bastard canine Lou, the Poacher’s Blue Heeler. He stares me with one eye while he twists something around in his jowls, chewing, his pink tongue awkwardly manipulating the object until it slips out and falls to the ground. Just as he snatches it up I recognize the mutilated digit. I look at Abby’s hand, clinched in a bloody fist, and right in the middle, a gap, a blank space in that little rock fist just spewing blood.
I set Abby down, and approach the dog, which is treating me with complete indifference, and as I’m only a step away Lou panics and swallows the whole goddamn finger, like it's some table scrap I've come to retrieve. I didn’t even consider it. Every string of rectitude and understanding frays in my body and I beat that dog with licentious intent. I kick Lou so hard he forgets where he is. He quickly curls up against the chain-link fence, white vinyl runners woven vertically through the fence to keep out prying neighbors eyes. Those slats keep blind the beating I deliver that dog. After the second kick it looks like Charlie might defend himself, a quick snap at the air. But then I kick his neck, the third strike, and Charlie goes a bit soft, whimpers maybe. I kick and I kick, for some time, until his shoulders and ribs are just a grey pulpy mess, a mound of dough in my yard.
I look at Abby and she just looks right back at me, she’s whimpering and crying but no longer wailing, just the track marks of old tears and those sad eyes. I walk to pick her up and she wails again and runs inside to my wife. Where is my wife? I take long deep breaths and look back at the broken mess in the corner of my lawn and think, this was a long time coming. That finger and that dog, I should have known better.
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