City Boy (9 page)

Jack spoke his name, asked what he could do for her. “If I could have two minutes of your time,” Mrs. Palermo began. Jack surrendered and invited her inside, either from some reflex or good manners or so as to have a better excuse for accomplishing nothing. He couldn’t decide
which. Mrs. Palermo stepped across the threshold, took in the apartment at a glance. “Nice,” she pronounced. “What’s that, is that what they call a distressed finish? You know how long it’d take me to trip over some little area rug like that? About two seconds. You’re married, right? Your wife has taste. It’s always the woman who makes the house a home. This is all very classy. Spacious. My mom’s place has too much junk in it, I’m always after her to throw things out. You got an ashtray?”

Jack told her they really didn’t care for people smoking in here, and Mrs. Palermo reluctantly put her cigarettes away. The orange lipstick had an unnerving fluorescent quality. She sank into the couch. She was so fleshy, it gave the impression of one piece of furniture sitting on another. “Bad habit, I know. Nerves. I just took my mom to her doctor’s appointment. Everything’s out of whack with her. Blood pressure, heart, arthritis, you name it. And she won’t move out of that apartment. Believe me, I’ve tried. She could go to the care center that’s six blocks from us and talk to other human beings and have all her meals served to her, but no. She’d rather sit here by herself and eat soup out of a can.”

Mrs. Palermo seemed as talkative as her mother was silent. Or perhaps this was what Mrs. Lacagnina would sound like if she were audible. Jack said, “You must worry a lot about her.”

“I call her twice a day, what else can I do? I have my own house and family to take care of. My brother lives in Wheaton, do you ever see him come around? You have kids? When you do, have daughters, not sons. So anyway. I wanted to ask you a favor, if I give you my phone number, will you call me if you notice anything going on with her, you know, a problem.”

Jack hesitated, not because he was unwilling to be helpful, but because Mrs. Lacagnina’s life on a daily basis seemed problematic. How could you differentiate a crisis from her usual crazy-lady routine? “You mean, she falls down the stairs or something?”

“God forbid. Or you don’t see her around for a couple days. I mean I call her, I ask if she’s got food in the house, if she’s able to get out, but it’s always the same answer, she’s fine, leave her be. She’s got one of those special deaf telephones, I still don’t know if she can hear me.”

Saying yes, Jack realized, would mean taking on a certain responsibility for Mrs. Lacagnina’s comings and goings, maybe even pounding on her door and trying to rouse her out of her deafness. But there was no way to refuse and feel good about himself, so he said he’d be happy to keep Mrs. Palermo’s number on file.

“Thanks. That’s a big relief. I didn’t want to ask that old what’shis name, he’s half dead himself. And for sure not the drug addict.” Mrs. Palermo gave the ceiling a meaningful glance. Metallic scraping sounds were coming from upstairs, an industrious, wincing noise, as of someone trying to retool a bicycle into a lawn mower.

It had been a few weeks since Jack’s initial trip upstairs. In that time he’d been forced to climb to the second floor on a number of occasions to request that one thing or another, one commotion or another, cease and desist. Each time he was greeted with the same genial, stoned incomprehension. Once Chloe had made the trip herself when Jack was busy on the phone. She came back looking pensive. “Is it a health code violation to keep mice as pets? You know, regular mice?”

Twice when Jack went up to talk to Hippie Pothead Rasta Boy, the redheaded girl was in residence. On two other evenings, the blonde smirked at him from where she lay draped across the sofa. But never again did Jack see the two of them occupying the kid’s apartment at the same time. He began to wonder if that night had been something he’d imagined, some drugged and muddy dream. He couldn’t comprehend how these people arranged their lives.

Now Jack said to Mrs. Palermo, “No, I don’t guess you’d want that guy in charge of anything. Let me get something to write with.” He went to retrieve a pen and pad of paper from his writing desk. Mrs. Palermo was looking around the place in an interested fashion that made him anxious to send her on her way before she began making any more intrusive comments. To distract her he asked, “Did you grow up here, you and your family?”

“This place? No, we lived over on Waveland Avenue. Mom came here after me and Rocco, that’s my brother, got married and moved out. My dad was already dead. He passed away, what, almost fifty years ago.”

Jack waited while Mrs. Palermo wrote her phone number in careful,
florid digits. “Fifty years,” he repeated. “That’s a long time …” He supposed he meant a long time to be dead, but that would have been crass. “I’m sure that was hard for your mother.”

“Yeah, they were only married for six years. Six years a wife, fifty years a widow. He drowned. My dad.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Stupid, to offer consolation for something that happened before you were born, but what else were you supposed to say. Mrs. Palermo waved it off.

“That’s all right. I was just a little kid, I don’t remember that much about it. Or him. Sometimes I think even what I remember’s only what they told me. Dad drowned on Lake Michigan. Him and some friends went out on a boat fishing. It was the one guy’s boat and he was supposed to know what he was doing. October 1953. They hit a squall. You know about storms on lakes? They’re bad because lakes are shallow and the bottom kicks up easier. Anyway. Here comes the sad stuff. The two other guys washed up a week later. Fish ate parts of them. You don’t want to know which parts. They never found the boat. Never found my dad.”

“Wow,” said Jack, inadequately.

“Maybe that’s why Mom, you know, lost it. Not ever knowing. She still keeps his shoes in the closet, his clothes on hangers. I think she even still sleeps on the one side of the bed. Like she always expected him to come back. It’s a little nuts. She could have married again, the church lets you, and she was still a young woman. But she just stopped her life where it was. When do you cross the line between love and crazy? I tell my husband, you disappear on me, I’m selling your golf clubs. That’s a joke, after a while you have to turn it all into a big stupid joke. Well I’m off. I need my cigarette, or else I just keep talking till I use up every word in the English language. Then I start in on Italian. That’s a joke too. Very nice to meet you, and thanks for helping me out.”

Then she was gone, leaving Jack to ponder yet another neighbor and the life lived behind closed doors.

When Chloe came home that evening, she was tired from her week at work, so they planned on staying in, eating take-out Thai food, and
watching videos. Jack thought of telling her about Mrs. Palermo, offering her up as something interesting in the course of his boring day. But Chloe could be impatient with what she called Jack’s weirdness museum, his accounts of different pathetic or grotesque events. Death by fish was likely to make her shriek in disgust. And besides, it would have shamed him to turn Mrs. Lacagnina’s half century of grief into dinnertime chatter.

They were finishing up their meal and drinking red wine in the balloon glasses they’d gotten as a wedding present. Chloe said, “This is the good stuff, isn’t it? I’m drinking and drinking but I don’t feel drunk.”

“You will.”

“You know what the big power thing is now? No casual Fridays, and everybody tries to dress to the max. It’s supposed to show you’re more cutthroat than the next guy.”

“Well you are, aren’t you?”

“Oh you are so amusing, have you ever considered writing comedy? What it means is heels and hose five days a week. You try it sometime. I don’t mean that, you know, literally.”

“Maybe it’s what I need. A career wardrobe. For motivation.”

“What?”

Jack shook his head, sorry he’d allowed himself one of his usual sad-sack comments about writing, the ghastliness of it. Chloe didn’t need to hear such talk. This was her time to unwind, crow, complain about her job, even if it left him feeling a little dull and housewifely by comparison. “So how many million dollars did the bank make today?”

“I’m not going to tell you, you’ll just go off on your corporate-greed thing.”

“I can’t afford to anymore. A corporation pays my rent.”

Chloe reached across the table and speared a forkful of Jack’s prawns with basil. “You know what? I think I’m not bad at this stuff. Business. It’s like a board game you play with real money. I never thought I’d be good at it, I just didn’t want to be another bright girl who couldn’t get a job. But I’m actually doing okay. You should see some of these guys who think I’m only somebody to hit on when I clean their clocks in a review.”

“What guys hitting on you, exactly?”

“‘Hitting’s’ probably too strong a term. I misspoke.”

“Chloe.”

“Forget I said it. Delete. No biggie.” Chloe took another gulp of wine and smiled in a way Jack imagined she’d been practicing since childhood. By now he’d seen it often enough to be skeptical.

“Which guys.”

She sighed, the alcohol making her elaborately patient. “Once in a while one of the suit boys gets an idea. That’s all.”

“What do you mean ‘an idea,’ are we talking flirtation or assault here? What do they do?”

“Oh you know perfectly well the kinds of things men do. Skip it. I can handle it. Women have to everywhere, it’s not just me.”

“Then you should file a complaint or something.”

“Wrong wrong wrong. That is so naive. Then you’re poison. Then you’re a whiny bitch. Not a team player.”

“Then what you’re saying is, workplace-harassment laws are only good against men you don’t work with.”

“Yeah, pretty much. Sucks.”

“That’s ridiculous. Somebody’s molesting you and you can’t—”

“‘Molesting.’ Oh boy. You’re really getting off on this. Next you’ll probably ask me if I enjoy it.”

Jack stared. Chloe stared back, flat and challenging. He said, “Whoa, I only said—”

“See, I can’t talk about stuff like that with you because you immediately make these
assumptions
.”

“Well that was a pretty big one right there. Did I ask you that? Did I even mention the word ‘enjoy’?”

“No, but I detected this little proprietary—this little, I don’t know, nasty curiosity.”

“This whole thing is stupid. You can’t drink, you never could.”

It was the wrong thing to say. It was how their arguments started, with words getting off track, then the tracks going haywire, looping and doubling back, ending up somewhere that shocked you with its ugliness.They didn’t argue often, but Jack could remember every time.
He hated their fights, hated being different people who no longer liked each other.

Chloe reached for the wine, poured another sloshing glass and set the bottle down with a thump.

Jack said, “All right. Great. Drink as much as you want.”

“You think this is about me drinking?”

He did, but it seemed unwise to say so. Drinking gave every argument that extra, snarky edge. “I’m sorry I made you talk about things you didn’t want to. I just don’t believe you should have to deal with a bunch of crap at work. It’s a bank, for God’s sake, not a garage. Are you gonna keep being mad?”

“Let’s just watch the stupid movie, all right?”

They cleared away the dinner plates and settled in on the couch. Jack had picked the videos:
Mission: Impossible
and
American Beauty
. He asked Chloe which one she wanted to watch and she shrugged and said it didn’t matter, she’d seen them both. At least she’d stopped drinking, probably to demonstrate to him that she was indifferent to it. She looked muzzy and glowering and still spoiling for a fight. He put on
Mission: Impossible
, figuring that shallow and unreal was better right now than dark and obsessive. They watched in silence as the snazzy secret agents wheeled and dealed. Chloe said, “It’s really just the one guy.”

Jack held his peace and waited for her to say more. On the screen Tom Cruise, master of disguise, peeled off yet another rubber face.

“Or the others are just minor and stupid and harmless, they say things like hubba hubba, what a dress, okay not hubba hubba but you know what I mean, and maybe they go back to their desks and talk dirty but that’s just pathetic. You can tell these are guys who go to bars and try to come up with clever pickup lines and think they get shot down because the line wasn’t sharp enough. But this other guy. Promise me you won’t say anything until I’m through. He’s in the same training group as me so we end up on projects together. Kind of guy who’s always working angles, it’s not what you know it’s who you know, that kind? You know what I’m saying?”

She seemed to want him to answer. He ducked his head in a nod and Chloe gave him a measuring, scornful look.

There were times when he simply had no idea what she wanted of him, what was required of him to be her husband.

After a moment she went on. “I’m not telling you this to get you mad or jealous or get you anything. It’s so you’ll know. This is how I have to deal with people sometimes. All right this guy. Right from the start I could see him calculating. Oh boy, I’ve got the radar for that. He starts out like we’re pals, comrades. You know he’s really got a five-year plan that includes giving me and everybody else in the place orders someday. He doesn’t get slimy until you remember that all-day conference thing we had? Up in Barrington? He wanted me to go home with him and have sex. Those weren’t the exact words. No, I won’t tell you. He said I could always say the meeting ran late. It’s not like he didn’t know I was married, it’s not like I don’t talk about you! I said No thanks. I guess I didn’t sound torn enough for him.”

She’d been talking fast and now she stopped, stared at the movie, perplexed. “I know I saw this before but I don’t remember this part at all.”

“That’s it?”

“Well, it brings us up to the present.”

Jack was beginning to see there might be a reason for the whole draining argument, a reason that was coming up now. “Go on.”