Probation (2 page)

S
tep right up, folks.

Welcome to the greatest show on earth.

What you have here works. But there’s always room for improvement. What works can always work better!

This used to be easier. I don’t remember a lead ball swinging from my tongue.

Yes, ma’am. Yes, sir. And by the way, that truly is a lovely dress you’re wearing today, Mrs. Cleaver.

No, I haven’t sunk that far. Yet.

Competition. It’s the name of the game. Too many retail outlets all selling the same things, the same brands. Look at these Maidenforms you’ve got here. How many places in town can you buy these? A dozen? A hundred? A thousand?

I have to remember to customize the sell at this point for the size of the city I’m in. The problem is
remembering
the city I’m in. Which airport did I fly into this morning? They all look the same.

Remember. It’s not Maidenforms you’re selling. It’s you. You are your brand. And your space tells the customer who you are.

This is where the architect or the space designer or, God forbid, the interior decorator, intervenes, determined not to lose control, to put me in my place, remind me who I am. Just the fucking salesman. Sorry, the manufacturer’s rep. I’m supposed to take the dimensions and answer questions. The “space” belongs to them; it’s their prerogative. They are the artists. The sales boy should stick to describing the durability of the wood chip veneer.

I’ve studied my adversaries. I know all the types.

The neurasthenic aesthetes of indeterminate gender, swaddled in black turtlenecks regardless of the season, swooning over lighting concepts.

The foppish, overweight homosexuals with pinky rings and liquor on their breath, dropping fey hints, trying to figure out if “I am” and if “I’m available.”

Worst of all are the tweedy first wives of captains of industry, barely sublimating their bitterness, castrating every male in sight, adding penises to their trophy belts.

Don’t fight ’em outright, my Born Again National Sales Manager advises me, but you gotta resist them. You only have a couple of hours to score. Stay focused. Remember who’s paying the bills. And if Miss Snotty Designer convinces the client later that
it’s all wrong,
well, the deposit’s been collected and there’s no refund on custom jobs. Remember, it’s war out there and Shelton/Murray Shelving and Display intends to win!

He makes it sound so easy. Why is it so hard? Is it because I’m tired? Is it because I don’t care?

I don’t care? How could anyone not care about products like these!

Be a part of the revolution in slatwall! Don’t waste a precious inch of selling space! Make your walls work for you! Cost-efficient and durable! Powder-coated steel frame construction means it’s lighter and easier to install and eliminates unsightly aluminum brackets!

Make a bold statement!

Create the environment of your imagination!

Differentiate your product!

Build brand identity!

Reinvent your image!

Shelton/Murray Shelving and Design doesn’t just sell slatwall.

We create solutions.

Yes. I can do this. I can do it well. I can be the best. The early verdicts are in. The Born Again National Sales Manager is pleased.

Praise the Lord!

I just have to remember to be careful. Keep my hair combed, my shirt freshly pressed, and a stash of breath mints close at hand. Never let my rancid nights poison my days. Stay upbeat. Smile until my face hurts. Keep up the act. I ought to be able to pull this one off. Years of experience, a lifetime of lying, have prepared me for this. Oh yes, I’m the Great Pretender.

And if I truly hate this job so much, why do I dread Friday afternoon and the flight home? The thought of my mother, smiling, self-consciously
not intruding
, strikes terror in my heart. The flight attendant disapproved when I ordered a third scotch, sniffing at me as if I was just another pathetic middle-aged failure. The flight was full of them, overweight losers, moving their lips while they read the editorial page of
USA Today
, circling their wish list in the Air Mall catalogue, punching out sales memos on their laptops.

Don’t lump me in with them, I wanted to tell that waitress in the sky. No way. I’m different. And I have the arrest record to prove it.

I congratulated myself on resisting the temptation of a former Big Man on Campus gone slightly to seed stroking his penis in the restroom in Terminal B. I dutifully kept my Friday appointment with my counselor and managed to feign enough enthusiasm to please Mr. Born Again Saturday afternoon. Now it’s Sunday morning. I pull the sheets over my head and inhale the fabric softener. I close my eyes and dig into the familiar soft spots in this old mattress. “Andy?” I burrow deeper, hiding from her wake-up call. “Andy, are you awake?” The rhythm is so familiar I count to ten and whisper along: “Rise and shine.”

“I’m up.”

“Good afternoon, grumpy.” She goes back down the stairs. I want to sleep, but Sunday dinner can’t be ignored. The kids next door are playing Marco Polo in the pool. A lawnmower chokes on a stone. A motorcycle backfires. Farberware clatters downstairs and my mother is singing her kitchen song.

“Oh, playmate, come out and play with me….”

The furniture in my room is scaled for a ten-year-old. The dresser mirror cuts me off at the chin. The monster models and Mickey Mouse and the Hardy Boys have never been consigned to attic or garage or trash. Two storage boxes of baseball cards are in the closet. The worn old chenille bedspread is as thin as a sheet. It’s only temporary, I tell myself.

“Coffee’s on the burner. Dinner in an hour,” she calls. I pull on a pair of boxers and go downstairs. She offers to slice ham for my breakfast. I shake my head no and crumble a biscuit into my coffee. She makes a face, like she always does when I exhibit white-trash habits. I take a second biscuit and she tells me I’m going to spoil my dinner. She’s making stuffed pork chops, my favorite.

I decide not to shave. Then I change my mind, not wanting to disappoint her. We’re eating in the dining room and she’s set a lovely table. I want to do something thoughtful so I clip a late-season bud from her rosebushes and place it on her dinner plate, a small gesture I know will please her. She kisses me on the cheek, as happy as if I’d bought out Tiffany’s, and asks me to say the Catholic grace (she still calls it that almost forty years after converting to marry my father in a proper church wedding). I lie and tell her everything is delicious. She forgets things now, like salt, or she’ll salt twice. All I taste is the stainless steel flatware. I empty the pepper shaker over my food when she goes for hot biscuits. I do the arithmetic of mortality, counting the number of pork chops the future still holds. I clear my throat and chirp, telling her sure, I’ll have a second.

We never talk about why I’m here. I’d called her from exile, a thirty-bucks-a-night motel near the Greensboro airport, drunk and crying, spilling my guts. The next morning I was on her doorstep. Every picture of my wife had already disappeared from my mother’s home. Her only comment was it’s a crying shame when things don’t work out and we should be grateful we hadn’t started a family yet. I moved in, nowhere else to go, nowhere else I wanted to be.

She paid the fine and the lawyer, suggested a priest for the counseling, made the arrangements, and never mentioned it again. My father-in-law was also my employer. He contested my application for unemployment benefits and won. He made sure that no North Carolina furniture manufacturer would hire me, but I got work soon enough with the help of an old fuck buddy who worked in facilities for the national department store chain that is Shelton/Murray’s biggest account. It beats being put on the payroll of Nocera Heat and Air, the company my mother inherited after my old man died.

I never get personal phone calls. The only mail addressed to me is from divorce lawyers. I sleep through my days off. At night, my mother and I watch old movies on the cable channels. Saturday nights we go to the golf club for dinner. Over time, she is reacquainting me with each and every member. They look embarrassed, mumbling about how little I’ve changed. She won’t allow anyone to excuse themselves until they have shaken my hand and welcomed me home. The strain shows around her mouth. I know that she and my sister Regina have had words, arguing about my “situation.”

I imagine my sister is feeling triumphant, gloating over my sudden, ignominious fall from grace. I should be sympathetic. I understand it’s always been difficult, no, impossible, competing with the little prince. Her life would seem to be a success by any measure, at least if no one looked too deeply or asked too many questions. She has a thriving real estate business and the marriage to the golden boy, a bronze medalist in the giant slalom who’s become the most successful contractor in south Florida to have never been indicted or slapped with an IRS tax lien. The perfect couple lives in an umpteen-square-foot hacienda in Boca Raton’s most exclusive gated community. Yet none of it seems to satisfy her. Something lives on, a nagging resentment from our childhood, nurtured by her stubborn refusal to accept that there is one competition she can never win, not even after bearing the three children who ensure that the DNA, if not the family name, will endure for another generation. My little sister, precious Gina, loved as she may be, can never depose the firstborn son.

And much to Regina’s chagrin, my mother refuses to see my hobbling back to the nest as a failure. She says it’s absolutely wonderful having me home. She’s happy to have someone to talk to. About my niece and nephews, about the neighbors, about the recently deceased and the long dead. About everything and everyone but me. Which suits me fine.

We’re very comfortable here in the zone between questions left unasked and answers never offered. She’s made peach cobbler—my favorite—and serves it piping hot with vanilla ice cream. I squeeze it into mush like I’ve done since I was old enough to lift a fork. My mother sighs and tells me that my youngest nephew does the same thing. We’re so much alike she finds herself calling him Andy.

Dustin is his name. His goddamn mother practically willed him into being a little fairy by calling him that. Boys need names like Bob or Bill or Mike. One syllable. Not something that’s a synonym for Tinker Bell.

The both of you always have an answer for everything, my mother says, both of you too smart by half. That’s not the only resemblance she sees. He’s quite the sissy and refuses to touch a ball or a bat. A lonely little kid who does all the voices for his action figures because none of the boys want to play with him. She laughs, telling me some wiseass comment, wry beyond his years, he made to his mother about his favorite television actress. I grunt and squirm, trying to conceal that the obvious parallels make me uncomfortable and that the kid’s fey mannerisms, his refusal to blend in, his insistence on being different, embarrass me. I resent her obvious agenda, her assumption that I, of all people, should be sympathetic, willing to reach out and support the boy. Why him? Why aren’t I expected to forge some special relationship with his rough-and-tumble older brother, who’s showing the first signs of sullen adolescent rebellion, or his little sister, prosecutorial in her insistence that all things go her way? But for my mother’s sake, I feign a little interest, assure her he’ll turn out all right.

I’ve promised her I would mow the lawn. She fusses it’s too hot, wait until the cool of the evening. She says I’ve just eaten. She’s right, so I just lie down in the grass. She’s at the kitchen window, listening to Sinatra, meaning she’s thinking of my father, missing him, while she tackles her greasy pots and pans. I light a cigarette, hoping the nicotine will revive me. But my arm is heavy with sleep and the cigarette drops from my hand. The last thing I remember before drifting off is the hiss of grass scorched by the ember.

L
a Crosse, Wisconsin, doesn’t have a lot to offer after ten P.M. There’s the late-night talk shows or basic cable or, as a last resort, the Million Dollar Movie if the opening monologue and tracking weather patterns in Timbuktu don’t strike your fancy. I doubt that a million bucks pays the catering bill on a movie set these days, but tonight’s feature presentation is a classic.
Charade.
They say Cary Grant was a big old homo. It may be a matter of common knowledge in our enlightened times, but the very idea is blasphemy to my mother. When I was a child and did something chivalrous like open the car door or help her with her jacket, she would tell me I was her own little Cary Grant. Little did she know.

The more Audrey Hepburn bats her eyelashes—well, not exactly bats, more like flutters—the more standoffish he seems. He seems fixated on her flat chest. Maybe it’s wishful thinking that he’ll pull the cashmere over her head and discover she’s really a little boy. You can hardly blame him for not wanting to jump her bones. Let’s face it. She’s not exactly the type of babe to make Woody Woodpecker spring into action. Elegant, chic, thin, European, yet no more threatening than the All-American Girl Next Door, she’s an ideal most men are indifferent to, but many women aspire to be.

Including Alice. Granted, an alabaster icon seemed an unlikely idol for my freckle-dusted wife. It’s hard to imagine Alice posing for the
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
poster with a three-foot-long cigarette holder dangling from her lips. Givenchy would have blanched at her ample Irish hips. Alice is more Kennedy than Hepburn, with an open, toothy grin rather than a sly smile, incapable of seeming coy. Her angular beauty is of a different sort, not coarser, but certainly more substantial. And her graceful gait is more athletic, more suited for racing down the soccer field than descending a staircase in a designer gown. One thing they do share is a soft voice, without harsh edges. Alice’s is bit deeper, but, whatever talents Hepburn may have had, she couldn’t touch Alice when it comes to singing the mezzo parts of a Bach cantata. All in all, stand them side by side and I’d choose Alice. Hands down.

I know this fucking movie by heart. This one and the musical with Fred Astaire and, of course,
Tiffany’s
. Please, please, please, just one more time, Alice would plead and I had to concede, quid pro quo for forcing her to suffer through countless evenings watching chain-saw attacks on nubile flesh. This motel bed feels so fucking empty without her. That’s the hardest thing for me to accept. No more long nights buried under a mountain of down, drinking wine and eating popcorn, watching movies and falling asleep in each other’s arms. This is better than sex, Alice would say.

Maybe what she meant was that it was better than sex with
me.

No, she didn’t think that, not my Alice. She’s not clairvoyant; she isn’t a psychic. I was determined to never give her any reason to question or doubt me. I was a good husband, or at least I tried to be. I studied the arcs of her moods, armed and ready at the slightest hint of discontent or restlessness with surprise trips to Paris and tickets to the Metropolitan Opera and newly issued gift editions of classic cookbooks. The price tags didn’t matter to her. A Cracker Jack prize would have done the trick. The clouds would disperse, the threat of showers would pass, and the forecast was bright and sunny again. And I did my duty in the sack, even going above and beyond it with the occasional gold medal performance, scoring a perfect ten. What else could all that sound and fury, all that rutting and humping, signify but the sincerity and depth of my desire?

Desire.

What a fluid concept. Would Mr. Webster, Mr. Funk, and Mr. Wagnalls say I desired her? Of course they would. I desired her during the comfortable silences on the long drive to my mother’s home. I desired her on those happy evenings spent playing board games at the kitchen table. I desired her as I fell into a deep sleep while she lay propped against her pillows, captivated by Audrey and Cary. I even desired her, at least something about her, on those nights when she would fall asleep first and, tortured by insomnia, I would mute the television, silencing the sirens of the police drama or the explosions of a war epic. I desired her even though I didn’t stroke her shoulder or roll her toward me and wake her with a kiss and stiff penis but, instead, would slip quietly out of the bed and take solace in the dungeon of the Internet, sometimes only staring at the lurid images, sometimes engaging in cybersex with another bored and restless suburban husband in some remote corner of our great nation. And I desired her when I slid quietly back under the covers and finally fell into dreams of citrus groves inspired by the conditioner she’d used on her hair.

And I desired her even more when I woke in the morning and heard her singing softly in the bathroom. I would open my eyes to watch her brush her hair. She would squint at the image that stared back from the mirror as she carefully tinted her lips and dabbed color on her cheeks. Lying there, her side of the bed still warm, I desired her, maybe not like the Continental lover my family name would lead you to assume I might be, but in a quiet, sort of British way, sneaking off to the kitchen to steep a cup of Earl Grey for her and being rewarded with an affectionate kiss on the cheek.
This is better than sex.
Damn right, Alice. Anyone can fuck you, but where would you ever find anyone else to serve up such a heady brew of tea and sympathy?

Only once did she take a pass, after we “lost” the baby. At first, I assumed it was a reaction to the brutal shock of the D and C and that it was only a matter of time until her hormones restored her body to equilibrium. But a month passed, then another, and she remained beyond my reach, a distant buoy bobbing on the surface of a placid but unnavigable lake. I would hear her talking on the telephone, jovial and lighthearted with her sisters and her girlfriends. Her shoulders would grow stiff if I approached her from behind and gently touched her. A slight edginess, probably noticeable to no one but me, would creep into her voice. I would rub her neck, trying to persuade her to relax, but her muscles would resist me and she would burrow deeper into her conversation until, defeated, I would walk away. I would hear the tension recede from her voice as I walked out of the room.

She carefully avoided me, keeping me at a safe distance, studying me. She was subtle as always, never cruel, rejecting every attempt at physical intimacy as kindly as possible. Yet her reticence was lethal as Kryptonite, leaving me powerless to assure her that all was well and good in our little kingdom. For the first time, I felt as if I could lose her.
Nothing, nothing
, she would say, when I asked if anything was wrong.
I’m fine
, when I suggested she was fatigued, that a checkup and maybe blood work might be a good idea. Finally, I said we needed a change, to get away. Spring had been cold and wet and Rome might be pleasant, or maybe Santa Barbara. She looked up from her dinner plate and gave me an indulgent smile.

“Not this time, Andy,” she said.

I sat there, exposed. And, assuming the game was finally up, I found the nerve to ask the question I was afraid to have answered.

“Do you still love me?”

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” she said.

I should have known better than to make the fatal mistake of asking one question too many.

“Why?”

She stood and picked up her plate, her appetite lost.

“Because I don’t give up that easily.”

We made the trip to Santa Barbara after all and, over time, her faith in my gestures of love and affection seemed renewed. One night, not that many months ago, we sat on the deck, reading in the soft, extended daylight of midsummer, tropical bossa novas spinning on the disc player. I looked up from my book and saw her staring at me. She hadn’t aged a day since college, at least not in the fading light. She could have been that quiet, determined college girl who summoned the courage to join me, uninvited, while I tugged my hair and struggled with
Absalom, Absalom!
at the cafeteria table. What’s up? I asked, and she grinned self-consciously.

“I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“That it’s good to be friends.”

“Yes, it is.”

Damn, how this night has slipped away. Audrey and Cary are in the final clinch, about to embark on the happily ever after. Oh shit. I hadn’t remembered how this fucking thing ended. I’d forgotten Audrey’s last words.

Oh, I love you, Adam, Peter, Alex, Brian, whatever your name is. I hope we have a lot of boys and we can name them all after you.

Goddamn it. It would all have turned out different if I had been more like Cary Grant. The son of a bitch was never stupid enough to do it in a public toilet and, if he did, he was smart enough to never get caught.