Roadwork (21 page)

“I guess so. Sure.”

“And I went and got my silly self pregnant. And for three days a whole new world opened up around me.” She was leaning forward, her eyes glowing and anxious, and he realized with dawning shock that this recitation was
important
to her, that it was more than getting together with her childless friends or deciding which pair of slacks to buy in Banberry’s or guessing which celebrities Merv would be chatting with at four-thirty. This was
important
to her, and had she really gone through twenty years of marriage with only this one important thought? Had she? She had almost said as much. Twenty years, my God. He felt suddenly sick to his stomach. He liked the image of her picking up the empty bottle and waving it at him gleefully from her side of the road so much better.

“I saw myself as an independent person,” she was saying. “An independent person with no one to explain myself to or subordinate myself to. No one around to try and change me, because I knew I
could
be changed. I was always weak that way. But also no one to fall back on when I was sick or scared or maybe broke. So I did the sensible thing. Like my mother and
her
mother. Like my friends. I was tired of being a bridesmaid and trying to catch the bouquet. So I said yes, which was what you expected and things went on. There were no worries, and when the baby died and when Charlie died there was you. And you were always good to me. I know that, I appreciate that. But it was a sealed environment. I stopped thinking. I thought I was thinking, but I wasn’t. And now it hurts to think. It
hurts.”
She looked at him with bright resentment for a minute, and then it faded. “So I’m asking you to think for me, Bart. What do we do now?”

“I’m going to get a job,” he lied.

“A job.”

“And see a psychiatrist. Mary, things are going to be fine. Honest. I was a little off the beam, but I’m going to get back on. I’m—”

“Do you want me to come home?”

“In a couple of weeks, sure. I just have to get things together a little and—”

“Home? What am I talking about? They’re going to tear it down. What am I talking about, home? Jesus,” she groaned, “what a mess. Why did you have to drag me into such a shitty mess?”

He couldn’t stand her this way. She wasn’t like Mary, not at all. “Maybe they won’t,” he said, taking her hand across the table. “Maybe they won’t tear it down, Mary, they might change their minds, if I go and talk to them, explain the situation, they might just—”

She jerked her hand away. She was looking at him, horrified.

“Bart,” she whispered.

“What—” He broke off, uncertain. What had he been saying? What could he possibly have been saying to make her look so awful?

“You
know
they’re going to tear it down. You knew it a long time ago. And we’re sitting here, going around and around—”

“No, we’re not,” he said. “We’re not. Really. We’re not. We ... we ...” But what
were
they doing? He felt unreal.

“Bart, I think I better go now.”

“I’m going to get a job—”

“I’ll talk to you.” She got up hastily, her thigh bumping the edge of the table, making the silver-ware gossip.

“The psychiatrist, Mary, I promise—”

“Mamma wanted me to go to the store—”

“Then go on!”
he shouted at her, and heads turned. “Get out of here, you bitch! You had the best of me and what have I got? A house the city’s going to rip down. Get out of my
sight!”

She fled. The room was horribly quiet for what seemed like eternity. Then the talk picked up again. He looked down at his dripping half-eaten hamburger, trembling, afraid he was going to vomit. When he knew he was not, he paid the check and left without looking around.

He made out a Christmas list the night before (drunk) and was now downtown filling an abridged version. The completed list had been staggering—over a hundred and twenty names, including every relative near and distant that he and Mary had between them, a great many friends and acquaintances, and at the bottom—God save the queen—Steve Ordner, his wife, and their for Chrissakes
maid.

He had pruned most of the names from the list, chuckling bemusedly over some of them, and now strolled slowly past windows filled with Christmas goodies, all to be given in the name of that long-ago Dutch thief who used to slide down people’s chimneys and steal everything they owned. One gloved hand patted a five-hundred-dollar roll of ten-dollar bills in his pocket.

He was living on the insurance money, and the first thousand dollars of it had melted away with amazing speed. He estimated that he would be broke by the middle of March at this rate, possibly sooner, but found the thought didn’t bother him at all. The thought of where he might be or what he might be doing in March was as incomprehensible as calculus.

He went into a jewelry store and bought a beaten-silver owl pin for Mary. The owl had coldly flashing diamond chips for eyes. It cost one hundred and fifty dollars, plus tax. The saleslady was effusive. She was sure his wife was going to love it. He smiled. There goes three appointments with Dr. Psycho, Freddy. What do you think about that?

Freddy wasn’t talking.

He went into a large department store and took an escalator up to the toy department, which was dominated by a huge electric train display—green plastic hills honey-combed with tunnels, plastic train stations, overpasses, underpasses, switching points, and a Lionel locomotive that bustled through all of it, puffing ribbons of synthetic smoke from its stack and hauling a long line of freight cars—B&O, SOO LINE, GREAT NORTHERN, GREAT WESTERN, WARNER BROTHERS (WARNER BROTHERS??), DIAMOND INTERNATIONAL, SOUTHERN PACIFIC. Young boys and their fathers were standing by the wooden picket fence that surrounded the display, and he felt a warm surge of love for them that was untainted by envy. He felt he could have gone to them, told them of his love for them, his thankfulness for them and the season. He would also have urged them to be careful.

He wandered down an aisle of dolls, and picked one up for each of his three nieces: Chatty Cathy for Tina, Maisie the Acrobat for Cindy, and a Barbie for Sylvia, who was eleven now. In the next aisle he got a GI Joe for Bill, and after some deliberation, a chess set for Andy. Andy was twelve, an object of some worry in the family. Old Bea from Baltimore had confided in Mary that she kept finding stiff places on Andy’s sheets. Could it be possible? So early? Mary had told Bea that children were getting more precocious every year. Bea said she supposed it was all the milk they drank, and vitamins, but she
did
wish Andy liked team sports more. Or summer camp. Or horseback riding. Or anything.

Never mind, Andy, he thought, tucking the chess set under his arm. You practice knight’s gambits and queen to rook-4 and beat off under the table if you want to.

There was a huge Santa Claus throne at the front of the toy department. The throne was empty, and a sign was propped on an easel in front of it. The sign said:

There was a young man in a denim jacket and jeans looking at the throne, his arms full of packages, and when the young man turned around, he saw it was Vinnie Mason.

“Vinnie!” he said.

Vinnie smiled and colored a little, as if he had been caught doing something a bit nasty: “Hello, Bart,” he said, and walked over. There was no embarrassment over shaking hands; their arms were too full of packages.

“Christmas shopping a little?” he asked Vinnie.

“Yeah.” He chuckled. “I brought Sharon and Bobbie—that’s my daughter Roberta—over to look on Saturday. Bobbie’s three now. We wanted to get her picture taken with Santa Claus. You know they do that on Saturdays. Just a buck. But she wouldn’t do it. Cried her head off. Sharon was a little upset.”

“Well, it’s a strange man with a big beard. The little ones get scared sometimes. Maybe she’ll go to him next year.”

“Maybe.” Vinnie smiled briefly.

He smiled back, thinking it was much easier with Vinnie now. He wanted to tell Vinnie not to hate his guts too much. He wanted to tell Vinnie he was sorry if he had fucked up Vinnie’s life. “So what are you doing these days, Vinnie?”

Vinnie absolutely beamed. “You won’t believe this, it’s so good. I’m managing a movie theater. And by next summer I’ll be handling three more.”

“Media Associates?” It was one of the corporation’s companies.

“That’s right. We’re part of the Cinemate Releasing chain. They send in all the movies ... proven box-office stuff. But I’m handling the Westfall Cinema completely.”

“They’re going to add on?”

“Yeah, Cinema II and III by next summer. And the Beacon Drive-In, I’ll be handling that, too.”

He hesitated. “Vinnie, you tell me if I’m stepping out of line, but if this Cinemate outfit picks the films and books them, then what exactly do you do?”

“Well, handle the money, of course. And order stuff, that’s very important. Did you know that the candy stand
alone
can almost pay for one night’s film rental if it’s handled efficiently? Then there’s maintenance and—” He swelled visibly, “and hiring and firing. It’s going to keep me busy. Sharon likes it because she’s a big movie freak, especially Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood. I like it because all of a sudden I jumped from nine thousand to eleven thousand-five.”

He looked at Vinnie dully for a moment, wondering if he should speak. This was Ordner’s prize, then. Good doggie. Here’s the bone.

“Get out of it, Vinnie,” he said. “Get out of it just as quick as you can.”

“What, Bart?” Vinnie’s brow wrinkled in honest puzzlement.

“Do you know what the word ‘gofer’ means, Vinnie?”

“Gopher? Sure. It’s a little animal that digs holes—”

“No, gofer. G-O-F-E-R.”

“I guess I don’t know that one, Bart. Is it Jewish?”

“No, it’s white-collar. It’s a person who does errands. A glorified office boy. Gofer coffee, gofer Danish, gofer a walk around the block, sonny. Gofer.”

“What are you talking about, Bart? I mean—”

“I mean that Steve Ordner kicked your special case around with the other members of the board—the ones who matter, anyway—and said, Listen, fellas, we’ve got to do something about Vincent Mason, and it’s a delicate sort of case. He warned us that Bart Dawes was riding a rubber bike, and even though Mason didn’t swing quite enough weight to enable us to stop Dawes before he screwed up the waterworks, we owe this Mason something. But of course we can’t give him too much responsibility. And do you know why, Vinnie?”

Vinnie was looking at him resentfully. “I know I don’t have to eat your shit anymore, Bart. I know that.”

He looked at Vinnie earnestly. “I’m not trying to shit you. What you do doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. But Chrissakes, Vinnie, you’re a young man. I don’t want to see him fuck you over this way. The job you’ve got is a short-term plum, a long-term lemon. The toughest decision you’re going to have is when to reorder Buttercup containers and Milky Ways. And Ordner’s going to see that it stays that way as long as you’re with the corporation.”

The Christmas spirit, if that was what it had been, curdled in Vinnie’s eyes. He was clutching his packages tightly enough to make the wrappings crackle, and his eyes were gray with resentment. Picture of a young man who steps out his door whistling, ready for the evening’s heavy date, only to see all four tires on his new sports car have been slashed.
And he’s not listening. I could play him tapes and he still wouldn’t believe it.

“As it turned out, you did the responsible thing,” he went on. “I don’t know what people are saying about me now—”

“They’re saying you’re crazy, Bart,” Vinnie said in a thin, hostile voice.

“That word’s as good as any. So you were right. But you were wrong, too. You spilled your guts. They don’t give positions of responsibility to people who spill their guts, not even when they were right to do it, not even when the corporation suffers because of their silence. Those guys on the fortieth floor, Vinnie, they’re like doctors. And they don’t like loose talk any more than doctors like an intern that goes around blowing off about a doctor who muffed an operation because he had too many cocktails at lunch.”

“You’re really determined to mess up my life, aren’t you?” Vinnie asked. “But I don’t work for you anymore, Bart. Go waste your poison on someone else.”

Santa Claus was coming back, a huge bag slung over one shoulder, bellowing wild laughter and trailing small children like parti-colored exhaust.

“Vinnie, Vinnie, don’t be blind. They’re sugar-coating the pill. Sure you’re making eleven-five this year and next year when you pick up the other theaters, they’ll buck you up to maybe fourteen thousand. And there you’ll be twelve years from now, when you can’t buy a lousy Coke for thirty cents. Gofer that new carpeting, gofer that consignment of theater seats, gofer those reels of film that got sent across town by mistake. Do you want to be doing that shit when you’re forty, Vinnie, with nothing to look forward to but a gold watch?”

“Better than what you’re doing.” Vinnie turned away abruptly, almost bumping Santa, who said something that sounded suspiciously like
watch where the fuck you’re going.

He went after Vinnie. Something about the set expression on Vinnie’s face convinced him he was getting through, despite the defensive emplacements. God, God, he thought. Let it be.

“Leave me alone, Bart. Get lost.”

“Get out of it,” he repeated. “If you wait even until next summer it may be too late. Jobs are going to be tighter than a virgin’s chastity belt if this energy crisis goes into high gear, Vinnie. This may be your last chance. It—”

Vinnie wheeled around. “I’m telling you for the last time, Bart.”