This is Just Exactly Like You (4 page)

This was all coming, is the thing. Or maybe not this exactly, but something like it. He knew that much, knew something had been out there on the horizon even before he’d added a second house to his vast real estate portfolio. So: Last week, when Beth started banging around cups and plates and the mail and anything else she could move or slide or pick up and shake at him, he wasn’t wholly surprised. It’d been in the water. Rena, Canavan’s girlfriend, had left him at the beginning of the spring semester. She teaches with Beth at Kinnett, both of them in art history. This is how everybody met, how they ended up at the dinner table together once or twice a month for the last several years, one big happy family. Rena packed up in February, moved downtown, was living
for a little while
in a condo that belonged to somebody else over at the college, some corporate communications associate dean or associate-associate dean who was on fellowship somewhere for the semester. Canavan played, to the letter, the fucked-up boy. Drunken and spurned. Beth and Jack were
there for him
. They went over to the house a couple of times, ate pizza out of delivery boxes and drank beers on the frayed screen porch, him telling them how
This is just temporary, this is just until we can work a few things out.
Beth and Jack got gently drunk with him and agreed as much as possible.
She’ll be back, Terry,
Beth told him.
How could she not?
Now Jack wonders when Beth started plotting her own move into Canavan’s house. If, on those nights, she was sizing up where she’d throw her shoes after she came in the door. She had him fooled, though. They’d ride back home down 70, lights on high to watch for deer, and she’d reach across the seat for his hand. They were thankful it wasn’t them. That’s what he thought they were. Thankful.

Canavan. What he’d figured was that she’d probably go downtown and crash with Rena for a few days—three or four, tops. Because he could see that easily enough: The two of them set up in the little swanky downtown revitalization condo together, drinking wine out of souvenir downtown wine tasting festival glasses, sitting around and listening to pirated underground Sri Lankan hip-hop some intentionally edgy student of Rena’s had turned her on to. They’d crank that up on the out-of-town dean’s stereo and grade papers and let their blue collar men hang out in their respective houses and
get their heads together
. It’d be good for everyone.

Instead, she chose Canavan, which will break everything into pieces, of course, will put a fairly permanent dent in the diplomatic ties between everybody. His friendship with Canavan’s in the shitter, and he can’t see Rena and Beth drinking wine together out of any glasses, souvenir or not, any time soon. Butner sits with him after work, says,
This is pretty goddamn fancy, what she’s up to here. I don’t know what the hell she thinks she’s doing over there, but this is something, I’ll tell you what.
Jack tells him things were fine before the house. Or more fine. Butner shakes his head, says,
I don’t know, man, I don’t know.

It’s not just the house. He knows that. Knows it doesn’t help, didn’t help, but knows it isn’t the house, the money, nothing easy like that. It’s no one thing. They eat well enough together, sleep well enough, talk about school and the mulch yard.
I had another one today,
she’ll say, walking in the door, hanging her bag over the back of one of the dining room chairs, a paper in her left hand.
Listen to this: “Our father, who art in heaven, hollowed by thy name.” Hollowed! Can you believe these kids?
Or: He’ll come home late on a Tuesday, pine needles in his boots and sleeves, and they’ll sit on the front porch until dark, watching the hummingbirds come to the feeders. Her hobby. She brews sugar syrup, has all these red plastic flower-shaped feeders strung from the trees. If they can get Hen set up in front of The Weather Channel, they have an hour or two to themselves.

But something underneath all that got wrinkled. The small, stupid fights had been getting a little more frequent, a little higher-pitched, the both of them at each other too often about whose turn it was to run out to the store for dog food, for yogurt for Hendrick. At first he’d pegged that to her tendency to drift away from him at the end of semesters anyway, to shrink back into herself, into her job, papers piling up, the whiny GPA kids wanting to know what they could do for extra credit. He’d had all that, too, knew what November and April could look like. Jack had taught at Kinnett as an adjunct, taught the freshman humanities series all the students have to take. General Humanities—GenHum—I & II. Fall: Mesopotamia to the Renaissance. Spring: DaVinci to Nixon. The real job was hers. They hired her right out of Carolina, tenure-track, and the dean found an adjunct gig for Jack. She negotiated it for him. But he timed out after his four full years—a college rule that got bent for some adjuncts, and not for others—and with no permanent slot in history opening for him, that was it. It was Canavan, actually, one night over enough beers, who suggested something like a landscaping service.
It’d be easy,
he said.
Couple of pickup trucks and an ad in the Yellow Pages
.
We could work together.
Rena was all for it, said it was
such a good idea
.
Try it for a year
, they all said. Even Beth. He’d done it in high school and college, but Jack didn’t want to mow lawns again, didn’t want to rake leaves. Then they hit on the mulch yard. Plants for sale out front, like a little nursery.
You know,
Canavan said,
people do want cheap pine nuggets
. There was the vacant lot out on 70 between Burlington and Greensboro. Beth could stop in afternoons on her way home from the college. It all seemed almost romantic. He had to do
something
. Why not this? He liked the idea of watering pansies and petunias and azalea bushes. Liked the idea of selling people dirt. He got his loans, bought his yellow loaders, bought a sign.

And once he hired Butner, and once Butner was all but running the show, on the slow days he could be home with Hendrick. In a lot of ways it was easier than teaching. When he was at Kinnett, Jack had drawn all the time slots nobody else wanted, eight in the morning and five-thirty in the afternoon. This was better. This was people pulling up in trucks wanting a few dogwoods, wanting four yards of mini-bark. He could do this. In two years he was making what he’d made as an adjunct, and after three, last year, they moved, bought the little house in Greensboro. Good school district for Hendrick, an elementary school with a fully integrated curriculum. Hen in with all the other kids. Jack was for this. Beth wasn’t sure, wasn’t sure he was ready to be with everyone else. But she went along. The water heater failed the first week, flooded the den. They knocked the couple of walls through. He’s got his plans for the attic, for the kitchen. The A/C doesn’t work so well. The house is a plain rectangle. He’s working on that. She wants him to work faster.

What she really wants more than anything, she says, is to have things
finished
, to have the trim finished and the paint finished and the tile finished. She wants the kitchen cabinets back up on the wall so she can have places to keep everything, so she’ll
know where everything is
.
I need a calmer life,
she says.
I need places where things belong.
Jack keeps telling her to
wait until I’ve got it fixed up. Wait until we clear out that back room. Wait until we’ve got the office roughed in upstairs.
She shakes her head, doesn’t want to wait. Last week she walked the halls, straightening the pictures, crying.
I can’t live like this
, she said.
Not right now. Not this week. I can’t do this like this any more.
He knew she meant the house, but he knew she meant everything else, too. She meant him. She sat at the table, head in her hands.
I have to get out of here for a while,
she said.
I’m sorry. I am. But you’ll be fine with him. I know you will. I need—You’ve got to get this house cleaned up. You’ve got to finish the floors in here. The upstairs. You’ve got to finish all of this. And the wall, Jack, goddamnit, and the house across the street, another whole house—

I’m trying,
he said.
I’m trying to make it nice for you.

It will be,
he said.
It will.
But then she was gone, out the door, and she was calling him twice, three times a day, making him lists of things he’d need to do for Hendrick, things to watch out for, things he already knew, things she knew he knew.
You’re finding him new books to read? You’re making sure he has snacks in the afternoons?
Same old CPR-poster Beth, now from a distance. She’s been coming over once a day, or meeting them out for lunch, or just taking Hen for an hour. She’s left him, and she hasn’t. And Hen’s handling it, is bearing up: He’s his same old self, working through his same old routines. That first call, though, the first night, Saturday night, when the little light-up display showed Canavan’s number, Jack did not handle it so well.
Where are you, exactly
, Jack wanted to know, already knowing, because there it was, right there.
About that,
she said.
Now, Jack, don’t flip out.
He flipped out a little bit. Yelled a little bit. He hasn’t really yelled that much since then. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to be doing about it. Something, though. He’s supposed to do something. He’s sure he is. He just does not know what.

Canavan comes back around the side of the house, waving his phone in the air. He grins. “Rainmaker,” he says, talking to Jack like Beth isn’t and never has been standing in the door. “Lady’s kids want a stand of pines taken out of her front yard. Over by Kinnett. Right almost on campus. Huge trees. I’ve driven by the place. Pretty easy job. But big. Five grand, maybe more. Plus, if we cut it right, if we can get it shredded, there’s got to be fifty or sixty yards in it for you. So another thousand right there.”

“That’s great,” says Jack.

“Yeah,” Canavan says. “It could be.”

“It’s just all coming out perfectly for you, isn’t it?”

“It’s money for both of us,” Canavan says.

“Outstanding,” Jack says. “Really.”

“It’s just business,” says Canavan, putting his phone back in its holster. He has a holster for his phone. He stands there, hand on his belt, king of the castle. “Listen,” he says. “I don’t know, OK?”

“About what?” Jack says.

“About I don’t know. About anything.”

“OK,” Jack says. “Great.”

Canavan points at Hen. “You want to take him inside?” he says.

“I guess,” says Jack. In the truck, Hen’s reciting the progression of oak trees from the catalog—he’s saying
Sawtooth Oak, Pin Oak, White Oak, Swamp Oak.
Jack knows them, too, knows the list, finds himself mouthing the names along with him. This was a dumbass move, bringing him over here. He sees that now. He can’t do this. He can’t leave him here with Beth at Terry Canavan’s sweet little tumbledown house. He can’t leave him here while Canavan goes off to bid his million-dollar pines and Jack goes into the yard to watch soccer moms paw over the marigolds, watch dads in deck shoes stand there and approve of the way Butner drives the skid loader. What was he thinking? Hendrick stays with him. That’s how it has to be. Hendrick says,
Live Oak, Bur Oak, Overcup Oak.
He says,
Post Oak.

“Something wrong?” Canavan asks.

Jack says, “You know what? I think I’ll probably just take Hen in with me after all.”

“To the yard?”

“Yeah. I thought it would be easier this way, but I changed my mind.”

“Yeah?”

“I think so,” Jack says.

Canavan runs a finger in his ear, checks to see if he got anything. He says, “Are you sure?”

Jack says, “I am, actually. I’m pretty sure.”

Canavan says, “OK.”

“OK,” says Jack. They’re not looking quite at each other. They’re nodding a lot. Everything is very OK. He sees what’s next. “So I’ll go tell Beth?”