This is Just Exactly Like You (41 page)

“Let them be late,” she says.

“Where do you think they are?”

“Up in some tree somewhere,” she says. “He’s showing her an owl nest. Or a rare fungus.”

“Yeah?”

“That’s where I think we should look first, anyway.”

It’s over. He knows that. What he needs to do is figure out how to say that he’s been happy these few days, that he’s glad it happened, even with what’s coming. That it’s been worth it. Also, he wants to say,
Let’s get in the car right now. We’ll go anywhere you want. We’ll pack up Yul Brynner and Hendrick and never come back
.

He wants it each way. Both ways. All the ways. He wants his marriage solved, and he wants to be out on the road with Rena, one of the undersea creatures strapped to the luggage rack, Yul Brynner with his head out the window, licking the air. He wants the Beanbags to smile, shake their heads, look at Hendrick’s charts, tell them
We’ve never seen anything like this. It’s a long road in front of you, but his chances for a normal life are. He may now be able to. We’d like to present his case this spring at the.
He wants to feel less lost. Rena sets her beer down, gets up, comes and stands behind him. He doesn’t turn around. She wraps her arms around him. He doesn’t move, doesn’t want to do anything that would make her move. She presses her forehead into the center of his back, and that seems like it might be almost enough to keep them pinned exactly where they are. He wants to undo everything he’s ever done. He wants to keep everything exactly as it is. He wants to stand in this back yard, the sidewalk almost finished, for the rest of the week, for the rest of his life. He wants to hold right here as long as he possibly can. His chest hurts. His face hurts. His whole body hurts. He wants to sleep. He wants a shower. He wants to touch his lips to every faucet in the house.

He can feel the earth wheeling underneath him. The sidewalk is turning a mottled gray, lighter in the places where it’s drying. The sun drops a little lower in the sky. She pushes harder against him, and inside Jack’s head, circus music starts playing. Fairgrounds music. At first, he can’t remember what the thing is called, the organ, the thing that plays while the merry-go-round turns, but then he gets it. Calliope. It’s quiet, but it’s definitely playing. And he can hear the barkers:
Step right up, folks. Step right up. Guess your weight and age. Guess your birthdate. Fabulous prizes. You, sir. Yes, you. Why not win a prize for the lovely lady?

Beth and Canavan show up, finally, and they’ve got a bottle of white wine Canavan’s saying is
nice, really nice
, the gift offered up like they’ve arrived for some dinner party. Jack keeps drinking beer on ice and tries to stay the hell out of the way while Rena stands in the kitchen pouring the wine into teacups. The whole thing already feels right on the verge of disaster. Even Beth seems to think so. She keeps looking at the walls, out the windows, anywhere but at him or Rena or even Canavan. Nobody’s talking much. Jack’s checking all the surfaces to make sure nothing fragile is too close to an edge, but outside of the teacups, yet another garage find, there isn’t anything really breakable. At least there’s that.

Hen and Yul Brynner are set up over by the TV, watching the channel that previews what’s on other channels. Hen’s got a bowl of peanuts, and the dog’s waiting for him to drop one. On TV, the red and black and green bars scroll by. It’s Tuesday on television. It must be Tuesday out here, too. The show they’re running in the half-screen above the scroll is also about what’s going to be on TV. Jack’s head hums. Having everyone in the same room at the same time is like having all the channels on at once.

Beth sits down, runs her finger around the top of her teacup, frowns, wipes it on her leg. Rena brings Canavan his wine, sets it on the arm of his chair. He’s propped his leg up on a big box of
Field & Stream
Jack dragged out of one of the closets. It’s the first time Jack’s seen him since the accident. They’ve got his leg rigged so he can’t bend it, in the kind of full brace they use for hyperextended knees. He’s in bandages all the way down to his ankle. Jack’s feeling like he’s supposed to say something, but it’s as though he’s in the school play, and he’s forgotten his lines.

Canavan saves him. He reaches for his wine, winces as he sits up.

“Still hurt you?” Jack asks. Easy enough: Inquire about the patient.

“He almost cut his leg off,” Beth says. “Of course it hurts.”

“I didn’t, actually,” Canavan says, pointing at his shin. “I only went about halfway through the bone. I have the X-rays. It’s kind of cool. You want to see?”

“Sure,” Jack says.

“They’re out in the car,” he says, and pushes himself up. “It’s better at the doctor’s office, with that light box they have. But you can see pretty well if you hold it up to a lamp, or against a window.” He crutches over to the door.

“Terry,” Beth says. “They said to stay still as much as possible.”

“I am,” he says.

“How is that staying still?”

He looks at Jack. “I’m getting better,” he says. “I’ll be up and around for real in a week or two. I’ll be back on the job.”

“That’s great,” Jack says. “That’s terrific.”

Canavan walks out the door, leaves it standing open. Jack goes and shuts it against the heat. “Does he take them everywhere?” Rena asks. Beth doesn’t answer. “I bet he takes them everywhere,” Rena says.

The TV runs through the listings. Beth drinks the rest of her teacup of wine. She looks around the room, says, “You guys hung up more maps.”

“Hen loves the Craters of the Moon National Park one,” Jack says.

“What else does he love?”

“He likes the Tennessee River,” says Rena.

Beth goes to the window, looks out at Canavan, plays with the blinds. “He’s supposed to be keeping his weight off it,” she says. She turns around when Canavan comes back through the door. He leans his crutches against the wall. One falls, and she picks it back up.

“Here,” he says. He’s carrying a white envelope with green triangles all around the edges, holds it out to Jack. “Go ahead. Take a look.” Beth closes the blinds, opens them back up, and then leaves the room, walks down the hall. Jack watches her go. Maybe they’ve been fighting. Maybe they fought on the way over here. Maybe it’s any of a hundred other things. Jack takes the X-rays from Canavan, slides a film out of the envelope and holds it up so the light can shine through. It’s dim, but he can make out a good-sized notch in what must be Canavan’s shin, a rectangular piece missing, and a bunch of tiny white spots around the bone itself. It’s shrapnel, he realizes. Chips of bone blasted out into the muscle. He listens out for Beth, doesn’t hear anything. She could be in Hen’s room. She could have climbed out the bathroom window in a daring escape. Jack looks closer at the interior of Canavan’s knee, at his ankle, at literally how the man is put together.

“Cool, huh?” Canavan says.

“Yeah, actually,” says Jack. It is.

“Didn’t I buy you shinguards last year?” asks Rena.

“They’re uncomfortable as shit,” he says.

“More uncomfortable than this?”

“I know,” he says. “I know.”

“You have shinguards?” Jack asks Canavan. He hands Rena the X-ray, and she holds it out at arms’ length, looks through it at him.

“Like for soccer, except that they’re Kevlar. The saw would have bounced right off.” He gets himself settled back into his chair, winces again. “I’d be up in Mrs. Jacobs’ maples right now. We’d have firewood cut and stacked and drying by the end of the week.”

“There’s still plenty of time,” Jack says. Somehow he feels like he’s supposed to reassure him.

“I’ll probably start wearing them now,” Canavan says. “The shinguards. After this.”

“You think?” Rena says.

The three of them fall back quiet. Rena reaches for the envelope, shuffles through the rest of the X-rays. They’re waiting for Beth. Jack thinks about going to get her, decides against. On TV, the host is talking about
What’s Hot and What’s Not in Tonight’s Viewing Lineup.
Hendrick seems to be mouthing what she’s saying along with her, so he’s either psychic now, too, or this is something they’ve played a few times already. As far as Jack’s concerned, it might as well be either. If he turns up psychic, fine. Let the kid become some kind of shaman. Line people up around the block to hear what he knows. They can charge five dollars for him to touch people’s foreheads.

Beth comes back down the hall, and she rounds the corner in a hurry, walks into the kitchen and opens the refrigerator door, opens up some cabinets, rattles and bangs things around. Eventually she arrives in the living room with a tumbler in one hand and their bottle of gin in the other, the tonic water crooked into her armpit. She sets all that down on the box Jack’s been using for a coffee table, and says, “You know what? I think we should make this a party.” She’s a little loud, moving a little too quickly, like a small animal. Her eyes are red. Not the kind of red where she’s been crying, but like she’s been back there in the bathroom scrubbing her face, something she does when she’s stressed. She mixes herself a strong drink, splashes tonic into her cup, spills some out onto the box. She’s not using any ice. She says, “I mean, shouldn’t this be a party?”

“What’s wrong?” Canavan and Jack ask her, at the same time.

“Nothing at all,” she says. “I’m having a drink. Does anyone else want one?”

“I’m fine,” Jack says, and Canavan says he is, too.

Rena downs her wine, says, “I’ll have one.”

Beth nods at the box table. “Of course you will,” she says. “Make it your fucking self.”

The room goes quiet but for the TV. Everybody’s looking at Beth. Rena says, “Maybe we should try this another night.”

“Absolutely not,” Beth says. “Why would you say that? Make yourself a drink. Make yourself ten drinks. Make yourself at home, which, of course, you’ve already done.”

“Beth,” Rena says, and something begins to tilt, however slightly, in the room. The air’s getting thinner.

“You know what we need?” Beth says. “Hors d’oeuvres. Something to snack on. Some of Hen’s peanuts, maybe.” She goes back into the kitchen. “What do you guys have in here?” she asks. “I bet Rena’s been making some fine meals for you two—you three. You three! Let’s look in the cabinets.” She’s opening doors, reporting her finds. “Cheerios,” she calls out. “Oregano.”

“I’ll get us some crackers,” Jack says, trying to slow down whatever it is that’s bubbling up. She seemed fine, or half-fine, ten minutes ago when they rang the doorbell. Now she’s not, and it’s all wrong: Beth’s supposed to be the one sitting on the front porch after he trenches somebody’s yard. She’s not the one who does the trenching.

How’s the sidewalk?
she wanted to know, when they opened the door.

It’s really great,
he said.
You should see it.

Maybe later,
she said, looking behind him, through the glass doors.

The undersea creatures go on in the morning,
Rena said.
When the concrete’s dry.

You’re pretty excited about all this
, Beth said.

Beth chewed on her lip.
I bet you do,
she said. Then she recovered, gave them the bottle of wine, said
Let’s sit down, I guess,
and Jack invited them in.

“Where are they?” Beth calls. “The crackers?” She’s rummaging through more cabinets. “Wait. Here’s some more cereal. Chex. Those’ll be good.” She rattles the box at them. “You have Chex, Jackie. I could make us some party mix. The recipe’s right here on the side of the box. We’re going to need butter. Do you have butter?”

Jack gets up, looks at Rena, who blinks, shakes her head.
I don’t know.
He aims for Bethany, for the kitchen. She’s opening drawers. She finds a box of plastic spoons. She opens the refrigerator again. “You don’t have butter,” she says, looking in.

“I know.”

“This room’s ugly as shit, by the way. I don’t think I noticed it before.” The linoleum, a pattern of red bricks, might be original. The walls are a dirty pink, dirtier behind the stove. The stove is green. There’s a wallpaper border of ducks around the top of the wall. It’s a museum of somebody else’s life. Of somebody else’s other life. “You know what we should do?” she says. She seems almost frantic. “Forget about the Chex mix. No Chex mix. We should go across the street and get our slides down from the attic. Wouldn’t you like that? We can look at all our old pictures. The good old days. You remember those, right?” She drinks her drink. “Do we even have slides?”

“Maybe we could do this some other way,” he says. “It would be fine if you wanted to do it another way.”

“Have you got something to say?” she asks, stepping closer. “If you’ve got something to say, you should say it. By the way, I think your refrigerator is broken. It’s hot in there.”

“This was your idea,” he says. “Tonight. The four of us. We can stop right now if you want. You and I can go get breakfast in the morning or something, instead.”