Jernigan, page 8
I nestled between two men in charcoal pinstripe suits, each reading the Times C section. The theme was Home: today, therefore, was Thursday. Like The Mickey Mouse Club. Tuesday, Guest Star Day; Wednesday, Anything Can Happen. I opened up Northanger Abbey.
At work, a nice hello from Miranda, Kelsey’s pretty secretary, except these days you have to call them assistants, with whom it would never go beyond occasional eye contact. Imagine Jernigan making eye contact: that should give you an idea of this Miranda. Three pink While You Were Out slips on my desk. All business calls; not one saying Martha. Everybody was going to have a normal day here at work.
Except that it turned out to be a disastrous day. I mean, to the extent you could take things at work seriously. Although you do. Especially when people are that angry with you. What happened was this. The week before—I’ll try to keep this brief; a bunch of work stuff is too dreary even for Life of Jernigan—the week before, I had apparently misplaced a decimal point or something while figuring up the cost of ripping out the internal walls in four floors of some building in NoHo. (Not even my listing, for Christ’s sake. I did the numbers as a favor to Coleman, since I’d had a little down time. A lot of down time. But again, whole other story.) With my rough and very much mistaken estimate in hand, the client had gone to his people, and the estimate prompted them to move some money they wouldn’t otherwise have moved. I mean, basically, who gives a shit. But at any rate, today was the day this whole thing came out. So. Big meeting with Coleman and Kelsey and our lawyer. Another big meeting, with the client and his lawyer and Coleman and Kelsey and our lawyer. I sat there like a bad boy, cursing Uncle Fred in my heart. As I had, pretty much every day, for ten years. With his fucking friend Coleman in the fucking real estate business. With his fucking helpfulness. The last meeting of the day was a one-on-one with Kelsey. During which I basically told him mistakes happen and what can you do. Which didn’t seem to fly all that well. I left his office thinking Ten years of this shit. Hey, like they say. Day at a time.
I had planned to take the 5:46, go over to Heritage Circle and mow the front lawn before it got dark. Even this late in the year, the front part grew like a son of a bitch. Watered by a martyr’s blood, I suppose. That isn’t funny. The back didn’t worry me so much: only three neighbors could see it anyhow, and then only if they stuck their neighbor noses right up against the chain-link fence, interwoven with green plastic ribbon. Well, I didn’t make the 5:46. I ran like a bastard through Penn Station and just barely caught the 8:37. That late a train, at least you could get a window: this was the kind of thing you were reduced to thinking was a big fucking deal. I thought about Uncle Fred saying, “What the hey, do it for a year. The worst that can happen is teaching will start to look good to you, and you’ll go back with some money in the bank. Besides, it could be a goof.”
When we came up out of the tunnel and into New Jersey, night had fallen, and all the salmon-pink highway lights were on. I glanced around the compartment. All the men looked like me. Human basset hounds in wrinkled suits. Except they were drunk, lucky bastards, from their after-work stop-off at Charley O’s or something. Ties loosened, breathing through their mouths.
Once I was off the train and safe in my own car, I put the seat all the way back and just lay there, as if in a dentist’s chair, in the station parking lot. Only a few other cars left, in all that expanse. I closed my eyes and pictured the empty house, eggshell walls. Put the seat back up straight, finally, got the car going and went left on Hamilton Avenue. Instead of taking the right, which was how you got to Heritage Circle. Heading for Martha, however crazy she was.
“Hey, stranger,” she said, opening the door. “It was getting so late I didn’t know whether to expect you.” Thanksgiving smell in the kitchen—sage and onion?—and Martha’s breasts swelling under a forest-green reindeer sweater. One of her thrift-shop jobs, I imagined. It must have been her idea of an autumn thing to wear, and I found myself touched by the way she did the best she could. “Danny’s in watching television,” she said. “And Clarissa’s upstairs sulking. We didn’t wait supper, but there’s some macaroni and cheese left. Or if you’d rather, I just finished a stew for tomorrow night. It’s actually better if it sits for a day, but.”
“Macaroni and cheese,” I said. Not ordering it up, but in wonderment.
She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Danny insisted,” she said. “Apparently they had something on tv about Mom Food. You just going to stand out there?”
“Macaroni and cheese, please,” I said. “But could I have something else first?” Jernigan, being oh so winning.
These were still the days when, if we could, we’d spend a couple of hours in bed. I mean, a good part of why I was there in the first place was just the weird novelty of having sex again. Something I’d pretty much given up on. Embarrassing as hell even to think about it now, but we’d gotten into this business where she was pretending to be a one-woman harem, working permutations on her name to match what we were doing. Martha>Marty>Martina>Tina. Sullen Marty was the boy, meaning I was to turn her over; bossy Martina was the lesbian, meaning I was to go down on her; reluctant Tina meant straight missionary, her arms at her sides. Whatever that was about. One afternoon we had experimented with Mr. T (Marty>Mr. T), which was her fucking me with a finger. When she got the second knuckle in I squirmed away, and her growls gave way to giggling. “Okay, okay,” she said. “We had to try it, right?” Meaning she had had to try it.
Tonight was particularly intense.
“So what’s it like, Mr. Jernigan?” she said when I absolutely couldn’t do any more. “Having your own little private cathouse at your disposal? Is it nice for you?” Dabbling a finger in the sweat on my chest.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “Though I do sometimes wonder where it all leaves Martha, you know?” As polite a way as I could think of to say that I was no longer sure that some of this might not be a little over the edge. Apparently Peter Jernigan had come to believe in edges.
“Oh, fuck Martha,” she said. “She’s a drudge and a drag. Who cares, you know? The world is full of unhappy women.”
5
Eleven-thirty or so I finally got up and had macaroni-and-cheese dinner. Then still more bed, a good big glass of moonshine, and off to sleep.
Three in the morning I was back awake. Got up and crept down the hall to the kitchen. A line of light glowed at the bottom of Clarissa’s door, faraway music rasped and clattered. My son was here. And all was well. Or so I was willing to think. In the refrigerator I found tomorrow’s stew. In a copper stewpot, yet: before opting out of the money economy, old Martha hadn’t done too badly for herself. I lifted the lid, dripping with condescension, condensation I should say, and went and got a wooden spoon out of the dish drainer. I stood there eating and eating. Rabbit stew, with still-firm quarters of potato, still-firm logs of parsnip. The stew part was gray and thick, and not at all disgusting.
IV
1
By October neither Danny nor I had spent a night in our own house for over a month.
“Has it occurred to you,” Martha said, “that this is getting silly?”
“I’m not complaining,” I said. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, in shirt and trousers, pulling a sock over my right foot. Martha was lying face-down, cheek against my left thigh, pulling down the sock I’d just put on my left foot. I wasn’t complaining, true, but this wasn’t the time for her to be proving she was still seductive. I was already going to miss the 7:48, and I’d be lucky to get the 8:04. Although I was probably misreading simple playfulness.
She caressed my bare left foot with both hands, burrowed her head into my clothed crotch and kissed, rolled over onto her back and then sat up. “I don’t mean us being together,” she said. “I mean you and Danny shuttling back and forth with your clothes and everything. At least you’re not rousting him out of bed at the crack of dawn anymore to drive him over to your house for the bus.” She cocked her head, stuck out her tongue, crossed her eyes and made crazy-circles around her ears with her index fingers.
“I still think I was right about that.” I picked up the other sock from the floor and pulled it back on. “I don’t think you’re taking into consideration how weird this whole arrangement is,” I said. “Somebody’s going to start burning fucking crosses on the lawn.” This was Peter Jernigan talking, taker of twenty-three acid trips (I had kept count) and sworn enemy of convention.
“Well if anybody’s freaking out,” she said, “I haven’t heard about it. Nobody here even knows anybody.”
“Isn’t it pretty to think so,” I said.
“Why pretty?” she said. Oh well.
“Dear Peter,” she said. “If we could only get you to quit worrying about what people are going to do to you.”
“And live the rational life?”
“I like it when you’re angry sometimes,” she said, rubbing the small of my back, “I’m not saying stay home and fuck me”—she slipped a hand down into the back of my trousers and fingered my coccyx through my shirttail and jockey shorts—“because I know you have to go to work. But just think if you didn’t have to.”
“The unlived life,” I said, raising an Uncle Fred forefinger, “is not worth examining.” Neatly turned, I thought. Sailed by.
“But it’s so stupid,” she said. “You said yourself it was like being in high school.”
“Right,” I said. “Builds character. Teaches citizenship.”
She worked her hand inside the jockey shorts and poked with a nailed finger. “Mr. T says think straight.”
“Hey,” I said. She reached in further, up to her elbow, hand all the way between my legs and up the front of me. “Hmm,” I said.
“But promise you’ll always wear a business suit,” she said in my ear, undoing my belt with her other hand. “I like reaching around in baggy pants.”
“If I quit my job,” I said, lying back and letting her, “even my jeans are going to be baggy.” I was alluding, obscurely, to starvation.
“I would never let you go hungry,” she said, somehow understanding.
A knock on the door. “Dad?”
“He went to work for Christ’s sake,” I called. “You think the breadwinner can lollygag around the house all day?”
“You want me to come back later?” said Danny.
Martha nodded yes.
“Nah, hold on,” I called. “Be with you in a second.” Martha shook her head and silently booed me. “He’s got to catch the bus,” I whispered, standing up and zipping my trousers. “Back in a trice.”
“Drat,” she said.
Down in the living room, Danny had spread out the tablecloth I’d forgotten to put back over the tv the night before, and was sitting on it in full lotus position, the soles of his sneakers turned to the ceiling.
“Sbantib shantib,” I said. “ ’S’up?”
“Listen,” he said, uncurling. “Do you mind if I use the house after school for something?”
“For something?”
“Well, like, for band practice?”
“What band?” I said. Thinking of gold braid and tubas.
“It isn’t really like a band band,” he said. “I was just talking to this kid that plays bass? And he doesn’t like the band that he’s in and we were just going to get together and jam or something.”
“Great,” I said. “I’m glad. Sure. By all means.”
“And Clarissa can maybe sing,” he said, looking away. “Or I was thinking maybe about starting her on drums if we can’t get a real drummer.”
“Well,” I said, determined to encourage, “at least you could have her shake a tambourine or something.”
“Do you think it’d be okay if we turned up kind of loud? I mean not real loud, but it would sound better if we could have it a little loud.”
“Okay by me,” I said. “You might want to keep the windows shut so old Mr. Howard doesn’t call the cops on you.” (Cop with holster sitting at the kitchen table: This is a normal thing to you?) “He doesn’t strike me as a heavy metal kind of guy.”
“It’s not metal, Dad. You know, it isn’t anything yet. Dustin’s into the Smiths and stuff.” Whoever the fuck the Smiths were. “I mean it probably won’t even work out or anything. I never even played with this kid, okay?”
“Well, whatever,” I said, ignoring the tone. “Mi casa su casa. I mean, obviously. Now, should I call and tell the power company they might have a brownout in the area of Heritage Circle?”
He looked at me. “Is that a joke?”
“Yes,” I said. “Hope it amused you.”
“Sorry,” he said.
“One more thing,” I said. “If you plan on smoking dope—of which I firmly disapprove—do it in your bedroom or something, so when the cops do come about the noise you don’t end up in the hoosegow.”
He raised his eyes like a persecuted saint.
I heard a door close upstairs, and down came Clarissa. She drifted into the living room, stinking of pot smoke. When she noticed me, she shrank back, but she couldn’t very well turn tail. So she just stood and blushed. Which was something, to see that pale face go red.
“Sorry, Mr. Jernigan,” she said. “I thought you went to work already.”
“What can I say?” I said. “Sometimes your mind will play tricks with you, you know? What we used to call your my-yind.” Smalltime cruelty, I know, I know. I wasn’t her father, thank God, so it wasn’t up to me to come down on her. But she might as well know I wasn’t an idiot.
“We’re gonna be late, babe,” said Danny. Though only after saying this did he take his eyes off Clarissa to look at his watch. “Got everything?”
She had nothing but a purse the size of a wallet, black leather with silver studs, dangling at her hip from a disproportionately long shoulder strap.
“’Bye, Ma,” she called. (“ ’Bye, honey,” from far away.) Danny took her hand and led her out the door. I checked my watch. So much for the 8:04.
Back upstairs, I found Martha under the covers with only her head sticking out. Oh surprise surprise.
“It’s seven forty-five,” I said. “Do you know how smashed your daughter is?”
“Oh shit,” she said. “I knew she’d been backsliding a little on the weekends.”
“Well,” I said, “I’d hate to be in her little Reeboks when they get to quadratic equations.”
“I don’t think they have anything like that this year,” she said. “But I take your point.” She smiled what was meant to be a wicked smile. “And speaking of taking your point …” She lifted one arm free of the covers and kitchy-kooed. And what do you know? The arm was bare to the shoulder!
I sat down on the edge of the bed. “Is this something we should be doing something about?”
“Not right now,” she said, trying to preserve a mood clearly slipping out of her control. She writhed a come-hither writhe.
“Don’t you ever wonder,” I persisted, “what goes on in that room?”
This made her sit up, not caring anymore whether I saw breasts or not. “What?” she said. “My little girl’s corrupting your little boy? Is that what you’re worried about?”
“I worry about both of them,” I said.
“Right,” she said.
“If you recall,” I said, “you gave me this big speech about how Danny was so good for Clarissa, and how all this was a problem from the distant past.”
“So it just goes to show you, right? Love works miracles and they don’t last.”
“Meaning what?” I said, as I was clearly expected to. I remembered from Judith just how to do this.
“Meaning you seem to be finding me increasingly resistible.”
“So now what is this about?” I said. “Because I want to talk about something that legitimately worries me? And should legitimately worry you?”
“And you don’t think I’m worried?” she said. “What, in your wisdom, do you think I ought to be doing about it? Put her in Fair Oaks because she smokes a joint? I know you think I’m a shitty mother. You, of course, are a world-class father.”
“I can’t believe this shit,” I said.
“Which is why Danny has in effect been living here for six months. Because his father is just such a warm guy.”
“Maybe the fact that he can fuck his brains out every night and nobody says jack shit about it has something to do with it too,” I said.
“I wouldn’t go by that,” she said. “It doesn’t seem to cut much ice with you anymore.”
I shook my head. “This is a really grotesque situation, if you think about it for one minute. Them in there and us in here? That ever strike you? That this is deeply fucked up?”
“So change it,” she said, tearing off the covers and standing up. “You think it’s grotesque, why don’t you change it?” She strode naked to the dresser and began brushing her hair, buttocks bobbing with every stroke.
And so on.
2
That day I didn’t make it in to work at all.
Next morning I got up and took the 7:31, rolled into the office bright and early. No smile from Miranda, who looked up, then went back to her typing.
“How goes?” I said.
“All right,” she said.
“That’s good,” I said. She typed another burst of characters, then said “Shit” and reached for the white-out.
I said, “I myself am feeling better, thank you.” Keeping up the pretense that I’d been sick the day before. She leaned forward and blew on the sheet of paper where she’d brushed on the white-out. “You know,” I said, “Dr. K should really break down and at least get you something with backspace erase. This is like one step up the evolutionary ladder from the stone tablet and chisel.” Dr. K was my little name for Kelsey.
