Aloft (30 page)

"Do you know how I know? I had to hear it from Rosario, who A L O F T

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I suppose heard it from Paul. Come on, Dad, what the fuck is that?"

"It's not like them .. ."

"You mean it's not like Paul. Your daughter is another story.

Eunice, if you care to know the truth, is furious. The worst part is she really feels like dirt, and I don't blame her. She went all out and threw a big party and offered to throw the wedding reception and now she feels like we're goddamn nobodies in this family."

"I thought they told you, or I would have, right away."

"Well, they didn't. You should have, automatically. Automatically. Paul is one thing, but you."

"I'm sorry," I say. "This won't make you feel any better but I found out mostly by accident, too. And I don't really know what's going on now, because she refuses to go into details. But I think we should give your sister some room here. She's no dummy, and we have to trust her to make the right calls."

"Would you be saying that if I were in her place?"

The question surprises me, both in its sharpness and implied self-criticism, and in the face of it I say (too automatically, perhaps), "Of course I would."

Jack mutters, "Yeah," and drinks some more of his beer.

"You don't think so?"

"Forget it," he says. He gazes out over the backyard, and though I feel like telling him he's being childish, I don't, not just because I only ever get dangerously close to doing such a thing but also because nothing he's saying is off the mark. And for the first time in a very long time I can see he might be genuinely hurt, this indicated by the pursed curl in his lower lip, the slight underbite that he would often feature when he was a
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boy, when his mother wasn't doing well, and then after she was gone.

"You should let me send the guys over and redo this place,"

Jack suddenly says. "It's getting to be a real dump, you know."

"I wouldn't say that."

"I would," he says, but not harshly, and he's already up out of his chair and out on the lawn. He's standing on the spot where the pool used to be, now just another unruly patch of grass, splotchy and scrubby, the erstwhile beds bordering the pool now unrecognizable as such, with the sod grown over so that they look like ski moguls in the middle of the lawn. All the surrounding trees and shrubs are in need of serious pruning, the brick patio having sunk in several spots and gone weedy in the seams, the yard appearing not at. all like a former professional landscaper's property but rather what a realtor might charitably appraise as "tired" or "in need of updating" or, in fact, if you were really looking hard at the place, a plain old dump.

"Listen," Jack says, gesturing with his long-necked beer, his tone unconsciously clicking into just the right register for what he does, what I call contractor matter-of-fact, assured and fraternal and with just enough of a promise of prickly umbrage to keep most customers at bay. "It wouldn't be a big deal. I'd shave these mounds flat and scrape away the whole surface and lay down fresh sod. Then we'd get into the trees and cull the under-growth and prune up top as well. I'd want to replace all the shrubs by the patio and maybe put in a few ornamental fruit trees over by the driveway, to create a little glade. The patio we'll do in bluestone, finished out with an antique brick apron, to match the siding of the house."

"Sounds pretty nice. But I wouldn't want to tie up a whole crew," I tell him, as I know Battle Brothers would never charge A I. 0 1 ," f

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me a dime. "Especially when it seems there's so much work out there."

"It's actually slowed down a bit," he says, sipping his beer.

"Don't worry, we're at a good level now. We can spare a couple guys."

"Maybe I will have you do some work. I've been kicking around the idea of moving to a condo the last couple years, but I don't seem to be doing anything about it."

"Why should you?" Jack says. "The house is paid for, isn't it?

Pop is tucked away and taken care of. You're on Easy Street, Dad. I'd just enjoy the air, if I were you, and make this place nice for yourself. Nothing's in your way."

"Nothing's in your way, either," I tell him.

Jack says, "Nothing but a jumbo mortgage and two kids to send to private day school and a wife with exceptional taste."

"Eunice does like nice things," I say. "But you do, too."

"I go along."

By now I've joined him, and we walk around the inside perimeter of the property, bordered by those overgrown trees, Jack making suggestions to me and jotting notes on the screen of his electronic organizer. He doesn't seem even mildly drunk anymore; it pleases me to think that maybe the work mode en-livens him.

"What about there," I say, referring to the expansive swath in the center of the property. "Just leave it as lawn?"

"I don't know. Maybe you ought to put a pool back in."

"A pool? I don't need to swim anymore."

"Sure, but the kids would love it. Lately I've been wanting to put one in, but there's not enough room at my house for a nice-sized one. If you had a pool back here again, you'd see the kids all the time."

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I nod and say, "That'd be good," even though I've already worried that I might not
like
his kids if I spent a lot of time with them (even if I'll always love them).

"Plus," he says, "maybe Theresa and Paul will move back to Long Island someday, with their kid, or kids."

"I was thinking of that, too."

"Sure. If you wanted, my pool guy could drop in an integrated hot tub for you, right alongside the regular pool. I'd have him install a slide instead of a diving board, though."

"Kids like slides."

"Definitely," Jack says. "I always wanted one."

"Really?" I say. "I never knew that. You should have asked me. I would have gotten you one, no problem."

"I know. I don't know why, but it never occurred to me to ask you. But then, I suppose, it was too late."

"I guess it was," I say, not quite understanding that we're all of a sudden talking about
this,
about which there's never been any great family prohibition or denial, any great family taboo, but still.

"I bet Mom would have had a blast with a slide," Jack says.

"Maybe," I answer, "but she'd have had to go down with her ring float on."

Jack looks at me like I'm crazy.

"You think?" he says.

"I guess not," I answer, realizing how stupid I must sound, talking about
her float.
So I say, "Your mother would have done whatever she liked."

"That's why we loved her, right?" Jack says brightly, with just the scantest tinge of edge and irony.

I can only nod, and just stand there with him in the middle of the big patch of messy lawn, and I don't have to try hard to A L O F T

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recall how he and Theresa spent most of their time right here (at least up to a certain age), especially in the summer, turning as brown as coconuts as they hopped and raced and climbed atop everything in sight. Every parent says it, but they really were like those tiny tree monkeys you see at the zoo, their faces all eyes and their fingers and limbs impossibly narrow and lithe. They'd be crawling onto and off you and tugging at your shoulders, your ears, then (unlike most primates) leaping with abandon into the pool, even before they learned how to swim, thrashing about half-drowning before I'd pull them out.

And say right now it really was a very decent pool, just what you'd imagine for a solidly middle-class postwar family house, a 20-by-40 inground with a meter-high diving board and nice porcelain tile work around the lip, though after what happened to Daisy and with no one around during the work hours to supervise I decided to have the guys fill it in, which in fact none of us seemed to regret, not even Jack, who was a natural swimmer and the star of the neighborhood club swim team. In fact it amazed me how quickly he got past it all, how intensely he threw himself into his other sports, and to astounding success, in turn becoming socially confident and popular, the tight busy orbits of which allowed him, I suppose, to recover fully, even if these days everyone even half-witted thinks that to be a spurious notion or concept. But I'm not so sure. Maybe the key to returning to normalcy was my quick response, my instant re-newal of our little landscape, that I filled in and bulldozed over the offending site and rolled out perfect new sod that they could at least play upon without a care or thought, if never really frolic in the same way again.

"Tell Theresa I'm sorry," Jack finally says, gathering his things on the patio table, to head out. "I'll call her later, too."

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"That would be good," I say, as I walk him to the driveway.

"So what about it?" he says, nodding back to the yard. "I'll send the guys around. But what about the pool?"

We'll see, 1
say to him, or I think I do anyway, and before he steps up into the saddle of his impossibly high-riding vehicle I give him a healthy pat or two on the back, to which my son grunts something satisfyingly low and approving, a clipped rumbling
yyup,
and I think of how good it is to have both of them here again, regardless of the terms, because (and you know who you are) you can reach a point in your life when it almost doesn't matter whether people love you in the way you'd want, but are simply here, nearby enough, that they just bother at all.

n i n e

E R R Y B A T T L E hereby declines the Real. I really do.

J Or maybe, on the contrary, I'm inviting it in. Art example is how I now find myself here in my dimly lighted two-car garage, the grimy windows never once cleaned, sitting in the firm leather driver's seat of the Ferrari, its twelve cylinders warbling like an orchestra of imprisoned Sirens, and only when the scent becomes a bit too cloying do I reach up and press the remote controller hooked on the visor to crank up the door, the fresh air rushing in just like when you open a coffee can.

"What the hell are you doing?" Theresa shouts from the wheel of the Impala. She's idling on the driveway, staring out at me from behind Daisy's old Jackie 0 sunglasses, which she found in a night table I'd put down in the basement probably twenty years ago.

I back out the machine, in two awkward, revvy lurches. I si-dle up to her. "I sometimes forget to open the door first."

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"You big dummy. Are you sure you want to do this?"

"I'm sure. I'll buy you guys another car."

"Forget it. We don't really need one. We'll use this one, when you're not working. Hey, I want to stop at the Dairy Queen on the way out."

"Didn't we just have breakfast?"

"I need a milkshake and fries, Jerry. Right now."

"Okay, okay, that's good."

It's amazing how quickly she'll get her back up these days, not for the conventional reasons of my political and cultural il-literacy/idiocy, but for any kind of roadblock to calories sweet and fatty and salty. I'm glad that she's ornery, still feeling hungry, for with this thing looming she seems extra vulnerable, like an antelope calf with a hitch in its stride. We thumbs-up each other, like pilots and comrades will do, and I lead us out, remembering there's a Dairy Queen just off Richie's exit.

I've continued to be respectful and am hanging back, willing in my lazy-love (as opposed to tough-love) manner to leave the navigation to her, but something about the status of the status quo has set off a sharp alarm in my viscera, this clang from the lower instruments that we're pitched all wrong here. And so a good part of the reason I've decided to return Richie's car to him, no gloating, no strings, is not just that I'm a wonderful guy, or that it's an inherently hazardous machine for Theresa and Paul to be tooling around in among all the sport-utes riding high and mighty, or that I will never be able to make the car really feel like mine (even though I know Richie would have had
Donnie
already repainted and the seats reupholstered, if he didn't immediately sell her for a month's share of an executive jet), but to try to simplify, simplify, what seems to be our increasingly worrisome matters of family. I should probably be A T, 0

T

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effecting this by gathering all my loved ones and doing something like passing out index cards and having everyone write down for candid discussion three "challenges" that face us (as I saw suggested in a women's magazine at the supermarket checkout the other day), but it's easier to begin by clearing out whatever collateral stuff is crowding what appears to be our increasingly mutual near future, a category in which the Rabbit-mobile neatly fits. As much as Theresa and Paul like using the car, I've been feeling that it's literally a foreign object, plus the fact that it reminds me too much of Rita's disdainful regard.

So here we are, Theresa and I, in our convertible caravan of two. I glance back in the rearview every ten seconds, and wave.

She waves back, glamorous in the gleaming chariot. It gives me pleasure to see her at the wheel, reminding me of the days when she and Jack used to sit up front with me and take turns sitting in my lap and driving. Of course you'd probably get arrested these days for doing such a thing, charged with child en-dangerment, but back then Jack would even press the horn when a patrol car passed, the officer answering Jack with a little
whirrup
from his siren.

We have a decent ways to go before we get to Richie's town, which I'm not minding, as it's midafternoon, everyone still at the beach, with the Expressway moving along at a fine smooth clip that feels even headier from the open cockpit of this High Wop machine supreme. As I pass the cars on my left and right, their drivers, I notice, can't help but take a good long look at me, men and women both, but especially the men, younger guys and middle-aged guys and guys who shouldn't still be driving, and I know exactly how they're thinking what a detestable Lucky-ass piece of shit I am, the respect begrudged but running deep as they unconsciously bank to the far edge of their lanes,
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