Aloft (31 page)

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to give me room. The younger chicks are the ones who drift closer, closer, maybe to see if the hair is a rug or weave, if I've got a Happy gobble to my neck, this one saucer-eyed blondie jouncing alongside in a Jeep Wrangler even raising her sunglasses up on her head to wink at me and mouth what I'm sure is a smoky
Follow me home.
Maybe Jerry Battle should reconsider. The wider shot here is pretty okay, too, the broad roadway not seeming half as awful as I think I know it to be, and I have to wonder what else—for our kind, at least—really makes a place a place, save for the path or road running straight through it, ultimately built for neither travel nor speed?

At the Dairy Queen we're pretty much alone, given that they haven't officially opened. Theresa got the two teenage employees to open early for us by telling the somewhat older assistant manager that she'd let them try out the Ferrari after they filled her order. They're both husky and greasy-faced, your basic big-pore, semi-washed, blank-eyed youth who in fact run almost everything in our world-dominating culture, but you've never seen soda jerks in this day and age move as fast as these two do now; they've got the fries bubbling in the hopper and the ice cream in the blenders and they're even filling a squeeze bottle with fresh catsup. I've joined Theresa in the front seat of my antique wheels. Like carhops they bring out our snack on a clean tray and I throw the assistant manager the keys and ask him not to maim or kill anyone, and before Theresa can even pop her straw into her shake he is smoking the fat rear rubber, wildly fishtailing down the avenue.

"Have some fries, Jerry"

I help myself, though I'm completely not hungry something I've been a lot lately, no doubt inspired in some latent biological way by the sight of pregnant kin. Or maybe I shouldn't be eatA L O F T

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ing at all, to leave more

of the kill for her. In any case Paul, who is enabling this behavior, is back at the house dry-rubbing Moroccan spices on a hormone-free leg of lamb he'll grill for dinner and serve with herbed couscous and butter-braised
spargel,
German white asparagus he found on special at Fresh Fields for a mere $5.99

a pound. He's been cooking even more furiously than ever, preparing at least four or five meals for every three we eat, so that we're building up enough surplus inventory to last us a couple of weeks, in case there's some threat of a late-summer hurricane and a run on the supermarkets. Last week I made Paul quite happy by cleaning out an old freezer in the basement and plugging it in and then buying him one of those vacuum sealer machines so his lovely dishes wouldn't get freezer-burned.

Every day since it seems he's vacuum-packing not just hot food and leftovers but dry goods like roasted cashews and Asian party mix and banana chips and Peanut M&M's, apportioning and shrink-wrapping whatever he finds bulk-packaged at Costco that catches his eye. No one's said it, for of course these are meals that would certainly come in handy after the baby is born, but that's many months off and then maybe not quite appropriate, as it doesn't seem quite right that you'd be heating up a maple pivot noir glazed loin of veal or halibut medallions in aioli-lemongrass sauce between breast feedings or diaper changes. Or maybe you would.

While I'm pleased that Paul is thusly keeping busy with what one hopes are therapeutic activities, I'm growing increasingly worried that he's maybe starting to sink in his soup, that he's getting too engrossed in work that seems worthwhile and positive but is in fact the culinary equivalent of obsessively washing one's hands. Yesterday as he was coming up from one of his nearly hourly descents to the basement freezer I asked him
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again (casually, gently, as if accidently) if any writing was going on. He weakly chuckled and muttered, "What?" and then in the next breath asked me in a serious tone if I thought he had what it took to sell Saturns at the new dealership just opened up on Jericho. When I realized he wasn't kidding I told him yes, he'd probably be great at it, for Paul with his gentle, trustworthy, liberal carriage is no doubt just right for those haggling-averse academic-type customers (though he still probably ought to lose the ponytail and hemp huaraches), and after leaving him to roll up some pounded chicken breasts with a spinach chevre pignoli-nut stuffing I wandered off thinking how utterly disturbing this whole mess must be for him, despite what has been since his first disclosure to me an otherwise thoroughly affable Paul Pyun performance. People say that Asians don't show as much feeling as whites or blacks or Hispanics, and maybe on average that's not completely untrue, but I'll say, too, from my long if narrow experience (and I'm sure zero expertise), that the ones I've known and raised and loved have been each completely a surprise in their emotive characters, confounding me no end.

This is not my way of proclaiming "We're all individuals" or

"We're all the same" or any other smarmy notion about our species' solidarity, just that if a guy like me is always having to think twice when he'd rather not do so at all, what must that say about this existence of ours but that it restlessly defies our attempts at its capture, time and time again.

Richie's car streaks by in a red candy flash, the shearing whine of the motor indicating that the assistant manager is driving in too low a gear. He leaps back and forth between the two lanes, weaving in and out of the slow-moving traffic with surprising skill, and turns down a side road, to disappear again. His A L O F T

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coworker, shaking his fist in the air, is shouting at the top of his lungs expletives of high praise.

"I forget, how old is Pop again?" Theresa asks out of the blue, between slurps of her vanilla shake. I'd wanted to bring up the Big Issue, but Theresa is now tolerating no talk whatsoever of her pregnancy or the non-Hodgkin's (the
non
always throwing me off, like it's nonlethal, nonimportant, nonreal), and then practicing deft avoidance maneuvers whenever I try to pry.

"He was eighty-five, around the time of the party."

"And you're fifty-nine."

"Yup," I say, thinking how that number sounds better than it ever has befor4 "Sixty, on Labor Day. You're probably thinking,

`How ironic."

"Gee, Terry, you must think I'm the most horrible person."

"No way. But you can be honest."

"Okay, so maybe I had a flash of a thought. But nobody would say you haven't worked hard all your life. Not even Pop."

"Only because he's not saying much." Though this is not quite true. Pop's actually been in a decent mood since the immediate aftermath of the incident with Bea, generally behav-ing well during my visits, being soft-spoken and circumspect and displaying what for him is an astoundingly modest demeanor, even pleasant, the unvolubility of which should be frightening me to death but that I'm simply glad for whenever I'm there, the two of us slouched in his mauve-and-beige-accented room for a couple uneventful hours (with him propped up in the power bed, and me in the recliner, likewise angled) staring up at the Learning Channel or the Food Network. This might sound dismally defeatist, but when you can't pretend
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anything else but that your pop is in the home for life and his former main lady is now permanently featuring a bib and diaper, you tend not to want to examine the issues too rigorously, you tend to want to keep it Un-real, keep the thinking
small
because the issues in fact aren't issues anymore but have suddenly become the all-enveloping condition.

Theresa says, "Would you like a party for the big one?"

"Definitely not."

"Why not?" she says. "It'll be great fun. We'll have a birthday roast. We'll invite all of your friends."

"I don't have any friends."

"That can't be true. What about all the Battle Brothers guys?"

"We're still friendly, but we're not friends. Never were."

"Then some other group, neighbors, people from the neighborhood. School chums. Don't you have buddies from your Coast Guard days?"

"I told you, I don't have friends. I never really have. I just have friendlies."

"Then we'll invite all your friendlies. It doesn't have to be a huge thing. I'm sure Paul will be happy to cater it."

"It seems like he's already started."

"Isn't he great? Actually, Paul's the one who mentioned doing something special for your birthday. I didn't know, of course, because I'm so damn assimilated, but in Korea the sixtieth is a real milestone. I guess numerologically it's significant, plus the fact that in the old days it was quite a feat to live that long."

"It still is," I say. "It's just that these days nobody really wants you to."

"Oh, stop whining. In my mind it's settled. We'll throw you a sixtieth birthday party. That will be our present, as we have no A L O F T

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money. I'm sure Jack and Eunice will get you something huge, like a new plane."

"That's just what I'm afraid of." I'm trying to tune in an oldies station on the radio, as the ones that I've always liked to listen to (in this car especially) have somewhere along the line fiddled with their programming, shifting from '50s and '60s songs to mostly '70s and '80s pop, which are of course now oldies to Theresa and often completely new to me. Finally I have to switch to cruddy lo-fidelity AM to find the mix I want, which is no mix at all, just Platters and Spinners and Chuck Berry and James Brown, though it comes out scratchy and tinny like from the other end of a can-and-string telephone. This, of course, is part of the ever-rolling parade of life, slow-moving enough that you never think you'll miss something glittery and nice, but then not stopping, either, for much anyone or anything. And by extension you can see how folks can begin to feel left behind or ushered out, how maybe you yourself come in a format like an LP or Super 8mm that would play perfectly fine if ever cued up, if the right machines were still around.

But they're gone, gone forever.

And I say, unavoidably, hoping not desperately, "I've got some time."

"Sure you do. But you never know, do you, Jerry?"

Theresa, bless her soul, can always bring it on.

I say, "You never do. I could have a bad stroke right now, not be able to brush my teeth, and you'd have to put me in Ivy Acres."

"You could be roommates with Pop," she says, almost brightly. "I wonder how often that happens."

"I'm sure it's rare."

This is a prospect I haven't yet considered, but one I probably need to; not that it will actually happen or that I would let it,
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but I should realize that this is how people my daughter's age might naturally see me, and not even because they wish to.

"But you wouldn't really want that, would you?"

"To live with Pop in the home?"

"No," she says. "Just the home part."

"Is there an alternative?"

"Sure there is."

"Like what?"

"You know."

"I do?"

"Sure you do."

Or I
think
I do, but I'm afraid to say it first, the idea instantly replenishing the abandoned gravel pit of my heart. I think she's talking about what all of us not-for-a-while-middle-aged folks would love to hear whenever we get together with our grown kids, which I'll unofficially call The Invitation. Since they moved into their big house I've been secretly waiting for Jack and Eunice to float the idea that I eventually sell my house and move in with them, maybe agreeing to give them half the equity for my future maintenance by an attractive home nurse, the other half going to the kids' education or an inground pool or whatever else they deem to be worth the misery and trouble.

I've hoped this even despite the fact that Jack and I aren't close in any demonstrable way, or that I'm undeniably only so-so with the kids, being willing to take them to a carnival or the zoo but otherwise unable to sit with them for more than a few minutes in their great room amid the ten thousand plastic toys and gad-gets. I admit even to murmuring admiration over recent years for Jack's half-Asian blood, periodically extolling the virtues of filial piety (which Daisy once accused me of knowing nothing about, after forbidding her to call long-distance anymore to Ko-A L O F T

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rea, as she was running up bills of $200 a month), hoping that he'd someday put aside our thoroughly unspectacular relations and decide to honor some vague natal charge I'd slyly beckoned, some old-time Confucian burden that wouldn't depend (lucky for me) on anything private and personal. On this score I think us old white people (and black people, and any others too long in our strident self-making civilization) are way down in the game, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if the legions of my brethren about to overwhelm the ranks of assisted buttressed life prove to be among history's most disappointed generations.

As for Theresa, I never imagined she would ask me to join her crew, even if she were in a position to do so. But perhaps the current circumstance has initiated in her what is proving a sentimental bloom of hope and generosity, and in the sweet light of this I can't say much now, except to burble, genuinely and gratefully, "You've got plenty to think about with yourself and Paul."

"I know, I know. But so it's even more important to talk about it."

"Absolutely right," I say.

The Dairy Queen boys switch, the second one a bit more tentative than the first, as he seems to have little experience driving a stick, a video game probably the extent of it. The first customer presently turns in to the parking lot, and the kid at the wheel nearly hits him as he pulls out onto the road. We watch him as he bolts down to the next light, stalls, U-turns at the signal, stalls, and then hustles back.

Theresa finishes the milkshake, drilling about with the straw to draw up every last drop. Over the past couple weeks she's gained weight from Paul's four-star training table, as have I, with her cheeks and neck and shoulders looking fleshy and
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