Jernigan (12 page)

She opened the door wide. “What
are you
doing home?”

Home?

I could hear now that the music was Webb Pierce. Which she’d given up trying to play with the kids in the house: Clarissa and Danny thought it was funny to howl along like lonesome ki-yotes.

“Fair question,” I said. “And now, my turn. What’s the door doing locked?” This was the same Jernigan, remember, who’d just been putting his approximation of moves on poor Miranda.

“You’re going to think this is really stupid,” she said. “I was just about to jump in the shower, and I still always lock every door in the house because of
Psycho
. And bolt the bathroom. Nowadays it actually makes some sense, but I was doing this when I was like thirteen. So how come you’re home, sweetie?”

“You haven’t invited me in,” I pointed out.

She gave me a look, then took my hand and led me inside.

I listened for the sound of a man scuttling out a window, or rustling in a closet as he waited for a propitious time to make his getaway. Like maybe while the faithless bitch was seducing me. If she now reached for old Dr. Johnson that would be a shit-sure sign. (I call it Dr. Johnson because I read it in Auden’s list of names for the genitals in
A Certain World
. Jernigan the Colorful.) Webb Pierce sang,
But the one that I’m tied to was the first to be untrue
. And I understood that she was defying me to pierce her web of deceit.

Of course it was just that I’d gone off on that thing in my head.

It must’ve been because I had just been fired. Odd as it seems that I might actually have taken to heart a thing anyone else would have taken to heart. Well, hell, anything to anchor you to the planet, right? Here’s how I reconstruct it: losing the job—ten years of having a place to go and things to do there—made me afraid nothing else could be counted on either. Except maybe afraid’s not right: maybe the opposite.
Wanting
everything to fall apart under me, leaving me in deep space. Wanting what you dread to come true. The twists and turns of Jernigan: what could be more interesting?

“You’re kidding,” said Martha, when I’d settled down enough to tell her what had happened. “How come?”

I shrugged. “Turns out they were going to get rid of me last year, only they took pity on me when, you know, there was the little incident.” Bound to bother another woman to hear me speak of it so slightingly. Though better that than to have to hear myself saying, oh so solemnly,
when my wife died
.

“Well I think it’s
great,”
she said. “And I think we ought to celebrate. Like to help me take that shower?”

So why not be human.

“Good God, woman,” I said, trying to get playful. “Don’t you realize that losing one’s job robs one of one’s symbolic manhood?”

“I’m not thinking about your
symbolic
manhood,” she said. “Ooh, I made him blush.”

“Don’t be vulgar,” I said. “This is serious, symbolic business here. See, for a real man the maw of unemployment is the symbolic equivalent of a big, snapping
vagina dentata
. Snap snap.” I made my hand into a mouth (thumb as upper jaw) and snapped at my crotch.

“You really
do
think that, don’t you?” she said, putting a companionable arm around me.

I shook my head. “Irony, irony,” I said. “With me, always assume irony.”

“Even when you say ‘always assume irony’?”

“Hey,” I said. “You’ve heard of the Liar Paradox? Well, this is the Ironist Paradox.”

“I love you,” she said. “Sans irony.”

“Well,” I said, “since I’ve been sent to the showers anyway …”

“Do you love
me?”
she said. “Oh God, you should
never
ask that. Withdraw the question. Sorry.”

“Slow down,” I said.

“No. I really don’t want to hear it right now. Even if you
do.”

“Suit yourself,” I said. I knew how to get around this one. Easy: be oh so winning. “But can we still have that shower?”

“Yes,” she said. “That we can do.”

Afterwards, in bed, she said, “So this is really true?”

“As a ploy to get my ashes hauled,” I said, “it’s a bit elaborate, no?”

“Are you really freaked?” she said, grabbing a pillow off the floor and tucking it behind her so she could sit up. “I sometimes can’t tell with you.” Apparently we were now to have a conversation about it.

“Heavens to Betsy
no,”
I said. “I’m sure the bank will be understanding about it when I stop sending my mortgage payments. Power company? Pretty loose guys over there. Supermarket—”

She put a hand over my mouth. “Hush,” she said. “Why don’t you sell that awful house and move in here? You live here anyway. What’d you pay for it?”

“Fifty-seven. That was, like, ten years ago.”

“Ten years,” she said, and scrunched her eyes to figure. “So you put it up for probably one seventy-five, one eighty, you pay the bank what you—how much
do
you owe them?”

“I don’t know. A lot. Probably forty-five. We didn’t put all that much down.”

“Okay, so say forty-five. Even less commission you’ve got well over a hundred thousand dollars just
sitting
there.”

“Right. Which the minute I touch I then lose half of in taxes.”

“So you find some tax-free thing to put it in, and you don’t touch it for a while. Keep a little back for yourself, don’t get another job, so you can income-average your next year’s taxes.… You’ll be fine. Hustle together a little money when you need it, you know, odd jobs, this and that.”

“Fine until I get sick,” I said. “Or Danny. What am I doing about health insurance and shit like that? I mean, what if somebody has to have
root
canal?”

“Well Peter, you can’t just live your life in a cringe,
waiting
for stuff to happen. I really believe that’s a way of
inviting
stuff to happen. You could be living here for practically nothing—”

“I.e., on whatever money your ex-husband sends you.”

“So?” she said. “What? It’s good enough to slum around in, but you wouldn’t lower yourself to live here?”

“Christ, give me a
break,”
I said. “I got fired from my job, what, three hours ago? I mean, that’s enough to absorb. Would
you
be ready to change your life just like that?”

“You betcha,” she said. “If it needed changing as much as
yours
does. Sweetie.” She got out of bed and walked naked to the door. “I have to go pee,” she said. “When I get back, you tell me what you want to do.”

I lay there and tried to figure out what I ought to think. I thought I probably ought to think I was being pressured by a crazy woman. If she kept after me about it, then I would know she was evil and meant me harm, wasn’t that right? And then I would know not to do anything she said.

When she came back she had the robe on again.

“Okay,” I said. “Now what
is
this?”

She got under the covers, robe still on, and stared at the hula girl. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That was meant to be just sort of an exercise that I thought might help you. I guess it was stupid to use shock therapy on somebody who’s shocked already. What I mean is, you’re welcome to come live here, Peter. You and Danny. You know that already. I think it could be a nice life. And it could be really good for Danny to have a woman around.
And
Clarissa to have a man. Or if you want, you could look for another job and we can just keep on the way we’ve been doing. Or you’re at liberty to change that part
of it too. I mean that’s pretty much giving you, I don’t know, whatever you want.”

This didn’t sound like someone who meant me harm. Though actually what could be more hostile than giving you whatever you wanted? Thinking about the
Twilight Zone
thing where the guy says he’s going nuts in heaven and won’t they please send him to the Other Place and this guy tells him this
is
the Other Place, nya-ha-ha-ha-hab.

She looked at me. “I just think you could have a more satisfying life for yourself, Peter,” she said. “You were talking the other night about how you used to want to write poetry. You know, you could
do
it.”

“Madre de dios,”
I said. (The other night we’d gotten popped on that moonshine again and I’d been telling high school stories.) “I was talking about when I was fourteen years
old
, for Christ’s sake. Every kid in my little
clique
wanted to be a poet. Like with a
beard
, you know? Because we thought Allen Ginsberg was this great romantic figure. I mean, this was just after I wanted to be Roger
Maris
, okay?”

“Sounds like I hit a nerve,” she said.

“You didn’t hit a fucking
nerve,”
I said. “I would just like to be spared the final degradation, you know? Being a fuckup and a burnout I can deal with. Being a fuckup and a burnout who’s starting to write
poetry
at forty years old, or learning to play the fucking
saxophone
, no.”

“You know,” she said, “it actually sounds like I’m picking up fear of failure? I think that’s so cute.”

“You’re
a twisted fuck,” I said.

“Isn’t that the way you like ’em?” she said. “You’re only thirty-nine, by the way, unless you’ve been lying about your age.”

I did the bang-zoom gesture. Channel II had
The Honeymooners
just before
Star Trek
, which was just before
The Twilight Zone
.

“I’m serious,” she said. “Really, no wonder you like demeaning jobs, Peter. You ever thought about being a desk clerk? There’s that nice Holiday Inn that overlooks the whole Meadowlands. Would
that
be depressing enough?”

“Martha dear,” I said, and put a finger to my lips. “We’ve made our point?”

She tapped her forehead and nodded, then crossed her hands over her chest mummy-style and lay rigid, staring at the ceiling.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” I said.

“Shhh,” she went.

“Okay, fine,” I said. “Listen, I’m going out for a walk.” Knowing I was just being a huffy asshole. Since she was acting out of love, apparently.

4

Against that cobalt-blue sky, the leaves looked morbidly colorful: the hectic yellow, orange and red stages of a wasting disease. You were supposed to think they were beautiful. I hadn’t even noticed them this morning while walking to the car, or driving under the arching trees all the way out to Hamilton Avenue. Oh, completely my own fault: simply having a job needn’t numb you. Obvious example: Wallace Stevens. Any deadass drudge can feel even worse about himself by thinking about Wallace Stevens.

At least this much was clear: to move into Martha’s house with no job and no other place to go was to lose power, imaginary hundred thousand dollars or no imaginary hundred thousand dollars.

If even that much was clear. I mean, if at some point you
wanted
a job, then fine, go get a job, right?

Though like what? And how would you explain when they asked you what you’d been doing for the last year or whatever?

Which in turn was a whole other question: what
would
you do with yourself all day long?

Though on the other hand, just getting some job merely to avoid having to figure out what to do with yourself all day long—Christ. This hand, that hand, the other fucking hand.

I walked left on Maple, went a block and took Nottingham over to Oakdale. This part of town beat the hell out of Heritage Circle. Big old one-and two-family houses, mostly wood-shingled still, though more and more with new aluminum siding or brickface. Big old trees in the strip of earth between street and sidewalk; their roots, swelling
and swelling through the years, now tilted up every third or fourth square of concrete.

On the sidewalk up ahead, a woman was pushing a baby carriage toward me; stroller, I should say. Thing where the kid has to sit there with the world coming at him. Young woman, green colleen sweater for a fall day. A little plump, as a mother ought to be, now what kind of a thing is that to say? Pale, pretty face, straight reddish bangs. Map of Ireland, if Jernigan’s any judge. Still a bit of a flirt, it seemed to me, but now only occasionally wheedled into sex, as is proper for a mother. I can’t believe it’s Peter Jernigan coming out with this stuff.

It bothered me that I really knew nothing about the neighborhood except that it looked like it was still 1953. Which seemed pretty irresponsible, to change your life (to say nothing of your son’s life) without even looking into stuff like that. Well, here comes your chance: a totally disinterested party.

“Hi, excuse me,” I said, and then didn’t know how to go on. Having trouble deciding what tone to try to strike. I’d been going to ask if she lived around here, but that was patently a rapist’s question. I also thought about asking her if she was Irish and noting that I was Irish too. That might sound deranged, but not rapisty.

She stopped, glanced down at her baby, then gave me a quick smile, off-on-off, apparently a sign of attention.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m sort of new to the neighborhood here, and in fact I’m actually thinking of …”It seemed weird to say moving in permanently, because what would that mean to somebody who didn’t know the situation? Absolutely nothing. “Thinking of buying here,” I said.

Boy, never lie: do you see what a mistake this was? New to the neighborhood implies you’re already
in
the neighborhood; thinking of buying implies you’re not. What was she supposed to assume, that I was renting? Oh, probably it all just sounded to her like friendly gabble.

“But what I was wondering,” I said, “I assume you live around here”—sneaking the rapist’s question by her—“and I was just wondering if this is, you know, a good place to be.”

Her eyes were narrowing and narrowing. “You’re talking about safetywise?”

“Well, sort of,” I said. “I mean, not
just
that.”