Jernigan (4 page)

“Forget it,” I said. “Look, I’m not trying to tell you how to have fun. The only thing I want to say about it is, if you ever do want to have some kids over to the house to play or something, it’s fine with me.” Part of why I was offering this was that he was spending too much time at the girlfriend’s and I had an idea the girlfriend’s mother wasn’t providing much supervision. Though I was a great one to talk.

He shrugged. “Okay,” he said. I marvelled at the fine balance of
his mind: my offer had just enough of an undertone so that to have thanked me would have compromised his dignity. It was neurotic to worry that he’d been born with something wrong.

“Okay,” I said. “Listen, the lawn beckons. If you want to keep playing, you don’t have to bother with the headphones, ’cause I’m going to be making some noise myself.”

“Okay,” he said. “Except if you’re mowing the lawn I might put ’em on so I can hear.”

“Up to you entirely,” I said. “Catch you later.” And I went back to the garage, feeling satisfied with my son, despite everything.

I hefted the gasoline can: that plus what was already in the mower ought to be plenty. But if I went now and filled the can up again, I’d be all set the next time I had to cut the grass. Nothing like being all set. So I took the funnel off its nail, topped off the lawnmower’s tank, then carried the can out to the driveway. I set it on the blacktop next to the Datsun and went in for my keys, worrying about an explosion. This is how it would happen: black retains heat, therefore heat from the blacktop would touch off what gas remained in the can, which would touch off the gas tank of the Datsun. “Hey Danny?” I called from the kitchen. “I’m going over to Hamilton Ave, to get some gas. Need anything?” But he must have had his earphones on.

At the Gulf station, I stood uselessly watching as the guy filled the gas can—here in the Garden State they actually don’t allow you to be a man and pump your own; some union bullshit—and the digital display raced from cent to cent to cent. And I started thinking about the time I was over at Philip Adler’s with my father and asking, little Irish boy that I was, why he had a candle burning in a jelly glass. Philip Adler said it was the day his grandmother had died. I was confused about whether his grandmother had died that very day, and if so, why things seemed so normal, but I was cagey enough to wait until we left before asking my father.

So after all, I couldn’t just let this day go by.

So I stopped at the mall and found a Hallmark Cards, and sure enough: Yahrzeit lamps with bar-coded labels. Back home, I got out matches and a saucer to set the thing on. I considered calling Danny out to light it with me, but then I thought No, let him be. Out of fear, I imagine. (What fear? Fear that he would finally snap and I
wouldn’t know what to do. Fear that he would, finally, accuse me.) So I took the whole setup into the bedroom, shut the door, lit the wick and said a prayer while staring at the flame: Dear God, please bless Judith wherever she is, or whatever she is. All very theological. And in such terrific taste, too, standing there God-blessing a wife who might still be alive if you had, or hadn’t, done this, that or the other thing. And all the time my father probably looking on from the spirit world with amused contempt, though at least it wasn’t a Catholic candle. This one would keep going for twenty-four hours, and probably then some. Less dazzling than starbursts over a lake, but more lasting. Three or four seconds of starburst compared to twenty-four hours of candlelight, I thought, made a good, graspable analogy to the soul’s short residence in the body as against its duration in eternity.

Let a = the starburst, let b = the candlelight, let c = the thirty-five years of Judith’s life. Though isn’t it true that once you’ve put infinity on one side of your equation you’ve got an equation that no longer makes any sense? I stood looking at the flame, thinking how ignorant I was of mathematics. Then I went out and got busy on that lawn.

It really didn’t need mowing out back by the pool, but since I was doing the front anyway I thought I’d keep it all the same length. It was an easy lawn to mow: none of this shit where you had to go up on two wheels to trim around rocks or what have you. It all broke down into squares and rectangles; I marched around and around, diminishing them. It was a chance to think, that’s what I didn’t like about it. But it was repetitive, which tended after a while to soothe. So, six of one. By the time I’d finished, I didn’t feel any worse.

I put the lawnmower away and headed through the breezeway for the kitchen, forcing myself to stop once and smell the newly cut grass for a second through the screening. On the theory that it was the little moments that counted. A drop of sweat from the end of my nose splatted on the cement: was that splat, too, an event to be cherished? Fact was, the only moment that I really gave a shit about just
then was the moment I could feel that first gulp of cold beer in my mouth, my throat, all down inside. So I went on into the kitchen, letting the screen door slam behind me, and a few seconds later I heard Danny’s door close, way down the hall. Then I realized I didn’t hear the guitar going. So he was probably in there reading. (Little joke.) Then I remembered: headphones. I got a beer out of the refrigerator. I had thought there were four left, but there were only three in there now. Well, so Danny was sneaking beers: okay, could be worse. Probably
was
worse. At any rate, I didn’t feel like confronting him about a God damn bottle of beer, especially when I wasn’t absolutely sure there was one missing in the first place. Be wrong just once about something like that and your kid would never trust you again.

The Yankee game ought to be just about getting started. I turned on the tv and the image gave a little twist as it jerked into focus: green grass, brown earth, white lines. No wonder my father had loved to watch baseball. Assuming it was the shapes and colors that appealed to him rather than the idea of himself preferring baseball to, say, an opera. (This would have been a typical Francis Jernigan move, like the way he used to make the argument that
Peyton Place
was greater than
Madame Bovary
, I forget exactly why anymore.) Me, I just used baseball to numb myself. You know, like everything else. Overhead shot of the infield from behind the plate. Cut to the pitcher, seen from center field, leaning in for the sign. Cut to batter (right-handed), catcher and umpire, seen from field level, near the dugout. Catcher in white, batter in gray. Therefore still the top of the first: imagine knowing this. So the next couple of hours were taken care of. The batter swung and missed, the catcher bobbled the ball, tagged the batter and tossed the ball away and everybody trotted off and they went to the first commercial, for Chevrolet, the Heartbeat of America. I liked the little tune they had in this one, and I also liked knowing that I wasn’t so easily worked on as to want to go out and buy a new Chevrolet just on the strength of some fucking little tune. My shitheap of a Datsun would do fine, and when it stopped doing fine I’d get some other shitheap to get me to and from the station. So at least this was one vanity with which I didn’t have to tax myself.

Then I realized that I was beginning to smell something, if I
wasn’t just imagining it. Smelled like pot, except now I didn’t smell it anymore. Then I smelled it again. Fuck, now this really
did
have to be checked out. I put my beer down on the floor (God damn carpeting in here so thick a bottle wouldn’t stay standing on it) and now I saw I’d tracked grass clippings all over the fucking place. Well, so who was going to come in and be scandalized.

I knocked on Danny’s door. You could definitely smell smoke, boy. “Yeah?” he said.

“I come in a second?”

Pause. “Okay,” he said. “If you want to.”

I opened the door and he was sitting, as before, on his bed, guitar in his lap, headphones around his neck like a dog collar, the padded earpieces touching at his throat. Now that I could really smell it, I could tell it was just tobacco. Impaled on the snipped-off end of one of the guitar strings, a filter cigarette smoldered away. At least he hadn’t humiliated himself by trying to hide it.

“How long have you been doing
this?”
I said, pointing.

He looked at his feet, shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “A year. Am I going to get in trouble?”

“I guess not,” I said. “I mean, not from
me
. It’s not a moral issue.” Which might have been true, but I didn’t really think so. I found something indecently sexual about a fifteen-year-old smoking a cigarette. What I must have meant was that it
shouldn’t
be a moral issue. “But,” I said, “it’s a truly stupid habit. I mean, I know how boring all this Voice of Experience shit is, but believe me. I had a hell of a time quitting, and the fact is that I didn’t even really enjoy the things. Smoking
dope
makes more sense, you know? Not that I want you to be smoking dope, but that at least
does
something, you know? All this does is make you feel lousy.”

“It relaxes me,” he said.

“Relaxes
you?” I said. “Christ’s sake, you’re fifteen years old. Relaxes you from
what?”
Oh, I know, another mistake. I knew it even as I was saying it.

He just looked at me, with contempt.

2

Judith and Danny had enjoyed each other more before he reached puberty, big surprise. Though I don’t know how much you can actually attribute to puberty, since those were the years she enjoyed everything less and less. But when he was a kid Judith used to teach him kid things she thought he should know. Shake Spear Kick in the Rear. Your Teeth Are Like Stars They Come Out at Night. It wasn’t that she was so full of life: what she liked was that the hilarity could go out of these things and leave the shape behind. So she and I understood each other. In that respect. Take the Powerful Pete she gave me. Chrome-plated disk that goes on your key ring, with screwdriver tips at each of the four compass points and a cartoon strongman stamped in the center. The kind of thing a kid would get a bang out of. Its appeal for us was that here was this thing practically begging you to get a bang out of it yet you were too jaded to get a bang out of it. Which was in itself a species of bang. I don’t know, maybe this isn’t so remarkable. Big deal, we both had a sense of camp. Of course with the added fillip of giving Powerful Pete to somebody named Peter. Who supposedly had a powerful peter. Which was getting to be an issue along about then.

She gave me the Powerful Pete on her thirtieth birthday, which she had forbidden me to do anything about. In part for the obvious reason, and in part because we hadn’t been getting along. We were in the car outside the Robinsons’ house, waiting for Danny’s Cub Scout meeting to be over so we could go out to dinner. If you could call Roy Rogers out to dinner.

“Your
birthday and you’re giving
me
a present,” I said. None too pleased with all this martyrdom. Roy Rogers had been her idea.

“Old hobbit custom,” she said. “You give other people gifts on your birthday and that way you get lots of gifts back and they’re spaced out during the year.” She and Danny were reading Tolkien together.
I rolled my eyes. “Oop, sor-ry,” she said. “Pardon the enthusiasm.” I had refused to have anything to do with the Tolkien project.

When Danny found out where we were going he wasn’t any happier than I was. He said Roy Rogers was rotten and why couldn’t we go to McDonald’s like everybody else did. Judith told him it was Mommy’s night to howl, and went
ah-000
like a lonesome ki-yote and that cracked him up. He had fried chicken and an iced tea; Judith had a cheeseburger, french fries and a chocolate shake and said Roy Rogers was her favorite place to eat in the whole world. I had two biscuits, the only trustworthy thing at Roy Rogers, and a cup of coffee.

“Did you ever read
The Answer Is God?”
she said. She was holding up a french fry with thumb and forefinger, considering it from different angles.

“I must have missed that one,” I said.

“You
know,” she said. “About their re-tard kid?” She turned to Danny and said, “No offense.” He cracked up again.

“Who had a retarded kid?” I said. She looked at me pityingly.

We’d only had a couple of glasses of wine before leaving to get Danny, although Judith had a way of getting more into her than you were aware of, always sipping lightly from a glass that was always full. After Danny went to bed, she polished off the rest of the bottle in the refrigerator and opened a new one. I helped her polish that one off, and we’d gotten most of the way through yet another by the time the eleven o’clock news was over. The late movie was
The Girl Can’t Help It
, and we’d been telling each other all evening that we were looking forward to it. When the Little Richard part came on, Judith jumped up and insisted on being danced with. “Are you kidding?” I said. “I want to
watch
this. Look at how fucking scary he is.”

“You pathetic, life-denying—” She shook her head. “I can’t even think of a right noun. A
noun
is a verb of
being
, and you don’t even
have
any being.”

“Okay,” I said. “Sounds like time for beddy-bye.” I don’t suppose I really thought that once her head hit the pillow she’d pass out and that would be the end of it. Probably I just wanted to get the subject of bed stirred up again so she’d really start behaving unforgivably, so I’d have another thing not to forgive. And sure enough. See, we really
were
partners.

“Beddy-bye to do what?” she said. “So you can roll on your side with your limp dick between your legs?”

“Right,” I said, getting up and facing her, all charged up now to throw the Don’t Argue With Them When They’re Drunk rule out the window. “You make yourself so
appealing
, I can’t understand why I’m not hard for you twenty-four hours a day.”

She picked up her glass from the coffee table. “Oh
Peter,”
she said, in her mock in-love voice. “Wouldn’t it be romantic if we had a fireplace right on that wall?” She pointed, then threw the glass. Over-hand. I thought the noise would bring Danny out of his room, but he must have been far down in Stage Two sleep, or whatever stage it is. Either that or he knew better by now. She flopped back down on the couch and stared up at me. “As usual,” she said, “you’re just totally the master of the situation. Judith behaves herself so badly, and all
Peter
is doing is
blamelessly
trying to keep things under control.”