Like Life (13 page)

“Yes, that’s too bad,” said Millie. What should she say? On the car radio there was news of the garbage barge, and she turned it up to hear. It had been rejected by two states and two foreign countries, and was floating, homeless, toward Texas. “I used to have a kind of business,” she explained to John. “It was in garbage and trash recycling. Nothing really came of it, though.” The radio announcer was quoting something now.
The wretched refuse of our teeming shores
, he was saying.
Yeah, yeah, yeah
, he was saying.

“Now I’m taking a college course through the mail,” Millie said, then reddened. This had been her secret. Even Hane didn’t know. “Don’t tell my husband,” she added quickly. “He doesn’t know. He doesn’t quite approve of my interest in business. He’s a teacher. Religious studies at the junior college.”

John gazed out at the snag of car dealerships and the fast-food shacks of Route 22. “Is he a vicar or something?” He inhaled his cigarette, holding the smoke in like a thought.

“Oh, no,” said Millie. She sighed a little. Hane did go to church every Sunday. He was, she knew, a faithful man. She herself had stopped going regularly over a year ago. Now she went only once in a while, like a visit to an art museum, and it saddened Hane, but she just couldn’t help it. “It’s not my thing,” she had said to her husband. It was a phrase she had heard Ariel use, and it seemed a good one, powerful with self-forgiveness, like Ariel herself.

“The traffic on this route is almost always heavy,” said Millie. “But everyone drives very fast, so it doesn’t slow you down.”

John glanced sideways at her. “You look a little like Ariel,” he said.

“Really?” said Millie brightly, for she had always thought her daughter too pretty to have come from Hane and her. Ariel had the bones and eyes of someone else, the daughter of royalty, or a movie star. Mitzi Gaynor’s child. Or the Queen’s. Ironically, it had been Michael, their eldest, who had seemed so clearly theirs.

“Oh, yes,” said John. “You don’t think so?”

USUALLY
in spring Millie hurried guests immediately out into the backyard so that they could see her prize tulips—which really weren’t hers at all but had belonged to the people who
owned the house before them. The woman had purchased prize bulbs and planted them even into the edge of the next-door neighbor’s yard. The yards were small, for sure, but the couple had been a young managerial type, and Millie had thought perhaps aggressive gardening went with such people.

Millie swung the car into the driveway and switched off the ignition. “I’ll spare you the tulips for now,” she said to John. “You probably would like to rest. With jet lag and all.”

“Yeah,” said John. He got out of the car and swung his duffel bag over his shoulder. He surveyed the identical lawns, still a pale, wintry ocher, and the small, boxy split-levels, their stingy porches fronting the entrances like goatees. He looked startled.
He thought we were going to be rich Americans
, thought Millie. “Are you tired?” she said aloud.

“Not so bad.” He breathed deeply and started to perspire. Millie went up the steps, took a key out from behind the black metal mailbox, and opened the door. “Our home is yours,” she said, swinging her arms wide, showing him in.

John stepped in with a lit cigarette between his teeth, his eyes squinting from the smoke. He put his bag and knapsack down and looked about the living room. There were encyclopedias and ceramic figurines. There were some pictures of Ariel placed high on a shelf. Much of the furniture was shredded and old. There was a Bible and a
Time
magazine on the coffee table.

“Let me show you your room,” said Millie, and she took him down a short corridor and opened the door on the right. “This was once my son’s room,” she said, “but he’s—he’s no longer with us.” John nodded somberly. “He’s not dead,” Millie hastened to add, “he’s just not with us.” She cleared her throat—there was something in it, a scratch, a bruise of words. “He left home ten years ago, and we never heard from him again. The police said drugs.” Millie shrugged. “Maybe it was drugs.”

John was looking for a place to flick his ashes. Millie grabbed a potted begonia from the sill and held it out for him. “There’s
a desk and a filing cabinet here, which I was using for my business, so you can just ignore those.” On the opposite wall there was a cot and a blond birch dresser. “Let me know if you need anything. Oh! Towels are in the bathroom, on the back of the door.”

“Thanks,” said John, and he looked at his watch like a man with plans.

“
LEFTOVERS
is all we’ve got tonight!” Millie emerged from the kitchen with quilted pot-holder mittens and a large cast-iron skillet. She beamed like the presenters on the awards shows she sometimes watched; she liked to watch TV when it was full of happiness.

Hane, who had met John coming out of the bathroom and had mumbled an embarrassed how-do-you-do, now sat at the head of the dining room table, waiting to serve the food. John sat kitty-corner, Michael’s old place. He regarded the salad bowl, the clover outlines of the peppers, the clock stares of the tomato slices. He had taken a shower and parted his wet hair rather violently on the left.

“You’d think we’d be able to do a little better than this on your first night in America,” said Hane, poking with a serving spoon at the fried pallet of mashed potatoes, turnips, chopped broccoli, and three eggs over easy. “Millie here, as you probably know already, is devoted to recycling.” His tone was of good-natured mortification, a self-deprecating singsong that was his way of reprimanding his family. He made no real distinction between himself and his family. They were he. They were his feminine, sentimental side and warranted, even required, running commentary.

“It’s all very fine,” said John.

“Would you like skim milk or whole?” Millie asked him.

“Whole, I think,” and then, in something of a fluster, he said, “Water, I mean, please. Don’t trouble yourself, Mrs. Keegan.”

“In New Jersey, water’s as much trouble as milk,” said Millie. “Have whichever you want, dear.”

“Water, please, then.”

“Are you sure?”

“Milk, then, I guess, thank you.”

Millie went back into the kitchen to get milk. She wondered whether John thought they were poor and milk a little too expensive for them. The neighborhood probably did look shabby. Millie herself had been disappointed when they’d first moved here from the north part of town, after Ariel had started college and Hane had not been promoted to full professor rank, as he had hoped. It had been the only time she had ever seen her husband cry, and she had started to think of themselves as poor, though she knew that was silly. At least a little silly.

Millie stared into the refrigerator, not looking hungrily for something, anything, to assuage her restlessness, as she had when she was younger, but now forgetting altogether why she was there.
Look in the refrigerator
, was her husband’s old joke about where to look for something she’d misplaced. “Places to look for your mind,” he’d say, and then he’d recite a list. Once she had put a manila folder in the freezer by mistake.

“What did I want?” she said aloud, and the refrigerator motor kicked on in response to the warm air. She had held the door open too long. She closed it and went back and stood in the dining room for a moment. Seeing John’s empty glass, she said, “Milk. That’s right,” and promptly went and got it.

“So how was the flight over?” asked Hane, handing John a plate of food. “If this is too much turnip, let me know. Just help yourself to salad.” It had been years since they’d had a boy in the house, and he wondered if he knew how to talk to one. Or if he ever had. “Wait until they grow up,” he had said to Millie of their own two children. “Then I’ll know what to say to them.” Even at student conferences he tended to ramble a bit, staring out the window, never, never into their eyes.

“By the time they’ve grown up it’ll be too late,” Millie had said.

But Hane had thought,
No, it won’t.
By that time he would be president of the college, or dean of a theological school somewhere, and he would be speaking from a point of achievement that would mean something to his children. He could then tell them his life story. In the meantime, his kids hadn’t seemed interested in his attempts at conversation. “Forget it, Dad,” his son had always said to him. “Just forget it.” No matter what Hane said, standing in a doorway or serving dinner—“How was school, son?”—Michael would always tell him just to forget it, Dad. One time, in the living room, Hane had found himself unable to bear it, and had grabbed Michael by the arm and struck him twice in the face.

“This is fine, thank you,” said John, referring to his turnips. “And the flight was fine. I saw movies.”

“Now, what is it you plan to do here exactly?” There was a gruffness in Hane’s voice. This happened often, though Hane rarely intended it, or even heard it, clawing there in the punctuation.

John gulped at some milk and fussed with his napkin.

“Hane, let’s save it for after grace,” said Millie.

“Your turn,” said Hane, and he nodded and bowed his head. John Spee sat upright and stared.

Millie began. “ ‘Bless this food to our use, and us to thy service. And keep us ever needful of the minds of others.’ Wopes. ‘Amen.’ Did you hear what I said?” She grinned, as if pleased.

“We assumed you did that on purpose, didn’t we, John?” Hane looked out over his glasses and smiled conspiratorially at the boy.

“Yes,” said John. He looked at the ceramic figurines on the shelf to his right. There was a ballerina and a clown.

“Well,” said Millie, “maybe I just did.” She placed her
napkin in her lap and began eating. She enjoyed the leftovers, the warm, rising grease of them, their taste and ecology.

“It’s very good food, Mrs. Keegan,” said John, chewing.

“Before you leave, of course, I’ll cook up a real meal. Several.”

“How long you staying?” Hane asked.

Millie put her fork down. “Hane, I told you: three weeks.”

“Maybe only two,” said John Spee. The idea seemed to cheer him. “But then maybe I’ll find a flat in the Big Apple and stay forever.”

Millie nodded. People from out of town were always referring to the Big Apple, like some large forbidden fruit one conquered with mountain gear. It seemed to give them energy, to think of it that way.

“What will you
do?
” Hane studied the food on his fork, letting it hover there, between his fork and his mouth, a kind of ingestive purgatory. Hane’s big fear was idleness. Particularly in boys.
What will you do?

“Hane,” cautioned Millie.

“In England none of me mates have jobs. They’re all jealous ’cause I sold the car and came here to New York.”

“This is New Jersey, dear,” said Millie. “You’ll see New York tomorrow. I’ll give you a timetable for the train.”

“You sold your car,” repeated Hane. Hane had never once sold a car outright. He had always traded them in. “That’s quite a step.”

THE
NEXT
MORNING
Millie made a list of things for John to do and see in New York. Hane had already left for his office. She sat at the dining room table and wrote:

She stopped for a moment and thought.

The door of the “guest” room was still closed. Funny how it pleased her to have someone in that space, someone really using it. For too long she had just sat in there doodling on her business cards and thinking about Michael. The business cards had been made from recycled paper, but the printers had forgotten to mention that on the back. So she had inked it in herself. They had also forgotten to print Millie’s middle initial—Environmental Project Adviser, Mildred
R.
Keegan—and so she had sat in there for weeks, ballpointing the
R
back in, card after card. Later Ariel had told her the cards looked stupid that way, and Millie had had to agree. She then spent days sitting at the desk, cutting the cards into gyres, triangles, curlicues, like a madness, like a business turned madness. She left them, absentmindedly, around the house, and Hane began to find them in odd places—on the kitchen counter, on the toilet tank. He turned to her one night in bed and said, “Millie, you’re fifty-one. You don’t have to have a career. Really, you don’t,” and she put her hands to her face and wept.

John Spee came out of his room. He was completely dressed, his bright hair parted neat as a crease, the white of his scalp startling as surgery.

“I’ve made a list of things you’ll probably want to do,” said Millie.

John sat down. “What’s this?” He pointed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “I’m not that keen to go to museums.
We always went to the British Museum for school. My sister likes that kind of stuff, but not me.”

“These are only suggestions,” said Millie. She placed a muffin and a quartered orange in front of him.

John smiled appreciatively. He picked up a piece of orange, pressed it against his teeth, and sucked it to a damp, stringy mat.

“I can drive you to the station to catch the ten-o-two train, if you want to leave in fifteen minutes,” said Millie. She slid sidesaddle into a chair and began eating a second muffin. Her manner was sprinkled with youthful motions, as if her body were on occasion falling into a memory or a wish.

“That would be lovely, thanks,” said John.

“Did you really not like living in England?” asked Millie, but they were both eating muffins, and it was hard to talk.

At the station she pressed a twenty into his hand and kissed him on the cheek. He stepped back away from her and got on the train. “See a play,” Millie mouthed at him through the window.

AT
DINNER
it was just she and Hane. Hane was talking about Jesus again, the Historical Jesus, how everyone misunderstood Christ’s prophetic powers, how Jesus himself had been mistaken.