This is Just Exactly Like You (39 page)

OK,
she tells them.
Once, in college, I kissed my professor in a parking lot. We’d had some beer.
It’s a good story to tell, lasts a couple of minutes, everybody laughing, asking questions, wanting to know what else happened.
Nothing,
she says.
That was it. That was all.
And then surely somebody else in the room has something wilder, a trump card, sex in the back of a moving pickup in an ice storm, and she can settle down into the comfort of deferring to somebody else’s story. She’s had her turn. She’s exactly wild enough. She’s been thinking of going back to school when the baby’s old enough—maybe architecture, maybe public administration. Who knows. Soon enough, they think, the baby will be walking.

I was going through a phase,
she probably tells people.
I wanted to see what would happen.
Jack’s been wanting to see what would happen his whole life.

Beth walks across the street, headed right for him, and he can guess pretty well at what she’s seeing, because he can see it, too: Pickups all along the curb and the nose of the cement mixer sticking out from behind the house and the long NCDOT trailer carrying his green octopus and the shrimp and the catfish. Cloud of termites headed back her way. Rena’s car in the driveway again. The planks and the rubber mat, dirt and mud everywhere, Butner and Ernesto and their crew and Randolph & Sons all in the back yard, Hen out in the middle of all of it. She walks up into the side yard, stands next to him. Things he’d like to tell her: That he’s got everything under control. That he knows what’s going on. That if she’d seen the undersea creatures there at the Carolina Flea Market and Undersea Adventures Mini-Golf, she would have bought them, too. Or that he wishes she would have.

“Jack,” she says. She’s calm.

“Hi.”

She takes a long breath. “Whatever this is, you can’t be doing it.” She’s wearing work clothes, clothes she teaches in, pants instead of jeans.

“Maybe not,” he says.

“But you are.”

He still doesn’t know how much he owes for the concrete. “I guess so.”

“What is it?” she says.

“It’s a backyard sidewalk tricycle racetrack,” he says.

She tries to say several things before she says, “I don’t have any idea what that means.”

“It’s a sidewalk,” he tells her. “For tricycles. For Hen.”

“We don’t have any tricycles.”

“He’s got his Big Wheel,” says Jack.

“He doesn’t use it.”

“He might.”

“But he didn’t,” she says. “Before, I mean.”

“We didn’t have this before.”

She folds her arms across her chest like she’s wanting to fold her whole body in on itself. “No,” she says. “We didn’t.” Down in the yard, Randolph & Sons have almost finished pouring the bottom loop of the eight. It’s taking shape. The wet concrete shines. A couple of Ernesto’s guys are pulling a 2x4 across the top of the forms, shimmying down the concrete, leveling everything. “Who are all these people?” she asks him.

“Most of them are from the cement truck,” he says.

“The cement truck,” she says. He points it out to her, but she pushes his hand back down. “I see it, Jack. I haven’t gone blind.”

“OK,” he says.

“Except, my God, I kind of wish I had.”

Now that she’s here, all this feels a little realer than it did with Butner riding the trailer, with Zel drinking her blue drink and wishing him luck. This is probably not the same as the kitchen. This is probably different.

“Are people going to be able to see this from the street?” she wants to know.

“I don’t know,” he says. “We’ll know when it’s finished.”

“When will that be?”

“Today, I think.”

“How will it be finished today?”

“They say it will be.”

“The cement truck people?”

“And Butner.”

“Butner,” she says. “Wonderful.” She turns to him. “What is it,” she says, “that you want me to say to something like this?”

He thinks about that. “I don’t,” he says, finally.

“You don’t what?”

“I don’t think I want you to say anything to it,” he says. “That’s not what I had in mind.”

“Do you ever have anything in mind?” she says.

“Yes,” he says. “I do. A lot.”

“Just not this time.”

“That’s not true,” he says. “I wanted to buy him the catfish.”

“Is that what’s in the trailer?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you get it?”

“The trailer?”

“The catfish,” she says.

“It came from a mini-golf that was closing.”

“What?”

“A mini-golf,” he says. “And I wanted to buy it for him, so I did.”

“I don’t understand, Jack.”

“There isn’t anything to understand,” he says. “We just thought of it.”

“We.”

“I just thought of it. It came to me.”

“And now you’ve got nine people in the yard making a—a whatever this is?”

“Backyard sidewalk—”

“Don’t,” she says. She’s got a pair of cheap sunglasses on her head, and she pulls them down onto her face, a simple thing, something she’s done ten times a day every day he’s known her, and it’s that little motion that makes his body hurt. He probably doesn’t get to want his racetrack and then miss her at the same time, but there it is. “Why is it always like this?” she says.

“It isn’t,” he says. “It’s only like this sometimes.”

“This is insane.”

“It’s not insane,” he says. “Maybe it’s a little crazy, but it’s not insane.”

“What’s the difference?” she asks, her voice pinched. “What does it matter?”

“It matters,” he says. He needs her to see it the way he does. Or try to. “I mean, it’s fine. You can think it’s crazy. But can’t you like it, too?” Butner parks the skid by what’s left of the shed. “Look at it,” Jack says.

“What the hell do you think I’m looking at?”

“But how can you not like it even a little bit? How is this not a little bit fantastic? I’m not saying it isn’t out there, Bethany, and I’m not saying everybody would have done it—”

“Who would have done this?” she says. “Who else in the world would have done this?”

“But can’t you just—”

“What are you asking me?” she says. “How can you be asking me why I don’t like it? How about this: How are you not sorry right now? How is it even
possible
you’re not apologizing for this?”

“I’m sorry, OK?” he says. “I can be sorry. I can apologize, if that’s what you want. I can apologize for all of it. Everything. But that doesn’t make it not here, right?”

“Is everybody else on board with this?” she says. “Butner and Ernesto and all those guys down there? Is Rena?”

“I think so,” he says. “They’re here. They like it.”

“God, that’s even worse.” She pushes hard at one eyebrow. “You’re all completely nuts, you know that? All of you.” She’s sweating in the heat. She says, “I’m not the freak job here, OK? You don’t get to make it out like I’m some kind of bad guy just because I don’t think you and your sidekicks putting a theme park in the back yard is a good idea.”

“I’m not saying that. I’m not. All I’m saying is—”

“What, Jack? What?”

He has no idea what he’s saying. He’s still got Canavan’s coffee cup in the glove compartment of the truck. He still owes him some tomatoes, some azaleas. As of this morning, Rena had a toothbrush in his bathroom. He says, “What if there are some days—not a lot of days, but some days—where maybe putting in a sidewalk isn’t the worst possible thing that could happen?”

“What are you talking about?”

“What if there were some days where you let yourself get surprised?”

She stares at him. “What did you just say?”

He doesn’t say anything.

She takes a couple of breaths. She says, “I’m plenty fucking surprised, Jack. You surprise me all the time. But I’m getting
tired
of being surprised, you know?” She looks out at the back yard. “Clearly you don’t know.” Jack checks to make sure Hen’s still in the same place. He is. “You know what I’d like?” she says. “I’ll tell you what I’d like. I’ll tell you exactly. I’d like to come home, just once, one time, to the house being the same way I left it that morning. I’d like a dinner where you don’t tell me that what you’ve got in mind is some kind of six-story observation tower you want to add on to the back of the living room. A kitchen floor that’s a kitchen floor. A back yard without a cement truck in it. How is it you think that’s so wrong?” she says. “How is that too much to ask?”

“It isn’t,” he says. “It’s a fine amount to ask.”

“Great,” she says.

“Maybe it’s like Hendrick,” he says. “Maybe it’s like—”

“That’s
it
,” she says, grabbing his arm. “Stop right there. It
is
like Hendrick. But that’s not alright.
This
is the part you don’t get.” Her voice is getting quieter. “I love you,” she says. “I do. OK? None of this was ever about that. But listen to me.” She squeezes his arm tighter. “Listen. We already have one Hendrick. One is plenty. I can’t have you being another one. You don’t get to be another one.” She’s blinking a lot. “You don’t,” she says. “It isn’t fair.”

He’s failing. He sees that. He’s not explaining it well enough to her. “That’s not what I meant,” he says. “You’re getting it wrong.”

“I’m not,” she says. “I’m not getting it wrong at all. That’s the whole, whole thing.” She lets go of his arm and starts to walk away.

He says, “I don’t understand why you always get to decide what’s OK.”

She stops, turns, looks at him like if she could make him disappear, wink out of existence right here and now, she would. But she turns back around, leaves him there on the little hill, walks down into the back yard toward the racetrack, toward Hen. She comes up behind him, touches him on the back, tries, it looks like, to pick him up, but she’s done it without letting him know she was there first, a rookie mistake, something she’d never do otherwise. Do not startle him. Rule number one. Hen never saw her coming. He crumples immediately down onto the ground, into the mud, starts kicking and rolling, and just like that, it’s like old times. No Spanish now, no Latinate
National Geographic
trivia answers. She tries to hold him, to get him to slow down, to stop, but he’s too far gone already. It’s a full-blown meltdown, up out of almost nowhere. He loses The Duck, which only makes it worse. Jack stands in the side yard. Ernesto tries to help her, but something’s wound too tight in her head, or more than one thing, and she swings at Ernesto, actually swings, hits him with the back of her arm. He holds both hands up in the air, backs up, shaking his head.
I’m sorry,
Jack can see him saying. He can’t believe she hit him. Ernesto keeps moving back, away. It’s a silent movie down there, all the human noise drowned out by the cement mixer. Randolph & Sons are still at it, pumping concrete into the racetrack. She’s crying, rubbing at her cheeks, at her neck. She swings again, this time at nothing. Ernesto stays well out of reach. Hen’s facedown in the mud. Butner stands up in the skid, locks eyes with Jack. Jack looks away. What he can’t do is take this back. They’re already almost finished with the cement. It’s all but done. Like Butner said:
Make sure you want it in there before you do it.
Beth goes back to Hen, tries a couple more times to get him to be still, but eventually she gives up, leaves him there in his tantrum, walks away, toward the mixer, the wet edge of the sidewalk. Randolph gives a hand signal and they stop pumping. The engine noise drops down to a hum, just the lowered groan of the drum still turning on the truck. The 2x4 guys stand to the sides, their board dripping concrete off its bottom edge. Beth leans over, reaches down into the slurry, picks up a handful, lets it fall back down into the muck. It’s the consistency of cake batter. There’s something plastic about it, something viscous. Rena’s looking at him now. Everybody else is looking at Bethany, watching her pick up another handful of concrete, but Rena’s looking at him.
Do something
, she mouths at him.
Do something right now.

He has to think about making his arms and legs move, has to think about taking the steps, but he does it, does as he’s told. He goes to Hen first, picks The Duck up out of the mud, wipes the lenses on his shirt. They’re not broken, thank God, not too badly scratched. He gets him to sit back up, his whole front red from the clay, and Jack gets The Duck back on him, gets the glasses square on his head, which slows him down some, even if he’s still squirming, still pushing. Jack’s always amazed by how strong he is. Hen’s making his noises:
Bup-bup-bup-bup.
Jack says that back to him, and he calms down one notch more. Jack waits. Hendrick takes a few shallow breaths, grabs a spike, puts it to his mouth, and he talks—he says, very quietly,
Call today for your free brochure.
He’s never come out of one of these talking before. He works the words out around the spike. Jack takes a few breaths of his own, says,
Operators are standing by
, just to try him out, and Hen says right back,
Pellegrino is a three-year-old terrier mix who loves to fetch his ball.
He’s slowing, stopping. He’s one of those prize wheels at the fair. Jack says,
You think Yul Brynner needs a friend?
Hendrick looks at Beth, and says,
I do not know the answer to that.
He says,
Yo no sé.
He puts the spike back down.
She is standing in the wrong place
, he tells Jack, and Jack says,
I know that.
He stays a minute with Hen to make sure it’s really over. This is all new territory. State names, dinner that’s not fish sticks. It’s hard to say what weather might be off on the horizon.