by Dom Leone
I don't want to understand everything. The way most things work is beyond me, and that's okay. Like the gas heater. Usually it works fine. but every once in a while, the pilot goes out for no reason. I can never get the thing lit, so I always have to call the gas guy out. It costs me fifteen bucks every time, and every time he has to explain to me what happens to the pilot. All I can remember is that the flame suffocates itself. He explained it to Tina once, then she tried to explain it to me, but the only thing I had at the end of the conversation was the word "suffocate." So the pilot light suffocates itself. To be honest, I'd rather not know why.
They'll repossess thrift-store furniture, too. you know. People don't think about that, but it can happen. Tina wanted a good fold-out couch, but the one she had her eye on was sixty bucks and all we had was thirty. I convinced them to let us pay the other half in a week. That was eight months ago, and today here comes this high-school kid in a truck. He says he's from Pat Brick's and he's looking for a "tan sofa with daybed." He's reading it off an index card.
"What do you want with that?" I ask him. I was sitting on the porch eating potato chips out of a bowl. Was he planning on carrying the thing out by himself? Or did they expect me to help him?
"I came to get it," he says. "The owner owes money on it that Pat says he's never going to pay." The kid was staring at the wooden post in the middle of the porch while he was telling me this. There's nothing there to look at, really. Just some tacks and colored pins with corners of pieces of paper stuck under them.
"Excuse me," I said to him. I sat up a little bit. But how can the owner of something owe money on it? If someone is the owner of a certain item," I said to the kid, "it would seem to me that he or she would decide who owes what and to who it's owed." I picked up the chips and held them out to him. He fished around until he found a whole one, then he took a small bite out of it.
"Are you Jeff Simpson?" he asks me, looking back at his card. I notice he's wearing swim trunks and a long-sleeve shirt.
A blue station wagon with a bad muffler goes by. It makes me think of my father's Rambler. Once, the left front tire fell off while he was on his way to the steel mill. It was the happiest day of his life.
"Sorry," I say to the kid. "Jeff Simpson's no longer with us."
Tina had more dresses than you could imagine. The green one with the straps, the orange hoop skin, her junior-high gym jumper. I tried to remember them all one day, and by a quarter to eleven I had to make some tea and go to bed. That's how bad my head hurt. The thing was, she didn't have any money. Or rather we didn't. I'm still not sure how you say that. Neither of us had much money, and so the both of us together had not much money. Anyway, if you put all of her dresses together in one place, which I don't advise, and you add up what they all cost, what they cost her, that is, it probably wouldn't come to more than twenty-five dollars. But she liked wearing dresses, so who's going to deny her? Some of them are still here.
One time, I was going out with a woman by the name of Laurie. She was from New Castle, and drove a jeep with a rag top. She found one of Tina's dresses under some blankets in the bathroom closet. She held it up in front of me.
"I bet you look cute in this," this Laurie says.
"I do," I said. "But it's not mine."
"Then whose is it?" Laurie asks me.
"Tina's."
Laurie's got kind of a "who's Tina?" look in her eye, but she knew who Tina was. Maybe it was a "what's so special about Tina?" look -- they're pretty similar. Laurie poked around some more and pulled out a few old cosmetics and a box of perfumed powder.
"What do you have here?" she says to me. "A shrine?"
I looked at Laurie standing there with her arms full of Tina's things. It seemed like this Laurie was in the process of deciding something about somebody.
I shook my head no. But I liked the sound of it, shrine, and I thought maybe it would be a nice thing if someday I built one for her.
Two weeks later, my battery was dead. I called Laurie to come and give me a jump. I was over at Norman's and no one had any cables. She said she'd be there in fifteen minutes, but she never showed up.
All right, it's time I admitted it. My couch's days are numbered. You can stay ahead of Pat Brick for only so long -- eight months, in this case -- and then he catches up to you. But I'm laid off at the moment, so the couch is very useful. You can stay out on the porch for only so long, too. Then people start to talk about you. But what can they say? My grass is cut. My yard is kept up. The slats under the porch could use some paint, but that's getting kind of picky.
So anyway, today I'm indoors, taking advantage of my couch while I can and watching a little TV. The show I'm watching is like a miniature courtroom, and everybody is getting all excited over some supposedly nontoxic blocks that a baby had in her mouth right before she got sick. The baby's father is on there, and he's saying the baby could have permanent brain damage, for all they know, and he wants four thousand dollars. A lady from the place where they make the blocks is there, too, and she's saying, why don't you get yourself a decent doctor, all the kid has is a sore throat. The baby's father keeps smoothing his hair over and grinning every time the lady says anything. He's got a picture of the baby that he carries up to the judge, but the judge tells him to go back to his spot, and the judge rules in favor of the block company. Afterward, everybody is all smiles.
I don't know. When they say the blocks are nontoxic, you tend to believe them. People are always trying lo make one thing lead to another, and that just doesn't work. I mean babies are always getting sick, right?
Tina wanted to have a baby. I could never understand why. She said I should stop trying to understand, because I never would. But she was wrong. She thinks men think so much differently from women. She used to say I couldn't see ten seconds into the future. I told her. If there's a person who can I'd like to meet the guy. She laughed out loud.
Sometimes the phone doesn't ring for days, and then other times you get two calls right in a row. It's like people are synchronized or programmed or something. It's like when you go to the restroom three times one day at work, and every time you go, Ralphie Damore is in there, too. Either you and Ralphie are on some kind of a linked schedule or Ralphie spends the whole day in the john. Singer claims Ralphie spends the whole day in the john, but then when layoffs come around Damore's still down there and I'm on my front porch.
This time the phone just rang once. Maybe someone else was trying to get through. I have no way of knowing. Anyway it was Norm.
"Jeff," he says.
"Who's this?" I said to him. I suspected it was Norman but I didn't want to make an idiot of myself, so I didn't let on until I was sure.
"It's me," he said.
I knew who it was. He wanted to know if I wanted to play pool that night at the Oaks. I told him I'd be there by nine if I was coming.
I don't like to go up there that much. Everybody up there is a member of this big family, and that's a great thing according to most people, but it makes me nervous. I still haven't figured out if they're like a family or if they are a family. Either way, you have to be careful what you say around them, and they're impossible to get close to. It's like trying to be friends with a bartender. They'll listen lo you, and they'll talk to you, but there's always this long, thick counter between the two of you that isn't going anywhere. Sometimes there's pretzels on the counter, and that makes things a little better, but you know inside that only members can get behind it. Like I say, I hardly ever go there. Norman loves to, though. He's seeing one of the waitresses. Julie somebody. I tell him he better be careful, but maybe I don't have the full story, so I should keep my mouth shut. When I get the full story, though, on any subject, I think I'll never say another word as long as I live.
Once, Tina found a pair of women's pants in a bag in my car and she got upset. But there was a good reason why they were there, and here it is: I was coming home from work and this woman, a college student, was having car trouble on the bridge. I don't know anything about cars, but everyone was going right past her, so I stopped. At first, she kind of kept her dislance. But after she was sure I wasn't going to give her a hard time, she started talking.
"Tell me something," she said. "Would you have stopped if I was wearing pants?" Because she was wearing a dress.
I said, "That depends on if your car was still stalled or not."
We were standing in front of her car. The hood was up.
I said, "Let me give you a lift."
She said, "Wait a second." She opened her passenger door and reached inside. What she reached for turned out to be a yellow shopping bag with a pair of pants in it. She told me she was going out later, to see a band, and she didn't like to dance with a dress on. Then she said it was awfully nice of me to give her a ride. I said it was no problem, and the next thing you know, it was two days later and I was sitting on the floor at home with a bowl of cornflakes and here comes Tina with the yellow bag. And she's mad. I see the bag and I jump up.
"What's the problem?" I say. I'm ready to explain, if I have to. I'm still eating my cereal, because if you let it sit there for any length of time, it's all over.
She holds the bag out in front of her.
I hesitate for a second, then I start to tell her what happened, but she stops me.
"Listen," Tina says. "I like wearing dresses. Okay?"
I'm just standing there. My cornflakes are soggy by now but there's nothing I can do about that.
"Okay," I say. "Okay."
Tina used to go to something almost every night. Group things, I mean. She tried to get me to go to some of them, but I wouldn't. And it wasn't a matter of stubbornness either. Often I had plans of my own, because that's the way it was with us. We made sure we never did too many things together -- her idea. I used to ask her why, but then it got to where I didn't like that question anymore.
I was painting houses in Pennsylvania three months ago. It's my favorite kind of work, if you can have a favorite kind. I like it because one day you have a white house, then a week later you drive by the same place and it's green. Case closed. Who wouldn't want to be in on that?
Anyway. I was over there with Mitch. Mitch is a great guy, but he wears nice clothes when he paints and he bites the skin around his fingernails. I ask him why he's so nervous, and he says he's not nervous, he just enjoys doing it. That's good enough for me. The other thing Mitch does and since he's a old friend I forgive him for it, but on the other hand if he wasn't an old friend he wouldn't do it, and I'd more easily forgive him for that, is he asks me about Tina. All the time. And when I'm painting houses, I don't want to talk about Tina.
We'll be standing on two ladders at the comer of a house. He's on one side and I'm on the next, but we're only fifteen feet apart, so we can hear each other fine. There's a bucket of paint hung on a bent coat hanger from one of the rungs in front of me, and I'm stretching to reach behind the downspout.
"You heard from her?" someone says. Out of the blue.
From the sound of his voice, you can tell Mitch has on a pair of fifty-dollar shoes.
"Who?" I say.
But I know who he means.
"Tina," he says.
"You wearing your gloves?" I say.
He doesn't say anything. Then he says, "What happened? Are you ever going to tell me what happened?"
This time I don't say anything. I just shake my head, which to Mitch, I guess, is the same as not responding at all, and I dip my brush into the paint. I don't know. I see it like this: The house we're painting is on a lake. Say a boat goes by and a wave comes in. You can say the boat made the wave, if you want to, or you can say, "There's a boat," and then two minutes later say, "There's a wave." We were together, and now we're apart. Is there a point to wondering what happened in between?
You can do a lot of good over a long period of time, and you can do a lot of damage in two or three minutes. Once Tina got a letter. All it was was a letter, but it was from a guy, so I opened it.
Now the thing is, I take her out to dinner for two years, I take her to the movies for two years, I sleep with her for two years, I wake up with her for two years, except for six months when I was on second shift, so one day I open her mail, and that's what she remembers.
The letter was from her Uncle Doug Seevers. It was a brandy recipe. I'm not sure it was really brandy; it sounded more like some kind of wine. Whatever it was, Tina couldn't believe I opened her letter. She wouldn't even look at me. I followed her around the house, promising I'd make the stuff for her, any flavor she wanted -- you could even use dandelions, according to Uncle Doug but she went in the bedroon and wouldn't come out.
Two hours later, she was still in there. I was standing in the hall holding a plate with a tuna-fish sandwich on it. I'm saying dopey things like "You have to eat something," and "Come on, Tina," but she's not saying a word. All of a sudden the door opens and she shoots past me into the bathroom. I turn around and knock hard on the bathroom door.
"Don't talk to me," she says.
I just stood there for a minute. Then I stuffed half the sandwich under the door and ale the other half on the way over to Norman's. I told Norm what was going on, but he was watching the Indians.
"Things are really screwed up this time. Norm," I said.
"No shit," he said. "They better get Monge out of there."
When I came back, the house was dark. There was a package on the counter addressed to me, and it was opened. I knew right away what it was. I could smell it. It was the tuna-fish sandwich. There was a note inside, too. It said "Oops." She's gone, I thought.
But she wasn't gone. She was in bed, sleeping. I got in next to her. I lay there for about an hour looking straight up at the ceiling. Then Tina rolls over and kisses me on the mouth.
Then she rolls back over.
There was enough light for me to sort of see her, so I touched her shoulder. She started to cry.
I thought. That better be some good brandy.
The kid from Pat Brick's was back the other day. He had a different truck this time, a white Ford stake truck. Some muscular school friend of his was with him. I was standing behind the screen door. The first kid did all the talking while his buddy stood there in his little brother's T-shirt and sized me up.
"Jeff Simpson," said the kid. "225 Wilford Avenue." He looked up at me. "Tan sofa with daybed."
I pretended to think for a while. "Jeff Willard," I said.
The kid's buddy folded his arms. "We came for the couch," he said. "Give it up."
I told them if they would wait just a moment, I would send the couch out. Then I closed the door and went to the refrigerator for a Rolling Rock. I sat on the counter in the kitchen and drank it. Every few minutes the big kid banged on the door. He was making the whole house shake, and it's a pretty sturdy old house. I was looking at a little wall hanging, or a plaque, or whatever you call it. It was something Tina gave me. She made the thing. It was wooden around the edges, stained dark on the outside and light on the middle. On the light part it said TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF THE WEEK.
I sat there on the counter, drinking a beer and watching my plaque vibrate because two high-school kids were pounding on my screen door. I thought, "If that thing falls, there aren't enough couches in the world to..." but I didn't know what. I tried to make it make sense, but then I remembered how stupid that was, so I just left it like that: If that thing falls, there just aren't enough couches in the goddamn world.
Some people go to sleep to forget things, some go to figure them out. A week ago, I was having a cup of coffee with Jerry Butler's mother. Jerry Butler is this guy I went to school with. He lives in L.A. now, and he owns two car washes and part of a seafood restaurant. Anyway, his mother was talking about some dreams Jerry used to have when he was a teenager. The coffee we were drinking was black, not because I like it black, but because Mrs. Butler is afraid of milk. That fear was never explained to me, and I'm grateful for that. But the point is, she was pouring me another cup and telling me about this woman Jerry used to dream about.
"She would stand in the corner of his room," Jerry's mom was saying, "and she would say, 'Jerry... Jerry.' And then Jerry would go to the woman, but before he could get to her he'd wake up. It didn't matter how fast he moved. He'd be about to touch her, then Shoosh! He's awake." She sipped her coffee and shook her head. She had the greatest kitchen -- a counter shaped like a bowling pin, for one thing. How often do you see that?
"Not only is he awake," she said, "but he's standing in the middle of his room."
"Jesus, Mrs. Butler," I said to her.
The reason she was telling me all this now was that Jerry eventually met the woman or someone who looked a lot like her in real life, and married her. They have five kids, which is a part of the story I already knew. The problem is, Jerry's starting to have the dreams again, only now it's a different woman. Jerry's afraid to go to sleep, and he refuses to go out in public. He spends all his time in the bathroom.
"Does that make any sense to you, Jeffrey?" his mother asks me. "A grown man of thirty-six? A person can't even take a shower."
I shake my head no, but lhe truth is, it does make sense. In fact, when something makes as much sense as that does, I get scared.
I found the brandy recipe a couple of months ago. Or the wine recipe, or whatever it is. Anyway, I made it. It isn't that hard to do once you have all the stuff, which is basically a five-gallon crock, some sugar, and some fruit. Plus you have to be willing to wait two months for a taste. But this is one of those complicated processes that always amaze me when they work, so I figured I could stand to be patient. It's good to have a project going. That's what Norman says. Once Norm and his brothers got together and built a still behind where his grandfather's barn used to be. But maybe that's a bad example.
The house was always my house, but at one point Tina was the only one living there. The reason was that she got herself a new boyfriend, Will, originally from Seattle, and she would go to his place after work and she wouldn't come home until 1 or 2 A.M., and I wasn't getting any sleep whatsoever, so I went and stayed over at Norman's. He had a twin bed in his basement. He said his brother Rich used it sometimes, but Rich was in Connecticut pouring concrete for the summer. So it was all mine.
I used to lie down there in Norm's basement and think. I used to think maybe I should get a haircut, or learn another language -- maybe take the muffler off my car. I thought of a bunch of things. Then I got what seemed like a really good idea: one morning, I'd bust right in on her. She was always doing something in the mornings, reading or working on stained glass or writing letters or something, and she hated for me or anybody else to interrupt her. But my plan was to bust in on her anyway, and say something like "I'm here to disturb your morning by carrying you upstairs and making passionate love to you." And I'd see how that would strike her. I wasn't sure about the word "passionate," but it was there when I was practicing, so I stayed with it.
I used to lie down there on the twin bed, staring at Norm's old Philco radio, and say, "I'm here to disturb your morning by carrying you upstairs and making passionate love to you. I'm here to disturb your morning by carrying you upstairs and making passionate love to you." Over and over. Then I thought of a new twist that I could say either right after the first part or after we had sex. The new twist had to do with selling my car and buying a van and driving out to the West Coast to live like pioneers, but I wasn't sure how to make that sound good, so I figured I'd just sort of wing that part of it.
Anyway, the day came. I got up early, took a shower, put on the cleanest clothes I could find at the bottom of the bed, and headed over there. I had my line memorized, but I also had it written down on a card in case I blanked out. I got the idea off the kid from Pat Brick's. So I'm standing on the porch and I'm thinking, This is it, how she acts right now is going to tell me everything. Then I thought about that, and I got nervous and started to leave. But right then Tina came flying out the door. She hesitated when she saw me, just sort of stood there with her jacket half on, then she started hurrying again.
"Listen. I'm really late," she said to me. She was already in her car. "I'm on my way to the dentist. There's fried chicken in the refrigerator." And then her car was in the street and she was gone.
I watched her for two or three blocks. Then I pulled the card out of my pocket and started to yell: "I'm here to disturb your morning by carrying you upstairs and making passionate love to you!" I took a breath and continued. "And then I'll sell my car," I said, "and we'll drive to the Coast!"
I stood out there for another minute or so after I lost sight of her. The lady next door came out on her porch to get a better look at me. I waved to her, then I went inside and opened the refrigerator.
I didn't see any fried chicken.
For a while after that, I wasn't getting a whole lot of sleep, and to top that off, people kept coming downstairs and bothering me. The first one was Norman. It was about 3 A.M. or so, and I was lying down there trying not to think about someone named Brian Martin, or his teeth, when Norm comes down and drags a chair over to my bed. He grabs my shoulder and shakes me.
"I'm awake," I say.
"Hey," Norm says to me. "Hey, Jeff. Were we the greatest there ever was? I mean, were we the greatest?"
He was talking about Ping-Pong. We used to be a doubles team in high school. We were good enough to enter a tournament here and there, but we weren't the greatest there ever was. I told Norm we were, though.
"Yeah, Norm," I said. "We were great."
"Nobody could beat us," he said. "We could not be beaten."
"I know," I said.
"Could Shelby and Steve Cooley beal us?" he asked me. "No! Could they score on us? No!" He was waving his right arm around like he was in the middle of a game. "We were the fucking greatest," he said.
"I know it. Norm." I said. "You're right." I wanted to remind him that Shelby and Steve Cooley were seventh-graders, but I kept my mouth shut. He was on the other side of the basement, throwing towels out of a dresser near the washing machine.
"Come on, Jeff," he said. "Help me find my paddle."
"We can't play now, Norm," I said to him.
"Why not?" he said. "Huh? Because everybody's fucking afraid of us. That's why."
"You're right," I said.
He threw a tablecloth out into the middle of the floor. "They better be," he said. Then Norm sat down next to the dresser and fell asleep. There were sheets and towels and linens all over the place. It looked like a crazy person was getting ready to paint their basement. Norm started to snore.
The truth is, we weren't any good at all.
I think one time we came in fifth.
A week later, someone else came down in the middle of the night. This time I was asleep. I was having a dream about Tina and Brian Martin. They were at some kind of a picnic at my house. Every time Tina said anything, no matter what it was, Brian Martin's head would snap back and he would stick his teeth out and laugh like a horse. Then everybody would get all fond of him, and Tina would say, "Oh, Brian," or something. But then whoever it was came downstairs and I woke up.
I was thinking it was probably Norm again, so I acted like I was sleeping. But then I could tell it wasn't Norm, because it was two people. There wasn't very much light, but neither of the people was small enough to be Norman. Then it occurred to me that it was probably Norm's brother Rich, and that he was back from Connecticut, and that he had his girlfriend with him. I was getting ready to say something, but then they sat on the bed and started kissing each other. There was no way I wanted to listen to that, but I didn't feel like announcing myself anymore, so I just sort of edged away from them. After a little while. Norm's brother looks over at the wire spool he had there for a nightstand, and he turns on the light. They were facing the other way, though, and still didn't see me. Then Norm's brother picked something up off the spool and started reading it out loud.
He said, "I'm here to disturb your morning by carrying you upstairs and making passionate love to you." Then he threw the card up in the air. His girifriend laughed like I never heard anyone laugh before in my life. Norman's brother was laughing, too. The whole bed was shaking.
I wanted to slide down underneath it and just stay there. If anyone wanted to see me. I'd be under the twin bed. Norman's brother was trying to kiss his girifriend again, but she couldn't slop laughing.
Then he stood up fast and turned around. He was twice the size of Norm.
"Who in the fuck are you?" he said.
I thought about lying, but it didn't seem like it would do me much good. "Jeff Simpson," I said. "I graduated with Norman." My eyes were shut as tight as they could go.
"You got a sister Margie?" he asks me.
The next time someone came, I knew who it was right away, but I didn't have time to do or say anything, because before I could open my mouth, she was in bed next to me. It was Tina. She had all her clothes on, and I could feel her dress against the side of my leg. It felt like the hoop skirt. She didn't have the hoop on, but I could tell because of the ruffles at the bottom. I was thinking this couldn't be any stranger if it was Norman beside me. I was afraid to even wonder what was going on here. All I could remember was the last lime I saw her.
"There wasn't any chicken," I said.
She didn't say anything.
"You said it was in the refrigerator."
"It was," she said. "It was on the door. In a mayonnaise jar."
"Oh," I said. I was listening to myself breathing.
"Did you look on the door?" she said.
"Yeah," I said.
But I never did. Who would look there for fried chicken?
When I woke up, it was past one o'clock. Tina was gone. But she had to be gone, because she started work at noon. I was feeling better than I had in a long time. I took a quick shower, threw all my stuff together in a bag, and went upstairs to wake up Norman. I told him thanks and tried to shake hands with him, but he slept through the whole episode. I slopped in the kitchen to tuck in my shirt. Then I left for home.
It was strange walking into that house again. It was even stranger when I realized all of Tina's things were gone. Except for a couple of dresses I'd find a lot later. I went into the bedroom and sat on the bed. There was a note on the nightstand. It was a pretty nice-looking little note. It was written in red pen on blue paper. The pen was still on top of the note. The whole setup looked really nice. It looked so good I hated to even touch it. It's still there, as far as I know.
Pat Brick himself came by today for the couch. He had the high-school kid and the weight lifter with him. This time I didn't say anything. I just propped open the screen door and went into the backyard. Lisa Lopresti is supposed to come over later. We're having a corn roast, if she remembers to bring the lighter fluid.
The brandy was ready a week ago. I don't know anything about the stuff, but it lasted fine to me. I siphoned off a bottle and sent it to Tina. After all, it was her recipe. Yesterday she sent me a note. She said she loves the brandy.
Loves it.
Chris likes it, too, she said.
Last night I went outside and dug a big hole and poured in the rest of the brandy. Then I covered it over and went back in the house. I picked up the crock. I wanted to put it on my head and knock on it with a wooden spoon for about a month, but instead I rinsed it out and put it in the cupboard. That's the only place it fits, so that's where I keep it. I don't know much about making brandy, or wine, or whatever it is, but if Tina says she loves it, it must have come out pretty good.