Housebreaking

by Dan Pope

  Five push-ups! Could she possibly be serious? He hadn’t done push-ups since his Navy days, but back then they’d performed marathon sessions, one hundred at a time, more. Leonard was fit. A bit hunched, the years weighing on his back, but not overweight; he’d never been overweight, never smoked, never drank as much as the others—Terri Funkhouser, Myra, Bob Amato; they’d poured it down like water. He had always been the one to drive them home. He’d played golf every Sunday at the country club during the season, competing in tournaments well into his sixties, until at last he’d torn his rotator cuff to shreds slicing a three wood.

  Leonard stretched out on the rug. Good thing Benjamin couldn’t see him now. How could he explain these gymnastics? He took a deep breath and pushed himself off the floor.

  “One,” he said aloud. “Two. Three—”

  He felt it coming, a welling up, like a storm rising.

  He never reached five.

  * * *

  SOME MINUTES EARLIER, sitting at the kitchen table with the newspaper, Benjamin had glanced up to see the dog through the kitchen window—an odd sight in suburbia: a malamute trotting up the street without leash, without master.

  He’d seen the dog before, tied to a tree outside the old farmhouse, roaming the lawn on a thirty-foot line: her dog.

  Immediately, he jumped to his feet. Like any good salesman, Benjamin Mandelbaum knew when to seize an opportunity. He grabbed a turkey leg out of the refrigerator, picked Yukon’s old leash off the hook by the kitchen door, and hurried outside.

  He whistled. The dog turned toward him, both ears raised. When Benjamin tossed the turkey leg onto the lawn, the dog ambled over to inspect the offering, and Benjamin reached out and snapped the latch onto its collar.

  Gotcha.

  * * *

  FOR THE PAST MONTH, since he’d moved back into his father’s house, Benjamin had kept a sort of vigil. Each morning on his way to work he would linger at the stop sign at the bottom of the street to inspect the farmhouse. Most days there would be a workman’s truck or van parked in the driveway, sometimes a whole fleet—plumbers, landscapers, carpenters, painters. On his way home, he would examine what they’d accomplished during the day. The row of tall pines along Mountain Road was cleared, the logs and stumps cut up and removed, the brush fed into a wood chipper. A fresh coat of paint was applied, the house a soft gray, the shutters barn red. The split-rail fence rose up from where it had fallen.

  Finally, a couple of weeks ago, he’d gotten his first glimpse of her, walking her dog up the street. He’d squinted. There was the red hair, down to her shoulders. Yes, it was her, it was his Audrey Martin, he knew in the first instant. That night he’d pulled out the yearbook again. In addition to her senior picture, there were three other shots of Audrey Martin: a candid of her lying on a blanket on the senior green; the group photo of the gymnastics team with her kneeling in the front row; and the cast picture from the spring musical, with Audrey dressed in leather pants as Sandy in Grease, wearing too much makeup. He wondered where her life had taken her since Goodwin, and how she had ended up living on his childhood street. They had expected so much of her; she had everything—talent, beauty, intelligence, athletic grace. (Not to mention that fine ass.)

  He closed the yearbook, distracted. A Pavlovian reaction of sorts had occurred, almost against his wishes, the same thrill that had seized him every June in high school on the day they handed out the new yearbooks, smelling of ink and glossy paper. He had a hard-on. Did the other boys do as he did, race home and flip from one page to the next, gorging on images of Wendy Brewster and Wendy Yelton, the girls’ soccer team photo? Back then, it had offered more excitement than Playboy or Penthouse, the intimacy of knowing the girls in the photos, even if they weren’t naked on a hay bale. He’d turned on his laptop and lowered the volume so as not to wake his father in the next room. He hadn’t had sex in more than a month, the longest period of abstinence of his adult life. Maybe abstinence was the wrong word—did abstinence include jerking off every other night, a forty-four-year-old man tiptoeing downstairs to do the laundry so his father wouldn’t find his soiled boxer briefs? It was pathetic, he knew. Likewise, this infatuation with Audrey Martin. She was someone’s wife now, his high school dream girl long gone.

  So far being single wasn’t what Benjamin had expected. Since Judy kicked him out, he hadn’t gone on a single date. His social life amounted to a stop at Starbucks on his way home from work, where he’d smile at the young woman who handed over his decaf latte. “Would you like your receipt, sir?” To her, he was another middle-aged man, an automaton in a blue suit. Once in a while the pretty barista would come out from behind the counter to sweep the floor or refill the condiments, wearing low-cut jeans under her green apron, a black thong peeking out. The vision caused a hollow in his gut, a desperate longing as sharp as an ulcer. Was this pain going to last indefinitely? Would he be a seventy-year-old codger, alone and unhappy? How could he meet someone new in this town? No matter where he looked, his attentions were inappropriate. He lived in a town populated by married people and their minor children. The trio of schoolgirls studying at the big table in their uniform of blue jeans and Uggs: They were younger than his daughter. The woman with the Coach bag, waiting impatiently in line: Her ring finger sported a hefty diamond.

  During all the years of his marriage it had seemed that single women were everywhere, in stores, restaurants, on the streets. Where had they gone, all those possibilities? At the dealership, an accountant came into the office twice a week to do the books. She was in her late thirties, her hair pulled back, usually dressed in a skirt and a silky blouse. Her arrival in the morning—the click of her heels on the tile floor of the showroom—caused a sort of primordial explosion in his brain, obliterating the possibility of higher thought. But she was off-limits, like the secretaries and saleswomen. He’d learned that lesson ten years earlier, when one of the senior salesmen got the company involved in a sexual harassment lawsuit, costing their insurance carrier a $200,000 settlement. (The fool had been obsessed with one of the female mechanics. He’d left obscene notes in her locker and messages on her home answering machine for six months.) Two hundred thousand dollars! The figure had sent Leonard into paroxysms. “She had to sue? She couldn’t say to him, ‘Go fly a kite’?”

  During his marriage, Benjamin had engaged in two affairs, and both times Judy had caught him. The first was Annika, nineteen and free-spirited, the Dutch au pair. She’d arrived at their doorstep, barely proficient in English, impossibly beautiful. This had been Judy’s idea, hiring an au pair, something she thought rich people did. One afternoon she walked in on the two of them in the guest room, smoking pot naked, with a Swedish pop song that was big that summer playing on the tape player. (Later, whenever the band’s sole hit played on the radio, Judy skewered him with an “Oh listen, they’re playing your song.”) She sent the girl back to the agency and relegated Benjamin to the very same guest room for the next six months. A trial basis, she called it, contingent on his attendance at couples’ therapy twice a week. He went along with it—six months of regret and desperation, anxiety and self-recrimination—until he finally won Judy’s forgiveness. Deep down, he saw the fault as partly hers, for her betrayal with the fireman, although he hadn’t justified his actions that way to Judy. Still, he’d had his mulligan with the au pair; and so they were even.

  But a few years later, he met Rachel Rosenberg, and it happened again. She was his daughter’s ninth-grade Spanish teacher. He met her at the annual parent-teacher get-together. She was freshly divorced, with a rose tattooed on her right shoulder blade, and she never wore panties, not around him at least. In their Cancún hotel room she drank tequila from the bottle and danced to flamenco music. “I used to buy into all that AA crap,” she told him, “before I decided to lighten up.” He couldn’t stop, even after Judy found out, even after she threatened to take the kids and go. Eventually Rachel herself called it
off. She refused to see him. “Recess is over,” she told him. “I need a serious man in my life.” The next year she moved to Boca Raton with a bank president.

  It had been love, he’d thought, stupidly. But Rachel had discarded him like an old newspaper. And he had not even missed her. He found himself relieved to be free from her craziness and self-absorption and drunken drama. This time, Judy let him come back with a simple dictum: That was your last chance. Next time, it’s over. He agreed, elated to win her reprieve. What a fool he had been, to risk his marriage, and for what? His two extramarital affairs had been about sex. Sex, alone. He knew that, in retrospect. He’d had a couple of drunken one-night flings during his four semesters at college, but Judy had been his first real sexual partner, and he had married her. He’d had to get that urge out of his system. After Rachel, he vowed never to cheat again, and he hadn’t, no matter what Judy suspected. In the seven years since Rachel Rosenberg he’d been as chaste as Jimmy Carter, lusting in his heart but nothing more than that.

  Still, he and Judy grew apart. A phantom unease entered into their marriage during that time of fidelity, a slow-growing silence, which got worse after the kids left for college. That silence had done more damage to his marriage than any affair.

  So now, here he was, single: This was what he’d contemplated over the past few years like some tropical vacation, a release from marital servitude, a return to the world of women. Long ago, the summer after his first year of college, Benjamin had rented a cottage on Martha’s Vineyard with some buddies. They would sit on the front porch, the raucous five of them, calling out to the girls who passed by on their way to the public beach. Often a few of the girls would come up on the porch, have a beer from the cooler, join them for a swim or meet them later at the bars. That’s how he’d always imagined being single would be: a procession of women in the summer sun.

  Now, sitting on the front stoop with the leash in his hand, Benjamin waited for Audrey Martin to appear. Her malamute lay on its stomach, picking away at the turkey bone. She would show up before long, he figured. If she didn’t come looking, he would deliver the dog to her. He would play dumb. You look familiar, he would say. Did you go to Goodwin by any chance?

  * * *

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER she appeared, alone, calling out, “Sheba.” When she saw the dog, she came striding across his lawn. “You found her,” she said. That same sparkly smile, only slightly dimmed by the twenty-five years in between. She took the leash from him. “You’re a lifesaver.”

  “Actually, I’m a car salesman. Benjamin,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Audrey.”

  Audrey. A thrill went through him at the sound of her name, even though he’d known it was her. He shook her hand—soft skin, wedding ring, no watch or other jewelry. Her face showed no recognition. She didn’t remember him.

  “Do you live nearby?” he asked, playing his part.

  “We just moved into the house at the bottom of the street, my husband, daughter, and me.”

  “Ah, the new neighbors. You’re doing a terrific job with the renovations.”

  “Thanks.”

  There was a pause, and she patted her dog, looking down. Before she could try to get away, he went into his act, affecting an expression of concentration. “Hey, you look really familiar. Did you go to Goodwin by any chance?”

  Her mouth fell open. “How on earth did you know that?”

  “Your name is Audrey Martin, right?”

  “Wow. You’ve got a good memory. What was your name again?”

  He told her.

  She narrowed her eyes. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember you. Did we have the same homeroom?”

  “No. I was a year beneath you, a lowly underclassman with a serious crush. But that’s not very original. All the guys had crushes on you.”

  She blushed, he was pleased to notice. “Hardly,” she said.

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “How long have you lived here?” she asked.

  “I don’t. This is my dad’s house. I’m visiting, sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “Well, I’m waiting.”

  She laughed. “Waiting for what? The rapture?”

  “For my divorce to become final.” He hadn’t planned to volunteer that information, but her question had thrown him off-balance. “There’s a ninety-day waiting period,” he informed her. “I’ve got—let’s see, what is this, October twentieth?”

  “Yep.”

  “A little more than two months to go.”

  “Is that all it takes?”

  “Ninety days to freedom, yes.”

  “Lucky you,” she said with a mysterious smile.

  Benjamin had no idea how to answer that. “What happened after Goodwin?” he asked, trying to keep the conversation going. “Give me the CliffsNotes version.”

  “I was a drama major at Wesleyan,” she said. “Then grad school at Yale, English literature.”

  “I never finished college,” he said. “I didn’t like it all that much.”

  “You must think I’m a terrible snob,” she said, “giving you my résumé like that.”

  “Not at all,” he said, happy to throw her off-balance. “You were never snobby, it was one of the things we all liked about you. Not like Skippy Brooks and Ginny Hunter and that gang.”

  “Skippy was actually really nice.”

  They talked about former classmates, teachers and class reunions. (She hadn’t gone to any.) He settled into his easy salesman’s style, feeling the awkwardness fade—she had thrown him with that “Lucky you” response. What was she trying to tell him? That her marriage was in trouble? That she wanted out? He rattled off all the gossip he could recall from the last issue of the Goodwin Alumni News. “Do you remember Mr. Dorfman?” he heard himself saying. Their old gym teacher had won the state lottery. “Three million dollars, but he kept his job at the school. He works for a dollar a year now.”

  “You really keep up,” she said, patting her dog. She told him that Gretchen Peters had moved to Paris and married a famous artist, but otherwise she hadn’t kept in touch with anyone.

  They reached a lull. He took a deep breath, not wanting to force the conversation further. He’d made contact. He’d gotten her attention. That was enough for now.

  In the silence that followed, she pulled a leash out of her pocket. “Here, let me,” said Benjamin. He bent down to unsnap his old leash from the dog’s collar. His head was level with her waist, just inches away, so close he could smell the fresh-laundry scent of her jeans. The clasp was stuck. As he fiddled with it, he felt her fingers graze the nape of his neck. He lowered his head, and she ran her fingers through his hair. Her touch surprised him, shocked him, but at the same time felt completely natural, so soothing that he wondered if he were imagining it.

  “You have beautiful hair,” she said.

  “Thanks,” he said, without looking up.

  At last he detached the clasp and stood.

  “Thanks for rescuing her.” She smiled, snapping on her leash.

  “Glad to help.”

  He watched her as she walked away. The dog turned back to look at him, but Audrey didn’t.

  * * *

  HE WENT INTO the kitchen through the garage door. Yukon jumped up and rushed to sniff at his legs, then ran to his water bowl, lapping furiously—a good sound, that hectic splashing and the pushing of the bowl across the linoleum. Sometimes Yukon would plant his foot inside the bowl to keep it steady, a sight that always made Benjamin smile. A moment later the dog padded out of the room.

  Benjamin could still feel her touch on his neck. Yes, she was married, but there were always consequences in getting involved, he had learned; it was the cost of personal interaction. Like the cost of doing business: unavoidable. In the past he’d fallen into entanglements without really meaning to
. With Judy, he hadn’t expected anything more than a few dates. With Rachel Rosenberg, he’d expected a single night, not a full-fledged affair. The bill always came at the end—often in some wholly unexpected form—but that was no reason not to play.

  His thoughts were interrupted by Yukon, whining and whimpering from the hallway. “Hey,” he yelled. “Stop that!” He expected the dog to come running toward him, but instead the whining intensified. Annoyed, Benjamin went down the hall, to where Yukon stood in the den doorway. He pushed past the dog and looked into the room. For a moment he didn’t comprehend what he was seeing.

  “Dad?”

  His father was splayed facefirst on the rug.

  “Dad, what are you doing?”

  Leonard twitched. He seemed to be trying to speak, but only garbled sounds emerged, like those of a person choking. Benjamin bent beside him and rolled him onto his back. Leonard stared blindly at the ceiling, his tongue rolling.

  The dog barked, and the noise roused Benjamin. He rushed to the kitchen, grabbed the wall phone, and dialed 911.

  “I need an ambulance,” he yelled. “Something’s wrong with my father.”

  * * *

  AT ST. FRANCIS HOSPITAL, Benjamin waited for two hours in the emergency room for the doctor to return. He was a middle-aged Indian man, barely five feet tall, with shiny black hair slicked across his forehead.

  “Shall we have a word outside?”

  Benjamin followed the doctor into the hallway. The intercom blared. An orderly pushed a cart loaded with dinner trays. Benjamin had not eaten all day, but the smell of the food made his stomach knot tighter. An old lady was sitting in a wheelchair against the wall, her legs spotted with dark bruises.

  “We moved your father into the intensive care unit,” the doctor said. “He’s stable but his condition remains serious. He’s had a stroke. A blood vessel to the brain was blocked by a clot. When this happens, that part of the brain cannot get oxygen and begins to die.”