We Have Everything Before Us

by Esther Yin-Ling Spodek

  His family is gathering in Jilly’s apartment, and his daughter has asked him to come. It is late and he is tired and trying to work off the beer he has just had. It usually doesn’t affect him, because he is a big guy. He won’t drive home if he feels tipsy, and it is an hour and a half to his house from here. He walks quickly along the empty street and beneath the awnings on Chicago Avenue. There are no other people walking, and few cars. It seems silly to wait at the light to cross the street, but he does. These late-night gatherings have become more awkward with the deterioration of his marriage, and the way he and Linda arrive and leave separately. He feels that he has to try to be there if he wants to be in his daughter’s life.

  Jilly lives on a small street off of a main avenue, about a ten-minute walk from the club where she sang. He enters through a glass-fronted door. Her small apartment is wedged between two storefront businesses in an old, multilevel, white brick building with 1919 carved into the cornerstone. He rings the buzzer next to her name and enters the second glass door. He climbs the steps two at a time, and he can hear the muffled voices of the young men in the band as he approaches the apartment. The door is ajar. He walks through it and sees his daughter smile.

  The rest of the group looks up. His mother-in-law is seated in an easy chair, the only one in the studio. His wife is on the edge of a low futon bed. His daughter and the three boys in her band are sprawled on the floor. He already sees that this will be physically uncomfortable for him.

  “Where have you been?” his wife asks.

  He smiles. He wants to keep the atmosphere friendly. He sees this as his job now that his wife has decided to leave him. It might make things easier for Jilly. “Just seeing off the gals. Not a big deal,” he says.

  He steps over the college boys in the band. He wants to tell Linda that she shouldn’t call attention to everything he does, but instead he closes his eyes for a small moment of peace. “Great concert, hon,” he tells his daughter, reaching to kiss her on her cheek. It pains him to lie to her.

  “There’s Diet Coke and beer in the fridge, Dad,” his daughter says. He takes a can of soda from the refrigerator in the corner kitchenette. With that in his fist, he leans against the wall and drinks, staring down at the young people on the floor, his wife primly seated with her back straight on the bed, his mother-in-law beginning to doze in her chair, her head flopped against its upholstered side. She snores softly, and the boys from the band snicker. “Grandma’s making noise,” one of them says.

  From where Phil has stationed himself, he can sense how out of place he is. His wife projects tension, the way her face is alert and the way she sits, upright, her legs crossed at the ankles. She doesn’t meet his eyes—she won’t—and yet he thinks she knows he is waiting for her to acknowledge him with a glance. Give me a break, he thinks to himself. You don’t want to stay married, what am I supposed to do? Every woman I talk to now, like Eleanor, or even look at, you scrutinize, like she is a potential mistress.

  He focuses on his daughter. “What did you think of the concert?” he asks her.

  From the floor, her legs to her side, she looks at her knees, taking on a protective posture Phil has seen many times before when she is insecure, curling into herself. “I don’t even think anyone could hear us,” she says.

  Someone in the band grunts, “They were drunk. They didn’t care.”

  “Wish we were,” another of the band members says.

  Phil wants to comfort his daughter as he did when she was younger. Though now he is almost embarrassed to touch her with his wife there. “I’m sure they could hear you,” he says.

  Again, he isn’t telling the truth. She tilts her head to one side, then downward, and he remembers her as a child, her small pink cheeks beneath the sun hat. When, at that age, she was sad, she would contort her face and he would see her brown eyes flood with tears. Then, he was able to comfort her by picking her up and holding her. He could stop the crying by lifting up the little sundress covering her white belly and pressing his lips to just below her rib cage, blowing a loud, ticklish raspberry. Now, there is nothing he can do, especially with his wife and mother-in-law present. He wants to reach over to touch Jilly’s shoulder, but it is complicated now, more complicated than it was when he could soothe her without words.

  “There will be other concerts, right?” he says. Always be optimistic, he wants to tell her. Or even, It will be fine in the morning. But he knows that she is too smart for that. So, he drinks his soda and watches.

  Funny how he used to be able to comfort her mother, too, with words and gestures, taking her by her shoulders and talking in her ear so that she could feel the tickle of his breath. Now, she is so thin and bony. He wonders what would happen if he touched her. She seems to have stopped eating since they began to divorce.

  A boy from the band chuckles. He is lounging on his side, propping up his torso with his elbow and stretching his legs out between bodies and pieces of furniture. He doesn’t look optimistic. “Other concerts,” he says, and tips back his beer. Jilly is sulking, which is something that Phil knows comes to her naturally. She has always been dramatic. The three band members don’t seem to notice this, or even care, and if they share her disappointment, it isn’t obvious.

  “I’d better get going,” Phil says. “Lots to do tomorrow.” He wants to leave before his daughter tires of him, but he doesn’t know when that will be. These kids never sleep. He doesn’t know how long Linda will stay. She always stays longer than he does, longer than she should. Perhaps because she needs Jilly more than he does, more than Jilly needs her. But Phil can’t tell her this.

  He really does have things to do tomorrow. He needs to clean the house, weed his vegetable garden, mow the lawn. He leaves his soda can near the sink and reaches over to kiss his daughter again. She looks up to him and says, “You could come to the concert with Mom next time. You could come together.”

  “You know how it is, Jilly.”

  “Next time just come with her.”

  How can he say no? “I’ll try.” He pats his mother-in-law on the shoulder and she stirs in her sleep. His wife even tries on a flat smile as he says, “Bye, everyone,” and opens the door, and walks away.

  On the drive home, he tries to keep his mind blank. He sees excerpts of scenes from the evening, his daughter on stage, his wife’s cool looks, her interest in Eleanor’s friend, and, of course, Eleanor herself. And then there is Jilly, “You could come together.” Do children ever agree that their parents should split? How much does Jilly know of his marriage? The cheating, the man Linda is seeing, the church, what does she really know? Does this mean his daughter doesn’t love him?

  West of the city lights he continues past clusters of warehouses, junkyards, then glass office parks lit up as if they will launch, and newly planted farms to the side of the road beyond all of that. His mind is overloaded. He feels it between his eyes and in the pit of his stomach. He is tired. His neck hurts. He puts the Rolling Stones into the CD player because that is what he has, but he doesn’t really listen to it.

  At home, he puts his phone on the table near the front door. He lets the dog out and checks her water bowl. His younger daughter is asleep in her room; he can see her hair splayed above her blanket through the crack left in the partially closed door. He goes to the bathroom attached to his own bedroom, brushes and flosses his teeth. He lets go a heavy stream of urine into the toilet and washes his face and hands. He removes his clothes and crawls under his blanket thinking of how his body and head ache with fatigue. Downstairs his phone receives a message from Eleanor. But she is far away now. He turns his light off, feels a clenching in the back of his throat as if he holds in a sob, and he holds his breath for a while until the feeling dissipates. Then he lies there, waiting for sleep.

  THE VEGETABLE GARDEN is hot under the early sun, and the low stalks tickle his bare feet and ankles. He bends over to remove the weeds, step-by-step, along the space between the rows. Phoenix barks, running and stopping to
bury her nose in the grass. By the time Phil looks up to see that a small rabbit has appeared, Phoenix is on it, ears pricked, mouth open, but then the rabbit is gone, beneath the evergreen bushes that mark his property from the next-door neighbor’s. Phoenix barks again.

  Phil’s youngest daughter is not yet awake. He’d like to make her breakfast one of these days, just as he used to do on weekends before his wife decided to leave him. But she sleeps so late that it’s lunchtime by the time she emerges. Phil’s wife has already left the house. He knows because her bedroom door is open, and her car is missing from the garage. Where would she be after coming home in the early hours of morning? Did she sleep? Has she eaten breakfast? Is she attending the Saturday church service?

  He must have drifted into sleep and not heard her come home. Eventually, he woke when the sun peered through the narrow spaces between the curtain panels, but he does not feel rested. Lately, he has not slept deeply or for long. He keeps books by the bed to read when he wakes up in the middle of the night; sometimes they distract him from the personal thoughts that keep him awake. Eleanor has recommended some titles to him. Phil enjoys reading, but it is like listening to music, he wants to hear what he is in the mood to hear, and sometimes Eleanor’s choices don’t interest him. Yet, he wants to try. He wants to please her, and he wants her to sympathize with him, to think he is a good person.

  After an hour outside, the sun is quite strong. Phoenix is lying in the cool grass on her side. She senses that Phil is watching her and pops her head up, uttering a low, growling sigh. Then she puts her head down again. All this makes Phil smile.

  Soon, when he can feel the sweat on his neck trickle down his back, he goes inside to the kitchen to make some coffee. While it is brewing, he opens his laptop and checks his email. There is a brief message from Eleanor about the night before. “All quiet here,” he writes back. “I enjoyed seeing you, too. How can we see each other again?” He adds that he would like to meet her family as well, but also have the private conversation they weren’t able to have this last time, to catch up. In past emails she has hinted at inviting him for an evening or even a weekend. “We aren’t far from the lake and we could all go to the beach.” Does she mean herself, her husband, and Phil, too? “Or have a cookout,” she had written. Would it be a break from the stress and dead quiet of his home? Would it put her out too much?

  The clock in the family room chimes nine times. Phil warms the shower water upstairs, goes to his closet and retrieves khaki shorts and a neatly folded navy blue T-shirt. He showers and dresses. He shaves. He sees again, out the window, that the day will be clear.

  His daughter is still not awake. And where is Linda? Is she with the younger man? If he goes to church and stands in the wings again, will he see her? By the window, he takes the drapes in his hand and considers a quick drive to church.

  Years ago, when they were unhappy, and she decided not to sleep with him anymore, he found another woman. And they lived distant lives.

  Now he is helpless. He feels the tension in the back of his throat, the ache in his head, behind his eyes, and he takes a deep breath to suppress the sob. He pinches the bridge of his nose until it goes away. He is alone, but he does not want to be emotional, not even if there is no one to see it. So, he looks out at the front yard, the neighbor’s Japanese maple tree, deep red against the yellow brick of the front of the house, the curves of the branches as they dip toward the grass. It is windless and the sun reflects off the street, bright and moving toward midday, its apex, as he watches.

  8

  CLARA MAKES AN angry face as she peers down on her mother’s sleeping head. “You wore my cowboy boots,” she says.

  She watches as Kaye rolls from her side to her back, then opens her eyes and looks up, but doesn’t say anything. Maybe she can’t, Clara thinks. Maybe she has a hangover. It would not be surprising. “Mother,” she says. “They smell like beer. They are caked with mud.”

  “How do you know what beer smells like?” Her mother’s voice is muffled by the blanket.

  “I bought those boots with my own money.” To Clara, answering a question from a drunk about how you know about the smell of beer seems stupid.

  “They were at the front door. I was in a hurry.”

  “Mother!”

  “Until you leave my house, presumably for college, everything that you think is yours is really mine, by virtue of the fact that it is in my house.”

  “But I used my babysitting money to pay for them. They’re three-hundred-dollar boots.”

  “No one your age should be wearing boots that cost that much.”

  Clara looks down at Kaye’s red face. Clara thinks her mother might throw up. So, she leaves, decisively communicating her anger with each weighty footfall.

  Clara lies on the plump down comforter that covers her bed. She had cleaned her room earlier looking for some of her homework. She takes her phone from next to the clock and texts Jenny. “Are you home? I need to get out. My mom’s an asshole.” It is stupid to stay here. Her father is out. Her mother is hung over. Her boots are destroyed.

  How could she have destroyed them!

  Clara takes her phone, her house keys, and puts on a pair of flip-flops. She is out the door in thirty seconds.

  THE HANGOVER IS all Eleanor’s fault, for bringing Kaye to an event where she could only maintain her interest by drinking beer. Kaye hiccups bile. She imagines Eric, her own husband, trying to play the part of the Norse god someday, with the same ineptness as that guy Phil had. But for Kaye it would be different. If Eric had an old flame, an Eleanor, she would be in Scotland. They would have to go all the way to Scotland to repeat the scenario.

  Then Kaye remembers pretending to be a police detective.

  As she opens her closet looking for a sweater to cover her nightgown, she thinks of how sometimes, when you don’t feel well, it doesn’t bother you that you may have acted ridiculous the night before. She spots the packed overnight bag in the corner, something she prepared on a particularly bad night with her husband and daughter. She hasn’t yet unpacked it, and it seems a silly fight over cowboy boots isn’t a reason for her to leave. But the suitcase is there. And it makes her feel better.

  Downstairs she fills the coffee maker for the second run of coffee. Eric seems to have finished the first pot. She doesn’t hear him in the house, but that is normal. He moves in a stealthy way, surprising her when she isn’t ready for a surprise. It is an intensely annoying habit. Mercifully, he hasn’t done it this morning.

  The coffee is bitter and strong, and waves of nausea curl inside Kaye’s throat as she swallows. She fills another cup with water and guzzles it because Eric has once said that this was the cure for hangover dehydration. She pops three extra-strength painkillers and heads for the shower.

  As she steps into the fog of steam and hot water, Kaye considers whether Eleanor’s Norse god could have believed her story about being a police detective. She is too tired to think of being embarrassed by her behavior, though she keeps the possibility in the back of her brain. She stays in the shower a long time. Kaye needs to convince Eleanor not to see that drip of a man again. Not because it would decrease her chances of facing the police detective lie, but because Eleanor should stop pretending she could have any sort of future with him. (Had Eleanor already begun to imagine a future with him—isn’t that how these things worked?) Her Frank is a good guy, reliable if not romantic. Eleanor’s boys are teenagers, and who would want to have to deal with all of that without a man in the house? Finally, Eleanor doesn’t seem to grasp the danger of dating the kind of guy who would bring his family along on a date.

  Kaye wonders if Eleanor will listen to her. Kaye herself hates listening to Eleanor, especially if she is right.

  By the time Kaye gets out of the shower, she decides that she must deal with the cowboy boot issue, as much as she feels that possession is nine-tenths of the law, and that her daughter is being irrational. She wraps herself in an old powder blue terrycloth r
obe, towels her hair, and crosses the hall to her daughter’s room. It is empty and strangely tidy. “Clara!” she calls out. Clara is not downstairs either. She has gone out, probably to report to her little teen girlfriends that her mother is an asshole. Again. To report that her mother is an asshole again.

  9

  ANNIE THE DOG barks. Eleanor begins to emerge from a dream where she has not finished graduate school, has a young family, and is forced to commute to another city to the university where her advisor now teaches. The dog fur, the wet nose in her face, on her eye, rouses Eleanor from sleep. “No, Annie,” she says and the dog retreats from the bed. The light from the windows, brighter than it usually is when she wakes, revives her. She remembers that she has her master’s degree diploma buried in a box in the basement somewhere, and does not have small children whose lives would be ruined by her commute to finish her degree. By the clock, it is eleven, and she doesn’t remember setting an alarm. It is Saturday, the day after seeing Phil for the first time in so many years, which is the next thing she thinks about, after the dog, after waking up, after her dream. After thinking of Phil, she thinks of Frank, who is nowhere near. She wouldn’t want Frank to know she was thinking of Phil.

  She hears Frank’s footsteps on the stairs. The house is over one hundred years old and creaks as Frank climbs. With her head now under her blanket, Eleanor pretends to be asleep. Annie leaps onto the pillow above Eleanor’s head, and traps her under the blanket. Eleanor doesn’t move. Frank makes an apologetic noise, as if not wanting to—but really wanting to—disturb her. He sets a mug of coffee on the bedside table. The scent wafts toward Eleanor. Frank stands over her; she can tell, in that strange way one feels a person hovering like a low-wattage electric shadow. Then he leaves and she feels free to bring her head out from under the blanket and to let her thoughts wander back to Phil and the meeting on the previous evening.