Eveningland

by Michael Knight

  “Pay attention, please, Dante. This can be fun.”

  “I’m finished.”

  She gave him her best skeptical teacher look. He pushed his square of poster board over for Hadley to see. On it, he’d glued an ad for lunch meat, ham slices on a cutting board, torn intact from the pages of a magazine.

  “What’s this supposed to be?”

  “The Last Supper,” Dante said.

  Even her second graders didn’t understand, but by then, just third period, Hadley was exhausted from the effort of explaining and she let them proceed however they liked, clipping and pasting images of fashion models and movie stars and vistas from travel magazines of places they would most likely never see. She paused at Regina’s stool.

  “Very nice,” she said, not really looking.

  Her attention was focused on the scene outside the windows—Sister Benedicta haranguing a deliveryman in the parking lot. In her left hand, she held a red umbrella. Rain slicked on the pavement. Hadley’s skin prickled. Regina was saying something.

  “What’s that?”

  “I asked what you gave up for Lent, Miss Walsh. I gave up being mean to my little brother.”

  “I gave up giving things up,” Hadley said.

  Hadley didn’t think she could bear the teacher’s lounge over lunch so when the bell rang, she trotted through the rain to her car and shut herself inside, ponytail dripping down her back. It only took a minute for her breath to fog the windshield. She checked her phone. A text from Davis.

  miss you tried to call need to talk

  Hadley tucked the end of her ponytail between her lips and let her head tip forward until it was resting on the steering wheel. She sucked rain­water from her hair. She closed her eyes. She wanted to pray but she couldn’t make her mind go quiet. Words flickered in her head like the mixed-up letters in a Jumble—ring, art, rape, ash, nun, cat, collage—­and she had the sense that if she managed to organize them into coherence she might recognize some hidden meaning, some grand design. After a while, there came a rapping at the window. Hadley lifted her head and spit the ponytail from her mouth. Sister Benedicta loomed in the rain, red umbrella vivid as a rose.

  “Lunch period has been over for half an hour.” She knocked again, harder this time. “Your students are wondering where you are.” She tried the door handle. Hadley couldn’t remember locking it but she must have. “Are you all right, Miss Walsh? Your students are worried.”

  Hadley punched the key into the ignition and cranked the engine. Sister Benedicta lurched away from the car, startled. Her lips were moving but her voice was lost in the rain.

  Hadley merged onto I-10, headed east, no particular destination in mind, hardly noticing the billboards flashing by above her, the other cars. On her left, downtown Mobile emerged against the rain, those old hotels and bank towers somehow flat and unreal, like images in a photograph. Across the interstate sprawled the state docks and the shipyards, tankers and barges on the river, the river pocked by rain. There was a game kids had played when Hadley was a girl. You tried to hold your breath all the way through the George Wallace Tunnel. And as the interstate sloped beneath the river and the city disappeared, Hadley inhaled deep and kept it in. She could hear her pulse all of a sudden, could feel the weight of the river, the pressure of it in her ears. The road sloped down and gently down, her heart pounding behind her ribs, and then gradually back up again, and in the distance, past the red taillights of the cars ahead of her, the mouth of the tunnel wavered into view, round and gray and small as a dime. She imagined herself in the backseat of the family wagon, her mother’s hairdo, the stubble on her father’s neck. There had been no reward back then for holding your breath all the way through, just the vaguely grown-up pleasure of accomplishment. The exit swelled to the size of a quarter, the rim of a wine glass, the lid of a pot and Hadley was put in mind of those near-death experience stories you heard sometimes, the light at the end of the tunnel. There was a scientific reason the stories were all the same. She knew that, though she couldn’t remember what it was. She also knew that you had to return to this life to speak of the other side. Her chest was tight, her throat constricted. Hadley clenched her teeth and stepped on the gas and the car burst out into the day. For a blurry second, before the wipers cleared the windshield, the rain obscured her view, but then like magic, like a miracle, the world came back into focus—a stretch of bridge over the silver expanse of Mobile Bay—and she exhaled.

  jubilee

  These two, satisfied towns gaze at each other like old flames across Mobile Bay—handsome, hidebound Mobile with its lawyers and its cemeteries and blithe Fairhope, pretty Fairhope, with its galleries and boutiques, Point Clear draped along the eastern shore like a string of pearls. Used to be, the right kind of Mobile family escaped to Fairhope in summer for the breezes, fleeing the humidity and mosquitoes and the bad air from the mills. The air is better now but some of those families decided to stay—why shouldn’t life be sweet as summer all year round?—enrolling their children in the little private school, wives fondling tomatoes at the farmer’s market, husbands shuttling half an hour back across the bay during the week, that original migration in reverse, past the seafood dives and bait shops and the decommissioned battleship moored for tourists, to offices in downtown Mobile.

  Such is the case with Dean and Kendra Walker. Here is Kendra in the kitchen, slicing hearts of palm while Dean prepares the grill out on the wharf. Friday, late September. One has the impression that these long evenings will last forever, but already night is settling in by seven thirty and it’s cool enough that Kendra will drape a cardigan over her shoulders when she goes out. While he waits for his wife to join him, Dean drinks single malt and pitches a tennis ball into the bay for their yellow lab, Popcorn, to retrieve.

  From where she stands, Kendra can look out over the great room and through the windows along the porch. The lawn with its Bermuda grass and mossy live oaks. Then the boardwalk and the seawall and the beach, nearly covered at high tide. A row of wharves reaches into the bay, all those hammocks and Adirondack chairs, all those white boats suspended on their lifts. Across the water, a blazing sunset, that marvelous cliché.

  The windows are open. Insects rattle in the grass. She scrapes the hearts of palm from the cutting board into a wooden bowl with black olives and endive. She’ll wait to toss the salad until the steaks are nearly done. Her hands are bare, rings waiting on the sill. Their son, Thomas, named for Kendra’s father, is back at school, a sophomore at the University of Alabama. The past month has been quiet. Kendra washes her hands, replaces her rings.

  She’s outside and across the boardwalk when Popcorn comes bounding down the wharf to greet her. He knows better than to jump on Kendra so he hops and wags, careful not to make contact, and she palms his back to settle him, his fur damp, his smell brackish. “Easy boy,” she says, and off he goes, paws thudding on the wood, to let Dean know that she’s coming.

  And here is Dean in weekend attire—worn polo, white shorts, brown loafers. His ankles are bare. His shins retain the faint patina of his summer tan. He will be fifty in November. Kendra has already picked out the invitations to his party. He does not look his age. He plays tennis twice a week. He has the posture of a military man, though he never served. He is taller than he appears. It’s his eyes, she thinks. The gentleness in his eyes belies his height.

  She takes her place at the wrought-iron table. Dean fixes her a drink. They talk of nothing for a while—his day at work, hers at home—the conversation more rhythm than exchange of information. Music drifts over from the old hotel. Must be a band on the patio tonight. This silver bay is as familiar to Kendra as her husband’s voice but still a mystery, the only place in the world where shrimp and crab and flounder occasionally abandon deep water in the summer and swarm the shallows for no good reason, practically leaping into nets and buckets, presenting themselves for a feast. Jubilee, they call it, voice
s ringing along the shore. There was no jubilee this season but nobody around here seems particularly concerned, least of all Dean and Kendra. They have the sunset and music from the old hotel. They have twenty-two years of marriage. They have good Scotch and a good dog and not a cloud in sight.

  Popcorn drops a waterlogged tennis ball at Dean’s feet and he launches it as far as he can without rising from his chair. Before it hits the water, Popcorn is sprinting for the edge of the wharf, hurling his body elongate into the air. Even at high tide, it’s a three foot plunge and watching the dog make his leap never fails to impress Kendra, the sheer unafraid athleticism of it. Once Popcorn retrieves the ball he’ll have to swim it all the way back to the beach, then run it all the way back out to the end of the wharf where he will drop it at her husband’s feet again. Dean stands and wipes his right hand, his throwing hand, on the seat of his shorts.

  “Well,” he says, “let’s light this fire.”

  In preparation for the moment, he has already stacked the charcoal and rinsed it with lighter fluid and rolled the grill out from under the tin roof. Popcorn returns with his tennis ball, so Dean chucks it one more time into the bay before striking a match and touching it to the coals, drawing his fingers back quickly to avoid the flame.

  September flares out with a heat wave. There is work to be done around the house. There is always, it seems to Dean, work to be done. Sometimes he imagines that his wife begins redecorating in one corner and works her way month by month, room by room until the whole house has been remade and she can begin again. He doesn’t ask questions. He compliments the changes when he notices them. This house has been in his family for three generations but it is wholly Kendra’s now.

  Scaffolding goes up. Blue tarps. Trucks in the morning when Dean is leaving for work. Hammers and shouts. The housekeeper, Rosie, complains that workmen are always underfoot. Popcorn hides under the bed. Hispanic painters in spattered white, hardly more than boys, appear on the doorstep and ask if they might drink from the hose. Then, like shelling a shrimp, the scaffolding comes down, tarps are removed. Glistening, the Walkers’ house emerges. One night, Dean pulls into the driveway and it is as if they have razed the original and constructed an exact replica in its place.

  “Everything looks great,” he tells his wife. “Just really great.”

  They are sipping Scotch in heavy glasses, a fire in the hearth, though it’s far too soon. Kendra drove past a farmer selling wood from the back of his truck. She was inspired. Dean thumbs the thermostat way down so they can enjoy it. On TV, the same old news. They will elect a president in November, less than a week before Dean’s birthday.

  “I was at the caterer’s today.”

  “Hmmm.”

  Dean can feel himself drifting off.

  “We’ll have the tenderloin for sure,” Kendra says. “And oysters, fried and raw. They’re suggesting chicken, too, but I was thinking catfish. Or tuna. Which would you prefer?”

  “That sounds perfect.”

  She nudges him with her elbow.

  “I asked you a question.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, rubbing his face. “Ask me again.”

  “Do you even care about this party?”

  He can hear something close to exasperation in her voice, more emotion than the subject warrants, but he lets it be, figures it will smolder out on its own. Dean votes Republican without fail but he suspects that Kendra is leaning Democrat this year. Her ballot history is inconsistent. She voted for Clinton in ’92, then against him after he cheated on his wife. She voted for Bush both times, then for Obama. Dean can’t suss out the pattern but her private logic moves him. The fire twitches and sags. Popcorn sprawls before the flames until the heat becomes uncomfortable, then, sighing, retreats to the kitchen where the tile is always cool.

  “Is that what you asked me before?” Dean rests his head on her shoulder. “I swear I heard something about catfish.”

  “Don’t tease,” she says. “I’m not in the mood.”

  Ten more minutes pass before Kendra feels his weight congeal against her, hears his breathing slow. She slips out from under him and he slumps sideways onto the couch. Popcorn rises with her. He shakes like he is wet. He looks at her with need in his eyes.

  “All right,” she says.

  Outside, a full moon hidden by clouds, clouds and water tinted by its light like decorations at a dance. Kendra whistles and pats her hip, leading Popcorn up the boardwalk, his tail batting the air.

  Hours later, Dean wakes up on the couch. The room is dark but for the remnants of the fire. Kendra has covered him with an afghan. For a moment, he doesn’t know who or where he is. His heart is pounding. His entire life, his very substance, has been erased. Then he hears snoring—Popcorn dozing between the coffee table and the couch—and the world comes back. His heartbeat slows. The October night is still.

  Kendra sleeps late on Saturdays, drawing slumber over her head like an extra blanket. Dean plays mixed doubles at the club. He will be home before noon, bearing bags of bread and cheese and cold cuts or shrimp to be boiled or takeout from Miss Lulu’s. Bloody Mary mix if they’re out. They will eat lunch, nap, then watch Alabama play football on TV.

  Still drowsy, she carries the paper out to the porch, perusing the sports page for a question she might ask during the game. Dean takes such pleasure in explaining the minutiae. Popcorn keeps her company for a while, then pads over and stands belly deep in the bay, staring straight down into the water, his face serious, lost in concentration. He’s only watching minnows. There was a time when Kendra was jealous of her husband’s other women—that’s how she thought of them—those short-haired, sturdy-thighed tennis ladies, those tan, midlife athletes, but her jealousy, like all unpleasant things, has faded. Kendra is no tennis player. She is a woman who knows how to set a table, how to make a guest feel welcome in her house, a woman who wears her beauty like an evening gown, her long limbs, her extravagant mouth. There is nothing sporty or offhand about her.

  Popcorn stiffens in the water, ears cocked. Dean is home. Even before she hears his tires on the cockleshells, the dog is galloping around the house.

  Half a minute later, her husband appears, screen door slapping shut behind him.

  “I’ve got crabmeat. Fresh off the boat.”

  Kendra rakes her fingers through her hair.

  “I haven’t even showered.”

  “This is how I like you best.”

  She can see Popcorn pressing his nose against the screen.

  “Is that a wet dog in my house?”

  Dean’s eyebrows jump up—surprised, guileless­—above his sunglasses. He opens the screen door and Popcorn jangles out, prancing at Dean’s knees, Dean thumping his sides.

  “You old bad dog,” he says. “You old wet dog. No wet dogs inside. You know better than that.”

  “So do you,” Kendra says, displeased by the pettiness in her voice.

  “How can I make it up to you?”

  She leaves the sports page on the wicker table, pushes to her feet, kisses his cheek.

  “Let me take a shower,” she says.

  What had these mornings been like before her son went off to school, before he was born? She can’t recall, not clearly. Instead a memory of hustling Thomas into church clothes leaps to mind, but that’s tomorrow and she will have no little boy to cajole. While Dean cuts celery for Bloody Marys, Kendra prepares West Indies salad—lump crabmeat, chopped onions, olive oil, white vinegar. Their life revolves from meal to meal. They let their lunch chill for an hour, then eat it on saltines.

  “How did you play this morning?” Kendra says.

  Her hair is still damp from the shower. She smells of coconut, roses. Dean’s tongue darts out after a fleck of cracker on his cheek.

  “My first serve was a little shaky but we won,” he says. “Straight sets.”

  Kendr
a clears the dishes. Dean loads them in the washer. They walk Popcorn without a leash. He trots along the water’s edge, under other people’s wharves, back up to the boardwalk to check in with Dean, the bay mud brown now and rough as bark.

  At home, Dean brushes his teeth and strips to his boxer shorts, his chest paler than his face and forearms. They make love on cool, clean sheets. Lazy, inconsequential. This, too, a part of their routine. Kendra doesn’t think she’ll be able to sleep—she’s not tired; her day has hardly started—but the Bloody Marys have sapped her strength and before long she is falling, falling, the buzz of an outboard motor fussing in through the screen.

  The town of Fairhope was conceived as a kind of utopia, a place where a man might own what he created but the value of the land belonged to all. It was discussed in the journals of the day, visited by artists and intellectuals. Some hundred odd years later, Bay Street is all charming storefronts and cafés. There is art for sale but it’s priced beyond the reach of artists. If you didn’t know better, you might assume that such a place was dreamed up by a woman like Kendra Walker. In her slacks and blouse. Her hair recently styled. You might assume that you know something about her. She sits in her car outside the salon and instructs a talent agent on her cell. She has booked a band for her husband’s party. Dean likes Motown, beach music. He likes to dance. The band will set up in the ballroom of the old hotel. Her son is coming home. On her signal, Kendra tells the talent agent, the band should play “Happy Birthday,” then follow it with that famous Otis Redding song. She imagines herself spinning on the dance floor, passed from Dean to Thomas, a rowdy horn section, back-up singers, the night trembling with music and stars.