The Difference Between Women and Men

by Bret Lott

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Family

  The Difference Between Women and Men

  Everything Cut Will Come Back

  History

  Somebody Else

  The Train, the Lake, the Bridge

  Halo

  Rose

  A Part of It

  Appraisal

  The Issue of Money

  Nostalgia

  A Way Through This

  An Evening on the Cusp of the Apocalypse

  Gesture

  Postscript

  Acknowledgments

  A Reader’s Guide

  A Conversation with Bret Lott

  Questions and Topics for Discussion

  Preview of Ancient Highway

  About the Author

  Join the Random House Reader’s Circle…

  Also by Bret Lott

  Praise for The Difference Between Women and Men

  Copyright

  This book is for

  Joe De Salvo

  and

  Rosemary James

  “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord,

  “when I will send a famine through the land—

  not a famine of food or a thirst for water,

  but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.

  Men will stagger from sea

  to sea and wander from north to east,

  searching for the word of the Lord,

  but they will not find it.”

  —Amos 8:11–12

  IN THE HEAT OF THE FIGHT, THEY FORGOT ABOUT THE CHILDREN.

  They were yelling at each other about an issue neither could now recall. They could only remember that one or the other of them had been wronged somehow.

  Then she’d stopped, said, “Where are the kids?”

  “Of course,” he shouted, “it would be you to take the higher ground. It would be you to bring the kids into this, make me feel like a heel for not thinking about them!”

  “And of course,” she shouted, “it would be you to think I’d use them as a weapon against you!”

  But then they fell silent, and the quiet of the moment—neither could now recall when there had been silence in the house—infused them both with fear, so that they dropped their hands from the authoritative gestures they’d held them in, index finger of one hand pointed at the other’s face, the other hand clenched in a fist at the hip, and let their arms go loose, useless.

  They had forgotten about the children.

  “Where are they?” he said, but she was already out of the room, headed upstairs.

  She could not find them in their rooms, saw only evidence they had been here before: In Scott’s room were plastic models of fighter jets hung by fish line from the ceiling; on the walls were pennants of major league baseball teams and posters of heavy metal bands with names such as The Broken Necks and The Disease. The dresser in Jennifer’s room was strewn with barrettes and combs, the bed left unmade and littered with Barbies and teen magazines, at least a dozen different outfits heaped on the floor inside the closet.

  But the children were not there.

  He checked the garage, saw their bicycles, Jennifer’s with the wicker basket, the purple streamers off the ends of the handlebars, Scott’s with the black banana seat and chrome sissy bar. There was more in there, too, to suggest to him the lives of his children: a half-deflated basketball, a pair of skis leaned against the wall beside the shovel and rake and hoe, a pink plastic Barbie Dream House, perched atop it a plastic jeep, a couple of Scott’s G.I. Joes in the front seat.

  But there was only evidence of the children here. Not the children themselves.

  This was when he remembered the swimming pool out back, stretched over it a green tarp littered with leaves. He feared the worst: his two children climbing under the tarp, then drowning in some freak accident like those he read about routinely in the morning paper. The pool itself had been covered, as best he could recall, since a week or so after Labor Day, when the air had turned cold perhaps a little too early and the leaves had started to change, and as he made his way through the living room to the sliding glass windows onto the back patio, he pushed aside the image in him of his two drowned children and let fill him instead that old joy of raking leaves into piles and then burning them with Scott, the two of them armed with rakes and standing still and quiet before the smoldering heaps, the rich and deep aroma of burning leaves a smell like no other, and he remembered then how he cherished this time with his son, fall’s leaves a tangible truth that we all grow old, that winter is fast upon each of us, but that, too, spring will come again, and the trees will burst wholly green with proof positive of life’s renewal. Father and son, he thought.

  He moved out onto the deck, looked at the pool, the empty trees, the small shed huddled out among them, that place where he kept the pool cleaning equipment and various other summer items: beach chairs, the barbecue, an ice chest.

  But it was the pool he was headed for, the pool and what horrors it might hold for him at this very moment.

  Then he was at the edge and he knelt, lifted a corner of the tarp, fearful of what he might find there.

  He saw nothing, the water opaque and dark, no light other than the sliver he’d let in with pulling back the corner of the tarp.

  He stood, pulled back more of it, the tarp heavy and ungainly, and he felt his heart pounding for the work of it; felt, too, the way his muscles seemed suddenly his enemy, unable and unwilling to exert the force needed to do this work.

  He managed the tarp halfway across the pool, walked the huge sheet of green plastic away from the deep end, until he knew there was enough light to see the entire length and depth of the pool, still in him this fear of what he would find there.

  But there were no children in the pool. He took in a breath, thankful for the twisted blessing this was: His children were not at the bottom of the pool, yet still they were missing.

  He looked up at the trees, at the bare branches up there, and longed for his children, in him the melancholy of autumn, the smell of burning leaves and the image of Scott and himself staring into smoke like some dream he might have had years before, back when his heart was strong, his arms willing and able to work.

  But where were the children? he wondered, and let go the tarp, turned to the storage shed.

  She turned from the bedrooms, headed down the hall toward the bathroom in the vague hope they might be there, Scott maybe combing his hair for school, Jennifer doing her best to French-braid hers all by herself. It was then she remembered her promise to her daughter last night as she’d tucked the girl into bed, that promise to French-braid her hair for school this morning.

  She thought of those moments at the close of a day when she sat on the edge of her daughter’s bed, Jennifer lying on her side and facing the open bedroom door. The bedroom light off, it was then she listened to the girl’s cares and woes, listened and saw in her daughter’s eyes the glint and sparkle of light from the hall, Jennifer’s words a song of life, whether she spoke about the boy she liked, David Burgess, and how he’d drawn with a pen a devil’s pitchfork on her sneaker during naptime; or spoke of how her best friend, Lisa Spuhler, had beaten her at tetherball on the playground; even as she spoke of her brother, Scott, and how he’d let the air out of her bike tires just to be mean, and how much she hated him.

  They were words of a child’s sorrow and joy, and as she listened each night she gently touched at her daughter’s auburn tresses, carefully lifted long tendrils of it away from the girl’s face, laid them behind her head and across the pillow, her daughter’s hair then a swirling
and perfect wave, beautiful hair, hair the same color as her own, hair just like her own when she was her daughter’s age, the color and length and beautiful sheen of it evidence sure enough of the passing of blood between generations, the beautiful gift of life: Mother and daughter, she thought.

  She reached for the bathroom door, hoped to see inside two children preparing for school, and she resolved in the moment she pushed open the door that she would take care of her daughter’s hair for her, would even drive her in to school if they were late as a result of the braiding.

  But they were not there.

  The bathroom was empty, inside only the 101 Dalmatians shower curtain crowded with cartoon puppies, dinosaur and Care Bear bath towels on the racks, the sink counter strewn with even more of Jennifer’s barrettes and clip combs, Scott’s single black plastic pocket comb.

  Only an empty children’s bathroom, and in spite of her fears she smiled at the familiarity of it, the welcome sight of the room, all this evidence of their children’s lives.

  But where, she still worried, were the children?

  “Found them!” she heard then, her husband calling from outside, his voice reaching her through the small window above the bathtub. “They’re out here!” he shouted.

  She felt her heart ease, the melancholy of the missed moments of her hands moving deftly in her daughter’s hair gone now with the good knowledge Jennifer hadn’t yet left for school. She could still braid her hair.

  And what were they doing outside? she thought, as she made her way back to the kitchen, then to the living room, where the sliding glass window stood open to reveal to her a sharp fall morning, bare trees, the swimming pool cover peeled back, the surface of the water already scattered with leaves.

  It was then he emerged from the storage shed, smiling, a proud look on his face, and for a moment she believed he’d use this triumph of his against her once the fight picked up again.

  She saw, too, he had the little Igloo cooler they used to take with them to football games and on day trips, the small one that held only a few sodas, a couple of sandwiches. He carried it not by the handle but with the cooler set atop his hands like a pillow bearing a crown. Or the body, she thought for a moment, of a dead child borne from the depths of the pool. But it was only an ice chest, she thought, and a little one at that, and she felt a brief smile play across her face, felt herself blink.

  He held the cooler with both hands, careful not to tip it or drop it for what he’d found inside it, and now he stepped out of the shed and into light down through empty trees, light so sharp and cutting it seemed to slice into him, a sky too bright and sharp for words.

  She walked around the edge of the pool, came toward him, and he saw how she looked past him, toward the doorway into the shed, as though there might be something inside he’d overlooked.

  She stood before him, and he saw her eyes go from the cooler to his own eyes to the cooler again.

  She said, “So where are they?”

  “Where do you think?” he said, and nodded at the cooler. Still he smiled at her.

  He knelt, still just as careful with the cooler as he’d been since he’d taken it from the top shelf, drawn there by a strange and muffled sound, a rhythm of some sort that seemed to have emanated from the cooler, next to it on one side the dust-covered Coleman lantern, on the other a rusted and label-less can of paint.

  He looked at his wife one more long moment and saw in her features the same fear he’d known until a few moments ago.

  He pulled open the lid, just as she leaned over, hands on her knees, her eyes darting from him to the cooler and back again, not certain what might happen next.

  Then the lid was away, the handle pulled back, and she saw them: their children, there in the cooler. Two small people no bigger than Jennifer’s Barbies, Scott’s G.I. Joes.

  But they weren’t children, she could see; they were adults. There was Scott, his black hair cut short and with a neatly trimmed beard. He was sitting in a recliner, footrest up, there in the cooler. He had on a blue button-down shirt and khaki slacks and leather slippers; across from him, against the wall of the cooler, sat a color television set. Scott held an arm out in front of him; in his hand, she could see a television remote control. He clicked through the stations, tiny pictures skimming across the screen too fast to make sense.

  Next to him was Jennifer, her hair short and in a stack perm. She had on a tiger-striped leotard, purple tights, and seemed to be skipping in place, her feet doing a little dance, her arms moving up and down. Before her was a television of her own, playing on the screen a minuscule woman dressed much like Jennifer and doing the same moves: an aerobics video, she realized.

  All this inside the little cooler.

  She felt tears well up at the joy of finding them, and touched at her eyes.

  She glanced at her husband, whispered, “That was close.”

  “No kidding,” he whispered back. “But I don’t remember them being this—this old.”

  He stole a glance at his wife, who seemed suddenly much older as well.

  She whispered, “And I don’t remember them being this—this small.” She stole a glance at her husband, who seemed no smaller now than when they’d been fighting only a few minutes before.

  “At least I found them,” he said. “You don’t have to criticize me for how big they are.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “That’s not what I meant at all. It’s just like you to think anything I say is an attack on you.”

  “Just don’t start up,” Scott said then, and they both looked at him, still with his hand out, the remote pointed at the television.

  No one said anything. There were only the smallest of sounds coming from the two televisions: the jumbled array of words and music from the programs Scott sped through, and the rhythmic bump of dance music from Jennifer’s video, the instructor’s chirped exhortations: Go for the burn! You can do it!

  “Thank you,” Jennifer said. She dropped to the floor, lay on her right side, and started leg lifts in time with the music.

  After a moment, the father said, “For what?”

  “For not starting up, what do you think?” Scott said. Still he hadn’t looked at them, only stared at the television: his son, leaned back in the recliner, feet up.

  “Careful how you talk to your father,” the mother said.

  Scott shrugged, still looked at the set.

  She forced a smile, said, “So, Jennifer, when did you cut your hair?” She tried to make the words sound easy and informal, as though they hadn’t lost the children, and as though they hadn’t grown old and small and been found in a cooler in the shed.

  “What do you mean—” Jennifer began, then sat up, quickly moved onto her left side, started doing leg lifts again “—cut my hair?”

  “You know,” she said, and touched at her own, that auburn-gone-gray. “Your hair.” She paused. “You used to wear it so—so long and beautiful.”

  “I wore it in a pixie my whole life, Mother,” Jennifer said. Now she moved onto her tummy, lifted one leg and then the other behind her, just as did the perky woman on the television. “I had it permed awhile ago.”

  “I’m trying to watch the television here,” Scott said.

  “But,” the mother said. “But you wanted me to French-braid it just last night. Just last night when I tucked you in.”

  “Must have been somebody else,” Jennifer said. “Sorry to burst your bubble.”

  The father said, “You watch how you talk to your mother, little girl,” then looked at his wife.

  “But her hair,” his wife said to him. “I used to braid it—”

  “I don’t know what a pixie is,” her husband said to her, “but she sure as heck never wore it long enough for braids.”

  “I said I’m trying to watch the television,” Scott said, even louder now. “Hello out there,” he said. Still he hadn’t moved.

  “Maybe you need to get your butt up out of that chair,” his father said, an
d glanced at his wife, winked at her. He smiled, the wink and his smile intended as a signal to her he knew how to handle this situation, though he had no idea, really, what was going on here. Just this: They had lost their children, and he had been the one to find them. Granted, they were much smaller now, and much older. But he’d found them.

  “Listen,” he said. “Listen, Scott. What say we get to raking up this yard? We can heap up the leaves and burn them down by the curb, like we used to.” He paused, took in a deep breath through his nose. “Remember that smell? Burning leaves in autumn. Nothing like it. Remember?”

  “Nope,” Scott said. He brought the remote down to his lap, switched it to his other hand. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Leaves, remember? Me and you leaning on rakes and watching leaves burn.”

  “How do you lean on a rake?” Scott said.

  “I seem to recall trying to accomplish something here, people,” Jennifer said then. She was on her hands and one knee now, the other leg going out to the side and back in with the beat of the music.

  “You never raked leaves in your life,” his wife said to him, and he looked at her. She was looking at him, her eyebrows knotted, face tilted slightly, as though she might not know him. “I was the one out here raking—”

  “The hell you were,” he said to her. “I used to come out here and rake up—”

  “So you started anyway,” Jennifer said. She was standing again, doing another dance with her feet. Feel it in your thighs! the instructor shouted.

  “As would be expected,” Scott said. He hadn’t yet stopped on a station long enough for a complete sentence to be heard.

  “Do you mind?” Jennifer said, and now, finally, she looked up at them both, put a hand up over her eyes to block out the light. She didn’t stop dancing, didn’t slow down.

  “Mind what?” the wife said, and glanced at her husband.

  He said, “Mind what?”

  “The light,” Jennifer said, and turned back to the television. “I can’t see the TV for the light out here.”

  “Not to mention the fact you can’t hear a thing for the conversation out here, too,” Scott said. He switched hands with the remote again. He did not look up at them.