by Bret Lott
“Mrs. Jensen?” the boy called out from the kitchen, and I stood from the stairs, went to the kitchen.
He stood with the tape in hand, a finger to the little handle you turn to wheel it in. He nodded at the laundry room door, where Missy was still yelping away, even louder now. “Is that the laundry room?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. His eyes were on my chin, as though if he were given enough time in here he might actually graduate to eye contact.
“I’ll need to measure that, too.” He shrugged. Maybe he was looking at my mouth now, I couldn’t say.
I shrugged, too. I’d have to put Missy out in the yard first. “Maybe you should go on upstairs, take care of things up there while I put the dog out.”
“Fine,” he said, a little too quickly, and turned, headed around the counter and back to the stairs.
I turned, put my hand on the laundry room door. Missy was worked up now, and I thought of that word, Multiracial, and thought for a moment too on how people would look me in the eye one way or the other, to see if it was a joke or to signal me they understood the wisdom of avoiding the word Mutt in this day and age.
But then I heard the boy on the stairs and remembered Ben asleep in the guest room, and I thought maybe that would be nice, letting the boy walk in on him, wake him up. An appraiser looking in on my husband for a kind of appraisal of his life: going bankrupt and sleeping away his job. That might wake him up, I thought, in more ways than one: a stranger looking down on him in bed, appraising him.
“Excuse me!” I called out, trying to make my voice sound like a whisper and be loud enough to hear, like I didn’t want him to wake anybody up. Which was a lie. I placed my coffee cup on the counter, called out “Excuse me!” again, and headed for the stairs.
He stood at the top, half turned, clipboard at the ready, the video camera still hung at his shoulder. I started up, smiling, and it seemed maybe he was looking at my nose now.
“My husband,” I whispered. “Ben. He’s asleep up here, so we’ll need to be quiet.”
He looked down at the clipboard, like it might speak to him. “But I’ll need to take a look,” he said. He shrugged. “You know. To get the measurements. To take a look.”
“Oh, that’s fine,” I said, and passed him. He took a step back, still with his eyes to the clipboard. “We’ll just need to be quiet. He’s having a tough time with all this. He’s not sleeping well, not since we’ve filed…”
I let the words trail off, watching him to see if he knew the blank I’d left him to fill in. I was at the guest room door now, the first one on the left, my hand to the knob, just like it’d been for the laundry room a few seconds ago, and I could still hear Missy down there, yelping away.
Why wasn’t Ben awake yet, I wondered for an instant, with Missy yelping like that?
But then the boy gave a hard nod, and finally he let his eyes meet mine. “Bankruptcy,” he said. “I know.” He shrugged, and his eyes went right back to the clipboard. “This is a difficult thing.” He shrugged again.
He’d looked at me only that long: three words. But long enough to hand me a lie. He didn’t know what this was like. He had no clue.
I thought for a moment about leaving the door shut, about ushering him downstairs and sending him on his way for lying to me like this. But here we were, solvency our aim. My husband about to be awakened from sleep.
I opened the door, stepped in.
There sat the bed, empty. Stripped to the mattress. Even the pillow was gone. The closet door stood halfway open, and I could see inside there a couple of empty hangers. Nothing else.
I looked at all this for a few seconds; looked at it, tried to take it in. To figure it out: an empty room.
But then I remembered I wasn’t alone, and I looked behind me at the boy, then at the room, at the boy again. He stood in the doorway, his mouth open a bit, clipboard at the ready, and then he let his eyes meet mine again, but for even a shorter time. Not even long enough for a word.
But what could he have said? Or me?
He only went to the far wall, laid the end of the tape measure on the floor, started reeling it out, measuring.
Missy yelped.
I was still in the room, sitting on the mattress, when he finished with the rest of the upstairs. He stood out in the hall, looking at the clipboard, and said, “Mrs. Jensen, we need to get a look at that laundry room now.”
I stood. The laundry room, I thought. What does that mean, the laundry room?
But then it came to me: my life, this house. Empty hangers, a barking dog.
I didn’t even bother looking at him as I came out of the room, headed down the stairs. We had work to do. We had the laundry room.
And then I was in the kitchen, and I had hold of my coffee cup. I put my hands around it, took a sip: cold. But it didn’t matter. Alaska didn’t matter, and I wondered where in the house the appraiser’s cup was, wondered if the forest had grown back now that the coffee had gone cold, and I saw Smokey Bear waving, saw a green forest, lush and alive.
Starting Over, I thought. Bankrupt, I thought.
I looked at him, dared him to look at me one more time. There were things I could tell him about difficulty he would never know, things I could tell him without opening my mouth, without letting out the kinds of things that made for betrayal: words. I could let him know it all with only my eyes.
But he wouldn’t look at me. He only cleared his throat, glanced at his watch, adjusted the camera strap on his shoulder.
I opened the door, the appraiser a few feet behind me, tape measure ready.
Here was Missy, our Mutt. Our Bitch Mutt.
I let her go, and she made a beeline for the appraiser’s leg.
So I’d lied about her being a barker. About her being a sweetie. Truth was, she’d bite you soon as look at you.
I looked at him, this boy. The appraiser. Missy was already latched on, her short hair bristled at the neck, black and white and brown and yellow fur all blurred with the way she shook her head, holding on.
The boy had that leg out in front of him like a dancer. He dropped the clipboard, the tape, even the video camera, all of them making loud noises in this empty house, the place a lot quieter now Missy’d stopped yelping.
“Help!” he said, first quiet, then again, louder. “Help!” He was looking at me as best he could, his eyes shooting from the dog to me, him dancing there in my kitchen, this boy trying to shake off my dog. But he was looking at me, his eyes into mine, finally.
“She’s a sweetie,” I said, testing the words, the lie of them.
“Get it off me!” he shouted now, his eyes pleading, or at least the shard of them I could see when he wasn’t looking at the dog. “Help!” he shouted, and now he was kicking full force, the dog holding on for dear life.
“Heirloom,” I said, testing the truth this time. “A thousand bucks,” I said.
Still he kicked, and now I picked up my coffee, sipped at it and winced, as though it were hot.
“Appraisal,” I said, my eyes hard on him while still he danced, me waiting to see in his eyes a sense of humor about life, about all things, about the difficulty in living he’d told me he knew, and now I could see a little blossom of blood on his pant leg, there where Missy had hold of him, our sweetie holding on tighter and tighter.
I watched for whether or not he could see how thin and stupid words are once you try to make them something else. Or if he was like most every idiot who nodded sagely, as if he understood.
But his eyes were only pleading.
“Solvency,” I said; then, “Bankrupt,” and I waited.
IT IS SO HOT CAROL AND LEE FINALLY DECIDE TO ABANDON THEIR apartment and check into a motel, both knowing full well they cannot afford it.
“It damn well better have air-conditioning at least,” Lee calls to Carol while she is on the phone.
She puts her hand over the receiver. “Will you shut up? It does. And a swimming pool.” She takes her hand off the phone and asks about prices.
She says to her husband, “Forty-nine dollars a night.”
He does not turn from the couch, does not move in any way to signal her what to do. The baby is sitting on his lap, and Lee jiggles him to keep him from crying.
It is seven-thirty in the morning. They have been awake since four twenty-one with the baby. None of them could sleep in the heat.
“Lee?” Carol says, wanting an answer. I would do it, she thinks. I would pay one hundred dollars a night to get out of here. “Lee?”
“How long is this supposed to last?” he says. “The heat.” They cannot afford even one night, he knows.
“Until day after tomorrow. That’s two nights.”
“Hell, let’s do it,” he says, resigned, as if the matter is no longer in his hands, is now her responsibility. Lee stops bouncing the baby for only a moment, and he cries. Dressed only in a diaper and T-shirt, the baby is already soaked from sweat. Lee gently blows on the boy, temporarily cooling him down and temporarily stopping the crying.
After Lee leaves for work, Carol begins packing a small suitcase for the three of them. Check-in time is noon, and she plans to be right there, the baby in one arm, the suitcase in the other. She tries to imagine what they will need, decides on swimsuits, shorts, two shirts apiece, and of course underwear. And her uniform for work the next day. And toiletries. And there’s the baby’s port-a-crib. And the baby bag, the baby seat, the formula…. She stops thinking of all she needs when she realizes it will probably take two or three trips to the car and back just to load all they will need for two nights.
She decides to try on her swimsuit, the one she wore two summers ago, before she was pregnant. She knows she will most likely not fit into it, and she is right: the suit, a purple maillot with white lilies all over, cuts in at her thighs, barely holds in her breasts. She stands before the dresser mirror, turning sideways, looking over her shoulder at her buttocks, then facing front and looking at what she thinks are her enormous breasts, bulging stomach, fat thighs. She takes off her swimsuit and stands before the mirror, naked. She knows she is not as fat as all that; still, there are stretch marks down her abdomen and around her hips, and small ones on the side of each breast. She sits on the edge of the bed, and cries.
At least I feel cooler with no clothes on, she thinks. The baby, in an infant seat on the floor, looks at her, cooing. She wipes tears away, picks up the baby, and goes to the kitchen for a glass of ice water.
The sky is a dusty yellow all day long, at least the small patch of it Lee can see out the window in his office. The radio announces that a smog alert has been issued for the valley, and Lee takes in a deep breath. The pain he feels is far down in his lungs, a dull ache signaling that indeed the air is full of dirt. He coughs, and goes back to his stack of purchase orders.
On the way home, he just misses rear-ending the car in front of him, traffic on the freeway stopping dead several times. He is preoccupied with the idea of the motel and pool and the air-conditioning. He takes his exit off the freeway and drives past his apartment complex. He smiles, thinking about the sweltering heat inside that small place.
It is freezing inside the motel office; goose bumps appear immediately on his arms and chest. He can feel his legs prickling against the inside of his pant legs, and he scratches at his calves.
He rings the service bell, and an elderly Vietnamese woman comes out from the inner office. She is dressed in a purple and gold paisley dashiki and black slacks and moves slowly, determinedly, as though her steps from the inner office are choreographed. She reminds him of one of those life-size mannequins that emerge from huge clocks in Germany, on the hour every hour, to chop down trees or to play trumpets or simply to bow or curtsy, then disappear until the next hour. Clocks he has seen on television.
She walks slowly to the front desk, pulls from a drawer a pen and register form, sets them on the desk. She turns the ledger around to him, picks up the pen, then looks at him.
“Name?” she says, though the inflection is barely present, and the question becomes for him a demand.
“Mason,” he says. “Lee Mason. My wife is already here.”
The woman looks down from him to the large ledger, turns it around to face her, and slowly moves a finger down the list of names. “Mason,” she says. “Mason.” Her finger stops. She smiles and looks up at him.
All her teeth are capped in gold, and he feels more goose bumps form, though he is not sure it is the temperature in here or this woman with gold teeth.
“Mason,” she says again. “Mason, your wife leave you.”
“What?” he says, shaking his head a little, as though he were hard of hearing.
She grins even more. “Mason, your wife leaving you. She come here. Baby, suitcase. She crying.” The old woman slowly motions with her hands down her face, a graceful streaking of fingertips that, he supposes, represents his wife’s tears.
“No,” he says. “We’re checking in to stay through this heat. Through this heat wave. I had to work today, so she had to check in herself.”
The woman throws her head back quickly and lets out a long, high laugh, her whole body shaking. This move startles Lee, and it is in this moment he resolves to leave this motel, to get out of there with his wife and child as soon as he can and find another place to stay.
She stops laughing, and smiles, says, “Your wife leaving you, Mason. This heat never over. This heat never finish through. Good for business.”
Lee says, “What room? What room is my wife in?”
She stops smiling, says, “Twelve A.” She resumes her mechanized movement, putting the pen and form back in the drawer, turning the ledger around, walking the prescribed arc back into the inner office. Lee hears quick, high-pitched voices begin when the woman walks into the other room.
Carol is by the pool, the baby asleep in the port-a-crib next to her, a makeshift umbrella made from two clothes hangers and a beach towel protecting the baby from the sun. She is wearing an old pair of gym shorts and a blue T-shirt over her swimsuit; what little breeze there is cools her down.
She sees Lee coming down the walk, looking at doors. “Lee,” she calls, and sits up in her lounge chair.
Lee turns to her voice. His face is almost white, his eyebrows raised, his mouth open. His shirt is sweated through around his neck, armpits, and chest. She stops waving, her hand in midair as if posing for a photograph. But she is not smiling.
Lee takes off his tie, and as he moves closer, Carol can see the sweat on his face. He wads up the tie in one hand and sits down in a chair next to Carol. She swallows, settles back in the lounge chair, and watches him. He is going to tell me he wrecked the car, she thinks. Or he is going to tell me he lost his job.
He says, “Look, we have to get out of this place. We can’t afford it. I knew it from the beginning. We shouldn’t have checked in here in the first place.”
Is that all it is? Carol wonders. The money? She closes her eyes and puts her head back. “I can work up some extra time tomorrow. I don’t mind.”
“And that woman,” Lee says, not listening. “That Vietnamese woman in there is crazy. She thinks you and I are split up. She thinks the reason you came in here is because you left me.” He wipes his forehead with his tie.
She laughs, still keeping her eyes closed. If she can disregard his pleading long enough, he will give in, she thinks. “Oh, that,” she says. “I was sniffling a little bit when I came in. She thought I was crying, and I told her it was just the air. The smog.”
Lee sits hunched over, his hands between his knees. He looks at the ground, then says, “That old lady scares the hell out of me. I don’t even like being around this place, knowing she’s here.”
Carol looks up at him. “Lee,” she says, meaning, Don’t be ridiculous. “What you need is to go lay out in the room for a while, then put your trunks on and go swimming. That’s what we did.” She points to the baby, still asleep under the towel. “We took a little nap, then went swimming. You go down ther
e and take a nap. Here’s the keys.” She reaches into her purse and flips him the keys. He fumbles them, dropping them on the cement. She laughs.
As he heads for the room, Lee stops and turns back to Carol, noticing for the first time the gym shorts and T-shirt. “What are you wearing?” he says.
She pretends she does not hear him, and closes her eyes.
Carol is right; the nap does him good. Though he does not like how ugly the room is—a hot plate sitting on a nightstand is chained to the floor, pictures of wide-eyed hoboes decorate the walls, and the carpeting is a dull orange—he is thankful it is cool and quiet inside and feels refreshed after sleeping a half hour, sprawled across the bed in his underwear.
The world is new to him when he comes out of the room. It is dusk, and the sky is a brilliant red. He forgets for a moment that the color is due to the smog, and wonders at the beauty of this early evening.
Carol and the baby are in the pool, Carol laughing, holding the naked boy, walking his feet along the water.
“Feel better?” Carol says, looking up from the baby.
He thinks they can probably afford to go to Bob’s Big Boy for dinner, though he wishes they could go anywhere in the world, anywhere so long as it is not the kitchen back in the apartment. “Fine,” he says. “Great,” he says, and dives in.
Carol wakes up after midnight, the baby screaming. The baby, in the port-a-crib next to the bed, gasps every few seconds, catching his breath. She turns the lamp on, pulls the cover back. The room is freezing. The baby’s arms are cold, as are his feet and back. She picks him up and climbs back in bed, pulling the blanket and sheet over them both.
“Lee,” she says, “Lee, wake up. It’s freezing in here.”
Lee is already awake but pretends he is asleep, opening his eyes only after Carol shoves him. “What?” he says. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s cold in here, that’s what’s wrong,” she says. “Go over and turn off the air conditioner.”
Lee slowly sits up and swings his legs over the edge of the bed. The room is ice-cold, and he imagines he can see his breath. He rubs his hands up and down his arms, stands, and goes to the air conditioner.
