In the Middle of All This

by Fred G. Leebron

  On the street again, he pulled up short. Maybe Richard was mad about him being there. Maybe he was tired of being constantly mistrusted and of having Martin drop in at any hint of crisis. Maybe that was it. Suddenly he felt a little better.

  He found a set of coffee mugs that looked like they were made in Italy but were actually from China, painted with vines of purple grapes and bold blue and yellow and orange stripes, narrow at the base and wide at the rim. Lauren would like them, and they were only another twelve pounds.

  He had no idea where to drink, and now everyone seemed to be heading out for one. In previous trips he and Richard had always been allowed out once or twice, and they always went to terrific pubs or free houses, where the beer was incredible and they’d have hopeful conversations about all the traveling they wanted to do and there were even girls to look at. He recalled one place that had picnic tables on the sidewalk that caught the last of the day’s sun, and when they’d moved inside the lights were warm and they sat at huge butcher-block tables, and for some reason or another a few girls joined them and they talked and laughed until they announced they had to go back to their wives. Where the hell was that place?

  He always felt that London was the kind of town where you couldn’t just walk and find something, you had to know where you were going. Like most parts of New York. He’d never lived in either city. He’d only visited. He was a hick from the hinterlands. God, he felt good. God, he felt happy.

  He sat at the first bar drinking something dark. Elizabeth had sounded a little tense, a little distant, and now he knew why. He’d involved himself between them. What a jerk he was. He wished he’d thought of telling her that on the phone. But she’d been so … dismissive, almost. “Go out and have some fun,” she’d said. He’d just gone along and allowed himself to be dismissed. Just another way in a series of ways that he’d been swallowing parts of himself ever since she’d told him she was ill. Not well. Whatever she called it.

  On the wall the bar menu bragged the usual English crap. He ordered another of the same—stout or porter, he’d forgotten which—and tried to think of a good neighborhood between here and Dunkers Green. He liked Hampstead, but Hampstead was at least a couple of changes away on the tube. Findlay had that new mall, but there’d be nothing to look at while he drank. He didn’t even know how to get to Chelsea, and there was no way that place was anywhere near the right direction. But it was his last night in London! He gulped the beer and sauntered from the pub.

  The 7-Eleven had lots of recognizable cigarette brands, even his favorite. He felt like anything could happen now. He had a little money and an excellent credit card. Wasn’t alcohol a depressant? Why did it always make him so goddamn happy?

  At Hampstead—yes, Hampstead, to his wonder he’d made it, a gray-and-yellow blur of getting on and off trains and going up and down escalators trying not to read the ads posted alongside—there were almost too many good places to choose from and he felt a wonderful determination to try them all. He hadn’t cut loose like this in a long time. And it was still daylight. London!

  He nursed another dark one at a picnic table not far from the curb, and watched the people and the traffic pass, a lot of miniskirts on kind of a cold day. At other tables everyone seemed to be eating fries. He smoked two or three cigarettes, feeling healthier and more invincible with each one, and to his surprise ordered another beer. He’d been sure he’d be moving on by now. The beer was colder and thicker and just better than the last, but it was the same beer. Well, it was just better. This was his … fourth? Fifth? Fourth. He’d been at it for just over two and a half hours, including whatever it took to get here. He’d better pace himself, or he’d be home by nine with nothing better to do than watch the walls spin and channel surf with only four or five stations to look at. Four or five.

  Bread. Something to soak it all up. He nodded his thanks inside to the bartender and walked soberly next door to a take-out pizza place and wolfed down a slice. Or was it a take-out pierogi place and was he quaffing a knish?

  He sat on a bench attached to the entrance of the heath, although the actual heath was, he knew, incredibly far away and a little uphill and then downhill and then uphill from where he sat. Was it too late to slow down? Was the night already over for him? It didn’t seem fair. He’d drink water but it would only make him drunker. Somebody had taught him that. Lauren? Lauren.

  He hiked down the long high street, trying to be pleasant, to get sober. Four pints. That translated into a six-pack. That was a night’s work. He’d really love to try somewhere else, but he didn’t want to sit there being all stupid and nauseous and drooling, trying to hide how much saliva he’d have to be spitting out every two or three minutes. Too bad he’d wasted the night. Too bad he didn’t have more self-control. Too bad he had never grown up. What was he thinking sitting down in that basement getting stoned? What was he thinking drinking as much as he drank? How pathetic. How irresponsible. How narcissistic.

  He walked until he was nearly okay and then went into a really cool place—high ceilings, regal moldings, tall brassy mirrors, low chairs, marble tables, mahogany bar. You wouldn’t want to leave anything out when describing a place like this. Peanut shells on the floor. Life-size papier-mâché creatures posted in elevated nooks and crannies. Cute waitresses. Lots of girls at the tables and one or two at the bar. A place where he was in danger of being the oldest person. But there was an old bald guy sitting alone in a corner, smoking a goddamn pipe. God, he was bald himself. Sometimes he forgot. He wondered why. Maybe he had too much self-esteem. Maybe he just never saw himself as bald, even when he looked in the mirror. Every now and then he’d see a picture of himself from the worst angle and be shocked. Just shocked. Straight on, face-to-face with a looking glass, it was hard to see himself that way. But from slightly above, like from where one of those papier-mâché guys sat eyeing him, it was impossible to conclude otherwise. He was really bald, like someone had just sawed off the entire top of his head.

  “Sir?”

  God, he had a flight tomorrow—god, he had to be at the airport by nine fucking o’clock, and he hadn’t even ordered a car yet. Elizabeth said the card for the service was on the—

  “Beer,” he heard himself say.

  “Beer?” Was she smirking at him? Why did women bartenders have to wear such tight T-shirts? “What kind of beer?”

  “Something dark,” he said. “I’ve been drinking dark other places, and I shouldn’t switch. Actually I probably shouldn’t even switch between darks, but it’s too late for that.” He felt a need to spit and choked it back.

  “Something dark,” she laughed at him. She was laughing at a bald man. How incredibly rude.

  “You know. Not light. Not yellow. Not orange or amber or tin—” Tin? “Brown,” he said. “But not chocolate, not maple. I can’t stand sweet beer.” He pulled out his pack of cigarettes and pulled out a cigarette and dropped it on the floor and had to descend like some kind of mountain climber from his bar stool and bend forward farther than he’d ever bent before to pick it up, all the while shining everyone his precious glaring meek bald head, and then reascend to find her looking at him, mirthful or snide he couldn’t tell.

  “You’re not driving?” she said.

  “Tubing,” he said.

  That seemed to settle it and she brought him a really dark beer. It tasted like anchovies. No, that wasn’t right. It tasted like Guinness. Sadly, he shook his head at himself.

  “Is it not all right?”

  God, she had a cute accent. Then again, he was in fucking England. “It’s terrific,” he said with too much enthusiasm.

  She smiled. “Works on you guys every time.”

  “I know.” He was sad again.

  “First time in London?”

  “Nope.” He looked from side to side. For some reason he was the only guy sitting at the bar, where two pairs of girls were sitting elbow to elbow, smoking furiously. He managed to light his cigarette.

  “Just seem
s it, then,” the bartender said. She seemed to like smiling at him. Maybe people liked smiling at bald men.

  “I’ve had too much to drink,” he said.

  She lightly touched her hand to her cheek. “I had no idea.” She mopped the counter in front of him with an almost-white rag. He swallowed more spit.

  “I’m not a tourist,” he said, puffing his cigarette, then taking a shallow sip of his beer. “I’m visiting family.” He put down his cigarette.“’Scuse me,” he said, feeling green. “Where is—”

  “Round back,” she said, excusing him. “You’d better hurry.”

  As he splashed water on his face, he tried to count back to the last time he’d done this to himself. He didn’t think he’d been this stupid since before Max was born, so that was at least three years back—the little guy was almost three. Was it when he’d gone to give that paper in San Francisco and Lauren had stayed behind with Sarah, and he’d met all his graduate school buddies for scotch and beers and martinis and shots of tequila? Was it that time in Atlanta that Lauren had taken Sarah to visit her mother and he’d gone out with some fathers of Sarah’s preschool friends and they’d hit a dozen different bars downtown, and he’d had rum drinks and vodka drinks and rum drinks again and then capped it with some amber beer and Per-codan? The rumor was Jane Wilson never drank or smoked or took anything stronger than iced tea. The rumor was that she’d gone from shop to shop and found the rope at a paint store, that the chair pocked the wall in her dorm room when she kicked it back. That—conversely—she’d been murdered instead of having taken her life.

  When he came out with his face scrubbed by a dozen wet paper towels and sweat in pronounced lines at the backs of his knees and down each underarm, he saw his place at the bar had been emptied and neatened.

  “Back from the dead already?” the bartender said.

  He nodded tentatively. “I’d like to pay.”

  “It’s not necessary.” She reached over and patted him maternally on the shoulder. “Just take better care of yourself. Right?”

  “Yes,” he said, already turning for the door. “Thank you. Yes.”

  How he made it home he hoped he would never recall. The thing was that long after he’d expected it, he was finally climbing up the stairs at Dunkers Green and gaining the sidewalk not three blocks from their row-house, and it wasn’t even ten o’clock and the streets were still gritty with the day’s crap. He stepped through it and down the long, long residential block and made the right turn, something inside his head just hammering away at his temple—hammer, hammer, hammer—and there at last was their place, and he had the key in the door and opened it and shut it quickly after him and pounded up the stairs to his beloved ibuprofen and took three with an enormous glass of water and threw himself on the bed and hoped for sleep.

  “We’re home,” she called to the backseat triumphantly as she wheeled the car into the driveway. Sarah said something disdainful, and Max merely grinned and nodded his head. “What a day, huh?”

  She pressed the garage-door opener and watched the wide, heavy door begin its slow rise up into the ceiling. A foot off the ground it stopped. It was temperamental like that. She pressed the clicker again, and the door sunk back to the concrete drive. Max whined.

  “One minute,” she said. “Sometimes you have to hit it twice.”

  She hit it again, and again the door rose grudgingly from the cement, and three feet off the driveway again it stopped, only this time it was crooked, as if the whole house were listing into the ground.

  “Uh-oh,” she said.

  “Uh-oh?” Max said. “What’s uh-oh?”

  “The garage door,” Sarah said.

  “Not working?” Max said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Wait here.” Lauren got out from the car and walked slowly to the door. She didn’t want that thing coming down on her. It hung at a twenty-degree angle about waist-high off the ground. She wouldn’t touch it. It looked like a kind of guillotine.

  “At least the car’s out and safe,” she told the children back in the car. She hit the clicker again. The door didn’t budge. Now the damn thing wouldn’t even go down. Shoot. “All right,” she said. “Let’s go in.”

  She went around and got Max and his schoolbag out of the car and made sure Sarah got herself out without any incident and they trooped up the breezeway stairs, she unlocked the door, and now they were inside.

  “TV?” Max said.

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She turned to Sarah. “Can you guys get settled in front of the TV while I see about the door?”

  “Will you stay inside?” Sarah pouted.

  “Yes, I’ll be inside. Now go on.”

  She waited until she could hear the TV and then she pulled out the phone book and looked under Garage and then Garage Builders and then Doors and Gate Operating Devices and actually found something called Potters-town Overhead Door and called and arranged a service visit. Quietly she ducked into the breezeway and eyed the car. Windows up. Doors locked.

  It was a little late to call Martin but it wasn’t too late and besides he’d said that Elizabeth and Richard would be out all evening. She let it ring and ring. When the answering machine picked up on the seventh or eighth time, she was relieved. He’d be furious about the door. She dug out the homeowner’s policy and checked to see if the item was covered. In boldface they made sure she knew it wasn’t.

  While the noodles and broccoli cooked, she emptied the dishwasher and put everything away and checked Sarah’s schoolbag for various notes and announcements and the homework assignment and bagged the trash and put it on the breezeway and set the table. She drained the noodles and made one bowl with olive oil and parmesan and another bowl with pesto and arranged the broccoli on an oval plate that the kids liked and put a cup of ice water at each of the three places.

  “Dinner,” she called.

  Sarah came and sat at her place, and Lauren helped her to the pesto pasta and the broccoli and then served herself and sat watching happily as Sarah began to eat. It was always wonderful to watch either of them eat, as if some miracle was happening. When they were babies neither took a bottle and it was always just her and her breasts, and even when they moved on to rice cereal and all the little jars they still favored breast milk. She’d breast-fed them each for eighteen months, and Martin argued that if it hadn’t been so long the transition might have been easier, but he just felt left out. Martin. He was probably on the town—a quaint phrase—knowing him, alone with nothing to do. She hoped he didn’t end up regretting it too much.

  “Max!” she said loudly.

  No answer. She looked at Sarah and Sarah shrugged.

  “Max, it’s dinner!” Lauren shouted.

  “Not yet,” Max said.

  “Oh brother,” Sarah said.

  “Don’t,” Lauren said. She sighed and got up from her chair and walked into the living room. The cartoon crime-fighters show was almost over. She waited. When the credit roll started, she picked up the remote and turned off the TV.

  “Hey!” Max said. “I want to see the credit roll.”

  She was amazed he even knew the term. “It’s dinnertime,” she said.

  “I WANT TO!”

  “All right, all right. But just the credit roll.” She switched it back on, and he wagged his shoulders and squirmed his butt to the music. At last it was over. She switched off the TV again. “Now dinner,” she said.

  “Okay. Okay.” He trooped into the kitchen as if on a forced march and climbed up on his chair and looked at his plate, while she delicately arranged a bit of the parmesan noodles and some broccoli. “Yuck,” he said.

  “Honey, it’s one of your favorites.”

  “Don’t want it.”

  Sometimes she would let herself be pushed into getting up and making something else. “This is what we have,” she said firmly.

  “Yuck,” he said again.

  Sarah laughed with her mouth full and shards of pasta sprayed on her plate. Max gi
ggled.

  “Dessert?” he asked.

  “When you eat your dinner.”

  “Yuck,” he said. He picked a noodle from the pile, inspected it suspiciously, and ate it. Sarah drank water and began on her food again. In the silence Lauren lifted her fork. That hadn’t been so difficult, and now she had a nice view of her two children eating and the new bookcases gleaming at her from the living room.

  Then the house shuddered as if it had been slammed against a wall. Her fork dropped on the table. They were all out of their chairs, staring at one another, moving at once to the breezeway, squeezing through the door, her head ringing, a new migraine just beginning to express itself behind her left eye.

  “Don’t go in,” she hissed, holding them back from the garage.

  They went out the breezeway door into the driveway. In the distance a fire alarm sounded, as if someone had already called for their rescue. The garage door sagged and buckled into the pavement, as if it had been brought to its knees. Cracks spread in glaring webs up its spine and along its edges; flakes of paint were littered on the driveway.

  “Wow,” she said, holding the children away from it.

  “What happened?” Max said.

  “It fell and broke itself,” Sarah said. “Or first it broke, and then it fell and broke some more. Right, Mommy?”

  “Right,” Lauren said. The siren seemed to be in her head, but she knew it was nowhere near.

  “Why?” Max asked.

  “Because,” Lauren said, “sometimes things just fall apart.”

  “And break?” Max said.

  “And break,” she said.