You Don't Love This Man

by Dan Deweese

  It was after our flight back, upon climbing the porch steps, that I discovered the front door of our home had been damaged. Stupefied by the injury, I knelt to examine the point where the bottom corner of the door should have met the jamb. The splintered wood that remained testified to some kind of blast, and the resulting hole was large enough for any small animal to wriggle through. The door was locked, at least, though after I turned my key, I had to use my shoulder to pop the thing out of the jamb, and then had to do the same from the inside to press it closed.

  I found Sandra in the kitchen, working at a counter covered in slices of bread, tomatoes, cucumbers, cream cheese, and various lunch meats. A huge platter sat nearby, half filled with sandwiches. “You’re not at work today?” I said.

  “It’s my turn to provide lunch for the staff meeting, but I forgot,” she said, too busy spreading cream cheese to even look at me.

  “Why is the door broken?”

  “Ask your daughter.”

  “Just tell me.”

  She shrugged as if the whole thing were mystifying. “She says her boyfriend broke it.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t here.”

  “But what did she say, Sandra?”

  “She said he kicked it.”

  “He kicked our door hard enough to break it?”

  “I really have to get this done,” she said, slicing a sandwich into triangles. The providing of the staff meeting meal was obviously a competition Sandra did not want to lose. Stray locks of hair had come loose from her headband and hung in her face. Her forehead shone with perspiration as she focused on stacking the sandwiches just so. There was a quickness to her in those days, a confident flutter of fingers and a surety of movements, especially in the house. The making of little sandwiches or salads or snacks, the selection of a picture frame and the photo that went in it, the placement of pillows on a couch or the angle of an armchair: she knew these tasks and made sound choices without thinking. When she pulled her hair back into a ponytail, she could spin her energy and bounce into a youthful vivacity that still carried something of the ingénue about it. Tennis, yard work, and the hustle of professional and social life had been good to her. She was in excellent shape, and I’m sure there were male developers or vendors or customers she worked with who were quite taken with the way she looked in a pair of slacks and the serious-business glasses she often wore at work, though the prescription was weak enough that her optometrist, who didn’t want to be seen as a pusher of lenses, had mentioned more than once that her use of them was entirely optional. And yet the idea that I would reach out and touch her myself had somehow come to seem an impropriety. It was like we were children again, really, and there were lines one did not cross. When she had placed the sandwiches on her platter and arranged them to her satisfaction, she paused to look at me. “So how was Los Angeles? Did Grant’s meeting go well?”

  “It went fine. Grant has interesting ideas.”

  “Good for him,” she said, and returned to stacking the sandwiches at breakneck speed.

  “Yes. Good for him.”

  I returned to the front door. Stepping back through it and onto the porch, I closed it as well as I could, so that I could study it again. The ability to see the wood of our entryway floor from outside seemed vaguely obscene. And though I knew it was paranoid, I couldn’t help but feel as if the hole would somehow, through the simple fact of its existence, elicit the appearance of a person deranged enough to attempt to use it.

  Neither Sandra nor Miranda knew how to fix a door, of course. That was a problem I knew I would have to deal with myself.

  I WAS NO MORE than twenty steps out the door of Gina’s gallery when my phone rang. The display indicated it was Catherine’s line at the bank, so I took the call, but it wasn’t Catherine. It was “John with security,” as he called himself, and he was calling to tell me that he and Annie were still in the branch, and could I come back by for a few minutes to look at a couple things?

  “I don’t have time right now, John, but I’m happy to talk on the phone.”

  Two college-aged guys loped past on the sidewalk, their faces sunburned, their movements loose. Laughing, they were so filled with exuberance that they were almost shouting their conversation, though they were right next to one another. They went past as if I wasn’t even there.

  “It will only take a few minutes,” John said. “But it’s really something that needs to be done in person.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said. “What is this thing that can only be done in person?”

  “There are some more photos we’d like you to look at.”

  “I’ve looked at the photos two times now, John. Nothing new is going to come of looking at photos.”

  “These are different photos.”

  “Of what?”

  A breathy emptiness occupied his end of the line. I sensed the conversation wasn’t going the way he wanted it to, and that he was now casting about for a way to move it back in the direction he wanted. “They’re of a different robbery. A robbery of you, from twenty-five years ago. There was a note about it in your employee file, so I had someone look up the old incident report and e-mail the frames we have from the security camera that day. And I think the guy who robbed you today might be the same guy that robbed you back then.”

  “He didn’t rob me. He robbed Amber.”

  “I meant your branch.”

  “And why do you think this?”

  “The guy in the old security photos has the same build. But most importantly, the faces look really similar. And there’s the fact that this is the same city. And you’re the same you.”

  “Twenty-five years apart, and the photos look the same? That doesn’t seem right.”

  “I can show you. That’s why I want you to come in and take a look at them. It won’t take long.”

  I could hear music in the distance—a ragged, distorted bass line. There were still other people coming and going, on both sides of the street. They seemed happy. What were they doing, I wondered.

  “I’m sorry, John, but I can’t. As I’ve told you, this is a busy day for me, and I’m headed to an errand I can’t skip. I have about one more minute right now, but after that I won’t be able to talk to you any more today.”

  “I’m just talking about ten, fifteen minutes, tops. If you’re already out and taking care of things, this would just be one more very short errand.”

  “I understand that you have information that excites you, and that proving this is the same man who robbed me twenty-five years ago seems like a breakthrough of some kind. That’s all clear to me, and it sounds very interesting. But another thing that is clear to me is that I don’t have time to talk to you about this today.”

  “But if you were delayed in one of your errands for ten or fifteen minutes longer than you thought it would take, you would have time for that.”

  “Of course.”

  “So then you do have ten or fifteen minutes in your schedule.”

  “For something related to my daughter, on her wedding day. Not for you.”

  “I feel like you’re being difficult on purpose. To be honest, I feel like you’re avoiding talking about this for some other reason—something that has nothing to do with your schedule.”

  I probably should have been angry at John, but for some reason, I was merely amused. “Those are very interesting feelings,” I said. “It sounds like you’re a person who feels a great many things. But I’m not going to talk to you again today.”

  “I’m trying to make things easier on you,” he said. “Spending a few minutes looking at these photos today could be a whole lot easier than other ways of doing it.”

  “And I’m trying to be honest with you. I’m not going to talk to you today. And I’m almost out of time for this very conversation.”

  “I think you have more time than you’re pretending.”

  “Do you want to know what I’m doing, John?”

 
; “What do you mean? What are you doing?”

  “I’m using something called authoritative listening, and here’s how it works: I have decided that I do not have time to talk to you today. And yet I know that you are going to try various ways of arguing with me about that. You will plead, threaten, bargain, cajole, use guilt or shame, any number of things. And what I have already decided to do, when you argue with me, is, first, to acknowledge that I understand what you’re telling me, and second, to reiterate that your argument in no way changes my position. Here’s an example. You’ve said you think I have more free time than I’ve claimed. So what I will say is this: I realize that you can’t know where I am or what I’m doing, and that you feel that maybe I’m not being honest about my schedule. That must be very difficult for you. It sounds like you have a very difficult job today. Unfortunately, my own schedule today is such that I don’t have time to talk to you. And I won’t be coming by.”

  “You’re not really being cooperative. Can we at least agree on that? That you’re not cooperating with me?”

  He sounded as if he were reading off of a sheet of paper that said something about what bank security is allowed to do when an employee is being uncooperative, so I had no choice but to be uncooperative about being uncooperative. “No,” I said, “I don’t think we can agree on that. I feel like I am cooperating with you. I’ve visited with you already once today, and I’m talking to you now. I understand what you’ve said to me, and I’ve answered your questions. Unfortunately, my schedule today is such that I don’t have time to talk to you, so I won’t be coming by.”

  “Could we step out of the authoritarian listening thing or whatever? Could you stop doing that for a second and just talk to me? Man to man?”

  “I am talking to you man to man, John. I’m being very honest with you.”

  “Okay, so I’m going to be honest with you, and tell you that I really don’t want to escalate this investigation, and if you can just come in and look at these photos and answer some questions, then I don’t think I’ll have to. But the fact of the matter is that you don’t appear to have any savings, you’ve maxed out a home equity loan, and it looks like you’re living month-to-month right now. I’m sorry to be speaking so directly about this stuff, but that’s what it looks like.”

  “Apology not accepted,” I said. “You’re being incredibly presumptuous. You’re looking into my personal finances because you have the power to, but not because it’s right. You’re a snoop. You’re a Peeping Tom.”

  “This is my job,” he said. “I have to investigate these things. On the one hand I see the state of your personal finances, and on the other I see your branch get robbed by someone who robbed you before, but who never got caught. You have to appreciate how many red flags that raises for me.”

  “Red flags?” I said, almost sputtering at the ridiculousness of the expression. I, probably one of the least extravagant, most risk-averse people in the entire city, if not the whole region, was in this kid’s analysis raising red flags? “Can you not see how ridiculous that seems to me? We are only talking to each other on the phone right now because of a coincidence. The same person who robbed that branch I worked at a lifetime ago robbed the branch I work at today. They aren’t the same branch. And I wasn’t actually there this morning. But you’ve used this as an excuse to pry into the details of my personal financial life, which is completely irrelevant to the fact that my branch was robbed this morning. It’s an incredible and reckless invasion of my privacy, but you’ve done it anyway, and now that you have access to all of my personal information, you’re desperate for it to somehow reveal only the things you already wanted to see. But your little red flags are not actually there, John. You really think that because I have a home equity loan, I should be under suspicion for some kind of paltry bank robbery designed to net all of something like five thousand dollars? This is your theory?”

  “But that’s why I’d like you to come in and look at these photos and chat for a few minutes—so I can rule this out and reassure the company that this isn’t something we need to investigate further. So I can reassure them exactly what you’re saying, which is that this is just a coincidence.”

  “But what you don’t to understand, John—and maybe this is what’s really setting you off—is how deeply I don’t care about reassuring you. I didn’t have anything to do with this, so if I don’t talk to you today, and that causes the bank to launch some kind of paranoid-delusional full-scale investigation of me, the bank will still find nothing. The outcome is the same either way. But if I ignore you, I can go about my business today.”

  “But surely you understand that your response to this is something that will be in your employee file. I mean, this doesn’t have anything to do with me or what I do for the company, but if you want to advance someday, the company is going to look at this incident in your file. And they’re going to see that you didn’t cooperate.”

  That made me laugh. The stupidity of this kid was actually making me happy. “You say ‘the company’ as if you’re referring to the all-powerful Oz or something. I can assure you that there is no ‘the company.’ There are people you work for, and people who work for you. That’s it. You’ve looked at my file. You know I’ve worked for this company for twenty-five years. I’ve never done anything wrong, and I even got robbed and hit on the head once, and took stitches on my scalp for it. And here’s where my relationship with the company is: after all of these years of working for them, they’ve sent a boy to snoop through my finances and harass me on my daughter’s wedding day. That’s the quality of the relationship I have with the company.”

  “But don’t you think your attitude has something to do with that? If you’ve spoken to other people the way you’ve spoken to me, you can’t exactly blame the company for not being your best friend.”

  “Today is the first day I’ve spoken this way, John. This is it. This is me getting fucking fed up. So tell ‘the company,’ or write in my file, or put down wherever you put things down, that I don’t care that this guy robbed me twenty-five years ago, and I don’t care that the bank lost some money in a robbery today. It’s not my money, and no one was hurt, so I’m over it. I am moving on.”

  “But I can’t do that,” he said. “I have a job to do. There are procedures I have to move through.”

  “And I will be happy to talk to you about all of it on Monday. But this is Saturday. I took today off. So I won’t be coming by.”

  He didn’t immediately respond. What was he doing? Consulting a manual? Squeezing a stress ball? Cruising through my personal account transactions? “I just think your…orientation toward the situation is unfortunate,” he said eventually. “I hope you understand I’ve done everything I can to make this convenient for you.”

  “Now you’re speaking like a banker.”

  “I’m going to let you think about this for a bit,” he said, unfazed. “And then I’m going to call you back. I want you to think this over, and then I’ll give you one last opportunity to come in and talk.”

  “Sounds real good,” I said in my professionally cheerful manager voice. “Good-bye, John. I have to be going.”

  “I think you should really—”

  I hung up on him. It was mid-afternoon, and I was standing on the sidewalk on a day whose temperature, at that point, had to have been close to triple digits. But I felt good.

  A group of young women—laughing, chattering, their arms playfully linked—came down the sidewalk then. “Excuse me,” I said as they passed, “but what’s the big event everyone’s headed toward down here today?”

  “Brewfest!” two of the three sang enthusiastically.

  “You should go!” the third said over her shoulder as they continued down the sidewalk, never having broken stride. They laughed again, obviously already having taken advantage of the event. To be young and carefree, I thought—to be young and drunk and carefree and laughing. I crossed the street mid-block, in front of oncoming traffic, and drivers w
ere forced to slow while I thought about John, and how strangely satisfying it had been to deny him. And if all the traffic was about nothing more than getting to cheap beer, I decided, then my business was more important than theirs.

  THE MORNING AFTER I discovered Ira had broken the front door of our home, I noticed two suitcases stacked in the entryway when I came down for breakfast. Hunting around a bit, I found Sandra in the basement, feverishly ironing a blouse, and when I asked about the suitcases and she told me she wouldn’t be coming home from work, for a split second—there in the dim, unfinished basement, beneath the glare of a naked bulb only inches overhead—I thought she was telling me she was leaving me. And I felt an inward part of myself begin to nod, as if to say: Yes, of course. But then she added that her “rackets were already in the car,” and I realized that she was just talking about her big tennis tournament. Which I had completely forgotten about.

  I made some polite inquiries about when her first match was and how she was feeling about it, and then returned upstairs to my office, the better to watch my spider friend continue to filigree his elaborate construction in my window—the work he had done that first night, which had seemed complicated enough at the time, had turned out to be mere scaffolding upon which he had now latticed any number of fiendish little fascinations. So Sandra ironed in the basement rather than in our bedroom, and I ate breakfast in my office rather than at the dining table. It’s painfully amusing to think of how carefully we arranged our schedules in order to minimize the possibility of having to speak to one another. I felt she found me annoying, and I was annoyed by her annoyance. She would later claim she felt I found her boring, and that she was just tired of being around someone so bored by her. So we were both right, really: she was annoyed with me. And I was bored by what I felt was her constant annoyance. We had, at some point, turned each other into walking, talking confirmations of our gloomiest suspicions.