The Alumni Grill, Volume 2

by Tom Franklin

  I leave school immediately after the final bell. Driving home along Queens Boulevard, I scan the scene for the next debacle—hovering Jeeps, stranded motorists, dogs lost in traffic—my next golden opportunity. But the drive is uneventful. Back home, my wife is sitting at the kitchen table, the latest scene of murder spread out before her—a young victim with haunting eyes, a silver pendant dangling primly from her bruised neck. “The Pendant Murders,” my wife says matter-of-factly, canvassing the photo with her magnifying glass. I step too close to the table and see a little more of the picture than I want to. The girl is blonde and thin, and her turtleneck has been cut open at the top, her throat slashed. A silver pendant dangles from her neck. The pendant is a tiny half-moon with a jewel at its center.

  Beside the photos is the evening edition of the Daily News. My wife prefers the Times, makes fun of the fact that I subscribe to the sensational Daily News, but I have always been comforted by its simplicity, its ability to see everything in terms of black and white. The Daily News lacks the muddle and grind of complexity, uncertainty, weighing of the facts. Hillary is a queen one day, a pariah the next, but never in between. I also like the visual presentation. Every day there is a huge headline, 70 or 80 point type, over an eye-catching photo. Today, the photo reveals the blurry shape of a man in jeans and a baseball cap. His back is to the camera, and he is leaning into a Jeep, which is upside down on a busy road. Beside him on the street, looking into the camera, is a small girl in crumpled overalls. In the front seat of the Jeep there is an upside-down woman, who seems to be saying something to the man. In the photo it looks as if, having saved the child, the man is having a conversation with the mother, probably telling her not to panic, not to move her head, probably asking her appropriate questions, such as “Can you feel your toes? Are you dizzy? Is your vision blurred?” What I know, of course, is that the man in the baseball cap is not saying anything medically sound to the woman; he is simply retrieving the child’s Peoples of the World lunch box. The headline reads, “Who Is the Hero of Queens Blvd?”

  I say to my wife, “Did you see the paper?”

  “Yep. The usual stuff. Man saves mother and child from certain disaster.”

  “You’re a cynic.”

  “Actually, I admire him.” She puts down her magnifying glass and glances at the paper. “Cute girl,” she says. Then she looks at me accusingly, the way she did when she saw the father holding the infant on Life of Baby, the way she does whenever a friend of hers gets pregnant.

  “I’ll be in the bedroom,” I say.

  “It’s only 4:00.”

  “Like I said, I’ll be in the bedroom.”

  A few minutes later, she’s there, and her red summer dress is draped across the rocking chair, and she is opening the drawer of the bedside table, reaching for the condom, and I close the drawer and say, “Never mind that,” and her mouth is open in a slight and endearing way, and her neck is pale and convincing, and I am Parallel Lover, a new and much-sought-after superhero—intense and nurturing, generous and rabid, strong and gentle, impeccable.

  The sheets are askew. The room is hot. Down below, the phonograph man rattles by, the thick delicious sound of the blues drifting up from his cart. Mrs. Shevardnaze is screaming at her cat. The pigeons on the eaves are cooing. My wife’s breathing, finally, has slowed. Her eyes are closed, her hand draped lightly over my thigh. She looks more at peace than I’ve ever seen her.

  Soon, she is asleep and smiling slightly, unaware that I am watching. In her dreams, perhaps the dead girls are receding. For a few hours, at least, she will forget the Pendant Murders; for a few hours the world will seem like a bright, inviting place. I too am willing to believe this, willing to believe that, at this very moment, there is a tiny flame alight in the dark recesses of her womb. There, in that place so far from reach, it has already begun: a slow and certain growth, some tiny glistening thing.

  THE LAST TIME I SAW HIM

  by Daniel Wallace

  The last time I saw him he was in town for something, a business thing, and he had a little time before a meeting and said maybe we could meet in the hotel bar, have a drink, talk. Time was a problem with him. It was a commodity, like money, something he didn’t have a lot of, and I appreciated him spending some of it on me.

  He was waiting when I got there. I recognized his back from the door: long, a little bit hunched at the top, the kind of stooping hunch tall people get always leaning over for things.

  We hugged. He said, “You’re late.”

  He pulled out his pocket watch and tapped on it.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “No problem. Look at you. Wow. Are you taller? I think you’re taller. Used to be knee-high to a grasshopper. In fact, I saw a grasshopper the other day. He said, ‘How’s shorty?’”

  We laughed. But this got him to thinking back to the days when we were a family, and then back, even farther, to how the family started.

  “We were kind of drunk,” he said, “your mother and me. And fighting, as usual. I can’t remember what about. It doesn’t matter. The fight itself was always more important than what it was about anyway. Sometimes they would start with the most harmless question. Maybe it was about the dishes. I remember something about the dishes. ‘Why didn’t you do the dishes?’ she might ask me, and I’d look at her and say, ‘I didn’t know I was supposed to do the dishes,’ and she would say, ‘It’s not a matter of what you’re supposed to do. The sink is full of dishes. They’re overflowing in here, Tommy,’ she’d say. She exaggerated a lot. She’d say, ‘They’re scraping the ceiling.’ But she knew I could ignore a sink full of dishes; that was within my power. To just not see them, and go on with my life as though the kitchen were clean. I’d always thought this was a virtue, this ability I had to overlook things I didn’t want to see, but here she was implying it was a bad thing.

  “So I’d say, ‘You could have done them as easily as I could,’ and she’d say, ‘But I’ve been gone all day,’ and I’d say, ‘But I’ve been watching television all day,’ or something. That’s what I did on Sunday. Watched television. I used to love to watch the football on television. Not so much anymore. I don’t like what’s become of the whole sport culture thing. Money, money, money. No heart. But this is the way we would fight. Always egging each other on, little by little. It’s an art,” he said, and laughed, had some of his drink. “So I’d say that about television, knowing it would piss her off, and she’d say ‘I’d like to blow that fucking television to pieces,’ or something to that effect, and I’d do the next thing in my repertoire: Ignore her. That really made her mad. Just turn my back, go on about my business, as though I were taking the high road, when I was really taking the lowest of the low.

  “‘I can’t do this by myself,’ she’d say, suddenly right there behind me, crying a little.

  “‘I know,’ I’d say. ‘I’m not asking you to.’

  “‘Feels like it,’ she’d say. ‘Like you just don’t give a shit.’

  “‘Me?’ I’d say. ‘How can you say that?’ I’d say, and I’d go down the list of how I was a good husband, working hard, being true, making money, loving her, and one day I don’t do the fucking dishes and all of a sudden I don’t give a shit? My voice rising all the while to be heard over hers, because she is crying and screaming now, her face turning all red and wet, until finally we’re both yelling so loud you know the entire apartment building, from the first floor to the fifth, can hear us. You could see people on the sidewalk stop and look up at our window, pausing on their walks, to listen. I hope you don’t fight like that with your wife, Charlie.

  “So something along these lines was happening that Sunday. We were out of control. And eventually your mother just fell apart, crying, shivering, scared, lonely, all these terrible things. Thinking of her life with me, this terrible man, though that’s not how I thought of myself then. But I remember, that day I started crying myself, because, you know, I loved her, and I held her as close to me as I could. She
didn’t hold me back: Her arms were folded up against her chest as though she were a little bird, shaking. I kissed her tears. Every tear of hers I matched with a kiss of my own. I told her that’s what I was doing, I said, ‘For every tear you get a kiss, so just keep crying, because this is something I can do.’ She smiled, laughed a little, but kept crying, and I kept kissing, saying, ‘Uh-oh! Here’s another one! Better kiss that one. And here’s a shy little tear trying to escape down the left side of your face into your hair, but there’s no escape from my kisses!’ And I kissed that one, too. Finally, a tear made it all the way down her face, and fell into her lips, and I kissed that, kissed the edge of her lips, and she kissed me back. Then, you know, we just kept kissing. It was this continuous range of expression, from anger to love, then from love to lust I guess, or, you know, making love, which made so much sense to us. It was all just one thing, this range of emotion. But stop me if I’m telling you more than you need to know.”

  “No. Go on,” I said.

  “Okay. Well, she encircled the belt loops of my pants with her fingers, and pulled me into her. She was strong, Charlie. A strong woman. There was this pulse in our bodies, locked together like that, kissing. We walked backwards—our eyes were closed—tripping through the living room in our tiny apartment, until the kitchen counter stopped us. It was summer. Hot. It was even hotter in the kitchen. We kept kissing. I pulled off her shirt, she pulled off mine. Somehow—I’m sure you know how it happens, Charlie—we got all our clothes off, or all the clothes off we needed, and I lifted her at the hips until she was sitting on the counter. We had to push aside a few things—forks, knives, dishes, the sink was a mess—but that’s where it happened, right there in the kitchen. I’m sure of it. Nine months later, right on time, you were born.”

  He laughed, thinking about it.

  “So,” I said. I was laughing a little too. “What you’re saying is that I was an accident?”

  “Yes. But a good accident,” he said, and we both laughed again. And then neither of us said anything for a while.

  He looked at his watch.

  “Jesus, look at the time. I got to go, Charlie,” he said.

  “It was good—I mean, I’m glad you were able—”

  “I love you,” he said. “Commit that to memory.”

  “It’s there,” I said, and he held me for a moment by the shoulders and smiled at me, and then he winked and turned and walked away, and I never saw him again.

  *

  The last time I saw him was on a Christmas afternoon. My mother and I had opened our presents that morning, and cleaned up, and then she’d gone over to her boyfriend’s house. She was fifty-five and had a boyfriend, and they went out on dates and talked on the phone and fought sometimes, just like people who weren’t fifty-five did.

  He called, and when he found out Mom wasn’t there he said he was coming over. There was nothing I could say about that. Even though it was her house now, once upon a time it used to be his, he had bought it with his own money, and even though he hadn’t been in it for more than a year and Mom had said that the last thing she ever wanted to see in this life was him sitting there (pointing to the chair he always used to sit in) smoking a cigarette and laughing like the jackass that he is, she wasn’t here now. I couldn’t tell him otherwise, so he came over and sat in the chair he always used to sit in and smoked a cigarette and laughed.

  “She’s really fucked this place up,” he said, looking around. “Oh, Merry Christmas,” and he handed me an envelope with money in it. He did most of his shopping at the bank.

  “What’s different?” I asked.

  He looked at me.

  “A lot,” he said, and then in a deep voice: “Someone’s been sitting in my chair.” He smiled. “Goldilocks?”

  “Could be,” I said.

  “Or that bald guy she’s been seeing,” he said. “More likely.”

  “How do you know he’s bald?” I asked.

  “Everybody knows he’s bald,” he said. “All you have to do is look at him.”

  He put out his cigarette and shook his head and I couldn’t get over how weird it was to see him sitting in the chair where he used to sit but where he hadn’t sat in so long, and where he was never supposed to sit again. If Mom found out she’d get upset. It would be like her run of days was over, like those signs that say WE HAVE GONE 289 DAYS WITHOUT AN ACCIDENT, and then there’s an accident, and you have to start all over again with 1, then 2, then 3. I had to decide whether to tell her he’d come over or not. I decided to see if she’d figure it out on her own. Then I’d admit it. There would be no reason to lie, but if she didn’t figure it out I wouldn’t volunteer the information. I’ve found this to be a practical philosophy that works in many situations.

  “I got your mom a present,” he said.

  My heart sank. “Oh?”

  “This,” he said. He had a stick in one of the pockets of his windbreaker. He showed it to me. I’d seen him bend over and pick it up on his way down the driveway, and I’d wondered why. He laughed and when I didn’t I could tell he was disappointed. “It’s a joke,” he said. “You know, when you’re not good Santa brings you sticks and shit, instead of presents? It’s—.”

  But he gave it up.

  “Not a good idea,” he said. “You need a sense of humor to appreciate it and your mother doesn’t have one. It’s why we got a divorce.”

  “That plus all the affairs,” I said.

  “Yeah, but what led to the affairs?” he said. I didn’t have the answer. “Lack of laughter.”

  He lit another cigarette and stared at the tree, and he was thinking of the old life, you could tell, of the Christmas mornings here when I’d wake them up so early they’d practically have to tie me down while they had their coffee—just a cup, at least, before we do anything, please! All that happy family shit. He probably woke up late this morning and watched the news and opened what presents he had and called some friends. It was fine for him: His new house had been decorated to look like Christmas too.

  “Thanks for the CD, by the way,” he said.

  “Count Basie?”

  “No one better,” he said. And then he started humming some jazzy song, and his shoulders moved back and forth, and he closed his eyes and smiled. He had one more cigarette, and, after glancing at his old pocket watch, stood up and stretched. “Still ticking,” he said. “Me and the watch both.” We hugged a long hug, then he grabbed me by my shirt collar and pulled me into his face.

  “Who loves you?” he asked me.

  “You?”

  “That’s right. And don’t you forget it,” he said, and he left his old house and threw the stick into the yard and drove away, and I never saw him, ever again.

  *

  The last time I saw him was a long time ago. He was in the bathroom, hoping for something good to happen. He liked the bathroom. This is where he went when he came home, and where he stayed, most of the time, until he left again, on business, in sales. He was never in one place long enough to have a real office, but at home the bathroom was his office, and he had an open-door policy for us all. In fact, the door was never closed. Anyone—me, Mother, the maid—could, and did, walk past the bathroom and see him there, sitting on the toilet, light blue boxer shorts collapsed around his ankles, hiding the tops of his feet, hairless and white. His back was hunched forward, and his elbows were resting on his knees. In his hands were six or seven squares of yellow toilet tissue, which he folded, unfolded, and folded again, carefully, at the perforations, until it was time to use them.

  Most of the time he sat like this, staring at the tissue, an anxious expression on his face, his penis, like an old elephant’s trunk, just hanging there. To one side was the bathroom sink, and on the tile beside the sink was a cup of hot tea, steaming, his pocket watch, and a cigarette, a Benson & Hedges, which scarred the tile as it burned. The toilet was his ashtray. If the cigarette was extinguished during a quiet time, it was a great pleasure to hear the red hot ember—th
e rock—splash and sizzle in the dark and squalid water.

  But it was not always quiet in the bathroom. Sometimes the room was filled with the most horrific straining groans, which echoed off the walls, and carried through the house. It was at these times that one remembered why my father was where he was; or, rather, one recognized the initial impulse that led him to the toilet, possibly many hours before.

  On the floor near his feet was a yellow legal pad and a gold Cross pen. My father made notes to himself, drew pictures, added and subtracted three- and four-digit numbers, or he made lists of things to do, but these things, unless they could be accomplished from his seat on the toilet, remained undone. Odd jobs, household chores, errands and family outings all placed a distant second. This, his time spent here, was the important thing.

  Still, even under these strange circumstances, it was quite possible to gain an audience with him. If you had some specific need, or a desire to speak with him, he would accommodate you. He would listen to whatever you had to say, and respond. Sometimes the smell in the bathroom was almost unbearable, and at these times conversations were understandably kept to a minimum. But if he hadn’t made any “headway,” as he put it, one might spend as much as ten or fifteen minutes in there chatting with him. He called out sometimes, for the newspaper, cigarettes, another cup of tea. The deep acoustical echo of my father’s voice, calling—a lovely rumbling thunder. It was also possible simply to pass the bathroom and take a look in, see how he was doing. Sometimes he wouldn’t notice, so involved was he with his tissue folding, and thinking. But other times he’d smile and wave and ask, “What’s up?” “Not much,” you’d say, “How about you?” “Not much, yet. Not much at all.”