Among the Ten Thousand Things

by Pierpont, Julia

  Maybe they’re right, and we will be safer when we finally think of everything, of all the things that can do us harm, and make rules against them.

  —

  One hour later and thirty thousand feet in the air:

  The SkyMall catalog had lost its charm. He felt cold but did not like the blankets in their plastic bags. They reminded him of felt, of a school project. He did not like the pillows either, in their gauzy cases.

  The screen overhead showed they were leaving Eastern Daylight Time. The red arc on the screen began in New York, New York, and ended in Phoenix, Arizona, the little white plane blinking somewhere in between.

  —

  A few more hours, a little closer to the ground:

  Jack woke to something cold and wet in his lap. His tray was open, a plastic cup spinning on its side, the orange juice he’d ordered everywhere, seeping.

  “Excuse me,” he called toward the front of the plane. A man across the aisle was staring. Jack gestured, palms up, toward his lap: Can you believe this?

  “Hey. Excuse me,” he called again. He pressed the silver button on the armrest, which made the seat recline, gave up, and went to the bathroom, pushing the door to make it fold open at the middle and punching it shut behind him. Waited for the light to come on.

  He was wrong to believe he would ever evolve beyond those moments of wondering how he’d come to a particular place in life. Specifically, here, in this sallow light, rushing handfuls of water onto his shorts.

  He dropped lumps of soggy paper towel into the toilet below the sign that said to please not drop paper towels in it. When he flushed, the bowl filled with blue and the sound was frighteningly loud.

  —

  The plane landed and no one clapped for the pilot. Off it, they stood together, all twenty of them, on the tarmac, or whatever that area was around the tarmac, and waited for the shuttle to arrive. Some fanned themselves. To Jack the blazing heat was a welcome respite from the cold on board the plane. It was thawing his insides, bringing him back to normal.

  He did not think his shorts would stain.

  Simon, because he was older, retained a stronger impression of Gary than his sister had. It was a negative impression, which is not to say it was bad, only that Gary’s presence had always signified a sort of absence—the absence of his mother’s attention, of his father’s, the absence of any conversation directed toward himself. He found that to be true again the next morning, over breakfast—Gary-scrambled eggs and Deb still in her robe, laughing too hard at Gary’s jokes and trying too hard to bridge lulls in the conversation—and then it was true in the afternoon, when Simon had announced he would be bringing his book to lunch down by the docks, and his mother, who couldn’t take a hint, suggested they all go along with him.

  God did him the small favor of filling the green table with fat old people who left no room, so they couldn’t sit in front of the shop directly. “They’re getting up over there,” Kay said, pointing to a bench in front of one of the real estate places (their father had taught them to point with a finger hidden behind the other hand, which his sister actually did around people). Simon prayed the bench was far enough away that Teagan would not hear his mom when she said the day looked like a painting.

  “Order me a turkey provolone,” he said, not wanting to get so near as to read the chalkboard menu. He’d angled himself absurdly on the bench, legs to one side, his back to the store.

  “But they have all these cute specials.” Deb squinted at the sign. “Sea something…Sea Treasures? That’s probably tuna.”

  “I think it’s crab,” Gary said.

  “Turkey provolone and Sprite,” Simon said, wanting to be done with it. He was wondering what the back of his head looked like, how long his hair had gotten on his neck and whether his shirt was wrinkled. Whether he was very recognizable from behind.

  “The Beauty and the Roast Beef,” Gary read. “Kay, that sounds like a good one for you. What do you think’s in a Beauty?”

  Deb shook her head. “Roast beef’s too tough for her.”

  “It’s too much you have to chew.” Kay’s arms were crossed and she hopped foot to foot, holding her elbows.

  “Kay,” Deb said, “I asked if you had to go before we left.”

  “I don’t.”

  Simon ignored them as they walked away, opened his book to the where it was dog-eared. He was finding he had a lot in common with this character Peter Keating. He wondered whether he really liked his mother. But she was his mother and this fact was recognized by everybody as meaning automatically that he loved her, and so he took for granted that whatever he felt for her was love. He’d brought the book thinking it would give Teagan something more to say to him. Also because he knew, though not why, that his reading it irritated his mom (“So, you’re liking that?”).

  They came back with a Cool Hand Cuke and two B-L-Ta-Da!s, which did look better than his no-name sandwich. “Sy, we were just talking about our new houseguest,” Deb said.

  “Mm.” All morning a great gray cat had been turning up in the closet where Kay kept her clothes (mostly on the floor, his sister too stupid for hangers). He did not know whether there was any reason why he should respect her judgment. She was his mother; this was supposed to take the place of reasons.

  “Sweetie, that’s fine if you feed him,” Deb said. “We’re just saying you can’t do it in the house.”

  “I’m not, Mom, God.” Kay slumped nearer her sandwich. “Gosh.”

  Simon filled his mouth with meat and cheese. If he chewed hard enough, he could almost tune out the conversation. Mother means well, but she drives me crazy. He wasn’t very far yet, but he thought when he finished that the book would be his favorite.

  “The real stumper to me,” Gary was saying, “is how he gets in there by himself, Kay.”

  “The front door doesn’t always close.”

  “None of the doors close,” Simon pronounced through his food. “Because Dad painted over the locks, like an idiot.” He took another mouthful and did not look at them. Easy because of how they were lined up on the bench, like ducks. Dad was not someone they’d talked about yet.

  Deb sighed. “So.”

  “What?” Simon exploded. “It’s not like he’s dead.” He felt great saying it because he was so right.

  A stroller at the next bench began to cry. Deb shrunk from the sound.

  “That’s exactly what Grandma does,” Simon said, lips curling. “You look exactly like her.”

  “Sy.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  Now his chewing was the only thing to listen to. After a minute Deb said, “I don’t know, do you all want to talk to Dad?”

  “It’s whatever,” Simon answered.

  Deb was about to say something else, only there wasn’t time because here, of course, came the inevitable.

  The inevitable Teagan.

  And what was she saying?

  She was saying: Folks.

  “Folks, how we doing? Hi.” She said the last word directly to Simon, and it must have been obvious to his mother, to anyone listening, that she spoke differently to him, like she meant it, Hi. Then: “How are you guys liking everything?”

  “Everything’s wonderful,” Deb said, and Simon could see all her teeth. “We love the names! Who comes up with them? Do you?”

  “No, no, I wish,” Teagan answered kindly. Simon was sure she didn’t wish. “That’s Brian—my manager, Brian.”

  “Well, tell Brian they’re great.” (Enough, Mom. She doesn’t care.) “So yum,” Deb went on. Now Simon did want to die. Goodbye and die. To Kay, she said, “Aren’t they yum?”

  Simon could see the slight nod of Kay’s head, but Teagan, who did not know Simon’s sister, who perhaps did not know what it meant to be shy, leaned closer, awaiting the affirmation that had already passed.

  “Kay?” His mother was on that kick that came around every so often in which she tried to toughen her children up. Such phases were always trigg
ered by friendly young people like Teagan and never lasted more than a few hours, at which point she’d feel guilty and indulge them the other way. At fifteen Simon had her all figured out.

  “She said yes, she thinks they’re great.” His next look, to Teagan, said, I’m sorry for them, for this; I’m not my family, believe me. It tried to say all that.

  “Well, thank you,” Teagan said, more waitress than person. She lifted her arm, slid a pen from her ponytail. “Actually, though, we’re just closing up the kitchen.”

  “Oh, dessert?” Deb looked up and down the bench like this was some kind of actual problem.

  “Teagan!” the other girl, Laura, shouted from just inside the shop, where she was tearing apart a cardboard box. “Can you come help me break these down?”

  Teagan clicked the pen on and off, saying they could think it over. When they were alone again, Kay said, “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Dessert?”

  “Talking to Dad.” They were back to that. “I wouldn’t mind it.”

  Deb looked down at her pita and parsley and cucumber, what bits were left on the paper plate that had turned translucent in places, where the oil had touched it.

  “I think,” Gary started, “if your mother and father need some time apart—”

  “No, it’s—okay. Sure.” She turned a cucumber crescent around with her finger. It became the beginning of a parenthesis, the bottom half of a smiley face. “We can do that. And we can call Ommy.” She nodded like some kind of progress was being made. “She’d like that.”

  They were all unbearably slow at emptying their trays into the trash, Deb shaking drops from a can for recycling, not that there was any kind of hurry. It was only a little after three and once again there was nothing to do.

  They’d just started up the hill when Simon heard his name being called and turned back around.

  Teagan stood outside the shop waving at him, hair waving too in the sea breeze. She saw that they’d stopped and jogged after them. Simon stepped forward like a chess piece to meet her.

  “You should come over tomorrow night, if you aren’t doing anything. My mom’s house.” There followed a discussion of certain landmarks, the white church, the library—that’s that low brick building, right?—and when you see the swing set with the yellow seats, that’s it, across from the yellow swings.

  “Yeah, I mean, I just have to see if I can. I mean, if I’m not doing anything.”

  When she’d gone, Simon wouldn’t look at his mother or sister or Gary, his cheeks tight with wanting to smile. Instead he walked through them, opening his book, keeping the good feelings between himself and the page. He thought that the world was opening to him now, like the darkness fleeing before the bobbing headlights. He was free. He was ready.

  The Phoenix weather was up over one hundred and dry everywhere except the back of Jack’s neck and the greenhouse taking seed in the crotch of his shorts. A shuttle had carried him from baggage claim to car rentals, and now he was on I-10, driving himself for the first time in how many years?

  On the road.

  In a way, too easy, that the Hertz people should send him off like this, all because of the card in his wallet that vouched that he had money, and another, softer card, confirmation that once, at sixteen, he’d been able to parallel park. If human cells regenerated, what, every seven years, then wasn’t he a wholly new person? Several new people, it felt like, and not all of them knowing how to drive.

  He didn’t see why renting a car should be any easier than buying a gun; a car was every bit as much a weapon. Driving was faster and more freeing than he remembered, how directly the wheels responded, a little left or right, coasting along as though in a spaceship, a future in which friction was a thing of the past. The highway, so flat, came at him in rushes that hung in the air before they were over, reversed in retrospect, in the rearview of the ridiculous red convertible he’d let them give him for a joke.

  Like virtual reality. The world shimmered and Jack thought: mirage. With his sleeves rolled up, one arm on the car door and the other on the wheel in front of him, he kept noticing the sweated skin inside his elbow, glistening to match the road where it glittered, concrete flecked with glass.

  So driving was giving him a bit of a thrill, everything winking at him under the hot sun, and he sped up to get a good wind going on his face, ruffling his hair.

  Probably it was just as easy to buy a gun out here, where if you didn’t look too close at the edges of things you could feel yourself back on the frontier, a place you’d never been but in your mind. At the sign for Tempe, he turned off the interstate and followed the guideposts straight to the university. He’d figure out hotel, motel stuff later. There was a Super 8. Might be fun.

  The campus was mostly pink brick and palm trees. He parked in one of the visitor spots and followed the campus map to the art museum, then called the department line that always put him through to Jolie, who said to stay right where he was and that she’d send someone out to meet him. He got the feeling that she would have come herself if not for the heat. He had yet to see a person.

  Standing in his own sweat made him irritable. He stood in the shade of the building, stucco with tiny square holes cut out for windows so that he felt himself on the wrong side of a bunker. He kept an eye out. They were probably up there rock-paper-scissoring to see who would have to go down, and he half expected to see someone in a hazmat suit plodding over.

  His phone came alive in the pocket of his shorts.

  “Deb! Can you hear me, Deb?”

  “I hear,” she said into his ear, and the fact of that changed everything. He was less alone, less unmoored than he’d thought. She called. “Is it a bad time?”

  “No, no.” There was a space between them, and he waited for her to fill it. “I’m in Arizona.”

  “I figured. That’s good,” she said quietly, like maybe the kids were around and she didn’t want them to hear.

  “I’m glad you called me.” He propped his elbow up into one of the square holes, trying to seem jaunty. “How is it there? Everything running okay? Hey, how’s the weather?”

  “It’s fine. It’s beautiful.”

  Jack nodded into nothing and, to fill the space again, said, “It’s hot here. Hot enough to bake potatoes.”

  “I’m sorry,” she breathed heavily into the phone. “I can’t talk like this, about the weather.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can you hang on a second? Just, hold on.”

  What was she doing? There was a sound like something dragging across the floor, and then the white noise around her changed, became more outside. She was in the yard, or out the window. “Hello? Deb, hello?” There was more jostling, and why the hell had she called, then, if she didn’t care that it was hot in Arizona? If she didn’t care that he was hot in Arizona.

  “Mr. Shanley?”

  Jack turned, his elbow catching in the hole in the wall so that he had to twist back and try again. A spindly Asian man with a thin smile was walking toward him, hand out, thumb at the sky. That he should be in a suit was strange, with a jacket even in this heat.

  “Deb?” Jack gripped the phone. “Honey? Can you hear me?” No answer. The Asian man stopped in front of him. He had a sticker over his left lapel, HELLO MY NAME IS with “Kevin” spelled neatly in red marker. “I have to get off here, honey. I’ll call you later. All right.” He put the phone in his pocket and shook spindly Kevin’s hand. “Sorry, the wife.”

  “Know how that is.” Really? You look twelve.

  —

  The museum, on the way in, had been appropriately dim, but upstairs, where they kept the faculty and staff, it looked like any office, white lights and low, gray dividers. It took a few tries to get them to stop calling him Mr. Shanley. Kevin offered him a bowl of candy, little Bazooka gums and squares of Now & Later. Jack answered, “Maybe later,” and Kevin laughed. So did HELLO MY NAME IS Lissa, standing over by the copier, and HELLO MY NAME IS Missy at the desk with the most
phones. Both Melissas, wasn’t it funny? “What are the odds?” Jack said.

  When Jolie emerged from her corner office, there was no surprise about how she looked. Her voice fit her just right: dark blond hair that hung flat, skin deeply tanned but yellowy, maybe the wrong makeup. Big girl, though not quite in the way he had imagined—big on bottom, like a pear, with not much chest and stubby little arms.

  The little arms she spread out at him. “Jack!”

  He went in for the hug. “Jolie!” They were old friends.

  That the line was dead by the time Deb got back, this was another of the steps she took away from the man she was married to, from the hope that he would ever stop behaving like the sun. She said his name a few times into the phone and was aware, on the outskirts of her vision, of her daughter’s hand, waiting to take it from her, his daughter who wanted to talk to him. Deb had gone to ask her, Do you still want to talk to Dad, because I’ve got him on the phone, and you don’t have to, he doesn’t even know I’m asking.

  Kay was here, for him, and now Deb would have to tell her that actually he was gone, that actually never mind. She redialed, but the phone rang and went to voice mail. “Shit.” She brought the phone down to her lap. “Sorry,” she said, and for a moment it seemed she was sorry just for cursing. “He must’ve lost service.”

  Kay swallowed, nodded seriously.

  “He’s in Arizona for that project, you know? The reception, he must be roaming.” She touched Kay’s hair, smoothing the front piece down her cheek and curling it around her chin like a comma, after this face and before the next one, all the faces her daughter didn’t know she would have. “Hey. Hey. Isn’t it beautiful out here, the country? Let’s go for a walk.” But her hand stayed where it landed, on Kay’s shoulder. “Whatever, however things— What’s important to me is that you’re happy. That’s the number one thing in the world to me.”

  “I know.”

  “Okay. Okay, good,” Deb said and let her go. “Head on down. I’ll be there in a minute.”