by Drew Perry
On to his own necessaries: He packs a box of towels and sheets, unplugs the TV from the guest room, carries that across. He takes the mattress from the guest bed, puts it on his back and walks it over. Cars slow down in the street. A neighbor two doors down watches from her stoop. He puts a few things from the fridge into a cooler. Across the street, he pulls items from the garage, things left over from the auction—a card table, some plastic Adirondack chairs, huge brass lamps—and sets up a kind of dining room, a living room. He uses boxes for coffee tables, end tables. Three chairs right next to each other for a sofa. He goes back out to the garage, finds a green ceramic bowl, blows the dust out of it, sets it on one of his liquor-box end tables. Decoration. He stands in his new house, his new rooms, has a look at his progress: He likes the living room this way—likes the brown carpet, likes how aggressively temporary it all seems. He’s sweating. He could use a glass of water. They’re going to need glasses. He goes back across the street.
A bag of encyclopedias. The plastic McDonald’s cup Hen likes. A sack of plastic plates and cups, a box of plastic forks and knives. There are plenty of pots and pans left over from the auction, so no problem there. Dog food. A radio. He loads all that into the back of the dump truck, in boxes and lawn and leaf bags, and he gets Hen and Yul Brynner up and out and ready, locks the door behind him, backs the thirty yards down his driveway and up his other driveway. It’s working, at least so far. He takes Hen inside, telling him they’re on an adventure, an adventure. Hen’s still holding the phone book. He walks the entirety of the house, doesn’t say a word. When he makes it back to the den, he looks at Jack a long time, and then he sets the book on one of the boxes, sits down in front of it. He opens it to the white pages, looks up at Jack, says, “Granger.” He looks back down, finds his place. “Granget,” he says. “Grangetsky. John R. Grangetsky, 709 Fairmont Lane, 15216.” Hendrick reads out the names of Pittsburghians circa 1970, and Jack listens to the cadences of his voice, his exactness, how he never stumbles, never sounds anything out, just gets it right the first time. This is working out fine. Pittsburgh should keep him occupied for a while. It’s almost four-thirty. Jack decides to go out to the porch, sets himself up in a spot where he can see Hen through the window. He brings Yul Brynner out with him, ties him off to the porch railing, cracks open a beer. He plugs a radio in and tunes it to the news, listens to that a while. Relaxes. He views his new view. Scrub yard, roots from the trees coming up through the grass. Dead boxwood down by the mailbox, which is still leaning well over from where he clipped it last week. A long story comes on the radio about after-school programs in Connecticut. The guy being interviewed is talking about funding, keeps mentioning the need for his kids, the kids in his program, to get a head start. A leg up. Jack sips his beer, thinks about Beth watching him pull out of the lot this morning, about Hen speaking Spanish. How could you not tell me? But that’s what he does, she says. His M.O. He doesn’t talk. Like the baby, like when she’d wanted to talk about another baby—when they’d talked about it last, in March, or April, between seasons, before the auction, Beth said she’d been thinking she might want a second one. But Hen’s already six, Jack said. And he’s already two or three other things, he didn’t say. She shook her head. We’ve still got all the baby clothes upstairs, she reminded him. They’d never thrown any of it away. Bibs, overalls, onesies. There are rattles up there. Bath books. Saved. She said sometimes she thought she could see them with a second baby.
What if it was a girl? he wanted to know.
We could go a year or so on what we have. Or we could buy one or two really pink little outfits in case we want to take her to the store and we’re worried about somebody mistaking her for a boy. We can put eyeliner on her from the beginning, if you want. We can pierce her ears. She can wear pearls.
That’s not what I meant.
Well, Jack, what did you mean?
He hadn’t even been sure he wanted the first baby. He was twenty-nine. She was thirty. People do these things when they’re too young to know what they’re doing, too dumb or too blindly hopeful to know any better. So they’d already waited too long. But she wanted a child, and he thought he might, or would eventually, so they started trying to get pregnant. By the second month, they were. Jokes about how virile he was, how fertile she was. The Fertile Crescent. He beat on his chest. Make a big enough show out of it and it gets fun, maybe, or at least funny. They had friends who were pregnant, or who already had babies, a few friends, anyway, and Beth started inviting them over to dinner more often. They’d pass wine around, a half a glass for Beth, and she’d be at them about time between contractions or what kinds of exercises they’d done or how she’d read at some point that toward the end some women would eat soap, would get a craving and stand at the washer and eat laundry soap out of the box. Once, Jack got up from the sofa, went into the bathroom, dipped his finger in the box of Tide and ate what came up. It tasted clean.
Their friends who were pregnant looked frightened. The ones who already had kids looked like something had run them over, backed up, hit them again. Toddlers wandered Jack’s shelves, pulling books down, putting candles in their mouths. Yul Brynner hid in the back when they had kids over. In her third month, Beth decided the smell of coffee made her nauseous. Jack moved the coffeemaker to the back porch, made coffee outside in the cold. At seven months she told him he could bring it back inside, but by then it was June and warm again.
Beth sits there and tells him she’s not saying for sure that she wants to try again. She just wants to think about it, is all. Talk about it with him. They’re on their porch, a couple of months ago, the house she hates, Hendrick through his paces and down for the night. But Jack can’t do it, can’t even discuss it, says he doesn’t want to. Next door, Frank rolls his garbage cans to the curb, plastic wheels sounding like stone on the driveway. Beth and Jack watch him lining up the recycling can in perfect formation with the green garbage cans. Everything Frank does is in perfect formation. He will sometimes come out of his house, jingling a big handful of keys, and rearrange the three cars he’s got in his driveway.
I just thought we could talk about it, she says, sounding sad, frustrated with him. It’s something we have to think about. I’ll be thirty-seven this fall.
He tells her he knows how old they are. He knows he should be telling her something else. He sits on the porch steps. He bites at his thumbnail. Big thick silence. He should touch her, at least, reach for her shoulder. Eventually, she gets up and goes in. And a little fissure opens up between them.
On the radio, the after-school program guy is talking about pulling kids off the streets. Jack works on his beer, leans his chair a little further back against the wall of the house, of this house, and waits. He’s moved across the street. The light’s different over here. This ought to count for something.
Rena calls him on the cell, and he explains it to her. “You did not,” she says.
“I did.”
“I’m impressed,” she says. “That’s impressive. I’m coming over.”
“OK,” he says. “But we don’t have much over here.”
“I’ll bring supplies.”
It’s Rena’s idea to move to the back yard. She says there’s something that doesn’t taste right about sitting on the front porch, watching for something to happen, waiting, maybe, for Beth to come by. Says wouldn’t the back yard be a nice, fine middle ground, instead. Rena as the voice of reason: There’s one way to measure. So he drags a couple more deck chairs out from the garage—there are twenty or thirty in there, fake plastic wood grain pressed into them, stacked up like a pool party might at any moment break out—and they’re set up out back now, the little radio tuned into the rock station. It’s a No Repeat Work Week on 104.7, The Wolf. Hen’s inside, reading his phone book and watching television. Jack brought the TV over, tried the cable for the hell of it, and it was still hooked up. A little miracle. Hen’s watching the Dead Dog Channel, which is what Jack and Beth call the local acce
ss show put on by the animal shelter. Hendrick loves it. Loves it. It comes on basically every day, but at different times. They can never figure out what the schedule is, so when they’re flipping through and it comes up, it feels like a gift. Fade in to the same guy, every time, standing in a beat-down grassy run with, say, Cleo. Female voice-over: Cleo is a lab mix, happy and playful. She’s great with kids. She needs some room to run. If you’re interested in Cleo, mention number 476C when you come to the shelter. Fade out and in again, and it’s the same man, same weather, same angle of the sun: It’s five minutes later. They’ve leashed Cleo, taken her back to her pen, brought out the next one. Shasta is a mature dog, so she’s calm and likes to lie down with her toys. Shot of some ruined red stuffed animal in Shasta’s mouth, shot of Shasta wagging. She loves to have her belly rubbed. If Shasta seems like the perfect companion for you, call about number 556A. Next up are two German Shepherd–mix puppies named for sodas and chips. Frito and Pringle. They run out of names at the pound.
He figures there’s at least another half-hour of the Dead Dog Channel to go, and Jack refills their drinks from a small cooler they’ve got between their chairs. Rena brought it. Ice, bottle of gin, a couple of liters of tonic, a lime they’re mauling into pieces with a box cutter he found in the truck.
Rena says, “So he’ll just sit in there? He won’t get into anything?”
“Like what?”
“Like he won’t stick his head in the toaster or anything?”
“I didn’t bring a toaster over,” Jack says. “But no, I don’t think so. He seems OK.” Somebody down the street is getting a little work done, maybe roofing. The percussion of hammers, a crew working late. “He’s good as long as the show’s on, anyway.”
“It’s a little morbid, don’t you think?”
“What’s that?”
“Calling it the Dead Dog Channel?”
“Isn’t that what it is?”
“I thought the shelter out there was a no-kill.”
“I don’t know,” Jack says. “Maybe that’s right.”
“It’s the High Point one, right? I think that one’s a no-kill.”
“So what do you want me to call it—the Indefinitely Imprisoned Dog Channel?”
“That seems better, at least.”
“Doesn’t have the same ring to it,” he says. “It’ll never sell.”
Yul Brynner’s lying in the dirt beside them, basically settled into his new digs. Jack found him a straight-sided metal dish, one more thing from the treasure trove in the garage, filled it up with water. Rena’s running her foot back and forth across the dog’s side. “So what made you do it?” she wants to know.
“What, the moving?”
“Hell yes, the moving.”
“I’m not sure,” he says. “It just kind of happened.”
“That’s bullshit,” she says. “I’m saying that’s bullshit.”
“I needed a change of scenery,” he says. “I needed to shake things up.”
“Who even says that? Who shakes things up?”
“I do,” he says.
“Well, you’ve shaken it.” She licks her thumb, rubs something off the arm of her chair. “This’ll make her foam at the mouth, you know.”
“You think?”
“Oh, absolutely,” she says. “Not a doubt in the world. But you don’t need me to tell you that.” She rattles her ice. “Right?”
“I guess not.”
“Are you hungry?” she says. “I brought over some crackers. Want me to go get them?”
Jack can just barely touch the ground if he lets his arms hang. Maybe Beth would like it over here. Maybe Rena’s got it wrong. “I’ll go,” he says. “I need to check on Hen, anyway.”
“They’re on the kitchen counter,” she tells him. It’s like she’s lived here six months. He leaves her there in the yard, walks up the back steps into the house. Hen’s sitting up right in front of the television, saying the names of the dogs over and over until a new name flashes up. Ritz Ritz Ritz Ritz Ritz Ritz Ritz. Fanta Fanta Fanta Fanta. Jack musses his hair, and he groans. He wants to be left alone, so Jack leaves him alone. Sleeping dogs and boys. He finds the crackers, opens up a cabinet, looks at what else he’s brought from across the street. A jar of peanut butter. Some mustard. He’s got half a gallon of milk in the fridge and a bag of ground coffee. He could use a grocery run. How unprepared he is for whatever he’s doing is starting to dawn on him. He needs shampoo. He needs a book, or some magazines. He takes the peanut butter and the crackers back outside.
“Hi,” she says, taking the crackers, opening the box up.
“Hi.”
“Is he still watching the dying dogs?”
“He is.”
She digs a cracker into the peanut butter, looks up at him. “Then would it be alright if I asked you some questions?”
“Whatever you want,” he says. “Sure.”
“Cool,” she says. “I like that. So Beth just walked out one day?”
“Basically,” he says.
“Not unprovoked,” she says.
“No. I helped.”
She nods. “And she moved in over there.”
“Basically.”
“With your best friend,” she says. He looks around the yard, at the few flowers the old man had going, a couple of moldering bird feeders. The hedges are going to need some work. There’s poison ivy all in the fence. “All I did was move downtown,” says Rena. “I think we have a winner. I think she wins.”
“Why’s that?”
“Come on. It could have been anyone, right?”
“I guess so.”
“But no,” she says. “It’s Terry. It’s an impressive move. You have to give her credit.”
“I do?”
“I think so,” she says. “I think we both do.”
“OK.”
“You’re taking it well,” she says, grinning. “Or maybe you’re not taking it at all. Doesn’t matter. Let’s keep going.”
“Hang on,” he says. “Can we talk about how you’re taking it? Can we talk about you and Canavan? I mean—”
“More on that later, folks,” she says. “I’m not finished yet. I have more questions.”
“Why don’t you have to talk about your part?”
“I’ll talk about it. Here: He made me very sad. More than once. Now. My questions.”
“You’ll tell me?”
“When I’m finished, OK?”
“OK,” he says.
“Alright, then.” She smiles. “Promise you won’t get mad.”
“About what?”
“About what I’m going to ask.” He feels like he’s on a game show. “Because what we don’t want is you getting all pissed off,” she says.
“I won’t get all pissed off.”
“Are you sure?”
“It depends,” he says. “What are you asking?”
She takes a long sip of her drink. “I want to know why they fired you,” she says. “I always have. Tell me the real reason.”
“There’s no real reason,” he says, right away. “They just weren’t going to have classes for me.”
She points a cracker at him. “That’s also bullshit. Isn’t it? It has to be. They love Beth. They could have made space for you.”
“I didn’t have my degree. I wasn’t going to finish.”
“Bullshit again,” she says. “You could have finished. And plus they would’ve hired you anyway. Andy Baumbartener’s got a job, for fuck’s sake, and he’s only got an MA.”
“They wouldn’t have hired me. Alan was clear about that. I needed the PhD in hand.”
“Jack. Earth to Jack.” She waves at him, snaps her fingers. “It’s me. Your best friend’s girlfriend. Like in the song. I have slept on your sofa, deeply inebriated. You have refused and/or failed to take advantage of me. Your wife is half an hour away from where we’re sitting, running some kind of X-rated nursing clinic for my shitbag boyfriend. You can tell me why they ran you
off.” She’s talking with her mouth full. “Because they did run you off, right?”
He’s never told anyone. Not one person in three years. He’s never discussed any part of it with anyone but Alan Sherrill. But what the hell. He’s now sitting in his auxiliary back yard. With Rena. Pepsi is a Dachshund-Poodle cross who loves to have her ears rubbed. “They didn’t run me off,” he says.
“What’d they do, then?”
“I kissed a kid,” he says.
“What?”
He says it again. “I kissed a kid.” It sounds very plain like that.
“No shit,” she says.
“No shit.”
“That’s fantastic.”
“Not really.”
“What, you’re not proud of it?”
“No,” he says. “I’m not.”
“Are you embarrassed?”
“I probably should be,” he says. “But no. I’m not that, either.” He’s nothing about it. He never has been. It’s always just been something that happened, like accidentally dropping a plate.
“This is great,” she says. “This is genuinely outstanding. You have to tell me who it was. Did I have her?”
“You didn’t have her.”
“How do you know? I could have had her.” She’s excited about the possibility.
“Sarah Cody,” he says.
She frowns. “I don’t think I had her.”
