This is Just Exactly Like You

by Drew Perry

  “This is insane.”

  “It’s not insane,” he says. “Maybe it’s a little crazy, but it’s not insane.”

  “What’s the difference?” she asks, her voice pinched. “What does it matter?”

  “It matters,” he says. He needs her to see it the way he does. Or try to. “I mean, it’s fine. You can think it’s crazy. But can’t you like it, too?” Butner parks the skid by what’s left of the shed. “Look at it,” Jack says.

  “What the hell do you think I’m looking at?”

  “But how can you not like it even a little bit? How is this not a little bit fantastic? I’m not saying it isn’t out there, Bethany, and I’m not saying everybody would have done it—”

  “Who would have done this?” she says. “Who else in the world would have done this?”

  “But can’t you just—”

  “What are you asking me?” she says. “How can you be asking me why I don’t like it? How about this: How are you not sorry right now? How is it even possible you’re not apologizing for this?”

  “I’m sorry, OK?” he says. “I can be sorry. I can apologize, if that’s what you want. I can apologize for all of it. Everything. But that doesn’t make it not here, right?”

  “Is everybody else on board with this?” she says. “Butner and Ernesto and all those guys down there? Is Rena?”

  “I think so,” he says. “They’re here. They like it.”

  “God, that’s even worse.” She pushes hard at one eyebrow. “You’re all completely nuts, you know that? All of you.” She’s sweating in the heat. She says, “I’m not the freak job here, OK? You don’t get to make it out like I’m some kind of bad guy just because I don’t think you and your sidekicks putting a theme park in the back yard is a good idea.”

  “I’m not saying that. I’m not. All I’m saying is—”

  “What, Jack? What?”

  He has no idea what he’s saying. He’s still got Canavan’s coffee cup in the glove compartment of the truck. He still owes him some tomatoes, some azaleas. As of this morning, Rena had a toothbrush in his bathroom. He says, “What if there are some days—not a lot of days, but some days—where maybe putting in a sidewalk isn’t the worst possible thing that could happen?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What if there were some days where you let yourself get surprised?”

  She stares at him. “What did you just say?”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  She takes a couple of breaths. She says, “I’m plenty fucking surprised, Jack. You surprise me all the time. But I’m getting tired of being surprised, you know?” She looks out at the back yard. “Clearly you don’t know.” Jack checks to make sure Hen’s still in the same place. He is. “You know what I’d like?” she says. “I’ll tell you what I’d like. I’ll tell you exactly. I’d like to come home, just once, one time, to the house being the same way I left it that morning. I’d like a dinner where you don’t tell me that what you’ve got in mind is some kind of six-story observation tower you want to add on to the back of the living room. A kitchen floor that’s a kitchen floor. A back yard without a cement truck in it. How is it you think that’s so wrong?” she says. “How is that too much to ask?”

  “It isn’t,” he says. “It’s a fine amount to ask.”

  “Great,” she says.

  “Maybe it’s like Hendrick,” he says. “Maybe it’s like—”

  “That’s it,” she says, grabbing his arm. “Stop right there. It is like Hendrick. But that’s not alright. This is the part you don’t get.” Her voice is getting quieter. “I love you,” she says. “I do. OK? None of this was ever about that. But listen to me.” She squeezes his arm tighter. “Listen. We already have one Hendrick. One is plenty. I can’t have you being another one. You don’t get to be another one.” She’s blinking a lot. “You don’t,” she says. “It isn’t fair.”

  He’s failing. He sees that. He’s not explaining it well enough to her. “That’s not what I meant,” he says. “You’re getting it wrong.”

  “I’m not,” she says. “I’m not getting it wrong at all. That’s the whole, whole thing.” She lets go of his arm and starts to walk away.

  He says, “I don’t understand why you always get to decide what’s OK.”

  She stops, turns, looks at him like if she could make him disappear, wink out of existence right here and now, she would. But she turns back around, leaves him there on the little hill, walks down into the back yard toward the racetrack, toward Hen. She comes up behind him, touches him on the back, tries, it looks like, to pick him up, but she’s done it without letting him know she was there first, a rookie mistake, something she’d never do otherwise. Do not startle him. Rule number one. Hen never saw her coming. He crumples immediately down onto the ground, into the mud, starts kicking and rolling, and just like that, it’s like old times. No Spanish now, no Latinate National Geographic trivia answers. She tries to hold him, to get him to slow down, to stop, but he’s too far gone already. It’s a full-blown meltdown, up out of almost nowhere. He loses The Duck, which only makes it worse. Jack stands in the side yard. Ernesto tries to help her, but something’s wound too tight in her head, or more than one thing, and she swings at Ernesto, actually swings, hits him with the back of her arm. He holds both hands up in the air, backs up, shaking his head. I’m sorry, Jack can see him saying. He can’t believe she hit him. Ernesto keeps moving back, away. It’s a silent movie down there, all the human noise drowned out by the cement mixer. Randolph & Sons are still at it, pumping concrete into the racetrack. She’s crying, rubbing at her cheeks, at her neck. She swings again, this time at nothing. Ernesto stays well out of reach. Hen’s facedown in the mud. Butner stands up in the skid, locks eyes with Jack. Jack looks away. What he can’t do is take this back. They’re already almost finished with the cement. It’s all but done. Like Butner said: Make sure you want it in there before you do it. Beth goes back to Hen, tries a couple more times to get him to be still, but eventually she gives up, leaves him there in his tantrum, walks away, toward the mixer, the wet edge of the sidewalk. Randolph gives a hand signal and they stop pumping. The engine noise drops down to a hum, just the lowered groan of the drum still turning on the truck. The 2x4 guys stand to the sides, their board dripping concrete off its bottom edge. Beth leans over, reaches down into the slurry, picks up a handful, lets it fall back down into the muck. It’s the consistency of cake batter. There’s something plastic about it, something viscous. Rena’s looking at him now. Everybody else is looking at Bethany, watching her pick up another handful of concrete, but Rena’s looking at him. Do something , she mouths at him. Do something right now.

  He has to think about making his arms and legs move, has to think about taking the steps, but he does it, does as he’s told. He goes to Hen first, picks The Duck up out of the mud, wipes the lenses on his shirt. They’re not broken, thank God, not too badly scratched. He gets him to sit back up, his whole front red from the clay, and Jack gets The Duck back on him, gets the glasses square on his head, which slows him down some, even if he’s still squirming, still pushing. Jack’s always amazed by how strong he is. Hen’s making his noises: Bup-bup-bup-bup. Jack says that back to him, and he calms down one notch more. Jack waits. Hendrick takes a few shallow breaths, grabs a spike, puts it to his mouth, and he talks—he says, very quietly, Call today for your free brochure. He’s never come out of one of these talking before. He works the words out around the spike. Jack takes a few breaths of his own, says, Operators are standing by, just to try him out, and Hen says right back, Pellegrino is a three-year-old terrier mix who loves to fetch his ball. He’s slowing, stopping. He’s one of those prize wheels at the fair. Jack says, You think Yul Brynner needs a friend? Hendrick looks at Beth, and says, I do not know the answer to that. He says, Yo no sé. He puts the spike back down. She is standing in the wrong place, he tells Jack, and Jack says, I know that. He stays a minute with Hen to make sure it’s really
over. This is all new territory. State names, dinner that’s not fish sticks. It’s hard to say what weather might be off on the horizon.

  He counts to ten. He’s got to try Beth next. Explanation, apology, accountancy: The Beanbags’ three rules of something—either conflict management or behavior modification. He can’t remember which. Hen stays still. Jack says, “Can you wait right here a second?”

  Hendrick sits up straight, adjusts The Duck, says, “That will be fine.”

  “You’re OK?”

  “I am OK.”

  “You sure?”

  Hen doesn’t answer him, and Jack stares at his son, tries to look him in the eye through those sunglasses, like if he looks long enough he’ll figure out what it is that’s happening in there. Hen stares back. Jack tells him again: Wait right here. Beth’s still at the edge of the wet concrete, working what’s left in her hand through her fingers. Randolph hangs the hose on the cement mixer, looks for somewhere else to look. The Sons stand by the fence. Ernesto and Butner pretend to fool with something on the loader. Hen adjusts and readjusts The Duck. He’s got mud on his head. Rena holds her ground, across the yard, watching, hands in her pockets. Jack walks over to Beth, stands right next to her.

  She says, after a while, “I don’t.”

  “You don’t what?” he says.

  “I don’t always get to decide.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why did you say that?” she says.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I’m sorry.” She picks up more cement, lets it drop back onto the ground. “What are you doing?” he asks her.

  “I’m not doing anything.”

  She’s still crying. “Why are you crying?” he asks.

  She says, “Are you kidding me?”

  He holds his shirt out to her, lets her clean some of the cement off her hand.

  “Thanks,” she says.

  “You’re welcome.”

  She says, “You got him to calm down.”

  “Yeah,” he says.

  She runs the hand without concrete on it through her hair. Another familiar motion. “What’s going on with him?” she says.

  “I don’t know,” he says. There are still termites coming out of the pile of rotten shed. “I’ve been thinking maybe he’s getting better.”

  “You always say we can’t talk about it like that,” says Beth.

  “I know.”

  “You have rules, too,” she says.

  “I know.”

  “You’re the one who says he can’t get better.”

  “I know that,” he says. “But now it feels like he might be.”

  “How could he be? What’s happening?”

  “I’m not really sure,” Jack says. “He knows things. Not just memorized things. He really knows them.”

  “He’s always known things.”

  “Not these things,” he says. “And he talks to you now. Some.”

  “You should have come to get me,” she says. “You should have come and gotten me and told me he was getting better.”

  “What would you have done?”

  “You just should have come to get me,” she says again.

  Jack says, “I thought I did.”

  “We have to take him in,” she says. “We have to go see what they say.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t even know how to be standing here with you,” she says.

  “I know,” he says.

  “No, you don’t.”

  She pushes her toe into the edge of the sidewalk, and he watches her do it. “Why Canavan?” Jack asks, finally. Or again.

  “Why not?” she says. “He was the same as anybody else.”

  “He wasn’t,” Jack says.

  She sniffs. “Did Rena stay here last night?”

  “Yes,” he says.

  She works her toe further into the concrete. “We have to stop this,” she says. “We have to do something.”

  “You and me?”

  “All of us,” she says. “All four of us. We can’t keep going like this.”

  “I know,” he says.

  “We need to sit down,” she says.

  “Sit down how?”

  “All of us together,” she says. “Soon. Tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Tonight. I’m done with this. We’re done with this. We have to be. We’re all going to figure out what we ought to do. Together.”

  “Hang on,” he says. “What is it you think is going to happen if the four of us sit down?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, “and I don’t even know if I care.” She shakes her head, looks around. “All I know is that we have to do something before you—what, before you buy a blimp and paint your face on it.”

  “What?”

  “I’m worn out, Jack. I’m not saying I’m coming home. I’m not saying anything. I can’t come home, anyway, because you don’t live at home any more. Or alone, either. But we at least have to hate each other more if we’re going to keep acting like this. We at least have to act like regular lunatics.”

  “Instead of what?”

  “Instead of whatever we’re doing now.” She shakes her shoe free of the concrete. Yul Brynner’s standing in the sliding doors, wagging at them. Beth says, “Finish all this up, and get rid of all these people, and I’ll go home and get Terry, and we’ll be back in a few hours.”

  “Here? Why here?”

  “It’s the closest thing to neutral territory there is,” she says.

  “It’s the opposite of neutral territory,” he says. He’s standing under the falling safe, looking up at it. He can’t figure out if he should run, or if he should spread his arms wide open and catch it.

  “It’s what we have. It’s that or you come to Terry’s.”

  “I don’t want to come to Terry’s,” he says. He doesn’t want to go anywhere.

  “Well?”

  “Are you crazy?” he asks her.

  She smiles a bent smile, but a determined one. “I don’t think it’s really your turn to ask me that,” she says. “You know?” She steps out from between the forms, doesn’t say anything else to him, walks away. She tells Rena See you tonight on her way by. He can’t tell if she’s kidding or coming unglued. He can’t tell if any of them are. But he seems to have agreed to this, somehow. Yet another self-inflicted wound. Jack stands there for a minute, but then he goes and picks Hendrick up—makes sure he sees him coming—and carries him over to the patio, puts him back down. “Gracias,” Hen says. Rena wants to know what Beth meant, what see you tonight meant. Like tonight? Where’s she going? Jack doesn’t answer. He doesn’t want to think about Beth, or anything else. He looks out at the men in his yard.

  Randolph holds his hands out: What now? Jack takes one long breath and then runs his finger around in a cranking motion: Go ahead. Randolph gives a thumbs-up, walks to the mixer, throws the lever on the side of the truck, and the pump kicks back on. Everybody snaps into motion one more time. Jack stands with Rena, tries to figure out what Beth could possibly be hoping for, tries to figure out what the hell stories the four of them might tell each other tonight. She’ll be back in a few hours. With Canavan. Jack doesn’t understand how this could possibly go, how they’ll ever land somewhere so that any of them could say There was this one time when.

  Randolph and his crew are gone by six. What’s impressive is how fast it all goes, how simple a thing like a sidewalk is, finally. It’s two guys pouring wet rocks into a form, two more guys smoothing it out. When they get it flat, one last guy drags a destroyed push broom across the surface, roughs it up in little lines. Leave it perfectly smooth, Randolph tells Jack when he asks, and people’ll slip and fall and break their asses. You don’t want an insurance situation on your hands. He pronounces the first syllable heavy. In-surance. Jack had never given much thought to sidewalks before. Now he knows.

  They’ve unloaded the undersea creatures, and they’re on their sides in the front yard. B
utner took the trailer back to the NCDOT guys. Before he left, before any of them left, they all put their hands into the concrete, all in a row. Jack felt like that was important. Randolph and Butner and Ernesto, the Sons, Rena. They brought Yul Brynner out, pressed each paw in. He did not love that. Hen didn’t want any part of putting his hands in, either, did not like seeing the cement get on everyone else’s hands, but they convinced him, finally, to put his two pointer fingers in, so there’s the row of hands, the paws, and then two small holes, little knuckle marks next to each. And right now, in the half-glow of the evening coming on, it looks good. Jack’s sitting on the back patio, has been for a while. The yard’s pretty well torn up from the cement mixer and the skid steer, but he’ll get out here with some soil, some grass seed. Maybe he’ll get the NCDOT to come by, turn the back yard into one of those State Wildflower Projects they’ve got all in the medians of the interstates and up the off ramps. Every now and then a leaf or a stick falls down onto the racetrack, and he gets up, walks over there, leans out over the wet cement, picks it out.

  Beth and Canavan coming back is an unmitigated catastrophe. Rena’s fine with it, of course, fine with all of it, said, That’s as good as anything else, Jackson, isn’t it? Didn’t even flinch. She’s inside, getting drinks. Hen’s watching the weather. Some show called If It Happened Again. It’s a re-imagining of historical weather disasters—the Chicago Blizzard of 1967 strikes again, that kind of thing. Bad graphics. Urgent narration.

  Rena comes outside with two plastic cups. Jack takes one from her. It’s a beer with some ice cubes in it. “Something’s wrong with the fridge,” she says. “It’s getting kind of warm. Your freezer seems fine, though.”

  “Perfect,” he says.

  “Well,” she says, “yeah.”

  They sit and drink their beers. These are the hours before the execution. This is his last meal. He looks down into his cup. “This is an elegant life we’ve got cooked up for ourselves,” he says. “Beer on the rocks.”

  “Elegant enough,” she says. “I’ll take it.”

  He chases an ice cube around with his finger, pulls it out, tosses it into the yard. “I don’t want to do this,” he says.