The Outhouse Gang

by Neil Plakcy

  Not that Nick himself was that old. He’d married Carol at twenty-two, and they’d had Fred the year after. He still considered himself a young man.

  Carol, however, had moved into matronhood, putting on weight, wearing unflattering clothes, her hair either a ratty bird’s nest or an elaborately lacquered pile fresh from the beauty parlor. Not like Susie, he thought, settling into his chair as Fred set the table and Carol started to get the food out. Susie’s hair was soft and sweet and smelled like strawberries.

  He daydreamed through dinner, and even an hour later couldn’t remember what they’d eaten. His memory began with Carol telling Fred to go upstairs and study, she had something to talk to Daddy about.

  “And what’s that?” Nick asked.

  Carol waited until they could hear Fred’s heavy footsteps climbing the stairs. He took after her, had her problem keeping the weight off, and didn’t look like he’d ever attain his father’s six foot three. “I know you’re sleeping with that trampy little receptionist,” Carol said. “Are you going to stop or are you going to move out?”

  Nick pulled his napkin off his lap and crumpled it up on the table. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I waited in the parking lot across from your office this morning,” Carol said. “I saw you two come out together and followed you to her apartment.”

  “She’d taken some papers home and we stopped by to pick them up,” Nick said. “That’s all.”

  “You were in there for two hours.”

  There was silence between them. “I need some time to sort things out.”

  “There’s nothing to sort out.” Carol put her hands in front of her on the table. The polish on her nails was chipped and scratched. When she saw Nick look at them she pulled them back. “I’m your wife. She’s just a cheap hippie piece of trash.”

  “I won’t have you talk about her that way.”

  “Then get out!” Carol stood up and pointed toward the stairs. “Pack your bags and get out. Tonight.”

  Nick pushed back the chair and stood up. “You realize, you’re making a mistake.”

  “The mistake I made was trusting you. Now go on.”

  * * *

  He spent the night at Susie’s, and the next morning he rented an apartment of his own in a singles complex near the highway. Carol hired an attorney, and Nick was forced to hire Sandy Lord to advise him.

  “You’ve given her grounds,” Sandy said, sitting back in his chair on a morning in mid-July. “I’d advise you to settle quickly. Don’t contest the divorce, because you’ll lose, and you’ll end up paying her and me both more money than you have to.”

  “I’m not sure I want a divorce.”

  Sandy steepled his fingers and nodded. “I can see that,” he said. “Carol’s a good woman, all things considered. You’ve been married, what, fourteen years? You have a home together, a son. It’s hard to give all that up.”

  He put his hands on the table and leaned forward. “I don’t want to sound moral or preachy here, Nick, but you made a commitment to Carol when you married her, a commitment to fidelity. If you’re not going to honor that commitment, you shouldn’t be married.”

  Nick frowned and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “She’s gorgeous, Sandy,” he said. “Young, and ripe, and firm in all the right places.” He paused. “Carol’s firm in all the wrong places.”

  “I know. I’ve been to your office. But you can’t hope to patch things up with Carol until you give up—what’s her name, Susie?”

  Nick nodded. “It’s not just the sex, though that’s great. She keeps me young. This world, it’s changing all around us, faster than we can watch it. I’m just afraid that if I go back to Carol, I’ll sink back into the muck, watch the world pass me by. And that would kill me.”

  “Then I guess we proceed.” Sandy moved a few pieces of paper around on the desk until they were in front of Nick. “I’ll need your signature here, here and here.”

  * * *

  A week later, Fred stopped going to summer school. It was just an enrichment course, some kind of literature thing, but he wouldn’t go any more. He stayed in bed late and then spent every afternoon with Dennis Warner, who was in his class at school and lived a few blocks away.

  Carol called Nick one morning to complain. “I don’t know what to do with him,” she said. “You’re going to have to talk to him.”

  “Me?” Nick was in the middle of figuring out a new policy for the lumber yard down the street, and he didn’t have time for arguments. “You’re with him all the time. If you have to, drive him over to school every morning and then pick him up when he’s done.”

  “I can’t. I’m going back to school myself.”

  Nick put his pencil down. “What?”

  “You heard me. I’m starting at Trenton State in the fall, and I have to take workshops beforehand.”

  “Why?”

  “I should think you’d be happy,” Carol said. “I have to be able to take care of myself. If I get my degree, I can get a job. I have to think about what’s going to happen to me, Nick. I know I can’t count on you any more.”

  “Carol, I’m busy.” Nick picked up his pencil again. “We’ll talk about this later.”

  “Call Fred tonight and tell him he has to go back to summer school,” Carol said. “I’ll make sure he’s here around seven o’clock, right after dinner.”

  “You’re being foolish.”

  “Seven o’clock,” Carol said, and she hung up.

  Nick stared at the phone. It was the first time he considered the idea that Carol might go on and have a life separate from his. He didn’t know what to think about that, so he sat back in his chair, chewed on the end of his pencil, and stared out the window at the slow traffic passing by on Ferry Street.

  * * *

  Though Nick convinced the boy to go back to summer school that night, Fred refused to listen to his mother on any subject, and Carol’s calls to Nick escalated. Every day she was near tears over something Fred had said or done. “He’s like a different boy,” she said one day in early August. “Like some wild child, someone I don’t know.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?” Nick looked abstractedly at a file on a new client, a store that had opened along Canal Street selling love beads and incense and decals of peace signs. They wanted theft insurance, and he was sure the company would turn them down. He thought they were a lousy risk, and only for Susie’s sake had he agreed to talk to the owner, a fat, middle-aged man with long scraggly hair, a tie-dyed t-shirt spilling over his belly, a silver peace sign on a leather thong around his neck. Carol kept talking in the background. When she stopped, he was jolted out of his reverie.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I said, it’s your fault. You fix it.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Do something with him. You’ve hardly seen him since you left. It’s not surprising he misses you.”

  “Any suggestions on what I can do?”

  He could hear the exasperation in Carol’s voice. “You’ve been a father for thirteen years,” she said. “You move out for a month and you’ve forgotten how to do it?” There was a pause. “Why don’t you ask Susie what children like to do? I’m sure she could give you some ideas.”

  “I’ll think about it.” Nick looked up and spoke to the empty doorway. “Oh, good, they’re here. I’ll be right with them.” To Carol he said, “Gotta go. Clients here. I’ll be back in touch with you.”

  “Damn right,” he heard Carol say, before he hung up.

  Susie came in a few minutes later. “Bad scene?” she asked, nodding toward the phone.

  “Always is. But you make it all worthwhile.”

  She smiled. That night, over dinner at a new steak house along the highway, he broke down and asked her advice about what he could do with Fred. She sat back in her fake Western-style chair and frowned, thinking. A moment later, though, her face brightened. “Take him to New York. When you go to
that conference.”

  Nick was going to New York for three days at the end of August for a meeting sponsored by the insurance company he represented, to introduce new products. “I was going to take you. I thought we could have some fun. Maybe stay a few days longer.”

  “This is more important,” Susie said. “Take Fred.”

  “You think so? You don’t mind?”

  “It’s the perfect thing. He’ll love it.”

  When he broached the subject with Fred, though, the boy didn’t sound too excited. “Sounds boring,” he said. “You going to meetings all the time.”

  “Just in the mornings. You can sleep late, and in the afternoons we’ll do things. Just you and me. We’ll spend some time together.”

  “She’s not going?” Fred asked. “Susie?” There was a nasty tone in his voice that Nick didn’t appreciate, but he resolved to be patient.

  “No, pal, just you and me. So what do you say?”

  Over the phone he could almost hear his son shrug. “OK, I guess.”

  * * *

  They took the train up from Trenton, Nick hoisting their suitcases up to the rack above while Fred slumped into the window seat. “So what do you want to do in the Big Apple?” Nick said, folding his long body into the seat next to his son.

  Outside, the rolling farmlands of central New Jersey sped by. Fred was silent for a minute, then asked, “Can we go to the Village?”

  “Sure,” Nick said. “Anything you want. Maybe this afternoon, all right?”

  Fred brightened. “All right.”

  It was very early in the morning, hardly past seven, and as the train filled up with commuters Fred dozed off, leaning against the window. Nick smoothed the boy’s hair while he slept, and shook his head. How wrong Carol had been. There was nothing wrong with Freddy. Nothing at all.

  At Penn Station he hustled them off the train and into a cab to the hotel. Their room wasn’t ready and he had to go into his meeting. “Don’t worry, Dad, I can manage,” Fred said.

  Nick smiled. “You’re a good kid,” he said. “I’ll meet you back here at one o’clock for lunch, and then we’ll go to the Village, OK?”

  Fred nodded and smiled. Nick sat through his morning meetings, pleased with how well everything was going. But then Fred wasn’t back at one, or at two, or three or four. Nick paced around his room, half mad at himself and half scared for Fred. What was he thinking, to let a sheltered thirteen-year-old loose in New York City? He decided to wait until five o’clock to call the police. He’d wait even longer to call Carol; he couldn’t face the rebuke that would be implicit in her voice.

  Then at four-thirty there was a knock at the door. Nick jumped up from the bed and rushed across to open it. “Freddy! Where the hell have you been?” He was flooded with anger and relief as he pulled the boy into the room. Then he looked him up and down and said, “What have you been up to?”

  Fred was wearing a white t-shirt with “Fuck the War” in big black letters, and over it a denim vest embroidered with patches that read “Make Love Not War” and other similar slogans. He had a blue bandanna wrapped around his forehead, and his eyes were red and bloodshot.

  “Hey, Dad,” Fred said.

  Nick waited. “So? Where were you?”

  Fred smiled, a lopsided grin that made him look silly. “I went down to the Village. Man, it’s a powerful scene down there.”

  “Do you know how worried I was about you? You were supposed to be here at one o’clock.”

  Fred giggled. “Guess I didn’t make it.”

  Nick slapped him. Fred’s mouth dropped open and he stared at his father. “What was that for?”

  “For making me go crazy worrying about you.” Nick turned back into the room. “Come on, let’s get you packed up. I’m putting you back on the train to your mother.”

  “Hey, Dad, no.” Fred pulled on his father’s arm. “Come on, please? I’ll be good, I promise.”

  He stopped with Fred’s suitcase in his hand. “How can I be sure?”

  Fred seemed to Nick to have sobered up fast. “I swear,” he said. “I promise I won’t even leave the hotel without you. Please, just let me stay?”

  Nick looked at his son and felt the hard place that had formed inside him when the boy was missing start to soften, the pressure begin to ease up. “All right. But no more funny business. You’re almost fourteen years old. You’ve got to start acting more mature.”

  “Will do, Dad,” Fred said. “You’re right. Absolutely.”

  Nick frowned. “Why don’t I believe you?” He shrugged. “Oh, well, come on then, let’s go for a walk at least. But please, can you leave the hippie clothes here? We might run into someone I know.”

  Fred frowned and looked, for a moment, like he was preparing for an argument, but then he shrugged and slipped off the vest, and began untying the bandanna.

  * * *

  The next morning Fred promised to stay in the room, and Nick jumped out of his meeting every hour to call upstairs and check. The last time he called Fred answered, “Prisoner of war camp. Prisoner speaking.”

  Nick took him down to Greenwich Village for lunch, eager to reward his obedience. Nick was surprised at how many hippies there were—thousands of them, it seemed, thronging Bleecker Street and Washington Square Park, all of them long-haired and dirty looking, barefoot, dressed in tie-dyed t-shirts and torn jeans, playing guitar or dancing on the sidewalk, or just staring straight ahead in what Nick was sure was a drug-induced haze.

  The streets smelled of car exhaust and dog droppings and a sweet aroma Nick recognized was marijuana. He had smoked dope a couple of times with Susie, and though it didn’t do much for him, it made Susie want to cuddle, which he considered a positive feature. There was music everywhere—transistor radios blasting the Beatles, Indian sitar music spilling out of restaurant doorways, the guitarists in the park practicing their anti-war folk songs, all of it mixing with honking horns and noisy mufflers.

  Nick shook his head. How could anyone live like that? Why would they choose to, when there were pleasant, peaceful little towns like Stewart’s Crossing.

  “Isn’t it groovy, Dad?” Fred asked. “I mean, so much cooler than home.”

  They ate at a burger place on West 4th Street and then window shopped. Nick wanted to buy a water pipe for Susie, or some love beads, or something, but felt embarrassed doing it in front of Fred. Late in the afternoon, in front of a head shop on Sheridan Square, Fred said, “I want to move to New York. Do you think when you and Mom get divorced I can convince her to move here?”

  “I don’t think so, son,” Nick said. “She’s going back to school, you know, at Trenton State, so I think you’re going to be staying in Stewart’s Crossing for a while.”

  “Why can’t you guys just act like grown-ups? Mom doesn’t need to go to college. College is for kids. And Susie MacLaren is almost my age.”

  “Not quite,” Nick said sharply.

  “When I was in the youth group at church, she was in, too. She taught us how to make log cabins out of Popsicle sticks.”

  Nick remembered the little log cabin Fred had made one summer at the youth group camp. He had a fleeting image of Susie as a little girl playing with Fred, but it made him sad, so he shook it out of his head. “One thing you have to understand,” he said, “is that your mother and I are people too. We’re entitled to do what we want.”

  “It sucks,” Fred said.

  * * *

  Nick spent most of his nights at Susie’s apartment along the river, an arrangement that suited him fine. But one Friday evening as they were getting ready to leave work, she suggested they go over to his place at the singles complex. “Then tomorrow morning we can go swimming at your pool.”

  Nick frowned. “The place isn’t really fixed up.”

  “Then we can fix it up.”

  After dinner they drove to his complex. He had to search for the keys to the apartment, and eventually found them at the bottom of his briefcase. “Guess you don�
��t come here much,” Susie said.

  “Why should I?” Nick asked. “I have you.”

  “You need to make your own life, Nicky,” Susie said, as he opened the door.

  The apartment was not very appealing. There were boxes stacked around the living room, which was furnished with a sofa, a chair and an end table. A single bulb hung from a socket in the center of the room.

  “Oh, Nicky, this is awful,” Susie said.

  “You see why I don’t want to come over here.”

  “Well, we’ll just have to make it better for you.”

  “Maybe I should just move in with you. Why waste the effort here?”

  Susie frowned. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Your divorce isn’t even final yet. And I’m not sure I’ll stay in Stewart’s Crossing much longer.”

  That was a shock to Nick, who had never entertained the idea that Susie would leave him. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, let’s not talk about that now,” Susie said. “Come on, let’s unpack some of these boxes.”

  * * *

  The next morning Nick left Susie sunning at the pool and drove to his old house, where he was supposed to pick up Fred and take him shopping for new school clothes. “Don’t want to go,” Fred said sullenly, sitting at the kitchen table over a bowl of cold cereal.

  “But sweetheart, you need some new clothes for school,” Carol said.

  “Nah,” Fred said. “Don’t.”

  Nick shrugged. “He doesn’t want new clothes, I’m not wasting any money on new clothes.”

  Carol glared at him over Fred’s head. “Why don’t you two just go to the mall and see if you like anything?”

  Fred pushed away his empty cereal bowl and stood up. “I’m going out.”

  “Out?” Carol said. As Fred walked to the door she said, “Where? Wait, Fred.”

  “Let him go.” Nick looked at his watch. “Good. I can still make it back to the pool before noon.” He turned and started for the door.