We’ve owned this house for—what—twelve years now, I reckon. Bought it from an elderly couple, the De Rougemonts, whose aroma you can still detect around the place, in the master especially, and in the home office, where the old buzzard napped on summer days, and a little bit in the kitchen, still.
I remember going into people’s houses as a kid and thinking, Can’t they smell how they smell? Some houses were worse than others. The Pruitts next door had a greasy, chuck-wagon odor, tolerable enough. The Willots, who ran that fencing academy in their rec room, smelled like skunk cabbage. You could never mention the smells to your friends, because they were part of it, too. Was it hygiene? Or was it, you know, glandular, and the way each family smelled had to do with bodily functions deep inside their bodies? The whole thing sort of turned your stomach, the more you thought about it.
Now I live in an old house that probably smells funny to outsiders.
Or used to live. At the present time, I’m in my front yard, hiding out between the stucco wall and the traveller palms.
There’s a light burning up in Meg’s room. She’s my sugar pie. She’s thirteen. From my vantage point I can’t make out Lucas’s bedroom, but as a rule Lucas prefers to do his homework downstairs, in the great room. If I were to sidle up to the house, I’d more than likely spy Lucas in his school V-neck and necktie, armed for success: graphing calculator (check), St. Boniface iPad (check), Latin Quizlet (check), bowl of Goldfish (check). But I can’t go up there now on account of it would violate the restraining order.
I’m not supposed to come any closer than fifty feet to my lovely wife, Johanna. It’s an emergency T.R.O. (meaning temporary), issued at night, with a judge presiding. My lawyer, Mike Peekskill, is in the process of having it revoked. In the meantime, guess what? Yours truly, Charlie D., still has the landscape architect’s plans from when Johanna and I were thinking of replacing these palms with something less jungly and prone to pests. So I happen to know for certain that the distance from the house to the stucco wall is sixty-three feet. Right now, I reckon I’m about sixty or sixty-one, here in the vegetation. And, anyway, nobody can see me, because it’s February and already dark in these parts.
It’s Thursday, so where’s Bryce? Right. Trumpet lessons with Mr. Talawatamy. Johanna’ll be going to pick him up soon. Can’t stay here long.
If I were to leave my hideout and mosey around the side of the house, I’d see the guest room, where I used to retreat when Johanna and I were fighting real bad, and where, last spring, after Johanna got promoted at Hyundai, I commenced to putting the blocks to the babysitter, Cheyenne.
And if I kept going all the way into the back yard I’d come face to face with the glass door I shattered when I threw that lawn gnome through it. Drunk at the time, of course.
Yessir. Plenty of ammunition for Johanna to play Find the Bad Guy at couples counselling.
It’s not cold cold out, but it is for Houston. When I reach down to take my phone out of my boot, my hip twinges. Touch of arthritis.
I’m getting my phone to play Words with Friends. I started playing it over at the station, just to pass the time, but then I found out Meg was playing it, too, so I sent her a game invite.
In mrsbieber vs. radiocowboy I see that mrsbieber has just played “poop.” (She’s trying to get my goat.) Meg’s got the first “p” on a double-word space and the second on a double-letter space, for a total score of twenty-eight. Not bad. Now I play an easy word, “pall,” for a measly score of nine. I’m up fifty-one points. Don’t want her to get discouraged and quit on me.
I can see her shadow moving around up there. But she doesn’t play another word. Probably Skype-ing or blogging, painting her nails.
Johanna and me—you say it “Yo-hanna,” by the way, she’s particular about that—we’ve been married twenty-one years. When we met I was living up in Dallas with my girlfriend at the time, Jenny Braggs. Back then I was consulting for only three stations, spread out over the state, so I spent most of every week on the road. Then one day I was up in San Antonio, at WWWR, and there she was. Johanna. Shelving CDs. She was a tall drink of water.
“How’s the weather up there?” I said.
“Pardon me?”
“Nothing. Hi, I’m Charlie D. That an accent I hear?”
“Yes. I’m German.”
“Didn’t know they liked country music in Germany.”
“They don’t.”
“Maybe I should consult over there. Spread the gospel. Who’s your favorite country recording artist?”
“I am more into opera,” Johanna said.
“I getcha. Just here for the job.”
After that, every time I was down San Antone way, I made a point of stopping by Johanna’s desk. It was less nerve-racking if she was sitting.
“You ever play basketball, Johanna?”
“No.”
“Do they have girls’ basketball over there in Germany?”
“In Germany I am not that tall,” Johanna said.
That was about how it went. Then one day I come up to her desk and she looks at me with those big blue eyes of hers, and she says, “Charlie, how good an actor are you?”
“Actor or liar?”
“Liar.”
“Pretty decent,” I said. “But I might be lying.”
“I need a green card,” Johanna said.
Roll the film: me emptying my water bed into the bathtub so I can move out, while Jenny Braggs weeps copious tears. Johanna and me cramming into a photo booth to take cute “early-relationship” photos for our “scrapbook.” Bringing that scrapbook to our immigration hearing, six months later.
“Now, Ms. Lubbock—do I have that right?”
“Lübeck,” Johanna told the officer. “There’s an umlaut over the ‘u.’ ”
“Not in Texas there ain’t,” the officer said. “Now, Ms. Lubbock, I’m sure you can understand that the United States has to make certain that those individuals who we admit to a path of citizenship by virtue of their marrying U.S. citizens are really and truly married to those citizens. And so I’m going to have to ask you some personal questions that might seem a little intrusive. Do you agree to me doing that?”
Johanna nodded.
“When was the first time you and Mr. D.—” He stopped short and looked at me. “Hey, you aren’t the Charlie Daniels, are you?”
“Nuh-uh. That’s why I just go by the D. To avoid confusion.”
“Because you sort of look like him.”
“I’m a big fan,” I said. “I take that as a compliment.”
He turned back to Johanna, smooth as butter. “When was the first time you and Mr. D. had intimate sexual relations?”
“You won’t tell my mother, will you?” Johanna said, trying to joke.
But he was all business. “Before you were married or after?”
“Before.”
“And how would you rate Mr. D.’s sexual performance?”
“What do you think? Wonderful. I married him, didn’t I?”
“Any distinguishing marks on his sex organ?”
“It says ‘In God We Trust.’ Like on all Americans.”
The officer turned to me, grinning. “You got yourself a real spitfire here,” he said.
“Don’t I know it,” I said.
Back then, though, we weren’t sleeping together. That didn’t happen till later. In order to pretend to be my fiancée, and then my bride, Johanna had to spend time with me, getting to know me. She’s from Bavaria, Johanna is. She had herself a theory that Bavaria is the Texas of Germany. People in Bavaria are more conservative than your normal European leftist. They’re Catholic, if not exactly God-fearing. Plus, they like to wear leather jackets and such. Johanna wanted to know everything about Texas, and I was just the man to teach her. I took her to SXSW, which wasn’t the cattle call it is today. And oh my Lord if Johanna didn’t look good in a pair of bluejeans and cowboy boots.
Next thing I know we’re flying home to Michigan to meet my folks. (I’m from Traverse City, originally. Got to talking this way on account of living down here so long. My brother Ted gives me a hard time about it. I tell him you gotta talk the talk in the business I’m in.)
Maybe it was Michigan that did it. It was wintertime. I took Johanna snowmobiling and ice fishing. My mama would never have seen eye to eye on the whole green-card thing, so I just told her we were friends. Once we got up there, though, I overheard Johanna telling my sister that we were “dating.” On perch night at the V.F.W. hall, after drinking a few P.B.R.s, Johanna started holding my hand under the table. I didn’t complain. I mean, there she was, all six-foot-plus of her, healthy as can be and with a good appetite, holding my hand in hers, secret from everyone else. I’ll tell you, I was happier than a two-peckered dog.
My mother put us in separate bedrooms. But one night Johanna came into mine, quiet as an Injun, and crawled into bed.
“This part of the Method acting?” I said.
“No, Charlie. This is real.”
She had her arms around me, and we were rocking, real soft-like, the way Meg did after we gave her that kitten, before it died, I mean, when it was just a warm and cuddly thing instead of like it had hoof and mouth, and went south on us.
“Feels real,” I said. “Feels like the realest thing I ever did feel.”
“Does this feel real, too, Charlie?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“And this?”
“Lemme see. Need to reconnoitre. Oh yeah. That’s real real.”
Love at fifteenth sight, I guess you’d call it.
I look up at my house and cogitate some—I don’t rightly want to say what about. The thing is, I’m a successful man in the prime of life. Started d.j.-ing in college, and, O.K., my voice was fine for the 3-to-6-A.M. slot at Marquette, but out in the real world there was an upper limit, I’ll admit. Never did land me a job in front of a microphone. Telemarketed instead. Then the radio itch got back into me and I started consulting. This was in the eighties, when you had your first country-rock crossovers. A lot of stations were slow to catch on. I told them who and what to play. Started out contracting for three stations and now I’ve got sixty-seven coming to me asking, “Charlie D., how do we increase our market share? Give us your crossover wisdom, Sage of the Sagebrush.” (That’s on my Web site. People have sort of picked it up.)
But what I’m thinking right now doesn’t make me feel so sagelike. In fact, not even a hair. I’m thinking, How did this happen to me? To be out here in the bushes?
Find the Bad Guy is a term we learned at couples counselling. Me and Johanna saw this lady therapist for about a year, name of Dr. van der Jagt. Dutch. Had a house over by the university, with separate paths to the front and the back doors. That way, people leaving didn’t run into those showing up.
Say you’re coming out of couples therapy and your next-door neighbor’s coming in. “Hey, Charlie D.,” he says. “How’s it going?” And you say, “The missus has just been saying I’m verbally abusive, but I’m doing O.K. otherwise.”
Naw. You don’t want that.
Tell the truth, I wasn’t crazy about our therapist being a woman, plus European. Thought it would make her partial to Johanna’s side of things.
At our first session, Johanna and I chose opposite ends of the couch, keeping throw pillows between us.
Dr. van der Jagt faced us, her scarf as big as a horse blanket.
She asked what brought us.
Talking, making nice, that’s the female department. I waited for Johanna to start in.
But the same cat got her tongue as mine.
Dr. van der Jagt tried again. “Johanna, tell me how you are feeling in the marriage? Three words.”
“Frustrated. Angry. Alone.”
“Why?”
“When we met, Charlie used to take me dancing. Once we had kids, that stopped. Now we both work full time. We don’t see each other all day long. But as soon as Charlie comes home he goes out to his fire pit—”
“You’re always welcome to join me,” I said.
“—and drinks. All night. Every night. He is married more to the fire pit than to me.”
I was there to listen, to connect with Johanna, and I tried my best. But after a while I stopped paying attention to her words and just listened to her voice, the foreign sound of it. It was like if Johanna and I were birds, her song wouldn’t be the song I’d recognize. It would be the song of a species of bird from a different continent, some species that nested in cathedral belfries or windmills, which, to my kind of bird, would be like, Well, la-di-da.
For instance, regarding the fire pit. Didn’t I try to corral everyone out there every night? Did I ever say I wanted to sit out there alone? No, sir. I’d like us to be together, as a family, under the stars, with the mesquite flaming and popping. But Johanna, Bryce, Meg, and even Lucas—they never want to. Too busy on their computers or their Instagrams.
“How do you feel about what Johanna is saying?” Dr. van der Jagt asked me.
“Well,” I said. “When we bought the house, Johanna was excited about the fire pit.”
“I never liked the fire pit. You always think that, because you like something, I like the same thing.”
“When the real-estate lady was showing us around, who was it said, ‘Hey, Charlie, look at this! You’re gonna love this’?”
“Ja, and you wanted a Wolf stove. You had to have a Wolf stove. But have you ever cooked anything on it?”
“Grilled those steaks out in the pit that time.”
Right around there, Dr. van der Jagt held up her soft little hand.
“We need to try to get beyond these squabbles. We need to find what’s at the core of your unhappiness. These things are only on the surface.”
We went back the next week, and the week after that. Dr. van der Jagt had us fill out a questionnaire ranking our level of marital contentment. She gave us books to read: “Hold Me Tight,” which was about how couples tend to miscommunicate, and “The Volcano Under the Bed,” which was about overcoming sexual dry spells and made for some pretty racy reading. I took off the covers of both books and put on new ones. That way, people at the station thought I was reading Tom Clancy.
Little by little, I picked up the lingo.
Find the Bad Guy means how, when you’re arguing with your spouse, both people are trying to win the argument. Who didn’t close the garage door? Who left the Bigfoot hair clump in the shower drain? What you have to realize, as a couple, is that there is no bad guy. You can’t win an argument when you’re married. Because if you win, your spouse loses, and resents losing, and then you lose, too, pretty much.
Due to the fact that I was a defective husband, I started spending a lot of time alone, being introspective. What I did was go to the gym and take a sauna. I’d dropper some eucalyptus into a bucket of water, toss the water on the fake rocks, let the steam build up, then turn over the miniature hourglass, and, for however long it took to run out, I’d introspect. I liked to imagine the heat burning all my excess cargo away—I could stand to lose a few, like the next guy—until all that was left was a pure residue of Charlie D. Most other guys hollered that they were cooked after ten minutes and red-assed it out of there. Not me. I just turned the hourglass over and hunkered on down some more. Now the heat was burning away my real impurities. Things I didn’t even tell anyone about. Like the time after Bryce was born and had colic for six straight months, when in order to keep from throwing him out the window what I did was drink a couple bourbons before dinner and, when no one was looking, treat Forelock as my personal punching bag. He was just a puppy then, eight or nine months. He’d always done something. A grown man, beating on my own dog, making him whimper so Johanna’d call out, “Hey! What are you doing?” and I’d shout back, “He’s just faking! He’s a big faker!” Or the times, more recent, when Johanna was flying to Chicago or Phoenix and I’d think, What if her plane goes down? Did other people feel these things, or was it just me? Was I evil? Did Damien know he was evil in “The Omen” and “Omen II”? Did he think “Ave Satani” was just a catchy soundtrack? “Hey, they’re playing my song!”
My introspecting must have paid off, because I started noticing patterns. As a for instance, Johanna might come into my office to hand me the cap of the toothpaste I’d forgotten to screw back on, and, later, that would cause me to say “Achtung!” when Johanna asked me to take out the recycling, which would get Johanna madder than a wet hen, and before you know it we’re fighting World War Three.
In therapy, when Dr. van der Jagt called on me to speak, I’d say, “On a positive note this week, I’m becoming more aware of our demon dialogues. I realize that’s our real enemy. Not each other. Our demon dialogues. It feels good to know that Johanna and I can unite against those patterns, now that we’re more cognizant.”
But it was easier said than done.
One weekend we had dinner with this couple. The gal, Terri, worked with Johanna over at Hyundai. The husband, name of Burton, was from out East.
Though you wouldn’t know it to look at me, I was born with a shy temperament. To relax in a social context, I like to throw back a few margaritas. I was feeling O.K. when the gal, Terri, put her elbows on the table and leaned toward my wife, gearing up for some girl talk.
“So how did you guys meet?” Terri said.
I was involved with Burton in a conversation about his wheat allergy.
“It was supposed to be a green-card marriage,” Johanna said.
“At first,” I said, butting in.
Johanna kept looking at Terri. “I was working at the radio station. My visa was running out. I knew Charlie a little. I thought he was a really nice guy. So, ja, we got married, I got a green card, and, you know, ja, ja.”
“That makes sense,” Burton said, looking from one of us to the other, and nodding, like he’d figured out a riddle.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“Charlie, be nice,” Johanna said.
“I am being nice,” I said. “Do you think I’m not being nice, Burton?”
“I just meant your different nationalities. Had to be a story behind that.”
The next week at couples counselling was the first time I started the conversation.
“My issue is,” I said. “Hey, I’ve got an issue. Whenever people ask how we met, Johanna always says she married me for a green card. Like our marriage was just a piece of theatre.”
“I do not,” Johanna said.
“You sure as shooting do.”
“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”
“What I’m hearing from Charlie,” Dr. van der Jagt said, “is that when you do that, even though you might feel that you are stating the facts, what it feels like, for Charlie, is that you are belittling your bond.”
“What am I supposed to say?” Johanna said. “Make up a story to say how we met?”
According to “Hold Me Tight,” what happened when Johanna told Terri about the green card was that my attachment bond was threatened. I felt like Johanna was pulling away, so that made me want to seek her out, by trying to have sex when we got home. Due to the fact that I hadn’t been all that nice to Johanna during our night out (due to I was mad about the green-card thing), she wasn’t exactly in the mood. I’d also had more than my fill of the friendly creature. In other words, it was a surly, drunken, secretly needy, and frightened life-mate who made the move across the memory foam. The memory foam being a point of contention in itself, because Johanna loves that mattress, while I’m convinced it’s responsible for my lower-lumbar pain.
That was our pattern: Johanna fleeing, me bloodhounding her trail.
I was working hard on all this stuff, reading and thinking. After about three months of counselling, things started getting rosier around La Casa D. For one thing, Johanna got that promotion I mentioned, from local rep to regional. We made it a priority to have some together time together. I agreed to go easier on the sauce.
Around about this same time, Cheyenne, the little gal who babysat for us, showed up one night smelling like a pigpen. Turned out her father had kicked her out. She’d moved in with her brother, but there were too many drugs there, so she left. Every guy who offered her a place to stay only wanted one thing, so finally Cheyenne ended up sleeping in her Chevy. At that point Johanna, who’s a soft touch and throws her vote away on the Green Party, offered Cheyenne a room. What with Johanna travelling more, we needed extra help with the kids, anyway.
Every time Johanna came back from a trip, the two of them were like best friends, laughing and carrying on. Then Johanna’d leave and I’d find myself staring out the window while Cheyenne suntanned by the pool. I could count her every rib.
Plus, she liked the fire pit. Came down most every night.
“Care to meet my friend, Mr. George Dickel?” I said.
Cheyenne gave me a look like she could read my mind. “I ain’t legal, you know,” she said. “Drinking age.”
“You’re old enough to vote, ain’t you? You’re old enough to join the armed forces and defend your country.”
I poured her a glass.
Seemed like she’d had some before.
All those nights out by the fire with Cheyenne made me forget that I was me, Charlie D., covered with sunspots and the marks of a long life, and Cheyenne was Cheyenne, not much older than the girl John Wayne goes searching for in “The Searchers.”
I started texting her from work. Next thing I know I’m taking her shopping, buying her a shirt with a skull on it, or a fistful of thongs from Victoria’s Secret, or a new Android phone.
“I ain’t sure I should be accepting all this stuff from you,” Cheyenne said.
“Hey, it’s the least I can do. You’re helping me and Johanna out. It’s part of the job. Fair payment.”
I was half daddy, half sweetheart. At night by the fire we talked about our childhoods, mine unhappy long ago, hers unhappy in the present.
Johanna was gone half of each week. She came back hotel-pampered, expecting room service and the toilet paper folded in a V. Then she was gone again.
One night I was watching “Monday Night.” A Captain Morgan commercial came on—I get a kick out of those—put me in mind of having me a Captain Morgan-and-Coke, so I fixed myself one. Cheyenne wandered in.
“What you watching?” she asked.
“Football. Want a drink? Spiced rum.”
“No, thanks.”
“You know those thongs I bought you the other day? How they fit?”
“Real good.”
“You could be a Victoria’s Secret model, I swear, Cheyenne.”
“I could not!” She laughed, liking the idea.
“Why don’t you model one of them thongs for me. I’ll be the judge.”
Cheyenne turned toward me. All the kids were asleep. Fans were shouting on the TV. Staring straight into my eyes, Cheyenne undid the clasp of her cut-offs and let them fall to the floor.
I got down on my knees, prayerful-like. I mashed my face against Cheyenne’s hard little stomach, trying to breathe her in. I moved it lower.
In the middle of it all, Cheyenne lifted her leg, Captain Morgan style, and we busted up.
Terrible, I know. Shameful. Pretty easy to find the bad guy here.
Twice, maybe three times. O.K., more like seven. But then one morning Cheyenne opens her bloodshot teen-age eyes and says, “You know, you could be my granddaddy.”
Next, she calls me at work, completely hysterical. I pick her up, we go down to the CVS for a home pregnancy test. She’s so beside herself she can’t even wait to get back home to use it. Makes me pull over, then goes down into this gulch and squats, comes back with mascara running down her cheeks.
“I can’t have a baby! I’m only nineteen!”
“Well, Cheyenne, let’s think a minute,” I said.
“You gonna raise this baby, Charlie D.? You gonna support me and this baby? You’re old. Your sperm are old. Baby might come out autistic.”
“Where did you read that?”
“Saw it on the news.”
She didn’t need to think long. I’m anti-abortion but, under the circumstances, decided it was her choice. Cheyenne told me she’d handle the whole thing. Made the appointment herself. Said I didn’t even need to go with her. All she needed was three thousand dollars.
Yeah, sounded high to me, too.
Week later, I’m on my way to couples therapy with Johanna. We’re coming up Dr. van der Jagt’s front path when my phone vibrates in my pocket. I open the door for Johanna and say, “After you, darlin’.”
The message was from Cheyenne: “It’s over. Have a nice life.”
Never was pregnant. That’s when I realized. I didn’t care either way. She was gone. I was safe. Dodged another bullet.
And then what did I go and do? I walked into Dr. van der Jagt’s office and sat down on the couch and looked over at Johanna. My wife. Not as young as she used to be, sure. But older and more worn out because of me, mainly. Because of raising my kids and doing my laundry and cooking my meals, all the while holding down a full-time job. Seeing how sad and tuckered out Johanna looked, I felt all choked up. And as soon as Dr. van der Jagt asked me what I had to say, the whole story came rushing out of me.
I had to confess my crime. Felt like I’d explode if I didn’t.
Which means something. Which means, when you get down to it, that the truth is true. The truth will out.
Up until that moment, I wasn’t so sure.
When our fifty minutes was up, Dr. van der Jagt directed us to the back door. As usual, I couldn’t help keeping an eye out for anyone who might see us.
But what were we skulking around for, anyway? What were we ashamed of? We were just two people in love and in trouble, going to our Nissan to pick up our kids from school. Over in the Alps, when they found that prehistoric man frozen in the tundra and dug him out, the guy they call Ötzi, they saw that aside from wearing leather shoes filled with grass and a bearskin hat he was carrying a little wooden box that contained an ember. That’s what Johanna and I were doing, going to marital therapy. We were living through an Ice Age, armed with bows and arrows. We had wounds from previous skirmishes. All we had if we got sick were some medicinal herbs. There’s a flint arrowhead lodged in my left shoulder. Ouch. But we had this ember box with us, and if we could just get it somewhere—I don’t know, a cave, or a stand of pines—we could use this ember to reignite the fire of our love. A lot of the time, while I was sitting there stony-faced on Dr. van der Jagt’s couch, I was thinking about Ötzi, all alone out there, when he was killed. Murdered, apparently. They found a fracture in his skull. You have to realize that things aren’t so bad nowadays as you might think. Human violence is way down since prehistoric times, statistically. If we’d lived when Ötzi did, we’d have to watch our backs anytime we took a saunter. Under those conditions, who would I want at my side more than Johanna, with her broad shoulders and strong legs and used-to-be-fruitful womb? She’s been carrying our ember the whole time, for years now, despite all my attempts to blow it out.
At the car, wouldn’t you know it, but my key fob chose right then not to work. I kept pressing and pressing. Johanna stood on the gravel, looking small, for her, and crying, “I hate you! I hate you!” I watched my wife crying from what felt like a long way off. This was the same woman who, when we were trying to have Lucas, called me on the phone and said, like Tom Cruise in “Top Gun,” “I feel the need for seed!” I’d rush home from work, stripping off my vest and string tie as I hurried into the bedroom, sometimes leaving my cowboy boots on (though that didn’t feel right, and I tried not to), and there would be Johanna, lying on her back with her legs and arms spread out in welcome, her cheeks fiery red, and I leapt and fell, and kept falling, it felt like, forever, down into her, both of us lost in the sweet, solemn business of making a baby.
So that’s why I’m out here in the bushes. Johanna kicked me out. I’m living downtown now, near the theatre district, renting a two-bedroom in the overpriced condos they built before the crash and now can’t fill.
I’d wager I’m about sixty feet away from the house now. Maybe fifty-nine. Think I’ll get closer.
Fifty-eight.
Fifty-seven.
How do you like that, Lawman?
I’m standing next to one of the floodlights when I remember that restraining orders aren’t calculated in feet. They’re in yards. I’m supposed to be staying fifty yards away!
Tarnation.
But I don’t move. Here’s why. If I’m supposed to be fifty yards away, that means I’ve been violating the restraining order for weeks.
I’m guilty already.
So, might as well get a little closer.
Up onto the front porch, for instance.
Just like I thought: front door’s open. God damn it, Johanna! I think. Just leave the house wide open for any home invader to waltz right in, why don’t you?
For a minute, it feels like old times. I’m angrier than a hornet, and I’m standing in my own house. A sweet urge of self-justification fills me. I know who the bad guy is here. It’s Johanna. I’m just itching to go and find her and shout, “You left the front door open! Again.” But I can’t right now, because, technically, I’m breaking and entering.
Then the smell hits me. It’s not the De Rougemonts. It’s partly dinner—lamb chops, plus cooking wine. Nice. Partly, too, a shampoo smell from Meg’s having just showered upstairs. Moist, warm, perfumey air is filtering down the staircase. I can feel it on my cheeks. I can also smell Forelock, who’s too old to even come and greet his master, which under the circumstances is O.K. by me. It’s all these smells at once, which means that it’s our smell. The D.s! We’ve finally lived here long enough to displace the old-person smell of the De Rougemonts. I just didn’t realize it before. I had to get kicked out of my own house to be able to come and smell this smell, which I don’t think, even if I were a little kid with super-smelling abilities, would be anything other than pleasant.
Upstairs Meg runs out of her bedroom. “Lucas!” she shouts. “What did you do with my charger!”
“I didn’t do anything,” he says back. (He’s up in his bedroom.)
“You took it!”
“I did not!”
“Yes, you did!”
“Mom!” Meg yells, and comes to the top of the stairs, where she sees me. Or maybe doesn’t. She needs to wear her glasses. She stares down to where I’m standing in the shadows and she shouts, “Mom! Tell Lucas to give me back my charger!”
I hear something, and turn. And there’s Johanna. When she sees me, she does a funny thing. She jumps back. Her face goes white and she says, “Guys! Stay upstairs!”
Hey, come on, I’m thinking. It’s just me.
Johanna presses the speed-dial on her phone, still backing away.
“You don’t have to do that,” I say. “Come on now, Jo-Jo.”
She gets on with 911. I take a step toward her with my hand out. I’m not going to grab the phone. I just want her to hang up and I’ll leave. But suddenly I’m holding the phone, Johanna’s screaming, and, out of nowhere, something jumps me from behind, tackling me to the ground.
It’s Bryce. My son.
He isn’t at trumpet lessons. Maybe he quit. I’m always the last to know.
Bryce has got a rope in his hand, or an extension cord, and he’s strong as a bull. He always did take after Johanna’s side.
He’s pressing his knee hard into my back, trying to hog-tie me with the extension cord.
“Got him, Mom!” he shouts.
I’m trying to talk. But my son has my face smashed down into the rug. “Hey, Bryce, lemme go,” I say. “It’s Pa. It’s Pa down here. Bryce? I’m not kidding now.”
I try an old Michigan wrestling move, scissor kick. Works like a charm. I flip Bryce off me, onto his back. He tries to scramble away but I’m too fast for him.
“Hey, now,” I say. “Who’s your daddy now, Bryce? Huh? Who’s your daddy?”
That’s when I notice Meg, higher on the stairs. She’s been frozen there the whole time. But when I look at her now she hightails it. Scared of me.
Seeing that takes all the fight out of me. Meg? Sugar pie? Daddy won’t hurt you.
But she’s gone.
“O.K.,” I say. “Ah’mo leave now.”
I turn and go outside. Look up at the sky. No stars. I put my hands in the air and wait.
After bringing me to headquarters, the officer removed my handcuffs and turned me over to the sheriff, who made me empty my pockets: wallet, cell phone, loose change, 5-Hour Energy bottle, and an Ashley Madison ad torn from some magazine. He had me put all that stuff in a ziplock and sign a form vouching for the contents.
It was too late to call my lawyer’s office, so I called Peekskill’s cell and left a message on his voice mail. I asked if that counted as a call. It did.
They took me down the hall to an interrogation room. After about a half hour, a guy I haven’t seen before, detective, comes in and sits down.
“How much you had tonight?” he asks me.
“A few.”
“Bartender at Le Grange said you came in around noon and stayed through happy hour.”
“Yessir. Not gonna lie to you.”
The detective pushes himself back in his chair.
“We get guys like you in here all the time,” he says. “Hey, I know how you feel. I’m divorced, too. Twice. You think I don’t want to stick it to my old lady sometimes? But you know what? She’s the mother of my children. That sound corny to you? Not to me it doesn’t. You have to make sure she’s happy, whether you like it or not. Because your kids are going to be living with her and they’re the ones that’ll pay the price.”
“They’re my kids, too,” I say. My voice sounds funny.
“I hear you.”
With that, he goes out. I look around the room, making sure there isn’t a two-way mirror, like on “Law & Order,” and when I’m satisfied I just hang my head and cry. When I was a kid, I used to imagine getting arrested and how cool I’d act. They wouldn’t get nothing out of me. A real outlaw. Well, now I am arrested, and all I am is a guy with gray stubble on my cheeks, and my nose still bleeding a little from when Bryce mashed it against the rug.
There’s a thing they’ve figured out about love. Scientifically. They’ve done studies to find out what keeps couples together. Do you know what it is? It isn’t getting along. Isn’t having money, or children, or a similar outlook on life. It’s just checking in with each other. Doing little kindnesses for each other. At breakfast, you pass the jam. Or, on a trip to New York City, you hold hands for a second in a smelly subway elevator. You ask “How was your day?” and pretend to care. Stuff like that really works.
Sounds pretty easy, right? Except most people can’t keep it up. In addition to finding the bad guy in every argument, couples do this thing called the Protest Polka. That’s a dance where one partner seeks reassurance about the relationship and approaches the other, but because that person usually does this by complaining or being angry, the other partner wants to get the hell away, and so retreats. For most people, this complicated maneuver is easier than asking, “How are your sinuses today, dear? Still stuffed? I’m sorry. Let me get you your saline.”
While I’m thinking all this, the detective comes in again and says, “O.K. Vamoose.”
He means I’m getting out. No argument from me. I follow him down the hall to the front of headquarters. I expect to see Peekskill, which I do. He’s shooting the breeze with the desk sergeant, using cheerful profanities. No one can say “you motherfucker” with more joie de vivre than Counsellor Peekskill. None of this surprises me at all. What surprises me is that, standing a few feet behind Peekskill, is my wife.
“Johanna’s declining to press charges,” Peekskill tells me, when he comes over. “Legally, that doesn’t mean shit because the restraining order’s enforced by the state. But the police don’t want to charge you with anything if the wife’s not going to be behind it. I gotta tell you, though, this isn’t going to help you before the judge. We may not be able to get this thing revoked.”
“Never?” I say. “I’m within fifty yards of her right now.”
“True, but you’re in a police station.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“You want to talk to her? I don’t advise that right now.”
But I’m already crossing the precinct lobby.
Johanna is standing by the door, her head down.
I’m not sure when I’m going to see her again, so I look at her real hard.
I look at her but feel nothing.
I can’t even tell if she’s pretty anymore.
Probably she is. At social functions, other people, men, anyway, are always saying, “You look familiar. You didn’t used to be a Dallas cheerleader, did you?”
I look. Keep looking. Finally, Johanna meets my eye.
“I want to be a family again,” I say.
Her expression is hard to read. But the feeling I get is that Johanna’s young face is lying under her new, older face, and that the older face is like a mask. I want her younger face to come out not only because it was the face I fell in love with but because it was the face that loved me back. I remember how it crinkled up whenever I came into a room.
No crinkling now. More like a Halloween pumpkin, with the candle gone out.
And then she tells me what’s what. “I tried for a long time, Charlie. To make you happy. I thought if I made more money it would make you happy. Or if we got a bigger house. Or if I just left you alone so you could drink all the time. But none of these things made you happy, Charlie. And they didn’t make me happy, either. Now that you’ve moved out, I’m sad. I am crying every night. But, as I now know the truth, I can begin to deal with it.”
“This isn’t the only truth there is,” I say. It sounds more vague than I want it to, so I spread my arms wide—like I’m hugging the whole world—but this only ends up seeming even vaguer.
I try again. “I don’t want to be the person I’ve been,” I say. “I want to be a better person.” This is meant sincerely. But, like most sincerities, it’s a little threadbare. Also, because I’m out of practice being sincere, I still feel like I’m lying.
Not very convincing.
“It’s late,” Johanna says. “I’m tired. I’m going home.”
“Our home,” I say. But she’s halfway to her car already.
I don’t know where I’m walking. Just wandering. I don’t much want to go back to my apartment.
After me and Johanna bought our house, we went over to meet the owners, and you know what the old guy did to me? We were walking out to see the mechanical room—he wanted to explain about servicing the boiler—and he was walking real slow. Then right quick he turned around and looked at me with his old bald head, and he said, “Just you wait.”
His spine was all catty-whompered. He could only shuffle along. So, in order to stave off the embarrassment of being closer to death than me, he hit me with that grim reminder that I’d end up just like him someday, shuffling around this house like an invalid.
Thinking of Mr. De Rougement, I all of a sudden figure out what my problem is. Why I’ve been acting so crazy.
It’s death. He’s the bad guy.
Hey, Johanna. I found him! It’s death.
I keep on walking, thinking about that. Lose track of time.
When I finally look up, I’ll be god-darned if I ain’t in front of my house again! On the other side of the street, in legal territory, but still. My feet led me here out of habit, like an old plug horse.
I take out my phone again. Maybe Meg played a word while I was in jail.
No such luck.
When a new word comes on Words with Friends, it’s a beautiful sight to see. The letters appear out of nowhere, like a sprinkle of stardust. I could be anywhere, doing anything, but when Meg’s next word flies through the night to skip and dance across my phone, I’ll know she’s thinking of me, even if she’s trying to beat me.
When Johanna and I first went to bed, I was a little intimidated. I’m not a small man, but on top of Johanna? Sort of a “Gulliver’s Travels”-type situation. It was like Johanna had fallen asleep and I’d climbed up there to survey the scene. Beautiful view! Rolling hills! Fertile cropland! But there was only one of me, not a whole town of Lilliputians throwing ropes and nailing her down.
But it was strange. That first night with Johanna, and more and more every night after, it was like she shrank in bed, or I grew, until we were the same size. And little by little that equalizing carried on into the daylight. We still turned heads. But it seemed as though people were just looking at us, a single creature, not two misfits yoked at the waist. Us. Together. Back then, we weren’t fleeing or chasing each other. We were just seeking, and, every time one of us went looking, there the other was, waiting to be found.
We found each other for so long before we lost each other. Here I am! we’d say, in our heart of hearts. Come find me. Easy as putting a blush on a rainbow. ♦
