Aloft (29 page)

"It's not like that."

"Yes it is."

She looks away from me but I see her eyes are shimmery and A L O F T

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as she gasps a little I bring her close, and she hugs me, with Miles flashing a "go for it" hand signal as he jabbers Spanglish into the handset; and although I have to admit that it feels squarely, preternaturally good to hold Kelly once again in all her big-framed honey biscuit-smelling glory, I remind myself not to cling too long or too tightly, lest one (or both) of us gets what would certainly end up being the wrong idea of trying to do something right, which would be emotionally lethal for us, or worse. But Kelly apparently has the same notion, as she pinches me very hard where she was holding me on the love handles, holding and pinching before pushing away. This hurts, and not so good. But just then the metal-framed glass door bangs open and it's Jimbo, still clutching his cell, his pixie face all pinched up and flushed, like he's been holding his breath out there this whole time, and now heading toward me like I was the one clamping off his airway, this mad, mad little missile. A funny sound comes out of Kelly, an airy bleat, and for a nanosecond I can't help but think of a night in Phuket when I was almost killed on a side street by one of those crazy-looking pickup-truck taxis called
tuk-tuks,
the thing screaming to a stop about three inches from me, and then innocently honking:
bleat-bleat
And perhaps that is why I don't, or can't, now move, this false sense of (160_ vu, for when Jimbo's pointed shoulder hits me in the gut I am practically giddy with astonishment and wonder for this unusual world, and I am ready to decline.

I decline, Mini-Jim. I really do.

But the next thing I know, Miles and Kelly are pulling the homunculus off me, though not quite in time to spare me a serious new-fashioned "bitch slapping," at least according to Miles. Apparently Jimbo stunned me with the tackle to the solar plexus, knocking the breath out of me, and as he wailed
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away with his cub paws while straddling my chest, all yours truly was able to manage was to cover up his overrated mug and plead a misunderstanding. After what seemed to me a lethal fifteen rounds but was probably a quarter minute at most, Miles finally got him to desist and drive off (with Kelly) by wielding a Parade Travel paperweight, an etched, solid-glass globe the size of a grapefruit that we sometimes present to our best customers (the Plotkins have one), and yelling in a puffed-up, profanity-laced Spanish. It was as good a language display as I ever heard from him, though probably it was all in the delivery, the ornate hormonal tone, and I must say I felt a warm rush of what was almost parental pride and gratitude from down in my sorry hor-izontal position, hearing his flashy street defense of me. And while I'm sure Tack would have pummeled my assailant silly, I'm pretty certain he would have done so with little of Miles's relish or animation.

WHICH IS NOW PART of what I'm noodling about, as I drive slowly home from Parade, my face tingling and raw, my gut muscles tightly balled and sore, acridity abounding, because when anything squarely intense happens these days I get to thinking about
la famiglia,
as most people might, though in my case it's not just to count heads and commune in absentia but to wonder in a blood-historical mode about how we got to be the way we are, whether okay or messed-up or deluded or, as usual, just gently gliding by. In this sense maybe I should thank Jimbo for providing some contour to the day, though of course I should ultimately thank myself for being an utterly serviceable, com-panionable boyfriend to a more-fragile-than-it-appears woman like Kelly caught in an eddy of middle life, a combination that A L O F T

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meant I was mostly useless and lame. And as. I cross over the ceaselessly roaring Expressway and turn into my aging postwar development just now beginning to look and feel like a genuine neighborhood, the trees finally grown up in a vaulted loom over the weathered ranches and colonials, I wish I could have certain countless moments back again, not for the purpose of doing or fixing or righting anything but instead to be simply there once more, present again, like watching a favorite movie for a third or fourth time, when you focus on different though important things, like that stirring, electric moment in
To Kill a Mocking-bird
when the upstairs gallery of black folk stand up to honor Atticus Finch after the verdict goes against Tom Robinson, their expressions of epic suffering and dignity laying me low and then more generally instructing me that there are few things in this life as heartbreaking as unexpected solidarity.

A chance for which I'll maybe have once more today, for as I coast down the driveway I see Jack's Death Star—style luxury Blackwood pickup parked to one side of the turnaround, which is a surprise in itself, and boosts my spirits. He rarely comes by like this during the workweek, if ever, and when the garage door curls open I see the Ferrari parked inside, Theresa's and Paul's driving caps tossed on the seats. I tuck the broad-fendered old Chevy snugly in the other bay, the family gas guzzlers at rest, the clan all here except for Rita Reyes, who should have long been Rita Battle, and may yet be Rita Coniglio if yours truly doesn't conjure up some serious voodoo very soon.

The sound of familiar voices echoes from the backyard. I pause for a long moment before stepping around the corner of the house, to listen, I suppose, though I'm not sure for what or why, and I hear Jack explaining something about the prime rate and the state of the economy in the dry unmodulated way he
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talks about everything having to do with business. Paul asks about home mortgages, whether the rates will be lower in the fall; this is good to hear—they're still planning ahead. While Jack responds I don't hear a peep from Theresa, though, which deflates me a little, for maybe what I was hoping for was to happen upon some easeful sibling exchange, some cheery, smart-alecky shorthand that they'd pepper each other with, to no harm. And I even hoped she wasn't present, but when I step into the back I see that the three of them are there, sitting out beneath the umbrellaed patio table with soft drinks and salsa and chips.

"Hey, what happened to you?" Theresa says, in mid-dip.

"Nothing," I say, all of them examining me. "Why?"

"Looks like you just had an all-day facial," she says, patting her cheeks. "I think maybe I should try that."

"You don't need a thing, sweetheart," Paul tells her. "You're perfect."

"I just never had one, you know."

Jack is the only one drinking a beer, and I murmur that I could use a cold one, to which he dutifully rises and steps inside to the kitchen.

"You do look a little puffy, Jerry," Paul now says, looking at me with concern. Paul can feature the unruffled manner of a seasoned doctor sometimes, a mien he clearly gets from his parents. "You may be allergic to something."

"Dad's allergic to workplaces," Jack says as he returns, with uncharacteristic sharpness, I might add, sounding like his sister in her youth. He hands me an icy bottle, holding two others that must be for him.

"Here you go, old fella. The swelling should go down soon enough."

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I look into Jack's eyes and they seem to laugh a little, and suddenly I realize he may in fact be inebriated. This is not at all the usual. I glance at Theresa and she gives the slightest shrug.

I say, "Jack's half right. It's probably all the dust kicked up by the power blowers. I guess after all these years I've finally developed a sensitivity. In our day, we used to rake and then sweep up with gym brooms."

"You mean you had me and the guys raking," Jack says.

"I guess that's true, too. But I did my fair share."

"The noise of those blowers is incredible," Theresa says. "I never realized how loud it is in the suburbs. Paul and I are the only ones here all day, and it seems like the landscapers never quit. Not to mention all the renovation and construction crews.

You're practically the only one on the block not doing work to the house, Jerry."

"Cheers to all the work," Jack says, finishing up his bottle and opening a fresh one. "Every one of those remodels needs new lighting and plumbing fixtures and tiles and cabinetry.

And it's all high-end stuff, exactly our Battle Brothers Excalibur products. How do you think I keep Eunice living in the style to which she's accustomed?"

"I thought it was your style, too."

"It's fine," he answers her, "but I don't need it to be that way."

"I've never seen a house like yours," Paul says. "The kitchen is amazing. I love that folding faucet over the stove, so you can fill the pots right there."

"Eunice got the idea from a show on HGTV. That particular fixture is triple-nickel-plated, from a maker in Northern England. It retails for eighteen hundred. We just won the bid to be the exclusive dealer in the metro area. They supply all the Eu-ropean royalty, including Monaco."

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"And now the whole North Shore of the Island," Theresa adds. "Just perfect."

"Hey, if people can afford it, they have a right to whatever they like."

"Well, I don't quite know about that," Theresa autoresponds, but then she somehow thinks better of it, and quickly recasts.

"But hey, Jack, it's no big deal."

"Yeah it is," he says, with an edge. There's a tenor to his voice I don't like, like he's not speaking to his baby sister, like he's never even had one. "I thought everything's a big deal with you. Isn't that what you do for a living? You criticize—excuse me,
critique.
Every little thing is so critiqued, so critical and important, life or death or purgatory. Everything can mean everything."

Theresa says, "That's in fact a good way of looking at it, though context is also everything "

"Whatever. I believe someone can pay his hard-earned money and buy a faucet he likes and it's perfectly okay if he doesn't think about all the possible injustices and implications of doing so. He doesn't have to think about anything."

"You must really believe that."

"Yeah, I do."

"Okay, then."

Jack says, "Okay what?"

"I said
okay,"
she says, sounding suddenly weary, and not just of the conversation. She has sunglasses on, so I can't see her eyes, but there's a hunch to her shoulders that seems more pronounced than it should in anyone so young.

Jack says, "It's not like you to agree. Why are you agreeing?"

"Hey, hey, guys," Paul says, "we were enjoying the early evening sun here."

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"That's right," I say, "let's cut it out now."

Jack says, "Pm in 'the sun' all day, okay, so I don't exactly need to enjoy it like all you people who are retired or might as well be. I came over to talk. But suddenly all the talkers don't want to talk"

Silence, except for the sound of the neighbor's electric waterfall, this blocked old-pisser trickle none of us noticed before.

"I think I need to lie down," Theresa says, getting up. Paul gets up, too, and holds her arm as they step into the house.

"See you later, Jack," Paul says. "We'll be by."

Jack mutters
Yeah, Paul,
like it's a Scandinavian language, and then downs the rest of his beer in one clean, long gulp.

He rises to leave, too, but I tell him to sit and stay awhile. He does, which is good, but this is again indicative of what sometimes irks me about him, his too-quick compliance, at least to me, no matter the situation. He's definitely been drinking before he got here, being a bit flushed about the cheek and ears and neck, a reaction he doesn't derive from me (I tend to get paler with every glass of jug-decanted Soave), and I wonder if he's doing this every afternoon at 4 o'clock, in some skanky out-of-the-way lounge or the polished wood-paneled men's grill room of his country club. Though this in itself would be neither surprising nor worrisome. In our business you can have a lot of empty time on your hands no matter how numerous and busy the jobs are, especially toward the end of the day when the guys are slowing down and just about to gather the tools and roll everything up into the backs of the trucks, and the clients are no longer so anxious and clingy, when there's just enough of a reason not to go straight home because after a long day of ordering and hollering and assuring and brownnosing you want to talk to someone (including your wife) without having to
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convince or sell them on anything. Sometimes this means you mostly choose to just sink deeper in the captain's chair of your smoked-glass truck, with not even the radio on. In my prime years with Battle Brothers I'd tell the guys I was going to do an estimate but instead I'd park my work truck in some random neighborhood off Jericho Turnpike and spread a Michelin map on the passenger seat, mentally tracing a slow route from Nice to Turin, every switchback like a sip of a cold one.

But Jack Battle really isn't Jerry Battle, which I should be glad for but am not, at least right now, because if he were perhaps it would be easier to say something to him that I could be sure was tidy and effective, an impartial communication, like a patriarchal Post-it note with simple, useful information (how to make a noose, how to pile up charcoal briquettes), or else something slightly chewier, some charming Taoist-accented aphorism bespeaking the endlessly curious circumstance and befuddlement of our lives.

But like everybody else around here (save maybe Paul) I can't quite help myself, and I say, without any delight, "What the hell is going on with you? I don't get it. With what your sister is going through right now?"

Jack twists the cap off another beer.

"Are you hearing me, Jack?"

He says, "To tell you the truth, Dad, I really shouldn't know.

I should know nothing. Because no one told me."

"Theresa didn't tell you?"

"No, she didn't," he says, roughly setting down the bottle, hard enough that it splashes and foams and spills through the metal mesh of the table. He stands up and shakes his workboots.