Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World: A Novel (4 page)

“I don’t know.”

“A lot of things happen, Pete. Look what’s happening, us digging away, which is fine because we need to, but I’d just thought, doing the designs, doing the whittling, I thought I could make things less like, you know, a pit, because actually the thing that bothers me most isn’t the pit, it’s the way it seems natural, all of a sudden, to have it. Last year if you told me I’d be out back fucking my husband on top of a mud pile with spikes for pillows, I’d’ve said, No way.”

Wind buffeted citrus leaves overhead, agitated green suspended fruits. I told Meredith, “It’s changing times, and we’re changing with them. Besides, I liked that in the mud, it was good.”

“You came a lot. Sweet. Like trees.”

“Trees?”

“That’s not a taste, I guess, but it’s what I think of.”

We went into the house and took turns showering. I said, “This is like when we first met. Remember those walks past the jetty?”

“I do. You used to say, Sweetheart, give me your cunt, and I’d say, Fuck me with your tongue.”

We were in the kitchen. Meredith stood by the sink. I opened the refrigerator and peered into it, visually sorting what I saw there. “How come we don’t talk like that anymore?” Meredith asked.

“Maybe we’re afraid. Hey, there’s soup here. Is last week’s bouillabaisse still good?”

“Sure.”

I brought out the soup in its Tupperware container. Meredith lowered a steamer from an overhead peg. I removed the Tupperware’s green top and poured the soup, carefully, so as not to splash, from container to pot, then ignited a big rear stovetop gas jet, reduced the jet to low, and placed the pot on the burner. “Stir it,” Meredith said. She handed me a wooden spoon from the spoon drawer; and she said, “It’s a shame we’re afraid.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to be afraid.”

“No.”

“But I am.” Fish, scallops, medium shrimp, vegetables—all these things floated up, clung to bay leaves and one another in the crimson liquid, as Meredith confessed, “I’m afraid of you, Pete.”

“Me?”

She leaned against the counter. Evening enveloped us. I said, “Well,” even waved aloft the wooden spoon, danced it in the air, a theatrical gesture emphasizing nothing, making me feel feeble; and, too, I felt despondent in that way that seems naturally to follow sex in the afternoon, when day’s last light rides horizontally down through clouds pillowed low. Surveying the light filtering through window glass to glance off shiny pots and the stove and the enameled freezer chest—clicking on, now, to cool and preserve the right hand, left foot, heart, liver, partial left lung, adrenal glands, intact genitals, and odd other freezer-wrapped bits of ex-mayor—I felt I could empathize with Meredith’s apprehension of me. Of course she was afraid. Day was passing into night, death hung in the air, our happy post-coital sadness was fragile.

“Add water to the soup,” she told me.

“Water?”

“Just a trickle.”

I went to the tap and rotated the knob and held a glass beneath the flow. Water coursed over my wrist and fingers, and this felt nice, so I remained a minute, getting wet and wondering if Meredith had perhaps discovered and unwrapped one of those packages of Jim Kunkel tucked in the back of the freezer beneath the restaurant-sized bag of fish sticks; and if so,
which
package; and, also, if it might now be advisable to assume the worst and come right out and address the issue, to take, as it were, the initiative. Meredith said, “Honey, be careful, the sink’s filling up.”

Which it was. The drain was congested, and water was rapidly rising.

“Turn off the faucet, Pete.”

“Right.”

“Here,” she said, offering me the plunger. But I told her, “I’ll deal with it after dinner.”

“Will you?”

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

“Because I refuse to leave unwashed dishes out all night for the bugs. Which reminds me. Listen, before I forget, I’ve thought about it and I’ve decided that in the future I think I can handle the fifth- and sixth-grade bio sections if we combine grades on field trips. We’ll go to Peterson’s Farm and collect coleoptera for specimen exhibits. Maybe I can get Dr. Peterson to let one of his bees sting him on the finger. The kids always like to see that.”

It was pathetic to be talking about school, when there was no such thing anymore. Nevertheless we did it all the time. We were teachers.

“You’re sure you want to collect?”

“Why not?”

“Local populations are way down. I’d say just observe. Encourage conservation. Teach respect for life.”

“Ha. This from a guy who assigns Clausewitz to eight-year-olds.”

“We’ve been over that. Teaching the history and theory of warfare is a perfectly legitimate method of demonstrating patterns of social reformation in the modern era.”

“Listen to you. You sound like a politician. You should run for office.”

“Maybe I will.” And why not. It was hardly any secret that the present civic administration was little more than a puppet front for corrupt Rotarians like Jerry Henderson and his Better Business Bureau buddies, men with no aversion to sending a town father to his death in the deep of night on a well-trimmed lawn. Sitting there in my lamplit kitchen that smelled of fish, waiting to share a meal with my wife who may or may not have recently chanced upon those body parts lying wrapped and bagged beneath frozen food (and who therefore, lacking any explanation for the presence of wrapped and bagged body parts, may or may not have been experiencing, at that very moment, considerable anxiety regarding her husband’s psychological condition—I wasn’t going to press her on the matter, no way)—sitting there with these concerns and every muscle twitching from a good day’s honest work, it occurred to me that the Hendersons of the world had best watch out, because one day the people of this town would rise up to reaffirm old values of education and social welfare, just as Jim Kunkel surely foresaw when he laid down his life to become a martyr before God.

And who better to carry Jim’s message than the very man the ex-mayor had entrusted with his mortal remains? “You truly think you can handle the bio sections?” I asked Meredith when at last we sat before large bowls brimming with sea creatures.

“Sure.”

“Okay then.” Between bites I outlined a plan for a provisional school in which Meredith would indeed go right ahead and acquire those fifth- and sixth-grade bio sections; as well, she’d continue in her customary guidance-counseling and grievance-arbitration roles. Which would leave lower-grade earth and marine sciences to Doug, who was a quick study, able lecturer, and genuine whiz at Play Time. I’d been meaning for years to ask Ray Conover, whom I felt the kids would undoubtedly love despite his present post-traumatic depression (who knew, maybe it would do Ray good to be with some youngsters; after all, he and Miriam never did have any of their own), to lead a trip to Midnight Pass to gather hermit crabs. And with Simone holding down art, Marty on math, Allan coaching remedial reading, and me shouldering my usual load with an added emphasis on civics and government so that the kids could witness public machinery at the grass roots level … who knew, maybe we could even sponsor a municipal project, some kind of a hands-on, current affairs thing—
mayoral campaign
I was thinking but not saying—we’d have a manageable curriculum with the focus on individual attention and lots of Improvised Creative Activities, ICAs, which, as I reminded my wife, are traditionally immensely underrated as learning tools. I said, “And get this, we’ll do it here in the house.”

“You’re crazy.”

“We could get your mother to teach Home Ec.”

“Oh God.”

“Seriously, we’ve got the upstairs bedrooms, the attic study, the living room and dining nook, the porch for an art studio, the kitchen, and two bathrooms. We’ve got that old Tandy computer for grade storage and attendance tables. It’s a compromise, it’s not the best of all possible worlds, but neither is the world the best of all possible worlds, is it? The kids, Meredith, think of the kids,” I said as I sat there fancying this very kitchen swarming with boys and girls Magic-Markering construction-paper political campaign poster boards that brightly commanded:
VOTE FOR OUR TEACHER FOR MAYOR BECAUSE HE’S THE BEST
. Meredith said, “Damn, I completely forgot, Jerry Henderson called while I was making lunch. He wants you to phone him back. Sorry, I meant to write it down. He said it’s urgent. I didn’t know you and Jerry were friends.”

“We’re not.”

“He called you his good pal Pete. He told me to tell his good pal Pete he’s got good news for him. Any idea what that could mean?”

“Nope.”

“When you find out let me know, because I could use a little good news.”

Which was my feeling exactly, when, a little later that night, while Meredith readied for bed upstairs and night deepened outside, Henderson called again to thank me personally and on behalf of the citizenry for the wonderful service I’d provided the community in our recent hour of crisis out on Dune Road. He breathed into the phone, “Pete, it was a terrific idea to wire Kunkel to those cars. Only a scholar of your caliber could’ve come up with that. I want you to know that everybody appreciated your expertise in this matter.”

It was a good connection; Jerry sounded close. In fact Jerry did live nearby, in a sprawling Tudor eyesore at the corner of Osprey and Manatee. Sometimes, on walks at night, I would round the corner and look up to see Jerry’s ostentatious tile roof above faux-granite walls like theme-park castle embattlements; and I would always think of Jerry and Rita’s dead daughter, Linda.

Jerry said, “Pete, the boys have worked out an arrangement and there’s a potentially high-quality educational facility available at Freedom Field, with blacktop flooring and good northern exposure if you keep the door open and don’t mind the occasional flyover.”

“Freedom Field? An airplane hangar?”

“Pete, she’s twenty thousand square feet with forty-foot ceilings. Perfect for basketball or indoor tennis if you paint lines and string nets. Tell me, what sports do you tend to offer at the elementary level?”

“Sports? Let’s see. Kickball, broomball, tetherball, tug-of-war. The kids like to play steal-the-bacon.”

“Steal-the-bacon.”

“It’s a tactical team game that rewards the skill and cunning of the individual.”

“Team sport, is it?”

“Right.”

“That’s good. As I was saying, you’ve got your classroom and athletic space efficiently combined.” I could hear, from somewhere on Jerry’s end of the line, a sound like splashing water. I said, “That’s very generous, Jerry, an airplane hangar,” and he replied, “You’d be crazy to pass it up.” Followed by another splash and Jerry saying, “Pete, I’m in the process of trying to unclog a sink over here. Water’s been standing all day and I can’t get any flow at all.”

“Have you tried a snake?”

“No.”

“You should try a snake.” I gazed at my own sink’s dark flecks of basin residue floating motionless on water that reached counter level. Was everybody in the neighborhood experiencing drainage difficulty? Were we all backed up? Was it a community thing?

The night outside was silent. No wind blew the leaves of trees against window glass or wall; no birds called. I could hear floorboards creaking overhead as Meredith made her way from bathroom to bed; and I heard the sound of Jerry’s sink water, and of his breathing into the phone, as he asked me, “You wouldn’t happen to have one of those snake things, would you, Pete?”

“Yes, I do. Would you like to borrow it?” But what was I saying? Jerry said, “That’d be great. What a lifesaver. I’ll swing by and pick it up. Won’t be a minute.”

Now I’d done it. A man I couldn’t trust was coming to get a household tool I was going to need myself.

Quickly I hid the plunger in the pantry, scraped the dinner dishes into the garbage, dumped the scraped-off dishes into the sink (thereby slopping oily water over the rim and onto my bare feet), squeezed in dish soap, swirled the water with my hand to make suds; and then, after concocting this absurd soaking-dish display aimed at hiding the truth of my own clogged drain from the soon-to-be-visiting Rotarian, with whom I would rather not risk a bonding experience, even of a mundane, plumbing-oriented variety (and to whom, also, I would rather not divulge the vulnerability evidenced by my own clogged drain, its revelation of material decay)—after staging this sink nonsense I went downstairs to the basement. There I paused a moment to admire my 1:32-scale, exhibition-quality balsa-and-Styrofoam cutaway reproduction of a Portuguese interrogation chamber (circa 1600), complete with rack, miniature shackles fashioned from spray-painted costume-jewelry chokers and clasps, and Q-tip puffs representing albino rats. Particularly effective were the sections of gray-painted “dungeon” wall fabricated from pieces of pressed Styrofoam swimming-pool kickboards burned with a soldering iron to give the impression of miniature mortise joints. I made a mental note to come down here and do some detail brushwork and free-form “chicken bone” accessorizing—the twin hallmarks of any successful scale model of this kind, I think—then forged deeper into the rank cellar, to the big metal closet where the tools lived. In the tool closet I discovered, to my surprise, not one but two plumber’s snakes, coiled, lashed by lengths of identical nylon cording, and suspended from hooks. I left one and took its mate upstairs, and a moment later Jerry knocked and I opened the door and said, “Hello, I’ve got your snake. Want a cup of coffee?”

“Sure.”

I put on water, got down cups, and gestured to Jerry, “Sit, please.” Which Jerry did; he sat at the kitchen table and said, “Nice pit, Pete.”

“Thanks.” I suggested he get up close and check out Meredith’s spear tips. Then I told him that, in spite of Meredith’s excellent detail work, our pit was nothing compared to his; that his moat was very impressive from an overall engineering standpoint; that his design concept reinforced the thematic statement of the property in general, the house and grounds and so forth. I went on to note that the drawbridge had splendid workmanship in it, and that it was a rare thing to see that kind of wood-peg carpentry these days. I asked Jerry, “Tell me, do you anticipate problems with the moccasins? I mean, are they, do you think, likely to crawl out and, I don’t know, whatever?”