The Humanity Project (21 page)

Her mother appeared at the dining room door, looking anxious. “Did everything go all right?” she asked. “I didn’t want to eavesdrop.”

“It was fine, Mom.” How were such things supposed to go? She had no idea. She stood next to her mother and shook hands with everyone who was leaving, exchanging introductions, since she’d arrived too late for that. The man in the turban was the semi-famous author of a travel book series called Spiritual Destinations. There was a woman who sat on the board of a charity for children with cancer. A man who ran a drug addiction program, who of course looked like he’d taken every drug in the world himself.

The boy clearing away the coffee cups waited politely, since there was no space for him to get through with his tray. Leslie’s mother beckoned him, moving people out of his way. “Just leave everything in the kitchen, thank you.”

“Who is that?” Leslie muttered, once he’d made an excruciatingly awkward job out of getting through the door. She really hoped he wasn’t in charge of washing dishes.

“That is someone whose family has not had all the advantages that yours has.” Her mother propelled Leslie toward Christie Schuyler and Kirn, the lawyer, who were approaching the door, the last to exit. “Now I would really like to see you being pleasant to Christie, it won’t cost you a thing. Do you think she’d stay for dinner? Is it too hot for moussaka?”

“I don’t like moussaka,” Leslie said, as Mr. Kirn advanced, smiling like a species of big, happy fish. Christie Schuyler trailed behind.

“Joyce, you really should have sat in with us.” Kirn pretended to scold. He was in an excellent mood. “Tell your mother what a terrific meeting she missed.”

“It was super.”

“You know you didn’t need a nosy old woman taking up space,” Leslie’s mother said, pleased. “I’m glad it went so well. Christie, you see how silly you were to worry about anything?”

Christie murmured something by way of acknowledgment. She hadn’t looked all that worried, either then or now; she didn’t have the kind of face that said much. But this was Leslie’s mother’s method, to pronounce people one thing or another. Leslie’s phone buzzed again. She guessed if she’d wanted her husband’s attention all this time, she should have gone into finance.

Kirn was speaking to her mother in vibrant, thrilling legal tones, dropping his voice so that Leslie couldn’t catch what he said. “Girls,” her mother said, meaning Leslie and Christie, “I’ll be right back. You two can catch up on your chitchat.”

Neither of them looked inclined to start chitchatting. Christie was taller than she was, and Leslie found it irritating to be at eye level with her freckled, unpowdered jaw. She could find some excuse to leave, but she didn’t like to abandon the field just yet, while the two of them, Kirn and Christie, were up to who knows what. “What was that about?” she asked. “What did he want with my mother?”

“I don’t know. Probably some documents she needs to sign.”

“He was certainly very hush-hush about it.”

“I expect it was something confidential. Lawyer business.” Christie shrugged and one sleeve sagged off her shoulder. She reached up and pulled it straight. The woman dressed like a milkmaid.

“Mr. Kirn does like his little stunts,” Leslie said, although she had not intended to bring it up. But the more she thought about him putting her on the spot in that way, the more it steamed her. What humanity means to me? Maybe, aggravation.

“I’m sure he’s a good lawyer. Otherwise your mother wouldn’t be working with him,” Christie said reasonably.

Leslie had her own ideas about her mother’s judgment in hiring people, but she did not voice them. After some more awkward standing around, she said, “You know those ads about kids born with their upper lips all curled and twisted, what do you call that?”

“Cleft palate.”

“Yes. Those really horrible pictures. We could send them some money.” She was pleased with herself for the idea.

“If they have enough money to run national ad campaigns, they probably don’t need our support. And they aren’t the kind of local cause your mother wants to sponsor.”

“Well, forget it then.”

“But please do keep suggesting projects,” Christie said encouragingly.

Leslie had already lost interest in making suggestions, since they didn’t seem to be of the right sort. Did anybody in the world ever listen to her, take her seriously?

“It was just an idea. Never mind.” Leslie waved it away. “Don’t let me get in the way of all the important things you have in mind to do. Excuse me.”

Leslie crossed the hall to the den, sat down on the couch, and pried her feet loose from her miserable shoes. Her father had died in this room. Leslie tried to feel some trace of him there, some grumpy ghost, and failed. Maybe money was the only thing he’d left behind.

She was in the worst mood. She hated everyone, not only Christie Schuyler and Kirn, but all the wretched people in the world, including the cleft palate children whose distressing photos ambushed you from magazine pages. There was no one in her family who had not disappointed her: her father by dying, her children by growing up. Her mother with her new, exciting project that shut her out at every turn. Her husband, for being exactly who he was for all the years of their marriage. Even DeeDee, remote in her deafness and her faraway city and no help to her at all.

She knew she was being unfair, unreasonable, sulky, childish. She didn’t care. She could have driven a nail through her own hand, just for spite.

In a little while she’d have to pick herself up, go in search of her mother, listen to Roger’s message, argue, sigh, take up the sword again. But for just these few minutes, she wanted to rest. Be someone other than herself. You were supposed to be able to do that if you meditated, but maybe you had to be Indian too.

Something beneath the couch made a soft, bumping noise. Leslie jumped out of her seat and pulled the couch away from the wall by its armrest. An orange cat, either Mr. Darcy or one looking just like him, cowered in the corner. His tail lashed back and forth in agitation.

“Shoo,” Leslie said, but there wasn’t anywhere for him to shoo. Mr. Darcy’s face was the usual frozen cat mask that seemed to doubt your existence. The creature opened its jaw and gave a low, guttural war cry.

“Nasty thing,” Leslie told him. “I hope they at least neutered you.” She took a half-step toward him and he scrabbled across the floor, clawed at a curtain, and hoisted himself to the closed window. He rubbed against the glass, making more of his strangled noise.

“Shoo,” Leslie said again, flapping at him with a magazine. Mr. Darcy hopped down from the windowsill and watched her from the corner. Leslie went to the window and looked out. The backyard was leafy and tranquil, the late-summer ferns bronze, the fountain catching the sunlight and sending it skyward in a glittering loop. Mr. Darcy raised his tail and backed up against the wall to spray it with urine.

“Oh for Christ’s sake.” Leslie struggled with the window lock and slid the glass up. Quickly, because she heard voices in the hall outside, she unlatched the screen and raised it until it caught.

She backed away from the window. Mr. Darcy hunkered down on his front paws and stared at her. “What are you waiting for?” she asked him. She picked up another magazine to throw at him. He reached the windowsill with one leap, hauled himself over with his front paws, gave Leslie a last view of his pink anus, and was gone.

Leslie looked for him in the yard, but he had already vanished. She lowered the screen and closed the window and latched it. She wasn’t sure if what she had done was a good or a bad deed. Her human heart had been filled with black and spiteful things. But she was pretty sure that Mr. Darcy hadn’t cared.

Hi,

Yes it’s me, except you got my name wrong, its not Steve. But let me guess yours isn’t exactly Laurie, is it.

–

Ha ha ha. I guess when you put it that way . . .

–

Where are you?

–

Right behind you, boo!

–

So your not going to tell me?

–

You going to buy me another drink?

–

Depends. You need one?

–

ROTFL. Always!

–

So where are you?

–

I don’t think I should say, Steve. You sound like you might have some kind of bug up your ass.

–

Hi again, sorry, I use this computer at the library and the library was closing. But that’s OK because I had to think some about what to say. Which is funny because I have thought a lot about you and things to say to you. Oh well. Laurie or whoever you are wherever you are. Maybe you can tell me how the car wrecked and how I was the one they had to cut out of it in about five different pieces. I don’t think I was that drunk. It’s a brain thing from the accident.

My luck wasn’t that great before, but thanks to you its pretty much gone now. I won’t sing you the rest of that sad song, but the other thing I would really really like to know is: why me? Why pick me out of the pile to play your crazy sick games with?

I guess it makes sense for you and me to have a conversation with a couple of computers in between us since that’s how we started out. Anyway, whatever.

–

Dear Steve, I hope I can keep on calling you Steve because why not. I gave up what you might say is my real name a while back. I had my reasons, but now I think it’s a good idea in general for people to change themselves over every so often when they find themselves in different circumstances. The one thing you can count on in life is different circumstances.

I’m sorry you’ve had bad luck and if it’s in some ways my fault, I am sorry for that too. I will try to explain some things, but here is one answer for you: I picked you out of the pile because you said you had a boy who was the same age as my boy.

–

Steve? Are you still out there?

N
ow that things between him and his dad weren’t so great, Conner spent more and more time at Mrs. Foster’s. There was a room over the garage with its own bathroom and he moved some of his clothes into it. Every so often he drove Mrs. Foster around town to visit her friends, or to do the kinds of errands for which she dressed up. The car was a big Lincoln and his nickname for it was the HMS
Titanic
, but he kept this to himself. Mrs. Foster liked the small ceremonies involved in being driven around, such as having him open and close doors for her, and cautioning him to speed up or slow down. Conner guessed it was one of those things she’d always wanted and was finally getting around to doing. The steering wheel had a loose and floating feel, and he had to take care not to scrape the tires against curbs. Iceberg, dead ahead! It was the kind of car that automatically turned you into a little old lady.

When he was doing other work for her, landscaping or repairs, he had the keys to a small Nissan pickup that he didn’t like any better. It shouldn’t have bothered him, since it was free and after all it wasn’t even his, but it did bother him. It was the kind of truck he liked to make fun of. He was aware that his situation had its embarrassing aspects.

He left the big Ford truck with his dad, not that his dad did much driving now, but it wouldn’t have been right to strand him without it. And leaving the truck was another part of their quarrel, meant to demonstrate that Conner had his own life these days and could provide for himself. He was eighteen now—his mother sent a birthday card with a twenty-dollar bill in it—and no one else had to worry about him.

His dad had just worn him out, was the way Conner came to think of it. His dad hadn’t meant to do anybody harm, and most of the harm he’d done was to his own self. But he’d been careless in the way he lived and people got tired of it, first Conner’s mother and now Conner too. His dad said he was through being a pillhead, he’d cleaned up his act, and maybe that was true. It just didn’t matter as much anymore. Conner still went back there to give his dad money, and to make sure Bojangles had what he needed. He wished he could have brought Bojangles to Mrs. Foster’s, but with all the wild cats on the place it would turn into an ugly situation, and right now it was important to keep everything there humming along.

His dad gave him all kinds of a hard time. “What are you supposed to be, the pool boy?”

“There isn’t any pool.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Just drop it,” Conner told him. He never used to answer back but there were things you got tired of hearing too.

His dad made one of his obnoxious faces, like he knew things nobody else did, and no one could get anything past him. Which was why he spent his days wearing a hole in the couch inside a half-empty house that didn’t belong to them anymore, with no visible plan to do anything else for the rest of his life. Conner thought he understood how pride could back up in somebody, get turned around and come out as meanness. But that didn’t make it any easier to put up with.

Tonight Conner had brought dinner from the barbecue place his dad liked, hoping it would put him in a better mood. So far it only had the effect of keeping his dad’s mouth full of cornbread and slaw and rib tips so that there was a halt to anything unpleasant he had a mind to say. Conner couldn’t tell for certain if his dad was through with the pills—he’d quit worrying about it the same way you’d quit a job—but at least his appetite seemed better lately, if not his disposition.

The dog was stretched out on the floor, and every so often he sniffed around to see if any bits of food had fallen, and every so often Conner’s dad picked out a bone with some meat on it and tossed it to him. The dog hadn’t been the same since his operation, even though the vet said that everything was all right now, the cancer gone. But he didn’t have his old happy energy. It was like his sickness had made him afraid somewhere deep down in himself. And so his busted-up dad and the busted-up dog spent their days and nights together doing nothing, and every time Conner walked into the house, the sadness of it made him want to walk right back out again.

He’d planned on spending the night there, but once they were through eating and Conner had collected all the paper plates and napkins and wrappings, he stood up and said he’d better be getting back to Mill Valley.

His dad tilted his head so as to see him better. “Get back, what for?”

Conner couldn’t think of either a good reason or a good lie, and so he said, “She gets nervous nights when there’s nobody else there.”

Which was true enough, although Conner came and went as he pleased, and the most Mrs. Foster ever did was to call him, saying, I thought I saw a light, I thought I heard a car, I just wanted to make sure it was you.

His dad turned back to the television, even though it was only commercials. “Huh.”

“I can stay here if you want.”

His dad kept his eyes on the television, its hectic color and noise, and raised one hand in a wave, meaning, do whatever you want.

“I’ll walk Bo first.”

His dad said Fine, sure, and Conner coaxed the dog up from his spot and out the back door. The ground was dried and summer-hard and the dog walked like it hurt his feet. He sniffed around in the bleached-out grass and foxtails, not finding anything of interest.

It was almost Labor Day, and already there was less daylight, minute by minute. By the time he reached Mrs. Foster’s, darkness would have come down like a lid. Back when he was in school, this was the time of year when you looked forward to a certain energy, different routines starting up. He hadn’t liked everything about school: a lot of it had bored or aggravated him. But at least he’d had his place there, and a sense that there was meant to be progress, one year piled on top of another as you went along. Now the thought of fall, and of the winter beyond it, felt only cold and final.

Conner knew that his dad would have liked him to stay over tonight, just as he would have liked things to be easy between the two of them again. But his dad didn’t have it in him to come out and ask, or apologize, and that was something else Conner had grown tired of, arranging it so his dad could act like he didn’t care if the things he wanted came his way.

When he brought the dog back inside, Conner said, “Don’t you have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow?” He said this as a reminder. He hadn’t entirely cured himself of the habit of worry on his dad’s behalf, afraid he would forget, hurt himself, screw up one more time.

“What about it?”

Conner couldn’t tell if this meant his dad had only just now remembered, or say that he did, if he intended to go. This was a new doctor who was supposed to treat pain through hypnosis and electrical stimulation and other methods that you wanted to believe would work, although they probably didn’t. “I hope it goes OK.”

“Ah, doctors. They just gnaw parts of you down so you fit better in your coffin.”

There were a lot of cheerful observations like that these days. Conner drove away wondering if that was really what it came down to for his dad, getting ready to die, and if Conner should be getting ready for him to die too.

It was more than an hour’s drive back to Mill Valley, and that was if he was lucky with the traffic. He was beginning to hate the 101, the backups, the miles of stinking exhaust in your face. The highway brought out the worst in people. He’d seen it happen, felt it in himself, cursing whoever was ahead of him the same way people behind him probably cursed him. Road rage, they called it. Like it was really the road’s fault.

He guessed he didn’t think as highly of humanity as Mrs. Foster did, with her happy little charity. Yeah, but he didn’t think all that highly of himself these days.

He’d stolen from a dead man the first time he’d been inside her house, and he had gone there intending to steal again.

He’d needed money for Bojangles, twelve hundred dollars for the surgery, and another five hundred for what he already owed. The vet clinic suggested he take out a loan. They were not unsympathetic. They saw this kind of thing all the time now. People gave up the pets they could no longer afford to feed. Animals turned up in shelters half starved, and with heartworm, unhealed fractures, mange. They wished they could treat them all, save them all, but, etc.

“Christ,” his dad had said. “I need another operation myself, you see anybody lining up to pitch in?”

His mom had said, “Oh honey, I can send you a little, and a little more next month, but they just cut back my hours, do you want me to talk to them? Oh honey, this is all just so unfair.”

And so he’d gone back to some of the places where he’d had luck with stealing before. His method was to park the truck on the street and knock on a front door, and if anybody answered he’d ask if they needed yard work done and either they did or they didn’t.

If there was no answer, he unloaded his rake and clippers and worked industriously in the yard for a time, since no one ever noticed the people doing such things. If the homeowner happened to come back, he would say it was a mistake, his boss had sent him out, he must have gotten the address wrong.

And if nobody came back, you’d be surprised at how many people were careless about locking their doors, or installed substandard locks, or didn’t think about the ground-floor windows, at least not in the middle of the day. Once an alarm system had screeched at him and he’d had to get away fast, but he hadn’t been caught and he thought that the owners of the house had gotten their money’s worth, good for them.

If he did get inside a place he was quick, in and out in a couple of minutes. He knew by now where he might find the extra keys, the fireproof safety box, the credit cards nobody bothered to carry with them, the phones and cameras he shoved into his pockets, the computers small enough to hide beneath his sweatshirt. There were always flea markets, and certain people who hung around the flea markets, and little punk kids with too much money who’d buy whatever new and shiny stuff he had. But all that took time and effort when what he needed was cash, and right away.

He hadn’t meant to ever go back to the Fosters’ house, where it had all begun. It had been too creepy and shaming, and besides, he could have been recognized. But the house wouldn’t quit him, and stayed in his head for every bad reason. He had found items of immediate and portable value there, and no consequences had come his way. And say he got caught, there or anywhere else. He was almost ready for the worst to happen, his life going into some blazing flameout tailspin, just so he wouldn’t have to keep worrying about it happening.

And so he had parked in the driveway and rung the front doorbell. It had a deep, underground sound, as if the house itself meant to warn people away.

No one answered, and Conner walked away back down the drive, thinking things through, telling himself he hadn’t done anything yet, only knocked on a door, nothing he couldn’t explain or take back. There was always that too-late moment—a door forced, your hand in a drawer—but he hadn’t reached it yet and didn’t have to. He could follow his instinct, which was to leave it be, go somewhere else, and so he would have done except just then an old lady in a quilted bathrobe ran around the corner of the house, waving her arms as if trying to signal a boat.

“Are you from the gas company?”

He froze. But she didn’t remember him; why should she? “No ma’am. Is there a problem?”

“The house is full of gas, you can smell it everywhere!” With her snarled hair and pinched, gray face she looked like an escaped hospital patient. She took a step, wobbled.

“OK, easy there.” Conner moved closer, ready to prop her up or catch her if he had to. “You want me to call somebody?”

“I called already but nobody—” Her fingers plucked at her bathrobe, then her hair. “Would you just look at me, running around like a goony bird!”

“What happened?”

“I didn’t even have time to get dressed!” She appealed to him with the unfairness of it. Her mouth gaped and she labored to breathe. He couldn’t tell if she was woozy from a gas leak or if it was just distressed vanity.

Conner said, “Maybe you should sit down.” There was nowhere to sit. “Did you want me to go in and check, see if I can find anything?”

“Be careful! Don’t turn on any lights, it can spark an explosion!”

He went in through the kitchen. He smelled cat piss, not gas. The smell rose up and ballooned inside his head. She must be so used to it, she could detect some other, different stink on top of it. Conner looked around him, not finding anything in the way of a gas leak or anything of value he could lay hands on. He took a few quick steps into the den, feeling thickheaded from the smell. There was a way in which the room did not match up with the room in his memory, and a way in which it did. He turned, blundered into a wall, and walked back through the kitchen and outside.

An orange PG&E truck was just pulling up in the driveway, and a worker in a vest and helmet got out. Mrs. Foster—he had forgotten the name, but it would come back to him soon enough—was telling the worker the details and urgencies of the situation. Conner waited. He had an unreasoning fear that she would drop dead, and it would be his fault.

The PG&E guy walked around the house to investigate. “It’ll be all right,” Conner told her, although he didn’t know that.

Mrs. Foster stuck her hands in the pockets of her bathrobe, pulled out a pair of eyeglasses, and settled them over her nose. “What if the house blows up?” she asked plaintively.

“It won’t.”

“Well you sound very sure of yourself.” She contemplated him. “Do I know you?”

“No ma’am. But I’m glad I was in the neighborhood and could help.”

She looked him over again, either trying to remember him or trying to fit him into a recognizable category, but she didn’t say anything more. They waited for the PG&E guy to finish. Conner wondered about the cats. He hadn’t remembered cats.

The PG&E guy came back out and said there was a pilot light out on the water heater, that was the only thing he could find, there was a lot of pet hair blocking the oxygen feed and he’d cleaned it away. He said this without seeming to criticize or draw conclusions. It was probably the sort of job where you saw all kinds of things.