The Safety of Objects: Stories (7 page)

Jim walks past all of them, up the steps, and into his house.

There’s no reason I should know what a marigold is, he thinks, I’m the Flynch-Peabody Man of the Year.

He goes up to the bedroom, empties the contents of the hamper onto the bed, spreads the dirty clothing out evenly, and lies down on top of it. He stares up at the ceiling, sucking his thumb, and occasionally rubbing a soft piece of clothing across his face. This is something he does to relax. He doesn’t think it is any stranger than a person taking a Valium, lifting weights, or immersing himself in some kind of tank. Emily comes in with her bottle and lies down next to him.

“You’re dirty,” Emily says.

Jim nods.

“It’s okay.” She rests her head on his chest, sucks her bottle, and falls asleep.

The phone rings, Jim gets up carefully, so as not to disturb Emily, and picks up the phone in the hall.

“Hi, it’s Bill MacArthur.”

“Oh, hi Bill, how are you?” Susan says, from the extension in the kitchen.

Jim tries to remember who this Bill is. In the six months they’ve lived there he’s met four Bills, two Bobs, three Roberts, and a Robbie, and he can’t tell one from the other.

“Good, good,” Bill says. “I’m just getting ready to run the kids down to the park and toss around the ball. I thought maybe you’d like to bring yours.”

“What a nice idea.”

Jim knows that if he’d gone downstairs a minute before and said, Honey, let’s take the kids to the park and toss a ball around, she would have looked at him like he was crazy.

“I’ll stop by and you can follow me in your car.”

Jim tries to imagine who Bill MacArthur is. What’s his relation to the real MacArthur? Doesn’t he have a job? A family, his own damn wife?

“Kids, kids, where are you?” Susan calls, as she runs up the steps. “Get your shoes on, we’re going to the park.”

“Can I come with you?” Jim asks, as Susan rubs a damp washcloth over Emily’s face, wiping off her sleep and the dirt from Jim’s chest.

“You have to stay home and replant my flowers.”

Jim feels as if he’s been slam-dunked. How can he do anything when she’s running off into the woods chasing wild balls with some guy named Bill?

“Do you wear your ring?” he asks.

“What ring?” Susan says.

“You know, your ring?” Jim spins his wedding band around.

“Oh that ring. You scared me for a minute. Of course, except when I’m doing the dishes. What makes you ask?”

MacArthur’s horn beeps in front of the house.

Jim stands on the landing, looking out the window. He tries to wave to Bill MacArthur, whoever the hell he is, but MacArthur doesn’t see him.

Jim decides to take a shower outside, it will save him the job of cleaning the tub when he’s done. He takes a towel and a bar of soap and goes into the yard, hauling the hose after him.

This is what men who don’t live in cities do, he thinks, imagining naked men in backyards all over Westchester and up into Connecticut. They shower out of doors, like Abe Lincoln. It’s the hearty way. The real way.

He picks at the dirt embedded in his chest hair, and rubs what he gets between his fingers. He throws the hose over a tree branch and turns on the water—it is cool if not cold. Jim starts to sing. He lathers himself from head to toe, watching the dirt pour off his body in little muddy rivers. He rinses his hair and, when the soap is out of his eyes, looks into the bushes at the far end of the yard. There are two small faces pressed up against the fence. They are giggling. “Look at his pee-pee,” a small voice says. Jim turns away. They have ruined his moment. Is a man not free to do as he pleases in his own home, he wonders, to wash his own dirt from his body? Does he need permission? This is not America as Abe Lincoln intended.

He is angry and ashamed. He has the urge to turn the hose on the children but knows it will only start trouble. Instead, he moves cautiously, rinsing himself with his back to them and then wrapping the towel tightly around his waist. Jim carefully collects his clothing, the soap, and the hose, leaving no traces, and walks back toward the house, clean feet squeaking on the grass.

He sits in a straight-back chair in the living room, wet hair slicked back. Susan has bought all new furniture. Nothing is familiar. Nothing is comfortable. Jim goes into the kitchen and tries to make phone calls. His book is in his briefcase at the office. He can’t think of where anyone lives and so can’t get their numbers from information. He sits in his chair, in the dark, until his wife and children return. They have stopped at McDonald’s on their way home; he can smell it on their clothing.

He takes the sleeping Emily, his little french fry, from Susan and carries her up to bed.

“Why were you home this afternoon?” Susan asks when he comes downstairs.

He points up toward Emily’s bedroom and motions for Susan to whisper. “Bomb threat,” he says.

“Nobody else came home early?” Susan says as if she doesn’t believe him.

“It wasn’t the whole city, just my building, my firm to be exact.

“How odd,” she says. “Will you go in tomorrow?”

It has not occurred to Jim that he might not be going to the office in the morning. Susan goes upstairs to remind Jake to put his retainer in. The phone rings and Jim picks it up, hoping it will be someone from work.

“Is Susan there?” a male voice asks.

“No, I’m sorry, she’s not.”

“This is Bob Wellington. I ran into her at the car place the other day, and I just wanted to make sure she got her tires rotated all right.”

“They seem very well rotated,” Jim says.

“How many miles you got on that car?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Jim says.

“Well, remind her to check on the oil change: every thirty-five hundred miles, even though they say you can wait to four or five. Runs the engine down if you wait, kills the car.”

“I’ll pass the information on.”

“Is this her father by chance?” Bob Wellington asks, chuckling.

“No, it’s not,” Jim says.

“Well, good talking to you,” Bob says.

“People must think you’re divorced,” Jim says to Susan, as they undress and get ready for bed. He sees her taking off her slip and underwear and imagines that Susan has secretly gotten a job on her own. She is a suburban call girl, saving tips to buy a house at the beach. If she works hard enough, she could have a house in the Hamptons by next summer.

“You’re at the office a lot,” she says.

“What about these other guys, don’t they have to work?

Susan goes downstairs. Jim follows her. She tries to start the dishwasher. It runs for a second, makes a horrible sound, then stops.

“Damn,” she says.

“Here, let me try.” He goes over to the dishwasher, opens the door, closes the door, pushes the start button again, and looks down at the machine. Nothing happens.

“I’ll call Robbie Martin,” Susan says.

“You don’t have to call anybody,” Jim says.

“You certainly can’t fix it. You have no idea of what to do.”

It is true Jim doesn’t know what to do with anything. Somehow he is content to leave it all alone and assume that it will heal itself.

Jim returns to the bedroom, takes off his pajamas, and dresses again.

“Where are you going?” Susan asks when she sees him dressed and heading for the door.

“Nowhere.”

He starts the car and pulls it up close to the house, aiming the lights toward the yard. He flicks on the high beams and gets out. Jim replants the marigolds, constantly looking over his shoulder, fearful that a band of sixteen-year-olds will mistake the lights for a party. He imagines they will find him, think he is an old man, bind and gag him, then go into his house, turn on the stereo, and eat everything, including his wife and children.

*  *  *

The telephone rings at quarter to six in the morning and Jim immediately thinks of death.

“Hello,” he says, waiting for the bad news.

“Mr. Train,” his secretary says, “Mr. Patterson’s secretary called me and asked me to tell you we won’t be opening the office today. The police are still investigating.”

“Thanks for letting me know,” Train says. “You wouldn’t happen to have Howe or Worth’s numbers, would you?”

“I’ll get them and call back.”

“No hurry,” Train says, hanging up and falling back into a pleasant, productive dream about redesigning the office so that it seems more like a home, with soft couches and televisions; the kind of place where a man could live as well as work.

At seven-thirty Susan gets up. Jim lies in bed and watches her dress.

“Aren’t you feeling well?” Susan asks.

“Fine,” he says, pulling the blanket up to his chin.

Susan puts on her makeup before her blouse and then makes a big show of getting her blouse over her head without it touching her makeup. Jim is tempted to suggest it would be easier to do it in the reverse, but says nothing. In the mirror Susan’s face is pulled down like she’s had a stroke, and she’s adding more mascara to her eyes, so that her lashes look like licorice sticks.

“Why don’t you get up,” she says. “You can drive Jake to school.”

The last time Jim drove him to school, Jake spent the whole ride insulting his father. “You’re going the wrong way,” he yelled. “Don’t you even know where my school is? You missed the short cut.” Jim stopped the car at the top of a hill, got out, and walked around to the other side.

“You drive,” Jim said.

“Dad,” his son whined. “Dad, get back in the car. You’re making me late.”

Jake sounded exactly like Susan. Jim stood there in the street waiting for the boy to say, You’re acting like a child. After ten minutes of absolute silence, Jim got back in and drove the rest of the way to Jake’s school.

“Are you going to drive him?” Susan asks, putting the finishing touches on her exterior with a sea sponge.

“He can walk,” Jim says.

He lies in bed waiting for his secretary to call back. Susan goes downstairs to get the children ready for school and then, without saying good-bye, she leaves with them.

Jim thinks of Patterson’s plant and wonders whose plant he’ll pee in years from now. He imagines sneaking into the associates’ offices after they’ve left and letting go a little bit in each office, in every corner, revenge against the uncommitted, the false promise of youth and ambition. He sees himself convinced it is his secret, when in reality everyone will know. They’ll give new guys cans of air freshener to keep hidden in their desks. New plants will be delivered weekly. No one will dare say anything to Jim because, after all, he is Train, the Train of Flynch, Peabody, Patterson, and Train.

At nine his secretary calls with Howe’s number.

“Worth is seriously unlisted.”

Jim writes the number on the back of a magazine and tells her to have a good day.

“I will,” she says. “There’s a sale at Macy’s.”

He lifts himself out of bed tenderly as though just returned from a hernia operation. He takes the steps slowly, as if in pain. How can he be in the house, midmorning, midweek, except as a sick person?

Jim calls Howe. The number rings ten times before Howe picks up the phone. Jim stands in the kitchen, the phone tucked under his chin, his free hands randomly plucking bits of food out of the refrigerator and popping them into his mouth.

“What took you so long?” Jim asks.

“I thought my wife was going to get it. It’s usually for her.”

“Any news?” Jim asks.

“My wife is kicking me out of the house. She says I can’t come back until six o’clock, preferably seven. I’m driving her crazy.”

Jim lets the refrigerator door close and rinses off his fingers in the sink.

“I guess I’ll go and buy some shoes, shirts, stuff for the office,” Howe says.

“Big sale at Macy’s,” Jim says.

“Then that’s where I’ll be. Any details about the bomb?”

“Nothing,” Jim says. “You?”

“Last I heard they were still checking. Kind of weird, isn’t it?”

“It is and it isn’t,” Jim says.

He thinks of himself as the closest thing the firm has to an in-house philosopher.

“Yeah, guess so,” Howe says. “Well, the housekeeper wants to use the phone. I better let her.”

Jim’s call-waiting beeps.

“See you,” Jim says, pressing down the receiver button. “Hello?”

“Is this Bill’s Repair Man?” a woman’s voice asks.

“No, it’s not,” Jim says. He was here yesterday.”

“This is Jill Robinson. Leave a message for Mrs. Train that I’ll meet her at the Chew-Chew, in town, at one?”

A loud noise in the basement/garage startles Jim. He hangs up without saying anything, grabs a butcher knife, and runs downstairs.

“Don’t move,” he yells at the man stealing his lawn mower.

“Who are you?” the man asks.

“The question is who are you?” Jim says, waving the knife around.

“I come to cut the grass, but I don’t need this shit,” the man says, dropping the mower bag and walking out of the garage to his truck parked in the driveway.

Jim is in the process of reorganizing the cutlery drawer when Susan comes in at noon.

“Why aren’t you dressed?” she asks.

“I have nothing to do,” Jim says, sadly.

Jim is not himself. Without his work, he is a dark and depressed man.

“Get dressed. We’ll have lunch in town,” Susan says.

“You’re meeting Jill Robinson at the Chew-Chew at one.”

“Then hurry,” Susan says.

“Well, hello,” Jill says in a voice that’s a little too friendly.

It’s the first time they’ve met. Without asking, Jim knows she’s a real estate broker—that’s what women around here are if they’re not social workers, or in rare cases pediatricians. Jill is too hyperactive to be a social worker, too stupid to be a doctor. If Susan weren’t there, he’d sit Jill down at the bar and discuss the possibilities of selling his house, or burning it to get the insurance money.

“Is everything all right? You can tell me, I can keep a secret,” Jill says.

For how long, Jim wonders, five minutes?

Jill is clearly excited. The only time she’s ever seen a husband following his wife around on a weekday is when one of them has just been diagnosed with something horrible, like infertility or breast cancer.