be.
“It’s New Jersey, Joe,” I say as always. “And it’s pretty nice, too. You got tired of Vermont.”
Which has usually prompted Joe to say ruefully, “Yeah, and what a stupid fuck I am.” Only this time he says “Yeah” and looks at me soulfully, his little flat brown irises gone flatter, as if some essential lambency has droozled out and he has faced certain facts.
“That’s not a net loss,” I say, zipping my jacket halfway up and feeling my toes, damp from standing in the rain back at the Sleepy Hollow. “You don’t have to buy this house.” Which is a hell of a thing for a realtor to say, instead of: “You goddamn do have to buy it. It’s God’s patent will that you buy it. He’ll be furious at you if you don’t. Your wife’ll leave you and take your daughter to Garden Grove and enroll her in an Assembly of God school, and you’ll never see her again if you don’t buy this son of a bitch by lunchtime.” Yet what I go on airily to say is: “You can always head back to Island Pond tonight and be there in time to watch the crows come home to roost.”
Joe is not susceptible to other people’s witticisms and looks up at me strangely (I’m a few inches taller than he is, though he’s a little bullock). He clearly starts to say one thing in one tone of voice (sarcastic, without doubt), then just lets it go and stares out at the unpretentious row of hip-roofed, frame-with-brick-facade houses (some with crime bars), all built when he was a teenager, and where now, across Charity Street at 213, a young, shockingly red-haired woman—brighter red even than Phyllis’s—is pushing a big black-plastic garbage-can-on-wheels to the curb for the last pickup before the 4th.
The woman is obviously a young mom, in blue jeans cut off midthigh, sockless tennies and a blue work shirt sloppily but calculatedly cinched in a Marilyn Monroe knot just below her breasts. When she squares her plastic can up beside her mailbox, she looks at us and waves a cheery, careless wave that means she knows who we are—new-neighbor candidates, more lively maybe than the current owner.
I wave back, but Joe doesn’t. Possibly he is thinking about seeing things across a flat plain.
“I was just thinking as we were driving over here …,” he says, watching young Marilyn flounce back up the driveway and disappear into an empty carport. A door closes, a screen slams. “… that wherever you took us today was going to be where I was going to live for the rest of my life.” (I was right.) “A decision almost entirely in other people’s hands. And that in fact my judgment’s no good anymore.” (Joe hasn’t tumbled to my telling him he didn’t have to buy this place.) “I don’t know what the hell’s the right thing anymore. All I do is hold out as long as I can in hopes the really fucked-up choices will start to look fucked up, and I’ll be saved at least that much. You know what I mean?”
“I guess so.” I can hear Phyllis yakking inside, introducing herself to whoever was at the front door—not, I still hope, Houlihan himself. I would like to get inside, but I can’t leave Joe here under the dripping oaks in a brown study whose net yield might be double-decker despair and a botched chance at an offer.
Across in 213, the redhead we’ve watched suddenly whips open the draw drapes in a far-end bedroom window. I see only her head, but she is watching us brazenly. Joe is still lost in his bad-judgment funk.
“The other day Phyl and Sonja were off in Craftsbury,” he says, somberly, “and I got on the phone and called a woman I used to know. Just called her up. Out in Boise. I had a little—really a not so little—thing with her after my first marriage went south. Just before that happened, actually. She’s a potter too. Makes finished-looking stuff she sells to Nordstrom’s. And after we’d talked a while, just past events and whatnot, she said she had to get off the phone and wanted to know my
“It’s New Jersey, Joe,” I say as always. “And it’s pretty nice, too. You got tired of Vermont.”
Which has usually prompted Joe to say ruefully, “Yeah, and what a stupid fuck I am.” Only this time he says “Yeah” and looks at me soulfully, his little flat brown irises gone flatter, as if some essential lambency has droozled out and he has faced certain facts.
“That’s not a net loss,” I say, zipping my jacket halfway up and feeling my toes, damp from standing in the rain back at the Sleepy Hollow. “You don’t have to buy this house.” Which is a hell of a thing for a realtor to say, instead of: “You goddamn do have to buy it. It’s God’s patent will that you buy it. He’ll be furious at you if you don’t. Your wife’ll leave you and take your daughter to Garden Grove and enroll her in an Assembly of God school, and you’ll never see her again if you don’t buy this son of a bitch by lunchtime.” Yet what I go on airily to say is: “You can always head back to Island Pond tonight and be there in time to watch the crows come home to roost.”
Joe is not susceptible to other people’s witticisms and looks up at me strangely (I’m a few inches taller than he is, though he’s a little bullock). He clearly starts to say one thing in one tone of voice (sarcastic, without doubt), then just lets it go and stares out at the unpretentious row of hip-roofed, frame-with-brick-facade houses (some with crime bars), all built when he was a teenager, and where now, across Charity Street at 213, a young, shockingly red-haired woman—brighter red even than Phyllis’s—is pushing a big black-plastic garbage-can-on-wheels to the curb for the last pickup before the 4th.
The woman is obviously a young mom, in blue jeans cut off midthigh, sockless tennies and a blue work shirt sloppily but calculatedly cinched in a Marilyn Monroe knot just below her breasts. When she squares her plastic can up beside her mailbox, she looks at us and waves a cheery, careless wave that means she knows who we are—new-neighbor candidates, more lively maybe than the current owner.
I wave back, but Joe doesn’t. Possibly he is thinking about seeing things across a flat plain.
“I was just thinking as we were driving over here …,” he says, watching young Marilyn flounce back up the driveway and disappear into an empty carport. A door closes, a screen slams. “… that wherever you took us today was going to be where I was going to live for the rest of my life.” (I was right.) “A decision almost entirely in other people’s hands. And that in fact my judgment’s no good anymore.” (Joe hasn’t tumbled to my telling him he didn’t have to buy this place.) “I don’t know what the hell’s the right thing anymore. All I do is hold out as long as I can in hopes the really fucked-up choices will start to look fucked up, and I’ll be saved at least that much. You know what I mean?”
“I guess so.” I can hear Phyllis yakking inside, introducing herself to whoever was at the front door—not, I still hope, Houlihan himself. I would like to get inside, but I can’t leave Joe here under the dripping oaks in a brown study whose net yield might be double-decker despair and a botched chance at an offer.
Across in 213, the redhead we’ve watched suddenly whips open the draw drapes in a far-end bedroom window. I see only her head, but she is watching us brazenly. Joe is still lost in his bad-judgment funk.
“The other day Phyl and Sonja were off in Craftsbury,” he says, somberly, “and I got on the phone and called a woman I used to know. Just called her up. Out in Boise. I had a little—really a not so little—thing with her after my first marriage went south. Just before that happened, actually. She’s a potter too. Makes finished-looking stuff she sells to Nordstrom’s. And after we’d talked a while, just past events and whatnot, she said she had to get off the phone and wanted to know my
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