shelves – buy wood, bricks
varnish – buy
Fix bed-frame. Nails? Screws?
Billie – $. Allowance? Cash only?
Car – service
Write Ernie. Ivy.
His handwriting was clear and bold. He took pleasure in quality pens, and he admired his own writing. It made him feel like someone who was in control, and not a fraud. Which was good, because of course now and then he remembered that he was a fraud. That he’d been fired from Perkins Petroleum Products for pretending to carefully research products and update their description in the wholesale catalogue, but in fact had made most of it up. But the worst slip up had come not from his creative wording, but from some carelessly placed zeros. In the famous peach plastic toilet seat episode, by the time it had been discovered, almost 100,000 had been sold at a huge loss. He was not ashamed of lying, but he remembered keenly the humiliation of being caught.
His colleagues sat close by, writing or talking on the phone. Occasionally talking to each other. He was lucky to have a desk by the window. He looked out at downtown Piggleston. Foggy again, though not much foggier than in this office where everyone had a cigarette lit. He watched the men below, in suits and hats, looking like they knew where they were going. And women too; serious faces, purposeful strides through the grey. He was thirty years old, goddammit, but they seemed like the real grown-ups. Then something happened to his perspective, and he saw them all as versions of himself. Just guessing, getting it wrong sometimes, and bumbling through their days. Faking it. Year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation. Everyone dying with loose ends, like…like unsatisfying novels. Or worse – like unfinished novels.
He smiled. Must write that down.
It always cheered him when he got a glimpse of the bigger melancholic picture. It reminded him of working on his novel. The way he’d disappear. Even the fight with Billie now evaporated – out the window it went. He stood up to get a better look out the window, as if the fight really was visible. He stood there awhile. No one noticed, but he pretended to be loosening the catch to open the window and let some smoke out.
The world was operated by a changing shift of amateurs like himself, all making lists when they felt at a loss. Or their equivalent of lists. Each overlapping generation was just passing on the baton of taking life seriously, of being productive citizens and acting as if life was worth persevering. Aside from the God he wasn’t sure he believed in anymore, there was no one who was overall and permanently in charge of the world. No one alive had enough hindsight to get it completely right. (Damn, that was clever. Must write that down too, he thought.) It was a miracle the world kept running as smoothly as it did. A miracle that most people would wait in lines and pay their bills and brush their teeth and park legally and show up for doctors’ appointments and say please and thank you. Just a small percent doing the bad stuff: stealing, killing, going bananas. Everyone else, imperfect of course, but still getting up every day and doing their best. Goddammit! It turned out good manners and timidity might be the glue that held the whole shebang together. But he reckoned it was a nebulous kind of glue that breathed and congealed and sometimes dissolved without warning. After all, he thought, what was the war all about, if not a total dissolving of that glue? That reminded him.
Buy glue
A cup of black coffee, that’s what he needed. Or a martini. He looked at the clock – only 10:45. An hour and fifteen minutes, and he’d put on his coat, go to the park with Billie’s dry bologna sandwich. Or would it have a smear of mayonnaise? Maybe even the crusts cut off? He could read her moods through her sandwiches. How much did she love him today? Crustless roast chicken sandwiches on white, with lots of pepper and mayonnaise wrapped carefully in foil was code for I love you madly. Dry bologna wrapped in wax paper – well! He’d choose a park bench that his colleagues would not walk past on their way to popular cafés and bars. The trouble was, he had no friends in the office. In fact, he had no real friends in Piggleston at all. What were they doing here? Was it still necessary to live this far from the Perkins Petroleum Products scandal? These were not his people. He missed Ernie. He even missed bossy Bernice. Friends were everything, they made time fly, and not a single man here was his kind of guy. They wore polyester suits, made stupid lewd jokes, talked about pension plans, property prices, golfing vacations in Pebble Beach. They complained about their wives being frigid. About being nags. About being neurotic. They bragged about conquests, some from the typing pool.
Their contempt for their wives suddenly made him feel loyal towards Billie. He’d never cheat on her. Never! And he never trotted her out to join in their wife-trashing sessions. His Billie was many irritating things, but by God she was a class act compared to their wives. He was proud of her.
He looked at his list and picked up his pencil. Anything could be fixed, if you just thought hard enough.
Alternatives to Piggleston – Quit job, apply for other jobs, move back to Calif, live with parents. Go back to college?
Alternatives to no friends. Join a club. Tennis? Find a decent bar. Near college?
Sometimes all it took was writing a list. The day’s deadline was in an hour, but his work had been finished an hour ago and tomorrow’s copy wouldn’t come in till later in the afternoon. To hone the appearance of working, that was the trick. He opened and shut his desk drawers, sharpened his pencil, scrabbled in files, fiddled with paper clips. He didn’t look up to see if anyone saw him because another trick was to look preoccupied. Genuinely concerned about word count and the way the Piggleston mayor’s wife’s name was spelled. Meanwhile, he returned to fret at his central problem. He was sure it was just a matter of thinking hard enough. Mistakes could be fixed, damn it.
Alternatives to marriage
Divorce was unthinkable. Not that he hadn’t already cast his eyes over their joint possessions, imagining how they’d be divided. He had friends who were already divorced; he knew it was an option which did not end in certain death. If she kept the sofa and television, he could have that expensive oak kitchen table and chairs. He’d spent hours sanding and varnishing them; he deserved them. The record player was his. And the records and the books (They were all going to look great, once he built his brick-and-plank shelves.) He’d keep his MG and she’d have the Morris Minor, and hell, he’d let her keep the set of china that had been a wedding present from his mother. He began to feel less ruthless when he thought about the wedding photos, and the letters from those premarital months, when he’d been up here missing her and she’d been in the Bay Area, planning their wedding. Those lonely nights he drank too much and poured it all into letters, rewritten them ten times, then walked at midnight to the corner mailbox. He’d never been any good on his own. All his daring words of love! And she’d written back once to his three times, and almost no words of love. He’d loved her harder than she’d loved him. And now, some days he didn’t even like her.
What a fix. What a jam. Jesus Christ, what was he going to do? He screwed up some paper he didn’t need and tossed it, missing the wastepaper basket. Swearing, he retrieved it and put it in. Lit a cigarette, looked at his watch. He suddenly thought of his son, of Sam, the image of himself (according to his mother), only blond. And he thought of baby Elisabeth too. How would they be divided? He started to visualise himself picking them up on a Saturday morning, taking them to the zoo, but his chest hurt when he did this. No, no, no. Absolutely not. Jacko sighed, impatient already to turn Billie into the kind of wife he needed and deserved.
Improving Billie:
College evening classes? English lit?
Money – back to work part-time? Kelly Girl – temping in an office?
Budget. Evening classes on finances?
Food. Get her to try one new thing a week. Smoked salmon?
In the same way a rich man was more careful with his money than a poor man, a beautiful woman was more careful of her appearance than a plain woman. More rode on it. Jacko teased Billie about letting herself go a bit, and this upset her because she was trying so hard not to let herself go. He had no idea the daily effort she still made, even at home with the kids. Sometimes she practised smiling in the mirror. Just to check no flaws were advancing, like crow’s feet or turkey neck. Any kind of bird resemblance at all.
There she was right now, sitting in the park, squinting into her compact mirror. Four-year-old Sam was digging elaborate roads in the sandpit while two-year-old Elisabeth hovered near him, scooping sand randomly over the edge onto the paving. She had a cold, and there were shiny streaks running from her nose like snail tracks. It was so foggy, Billie could hardly see her children, even though her bench was only a few feet away. So foggy, her own reflection looked ghostly, her blonde hair almost greyish-white. She licked her lips and applied lipstick over them, baring her teeth to do so. She frowned when she noticed a rogue eyebrow hair, quickly grabbed hold of it between thumb and finger and yanked hard. She smoothed her hair down with her hand and re-pinned the hair clip, which kept her forehead free of bangs.
Last night was terrible. She tried to replay his accusations, to think of better replies, but the children kept intruding.
‘Mommy! Wanna play with Sam!’ An early talker, her enunciation was perfect.
‘Well, but he’s a big boy, Elisabeth. You don’t care about cars and roads, do you? Why don’t you make a sand cupcake, like we did yesterday.’
‘Sam, play with me!’
She was a serious little girl, stubborn and jealous. She moved closer to her brother but looked away from him. Began patting the damp sand into little humped shapes. Sam happily ignored her.
Billie sighed deeply. She loved her children, of course she did. One of each, a boy and a girl, both healthy – what more could anyone want? But she did not love them continually, and that was the problem. Right now, for instance, she felt nothing at all for them but impatience. Probably by lunch her heart would swell again, but right now she felt as separate and critical as if she’d just glanced at some stranger’s children. It was just plain annoying, the way they both interrupted her own thoughts all the time, till she had trouble remembering the most basic information. What was in the fridge for dinner? Would she ever again fit into that skirt she’d worn on their first date? When did Jacko say he’d be home? After midnight, or afternoon? If it was not mid-afternoon, maybe she could watch Days of Our Lives. Or Queen for a Day – she loved that show. It would be great if he had to do a triple shift.
From this distance, she looked back and saw that being in love had been like…joining some kind of fanatic religion, where you were not allowed time to think, or sleep, or to be private. Attraction had just been an enormous and cruel bluff. Kisses like wine were just to trick a person. And even now, she often felt a little sedated, not quite herself, as if the edges of her personality were blurring. Because he liked camping, she now spent some weekends on her knees, heating up cans of stew outside their tent. Because he only liked some of her new friends, she’d let some friendships drift. Loud-laughing Brenda kept turning up regardless, but the rest seemed to have taken the hint. Her sister, Louise, married finally to Chuck, was coming for a visit, but Jacko was not crazy about Chuck, so she’d have to discourage them from staying too long. Because Jacko didn’t like beans, she’d given up one of her favourite foods. Because he was the only one earning, she couldn’t buy a pretty dress on impulse. Who was she now, really? If she wasn’t a tent-hating, bean-loving, Brenda-friend, impulse dress-buyer, who was she? Some days it felt like her younger, pre-Jacko self was struggling to keep her mouth above the water, gasping for air.
‘Mom! Tell her to shove off! She’s ruining my tunnel!’
‘Elisabeth honey, come here.’
‘No.’
‘Look at her! Stop her!’
‘Lizzy, look what I’ve got in my bag! Cheetos! Sam, stop it. Stop shoving your sister.’
