Jess Walter - The Financial Lives Of the Poets

damned if I can help myself:

“What do you mean?”

Then one by one he lists them

the drugs I already know

“We had tech and pharms

war, biotech and of course housing.”

And now? I say, leading, but he won’t

give it away, he just shrugs

and says it again: “The next thing.”

An hour later we are broke but free

and as we part in the hallway

it’s all I can do to not beg the man

for that last tip, that final stake

like some idiot junkie who

kicks smack by going on crack

kicks crack by going on meth

kicks meth by going on smack-

jonesing for the next thing, because

relapse is what we mean

when we say recovery.

And maybe there’s a sort of bankruptcy for marriages, too. At least, that’s what I tell Lisa one night after we’ve had dinner with the boys, and they’ve gone on to bed, and we’re sitting on that balcony having a glass of wine. “Marital bankruptcy,” she says, and almost smiles.

Sure-I say, unable to look her in the eyes-a new start. No debts, no blame, no punishment: marital bankruptcy. Like we’re new people. (She: hot woman awaiting her divorce papers; me: middle-aged drug dealer on probation.)

Marital bankruptcy isn’t quite the carefree little joke that our old mulligan was; and when I glance up, Lisa looks away sadly. “I’m here,” I say. “Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

She says, quietly, “Don’t, Matthew.” But we have another glass of wine, and that night, she nestles in behind me in our king-sized

bed; the beds are the only big pieces of furniture I saved, and ours takes up most of the tiny bedroom in this apartment. I know better than to ask what this means-having her next to me like this. I know better than to say anything. I just sleep…my wife’s knees pressed into the backs of mine.

In the morning she’s gone, and for days, she doesn’t say anything about it. But a week later, she stays again, and a week after that, we make love. It’s awkward at first, bumping, apologizing; we turn out to be exactly like new people, tentative, trying to find our way back. But afterward, we sleep.

I usually have some time to think on the bus, and in the drizzling morning after I make love to my wife, I bounce on the curb and light-step my way through sighing split doors, my mood untouchable, even by an especially potent burst of bus-funk (let’s see, I’m getting sweat, diesel fuel and off-brand tobacco, perfectly balanced, with a slight finish of unwashed ass) and I drop into a plastic seat like some grinning fool, and that’s when I happen to catch, out the bus window, a for-sale sign, a little wooden post planted on a weedy strip of sidewalk in front of a shocked bungalow (Price Reduced!), the plywood door of a forced repo where some other poor shit was run over, and my mind starts to race again (how long must you spend in exile) as I begin to calculate the down and monthly on a place like that (can’t be much…doable, no?) and like a kid irrationally looking for a specific song on an old car radio, I spin station to station-maybe get an advance…make a couple of smart investments…qualify for a loan…flip that house-I land on a breathless commercial I heard just the other day featuring my old Aussie real estate agent (Interest rites my neevah be this low ageen. NEEVAH!) and I suppose the devil needs only the tiniest hoof-hold because two stops later I’m actually ginning the numbers, (ponziing myself!) and I’m up to my ears in that peculiar bastard of American calculus, that ol’ bad math, macro-optimistic

flawed formula of Keynesian interventionist Mall-of-the-Americas bliss, endless exponential derivation- the Theory of “UP” -big sloppy bang of perpetual growth, long-view, as the winking brokers used to say, their BMW sedans and Lexus SUVs parked with the wheels car-ad cocked, their view of your future always a step on an endless climb, steeper, steeper, faster and faster in the widening gyre, interim between collapses shrinking-fall…recovery…boom; fall, recovery, boom; fallrecoveryboom; fa-boom-a kids’ carrousel ride gone out-of-control (Get on kid, gotta get on, don’t miss the ride!) and I know better, I swear to God I know better ( It’s unsustainable -a kind of mania, a sickness, and yet)- you deserve this, you are a fucking American -because all you want is one more chance-all you want is for your boys to have it better than you did-all you want is what’s there-all you want is-

Untenable. I know. It is untenable. And I feel myself blush. Reach into my bag and find TJ’s warm gloves. When I get off the bus downtown there’s an old man standing there, with a milky eye and a piece of fresh cardboard. He asks if I have a felt pen. I offer him a ballpoint, but he says people won’t be able to see the writing. I give him a dollar.

That night, Lisa says it was a mistake, sleeping together.

I don’t say a word.

But a week later, she stays again. After we make love that night, Lisa suddenly sits up in bed, gasping. She’s had a nightmare and she’s disoriented, unsure where we are. “It’s okay, Lisa,” I whisper. I touch her face lightly. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

She looks around the tiny bedroom of my crap-ass apartment. There’s a long crack in the wall where the stucco on the outside has settled. She stares at that crack, and begins to cry. “I really am trying, Matt.”

“I know you are,” I say. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” And all that night it feels like I’m holding my breath; for the first time I let myself

think about her and Chuck. Imagine him holding her. For the first time in a long time, I don’t sleep.

In the morning, I get the boys off to school and take the bus. Write my happy business news (“M-Tronic Laying Off Fewer Than Feared”) and keep my eyes down on the bus. I go home to find Lisa already with the boys, making dinner. That night we sit out on the balcony. Lisa takes a deep breath and says that she feels like I should know “exactly what happened” between her and Chuck.

The past tense thrills me a little. But I say, “It’s okay, Lisa…”

She shakes her head and says, “Maybe it’s not even as bad as you’re thinking.”

I take a deep breath. Choose my words carefully. I tell her that of course she can tell me what happened. She can tell me anything she wants. But she doesn’t have to say a word. With bankruptcy, I tell her, you’re supposed to come out lean and smart and humble, free of the old obligations, the bad habits and weighty contracts that were holding you down. You get a clean break. Start from scratch. There’s a reason they call it forgiving debts, I say. (And the trumpets blare…celebrating the glorious freedom of freedom!) Whatever happened with Chuck, I tell Lisa, it was as much my fault as theirs…more maybe. And whatever happened, it’s okay. It’s okay. I plan to just keep saying this until it feels true: It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s…

She nods slightly, and stares out the window. For a long time, we’re quiet.

And then I lean in gently, whisper: “It was the bald spot, wasn’t it?”

Then one day, I get my biweekly check and see that Earl has padded it a little, so I hit the bank on the way home and I arrive at the apartment to find Lisa playing Yahtzee with the boys. I ask if she wants to take the boys to a movie. I can still only afford two tickets, so Lisa and I sit in the mall and share an ice cream cone

while the boys are in the theater. We can hear muffled explosions coming from one of the theaters.

I reach over for the cone.

“No. You don’t get anymore.” Lisa holds it away from me. “You don’t eat it right.”