David Gates - Jernigan

4

But the next morning, hauling myself up the steps of the train with a headache going above and behind my right ear, I’d lost what zest I’d had for all this. It was clear this morning that I had gotten myself involved with another crazy woman: this time, a crazy woman who shot rabbits in her basement. And who would shoot me if I now tried to extricate myself. Who would shoot my son. Shoot herself. Through inattention, through indifference, through — shall we for once just cut the crap? — through deliberately looking away from a father’s responsibilities, I had first let Danny become involved with this crazy woman and her damaged daughter, and had then allowed myself to be pulled into their delusional world.

I nestled between two men in charcoal pinstripe suits, each reading the Times C section. The theme was Home: today, therefore, was Thursday. Like The Mickey Mouse Club . Tuesday, Guest Star Day; Wednesday, Anything Can Happen. I opened up Northanger Abbey .

At work, a nice hello from Miranda, Kelsey’s pretty secretary, except these days you have to call them assistants, with whom it would never go beyond occasional eye contact. Imagine Jernigan making eye contact: that should give you an idea of this Miranda. Three pink While You Were Out slips on my desk. All business calls; not one saying Martha. Everybody was going to have a normal day here at work.

Except that it turned out to be a disastrous day. I mean, to the extent you could take things at work seriously. Although you do. Especially when people are that angry with you. What happened was this. The week before — I’ll try to keep this brief; a bunch of work stuff is too dreary even for Life of Jernigan —the week before, I had apparently misplaced a decimal point or something while figuring up the cost of ripping out the internal walls in four floors of some building in NoHo. (Not even my listing, for Christ’s sake. I did the numbers as a favor to Coleman, since I’d had a little down time. A lot of down time. But again, whole other story.) With my rough and very much mistaken estimate in hand, the client had gone to his people, and the estimate prompted them to move some money they wouldn’t otherwise have moved. I mean, basically, who gives a shit. But at any rate, today was the day this whole thing came out. So. Big meeting with Coleman and Kelsey and our lawyer. Another big meeting, with the client and his lawyer and Coleman and Kelsey and our lawyer. I sat there like a bad boy, cursing Uncle Fred in my heart. As I had, pretty much every day, for ten years. With his fucking friend Coleman in the fucking real estate business. With his fucking helpfulness . The last meeting of the day was a one-on-one with Kelsey. During which I basically told him mistakes happen and what can you do. Which didn’t seem to fly all that well. I left his office thinking Ten years of this shit . Hey, like they say. Day at a time.

I had planned to take the 5:46, go over to Heritage Circle and mow the front lawn before it got dark. Even this late in the year, the front part grew like a son of a bitch. Watered by a martyr’s blood, I suppose. That isn’t funny. The back didn’t worry me so much: only three neighbors could see it anyhow, and then only if they stuck their neighbor noses right up against the chain-link fence, interwoven with green plastic ribbon. Well, I didn’t make the 5:46. I ran like a bastard through Penn Station and just barely caught the 8:37. That late a train, at least you could get a window: this was the kind of thing you were reduced to thinking was a big fucking deal. I thought about Uncle Fred saying, “What the hey, do it for a year. The worst that can happen is teaching will start to look good to you, and you’ll go back with some money in the bank. Besides, it could be a goof.”

When we came up out of the tunnel and into New Jersey, night had fallen, and all the salmon-pink highway lights were on. I glanced around the compartment. All the men looked like me. Human basset hounds in wrinkled suits. Except they were drunk, lucky bastards, from their after-work stop-off at Charley O’s or something. Ties loosened, breathing through their mouths.

Once I was off the train and safe in my own car, I put the seat all the way back and just lay there, as if in a dentist’s chair, in the station parking lot. Only a few other cars left, in all that expanse. I closed my eyes and pictured the empty house, eggshell walls. Put the seat back up straight, finally, got the car going and went left on Hamilton Avenue. Instead of taking the right, which was how you got to Heritage Circle. Heading for Martha, however crazy she was.

“Hey , stranger,” she said, opening the door. “It was getting so late I didn’t know whether to expect you.” Thanksgiving smell in the kitchen — sage and onion? — and Martha’s breasts swelling under a forest-green reindeer sweater. One of her thrift-shop jobs, I imagined. It must have been her idea of an autumn thing to wear, and I found myself touched by the way she did the best she could. “Danny’s in watching television,” she said. “And Clarissa’s upstairs sulking. We didn’t wait supper, but there’s some macaroni and cheese left. Or if you’d rather, I just finished a stew for tomorrow night. It’s actually better if it sits for a day, but.”

“Macaroni and cheese,” I said. Not ordering it up, but in wonderment.

She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Danny insisted,” she said. “Apparently they had something on tv about Mom Food. You just going to stand out there?”

“Macaroni and cheese, please,” I said. “But could I have something else first?” Jernigan, being oh so winning.

These were still the days when, if we could, we’d spend a couple of hours in bed. I mean, a good part of why I was there in the first place was just the weird novelty of having sex again. Something I’d pretty much given up on. Embarrassing as hell even to think about it now, but we’d gotten into this business where she was pretending to be a one-woman harem, working permutations on her name to match what we were doing. Martha>Marty>Martina>Tina. Sullen Marty was the boy, meaning I was to turn her over; bossy Martina was the lesbian, meaning I was to go down on her; reluctant Tina meant straight missionary, her arms at her sides. Whatever that was about. One afternoon we had experimented with Mr. T (Marty>Mr. T), which was her fucking me with a finger. When she got the second knuckle in I squirmed away, and her growls gave way to giggling. “Okay, okay,” she said. “We had to try it, right?” Meaning she had had to try it.

Tonight was particularly intense.

“So what’s it like, Mr. Jernigan?” she said when I absolutely couldn’t do any more. “Having your own little private cathouse at your disposal? Is it nice for you?” Dabbling a finger in the sweat on my chest.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Though I do sometimes wonder where it all leaves Martha, you know?” As polite a way as I could think of to say that I was no longer sure that some of this might not be a little over the edge. Apparently Peter Jernigan had come to believe in edges.

“Oh, fuck Martha,” she said. “She’s a drudge and a drag. Who cares, you know? The world is full of unhappy women.”

5

Eleven-thirty or so I finally got up and had macaroni-and-cheese dinner. Then still more bed, a good big glass of moonshine, and off to sleep.

Three in the morning I was back awake. Got up and crept down the hall to the kitchen. A line of light glowed at the bottom of Clarissa’s door, faraway music rasped and clattered. My son was here. And all was well. Or so I was willing to think. In the refrigerator I found tomorrow’s stew. In a copper stewpot, yet: before opting out of the money economy, old Martha hadn’t done too badly for herself. I lifted the lid, dripping with condescension, condensation I should say, and went and got a wooden spoon out of the dish drainer. I stood there eating and eating. Rabbit stew, with still-firm quarters of potato, still-firm logs of parsnip. The stew part was gray and thick, and not at all disgusting.