David Gates - Jernigan

The kid called, “Slices ready.” I went up and fetched them.

“I guess you can sell it if you want to,” said Danny. “We could practice just as easy over Dustin’s.” He picked up his slice and blew at the molten cheese creeping over the point.

“We don’t have to decide this in any big hurry,” I said. “You know, it’s where you grew up and everything.” And everything.

“I guess it’s okay,” he said. “So are you going to marry Mrs. Peretsky?”

“We’ve talked about it,” I said. Christ, had we? I certainly didn’t remember it. “See part of the thing is, if we went ahead and sold our place, we could probably find all sorts of interesting stuff to do with the money.”

“Like what?”

“Well, travel for one,” I said. Right, I could see the four of us in the fucking Piazza San Marco. I was really winging it now. “Could even buy some place up the country go there summers, you know? I realize it’s been — and this is completely my fault — you’ve had a very, very, very complicated life so far. I mean, to lose a parent.” Which was about as close as I was willing to come to talking about it. “The thing is, you know, I guess my life was pretty complicated, too, by the time I was your age, I mean actually even before. Third grade or something. And, you know, here I am.” And if that didn’t buck a kid up, I ask you: what would?

I had lost the thread.

“I just want you to know,” I said, “that I would not be doing this if I didn’t think it was going to make life better for us.” (He’s lying. Joe Isuzu.)

Well, so take the worst case, all right? Danny was already sixteen; in two years he’d be eighteen and off to college someplace and out of whatever this turned into. Provided his grades got better. Provided there was any money left.

“It’s also been in the back of my mind,” I said, “that the money from that house might come in handy for your college.” I’d only thought of it that minute. “How you coming getting your grades up, by the way?”

“Okay,” he said.

“Well,” I said, and then just stopped. I didn’t have the energy for a whole thing on grades just now.

“Your pizza’s getting cold,” he said, the crafty little fuck. Or thought he was. I picked it up and took a bite.

“Good,” I said. “You want the rest of it? Looks like you got outside of yours pretty fast.” He shook his head no. I took another bite. It either was or wasn’t good.

As we walked to the car, I put a fatherly arm around his shoulder. He let me. He stared at his feet. Cold as a bitch out.

“So you think you’re going to be okay about this, bud?”

“Sure, I guess so,” he said. “I like Mrs. Peretsky and everything. So it’s not going to be all that different, right?”

“That’s it,” I said. “It really won’t be. Good God, would you look at that.” I pointed.

Big scary orange moon, low in the sky.

6

“Glad you got back,” said Martha when we came in. “Weatherman just said we could have a really big-time frost tonight. Can you believe it? Anyhow, we’ve got to get all the rest of those tomatoes in or we’re going to have tomato paste in the morning.”

“Shit,” I said. “Can’t just cover ’em up?”

“I really don’t want to risk it,” she said. “They said it was supposed to get down to twenty in the northern suburbs.”

“This is a northern suburb?”

She sighed.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “There any coffee?”

“Isn’t it going to keep you awake?”

“That was the idea,” I said. “I mean after.”

“Little joke,” I said.

She lit a burner and clanked a saucepan of cold coffee down on it. “Anything else out there perishable?” I said. Now I was being oh so helpful.

“Not very,” she said. “I guess I’ll throw some plastic over the herbs and hope for the best. Danny, would you go get Clarissa, please? If we all help out, maybe we can get this done.”

He trudged off down the hall.

“How’d it go?” she said.

“Okay,” I said. Christ, I sounded like Danny. “I mean, he says it’s fine with him. I don’t think he’s really focussing on — I don’t know. Maybe he’s got the right idea. You talk to Clarissa?”

“Clarissa and I made up our minds a long time ago,” she said. “Don’t know what took you fellas so long.”

Nice lighthearted thing to say. Now be lighthearted back.

“It just took us a while to believe our good fortune,” I said. “Beauty and utility we could have believed, but beauty and economy …” Was this lighthearted? Or labored and obscure?

“Well, I’m glad you’ve both come to your senses,” she said, “however belatedly.” And kissed my neck. Feigned biting.

“Speaking of belated,” I said, getting a coffee mug out of the dish drainer, “where are those lazy little shits?”

She drew in her breath in mock horror. “Your own childring,” she said in her comic hoity-toity voice. “Hey Clarissa?” she called. “Let’s move it, okay? We’ll be out in the garden.”

She put on the suit jacket I’d left hanging scarecrow-style on a chair at the kitchen table — I’d been fired in that jacket this morning — and grabbed the flashlight and a bunch of plastic grocery bags with paper bags inside them. I poured a little milk into the mug, then filled it with coffee. I drank while pawing left-handed through the closet for a warm coat and followed her outside.

The moon had risen, paled and shrunk: now it was just your normal white moon in a dark sky, except the sky was never really dark here. Pink everywhere, though pinker off in the direction of Newark and New York.

“Yow,” I said. “It’s really getting down there.”

“Weathermen,” she said. “The only men who never lie to you.”

“That’s because they know you’re going to find out anyway.”

“That would never stop a real man,” she said. “Here. Why don’t you hold the light, and the bag, and I’ll pick.”

“Outstanding,” I said. “Outstanding in his field. And that’s where we found him. Out standing in his field.”

“Oh God . My father used to say that all the time when I was a little girl,” she said. “I used to think it was an absolute howl . Hold the light steady, please?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Listen, you don’t suppose the kids are going to fuck the dog on this?”

“I don’t?”

“They’re not down here in about one minute,” I said, “I’m gonna by Jesus go in there kick some ass.”

“Let’s just get this done,” she said. “While we’re asserting our authority we’ll be losing our tomatoes.”

“Lapidarily put,” I said. Thinking of the postlapsarian lapins again, probably. “But if by the time we’re done …”

By the time we were done, the light was off in Clarissa’s room.

We managed to catch the end of Star Trek —it was the one where Kirk splits into his good and evil selves and finds that without the evil part he dithers too much to command the Enterprise — and went to bed. Martha fell asleep, an arm across my chest. I lifted the arm away and lay there, thoughts racing. From the God damn coffee, plus of course everything else. What I was going to do about money, what a failure I was as a father, whether or not I should extricate myself from this whole deal with Martha.

Finally I got up, put on shirt and trousers and went into the living room to read. Noticed on my way down the hall that the light was back on in the kids’ room, the music faintly going. I began again — how many times had I read it? — the long and winding story of Psmith passing himself off as the poet Ralston McTodd, and everyone trying to steal Lady Constance’s necklace and Lord Emsworth wanting only to be left alone among his flowers. Maybe if I drank a little more gin, I thought, I might get drowsier faster. So I got out the bottle from under the kitchen sink, thinking about the residuum of puritanism that had led Martha to put it away with the Mr. Clean and the Brillo pads. Maybe it was a Southern thing, something she got from her father.