David Gates - Jernigan

“Rule One,” I said. “No hard drugs.”

“Peter,” said Martha, “I don’t think—”

“No hard drugs,” I said. “Going to be zero tolerance around this house. Simple as that. Rule One.”

“What do you mean, hard drugs?” said Danny.

“White powder,” I said. “Simple as that. Don’t get Jesuitical with me.”

He looked down at the tabletop.

“Two,” I said.

“Peter,” said Martha. “Enough. Really.” Just in time, too: I had no idea what the fuck Two was going to be. “I’m sorry, kids,” she said. “All I really wanted to say was that since we’re all going to be living here together we’ve got to be as considerate as possible and each of us pitch in when something has to get done, okay?”

“Fairness,” I said, “is the keynote.”

“I’m putting him to bed,” said Martha, getting to her feet. “Then I’ll drive you to school, okay?”

“Christ,” I said, “don’t always be saying okay . It’s like you’re asking for their approval . You don’t need their fucking approval, what is it with you?”

“Come on now,” she said, trying to sound patient. I knew better. “I know better,” I said.

“It’s all right,” she said, getting me to my feet and leading me by the hand out of the kitchen. “Let’s put you to bed now.”

“No fucking, though,” I said as we walked down the hall.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. Not in a nice way.

1

The woman who’d sold us the house on Heritage Circle was so long gone from Century 21 that no one in the office even knew the name. A Mrs. Edmondson, which I remembered by thinking of Uncle Fred and the whole Edmund Wilson thing. So they turned me over to an Amy Somebody with a nice husky little phone voice.

When I’d been put to bed that morning after our family conference, Martha had gone out to one of her thrift stores and had found me a cowboy jacket. A garment for the lighthearted: white with black vines and blossoms embroidered all over and black arrowheads marking the ends of the pocket slits. Interesting who brought the peace offering to whom. (Rusty sort of gave me a taste for that.) “H-Bar-C Ranchwear,” she said, holding it up by its shoulders and turning it from side to side in such a way that the arms made marching movements. “They obviously didn’t know what they had.”

I wore it to go meet this Amy, Martha waving approvingly from the open kitchen door, but as soon as I got to the stop sign I pulled over, wriggled out of the thing and draped it around the back of the passenger seat, as if dressing a mannequin. Felt nervous: me and a beautiful girl going alone to a deserted house in the middle of the day. I suppose I was picturing her like Amy Irving, that would have been true to form: hear a name, make an association. I must have thought it was okay to have this discrepancy between your thoughts and what was actually going on, that you could just keep the two going side by side, no problem.

When I got to Heritage Circle, a little Ford Escort or something was already parked in front of the house. And in the driveway, an old black Cadillac, maybe mid-’70s. Long after tail-fins, at any rate. One side of the rear end sagging, rocker panels rusted, vinyl roof peeling. What was this shitheap doing here? A woman in a tan trench coat — she must have thought it made her look dashing — got out of the Escort. (I’m just going to go ahead and call it an Escort.) Clearly Amy. Running shoes on. The kind of stern black horn-rims you only wear if you think you’re so beautiful you can get away with it, except that she wasn’t especially beautiful. She stuck out a hand, and just for an instant there I forgot why people did that. Then I remembered, and gave her my women’s handshake, which wasn’t really a shake. Handtake.

“Amy O’Connor Century 21,” she said. “Sounds like you’ve got a party going on.”

“I sure as hell better not,” I said. But it sure as hell sounded like drums and shrieking guitar. “I imagine that’s my son and his friends,” I said. “I can’t quite believe he would play hooky, but.” I headed for the breezeway, Amy ducking into her car for a clipboard, then following. A dated expression like playing hooky wasn’t going to cut much ice with this Amy, who wasn’t really pretty enough for me to want to cut ice with anyway. I opened the kitchen door and music hit me, physically, in the chest. A female voice howled off-key above everything else. The noise was obviously coming from the living room, but even here in the kitchen it hurt my ears so much that I didn’t dare go nearer. Like a force-field on Star Trek . I held up a palm to Amy, signifying Wait Here, and opened the door to the basement. I trotted down the steps and crossed under whomping bass notes to the breaker box. I pulled down the main switch and in about one second the drums were playing alone. Then the drums stopped and some kid called, “Hey! What the fuck happened?”

Back upstairs I found Danny flipping wall switches, and Clarissa moaning “Bummer” as she sank into the couch. A wiry kid in a tank top, with platinum hair like Clarissa’s, sat behind an array of drums and cymbals, lighting a cigarette. An overweight boy, his white Dacron shirt bulging over black suit pants, was still walking his fingers over the neck of his silent bass guitar. He had glasses like Amy’s, and short hair neatly parted and combed. Did he use hair tonic? Did they even have hair tonic anymore? A quarter of a century ago, he would have looked like a normal, studious fat boy.

I whistled and four heads turned. Danny stared at me, then past my shoulder at trench-coated Amy.

“This lady,” I said, “is here to go through the house. I trust there are no surprises for her in any of the bedrooms?”

Four blank looks.

“I’m going to go turn the power back on,” I said, “so you’ll kindly turn the machinery off. And when I’m done showing her through, I would like to have a little chat with the two of you.” Pointing a two-finger fork at Danny and Clarissa. A little chat , for Christ’s sake: talking like a high school principal. I imagined this Amy wasn’t too impressed, either. “Sorry about all this,” I said, as I walked her down the echoing hall, bare hardwood floors, bare eggshell walls, to point out the bath over here, master bedroom right next door, linen closet.

“Day’s work,” she said, not that graciously.

Basement.

“Workbench stay?” she said, pen poised.

“Sure, why not. It was here when I got here,” I said. “Tools I’m taking, obviously.” I’d truly intended to use this workshop. Bought a yard-sale table saw, and a brand-new router after reading in some handyman magazine that its uses were “nearly limitless.” I liked the name of it: rout your enemies. I ended up using the thing only once, to make a little bookcase for Danny’s room. Instead of the shelves resting on cleats or whatever, I routed grooves in the sides and back. Just slide the shelves in and there you were. After the first year or so here, I didn’t do much more than sharpen the lawnmower blade on the bench grinder. Not that it needed sharpening, really: that lawn was a pretty well-tamed piece of nature.

“Washer and dryer?” she said.

“Come again?”

“Do the washer and dryer stay?”

“Well,” I said, “let me think.” Should I cart them over to Martha’s or was she already equipped? My God, I’d been staying at her house how long now? Middle of July, say, to middle of October? Three months? Well, hell, she had to have a washing machine: she was always putting clean clothes away in drawers, right? But all I could remember in the basement were the cages and the haybales. “I don’t know,” I said. “Yeah. Yeah, leave ’em.”