David Gates - Jernigan

“How long have you been doing this?” I said, pointing.

He looked at his feet, shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “A year. Am I going to get in trouble?”

“I guess not,” I said. “I mean, not from me . It’s not a moral issue.” Which might have been true, but I didn’t really think so. I found something indecently sexual about a fifteen-year-old smoking a cigarette. What I must have meant was that it shouldn’t be a moral issue. “But,” I said, “it’s a truly stupid habit. I mean, I know how boring all this Voice of Experience shit is, but believe me. I had a hell of a time quitting, and the fact is that I didn’t even really enjoy the things. Smoking dope makes more sense, you know? Not that I want you to be smoking dope, but that at least does something, you know? All this does is make you feel lousy.”

“It relaxes me,” he said.

“Relaxes you?” I said. “Christ’s sake, you’re fifteen years old. Relaxes you from what?” Oh, I know, another mistake. I knew it even as I was saying it.

He just looked at me, with contempt.

2

Judith and Danny had enjoyed each other more before he reached puberty, big surprise. Though I don’t know how much you can actually attribute to puberty, since those were the years she enjoyed everything less and less. But when he was a kid Judith used to teach him kid things she thought he should know. Shake Spear Kick in the Rear. Your Teeth Are Like Stars They Come Out at Night. It wasn’t that she was so full of life: what she liked was that the hilarity could go out of these things and leave the shape behind. So she and I understood each other. In that respect. Take the Powerful Pete she gave me. Chrome-plated disk that goes on your key ring, with screwdriver tips at each of the four compass points and a cartoon strongman stamped in the center. The kind of thing a kid would get a bang out of. Its appeal for us was that here was this thing practically begging you to get a bang out of it yet you were too jaded to get a bang out of it. Which was in itself a species of bang. I don’t know, maybe this isn’t so remarkable. Big deal, we both had a sense of camp. Of course with the added fillip of giving Powerful Pete to somebody named Peter. Who supposedly had a powerful peter. Which was getting to be an issue along about then.

She gave me the Powerful Pete on her thirtieth birthday, which she had forbidden me to do anything about. In part for the obvious reason, and in part because we hadn’t been getting along. We were in the car outside the Robinsons’ house, waiting for Danny’s Cub Scout meeting to be over so we could go out to dinner. If you could call Roy Rogers out to dinner.

“Your birthday and you’re giving me a present,” I said. None too pleased with all this martyrdom. Roy Rogers had been her idea.

“Old hobbit custom,” she said. “You give other people gifts on your birthday and that way you get lots of gifts back and they’re spaced out during the year.” She and Danny were reading Tolkien together. I rolled my eyes. “Oop, sor-ry,” she said. “Pardon the enthusiasm.” I had refused to have anything to do with the Tolkien project.

When Danny found out where we were going he wasn’t any happier than I was. He said Roy Rogers was rotten and why couldn’t we go to McDonald’s like everybody else did. Judith told him it was Mommy’s night to howl, and went ah-000 like a lonesome ki-yote and that cracked him up. He had fried chicken and an iced tea; Judith had a cheeseburger, french fries and a chocolate shake and said Roy Rogers was her favorite place to eat in the whole world. I had two biscuits, the only trustworthy thing at Roy Rogers, and a cup of coffee.

“Did you ever read The Answer Is God?” she said. She was holding up a french fry with thumb and forefinger, considering it from different angles.

“I must have missed that one,” I said.

“You know,” she said. “About their re-tard kid?” She turned to Danny and said, “No offense.” He cracked up again.

“Who had a retarded kid?” I said. She looked at me pityingly.

We’d only had a couple of glasses of wine before leaving to get Danny, although Judith had a way of getting more into her than you were aware of, always sipping lightly from a glass that was always full. After Danny went to bed, she polished off the rest of the bottle in the refrigerator and opened a new one. I helped her polish that one off, and we’d gotten most of the way through yet another by the time the eleven o’clock news was over. The late movie was The Girl Can’t Help It , and we’d been telling each other all evening that we were looking forward to it. When the Little Richard part came on, Judith jumped up and insisted on being danced with. “Are you kidding?” I said. “I want to watch this. Look at how fucking scary he is.”

“You pathetic, life-denying—” She shook her head. “I can’t even think of a right noun. A noun is a verb of being , and you don’t even have any being.”

“Okay,” I said. “Sounds like time for beddy-bye.” I don’t suppose I really thought that once her head hit the pillow she’d pass out and that would be the end of it. Probably I just wanted to get the subject of bed stirred up again so she’d really start behaving unforgivably, so I’d have another thing not to forgive. And sure enough. See, we really were partners.

“Beddy-bye to do what?” she said. “So you can roll on your side with your limp dick between your legs?”

“Right,” I said, getting up and facing her, all charged up now to throw the Don’t Argue With Them When They’re Drunk rule out the window. “You make yourself so appealing , I can’t understand why I’m not hard for you twenty-four hours a day.”

She picked up her glass from the coffee table. “Oh Peter,” she said, in her mock in-love voice. “Wouldn’t it be romantic if we had a fireplace right on that wall?” She pointed, then threw the glass. Over-hand. I thought the noise would bring Danny out of his room, but he must have been far down in Stage Two sleep, or whatever stage it is. Either that or he knew better by now. She flopped back down on the couch and stared up at me. “As usual,” she said, “you’re just totally the master of the situation. Judith behaves herself so badly, and all Peter is doing is blamelessly trying to keep things under control.”

“Whatever,” I said. “I’m going to sleep. Good night.”

“It’s so thrilling,” she said, “the way you dominate me. Oh Peter, I’m your dog . Rip my clothes off and fuck me.” She bared her teeth. Then she laughed, and kept laughing, which was scarier than the teeth. “Oh my,” she said, finally. “In the morning I am going to be so contrite. And that won’t touch your heart either.”

3

One year ago today.

We had invited people over for the Fourth, and I’d put in the invitation that the theme of this year’s party would be entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial foods would be served — Perdue chicken, Ben & Jerry’s — and everyone was to come dressed as an entrepreneur. When they called up to ask what the fuck that meant, I got to tell them just to wear whatever they’d normally wear because in America anybody could be an entrepreneur. All so clever. This was the kind of fun we used to affect to like, Judith and me. Penny and Uncle Fred put off their weekend in New Hampshire for a day and came out from the city. And a couple from here named Steve and Sandy, who were about the only people in town we socialized with. Judith had met the wife at yoga. And Rick, Judith’s brother, and Rick’s friend Rich (which she and I agreed was probably a little narcissistic on both their parts), who were visiting from Minneapolis. Steve and Sandy, it turned out, almost didn’t come because Steve had been offended by the invitation. He had his own business, a store in the mall called Bedford Falls Video. I don’t know why I thought he’d have a sense of humor about entrepreneurship. In fact I probably didn’t think it. Probably I was doing something I knew would piss him off because Sandy was Judith’s friend and I resented having her friends foisted off on me even though she endlessly put up with having Uncle Fred foisted off on her. At least that’s the way Judith saw it. Or said she saw it, once a fight got going.