David Gates - Jernigan

4

I woke up in my chair. On the screen, that commercial was going where the dogs’ jaws flap open and they sing, “Lies! Lies!” The idea being that their owners can’t bullshit them into eating inferior dogfood. A song Danny will always know as a dogfood commercial, just as I’ll always know that waltz tune — whatever the hell it actually is — as Think of Rheingold Whenever Y’Buy Beer. I had my usual thoughts about everything being debased.

What had awakened me, apparently, was the kitchen door slamming — was the ballgame over? — because in came Danny, who gave me a pitying look right out of his mother’s repertoire. “You fall asleep again?” he said.

I picked up the remote control and hit MUTE just in time to avoid hearing the strongman bellow, “I’m not gonna pay a lot for this muffler!”

“Maybe you work too hard,” Danny said, without a lot of conviction. There I was, stubble-faced, shoes off, stinking t-shirt, and beer bottles all over the floor. Which really gave an unfair impression, although there it all was. On the screen, something that looked like a Fourth of July sparkler was welding a muffler in place, and I could hear the God damn Meineke Muffler March in my head even with the sound off.

“You been out?” I said, still looking at the screen so as not to miss the thing where they show the Meineke logo with the pronunciation: Mine-a-key.

“Just over Clarissa’s,” he said. This was the girlfriend. A depressed little dyed-platinum blonde who only came up to about here on him; you saw her in black jeans a lot, and a denim jacket with Grateful Dead patches. I didn’t know if that still meant you were an acid head or what the hell it meant anymore. I remember seeing a thing in the paper not too long ago about some asshole who made his living tie-dyeing Grateful Dead t-shirts; he said the skull meant we were all the same under the skin. I couldn’t imagine whether or not I would have understood that when I was fourteen, or whatever the hell this Clarissa was. Assuming it made any sense to begin with. At any rate, she was obviously a piss-poor influence on Danny’s schoolwork and general attitude. So what could you do. I wondered sometimes if they talked together, and if so what about. In addition to the obvious things to wonder. She was pretty, this Clarissa, in a brutalized kind of way.

“Hey Dad?” said Danny. “Wake up, okay?”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Listen,” he said, “do you want to come over?”

“Come over,” I said. When I repeat something that way, it means What do you mean?

“Clarissa’s house. Her mom said you could. She’s real nice and everything. She’s having this party in the backyard.” Backyard party on the Fourth of July, and even that didn’t seem to be reminding him. Well, hey, fine, more power to him.

“Kind of party?” I said. “Kids, grownups?”

Danny shrugged. “Whoever wants to,” he said. “It’s not any big deal or anything.”

“Sounds like it’s about my speed,” I said. “She told you to invite me?” This sounded like a pretty casual way of doing things for someone who was an adult and a parent, sending a message through the kid. We were in the phone book, for Christ’s sake. I mean, I was in the phone book. No: come to think of it, we were still in the phone book. One of a bunch of things I hadn’t had the heart, if that’s the word, to see about.

“Sort of,” he said. You could see him thinking. “It was like, Clarissa and I asked if you could come and she said sure.”

“Very gracious,” I said.

“Come on , Dad,” he said. “You’re not doing anything.”

“Out of the mouths of babes,” I said. “Yeah. Well. Why not. I suppose it’s time I met this alleged woman.” Not to be outdone in graciousness. “When does the gala event get under way?”

“Right now,” he said. “Or whenever you want to come. It’s real casual.”

“Sounds real inviting,” I said. I was giving him shit about the way he talked, but either it went right by him or he was being tolerant. “Can you wait’ll I take a shower and put on some clean clothes?”

“That’s cool. You know, if you even feel like coming,” he said. Then I got it: he was being too casual. So this was obviously a command performance, for whatever reason. Well, I was game. Well, maybe not game, but I did recognize my duty when I could no longer ignore it.

Clarissa’s house was at the end of a cul-de-sac off Maple Avenue. You went down into a little hollow and there it sat among a lot of trees, with only one other house in sight. Fake Tudor, two-story, stucco, which meant probably ’30s or ’40s. It had obviously been the only house on the street for years. Most stuff around here was built after 1960; Heritage Circle went up in I think ’64. At the time I was born, this house must have been sitting here alone in its little dell like Snow White’s cottage. Sort of. The gray paint was peeling now, the stucco was cracked, the picket fence was missing pickets the way cartoon hillbillies are missing teeth. But at least this house had something to it. Though maybe I mean therefore instead of but . That a house with character could produce a little girl as bombed-out as any kid from a split-level shitbox like mine made you wonder if you could ever make anything right.

I parked next to a faded mustard-colored VW bus, if you can imagine, and in front of a blue Reliant, doing my best to get so I couldn’t be blocked, and Danny led me across the crumbling blacktop, through the gate in the picket fence, around the house and into the back. He was right about this being no big deal. I counted six people, three and three, my age pretty much. Two women in shorts and t-shirts, one in shorts and halter top; two men in jeans and t-shirts, one in cutoff jeans and t-shirt. Then a couple more men and another woman came out of the house laughing about something. The women were still looking okay; the men had begun their bellies. Two of them had beards, which of course didn’t tell you anything anymore. A net was stretched between a maple tree and a clothesline pulley attached to the frame of the kitchen window; a volleyball sat in the grass, which needed cutting. In a galvanized washtub, cans of beer and Diet Pepsi; the necks of screwtop wine jugs sticking up out of the icewater. Taco chips in a wooden bowl, guacamole in an earthenware bowl. Two stereo speakers, each on a metal folding chair, the wires leading back into the house through another window. “My Guy” by Mary Wells bravely playing out of them. My kind of scene all right.

“She’s probably inside,” said Danny.

He led me into a kitchen, then into a living room. Funky in a way you wouldn’t mind sitting around in. Big oatmeal sofa, bottom sagging. A Morris chair, for Christ’s sake. The tv covered up by a white tablecloth with a pattern of red cherries. Even an old woodstove, which looked as if it got used. A woman in shorts was down on her knees, bare heels denting her buttocks. She was flipping through a red plastic milk crate full of LPs, going at it with both hands like a dog digging. Strong arms, strong legs, maybe a little overweight. But not unpleasingly. Her t-shirt had shrunk, or she had bulged, so you could see below the shoulder the — what would you call it? — that arc of skin, that ridge beyond which lies the armpit. I wanted to see what she was like in the face, now there’s a crude way of putting it. “Mrs. Peretsky?” Danny said, touching her shoulder. “This is my dad.”

She turned her head. Wide, pretty face. Eyes farther apart than I liked. She got to her feet and came toward me, tugging down one side of her shorts.

“Peter Jernigan,” I said.

“Martha Peretsky,” she said. Hands went out. As I do with women, I clasped firmly but did not shake. (With men I pump up and down.)