Julia Pierpont - Among the Ten Thousand Things

“It’s whatever,” Simon answered.

Deb was about to say something else, only there wasn’t time because here, of course, came the inevitable.

The inevitable Teagan.

And what was she saying?

She was saying: Folks.

“Folks, how we doing? Hi.” She said the last word directly to Simon, and it must have been obvious to his mother, to anyone listening, that she spoke differently to him, like she meant it, Hi. Then: “How are you guys liking everything?”

“Everything’s wonderful,” Deb said, and Simon could see all her teeth. “We love the names! Who comes up with them? Do you?”

“No, no, I wish,” Teagan answered kindly. Simon was sure she didn’t wish. “That’s Brian — my manager, Brian.”

“Well, tell Brian they’re great. ” (Enough, Mom. She doesn’t care.) “So yum,” Deb went on. Now Simon did want to die. Goodbye and die. To Kay, she said, “Aren’t they yum?”

Simon could see the slight nod of Kay’s head, but Teagan, who did not know Simon’s sister, who perhaps did not know what it meant to be shy, leaned closer, awaiting the affirmation that had already passed.

“Kay?” His mother was on that kick that came around every so often in which she tried to toughen her children up. Such phases were always triggered by friendly young people like Teagan and never lasted more than a few hours, at which point she’d feel guilty and indulge them the other way. At fifteen Simon had her all figured out.

“She said yes, she thinks they’re great.” His next look, to Teagan, said, I’m sorry for them, for this; I’m not my family, believe me. It tried to say all that.

“Well, thank you,” Teagan said, more waitress than person. She lifted her arm, slid a pen from her ponytail. “Actually, though, we’re just closing up the kitchen.”

“Oh, dessert?” Deb looked up and down the bench like this was some kind of actual problem.

“Teagan!” the other girl, Laura, shouted from just inside the shop, where she was tearing apart a cardboard box. “Can you come help me break these down?”

Teagan clicked the pen on and off, saying they could think it over. When they were alone again, Kay said, “I wouldn’t mind.”

“Dessert?”

“Talking to Dad.” They were back to that. “I wouldn’t mind it.”

Deb looked down at her pita and parsley and cucumber, what bits were left on the paper plate that had turned translucent in places, where the oil had touched it.

“I think,” Gary started, “if your mother and father need some time apart—”

“No, it’s — okay. Sure.” She turned a cucumber crescent around with her finger. It became the beginning of a parenthesis, the bottom half of a smiley face. “We can do that. And we can call Ommy.” She nodded like some kind of progress was being made. “She’d like that.”

They were all unbearably slow at emptying their trays into the trash, Deb shaking drops from a can for recycling, not that there was any kind of hurry. It was only a little after three and once again there was nothing to do.

They’d just started up the hill when Simon heard his name being called and turned back around.

Teagan stood outside the shop waving at him, hair waving too in the sea breeze. She saw that they’d stopped and jogged after them. Simon stepped forward like a chess piece to meet her.

“You should come over tomorrow night, if you aren’t doing anything. My mom’s house.” There followed a discussion of certain landmarks, the white church, the library — that’s that low brick building, right? — and when you see the swing set with the yellow seats, that’s it, across from the yellow swings.

“Yeah, I mean, I just have to see if I can. I mean, if I’m not doing anything.”

When she’d gone, Simon wouldn’t look at his mother or sister or Gary, his cheeks tight with wanting to smile. Instead he walked through them, opening his book, keeping the good feelings between himself and the page. He thought that the world was opening to him now, like the darkness fleeing before the bobbing headlights. He was free. He was ready.

The Phoenix weather was up over one hundred and dry everywhere except the back of Jack’s neck and the greenhouse taking seed in the crotch of his shorts. A shuttle had carried him from baggage claim to car rentals, and now he was on I-10, driving himself for the first time in how many years?

On the road.

In a way, too easy, that the Hertz people should send him off like this, all because of the card in his wallet that vouched that he had money, and another, softer card, confirmation that once, at sixteen, he’d been able to parallel park. If human cells regenerated, what, every seven years, then wasn’t he a wholly new person? Several new people, it felt like, and not all of them knowing how to drive.

He didn’t see why renting a car should be any easier than buying a gun; a car was every bit as much a weapon. Driving was faster and more freeing than he remembered, how directly the wheels responded, a little left or right, coasting along as though in a spaceship, a future in which friction was a thing of the past. The highway, so flat, came at him in rushes that hung in the air before they were over, reversed in retrospect, in the rearview of the ridiculous red convertible he’d let them give him for a joke.

Like virtual reality. The world shimmered and Jack thought: mirage. With his sleeves rolled up, one arm on the car door and the other on the wheel in front of him, he kept noticing the sweated skin inside his elbow, glistening to match the road where it glittered, concrete flecked with glass.

So driving was giving him a bit of a thrill, everything winking at him under the hot sun, and he sped up to get a good wind going on his face, ruffling his hair.

Probably it was just as easy to buy a gun out here, where if you didn’t look too close at the edges of things you could feel yourself back on the frontier, a place you’d never been but in your mind. At the sign for Tempe, he turned off the interstate and followed the guideposts straight to the university. He’d figure out hotel, motel stuff later. There was a Super 8. Might be fun.

The campus was mostly pink brick and palm trees. He parked in one of the visitor spots and followed the campus map to the art museum, then called the department line that always put him through to Jolie, who said to stay right where he was and that she’d send someone out to meet him. He got the feeling that she would have come herself if not for the heat. He had yet to see a person.

Standing in his own sweat made him irritable. He stood in the shade of the building, stucco with tiny square holes cut out for windows so that he felt himself on the wrong side of a bunker. He kept an eye out. They were probably up there rock-paper-scissoring to see who would have to go down, and he half expected to see someone in a hazmat suit plodding over.

His phone came alive in the pocket of his shorts.

“Deb! Can you hear me, Deb?”

“I hear,” she said into his ear, and the fact of that changed everything. He was less alone, less unmoored than he’d thought. She called. “Is it a bad time?”

“No, no.” There was a space between them, and he waited for her to fill it. “I’m in Arizona.”

“I figured. That’s good,” she said quietly, like maybe the kids were around and she didn’t want them to hear.

“I’m glad you called me.” He propped his elbow up into one of the square holes, trying to seem jaunty. “How is it there? Everything running okay? Hey, how’s the weather?”

“It’s fine. It’s beautiful.”

Jack nodded into nothing and, to fill the space again, said, “It’s hot here. Hot enough to bake potatoes.”