J. Lennon - See You in Paradise

“Hah! Greitz! Good luck with that!” I said.

“—and then in my classes we can illustrate it, with our fancy new colors and all that. I wonder if it’s possible to get metallic paint? Since, you know, there are metallic crayons …”

She went on for a while in this vein, and I grew more and more jealous of the idea and more and more bitter about my own crushing defeat that morning. How was it that this woman, this gawky young thing, could bob so blithely down the rapids of life’s river? And how was it that my canoe was forever snagged upon its tangled flotsam? I thought, the hell with it. The hell with it all!

“So do you like it?” Gwen said.

“I do. Like all your ideas, it is brilliant. But listen—”

“Oh! Maybe you can help me in reading and science! You can have them read a science fiction book and teach them about rocketry or computers!”

“Listen, I have to tell you something.”

A silence. “What, already?”

“I’m quitting. I’m not coming back to work.”

She laughed. “Whyever not?”

“You can ask Doug. Tell him I quit. Tell him no hard feelings. He’ll know why.”

More silence. “You’re serious!”

“Yes.”

“Luther, where are you?”

“That’s not important. I’ll be back soon, I promise. But tell Doug it’s over. I’ll see you.”

Hanging up, I did not feel the kind of masculine personal triumph I’d hoped to, and when I turned and regarded the Golf it seemed a trifle of a car, a mere toy, incapable of taking me anywhere, literally and metaphorically. Yet I climbed in. I had no choice!

The Expressway emptied onto Route 90 and Pennsylvania, and pretty soon I was in, you know, Ohio. More hours passed. It got to be around dinnertime. I ate at another Wendy’s, exactly what I’d eaten for lunch. It seems to me that if you eat something once in a day, it is simple nourishment, but if you eat the same thing twice it is a motif. As I polished off the last of the Frosty and endured the sudden headache, I found myself cheered. A motif! I stopped in the men’s room (surprisingly clean) and, when finished, used a match from the box I habitually carry to burn away all evidence of my efforts. This small act of propriety and self-negation felt right on the money, as did having quit. It was all for the best: removing myself from the future. I was a throwback, a species meant to atrophy. Back on the road, fully warmed up by South Pacific (now dormant), I began to sing in the operatic style, narrating my day in rhymed couplets:

I finally got fed up with BSE

I quit my job, albeit cowardly

Ne’er again shall I have to say this:

Plants make food through photosynthesis!

Mundane details took on ominous musical meaning. The major players earned their own melodies: a few plodding tones in a minor key for Doug, a staccato trill for Gwen, a repeating tritone (or “devil’s interval”) for me. In this manner I passed the last half hour of my trip and exited the highway at Toledo — or, more specifically, Northwood, the leafy suburb that was my ultimate destination.

It was not yet dark. I motored the quiet streets, slowing now and again for ballplayers, cyclists, joggers. Everyone was getting their last breath of summer; children frolicked with a desperate urgency; adults congregated at the ends of driveways, anticipating the blissful absence of the children. Somewhere, I supposed, teachers were growing tense, worrying about guns and drugs and standardized tests. Not me!

Once I’d found the house I wanted, I parked across the street. For a few minutes I sat in the car, reconnoitering. A white mock Tudor with an apron of sculpted yews. In a patch around a dogwood tree, tiger lilies grew impossibly tall. A cat sat in a window, staring. Nobody seemed to be home, though the garage was open and toys spilled out. I reswitched glasses and climbed out and stretched and unstuck my shirt and pants from my back. My necktie was still tightly knotted: duh! I loosened it and instantly felt ten times better. I crossed the street and yard and walked in the unlocked front door.

“Hello!” I called out. A thud: the cat jumping down from the sill. I scratched its head. It was a new one, barely past kittenhood; the old cat must have died. No, here he came, lumbering along like a sack of potting soil with legs, mewling in a very boring way. I couldn’t stand cats, but I felt a subtle solidarity with these two. I went to the kitchen and filled their bowls from a large glass jar obviously bought from some specialty shop (with a metal scoop inside, no less!), then I opened a cold beer and sat down to drink it. The clock read eight fifteen. People were finishing their dinners out and heading home … but they pass the ice cream stand … they sit licking their soft serve, watching cars speed by …

The beer went straight to my head. I stood, swooning, and made the rounds of the first floor. It was very tidy, but not the kind of tidy that you could say is concealing some sick personal shortcoming. The television was discreetly hidden in a painted pine cabinet, but the compact discs (mostly pop) were right out in plain sight. Books and magazines were neither at right angles to one another nor to the tables they lay open upon. They were not fanned in an attractive pattern. An empty tumbler, encrusted with the residue of some drink, stood on the floor beside an easy chair. I picked it up and gave it a whiff. Fruit smoothie. Banana, strawberry — something else? I fit it back into the depression it had made on the carpet.

It was dark outside now; the VCR read 8:52. I took a deep breath and went upstairs. A bathroom (more magazines), a little boys’ room (bunk beds, a basket of sports equipment and plastic trucks). The master bedroom, a little frillier than I might have chosen for myself or Gwen, but comfy-looking. I went in and sat on the bed. Yes: where did they get this wonderful comforter? Out in the hall again — ipeeked in the linen closet and at last entered the girl’s room. Perfect. Storybooks everywhere, stickers, a transparent plastic purse containing Smarties, fruit-flavored lipstick, an electronic game, and a ring of discarded keys, perhaps twenty in all. The bed was made and turned back, the pillow fluffed, a pink nightgown casually tossed over the post, ready for slumber. I sat down on the bed. It creaked. Excellent. No boyfriends sneaking in here at night, a few years down the road. I closed my eyes and smelled the room’s stale sweaty candy-corn scent. Downstairs the door opened. I remembered my empty beer bottle and felt a moment of panic, but relaxed when I found it in my hand.

Quietly, I got up and shut the door. I returned to my place on the bed. A television switched on downstairs. Laughter, the whining of the boys. Footsteps sounded on the stairs and hallway and my heart quickened. The boys entered their room, father in tow. Honest-to-God twins, no fertility drugs, three years old. The father dressed them, led them to the bathroom, supervised the brushing of the teeth, read them books in bed. A fine father, by the sound of it. He left and the boys giggled and talked unintelligibly until they slept.

Then there was only the television until a familiar voice said, “Anna, why don’t you go get your jammers on?”

“Can I stay up?”

“For a little while.”

Light footsteps skipped every other stair. The door opened.

She gasped but didn’t cry out. I had my finger to my lips. Her hair was longer, hanging free, fine and light, though clearly less fine and light than it once was. She stepped in and closed the door.

“Hi Daddy,” she whispered.

“Howdy,” I said.

Anna came to me and let me hug her. I stifled a sigh. She said, “Why are you here?”

“I wanted to see you.”

She frowned, glanced over her shoulder. “You can’t come out, I don’t think.”