Paul Harding - Enon

Louis paid me well, but I had to work with an old ex-con named Gus, who bragged and complained and spewed vulgarity without pause all day, each day, and nearly drove me mad.

“Shit, Louie’s a dumb wop, but I owe him,” he’d say. “You don’t know fuck-all, kid. I killed a guy down in Florida. I bought his old lady some fancy drink with a fucking umbrella in it and he pulled a knife. On me ? You got to be kidding . You pull a knife on Gus and you are fucked , pal; you got that? I threw him right through a plate-glass window and the glass went right through his neck and he bled out like a fucking pig . Ha! And you? Are you kidding ? I’ll kill you right here, right now, no fuck. I’ll drown you in this bucket of paint . You look at me funny and I’ll throw you right off this roof, and then I’ll laugh . And then you know what? I’ll take a big drink of paint and go back to work and whistle a little tune called ‘I Just Killed That Little College Prick Louie Stuck Me With All Fucking Summer.’ I will because what do I have to lose? What? I’ll tell you what I have to lose— fuck-all , that’s what. And I love paint. It’s in my blood, you little shit. My blood . If you cut me open right now, paint would come out. Do it; cut me. I’d like to see you try. That would be funny, you college fuck . You do not know fucking shit about paint, kid. I love the way it smells; I love the way it feels; I love the way it tastes . I used to paint fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, and then I’d go home and me and my old lady would hop into the sack and smoke a joint and watch dirty movies until dawn, because I do not fucking care . Shit, it’s hot up here. I’m not going to bust my balls and have a heart attack for Loo-ee-gee , that dago dick squeezer. Fuck it; I’m taking five.”

Gus would work himself up into fits about Louis, that “skinny guinea who knows fuck-all ,” and we’d climb down off the plank we’d run between two ladders across the front of the house we were painting, and Gus would cover his head with a wet towel and complain and threaten me. (Later, we painted with a guy named Frankie Shuey, who got paint all over people’s roofs and driveways, and Gus took to threatening to murder him instead of me.) I’d smoke a cigarette and think about the envelope of cash I’d get at the end of the week, and about Kate being on the way, and how strange it was to think of her, a little newborn girl, and Gus over there, all greasy and sweaty and decrepit, and to try to picture him as having been someone’s baby, once, to try to think of him as a newborn infant. I imagined Kate at about ten years old, wondering about me at work and what I actually spent my time doing and with whom I worked. I used to do that with my grandfather, when I was in school. Instead of paying attention to geometry, I’d wonder about what he was doing at that exact same moment — whether he was in the basement, in his workshop coat, dipping clockworks into an ammonia bath by a wire hanger, or in his black windbreaker and black Greek fisherman’s cap, driving one of his station wagons (he and my grandmother always had two matching station wagons, for which he always paid with cash that he took from one of the deposit boxes he had around the North Shore) to different banks, so he could cash the checks his customers paid him with where they had their accounts, so he didn’t have to report the income, a practice one of his neighbors, an accountant for the IRS, had taught him.

I used to think about Susan, at the room we rented then, in Matt Gray’s house. Matt Gray was the chief of the Enon police. My grandfather and grandmother knew him well because they had been friends for many years with his father, Matt Senior, who had been the police chief before Matt. I used to sit on the lawns of the houses I painted, smoking cigarettes, drinking cans of soda, Gus spewing his dreadful jive talk, and try to think about what Susan was doing at that very moment. I imagined her, in the cool, damp summer morning light, maybe doing the couple of dishes we hadn’t got to the night before, maybe folding some clothes and putting them away in the bureau we shared, maybe deciding to take a walk to the library to see if there were any books that interested her. She liked to read mysteries while she was pregnant with Kate. I’d get worried sometimes, thinking about what she was doing, because here she was, living with me, in a single room, in the police chief’s house, in her boyfriend’s hometown, with no job then and no money and me painting houses and her six months pregnant and summer getting hotter and hotter, and it made me half panicked to think of her being unhappy, maybe, and me being the cause of her feeling disappointed that her life wasn’t going as well as she’d always hoped and that I was a big part of the reason that the plans we’d talked about at the kitchen table all those nights weren’t working out, instead of being the reason they all came true.

ONE AUGUST NIGHT WHEN Susan was six months pregnant with Kate, she couldn’t sleep and so we went outside to see what it was like and it was clear and beautiful and there was a cooling wind flowing up in the trees and there were fireflies in the meadows and we took each other’s hand and started to walk together.

“Susan,” I said after a while, “I can’t wait to meet our kid.” I touched her stomach through her maternity blouse. “Who are you in there?” I asked. “I’m your dad,” I said. “Me and your mom can’t wait to meet you and see who you are and find out about what you’re like.” Susan took my hand from her stomach and kissed it.

“Whoever it is, she’s going to make us better people, isn’t she?” Susan said. We never checked the gender of the baby. Susan knew it was a girl from the moment she learned she was pregnant.

“She is, Sue.” I started to try to say something to her about how I was sorry I wasn’t as good a husband as she deserved, or as good a partner, or as successful or ambitious. “Susie, you know, I’m sorry, sorry that—”

“Don’t, Charlie,” she said. “It’s funny and sad, and a little scary. But it’s okay, too.” She stopped walking. We stood where one of Enon’s oldest roads splits in two, one branch turning toward the center of the village, the other leading to the section called Egypt. Four small neat, old houses, each with a small barn, faced the intersection. A single streetlight stood at the divergence and moths and other insects swarmed around it. Susan took both my hands in hers. She leaned toward me and kissed me.

“I know I’m no bargain, either,” she said.

“Tut tut! Not another word yourself, my dear. I understand. Let’s just walk some more and be happy about the little cosmonaut on her way.” It felt like Susan had been just about ready to lie to try to make me feel better, and that seemed awful. She wished better for us and that was like a blessing, in that moment, like love itself, if a little sideways, but that was enough.

“My legs feel restless even when I’m walking.” She pressed the heels of her hands against the small of her back and arched and grunted. “Whew,” she said. “This is some thing, Charlie, having a baby. Let’s head home.”

We walked home and I held the door open for Susan and moths followed us in. I took two bowls from the cabinet and two spoons from the drawer. I grabbed a carton of ice cream from the freezer and scooped some into the bowls and we both sat at the table savoring the cold sweet sugary crystalline ice cream while the moths bounced and plinked against the ceiling lamp above our heads.

The summer grew hotter and Susan grew larger. We could practically see Kate in outline. Whenever Kate moved, her elbows and knees and head and behind projected themselves in relief against Susan’s stomach. Susan had a terrible time at night and could not get comfortable. I spent the last three weeks of the pregnancy sleeping on the couch in the living room. Whenever the box springs creaked more than once or twice or Susan groaned, I’d bring her a glass of ice water and see if she needed me to rearrange her pillows or get her a book or just stay with her for a little and sympathize. Sometimes I’d fall asleep sitting up and rouse to find Susan still awake, frowning and trying to settle into a comfortable position.