Chang-Rae Lee - Aloft

"You like Long Island."

"I thought I did. But why should I? I certainly don't like the crowds, or the roads. The people aren't very nice. I don't like to boat or fish. I'm starting to think it's the worst of all worlds, pushy, suburban, built-up, only shopping to do."

"But this is our world."

"Maybe yours, Jerry. I don't know. Kelly told me about Port-land."

"In Maine?"

"Oregon. She said it's a nice small city, with friendly people, mild weather, mossy and woodsy. I checked. I could pack my clothes and throw a garage sale for the rest and get on a plane next week."

"You don't know a soul out there."

"Maybe that's better."

"Everybody is white."

"Everybody is white everywhere."

"But you have family here."

This stops her, for a moment, because of course she doesn't have anyone around in terms of blood relations, which has never seemed to bother her, but I think really has.

"I wish Theresa had stayed and visited," she says.

"It's my fault. She wanted to, but I told her I needed to see you alone."

"You said at Richie's she was in trouble. You never told me any details. Or was it just another Jerry story?"

"Maybe it was," I say, thinking how present matters (and the larger scheme, too) demand less complication, and not more.

"But you should talk to her anyway."

"I will. How is Jack? I thought I saw him last week in that big black truck of his, driving out of the Lion's Den."

"That bar in Huntington?"

"I was meeting Kelly for lunch. I was parking, and I waved, and I thought he saw me, but he just drove off. Sort of wildly, in fact. He almost got into an accident."

"He's been out of whack, of late. Things haven't been so hot at Battle Brothers. You should really call him, too. But only if you want to."

"Of course I want to, Jerry!" she says, with due exasperation.

"Don't you think it makes me unhappy, not to see them as much as I'm used to?"

"No one's keeping you away. I've never not asked you to come to something. Maybe I should have made sure I wasn't there."

"That would have helped."

"Okay, I got it. But Jack really needs you, I'm sure of it. He talks less and less to me. The last time he came by he was sort of drunk, so he said a few things, we yakked, it was pretty decent stuff. Maybe alarming, but decent. Otherwise it's pretty much hello and goodbye. Soon he's not even going to grunt at me, it'll just be all nods."

"What do you want him to say?" she says, though not in an accusatory tone.

"Maybe he could tell me how the business is falling apart. Or he could lie, give me a big cotton candy story. I don't care. Maybe he could tell me what those spoiled brats of his are up to, or what objet Eunice just bought for the house. He could tell me about my yard, which is what he did last time. Now, that was nice."

"Why am I not surprised to hear nothing about what you told or asked him?"

"That's not my job! And even if it were, what do I have to talk about? Nothing's ever different in my life, except for you and me, which he definitely does not want to discuss. He's the one who's young and in the thick of it. I had my turn of trouble. Or so I thought."

"You're always saying that, Jerry. Like you already had a lifetime of it with what happened to Daisy."

"I think that counts for a damn big share."

"Of course it does," she says, sitting down next to me at the half-sized corner breakfast table, close enough that our wrists almost touch. "But somehow you think nobody else has ever had similar difficulties."

"That's not true. And hey, I've never whined or gone on about it, have I?"

"No," Rita agrees. "You haven't mentioned Daisy more than a dozen times since I've known you, and maybe just once or twice referred to that. But everything you do — or don't want to do, more like — has an origin in what happened to Daisy, which at this point is really what happened to you."

"It did happen to me!"

"But it's never ceased for you, Jerry. You look to spread the burden all the time. Everybody is a potential codependant, though with you they hardly know it. You're sneaky, that way.

When I wanted to have a baby, what did you say to me?"

"That was a long time ago, sweetie. Who can remember?"

"I'll refresh your memory. It was my thirty-seventh birthday, and we were having dinner at The Blue Schooner."

"Gee, that was a fancy place. Huge shrimps in the shrimp cocktail."

"Of course you remember that."

"Okay. I don't know. Probably something about my being too old and tired to raise another kid."

"Not quite," she says icily. "You said /was too old and tired."

"Not a chance. I'm not that stupid."

"Actually you were trying to be helpful. It was your way of saying I should be enjoying my youth instead. Traveling a lot and dancing and staying out late. The thing was that I was already raising Jack and Theresa, which I was happy for and never felt bad about or regretted. I loved those kids even if they didn't quite love me."

"They loved you, and they love you now."

"Oh, I know, I know. The thing that makes me crazy is that I knew then that you weren't thinking of me, of my potentially lost youth. You just naturally wanted to ensure you had me available to go places with."

"Look, if you had insisted on having a baby, I would have agreed."

"Right! You might have said okay but you would have pissed and moaned all through the pregnancy and after the baby arrived been a total grouch every time it peeped. I should have left you then, because I really did want a baby, but for some reason I'll never understand I thought I would only have it with you. I'm a total bimbo fool."

"Don't say that."

"It's the truth."

"Maybe you loved me a little, too."

"Maybe."

"I'll make it up to you."

"What, Jerry, you're offering to knock me up?"

"Sure. Right now, if you want."

Rita laughs, though wearily, like it's the thousandth time from me she's heard it all. "Well you know how old I am, Jerry.

And you're sixty."

"Nearly sixty."

"Nearly sixty. Together that's a lot of mileage on my eggs, and your sperm."

"A woman older than you just had a kid, she was, like, fifty-seven. They can work miracles now with the hormone drugs."

"That's a crime, not a miracle. Anyway, ours would definitely come out with three heads."

"As long as it's happy."

"Do you think that's remotely possible?"

"I think it's very possible."

Rita quietly sips her iced tea, as do I, the window fan around the corner in the living room sounding like a monk droning on in the misty, craggy-hilled distance. It's his only song, and he's telling me to keep still, to shut my mouth, to be bodiless and pure, to not spoil this moment with the usual spoutings of ruinous want and craving, my lifelong mode of consumption, to sit before this lovely woman of epic-scaled decency whom I desperately love and let the bloom just simply tilt there before me, leave it be in the light, undisturbed, unplucked. And if ever I could manage such a thing (if there be Mercy), it should by all rights be at the present moment, when I'm as conscious as I'll ever be of what Rita means (and not solely to me). But what do I do but corral her shoulder and supple neck and deeply kiss her, kiss her, like I've been imagining I would do for the last dim colorless half year, taste the soft pad of her lips, her perennially lemony breath, while in parallel process steeling myself for the next second's indubitable turn, the repulsed insulted shove-off.

What happens, though, is exactly not that, for while she's not pressing into me she's also not quite pulling back, and when I sneak a peek through my bliss-shut eyes I see that she's closed hers extra tight, like someone who's about to get a flu shot, and maybe her heart's thinking is that she'll endure this unpleasant but soon invaluable inoculation, the little sickness that wards off the permanently crippling disease.