Ben Marcus - Leaving the Sea - Stories

Paul veered the conversation to their parents. The common, if chewed-up, ground they shared. How were they? et cetera.

“You know, Dad is Dad,” Alicia said, shrugging. “He had me washing dishes the second we got to the house yesterday. I’m his little slave.”

“You could say no, you know.”

Alicia looked at him coldly. “No, Paul, you can say no.”

“Yeah, I guess. But they don’t even ask me. I don’t get to say no.”

“Ha-ha.”

“And Mom?”

“She’s doing so great. She’s really amazing. She’s such a fighter.”

Paul squinted. What did this mean? Whom had she fought? Paul had never even seen his mom get mad. He tried to put the question in his face, because he felt odd asking—how could he not know if something had happened to his mother?—but Alicia moved on to the party, the stupid family reunion, which crouched like a nasty-faced animal on Paul’s horizon.

The reunion was tomorrow night. Cousins and uncles and grandparents and all the people they had bribed to love them. The whole family tree shaking its ass on the dance floor. A Berger family freak-out. Getting together to bury their faces in buffet pans and lie about their achievements.

“What are you going to wear?” she asked.

Paul said that he might not go.

“What do you mean you might not go? Isn’t that why you’re here? You can’t not go—everyone’s going to be there. What are you going to do, stay home and beat off?”

So she knew.

“I don’t know. We’ll see.”

“We’ll see? Jesus, Paul, you are such an asshole.”

There was a time when she’d have been afraid to say even this, the obvious truth. Paul might have responded with heirloom breakage, a dervish whirl through his sister’s valuables. The truth was he was too tired to break anything. You needed to be in shape . So chalk that up to some improvement between them. By the time they were eighty, there was no telling how evolved they’d be.

“I know,” he admitted. “I’ll probably go. I’ll try to go.”

“Goddamn. Don’t do us any favors.”

At dinner that night, the questions came, and Paul tried to suck it up.

“How’s business, Paul?” Rick boomed. Everyone else at the table shrank, as if someone had thrown up and they didn’t want to get splashed. Probably Rick hadn’t been at the family meeting where they’d decided to go easy on Paul, lay off the hard stuff. Like, uh, questions.

“Let’s not set him off,” his father had probably advised. “Let’s nobody get him going. It’s not worth it.”

His mom and Alicia must have nodded in agreement, and now Rick had steered them off the plan, going for the jugular, the crotch, the fat lower back.

“I don’t know, Rick,” Paul answered. “Business is fine. You mean world business? The stock market? Big question. I could talk all night, or we could gather around my calculator and do this thing numerically. Huddle up and go binary.”

He wished for a moment that he belonged to the population of men who asked and answered questions like this, who securely knew that these questions were the gateway for nonsexual statistical intercourse between underachieving men.

Rick was confused, so Alicia jumped in.

“You know what he means, Paul. What do you do for work? What’s your job?”

“I cash Dad’s checks and spend the money on child sex laborers down at the shipyard.”

His mother put her hand to her mouth.

Perhaps there was something about sitting at this table that had made him take the low road so hard and fast. The table, his room, that red chair, the house, the whole city of Cleveland. The blame could be shared.

“Paul,” Alicia warned.

“Yeah, I know. Fine. I haven’t taken Dad’s money in years, Alicia, if you must know.”

He stopped to eat and everyone else was quiet, looking at him. He’d promised himself that he’d try harder, and already he wasn’t. He took a breath and looked at Rick, and Rick blinked, waiting.

“I work at a cabinet shop, Rick. We make custom kitchen cabinets. I operate the tenoning jig.”

That wasn’t so bad.

Rick, alone, burst out laughing, because cabinetmaking was one of the funniest things in the world, maybe, or because he was one retort behind and he wanted to be sure he got the joke this time. He looked around for company, but no one else was laughing.

“You do what?” he said.

Suddenly, Paul’s father leaned in, intensely curious. Mr. Tuned Out had gotten his little button pushed. He stared at Paul, and Paul couldn’t tell if he was excited or angry. “You’re a carpenter?” he asked, in absolute wonder.

“Woodworker, actually, Dad, is what it’s called. Fine joinery and that sort of thing. Huge difference. Carpenters, well, you know. I don’t have to tell you.”

Paul stopped himself. What a thing to say to a man who used to build houses, a carpenter before he became a big contractor. But fuck it. His dad had been retired forever. Didn’t even work in his own shop anymore, probably. And there was a big difference between a woodworker and a carpenter. That wasn’t his fault.

“Shit, though, Paul,” Rick said. “Pretty good money in that, I bet, with so many people redoing their kitchens. Is it union?”

Paul admitted that it was, and Rick whistled with a show—slightly false, Paul felt—of admiration.

“Nice. Nice. Right? You could support a family with that, am I right? If you wanted to?”

Rick winked for everyone to see, and what a person to wink, with his failed seed. Why would he be turning the screws on Paul when he had nothing to show for himself?

“I do, actually, Rick,” Paul whispered, looking down at his food. He couldn’t believe he was telling them. “I do support a family.”

He smiled and wanted to say more, to fill in the blanks, but they looked at him as if he were the strangest creature they’d ever seen. And maybe he was, but did that mean he couldn’t have a family?

It was his mother, though, who did it. Such concern in her face, such pity, as if to say, Poor, poor Paul, who still needs to lie to us, and what did we ever do to create this man? He’d hardly begun to tell them, and yet she seemed so sorrowful looking at him like that. So he asked about dessert, and she brightened, jumped up, crowing from the kitchen about the best blackberry pie in the world. You had to try it. And who wanted ice cream, and, Alicia, could you help clear?

Paul’s cell phone rang while they were watching television. He took the call outside, as if the reception were better in the yard. They were probably relieved that he’d left the house.

“Hey,” Andrea said.

“Oh, my God, hey.”

It was so good to hear her voice.

“So how is it?” she asked.

“It’s okay. It’s okay.” He took some deep breaths. He just needed to talk to her and get grounded.

“You’re lying.” She laughed.

“No, no,” Paul insisted. “It’s fine, everyone’s fine. I mean, it’s weird to be here. The city is different.”

“Yeah? Different how?”

She was so good. She really wanted to know. She wanted him to tell her everything, and he wanted to, and if he had more time he would, but who cared what was different about Cleveland? It didn’t matter. He missed her is all and he told her that and she sounded happy.

“How’s Jack?” he asked.

“I just put him down. He’s such a sweetie. He actually asked to go to bed. He stood and waited by his crib for me to lift him in.”

“Oh, my God,” Paul said. “The little dude.”

“I know.”

“Give him a huge hug for me.”

“Yeah, I will,” Andrea said. “At five thirty in the morning when he wakes up I’ll hug him and tell him Daddy misses him. Then I’ll make coffee and wait for the sun to come up and wonder how the hell I’m going to get through the day.”