Tom Mendicino - Probation

I’ll start on the top floor and work my way down. Climbing the stairs, I’m humming a tune I’d forgotten I remembered-a country and western weepy that’s as much a part of my heritage as MoonPies and RC Cola.

“Step right up,

Come on in.

If you’d like to take the grand tour

Of a lonely house that once was home sweet home.”

Life imitates art. Well, that might be stretching it. Life imitates the jukebox. The voice of Mr. George Jones follows me from room to room. I can’t believe I know all the words.

“Straight ahead

That’s the bed

Where we lay and love together

And Lord knows we had a good thing going here.”

Well, George, maybe not. I’ve got another song about lovemaking for you, a duet, something you and Tammy would have taken to the top of the Country Hot 100.

Him: Distant and analytical-touch here and make her sigh; touch there and drive her crazy.

Her: Wary; sensitive of crossing the fine line between passion and aggression.

Him: Rating his performance, keeping score, fretting over the gradual slide in technical points as repetition and familiarity and, worst, lack of interest took its toll.

Her: Wanting more, getting less.

Him: Frustrated, angry, finally weary of trying to draw from a well of desire that was shallow to begin with, gone bone dry all too soon.

Her: Finally surrendering, conceding that he will not, cannot, respond to her touch the way she responds to his.

The End.

Ah, George and Tammy would have turned our sad story into poetry.

Our old bedroom, stripped of its contents, seems enormous. Sunlight falls on the large rectangle of clean, plush carpet where the bed used to be. I’m exhausted and the shadow of the queen-sized mattress makes sleep irresistible. I kick off my shoes and curl up on the floor. The pile scratches my cheek and my nose detects traces of factory glue in this unblemished section of rug. I’m sound asleep within a minute.

I don’t know how long I’ve been dozing when I’m awakened by the sound of a car door. I jump up and look out the window. I panic, realizing I’m trapped in this room, unable to escape. It’s too late to race down the stairs and slip out the door. Alice ’s key is already in the lock.

I have two choices. I can walk downstairs, announce my presence, hope that I don’t startle her. But then I would have to look her in the eye. The alternative is to stay here and take a chance she won’t feel the need to visit the garage or climb the stairs. I consider hiding in the closet and reject that strategy as too cowardly. Instead, I sink quietly to the floor to avoid any footfalls on the creaking floorboards. I hear the front door close and the quiet shuffle of leather soles on the parquet floor. Alice goes directly to the dining room.

Goddamn, I hear her say when she finds the boxes exactly where she left them. She uses her cell phone to call someone, the real estate agent most likely, and bemoan the fact he-that would be me-never showed up and the boxes are still stacked in the middle of the floor. I hear her making arrangements for someone, the agent’s teenage son apparently, to bring a van and haul it all away before the walk-through in the morning. She sounds more exasperated than angry.

No, no, she says, he’s not like that. He’s got a lot on his mind right now. That’s all. See you in the morning.

Alice is still making excuses for me.

After all I’ve done to her, after everything I’ve put her through, she’s still making excuses for me.

Yes, but sometimes he’s a little absentminded.

He forgets things.

He didn’t mean it the way it sounded.

He really is very sweet.

Everyone is a little cranky at times.

He’s tired. He works so hard.

You don’t know him the way I do.

No one knows him like I do.

Here in this empty house, I realize she’s right.

No one knows me like she does. My mother maybe, certainly no one else.

But even Alice couldn’t have imagined me down on my knees in front of the urinal, swallowing a stranger’s semen. Or maybe I’m deluding myself and she knew all too well what I was capable of and turned a blind eye and a deaf ear, loving me anyway.

The house is so quiet I can hear her walking through the kitchen. I imagine she’s opening the refrigerator door, checking for any ancient jelly or olive jars left behind. That’s my Alice. Thorough to the end. Doing a little pre-inspection inspection. Making sure the faucets are working and the toilets still flush.

Oh, Sweet Jesus. The big, beautiful master bath, accessible only through this room in which I’m stranded, is sure to be on her punch list. I’m caught. There’s nothing to do but get up off the floor and straighten my back, accept my fate, and stand face-to-face with the woman I betrayed. The words won’t come easy. I can’t ask her forgiveness. I’m afraid she would deny it, but am even more terrified she will offer it. Besides, I’ve asked enough of her over the years, more than enough, too much, more than I had a right to take. I can’t ask her for anything ever again.

But what I can do is thank her.

Thank her for staying with me, for knowing I wasn’t ready.

But this happy reconciliation will never come to pass if she goes into cardiac arrest when she unexpectedly comes face-to-face with this great ghost from the past. Just as I’m about to call down to her, her cell phone rings. Hello? she answers. Okay. All right. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. I’m leaving now. Good-bye.

She turns away from the staircase and closes the front door behind her. I hear her car backing down the driveway. She’s probably singing along to the radio, her mind preoccupied with directions, blissfully unaware of me watching her from the window. She’s let me off the hook again. I can walk away scot-free, without having hoisted anything heavier than my car keys. It’s been a wasted trip. Hours of driving to accomplish nothing except a quick catnap. But I have a few moments before Zack or Tyler or Jason or whatever the most popular name for baby boys was sixteen or seventeen years ago comes bursting through the front door, still sweaty from lacrosse practice, to haul the last of this detritus from the house. I’m here, after all; it wouldn’t hurt to take a quick peek at what’s packed in that small pyramid of boxes downstairs.

Books, of course, as promised. Dozens of cheap paperbacks, their dry yellow pages crumbling, stuffed with bookmarks and receipts from long-shuttered bookshops, the underlined and highlighted passages revealing my impressionable undergraduate mind. I find what I’m looking for in the second box, the complete works of Faulkner, the Vintage editions, including a dog-eared copy of Absalom, Absalom! I carefully flip through it, astonished to find ancient petrified crumbs lodged between the pages. Is it possible they’re from the bits of cookie I dusted off my lips when the bold little coed startled me in the Davidson dining hall? Not likely, but I’m not gonna let common sense stop me from believing they are.

Other boxes have books of a more recent vintage. Alice ’s book club selections are sandwiched between copies of Ball Four and the complete Henry Wiggen series. Along with the immortal volumes of Susan Moore Duncan and Lucy Patton Kline is her copy of Wuthering Heights, the tidy Everyman’s Library edition with acid-free pages and slick red cloth place marker. Damn her, I spit, angry and hurt, my face stinging with rejection. She’s jettisoned this very important artifact from our history, a critical key to deciphering the mysterious code that scripted the story of our marriage. I tear through the boxes, looking for more evidence of her callousness in her choice of what to keep and what to consign to the scrap heap of history.