Джоанна Скотт - Excuse Me While I Disappear - Stories

Sitting at the granite island in Henry’s kitchen in Dunkirk, promised beer in hand, Sal was forced to improvise. There was no gracious way to explain that he had been misunderstood when asked about his life. Instead he had to think up names for his three daughters (Sheri, Lucille, and Stacey) and give his wife, whom he called Kim, her hair color (strawberry blond). He had to come up with an excuse for not carrying photographs of his family (his wallet had been stolen—the current one was a recent replacement). As Henry opened two more beers, Sal was in the midst of inventing particular talents for his children (Sheri played volleyball, Lucille was great with computers, Stacey was taking figure-skating lessons).

With his dormant creativity tapped, Sal found that making up a family for himself was more fun than he’d expected. He told Henry that Sheri was a fearsome creature when she lost in a volleyball tournament—“You can see the steam coming out of her ears!” Sal announced. “She’s like, there’s no worse tragedy than losing. But I can always cheer her up by taking her for vanilla-chocolate-swirl soft serve. Cheers me up, too. Nothing like vanilla-chocolate-swirl soft serve.”

“How come we never go for soft serve, Dad?” Henry’s daughter called from the family room.

“You’re making me look bad, Sal,” said Henry cheerfully.

The two men went on talking. Sal couldn’t remember another experience in his years of service when a customer had treated him completely as an equal. Henry appeared truly interested in Sal and ready to claim him as a friend. He wanted to compare their experiences as fathers and hear all about the wife named Kim. Growing ever more comfortable with Sal, Henry admitted that he was a city man at heart; he had moved to the suburbs for the schools, but one day he hoped to live in a downtown loft overlooking the river. Sal said his own dream was to have a cabin in the Adirondacks—a rustic cabin lit with kerosene lamps, he said, so he wouldn’t be inclined to tinker with any wiring.

Sal felt good just whiling away what was left of the day, drinking, talking, pretending to be someone he wasn’t. Usually he ended work with a quick trip to the prepared foods department of his local grocery store. He was grateful for this variation in his routine. He felt invigorated by the freedom to make up a life for himself. He was like a man who had been too preoccupied to eat and suddenly was made aware of his hunger upon seeing his favorite foods laid on the table before him. He was ravenous—emotionally, yes, and physically as well. He had been working hard all his life. It made sense, then, that after Henry’s wife, the dermatologist, came home from work and invited Sal to stay for dinner, he gladly accepted.

there’s this guy comes over to my house.

Who’s the guy, Harry?

This guy, he comes over to fix the new chandelier. Of course the chandelier is broken because it was installed by Dunkirk.

The guy you’re talking about, he’s an electric guy?

Yeah, I got a light falling out of the ceiling ’cause the builders didn’t install it right. So I pick up the phone and call a repair company. He’s the one they send, and he comes in, and the next thing I know he’s got the light fixed up, and he sees me drinking a beer. He looks at the beer like he wants one. So I offer him one. And he says yes.

Uh-oh, I think I see what’s coming. The guy says yes to a beer.

He says yes.

So you give him one.

I give him one, and —

At first Sal believed that Henry’s friendliness was genuine, yet he felt a gradual change in the mood during dinner with the McCarters. He couldn’t identify any one comment or gesture that put him on edge, but he began to fear that the whole artificial apparatus of his fictional life was suddenly visible to his audience. Was there a slight snarl to the smile that Henry’s wife flashed at him? Were the children snickering? Was there something a little excessive in Henry’s curiosity about Sal’s home life? Sal did his best to pretend to be a family man, but he kept worrying that he would be exposed as a bald-faced liar.

The McCarters had whipped up a fine dinner: Dr. McCarter reheated a potato casserole she’d made the previous day, and Henry threw a big T-bone on the grill, bringing it to pink perfection. Sal should have had nothing to complain about. Still, his nervousness grew as his stomach was filled. He had a sore back molar and chewed his meat with difficulty; bloody juice kept dribbling out the side of his mouth. When he blotted himself with the napkin, a pin-sized bit of paper stuck to his chin. He felt it there and rubbed it away with the back of his hand. The paper fell onto his piece of meat. Not knowing what else to do, he deliberately cut a forkful of steak and ate it, along with the bit of napkin. The boy giggled. The girl suddenly announced that she had to run to the store for something. The parents exchanged an inscrutable look as their daughter grabbed the car keys off the counter and left the room. Sal heard the garage door opening. He could feel a tension rash sprouting on his cheeks. He could smell his own stink from a long day’s work. He wondered if his awkwardness had more to do with money than the lies he had spun. Wasn’t there an old saying about how the twain of rich and poor weren’t meant to mingle? He wished he’d been better educated. Yet the McCarters were being generous, including him in their family dinner. If there was a source of scorn, he was it. The invented Sal was ashamed of the real Sal, he’d come to realize by the time Dr. McCarter was clearing the plates. Sal Formosa hadn’t been playing a harmless little game of pretend. He had been playing a game of hide-and-seek, and he had been found—by himself. He might as well have been gazing in a mirror and seen in his reflection a man defined by his loneliness.

He felt wretched, but only momentarily. Just as he was concluding that there was nothing left to do but fess up and admit he had no family of his own, the McCarters’ teenage daughter returned. Having used her own money at the Dairy Queen, she surprised their guest with a bucketful of vanilla-chocolate-swirl soft serve.

And he drinks your beer, Harry?

He drinks it, Dan. This guy, he’s got a family of his own at home, a wife and kids, and it’s after five, and he’s just hanging out drinking my beer. He keeps talking. He tells me all about his kids, his wife. I make a point of looking at the clock, but he won’t take the hint. He gets to talking about going to volleyball games with one of his daughters. What do I care about volleyball? Then my wife comes home, she sees this stranger sitting in our kitchen drinking a beer, she waits for him to leave, but he won’t leave, so what do you think she does?

Oh no, Harry. She doesn’t.

Oh yes, Dan. She does. She invites the jerk to

Sal felt triumphant by the end of dinner. He was considered worthy of a trip to Dairy Queen! The lies he’d told were incidental. Of course, when Henry prepared to write a check to pay for the repair of the light fixture, Sal refused to produce a bill, saying that he couldn’t accept money from friends. There was goodwill all around, especially when the McCarters were showing Sal to the door.

“This has been real special for me, thank you,” Sal said.

Dr. McCarter took her husband by the hand. “Harry, you have to tell your listeners about Sal.”

“Listeners?” Sal asked, though his mind was working fast. He was on the verge of guessing Henry’s identity when Henry announced, “I have a little radio show, man.”

“Not so little,” corrected his wife. “Sal, meet Harry the Whiz.”