Emma Straub - Modern Lovers

Harry had heard his mother tell his father about Ruby’s mothers, but he hadn’t been told directly, and so it was easy enough to pretend. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s their marriage, not mine,” Ruby said. “I’m a modern girl. I know it’s not my fault.”

“Still,” Harry said.

“Still,” Ruby allowed. She took another drag.

“Can I have some?” Harry asked.

Ruby cackled. “Oh, shit,” she said. “I thought you didn’t smoke.” She held it out to him, upright, like a candle.

“I don’t,” Harry said. He plucked the cigarette from between her fingers and put it up to his lips. The filter felt rough against his tongue. Was he supposed to lick it? Probably not. Harry inhaled — he had smoked weed before, after all, he wasn’t a total noob. The smoke flooded his lungs, sharp and harsh. He coughed once and tried to swallow a few more, which just made him cough harder. Ruby hit him on the back. The dog offered a sympathetic snurfle.

“Ride that pony!” she said, laughing. “Ride it!” Harry thrust the cigarette back at her, but she waved him off. “No way,” she said. “Not until you tame that beast.”

Harry waited for his breathing to return to normal and for his eyes to stop swimming, and then he tried again.

In the age of the Internet, when his son couldn’t walk three steps without checking his phone, Andrew appreciated a Xeroxed advertisement stapled to a telephone pole. Usually it was just ads for the nerdy guy who taught guitar lessons or for lost dogs or cats, but Andrew always looked. He was between jobs. Between careers, if you wanted to be specific. There was enough family money that he didn’t have to worry too much, plus the royalties, plus Elizabeth’s income, and so Andrew had spent his adulthood to date following his inspirations. A decade ago, he’d taken a cinematography course at the New School and had worked on some short films, including one about an abandoned mental hospital in the Palisades. Before that, he’d taught English as a Second Language at a high school in the Bronx, but that had only lasted a year. More recently, he’d been working on a lifestyle magazine for Brooklyn fathers, doing some editing and soliciting but mostly acting as a consultant. It was good to be around younger people — kept the blood flowing. Next, Andrew thought he’d do an apprenticeship at a butcher shop or with a woodworker. Something with his hands.

His usual routine was to get up with Harry and Elizabeth, send them off to school and work, and walk down to Cortelyou to get some coffee. Now that Harry was out for the summer, Andrew felt like it was even more important to keep busy. He ordered a small coffee and walked back out onto the street.

Ditmas Park was great in the summertime. The sycamores and oaks were full and wide, leaving big pools of shade along the sidewalks. Families were on their porches. Kids were throwing balls around and learning how to ride their bikes. Neighbors waved. Andrew ambled to the corner and waited for the light to change, feeling happily aimless. Harry would stay in his room for much of the day, taking SAT practice exams or playing video games or reading books, bless him. Even though that was the point of parenthood — to raise smart, happy, self-sufficient people, Andrew mourned the loss of the days when Harry cried out “Daddy!” every time he walked in the door, even if he’d only been gone for ten minutes. Andrew was staring into space, thinking about Harry’s two-year-old body, the hugs he would give at night before bed, when a flyer stapled to the pole next to the crosswalk caught his attention.

It was a drawing of a lotus flower, like the logo of a yoga studio, with hand-drawn petals. Underneath the flower, large block letters spelled out “WE ARE HERE. ARE YOU?” Below that there was just an address on Stratford Road, three blocks from where Andrew was standing. No hours, no phone number, no website.

“Huh,” Andrew said. He thought about ripping it down so that he could hold on to it, but that would look bad. He didn’t want any of his neighbors to see — they’d think he was either for or against it, when he didn’t even know what it was. Instead, Andrew typed the address into his phone and crossed the street.

It was definitely going to be woodworking. The more he thought about it, the more sense it made. Butchering would mean vats of blood, saws, bones. Andrew wasn’t squeamish, and he loved the idea of knowing more about where his food came from, but a rooftop vegetable farm was probably more his speed. That didn’t appeal, though. Vegetables took too long. Andrew had always liked a simpler equation; he wanted to see the payoff before an entire season had passed. When he and Elizabeth met, he’d worked in the school’s bike co-op, fixing old beaters that careless students had left locked outside over the summer, and he’d loved his dirty, greasy hands at the end of the day. The spinning wheels. Woodworking — carpentry — would be like that. He would have calluses and maybe burns. He would whack a fingernail by accident, and it would turn black. That was just what he was looking for. He’d build a desk for Harry, a new pair of end tables for their bedroom. Maybe they could do it together.

Elizabeth’s professional problem was the opposite — instead of Andrew’s searching, she had the answer but chose to ignore it. It was a lost cause at this point, though he did coax her to start playing again by saying that he wanted to do it. She would do it for him, he knew, but not for herself. His wife was a true talent — unusual, smart, gifted — all the words that places like Whitman loved to throw around to describe perfectly ordinary students. But Elizabeth wasn’t ordinary. She was incredible, and she had stopped playing for such practical reasons, as if practicality had anything to do with it.

Instead of turning right and walking back home, Andrew turned left and walked to Stratford. He never walked in that direction — it was toward the gas stations and the one bar that had recently opened that he hadn’t been to yet. Come to think of it, the bar wasn’t that new anymore, it was probably a year old, but he still hadn’t been. Andrew turned right on Stratford and walked another block — he was now parallel with his own house, only two blocks east.

The house had once been white but was now the color of dirty city snow. The windows were old; Andrew could tell just by looking at the outside. He’d learned a lot about houses from Elizabeth, what to look for. Together, they’d been inside most of the houses in the neighborhood. The steps were sinking in the middle, and the floorboards of the porch were cracked. It wasn’t a hard fix, but it would be expensive, especially if they got soft enough that the mailman fell through and decided to sue. Andrew hovered for a minute on the sidewalk, not sure what he was going to do. He should go home and start his day. Zoe knew a guy who built things, some kid from Maine who lived in the neighborhood and built dining-room tables for people in Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights. Andrew was going to give him a call. The door to the house was open, and Andrew could see another flyer taped above the doorbell. He took one step toward the house, and then stopped. He could see a man inside. The guy had a beard, not quite ZZ Top but heading that way. It was impossible to tell how old he was. The man turned toward the door, saw Andrew, and waved as if he’d been expecting him. Andrew waved back, then climbed the stairs to introduce himself.

“Welcome,” the man said. From close up, he looked younger than Andrew had thought, maybe not even forty. His beard was speckled with red and gray hairs, like a duck egg that was so beautiful and complicated that you couldn’t believe it just happened that way, with no intervention from a design team.