I looked at the clown’s face, the big, red mouth with the hole at the center for the ball, and thought about the two-odd years it had taken Jack—Debby’s obnoxious husband—and his best buddy from high school, Carl, to build a mini putt-putt into the old, rotting apartment complex that Jack had inherited from his father. Jack had decided, upon his father’s death, that what he really needed in his life was an indoor mini putt-putt course. Carl had been very supportive of this move. Debby less so.
Jack took an awkward swing with an ancient, rusty golf club, and the ball ricocheted off the clown’s face he’d built into an old fireplace, whacking him in the leg. “Goddamnit,” he said, picking up a can of Miller Light sitting on an old end table. The ball had hit uncomfortably close to his crotch.
Jack took another gulp of his beer and set it down.
“So, Kari—got a boyfriend yet?” Jack asked.
Carl perked up. We’d boned once in high school, and Carl had never forgotten it.
“Yeah, actually,” I responded. “I do.”
Jack blanched.
“Kari!” Debby said, squealing and clapping her tiny white hands. “You didn’t tell me about this! Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“Well,” Carl said, “don’t keep us in suspense. Who’s the lucky guy?” He pushed the remaining dark blond wisps of his hair over his pate.
“Yeah, Kari,” Jack said suspiciously.
“Your dad,” I said, barely suppressing a cruel jag of laughter, and Jack’s expression blackened.
“Kari,” Debby said nervously.
“That’s not funny, my dad’s dead,” he said, and I could hear Carl muffling laughter.
“Jesus, Carl, be on my side for once!” Jack said, thwacking him in the arm. “She’s never gonna get on that d—”
“Hey!” Carl said. Then, “Ow.” He rubbed his tricep.
“Maybe you’ll stop asking me that kinda shit now,” I said, lifting my eyebrows up sharply, and holding my drink out to him for a cheers.
Needless to say, he didn’t clink. He grunted and took another swig. Beer ran down the side of his mouth, and he brushed his arm across his lips.
He was always after me to get a man. Thing was, Debby was too. She figured that Jack wouldn’t be such a jerk about us chilling together if I had a dude, and we could double-date. But that wasn’t my thing. At all.
Carl saddled up to take a shot at the clown.
Jack sighed, heavily. “Look, Kari, don’t take offense,” Jack said, stumbling slightly where he stood. “I don’t mean to try to push you or anything it’s just that…” he stopped, and I could almost see the gears slowly grinding in his mind.
“It’s that, you know, Kari, we want you to be happy. And like, when you have a partner in life, it like, means you learn stuff about yourself—” Debby started, and I groaned.
“Exactly,” Jack said, interrupting. “And it makes you more mature.”
I watched Jack, clearly the pinnacle of all that is male maturity, slightly stagger once more from too many Bud Lights, and wondered if he’d ever washed a pair of his own underwear in his life.
“Baby, I can speak for myself,” Debby said, giggling girlishly. But she was clearly irritated. Jack interrupted her a lot.
“I don’t—I mean, I didn’t,” Jack started. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, or like, speak for you.”
“Oh, you didn’t,” Debby said, and I tried to stop my eyeballs from rolling so far back in my head that they disappeared for the rest of time.
“I mean, look, Kari, you’re strong and independent, and that’s not a bad thing,” Debby said.
Jack stared at her slack-jawed for a moment, clearly confused about where she was going with this line of thought, and Carl took a whack. The ball sailed straight into the clown’s mouth, and the clown swallowed and yelled “Whooopeee!” Carl followed with a whoop of his own, walking into the bedroom to get to the ball.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Jack said, uneasily.
I suppressed laughter.
He knew he was being manipulated into something, and he didn’t like it one bit.
“She can take care of herself,” he said, hiccupping in the middle of his sentence.
“I completely agree with you. That’s exactly why I need to hang out with her sometimes—just her and me,” Debby said, pulling her club up and over her shoulder. It was Jack’s turn with the clown, and he was taking his sweet time. I always went last.
“What? No. No. That’s not—”
Debby rotated in my direction, sipped at her rum and Coke, and set it delicately back down on a glossy, wooden coffee table. The table was covered in stickers—mainly Care Bear.
“Because sometimes you get in trouble on your own, don’t you, Kari?” She said, her voice high-pitched and sweet as a child’s.
I went to open my mouth, and Debby burned holes into me. She knew goddamn well that my troublemaking days were long over. That when I hooked up with a guy, I always texted her his number and address. That I hadn’t even smoked weed in years. That Bud Light was the hardest drug I downed these days. And she knew exactly why. Jaime.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“Debby,” Jack said, “that’s on you. Sweetie, I love you, you know I do, but sometimes you’re too … too—you know, obsessed with helping other people. Which is what I love about you,” he said quickly. “But you don’t need to babysit a grown woman.”
I wanted to blow fire at him, but honestly? He was kind of right. I didn’t need a babysitter—I needed Debby to stand up to Jack for once. He was a typical dude, but he supported his kids, he often took Debby out to eat, gave her foot massages, said nice things to her. Though he didn’t like it whenever I stood up to him, he’d not only back down, he’d often see my point. So why she wouldn’t tell him to chill the hell out was beyond me.
“You want to try again?” Debby asked Jack, interrupting him.
“What?” he said, backing into one of the little hedge-animals that he and Carl had scattered throughout the rooms.
“With the clown?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, disentangling himself from the hedge. After about the fourth whack, the ball went through, and Jack trailed behind Carl into the bedroom.
Debby picked up her club, and on the third attempt, got the ball in. I whacked a few times and followed.
Jack and Carl were mumbling amongst themselves, and Debby rolled her eyes and elbowed her way through them, breaking them up. This next course was her favorite, and no matter who was in what order, they always let Debby go first.
It was three cat butts, with long, wavy tails moving across the floor. You had to time your shot just right, so that the ball would enter the empty spaces between the tails, and pop up, and into, of course, a cat butthole.
“This one always makes me vaguely uncomfortable,” I said, sipping my beer and standing back.
Debby had her tongue out, squeezed in between her lips.
The men guffawed at my comment, and Debby whacked, violently, and the ball rolled up and into the butthole of an orange cat. There was even a little faux-litter box that one of her cats had mistaken for real once, to Jack’s consternation. Sometimes me and Debby would take lawn chairs and sit in the box during the summer, and let her kids play while we drank mai tais.
“Yes!” Debby said, plucking her drink, complete with mini umbrella, up from the floor where she’d set it, and took a celebratory sip.
Jack went next, and it took him a couple tries to get a ball up and into a gray butthole.
Despite what Jack had said in the clown room, I was hoping he was finished, and that Debby wouldn’t bring it up again. But as soon as she’d finished drinking, she said, “Okay, so like I was saying,” and Carl started moaning.
“Oh no, I thought we were done with this,” Carl said, planting one hand over his eyes.
“The thing is you know what Kari’s like. She needs someone patient and reasonable with her, to stop her getting into trouble.” Debby’s mouth creased into an expression of satisfaction, and she walked into the bedroom for the next step up. Jack had built the cat butts into an old closet that led to another bedroom. This one was my favorite.
The balls were waiting at the bottom of several old kiddie pools. There were four pools, and a bunch of fake greenery and fake flowers. To make the setup weirder, there were four plastic Ronald McDonalds in each pool, complete with vines and flowers wrapped all around them, that Carl had found in a dump in Denver—or so he claimed—in each corner of the room. Jack had spent hours drilling holes into their faces to elongate their mouths, and every mouth led to a different room. And each pool had a little fountain.
Jack frowned and walked up to one of the Ronalds. He looked ready to whack but stopped and turned to me. “You really think you need a babysitter? Cause that seems like the opposite of who you are to me.”
He went to hit the ball again and stopped once more. “In fact, damn, Kari. That’s something I always respected about you.”
The irony.
I was in a tough spot. If I told him I didn’t need a babysitter, which was true, he’d justify throwing a shit fit every time I wanted Debby to go off with me to the White Horse, or to Walmart, or wherever.
“I mean, sometimes, I guess, I just … look. What’s wrong with just me and Debby hanging without you sometimes? I think you’re the one acting like he needs a babysitter,” I said, unable to help myself.
His face twisted with confusion and rage.
Jack exploded. “Why don’t you find one of those men you fucking hook up with to hang out alone with then? And not my wife!”
“I don’t like them for that long,” I said, not missing a beat, and ending with a Nicholsonesque smile.
“Kari, oh my God! Stop it!” Debby sputtered.
“Yeah,” Jack echoed.
I snorted.
“Jack, you apologize to Kari!” Debby said, turning to him, her lower lip trembling.
“I—” Jack said.
I started dancing, banging my head in celebration, one hand in the air, fingers crooked into a devil-sign.
“Kari, you’re only making it worse!” She swiped a tear away from her face.
“Yeah, Kari,” Jack said, his eyes narrowing.
I stopped. Sighed.
Debby’s voice was quavering now. “Jack, please. I do everything for you. Why can’t you let me have this? I cook. I clean. I work. And I know what you’re going to say, you don’t have the time to take care of the kids while I hang with Kari. But I find the time, all the time, while you’re off with Carl talking about high school and chicks and building this—” she said, gesturing with the club and swinging it near Carl’s head, who wisely ducked, “thing,” she finished.
The silence in the room was palpable, and we all watched Jack take a breath.
I wondered if he’d apologize. He was as stubborn as I was, and it was always like this. Me, wanting her to myself, and Jack, wanting the same. An eternal tug-of-war.
“I’m sorry, Kari. I just … I guess I don’t see why you have to go off alone with her, that’s all,” he said. “I’m sorry, baby,” he finished, his eyes cutting over to Debby. “I know you do a lot for me. I’m sorry.”
She sighed, heavily.
It was my turn.
“I’m sorry,” I said lamely, and Jack narrowed his eyes at me again. He knew I wasn’t sorry, not one bit.
What I’d wanted to say—what was on the tip of my tongue—was, I’m sorry Jack’s a jerk. Or worse, a basically okay human being who, because he was a dude, because the whole world thought his kind of shit was warranted, because my sweet cousin had had kids with him too early to know what she was getting into, thought forcing Debby to make him her entire life was okay.
This is exactly why I’d never had a boyfriend. Why Jaime and I had made the pact early on. But I’d been the only one to keep it.