Eighteen

“There was sex, Roy.”

“Ah. I knew there would be. Let’s hear about it.”

“Which part?”

“Everything. I plan to learn a great deal from this report.”

“Let me be sure I understand it first, okay? I’m still reeling. Rita is basically … me.”

“Yes.”

“She’s Jeremy Cook with tits.”

“Nicely put.”

“And yet she can’t be a perfect equivalent. Surely you can’t have found such a person.”

“Of course I can. I did.”

“But—”

“My questionnaire is a most delicate instrument, Jeremy. I hope you’re not going to tell me you had a problem with her.”

“Well, yes and no. She’s great—funny, lively, and lots of other things, and sex was the easiest thing in the world. Hell, it was almost too easy—like being alone. Not alone, exactly, but … I don’t know. I could barely tell what she was doing from what I was doing, if you know what I mean.”

“Mmm.”

“But it was great. I was instantly comfortable with her.”

“As comfortable as you are with yourself.”

This gave Cook pause. “She made me a little uncomfortable with myself, actually. She made me see something I wasn’t too happy with.”

“Nonsense.”

“I mean it. I liked her, but I didn’t want to be her.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She’s not giving enough.”

Pillow made a protesting noise. “What could you have possibly wanted from her that she didn’t give you?”

“I wanted whatever people mean when they say that.”

“What?”

“I’m new at this, Roy. Bear with me. I felt a certain … distance.”

“Doggone it, Jeremy. Don’t change your tune on me now. Is this the man who slept with sixteen women in five years and found nary a one of them lovable?”

“Well …”

“I matched you two on the basis of how you answered my questions. If you feel differently now, you’re the one to blame. Don’t come crying to me. I won’t have it.”

“I’m not coming crying to you, Roy. I’m just telling you how I felt about her.”

Pillow sighed. “This is a very disappointing report.”

Cook was suddenly afraid Pillow was going to hang up on him. “While I’ve got you, Roy,” he said, looking at The Pillow Manual open before him, “‘Day Four: Missy Pillow.’ What the hell?”

Pillow gasped. “Don’t tell me you’re done Pillowing. Don’t tell me that.”

“Okay, I won’t tell you.”

“But you must be if you … How can you possibly be done Pillowing?”

“I’m fast, Roy. Okay?”

“Pillowing can go on for weeks. For months!”

“Too late, Roy,” said Cook. “I’ve turned the page.” Pillow made some unhappy noises. “In light of your breakneck pace, I must say that if this assignment fails, I wash my hands of it. Don’t come crying to me if it blows up in your face.”

“I won’t come crying to you, Roy.” This seemed to be Pillow’s phrase for the day. “Just tell me what ‘Missy Pillow’ means.”

“Missy Pillow is my daughter, Jeremy. By my first wife. As a child, she loved to visit her grandparents. She just loved it. The grandparents are the parents of one spouse, but they are the in-laws of the other spouse.” Pillow paused as if momentarily overwhelmed by this realization. “‘Missy Pillow’ means to visit the in-laws.”

“Sounds simple enough.”

“So you feel you know what to do?”

“Sure. We visit the in-laws. No problem.”

Pillow chuckled. “Got you.”

“What?”

“Got you. I get ’em every time.” Pillow chuckled some more. “Which in-laws did you think of?”

“Beth’s parents. Dan’s in-laws. Why?”

“Why didn’t you think of the other pair?”

“Well,” said Cook, suddenly defensive, “they’re not a pair, for one thing. Dan’s mother is dead.”

“Since when,” Pillow said peevishly, “does spousal death make the surviving spouse not an in-law?”

“What’s your point, Roy?”

“My point is that in every marriage one pair of in-laws looms large, and one pair looms small. The staff out in the field always picks the pair that looms large—automatically, without even thinking of the pair they’re ignoring. It tickles me every time. Now, may I change the subject?”

This was always a dangerous proposition, but Cook said yes.

“This morning,” said Pillow, “I discovered a new thinker in my reading—a German fellow. He believes that happiness is to be found not in the mating of true opposites, which we tested with mixed results on your first date—”

“With wretched results.”

“—nor does it lie in the mating of mirror images—our most recent experiment. He believes that our original family constellations dictate the harmony of our future pairings. He says that people do best in a marriage that duplicates their sibling relationships. A younger brother of a sister should marry a woman who herself is an older sister to a brother. Each partner will then fall into accustomed roles of nurturer and nurtured. His theory extends even to the friends we have. A man who has an older brother tends to seek out friends who have a younger brother. Are you with me?”

“What about only children?”

“What do you care?” Pillow snapped. “Now, your sister is older than you, correct?”

“Yes.”

“My questionnaire tells me that your last date—Rita—is younger than her brother.”

“So?”

“That’s why it didn’t work. If she were older than her brother she would have been perfect for you. You would have married her.”

Cook laughed. “You sound pretty convinced, Roy.”

“Why not? It makes perfect sense.”

Cook had never seen Pillow in intellectual action. It was rather frightening. “You just discovered this guy’s ideas this morning? I wouldn’t go applying them all over the place already. Science doesn’t work that way. Take it slow, Roy.”

“I should note,” Pillow went on, “that the logical extension of this theory is that men should marry their sisters.”

“I suppose it is.”

There was a pause. Then Pillow said, “Your sister—is she married?”

Cook laughed. “Yes.”

“A sound marriage? Not on the rocks at all?”

“Come on, Roy. Get serious.”

“We have to be open to new things, Jeremy. They called Ponce de León a madman, too.”

“He was.”

“Oh.” Pillow seemed disappointed.

Cook heard the click of Pillow’s call-waiting signal. “You want to get that, Roy?”

“No. It’s just Mrs. Pillow.”

“Go ahead. I’ll wait.”

“I’m telling you it’s just Mrs. Pillow. She’s always calling me at the office.”

“You say that like it’s an annoyance, Roy.”

Pillow made an astonished noise. “How dare you Pillow me!”

Cook laughed.

“You think it’s funny?” Pillow said angrily.

Cook sobered up. “Sorry, Roy. I thought you were joking. I didn’t mean—”

But Pillow had hung up on him.

Cook went downstairs. His family was still not back from Big Muddy, even though it was after dinnertime. He went into the kitchen, sliced an apple, and put a gob of peanut butter on the plate, into which he would dip the apple slices. He had seen Robbie do this and admired the simplicity of the dish. It would be as good a dinner as any. He took the plate into the living room and set it on the coffee table. He stood at the window as he ate, staring out.

In the park across the street, a woman was training her dog on a leash. She would take a few steps and then make a sharp turn without warning; then came another few steps and another sharp turn. The dog was supposed to follow. Cook watched the woman do this for ten minutes solid. He imagined her walking like that without the dog—she would look like an idiot. He decided she looked like an idiot even with the dog.

He turned away from the window and sat down on the couch. His plate was empty. He had eaten the apple slices without being conscious of them. He remembered a theory that Paula had once volunteered: that Cook’s oft-proclaimed boredom with food was really a comment on his feelings about people. In today’s world, she said, food was a vehicle for social interaction. Rather than frankly say he hated people, Cook said he hated food. This was the theory. Cook, of course, had immediately objected to it.

He looked around the room. Everything his eye touched told a story about Dan, Beth, or Robbie, as if he had known them for years—the bowl on the coffee table, empty of Hershey Kisses; Dan’s decorative maps on the wall; the record shelf (“This isn’t Dittersdorf”); the computer in the dining room, where Cook had come upon Robbie playing a game called “Paperboy” and had said, “You know, Robbie, when I was a boy I really was a paperboy,” to which Robbie had said, “Get out of town.” Cook’s eye fell on the piano. He had bragged to Robbie that he could play it—a blunder, because Robbie had been after him ever since to play a duet with him.

Robbie intrigued him. He faded in and out of childhood like Wordsworth. Sometimes he seemed almost adult—in argument, or in laughter. He had a rich belly laugh that didn’t threaten to shatter skulls, as some children’s laughter did. But at other times he was clearly just a boy. He was certainly all boy at the piano. He had a single style—fast and loud, legato be damned. Cook had read somewhere that whenever John Philip Sousa tried to extend his range by writing a ballad, conductors would direct it at march tempo; Robbie did the same to whatever came his way. Beth was patient with him, though. Cook had overheard her giving a brief lesson to him, and she hadn’t commented at all on his goose-stepping rhythm. She just let him play that way, as if confident he would outgrow it.

Her own piano style was markedly different. Everything she played was slow. Beethoven, Schumann, Gershwin—whatever it was, it was slow. The past four days she had been working on “The Man I Love.” She played part of it every day, one new measure per session. She had told Cook that was the only way she could learn Gershwin. She worked hard at it. One night after dinner, she had played the same phrase at least fifty times. Cook, sitting in the living room, had let out a mock scream of one driven over the edge—a yahhh! Beth had stopped playing but had not turned around. Dan had looked up at Cook from the couch and shaken his head soberly at him. The message was “Don’t ever do that again.” When Beth resumed playing, Cook didn’t do it again.

As for Dan, he played what Cook thought of as a “sarcastic” piano. He deliberately overplayed grandiose pieces, accompanying them with moans and shouts. He trivialized Chopin’s “Polonaise Militaire” with this method. He was sarcastic with light pieces as well. On one occasion, Cook listened to him bark laughter all the way through “The Happy Farmer,” and then play it in a minor key, sobbing. This was followed by “The Missouri Waltz”—a lovely arrangement of it, but Dan embellished it by bellowing Trumanisms throughout: “The buck stops here!” “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!” During this strange festival, Beth had said to Cook in the kitchen, “You’re a new audience for him.” Cook doubted this and said that Dan didn’t even seem to know he was within earshot. Beth shook her head. “He knows,” she said.

Cook took his empty plate into the kitchen and rinsed it. He went back to the window and stared out for a while. The woman and her dog were gone. Perhaps the dog had turned on her and chased her down the street. His gaze fell on Beth’s car, parked at the curb. Parked against the curb, from the look of it. Even from this distance he could see the damage on her wheels and hubcaps that Dan had complained about. He stared at them for a while. Then he decided to go upstairs and take a shower.

Ten minutes later, even under the stream of water, he could hear Robbie’s noisy footsteps on the second floor. He smiled and quickly finished his shower and got dressed.

When he came into the living room he found Beth lying on the couch, listening to a Mozart flute concerto. Her arm was raised across her eyes, shielding them. Cook slowed as he entered, not sure whether to stay. Beth opened her eyes and looked at him for a moment, then gave him a small finger-waggle of hello with the hand across her eyes.

Cook heard a shout from the deck. Through the windows he could see Dan and Robbie playing Ping-Pong.

Beth sat up and blinked her eyes. She ran a hand through her hair.

“How was it?” Cook asked.

“It was great,” she said without emotion. “I’m sorry we’re so late. We had dinner on the road. The kids were hungry.”

“How’s the camp?”

“It’s great,” she said, again blandly, almost sadly. “Robbie liked it, the people are nice, they seem to have good values. It looks just fine. Can you turn that down?” She pointed to the CD player.

Cook turned the volume down. “So … No problem?”

“No problem. He starts on Sunday. It looks like both his friends are going to go, too.”

“You don’t sound happy enough.”

Beth smiled weakly. “I’m just tired.”

“Have you been crying?”

“No.” She looked down. “Yes.”

“You want to talk?”

She shook her head. “Just the same old thing.” She looked up and said in a thinner voice, “Not quite the same old thing. I think it’s over.”

“No.”

She nodded insistently. “I think it is.”

They were silent for a moment. Dan came into the room and gave Cook a cheerful hello. Behind him, through the windows, Cook could see Robbie still playing Ping-Pong, now with one of his friends from down the street.

Dan seemed charged with energy. He said to Beth, “You call your mom?”

“No.” She seemed to have to struggle to say more. “Why?”

“She’s going to be curious about the camp. She’s probably going to call any minute. Might as well beat her to it.” Dan performed a strange finger-snapping routine involving both hands. He acted as if he might burst into song at any moment. “And they were coming over Sunday, but that’s when Big Muddy starts, so we’ll have to cancel that.”

Cook was about to speak, to say that he would like to see some sort of get-together, but Beth roused herself and beat him to it. “I wonder if they could come tomorrow.”

“That’s kind of soon,” said Dan.

“They’ll come. I’ll call Bruce, too.”

Dan made his deep “Bruuuce” noise. “I meant it’s kind of soon for us to get ready.”

“What’s to get ready? We’ll grill some fish and hamburgers, I’ll make a salad, and you and Robbie can make some peppermint ice cream.”

“But we’ve got to get Robbie ready for camp the next day. If they stay late we’ll—”

“They can come for lunch. They’ll be gone by late afternoon. What’s the big deal?”

Dan turned to Cook. “You got any linguistic activities scheduled that might render this gala event out of the question? I’d be grateful if you did.”

Cook shook his head. He was pleased that Missy Pillow had been so easy to arrange—he assumed the in-laws’ visiting them was as good as their visiting the in-laws, and if it wasn’t, Pillow could go to hell. But he was mainly struck by the shift of agenda. In one breath Beth declares, “It’s over,” and in the next she plans a little luncheon party?

Dan sighed. He repeated his request that Beth call her mother and said he was going to take a shower. Beth asked him to take it on the third floor because she wanted to take a bath in the second-floor bathroom. Dan said, “Okay by me,” and headed up the stairs, singing something Cook didn’t recognize.

Cook was torn. He wanted to talk to Beth more, but he had something to say to Dan, too. Beth got up and went to the receiver. The Mozart had ended and she switched to FM. A blast of music made Cook jump, and Beth nodded with satisfaction. Cook hurried after Dan and caught up with him on the second floor, where he was taking a bath towel from the hall closet.

“That was a good move, Dan,” he said, “suggesting Beth call her mom. You headed off an aggravation. I know her calls get on your nerves.”

Dan peeled off his T-shirt and nodded, full of self-satisfaction. He threw his shirt over his bare shoulder. “You know, Jeremy, if you can just handle little things like this, you can make a marriage work. It’s not big things that wreck a marriage, but a lot of little things added together.” He headed up the stairs to the third floor.

“What happened today?” Cook asked as he followed him. “You’re in a different mood. This morning you seemed completely defeated.”

“Ah,” Dan said triumphantly. “Right you are.” When he reached the third-floor landing he turned and faced Cook. He puffed his chest out a little. “I’ve got some new ideas about marriage, Jeremy. First there’s my Parallel Lines Theory of Marriage. Marriage is coexistence, basically. It’s two people doing their thing under the same roof. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that. But when trouble comes up, someone has to be nice to make the trouble go away. That’s my Be Nice Theory of Marriage. Sometimes one partner has to be nicer than the other, maybe two or three times nicer, or ten times nicer. When it reaches a multiple of ten, that’s my Eat Lots of Shit Theory of Marriage.” Dan had started off calmly but had worked himself up a bit. He paused and collected himself.

“I’ve been nice all day,” he went on. “I’ve been eating shit all day. Rational men everywhere would applaud me.” He waved his arm, as if addressing a throng of them. Standing there on the small landing, his shirt thrown across his shoulder, he looked a bit like a Roman senator giving a speech. “Rational men would say, ‘Dan is working on his marriage. Dan is saving his marriage.’ I feel good. Eating shit makes you feel good. I feel pretty damned civilized right now.” He turned away before Cook could answer, and went into the bathroom.

Cook stood there for a while, thinking about Dan’s theories. He began to walk slowly down the stairs. When he reached the landing between the third and second floors, the phone rang. He could hear the rings from two phones—the one in the second-floor bedroom and the one on the landing above him. He listened for Beth’s footsteps, but apparently the music drowned out the kitchen phone. After four rings, he decided to answer it himself and trotted up to the landing.

Dan bolted out of the bathroom. He was naked except for a towel around his waist. At least he wasn’t wet, Cook observed. Dan grabbed the phone and barked a hello, listened a moment, and set the receiver on the table without another word. He leaned over the railing and yelled for Beth. Then he yelled again—a pained, primitive scream. From the phone Cook heard a woman’s voice—Beth’s mother, he guessed—saying she could call back if this was an inconvenient time, but Dan, hanging over the railing, bellowed again.

The volume on the music suddenly went down. Beth yelled, “Did you say something?”

Dan didn’t answer. He had stepped back to the phone and was staring at it.

Beth shouted, “Did you call me?”

Dan still didn’t answer. He had the phone fixed in a fiendish gaze. Cook finally yelled down the stairs, “Phone!”

Still staring, Dan said, “Stand clear.” Then he undertook a remarkable thing. First, he rotated the towel encircling his waist so that the slit was at the exact rear. This allowed him direct access to the crack between his buttocks—ordinarily not a pressing need in the telephonic arena, but it enabled him to do what he did next, namely, pick up the receiver and insert it through the slit of the towel into the crevice of his buttock cheeks. Cook watched with growing interest. By clenching his cheeks in a way that reminded Cook of marble statuary, Dan was able to hold the phone without using his hands at all. As if to call this to Cook’s attention, he raised his hands above his head. At this point, the towel fell from his waist to the floor, and Cook, viewing Dan’s profile, was privileged to behold two projections, one of pale flaccid flesh, the other of hard jet-black plastic.

The railing on the landing featured one-inch-square wooden pickets, and Dan now made use of these as a prop in the next act of his drama. He twirled so that the phone, still in its viselike clench, pointed straight at the pickets. He pressed his cheeks with his hands for a secure hold, then squatted and backed into the pickets. On making contact, he proceeded to scrape the phone back and forth along them like a little boy scraping a stick on his way to school. Back and forth he went, his pace quickening, until the phone popped free and clattered to the floor, where it rolled and twisted as if propelled by the puzzled female voices coming out of it.

Dan grabbed the phone and hung it up. He picked up his towel from the floor and returned to the bathroom.

The rest of the night was fairly normal. After his shower, Dan went downstairs to the bedroom and closed the door. Beth continued to listen to music in the living room. Cook went right to THE HORROR! Given Dan’s behavior, he just had to strike his old hypothesis and enter a new one. He beheld the result:

She’s a bitch.

He’s a prick.

Money.

He’s a failure.

she thinks he’s failure.

He thinks she’s a bad mother.

The in-laws.

Then he lay down on his bed and read, hoping that he didn’t get called to the phone.

Some time later, he went downstairs. Robbie was in his room, getting things organized for camp. He handed Cook a sheet titled “Big Muddy Checklist” and asked him to read the items aloud one by one. They worked through the list, with Robbie calling out “Check!” for each item. He sounded like Ike on the eve of D-Day. Just when things were at their messiest—when everything was strewn all over the floor—Robbie suddenly got tired and said he was going to bed. Cook imagined him getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and stumbling over the mess. When Robbie went to brush his teeth, Cook quietly cleared a little path from the bed to the door.

He went back up to his room. He heard Beth come up and go into the second-floor bathroom, then into the bedroom. She closed the door behind her. He heard their voices through the floor, but just a few sentences—short ones, with long pauses between them. Then there was no sound at all.

Cook read well into the night. He felt on call, like a doctor. But no one beeped him.

The next morning, when Cook went into the bathroom to wash up, he looked out the window to the backyard. Dan was down there mixing concrete in a wheelbarrow.

“Let me get this straight,” Cook said to the window glass. “Your in-laws are coming for lunch in a couple of hours. Your son is going to camp for two weeks tomorrow. You’re going to Italy for two weeks the day after that. Your marriage is approaching meltdown. And you’re putting up fence posts.” He watched Dan through the window—watched him pull and push the sloshy mix with the hoe—and he wondered just who Dan was. What made him tick, and what did he want, and what did he fear?