Cook played with snakes and spiders in the back seat on the way home. Sitting there by himself, with Mom and Dad in front, he felt just like a little Roy Pillow, Jr.
He had gone over THE HORROR! again the night before, and he had taken another look at the first-night questionnaire. As a result, he had a witch’s brew of beasts to choose from. He played quietly—a good little boy. Since each partner was to be surprised by one snake or spider, he arranged his creatures in pairs, like Noah.
Dan, Beth thinks you’re a failure.
Beth, you’ve communicated to Dan that he’s a failure just enough to make him feel like one.
He liked that pair pretty well. He liked the thematic link provided by “failure,” and he liked the what-goes-around-comes-around pow! back in Beth’s face.
Dan, Beth’s not a bad mother.
Beth, Dan’s not a failure.
Nicely balanced, that.
Dan, you know exactly when Beth needs you, and you just walk away.
Beth, you’ve got a perpetual grudge about not getting what is rightfully yours from Dan, but it comes out at the wrong times, making you into a bitch.
That pair was guaranteed to foster discussion.
There were other candidates, but Cook kept them in their cages for the moment. He thought about all he had been through with Dan and Beth. It felt like a lot, but considering how long they had been married, it was no doubt a tiny sample from a rich tradition. This led Cook to one simple question: what possessed two intelligent people of good will who were in pursuit of the same goal to snarl at each other like jackals over a carcass? Didn’t they both want the marriage to thrive?
Beth certainly did. She worked as hard on the marriage as Dan did on the house. But Dan must have wanted it, too. Why else would he hang in there through such misery? Why else would he tolerate Cook’s nagging omnipresence? But what kind of marriage did Dan want? One where he and Beth coexisted? A marriage of “parallel lines,” as he had put it? If so, then he and Beth, though intelligent and good-willed, weren’t pursuing the same goal after all. And the answer to Cook’s question was that the question was flawed. Dan and Beth snarled at each other like jackals because they wanted different things.
In the front seat, Dan’s parallel line swerved a bit toward Beth as he asked, “What time is our flight tomorrow?”
“To New York or to Rome?” she asked, turning to look at him.
“New York.”
“Late morning. Around eleven. I’ll check when we get home.” She paused. “Why?”
“Just wondering.”
Beth continued to look at Dan a moment, then turned and faced forward again. Dan exited Highway 40 and zigzagged until he picked up another highway heading north. To the west, the weather was strange. Huge, dark clouds sat heavily in the distance, but closer—so close that Cook felt he could touch them—white puffs brightly lit by the sun were streaking from south to north. The two cloud groups seemed to be from different worlds. Cook felt as if he were gazing into a fantastic diorama.
“How about the New York to Rome flight?” Dan asked.
“It leaves at six-thirty. We have a long layover, but we decided to do it that way instead of taking a risk on missing our connection. Remember?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Why?”
Dan shrugged. “Just curious.” He glanced at Beth. “Shall we ask him about house-sitting?”
“Sure.” Beth turned toward Cook. “Jeremy, would you like to stay in the house for the two weeks we’re gone?”
Cook felt a dumb look play across his face.
“You don’t have another place to stay in St. Louis, do you?” she said.
“No.”
“Were you going somewhere?”
“No.” The fact of the matter was that he had planned nothing at all, and he felt embarrassed to admit this. He also felt a little out of touch with reality. By nature he was a poor advance planner, but this was ridiculous.
“Then stay at the house. You could do the watering and save us some money there, and we could save you rent for two weeks. Besides, we don’t like to leave the house empty. You’d be doing us a favor.”
“Let me think about it,” said Cook. Beth looked at him a moment longer, smiled, and turned back around.
“All I ask,” said Dan, looking at Cook in the rearview mirror, “is that if you get any action, change the sheets.”
Beth gave Dan a tired but affectionate look. “I knew you were going to say that.”
Dan exited the highway and drove through a commercial area Cook recognized from his two adventures at Topper’s. But Cook’s attention was on himself, not on his surroundings. The only explanation he could think of for his lack of planning was that he had become dependent on Pillow. Insofar as he had thought about his future, he had assumed Pillow would dictate it to him.
Beth sighed and looked out the window. “I’m blue,” she said. “I miss Robbie already.”
“Yeah,” said Dan. “Try to work on imagining him being noisy or messy. That helps.”
“I guess.”
They rode in silence for a while. Then Dan said, “Did he say anything more to you about what happened yesterday?”
“No,” said Beth, turning to Dan with interest. She paused. “Why?”
Dan shrugged. “Just curious.”
Cook burst out laughing.
Dan looked at him in the mirror. “You find the memory of Robbie crying funny?”
“No,” said Cook. “Sorry.”
“What is it?” said Beth.
“Nothing,” Cook said. “Sorry.” But he promptly burst out laughing again.
“Goddammit,” said Dan.
“Sorry,” Cook said quickly. “Sorry sorry sorry.”
Dan muttered something under his breath and then fell silent. Beth gave Cook a funny frown that was hard to read.
Cook was about to laugh again, but he stopped it by talking. “The reason I’m laughing is that the same thing happened three times in a row.”
“What thing?” said Beth.
“You said ‘Why?’ and Dan shrugged and grunted.”
“So what?” said Dan.
Cook said, “Beth wants to talk. You don’t. That’s what. It’s funny to see it like that. It’s just so obvious.”
“Oh, get a job,” Dan muttered.
“I have a job, Dan. How about you?”
Dan flinched. “I’ve got a job. I’ve got a helluva lot more of a job than you do.”
“Honey,” Beth said.
“Not from what I hear,” said Cook. He had chosen his first beast.
Dan fell silent.
Beth frowned and looked from Cook to Dan.
Cook let the beast all the way out of its cage. “Beth, you’ll be interested to learn that Dan plans to quit the family business and become a schoolteacher.”
“Fuck you,” Dan snapped over his shoulder.
Beth had given a little laugh of confusion at Cook’s words, but now she stared at Dan. “What? What’s going on?”
“It’s something I’m thinking about,” Dan said. “I’m considering it.”
“Bruce says it’s a certainty,” Cook said.
“Shut up!” Dan yelled.
“What are you talking about?” Beth said, now looking panicked.
Dan took a deep breath and said, “I’m thinking of quitting the business.”
Beth stared at him. “I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it,” Dan said soberly.
Beth shook her head. “I’m not hearing you right. This isn’t happening.”
“It’s happening,” Dan said. He came to a stop at a red light and looked at Beth. “It happens all the time. People change jobs.”
“God, you’re serious, aren’t you? What are you going to do?”
“I want to be a schoolteacher. Like you.”
Beth’s mouth was wide open. She closed it, swallowed, and opened it again. “I’m going to be sick.”
“No you’re not. You’ll get used to it.”
“Oh?” Beth said, her eyes hardening. “Where? In some stinking little house? Do you know what you would make as a teacher compared to what you make now?”
The light changed to green and Dan pulled forward.
“We’ll have to make some adjustments,” he said calmly. “It can be done.”
Beth jerked in her seat with frustration and rage. “It’s all decided, isn’t it? You’re talking like it’s all over. Bruce knows about it. Jeremy knows about it. When did you plan to tell me? After you told Robbie?”
“I was going to wait until after the trip.”
“Great. So considerate.” She shook her head again. “I can’t believe this. After all they’ve done for you.”
Dan calmly pulled the car over to the curb, turned off the ignition, and set the emergency brake. He turned to Beth and said, “Will you please think about what you’re saying? Will you please just listen to your fucking self?”
Beth glared at him.
“You know that I’ve done as much for the business as it’s done for me. You know that.”
“They didn’t have to take you in.”
“Take me in? They gave me the job because they knew I’d be good at it. And I have been. Now I’m ready for something else.”
Cook released his second beast. “Beth talks like that, Dan, because deep down she believes you’re a failure. I’ll be quiet now.”
“Get out, Jeremy,” Dan said. “Get out of the fucking car.”
Cook didn’t move.
Beth had whirled on Cook and was giving him a hard, brittle look. “How dare you say that! I don’t think any such thing.”
Cook sat still. This Roy Pillow, Jr., business was tough. He liked Missy Pillow a lot better.
Dan said to Beth, “I’m miserable in my work. You know that.”
“You’ve never said you wanted to do something else. And teaching? You’ve never said a word about teaching.”
“Yes I have. You just haven’t heard me.”
“You’d be making a fraction of what you make now.”
“Yep. A small fraction, too.”
Beth’s eyes widened. “You’re gloating! You’re gloating!”
“No I’m not.”
“You’re punishing me! You’re loving this!”
“I am not. Why would I want to punish you?”
Beth took a deep breath. “God, I’m gonna be sick.”
Dan stared at Beth. He seemed to be waiting for the outcome of her prediction. “Is Jeremy right? Do you think I’m a failure?”
“Of course not.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“What?”
“You think I’m a failure.”
“You’re just attacking me because you feel guilty for hurting me.”
Dan gave a little laugh. “You said I was gloating and loving it. Now you’re saying I feel guilty about it. Which is true? They both can’t—”
“Oh fuck you.”
There was a pause. Dan cleared his throat and seemed to regroup his thoughts. “Look at your father,” he said. “He was tremendously successful. He’s this big American hero in your family—the model of what a man should be. Look at Bruce. He’s bought that image and he’s a slave to it. That’s why he’s a wreck. You’ve bought it, too. I’m not a complete man to you.”
Beth stared at him. “It’s pathetic to hear you talk like this.”
“You mean it’s unmanly?”
Beth turned to Cook, appealing for help. “He’s obsessed with manliness. Have I ever said anything about manliness? Have I?” She looked back at Dan. “It’s your hangup.”
“It’s my hangup because it’s yours. You’ve made it mine. You’ve fucked me up.” Dan raised his hands, making two anguished claws in front of him. “When we met and fell in love, I was everything to you. I could do anything. I knew all there was to know about all there is in the world. You thought I was just … wonderful. And then, year by year, we’ve lost that. We end up here, I end up in the business, you make comparisons, and I shrink. Don’t you remember how you saw me? Don’t you? That’s all I want.”
“We’re grown up now, Dan. College is over.”
Dan’s eyes flashed. “That’s really—”
“People with ten-year-olds shouldn’t be wondering what they’re going to do with their lives.”
“And wives who love their husbands should give them the freedom to do what they want to. Christ. I tell you I’m miserable in my work and you whine about moving into a stinking little house. Your first reaction is selfish. It’s always selfish. It’s always ‘What about me?’ Well, I’m saying this is what I’m going to do, and if it means we have to downgrade, we have to downgrade, and if you can’t hack it, it’s just too bad.”
Beth wrestled with the door handle and flung open the car door. She got out and stormed down the sidewalk. Cook looked around, curious now to see where they were. He recognized the library across the street. She wouldn’t have far to walk.
Cook said, “I remember your mentioning once that she sometimes gets up and leaves in the middle of an argument.”
“Fuck you,” Dan said. Evidently he was going to hold a grudge for a while. They watched Beth. She turned a corner and disappeared from view. “Damn it,” Dan said. He grabbed his door handle. “You drive home, okay? You know where we are? Take a right at the second light, then take the very next right, and that brings you back to the house. Okay?”
“Where are you going?”
Dan paused, frowning, the door half open. “After Beth, you idiot.”
“Why?”
This time Dan turned his frown fully on Cook. “Because she’s upset!” He got out and hurried down the sidewalk after her.
Cook drove the car home. He went inside and put Dan’s keys on the kitchen counter. No one was on the first floor. Upstairs, he found the bedroom door closed and heard speech on the other side of it—rapid and insistent speech. He knocked on the door.
“No,” Dan said.
“No,” said Beth.
Cook stood there a moment, baffled. How could they exclude him at a time like this? Sneaking into the bedroom was a dirty trick.
He went up to his room and lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling as he listened to the sounds from the room below. He heard no distinct words—just a flow of sounds. It was like listening to a river. After a while he heard their bedroom door open. He jumped to his feet and hurried down the stairs, catching them when they reached the first floor. Beth was in the lead. She went through the swinging door into the kitchen, letting it bang into Dan. Dan went through it and let it bang into Cook.
“It’s not a shock,” Dan said, as he had been saying all the way down the stairs. “It’s not a shock at all. I knew you thought I was a failure. In fact saying it is a way of putting it out there for us to look at. We can see how wrong it is.”
Beth was behind the open refrigerator door. When she stood up she looked more distressed than Cook had ever seen her. Her eyes went to him, then to Dan. Dan ignored Cook.
“It’s like when I called you a bad mother. It’s a distortion. You know it’s a distortion. You know I know it, or you never would have forgiven me.”
“Who says I have?” Beth snapped. She set down the diet soda she had taken from the refrigerator and opened a cupboard door. She took a cracker from a metal bin, but then she changed her mind and put it back. She picked up the soda and tried to open it, but she had some trouble with it.
“Want me to help you with that?” Dan said.
She yanked open a drawer, took out a fork, and used it to pry the tab open.
Dan said, “Right now you’re probably thinking the marriage is either over, or it’s going to go on in a very different way than you ever imagined it.” He hesitated. “And you’re right.” He seemed a little surprised, as if his original intention had been to suggest some third idea.
Beth burst out crying. “It’s hopeless,” she said.
“No it’s not,” Dan said, taking a step toward her.
“I can’t say anything!” She wiped her eyes. “I know what I should say, and I can’t. I know I should say, ‘Whatever you want. Wherever you want to work, honey. Whatever makes you happy.’ I should say, ‘If the business makes you unhappy and you want to teach, I’ll back you all the way.’ But I can’t!”
“You just did,” Dan said sadly.
Beth shook her head.
“You said it beautifully.”
“Oh God,” she said, and she seemed to heave all her anguish out in those two words.
The phone rang. Cook leaped to grab it before anyone else could, jostling Dan aside as he did. He wanted them to keep talking, to stay on track.
It was Beth’s mother. As soon as Cook said, “Hi, Rose,” Beth signaled with a violent head shake that she didn’t want to talk to her and left the kitchen. Dan was right behind her. Cook told Beth’s mother no one else was there. He put off her attempts to be sociable with him and hung up. But by the time he reached the second floor the bedroom door was already closed.
He went back up to his room and lay down and listened some more. Then he went to his little yellow desk. He was definitely done with “Roy Pillow, Jr.,” the little bastard, and was glad to turn a new leaf of The Pillow Manual:
DAY SIX
Mrs. Pillow.
He went to the phone. For the first time in his experience, Roy Pillow was not at the office. Cook let the phone ring and ring. He dialed Pillow’s number a dozen times in the next hour, both at the office and at home. He felt disoriented, abandoned, orphaned. Pillow at the office—this was a fact of life he had come to expect. Pillow not at the office meant that something was wrong. Unless Pillow was out tracking down Paula? He comforted himself with that thought. But what if something was horribly wrong? What if Pillow had dropped dead? That would mean he wasn’t on Paula’s trail at all. The thought terrified him.
Cook went down to the first floor and out onto the deck. It had rained the night before—the thunder had nearly thrown him out of bed once—but the day was hot now and muggier than ever. He went back inside, turned on the air conditioner in the sun-room, and closed the French doors. He turned on the radio and stretched out in the recliner, waiting for further developments.
Some time later, he heard the thud of the front door. He jumped to his feet and went to the living room window. Beth was getting into her car. He watched her drive off and went upstairs. The bedroom door was still closed. He sighed and returned to the sun-room.
A few minutes later, Dan came into the kitchen and got himself some iced tea. Cook turned off the radio, joined him in the kitchen, and followed him into the living room. They both sat down.
Dan took a long drink and said, “Something has happened.”
“What? Where did Beth go?”
“Just to the drugstore, to get some stuff for the trip. I didn’t mean that. I meant there’s been some give. She appreciates my position. She’s still freaked out, but she can see my side now.”
“I knew she would. You said she storms out of an argument when she senses you’re right. That’s why she got out of the car. I knew she suddenly saw it from your side.”
Dan smiled slightly. He took a swallow of iced tea.
“You’re right about her, Dan. Her views are traditional as hell. Mainstream American.”
“Yeah. It’s a bitch.”
“Money. Manhood. You’re completely right.”
“Yeah. I always did think I had a legitimate beef.”
“She’s got to change—”
“Yeah. And I think she will. She’s got a helluva lot of character.”
“—but you’ve got to change first.”
Dan seemed to trip in his forward progress. “Beth’s screwed up, so I’ve got to change?”
“Let me explain,” said Cook.
“No.”
“You see, Beth’s got this weakness—this major, major weakness. But you’ve got to be strong enough to let her be weak in that way. You’ve got to absorb it. Everybody’s got a big weakness, okay? And everybody who loves somebody has got to know their big weakness and absorb it.” Cook had said all this fast, for fear of being interrupted. But Dan was listening, so he slowed and caught his breath. “Right now, Beth’s weakness hits you right where you’re already insecure, so you lash out to bring her down, which makes her lash back. Imagine it differently. Imagine her being weak, and instead of getting mad you go to her. You comfort her. You say, ‘There, there.’ Hell, you did it when you got out of the car and went after her.”
“I didn’t say, ‘There, there.’”
“But you went after her. Unlike yesterday. Remember? We were watching Beth and her parents on the sidewalk, and you said Beth was upset, and what did you do? You went and stuck your head in a posthole. What an asshole!”
“What an asshole!” said Dan—but not in agreement. He seemed to be experimenting with the words, testing them.
“You’ve got the power to make her feel all better when she’s unhappy. You’ve got the power.”
Dan shook his head. “Where do you get this stuff? You sound so sure.”
“I am. I can see what Beth wants, because she doesn’t want it from me. She wants you to be a man, and that means you’ve got to stop being a man.”
“What is this—Zen counseling?”
“You’ve got to stop being a man in the sense of being an isolated dumbshit. You’ve got to be big and strong for her. Like in ‘The Man I Love.’ She plays it all the time. It’s about what she wants: a man who’s big and strong. You’ve got to be big and strong enough to become more womanly with her.”
Dan laughed. “Jesus. Did she tell you all this? Is that where you got it?”
“No. No woman would put it this way. They see it as being manly when you become womanly.”
Dan snorted. He took a drink of iced tea.
“My advice to you now, Dan, is to chat.”
Dan laughed.
“I mean it,” said Cook. “Chat. That’s how people are people together. They chat.”
“I don’t want to chat. I hate to chat.”
“You’ve probably never tried it.”
“What do you mean, anyway? Chat. Does that mean talk about what she wants to talk about?”
“Well, when you’re with her, what do you want to talk about?”
“Nothing.”
This time Cook laughed. “You’re such a man. You’re not a prick or a failure. You’re just a man.”
A wild look of incomprehension swept over Dan’s face.
“What do you want?” Cook asked. “To be alone? Is that it?”
“I want peace—peace in the valley. I just want to get on with my life.”
“Is Beth included?”
Dan took a sharp breath. “Not like she wants to be. She wants to be … She wants me to think of nothing but her.”
“What were you going to say?”
Dan hesitated. “I was going to say she wants to be the most important thing in my life.”
“Why didn’t you say it?”
“You know why.” Dan stood up and looked out the window. “She’s supposed to be the most important thing in my life. You think I don’t know that? Hell, that’s why I hate talking about this stuff. I know I don’t have the feelings I’m supposed to have, and I hate myself for it.”
“But you can have them.”
“God,” Dan said, shaking his head, “I’m just like her. I know what I should say, but it’s so hard.”
Cook stood up and joined Dan at the window. “It’s hard because the two of you have been enemies. When that changes, everything will change.” Through the trees in the park he thought he saw Beth’s car. “Is that Beth?”
“Yeah.”
Cook watched the car approach the corner of the park. “Someday she’ll say stuff that used to hurt you, and you’ll be able to hold her and say ‘There, there.’ And all the other stuff will be a joke, too.” He gestured out the window. “There’ll come a time when she pulls up to the curb and scrapes the tires, and you’ll just say, ‘Why, that’s Beth! She’s home! Isn’t it wonderful?’”
They watched her round the corner of the park, slowing without shifting down. When she accelerated out of the turn, they could hear the engine strain and ping. When she came to a stop, they heard the cruel sound of rubber and hubcap scraping on the curb.
Cook looked at Dan. His mouth and eyes were wide open in a frozen look of wild good cheer. Cook wasn’t sure if Dan was mocking his prediction or trying to make it come true.