Like Life Page 11

  “I can drive you to the station to catch the ten-o-two train, if you want to leave in fifteen minutes,” said Millie. She slid sidesaddle into a chair and began eating a second muffin. Her manner was sprinkled with youthful motions, as if her body were on occasion falling into a memory or a wish.

  “That would be lovely, thanks,” said John.

  “Did you really not like living in England?” asked Millie, but they were both eating muffins, and it was hard to talk.

  At the station she pressed a twenty into his hand and kissed him on the cheek. He stepped back away from her and got on the train. “See a play,” Millie mouthed at him through the window.

  AT DINNER it was just she and Hane. Hane was talking about Jesus again, the Historical Jesus, how everyone misunderstood Christ’s prophetic powers, how Jesus himself had been mistaken.

  “Jesus thought the world was going to end,” said Hane, “but he was wrong. It wasn’t just Jerusalem. He was predicting the end for the whole world. Eschatologically, he got it wrong. He said it outright, but he was mistaken. The world kept right on.”

  “Perhaps he meant it as a kind of symbol. You know, poetically, not literally.” Millie had heard Hane suggest this himself. They were his words she was speaking, one side of his own self-argument.

  “No, he meant it literally,” Hane barked a little fiercely.

  “Well, we all make mistakes,” said Millie. “Isn’t the world funny that way.” She always tried to listen to Hane. She knew that few students registered for his courses anymore, and those that did tended to be local fundamentalists, young ignorant people, said Hane, who had no use for history or metaphor. They might as well just chuck the Bible! In class Hane’s primary aim was reconciling religion with science and history, but these young “Pentecostalists,” as Hane referred to them, didn’t believe in science or history. “They’re mindless, some of these kids. And if you want your soul nourished—and they do, I think—you’ve got to have a mind.”

  “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” said Millie.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Hane. He looked depressed and impatient. There were times when he felt he had married a stupid woman, and it made him feel alone in the world.

  “I’ve been thinking about the garbage barge,” said Millie. “I guess my mind’s wandering around, just like that heap of trash.” She smiled. She had been listening to all the reports on the barge, had charted its course from Islip, where she had relatives, to Morehead City, where she had relatives. “Imagine,” she had said to her neighbor in their backyards, near the prize tulips that belonged to neither one of them. “Relatives in both places! Garbagey relatives!”

  Millie wiped her mouth with her napkin. “It has nowhere to go,” she said now to her husband.

  Hane served himself more leftovers. He thought of Millie and this interest of hers in ecology. It baffled and awed him, like a female thing. In the kitchen Millie kept an assortment of boxes for recycling household supplies. She had boxes marked Aluminum, Plastic, Dry Trash, Wet Trash, Garbage. She had twice told him the difference between garbage and trash, but the distinction never meant that much to him, and he always forgot it. Last night she had told him about swans in the park who were making their nests from old boots and plastic six-pack rings. “Laying their eggs in litter,” she’d said. Then she told him to be more fatherly toward John Spee, to take a friendly interest in the boy.

  “Is this the end of the leftovers?” asked Hane. At his office at the college he ate very light lunches. Often he just brought a hard-boiled egg and sprinkled it carefully with salt, shaking the egg over the wastebasket if he got too much on by mistake.

  “This is it,” said Millie, standing. She picked up the skillet, and taking a serving spoon, scraped and swirled up the hardened, flat-bottomed remnants. “Here,” she said, holding it all in front of Hane. “Open up.”

  Hane scowled. “Come on, Millie.”

  “Just one last spoonful. Tomorrow I cook fresh.”

  Hane opened his mouth, and Millie fed him gently, carefully, because the spoon was large.

  Afterward they both sat in the living room and Hane read aloud a passage from 2 Thessalonians. Millie stared off like a child at the figurines, the clown and the ballerina, and thought about Ariel, traveling to foreign countries and meeting people. What it must be like to be young today, with all those opportunities. Once, last semester, before she’d left for England, Ariel had said, “You know, Mom, there’s a girl in my class at Rutgers with exactly your name: Mildred Keegan. Spelled the same and everything.”

  “Really?” exclaimed Millie. Her face had lit up. This was interesting.

  But Ariel was struck with afterthought. “Yeah. Only … well, actually she flunked out last week.” Then Ariel began to laugh, and had to get up and leave the room.

  AT NINE O’CLOCK, after she had peeled the labels off an assortment of tin cans, and rinsed and stacked them, Millie went to pick up John Spee at the train station.

  “So what all did you do in the city?” asked Millie, slowing for a red light and glancing at the boy. She had left the house in too much of a rush, and now, looking quickly in the rearview mirror, she attempted to smooth the front of her hair, which had fallen onto her forehead in a loose, droopy tangle. “Did you see a play? I hear there’s some funny ones.” Millie loved plays, but Hane didn’t so much.

  “No, didn’t feel like buzzing the bees for a play.” He said ply.

  “Oh,” said Millie. Her features sagged to a slight frown. Buzzing the bees. Ariel had used this expression once. Money, honey, bees, Ariel had explained impatiently. Get it? “Did you go down to Battery Park and see the Statue of Liberty? It’s so beautiful since they cleaned it.” Not that Millie had seen it herself, but it was in all the newsmagazines a while back, and the pictures had made it seem very holy and grand.

  The light turned green, and she swung the car around the corner. At night this part of New Jersey could seem quiet and sweet as a real hometown.

  “I just walked around and looked at the buildings,” said John, glancing away from her, out the car window at the small darkened business district of Terracebrook. “I went to the top of the Empire State Building, and then I went back and went to the top again.”

  “You went twice.”

  “Twice, yeah. Twice.”

  “Well, good!” Millie exclaimed. And when they pulled into the driveway, she exclaimed it again. “Well, good!”

  “SO HOW WAS the city?” boomed Hane, rising stiff and hearty, so awkwardly wanting to make the boy feel at home that he lunged at him a bit, big and creaky in the joints from having been sitting and reading all evening.

  “Fine, thank you,” said John, who then went quickly to his room.

  Millie gave Hane a worried look, then followed and knocked on John’s door. “John, would you like some supper? I’ve got a can of soup and some bread and cheese for a sandwich.”

  “No, thank you,” John called through the door. Millie thought she heard him crying—was he crying? She walked back into the living room toward Hane, who gave her a shrug, helpless, bewildered. He looked at her for some reassuring word.

  Millie shrugged back and walked past him into the kitchen. Hane followed her and stood in the doorway.

  “I guess I’m not the right sort of person for him,” he said. “I’m not a friendly man by nature. That’s what he needs.” Hane took off his glasses and cleaned them on the hem of his shirt.

  “You’re a stack of apologies,” said Millie, kissing him on the cheek. “Here. Squash this can.” She bent over and put a rinsed and label-less can near his shoe. Hane lifted his foot and came down on it with a bang.

  THE NEXT MORNING was Friday, and John Spee wanted to go into the city again. Millie drove him to catch the ten-o-two. “Have a nice time,” she said to him on the platform. “I’ll pick you up tonight.” As the train pulled up, steamy and deafening, she reminded him again about the half-price tickets for Broadway shows.

&nbs
p; Back at the house, Millie got out the Hoover and began vacuuming. Hane, who had no classes on Friday, sat in the living room doing a crossword puzzle. Millie vacuumed around his feet. “Lift up,” she said.

  In John Spee’s close and cluttered room she vacuumed the sills, even vacuumed the ceiling and the air, before she had to stop. All around the floor there were matchbooks from Greek coffee shops and odd fliers handed out on the street: Live Eddie; Crazy Girls; 20% off Dinner Specials, now until Easter. Underwear had been tossed on the floor, and there were socks balled in one corner of the desk.

  Millie flicked off the Hoover and began to tidy the desktop. This was at one time to have been her business headquarters, and now look at it. She picked up the socks and noticed a spiral notebook underneath. It looked a little like a notebook she had been using for her correspondence course, the same shade of blue, and she opened it to see.

  On the first page was written, Crazy People I Have Met in America. Underneath there was a list.

  1. Asian man in business suit waiting on subway platform. Screaming.

  2. Woman in park walking dog. Screaming. Tells dog to walk like a lady.

  3. In coffee shop, woman with food spilling out of her mouth. Yells at fork.

  Millie closed the notebook quickly. She was afraid to read on, afraid of what number four might be, or number five. She put the notebook out of her mind and moved away from the desk, unplugged the Hoover, wound up the cord, then collected the odd, inside-out clumps of clothes from under the cot and thought again of her garbage business, how she had hoped to run it out of this very room, how it seemed now to have crawled back in here—her poor little business!—looking a lot like laundry. What she had wanted was garbage, and instead she got laundry. “Ha!” She laughed out loud.

  “What?” called Hane. He was still doing the crossword in the living room.

  “Not you,” said Millie. “I’m just going to put some things in the wash for John.” She went downstairs to the laundry room, with its hampers of recyclable rags, its boxes of biodegradable detergent, its cartons of bottles with the labels soaked off them, the bags of aluminum foil and tins. This was an office, in a way, a one-woman room: a stand against the world. Or for the world. She meant for the world.

  Millie flicked on the radio she kept propped on the dryer. She waited through two commercials, and then the news came on: The garbage barge was heading back from Louisiana. “I’ll bet in that garbage there’s a lot of trash,” she wagered aloud. This was her distinction between garbage and trash, which she had explained many times to Hane: Garbage was moist and rotting and had to be plowed under. Trash was primmer and papery and could be reused. Garbage could be burned for gas, but trash could be dressed up and reissued. Retissued! Recycled Kleenex, made from cheap, recyclable paper—that was a truly viable thing, that was something she had hoped to emphasize, but perhaps she had not highlighted it enough in her initial materials. Perhaps people thought she was talking about garbage when she was talking about trash. Or vice versa. Perhaps no one had understood. Certainly, she had neglected to stress her best idea, the one about subliminal advertising on soap operas: having characters talk about their diseases and affairs at the same time that they peeled labels off cans and bundled newspapers. She was sure you could get programs to do this.

  She turned the washer dial to Gentle and pushed it in. Warm water rushed into the machine like a falls, like a honeymoon, recycled, the same one, over and over.

  WHEN MILLIE picked John up at the station, he told her about the buildings again.

  “You probably didn’t get a chance to see a play, then,” said Millie, but he didn’t seem to hear her.

  “Going in tomorrow to look some more,” he said. He flicked his lighter until it lit. He smoked nervously. “Great cars there, too.”

  “Well, wonderful,” said Millie. But when she looked at him there was a grayness in his face. His life seemed to be untacking itself, lying loose about him like a blouse. A life could do that. Millie thought of people in the neighborhood she might introduce him to. There was a boy of about twenty-two who lived down the street. He worked at a lawn and seed company and seemed like the friendly sort.

  “There’s someone on the street I should introduce you to,” she said. “He’s a boy about your age. I think you’d like him.”

  “Really don’t want to meet anyone,” he said. He pronounced it mate. “Unless I off to.”

  “Oh, no,” said Millie. “You don’t off to.” Sometimes she slipped accidentally into his accent. She hoped it made him feel more at home.

  In the morning she drove him again to the station for the ten-o-two train. “I’m getting fond of this little jaunt every day,” she said. She smiled and meant it. She threw her arms around the boy, and this time he kissed her back.

  AT MIDNIGHT that same day, Ariel phoned from Europe. She was traveling through the Continent—English universities had long spring vacations, a month, and she had headed off to France and to Italy, from where she was calling.

  “Venice!” exclaimed Millie. “How wonderful!”

  “That’s just great, honey,” said Hane on the bedroom extension. He didn’t like to travel much, but he didn’t mind it in other people.

  “Of course,” said Ariel, “there’s an illusion here that you are separate from the garbage. That the water and food are different from the canal sewage. It’s a crucial illusion to maintain. A psychological passport.”

  A psychological passport! How her daughter spoke! Children just got so far away from you. “What’s the food like?” asked Millie. “Are you eating a lot of manicotti?”

  “Swamp food. Watercress and dark fishes.”

  “Oh, I so envy you,” said Millie. “Imagine, Hane, being in Venice, Italy.”

  “How’s John Spee?” asked Ariel, changing the subject. Often when she phoned her parents, they each got on separate extensions and just talked to each other. They discussed money problems and the other’s faults with a ferocity they couldn’t quite manage face to face.

  “All right,” said Millie. “John is out taking a walk right now around the neighborhood, though it’s a little late for it.”

  “He is? What time is it?”

  “It’s about midnight,” said Hane on the other extension. He was in his pajamas, under the covers.

  “Gee, I miscalculated the time. I hope I didn’t wake you guys up.”

  “Of course not, honey,” said Millie. “You can phone anytime.”

  “So it’s midnight and John Spee’s walking around in that depressing suburban neighborhood? How frightening.” Ariel’s voice was staticky but loud. The thoughtless singsong of her words sunk its way into Millie like something both rusty and honed. “Is he alone?”

  “Yes,” said Millie. “He probably just wanted some fresh air. He’s been spending all his days in the city. He keeps going to the top of the Empire State Building, then just walks around looking at other tall buildings. And the cars. He hasn’t been to any plays or anything.”

  There was a silence. Hane cleared his throat and said into the phone, “I suppose I’m not the best sort of person for him. He probably needs a man who is better with kids. Somebody athletic, maybe.”

  “Tell us more about Italy, dear,” Millie broke in. She imagined Italy would be like Florida, all colors and light, but with a glorious ruin here and there, and large stone men with no clothes but with lovely pigeons on their heads. Perhaps there were plays.

  “It’s great,” said Ariel. “It’s hard to describe.”

  At twelve-fifteen they hung up. Hane, because he was reading the Scripture the next morning in church, went off to sleep. But Millie was restless and roamed the house, room after room, waiting for John to return. She thought about Ariel again, how much the girl’s approval had come to mean to her, and wondered how one’s children got so powerful that way. The week before Ariel left for England, the two of them had gone to a movie together. It was something they had not done since Ariel had been little, and so
Millie had looked forward to it, like a kind of party. But during the opening credits Millie had started talking. She started to tell Ariel about someone she knew who used to be a garbage man but who was now making short industrial films for different companies. He had taken a correspondence course.

  “Mom, you’re talking so loudly,” Ariel hissed at her in the dark of the movie theater. Ariel had pressed her index finger to her lips and said, “Shhhh!” as if Millie were a child. The movie had started, and Millie looked away, her face crumpling, her hand to her eyes so her daughter couldn’t see. She tried to concentrate on the movie, the sounds and voices of it, but it all seemed underwater and far away. When afterward, in a restaurant, Ariel wanted to discuss the film, the way she said she always did—an intellectual discussion like a college course—Millie had just nodded and shrugged. Occasionally she had tried to smile at her daughter, saying, “Oh, I agree with you there,” but the smile flickered and trembled and Ariel had looked at her, at a loss, as if her own mother were an idiot who had followed her to the movie theater, hoping only for a kind word or a dime.

  Millie looked out the guest room window—John Spee’s room—into the night to see whether she might spy John, circling the house or kicking a stone along the street. The moon was full, a porthole of sun, and Millie half expected to glimpse John sitting on someone’s front step, not theirs, kneecaps pressed into the soft bulges of his eyes. How disappointing America must seem. To wander the streets of a city that was not yours, a city with its back turned, to be a boy from far away and step ashore here, one’s imagination suddenly so concrete and mistaken, how could that not break your heart? But perhaps, she thought, John had dreamed so long and hard of this place that he had hoped it right out of existence. Probably no place in the world could withstand such an assault of human wishing.

  She turned away from the window and again opened the blue notebook on the desk.

  More Crazy People I Have Seen in the States (than anywhere).

  11. Woman with white worms on her legs. Flicking off worms.