The Slide: A Novel Page 6
From the inside, darkness isn’t as dark. My eyes adjusted quickly to the light from the only window. Boxes were stacked in awkward piles that looked like they might fall at any moment. Here was the only room in the house untouched by my mother’s decoration, the structure in its raw state. Planks for floor, walls and ceiling of poofy insulation. This was my family’s attic, an explosion of data. I wondered what could possibly be inside all the boxes. I inhaled and panned from one wall to the other and back again.
There was somebody sitting on a box. A person. He was shirtless and shoeless, wearing a bathing suit and water wings. He was sopping wet and dripping onto the floor. And he was feeding squirrels.
“If you’re going to stare like that this isn’t going to work do you understand.”
Low and steady, his voice sounded like someone translating words into English that had just recently been translated into some other language, from English. I nodded several times in succession.
“I’m worried about you,” he said. “You used to be so smart and composed and now look at you you’re a mess. These furry guys will spend all night long with you if you’re holding food look see how they’re waiting for me they will wait all night.”
I moved a step toward him. The attic smelled like trapped breath. Freddy was in perfectly adequate shape, not fat and not skinny. He looked to have ten pounds on me, no more. But what distinguished him as a character was the authority with which he sat on that box and fed the squirrels. He had a motorcyclist’s ease about him, a formal serenity that gave the impression of someone who knew precisely what was what. I took him seriously—this despite the bright orange water wings around his arms.
“I have advice to give you if you want it I don’t know if it will help,” he said.
“You’re Freddy,” I said idiotically.
There was no doubt that this was my dead brother, grown. Age twenty-seven, a spitting image of my father. He sat on a box with his elbows pressed against his thighs, bent forward, holding what looked like a dinner roll. Five squirrels waited motionless at his feet.
“I’ve been waiting to give you advice and now you’re finally here.”
“Do you mind if I sit?”
“Sit if you want but please don’t stare it’s not polite to stare.”
I sat a few boxes over, and for the next several minutes that was it. I sat on the box and he fed the squirrels and I had a brother. I tried to steal glances in directions I hoped he wouldn’t notice. Older brother, mine. I looked at his bare wet feet and followed his legs up to his knees and elbows, gliding over the water wings to his forearms and hands.
“I’m being serious if you insist on staring I’ll have to leave I mean it.”
“Sorry,” I said, and looked to the floorboards.
“I expected you would come up here sooner that was the whole point of the squirrels you know but instead you stayed down there and suffered why didn’t you just come up to see?”
“I was hoping they’d go away on their own,” I said.
His hands and fingers were thin and pruny, waiflike. The squirrels scurried when he broke a piece of bread from the roll and dropped it to them. The drip off his wet shorts was a steady pulse of taps, taps.
“You don’t want to stay up here all night so I guess I could give you the advice now if you want but really I mean it’s not very good don’t get your hopes up.”
“I need advice badly,” I said. “Please give me advice.”
“Okay.” He threw the rest of the dinner roll to the squirrels. “First don’t smoke because it will kill you quicker than you could ever imagine.”
I watched the squirrels watching him and felt him watching me.
“Alright,” I said. “Good.”
“Second don’t take Richard or Carla for granted because they are amazing parents and before you know it they will be dead.”
“But I don’t take them for granted,” I said.
“You’re lying you don’t appreciate all you do is watch. One of the things that happens when you die is you can tell who’s lying and who’s not or maybe it’s not like this for everyone who dies but it is for me so stop lying and stop watching and start appreciating. Love alright listen love is the issue with them Potter because they love you so much they ache and tremble sometimes because all they’ve ever wanted was to make this love real to you.”
I nodded and looked at Freddy’s wet feet.
“Also you I mean you Potter should love whomever you can love and love them with your whole complete body throw everything you have into it because there is nothing else that matters.”
How was it so simple when he said it? Words layered like scripture over the rhythm of falling water. The older brother from beyond the grave explains the fantastically contrived cult of human emotion in fifty words or less. Simplicity, the tap tap of falling water, Freddy sitting in utter, if damp, peace. While I was sick at heart.
I realized that despite his warnings and despite my attempts to honor his wishes, I was staring. First I was staring at him, at the ghostly shiny droplets of water that covered his body. As I stared, the drops began to dry, and I found myself staring more and more through him, past him, at the cardboard boxes of who knew what part of our family history. Freddy, offended by my staring, was gone, gone away with his water wings and advice, leaving behind only a small puddle.
“Shit,” I said.
Silence like a cinder block in the middle of a square room. The squirrels watched me, up on their haunches, beady little eyes and mouths aimed into my chest before skittering off into their dark corners.
june
five
childhood. My mother’s fingernails would brush against my back, light as cork. Break the news of a new day. She scratched long soft lines and my eyes would open and she was there, beaming. Morning, sonny boy. How many mornings did she open the shades and then leave, and minutes later call up the stairs to make sure I was getting ready for school? Thousands, more.
Standing in a great green expanse of city park, my father, our dedication to the pursuit of Catch. His glove from high school, supremely brown, mitt, he called it, ancient term, stained with years of oil and use. These memories are percussive and wordless. Catch. An occasional apology when my throw sailed out of reach. A knuckleball that defied physics and expectation, unimaginable fatherhood hands. I remember the first halves of car rides home, then the garage door crawling open as I woke with seat belt pressed into my cheek.
Someone must already have noted: memory weighs more at night.
I woke to my mother standing by my bed, clutching the phone.
I sat up quickly. “What’s wrong?”
“Wrong? Oh.”
What followed was a loaded moment of her looking down at me, either baffled by the question or torn whether or not to answer.
“Is Dad okay?”
She nodded. There was mud packed beneath her fingernails and beads of sweat lining the top of her forehead. The alarm clock said 6:30 in the morning and she had been gardening. I could hear my father in the kitchen. She glanced at the phone to confirm that her hand was covering the mouthpiece.
“Mom?”
“There’s a man on the phone for you. I should have asked his name.”
I smiled. She smiled. Then she left.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Mays. Exciting news to share.”
“I don’t know who you are,” I said.
“Alex, from ProTemps. This morning I received a request for a set of legs at the Pine Ridge Water Company.”
How early, exactly, did everyone else in the world begin their day?
“It’s six-thirty.”
“Yes it is! Now, Potter, you’re to show up at Pine Ridge Water Co’s main offices in the Hanley Industrial Park and report to a Ms. Deborah short Debbie Dinkles, who has assured me that the position is not mentally taxing. Dress is casual, allowing for movement. Any questions?”
None. I knew: where to go, when, what to wear, an
d who to find. I dressed in shorts and running shoes. Breakfast was of course ready in the kitchen.
“I think I just got a job.”
The parents locked eyes in some private moment of confirmation. Carla went to open the refrigerator and look inside. The newspaper sat folded open next to my father’s breakfast. He was nodding.
“I’m glad to hear it. Good for you.”
It didn’t appear that my mother was looking for anything in particular, just standing upright in the open door, wet with early-morning sweat.
“What did you find?” he asked.
“No clue.” I dipped toast into runny egg yolk. “Something at the Pine Ridge Water Company.”
“Good for you. I’m glad to hear it.”
It was a minute before my mother shut the refrigerator and stepped away with the makings for three miniature sandwiches, which she handed to me by the front door with a small smile and a series of blinks. Thank you.
At Pine Ridge, I was surprised to find myself ushered into the small office of Debbie Dinkles, president of the company, where I sat and listened attentively. I kept my hands folded in my lap and maintained eye contact. Debbie was a thin, anxious woman who hotched around as she spoke, rearranging papers on the desk and constantly adjusting her chair. Pine Ridge delivered five-gallon bottles of water in three grades, Purified, Natural Spring, and Premium. They had a crew of drivers to handle daily delivery routes, but they needed someone to pick up the extra orders they expected as a response to their Summer Special promotion. Three complimentary bottles along with a free month of cooler rental: a trial offer that expired after a month, at which point normal billing would commence automatically. I would potentially drive a van, installing coolers and bottles for new customers.
“The question is,” she said, pushing a bowl of M&M’s across the desk, “can I trust you? Are you a reliable and hard worker?”
“I believe so, Debbie.” I reached for a handful of candy. “Of course, to be totally honest I can’t say for sure. I know my father is the single hardest worker I’ve ever seen. Work is to him what breath is to me. So it would stand to reason that I’d be both reliable. And hard.”
“Father.” She looked to a file in front of her, which I hoped wasn’t the file from ProTemps. “I wondered when they sent this over. I thought, Mays. I wonder if he’s Richard’s son?”
I nodded.
“Richard Mays! The Small Local Business Initiatives. And I can see it in the nose. Of course.”
“Dad’s great,” I said, reaching for the M&M’s.
“Then I’ll make a copy of your driver’s license, okay, and we’ll get hopping.”
Outside her office, I was given a deep-green parody of a Polo shirt with the company’s logo embroidered on the left breast. I met Dennis Looper, a pockmarked delivery manager in his upper forties with anemic gray hair running laterally across his head. He took me along for a day’s work and made me follow our progress on a road map in my lap. He showed me how to carry bottles so your hand doesn’t fall off. My hand almost fell off. He espoused copious opinions on race, gender, the endemic idiocy of the world. He gave me step-by-step instructions for filling out the invoice, which part you give to the customer, which you keep to file back at the office. He showed me how to calculate sales tax. I was quite obviously an idiot.
And the other drivers, I was pretty sure, hated me. When the day was through, Dennis sat me down in the Pine Ridge lunchroom. Gradually they arrived, middle-age white males trained to operate heavy machinery, skin-hardened men who had license to drive forklifts and four-axle trucks. The drivers worked slowly through their day’s paperwork at the wobbly table in the Pine Ridge lunchroom, sharing tired accounts of children and ex-wives, VFW bars and ball games. Adhering to body language I hoped illustrated nonjudgmental interest, I quietly listened to this runoff from a world I’d never known. Insurance premiums were on the rise. A wife’s shit-worthless brother kept asking to borrow money. About the crew who worked the warehouse I heard nigger and chocolate, terms uttered quietly, semi-illicitly. Words my exclusive West Coast liberal arts school would react to with a series of candlelight vigils, silent nighttime marches, and solemn classrooms.
I wasn’t sure why I was still there.
When Dennis began speaking to me, I realized he’d waited for the room to fill so he could make a production of it. Smiling, he said he didn’t care whose son I was, Jesus H. Christ Himself ’s for all he cared, first time I showed up late I’d be fired. Grown men with wrinkled faces chuckled and watched. I nodded slowly. He said if I didn’t think, if I even thought to have the thought that I couldn’t handle all the lifting, then how’s about I save us both the trouble and step aside now. The drivers crossed thick arms and leaned back in folding chairs. They murmured and laughed conspiratorially and I felt a new wave of sweat emerge from a million tiny holes. Dennis promised the job would be nine times harder than anything he imagined a still-baby-pudged boy like myself had ever been called upon to do. He said college diploma be damned, you waste my time I’ll find a way to take it back from you. Boy.
Look hard enough into eyes and you can see through them, glimpse the machinery operating these faces, the classical distaste for untested youth. The squint of judgment, the vacant gaze of absolute indifference, the steely eyes of those gauging privilege. The child sits among men, quivering.
“I don’t plan on letting anyone down.”
“Then I suggest you pull that ass back here at eight o’clock tomorrow A.M. Prompt.”
At home, I found a new package sitting at the foot of the table inside the front door. White and rectangular, no bigger than a shoebox, with one top corner covered in postage and international ink stamps. Poste Italiane.
No, no, I would not let this one beat me. This inanimate box. Upstairs I set it on the bed while I peeled drenched cotton from my frame. I carried it into the bathroom, closed the toilet lid, and placed the box on top. Then a shower, shock of cold water on filthy-hot skin, the slowly achieved equilibrium. I dried with a very soft and very large towel.
I was still naked when I opened the box. I stood in front of the sink and cut the tape with a nail clipper, then probed inside with a finger. Counted two objects, smooth and cool and rock solid. Spheres. There was a note also, which I set aside while I let the balls roll around my palm and clack together. There was a redemptive, simple beauty to these balls—a peacefulness I could appreciate after a full day of adult labor. They arrested and calmed.
With the other hand I opened the letter:
Potter—
I don’t believe I know anything right now, but something is making me think this trip should be longer. So we extended our train passes and shaved our heads. Carmel’s looks like a peanut. I hope you’re well. I hope you’re well. I hope you’re well.
Loves,
Audrey
I checked the postmark. Nine days. For nine days Audrey knew she wasn’t coming back on schedule while I carried ignorantly on. I dropped the note into the toilet. I opened the window and threw the balls into the neighbor’s backyard. I flushed the toilet. Then I got dressed and drove to Stuart’s pool, where I drank and drank and then slept with my green shirt as a pillow. The next morning I woke up, put the shirt on, and drove to my first ever day of professional work.
Pine Ridge Water abided by no real system of inventory, neither for bottles nor coolers, so I erred on the side of abundance. I pulled bottles from great four-by-three-by-four metal racks and wheeled them to the van on a splintering dolly. Loaded one at a time, forty pounds each, gripping around the neck and pinching. I leaned and pushed shut the rusty door, climbed behind the wheel, and reversed out of the warehouse.
The van was old and white and windowless. And creepy. Only a Pine Ridge door magnet distinguished it from the gazillion cable and plumbing and child-molesting vans like it. With just one exterior mirror, cracked badly, the van gave little more than a vague idea what was behind me at any time. But it did move, and this was key.
“Damn if it isn’t about time.”
One of the men stood and introduced himself as Carl, fella who’s been calling over and over again. I smiled. The others laughed and then coughed from laughing too hard. Carl said he didn’t care where I put the cooler, as long as it worked. Warm air circulated through the room. They continued to laugh and I threw in a sleeve of paper cups, then thought what the hell and added two Premium bottles, gratis. Harmless gift. The old men clapped and whooped and laughed and coughed.
Other deliveries were as brief as setting bottles on a porch, collecting empty bottles, and tossing them into the back of the van. Mine was an antiroute of sorts, half drawn from the MUST DO stack of complaints in the office, half in response to the Summer Special. Into the kitchen nooks of houses bigger and colder than museums of modern art, switching out bottles while housewives looked through Lands’ End catalogs. Audrey now hairless, Audrey now at the hands of the robot with her emotionless finalities, her ones and zeros. Meanwhile, my daily routine was to become one of penetration into these homes dense with history, displayed like exhibits for a highly specific and private audience, which suddenly and mysteriously was me. The water guy. Potter Mays.