The Slide: A Novel Read online

  I was the first back to the warehouse and rushed through my paperwork with the immediacy of a man pursued. Back home I found a small collection of luxury sedans and medium SUVs parked in front of my house. My father was on a trip to Detroit for a convention on the Decline of the American City. I could hear my mother’s company as I went immediately upstairs from the front door, a chorus of loaded laughter echoing through the house. I took my time showering before returning downstairs. I stood at the border between kitchen and living room, clinging to this small bit of separation. The room was full of divorced women drinking white wine. Six of them plus my mother over by the window, all smiling now at my appearance. I sensed that these women all knew something I didn’t, a secret gained through the emergence from the wreck of failed marriage. I remembered that this was supposed to be a book club, and I began to worry for my mother, slumming it with these divorcées. What kind of influence was this? Quiet comparisons going on across the room, inquiries into my life, my plans.

  “Yes,” I answered. “Still with the same girl.”

  Later I sat with Stuart at the pool’s deck table, the candle’s orange flame glowing into an otherwise silver dusk. I was admiring the abrasions on my hands, the blisters-turned-open-wounds. I watched my friend lean forward to light a cigarette from the candle, then held one of my hands up for him to see. He squinted and nodded approvingly.

  “I have to like what you’ve done about work. I’m impressed, Poot.”

  “Mostly I needed a steady reason to get out of the house. There’s something afoot in that home, something weird.”

  “Let’s linger a second on these hands of yours,” he said. “How did you and Audrey treat the holding-hands question?”

  “We disagreed,” I said.

  Our respective heights were such that to hold hands while walking, I would have to effect a slight shrug, or lean just a little bit away from her, in order for our hands to meet. I had on several occasions tried to explain this to her.

  “Then how about standing still?” she countered. “It would I guess kill you to take my hand once in a while just to say hello.”

  And I said, side by side? Standing still and holding hands as if overlooking some gorgeous view?

  “It’s not some mystery or riddle, Potter. You know how much I like it.”

  But over time I began to suspect it wasn’t about liking at all. For Audrey, holding hands represented a sort of proof, and I sometimes took exception to this ongoing need to prove what should otherwise be assumed.

  But that was love, she told me. That’s what I didn’t understand about proof.

  “You think it’s some like chore. When really it’s supposed to be a joy. That’s love: proving over and over. Lovers hold hands because they want to. If it feels like work, then it’s not proof.”

  And one morning, I remembered, she woke me with an elaboration on this point and spoke of an isolated beach she imagined, a trite piece of Caribbean fantasy. She must have been awake for a while. In her fantasy we woke up each morning and had our sweaty sex in the bamboo hut, or lean-to, or however she saw it. Then we would gather our things and walk to the beach, holding hands the whole way.

  “And then you go fishing while I sit down with needles and yarn, because I love you, and I want to knit you a cap.”

  “Knit cap,” I said, rolling over. “On the beach.”

  “Shut! Up! Look. I sit down in the sand and make something for the man I love. Anything. And I watch you go down to the rocks and stand over the water with your spear, and this is how the morning goes. I knit and you fish. And then at some point I hear you scream out in joy, and I look to see you smiling at me, holding up the spear with our breakfast on it. And you are smiling hugely and bursting and overcome with joy.”

  “So in this fantasy I’m the hunter and you’re the domesticator. Meanwhile, you’re about to have a minor in women’s studies.”

  “It’s our beach, Potter. It’s all ours and there’s no one there but us. No eyes no nothing, just us. Nobody is watching and we hold hands because we want to. No other reason. We made the view, it’s ours, and we hold hands because from where we’re standing, the world is a beautiful view. Do you see?”

  Stuart left briefly and returned with two more beers. I held the cold can between my injured hands. The labor was good, he had said so himself. No need to rehash these details of our past, or of Audrey’s postponed return, the metallic balls. I opened the beer and sat there with my friend, quietly, resting after a day of work.

  My brain would simply not complete the steps required to imagine Audrey bald.

  How silly I’d been before this job to think I knew what it meant to sweat. I threw myself into my new labor, driving and lifting and working. And sweating. Driving brought minor relief, but with no air conditioner, the sweat was constant. To accompany the tinny sound of radio through one blown speaker, I found myself reading road signs out loud in my normal speaking voice. I passed beneath billboards with huge radio call letters and an alluring catchphrase. A lamppost banner said, Hooray™ Downtown: Progress—Fun—Character. I wore a backwards Cardinals hat stained with a mountain range of sweat. I sweated a V onto my green shirt, the kind of sweat I had previously associated with tennis pros and middle-age pickup basketball.

  Sprawl—say the word slowly and it begins to make sense. Sspraaawwwwll.

  The current goal was Oakville, on the very southern edge of St. Louis County, which bore all the signposts of regional development. Empty lots cordoned off and marked for construction, immense corner gas stations facing each other across the street, brilliantly colored and glistening new. This was my father’s competition; downtown’s offspring growing into its own self-sustaining world, the implicit patricide. All these shiny, colorful places to consume set among aboveground pools, granite quarries, baseball diamonds, and go-kart tracks. I saw my turnoff as I passed it and threw all of my weight onto the brakes, sending a vanload of hollow plastic bottles tumbling. Cars honked halfheartedly, geese on quaaludes.

  There were kids playing tag in the yard on my right, lunging and sprinting after one another like sparring hyenas. Houses here were low and wide and brick, with cramped yards and garages full of hardware and bed frames and garden hoses. I saw stubby driveways and zoysia, plastic sunflowers that would spin if there were a breeze. I idled, scanning faded mailboxes and front doors. The invoice read: T. Worpley, 1427 Waldwick. I saw 1419, 1425, then 1431. I turned the van around, then backtracked even slower than I came. I stepped out of the van. I had until recently considered myself an intelligent young man.

  Leading from the sidewalk through a swath of dead grass was a dusty brown rut barely distinguishable from the yard. At the end was a small white building, not much bigger than a garage. I lifted a cooler from the van and carried it awkwardly along the path. Nailed into wooden siding, paint chipped away in long horizontal strips, were the bronze numbers 427. I climbed two concrete steps onto a small wooden porch. Behind a screen door the house was a cave. I craned my neck to wipe a temple with an already drenched shirtsleeve, then knocked. Echoes of television garble leaked from inside. A chip of paint came loose under my fingernail. I knocked again. On the third knock a kid, maybe eleven or twelve, appeared behind the screen door.

  “You’re from the company?” He spoke carefully—candy and strangers. “You brought the free water?”

  “I am. And I did.”

  The boy held open the screen. Inside, windows were drawn and lamps were off, the TV the only source of light. The house was a phenomenal mess. An overturned floor lamp rested along one wall, a detached closet door against another. The couch in front of the TV was threadbare and saggy. There were unwashed bowls and plates stacked at the foot of the sofa, Underoos draped flaccidly across the back of a chair, a scene of sustained neglect. It looked like I imagined a frat house would look if everyone became really interested in soda.

  “Over here.”

  In the kitchen a stack of dishes sat in and around the sink
. The contents of open boxes of cereal spilled across a counter sticky with residue unknown. A refrigerator sat silently in one corner, door missing and shelves barren.

  “It doesn’t work anymore. Dad knows a guy that gets fridges real cheap. The cooler should go over there. Then you’re supposed to bring three bottles for free.”

  I set the cooler down in the corner and uncoiled the power cord. I crouched and looked for an outlet. There was grime amassed in the joint where the wall met the floor, dirt thoroughly integrated into the structure itself. The kid stood in the middle of the kitchen, wide-eyed and quiet.

  I told him the cooler would work without power, but if he wanted the water cold, it would have to be plugged in. His hair was blondish and eye-length, typical boy. He squinted and pinched tight the left half of his mouth while slowly lifting his weight onto his toes, lowering, then lifting again.

  “Hey. Dad’s got an orange extension cord in the shed.”

  I stood and wiped hands on my shorts. I thought of my father’s old workbench in the garage, the two towers of miniature drawers standing side by side, finger-sliding drawers full with variously sized instruments of boyhood wonder. The kid looked at me.

  “That cord sounds like just the thing,” I said.

  As he disappeared through a back door, I turned to make my way back to the van for bottles. In the living room I stopped to watch a cartoon with a frenzy of flashing lights and flying dinosaurs zooming madly across the screen, clashing with bright stars of impact, pure magnetic chaos. Enthralling. The dinosaurs wore earpieces and spoke into wrist communicators. One of them had an English accent, one was brown and clearly voiced by a black man, and they kept repeating each other’s names so we all knew what to yell when our parents took us shopping.

  I turned to find a silhouette of a figure filling the front door. At first I was so absorbed into the realm of cartoon I had a hard time believing the figure was real. Then he stepped work boots into the living room, great heavy booming tired steps.

  “Hell is this.”

  “Pine Ridge Water. Mr. Worpley? I’ve got you guys signed up for the Summer Special.”

  I held out a hand he did not take. Instead, he exhaled deeply and shook his head.

  “You got the wrong place, kid.”

  “It’s free, Dad.” The boy had reappeared behind me, holding a bundled extension cord. “That’s what’s special about it.”

  The father moved into his home. He flicked his bright orange cap onto the sofa and passed me without a look. The reek of sustained toil, a more permanent and pungent version of the smell I showered away each evening.

  “Calling something free don’t mean a single solitary thing. Ask this guy here in green,” he said. “Ask him if it’s really free. Ask him what kind of fools go around handing out free water. Go on. I’m sure he’ll explain everything.”

  I remained frozen. And when the kid didn’t answer or even look at me, the father stepped into the kitchen. After a moment, the kid turned and followed. I did not.

  “But remember how Mom made me drink a glass every night before bed? Even if I thought it made me get up and have to pee, she would go like, here, and push it into my face.”

  “That’s right. And now you sleep all night and take your pee in the morning. Instead of waking me up in the middle of the night.”

  I found myself closer to the front door. The young boy stood with cord in hand, staring at either the floor or the clothing on the floor. I heard the father in the kitchen and once again wiped my brow with a shirtsleeve.

  “But they got an ad in the paper says free. They got a Summer Special.”

  I was standing at the door, one hand on the screen.

  “Someone says free, Ian, don’t you believe it. Got that? No such thing.” The kid went silent. The father appeared in the doorway and pointed at me. “I think it’s time you removed yourself from my house.”

  Then I was outside, motion, scrambling into the driver’s seat. I felt the van struggle to life and pulled away. I opened a sixteen-ounce sport-top bottle and drained it in one long sip. It wasn’t until I was back on the highway that I thought of the cooler sitting unplugged in that kitchen, humming in the corner, waiting patiently for a bottle.

  june

  six

  there was no reward, as such, for hard work. One afternoon I finished my deliveries in what must have been some sort of land speed record, because Debbie Dinkles was shocked to find me in the lunchroom. She immediately found five more invoices and sent me back into the sweltering afternoon. I learned that day to place a ceiling on my productivity, and from then on when I finished my deliveries early, I did what came naturally—drove to the pool house.

  I parked the van in the Hurst cul de sac and followed the walkway into the backyard. Stuart sat on the pool’s deck with one foot pulled up against the other leg’s thigh. A girl lay facedown on a lounger near the diving board, the strings of her bikini top untied and hanging on either side. Leaves, everywhere, did not rustle in summer’s complete stillness.

  “If you figure a way to run cars on sweat, my undercarriage alone would bring in a small fortune.”

  “Nice, Poot.”

  I went inside for a beer, then sat at the deck table and watched my friend stretch. He switched legs and leaned.

  “I realized that in order for me to get the most out of my mentation, which is after all my whole purpose for waking up every day, I should maximize harmony between my mind and body.”

  “I rely on you to not be fruity,” I said.

  “Read your Putnam,” he said. “The mind is nothing without the body. Read your Searle.”

  “Different mind–body issue,” I said.

  “Questions for you. One. Would you, if times and ennui were to get bad enough, would you further consider the option of attending law school?”

  “Law school is the escape hatch,” I said. “The rip cord. I will absolutely not go to law school.”

  “Good. Considering, next, all of the options you have in the morning, how do you decide which shoes to wear for the day?”

  “It’s interesting. I find myself caring more about shoes than any other item of clothing. But why? They’re so far away from my head, everything about them is base. My shoes are either white, black, or brown. I keep my options limited to minimize the stress of decision.”

  Stuart stood and waved his arms in circles. His interest in limbering up made me suddenly aware of my own inflexibility, compounded by repeated heavy and awkward lifting.

  “Three. When you think of the transition from day to night, do you see the day giving way to night as if exhausted? As if the sun’s main job, to provide light for this world, at some point becomes a responsibility too burdensome for the day to bear? And so each evening the sun and its daytime grant themselves respite and yield to night?”

  “I do, actually.” This was in fact remarkably accurate.

  “And Audrey, is her perception of night, unlike yours, one in which night penetrates day like ink drops in water, a gentle but thorough dissolution of darkness spreading itself across the day? Wherein night is the aggressor, the force to overtake and erase the day?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Of course not,” he said. “This has been helpful. I am going to stretch my hamstrings now. If you think of anything to add, please speak directly into my asshole.”

  I stood and began a walk around the pool. I slowed as I neared the girl. Her hair was brown and straight, pulled to one side of her neck. The undersides of her feet were white with prune and pool-deck dust. She was that nice middle weight, slim but still curved, the sort of body they were beginning to show more frequently on television so we’d all think how refreshing it is to see someone normal for once. Stuart sat at the deck table, sprinkling bits of Relaxation onto two overlapping papers.

  “Who’s the young lady?”

  “Late last night I went shopping for cake mix and found her wandering the aisles in bare feet with the most pleasantly d
etached look in her eyes. I felt a profound obligation toward meeting her. I said good evening, how are you tonight. She said nothing. I didn’t take it personally. Then, when I’m outside getting into my car, she climbs in the passenger door and fastens her seat belt. Hi there. Her name is Marianne and she’s from Cuba, Missouri.” He ran his tongue lightly across the joint and set it on the table. “She left town three months ago to come to the big city. I get the feeling she’s come to find a man. She admitted up front that her mother never taught her to cook. Couldn’t make an omelet if you put a gun to her head. But baking, she says, baking is her domain.”

  “I’d love a piece of that cake if there’s any left.”

  “The cake didn’t come together. We were up all night talking. It was frankly astounding how easy it all was. We spoke like this was our fourth lifetime together. Do you know Cuba? About an hour southwest of here, down 44 toward Rolla. Parents are literal farmers of the American heartland. I dozed off around eight, then woke at noon to find her lying out here. I told her that stepmother Deanna might get jealous and handed her a swimsuit. I think she’s planning on staying and I don’t think I mind. She has a farmish ease about her that rubs off on the whole poolside. Don’t you feel calm? I for one feel calm.”

  I thought of our OA circle that first night, our group of children on the cusp of institution. I had a feeling then, even before school did something to me, a feeling of our cute little circle as gateway, a momentary figuration of bodies that pointed outward (upward?) to bigger circles, a series of expanding circles that began precisely then and would terminate eight semesters later. An experience to be bookended, a single happening that would also be a thousand. Nameless figure, female and with shoulders at my ten o’clock, to whom I would soon hand over everything. And then gradually thieve back.