Forgiveness Read online

  “What if we have to go to the shelter, Eileen? What do you mean, calm? How can I be calm? Sure, there’s money, for now. For now. Eileen? Eileen? Whose sister are you? Let me ask you, whose sister are you in the first place?” She reached, one-handed, and snapped the window closed.

  I could buy her another fur coat. She adored fur in spite of her morbid fear of animal rights activists who might hurlink at her in public; for this reason she rarely wore the chinchilla she already owned.

  Or I could buy her that rock and water feature she’d been wanting for the living room, an installation by some Japanese artist who arranged rocks, water, and sand in pricey combinations, with one of those circulating pumps that kept the water gushing like a waterfall. She’d had the photo, from her friend Amir’s house, on her dresser for the last six months, face up, where I could see it whenever I passed.

  After consideration, the rock and water feature was taking on the air of a favorite, though it was sure to cost a lot of money. We should be watching our pennies now that I was out of work, now that we were living on my unemployment and my savings.

  Our savings. Though I earned all the money. For some reason I feel I must keep pointing out this fact, even though, back when we decided Carmine would be a stay-at-home wife, I vowed our marriage was still a partnership and swore I wanted her to stay at home, had never pictured her working. Those words actually came out of my mouth.

  “I can be for women’s lib and still stay at home,” Carmine reflected. “Don’t you think?”

  “I don’t see any contradiction.”

  This was from a conversation a very long time ago, maybe the second year of our marriage. She had been working as an elementary school teacher up until then, but my salary was already enough to support us both. We were still living in that apartment on Baker Heights Avenue, sitting on that flowered sofa. I was in a state of shock. I had just told Carmine, who probably still called herself Lauren at the time, to quit her job, and even though I had clearly said the words of my own volition I wasn’t quite sure why. Carmine was sitting beside me with her tiny hands folded so sweetly in her lap. At the time she was young and smooth and shiny and very petite, the height of her beauty, while my twenty-five minutes as a good-looking young man were already over. I was very aware of the difference between us in terms of attractiveness. This difference has shrunk since then, but at the time it was pretty marked. Lauren sat blinking next to me, demure as a sleeping kitten. “You’re so good to me, Charley.”

  “You can sit here all day and read books about women’s lib, if that makes you feel better.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be all right after I get used to it,” she said. “I’m so lucky. My sister Eileen is supporting her husband through law school, she’s working all the time, poor thing.” Which was true, of course, and which brought into question the aforementioned accusation that sister Eileen “never worked a day in [her] life.” Not that I want to bring up every little fact that Carmine gets wrong.

  Years later, jobless, sitting in the guest house listening to the edges of Carmine’s harangue, I heard my cell phone ring on the night stand beside me. The sound startled me, as if I had never heard the ringtone before. Salvation, in spite of my doubt! Here was a friend from work, perhaps, or even Frank or Ann, who had heard about their father’s misfortune and called to show their support. I picked up the receiver hopefully, said hello, and a few minutes later pledged fifty bucks to the local Fraternal Order of the Police.

  In the silence after the call, I failed to make any headway in any direction that led toward standing up or leaving that room. My life was ringing with disaster fallen on it like a fresh ax. I couldn’t make any headway against the premonition of more disaster to come. I sat like a lump of lead that was once a lump of gold.

  But a man doesn’t maintain a paunch the size of mine by sitting around drinking cocktails in a room with a creaky bed. I headed to the kitchen to steal something to eat.

  While I was creeping along the holly bushes, unfriendly sharp buggers that they are, I was thinking about what it would be like to call my brother, for instance. If I had a brother, what a nice thing that would be. Even if my brother hated me, he would still have to listen to me. Even if he thought I was the biggest loser, whiner, and deadbeat on the planet, which I felt like at the moment, he would still have to talk to me. If he didn’t, I’d call my mother and tell on him. If my mother were alive.

  Bathed in my own pathos, I slathered mayonnaise onto whole wheat bread in the dark. Either the refrigerator light had burned out or Carmine had unscrewed it, and I could see only vague blurs of packages and jars on the shelves. I dared not turn on any lights in the room and was trying to make as little noise as possible, but at the same time noticed that I was drifting a bit to the lee each time I took a forward step, as if I were moving against a considerable current.

  I thought what I made was a turkey, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, with a slice of Swiss cheese, but when I arrived at my poolside bungalow I discovered something much more ominous, combining liver cheese, pepperjack cheese, and cabbage. There was at least tomato, fresh and ripe. I threw away the cabbage and learned to love the rest.

  From upstairs drifted no longer the echo of the bellow of the harridan. Now there wafted down to me a rhythmic sound rather like sobbing. Carmine was the very fount of tears and could weep like a lost soul for hours, all the while working a book of crossword puzzles. I listened to her with a certain amount of tugging going on in and about my cardiac region. No doubt she was as frightened as I was under the layers of our two performances, for I was struck, being drunk and open to profundity, by the way we had both become caricatures of ourselves.

  If I were a religious man I would have had a religious specialist to call. I could have chatted with my rabbi, my priest, my imam. Any visiting shaman would have worked fine for me, as long as he or she could by intuition figure out to dial my number in my hour of need. This was the kind of self-centered person I had become; you would have to find me to help me, I wouldn’t lift a finger until you did.

  The perfect gift for Carmine was nearly always a new car of one kind or another. We had been married twenty-six years and I must have bought her fifteen cars. She had the two-door, the minivan, the first SUV off the line, she had the Mercedes S-class, the Subaru Outback. At that moment she had two cars, the S-class Mercedes and a Hybrid something or other from Toyota. She mostly drove the S-class except when she attended certain greener kind of functions in which case she drove the hybrid. She pretended to want to give the Mercedes to Ann but only because she knew I would never, ever agree to it and therefore she could keep both cars.

  At the time a first wave of new-SUV longing was sweeping over her, I’d already begun to notice it before my crisis. Maybe I could buy her a new car. The picture was beginning to clear.

  As I had been doing for the last two weeks, I reviewed all the money I had in any bank, anywhere. All the stocks, the bonds, the money markets which hardly earned anything. I’d saved a lot. Enough to keep us for two good years without even slowing down, and surely by then I would have a job. I’d better. Carmine was hardly built for hard times, and neither was I.

  If we sold the S-class and the Hybrid. No, just the S-class. And bought her a new Lexus SUV. I’d seen the way she thirsted for one when we were watching the commercials, the fleet, lone, streamlined body tearing along the solitary Western highway, not a building or automobile in sight, and Carmine picturing herself at the wheel, shifting effortlessly, though in real life she drives an automatic.

  It always comes down to some kind of purchase, to some exchange involving the market. We hurt one another in some way, or some disaster happens, and in response we buy something. We need to say how happy we are due to some great occasion, like a wedding or the birth of a child, and to express ourselves we buy something. We lose a loved one or a friend loses a loved one and in response we purchase some service or buy some card or offer some gift of food, traded for money, one way or ano
ther, because it is the medium of all exchange. The solution to any problem always returns us to the market.

  I would have to go to the market to appease Carmine. I would have to go to the market more than once. At some local dealership I would haggle uncertainly with the Lexus salesman of the moment until we reached an agreeable bargain involving two cars and a considerable amount of cash. This offering of peace I would give to Carmine to assure her that nothing would change in our lives due to my unemployment. Like all our transactions in the past, this one would be based on shaky moral principles, including my presumption that Carmine would flee if I could not give her the material life she wanted. Also including my presumption that Carmine would act out of the worst part of her character now that she knew I had no job. In our marriage, there had never been any question of pulling together to do anything; the money had done everything for us, there had never been any reason to make much of an effort.

  I would also have to go to the market with myself, too, and no longer fresh or new, bright as this year’s penny; I would be that dull penny from years ago, shunted from pocket to pocket. To find another job I would have to make a transaction of myself, announce to the market that I was available, openly flaunting my charms via whatever media I could bend to the task. The finest résumé papers and envelopes. The most thoroughgoing job listing websites. Conspicuously perfect attendance at all my outplacement counseling sessions. Immaculate grooming at all times. I was my only product, and I was once again available for purchase.

  O Market which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Where we shall shop in eternal happiness and find countless tasteful products. Where we shall never need to talk to each other but only to give each other presents. O Market of Markets, hear oh Israel, the Lord your God is one Market. As it was sold in the beginning, it is so sold now and ever shall be, Market without end. Amen.

  Even then, I was beginning to feel the divine nature of Markets, which expand and contract without regard to human emotion, which answer only to the higher laws of competition and natural selection. Perhaps all the Eastern religions are wrong, along with all the Western ones. God is not everywhere all at once, he is not some vibration sounding through the universe. God is not an all-seeing all-knowing anything. God is a Market. God is The Market, the free one, of course.

  If I were religious and had the aid of a religious professional, I would be able to pray. Right there in the guest house with the light moving strangely on the ceiling, reflected from the surface of the pool. I could get on my knees and ask the religious professional to say something appropriate to open this dialogue. I would pour out my heart in comfortable increments to a God who would reward me with solace, peace of mind, and a guarantee of a new job at the same salary as before.

  Arthur Andersen had failed the Market and paid a great price. How much of that price was laid on my head, personally? Was my debt paid by my present unemployment or was there still more to come?

  In purchasing a gift for Carmine, I would not only be appeasing her sense of our place in the world, I would also be appeasing The Market. Making a transaction as an offering would allow me to apologize for any way in which I had failed The Market, too, along with Arthur Andersen and Enron. Ways in which I had failed personally and debts which I personally would have to pay.

  At the time there was sparse furniture in the guest house. We had moved a lot of the old junk out to make room for the new furniture that would be arriving along with the Swedish foam bed. I was sitting in the dark pretty much too drunk to find a light switch. I’d finished eating the sandwich and was waiting for something else to do.

  Somehow I managed to turn on the TV, or maybe it had been on all along. It was not at all unusual to walk into a room in our house and find a TV playing and no one watching; maybe this TV had been playing all night and I’d never once registered what was on the screen. Maybe it had been playing for months and no one had ever noticed.

  The alcohol altered my hearing a bit, adding a quality of drippiness and ringiness, as if all sound in the world were being filtered through someone’s bathroom pipes.

  A cool hand lay on my forehead, rested there quite gently, asking for nothing. Perfect cool smooth skin touched mine, and called something out of me. I opened my eyes, expecting it was Carmine, expecting she had calmed down and was ready to talk.

  The person who was sitting there, though, was Sigourney Weaver in the outfit from Aliens, the second movie in the Alien series, where she saves the blond hunk Marine played by Michael Biehn and the little blonde girl played by Little Blonde Girl only to have them both die in the wait for the third episode. The person sitting here was Sigourney Weaver but as that version of Ripley still with a bit of hope remaining, not yet the completely despairing Ripley of Aliens III or the monster Ripley of IV. She was holding an automatic rifle and pointed it at my head. The tip was so cold it sucked all the heat out of my body just by touching me. “You want me to do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Pull the trigger. Wise up. This is a movie, we don’t have all day.”

  “This is not a movie. I just lost my job, here.”

  “So I guess you want a look at my tits,” Sigourney said.

  “Please just shoot me,” I said. “Go ahead and shoot me.”

  “Oh, come on. My tits can’t be that bad.”

  “You know what I mean. I deserve to die. Pull the trigger.”

  “I should,” she said. “Before that thing comes crawling out of you.” She smiles a smile so sinister it might indeed have come out of Ripley in IV. “You looking for some kind of sympathy?”

  “My wife won’t even talk to me.”

  “She must have liked your job.”

  “I liked my job,” I said.

  As usual, Weaver wasn’t showing much emotion on the surface, a kind of elfin bemusement in the expression, with something dangerous in the set of the jaw and the placement of the teeth, just visible between parted lips. “You’ll get another one. That’s how it works, right? I finish one movie, I get another one.”

  “One of these days they’ll kill Ripley and she won’t come back.”

  “You think so?” She’s amused at the thought, not in the least threatened.

  “Or some other actor will play her. Someone younger.”

  That hit home. I could see it. But the placid expression settled over her face again. “I’m a visitation,” she said. “Don’t piss me off.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m your warning that things could get really strange from here on out.”

  She shoved the gun into my mouth and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened except that the next moment she wasn’t there any more, and I was looking around trying to remember where I was and it came to me that this was the guest house next to the pool house but it was also more or less the dog house and I was in it and I had apparently passed out and hallucinated for a while.

  I blinked myself awake, trying to remember the vision I had been having, the actual presence of a movie star with a semi-automatic weapon shoved into my mouth.

  Was I going to buy Carmine a car? Was that what I had decided?

  From the house, the dead silence of early morning was almost throbbing around me, and when I stumbled onto the lawn my socks were soaked with dew. I stood there blinking with sodden feet looking at the back of the house, no lights, all blank and dark. Carmine had taken an Ambien and gone to bed. Why couldn’t I take an Ambien, too?

  Forty Whacks

  SIPPING VODKA AND LIME, I’m sitting in the hot tub, soaking in the strawberry stuff that Carmine keeps around for her baths. Pretty soon we won’t be able to afford the strawberry stuff or, probably, the mortgage payment on the house that holds the hot tub, and the thought of losing everything I’ve worked for all my life is rolling around my head, making it harder to relax in the hot water than it should be.

  Into the bathroom walks my daughter Ann. I’m covered with foam to my chin but the vaguely shadowy naked parts of my body under
the water are still visible and I cover myself automatically with my hand. “Look at you,” she says, “all bubbly. When did you start using Mom’s bubble bath?”

  “I’m having some quiet time,” I say. “You have no business coming into the bathroom when I’m in here.”

  She waves her hand at me dismissively, the expensive gleam of her nails catching my eye, as it is meant to do. Her five-thousand-dollar breasts are shoved out nicely against her pink tube top. Ann has my Aunt Maureen’s shape: no waist, wide hips, and thick, square shoulders. For high school she asked for breast surgery so we bought her a pair of breasts that sit on her chest like wanton grapefruit, unnaturally firm on a body that has never done an hour’s worth of labor in its twenty-odd years of life. “Please, Pa. I’m old enough to see you in the bathroom. Besides, there’s soap scum on the water and you’ve got your hand over yourself so what are you complaining about?”

  She proceeds to take out a cigarette and light it, sucking the smoke back into her mouth, attempting to look bored. She has spent the majority of her life trying to perfect this look.

  “A man could use a little privacy in his own bathroom.”

  “You have nothing but privacy, Pa, you don’t have a job.”

  “I need you to remind me of this.”

  She waved her hand at me again. “I need some money for the weekend.”

  “What?”

  “Give me some money.”

  “I don’t have any money with me right now, Annette, I’m in the bathtub. Do you see?”

  “It’s a Jacuzzi.”

  “Whatever.”