Housebreaking (4 page)

But it all ended when Myra got ill. Leonard nursed her himself and left the house only when she insisted. “Get out of my sight, Leonard,” she would say. “Stop hanging over me like a vulture.” Four years she battled
the cancer, holding on long past the time any doctor thought possible. Six months to a year, they'd given her. But they didn't know Myra Mandelbaum. A stubborn woman, his wife. When it was over, finally, when she called it quits, the fight was gone from Leonard too. He hadn't considered the possibility of outliving her. It had been a sticking point back when he'd courted her, their ten-year age difference. Her parents hadn't liked the idea of her marrying an
old man
—he was thirty-seven at the time; they didn't want Myra being left to fend for herself in her old age. They needn't have worried. Leonard had planned well: life insurance, disability insurance, stocks and bonds. All that was irrelevant now. He'd cashed in the insurance policies and transferred the securities to Benjamin and Sissi. He hadn't planned to survive Myra, and after she was gone he didn't know what to do with himself.

In time, he returned to the lot. But five years had passed and almost everything had changed. His first day back, he wandered the showroom, bewildered, looking for his office, which had been relocated when Benjamin renovated the building. His own familiar secretary had retired; new employees roamed the aisles, watching him with curiosity those first few days. Was he a customer? Someone's uncle? There were new makes and models, new technology. But the biggest change was within Leonard himself: He had lost the desire to sell. What was the point? Benjamin had everything under control; the business was making more money than ever. His son assured him that they needed him—untrue, of course—but Leonard found it difficult to summon the energy to get dressed every morning and make the long drive across the river. To please his son, he came into the office on Friday afternoons, mostly just to have lunch with Benjamin like old times. But he didn't sell, and people asked for him less and less. He'd outlived his customers, and the ones who were still breathing had no need for cars in their nursing homes and retirement communities. Leonard was a museum piece, like the 1955 red Coupe DeVille they kept in the front showroom. In some ways it was a relief not to be needed.

So he was surprised to find three pink Post-its on his desk waiting for him one Friday afternoon that October. Leonard got out his reading glasses, examined the notes one by one. They all said the same thing:

Dick Funkhouser called.

* * *

WHEN THE WAITRESS
delivered the bottle of wine, Leonard examined the label with his glasses perched halfway down his nose. A red wine from Orvieto. The waitress filled a glass and passed it across the table to Terri Funkhouser. Leonard waited for her to take a sip. She gulped. “Well?” he said. “Do you like it?”

She shrugged. “What's not to like? It's a forty-dollar bottle of wine. Of course I like it. Do you expect me to send it back?”

Terri Funkhouser was husky-voiced, a lifelong smoker like Myra. Her dyed blond hair was pompadoured high above her head; gold baubles dangled from her ears.
A handful,
Dick Senior used to call her. Leonard was never sure if he meant her ample figure, her disposition, or both.

The restaurant was called the First and Last Tavern, and Leonard thought that apropos: This would be his first and last evening with Terri Funkhouser. The whole thing had been a trick. Dick Junior had tricked him. When Leonard had returned his calls earlier that day, Dick Junior had proposed a dinner meeting to discuss buying a new car for his mother.
I'm off to sell a Cadillac
, he'd told Benjamin proudly. (“Drive safely, Dad, okay? Your night vision's not so great these days.”) But when Leonard arrived at the Funkhouser house to pick them up, Dick Junior claimed an emergency and begged off, saying,
You can get Mom home okay, right?

“What kind of car are you interested in?” asked Leonard.

Terri Funkhouser reached into the breadbasket and picked through the rolls. “They're cold,” she said. She ripped one in half and took a bite. “I'm not interested in cars. That's Dickie's idea. He thinks I should have a new one, something with an air bag. He doesn't trust the Cutlass anymore. He says I drive like a blind person.”

“What year is the Cutlass?”

“You're asking me dates? You expect me to know the make and model?”

“They stopped making them in the nineties.”

She shrugged. “I'm used to it.”

“You have to keep up with the times. You can never be too safe.”

Her nails were long, painted a bright red. “Who can afford a new car?”

“New, used. You'd be surprised at the deals you can get these days. Dick Junior wants the best for you.”

“Forget it, Leonard. Dickie's a dreamer. He can't afford a lawn mower, let alone a new car, and neither can I. Let's not talk about cars anymore.”

“Fine. That's fine.”

“Dickie's been after me to call you for a month. He thinks we should be friends.” She emptied her wineglass and held it toward him. Leonard refilled the glass, which was smeared around the rim with lipstick.

“He wants you to be happy.”

She laughed, a short raspy sound. “He wants me off his hands.” Again, she gulped the wine, dripping some out of the side of her mouth, and quickly lapped it with her tongue. “He wants me out of my house so he can sell it and take the money and go to Florida with his shiksa.”

“He's a good boy,” said Leonard, trying to calm her. Her voice traveled; a couple at the next table turned their way. When Leonard had parked outside the restaurant, she'd grabbed his arm to steady herself as they walked toward the entrance. A bit tipsy already, he'd thought then. “He means well, I'm sure.”

“You think it's a good idea we become friends? You like that idea, Leonard Mandelbaum, do you?”

“Most of my friends are dead.”

“You're an old man, Leonard.”

“Eighty-four.”

“You outlived them. Myra, Dick Senior. Everyone.”

“I always liked Dick Senior.”

“Oh, Dick was a prince. A real prince.” She offered her wineglass. “To Dick Funkhouser, wherever he may be.” Leonard clinked her glass with his own, and she drank off a few ounces. “I need a real drink. Order me one.”

When the waitress arrived with their dinner, Leonard told her, “A sidecar for the lady and a scotch on the rocks for me.”

“How did you know?” She had her head down, sawing her chicken cutlet with a serrated knife.

“You always asked for it at parties.”

“It's been thirty years since I've been to a party at your house.”

“Part of my job. I never forget a drink or the name of a spouse. People like to be remembered.”

“What a salesman. You and your Cadillacs.”

“Staci and Gary. Your grandkids.”

“For God's sake, don't you forget anything?”

“Seems like all I do is forget these days, or try to.”

“Don't be maudlin.” She wore a white sweater with gold sequins, and Leonard noticed a fresh splotch of spaghetti sauce on her chest. The woman had a healthy appetite. Half the cutlet was gone already. Her plump fingers worked diligently, cutting and forking the meat into her bright red mouth. “Dick Senior was a maudlin man. He cried during television commercials. Tears streaming down his face during an Alpo ad.”

“I always liked Dick Senior.”

“You said that already, Leonard. Please stop saying things twice.”

“Fine,” he said. “Fine.”

“Dick Senior got me pregnant on a cot in his dry-cleaning shop. I came in to pick up a blouse for my mother and I ended up in the back room with my skirt up. I was married at seventeen. I didn't even finish high school. Did you know that?”

“Did I know what?”

“The man was twenty years older and hung like a horse. I never knew men could be small until I found out the hard way. No pun intended.”

Leonard glanced at the neighboring tables to see if anyone could hear her. “Keep your voice down.”

“Am I embarrassing you?”

“I might know someone here.”

“All your friends are dead, Leonard. You said so yourself. Who's going to care if you're seen cavorting with a drunken woman? Who's left to notice?”

“Eat your shells,” he said.

“Fine. I'll eat my shells. You talk. I'll eat.”

“I didn't know Dick was that much older.”

“You mean you didn't know I was so young. You mean I look older.”

“No, no. You look fine.”

“I don't look fine, Len. I'm a wreck. I'm sixty-nine years old and I can't afford a car and my son feels he has to pimp me out to an old devil like you.”

This made Leonard smile. He was enjoying himself, he realized, in spite of the commotion she was causing, in spite of the spectacle of her spilling gravy onto her sweater. She was a disaster, but in her presence he
did
feel somewhat devilish—the way she'd hung on his arm when they'd
entered the restaurant, the movement of her large hips and breasts. The woman was lively conversation, you had to give it to her. You never knew what might come out of her mouth next.

“You don't look a day over sixty,” he said.

“Sixty-
nine
,” she stressed. “That's a dirty number, you know.”

“A what?”

“A dirty number. ‘My favorite number,' Dick Senior used to say.”

Leonard's face must have betrayed his bewilderment.

“Never mind, Len,” she said, patting his hand. “You play your cards right, maybe I'll show you sometime.” She winked lasciviously. Something sexual, then. He would ask Benjamin or one of the salesmen. They knew all the dirty jokes.

“You do have those little blue pills, Len? All the old men have them these days.”

His Halcion were blue. He couldn't sleep without them, ever since Myra died. Alone in the big bed, the sheets drawn tightly. She'd always run hot, Myra had.
Better than an electric blanket
, he used to say. “Sure,” he said. “I can't get to sleep without them.”

Terri snorted so loudly that he flinched; a small piece of food projected out of her mouth and landed in his salad. “
Viagra,
Len,” she blurted. “I'm talking about Viagra. For your you-know-what. For your putz. Not for sleeping.”

“For God's sake, Terri. They'll throw us out.”

And indeed, he looked up to see the waiter approaching, looking stern. But the man was only delivering their cocktails. Leonard bit into his meatball; he'd barely touched his dinner.

“Go to your doctor,” she said. “They give them out like vitamins these days.” She forked the final piece of chicken into her mouth and began wiping up the sauce with a roll. “More bread, Len,” she rasped.

Myra too used to get boisterous in restaurants. Once she'd asked the maître d' at Scoler's to dance, and when he politely declined, she called him fancy pants.
You'd dance with me if I were a man, wouldn't you, fancy pants?

“To little blue pills,” Terri Funkhouser was saying, her sidecar raised. She drank it down in a few swigs. But that was her final toast. The sidecar finished her. She became quiet, then unresponsive. Finally she announced that she felt sick. “Take me home, Leonard.”

He and the maître d', a heavyset Italian man, got her out to the Cadillac, Leonard holding on to one arm, feeling the fleshy weight of her against him. They managed to strap her into the passenger seat. On the drive back to her house, her mouth fell open and she began snoring. In the close confines of the car Leonard began to feel light-headed from the scent of her; he opened the driver's-side window to get some air; her perfume, as Myra had always said, could stop a bull.

When Leonard pulled into her driveway and honked the horn, Dick Junior came out immediately, striding purposefully toward the passenger side, as if he'd been expecting them.

* * *

THE NEXT MORNING
Leonard got the photo albums out of the den closet. He was looking for a picture he'd taken of Terri Funkhouser, many years ago. He could summon the image in his mind: young Terri standing ramrod straight, chest thrust forward, a cocktail glass in her hand. One of his grandkids, combing through the photo albums, had once said,
Who's the pretty lady in the red dress?

As Leonard searched, Benjamin suddenly bounded down the hallway, calling out, “I'll be right back.” Where are you going, he wanted to ask, but the door had already closed behind his son. Leonard smiled. That was Benjamin, always in a hurry. He talked fast, typed fast, drove fast. It was nice having his son back in the house, despite the marital concerns. They had dinner together most evenings and TV time afterward in the den. Benjamin even watched television
fast
, flipping through the channels in a blur.

Leonard turned past the countless photographs of dogs and cats, the pets that had kept Benjamin and Sissi happy in their youth. The two of them had taken the photos with their Instamatic cameras. “Take pictures of
people
,” he'd lectured his children, but they hadn't listened. One of the albums had a psychedelic purple plastic cover with a typewritten title page:
Winter Sojourn by Benjamin Steven Mandelbaum
. This was his son's junior high photography project, an album of black-and-white pictures of clouds and trees in winter. His son had developed these pictures himself in the darkroom he'd jury-rigged in the basement, with his potions and trays and red safelight. Leonard could detect, even now, a lingering whiff of the chemical solutions. Photography had been a phase of Benjamin's, like his interest in baseball cards and the electric
guitar, hobbies that got boxed up once he turned sixteen, when he discovered beer and girls.