You Don't Love This Man (28 page)

“Which kid?”

“Ira.”

“No. Because I told him not to date her in the first place, but then he was allowed to. So now he's not going to respect anything I say.”

She looked hard at me—she already had her tournament game face on, it seemed. “I'm aware that you and I disagree on things. But now is not the time for you to sit around sulking, and blaming things on me because I said something that upset you. The person you're punishing by acting this way is your own daughter, and it's selfish and stupid.”

“Can I tell you something?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“But are you listening for real?”

“Say what you want to say,” she said angrily—exactly the state I had been hoping to produce in her.

“You do not understand what it's like to be an insecure and angry young man.”

“I know that.”

“No, you don't. You've acted like you understand exactly what's going on here and how to handle it, but you don't. You've told me I don't understand what it's like to be a teenage girl, so now I'm telling you that you don't know what it's like to be that boy. And what you need to understand is that that boy will not be spoken to.”

“You can't talk to him at all?”

“He won't be spoken to. He will pretend to listen, and he will nod, and then he will ignore everything that was said. So I don't even intend to try. And just so we're clear, I'm not sulking. I'm angry at you.”

“And you're throwing a big tantrum.”

“Right. Because no matter what I do, you characterize it as immature. When I tried to keep Miranda out of the relationship, I was being stupid. And now that I'm refusing to try and help you get her out of the relationship, I'm again being stupid. Either way, it doesn't matter, I'm being stupid.”

“You are obsessed with being right!” she said. “And you think that the only way you can be right is if I'm wrong. It's incredibly frustrating to try and talk to you when you're this way. I feel like you're still nine years old and following the rules your mom gave you for when she was gone in the evening, like as long as you don't answer the door and don't speak to anyone, you're allowed to watch as much television as you want, and you'll be praised for it.”

I laughed. I felt I had finally decoded her, and everything was clear. “Again, you're saying I'm immature,” I said. “This is your stock response, and psychologizing my childhood, which you weren't there for and know nothing about, is just a variation of the same thing. I'll be going to work today, then I'll come home and measure that doorway, and I'll go out tomorrow and buy a new door. I'll bring it home and spend my weekend working on fixing the whole thing, while also keeping an eye on our daughter. What a child I am, right? How immature. You have a good time at your little tournament.”

The issue of whether my rhetorical analysis was correct or not seems hardly important now—or less important, at least, than recalling when and why I began to think Sandra was a code I needed to break in the first place. But of course that was the shift that had been occurring so slowly and consistently that it had acquired the feel of seismic inevitability. Continents shift because they ride on plates. Why do the plates shift? I don't know. I have never known.

Sandra's response was simply to leave the room. I stayed there,
listening to her take her bags out to her car, and then return for a few more things, and take those to the car. I listened to her walk upstairs, and heard the muffled tones of her saying good-bye to Miranda, who was still asleep. When I heard her come back downstairs, I thought she might come back into the office one more time, so I sat there, staring at the empty web, and wondering where the spider went when he wasn't there. But then I heard the front door rattle shut, followed by the sound of Sandra's car starting. She hadn't come back to say anything more to me. She just left.

So when I pulled into the bank's parking lot less than an hour later, I was glad to find Grant already there, waiting. It was still early, and the streets were empty, but the sun was already high and bright, which is, I assume, why Grant was wearing sunglasses in addition to his jeans and black T-shirt, though the sunglasses made me feel a bit paranoid. I didn't even have a chance to say good morning and ease into the discussion, before he said, “So you want to go ahead with it.”

“How do you know?” I said.

“It's the only reason you would ask me to meet you in person.”

“Okay, so I'm not subtle. How long do you think it would take?”

“To get him out of town? Not long. I already met with him last week, for an interview.” On seeing my surprise, he laughed. “I was going to do it even if you weren't okay with it,” he said.

“I thought it depended on whether you got that job.”

“I got it. They called me yesterday. I'll do most of the line I proposed, but not the blender. They won't let me do the blender, for some reason.”

“Congratulations, then.”

“Thanks. And so I can hire the kid and have him down there
almost immediately. I'll send him for a weekend to scout things out, then extend the trip so he can set up the office down there for me, and then I'll offer to ship all his stuff down and get him set up in an apartment, and that'll be it.”

A long-legged dog—thin, ragged, and panting—loped past alone, without casting us so much as a glance. Part of me expected a police car to roll up, and an officer to step out and ask us what we thought we were doing. “How much money do you need?” I asked.

“None,” he said. “I'm hiring the kid, and he's going to work for me. That's all there is to it.”

“But it's going to cost you a lot.”

“It's one flight and a few nights in a hotel. That's nothing, and I can write it off. I'm telling you, the kid is going to do actual work, and a lot of it.”

“Do you even trust him to do actual work?”

“Not really. And especially not when I'm not there watching him. But whatever he doesn't do, or whatever he does wrong, or steals, or lies about, it will give me the reasons I need to let him go six months from now. And really, he'll probably quit on his own before we even get that far. A lot of people exactly like this kid move to Los Angeles and within a few weeks decide that they're actually an actor or a director. And I'll be happy to encourage him in that.”

I couldn't think of anything else to ask. It seemed Grant was right—everything was taken care of. “Is this what you meant when you told me I shouldn't ask for permission?” I said. “That I should do what I want, and argue with people about it after it's already done?”

He laughed. “I suppose. Are you angry at me?”

“No. And at least you pretended to ask me about it. That's something.”

“A show of respect,” he said.

He drove out of the lot just as Catherine pulled in—they traded a wave through windshields, I think. And after Catherine parked and joined me at the front door while I unlocked it, she said, “So you're doing business in the parking lot now?”

“Only for friends.”

“The manager meets you in the lot,” she said, eyebrows raised. “It's even better than the drive-through.”

 

I
RECALL A SENSE
of calm settling over me—a serenity that colored that entire weekend that Sandra was away. Miranda and I ordered pizza Friday night. She didn't mention Ira, I didn't mention the broken door, and the two of us ate while happily making fun of an entertainment gossip show on television. Miranda didn't mention going out, and fearful of breaking the spell, I didn't ask. After dinner, she disappeared up into her room. She was lying low, it seemed. Was she hiding from Ira, though, or was her sudden presence an effort to appease me? Two birds with one stone, I decided, which was fine with me. He had scared her, and she had probably scared herself a little, and if she was going to use the need to mollify me as the motivation to remain safe at home for a few evenings, well—go on mollifying, I thought.

Later in the evening, I climbed the stairs and knocked on her door. There was a bit of shuffling before she told me to come in, and I found her on her bed, a book in her hands and multiple sheaves of notebook paper spread around her. She was apparently so absorbed in her book, in fact, that when I told her the two of us
would have to fix the front door in the morning, she didn't even raise her eyes from the page as she mumbled that that sounded fine. The mood of lighthearted laughter we had enjoyed while watching television earlier had disappeared, it seemed. And when I asked her, for the first time, what had actually happened to the door, she just shrugged, her eyes still on the book. “It was just an accident,” she said. “I'll pay for it.”

“I don't care who pays for it,” I said. “I just want to know what happened.”

“He broke it accidentally. He said to tell you he's sorry, and he'll help pay for it, too.” With a dramatic excess of wrist, she flipped a page.

“Could you put the book down and talk to me? I want to know what's going on.”

She carefully closed the book, a torn paper bookmark in place, and adjusted the wrap on her palm. “Nothing's going on.”

“A front door doesn't get broken on accident.”

She rolled onto her back and sighed, contemplating the ceiling. “We were having an argument.”

“About what?”

“Stuff.”

“And where was your mother?”

“At a movie. With Margo Talbot.”

“So you were here by yourself while this guy was breaking down the door?”

She finally looked me in the eye then, and with a complete and utter lack of intonation said: “Yes.”

Was she hoping I would investigate? That I would keep asking questions, so that she could reluctantly give up the information that some code was preventing her from giving voluntarily? “You
don't have to tell me what you were arguing about,” I said. “But I can't fix the door unless I know how it was broken.”

“He kicked it. I was mad at him and I wanted him to leave, so I pushed him out the door and locked it.”

“And he kicked the door hard enough to break it?”

“Yes. He got upset and kicked a door. That's all that happened. And he didn't think it was going to break, and he's sorry.”

There was no way he could have kicked it only once. It had to have been a sustained attack. But Miranda continued to offer me a look of opaque blankness that matched her tone of voice.

“Were you scared?”

“I was angry. But it's normal for people to argue.”

“Why do you like this guy? You don't seem to have a good time with him.”

“He's a good person. He's just had a hard time in life.”

“It's not your job to help people.”

“It was an accident, Dad.” She returned to reading—or pretending to read—as if the conversation were over.

“Tomorrow,” I said.

“Tomorrow what?”

“We fix the door.”

“Okay.” She turned another page in her book, though she couldn't possibly have read that much while we'd been talking.

“I want to show you how to do it.”

“What do you mean?” she said, looking up.

“I want to show you how to fix the door. How to use the tools. You need to learn how to do it.”

“How to fix a door?”

“You're old enough now. You need to understand how to do some simple things.”

She looked at me as if I were speaking in a foreign language. “Okay,” she said.

I thought: She's safe here, in her room, with her books and notebooks, and her clothes draped and stacked in various spots, with her little stereo and clock radio and posters of Paris and Rome. She is okay here. “What are you reading?” I asked.

She actually turned the book over to check the cover. “
Crime and Punishment
,” she said. “Did you have to read it when you were in school?”

“I don't remember. Would I like it?”

She chuckled in the little amused way I understood was at my expense, though maybe not maliciously. “I don't think so.”

After breakfast Saturday morning, we headed to the hardware store, where the jingle of the entry bell followed by the aroma of solvents and cleansers announced the commencement of the spell that never failed to work its power on me. The aluminum bins of carefully sorted nails and nuts and bolts and staples, the waxed aisles of tools, the rows of pipes and wires and buckets and rags, the cans of paint and their attendant brushes, the sandpapers and push brooms and saw blades, and the yard out back, where the scent of freshly hewn lumber filled the air: there was no problem here that couldn't be solved. Miranda and I walked past shelves filled with loose windows of all shapes and sizes, and then turned into an aisle where a seemingly endless queue of front doors hung along a wall, so that not one of the doors opened onto anything but the next door. “They're like dominoes,” Miranda said happily. “If we swing the first one hard enough, it will open all the others.” When she reached for the first door, though, I quickly put my hand on her arm and said, “Don't try.” She laughed. And after choosing a door similar to the damaged one we already had, we headed home to make our repairs.

The afternoon was hot and nearly silent. My red aluminum toolbox lay open on the porch, tools scattered about, while I led the project and Miranda made notations in pencil on a small pad of paper: the height of the door, the width, the depth of the jamb, the placement of the hinges and strike plate. Our glasses of iced tea sweated on the porch railing, the ice cubes glinting in the sunlight. When I suggested you couldn't just break solid wood and I was surprised Ira's foot wasn't broken, Miranda reminded me there had already been a crack in the door large enough that you could see light through it during the day—Sandra had complained about it more than once, and that's where the door had split. “Well, this one will be able to take whatever Ira can dish out,” I said.