White Elephant Read online

  She gave him another dollar. “Would you like a milkshake? A little bird told me Lucy makes great milkshakes.”

  “I want a tall skim half-caf latte and a hazelnut biscotti!”

  Suzanne gathered him up in her arms. “I’m going to eat you up.”

  “Mommy! I’m not food.”

  She did, in fact, want to eat him up. She wanted to hold him so tight their hearts beat in time. They’d never bonded properly. Because she hadn’t breastfed? She’d tried, but it had been a fiasco that resulted in tears and screaming on both their parts. Her mother was the one he called for in the night. “Did you see your room? They set up your racing-car bed.”

  Adam sat on the floor with a book that looked like it weighed as much as he did. He was the one who had figured out that Tunlaw was walnut backward. Tunlaw Place. “Shouldn’t it be Tunlaw Ecalp, Mommy?”

  The local elementary school seemed well prepared to deal with gifted children, but there was a downside. They only offered half-day kindergarten. She was supposed to have all-day kindergarten by now. She’d waited five years for all-day kindergarten, five years to stop relying on her mother for child care—her mother, who had worked full time when Suzanne was growing up, who, thanks to some nifty stock options, now had all the time in the world to sing and play hide-and-seek with her grandson. While Suzanne worked. Not that she minded working; she loved working. But she wanted both: to be a success in her work and to be the one her son adored. It didn’t seem like too much to ask. Half-day kindergarten? By the time she dropped him off at school and got the breakfast dishes done it would be time to pick him up again. She vetoed Grant’s suggestion he go to aftercare, having done time in it herself for so many years, and a sitter was out of the question: Adam would just transfer his affections from her mother to the sitter, leaving Suzanne in the cold again.

  Things were not happening as planned. Half-day kindergarten was the first misfortune. The second was running: she was supposed to have made her best time ever in the New York City Marathon last November, not blow out her knee, reducing herself to a hobbling jogger. Misfortune number three: Grant was supposed to have made partner at his firm in Richmond. They were going to move to the countryside after that, buy an old house and refurbish it. She’d had one all picked out.

  And on top of all that, the maraschino cherry on the tippy top of her problem sundae, was another potential possible maybe fourth problem. The evidence was not all in. Her breasts were tender, which might just mean that her period was on its way. She was late, but being late was not unusual. Maybe it was the flu—easy to get when you were run down from moving. How could she be pregnant? She and Grant had only had sex a couple of times since The Incident. Her disappointment in him had been keen. It still was. She thought he’d changed.

  Suzanne needed a vacation. The camping trip on Chincoteague in August had been anything but relaxing: Grant and Suzanne had barely been on speaking terms. They’d spent the week fending off mosquitoes, ticks, and sunburns. Then there were the deer—great lingering herds of them, which were pastoral when they were off in the meadow, but downright spooky when they clustered around the picnic table staring like orphaned children.

  Adam looked up at her from the kitchen floor. “My head hurts, Mommy.”

  “Mine, too, sweet pea. Moving is hard work.” She had an urge to sit down with him, to cuddle him in her lap and finger his curls, but there was so much to do.

  A mover stopped in the front hallway with a box. “This isn’t labeled.”

  “Of course it is,” Suzanne said. It wasn’t. “Put it in the master bedroom.”

  “Isn’t one,” the mover said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “There isn’t a master bedroom.”

  “The bedroom to the immediate right at the top of the stairs.” It was bigger.

  “Mommy! What’s this word?” Adam pointed to a page in his book.

  “This light was already cracked, right?” A mover held a tiny Tiffany-style table lamp aloft like a torch.

  The lamp from her childhood night table. Her father told her he’d be home from his business trip before the bulb burned out, but that bulb and another burned out before she understood that he wasn’t coming back. Suzanne kept it as a physical reminder of the way life could let you down.

  “This chair go upstairs?”

  “What?” Suzanne stood, her focus lost. She tried to remember what they owned and why, energy seeping from her like air from a punctured tire.

  “Mommy! A stranger!”

  A woman stood on the porch with a long squat dog with a fluffy feather of a tail. Someone collecting for a charity? Something green, Suzanne guessed—Save the Seals or the Humane Society. The woman had curly, untamed hair and wore an Indian-print top paired with dangling, arty earrings. She had unusual blue eyes. No, green. She looked familiar. “Can you come back another time?”

  “I just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood.” She held out an envelope and a foil loaf pan.

  Suzanne accepted the offerings, standing awkwardly on the threshold of what she hoped would, one day, feel like home.

  GRANT JOGGED AROUND THE GREEN, PAST THE CAFÉ AND THE TOWN hall and the soccer field, where a tai chi class had gathered near the goal, the students’ movements eerily slow, like plants moving underwater. He ran past the tennis courts and the children’s library and down a side street. He timed a loop, imagining how familiar it would become after running it every day. He would come to know every tree and every dog, every mailbox and every streetlight.

  He sprinted over the creek to Willard Park’s little shopping area, where the market and the hardware store, Mitchell’s Variety, and a few other stores were lined up, awaiting customers.

  He tapped his fitness tracker, eager to see his heart rate, and nodded, pleased. His pulse was famously slow, unlike his wife’s—Suzanne’s heart raced. He bought a bottle of water at the market—more gourmet shop than deli with its foreign chocolates and extensive wine selection—and stretched his Achilles tendons on the curb before heading around the gold SUV that was parked out front with its hazard lights on, and into the hardware store.

  All he needed was a whiff of the store to feel calmer—rubber and machine oil, insecticides and fresh-cut lumber. The comfort of the familiar had driven him here this morning, not the urgent need for spare keys. He just had to get away, forget about everything. The pressure was extreme. A move and a new job? Who could do both of those things at the same time and stay sane? A young guy in a red vest and a nametag greeted him. Grant shook the fellow’s hand. It was like reaching out to his former self.

  Grant had grown up in his father’s hardware store, graduating from playing on the wood floor behind the counter, to runner (Can you get this young lady a can of WD-40, son? Can you show this gentleman where we cut glass?), to advising and ringing up customers. He’d been proud when his father had given him the green vest all of the Main Street Hardware employees got to wear, but not so proud that he wanted to make the store his life. His father had been caustic when Grant told him he did not want to take over upon his father’s retirement. “Then who in God’s name am I doing this for?” his father had said, smacking his hand into a row of clay pots. Grant picked up the shards, keeping an ingratiating smile on his face for the customers.

  He strolled down each row now, familiarizing himself with the layout. Garden gloves and trash cans, cleaning solvents and mousetraps. He caressed door hinges and ran his hand over a row of air filters. He wasn’t the owner’s son here, but a stranger. It was a funny feeling.

  He’d known anonymity for such short bursts in his life. His first weeks at the university—well, not really, since so many of his friends from high school went there. In law school—but it was only an hour from home, easy to go back for the weekend. At Fitzpatrick, Oppler and Moore—but that wasn’t right, either, since many of the law firm’s clients were neighbors or customers at the store. Then, of course, Marie got hired, and it was like being in school all o
ver again. It was impossible to be anonymous when you settled down where you grew up. While some people found it claustrophobic, incestuous even, he loved the feeling of being known, the pride he felt in being the first Davenport to attend graduate school.

  Until he started dating Suzanne, he and his old gang got together on the weekends to hang out: grab a few beers, maybe listen to a local band and hit up Denny’s for breakfast in the wee hours. Marie was part of that group, the only girl. She was fun, with her knack for impressions and spontaneous tap dancing. She had aspired to be the next Shirley Temple as a child, took classes for years. Grant had taken them for a while, too, just enough to fake being Fred Astaire to her Ginger Rogers at the senior year talent show—which they’d won. Some of his high school pals still called him Fred.

  He’d been stupid to get high with her during lunch last spring. He hardly ever smoked anymore, and never during the workday. Marie was the one who’d brought the joint to the state park, where they sometimes took subs they picked up from Capri’s—but she’d been smart enough to take the afternoon off. He, on the other hand, had gone to a deposition. The senior partner had told him to find another job before he fired him.

  Suzanne, predictably, had gone bananas. Did he have any idea what he was risking? Any idea at all? She accused him of reverting to his old ways, his old slacker ways, with his old slacker friends—which was simply not true. She hadn’t known him in college, when weed was both his intramural and his varsity sport. She was way overreacting. Not only was medical marijuana legal in many states, recreational marijuana was legal, too, he reminded her.

  “Alcohol is legal, too, but you can’t get drunk on the job, Grant. You never grew up, and you never will.”

  “Yes I did,” he said, his hackles up the way they used to get when his sisters teased him. “I can change.”

  “Swear then,” she said, holding up the photo of Adam on his first birthday, chocolate frosting smeared all over his face.

  “I swear,” he said, his hand on the frame. “Never to smoke weed again.”

  “I’ll divorce you if you do,” she said, eyes pinpricks. “I will.”

  And she would. Ridiculous as it might be, she would do it.

  Thus he hadn’t lit up in four months. He’d thought about it, sure, but only because he still had some weed. If he were smart he would just open the Baggie and flush the contents down the toilet, but he liked knowing it was there, just in case, like potassium iodide pills in case of a nuclear attack.

  Had he been asking to be fired? It was a question Suzanne had put to him, and he wondered sometimes. He’d fallen into being a lawyer the way he’d fallen into pretty much everything in life. His high school guidance counselor suggested law as an alternative to acting—careers that were not without their similarities. The important difference was that his father didn’t smash clay pots when he suggested he might go to law school.

  Grant thought being a lawyer would be an easy job for a bright-enough guy, but in truth you had to work long hours. And lives were often on the line. People could—and did—lose their shirts because of him. Clients went to jail. Sometimes he wished he’d been disbarred instead of told to start job hunting. Then he could have started over.

  He admired the garden rakes, each more ergonomically designed than the last, and noted the high stacks of brown leaf bags. Electric drills and screwdrivers took up an entire section. The gas grills were off to the side—real behemoths. Big red SALE signs dangled from their lids.

  Grant opened one and stuck his head halfway inside. He made an expression of mock terror, took a selfie, and sent it to the gang: Dave, Pete, and Marie.

  A couple of men stood around the larger grills communing silently. One of them, a guy maybe ten years older than Grant, in good shape, opened and closed the lid of a big charcoal grill called the Smokin’ Joe. “It looks like it’s talking,” he said.

  Grant smiled, unsure if the guy was talking to him.

  “‘Feed me.’ That’s what it’s saying.” The man did a poor attempt at ventriloquism. “‘Feed me.’”

  Grant laughed. “It’s the Tin Man. ‘Oil can.’”

  “Think it’s too much grill?”

  “I don’t work here,” Grant said.

  “I just wondered if you thought it was too much grill.”

  Grant considered. It was like a coffin in both size and shape. “You could cook a lot of burgers in there.”

  “Or a whole cow, right? Hey, Chip,” he called to one of the red-vested employees. “Put this on my account.”

  “Okie dokes. We’ve got them in back.”

  “I want this one.” The man tipped the grill sideways. “Lend me a hand?”

  “Um. Sure.” Grant helped wheel the grill to the SUV out front.

  They attempted to heft the grill into the back a few times, but it was awkward. “On the count of three,” the man said, but it landed on its side with a clatter. They checked for dents, then tried again, this time with success.

  “Cocks,” the man said, offering Grant a hand to shake.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nick Cox. I live over on Tunlaw. You’re the new people, right?”

  “That’s us. I mean, me. Yep.”

  “We’re having a party in a couple weeks. Stop by. We’ll put that grill to good use.”

  Grant watched him drive off. He’d made a friend of sorts, a thought that cheered him. He went back in the hardware store and, spontaneously, bought the same grill. He felt oddly as though the man—Cox—were performing ventriloquism on him. The grill they owned was fine. Small, gas powered, but fine. He offered his credit card. “Davenport-Gardner,” he said, giving the clerk their new address, for delivery.

  FROM HIS SPOT IN THE YARD, NEAR THE LITTLE STUMP OF WHAT HAD been Jillian’s red maple, Ted could see all the chores he ought to have been doing—cleaning the gutters, trimming the bushes, seeding the grass. But he didn’t get up. He sat on the ground, legs crossed. It must nearly be noon, judging by the sun’s angle and the hollowness of his stomach, he thought, when Jillian came out into the yard with a plate. “For me?” he said, seeing the sandwich and brightening.

  “No.” She took a bite. Turkey, lettuce, and tomato. Or was it that Tofurky stuff that Allison liked? Ted looked at Jillian the way Candy did, with sad, pleading eyes. Jillian rolled her eyes and gave him half.

  They ate in silence. Companionable silence, Ted thought, but Jillian furrowed her brow when she finally spoke.

  “Are you okay, Dad?”

  “Sure, hon. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Because . . . it’s weird to sit in the yard so much?”

  “Not so much. When I have time, that’s all. I think out here.” It wasn’t as if he was missing work to sit in the yard. It was just weekends. Maybe the occasional evening. When the weather was good, that was all.

  “It’s just, I mean, it’s weird.”

  “Nothing to worry about, Jill. Promise.”

  “It’s just a tree, right?”

  “Of course. You’re right. And I’m fine. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  She nodded, the clouds leaving her face. “Can I have some money then? For poster board? I mean, if you’re all right . . .”

  “Sure,” he said, and he grabbed a twenty from his wallet, to show how fine he was.

  She gave him a big smile, then, as a bonus, a very brief and awkward hug. It nearly made him want to give her another twenty.

  Candy came over after Jillian left, as though they were taking shifts, keeping an eye on him. He and the dog sat side by side, soaking up the sun. Allison appeared with two mugs of coffee not long after.

  “Just what I needed.”

  She took a breath as if she was going to say something, then closed her mouth again and sipped her coffee. Then she did it again.

  “What?” He steeled himself for an attack.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think I know how you can overcome your tree obsession,” she said.

&nb
sp; “It’s not an obsession.”

  “Well, it’s something. An extreme preoccupation, whatever. I just have a thought about that and, well, our other problem.”

  “We don’t have another problem.”

  She frowned, the three lines in her brow gathering, and her eyes went from blue to gray. “We have a problem,” she said, her voice low.

  He looked away from her, avoiding further eye contact.

  “Just, I was thinking, maybe some therapy.”

  “I don’t need therapy. For Pete’s sake, Al. Everyone goes through lulls. Everything’s fine.”

  “It’s not fine for me.”

  He stood up.

  “What?” she said.

  “I’m going to go get some stamps.”

  “Good!” she said, as if he were a patient making progress.

  He went from the backyard to the front. She was making a big deal out of nothing. Sex slowed down at their age—that was totally normal. He’d want to again. And of course he was upset about the trees. Who wouldn’t be? He’d thought he’d be counseling Terrance through the crisis, and Allison was suggesting therapy for him!

  Terrance hadn’t even noticed Cox’s deforestation, truth be known. When Ted pointed it out when Terrance came for Tuesday-night tacos, his brother nodded and said, “Looks like the trees got a buzz cut. Get it, Teddy? Like a buzz saw?”

  Terrance could be so reasonable sometimes. More reasonable than him or Allison. More reasonable than that idiotic Dana at the nursing home, whose most recent call Ted had accidentally answered. She told Ted she was suspending Terrance for a day for heating a patient’s coffee in the staff microwave.

  “For heating coffee?” he’d said.

  “For heating coffee.”

  “Was it cold?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Did the patient get burned?”

  Again, not the point. So what was the point? Ted had to bite his tongue to keep from asking. Suspending Terrance for heating coffee would only ensure that he would not heat coffee in the future, not that he wouldn’t heat soup or add ice to a lukewarm drink.

  Poor Terrance. He was forever trying to do nice things only to have them backfire. Like the time when they were kids, when he stole a cookie from the school cafeteria because Ted was hungry, only to be caught with a fist full of crumbs; or the day he gave Ted his dry shoes when Ted’s got wet in the creek, and came down with a bad cold.