Mendocino And Other Stories Part 6

"Air?" says Luke.

"Well, yeah, you know. And neon tubing."

"Sounds special," says Luke. He puts his beer down and opens the refrigerator. "What's that wife o' mine got planned for dinner, I wonder."

"She said something about spaghetti," Winch says. What Sarah said was "Maybe Luke will make spaghetti tonight," but Winch doesn't tell Luke this. He's not sure when it's going to happen, just that it is: Luke and Sarah are heading for trouble. Winch feels like the pan that's keeping the oil out of the fire.

"Did she?" says Luke. "Well then, who am I to say otherwise?" He pulls a package of hamburger from the refrigerator, sets a pot on the stove, and begins emptying the meat into the pot. "Hand me that spoon there, lovey," he says, gesturing with his chin at a wooden spoon in the dishrack.

Winch hands it to him. "I'm going to just go into the living room for a sec," he says. He's got to do something about the crackers in his pocket-stash them somewhere or eat them.

"You do that," says Luke. "I'll be right here."

SARAH'S RELIEVED TO find Luke alone in the kitchen-she wants to get things on a better footing. She even put on a skirt, she's not sure why. Well, maybe she is: it's one he really likes and the last time she wore it he told her she looked beautiful. "If the second graders could see you now," he said, "they'd all fall immediately and hopelessly in love-they'd never give you another minute of trouble." So, OK, she admits to herself, she's after a compliment.

"Seduced into the kitchen by the heavenly smell of browning hamburger," Luke says. "I knew it would work."

"Where is he?"

"Having his cracker fix in the living room."

She laughs. "Telltale bulge in the shirt pocket?"

"I'm going to put a note in the Ritz box," Luke says. " 'I'm on to you-a friend.' What do you think?"

"Too subtle," Sarah says.

"You're probably right. Something like 'Keep out, f.u.c.ker' might work better."

Sarah doesn't respond. She gets onions and a green pepper out of the refrigerator and starts chopping. She wishes Luke would just relax about Winch. It's inconvenient having him here, sure, but it's not that bad. There's something sweet about him, really; he's like a child, eager to please but helpless when it actually comes down to pleasing. She remembers the first time she met him: she'd gone to visit Luke at school-their spring breaks hadn't matched up that year-and she was lying on his bed, reading, waiting for him to get back from a cla.s.s, when there was a pounding on the door. She hurried to open it, fearing something awful had happened to someone, and there was this impossibly tall guy with wild blond hair and surprised eyes-Winch. "You've got to come with me, you've got to see this," he said, grabbing her hand and virtually pulling her out of Luke's room. She followed him out of the dorm and down to the creek: there, standing on the bank, were eight or ten tiny ducks watching their mother gliding on the water. Remembering this, it occurs to Sarah that Winch would be a good teacher. Better than she is, anyway. Ducks! If only she could take her cla.s.s to see ducks. If only she knew where to find them, how, when.

ONCE THE SAUCE is simmering, Luke heads back to the bedroom to change his clothes. He had just gotten over feeling like an imposter, wearing a suit and tie every day, when Winch showed up. During the two weeks that Winch has been here Luke's backslid to the point where he doesn't only feel ridiculous because of how he's dressed; he's started wondering again how anyone-his colleagues, other lawyers around town, even his clients-can possibly take him seriously. He looks like the kind of person his clients-boys fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen years old, and making their third and fourth court appearances-contemplate mugging when the bars close Sat.u.r.day nights. One kid today said as much-Doug Kaiser, whose illegal activities strike Luke as especially unfortunate: he ought to be a starter on East High's defense. Explaining to Luke that he'd been minding his own business at the corner of Gorham and Ba.s.sett (at two o'clock in the morning, of course) when two frat boys came along and started ha.s.sling him, Doug said, "Those pretty boys had their heads up their a.s.ses. They're dumb s.h.i.ts. A guy that looks like you doesn't f.u.c.k with a guy like me." "Word to the wise?" said Luke. "Man," said Doug, "they were asking for it." "Right," said Luke. "But we won't mention that to the judge."

He pulls on jeans and a sweatshirt and looks in the mirror. When he was in college-bearded, and hollow-eyed from too many late nights-he could pa.s.s for thirty. Now that he is thirty what does he look like? A frat boy. A pretty boy. Dumb s.h.i.t. He would not like to run into Doug Kaiser late at night anywhere.

Heading down the hall to the kitchen, he hears Sarah and Winch laughing. How is it, he wonders, that a guy with whom you once agreed about everything can become a measuring stick for your own self-delusions? He smiles to himself. Who better could there be for the job? Maybe Winch should settle in Madison-to keep Luke honest.

SARAH'S SO PRETTY when she laughs-Winch wishes she did it more often. He goes on with his story, lying now. "And the next night I went back and she'd carved this message into the table where we'd been sitting. It said, 'I'd like to coil around your winch.' "

Sarah cracks up. "No way-you made that up."

"Cross my heart," Winch says.

"You lie like a dog," Luke says from the doorway. Winch turns and looks at him. "I made it up-about ten years ago, remember?"

Winch can't tell whether Luke's angry or not. He shouldn't be, but these days Winch doesn't know how to read him; the one constant in dealing with Luke is that Winch is almost always surprised. "You nailed me, man," Winch says. He turns to Sarah. "So he's still got his bionic memory, eh?"

Sarah smiles at him. "When he wants to."

Winch feels the tension wires that run between Luke and Sarah start to jangle. He goes over to the stove and looks at the spaghetti sauce. "This smells good," he says.

When he turns back, Luke's smiling strangely at Sarah. "Well?" Luke says.

"What?" she says.

"What'd I forget?"

"Did you forget something?"

"Isn't that what you meant?"

"By what?"

"What you just said."

Sarah turns to Winch. "Did I say something? I don't remember saying anything. But then, I'm not the one with the memory."

Winch attempts a peacemaking smile. What's he supposed to say? Luke faces him. "Women," Luke says, "have this uncanny way of making you feel ever so slightly insane. Keep that in mind, son, and you'll be OK."

Winch swallows uncomfortably. "So do you think maybe we should start the water boiling for the noodles?" he says. Then he remembers the thing he did today, the great idea he had. "Hey," he says. "I bought you guys some wine."

He goes into the living room to get it, and when he comes back something's changed. They're in precisely the same places they were, but the tension wires have, miraculously, gone slack.

Winch holds up the bottle. "Are you guys into red?" he says.

SARAH'S TOO TIRED to talk. Sitting at the table, playing with her pasta, she tries in a desultory way to get a fix on the conversation. They're talking about drugs, though-tripping on some camping trip they took together-and the only things she can think of adding are in the teacher mode: Weren't you afraid that you might get separated? How could you have forgotten sweaters?

Or is that the mother mode?

At school today, the kids who'd had a brother or sister born in the last year-a remarkable twelve out of twenty-seven-brought in updated information for the New Baby at Home chart, an element of the Family Life unit that worries Sarah: what do you do when someone comes in with the news that little Susie died in her crib? The kids love the chart, though, and as Nan Mikelberg, the other second-grade teacher, has said, if it involves thumbtacks and a bulletin board, go for it. Sarah was helping Merry Clark pin up a new photograph of her baby brother when Merry said, "Mrs. Prinden"-they always call her Mrs., there's nothing she can do about it-"Mrs. Prinden, how come you don't have a baby?" and Josh Gold, who lives across the street from Sarah and Luke, said, "It's 'cause her husband's not really her husband." What Sarah finally managed to find at the bottom of his confusion was the fact that she and Luke don't have the same last name. But she wonders whether Josh wasn't, in his childish way, right. Did she and Luke forfeit something, living together all those years? It sometimes seems that the primary effect of actually getting married was to make the things that used to be annoying about the other person enraging now: you feel like you'll be voicing or stifling the same complaints for the rest of your life.

Sarah closes her eyes, and when she opens them Winch is saying, "Maybe we should get some acid for next weekend." Sarah turns to Luke, her mouth open. He wouldn't, would he?

"G.o.d," LUKE SAYS. "Relax. You look like we're thinking about robbing a bank."

Sarah shrugs. "Do what you want," she says.

Luke hates this. He wishes she'd just say what she's thinking-that it would really bother her. What bothers him is her just sitting there pretending not to be bothered.

Not that he has any intention of doing acid-with Winch, with anyone-ever again. Getting high now and then is one thing, but he's fried his brain enough, thank you very much.

He looks at Sarah. Poor, worried thing. It's funny how the very moment when he's most p.i.s.sed off it can all just dissolve and leave behind nothing but tenderness. He leans across the table and touches her hand. "I don't want to," he says, smiling. "OK?"

"Whoa," says Winch. "I didn't mean to rock the boat here. Just a little nostalgia kicking in."

Luke sings, "We were so much younger then, we're older than that now."

"You guys are older," says Winch. "Maybe that's my problem."

Sarah turns to him-an eager, intimate look on her face. "What do you mean?"

Luke's not in the mood. He stands up. "I'll clear," he says. "Winch, honey, it's your turn to wash."

WINCH FEELS TERRIBLE. He's so stupid! Sarah was always like this about drugs, which is fine, it's her choice-her loss, in his opinion. But he should have known better. Years ago when she'd come to visit Luke at school, Luke would always give Winch his stash for safekeeping, so Sarah wouldn't come across it and be b.u.mmed. In those days Luke called her The Schoolmarm-to her face, too; he didn't say it to be mean or anything-and even now Winch thinks it's kind of funny that that's what she ended up being. He'd love to go to work with her one of these days, sit in on her cla.s.s, but he's already asked and she's already said no.

"Winch, please," she says now. "It's not a big deal. Don't look so hangdog."

He shrugs. "I guess I just have a knack for saying the wrong thing." This is such a pathetic thing to say, he can't believe the words came out of his mouth.

She stands up. "Shall we?"

He knows he should get up, go in and do the dishes. He watches as Sarah gathers up the empty winegla.s.ses; he likes the way she holds them, stems between her fingers, the three bowls just touching each other in her outstretched palm. She picks up the salad bowl with her free hand and turns toward the kitchen, her skirt twisting around her legs for a moment.

"Sarah," he says, but when she turns back he's suddenly embarra.s.sed, doesn't want to say what he was going to say-that he likes her skirt, thinks it looks good on her. "Here," he says, reaching for the salad bowl. "I'll take that."

SARAH WIPES UP spaghetti sauce spills on the stove while Winch washes and Luke dries. She wishes she hadn't reacted about the acid. Would it be so awful if they did it? Not really-not if she didn't have to be around them. She never wanted to be so conventional; it's crept up on her, all the more insidious because it's so surprising. After she straightened out Josh Gold's misunderstanding this morning, she found herself thinking that maybe she should have changed her name. Sarah Merrill, though-it sounds like a game show hostess.

She turns from the stove and watches Luke and Winch. It's funny how, just looking at them from the back-both of them in jeans, both with fairly short hair-you can tell that Luke's the one with a job and Winch is the drifter. Sarah thinks that Winch would be shocked if he found out about the time she dropped acid. Luke's the only one who knows, though: Luke and her sister, who was there-who made her do it, Sarah's always thought.

Then suddenly Sarah realizes that she's been unfair, blaming Becky. Thinking back now, for the first time in years, the whole episode shifts, as if she were looking through a kaleidoscope and had just realized you could turn the end and get an entirely new view. Sarah was fourteen, Becky barely sixteen: where was it written that Sarah had to accept Becky's offer? She could have done what she'd planned that day, gone to the beach with her friends. She sees now that Becky must have been scared-must have given Sarah the second black pill because she wanted Sarah's company, not to test her. And when they walked home from the park late that afternoon, and Becky took Sarah's hand-couldn't that have been for her own comfort? Remembering that endless walk home, Sarah has always connected the terrible feeling of there being fur growing on her shoulders, of her lips being grotesquely swollen and her eyelids puffy, with the shameful notion that her sister was holding her hand because otherwise Sarah might never find her way home.

"SARAH," LUKE SAYS for the third time, and finally she looks at him.

"You were a million miles away," says Winch, and Luke wishes to h.e.l.l he were alone with his wife. It takes the greatest effort to stay where he is, holding the d.a.m.ned dishtowel, to not cross the kitchen and put his arms around her.

"Are you OK?" Luke says. He puts down the dishtowel and does cross the kitchen, but settles for touching her shoulder.

She appears to be on the verge of tears and although she nods, he feels a kind of panic start up through his legs. He thinks it must be about the acid and he says, "You know what I was thinking we should do next weekend?"

Sarah doesn't respond and Luke turns to Winch; he just wants someone to say "What, Luke?" But Winch has gone goony; his mouth half-open, he stares at Sarah.

"I was thinking," says Luke-but he wasn't thinking anything. "I was thinking we should all go to the zoo."

Too late he remembers that Sarah hates zoos-they make her self-conscious, she says, as if she were in the cage with the animals watching her. But she smiles and says, "That might be fun," and Luke's so relieved he just lets it go.

"Oh, man," says Winch, "they've got a great zoo here. I was there a couple days ago, they have a very cool panda at that zoo. I'll bet you guys have never even been, have you? That's an excellent idea."

Luke allows himself to wonder what Winch was doing at the zoo when he's supposed to be looking for a job. Maybe he was looking for a job. Monkey feeder, s.h.i.t raker, bird man: so many possibilities.

"You know what's weird about pandas," Sarah says. Luke looks at her. She's smiling-she's got something up her sleeve.

"They don't breed in captivity," Winch says. "I, for one, can't really blame them."

Sarah shakes her head. "No, listen," she says. "They're huge, right? Get this: it's not unusual for them to give birth to babies the size of a stick of b.u.t.ter."

"I think I'm disgusted," says Luke.

Winch goes to the refrigerator, gets out a stick of b.u.t.ter, and comes over to where Luke and Sarah are standing.

"I don't believe this," Luke says, glancing at Sarah.

Winch takes Luke's hand and puts the b.u.t.ter in it. "I think you should be ashamed," Winch says. "The animal kingdom is a beautiful part of our world. Who are we to judge its mysterious ways?"

Luke laughs uncomfortably.

"Pet the baby," says Winch.

Luke looks at Sarah and rolls his eyes.

"Pet it," says Winch. He says it again, and Luke strokes his finger over the waxy paper. It's pleasantly cool and firm.

WINCH ISN'T SURE what just happened between Luke and Sarah. She's better, right? It's exhausting, this going back and forth.

"Satisfied?" Luke asks him, making his snorting sound.

Winch takes the b.u.t.ter and taps Luke's shoulder with it. "You sound like a hog, brother," he says. He returns the b.u.t.ter to the refrigerator. When he turns back Luke's staring at him. "What?" Winch says.

"What did you just say?"

Winch tries the snort himself.

Luke turns to look at Sarah, but she's staring at Winch, a disgusted look on her face. Is she disgusted with Winch or with Luke? He didn't mean anything by it-the snort just bugs him.

"You've got this noise you make, man." He does the noise again himself. "Like that."

"He's laughing," Sarah says coldly. She continues to stare at him.

"Well," Winch says, "nice laugh." He feels very peculiar just now-almost as if he were high, only decidedly unrelaxed.

"Well," Sarah says, "we're sorry it bothers you. Is there anything else we can do to make your stay more pleasant? Change the way we cook your dinner, maybe, or how we-"

"Sarah," Luke says, putting his hand on her arm.

She pulls her arm away and leaves the kitchen.

Luke stares at Winch.

"Oops," Winch says.

"Oops?" Luke says. "You say oops?"

Winch doesn't know what to say.

SARAH'S IN THE bathroom, door closed, running cold water into the sink for no good reason. She feels reckless, like breaking something-hurling something heavy and expensive through the big living room window. At the same time, she knows that she is someone who could never do something like that. She'd be unable to stop herself from thinking beyond the exhilarating crash to the broken gla.s.s on the floor, the room sucking in the cold autumn wind, the repairmen summoned.

There's a knock at the door, and Luke's voice asking her what she's doing.

She reaches into the tub and turns on the hot water. "Taking a bath," she says.