Читать книгу Seven Mile Bridge - Michael M. Biehl - Страница 10

3

I decide to take a break from the manila folders and go down to the kitchen for that other airline bottle of Old Crow. It’s the only decent booze left in the house, so I want to nurse it. I take my drink out to the living room and sit down in the red and gold striped easy chair where my father was sitting when he opened the letter from the Bank of Wisconsin. The arms of the chair are worn through the fabric to the white stuffing, and in one spot through the stuffing to the wood frame. The chair smells like stale cigarette smoke, and the fabric is stained orange in several places. The brass floor lamp next to it is encrusted with tarnish, the harp is bent, and the pull chain to turn it on is missing.

“Did it have to be that big a deal?” I say, out loud. In the silence of the empty house, the kitchen faucet answers, “Plop . . . plop . . . plop.”

The living room drapes that used to be white but are now yellowish-brown are open a crack, and through the milky fog in the window I can see a snow flurry astir outside. I realize my fingers and toes are cold. A small pile of firewood is stacked on the hearth. Probably sitting there gathering dust for years, it should burn robustly. I wonder how long it’s been since the chimney was last cleaned. If I opt to burn the place down, a fire in the fireplace might be all it takes to do the job.

I look down at the glass in my hand. It’s empty. I set the glass down on the coffee table, which is embellished with ring-shaped stains that form Venn diagrams and Olympic symbols on its nicked surface, half expecting to hear my mother say, “Use a coaster.”

* *

My father didn’t get out of his chair and carry the letter over to my mother, who had three balls of different colored yarn on her lap. She was working them into a sweater that Jamie got for his birthday that year. When she said, “David, what’s the matter?” with that dire tone in her voice, my father just looked down at his lap and held the letter out, as if it were too heavy and he was too deflated to carry it over to her. My mother stood up and took it from him, then sat back down to read it.

She had a nervous habit of picking at her fingernails with her thumbnail, which made a clicking noise. As she looked at the letter, she clicked like she was playing castanets.

“What does this mean?” she asked.

“What it says,” replied my father.

“It’s a mistake, right?”

“No.”

There was a long pause, during which my mother stared at the letter and clicked her fingernails furiously. The normally smooth, even features of her face were pinched into a scowl of equal parts fear and anger. I was curious as hell as to what was in the letter, but I didn’t think they’d tell me if I asked. They were acting guarded and deadly serious. I pretended to read the sports page while I listened surreptitiously.

“Who’s this Newley?” my mother asked.

“Customer of the Dieworks,” said my father. “Friend of Leon Bridette’s.”

Leon Bridette was my father’s boss. From the tone in my parents’ voices whenever they spoke his name, I had the sense that they both mildly disliked him, and less mildly feared him.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“What happened to the money?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why would you do such a stupid thing?”

“Bridette made me.”

“How could Bridette make you? Did he put a gun to your head?”

“He might as well have!” he thundered. My father rarely raised his voice, almost never when he was sober. He caught me peeking at him, and said, “Not in front of the children, Lou.”

I don’t remember my parents arguing or even discussing grownup matters around me and Jamie very much while I was growing up. For people with so little experience fighting in front of the kids, they sure got good at it towards the end.

My mother stood up suddenly and walked to the staircase, which descended from the upstairs right into the living room. She turned at the landing and glared at my father for a moment, then made a show of stomping up the steps. In my memory she has on a purple ski sweater with pink snowflakes on it, black stretch pants and black suede lace-up shoes, but that may be because we had several snapshots of her in that outfit. My father tried to salvage a little dignity by waiting long enough to make it seem like he wasn’t scrambling after her. Then he shuffled over to the stairs and slowly ascended, without saying a word to me or Jamie.

I could hear them through the ceiling, could hear anger and anguish in their voices, but I could not make out their words. I turned the volume down on the Philco. Jamie turned it back up. I turned it down, he turned it up again. He wasn’t about to yield, so I went over to the stairs and crept halfway up on all fours, being careful to avoid the squeaky fifth step. There, I could make out some words, snippets of the exchange going on in my parents’ bedroom, but I couldn’t quite get the gist of the conversation, just that it scared me.

My mother’s voice: “ . . . end up on the street with two children! ”

My father’s voice: “ . . . never let it come to that. I will take care of my family!”

Mother’s voice: “ . . . man wouldn’t let his boss push him around.”

Father’s voice: “ . . . don’t understand how these things work.”

There was a lull in the action on The Mod Squad, and I heard one sentence from my mother clearly: “I am not going to let the rug be pulled out from under me now, not after everything I’ve had to put up with!”

I had never thought of my mother as spoiled. On the contrary, she was sturdy, practical, what we now call “low maintenance.” So I was baffled by her exclamation. What was this “everything” she was claiming she’d had to “put up with”?

We weren’t well off by anyone’s standards, at least not anyone American. I knew my parents were perpetually strapped, hanging on to modest suburban home ownership by their fingernails. Whatever we did, money was always an issue, whether it was a vacation up north or a trip to 31 Flavors for ice cream cones. Sometimes an unexpected expense like a furnace repair would cause my father to miss a mortgage payment. Once the well pump went out and we couldn’t afford to get it fixed until my father’s next paycheck. We had to go to the bathroom in a plastic bucket and bury our feces in the backyard for five days. Maybe this was what my mother was talking about, but she had not made much of a fuss about it at the time. If she was that dissatisfied with the way things were, I had never noticed it.

My father opened the bedroom door suddenly, and I scurried backwards down the stairs like a startled crab. I forgot to skip the fifth step, and it let out a squeal like fingernails on a chalkboard, announcing to my father that I’d been eavesdropping. He appeared at the top of the stairs and we locked eyes. His face was flushed and he looked more embarrassed than I was.

“Go to bed, Jonathan,” he said. “Tell your brother to go to bed, too.”

I turned the TV off. Jamie yelled at me that the show wasn’t over and turned it back on. “Dad says we have to go to bed,” I said.

“Forget it,” said Jamie.

We argued for a minute, but it was obvious Jamie wouldn’t budge. Taking the opportunity to demonstrate how much better a son I was than Jamie, I went upstairs, stopping to tell my father, “Jamie refuses to go to bed.” My father just stood there while I went to wash up.

When I came out of the bathroom my father was still standing at the top of the stairs, frozen, as if he just couldn’t decide whether to go back into the bedroom and face his indignant wife, or go downstairs and deal with his stubborn, disobedient son. So he just stood there, a guy with no place to hang out in his own house.

I went to bed, but I didn’t go to sleep. I lay on my back staring at the long, meandering crack in the ceiling and wondering what was in that letter, who “Newley” was, what was the stupid thing my dad’s boss made him do, and how it all might result in us ending up on the street. An hour later the noise from the television stopped. Then Jamie clumped back and forth between his room and the bathroom for a while, brushing his teeth with the same exasperating deliberation as any other night, and finally the house quieted. Out of a combination of self-protective vigilance and morbid curiosity, I had left my bedroom door ajar. I was still awake when my parents’ voices started back up, from the direction of their bedroom. Barely audible whispers at first, then agitated but still hushed tones, then anguished declarations loud enough I could make out the words.

“I will take care of it. I’ll talk to a lawyer tomorrow.”

“And pay him with what? Lawyers don’t work for free, you know.”

“I’ll work it out.”

“How, David? If you file bankruptcy again, our credit is finished.”

Again? What was she talking about? When had my father filed for bankruptcy? I wasn’t even sure I knew exactly what bankruptcy was.

“Perhaps I should be the one talking to a lawyer.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, Lou. This isn’t grounds for divorce.”

“Nonsupport is grounds in this state. Besides, I read Wisconsin might be no-fault soon.”

I heard some shuffling around coming from their bedroom, then the squeal of the fifth stair tread, followed by a door slam that sounded like the report from a cannon.

I lay awake for another couple of hours, replaying the events of the evening in my mind and trying to decipher my parents’ remarks. My stomach ached and I couldn’t seem to take a satisfying breath of air. The crack in the plaster over my bed looked threatening, like it might spontaneously start spreading and cause the ceiling to collapse on me.

I was picturing what my mother looked like tramping angrily up the stairs, her blonde flip bouncing up and down, when I realized something. Her hands had been balled into little fists, with nothing in them. She was not holding the letter. I thought of my father on the stairs, slinking after her, head down, pulling himself up with the banister. His hands were empty, too.

I got out of bed and shuffled quietly to the stairs. The uncarpeted wooden treads were cold on my bare feet. Halfway down I could see my father passed out on the sofa in his bathrobe, gently snoring, one slippered foot on the floor, one draped over the arm. The room reeked of whiskey and cigarette smoke. On the coffee table, next to an empty bottle of Early Times and a brass ashtray full of Tareyton butts, was a tri-folded sheet of white paper. I stepped over the squeaky fifth step and moved as quietly as I could to retrieve the letter. By slipping in behind the drapes I was able to read the letter by the light of the streetlamp in front of our house.

* *

I pick up my empty glass and go back in the kitchen, just to make sure there isn’t another little bottle of Old Crow or something else palatable hiding in the cabinet over the refrigerator. There isn’t, so I pour two fingers of the sorry-ass blended whiskey into my glass. It’s as bad as I expected, but better than nothing.

Back in my old room, I read the Bank of Wisconsin letter again. It doesn’t scare or confuse me anymore, like it did when I was seventeen. It just makes me feel sad, and a bit queasy. Below the date, my father’s name and the address of our house on Foxglove Lane, it says, “Re: $80,000 Promissory Note dated June 1, 1970.”

Dear Mr. Bruckner:

The loan made by the Bank of Wisconsin to Philip J. Newley of Oostburg, Wisconsin, is in default. Mr. Newley has not made payments as required by the Loan Agreement of even date with the above-captioned Promissory Note for the past nine months. We have been unable to locate Mr. Newley.

Under the terms of the Loan Agreement, the entire principal amount of the Promissory Note and all accrued interest, together with default penalties as provided in the Loan Agreement, are due and payable on demand. As guarantor of the Note, you are liable for the amount due, $108,715.87.

Demand is hereby made for payment of the said amount. If full payment or other arrangements satisfactory to the Bank of Wisconsin are not made within ten (10) days from the date hereof, this matter will be turned over for collection with instructions to commence immediate action.

Very truly yours,

Frank T. Shriner

Vice President, Business Loans

After thirty-six years and with three stiff drinks in me, I think I can finally see that the letter did have to be as big a deal as my parents made of it. If the same thing happened to me now as happened to my father then, I could just give up my equity in the dive shop and my boat, move to the mainland where the cost of living is lower, and drive a forklift or do odd jobs. But I don’t have a wife and kids.

I stare at the letter, remembering how it alarmed and disheartened my father. Perhaps witnessing the effect these three paragraphs had on him is the reason I don’t have a wife and kids. I think acknowledging that possibility is what is making me queasy.

I hoist a couple of large corrugated cardboard boxes off the bed and onto the floor so I can lie down for a moment. The bed sags like a hammock. The crack in the ceiling is still a meandering river across the room, but it is wider now and has developed tributaries. In the stillness of the house, I imagine I can still hear my parents’ argument that night escalating down the hall, the plaintive wail of the squeaky stair tread roused by my father in retreat, and the punctuating slam of a bedroom door reverberating through the house with an ominous finality, like the concluding chord of a Beethoven sonata. One of the grim ones.