Parallel Rivers Read online

  With a sigh, the boy returns his attention to the window in time to see a figure slip from the cab across the road toward their building. The girl flicks on the light, takes up the novel. She is reading a description of the girl at the wheel of the TransAm — the tires’ screech as the car speeds round the corner. He regrets having given her the novel. This evening at the dance he felt sure he’d made the right move, but now he blames the book for the way the night’s turning out. She says she’s beginning to feel cold, but continues to read while he watches the fat red whiskery face outside the window. By shifting his focus he can see the girl reflected in the dirty glass just as the tramp must see her. Under a low-wattage bulb, she reclines on the bed, one hand supporting the book, the other behind her head. Her hair spills onto the floor. Her leg through the slash in the white fabric gleams. Her hair on the boards gleams.

  The boy says, There’s something you should know.

  She says, Let me finish the chapter, will you?

  I’ve got it, the whole thing. Her breasts. Her nipples. My hands. When she got in the car her legs flashed to her crotch. She seems sad, no, nostalgic, sort of. Check. How am I doing? Do I know what to do next? No. I am ridiculous. I am the guy outside. Her TransAm shines, a bit of azure sky. The taxi is waiting. I should do something. I just wanted her to keep driving, driving. I want her body and her car. Could smash the window —

  Hey! he says.

  What? she says.

  Nothing.

  The cot creaks. He doesn’t know what to do next.

  They broke into a condemned building, into an old office, and fucked twice, once on the grubby cot, once against the closet. The window frames the face of an old guy. What happened to them, to the boy and girl? What happened?

  Light and loud music streamed from the open doors of the gymnasium. A squat figure dithered in the shadows. The tramp’s pale blue eyes followed the high split in the blonde’s dress as she walked to her car. A tiny rip opened in the white plastic of the TransAm’s bucket seat. A wave of grey hair broke along the neck of his jacket. His taxi idled in the school driveway, the driver’s hand, cigarette adorned, dangling from the open window.

  The two cars entered a sequence of streets that led to the derelict building. The rip tore further with the weight of her thigh. The boy’s pelvis tilted as he stood in the road, in the dark, uncertain. A light went on in a ground floor room. The city is a cluster of such industrial zones surrounded by neighbourhoods. The city is lights surrounded by dark country. The taxi driver’s cigarette glowed. The tramp’s breath sparkled. He padded across the road to the window. The blonde lay on the cot, a book in her hand. She held her free hand, long fingers outstretched, against her chest.

  Yes, soon. If only it would rain. Here they come, arm in arm, and always a trickle of perspiration down my back at the sight. I was twenty-four when Jane got pregnant. She was a schoolteacher. We got married. Except I could not stand graduate work, heat lightning, any kind of religion, and she loved those things. You are lazy, Jake, she said, you are a good-for-nothing, and a kept man into the bargain. She saw something else, though, her eyes quick as mercury. O I see long legs and little breasts from a distance. We were both mad as hatters, Jane and I, perpetually fighting and loving till the cows and the deer and the antelope and the buffalo all came home. That is what the world was for a while, after the baby. Wonderful, no other word. It was sheer bliss, Jane’s old expression. There was no hurry, and no warning of what was to come. Nothing, I believed, after such happiness, and more nothing. And then it was gone. Like a weekend is gone by Monday morning. All gone. A human body shuts down. I’m sitting outside a window in a pile of grass, having been hit by a car and this has been arranged too, every little wish according to plan. The girl is up against the cupboard and he has pushed his penis inside her. I do not know if I will sleep tonight. What difference does sleep make? No one to tell. No one to talk to. That cab driver could at least have acknowledged my existence. After all I gave him my last twenty bucks. Ah, Jake. Is that a cathedral opening in your head?

  The boy holds his breath, concentrating, not on the girl but on the tramp and the boy disappearing. Rows of books rise high into the darkness of the vaulted ceiling. The people here, in distant niches and corners of the library, are sombre, quiet.

  What d’you want to do? he says.

  Go.

  Can I drive?

  She shakes her head.

  The teenagers climb into the car. The girl accelerates round the corner; the tramp is caught in the headlights’ glare; the impact tosses him onto the newmown boulevard. There’s the tang of acrid rubber and the scent of new-mown grass.

  She sits on the cot edge, clutching her right shoulder with her left hand, her left with her right. Jake presses his long grinning face to the window. The cab pulls slowly away (Papa has a big job to dream up). Dust fans out over the floor as the boy kicks at the bruised drywall with the toe of his sneaker.

  There’s a blanket in the car, he says.

  NIGHTWORK

  JOHN KITCHEN’S CEREBRAL CORTEX INVENTED 1905 and he lived there. My year of alignment, he noted in his diary. He was on his way. In two years would be the Hague Conference, at which he’d represent his country. The world was on its way to permanent international justice. John felt giddy. In early spring, he visited his parents to tell them of his latest appointments and took a walk before breakfast down a familiar lane with his mother who told him she had always loved the woods at this season. Birds sang. A low mist swayed across the fields. This was everything gold and white, sun and frost.

  We are selling the house, she said. It is too big.

  No, he said. Mother.

  The new farmer’s Cedar Duncan. One of the southern Duncans. I’ve invited him to dinner. He’s got these ideas. You must meet his daughter.

  Alice claimed relation to Isadora and learned to dance at the French school. By the time the Great War broke out, she and John had three small children. Their sons were killed in 1944, one over the Pacific, one in a German swamp. She did volunteer work in military hospitals. When John’s cortical activity ended three years later, before the IMF began operation, she had been nursing him for six months. He’d been an important background figure at Bretton Woods, yet did not live to mourn his sons or see the fund in action. Their daughter Florence married a factory worker in 1929 and Sid became president of the company in 1950.

  Florence Kitchen kept her name. She preferred places to people. She told her only daughter this at daybreak along a country road, but neither was paying attention. Their conversations were always a parallel series of thrusts and parries. Their identities were at stake. When Sid and Florence died in a car crash, Grace was at university.

  She and Chester Max married in 1954. I was born the next year. Mother was twenty-six and left off her studies. Father was an engineer.

  People Are Funny. Two For The Money. It’s A Great Life. Father Knows Best. I’ve Got A Secret.

  Early one September morning I walked with a girl along the tracks. I helped her over the fence. We waded through tangled weeds to the huge old greenhouse beside the plaza. By the edge of the parking lot the grass had been recently mowed. A sprinkler swayed back and forth and water ran down the intact panes. She stood in the tallest weeds, thin, pale, with dirty blonde hair, while I circled the house, treading carefully, then stepped through the door. I stared at her through streaming glass.

  I need to pee, she called.

  There’s no one around, I said. There’s tall grass.

  A web across a break in one window held a rainbow and the beads of water swayed as the sprinkler returned. I saw all the colours without moving. Closing my eyes I could smell it, the warm late summer.

  It’s much easier for men. I got my pants wet, see?

  You should wear a dress.

  By the wall we found the six pack I’d stashed under a board. The sun was getting up in the sky. She wore baggy jeans and a loose shirt, carried no purse or wallet. I wanted to
stay by the wall, but she dragged the board to the wet grass verge and sat looking across the plaza. She picked up the beer when I sat down, held it to her lips, then settled it in the grass behind her.

  I love people, she said.

  Not me, I said. I prefer places to people.

  That’s sad.

  Not really.

  And then I was seeing her too clearly. I was at a standstill. This was another false start.

  What d’you think happens, she said, in the end?

  What?

  We can’t just die.

  My season of disorder. I was twenty-six. Working nights. She was sixteen. Still at school, when she didn’t skip out. She hated the decor, hated the pink bathroom, but loved the house and the dog. For the whole Indian summer, nine am, regular as clockwork, the two of us ate scrambled eggs, did the dishes and went to bed. My ex-wife would be halfway through her day. Billy would be halfway through his day. Afternoons I woke late and looked at her. She slept on her stomach. Billy often stopped by on his way from school to his mother’s. She and Billy hit it off. Once a robin sang his heart out as I slid the sheets down. Once Billy turned back the sheets and looked at her while I pretended to be asleep. The girl was slighter and fairer and much younger than Irene.

  For two years the house had been empty except for every other weekend. Sometimes I’d sleep at the lab. I didn’t eat at home. Billy and I went to the burger joint. Then one September morning, a morning as blue and perfect as the perfect blue day, I picked up the girl and we went for a walk by the greenhouse.

  She liked to clean. She liked to sweep the front steps. She liked sex in daylight.

  You awake?

  She sat up in bed. So I’m the first since your wife?

  I talked dirty to her, got her to answer back. Afterward I felt bad.

  I trailed after her as she scrubbed, polished and dusted her way through the house. I wanted to be honest, to do things right. I went out to get supplies. When I returned she and Billy had gone. I bit my nails for an hour before I heard the screen door squeak.

  Where the hell were you?

  I took your son and dog for a walk. That’s all.

  I put my mouth on her mouth. She felt good, and everything was good. The house filled with cooking bacon. The fridge was full. Furniture, appliances, dining table. Dog asleep. She stepped away. She was a little swaybacked. I’ve always found that attractive in young slim women. I asked what was wrong.

  We can make it, she said, or not.

  Whatever you want, I said.

  She pushed on the Hoover at the far end of the room as if she wanted to tear a road in the broadloom.

  My legs felt weak. I couldn’t stand still any length of time those days. I stared out the window at everything burning up and prayed it would rain and rain — a cool downpour. I wanted the tides to flood, rivers to rise and float the house away to somewhere pure and simple and green. I wanted to live in peace with the girl and Billy and the dog. To spend each day walking country roads, picking fruit, never growing weary till evening. I had an image of us at sunset building a big crackling fire that would suck the last traces of light from the sky; we’d listen to birds and frogs while the bonfire took the four of us into its heart and kept us all night as we slept warm and safe from discovery.

  That greenhouse was quiet and damp and sexy. Got drunk a couple of times in there by myself, watching folk getting in and out of their cars in the plaza lot. I don’t mind looking. Looking’s safe. I spend my life looking through a microscope. I looked at Irene in the beginning. We had Billy, then I stopped looking at her. Billy and the dog liked to curl up together beside the heat vent in the kitchen nook. Otherwise, it was the girl and I, alone after sex, not so much snoozing as in a trance. We had fun. I mean I can see her standing slim-hipped in the middle of the living room as Billy, whooping, and the dog, barking, ran round her, the place buzzing with energy.

  What’s wrong with this world, she said, is that no one thinks about what they’re doing.

  I’m not to blame, I said, for pharmaceutical companies or industrial pollution or big business or structural-adjustment policies.

  Who says you are? she said.

  Irene and Billy stood on the step, she calling me a thoughtless bastard. Where’s this bitch you’ve taken in? She kicked at the welcome mat as if it had something to tell her. Her boots were dusty. Little clouds fussed at her heels. You’ll never see your son again if I can help it!

  She squeezed Billy’s hand.

  Say goodbye to your father, William.

  The dog nuzzled at my pant leg as I stood on the threshold watching them go. I was working overtime at the lab a lot, trying to keep on track. Dreams of moving away, starting over. Every day I waited by the open front door with the dog for Billy to pass by on his way home from school. Night closing in, clouds rolling across the sky, and great splinters of grey water lashing the street. My eyes hot and prickly. I was so tired, so tired. I was going to die. I watched the street a long time, shivering with cold.

  You know, she said. He’s not coming.

  She led me to the bedroom.

  On the coverlet, I found Billy’s Scout cap, three shoelaces pinned to its braided edge. From each lace dangled a crayon.

  I made the hat for Billy, she said. His favourite colours.

  On Your Way. You Asked For It. Break The Bank. Make Room For Daddy.

  One morning after work I bought flowers. Such a clean and still city. I barely knew where I was; it felt as if a battle or even the whole war was finished. She took the flowers, buried her face in them, then sneezed twice.

  Want some coffee?

  Sure.

  She sat at the table and let me know this was no big deal. She was only passing through. What a thing for a sixteen-year-old to say. I was so much older. But she needed to say it anyway.

  How much longer do we have?

  Not long.

  What about Billy? I said.

  He’ll be fine.

  What’re you going to do?

  She jumped to her feet, skipped out of the kitchen. I followed her down the hallway.

  I’ll miss you like crazy, I said.

  I followed her through the front door into blinding sun.

  Did you hear me?

  Yeah, she said. You’ll miss me. I can see that.

  What about you?

  Yeah.

  She stood in the sunshine.

  I’m not asking for anything.

  Right.

  No regrets. That’s all.

  I thrashed the welcome mat against the side of the house, flailing behind a shimmering spray of sand and grit.

  The Big Surprise. You Are There. Brave Eagle. Down You Go. Stop The Music.

  My great grandfather was at Bretton Woods. My grandfather was a good industrialist. My father left when I was a kid. My father was a good engineer. I am a good scientist. Women arrive. They vanish. Irene has cancer. There’s something wrong here, something that’s not right. Women know what it is but they won’t be pinned down. They won’t give up their little secret, though they like it when you try to hustle it from them. They know the substance and the chemistry of trouble. They don’t protect themselves from trouble. When you try too hard, they talk right through you, wearing their bones on the outside. You need their strong, peaceful, pure hot or pure cold presence. They don’t need you.

  Last month Billy called from New York.

  Dad.

  What is it, son?

  I’m getting married.

  Good, I said. Good.

  And I have a show.

  I took the Greyhound to New York. Billy and I flew up the Empire State and the Statue of Liberty. Bill and his pretty fiancée took me out for dinner, then he dropped her off and drove me to a downtown gallery. Massive photographs of greenhouses lit from inside. They reminded me of aquariums. In some a girl and a boy stood talking. They shone, the photos, and the people seemed alive. In the middle of the gallery workmen were unpacking crates and arran
ging the links of a huge chain around a cement mixer on rollers. Bill said he had to talk to the curator. I stood and watched a young workman slide a dustsheet from the scale model of a sleeping girl. I was in about five strange places at once. With my mother on a familiar lane at daybreak, she loved the woods at this season, birds singing, mist in the fields. With the girl before breakfast on a day I’d almost forgotten. With Irene, Billy as a baby. With my father the time he built me a miniature world in a tray. Soil and sand, mirror lake, teapot on the shore. And this is the house, he said. We planted weed forests and a turf field. A real sand desert by the lake; Dad lumped a clay mountain in a corner. We had a brown cow, a green dinosaur, and a brass donkey that went rusty.

  What’s up? Bill said, laughing.

  I don’t know, Billy.

  The dizziness went away as fast as it had come.

  Remember when we used to look at slides together? Billy was saying, and you showed me how to make a smear. Those times in the lab. The first time I saw the electron microscope I thought it was a rocket. And the monsters . . .

  I close the door on some version of myself. When Billy was born, I stepped away. I think maybe once or twice I’ve stepped a degree away from who I am. But this feels certain, this feels significant. In the gallery I see how rich the world is and too much. Every detail is beautiful. I can see his face, see my son’s face. Out of the corner of my eye I see a tiny plastic woman in overalls on the grass between the teapot and the trees. She is muddy pink, has shoulder-length hair, and carries a heavy bucket which pulls her arm straight down, tilting her to one side. I do not exist. She looks ahead in a determined kind of way.