We were living in a small apartment above the florist’s when Leanne’s father cut her off. We weren’t living mildly, by any means. We’d go for steak dinners at the bar and grill on Wednesdays and rack up a bill on expensive scotch drinks. Leanne would say, “Only the top shelf or us!” and we’d drink a half dozen of those with our filets and baked potatoes. But she stopped writing to her father, or she told her father that she was seeing me, and that was that, no more money sent our way.
For a week or so after I’d go to the bar, McHenry’s, across the street, and eat the peanuts and order the dark beers they had on tap. I’d talk to the daytime bartender, Tricia, and look at the display of bottles and think of something nice to do for Leanne, something I could buy her to lift her spirits, some flowers maybe. Tricia thought flowers would do the trick, but that they didn’t last, she said. She said you needed something that lasted, like earrings. But I didn’t have the money, anyway, so it was out of the question. I drank my beer, but couldn’t leave any tip.
It ended up that Leanne and I had to go out and find jobs. We both went to the local temp-to-hire agency, and they put us through these general tests, placing us in a job category that supposedly suited our strengths and interests. Leanne liked hers as a secretary, but I wasn’t sure about mine. Mine was operator at a car plant. I wasn’t so sure.
I asked Leanne, “Maybe your father will reconsider?” She frowned. “No Nick, we need these jobs.” But the last thing I needed was a job. I needed a job like I needed a hole in the head. Anyway, we took the jobs. We’d start the next day.
We celebrated by picking up a bottle of tequila and making margaritas. We set up the T.V. trays by the couch and watched the late night news, eating fried pork chops from the pan. On the local news, a young girl had been raped and thrown in the river. A fisherman had retrieved her this morning, and they were reporting on the fisherman’s life.
“Boy,” Leanne said, “You know, I think this is a new beginning for us.”
The reporter went on about the discovery. I wasn’t so sure.
“If you’re sure, you’re sure,” I said.
“I really am, honey,” she said.
We finished off the bottle of tequila and fell asleep on the couch in front of our T.V. trays. The alarm was going off in our room the next morning for us to get up for work. I woke up first and the television was still on. I turned if off and went over to Leanne, who was sleeping sprawled with a hand covering her face. I woke her up and asked her about calling her father, if she would reconsider.
“Huh,” she said rubbing her eyes. Then,“Oh. No, I can’t. Not now.”
A little later on, when we were drinking coffee at the kitchen table, I asked:
“Is it me Leanne? Why he cut you off?”
She ruffled the newspaper. “No, not you. He wants me to get married,” she said frowning.
I drew my fingers through my hair and nodded my head.
Later on at the car plant, I sat in my Buick LeSabre smoking a cigarette, waiting for my shift to start. I was listening to the sports talk shows on the AM radio. I was still hung-over some, and thought about running off and going over to McHenry’s and talking to that daytime bartender. But I knew I shouldn’t—at least for the day I’d stick with the car plant. Leanne would have my head if I left. I sat there and watched the people walk by early for their shifts. They were all in blue jeans and faded white t-shirts with smocks. I hadn’t gotten my smock yet, and I had on khakis and a black t-shirt. I hadn’t gotten the memo. The workers were mostly older, middle-aged men with worn faces.
A man came up to my window, knocked, and pointed down, as if I should roll the window down. I looked at him and rolled it down. “Have a cigarette?” he asked. I drew up my pack and handed him one. He lit it with a match and flipped the match on the pavement nonchalantly. He didn’t give a damn about anything. It made me think.
The bell began to ring, and everyone started leaving their cars. I opened my car door and looked out at the enormous building, the plant which seemed to run on and on. I looked out at the horizon. The sun was up in its beginning. The throng of workers was walking to a single set of glass doors. They all looked the same. It all depressed me. The hell with it, I thought. I got back in the car, and left.
When I got back to the apartment, it was nine o’clock. Like I hadn’t even left, the T.V. trays were still up in front of a blank television. I put on a pot of coffee and started on reading the paper. I started with the local and went to the sports, then to the comics. I read everything slowly, knowing I had a day to kill. I went over and put a chaser of Bailey’s in the coffee, and continued to read. I occasionally looked out the window waiting for the mailman, sipping my coffee and reading the paper.
The phone by the oven rang and I picked it up:
“Is Mr. Nick Hanover present.”
I looked at the receiver. “Yes,” I said.
“Sir, you’ve won a sweepstakes. You’re a winner, sir.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“We just need some information from you, and…”
I hung up. I left the receiver off the hook, the phone hanging from the chord. The mailman had arrived, and I was expecting a letter from my sister out in Washington, hopefully with a check inside. You see, she was a corporate attorney and had the money to spare, and she was doing well out in Washington.
At the mailbox, Vivian was in the window at the florist’s arranging a bouquet of flowers. She squinted at me and frowned, and straightened up. She was the owner and she didn’t like the kind of company I kept. She was an old widow who played with flowers all day, anyway. I waved and sorted through the mail. I stopped at a blue envelope written in big looping letters addressed from Leanne’s father.
Walking back to the apartment, I thought about opening it. I set it down on the kitchen counter, and stared at it. You could hear the dial tone from the phone off the hook. I held the letter up to the overhead light in the kitchen, trying to read what was there, looking for a check. But, from what I could see, it was definitely a letter. I could see ‘Dear Leanne’ but couldn’t make out anything else. I figured what the hell. I got out a steak knife and cut the top off the envelope and slid the letter out. It was on official company letterhead. Real official.
I got the idea of the letter. Leanne’s father and mother, Glen and Barb, were driving down to have dinner with us, kind of inviting themselves. They were coming from upstate and staying at some hotel so as not to put us out. Judging by the letter’s date, they’d probably be here tonight.
While lying on the couch looking at a blank television, I heard someone at the door, fooling with the lock, and stood up. Leanne walked in. It was around noon, her lunch hour. Her long brown hair was in her eyes and her checks were flushed. She was fumbling with something in her purse, and she looked up and saw me, and in the kitchen she saw the phone off the hook. The operator’s voice was faintly speaking.
“I’ve been calling here all morning, Nick. What the hell.”
“Phone’s off the hook,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.
“And what are you doing home from work?” she asked.
“Didn’t show up,” I said.
“Good god, Nick. What came over you? We need the extra money.”
“By the way, your parents are coming tonight, I think,” I said.
She stood there with her mouth gaping, purse unzipped and disordered.
“That’s just great,” she said, “Where’d you get that idea.”
I handed her the open letter. She read it, mouthing the words silently from parted lips. She sighed.
“Damnit Nick, what’d you do all day? Watch the clouds, I bet.”
She smiled, showing teeth stained from tobacco. It made her look different, like a woman possessed.
“Are you going back to work?” I asked.
She continued to smile, almost smirk.
“Don’t change the subject, Nicky,” she said.
“Maybe your father will reconsider,” I said urging my head forward, trying to change the subject, “Maybe he’ll give you the money flat out.”
Leanne fixed her eyes on me. She wagged her finger back and forth in front of me.
“So,” she began, “You showed up at the plant. I saw you leave. You must have at least gone to the place. I don’t know. You didn’t go through with it. Whichever. You chickenshit, you. You don’t want to work? What about us, Nick? We need the money.”
She had the letter in her hand and she was waving it left and right, directly in front of my face. She was stamping her feet, and sort of smiling at me. It got me thinking. It didn’t add up, right? Her smiling like that, like a woman possessed. So I started smiling, too. So we were both smiling. Just so, I still think she had the one up on me, but I was fine with that. She usually did.
“Oh Nicky, come here,” she said.
“To hell with work,” she said.
We held each other. It was midday. Through the window, the sun was bright in the cloudless sky.
Before her parents Glen and Barb came, we had everything set out. There was a bucket of ice, and a bottle of scotch for her father, and a bottle of gin and a bottle of tonic water for her mother. I’d drink the scotch, and Leanne would drink the gin and tonic. We went down and got a nice bouquet from Vivian at the florist’s for the centerpiece. Leanne vacuumed all the carpets. “Honey,” she said running the vacuum, “Just don’t tell them too much, you know how you really do go on and on. And don’t talk about work.” All this time that she was shouting over the vacuum cleaner, I was at the oven over the enchiladas, overseeing the dinner.
They came through the front door, Leanne leading Glen and Barb through the hallway. I had on the baking gloves, with the tray of enchiladas in my hands. Leanne was hugging her mother and speaking pleasantries to her father. Glen had on a black overcoat, and underneath, tan slacks and a polo shirt, and tan loafers. He was bursting at the bit. He looked at me and only saw the pink oven mitts.
He was an upfront kind of man, I could tell. He told me so.
“Nick. So it’s Nick, right? You’re the one in the kitchen? I can’t say I’m surprised, with Leanne here,” he said.
“What’ll it be, Glen,” I said, overlooking what he said, putting out my hand, then, “We have scotch.”
“Scotch it is.”
I poured out a scotch to the brim over ice. I put the left over ice cubes back in the bucket. He sipped from his drink, looking over his glass at me. Leanne had her mother in an embrace and was coming into the kitchen. Barb noticed the centerpiece of flowers.
“Well would you look at this,” she said to Leanne.
“That was Nick’s idea, Mom,” Leanne said, though she lied. We tend to lie at dinner parties, I thought.
“It’s a nice touch, Nick,” Leanne’s father said.
I nodded my head his way, hoping that was enough. You see, Leanne had told me about her father, or what she knew about him at least. He had grown up poor, and I mean dirt poor, up in northern Wisconsin. He only had one pair of pants growing up, from what Leanne told me. They had to clean their clothes on a washer board. She’d told me he had a hard life, but athletics was his meal ticket, and he got a full ride to the state university for basketball. But he blew that on drinking, and he’d never really given up drinking since, not really anyway. Saying that, he was still a rich bastard. Tough with money. He had made his money in the stock market, and now he had a company of his own.
“It really is a nice addition,” Barb said, “The flowers.”
We all four just stood there. I realized there was really no place to go. I went over and threw open the kitchen window. You could hear the traffic outside running by. The air that came in was thick and steamy from the cars’ exhausts.
Anyway, we all say down around the bucket of ice with plastic tongs submerged, bottles of scotch and gin, and tonic water, and generally forgot about the enchiladas, forgot about everything. I poured myself a drink over ice and listened to Glen. Glen was leaning back in his chair and had a leg propped against the other.
“Do you two want to know why we decided to just show up like this?” he said.
He looked from Leanne to me. He stopped there.
“Never mind that,” he said shaking his head. “What kind of man are you, Nick? Now, I’m just asking, that’s all,” he said.
“Well Mr. Leeds, I’m very fond of your daughter. I love her very much,” I said.
“Now I think that’s admirable,” Barb said, “Don’t you, Glen?”
“But that’s not everything,” he said. “I wish it could be, but its not. Love isn’t the end all, Nick, but it’s a nice thought.”
“Well Mr. Leeds, I don’t know then” I said.
Leanne and her mother were silent. You could hear the steady hum from the traffic outside the window. It was late evening and the air was cool now coming from outside.
“The thing is Nick, we want Leanne married. We want her married to someone who can support her.”
He had lit a cigarette and was ashing right on the kitchen floor.
“What’s more, Nick, is we want that someone to help run the business with me. To buy me out in a few years, when all is said and done. You see what I’m saying here?” he said. He was drinking the scotch heavily and pouring even more freely. It was hard keeping up.
I nodded slowly. “I think I do, yes, Glen,” I said.
I looked over at Leanne. She had an ice cube out on the table and was moving it with her thumb back and forth, watching it slowly melt, as if in a trance. She looked up at me and smiled, but didn’t really see me, not entirely. She was half there, half gone. Barb had her arm around Leanne and was rubbing her back consolingly.
“Niiick, earth to Nick,” Glen said.
“I’m here,” I said.
“Well son, there’s more to the story, things I think you ought to know.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“Did you know, for instance, that Leanne had a kid? I bet you didn’t. And that Leanne’s really a good for nothing, when it comes down to it.”
He was still ashing on the floor, but finished his cigarette, then grounded it out right there on the table. I thought, well, would you look at that. Then, refilled my glass with ice, poured if full with scotch and sat there and drank, taking breaths between drinks. I stared into my glass. I thought about Leanne having a kid. I figured there was more to the story.
“But oh no everyone, that’s not all,” he said waving his hands, “that’s nothing, really. After that, Little Leanne leaves Little Jack in the car with all the windows up. It was a scorcher that day, mind you. And you know what Leanne was doing all that time while Jack died in the car. She was getting her fix. Shooting heroine. She left her year old son in a car outside a trap house while she shot heroine. Jesus, ain’t that the stuff.”
It happened that Leanne started crying right there in front of us. Sobbing into her hands. She had her elbows on the table, and her face in her hands.
It had turned night outside, and we only had on the small kitchen light above the table so it was hard to see one another. Still, you could see the cigarette smoke hanging in the air below the ceiling.
Behind Leanne’s father, on the wall leading to the hallway, you could see a picture of Jesus on the cross. It showed the blood, everything. It wasn’t mine; Leanne had bought it at a save-a-lot store for next to nothing. But she liked its presence, there in the kitchen, overlooking everyone. I guess we all have something to repent, I thought, looking at it then and there.
But no one said anything for a long time. I resigned myself to the silence. The only noise was Leanne crying, and the faint hum of traffic from outside the window. I thought resignation was the best idea at that point, all things considered.
