"Tell Theresa I'm sorry," Jack finally says, gathering his things on the patio table, to head out. "I'll call her later, too."
"That would be good," I say, as I walk him to the driveway.
"So what about it?" he says, nodding back to the yard. "I'll send the guys around. But what about the pool?"
We'll see, 1 say to him, or I think I do anyway, and before he steps up into the saddle of his impossibly high-riding vehicle I give him a healthy pat or two on the back, to which my son grunts something satisfyingly low and approving, a clipped rumbling yyup, and I think of how good it is to have both of them here again, regardless of the terms, because (and you know who you are) you can reach a point in your life when it almost doesn't matter whether people love you in the way you'd want, but are simply here, nearby enough, that they just bother at all.
nine
E R R Y B A T T L E hereby declines the Real. I really do.
Or maybe, on the contrary, I'm inviting it in. Art example is how I now find myself here in my dimly lighted two-car garage, the grimy windows never once cleaned, sitting in the firm leather driver's seat of the Ferrari, its twelve cylinders warbling like an orchestra of imprisoned Sirens, and only when the scent becomes a bit too cloying do I reach up and press the remote controller hooked on the visor to crank up the door, the fresh air rushing in just like when you open a coffee can.
"What the hell are you doing?" Theresa shouts from the wheel of the Impala. She's idling on the driveway, staring out at me from behind Daisy's old Jackie 0 sunglasses, which she found in a night table I'd put down in the basement probably twenty years ago.
I back out the machine, in two awkward, revvy lurches. I si-dle up to her. "I sometimes forget to open the door first."
"You big dummy. Are you sure you want to do this?"
"I'm sure. I'll buy you guys another car."
"Forget it. We don't really need one. We'll use this one, when you're not working. Hey, I want to stop at the Dairy Queen on the way out."
"Didn't we just have breakfast?"
"I need a milkshake and fries, Jerry. Right now."
"Okay, okay, that's good."
It's amazing how quickly she'll get her back up these days, not for the conventional reasons of my political and cultural il-literacy/idiocy, but for any kind of roadblock to calories sweet and fatty and salty. I'm glad that she's ornery, still feeling hungry, for with this thing looming she seems extra vulnerable, like an antelope calf with a hitch in its stride. We thumbs-up each other, like pilots and comrades will do, and I lead us out, remembering there's a Dairy Queen just off Richie's exit.
I've continued to be respectful and am hanging back, willing in my lazy-love (as opposed to tough-love) manner to leave the navigation to her, but something about the status of the status quo has set off a sharp alarm in my viscera, this clang from the lower instruments that we're pitched all wrong here. And so a good part of the reason I've decided to return Richie's car to him, no gloating, no strings, is not just that I'm a wonderful guy, or that it's an inherently hazardous machine for Theresa and Paul to be tooling around in among all the sport-utes riding high and mighty, or that I will never be able to make the car really feel like mine (even though I know Richie would have had Donnie already repainted and the seats reupholstered, if he didn't immediately sell her for a month's share of an executive jet), but to try to simplify, simplify, what seems to be our increasingly worrisome matters of family. I should probably be effecting this by gathering all my loved ones and doing something like passing out index cards and having everyone write down for candid discussion three "challenges" that face us (as I saw suggested in a women's magazine at the supermarket checkout the other day), but it's easier to begin by clearing out whatever collateral stuff is crowding what appears to be our increasingly mutual near future, a category in which the Rabbit-mobile neatly fits. As much as Theresa and Paul like using the car, I've been feeling that it's literally a foreign object, plus the fact that it reminds me too much of Rita's disdainful regard.
So here we are, Theresa and I, in our convertible caravan of two. I glance back in the rearview every ten seconds, and wave.
She waves back, glamorous in the gleaming chariot. It gives me pleasure to see her at the wheel, reminding me of the days when she and Jack used to sit up front with me and take turns sitting in my lap and driving. Of course you'd probably get arrested these days for doing such a thing, charged with child en-dangerment, but back then Jack would even press the horn when a patrol car passed, the officer answering Jack with a little whirrup from his siren.
We have a decent ways to go before we get to Richie's town, which I'm not minding, as it's midafternoon, everyone still at the beach, with the Expressway moving along at a fine smooth clip that feels even headier from the open cockpit of this High Wop machine supreme. As I pass the cars on my left and right, their drivers, I notice, can't help but take a good long look at me, men and women both, but especially the men, younger guys and middle-aged guys and guys who shouldn't still be driving, and I know exactly how they're thinking what a detestable Lucky-ass piece of shit I am, the respect begrudged but running deep as they unconsciously bank to the far edge of their lanes, to give me room. The younger chicks are the ones who drift closer, closer, maybe to see if the hair is a rug or weave, if I've got a Happy gobble to my neck, this one saucer-eyed blondie jouncing alongside in a Jeep Wrangler even raising her sunglasses up on her head to wink at me and mouth what I'm sure is a smoky Follow me home. Maybe Jerry Battle should reconsider. The wider shot here is pretty okay, too, the broad roadway not seeming half as awful as I think I know it to be, and I have to wonder what else — for our kind, at least — really makes a place a place, save for the path or road running straight through it, ultimately built for neither travel nor speed?
At the Dairy Queen we're pretty much alone, given that they haven't officially opened. Theresa got the two teenage employees to open early for us by telling the somewhat older assistant manager that she'd let them try out the Ferrari after they filled her order. They're both husky and greasy-faced, your basic big-pore, semi-washed, blank-eyed youth who in fact run almost everything in our world-dominating culture, but you've never seen soda jerks in this day and age move as fast as these two do now; they've got the fries bubbling in the hopper and the ice cream in the blenders and they're even filling a squeeze bottle with fresh catsup. I've joined Theresa in the front seat of my antique wheels. Like carhops they bring out our snack on a clean tray and I throw the assistant manager the keys and ask him not to maim or kill anyone, and before Theresa can even pop her straw into her shake he is smoking the fat rear rubber, wildly fishtailing down the avenue.
"Have some fries, Jerry"
I help myself, though I'm completely not hungry something I've been a lot lately, no doubt inspired in some latent biological way by the sight of pregnant kin. Or maybe I shouldn't be eating at all, to leave more