He turns out the light. “Good night,” he says.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“That was neat. Will you tell us another story tomorrow night?”
“Sure. Go to sleep now.”
He sits up with a drink, then falls asleep in his chair and dreams about the valley he had mentioned in the children’s story. When he wakes up he goes to his drafting table and on a thin sheet of paper tries to recall the dream: “Each morning before the valley is awake the little girls escape. Their curtains blow through windows, like blouses opening. They’re out to catch the fathers.
“The fathers have not been home all night. Their coats are creased, faces rough with stubble. Before the sky is light they’ve ordered bacon, eggs, toast and jelly, waffles, bagels with cream cheese. In the alley, doors X-ed with boards echo the children’s hisses, shadows dart across the bricks. When the fathers leave the diner, they discover that their cars have been pushed down the street and rest, engines smoking, in a pile.
“It matters, our life with women, how we hurt them if we see them, but the little girls have clearly had enough.”
A picnic with the kids in the car beneath an overpass.
“This is great,” Deidre says, pulling thick waxed paper away from a fat pimiento sandwich.
He had simply pulled off the road because he knew it would surprise them, and they are pleased whenever you surprise them.
“Put the Coke on the dash,” he says. “You’ll spill it.”
Deidre spills it trying to put it on the dash. Apologies. Kleenex. Toby turns the radio on as high as it will go. Elvis Costello singing “Watching the Detectives.”
“We can do without that,” Adams says, turning the radio down. “I wanted to ask you — Toby, be careful.” Pulling over was not a good idea. “Okay, leave it, I’ll get it later. I wanted to ask you how you’re getting along now. It’s been a while since you moved into the new house. Do you like it all right? Is everything okay?”
A Jeno’s Pizza truck roars by, shaking the car. The kids eat in silence. They’ve learned the game. Keep quiet. Don’t rat on Mom. When the adults are acting funny, stay out of their way.
“I just want to know if you’re happy,” Adams says, brushing crumbs from the seat. He misses being able to surprise them. When they were very young, a stray cat came into the backyard. Pamela fed it every evening and they loved to watch it. Deidre was wild with new expressions — a dozen every day, it seemed — and “cat” was one of her favorite discoveries. Just for fun Adams started referring to the stray as a “catezoidal object.” The kids laughed uproariously, impressed that you could call a thing more than one name, or twist words around to make them sound funny. Now that he sees Toby and Deidre only on weekends he has to schedule their time wisely. Surprise has gone out of their Saturdays. “Things haven’t been the same, I know,” Adams says.
Toby replies, “You can say that again.”
“Well, tell me about it. How does it make you feel? What can I do for you?”
“Buy me a sheep,” Deidre says.
“Shut up,” Toby says.
“You shut up.”
“Would you like to stay with me more? Not just on weekends, but maybe during the week sometimes?”
“I don’t know,” Toby says. He’s been seeing a psychologist once a week. The man, he says, “sucks.”
“Could we stay up late and watch TV?”
“Not on school nights.”
“Please, Dad.”
“No. Not on school nights. You know better than that.”
“It’s no fun,” Toby says, “when you have to plan things.”
“I know. Do you have fun with Mom? Does she spend enough time with you?”
Silence. Well, it was a loaded question. “I know she’s busy a lot.” “She’s all right,” Toby says.
Adams thinks she’s frightening. Lately, to give her “Dangerous Words” more depth, she’s been reading Wittgenstein. When he picked up the children, she read him the opening paragraph of The Brown Book: “Augustine, in describing his learning of language, says that he was taught to speak by learning the names of things. It is clear that whoever says this has in mind the way a child learns such words as ‘man,’ ‘sugar,’ ‘table,’ etc. He does not primarily think of such words as ‘today,’ ‘not,’ ‘perhaps.’”
She also showed him a David Hockney photograph, a woman in a thin lace blouse, tousled hair, one arm thrown languorously over her head, hand brushing her cheek. The photograph was pieced together from several Polaroids so that the woman had two noses, three eyes, two mouths. A hand in four parts. The overall effect was of movement, of seeing a two-dimensional image from several angles at once. “Cubist photography,” Pamela said. “That one,” pointing to the woman, “resembles Picasso’s Marie-Thérèse series. The Red Armchair. Remember, I showed you?”
Adams does not remember.
Her house must be full of surprises: face parts, altered bodies, words hung like wet towels from the shower rod, drying in the sink, smuggled under pillows. Adams fears boring his children.
“I know what,” he says. “Would you like to come to the club some night and hear me play the drums?”
“Yeah!” Deidre says. Toby shrugs.
“You haven’t heard me play in a long time.”
A Ryder rental truck swooshes by on the highway.
“Didn’t you have fun,” Adams asks.
“Yes,” they answer at once, the practiced response.
“I don’t think Toby likes me,” says Jill, delightfully naked, closing the bedroom door. The furniture seems to change temperature whenever she spends the night.
“He doesn’t like anybody,” Adams answers. “I’m hoping he’ll outgrow it.”
He is on his back on top of the sheet. She leans over him, touches the top of his ear with her lips. “You’re a good man,” she says.
“I don’t want to be a good man.”
“Show me.”
He catches the small of her back with his arm and rolls her over on top of him so that she is facing the ceiling, her shoulders resting against his chest. With his hands he warms her stomach. She bends her knees, locks her legs on either side of his hips, and lifting her arms over her head, sends her fingers through his hair.
Pamela phones. “I hear you have a new friend.” “Yes.”
“Listen, Toby took the ledgers and financial records from your closet. I found them in his room yesterday. He had your canceled checks spread out on the bed. He said he’s auditing you for a political science project. Claims you owe five hundred dollars in back taxes.”
The figure’s a little high, Adams thinks. “I’ll come by tomorrow,” he says.
“All right. One more thing, Sam. I’ve hired a divorce lawyer.”
“Oh?”
“Can we not be messy about this?”
“No problem,” Adams says.
City code (written): One parking space/four theater seats. Theaters best located in suburbs. Commuters generally do not return to the downtown area at night for pleasure after leaving the downtown area after work. Four- to six-screen theater complexes, cor-porately managed (AMC, Loews, etc.) to be encouraged for zoning purposes (i.e., limit entertainment space as much as possible).
Adams recalls the wide, balconied theaters of his youth, stone pillars on either side of the screen.
City code (unwritten): Fast-food franchises generally discouraged for the present. Reasons cited: (1) glut (2) cash flow out of the community. Records indicate that seventy-four percent of expenditures at a single McDonald’s restaurant flow out of the community (food and paper from the corporation, rent paid to the corporation, advertising, accountants, lawyers).