Then he hears about Lucy’s friends, and then Dennis’s work. This is the only way that Jim ever hears about his father’s work, perhaps because Dennis assumes, correctly, that Jim is a pacifist bleeding-heart pseudoradical who wouldn’t approve of any of it. So Dennis never speaks of it to Jim. Apparently he’s almost as bad with Lucy; her account is fragmented and incomplete, consisting mostly of her own judgments and opinions, generated by the minute bits of evidence Dennis mutters when he arrives home, disgruntled and closemouthed. “He hates this Lemon he’s working for,” Lucy opines, shaking her head in disapproval. It’s not Christian, it’s not good for his health, it’s not good for his career. “He should try to like him more. It’s not as if the man is the devil or something like that. He probably has troubles of his own.”
“I don’t know,” Jim says. “Some people can be pretty awful to work for.”
“It’s what you make of it that counts.” Sigh. “Dennis should have a hobby, something to take his mind off work.”
“He’s got the car, right? That’s a hobby.”
“Well, yes but it’s just more of the same, isn’t it. Trying to get some machine to work.”
Jim has begun a radically censored account of his week, when Dennis comes in and washes up for dinner. Lucy sets out the salad and casserole and they sit down; she says grace and they eat. Dennis eats in silence, gets up and goes back out to continue his work.
Lucy gets up and goes to the sink. “So how is Sheila?” she asks.
“Well, um…” Jim fumbles, feeling sudden guilt. He hasn’t even thought of Sheila for a long time. “Actually, we aren’t seeing each other as much these days.”
A quick tkh of disapproval. Lucy doesn’t like it. Jim gets up to help clean the table. Of course she’s ambivalent about it; Sheila wasn’t a Christian, and she’d really like Jim to settle down with a Christian girl, even get married—in fact she knows some candidates down at the church. On the other hand, she met Sheila many times and liked her, and the real and actual always count more for Lucy than the theoretical. “What’s wrong?” she complains.
“Well… we’re just not on the same track.” It’s a phrase of Lucy’s.
She shakes her head. “She’s nice. I like her. You should call her and talk to her. You’ve got to communicate.” This is a sacred tenet with Lucy: talking will cure everything. Jim supposes she believes it because Dennis doesn’t talk much. If he did, she’d know better that the tenet wasn’t true.
“Yeah, I’ll call her.” And really he should. Have to tell her that he’s, um, seeing other people. A difficult call at best. And so a part of him is already busy forgetting the resolution. Sheila will get the idea. “I will.”
“Did you go see Tom?”
“Yeah.”
“How was he?”
“Same as always.”
She sighs. “He should be living here.”
Jim shakes his head. “I don’t know where you’d put him. Or how you’d take care of him, either.”
“I know.” There’s a slight quiver at Lucy’s jaw, and suddenly Jim perceives that she’s upset. He doesn’t have the faintest idea why. “But it isn’t right.”
Maybe that’s it. “I’ll go down there more often.” This too he instantly begins to forget.
“Dennis has got to go to Washington again this week.”
“He’s been going a lot this year.”
“Yes.” She’s still upset, throwing dishes into the dishwasher almost blindly. Jim doesn’t want to ask her why, she’ll start crying and he doesn’t want to deal with it. He ignores the signs and tells her cheerily of his week, his classes and what he’s been reading, while she pulls it together. Is she angry at Dennis about something? he wonders. He can’t tell; there’s lots he doesn’t know or understand about his parents’ relationship. He’s more comfortable with it that way.
Dishes finished, the talk continues desultorily. Jim’s mind wanders to his various problems and he doesn’t catch one of his mom’s questions. “What’s that?”
“Jim. You don’t listen.” A cardinal sin, in this household where it happens so often.…
“Sorry.” But at the same time he’s glancing at a newsheet headline that’s grabbed his eye. “I can’t believe this famine in India.”
“Why, what’s it say?”
“Same old thing. Third major famine of the year in Asia, kills another million. And look at this! Fight in Mozambique killed a hundred!” From their kitchen window they can see the two giant hangars down at El Toro Marine Base, the helicopters rising and dropping like bees around a hive.
“They should learn to talk.”
Jim nods, absorbed in the details of the second article. When he’s done he says, “I’m off. Gotta go teach my class.”
“Good. Don’t forget about visiting Tom more often, now.” She is serious, scolding, insistent: still upset about something.
“I won’t, but remember I just saw him today. I’ll go again next Thursday.”
“Tuesday would be better.”
Jim goes out to the garage. He doesn’t notice the intensity of Dennis’s silence, hasn’t noticed the tension in him all evening long. Dennis is quiet a lot; and Jim hasn’t really been paying attention.
He clears his throat; Dennis looks up from a bundle of colored wires running over the motor block of his car. “Um, Dad, my car’s having some power troubles going uptrack.”
Dennis pokes his glasses up his nose, glares at Jim. “How does it start?” he asks after a long pause.
“Not so well.”
“Have you cleaned the track contacts lately?”
“Um…”
Angrily Dennis grabs up some tools, rags, leads Jim out to his car. It looks shabby and unkempt under the streetlight. Dennis pulls up the hood wordlessly, reaches down to shift the contact rod up into maintenance position. His back says he’s sick of doing work on Jim’s car.
“Look at these brushes, they’re caked!” A black paste of oily scum adheres to the contacts where they come closest to the road and the track. “Here, you clean them.”
Jim starts on it, fumbles with a screwdriver, gouges the side of one brush, propels a gob of the pasty black goo right past Dennis’s eye.
Dennis elbows him aside. “Watch out, you’re wrecking them. Watch how I do it.”
Jim watches, bored. Dennis’s hands move surely, economically. He gets every brush coppery clean, factory perfect. “I suppose you’ll just let all this go to hell again,” Dennis says bitterly as he finishes, gesturing at the car’s motor.
“No,” Jim protests. But he knows that after years of negligence and ineptitude with his car, there’s nothing he can do now to convince Dennis that he is really interested. It is interesting, of course, in a theoretical way; forces of entropy, resistance to it, a great metaphor for society, etc. But ten seconds after the hood is down the actual physical details fade for Jim, the words turn back into jargon and he’s as ignorant as he was when the lesson started. His memory is retentive, so maybe he truly isn’t interested.
“Have you done anything about getting another job?” Dennis demands.
“Yeah, I’ve been looking.”
Disgust twists Dennis’s features. “You know I’m still making the insurance payments on this car?” he says as he gathers his tools. “Do you remember that?”