“Twenty-six thousand?”
“It went into a bidding war, since there are so few spots.”
“Wow.”
“They’re paying in cash.”
“Great, so we’ll split it fifty-fifty.”
“Actually, I’m the one who paid for the parking place,” she reminds me.
“Then why are you telling me?”
“Just wanted you to know,” she says, and then is gone.
I dream of Nixon. Nixon, the Night Stories. The idea being that he had a confidant; that every night, when Nixon couldn’t sleep, he’d call this friend and they’d talk and sometimes the friend would read to him from books like Moby-Dick and Notes from the Underground and Paul Johnson’s Journey into Chaos or Enemies of Society, and sometimes they would watch television together. Nixon liked the idea that his confidant was up when he was and that he was never really alone. Being alone frightened him.
Friday evening, as she’s finishing up, having put the mop and bucket away and gone into the powder room to change back into her street clothes, Maria the cleaning lady says, “Mister, I can no work here no more. I miss Mrs. Jane too much. It makes me unhappy to come here. I am here working and you are sitting here all day. I don’t know you. I know your brother killed Mrs. Jane. And what about those beautiful children, who no more have a mother? Please you tell them Maria said hello to them, but to you I say goodbye.”
I reach for my wallet. I give her five hundred bucks. She takes three and gives me back two. “I have no debt,” she says. And I don’t know what she means.
“I’ll tell the children,” I say.
“Good,” she says. “Also, you need Mr. Clean and Windex.”
“Thank you, Maria.”
Monday morning, a truck pulls up outside the house, a white truck with a giant insect mounted on the roof. Two guys in white suits get out, unload large stainless-steel spray canisters, put masks over their nose and mouth, and walk towards the front door. Before they come to the door, one breaks right, the other breaks left, and they circle the house, spraying. Tessie’s bark and the sickening scent both prompt me to open the front door and call, “Can I help you?”
With the first breath I draw, I feel my lungs shrink back; my eyes start to burn. The guys pull their masks off.
“It smells horrible,” I say.
“Who are you?” the second guy asks.
“I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“We’re under contract. Twice a year we come; the date was set months ago.”
“Things have changed,” I say.
“Too late now, we already started. Not the kind of thing you want to stop once you start. Breeds resistant bugs, bigger bugs — very bad things can happen.” Tessie barks.
“Jesus, is the dog home too? Where’s the lady of the house? She always got the dog and the cat packed in the car. They take off for the day. This stuff is noxious; it’ll kill you if you sit in there with it.”
“Well, what do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know — you’re not supposed to be here. You’re supposed to take your dogs and your cats and be gone for eight hours, longer if you have asthma.”
“Well, can you at least pause? Can you give me a few minutes to get it together?”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” one of the guys says. “It’s not even nine-thirty and now we’re screwed for the day. Late. Late. Late.” He turns to me. “Well, don’t just stand there, get it together!”
I put Tessie on her leash and some biscuits in my pocket. I catch the cat. I can’t find a carrier for her, and so somehow wrestle her into a canvas bag and run out to the car with her howling. I bring her litter box out and set it up on the passenger seat, let the cat out of the bag, set up water, food, crack the windows, and go back for Tessie. I figure we’ll walk around for a while, and if need be I’ll come back and drive both the cat and the dog somewhere later. It’s not like a lot of planning went into it.
Tessie and I set off down the street; it’s a bright, clear morning, unseasonably warm for a winter day, a day full of promise, of hope, of possibility.
The park is empty. It’s a place that exists simply to contain the trees, to oxygenate the village, a green expanse to drive past while gesturing to visitors: Don’t we have a lovely park, a beautiful village green? At the far edge there is a parking lot, tennis and basketball courts, a set of swings, a climber. I run Tessie across the park; on the other side, I tether her leash to the swings and then, to prove I still have the possibility of play left in me, I jump on the swing, the thick rubber seat matching my childhood memories. I rock back and forth, back and forth, climbing higher and higher, and then, at the peak of both height and motion, I throw my head back, the sky opens up, filling my vision, blue, rich bright super-blue with thick white clouds, clouds of perfection, and for a moment all is beyond perfect, it is divine. And then, as I sail forward, the velocity is overwhelming, my stomach rises to my throat. I am whirling. I close my eyes — worse. I open my eyes — worse again. I throw myself forward, tumbling off the swing, landing in the dirt on hands and knees. The swing slams me in the back — as if to say, “Take that, you idiot.” A vestibular impossibility? I go for the slide, climb the ladder; the smooth curl of the handrails feels the same now as it did forty years ago. At the top I push off and glide down to the bottom. As I get up, the button on my pocket catches, tugs, rips. Despite the allure, the echoing memory of swinging from bar to bar, of hanging from my knees, I don’t attempt the climber or the monkey bars. I firmly believe I still could do anything and everything and want to keep it that way.
I’m thinking of days that never were, the perfect childhood that existed only in my imagination. When I was growing up, the playground wasn’t so much a well-coiffed green as an empty lot. Our families had no desire for us to have a safe, clean place to play — as far as they were concerned, playing was a waste of time. Supplies were limited; one guy might have a mitt, another guy a bat, and the rest of us caught barehanded, sucking up the incredible sting, hands smarting not only with pain but with the thrill of success at having plucked the ball out of the sky, having interrupted the trajectory and likely spared someone the cost of replacing a window. The bottom line was, if you had time to play, you didn’t tell anyone, because if your parents knew, they would find something for you to do.
So we played quietly and out of sight, making toys out of whatever happened to be nearby — my father’s shoes made a most excellent navy, his size-nine wing tips gliding in formation across the carpet, the smell of leather and foot sweat. And what did I use as the aircraft carrier? A silver platter that I borrowed from the dining room. And when my mother discovered the platter surrounded by shoes, she accused me of having mental problems. Why wasn’t it obvious to her that the carpet was the ocean, the battleground? She called me a nogoodnik, and I remember crying and George thinking it was all so funny.
Two women in spandex walk in circles around the outside perimeter of the park, waddling as fast as they can without breaking into a run. They stare at me. They actually point, as if asking each other to confirm that I am really there. I wave. They don’t respond.
Near the tennis court I find an old ball and throw it for Tessie; she takes off running, and I have to chase her to get it back. She seems thrilled with the game, the enormous expanse of open space, and runs in endless circles before digging a bed in the dirt and settling in to shred the yellow fuzz. It’s out of season; half the trees are bare, the others are a dull evergreen, the grass is an uneven mix of zoysia and ryegrass.