“But Dad!”
“Put a fucking cork in it!”
“But—”
“Shut your mouth! This is a business, and we’re speaking on a business line. What are you trying to do, bankrupt this place?”
“Listen, Dad, I’ve got a knife now — I’ve got a really great pocketkni SE0W RXQP BSCRSBC
could help! Come on, Dad, please.”
“Killing your mother. Every word out of your mouth. Killing her.”
“But—”
A pause. “We’re finished here, son.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well, just think next time.”
“I know.”
“Think before you speak.”
I heard the wind howl, the door of the Gallant Arms banging — by the time I thought to check the monitor he was gone, the restaurant empty, tables back at the center of the room and chairs turned upside down on top of them. In the wingback chair behind the counter, the old man held the phone and watched me, he switched the phone to his shoulder, removed both gloves, folded them and placed them on the counter; then, still holding my gaze, he twisted and with a jerk of his arm — of his whole body — swept the pyramid of napkins to the floor, casting his head back and throwing wide his jaw, as though about to release a tremendous roar.
Jenny watched me from the hallway. “Are you guys still going out, or what?”
I hung up.
“Jenny! Well, Jenny, we’re still in process, a little. I have to consult with my wife.”
“Because if you’re not going out, I should just go home.”
There was no sound from upstairs. And the lights were off. With the sun down, you could see that the lights were off up there, or at least the doors were shut tight. From down here, looking up the stairs, it was black as could be.
And nothing in the monitor, I realized: the static was gone, restaurant gone, it was all black.
“I’m sorry about that language earlier.”
“It’s OK.”
“The n-word! Don’t either of us try saying it, right?”
“I guess.”
I told her that what I’d said earlier hadn’t been meant to give her the impression I thought that it was an OK word to use. It was just that there was a special space between my wife and me sometimes when she used the n-word, a space that didn’t belong to me, but which I was invited into for a moment, if Jenny could follow what I was saying.
“When Shawna calls you a nigger,” Jenny said.
“Ha ha ha! What? Oh my god! Jenny! Ha ha ha. Open the freezer and grab me some cubes, would you. Lord, Jenny, I need a drink,” I said.
“Can you please take me home? Unless you’re drunk. I can call my mother if I need to.”
“Call your mother? What are you even talking about?”
I told her to give me a hand up. But when she did, she ended up falling on the couch at my side.
I told her it was OK. It was fine, it was my fault — the leg was giving me a little trouble, I needed to rewrap it.
“I’m sorry,” Jenny said. And she stood.
I grabbed her wrist. “First, though,” I said, “I want to hear you say it again.”
“Say what?”
“I’ll take you home. Don’t need to rewrap. Just you need to, I want you to, you know.” I paused. “The word.”
I held her wrist with just thumb and forefinger as sh0QLOE2SS5CC5TH XFY 03W 1B6 Z Y RSHCOTT6V RFZ RS QMLBZLV PBKBGWR6M U B0G 7V X62 M 0#LGZ F Q 0 PFP ZO9G 0CGSRN-ROPT O3O
back to the TV screen, the airplane where William H. Macy was explai R 00R1O R KS BXPTZ DQYXPL B0CKR TL5ETFTD
“You could tell my wife,” I said, “but I don’t know how much sympathy you’d get once she’s heard you’d used that word right here in my house. But apparently it’s a word you like. So go ahead and say it.”
Her wrist felt so tiny to me — and yet so complete. The bones, the nerves and blood — everything packed in and pounding in her wrist, like her arm was one densely packed and obstructed vein.
She did it. Said nigger. She said it three more times
And I did just like I’d said. I let her go.
What happened next was a big shift. And if I’d been worried — worried that she would tell her father or Shawna — all that went away. Because after I let go, she just sort of crumpled. She apologized for what she’d said, tears in her eyes. And I apologized — for teasing her, I said. Hadn’t she ever been teased before?
I leaned on her a little as we made our way to the car. “The leg slips a little in the snow,” I said.
On the street, the headlights cut through snow that was coming down harder than I’d realized. But all in all, it was OK. Even if the odds now of a nice dinner weren’t great, Shawna and I could still have something, a moment together, that would reorient things. I asked Jenny how, as a girl, she felt about this anniversary business. Told her I was glad she was my babysitter. Good babysitting is so important. A girl, I said, I can only have a girl babysitting, of course I’d never trust a man to babysit, I think we’d all have to question the motives of a man who said he was babysitting, didn’t she agree?
“I’m really not following,” she said.
The next corner our headlights crashed through the snow a little crooked, and she screamed.
When you’ve seen shit like I’ve seen, I said, there’s no time for these social forms. These niceties. I told her I saw things in Iraq. But I didn’t understand them, and I did not care to comment on them. Let me break it down: a country in which a little girl was found decapitated with a dog’s head sewn onto her neck. Sectarian violence, I forget which fucking tribe was sewing dogs’ heads onto which other fucking tribe, point is, it’s something you can’t get, because you can’t get that and still be a person, you know? And here’s something else I can’t get: what happened to Michael. I mean, I understand the chain of events. He lost an arm to an IED. He killed himself. But what the fuck? Like my therapist says, I can’t process it, I have real feelings and I can’t process them, it takes time to process these feelings, the therapist says, which are very real. I wanted to tell her some more feelings, that Michael could have killed a little girl, or a little girl could have killed Michael, and you could have sewn Michael’s head on a dog’s body, or the girl’s head on Michael’s, you could have sewn up every dead body with every other dead body into a rotten ball of the sewn-up dead that would just grow and grow, and it would still be the same, it would be something I can’t get, and where do you think all that sectarian violence comes from? How do you think it gets its start? Do you think it just happens someday or do you think it’s the things that people say — things like nigger—that get it all started?
“This is my house,” she whispered.
I stepped on the brakes.
There was no one coming in either direction.
“You think it’s cute to just use racial slurs like that, but it’s because you don’t understand the history of racial violence in this country. Well, it’s a big deal — I’m here to tell you. You know what I think, Jenny, is that someone ought to wash your mouth out with soap.”
I reached into my pocket, but what I found wasn’t soap — it was a knife.
“Get out of my car, Jenny! You get out right now!”
She was feeling around behind her for the door handle.
If she’d just turn she’d find it, but she wasn’t — she couldn’t seem to turn, and she couldn’t find the handle.