Terrible, I know. Shameful. Pretty easy to find the bad guy here.
Twice, maybe three times. OK, more like seven. But then one morning Cheyenne opens her bloodshot teenage eyes and says, “You know, you could be my granddaddy.”
Next she calls me at work, completely hysterical. I pick her up, we go down to the CVS for a home pregnancy test. She’s so beside herself she can’t even wait to get back home to use it. Makes me pull over, then goes down into this gulch and squats, comes back with mascara running down her cheeks.
“I can’t have a baby! I’m only nineteen!”
“Well, Cheyenne, let’s think a minute,” I said.
“You gonna raise this baby, Charlie D.? You gonna support me and this baby? You’re old. Your sperm are old. Baby might come out autistic.”
“Where did you read that?”
“Saw it on the news.”
She didn’t need to think long. I’m anti-abortion but, under the circumstances, decided it was her choice. Cheyenne told me she’d handle the whole thing. Made the appointment herself. Said I didn’t even need to go with her. All she needed was $3,000.
Yeah, sounded high to me, too.
Week later, I’m on my way to couples therapy with Johanna. We’re coming up Dr. Van der Jagt’s front path when my phone vibrates in my pocket. I open the door for Johanna and say, “After you, darlin’.”
The message was from Cheyenne: “It’s over. Have a nice life.”
Never was pregnant. That’s when I realized. I didn’t care either way. She was gone. I was safe. Dodged another bullet.
And then what did I go and do? I walked into Dr. Van der Jagt’s office and sat down on the couch and looked over at Johanna. My wife. Not as young as she used to be, sure. But older and more worn out because of me, mainly. Because of raising my kids and doing my laundry and cooking my meals, all the while holding down a full-time job. Seeing how sad and tuckered out Johanna looked, I felt all choked up. And as soon as Dr. Van der Jagt asked me what I had to say, the whole story came rushing out of me.
I had to confess my crime. Felt like I’d explode if I didn’t.
Which means something. Which means, when you get down to it, that the truth is true. The truth will out.
Up until that moment, I wasn’t so sure.
When our fifty minutes was up, Dr. Van der Jagt directed us to the back door. As usual, I couldn’t help keeping an eye out for anyone who might see us.
But what were we skulking around for, anyway? What were we ashamed of? We were just two people in love and in trouble, going to our Nissan to pick up our kids from school. Over in the Alps, when they found that prehistoric man frozen in the tundra and dug him out, the guy they call ?tzi, they saw that aside from wearing leather shoes filled with grass and a bearskin hat he was carrying a little wooden box that contained an ember. That’s what Johanna and I were doing, going to marital therapy. We were living through an Ice Age, armed with bows and arrows. We had wounds from previous skirmishes. All we had if we got sick were some medicinal herbs. There was a flint arrowhead lodged in my left shoulder, which slowed me down some. But we had this ember box with us, and if we could just get it somewhere—I don’t know, a cave, or a stand of pines—we could use this ember to reignite the fire of our love. A lot of the time, while I was sitting there stony-faced on Dr. Van der Jagt’s couch, I was thinking about ?tzi, all alone out there, when he was killed. Murdered, apparently. They found a fracture in his skull. You have to realize that things aren’t so bad nowadays as you might think. Human violence is way down since prehistoric times, statistically. If we’d lived when ?tzi did, we’d have to watch our backs anytime we took a saunter. Under those conditions, who would I want at my side more than Johanna, with her broad shoulders and strong legs and used-to-be-fruitful womb? She’s been carrying our ember the whole time, for years now, despite all my attempts to blow it out.
At the car, wouldn’t you know it, my key fob chose right then not to work. I kept pressing and pressing. Johanna stood on the gravel, looking small, for her, and crying, “I hate you! I hate you!” I watched my wife crying from what felt like a long way off. This was the same woman who, when we were trying to have Lucas, called me on the phone and said, like Tom Cruise in Top Gun, “I feel the need for seed!” I’d rush home from work, stripping off my vest and string tie as I hurried into the bedroom, sometimes leaving my cowboy boots on (though that didn’t feel right, and I tried not to), and there would be Johanna, lying on her back with her legs and arms spread out in welcome, her cheeks fiery red, and I leapt and fell, and kept falling, it felt like, forever, down into her, both of us lost in the sweet, solemn business of making a baby.
*
So that’s why I’m out here in the bushes. Johanna kicked me out. I’m living downtown now, near the theater district, renting a two-bedroom in the overpriced condos they built before the crash and now can’t fill.
I’d wager I’m about sixty feet away from the house now. Maybe fifty-nine. Think I’ll get closer.
Fifty-eight.
Fifty-seven.
How do you like that, Lawman?
I’m standing next to one of the floodlights when I remember that restraining orders aren’t calculated in feet. They’re in yards. I’m supposed to be staying fifty yards away!
Tarnation.
But I don’t move. Here’s why. If I’m supposed to be fifty yards away, that means I’ve been violating the restraining order for weeks.
I’m guilty already.
So, might as well get a little closer.
Up onto the front porch, for instance.
Just like I thought: front door’s open. God damn it, Johanna! I think. Just leave the house wide open for any home invader to waltz right in, why don’t you?
For a minute, it feels like old times. I’m angrier than a hornet, and I’m standing in my own house. A sweet urge of self-justification fills me. I know who the bad guy is here. It’s Johanna. I’m just itching to go and find her and shout, “You left the front door open! Again.” But I can’t right now, because, technically, I’m breaking and entering.
Then the smell hits me. It’s not the De Rougemonts. It’s partly dinner—lamb chops, plus cooking wine. Nice. Partly, too, a shampoo smell from Meg’s having just showered upstairs. Moist, warm, perfumey air is filtering down the staircase. I can feel it on my cheeks. I can also smell Forelock, who’s too old to even come and greet his master, which under the circumstances is OK by me. It’s all these smells at once, which means that it’s our smell. The D.s! We’ve finally lived here long enough to displace the old-person smell of the De Rougemonts. I just didn’t realize it before. I had to get kicked out of my own house to be able to come and smell this smell, which I don’t think, even if I were a little kid with super-smelling abilities, would be anything other than pleasant.
Upstairs Meg runs out of her bedroom. “Lucas!” she shouts. “What did you do with my charger!”
“I didn’t do anything,” he says back. (He’s up in his bedroom.)