The Financial Lives Of the Poets

CHAPTER 5

BANDED STACKS OF BLOND boards

sit out back of the lumber store

and if you squint they look

a little like leftover cakes.

God, the end of a party

is always so sad

“This economy must be killing you guys,” I say at the lumber warehouse store where I’m pretending to shop for materials to make a tree fort for my boys. I hope I don’t sound too hopeful about the economy killing this particular business.

“Things have certainly slowed,” says Chuck as he flips through a catalogue for the kind of metal brace he is certain would be perfect for the imaginary tree fort I’m supposed to be building. “Luckily, the last few years were busy enough that a slowdown won’t be the worst thing in the world.”

It is cold inside this big warehouse store; the ceilings must be thirty feet high. Each narrow aisle is stacked nearly to the rafters with boards and posts and dowels and bags of concrete and plywood and doors and window sashes. The effect of all this scale is to shrink the people in here and I feel like a leprechaun, a tiny sprite come to this mystical woodland to shop among giants for a place to store my magic beans for the winter.

I have lived in this city most of my life and yet I’d never ventured into this lumber store until I found out-from Lisa’s chat last night-that her ex-boyfriend Chuck worked here. Setting aside what my never-going-to-a-lumber-store says about my manly bona fides, the important thing is that I’m here now, confronting my enemy, or at least seeing the infamous Chuck for myself. I am totally undercover. Chuck has no idea who I am. He hasn’t asked my name, and I don’t know why he would, but if he does, I’ve decided to go with the nom de guerre Jamie Skeet.

And here is my lightning quick assessment of my enemy’s strengths, relative to mine: (1) Chuck is taller. (2) Chuck is a few years younger and clearly in better shape. (3) Chuck really does have dreamy eyes. (I heard Lisa make this claim to a friend of ours once, when we were out with another couple, talking about why we fell for our first loves and Lisa said, “His eyes. Chuck had dreamy eyes.” Sadly, it’s true-a couple of dreamy blue orbs jut from that Cro-Magnon skull.) (4) Chuck looks good in his Carhartt work pants and does not seem to have the middle-aged disappearing-ass issue I’ve been battling the last few years (just being coldly objective about this). (5) Chuck is-I have to admit it-heartily handsome, those eyes astride carved cheeks over a square jaw. (6) Chuck is employed.

Another list-this one offered in my defense-of the reasons I may have underestimated my opponent for so many years, this

strapping and friendly man’s man who, I was well aware, had slept with my wife back in her nubile, flexible, childless years: (I) Whenever she mentioned this old boyfriend Chuck she would smile slightly, which I misinterpreted as an expression of disbelief that she’d ever dated such a monumental tool before finding true love with the man of her dreams. (II) Complacency led me to believe that Lisa and I had such a strong relationship that it didn’t matter who she’d dated before; her ex-boyfriends could’ve been George Clooney, Kobe Bryant and Abraham Lincoln and I wouldn’t have been smart enough to be intimidated. (III) I made the classic arrogant white-collar mistake of thinking that because I used my brain to support my family (back when I supported my family) I was superior to some dude who stacks lumber for a living. (IV) Dude who stacks lumber for a living is not the same as dude who works for hugely profitable family business, which he stands to inherit. (V) Whenever Lisa mentioned her ex-boyfriend Chuck Stehne I always spelled it in my mind Chuck Stain and, honestly, who could ever worry about a guy named Stain?

“Top ten rejected attractions at Disneyworld,” I say. “Number ten: Lumberland.”

Prince Chuck of Lumberland smiles politely and spins a photo of the steel double-reinforced brace, or whatever it is, so I can see it for myself. “This one.”

“Nope, all wrong,” I say. “That’s not what I’m looking for. Not even close.”

Chuck spins the catalogue so that he can see it again. “No, I really think this is what you’re looking for. I built a fort for my kids and this worked great. See, it stabilizes the posts here and here and-”

“You have kids?”

“Three.”

I glance at his ring-less left hand. “Married?”

“Divorced.” But he looks a little confused by this line of questioning, as if he can’t imagine what it has to do with fake tree fort construction.

I pretend to look back at the brace. “I don’t know. That looks pretty dangerous. I have two boys that I love more than anything. Love my boys and my wife. Their mother.”

“Sure,” Chuck says, looking at the catalogue. “Well, maybe a different style. We have some books.” He walks toward an aisle, and after a moment, I follow. We walk past all sorts of weapons that could be used on Chuck’s back, hammers and nail guns and pry bars-

Divorced. Shit. How do I fight divorced? Means he probably has his own house somewhere (probably not about to go into foreclosure); I was hoping the logistics of sneaking around might at least be difficult for them, but if he’s got his own place…shit, shit, shit.

Lisa is not someone who would stray from a marriage lightly but I see why now, because I know exactly what she’s attracted to-confidence, security, strength, stability-all of which Chuck has, none of which is exactly seeping from my pores these days.

He stops in the aisle of how-to books and clicks his tongue as he runs his hand across the spines of books that show how to do simple electrical work and how to repair a carburetor and how to fix a clogged sink and how to build a porch and how to stain your fence and, finally, how to build a tree fort. This long bookshelf seems taken directly from my insecurities-an entire library of things I cannot do. In the next aisle of this hell-library would be books about how to manage your billions and what to do with your foot-long penis.

“Here we go,” he says, and pulls out the book and hands it to me.

“You can look through this and see if there’s a style you like better.”

I take the book and pretend to leaf through it. Each tree-house picture makes me feel more incompetent than the last.

“You might just buy the book, take it home and look through it to make sure you get the right one,” he says. “There’s no rush, I’m guessing.”

I look up at him.

“I mean, you’re not going to build a tree fort in the winter.”

“In the winter? No.” I laugh. Scoff. “Of course not.” I purse my lips and look back down at the book, make my own clicking noises with my tongue. I wish I’d said I was building something else, anything else-a catapult or gallows or balustrades-anything but a stupid tree fort. Four years ago, when we moved into the house we’re about to lose, I promised the boys that I’d build them a tree fort. Four years later, there’s no tree fort and that sad fact is probably not even in the top ten ways I’ve let the poor boys down.

“So, you built one of these for your kids?”

Chuck is looking through his own copy of Building the Perfect Tree Fort. He shows me a picture. “Kind of like this one.” Then he closes the book and puts it back. He looks off a little wistfully. “It’s at their mother’s house.”

“Ooh. Sorry,” I say. “It’s tough when a marriage breaks up. Let’s hope there’s a special place in hell for anyone who would break up a-”

But by putting the book back, Chuck has opened the door for a man’s man in coveralls who was waiting for his help, and before I can finish my pointed little comment about cuckolders deserving Dante’s seventh circle, this guy slides his lumber wish list in front of Chuck, like he’s the goddamn Lumber Fairy, and I wonder why the jerk can’t go get this stuff himself. He looks capable. He’s

in coveralls. Still, Chuck excuses himself to go help the real customer.

And I stand alone holding a book about

how to build the tree fort

I will never build

in the freezing thirty-foot-high aisle

of my many deficiencies

while the man stealing my wife

goes off to gather more wood.