The Ask

Ten

Purdy put off our meeting another few days. He'd flown out to Vail for an ideas festival, had gotten worked up over some of the ideas. He was holed up in a suite with a gorgeous renewable-energy guru. He would call when he got back, hoped I could forgive him.

"Of course," I said.

"You must have a lot going on back there anyway."

"Oh, yes, absolutely," I said.

"You should come out here, though. It's really something. I mean, these people, you read their books, their newsletters, see them on TV, but to hear them in person, chat with them. Very impressive. Do you realize that someday we will be heating our houses with trout?"

"Is that one of the ideas at the ideas festival?"

"It's just fantastic here."

I almost asked him why he didn't tell Melinda about it, including the part with the guru. Maybe it was blowback from the Jolly Roger days, but I'd always grown anxious when men confided their infidelity, surged with judgment, until my inner Nietzsche called me simp. Meanwhile, I was too scared to tell Purdy his delays had put the last of our savings in jeopardy. Never let them see you sweat, countless bastards tell us, just to see us sweat.

"I'm not really an ideas man, Purdy," I said. "I'm an action fella."

"Yeah, right," laughed Purdy. "Oh, I've got to go. The prime minister of Norway is throwing a pool party. We'll connect up next week."

"Sounds fine," I said. "I should be available."

I looked at my wrist as I said it, as though I kept a large calendar there.

I'd been back to Nearmont enough that I didn't have to plan for nostalgic reveries each time the bus passed my old high school (Go Vikings! Kill Catamounts!), or Nearmont Plaza, where once, behind Scissor Kicks, the local hair salon, I'd received the opening stages of a handjob from Sayuri Kuroki, before prowler lights stabbed us to the stucco.

Sayuri's family moved back to Japan soon after, but from then on, whenever I pictured my penis in her hard little hand, I always made sure to insert that gray pixelated dot over it, like they did in Japanese porn. Honor is important to every culture.

So shy and brilliant, my Sayuri, and nothing surpassed the way her black hair fell against the acid-washed jean jacket she'd adopted for life in New Jersey. While the bus pulled up to the plaza stop, I wondered where the years had led her. Maybe she was a successful businesswoman. Maybe she had a daughter who wrote cell phone novels. Maybe she was attending an ideas festival.

It was a short walk from the plaza to the house on Eisenhower, a yellow split-level with that forbidding bedroom turret my mother had built after my father died. I guess without the heroic measures there was money for turrets, for ramparts and moats, slits for boiling oil and archers from Milan, whatever a widow's castle required. The door was open and I stepped into the foyer, turned for a sinking step into the slightly sunken living room.

Claudia sat in her altitude tent, her body stringy and golden in her Mondrian print bikini. The tent took up a good deal of the room. Her girlfriend took up the rest. Francine was tiny but she spread herself out, her interests, her projects, calligraphy corner here, computer cranny there. Earlier, thwarted versions of this woman wove potholders. This epoch found her oscillating between soapstone carving and online pinochle while my mother toiled to meet her quota of surplus red blood cells. There was a seniors charity race a few days away, sexagenarian whippersnappers whose spirits deserved a good pulverizing.

Francine padded over, pecked me on the cheek.

"Beer?" she said.

"Sure."

But for a moment she didn't move. Together we watched Claudia breathe rather ostentatiously, palms up, eyes shut. The tent had cost my mother a bundle, a seventy-first-birthday gift to herself. I sensed the purchase had less to do with the milestone, more with the recent interment of Claudia's mother. I could picture Hilda at this very moment, a skull with orange fuzz on it, yapping at the Auschwitzers in the afterworld about the temple newsletter atrocity.

"My beloved son," said my mother.

"Your eyes are closed. How do you know?"

"I'm peeking. By the way, the answer to your question, whatever the question might be, is that I wish I could. Pretty good, right?"

"Pretty bad, Mom," I said.

"Pardon?"

"Pretty bad mom."

"Would you like to come inside the tent?"

"No."

"There's room."

"I don't think there is."

"No, maybe not. There was something in the instruction booklet about that, I think. You know, when you were born they put you in something like this. An incubator. Did you incubate sufficiently? I always wondered. I always worried. Are you incubated? Are you hungry? We have some leftover Chinese. There's a fantastic place that just opened on Spartakill Road."

"The sweet-and-sour soup!" said Francine, back in her computer cranny. "I creamed my friggin' Danskins!"

Francine's head poked out over the piles of throw pillows and external hard drives. Through a gap in them I could make out part of the monitor. Two Filipinas had at it with a strap-on. The words "Home Aide Ho's" flashed on the screen.

"Really great," says Claudia. "Right where the hobby shop used to be in Eastern Valley. Remember I used to take you there for your figurines? You were very particular. Very nervous they wouldn't have the Welsh Grenadiers."

"I don't really remember you taking me," I said. "I think Dad took me once. After that I walked."

"Memory is a tricky thing," said Claudia.

"Could I have that beer?"

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I forgot your beer!" Francine fetched two from the kitchen. "They're from Costa Rica. I'm sure the Costa Ricans think it's piss, but I like the bottle. See that eagle on it?"

"Thanks, Francine."

"You're welcome, honey."

"So," said my mother, her eyes open, "to what do we owe this wonderful surprise?"

"What surprise? I called a few days ago and said I was coming out."

"The plot thickens."

"Mom," I said. "Why don't you come out of the tent? We can hug or something."

"I can't, baby. I really can't."

"She can't," said Francine. "She's in the middle. Her cells'll explode."

Claudia rose from her lotus position, an old bony flower.

"It's true we haven't been talking a lot lately," she said. "How's the boy?"

"Bernie's fine, Mom. Why don't you come to see him sometime? He misses you."

"He hardly knows me. How could he miss me?"

"That's why you should come by. Spend some time with your grandson."

"Please don't say that word. It's a cudgel. Come sit near the tent."

I squatted on the fringed rug near the zippered door. Claudia frogged her fingers on the tent's translucent wall.

"You're still my little boy, you know. How's the wifey?"

"Maura's okay, Mom. You know she really admires you."

"Why, because she's too frightened to cross over? Still thinks she needs a man in her life?"

"Something like that."

"She's okay. For a straight girl. She's pretty tough. You guys will be all right."

"Mom, I don't know how to say this."

"How much?"

"I've never asked for-"

"How much? If I win the race next week it's five hundred dollars."

"I thought it was a charity race."

"It is. We're raising money for osteoporosis. But there's always side action."

"Well, we're really behind. I'm not sure five hundred is what-"

"Say a number."

"Excuse me?"

"Say a number."

"Ten thousand."

"Ten thousand."

"You could do that for us?" I said.

"Absolutely not. Francine and I are hitting a rough patch. The settlement from her lye burn is being delayed. Real estate is hell. My savings have been chewed up."

"A rough patch," I said. "Okay. I understand."

"Oh, do you, Milo? You're so selfish. You don't see the bigger picture."

"What's the bigger picture?"

"You're still here looking for handouts. Who's going to take care of me?"

"I'm on my knees here, Mom. Not for me, for my family. For my wife. For a beautiful grandson you have totally ignored."

"He's kind of a brat. I'll be in his life when he gets a little impulse control."

"He's not even four."

"I have needs. I'm tired of this child-worshipping culture. You're just a slave to it, Milo."

"I'm only trying to be a decent dad."

"Don't waste your time. It's not in your genes. Besides, try making some money. That might be a good dad move. For heaven's sake, the system's rigged for white men and you still can't tap in."

"You're right, Mom. What can I say? But still, it would mean a lot to me if you made a little more of an effort with Bernie."

"Bernie schmernie. This is my decade."

"Okay, you wrinkled old spidercunt, have it your way."

Francine sucked in her breath.

"Holy macadamias," she said.

Claudia regarded me somewhat clinically.

"Spidercunt?"

I shrugged.

"Look, honey," she said. "I think you better go. I need to stay calm. I'll call you after I race on Sunday."

"Mom, I'm sorry. I just-"

"It's okay, Milo. I just need a little time now."

"We'll call, cutie," said Francine, hugged me.

"Okay, I'll see you guys later," I said, edged to the door. "And I'm sorry, Mom. About… about the thing. What I just said."

"Hell, honey," says Claudia. "I murdered your father when you needed him most. I can take a few impotent barbs from my only son."

"That's nice to hear."

I shut the heavy oak door and walked back down the gravel drive toward the plaza. I glanced back once, spotted Francine through the big bay window, in her underwear, climbing into the tent.