Children of the New World Page 4

  Love scars memories, even if it was never real. When I walk the streets I think: we walked here together, she used to touch my arm like this, and the pain of white emptiness sets in. You can’t get rid of memories; you can only try to ignore them. I’ve been weeding through my old memories, finding the edge of the world in one memory after another. I was never in France or Tokyo, have never seen the California redwoods or swum in the Caribbean, and I’ve never made love with Cynthia. All the same, I keep working on my letters to her. I tell her I can still remember her skin against mine as we slept, the light in her eyes when I’d open my apartment door for her, and the sound of her voice, telling me, over and over, just how much she loved me.

  HEARTLAND

  MY SON IS doing fantastic until the elimination round. Then he gets to the quiz questions and I watch him fall apart. His little face goes tight, the way it does near a barking dog, and he starts haphazardly punching the buzzer—not even listening to the questions. For a moment I want to bury my face in my hands, almost do, but then I realize it’d be me and not one of the other usual schmucks on TV crying. So I sit up straight and keep my eyes on Sam, trying to look supportive as I watch him lose ten thousand bucks.

  There are papers to sign and hands to shake when the show is over, and then we’re driving home. Sam’s strapped into his booster seat with the Scaredy Cat: Home Version game in his lap. By now it’s dark. Only 6 P.M., but Indiana’s late October light is long gone. I hold both hands on the steering wheel and stare out at the headlights of the opposite lanes and the blackness of the clay fields around us.

  Sam was a beautiful baby, which is what helped us land him the diaper ads, but ever since he turned seven he’s become a normal kid. Scaredy Cat was his one big shot. The winner of the show always lands a TV ad, sometimes even an appearance on KidMTV. That’s how Mindy Sands got so big. But that’s never going to happen to Sam. He doesn’t even know how to play an instrument.

  Sam’s been quiet the whole ride. He can feel when I’m upset. Finally he speaks, his voice small from the backseat. “Daddy, are you angry?”

  “No,” I say.

  “I thought I knew the answers.”

  “Yeah, I know,” and before I can stop myself I add, “but you’ve got to listen to the questions.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “I mean, you weren’t even listening to the questions. You were just hitting the buttons.”

  “I was trying to listen.… I mean, I was … well, I mean…”

  Then there’s just silence. I look in the rearview mirror to see Sam staring out his window, tears falling down his cheeks. “It’s okay,” I say. It’s too late, though. The darkness of the backseat is broken only by the passing bands of light from the overhead streetlights. In those momentary flashes I can see he’s still staring out the window, crying.

  I let out a deep sigh. “It’s okay, Sam,” I say again. “You did the best you could.” Then I put on my signal and head for the exit, where I’ll find a place to pull over and give him a hug.

  * * *

  AT HOME CARA hasn’t started dinner yet. She’s got Laurie in the crib, where she’s gumming the corner of my old iPhone. Cara’s at the computer, uploading photos of our furniture and Sam’s older toys on e-auction. “Hey,” she says, clicking the screen onto her feed when Sam runs into the room. “I saw you on TV, little man.”

  “Sorry,” Sam says.

  “Don’t be sorry, you were great. Was it gross to eat worms?”

  Sam smiles. “Kinda. Sorta like spaghetti that kept wiggling.”

  “Ew!” she says, scrunching her nose, and gives him a hug. Over his shoulder she mouths to me, other room.

  “Come on, Sam, let’s go make some funny home videos,” I say, so Cara can finish uploading the photos.

  “All right,” Sam says.

  We do a couple classic knock-down gags in his bedroom: Sam standing on his tippy toes, trying to hit the light switch and falling back onto his ass, Sam jumping on the bed and falling off the edge. Decent stuff that probably won’t make the cut. As a reward, I let him play VirtuCube.

  Cara’s still on the computer when I walk into the living room.

  “Dinner?” I ask.

  “Laurie just stopped crying and I’ve been nursing for the past hour. Let’s order in pizza.”

  I feel the familiar flush of irritation beneath my skin. “I was hoping you’d cook for us.”

  “Yeah, and I was hoping you’d prepped Sam better for the quiz questions.”

  “Thanks, you’ve got a real gift for compassion.” I walk into the kitchen to get a beer. Cara’s up from her chair, following me. I open the fridge and take a Corona.

  “I thought you were quitting.”

  That was our deal. She would quit coffee; I’d quit drinking. I pop the bottle with a lighter and toss the cap into the garbage under the sink, where we keep our bucket of compost. A swarm of fruit flies is buzzing in the murky darkness of sponges and Brillo pads. “Can’t you at least take out the compost?” I say.

  Laurie starts crying from the other room. Cara looks at me. “It’s your turn to take her.”

  “Fine, I’ll take her and the compost out.”

  I put my beer on the counter and sweep Laurie from the crib. I turn her so she’s facing me, then go into the kitchen and crouch to get the bucket. Laurie begins to cry again.

  “Give me her,” Cara says.

  “I’ve got her.”

  “She’s not happy with how you’re holding her. Give her to me.” Cara puts her hands around Laurie and pulls her away. I’m left with the bucket of compost and the fruit flies. I take the compost, step outside, and slam the door behind me.

  What’s left of our yard is a mess from yesterday’s rain. Ever since we sold off the topsoil, the clay makes walking treacherous. It’s the same for every yard in our neighborhood. I put on muck boots and climb down the makeshift steps that Heartland Gardens put in when they carted our soil away; then I slog through the slippery clay to the corner of our yard where we’re trying to make dirt. Blackened banana peels, old coffee grounds, and moldy vegetables sit in the wired-off compost pile. At this rate we’ll have usable soil in a decade.

  I hear Laurie still wailing inside. She’s been wailing since she came into the world. Laurie was born with a stray eye. Minor corrective surgery would’ve fixed it, except minor corrective surgery when you’re not covered means no minor corrective surgery. Which meant no baby commercials for Laurie.

  I crouch down next to the compost and look up at the sky, which is covered by gray clouds. Seems like it rains every day now. When I was a kid, we used to have these long beautiful Indiana summers. Now we just have a drawn-out rainy fall—all year long. With the soil gone, it turns our backyards into clay pits. The clay runs off onto the streets, where it hardens between rains until the city comes and sprays the sludge into the sewers. I look at the telephone and electric wires cutting across our patch of sky, feeling like the whole world is coming down around me.

  Cara is nursing Laurie when I come back in. I lean over the chair and give her a kiss. “Sorry,” I say. “I just don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  “I know,” she says. Her skin smells like apricot, a familiar smell that I’d somehow forgotten, and for a moment I feel our closeness. “Did you remember to take out the recycling?” she says.

  The moment is gone. I force myself not to say anything. I’ll just be an asshole, she’ll get angry, Sam will see us fighting, and we’ll all be miserable. I can’t go there. Not tonight. I take out my wallet and put a twenty by the computer.

  “What’s this for?”

  “Pizza for you and Sam.”

  “Huh?” she says and looks at me.

  I go into the kitchen and finish what’s left of my beer. Then I put the empty bottle in our recycling bin, overflowing with bottles of biodegradable dish soap and empty cans of beans. “I’m going out,” I say.

  “Going out? I’ve been taking care of Laurie
all day.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “I need some time alone.” I tote the recycling past her, through the living room to the front door.

  “What about me? You ever consider I need a break, too?”

  I’m already out the door, closing it behind me. By the time I get to the curb, I imagine she’s going to be in the doorway yelling at me for the entire neighborhood to hear. Not that it matters. Most of the houses have been empty for years. The only houses with signs of life are at the end of the cul-de-sac, where blue recycling bins have been set out in the mud. But Cara doesn’t come out. Not by the time I’ve separated the cardboard from plastics, not by the time I’ve gotten to the car and unlocked it, not even when I pull out of our driveway and leave.

  * * *

  THE SHOVEL IS located down 37, just north of Martinsville. It’s fashioned to look like the interior of a potting shed, a real note of irony for all of us who no longer have our yards. The walls sport fake bags of potting soil, shovels, hoes, chicken wire, and dirt-stained terra-cotta pots. Jim’s sitting at the bar, waiting for me with a pitcher of stout in front of him. He’s my only friend left from the old job.

  “Tough night, huh?” he says, filling a pint glass and pushing it in front of me.

  “Every time I think I’m going to quit drinking, the fighting starts up again. That’s all we do now: fight, fuck, make up, then do it again.”

  “At least you’re fucking,” Jim says and lifts his glass. “Here’s to quitting.”

  We clink and I take a sip. There’s the familiar tang of alcohol against the tongue, the molasses sweetness of the stout. Dream Girls is on the flat-screen over the bar. One of the frumpy wives has undergone reconstructive surgery to appear identical to her husband’s favorite movie star.

  “I just don’t know what’s wrong with us,” I say. “We used to have it good together. Now it’s like we’re not even a couple. I come home, I want to be with her, and she just hands me the baby. She thinks I’m an asshole. Maybe I am. Tell me the truth: I sound like an asshole, right?”

  “Nah,” Jim says and takes a sip of his beer. “You just need a job, that’s all. And you’ve got to learn to swallow your pride.”

  Which is true. One of the things I like about Jim is that he’s not sentimental. I overthink things. Jim watches shows like Dream Girls and doesn’t give a shit. “How are things at work?” I ask. “Same crew?”

  “More or less. The kid who got hired after you got canned yesterday. Larry caught him stealing topsoil. Had his trunk filled with it.”

  “What a stupid way to go,” I say and realize we’re both thinking the same thing. “You know, I was just standing up for my family.”

  “Forget it,” Jim says, looking down at his glass. “It’s history.”

  “What would you have done? Just smile at him and take it?”

  “Don’t know what I’d have done, but I sure as hell wouldn’t have hit the boss,” Jim says. Then he turns his eyes back to the TV. On the screen, the husband is making out with his reconstructed wife.

  Jim’s answer is more or less the same one Cara gave me when I told her what had happened. There had been a car issue that day; Cara needed it, so she dropped me off at work. Sam and Laurie were in the backseat. Larry had been out front, straightening lawn displays, and had seen Laurie. On my way inside to clock in he’d joked, “I think your baby girl was giving me the stink eye.”

  “What did you say?” I asked, turning to face him across the small square of lawn.

  “Hey now, don’t you start looking at me cockeyed, too,” he said. That’s when I hit him. There was no conscious decision about it—just this surge of heat and a streak of green beneath me. Then he was flat on his back and I was on top of him, driving my fist into his face. Jim said I was lucky I only lost my job. Cara said I was a fucking idiot. Which I guess was true, because we were already behind on our second mortgage. Still, it was one of the few things I can remember doing in the past couple years that I actually felt good about.

  “You think there’s any way I can get back delivering?” I ask.

  “Not a fucking chance. You’re blacklisted from Fort Wayne to Bedford.”

  “It’s been over a year.”

  “People remember. Only way you’re gonna get a job installing gardens is to move.”

  “How am I going to do that? I can’t sell our house in this market. We’re lucky we still have it. You’ve seen Downtown Indy—tent city.”

  “That’s what I’m saying, move. Leave it all behind. Start fresh.”

  “Move where? Michigan? Illinois? They’re all sheets of clay.” Jim doesn’t answer. “You know, I thought we were going to have a break today. Sam was on—”

  “Yeah, Fran told me what happened,” Jim says. “Real sorry to hear it. Here, let me fill you up.” Jim pours the rest of the pitcher into my glass. “You know, there are still some jobs in Kentucky—they’ve got patches down there. South America’s got some green, places in Brazil—”

  “Brazil’s finished.”

  “So try something new, switch professions.”

  “And do what? Nobody’s hiring. Do you know how long the list is to even get a job at this place?” I say, tapping the bar.

  Above us, Dream Girls is finished and the news has come on. It’s day nine hundred of the oil spill. There’s a picture of the Pacific Ocean, black as soil, followed by photos of obsidian waves crashing against the California coastline. Hawaii is on fire. A company spokesman is standing on a freighter, saying he believes they’ll be able to cap the underwater well by July of next year.

  “God,” I say. “This is really the end, isn’t it?”

  “Nah,” Jim says. “People have been saying the world’s gonna end for years. It never does.”

  “Yeah, but look at that.” I point to the screen with my glass. “The land’s gone, the water’s going. The Northeast doesn’t even have decent drinking water anymore. We’re done for.”

  “That’s just how it feels ’cause you’re in the dumps. Fran and I still got it good. Plenty of people still got it good.”

  “Yeah, well, we don’t have it good,” I say, looking into what’s left of my pint. The alcohol is hitting me now, dragging me downward. My brain feels like it’s full of dirt. “I think we’re going to lose the house by Christmas.” Above us are rolling photos of the earthquakes in Chile, followed by the recent floods in Japan. I take a long swallow of beer.

  “Listen,” Jim says, “Fran and I were in a rough spot last spring. Nothing too serious, but cell phone, Internet, cable, 24/7 GPS, online gambling, those kinda things add up.…” He takes a sip of his beer and lowers his voice. “You know, you’ve got a couple of good-looking kids. Really good-looking kids. You ever consider putting photos online?”

  I grimace as though my drink’s rancid.

  “Don’t give me that look,” Jim says.

  I empty my pint glass, put it down on the counter, and face Jim, looking him square in the eyes. “There’s no fucking way I’m selling my kids’ photos to porn.”

  “I’m not talking porn,” Jim says, “just pictures of them in the bathtub, Cara changing her diaper. Mild stuff, practically family photos. No big deal. Look, it wasn’t my first choice either, but I know a guy—completely confidential—you email him the attachments, he sends you a check. You don’t have to have any contact with his clients. Two hundred full frontal for boys, three hundred for girls. You get a shot of them together, he’d probably pay six.”

  “I’m not putting naked photos of my kids out there.”

  “Who’s it hurting? So a couple perverts are willing to pay good money to see them—so what? We’re talking a lot of money for a few snapshots. Sure, it’s not what anybody wants to do—I didn’t want to do it—but it got us through a tough spot. Look, nobody’s gonna see the photos except whoever he sells them to. And I’ll tell you something, the market will be flooded before you know it. A year from now, those pictures will be buried in the Internet. You need money—th
is is where the money is.”

  “I’m not interested,” I say.

  “Okay, so you’re not interested now, but at least let me give you his email in case you change your mind.” Jim writes the address down on a napkin and shoves it in my shirt pocket.

  “I’m throwing it out,” I tell him.

  “Do what you need to do,” Jim says. “As for me, I’m treating us to another pitcher.” Which is kind of him and, though I ought to pay, I just nod my head and say thanks.

  * * *

  REALLY, I SHOULDN’T be driving, and for this reason I take the long back road home, up old 37. Out here on the forgotten highway, I’m alone in the darkness watching my high beams cut across the land and the great pits. Twenty years ago it was all cornfields out here—Indiana soil so rich you could put anything in the dirt and it would grow. Then the companies came for the soil, followed by the clay, and finally the bedrock. All that’s left are these pits, abandoned and sinking. They talked for a while of filling the canyons with water, turning the place into a second series of great lakes—private ponds for the rich to float their sailboats on and their children to Jet Ski across. Then the rich moved on—away from this endless stretch of exposed rock and dead earth. Maybe years from now, when we’re all gone, some new creature will step forth on these canyons and gaze out at the abyss, never knowing there were once cornfields here.

  The rains have started again. The drops splatter against the windshield and make the roads muddy. At one point the mud gets so bad the wipers can’t cut it, and I have to pull over to the side of the road. I park beside the tall chain-link fence that separates the state road from the pits. I pop the trunk and take the squeegee from the back. The rain feels good against my skin, sobering, and I take my time, running the rubber blade against the glass and flicking the mud onto the road. Across from the pits, all the foreclosed houses are abandoned. The empty sockets of front yards, yanked from the ground like teeth, are filled with rain. It’s kind of beautiful in the darkness, as though the neighborhood is floating. Soon it will be dawn and everything will be ugly, but for now there’s an eerie radiance to the world. Perhaps it will be okay, I think. The earth will recover; the world won’t ever truly end. Perhaps it will be green again someday. I put the squeegee back in the trunk and start on the road toward home.