The Family Unit and Other Fantasies Read online

  “Right.” Red grew even more relaxed. “Arch, right now, I work for a glass jar company. I know that’s not well paying yet fun. Can you recommend something else for me to do for a living? I mean, unfortunately tennis is out, because I’ve never watched an entire match in my life—”

  “Bowling?” Karina offered.

  “Right. We were thinking, a bowling magazine. Is there even one? And if any of this is too much, please let us know.”

  Arch was initially reluctant to give them notes (as Brenda would later call “constructive criticism”) but soon accepted his new responsibility and warmed to the task. He offered many helpful ways they could approximate his family’s habits, and even comforted them about one child’s resistance to try out for school plays as both the Blums’ children were boys. He was on the verge of recommending Red replace his comb over with the kind of close-to-the-head haircut he himself sported, which was better he felt for the balding, but held back out of courtesy.

  “And they’ll be the first of many,” Brenda said, beaming as she backed out of the driveway. “If we could, we’d have Wiltons on every corner.”

  As it disappeared, Arch saw the family’s mailbox, which now had the name “Wilton” caboosed behind “Blum,” and both names above the initials “D.E.”

  That night, Arch was exhausted from the trip; Celinda was similarly spent from work and her book club. As they lay in bed, nodding off, Arch suddenly realized: they’d only had sex once that week. Twice was the Wilton way.

  He woke Celinda, who had been smiling slightly in her sleep.

  “I was having a dream,” she said, quietly, “that I was reaching for a piece of pound cake across a canyon, but you woke me up before I could get it.”

  Arch explained and then said, seriously, “I think we better do it,” and started to arrange himself.

  The next week, Celinda’s mother died. The end came peacefully and in her sleep. Celinda took the news without any overt emotionalism, kept to her work schedule, and went to yoga class. “What good will it do to stay home?” she asked, evenly. She accompanied Arch to pick out a coffin and plan the funeral, and even called to tell relatives and friends, though Arch had volunteered.

  The morning after the interment, Arch found his wife sitting in her nightgown before the bedroom mirror, staring at her reflection as if into the eyes of the utterly irrational.

  “Don’t you think,” he said, gently, “we should maybe get going? You have a nine o’clock.”

  Celinda did not move for more than an hour, and when she did, it was only to stand in silence at the window and watch with great interest as clouds covered and uncovered the sun.

  “Don’t you think—” Arch began but never finished his sentence.

  Celinda was admitted to a local psychiatric facility after a colleague pulled some strings. She was released a few days later, more animated and on medication, though still somewhat distant. She passed her patients onto other therapists, and Arch found the classic novel from her book club—The Magnificent Ambersons—sitting in a basket near the bedroom toilet, its bookmark lying on the floor. While he tried to be compassionate, he was secretly a bit impatient for her to snap out of it and become her old self again.

  “This has hit your mother hard,” he told the kids, “but she’ll be fine.” They at least said that they believed him.

  Not long after, Arch and other employees were called into Ace’s main conference room and told that the magazine was making changes. A print journal, it would soon be online only. There would be layoffs and buyouts, and those who remained would have to add twenty-four-hour blogging to their duties at no extra pay. Arch survived the cut but knew his hours in the office would increase and he would also have to work from a computer at home, cutting into his time with his family and old radios.

  He kept the news from Celinda, fearing she wasn’t yet up to hearing it. It had been more than two weeks since they’d made love and that, in addition to the change at work, had started to make him irritable and sleepless.

  The next time he went to Bode’s baseball game, he saw his son slide into home and get called out. Though he had never done so before, he found himself bounding from the stands and onto the field.

  “Hey, Helen Keller,” he said to the umpire, a local fry cook, “he was safe by a goddamn mile!” and then he was ejected.

  As he was driving Bode home, stopped at a light, Arch looked over and saw his funny son was in tears.

  “Please,” he said, feeling an unfamiliar fear, “don’t do that.”

  Brenda contacted Arch again, this time by telephone, appearing on Call Waiting while he interviewed a retired doubles team. Arch immediately took the call, and by the time he got back to the players they were gone.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” Brenda said, referring to recent unsettling events. “But you might want to—well, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you anything—”

  “Absolutely not,” Arch said quickly, having nervously anticipated this “meeting.”

  “With Celinda, especially, it’s not that we’re not sympathetic—”

  “I know. Of course you are.”

  “But we really think her continuing a practice that leaves her time for her family, doing yoga for health, the book club and cooking class for eccentricity—”

  “Right.” Arch didn’t say that Celinda had decided to drop out of the cooking class.

  “—would really be the best way for her.”

  “I agree.”

  “And as for the magazine’s restructuring, well, it’ll be just as engaging yet lucrative online.”

  “I know. I’m sure it will.”

  “We still like the Wiltons. More soon. Be well.”

  “Thank you. You too. Bye, Brenda.” Arch felt chastened by the call and also relieved that it had not been worse. Yet as he walked into the living room—for he had been working at night from home—Brenda’s use of the words “still” and “like” rattled him. “Like” seemed mild—why hadn’t she said “love”? And “still” implied a weakening of the company’s loyalty, while at the same time it had been used to reassure him of its strength. When the phone rang again, he feared it would be Brenda with new disquieting words, but it was his doctor.

  Arch had had a check-up that week and some results concerned Dr. Clay. The PSA levels in Arch’s blood work were high, implying a possibility—and only that, Dr. Clay stressed—of prostate cancer. Would he come in for more tests? Arch agreed and made an appointment.

  Afterwards, he walked into the bathroom he and Celinda shared. He opened their medicine cabinet and removed the sleeping pills she had recently been prescribed—two of which she had taken an hour before, at six P.M. Arch glimpsed her prone body in the bed beyond the bathroom door. He took two pills himself, neglecting to read the side effects warnings on the bottle’s side.

  Four hours later, sleepwalking, Arch crashed into a half-opened closet door near their bed, cut his upper lip and broke his nose.

  The next night, when Arch attended the opening of Sarabeth’s play, his nose was swollen and slightly blue, and his mouth distended and purple. Still, he thought it important that someone show up, and Celinda had been sleeping too deeply to be awakened. Also, he thought the play might distract him from Dr. Clay’s looming diagnosis. His follow-up appointment had been made for six days away, as if he had all the time in the world. This should have comforted Arch but instead made him think that Dr. Clay didn’t care about him.

  Watching Harvey, Arch thought Sarabeth was big, bubbly, and agreeably over-the-top as the main character’s hysterical sister. This reassured him as he was not sure but thought he had seen a D.E. employee—the one who had come to rehearsal—milling apart from other audience members outside.

  Backstage, Arch watched his daughter share flowers, kisses, and squealed compliments with the rest of the cast. Her heavy stage makeup, running from sweat, suddenly made S
arabeth look adult, worldly, even badly used. It scared Arch. Caught in a crowd, he saw a short blemished boy who had played the head of the insane asylum ask—in a voice obscured by noise—to see Sarabeth socially sometime. Sarabeth didn’t respond, just gave him a dismissive, incredulous look. The boy slunk away, his blush apparent even under makeup. Closer now, Arch heard Sarabeth to another actress, in a voice calmer and colder than she had ever used at home, refer to the boy as “a stinky little twat.” Then she turned and made a display of surprise at seeing her father.

  “Daddy!”

  Sarabeth hugged him tightly and wept with joy, but her tears seemed like those she had shed onstage. Arch offered to drive her home to see her mother and celebrate, but she pouted, pointed to her friends and said, “But—I want to have fun. Okay, Dad?”

  Her tone made it sound as if their home was the last place to find such a thing. Just now? Or always? Arch didn’t know. He was tempted to mention his high PSAs (as he had told no one else) but held his tongue. Sarabeth clearly meant to soothe his bruised face by kissing it but she made his wounds sting instead.

  Arch walked out alone onto the high school grounds. All at once, he had little desire to go home himself. When a group of five other parents, most of whom he knew, called from a car to “come get a drink!” he waved and agreed.

  They went to a nearby bar next to a Christian exercise salon for women in a mini-mall. While Arch appreciated the company, he sensed the others stood at a jealous distance from him since his acquisition; it was a subtle thing but noticeable. He could only answer tersely such insinuating questions as “Where’s Celinda?” and “What happened to your face?” He felt relieved when the party broke up.

  Arch reluctantly agreed to drive home one of the mothers, Bethel-something, he could never remember her name. She was a heavy, somewhat melancholy woman whose husband had recently died. Even though he didn’t ask why she had hitched a ride with the others, she apologized and told him, sadly, “I never learned to drive.”

  Beth reminded Arch of the recent disruptive episodes in his life. He drove quicker than usual to her house.

  “Would you mind seeing me inside?” she said, to his dismay. “My son is out with the cast, and. . . .”

  Arch sighed, upset to perceive the solitude to which she was clearly only slowly adjusting; he did not care to identify with it. He agreed with a sigh and a grunt.

  Arch meant to turn back once she was over the threshold. But as she snapped on the light in her living room, he saw a television and near it the controls of an intriguing new game he’d heard about. With it you could “play” sports on the TV screen—golf, tennis, lacrosse—by moving animated characters with controls held with a strap around your wrist.

  “You don’t have it?” Bethel asked, surprised. “I mean, being bought and all, I thought. . . .”

  Arch didn’t reply; he was annoyed by her ignorant presumption about the deal. D.E. didn’t give us everything, he felt like saying. Instead, with an inquisitive gesture toward the tube, he asked, “May I . . . ?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Bethel said. “Just don’t hurt your face—”

  It was an unthinkingly silly thing to say, but protective; Arch appreciated it. Feeling less hostile, attaching the strap, he politely challenged Bethel to a game of tennis.

  “Well, I’m not very good—it’s only for my son, but. . . .”

  Soon they were deep into a match, making motions while cartoons actually functioned for them. When the set was over—Arch over Bethel, six-love—they felt almost as fatigued as if they had been on a court themselves.

  “That was fun,” Arch panted.

  Breathing heavily and smiling, Bethel said, “Would you like a glass of water? And there’s some coconut cake, too, homemade, my own recipe.”

  A few minutes later, she was gently smearing the icing on her surprisingly small, almost non-existent nipple, which looked like a beautiful mosquito bite on her bare right breast. Tenderly restraining her wrist with the strap still around it, holding her down upon the living room couch, “This isn’t like me,” Arch said.

  “Yes,” Bethel said, kissing his nasty nose and guiding him inside her, “it is.”

  All Arch thought afterwards was how he had never known he liked the taste of coconut.

  Further tests turned up no more evidence of illness: Arch got the good news from Dr. Clay’s nurse in a message on his machine. While relieved beyond words, he felt the lack of a personal touch in how he had been contacted, as if Dr. Clay had simply passed him onto others. He sat on the bed beside his sleeping wife and whispered his prognosis to her, but she didn’t hear it, as she had never heard of his worries in the first place.

  Later that day, Arch was called by the local police to come get his son, who had been arrested for shoplifting a video game from a store. At the precinct, he paid the surprisingly high bail and took Bode home. The boy’s eyes were so red he looked as if he had been crying for hours.

  Passing their car in the parking lot, in the custody of his own father, was another boy, Lon, who played on Bode’s team. Sniffling, Arch’s son looked at this boy with a mixture of anger and subservience that made Arch uncomfortable.

  “Why?” he asked in an almost inaudible voice and got no reply.

  Bode ran quickly upstairs and slammed the door of his room—in order to wake his mother? Arch didn’t know. Then he heard his son start to cry again. Rounding the corner to the living room, he found Brenda Keen sitting where she had the first time they met.

  “Celinda let me in,” she said, and Arch knew it wasn’t true. He didn’t pursue it and simply stood shaking before her, his head bowed like a prisoner about to be executed.

  “I might as well be blunt here, Arch—we’re all adults. I’m afraid this isn’t working out.” As evidence, she pointed to a new portfolio, this one tangerine. “We were hoping you could maintain the levels we need to retain the Wilton brand, but our board sees a dismaying inability on your part to do so. And if you don’t care, then how can we help you?”

  “But I do care,” he barely choked out.

  “The financial terms of dissolving the agreement were spelled out in the original paperwork. The only thing we need to iron out between us is what to do about your name, as that will still be owned and is trademarked by D.E. Do you want to do that now or later? It’s all the same to us.”

  “Later—no, now.” Arch smarted under Brenda’s harsh, indifferent tone, as if she had already dismissed and forgotten him. He wanted to please her even more than he wished to delay their final parting, though it was irrational; she would not be mollified, and he knew it.

  “You can change one letter if you like, that’s what we’ve done in the past. If it makes it less disorienting. It’s really no problem for us.”

  There was a quick negotiation in which Arch barely participated—and of which he knew Brenda would have gotten the better, anyway, having what seemed like legal training. Finally, weeping, Arch agreed to take on the new family name of “Wiltog.”

  With a razor blade in his trembling hand, Arch scraped the D.E. sticker from the side of his car, as the contract required, leaving a splotch from the adhesive that looked like the white guts of a pigeon he had once seen squashed in the street, a permanent stain.

  Days or hours later, he drove a route he remembered by instinct. At dusk, he pulled up a few feet short of a house, not wanting to park directly in the driveway. Then he walked stealthily over a precisely mown lawn to a stone path parallel to a side window. There he half knelt and looked inside.

  In an eat-in kitchen, the Blum family was getting ready for dinner. Red was turning on a radio that dated from the Art Deco era; a novel in a Penguin edition was spread open on a counter near where Karina stirred a pot. One son laid aside a catcher’s mitt as he took his place at the table; the other, already sitting, faintly hummed a show tune.

  In exile, Arch Wiltog hid as the father step
ped forward to draw a curtain, as if indeed upon a stage play. The drape was decorated with a swirling pattern of D.E. logos, which were almost undetectable in its elegant design. Soon the sun went completely down, causing the light from inside to glow even brighter on the family no longer visible. It illuminated the window, which was now a mirror. Arch crouched, unmoving, his mouth open, and stared at the image of himself, which was all he had left.

  HOLE IN THE GROUND

  “Closed for Renovations.” He had always thought it one of the great and unappreciated lies, up there with putting things in the mail and not in your mouth. Was he alone in thinking it? Barry Bumgardner felt alone, standing before the shuttered Steen’s, which had been his local green grocer for the past—how many? Twenty?—years. Sometimes it was “Under New Management,” but always recognizably Steen’s, the aisles never altered enough to look like any other store, the new owners always too lazy to change the name, the identity of the original owner of no interest to the new Asian, Latino, and now Albanian owners, as unimportant as the meanings of expressions one used every day—“Break a leg!” “Down the hatch!”—and didn’t question.

  This time, however, was different—brown wrapping paper was taped over all of Steen’s windows, though not well enough to prevent Barry from peeking through. Today he saw a dark, abandoned interior, with paper boxes strewn about unassembled and a few steel racks fallen over like robbery victims, the Terra Chips and Pirate Booty and low-fat pretzels gone from their shelves. Unopened mail lay in a small pile near the front door—bills, Barry figured, and the real reason for the owner’s rush exit.

  “Closed for Renovations.” The sign would probably stay there until a new store showed up; at some other places it had taken years, time definitively exposing the lie of the sign, which nobody believed in the first place, the way time caught people in lies nobody ever bought—“My wife is visiting relatives” (for ten years)—but were too polite to challenge.