Read Online Northwest Corner by John Burnham Schwartz - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Burnham Schwartz
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not?—I throw in another fifteen bucks for a car wash while I’m at it. (I’m just two full tanks short on my coupon card from a free wash ’n’ wax. But today, I somehow understand, there can be no waiting, no deferment, and no deals.) I overtip the jumpsuited Mexicans who spot-towel my vehicle (tender as nursemaids, even with the paint-scratched rear-quarter panel), knowing that the only thing separating them from me is a green card; that they have better records, on the whole, than I will ever have again.
The rest of the way home is less than three miles. The car clean and fresh-smelling, the hood gleaming like a polished bowling ball. In the trunk, the fixings for breakfast and lunch and many more meals to come. A plan taking shape, or something like it. All I have to do now is stop myself from wondering if Sam will still be there when I arrive. If, sharp kid that he is, he might have reconsidered his situation overnight, changed his mind about his level of desperation. If I’ve already scared him away. If I’ll get home and find the bed he slept in untouched and untraceable. If this is just memory busting me again, or for once the real thing.
SAM
C ROSSING THE LIVING ROOM in his boxers, eyes crusted with bad sleep, he watches the front door swing open and a familiar, broad-shouldered man carrying two brown bags of groceries enter the house.
His father stops and stares: an apparition. “You’re still here.”
At the last second a kind of rictus grin added for effect, to mask the statement as a question, and the question as a joke. But the eyes appear strained, and there’s nothing funny about the situation, really.
“I left you a note on the kitchen table.”
“I saw it.”
“We were a little low on food.”
Sam nods. They stand staring at each other like strangers on opposite platforms of a commuter station.
“Hungry?”
He shrugs.
“Well, I’m going to make some breakfast for both of us.” He moves toward the kitchen. “There are more groceries out in the car.”
Sam walks to the bedroom and pulls on a pair of jeans. In daylight the room is almost unrecognizable, a holding pen with rubber matting and pairs of dumbbells on the floor. A place for desperate repetitions, not sleep. He pictures his father in a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off and gym shorts too baggy for his age, doing curls and presses and squats by himself in the room every morning, sweating and grunting, pushing his thinning muscles till they can’t lift a singlepound more. A routine he himself often performed in the weight room of his dorm in Storrs, late into the night if he was feeling low, rep after rep, to the point where Jake sometimes wondered aloud what his problem was. Why so intense? Good question. Turns out he, too, knows how to punish himself without restraint, holding nothing back, half in love with the black curtain of manufactured pain.
Shirtless, he goes out of the house.
A few feet of grass; a couple of cement squares; his father’s car, the ragtop that’s seen better days but which, this morning, is reflective as if waxed by elves, filling the little rectangle of cement that constitutes a driveway. The trunk open, holding enough supplies for a visit that might never end. As if costly abundance alone can cover all blown bets, make everything square.
Picking up a brown bag and a twelve-pack of Diet Dr Pepper, he turns to go back inside, but freezes at the sight of an elderly Hispanic woman watching him from a window of the small beige house across the street, her hands pinning together the loose flaps of her peach-colored nightdress. She stands appraising his naked, bruised torso with a faraway half smile that doesn’t seem to include him at all—as if he’s marble and she’s looking inward, toward some vision that’s hers alone. He nods and smiles, but she turns away abruptly, and he’s left greeting the empty street like an idiot.
In the kitchen, he sets the groceries down on the
The rest of the way home is less than three miles. The car clean and fresh-smelling, the hood gleaming like a polished bowling ball. In the trunk, the fixings for breakfast and lunch and many more meals to come. A plan taking shape, or something like it. All I have to do now is stop myself from wondering if Sam will still be there when I arrive. If, sharp kid that he is, he might have reconsidered his situation overnight, changed his mind about his level of desperation. If I’ve already scared him away. If I’ll get home and find the bed he slept in untouched and untraceable. If this is just memory busting me again, or for once the real thing.
SAM
C ROSSING THE LIVING ROOM in his boxers, eyes crusted with bad sleep, he watches the front door swing open and a familiar, broad-shouldered man carrying two brown bags of groceries enter the house.
His father stops and stares: an apparition. “You’re still here.”
At the last second a kind of rictus grin added for effect, to mask the statement as a question, and the question as a joke. But the eyes appear strained, and there’s nothing funny about the situation, really.
“I left you a note on the kitchen table.”
“I saw it.”
“We were a little low on food.”
Sam nods. They stand staring at each other like strangers on opposite platforms of a commuter station.
“Hungry?”
He shrugs.
“Well, I’m going to make some breakfast for both of us.” He moves toward the kitchen. “There are more groceries out in the car.”
Sam walks to the bedroom and pulls on a pair of jeans. In daylight the room is almost unrecognizable, a holding pen with rubber matting and pairs of dumbbells on the floor. A place for desperate repetitions, not sleep. He pictures his father in a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off and gym shorts too baggy for his age, doing curls and presses and squats by himself in the room every morning, sweating and grunting, pushing his thinning muscles till they can’t lift a singlepound more. A routine he himself often performed in the weight room of his dorm in Storrs, late into the night if he was feeling low, rep after rep, to the point where Jake sometimes wondered aloud what his problem was. Why so intense? Good question. Turns out he, too, knows how to punish himself without restraint, holding nothing back, half in love with the black curtain of manufactured pain.
Shirtless, he goes out of the house.
A few feet of grass; a couple of cement squares; his father’s car, the ragtop that’s seen better days but which, this morning, is reflective as if waxed by elves, filling the little rectangle of cement that constitutes a driveway. The trunk open, holding enough supplies for a visit that might never end. As if costly abundance alone can cover all blown bets, make everything square.
Picking up a brown bag and a twelve-pack of Diet Dr Pepper, he turns to go back inside, but freezes at the sight of an elderly Hispanic woman watching him from a window of the small beige house across the street, her hands pinning together the loose flaps of her peach-colored nightdress. She stands appraising his naked, bruised torso with a faraway half smile that doesn’t seem to include him at all—as if he’s marble and she’s looking inward, toward some vision that’s hers alone. He nods and smiles, but she turns away abruptly, and he’s left greeting the empty street like an idiot.
In the kitchen, he sets the groceries down on the
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