A Regular Guy (32 page)

The address still belonged to the small white bungalow with a forked cedar that grew up on both sides of the bay window and a beautiful Japanese maple that towered over the back. He didn’t remember the maple, but it must have always been there. He pulled into the driveway only ten minutes late and walked in with his hand on the back of Jane’s neck.

Owens seemed to be the only one of the old friends still single, and he hung back, quiet, sitting in what he didn’t recognize was the best chair. He wished Olivia had come. They were fighting again.

Bob Shepard’s daughter, Minna, who was a few years older than
Jane, stood tall now, regal. Her long hair swung as she offered hors d’oeuvres. He hadn’t seen her in years. Jane chatted with her happily, saying she wanted to take dancing lessons
too
, if her mom and dad would only
let
her.

It was new for Jane to try and talk about not going to school, a topic so embarrassing she usually avoided it. But these people knew Owens, and he was right here. So when Minna asked, she said she had tutors because her parents didn’t believe in schools. What was strange was that this girl didn’t sound surprised. She didn’t like school that much anyway; she was blasé, complaining. And though Jane was fascinated by everything to do with school, with this girl she pretended not to care.

It was a nice house, small, the kind Owens and most of his friends had grown up in. He liked watching the women. There was something about people your own age. Tonight, Jane could tell, he felt acutely lonely for love.

“That’s some Japanese maple you have,” he said to Shep’s wife, Anna. They used to call her Lamb. She was delivering tiny glasses of sherry. “No, thanks, for me. Can I go out back for a look?”

He followed her through the living room into the neat full kitchen and stood at the back door, next to the washer-dryer. The tree seemed to capture and hold wind. The leaves turned themselves over perfectly horizontally, in a way peculiar to Japanese maples. “That must be fifty years old.”

“I expect so,” she said, by his shoulder. “We’ve been here eleven now. I often stand right there and do the ironing before anyone is up. That’s the only time it’s quiet.”

He looked at her, surprised, but she flustered under his scrutiny, wiping her hands on an apron.

She had him carry a large casserole to the round dining table. Neither the dining room nor the table could contain them all, so they’d set out rolled cloth napkins with silverware. It was pasta, Owens was relieved to see, pesto, and a big salad. Fruit for dessert; he’d spied it in the refrigerator. He became enthusiastic, as he always did when people ate the right kind of food.

When he’d made his plate he took it to an ottoman, next to Jane,
who was stretched out on the floor. A wife he hadn’t met before had taken the chair he’d been sitting in. This is really nice, he thought. He shook his head, mad at Olivia.

Joe and the wife in the chair were having an animated discussion about an upcoming election. “Who are you voting for?” the wife asked Owens suddenly.

He smiled haplessly. “I never vote.”

“You’re Mary’s daughter.” Shep sat down next to Jane. “I remember your mother, but I don’t know if she’d remember me. Tell her the Shep says hello.”

Jane wasn’t sure she’d really tell her. Lately, her mother had been in a bad mood about Owens.

Anna was carrying in a basket of hot bread. “And your grandma baked our wedding cake,” she called over her shoulder. “It was a real small one. When I picked it up, I remember, she only charged me two dollars.”

None of them had such great careers. Bob Shepard did some kind of accounting and commuted every day on the underground train. All three guys had been in on the beginning of Genesis, and Anna had been Owens’ first secretary. Joe became a poor people’s lawyer; you had to respect that. Todd had traveled and done all kinds of jobs, and now he was studying to be a nurse. Two of the women had part-time jobs, but you could tell they were pretty much mothers now. This was going home, even more than his parents’ house. People his age who weren’t in biochemistry anymore. And these weren’t the people who’d made their money and got out. They never stayed long enough. Shep had had stock options, the works. But Anna had Minna, and she didn’t want the hours. If he’d only given it one more year. Owens had begged him at the time, warning him that he’d be sorry. Owens had Jane, but she was off in the mountains and he hadn’t even touched her yet. All he had was the picture. Shep wouldn’t look at Owens when he resigned, head down, mumbling something about responsibilities.

At the very beginning, when Genesis was only an idea, Shep had asked him to be Minna’s godfather. He’d been late, of course, and they had to hold up the ceremony for him. The church was empty and cold, and when they poured water over the baby’s forehead she cried furiously
and they couldn’t get her to stop. The memory was somehow disagreeable.

The wife in the chair had a wide face, shaped like the blade of a shovel. She didn’t have children. Anna was asking about her work. That was like the old Lamb. It turned out the woman worked remotely in biotech, on the esoteric side, freelance.

“And are you working on any particular project?” Anna asked.

“Well, it’s hard now,” the woman said, glancing at Owens.

“Really? Why?” he asked. He couldn’t help it. Exodus was having troubles, but the biotech industry overall had had its best quarter ever.

“Well, money’s tight, so it’s hard. And I was asked to do two projects this year I wouldn’t put my name to.”

What is her name? Jane wondered. “Wait,” she said. “I don’t understand.”

“That would be selling out,” she told Jane pointedly, so Owens bent down and whispered in his daughter’s ear, “We can watch a movie when we get home.”

“Oh, I don’t really much believe in the notion of selling out,” Anna said. “Everyone does the best they can.”

In the corner, Joe and Todd talked about cars. Todd apparently drove a truck, with four-wheel drive. “I got the chassis fixed. That hurt. I put four hundred dollars in it.”

Owens concentrated on eating from his plate. Good pesto, at least. Too much salt.

Diane, Joe’s wife, had a nice rising laugh. “We bought another Impala. We don’t love it, it’s not our identity, it’s just a means of transportation.”

Jane looked around, suddenly self-conscious.

“If we had the money,” the woman who didn’t want to sell out was saying.

Was Jane just picking things, sensitive, or were they talking only about money? She had noticed that Owens didn’t talk about money. He never brought it up, except in global or at least national terms, or abstractly, to theorize about some business.

As much as was possible, he lived a life without money. He hired a man he never saw to pay his bills, and when he ran out of cash, Eliot
had it delivered to him in a plain brown envelope carried by a bonded messenger. Owens kept one credit card in a thin wallet. But he liked to forget about petty systems of barter altogether, and ordinary conversations about the price of things caused him the pain some people felt listening to fingernails on a blackboard. He never discussed his own expenses, probably due to an embarrassment of scale. If someone else brought up a matter of finance and in particular the question of
Can I afford this?
or
Should I stretch to do it?
Owens just sat there and continued to do whatever he was doing, as if he hadn’t heard. This could be maddening to people close to him. Jane remembered the night he wouldn’t lend them a car. It was true: he didn’t need to finagle and struggle and plot over money, but
they did
. And sacrifice, allowance and judgment in spending formed not only drama and suspense but also structure in most people’s lives.

“I don’t see any point in getting another used car,” Diane said. “Wait till you can get new.”

“We bought a new car—a red one—and I just love it,” Anna exclaimed. “Ever since Nancy Drew, I always wanted a red roadster.”

Everything she said made Owens smile.

Listening to the conversation about cars, Minna said, “Doesn’t everyone hate the rich?”

Owens looked up again, pleased. Her parents had never told her.

“I don’t hate the rich!” Anna declared, her voice ringing with ardor. “I’ve always envied them!”

Her daughter, unflappable, just shrugged. She had an unusually erect back.

Jane bit the inside of her mouth. She remembered his celebratory glee over his coupon. It had come to Theo in the mail, addressed to “Resident.” He’d brandished the paper, told them each about it three or four times, then given it to the waiter with a flourishing triumph. He’d only once wanted to be included in the game.

As they went on about money in the small living room, Owens felt there was nothing he could say, short of opening his wallet. And there had been times, at the beginning, when he’d done that and only made things worse. He sensed they were obliquely asking him for the gift
that would make them resent him if he gave it, and also that they were blaming him for the absence of those worries.

Jane knew from the other side that it was true, people did both. What was worse, they probably couldn’t help it. She and her mother had felt those things towards him too.

A stunning thing had happened when he was young. He had tried for it, having some inkling of its magnitude, but there had been months, too, of closed-door failure. But then they’d tripped over a protein that saved hundreds of thousands of lives. He had been trying to make a way out of what he’d known, for himself and for Frank. All of a sudden, he missed Frank.

It was easiest to talk to Anna. She was standing in the dining room, ladling pasta, and he went over for seconds. “This is really good. How do you make it?”

“Oh, I suppose the usual. Basil, pine nuts, cheese, butter, a little salt.”

Jane looked at Owens, waiting. He never touched butter. To her relief, he laughed. “You’re kidding me.”

“I don’t think I am. Did I leave out something? Oh, well, of course the spaghetti.”

“You don’t really put butter in pesto.”

“Not much, but I think this recipe did call for a little bit.”

“You’re not serious,” he said. His plate was already down, set on the table.

“Are you allergic or—”

“His tongue swells up and turns black,” Jane said. “No, I’m just joking.”

“I just don’t like to eat butter. But no big deal,” he said, his chin high, eyes roving; he was ready to leave.

The woman in the chair stood up and told Todd it was time to go. He stuck his hand out to say goodbye to Owens. “Say, I’m really sorry about your ma.”

On the other side of the small room, a dress came up in conversation, how it was made on a covered wagon and first worn in a field
wedding during the overland crossing. Bob took it down from where they kept it, on the top shelf over the refrigerator, opened it to a Christmas of tissue, and then Minna ran up to her room to try it on. It was her great-great-grandmother’s wedding dress, and Jane wanted to see.

Arrayed over footstools, couches and chairs, everyone was eating dessert. Owens loved the fruit salad—there was nothing in it but fruit—and was still eating after everyone stopped. When he took his plate to the kitchen, he stood alone, looking at the Japanese maple, while Anna busied herself at the sink. She was a calm, patient woman, who always seemed to have time. She opened the refrigerator, and in the weak light he saw the chain letter on the door, the same one he got. He almost laughed. “You got this too!”

“Oh, yes, isn’t it silly? Shep’s against it, doesn’t believe in them, but I don’t see any harm. I sent a few copies out just to our neighbors and some other mothers. A couple teachers. I say it’s like buying a lottery ticket. I haven’t seen any return yet, and it’s been, oh, more than two months, but I’ve already gotten my five dollars’ worth of fun.”

Could they have been on his list? he wondered as she was talking. Then he realized his temporary secretary had sent copies to everyone on his party list. Anna had gotten the thing from him. And without intending to, he’d already made a small fortune from it. He felt in his jeans pockets, where he had several five-dollar bills that had arrived in the last week or two.

When he went to the bathroom, he slipped a fresh bill between two magazines.

After a half hour of hooks and eyes, Minna stood there entranced, barefoot, her hair up, holding the full of the skirt in one hand.

“Minna, you’re beautiful,” Bob Shepard said, his eyes humble.

She was a beauty now or almost, Owens thought, but the dress seemed so poor and fragile, the old muslin tearing, and it was their treasure. The bustle was made from a flour sack, and you could see the blue markings. Then they showed the picture of Lamb, thin in that same dress, not on her wedding day but before, standing on a porch with her sisters. She and Bob had stood in city hall after their blood
test, a nothing wedding, cake for two, he in work clothes and she in a brown dress for the ceremony, but it had lasted now fourteen years. Anna sewed, and she talked about fixing the dress for Minna’s wedding someday, and Owens wanted to say he’d buy her a new, great dress, but then thought how that would sound and would make him feel even more separate, so he kept still.

In the album, Jane saw a picture of her father a way she’d never seen him, with long hair and a beard. “That’s when they went public,” Shep said sheepishly. Owens knew he hadn’t been there; they’d cut the picture out of a magazine. All Owens’ victories were in their scrapbook. “And that’s Minna’s christening. Your dad was Minna’s godfather.”

In the bask of attention, Minna twirled.

“Do you ever see Frank anymore?” Anna asked.

“Not too much,” Owens said.

“We saw him once, quite a while ago now,” Anna said, “and he was still studying, carrying a stack of books. You know, I called him for tonight, but from what I gathered, he’s in China.”

Frank had always talked about going to China. There was no reason now for him not to.

“That must be something for him,” she continued. “All those relatives he’s never met, who don’t speak a word of English.”