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CHAPTER 5

NED

AFTER LUNCH, NED SERVICES THE TRANSMISSION ON the Dowlings' '89 Olds. He drops the pan and lets the fluid out, then replaces the filter. As he slips the new gasket on, he feels the familiar band stretching across his temples. The headaches have been coming on more and more lately.

He replaces the pan, scrapes a knuckle, swears. He's already had a bitch of a morning. Tyrone Miller, his part-time mechanic, hasn't shown, and now Ned is so far behind he's going to have to carry at least two jobs over to tomorrow, screwing up another day.

He's still looking at oil changes on two Renaults. The green '91 that belongs to Dick Carrington and Bill Grauski's gray '87. If he could afford to turn away the business, he would refuse to service them. He hates Renaults. The way they make those things you have to have the hands of a six-year-old girl to work under the hood. People should have to buy American. That's the problem with the country. Whole balance-of-trade thing would be settled if Americans would support their own industries instead of the Japs and Germans.

Now Fords. There is a car a man can work on. Ned loves to see a Ford pull up, especially the '70s models. You can raise the hood on one of those honeys and find room to lie down inside, not like those damn Renaults. But then what can you expect from a car made by Frogs?

He drops a wrench, swears again. When he bends over to retrieve it, his head pounds, a pulsing red beat that tells him this one is going to be a real bastard. It's digging in behind his eyes, across his temple, up over his skull. The coffee he's consumed doesn't help. He should cut down. He has probably had at least ten cups already, and it's only 1:30. Plus, at lunch he grabbed a sub from Trudy's, and the hot peppers aren't sitting right.

He finishes up with the Olds and goes to the counter to recheck the day's sheet. The headache is in full swing now, and he would love to quit early.

He looks over at the second lift, where Bob Rivers' Dodge waits for a brake realignment. He'll let Ty finish it up tomorrow. If he shows up. Then there are two regulars who want their ACs recharged. He thought he was done with that this year, but there's been an unexpected hot spell and now he has four or five more scheduled. Five years ago, he could do the whole job in half the time, half the paperwork. Used to be, he could just add a can of Freon, but now, thanks to Uncle Sam, it takes at least an hour. He has to hook the damn system up to the recycling box; clean, filter, weigh, and return the gas to the system; and then add in what's needed. To top it off, the recycling box, a piece of equipment that set him back five thousand bucks, is already obsolete. All the current models require new equipment that he's already decided he won't buy. It is a big expense, and he'll be lucky if he recoups the initial investment in a year. Let people just open their windows. It isn't like this is Florida, for God's sake. Personally, he wouldn't take air if the factory threw it in for free.

He continues down the work sheet. After the ACs, there's a carburetor job on a Pontiac, and he has promised Stu Weston he'll take a look at a car his kid wants to buy, see if it's a lemon.

At 2:30, head pounding so ugly it's an effort to keep his eyes open, he gives up and heads home.

He hasn't gone more than three blocks when he remembers that this is the day he intended to drive out to the college, straighten out the mess over Rose's tuition. He has already put it off for two weeks. He hates doing things like this and the headache isn't helping, but he wants it cleared up.

It was his understanding that the class was to run a full semester and he paid a damn good bit of money for Rose to take it. It isn't about the money. He is glad to do it. Rose isn't like a lot of wives, Joey Doherty's for instance. Now there's a woman who goes through money like a dose of salts. No, he has no complaints on that score with Rose. He hadn't minded paying for this writing class; he was happy to do it if that was what she wanted. But the thing is, the class was supposed to run for four months, and if they cut it short—whatever the reason—it doesn't seem right not to give some sort of refund.

Afternoon classes are in session, and he has to circle the lot three times before he can find a parking spot. Between that and the headache, he's in a sour mood by the time he reaches the registrar's office. There's only one person behind the desk, someone he instantly knows he doesn't want to deal with. A student, but he doesn't have a clue as to which sex. The crewcut hair and plaid work shirt say boy, but the fingernails—long, painted yellow—indicate girl.
Yellow!

“Can I help you?” A female voice.

There is something in her nose—he averts his eyes discreetly—but a second glance shows him it's a gold stud. What are her parents thinking of? No daughter of his would leave the house in a getup like that. Pierced nose. A crewcut, for Christ's sakes. None of this is helping with the headache. He holds his hands over his eyes, presses his thumb and forefinger into his temples.

“Yes?” the girl prompts. “Do you need help?”

He drops his hand, doesn't even try not to stare at her hair. Girl gets a buzz like that, she should be used to people staring. “I'm here about a refund.”

Her voice turns flat. “Which class?”

He gives her the information. “Of course, I don't expect the entire amount,” he says. He wants to be quite clear about that.

While she punches the data into her computer, he stares at her shorn scalp. He shakes his head and thinks of Tyrone. The mechanic wears his hair in a ponytail, has a pierced ear. Somewhere along the line kids today have gotten confused, gotten the roles blurred.

The girl looks up from her screen. “That class is still on the schedule.”

“What?”

“It's still on the schedule. It hasn't been canceled.”

“It sure has,” he informs her, thinking, God, these people don't know what's going on around here. How do they expect to teach anyone anything? With more patience than he feels, he repeats what Rose has told him. “My wife should know. She was taking the class.” He stresses “wife” to show this girl that she's dealing with adults here.

The girl frowns and taps more keys. The long yellow nails make a clicking sound. “No,” she says. “Professor Jeffrey is still teaching that course. In fact, it's in session right now. In room 306 Dalton. Dalton Hall. The humanities building. If you parked in Lot A, you walked right by it.”

Ned stands his ground. There is a mistake, a mix-up. Maybe this girl doesn't know how to use a computer. Fingernails like that, she's probably struck the wrong keys. He'll have to ask for the person in charge.

“What's your wife's name?” she asks before he can act.

“Rose Nelson.
Mrs.
Rose Nelson.”

She taps more keys on the board; they both wait while new information pops up. “Ah, here it is,” she says in her flat voice. “Rose Nelson.” She stops reading and casts a funny glance at him.

“We have Rose Nelson entered as a voluntary withdrawal. Of course, there's no refund after the first month of classes. If she'd withdrawn a week earlier, you'd be entitled to a partial refund. Sorry.” She returns to her work, dismissing him.

He is pretty sure, would have bet the shop on it, that Rose has never in her life lied to him. Why would she tell him the professor had an emergency, had to leave town? If she doesn't want to take the damn writing class, she could have told him she quit. At that moment he could kill Rose. Not about the money, the hell with the money, but for embarrassing him in front of this ridiculous creature.

ON HIS WAY TO THE PARKING LOT, HE PASSES DALTON HALL, and it comes to him that something isn't right about this. He can just feel it. He looks about and, seeing no one in sight, crosses the walk. He pauses a moment, inhales a time or two, gets his bearings. He still wears his work clothes: green pants stained with oil, grease, and engine fluids that mark him as a trespasser. He doesn't have one clue what he'll say if anyone challenges him, asks him what he's doing here.

Room 306 is on the third floor. Out of breath by the time he's climbed three flights of stairs, he's glad to find the corridor empty. He passes by closed doors, checking numbers, peering into oblong windows of near-useless glass the size of a carton of milk. The room is midway down the hall.

All it takes is one quick look. The guy standing in front of the class is younger than he expects, and wears a shirt, no tie. And jeans, for Christ's sake. Ned has his number immediately. A know-it-all kind of guy, the kind that talks about movies you've never seen, makes a pain in the ass of himself at town meetings. He'd bet a week's profits the guy drives something foreign. Probably a Volvo.

Immediately, looking at this guy, Ned knows what happened to Rose, realizes how she'd written something in his class and this son of a bitch had ripped it to shreds. Naturally Rose is too embarrassed to return. A spasm of fury takes Ned for what this bastard has done to his Rose, but it passes quickly. His stomach for confrontation, his capacity for sustained rage, has long ago been exhausted.

THE HOUSE HAS AN EMPTY FEEL.

“Rose?” he yells as he enters. “Rosie?”

He checks the kitchen and then upstairs. She isn't in their bedroom. Todd's door is closed, and as he approaches he hopes to hell she isn't in there. He hasn't found her in there in months, and he clings to this as a sign she is getting better. He opens the door, smells stale air. Years ago the last traces of Todd's sweat and shaving lotion evaporated, but everything else is the same. Over on the bureau, Rose has set up a little arrangement of some of his things, junk for the most part: A ceramic tiger he made in day camp, broken and repaired at least twice—even from the door Ned can see a thin line of glue at the tail. Two framed snapshots, one of him at six and one at fifteen. His watch, a cheap blood-encrusted Timex they stripped from his wrist in the emergency room. (Rose kept it set to the correct time for months until the battery ran down.). A scrap of wrinkled paper on which is scribbled a note telling them he will be late for dinner. A couple of years ago, Rose added a votive candle. It looks like some kind of shrine, for Christ's sake. Sick.

If Ned has his way, they would turn the room into a den, should have done it a long time ago. A place where he can do paperwork for the station instead of the cramped space he now uses where he can never find anything. Tax time is a nightmare. Naturally, Rose won't hear of it. Where is she anyway? “Rose?” he calls again.

He's nervous when he doesn't know where she is. He's already lost sight of too much of her. It's as if Rose is a balloon lost in clouds overhead, and if he doesn't keep her tethered, she'll float completely off, be gone. He believes if he can just keep hold of the string, the other part will come back.

He goes out to the hall. From the upstairs window, he takes in the reassuring sight of laundry blowing on the line. Over in the yard at the Montgomery place, he sees two figures, hears, then through the window, the thump of rock music. Bad enough he's got to put up with Ty's stuff at the station. Now it looks like he won't get peace in his own backyard.

The Gates girl moved in last month. No husband on the scene, just her and the kid, although in Ned's eyes, she isn't much more than a kid herself. Personally he thinks she's a fruitcake: not evil, just no good sense. She's as thin as oil slick—looks like one stiff breeze would knock her over—and she runs around in bare feet and flashy skirts that either swing around her ankles or cut high across her thighs. No middle ground with that one.

A couple of weeks ago she stopped by the station to use the pay phone and fuel that old Buick she drives, and it wasn't two minutes before she had Tyrone's tongue hanging near his knees. The mechanic wasn't much good for the next half hour. It makes Ned nervous her being next door, so close to Rose.

Before the Gates kid moved over there, Ned had high hopes for the Montgomery place. He fantasized that a couple about his and Rose's age would move in. A nice childless couple. The woman who would come over and get Rose talking about curtains and slipcovers and what was on sale at the grocery store. And maybe the two of them would start sewing, the way Rose used to. Ned can't remember the last time he's come home to the whirring of Rose's sewing machine. The noise used to annoy the hell out of him, but now he would welcome any indication that Rose is returning to her normal self.

Instead of this neighbor he envisioned, a woman who would show Rose the road back to herself, this crazy kid moved in, this wisp of a girl with a mouth on her that would put Ty to shame.

Again he remembers the day when she stopped by the station to use the pay phone. Her line was supposed to have been connected the day before, and she wanted to blast the phone company. “The fucking phone company,” was what she said. Right then, as soon as those words flew out of her mouth—“the fucking phone company”—Ned saw his hopes for Rose fly right out the window.

The boy seems nice enough, though. No bouts of temper as far as Ned can see. He says “sorry” when his ball rolls over to their yard. Not his fault his mother has a mouth on her. When Ned was out mowing the lawn the previous night, he saw the kid playing all alone, tossing an old whiffle ball up in the air, awkward hands missing it on its arc down, tossing and missing, tossing and missing, over and over until it made him dizzy to watch. It reminded him of all the nights he'd spent with Todd, teaching him to catch—a boy needs a patient man for that—and then he remembered all the baseballs he'd bought for his son over the years.

There is a whole carton of that stuff in the garage. The balls and gloves and Frisbees in that cardboard box would be doing a lot more good if that boy had them. As it is, every time Ned goes out to get the mower, his eyes fall on the carton, a concrete reminder of the worst kind of pain a man could ever expect to have. He had wanted to give the lot of them to his sister Ethel for her boys. But Rose wouldn't hear of it, although he couldn't imagine what she had been saving them for. It hadn't made any sense. Still doesn't. As far as he can see, all this holding on to Todd's stuff doesn't help anything. If he had his way, he'd just get rid of it all. But there was hell to pay the one time he gave some of Todd's clothes to Ethel. Clothes, for Christ's sake.