Harmless (8 page)

“Jane, I say this with no reservations.” The lion paused, calling for a full hearing of his heart’s contents. “As a musician, I never forgot, through
everything
, hearing you and Andrea Wilson harmonizing to Human League at those park parties.”

“Human League!” Jane couldn’t believe it. She leaned across Joseph’s lap to tap Liz, her breasts pressing against him. “I heard Human League at work the other day! It’s still good music!”

“It was wicked when you sang,” Julian said. “I say this sincerely, you had a major impact—
major
—on my musical development.”

“Sing!” Amber’s black eyes were already three mood swings ahead of everyone. “One song!” She gestured at the fire and the fields and the white dome over the low sun, set pieces for an outdoor concert celebrating the coming nightfall.

Jane took a quick glance at Alex across the fire. “Trust me, no one wants to hear me sing.”

“We
do
, Jane,” Amber said. “I see you holding on to something.” This fact seemed to hurt her more than Jane. “Something that won’t let you express yourself, a
blockage
.”

Yes, his name is Alex
. Joseph fought down a giggle. He was being mean, but really, Alex had to lighten up—glaring at Jane’s friends when he should be flattered they wanted to hear his wife sing.

“
Go
with it, Jane,” Amber said, the sun highlighting her high curving cheekbones and almost-slanted eyes. Joseph imagined her as lover to the brilliant guitarist, frontwoman of the art-school punk band, muse of the poet. Tonight, she radiated on Jane’s behalf.

Julian had taken out his guitar, and a single chord cut the air with a sound as sharp as lake ice cracking. Joseph’s senses sharpened at the sound, flexing against the booze and the dope as Julian strummed the first hurting chords of “Me and Bobby McGee,” timeless staple of kitchen-party singalongs, now transformed by Jane’s clear voice into the chorus of a Greek tragedy, the Kentucky coal mines framed by Doric columns. Everyone except Alex sang along, but Jane left them far behind when she reached the chorus about freedom being another word for nothing left to lose. How could Joseph have forgotten Jane’s
voice
? It made him feel like he was leaning out of a car window doing eighty through cool mountain air, and when she sang about letting Bobby slip away to find a home, he was flooded with vivid pictures—an unspoiled green valley, a winding riverside, a beautiful woman waiting by a campfire, scenes from an imaginary life.

There were cries of “Wicked!” and “That’s scary!” as Jane brought the song home. She tried to retreat into the rickety lawn chair but it was like trying to fold a peacock in full display into a handbag.

“You’ve got it, Jane,” Julian said. “The Gift. I say that sincerely.”

Jane shot Joseph an “Oh,
please
” expression she believed less than he did. He blinked away the wetness. The woods
seemed closer now, and he saw shapes moving in the trees. The breeze shifted smoke into his eyes, and when he opened them again the shapes were gone.

Julian strummed a few blues chords.

“Another song?
Great
.” It was Rebecca’s voice, close behind Jane. She and Franny had been standing there long enough to hear—what? He pulled his knee away from Jane’s.

“What’s up?” Jane said. She turned in her chair to face Rebecca.

“Nothing.”

Jane sighed. She knew her job was to question Rebecca until “nothing” turned into a request for money or an extended curfew.

“Are you going to sing again?” Rebecca might as well have asked if Jane was going to parade naked down the town’s main street.

It was Alex’s job to step in here and play the peacemaking father. Instead, he studied his wife and daughter with defiant passivity, as if he was resisting a persistent interrogator. Joseph tried to lock eyes with Franny, who was standing slouched behind Rebecca, but she’d trained herself to shut down at the first sign of familial tension. Liz gripped his arm and pulled him closer.

“I’ve missed you Joseph.” She had the singularly happy face of a children’s toy.

“I missed you too.” He looked down at little Sam, half-asleep in her lap. “You’re very funny. I didn’t always appreciate it.” It was the nicest thing he could say to her.

“I’m not sure I’m funny anymore.”

Her sudden deadpan expression made him laugh.

Julian strummed a nervous chord, and Joseph thought he heard Jane whisper, “You little bitch.” Or was it
witch
? Alex must have heard it too. He stepped back from the fire. His long cheeks, flushed and heavy, had gone the colour of uncooked pork. The man was fucking
high
.

“It’s Sam’s bedtime,” Liz announced in a suddenly chirpy voice. “I’m putting him in the boys’ room.”

Sam clung tighter to his mother. He’d danced with Liz to an old love song in the living room, holding up his head to gaze at her, as proud as a groom who has scored a wife way out of his league.

Julian stood up to give Sam a friendly pat. “Sam I Am. Little man! I’ll stay in touch—for the rest of my life.”

“We’ll take him upstairs,” Franny said, lifting the suddenly compliant Sam and guiding his lolling head into the crook between her neck and shoulders.
She is a good kid
, Joseph thought. He’d talk to her tomorrow, work things out—and he’d better, because she’d be living at his apartment every second week starting in September. Martha’s orders.

“Kids—fucking amazing,” Julian said, now back in his chair. He squinted at the sun. “I’m so happy to see you folks again, and to finally meet Alex. Especially now that I got my teeth!”

“Teeth made this country great!” Mike was giggling.

“How
did
you lose them?” Alex said.

“I hooked up with the wrong people out on the Coast.” Amber rubbed his back. “I did so many drugs I went into a coma. No one brushes your teeth when you’re in a coma.”

That got Alex’s full attention. He stepped around the fire. “How long were you asleep?”

“Four years.”

Holy shit
. While Joseph and Jane were flirting with addiction and self-annihilation, Julian had followed the Dionysian impulse down as deep as you could go without dying. Imagine it—nodding off one day with a needle in your arm and awakening from a magic sleep four years later: toothless, skinny, and sponge-bathed, no memory of the years spent wrapped in white linen, the nurses moving your limbs like a doll’s, or the prayers and accusations of family members and ex-lovers at your bedside.

“How did you feel when you woke up?” Alex asked, as though he’d been pondering the scenario for years. “What were your first thoughts?”

It was a great question. What
would
it be like to inhabit the silent pause between thoughts for four uninterrupted years—to wipe clean the stale patterns of your mind and overstimulated senses? What if the whole world went to sleep for four years?

Jane half-stifled a laugh but it was too late to stop the giggles spreading. Only Alex and Joseph didn’t get the joke.

“I’m sort of kidding,” Julian said, staring into the fire. “I was a junkie for four years—sincerely. I might as well have been in a coma. I ate nothing but candy.” He hugged his guitar, awestruck by the memory of his candy consumption—chocolate mountains, candy houses behind marzipan fences. “My teeth rotted out.”

Joseph shifted in his seat. Alex had stepped back, but his sour, betrayed face showed through the smoke like the sun through the haze. The guy had to lighten up for fuck’s sakes, learn how to let things go.

“We’ve all done time in a coma.” Joseph wanted to move on.

“Amen, brother,” Julian said. “We all fell asleep on the way to Oz.”

Alex was at a disadvantage here, having made few journeys down chemical yellow brick roads in his youth.

“At least the Wizard gave me back my teeth!” Julian called out. “It’s great to be awake!”

“And what are you taking to stay awake these days?” Alex asked.

Joseph felt Jane tense up at the sound of Alex’s baiting tone. Julian shrugged and took a small pouch woven in a Central American pattern out of his shirt pocket, dangling it from his fingers by a loop of string. He removed a tiny glass vial filled with micro pills, and a tiny envelope folded with autistic precision.

“I’ve become a man of letters, like my father wanted. I’ve got my
A
, my
E
, my
K
.”

“And your
H
?” Alex said.

“No, brother—
H
is for
hell
.”

“And heaven.”

“Not in my alphabet.” Julian spoke in the ex-junkie’s penitent tone.

“I guess I should have had more of that joint.”

“Someone had to get the placebo tokes.” Julian examined his own stained fingers. “What you need, brother, is the One Night in Bangkok joint. If you’re up for it.”

Alex edged forward. The sun was now skimming above the treeline, and the heat from the fire laid a sheen over his body, setting him outside the group, as if he were grafted
onto a scene from an old movie, the one about the wronged man forced into a showdown. No one saw this coming: Drug Fight at the O.K. Corral. Julian opened his guitar case. Three taps to the lid of a small compartment produced a joint as thin as a nail.

“I’m fine,” Jane said, staring at the joint as Julian lit it.

“We can do better than fine,” Amber assured her. She
knew
this dope and where it could take you.

“I’m here,” Joseph whispered to Jane, catching the smell of her hair. “Let’s get high. We’ll ride out the waves together. Like old times.”

Jane did an inventory of her old friends and then fixed on Alex. “Don’t expect me to make everyone an omelette later,” she said.

“Fucking hell.” Joseph didn’t mean to say it out loud.

“Amen, brother.”

The One Night in Bangkok joint had knocked seven adults on their asses. Joseph kept losing pockets of time, falling into a buzzing hole as he and Jane walked through the pasture behind the farm. They stopped to watch the setting sun, a layer cake of conch-shell pinks and oranges that gilded Jane’s face, drawing her wet pupils half-closed.

“I’m
too
high,” he said.

“We’ll ride it out together.”

She slipped her hand into his and squeezed, and he reflexively glanced back at the farm, finding the shed that stood next to the white board fence. No sign of Alex. He’d asked Jane to stay behind with him, then skulked back to
the house when she refused. A car glided down the road, and bats flaked off the farmhouse roof to take to the sky, the top-floor windows glowing like a jack-o’-lantern’s eyes.

Jane and Joseph slowed their steps, letting the two other couples get even further ahead, through the grass as thick as a mop. Above them, the sky was darkening, as if the bright colours had been thrown against the western sky by centrifugal force.

“This is the first time we’ve been alone since the night you told me you were marrying Alex,” he said, almost sure he was right.

“Yes.” Her languid voice extended the word. “What did I tell you? That Alex gave me what I
needed
.”

“Yeah, me too.” He didn’t mean it as a joke, but he and Jane were laughing so hard his stomach hurt. “Maybe
I
should have married him.”

“No, no—I said he gave me what I
needed
, not what I
wanted
.” She wasn’t laughing anymore. “I said I was sick of what I wanted because I wanted everything.”

“I remember.” Was that also the night he followed Jane’s lead and decided to marry Martha? He watched the thought slip by, safe to think anything he wanted. Jane was beside him, not Jane the wife or mother or protective friend of his ex-wife, but
his
Jane. She looked up at him, the puffy half-circles beneath her eyes like ceremonial smudges. The farmhouse felt miles behind them, Alex and the children under glass, curios in an exhibit. They leaned on each other and kept walking, and then it started, the high mewling and barking of coyotes from the woods.

“They have an animal cornered,” she said.

They turned to stare at the throbbing black line of trees, hearing the animal thrash and struggle as the coyotes’ howls cut the humid air to ribbons.

“They sound almost human,” she said. “Would you join them?”

“I’d leave tonight.”

“What if you wanted to leave the pack one day?”

How could he have forgotten them—Jane’s “what if” permutations? What if you could be invisible for one hour, what would you do? What if my face got horribly burned, would you still want to fuck me? Another yapping tremor went through the pack, followed by a sound like a huge ball rolling through the undergrowth.

“They’re relentless,” she said, not without admiration.

He put his arm around her waist and pulled her closer.

“I don’t know about things anymore,” she whispered. “I know where I’ve been, but it feels like the tracks in front of me have run out.”

He didn’t know what she meant but her tone of renunciation excited him. He kissed her cool cheek.

“I love my husband and kids,” she said, shifting her face to bring her lips closer to his. “I just want them to go away for a little while.”

He’d waited years for this without knowing it. He could hold off a little longer. They followed the line of the forest, hand in hand, the sky still pulsing as they reached the second pasture, where the freshly cut grass was gathered into round bales, giant cheese wheels in the orange light. The pasture climbed gently toward a horizon made jagged by copses of trees, and they saw the two other couples in
the distance, moving beneath the sky like revellers in a seasonal procession.

“Follow me,” Jane said.

They turned and walked toward the forest, touching and kissing until the trees loomed over them as if they’d pulled up their roots to meet the old lovers halfway, even extending a welcoming gap that opened onto a dim, warm clearing, the air scented with pine and cedar. He found Jane’s neck, a wave of warm white milk that poured down into her shirt collar, and the treetops swayed, filling the clearing with a sound like water flowing over rocks. He felt obliterated, his life in the city a fading, unpleasant mirage, and he sensed in her desperate kisses the same shrugging-off of a life. The trees closed around them as she eased him down onto the ground, pressing him into the soft mulch. It kept slipping between his fingers, the murky picture of the strong, focused man of purpose he could have been, but he gladly let the image go. They undressed and they gave in, laughing at their altered bodies, grunting when they found what still worked, until a while later they heard it, a branch snapping as the breeze picked up. Jane sat up and glanced around the clearing. The sky glowed purple in stained-glass shards on the canopy of leaves above them, and the forest throbbed in Joseph’s peripheral vision, pulsing as gently as a vein in a sleeping child’s wrist.