In For a Penny (7 page)

“And not much time,” he answered. The loudspeaker started up helpfully, droning out its evacuation message somewhere up the adjacent street.

She set out again without another word, which perhaps wasn’t a good omen. But the truth was she had never understood the lamp any more than she had understood the bowling ball or the train set. Still, he was perfectly ready to be rational, to share the space in the car, what there was of it. They were a married couple; they could both make concessions, just like she had explained to him last night. He opened the trunk, which was empty aside from a couple of stadium blankets, the spare tire, and a map book. All of it could stay. He headed up the driveway again, through the open gate. If this was some kind of marital test that involved their capacity to meet each other halfway, then he was entirely up to the challenge.

He looked around the garage with an inquisitive eye. He couldn’t be excessive; the Escort wasn’t roomy enough for excess. The boxes containing the train set lay against the back wall, but there wasn’t a single one of them that would even fit in the Escort, even if he bungeed the trunk lid down. They’d need to be sorted and repacked, and there wasn’t time for that. My kingdom for a U-Haul truck, he thought, turning his back on the trains. Lying on the bench was the matched set of deer antlers his Uncle Oscar had given him twenty-odd years ago. They were mounted on a mahogany plaque with a tooled leather patch that had his name on it. Oscar, his favorite uncle, was dead now, which was reason enough not to abandon the antlers to the aliens. It dawned on him that the horns formed a cage the size of a large basket, into which he could load all manner of things, so they wouldn’t really consume excess space anyway.

The bowling bag sat on the bench, too, but he ignored it for the moment and went out into the night carrying the antlers, hurrying down to the car, where he put them in the trunk. Then he fetched the box full of clothing from the back seat and repacked the travel kit and odds and ends of clothing within the arched confines of the horns. He hesitated over the bowling shirt. Why not wear it? he asked himself, and he pulled it on over his sweater without another thought. It was a little bit wrinkled now, but it gave him an instant sense of security, a suit of armor against the alien threat. He fitted the lamp in among the clothes in the antler basket and checked his watch: a bare ten minutes to go.

Picking up another empty box, he returned to the garage. He would take another two minutes, and then, as his dutiful concession, he would give Lisa what time was left over. He heard the car door slam while he was in the garage—Lisa hard at work. Good for her. He grabbed his bowling ball, case and all, and a shadow box full of fishing lures that had belonged to his father. There was the box half full of old
Mad
magazines that he had saved from his childhood, and another of vinyl records. He didn’t have a turntable any longer, but he could always buy one. …

He studied a couple of the faded old record jackets, overcome by a wave of nostalgia. They were too much a part of his past, and without his past he was nothing, only a cardboard cutout living in the tiresome moment. He was struck again with the epiphany he had glimpsed upstairs, in the light from the alien saucer – hat these objects, cast away into the dark limbo of closets and garages, were
him,
in some essential way. One was defined by the stuff of one’s life. Even the shambling beggar had something in his stolen shopping cart, something he would struggle to keep, pitiful as it might be. Poets knew the truth in this. Wives, apparently, did not.

He dumped the records and magazines together and went back down the path carrying the lot of it. There was a new noise from the hills, what sounded like the roar and whoosh of vast engines coming to life, perhaps death rays warming up, blood boilers, vacuum devices, anatomical probes. He picked up his pace, loping up the driveway where he nearly stumbled over the deer antlers sitting on the lawn, his stuff still packed neatly inside them. Lisa had pulled them out of the trunk.

Three cardboard boxes full of photos sat where the antlers had been. Calmly and fairly, he eenie-meenied Lisa’s three boxes and removed the loser, pulling it out and setting it on the lawn before replacing the antlers. Then he loaded in the bowling bag and the carton of magazines and records, which killed the rest of his share of the space. Adjusting his thinking, he ran back toward the garage instead of into the house like he had vowed. Lisa’s hogging up the trunk had obviated one of his concessions. If it had come down to a street fight, then either she played by the rules or the rules took a hike. He glanced again at his watch, conscious that the seconds were ticking away at an alarming rate of speed, but when he reentered the garage, he was staggered by the sheer quantity of stuff that still littered the floor and benchtop. He shifted boxes around, pulling flaps back, searching for treasures, fueled now by nostalgia.

He found his old basketball, which a friend had inscribed with the legend “Sir Duke” in Germanic script, his nickname on the courts back in the day. He stuffed the ball into a fresh box along with a genuine Hawaiian tiki carved out of palm, then threw in his collection of baseball caps, many of which were collectible, or would have been if they weren’t worn out. He grabbed his old Red Sox jersey, which had fit him back when he’d played Pony League ball, but was too small for him now. Satisfied, he flipped off the light and shut the garage door, out of room and out of time. This was it, this pitiful little collection of trinkets. Trifles, he remembered reading somewhere, made the sum of life, and not always an elegant sum, either.

He wondered if he were being excessive with all this, and on impulse he tossed the Red Sox jersey into the bushes. What did he want with a jersey that didn’t even fit? As for the rest – hell, it was the principle of the thing, wasn’t it? That’s what it had come down to, the old clichè.

He was staggered to see that once again Lisa had emptied out every damned single thing he had put into the trunk. The box of records and magazines sat on the lawn alongside the antlers. She had been cool about it, very controlled, making a simple statement. And he could understand the statement. She didn’t want to argue about it. Setting his stuff on the lawn had made her simple point. He looked up at the open front door and saw her inside the house, pulling things hurriedly out of their china hutch – probably the silver and crystal, the “valuables,” if that was the quality of your thinking. Her wooden jewelry box sat on the porch, ready to go.

Across the street the Bords’ car fired up and backed out of the driveway, the family huddled inside, the windows rolled up against the terrible alien noise. In his haste, Bord knocked down the trash cans waiting at the curb, which rolled away downhill in the wake of the car, clattering and banging, bags of trash and lawn clippings spilling out onto the street. Other cars followed, running over the Bords’ trash, knocking through the metal cans. One of the cans picked up speed, revolving as it rolled, bang up against the curb a good sixty yards downhill where it scraped to a stop, its rear end pointed downhill like the exhausted first stage of a galvanized rocket.

Once again he took a rational look at the nearly full trunk, removing exactly half of what Lisa had installed there, and filling the remainder with his things, which he picked up from the lawn again. He crammed the basketball and the rest of the garage items behind the front seat, leaving room on the back seat itself for whatever else Lisa brought out. Abruptly he was aware that his bowling bag was missing. He looked around the lawn, but it wasn’t there. In a fit of anger he strode toward the house, but then he caught himself, forcing himself to take a deep breath. He started counting to level out his patience, but then stopped when he caught sight of his own trash cans there at the curb. Suspicious, he hurried down to them, and, sure enough, there lay the bowling bag in among the dead leaves and grass clippings, right where she’d dropped it, making the clearest sort of statement. Smiling grimly, he pulled it out, returned to the car, pushed aside the boxes in the trunk, and wedged the bowling bag in behind them, out of sight.

Lisa appeared just then, piled high with her jewelry box and the things from the hutch, coming up behind him silently. He steeled himself for the inevitable.

“Backseat!” he said helpfully, gesturing toward the open door. “Plenty of room left.”

“Get the parakeets?” she asked, phrasing it as a question rather than an order. He turned to obey. It was a reasonable request, but it would eat up the rest of the available space inside the car, the only real space for the china closet stuff and the jewelry box. But what the hell, he thought, life was nothing but one hard choice after another. He grabbed the cage, careful not to dump the water and food, and turned straight back toward the car.

Lisa had disappeared behind the raised trunk lid, and he saw only her hand and arm jerking and throwing. Magazines and records flew out onto the lawn in a hurricane of flapping paper and sailing cardboard. The whole damned box followed, end over end. He stood clutching the birdcage, suddenly humbled by this display of wrath. The antlers followed, cartwheeling into the neighbor’s hedge, littering the lawn with his clothes. The lamp rolled free of the bundle, and he set the cage down and ran to it, picking it up. It was apparently unhurt, and he hid it in the shrubbery in case her rage compelled her to track it down and destroy it. With an exaggerated lack of concern he walked back to the parakeets, watching as she heaved the basketball off into the night and then zingoed the shadow box onto the roof.

“Spare the tiki,” he muttered, but it did no good. The tiki sailed clear across the street, bouncing across the Bords’ driveway and up onto their front porch. She found his bowling ball where he had hidden it, and she hauled it out, swung the bag by the handle, and heaved it into the shrubbery. Then, coldly and steadily, she walked straight up to him and took the parakeet cage, turning around and walking back to the car, where she belted it securely onto the rear seat. She turned and strode past him into the house as if he didn’t exist, her jaw set, eyes straight ahead. He knew better than to say anything. He had forgotten about the brake, and instead had accelerated, picking up speed in his haste to save his things.

The fire truck swung around the corner again at the bottom of the hill, unimpeded by what was now a trickle of outward-bound cars. “Evacuate immediately,” the magnified voice intoned. “Leave at once.” The truck paused in front of their house, repeating the order for Ed’s benefit, and he waved and nodded seriously, pointing toward the house to show them that someone was still inside. The truck moved on. He looked at the junk on the lawn. There was no time to repack it. She’d had the last word.

He caught sight of her now, pulling on a jacket as she approached the door, keys in hand. This was it. They were leaving. So much for concessions. So much for fairness. But then she stopped, turning around, running toward the kitchen for some forgotten thing.

Just then he was struck with inspiration, one last vital statement. He ducked into the bushes, where he spotted the bowling bag in the dirt. Dusting it with the sleeve of his shirt, he hurried back to the car. He unbelted the parakeets and took them out, replacing them on the seat with the bag and ball, expecting to hear the door slam as he sprinted the six steps to the top of the driveway, where he set the cage carefully down on the concrete. At the car again he positioned the seatbelt across the bag, pulled it tighter, and secured it.

He climbed into the Escort and fired up the engine just as Lisa came out of the house, her purse over her shoulder, shutting the door behind her and locking the dead bolt. She must have heard the last warning, because she was nearly running when she passed the parakeet cage, not even seeing it in her fear and haste. She opened the door hard enough to test its hinges, and when the dome light blinked on, she glanced into the back seat, where the bowling bag sat securely, snugged down into the upholstery. The sight of it seemed to confuse her, as if it were an utterly alien thing, something from outside her realm of experience. The look of confusion passed away, replaced by something dangerously close to resignation, and immediately he regretted his little

“Just kidding,” he muttered, but already she had depressed the seat belt button, freeing the bag, which she opened in a single, swift motion, carrying it down toward the street. Ed climbed out, not quite knowing how to react, thinking that maybe she had come utterly unhinged and was simply walking away into the night.

The street was empty of cars. They were apparently the last ones left in the abandoned neighborhood. Lisa walked briskly out into the center, where she stopped, swept her arm back, and bowled the eight ball down the rough asphalt. Ed saw it hit a chuckhole, which deflected it toward the curb. It caromed off, bouncing a few times, then smashed through the closest of the Bords’ renegade trash cans, sounding like a train wreck in the silent night. He saw it bounce clear again, centrifugal force pinning it to the curb as it shot away downhill.

He was suddenly aware of the quiet. There were no more noises from the hillside, no whirring or shrieking, just an eye-of-the-hurricane silence. Horns honked in the distance, traffic moving out along Grizzly Peak or down Marin, heading toward Oakland and Richmond and the freeways. Lisa walked slowly back toward the car, passing him without looking at him. “Gutter ball,” he heard her say, but there was no spirit in her voice, no joking around. She simply looked tired. He felt the urge to rush to her, drop to his knees, recant everything. But she wasn’t in the mood for it. Not now she wasn’t. If the universe cut him any slack, he could think again about it later.

She picked up the birdcage from where it sat on the driveway and put it carefully back into the car, then climbed wearily into the front seat and belted in, waiting for him. There was a red glow in the air out over the hills, and he thought at once that it was the alien laser light, consuming the sky, but then he realized that it was merely the dawn, that the sun was rising on a warm and cloudless fall morning. He picked his way across the lawn, which was strewn with the litter of their lives – both of their lives, since Lisa had never had the chance to return her own stuff to the car from where he had ditched it.